Tuesday, May 15, 2007

My Return

Wow, I leave for a couple weeks and when I come back it's basically just Incognito yammering to himself about his RPGs. Well, somebody has to put a stop to that, so I guess that's going to be me...

So, first order of business, my application to the Guildhall is complete and submitted. The recruitment director informed me I should expect to hear something by the end of this week or early next week. Needless to say, I am a little nervous about the whole thing. This is what I consider my greatest opportunity, so a rejection here would cause me to seriously reconsider this whole game design thing as a career choice. Regardless, there's nothing to be done about it now so I have been using my newfound free time to go back to my most favored pastime of actually playing games, which brings me to my second point.

Typically, when I play I tend to meander between games and get easily distracted by new and shiny things (as this post will further reveal). Occasionally, however, I consciously or unconsciously decide to really pour myself into a game and just get totally absorbed in it's storyline and characters. As that hasn't really been a natural occurrence as of late, I decided to look into my substantial backlog of games (likely larger than even Incognito's, with perhaps fewer RPGs) and choose something to just blitz with whatever free time I had available.

This decision, much like Incognito's was not an easy one, and I had several options that I think could have provided excellent experiences: Metroid Prime, STALKER, Onimusha 3: Demon Siege, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, Dragon Quest 8, Rogue Galaxy, Okami, among others. Instead of one of these I chose to try to re-engage with a game that didn't originally grab me, Kingdom Hearts.

The first time I tried to play Kingdom Hearts I think I mostly was turned off to it by the battle system. The story and characters seemed interesting (I like Disney), though the narrative moved a little too slowly for my taste, but the battle system just irritated me. Say what you will about FFXII and the gambit system, it beats the crap out of the downright stupid AI partners you get in KH. Donald and Goofy will in no uncertain terms run at the closest enemy and basically blow all of their MP as fast as possible, and then they will die. No attempt to evade attacks or at least minimize damage from bosses highly predictable special attacks. Nope, full-on right in the face and then dead.

This second time through I think I am enjoying things a bit more because I have just learned to accept it. You are on your own and your companions are more like set pieces than actual gameplay elements. I am about 7 hours in and I am heading back to Traverse Town after doing Tarzan world, Alice in Wonderland world, and Hercules world, so I know I have barely scratched the surface, but unfortunately I have yet again been distracted by something new and shiny, and worry that I may not complete it as planned...again.

I think this post is already long enough so I will leave the new game for my next post, but I'll give you a hint, it's a new MMO. Talk to you all later!

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