My Dick Hurts - August 28, 2011

So I "beat" Final Fantasy XIII... I think. I don't know if I missed some side-quests (I did a few of the hunts, but then realized that I have a goddamn brain and decided to not continue), but this ending comes in the middle of the game. I appreciate the developers ending it quickly - very thoughtful - but... gah! The WORST part of this ending was that it was actually kind of awesome. I have NO fucking clue what happened, but the final cutscenes are great to look at, and are actually kind of tense despite the "not having a fucking clue what happened".

I'd relate what occurs and what I think about it, but I don't think that's possible. The protagonists fight Orphan despite the fact they just spent the last ten hours talking about how they weren't going to do that. Turns out Orphan is a... mixture of Seymour and some other random character whose name I forgot. There's a lot of random characters whose names I've forgotten that are just dropped and served no purpose what-so-ever. Anyway, you beat him, but the characters don't know what to do. It's KIND OF too late to be formulating a plan here, but whatever. Orphan starts torturing Retarded Australian Girl in order to get her to kill him, but Hot Australian Chick ain't havin' none of that. So she threatens to smack Retarded Australian Girl in the head with her stick, and everyone else turns into Cieth. I don't know why. They dogpile on Hot Australian Chick, who turns into a fiery cat demon for some reason, jumps at orphan... and then gets off and turns back. I don't know why. Everyone else turns back into humans, I don't know why, and then we fight the REAL Orphan who's a baby head, I don't know why, which is an insultingly easy boss fight. You beat Orphan and then Hot Australian Chick and Retarded Australian Girl fuse together and turn into a thousand-armed demon and jump into the center of the world, using lava that turns into crystal to connect Pulse and Cocoon. Um... I don't know why? I laughed my ass off during the whole thing, but it was cool to look at.

Then it ends with a shitty song and pretends like something profound happened. There's no closure because it failed so hard at explaining the conflict. Next.

I already made a post about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I'll go into more detail. This game turned out a lot better than I expected. The graphics and animation are pretty dated, but the gameplay and level design are what matters and that's what they focused on. I'm playing through it as a stealthy-hacker, and for the most part I'm given fun and useful things to do. Until I get to the castle and have to fight Bowser and save the fucking princess. There are boss battles, and they do not belong. I assume if you focused on combat and played the game as a more traditional shooter, these would be fine. If you play Deus Ex like goddamn Deus Ex, however, you've got a problem. These segments have really tainted my view of an overall excellent game. Not only do they remove the element of choice, they are also just bad boss battles. Not welcome in the slightest.

I got used to playing as Neo a little faster than I thought, though. So there's that.

I don't have much to say about Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition, because I haven't gotten the chance to play it much. Street Fighter III has always been the fighting game that I could really "get into", but till now it's been hard because no one fuckin' plays it. I've only really fiddled around with it so far (haven't even touched the online mode), but the immediate thing I noticed is I can't do inputs. Like, I play Makoto and can't get her throw out when I really need it. At first I thought Street Fighter 4 just ruined me, but then I remembered the last time I played this game was on an emulator with a goddamn Xbox 360 controller and my execution was fine. Haven't really played enough to blame the game, but it just feels like something funny is going on.

Finally, I'm thinking of maybe doing something at the end of each of these, since they're basically all I do now. So for now, I'm going to be posting whichever song I've been listening to the most since the last post, provided there's a YouTube link to it. Why? Because I dunno. Here.