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Question of the Day: Valkyrie Profile and the Need for Voiced Dialogue

My backlog is becoming untenable. There are games, games that I started months ago, sitting in a pile that appears to be growing of its own volition. Where the hell did that copy of Pro Evolution Soccer even come from and why is it sitting in the “to play” pile? No one in my home even likes soccer!

The worst of the lot is Persona 4. Rather than hide myself away like some horrid realization of gamer stereotype, refusing to venture into the sun until the game is complete, I’ve been working through Persona since early December, taking it a bit at a time. It’s starting to drive me crazy. A few days ago, I fired it up for the first time since mid-February and was treated to one of its scarce animated cutscenes. Turns out that bear suit made a dude! Yeah, not a dude wearing a bear suit. The bear suit formed a dude inside of it. More startling than spontaneous dude generation was hearing the characters’ voices. I had forgotten they could talk you see. This is because, with very rare exceptions, I always turn off the voice acting in RPGs. Why? Because the voice acting is almost always terrible. Dragon Quest VIII’s British cast and Final Fantasy XII’s gang of breathy stoics are exceptions to the rule. Most of the time, you have to deal with screeching whiners who insist on naming every single thing they do and I’ll have none of it. Honestly though, I wonder why voice is considered a necessity in modern design.

Posted Mar 19 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: legend of zelda, twilight princess, square-enix, dragon quest, persona, atlus, final fantasy xii, question of the day, persona 4, dragon quest viii, valkyrie profile, eiji aonumal john Constantine, covenant of the plume

RPGs Make Me OCD

Playing Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen has unleashed my inner demons--but luckily for me, these demons are neat, orderly, and keep everything in nice little piles. Now, I'm normally just a neat freak, and I try to keep my OCD tendencies to a minimum; but there's just something about RPGs that turns me into a hand-washing, tile-counting, light-switch-flicking freak, and I'm not sure if I can help it.

On the brighter side of things, this behavior of mine makes certain games last, much, much longer than they should. For the darker side of things, please see my last point. When playing console RPGs, there are certain things I just have to do no matter what--and whether or not I need to be on prescription medication should be decided by you, dear reader.

What follows is a list of my RPG compulsions:

- Talking to everyone in town, then talking to everyone again once an event changes their dialogue.
- Checking every desk/drawer/lamp/treasure nook in every possible location.
- Not being able to leave or move on from an area until I have the best possible weapons/armor available from said area.
- Making sure my status-ailment curing items are always in totals divisible by 5 (this worries me)
- Never, ever using my uber-powerful items, even when I need them. You want elixirs? I've got 'em.

Posted Sep 29 2008, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: rpg, ds, final fantasy xii, dragon quest iv, ocd

Me and My Bitchin' Backlog

Don't lie to me. If you're a gamer, you've got a backlog. And for most of us, these stacks of unplayed and/or unfinished games are a testament to poor choices, personal failures, and conspicuous amounts of disposable income/growing debt. The first step in all of this is to admit that we have a problem, and that's exactly the point of this post. I will air my dirty laundry for all to see, only if you promise to do the same. Please abide by the rules of Web 2.0, and no one gets hurt.

What follows is a list of shame, my reasons for giving up, and a prediction of if I'll ever go back and play with these little digital orphans. I hope this doesn't take longer than I think it will.

Posted Sep 18 2008, 03:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 5 comment(s)

Filed under: final fantasy iv ds, bionic commando rearmed, bob mackey, final fantasy xii, backlog

Games You Keep Coming Back To

There are a few games out there that I know I'll never finish, but will continue to perpetually play for the rest of my life. The greatest offender (in the nicest of terms) for me is Final Fantasy XII; I bought it the day it came out in 2006, and to this day I still play it ten hours at a time in shifts five to six months apart. Even now, nearly two years later, I'm thinking of picking up my old save to try out some of those trickier hunting sub-quests, mainly because my brain has been completely ignorant of the game's story since pre-2007. I know it has something to do with evil twins, but I might be confusing FFXII with an episode of The Patty Duke Show.

Honestly, I can blame Final Fantasy XII itself for my bipolar feelings; director Matsuno gave the franchise a much needed shake-up (which will be all but forgotten by FFXIII), but the game's skill system is in dire need of refinement--which is why it was refined, in a Japan-only re-release. As things currently stand with America's only version of the game, all the characters in your party are basically the same, and any kind of planned specialization soon falls apart when you realize just how counter-productive this strategy is. With the addition of refined license boards built for specialization in the aptly-named Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System, it's possible that XII might actually be my favorite Final Fantasy; but I'll really never know.

Final Fantasy XII isn't the only game that I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with; while there are many games that I never finish and which subsequently haunt my dreams, I've come crawling back to quite a few others after months of downtime.

Posted Sep 11 2008, 01:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 9 comment(s)

Filed under: dragon quest, addiction, bob mackey, the wind waker, final fantasy xii

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.