As the new RPG would be the company's last chance for success, Sakaguchi pessimistically entitled it "Final Fantasy," intending to at least provide his dying venture with a suitably-named grave marker.
Ironically, Final Fantasy sold phenomenally in Japan, outpaced by only a few other top-selling franchises. This gave Square an exciting new lease on life, but also meant their flagship series was burdened with a stupidly inappropriate title as second and third Final Fantasy games were quickly designed and released.[4] ...
[4]Which isn't necessarily an embarrassment in and of itself, since the title really is pretty catchy and surprisingly euphonic for something so Engrishy. And it's not like it has an obtuse and ridiculous subtitle like "The Precusor Legacy" or something. Unfortunately, every human being in the world has looked at the name "Final Fantasy" followed by a roman number and made some hilarious comment about how wacky it is that this is the seventh (or whatever) "final" fantasy. Haw! Hyuck!
It's OK. Everyone is allowed to make this trite, obvious observation aloud exactly once in their lives. If you've yet to take your turn, please take a moment now to fulfill your obligation to nerd "humor." It's OK. For the remainder of this paragraph, nobody will think less of you for it.
However you're a week and a half late to catch in on the "nobody will think less of you for it" clause.
Gotta disagree with you, Im in the FF XI beta and its pretty solid if MMORPG are your thing. Not a hack job, and definately not just a "mee too" type of game. THe game is pollished to a glossy sheen the like of which I have not seen in any other MMORPG.
Why not branch out? Taking a different approach on one isn't going to hurt too many feelings (i think after #8 it would take a lot of crap to shake off their fan bases)
I just kind of wish they hadn't wasted a number on it. They've done FF:Tactics, FF: Mystic Quest, FF: Legends, and FF:Crystal Chronicles, why not FF:Online?
Instead they've double the amount of time that those of us not interested in MMORPGs have to wait for the next main game.
All in all it's not that big a deal though, since i'm not looking forward to the new games that much anymore. I've kind of given up hope that they'll ever come out with another IV, V, or VI, or another Chrono Trigger. I've got some hope for IX, which i'm halfway through now, but a lot of people have claimed the ending sucks.
Taking a different approach on one isn't going to hurt too many feelings (i think after #8 it would take a lot of crap to shake off their fan bases)
Eh, depends on what you mean by "shake off." I've already stopped buying the games on release and have started picking them up in used bins later.
From the article, "There are about 166 million residential phone numbers in the United States, the FTC said, and the wireless industry estimates there are more than 147 million U.S. cell phone numbers," and "The telemarketing industry estimates the do-not-call list could cut its business in half, costing it up to $50 billion in sales each year."
So they're making $100 billion a year in sales? That means that on _average_ each phone number is paying between $300 and $600 a _year_ to telemarketers, depending on how many of the cellphone numbers we want to include. (Techncially it's illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones, but does that stop them?)
So who's buying this stuff, what are they buying, and how much are they paying for it? Clearly there have to be some people spending totally atrocious amounts of money given how many people there are who have never bought anything from a telemarketer in their life.
Do the idle rich sit around waiting for telemarketers to call so they can spend thousands of dollars a year on them or what? Or are a lot of low and middle income people blowing their savings on this crap?
The problem is the second and third party developers. Sega has canceled their sports games for GameCube, Acclaim has stopped producing games for it (yeah, small loss) and Capcom after promising X number of exclusive games for the GameCube is starting to renege on that agreement.
In all three cases they sited low sales for their GameCube games as the reason for stopping/scaling back production.
There are already quite a few people who won't advance to 3rd edition because they like neither the rules changes nor the advances in teh storyline. Mage players are particularly prone to this because according to 3rd edition Mage the Traditions have lost the battle for Ascension.
It will be interesting to see how they handle that, obviously 4th edition will still have vampires and werewolves and such around, but it seems like the Technocracy winning the Ascension would pretty much put an end to all the other supernatural stuff. Once the Technocs have complete control of both the mundane and magical human worlds and don't have to worry about the Traditions anymore, i expect it wouldn't take much time for their focused attention to deal with all the other elements they wish to eliminate.
It'll be interesting to hear about (i'm still catching up with the changes to 3rd edition) but i'm not sure if i'll be interested in buying the new sourcebooks and playing in that world.
For awhile there it seemed like he was just sucking up to Nintendo, but after the bit about the upcoming transition in the industry when systems reach the realistic limit of improved graphics, it seems like he might actually beleive it.
Of coruse it's a little unfair of me to think of him as sucking up to Nintendo when i tend to view them in the same way. Unfortunatly i'm not sure that things will go the way he clearly hopes. Sure, Nintendo "cares" about video games, but as much as a developer might care about the art itself, they can't stay in buisness if they're not making money.
Sony (and to some extend Microsoft it seems, though the jury is still out on it) knows how to sell product, regardless of whether they "believe" in video games or are attempting to make their console into an all-in-one system.
People have dissed Miyamoto for saying that he won't go the route of Grand Theft Auto and such (which is ironic to bring up here, because i had not realized until now that Miyamoto collaborated with SK on Eternal Darkness, clearly he doesn't object to violence if it is necessary for the game's development and is handled tastefully) however he is correct in believing that a game can have great game-play and be lots of fun even without sex adn violence.
Unfortunatly, Nintendo is right that high quality can make good games without using sex and violence, Sony is right that sex and violence combined with godo marketing can make even a mediocre game popular. Nintendo is focused on making games _good_, but Sony is focused on making games _sell_.
It would be nice to think that in the end the high quality games (on both PS2 and GCN) would win out over the hyper-marketed sex and violence ones, but it would also be naive to believe that things will inevitably end up that way.
Ok then, what are we going to do with Hubble? Eventually, it MUST come down.
Okay, although that will most likely be practically true, it's a bit of a logical fallacy.
Technically we could keep boosting it indefinitely, and given that "it must come down" is being stated with the reference frame of Earth in mind, we could kick it up out of earth orbit entirely just to screw with the prediction:)
I am an average programmer in terms of skill, however i'm working in the generally underpaid field of game programming, and at a not very big company to boot. SO yeah, average in skill, but nowhere near average in pay. Oh yeah, and i get to work 70 hours weeks with no overtime pay. Why am i in this job again? =P
Hmmmm, that would seem to indicate that the US would see a positive economic boost if universal health care was implemented here. It would make it a lot easier for individual workers in America to "bid" on telecomuting employment opportunities.
From the CNN article recently posted to slashdot, "The average computer programmer in India costs $20 per hour in wages and benefits, compared to $65 per hour for an American with a comparable degree and experience, according to consulting firm Cap Gemini Ernst & Young."
That's about 40k a year. For 40k a year i might consider living in India if i had zero job opporunities locally. Of course for 40k a year i'd also consider living in Maine or Colorado or someplace else with very low cost of living. (Okay, i don't know that Colorado and Maine are low cost of living, but i know such places exist in the US, and those seem like reasonable guesses)
Hell, i'm only making 60k a year and living in LA. I'd probably be better off at 40k and living in the woods someplace, and i'd get to work from home to boot! And the mangement of whichever company would have an American programmer who shared their language and culture for the same price as an Indian programmer. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!
Which part of "I'll work cheaper if I can choose where I live and work." did you not understand?
From the CNN article that got posted here a few days back, "The average computer programmer in India costs $20 per hour in wages and benefits, compared to $65 per hour for an American with a comparable degree and experience, according to consulting firm Cap Gemini Ernst & Young." First of all, as an average American programmer i'm apparently geting gyped by about 70k a year:) Second of all, there are probably quite a number of programmers in America who would be willing to work for $20 an hour if they could telecomute from the backwoods of Maine so as to minimize their living expenses.
Obviously a lot of companies have decided that having an american physically in the office isn't worth a savings of $45 an hour, but once you've decided to hire telecomuters, isn't a $20 an hour American programmer with who management will probably have a lot less communication difficulties a better buy than a $20 an hour programmer from India?
Yeah, it doesn't say exactly, but one still has to wonder how exactly they measured that. It's not like musical ability is something you can pick up and place on a scale.
Were they given ratings by judges of some kind and difference in ratings before and after measured out? Or is there some more quantitative measurement they were able to make? Or maybe they just had all the musicians compete at DDR or some other rythem game before and after and compared the scores =P
Hmmm, i bought a copy of Age of Empires and tried out the campaign. I got bored less than halfway through. So yeah, unless they've gotten a lot better more of the same for $30 would be a real ripoff.
So you would not vote to reduce the amount of money you send to politicians who have the power to do things like DMCA and are willing to be bribed? That sounds pretty dumb to me.
Let's see, either continue to pay taxes, and work towards trying to improve the system, or give up on the system, vote to get rid of all taxes, and watch as the roads crumble, the police, firemen, military, and every other government organization fall apart, and enjoy the starvation and anarchy that would quickly spread across the country.
I don't think it's so much a question of "smart vs. stupid" as "suicidal vs. not suicidal." Or for some people i guess it would be, "content with normal life vs. want a role in a real world version of The Postman."
Sorry, i'm quite happy with the biggest threat i face most days being commuting on the freeway.
In other things he is just plain wrong. He states that "Liberals often are flummoxed by the way conservatives seem to love big business (including, of course, big media)." Yet it is the democrats who are most in the pocket of big business. Here is a clue - Hollywood is 99.9% liberals. The other 0.1% is Drew Carey. Senator Hollings is a Democrat. DMCA was signed by a Democrat into law. Mary Bono may be a Republican but only in name.
Hollywood isn't a very big buisness when you compare it to all the Enron's and oil companies out there, and guess which side those are on?
In pure monetary terms, the Democrats would be far better off trading the support of Hollywood for that of big buisness. You'd think that the democrats would be compensated somewhat in that they should have more influence in the media through Hollywood. Unfortunatly, myths about the "liberal media" aside, it doesn't work out that way. A lot of actors may be liberal, but whenever they open their mouths they get mocked and ridiculed by the conservatives. Meanwhile, the mainstream papers and other news outlets seem quite happy to repeat whatever the republicans want them to.
Note the media ganging up on Gore in 2000 on the basis of a few conservative papers misquoting him, or their eagerness to indict Clinton about the sex scandal but their comparitive slowness to bring up Bush having potentialy misled the American public in order to get them to support a war.
I put in the extra hours, I got the deliverable done on time, I did the work, why shouldn't I keep my money? How is that greedy? I think that coveting other people's money is what is greedy
Funny, i doubt the owners of big companies put in that many extra hours. Hell, a lot of them (take Enron for example) don't even get "the deliverable done on time," or whatever applies for their particular industry, yet they still make million. Even if the company as a whole crashes and burns and the workers all get laid off. Those owners then make huge donations to the Republican party so that they can save even more on the tax cuts the Rebuplicans pass once they're in power.
And then there are companies like Disney where the controllers who make the millions of dollars pay lobyists or bribe politicians directly to get laws passed that benefit them while hurting smaller independent companies. (How many small companies and how many employees of those companies could be making money right now by re-imagining Mickey Mouse and all the other things that are restricted by the Sonny Bonno Act, in the same way that Disney has made tons of money off of re-imagining Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and dozens of other stories they apropriated from the commons?)
Those are the people who make the majority of the donations to the Republican cause. In the recent past the Democrats have been trying to emulate that method as well since it worked so well for the Republicans. It seemed that going for the rich who could afford to donate $10,000 or more at a time was more effective. The Democrats were never quite as effective at it though because the rich know who will give them the most return for their bribes.
How is it greedy to want to save money? Your own money?
Yes, saving their own money which they made by imorally at the least and illegaly at the worst restricting the rights of others in the same field, or saving their own money through tax cuts that either increase the defecit which hurts everyone, but the rich less so since they just got their tax cut, or increases the tax burden on the middle and lower classes, taking away money from them.
They want to enjoy the benefits of our society without having to pay to maintain it. Seems greedy to me. Yet somehow they manage to convince everyone that they're just being fair, and all those in the upper-middle class will go along, because it doesn't hurt them to much, and maybe they'll be upper class someday, and the middle and lower classes go along either because they've bought into the "morality" sideline, or because they have dreams of someday being rich and getting to enjoy the same benefits.
I lose about 30% of every paycheck i get to taxes, yet if i had the chance to vote to reduce it i would not, because i make more than enough to live on, and making someone else pay for my tax cut would be greedy. I felt bad when i spent the $300 i got back through the Bush tax cut, because i felt that america would be worse off in the long run because of it. I might have given it back if it weren't for the fact that i didn't know of any easy way to do so and i knew that the small fraction of people who would do so wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket.
Of course on the other hand i ended up donating about $250 to my favorite Democratic candidate, so maybe i shouldn't feel too guilty:)
I haven't researched this, but it doesn't taste any different than good tap water to me.
You obviously don't live in SoCal, or at least not the part where i'm from:)
On the other hand, the tap water we got from the well back where i grew up in Washington kicked the ass of any bottled water i've ever tasted, so obviously the quality of your tap water factors into this.
I could rant for thousands of words why these games are so often horrible, but instead I'll sum it up in a single sentence: These games are designed to sell the movie, and nothing else.
Bzzzt, sorry try again. The game is being made to capitalize on the hype surrounding the movie. The amount of money spent on developing the game gets a miniscule return (if any) in advertising for the movie, and any company that is investing the money with that expectation is bound for disapointment.
FF8 has the best gameplay (no leveling up required)
Gah, couldn't stand it, see my post below, but in short, starting out the game at almost the most powerfull you'll ever be just isn't that interesting. It certainly wasn't what i was expecting, and perhaps i should be more willing to give up the expectation that spells and weapons will be usefull and interesting, but it seems counterproductive for Square to have included them if you're going to be encouraged not to use them or not to care about them.
and the best characters (which I define as most realistic, but some players just want "heroic" characters so they may think FF8 has the worst characters).
Sorry, i was angsted out after FF7. Is it possible for someone to realistically be as annoying and angsty as Squall?
I had a hard time getting started on the game, just couldn't get into the plot for some reason, however i got addicted to the card game. I wanted to get all the cards i could before leaving the Garden. As a side effect of course, i picked up lots of low level and medium level cards before i managed to collect all the high level ones.
Then i found out you could turn the cards into spells, junction the spells, and send you abilites into the stratosphere. Thus by the time i really started the game i had already done at least 75% of the "leveling" and just breezed through the rest of the game. I never gained very many actual levels, finished the game about 30 or so. I had fun collecting the rest of the cards, but the item stuff really wasn't that interesting, there wasn't really that much stuff you could make (it managed to even outdo FF7 in terms of lack of interest in weapons.) Worst of all, he plot itself just didn't grab me, and i can't really say why.
So the plot was mediocre, the system was broken, and the most exciting part of the game was playing cards. So far it is my least favorite FF. I'd rather go back and play the original FF than go through that again, and with FF: Origins out i'll do just that. Maybe FF2 will manage to win the place for worst FF game once i try it out, it's a NES game that won't have nostalgia going for it, and i've heard its system is at least as broken as FF8's.
Slashdot Mirror
</irony>
You obviously weren't paying attention to the "20 Most Embaressing Game Companies" article from awhile back were you?
However you're a week and a half late to catch in on the "nobody will think less of you for it" clause.
Why not branch out? Taking a different approach on one isn't going to hurt too many feelings (i think after #8 it would take a lot of crap to shake off their fan bases)
I just kind of wish they hadn't wasted a number on it. They've done FF:Tactics, FF: Mystic Quest, FF: Legends, and FF:Crystal Chronicles, why not FF:Online?
Instead they've double the amount of time that those of us not interested in MMORPGs have to wait for the next main game.
All in all it's not that big a deal though, since i'm not looking forward to the new games that much anymore. I've kind of given up hope that they'll ever come out with another IV, V, or VI, or another Chrono Trigger. I've got some hope for IX, which i'm halfway through now, but a lot of people have claimed the ending sucks.
Taking a different approach on one isn't going to hurt too many feelings (i think after #8 it would take a lot of crap to shake off their fan bases)
Eh, depends on what you mean by "shake off." I've already stopped buying the games on release and have started picking them up in used bins later.
So they're making $100 billion a year in sales? That means that on _average_ each phone number is paying between $300 and $600 a _year_ to telemarketers, depending on how many of the cellphone numbers we want to include. (Techncially it's illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones, but does that stop them?)
So who's buying this stuff, what are they buying, and how much are they paying for it? Clearly there have to be some people spending totally atrocious amounts of money given how many people there are who have never bought anything from a telemarketer in their life.
Do the idle rich sit around waiting for telemarketers to call so they can spend thousands of dollars a year on them or what? Or are a lot of low and middle income people blowing their savings on this crap?
In all three cases they sited low sales for their GameCube games as the reason for stopping/scaling back production.
It will be interesting to see how they handle that, obviously 4th edition will still have vampires and werewolves and such around, but it seems like the Technocracy winning the Ascension would pretty much put an end to all the other supernatural stuff. Once the Technocs have complete control of both the mundane and magical human worlds and don't have to worry about the Traditions anymore, i expect it wouldn't take much time for their focused attention to deal with all the other elements they wish to eliminate.
It'll be interesting to hear about (i'm still catching up with the changes to 3rd edition) but i'm not sure if i'll be interested in buying the new sourcebooks and playing in that world.
"Have you completely abandoned the original MGS look and feel as a side effect of graphicalizing Metal Gear: Twin Snakes?"
Where exactly was that question asked?
Just something about that team's character modeling and textures is distant from the feel and tone set by the original game's art.
What? You mean it's not going to look like this anymore? That sucks =P
Are there screenshots up somewhere of the new models and textures by which you're making this judgement? Or are you just blowing hot air?
Of coruse it's a little unfair of me to think of him as sucking up to Nintendo when i tend to view them in the same way. Unfortunatly i'm not sure that things will go the way he clearly hopes. Sure, Nintendo "cares" about video games, but as much as a developer might care about the art itself, they can't stay in buisness if they're not making money.
Sony (and to some extend Microsoft it seems, though the jury is still out on it) knows how to sell product, regardless of whether they "believe" in video games or are attempting to make their console into an all-in-one system.
People have dissed Miyamoto for saying that he won't go the route of Grand Theft Auto and such (which is ironic to bring up here, because i had not realized until now that Miyamoto collaborated with SK on Eternal Darkness, clearly he doesn't object to violence if it is necessary for the game's development and is handled tastefully) however he is correct in believing that a game can have great game-play and be lots of fun even without sex adn violence.
Unfortunatly, Nintendo is right that high quality can make good games without using sex and violence, Sony is right that sex and violence combined with godo marketing can make even a mediocre game popular. Nintendo is focused on making games _good_, but Sony is focused on making games _sell_.
It would be nice to think that in the end the high quality games (on both PS2 and GCN) would win out over the hyper-marketed sex and violence ones, but it would also be naive to believe that things will inevitably end up that way.
Okay, although that will most likely be practically true, it's a bit of a logical fallacy.
Technically we could keep boosting it indefinitely, and given that "it must come down" is being stated with the reference frame of Earth in mind, we could kick it up out of earth orbit entirely just to screw with the prediction :)
Hey, Tomb Raider of Resident Evil sounds like a great crossover game idea! :)
I am an average programmer in terms of skill, however i'm working in the generally underpaid field of game programming, and at a not very big company to boot. SO yeah, average in skill, but nowhere near average in pay. Oh yeah, and i get to work 70 hours weeks with no overtime pay. Why am i in this job again? =P
Hmmmm, that would seem to indicate that the US would see a positive economic boost if universal health care was implemented here. It would make it a lot easier for individual workers in America to "bid" on telecomuting employment opportunities.
That's about 40k a year. For 40k a year i might consider living in India if i had zero job opporunities locally. Of course for 40k a year i'd also consider living in Maine or Colorado or someplace else with very low cost of living. (Okay, i don't know that Colorado and Maine are low cost of living, but i know such places exist in the US, and those seem like reasonable guesses)
Hell, i'm only making 60k a year and living in LA. I'd probably be better off at 40k and living in the woods someplace, and i'd get to work from home to boot! And the mangement of whichever company would have an American programmer who shared their language and culture for the same price as an Indian programmer. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!
Which part of "I'll work cheaper if I can choose where I live and work." did you not understand?
From the CNN article that got posted here a few days back, "The average computer programmer in India costs $20 per hour in wages and benefits, compared to $65 per hour for an American with a comparable degree and experience, according to consulting firm Cap Gemini Ernst & Young." First of all, as an average American programmer i'm apparently geting gyped by about 70k a year :) Second of all, there are probably quite a number of programmers in America who would be willing to work for $20 an hour if they could telecomute from the backwoods of Maine so as to minimize their living expenses.
Obviously a lot of companies have decided that having an american physically in the office isn't worth a savings of $45 an hour, but once you've decided to hire telecomuters, isn't a $20 an hour American programmer with who management will probably have a lot less communication difficulties a better buy than a $20 an hour programmer from India?
Were they given ratings by judges of some kind and difference in ratings before and after measured out? Or is there some more quantitative measurement they were able to make? Or maybe they just had all the musicians compete at DDR or some other rythem game before and after and compared the scores =P
Hmmm, i bought a copy of Age of Empires and tried out the campaign. I got bored less than halfway through. So yeah, unless they've gotten a lot better more of the same for $30 would be a real ripoff.
Let's see, either continue to pay taxes, and work towards trying to improve the system, or give up on the system, vote to get rid of all taxes, and watch as the roads crumble, the police, firemen, military, and every other government organization fall apart, and enjoy the starvation and anarchy that would quickly spread across the country.
I don't think it's so much a question of "smart vs. stupid" as "suicidal vs. not suicidal." Or for some people i guess it would be, "content with normal life vs. want a role in a real world version of The Postman."
Sorry, i'm quite happy with the biggest threat i face most days being commuting on the freeway.
*pssst* i bet you could download an editor and create/edit your own titans for a lot less than $30.
All we need is that and a source of cheap limitless energy and maybe we'll be ready to try a real Communist system, a la Voyage From Yesteryear.
Hollywood isn't a very big buisness when you compare it to all the Enron's and oil companies out there, and guess which side those are on?
In pure monetary terms, the Democrats would be far better off trading the support of Hollywood for that of big buisness. You'd think that the democrats would be compensated somewhat in that they should have more influence in the media through Hollywood. Unfortunatly, myths about the "liberal media" aside, it doesn't work out that way. A lot of actors may be liberal, but whenever they open their mouths they get mocked and ridiculed by the conservatives. Meanwhile, the mainstream papers and other news outlets seem quite happy to repeat whatever the republicans want them to.
Note the media ganging up on Gore in 2000 on the basis of a few conservative papers misquoting him, or their eagerness to indict Clinton about the sex scandal but their comparitive slowness to bring up Bush having potentialy misled the American public in order to get them to support a war.
Funny, i doubt the owners of big companies put in that many extra hours. Hell, a lot of them (take Enron for example) don't even get "the deliverable done on time," or whatever applies for their particular industry, yet they still make million. Even if the company as a whole crashes and burns and the workers all get laid off. Those owners then make huge donations to the Republican party so that they can save even more on the tax cuts the Rebuplicans pass once they're in power.
And then there are companies like Disney where the controllers who make the millions of dollars pay lobyists or bribe politicians directly to get laws passed that benefit them while hurting smaller independent companies. (How many small companies and how many employees of those companies could be making money right now by re-imagining Mickey Mouse and all the other things that are restricted by the Sonny Bonno Act, in the same way that Disney has made tons of money off of re-imagining Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and dozens of other stories they apropriated from the commons?)
Those are the people who make the majority of the donations to the Republican cause. In the recent past the Democrats have been trying to emulate that method as well since it worked so well for the Republicans. It seemed that going for the rich who could afford to donate $10,000 or more at a time was more effective. The Democrats were never quite as effective at it though because the rich know who will give them the most return for their bribes.
How is it greedy to want to save money? Your own money?
Yes, saving their own money which they made by imorally at the least and illegaly at the worst restricting the rights of others in the same field, or saving their own money through tax cuts that either increase the defecit which hurts everyone, but the rich less so since they just got their tax cut, or increases the tax burden on the middle and lower classes, taking away money from them.
They want to enjoy the benefits of our society without having to pay to maintain it. Seems greedy to me. Yet somehow they manage to convince everyone that they're just being fair, and all those in the upper-middle class will go along, because it doesn't hurt them to much, and maybe they'll be upper class someday, and the middle and lower classes go along either because they've bought into the "morality" sideline, or because they have dreams of someday being rich and getting to enjoy the same benefits.
I lose about 30% of every paycheck i get to taxes, yet if i had the chance to vote to reduce it i would not, because i make more than enough to live on, and making someone else pay for my tax cut would be greedy. I felt bad when i spent the $300 i got back through the Bush tax cut, because i felt that america would be worse off in the long run because of it. I might have given it back if it weren't for the fact that i didn't know of any easy way to do so and i knew that the small fraction of people who would do so wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket.
Of course on the other hand i ended up donating about $250 to my favorite Democratic candidate, so maybe i shouldn't feel too guilty :)
You obviously don't live in SoCal, or at least not the part where i'm from :)
On the other hand, the tap water we got from the well back where i grew up in Washington kicked the ass of any bottled water i've ever tasted, so obviously the quality of your tap water factors into this.
Bzzzt, sorry try again. The game is being made to capitalize on the hype surrounding the movie. The amount of money spent on developing the game gets a miniscule return (if any) in advertising for the movie, and any company that is investing the money with that expectation is bound for disapointment.
Gah, couldn't stand it, see my post below, but in short, starting out the game at almost the most powerfull you'll ever be just isn't that interesting. It certainly wasn't what i was expecting, and perhaps i should be more willing to give up the expectation that spells and weapons will be usefull and interesting, but it seems counterproductive for Square to have included them if you're going to be encouraged not to use them or not to care about them.
and the best characters (which I define as most realistic, but some players just want "heroic" characters so they may think FF8 has the worst characters).
Sorry, i was angsted out after FF7. Is it possible for someone to realistically be as annoying and angsty as Squall?
Then i found out you could turn the cards into spells, junction the spells, and send you abilites into the stratosphere. Thus by the time i really started the game i had already done at least 75% of the "leveling" and just breezed through the rest of the game. I never gained very many actual levels, finished the game about 30 or so. I had fun collecting the rest of the cards, but the item stuff really wasn't that interesting, there wasn't really that much stuff you could make (it managed to even outdo FF7 in terms of lack of interest in weapons.) Worst of all, he plot itself just didn't grab me, and i can't really say why.
So the plot was mediocre, the system was broken, and the most exciting part of the game was playing cards. So far it is my least favorite FF. I'd rather go back and play the original FF than go through that again, and with FF: Origins out i'll do just that. Maybe FF2 will manage to win the place for worst FF game once i try it out, it's a NES game that won't have nostalgia going for it, and i've heard its system is at least as broken as FF8's.
"Dominate" being a very relative term of course, considering the extent to which Sony dwarfs them both in either location :)