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Dear Journal

today I played FFXII. last week I had been stuck at a tough boss. I thought I could take out his underlings and then finish the job with Quickenings but it never seemed to kill him fast enough. then my sister told me she beat him simply by spamming Quickenings the very second the battle began. Then swap the characters out and do it again.

I tried it and it worked! The first try!

God damn I'm becoming more convinced that this game's design is so damn broken. Screw the gameplay, it's no different than all the FFs that came before it.

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oh god i love this.

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I rather liked Phoenix Wright 2 as well.

Perhaps, like Katamari, people only liked the original for it's novelty?

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played Super Ghouls & Ghosts for some reason today, for the first time I actually got past the ghost ship to the very awesome raft level. Can't beat it yet, but the special effects kind of make up for all the malicious gameplay. this is good quality SNES stuff, nothing else I've seen really pulled off this effect of "feeling seasick"

I have new respect for this game! just enough to make me not mind dying every 20 seconds.

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I played Lester the Unlikely on an emulator.

this game's fucked up. and not that great, but funny. okay not that funny. just the stupid things Lester does against your will is kind of amusing for a few minutes. upon seeing the first bad guy in the game, a small enemy crab, he freaks out and starts running in the opposite direction. the first rock you have to climb down, he freezes, whimpers and goes "noooo..."

is this supposed to be the same Lester in Another World?


anyway since not a single person on Gamefaqs liked it enough to write a walkthrough, I can't get that far in it. how do I get past the dart-flinging statue in the second beach part? anyone know?

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I am starting to warm up to ZOE2 even though I'm almost done with it. I die a lot every mission.

most delightfully mysogynistic script ever.

"DINGO HELP ME--" "SHUT UP!"
(robot AI tells you what to do for this battle)
"DINGO I CAN'T--" "BE QUIET!"
(more AI instructions)
"DINGO WHAT SHOULD I DO--" "SHUT UP I SAID!"


the stages get pretty good and interesting later on, and the pacing of the plot is nice and brisk. every stage just segues right into another without any slow-paced breaks. this is Xenogears but so much more perfect.

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I played the awesome Battleship stage in ZOE2 for an hour but it kept raping me. I made no progress and got tired of it and quit.

... to play Phantom Brave a little, all cute and relaxing, that's the ticket. within 10 minutes it RAPED ME EVEN HARDER. goddammit. what the hell is with this game? I know they're "random dungeons" but they didn't have to be roguelikes.

I quit gaming and I'm never coming back (maybe tomorrow)

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I am addicted to FF Tactics Advance, 4 years too late.
I mean I tried it a little on an emulator when it came out, which is a horrible way to enjoy handheld games. it still has boring parts but they're easily remedied by multitasking.

Cooking Mama is barely even a game but it's much fun. this is like, my type of "Brain Training"

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I think you should check your emulator settings probably. or it might be an emulator bug, it happens.

sometimes I'd even save a file, just for a few days later to come back to it, and my progress has been rolled back by hours. I started resorting to carefully save-stating right before hardsaving just in case. maybe savestates were responsible for the problem in the first place, I'll never know.

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today: I give up, everything that makes FFT Advance so "unique" is shit

what's the point of the Law system if they don't even apply to the enemies? most of the time, the Judge completely overlooks their violations, such as this annoying battle I'm in. the rest of the time, the Judge blows his whistle and gives the enemy a yellow card.... that's not even a real penalty! that happened like 4 times in a row in 1 battle, all by the same enemy unit. stupid arbitrary restrictions?

as for the oh so postmodern plot, the main character hasn't presented a very good motivation for wanting to return to the real world. every other character has a reason, but he's a blank slate. so why do I have to "roleplay" as a goody two-shoes jerk

it's like playing a bunch of MMORPG fetch-quests on a handheld, and it would be perfectly fine if only these flaws didn't keep reminding me that it's a waste of time. so I'll be taking Matsuno's advice and getting rid of his "escapism." I've been having more fun playing Pokemon anyway.

seriously my opinion of this guy's game design talent is going down. he's like the fastest runner in the world who trips right before the finish line, every single race.

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red card laws are a nice idea, I admit. the yellow cards should've induced in-battle penalties too.

still, doesn't explain why this battle, where I waited until Time Magic was outlawed, the enemy still keeps casting Demi, and the Judge sits there doing nothing. (this is that one-on-one battle with Marche and Babus, by the way, which is frustrating in itself. I can see why Cid might be playing favourites against me, but that defeats the purpose of the law doesn't it. I still don't get it.)

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it's in the Time Magic ability set, actually

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aint playin nothing today!

but i have been getting into watching these Korean pro gamer Starcraft matches all over Youtube. for the first time a game is just about right, like watching a sporting event, with the atmosphere and all. there's the skill involved in micromanaging battles, as well as the overall strategy to balance that out... hell I could just quit playing forever and watch these pros instead, like almost everybody already does with real sports!
(there's a lot of them with live english commentary by some Klazart guy who's very spazzy. it's so worth it to listen to him so you can laugh when he gets excited and goes 50 words per second)
holy crap there's a lot of room for creativity in this game I never realized


maybe i'm biased towards SC but watching other gaming tournaments just didn't have that thrill or atmosphere. they still felt like people pushing buttons at a computer or console and things flash. and it's too hard to follow a FPS game like that.

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beat Odin Sphere today. lovely ending. those final battles were amazing, and made up for the monotony in the latter half of the game. minor spoilers: fucking loved the Cauldron, best 2D boss fight ever. and the castle that crumbles and collapses as you fight King Gallon, there's never been anything else like that.

I can only hope Vanillaware will make another game like this, and learn from their mistakes. not a perfect game, but it was oh so worth it.

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I learned how to play Freecell today!

for 9 years I brushed it off as a too complicated and stupidly hard version of solitaire, but it's much better designed.

maybe tomorrow I'll learn how to play Bridge.

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gotten addicted to Dragon Warrior VII


just saw the Mara & Nara cameo

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you can tell I'm a little bored today:

I figured the easiest way to win in R-Type Final's vs AI matches. the AI is so retarded and can't aim; it's futile to try to set it properly. SO... use any ship with a wave cannon with homing. Cerberus is pretty good. just leave the ship AI on default settings, it really doesn't matter. YOU'LL WIN EVERY MATCH WITHIN A FEW SECONDS.

... at least until you have to fight the 2 or 3 ships that also have homing. then they have a better AI and they'll beat you every time. so then you need a different ship with brute strength, or luck.

why even bother with such a boring cockfighting mode, you may wonder? well, the stage backgrounds look rather nice, some of them unique. the red city is amazing, and the championship stage is quite funny. I wasted an hour just to see those, so oh well.

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I finally got around to finishing Final Fantasy the twelvth. that final dungeon was surprisingly short. I was around level 45.
okay that ending was so goddamn ridiculous. we all joked about this game imitating Star Wars when we saw the trailer, but that was so blatantly a Return of the Jedi ripoff oh my god!
anyway, it reminded me that even with a fancy real-time battle system it's the same stupid game over and over, so now I know I'm done with FF, 4-evah.


I liked the final boss's design, kinda. and the illustrations during the credits were wonderful, they look like they belonged to a better story than what FF12 turned out to be. something with a more human element to it.

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I finally completed DMC3 SE on Normal mode.
I started a few stages on Hard Mode, and I was surprised at how much I'd improved at doing combos and such. it seemed almost too easy, compared to how many times I died the first time. and I don't even play Street Fighter type games.

but I still haven't beaten God Hand. HERE WE GO.


I hope you enjoy La Mulana. and by "enjoy" I mean "don't feel like smashing the keyboard against a wall"
there's a load screen in the F5 menu, is that what you mean? I know it's all kind of a 4th wall injoke about the MSX, and it either becomes charming or annoying.... like the whole game itself.

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I'm getting fed up with Persona3. stupid bullshit random deaths. the battling is terrible in every way.
PROTIP: if you get this game, choose easy mode so you can get continues

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I borrowed Bomberman Land Touched! from my sister for 10 minutes. the game has a questy-type mode which is completely stupid and has loooooong cutscenes. I wasn't sure if any bombing action was involved since all I got to see were boring stylus minigames.

then I tried out the traditional battle mode and my eyes lit up. up to 8 players on a board spanning both screens, with variable numbers of tunnels connecting the two halves! this isn't bad at all!
I tried connecting it on Nintendo WFC but absolutely nobody was on there, natch.

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hey guys I finished GOD HAND


also since my finals were over I dug out ZOE2 and finished that today. I had been stuck on that very awesome (but hard) battleship stage for half a year. I had forgotten what the story was about, but I don't really care because none of it was very well written. I give it 3 stars for the pretty decent robot combat.

I would like to mention that after the huge epic battle against 5 battleships, you get this huger epicker battle with armies of robots helping you attack the final enemy base, and having to fight off thousands of enemies on a battlefield. very awesome, until.....
you know how in Starfox 64, you'd have 3 whiny teammates sometimes calling out for help? here you have 40 and they're ALL shouting at you at once, it's an endless stream of furious voices wondering why you're not backing them up because goddamnit you're the hero and you're supposed to be everywhere at once.
It's so retarded that I wanted to smash the TV with a hammer, except I was laughing too much at how absurd it all was.

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started and finished Gitaroo Man today. that was very lovely.

the guitar mechanic is very fun. I like how they put a neat spin on the rhythm game genre without ripping off Konami's Beatmania. it's different in a good way, kinda like Um Jammer Lammy. meanwhile, "Keytar" Hero is fundamentally stuck in the 90s and I don't even find that kind of playing very much fun anymore.