What I Watched: The Legend of Zelda Animated Series Episode 1

Recently I got lost in the bowels of Amazon Prime's instant video section and somehow found myself watching the the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, which I recounted in an earlier post.

This past week I dove into a new animated video game inspired show, The Legend of Zelda. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show would trade off its Mario cartoon every Friday for a Zelda cartoon. The freaky live action stuff aired with Zelda too, but for some reason amazon has that cut out.

I'm not going to lie. I really like Zelda games. In fact, I'm confident in saying that it's one of my favorite video game franchises. The games all have the same basic premise. A silent hero named Link in a green tunic has to save or help the princess (Zelda) from an evil villain (Who is named Gannon most of the the time). It's not a hard concept to grasp. Link wears a green tunic and doesn't talk. He fights evil and saves the princess. It seems like it would be hard to mess up a Zelda cartoon, but somehow The Legend of Zelda Animated Series manages to be horrible despite that.

Check the intro out here.

The show's intro has Princess Zelda explaining everything to Link while a familiar tune from the game plays in the background. Zelda has the triforce of wisdom and the evil wizard Gannon has the triforce of power. Whoever gets both of them will rule the land! Link must help Zelda protect the troforce at all costs! Up until this point in the intro everything is fine and dandy, except for the fact that there should be a triforce of courage as well, but whatever I'll let that slide. 

Everything was going fine until Link lets loose the phrase "Excuse me Princess". It doesn't sound too bad out of context, but it's long, drawn out, and sarcastic in the show. It makes him sound like a total douche and his actions in the show prove that he's a total douche. I had heard the phrase prior to this viewing, but I always associated it with the awful Zelda CD-I games.

The episode begins with Link waking up for the day. He then immediately begins complaining about how boring Hyrule is. Apparently making sure the world doesn't suck isn't very fun. As he continues complaining he makes his way over to the window for a breath of fresh air. He looks out to see Princess Zelda on the balcony below wearing her sleeping garb. Link let's out a whistle as tells her that he has a nice view, especially from his angle. Now, I may be a little immature, but this remark sounds extremely sexual. Zelda gets offended and then her fair helper Sprite brings her a robe and they leave.

Mourning the loss of his view Link lingers at the window only to be pulled away by a moblin. While Link was sexually harassing Zelda they came in to steal the triforce. Link doesn't have his tunic, or pants on but that doesn't stop him from fighting back. He quickly grabs his sword...and a pillow to defend himself. As he's fighting Link decides to start up a pillow fight with the moblins.

Link's always ready for a pillow fight, especially when he has no pants on!

Link continues to not wear pants as he defeats the moblins. When he's done Zelda comes knocking. He's expecting a kiss for all his hard work, but instead she smacks him, just as she should. He explains that the moblins attacked to try and steal the triforce, while trying to make himself sound really cool. Zelda gets worried and tells him to stay inside for the day and protect the triforce. She can't stay with him, because she needs to judge the magician's competition.

The camera cuts to Gannon, who is not pleased by the failure of his moblins. He decided that if he wants to get the triforce he's going to have to get it himself. He teleports around a bit before deciding to enter the magician's competition in Hyrule. Gannon hides himself underneath what seems to be a blue sheet. Gannon looks like a green pig man and the blue sheet does little to hide it. It's a good thing the inhabitants of Hyrule are dumb in this show, or he'd be found out in an instant. Gannon then summons a few skeletons covered with blue sheets so that they can carry him to Hyrule on a chair. Pleased with himself he sets to enter the contest.

At the magician competition things aren't looking so hot. The only spell they show is a magician making a tomato grow until it bursts. I'm not a magician, but that spell seems like it's pretty lame. Gannon shows up just in time and summons a bird so the princess allows him to enter the competition, because obviously if you can summon a bird you're an amateur magician. Gannon then turns his bird into a bat and sends it to look for the triforce. It returns to tell him that Link and Sprite are up in the tower. Gannon then decides to create a distraction, which ends up being a dragon. It attacks Zelda. Link hears and see's it as an opportunity to get a kiss from Zelda, so he rushes to the scene.

Link defeats the dragon and then tries to claim his reward from Zelda. Much to his dismay he finds out that Gannon is escaping with the triforce. Zelda throws down some seeds and has a wizard cast a growing spell on them. One turns into a tree, which Link and Zelda use as a slingshot so they can get to Gannon.

Link get's denied a kiss...again.

Link lands in the forest first and Zelda lands on top of him. Link demands a kiss, but she refuses. They see Gannon on his chair and quickly jump into action. Link shoots a beam from his sword to slow him down. Gannon quickly sends his goons after them while calling for reinforcements. Link pulls a bow out of his bottomless item pouch for Zelda to use in battle, but they quickly become outnumbered. Link brilliantly says that they should get back to back, but they already are. Despite that he unbuckles his belt and ties them together, which there is no reason for.

They beat all of their enemies and manage to get the triforce back with a well timed bomb throw. When the battle ends it becomes clear as to why Link buckled the two of them together...he wanted a kiss! He begs Zelda for a kiss and she yields. Right when they're about to lock lips the stupid fairy sprite appears and unbuckles the belt causing them to fall to the ground. Link doesn't get his kiss and everyone laughs. The episode ends and they all live happily ever after

Link's perviness pays off and he almost gets a kiss.

The whole thing could have been decent, but instead it ends up being slightly creepy and hilariously bad. Much like the Super Mario Bros. Super Show live action segements I found myself laughing uncontrollably at many points during the episode. My sub-par synopsis of the episode can't capture the hilarity or creepiness that the show has.

The reason the show falls apart is because Link is a complete douche, but it's also the reason it's so funny. I wouldn't say that unless it was true. He complains about everything and is so full of himself it's painful. On top of that he has a creepy obsession with kissing Zelda, which leads to many awkward situations. Most of Link's lines seem like they're jokes, but they clearly aren't supposed to be. Every time he opens his mouth it's cringe worthy. I'd be willing to bet that whoever wrote the script for this show had never played Zelda and if they did, they had a totally different experience than I did. 

I can't recommend this show in good conscience, but if you're low on sleep and looking for a good laugh you should try it out. It's no longer available for free to prime members, but you can find full episodes on youtube. I even found an HD version of this episode. Someone must really like their animated Zelda. 

While the show isn't good, it's certainly a good example of what not to do with a Zelda cartoon. I guess creepy borderline sexual things were standard fare for Nintendo shows in the late 80's. Perhaps that's why they stopped being produces.

     -Manny

Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Demo Impressions

When it was leaked that Bioware would be adding multiplayer to Mass Effect 3 everyone seemed to freak out and I was right there with them. Mass Effect is a single player experience. I didn't want a poorly implemented multiplayer mucking up my epic space RPG/shooter hybrid. Without even playing it, I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't like it. I could have just ignored its existence, but they had to find a way to have it invade the single player experience as well. I was down on the whole thing. 

This past Friday the multiplayer portion of the  Mass Effect 3 demo was unlocked for everyone and it managed to shatter all of my preconceived notions. I am no longer upset now that I have played the multiplayer for an extended period of time. Contrary to my previous belief it's actually quite fun and I don't think I'll mind playing more of it when Mass Effect 3 drops in March.

The experience of the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer is most similar to horde mode from Gears of War. This type of thing is becoming more and more popular, so it's only natural for Bioware to capitalize on it. The goal is to fight wave after wave of foes in a group of up to four people with your chosen character.

Character Creation and Customization

What type of character you bring into battle is up to you. Just like the main game there are six classes to choose from. They are adept, soldier, engineer, infiltrator, and vanguard. Unlike the main game other races are finally playable. Each class can be a male or female human, or two other races. There is quite a wide selection of races. Asari,  drell, krogans, turians, quarians, and salarians are all available to play. At the beginning there is only one usable type of each class and they are all human. The others must all be unlocked.

The character select screen kindly displays all of the characters you can unlock.

All the character models are set in stone, but there are ways to differentiate them from everyone else. Only the color of their armor can be changed at first and you must unlock the other ways. Patterns can be added to the armor as well as the lights on the characters backs. I personally haven't unlocked any patterns, but I saw a few people who did and they actually looked pretty cool. The characters all look similar in the beginning, but over time you can make them look fairly unique.

The cosmetic customization is decent, but the gun customization is what most people will be concerned with. That's right, gun customization is actually in this part of the demo. Only two guns can be carried into battle, but they can be any two guns you want. All the gun types from the single player at your disposal, except for the heavy weapons. Each gun has two slots open for weapon attachments, which grant various bonuses to the weapon. These bonuses range from faster reload speeds to adding a scope. It's nothing huge, but it's more customization than the last game had. 

The gun customization page isn't fancy, but it gets the job done.

To round off the customization each character has a skill set, where points can be allocated to certain abilities. These are mostly the same as the single player skills, but there are a few minor differences. Experience is gained through play depending on how well you do. The max level for each character is twenty, so you won't be able to max out all six skills.

Finding Lobbies and How They Work

Once your character is customized it's time to head into battle. Having a party of four players is ideal, but that's easier said than done in this demo. The matchmaking doesn't exactly work as well as it could. More often than not the lobbies I got into would only get two people. There were several occasions when we would start the match and would be added to another game that already had two people, but it didn't happen enough. Other than that I like the way lobbies are done. It's exceedingly simple to view the load-outs of the other party members. 

Searching for lobbies is also easy. What map do you want to play, who do you want to fight against, and what difficulty do you want it to be. In the demo there are only two maps and you can only fight against Cerberus. The final version of the game will obviously have much more available. I've seen screenshots of people fighting against the Geth, which may be why you can't play as them. 

The three difficulty levels bronze, silver, and gold vary greatly in difficulty. The higher you go, the more health and armor the enemies have. Bronze is easy, especially if you have four people. Silver is manageable, but it's pretty tough at lower levels, and almost impossible if you have two people. Then you have gold, which is bananas. Enemies take a ton of shots, but you'll go down in one. If your group doesn't stay together you're not going to live for more than a few minutes.

Lobbies can be searched for based on mission settings.

Gameplay

It may come as a shock, but the gameplay of the multiplayer is almost identical to the gameplay of the single player. The main difference is that you can revive fallen teammates by standing over there bodies while holding x for a few moments. When shot down there is a limited amount of time for a teammate to revive you. Mashing x will keep you alive longer, but if the timer runs out then you will be dead until the next wave. Even though it plays almost exactly the same it feels a lot different, because you're working with up to three other human players.

The AI of the squadmates in Mass Effect is less than ideal. Telling them where to go and what to do doesn't always work out the way it should. This problem can be eliminated in the multiplayer by using a headset. Everything goes a whole lot smoother when you can tell the people you're playing with that they're being flanked, or that they need to help out with something. 

Human controlled squad members enhance the experience.

Since this is almost like a horde mode you'll be facing wave after wave of enemies. The shuttle will drop you off and then it's time to start shooting fools. They'll start easy, but gradually get more difficult as new enemy types are introduced. Most waves consist of killing all the enemies, but there are some objectives thrown in like killing specific enemies, hacking a computer, or disarming transmitters. 

In the demo there are only eleven waves, but that may be different in the final release. Once the tenth wave is wiped out extraction begins. In order to be extracted you have to run back to the shuttle, where a timer will start. If you hold out for the duration of the timer the mission is complete.

Players are awarded with experience points and credits upon clearing a mission. Any experience or credits earned will also be awarded upon failing a mission. You'll get absolutely nothing if you lose connection to the EA servers, which happened to me far too frequently. The experience goes towards leveling, while the credits are used to buy packs. These packs are the only way to unlock guns, mods, powerups, customizations, and characters.

Getting upgrades from packs is exciting and frustrating at the same time.

Packs are are like packs of trading cards. You never know what you're going to get, but you hope it's awesome. In the demo there are only three types of packs. The beginner pack is available the first time you go to the shop for free, so that you can get a sense of what everything is about. The two remaining packs cost credits. You can get the recruit pack for 5,000 credits or the veteran pack for 20,000 credits. The more a pack costs the higher the chance it has of getting a rare item. In the final game there are supposedly two packs that cost more. 

Final Thoughts

In short, I like the multiplayer. It's not ground breaking, but it's surprisingly fun. The final value of the multiplayer will be how well it's integrated into the single player. I'm still not quite clear on how exactly war assets will be implemented. I just hope it's not integral to the experience.

As of right now you have to get a character to level 20 in order to send them as a war asset. It takes a decent amount of time to get a character to level 20 and I don't know if I'd want to get someone up to that level more than a few times. 

It's definitely entertaining to play, but I don't know how long it will hold appeal (for me at least). Multiplayer is generally added to established franchises to bring in new players and I think that's working well for Bioware in this case. Most of the people I spoke with in the demo had never played a Mass Effect game before, but they found the multiplayer to be entertaining.

I'm just glad the multiplayer doesn't suck. Let's hope it doesn't detract from the single player experience.

     -Manny

What I Watched: Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Episode 1

Before I got into video games, prior to kindergarten, my great-aunt used to baby-sit me. She'd feed me all kinds of stuff and let me watch a ton television. The great thing about being able to watch TV at her house was that she had cable, while I didn't have it at home.

One of the things I remember watching was a Super Mario Bros. cartoon. I couldn't remember what it was called, until Amazon kindly reminded me. They've been adding a ton of free video for Prime Members to stream. Recently I got lost in all of the free programming and found myself face to face with the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. I figured that this was the show I used to watch, so I settled down to watch an episode. This is what I saw...

Some portions of the intro were exactly what I remembered of the show, but I can honestly say I have absolutely no recollection of the live action sequences. Perhaps I subconsciously tried to forget the two creepy older men, which I think is a valid possibility. I decided to do some research to see if this was the show I remembered and it was. Apparently live action sequences appear at the beginning and ending of each episode to bookmark the cartoon. In each episode of the show a different celebrity guest comes to interact with Mario and Luigi.

In the episode I watched the guest star was Nicole Eggert who is known for her roles on shows like Charles in Charge and Baywatch. For some reason she appears in the medicine cabinet where she is examining the expiration date on the toothpaste. She came to see Mario and Luigi, because she read that they were the best plumbers around. Her kitchen sink needs to be fixed and the Mario Brothers accept the job with little hesitation.

How the hell did she get in there?

The episode seems to revolve around cleanliness, because everyone involved makes various remarks about being clean, which is a little weird. Mario and Luigi decide that they need to prove their skills to Nicole and it just so happens that they have a clogged sink right in their office! She protests, because she has a party to go to, but the brothers insist that she stay and watch. While trying to fix the sink the brothers end up getting her dirty, which goes against the cleanliness they were promoting earlier. 

This is the point where the cartoon comes in. It's decent for a Mario cartoon made in the late 80's, but it's nothing special. Mario and Luigi have Brooklyn accents instead of Italian accents, but I wasn't expecting the voice acting to be any good. There are also a number of things that don't really fit in relation to the games. Birdo, Bowser, and the goombas all look way different, but not enough for kids to care. As a children's cartoon it's fine. It could have stood on its own, but it was instead book-ended by a ridiculous live action show. As you may have noticed I was much more concerned with what was happening outside of the cartoon segment.

This is about what I'd expect of a Mario cartoon from the 80's.

When the cartoon ends the live action segment makes its triumphant return. Mario and Luigi felt bad that they got Eggert dirty, so they wanted to help her out. As you'd expect they only end up making her even more messy. The two brothers continually get sadder with each mishap, while Nicole tries to console them. Nicole eventually gets through to the brothers in order to tell them that it's okay that she's dirty. Turns out the party she mentioned earlier was a sloppy party. Don't know what a sloppy party is? I didn't either, my mind was running rampant, so it's a good thing she explained it.

Turns out a sloppy party is a party where the person who looks the sloppiest wins. Without knowing it the brothers supplied Nicole with the perfect costume! The brothers are relieved and it just so happens that they have a cake for absolutely no reason. Nicole, Mario, and Luigi then begin rubbing the cake all over Nicole, which made me laugh so hard I cried. It's really funny, but it's kind of creepy at the same time. Two older men with fake mustaches are rubbing cake all over a young girl. It seems like the kind of thing that could turn into a porno at any moment. Lucky for me that didn't happen and the episode ended.

I don't get why these live action segment exist, but I can safely say that they're unintentionally hilarious. Mario and Luigi are really old and they're walking stereotypes. They have spaghetti sauce on their clothes, they have pizzas lying around, and their phone is literally in the center of a pizza. While I will always look back fondly on the humor I found in this episode I'm going to try as hard as I can to never watch another episode of this show ever again. Despite my quest to never watch another episode of this again the ending theme has been stuck in my head for some time.

DO THE MARIO! Swing your arms from side to side....

I do think that everyone should try to view this in some format though, just so they can witness how ridiculous it is. As I mentioned you can find it on Amazon and it's free if you have prime. Alternatively you can view it on youtube in parts. It's certainly something you'll never gorget.

     -Manny

Mass Effect 3 Single Player Demo Impressions

Stories of Mass Effect 3 have been flying around the internet for months. A demo was accidentally leaked to Xbox live dashboard previewers back in November. It was quickly taken down, but not fast enough. Files were extracted from the demo that detailed much of the story for the game and fans were not pleased with what was found. I have not taken a look at anything related to the leaked story, so I can't speak to the quality of what was found.

It's now Valentine's Day and the previously leaked demo is available to the general public. I played the demo on the PS3. As of now I've only gotten a chance to play the single player portion, because the multiplayer is currently unavailable. Here's my experience.

Part One

The Demo opens on Earth just before the Reaper invasion. I'm not positive, but this sequence seems like it's the very beginning of the game or quite close to it. Freddy Prince Jr. voiced James Vega, a tough marine, has come to fetch Shepard. The Council believes that the Reapers are coming, so Anderson wants Shepard to come and see if he can identify them.

Prior to starting the demo there is a prompt to choose whether Ashley or Kaiden was lost in combat during Mass Effect 1. I chose Kaiden, so Ashley showed up on the way to the council. She looks way different than she did before. She's been sexed up a bit, which doesn't make much sense. Why change her look for the final game in a trilogy? She was supposed to be a tomboy and that's what she was established as for two games prior to this one.

I found this handy picture to show the change in Ashley...

Anderson comes to rescue Shepard from his conversation with Ashley and takes him to the Council. Shepard argues with them for a bit and then surprise, the Reapers invade Earth. Without a visual reference everything I've described so far, bar Ashley, might sound pretty cool. Much to my dismay, it wasn't.

The player controls nothing prior to the Reaper Invasion with the exception of conversations. Everything outside of the conversations looks a bit...off. The character models look fine, but the textures on their clothes were straight up bad. There were multiple instances where the texture of Shepard's shirt didn't load at all. On top of that all of the movement looked super stilted, because the frame rate wasn't holding up.

The frame rate problem and stilted movement completely disappeared each time the game waited for me to select from the dialogue wheel. The textures looked a whole lot better too, which I found to be odd.

After the Reapers invade the player is given control of Shepard as he follows Anderson to the Normandy. Running across rooftops, while seeing the Reapers destroy everything is cool, but the frame rate can't hold up. The stilted movement I mentioned before becomes even more apparent when controlling Shepard. There were even points when Anderson's model would warp past obstacles, which I hope is fixed in the final game.

A tutorial of combat and movement takes place as the two run over buildings and rubble. Everything works more or less the same as it did in Mass Effect 2. Shepard run and gun or take cover in order to fight the husks that the Reapers are sending after him. The shooting felt poor, because of the stuttering frame rate. The main difference in the combat is that Shepard can now use his Omni-tool as a blade to melee enemies. It's attacks feel powerful, because Shepard takes a while to crank his arm back before he strikes. The impact is enough to kill most enemies, which is pretty satisfying.

Jackin' fools with the Omni-blade is satisfying.

Part 2

Once Shepard reaches the Normandy the demo moves to a later portion of the game. I have no idea why, but everything in the second portion of the demo seemed better. Everyone was in their N7 armor and the textures looked fine. On top of that the frame rate was totally fine.

The second scenario is exactly what I wanted to see out of this demo. Shepard, Wrex, Liara, and Garrus have arrived on the Solarian home world in order to rescue a female Korgan from the clutches of Cerberus. This portion of the demo is meant to show off the more action oriented sequences and it does a great job.

Wrex stays back, while Shepard, Liara, and Garrus kick some Cerberus ass. Shortly after control of Shepard is given back to the player he comes across Mordin, who is locked in a containment cell with a female Krogan. Your goal is to take out all of the soldiers around you so that you can send the cell to the next level, which will eventually make its way to Wrex. 

Prior to any combat the demo prompts you to level up the squads skills. Everyone is level 12, so they have a fair number of skill points to allocate. The skills are the same ones you could choose from in Mass Effect 2, but now there is much more customization. The first three levels of a skill are pre-set, but after that they branch off. The 4th through 6th progressions of a skill each have two choices. This allows for a deeper level of customization than was previously available in Mass Effect 2. How you choose to level the skills will depend on your play style. In the demo there was an option to undo a previously made upgrade, which may allow for the player to respect.

The new skill trees offer more customization.

Shepard is given one of each type of gun for the sake of this demo, and most of them are new. They all handle well and feel different than the guns I remember from the previous game. It's a shame that the gun customization didn't come into play, or if it did I wasn't able to access it. I did find an assault rifle scope, so I assume that in the final game you'll be able to add parts to your guns on the fly. 

Final Thoughts

The second section of the demo felt worlds ahead of the first. I hope that the first section of the demo was an older build of the game, while the second portion was newer. It's entirely possible that the problems I had were specific to the PS3. I am going to download the 360 version to test that theory and I will update this post with my findings. If anyone played this on PS3 and didn't experience these problems I'd like to hear about it.

People talking about the leaked demo and story elements got me a bit worried about Mass Effect 3. After playing the demo I am no longer worried. While the first section of the game may not have looked or played the best I liked what was going on. Everything is coming to a head and it looks like this will be an exciting conclusion to the story of Commander Shepard.

All of the gameplay in this demo (When it's working properly) is on par with Mass Effect 2. The improved skill tree shows that Bioware is at least trying to put some of the RPG elements back into this series. Sadly the weapon customization wasn't available, but I'm going to assume that it will be fine. 

Mass Effect 3 seems like it's shaping up to be a great game. This demo was certainly entertaining and I recommend that you play it. I'm still skeptical on the whole multiplayer mode. I'll post my thoughts on that in another post, so look out for that.

UPDATE: The multiplayer is only accessible right now for people who have played Battlefield 3 online. Since I do not have Battlefield I will have to wait until Friday for access to the multiplayer.

     -Manny

Odd PSN Download Problems

Recently I've been having problems downloading larger files off of PSN. The downloads I'm talking about are 1GB or more. When they begin the estimated time is around 15-20 minutes, which I'm totally fine with. The issue I've been having is that the longer the download goes the more the time goes up.

For some reason all of the Disgaea 4 patches are gigantic. I haven't played it in a while, but today I decided I should. Much to my dismay the newest patch is 1.7 GB. The estimated time was 25 minutes, so I left to go do some things around the house. When I returned the download was only 10% done and the estimated time had been cranked up to 300 minutes. I figured that something must have gone wrong, so I canceled the download and started it again. The same exact thing happened again.

Deciding to give it one last try I reset the PS3 again. This time the download is working completely fine and I'm not doing anything different. This isn't the only download this has happened with either. In the past few weeks all the demo's I've downloaded have taken a ridiculously long time to finish. Initially I thought it was my internet service provider, but now it seems clear that it's PSN. I've tried using an ethernet cable, but it makes no difference. It seems that the problem rests entirely with PSN.

I've emailed SONY to see if they have an answer to my problem, but I'm sure I'll get an automated response that doesn't help at all. If anyone else is having this problem I would be interested in hearing about it. Slow download speeds for PSN are complained about at length on the internet, but I haven't seen much on this specific problem.

Update: SONY emailed me back, but as I suspected they had nothing helpful to say. The customer service rep. Cameron instructed me to update my routers firmware, turn the PS3 off and on again, and check my firewall. None of these things explain why PSN randomly takes forever to download files.

     -Manny

New Double Fine Adventure Game

Double Fine Productions is a video game developer that was founded by one of my heroes, Tim Schafer. He used to work for Lucasarts back in their heyday mostly making adventure games. He was the primary writer on Grim Fandango, which happens to be one of my favorite games (I play it once every year). It focuses on Skeletons in the land of the dead and it just so happens that the main character shares my name. If you haven't ever played it, I highly recommend that you do.

Grim Fandango is a game that everyone should play at least once.

In 2,000 he left Lucasarts to form his own studio known as Double Fine Productions. He went on to create the cult classic Psychonauts, which is about a summer camp for psychic children. There's something about the humor and look of his games that I really enjoy. I make it a personal point to buy every Double Fine game available to me, because I want them to be able to continue the great work that they do.

Double Fine has been all over in the ways they publish their games. They've partnered with THQ, and more recently Microsoft. In order to make more recent PC ports of their games they have accepted money from XE.com co-founder Steven Dengler. Within the past week, Notch the creator of the popular indie title Minecraft has offered to personally fund a sequel to Psychonauts 2.

There are many people in the world like Notch who claim that they would willingly fund a Double Fine Project. Most of the time people want any type of point-and-click adventure game. If Double Fine went to a publisher and pitched an adventure game they would most likely be laughed out of the meeting. The simple truth is that point-and-click adventure games don't make the kind of money most publishers are looking for in a game.

Look at this man! I'd certainly give him my money!

In order to skip the troublesome pitch to a publisher Double Fine has given fans the opportunity to put up or shut up. Tim Schafer put up a Kickstarter page yesterday evening. Kickstarter is a way for people with ideas to ask for money from anyone willing to fund that idea. Double Fine's idea was to create a new point-and-click adventure game and all they needed was $400,000. Just $300,000 dollars for the game's development (An extraordinarily small budget) and $100,000 dollars to film the entire development process for backers to see. They were hoping to raise the money in just over a month,with the timer set to 34 days.

This video explains everything you need to know about the project.

Turns out that Double Fine fans want to see a point-and-click adventure game really bad. In less than 24 hours the Double Fine Kickstarter page has amassed around $872,000 dollars, which is well over the target amount. It hasn't even been 24 hours yet, but it is already the highest amount of money any project on the site has gotten in a day, and it has the most backers of any project ever. There is no doubt that people will notice this amazing achievement. If things keep going the way they have been then Double Fine will have $1 million dollars before the day is up.

For just $15 dollars you will get a copy of the game when it's released and you'll have an exclusive look at the development. The page will be open for another 33 days, so I hope that everyone will continue to donate. I've donated $15, because this is a game that I can't allow myself to miss out on.

     -Manny

Why the Story of Final Fantasy XIII-2 Isn't Good

Since my review of Final Fantasy XIII-2 I have played the game a whole lot more. This has left me to think about how much I like the gameplay, which is a shame due to the story being so bad. There shouldn't be spoilers in a review,which made it hard to fully explain why I thought the story was so awful. I am going to discuss the story of XIII-2 in depth here, including the ending. This means that there will be spoilers concerned with the entire game, so read at your own risk.

SPOILERS FOR FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 EXIST PAST THIS POINT.

I thought that the story of Final Fantasy XIII was average at best. The problem most people had with it was that it was extremely convoluted. I can't disagree with this, but I think that XIII did a good job of trying to explain what was going on. The in game datalog had tons of information about the characters and the world that was easily accessible should the player want to read it. XIII-2 shares the same datalog, but it's far less useful and doesn't do a whole lot to help understand what the hell is going on.

XIII-2 took the convoluted plot of its predecessor and took it to a whole new level. This problem arises mostly because of the large amount of time travel in the story. Time travel can be a great plot device, but that's only if what's going on is explained in a meaningful way. Instead of offering up reasonable solutions for the things that go on in the game everything is explained away as a time distortion. No matter what is happening or what has gone wrong it almost certainly will have to do with a time distortion. At some point they try to explain what that means, but it comes out a garbled mess where space time is thrown around a lot. You can visit things out of order, or leave and come back later which leads to the story progression being very stilted, but that's not even the worst.

The character development of XIII-2 is what got to me the most. It wasn't just bad, it was god awful. The character development of the last game was lacking, but it was nothing compared to this. Someone thought it would be a good idea to make the characters players knew from XIII occupy minor roles, or not show up at all. This is extremely misleading. For reasons I can't grasp Lightning is a ridiculously popular character and Square knows it. All of the advertisements for XIII-2 feature Lightning, who was the main character of the first game. She's even on the box art, yet she plays a minor role in the game. It's almost as if Square knew that the new characters weren't going to sell and now I know why.

Replacing the cast of XIII with these two probably wasn't the best idea.

Lightning's sister Serah and a mysterious time traveler named Noel are the only two party members that XIII-2 has to offer. As I mentioned in my review I think Noel (or gnoll as the  voice actors say) is an interesting character, but his development doesn't happen until far too late. He comes from the year 700 AF, which is at the end of the world. For almost the entire game he doesn't divulge any information about himself, or why he actually tried to get to Valhalla. Turns out he was the last person left on earth. He lived with the villain Caius and the seer Yuel. Both of them show up throughout the game. This is evident immediately, but Noel never wants to talk about it. When Noel's history with Caius and Yuel is shown later in the game it's actually quite powerful. The impact is cut short, because the revelations come far too late in the story for the player to actually give a shit about Noel and his problems. It happens only an hour or two before the game ends!

On the other hand you have Serah, who I think is the absolute worst. She is Lightning's little sister who is inexplicably going to get married to Snow. She seems way to young to be getting married to Snow, so the whole situation is a little creepy. Serah is more or less a non-character. To me she seems like an empty shell. All she wants to do is see her sister Lightning, but later on she decides that saving the world would be a cool idea too. Nothing happens that makes the player care about Serah at all. Somehow she was gifted with the power to read the timeline, which is never really explained. This must be why Lightning needed her to try and save the timeline, but it still doesn't make sense.

I found the villain Caius to be far more interesting than Noel and Serah combined. At first nothing is known about him, except that he's fighting Lighting eternally in Valhalla. This creates another problem with the story. If Caius is permanently fighting Lighting how the hell was he fighting Noel and Serah while following them all over the place? Later on they try to explain this by saying that Caius is immortal and has always existed to protect the seer Yuel. Yuel is a fragile girl who can see the timeline and because of that her life span is shortened. However, that only means that he lived forever. It in no way explains how he could be in so many places at once! I think that Caius is alright, because he's an awesome villain. His whole shtick is that he wants to end time so that Yuel doesn't have to die ever again. It's totally evil and completely selfish.

Caius is a truly selfish villain and that's why he's awesome.

The ending of XIII-2 is actually kind of cool, but it's also a giant slap in the face to the player. Noel and Serah return the world to normal and everything seems to be fine and dandy. It doesn't last, because Serah sees the timeline change and she DIES. That's right. Serah DIES. This is good, because she wasn't a good character in the first place, but it's upsetting because I was forced to play through a game with her in the lead only to have her die at the end. Once Serah dies the entire world goes to hell, because the goddess is dead. Apparently killing Caius also killed the goddess, so the timeline was not fixed at all. Right when things start to get interesting text fades onto the screen that reads "To be continued...."

Upon reading the ending text I wanted to throw my controller through the screen. How could that have been the ending of the game? Nothing they wanted to do in the story was completed. They didn't get Lightning back from Valhalla and they didn't fix the timeline. Instead Serah died and the world went to hell. This ending was just an excuse for Final Fantasy XIII-3, which is nuts. People claim that the story might be resolved with upcoming DLC, but the story seems far too incomplete to be done with DLC. To top it off the shitty ending shouldn't have happened. If Serah had the power to see the timeline she would have known that she was going to die and been able to change it. She wasn't bound by the same rules as Yuel. Plus she was trying to change the timeline anyways.

After the ridiculous story that XIII had I was hoping that its sequel would be better. Instead it had a poorly executed story and a supposed sequel is on the way. If XIII-2 had characters I cared about and a better explanation for everything that happened in the story then it could have been amazing. Instead we were given a nonsensical time travel story with bad characters who no one will care about at all. As a big Final Fantasy fan this plot line was extremely disappointing. The past few games have had horrible plots and it seems that its only getting worse. I hope that if there is a XIII-3 the writing will be much better, because I don't think I can handle another game like this one.

XIII-3 might be a real thing, so get ready.

     -Manny

Review of Final Fantasy XIII-2

This review is based on my experience with the PS3 version of Final Fantasy XIII-2

Score: 4/5

Final Fantasy 13 wasn’t necessarily well received by fans of the series, but that hasn’t stopped square from making the direct sequel Final Fantasy 13-2. Square listened to what fans had to say about the first game and tried their damndest to give them the game they were asking for. Most of the changes made improve the game, while others don’t make any sense at all, like the addition of the musical track Crazy Chocobo. Regardless, the end product is a game that’s much more fun to play, even if the story isn’t what it should be.

Lightning has been delegated
to a supporting role for 13-2

The story of Final Fantasy 13 wasn’t exactly the best part about the game. The characters were all right, but the plot surrounding them was filled with ridiculous jargon that made the game nigh incomprehensible to the average human being. In the end everyone was saved and they were going to live happily ever after. I’m going to come right out and say that I didn’t much care for the plot of Final Fantasy 13. However, compared to that of 13-2 the original is a masterpiece.

Final Fantasy 13-2’s plot is heavily based upon time travel. Somehow history was changed so that Lightning wasn’t saved when Cocoon turned to crystal. The only one who remembers that Lightning got off Cocoon is her sister Serah. She’s been pining after her sister for three years, which is where 13-2 begins. She begins to have strange dreams of Lightning fighting a purple haired man. She believes that her sister is still alive somewhere and she’s right!

Serah may not have been the
best choice for a main character.

Lightning is in a place called Valhalla eternally fighting the game's villain Caius Ballad. In the middle of her fight a young man named Noel enters Valhalla. Lightning gives him a Moogle and instructs him to find Serah. It’s not even worth explaining the rest. All you need to know is that Noel and Serah have to travel through time in order to fix time paradoxes on their trip to see lightning. Any time anything bad or weird happens in the game there’s a 98% chance it has to do with a time paradox. You’ll be sick of hearing about them by the time the game is over, possibly much before then.

The main problem with the story is that this game focuses on Noel and Serah, while relegating all the previous games party members to minor roles and cameos. The cast of the original wasn’t too great, but they’re better than Noel and Serah that’s for sure. Serah is a terribly annoying character. She’s far too whiny and all she wants to do is see her sister. Noel is actually a decent character, but you don’t find out much about him until it’s too late to care. Every time there should be exposition or any kind of character development either Noel or Serah say they don’t want to talk about it and then they just don’t. They both seem to know everything about everything, but they don’t let the player in on their secrets so it’s hard to follow what’s going on. 

Time gates are used to move from
place to place. Try to fix
all the time paradoxes!

Serah and Noel move from place to place through what are called time gates. In order to enter a gate you need an artefact (Yes, it’s really spelled like that) that corresponds to the gate. After entering the first gate the overworld map, known as the Historia Crux opens up. Each node on the map represents a certain area in a certain time period. The more gates you go through the more places you can explore. There are gates to find all over the place and they don’t all lead to places that you need to go. It’s easy to get sidetracked by going to times that you don’t have to go to, but it’s a pleasant diversion from the main story.

It’s shame that the plot was so poorly done, because everything else about 13-2 seems so polished. The battle system was great in 13 and it’s been vastly improved in 13-2. The ATB battle system makes its return in this game, so expect more fast paces battles filled with paradigm shifting. In order to make the battles flow better the animations when shifting paradigms have been removed. “Cinematic Actions” AKA Quicktime events have also been added to the game. These were added to give players a chance to interact with the boss fights, but all they do is come off as annoying. They don’t improve the experience in a meaningful way.

There are tons of monsters to
collect, like this Pulse Knight.

Monster collection has been added to the battle system to make for more variety. Each monster has a specific job. You equip a monster as the third job in a paradigm, so when you use that paradigm the monster will show up in battle as well. You level the monsters up by feeding them items corresponding to their level of strength. Stronger monsters will need higher quality items to get their stat upgrades. If you want to get the full use of the paradigm system monster capturing is a must. Certain monsters you face in battle will turn to crystal and join you when you do really well against them.

The only caveat to the improved battle system is the crystarium. Winning battles still nets you CP to apply where you like, but the choices are limited. Before you could go in multiple directions choosing which skills you wanted to get first, but now you have to go in a straight line and all the jobs follow the same line. Each level in a job gives you pre-designated stat points, while pre-determined levels will get you a skill. The end result is the same, but the sense of choice is completely gone. 

Linearity may have been added to the crystarium, but it has completely vanished from the rest of game. Most of the areas you visit through the Historia Crux are wide open, or have numerous branching paths. This is a welcome change from the straight line corridors of the original game. Towns make a return, but they’re nothing special. Most of the citizens only say random phrases when you walk by them, but they mostly just get in the way.

Chocobo Racing is back!

On top of the exploration there are tons of side activities to be had, which is something that the previous game was also lacking in. The main place to go for side activities is a casino that’s unlocked about halfway through the game. The Casino is home to the chocobo races. While they’re not on the level of chocobo breeding from Final Fantasy 7, it’s still possible to raise your own chocobos. You can capture chocobos in the wild and then level them up to make them better. 

Sidequesting is an option too. There’s an abundance of them in the world of 13-2. These can be anything from solving puzzles, fetch quests, hunting monsters, or crappy dialogue trees. There are plenty to access while the game is going on, but once you complete the game much more become available. There is a lot to do and there’s sure to be something to satisfy everyone. 

It won’t take you long to get to the end of the game. I had put in about 24 hours of play time when I beat the final boss. It’s not as long as the original game and it isn’t nearly as challenging either. All of the challenging fights are unlocked after the game is over, so if you want to fight some ridiculous monsters you’ll have to brave through the story first in order to see the more challenging content.

Final Fantasy 13-2 isn’t a great game, but it stands on its own. Most of the issues from the previous iteration were taken care of with the exception of the lackluster plotline. Square is having a hard time with the Final Fantasy series, but it’s clear that they’re listening to the feedback of their fans in order to give them what they want. My problem with Final Fantasy 13 was that it didn’t feel like a Final Fantasy game to me. 13-2 is a lot closer, but it’s still a ways off.


Note: This review is also posted on giantbomb.com

     -Manny