Blog

  • New start in Oblivion

    A couple days ago, I did a new start in Oblivion. But wait, TallGuyCalif, you were playing Star Ocean! Why switch?

    With the scarcity of save points in Star Ocean, sometimes I need to play for a couple hours before coming to the next one (I’m in the Purgatorium dungeon where there are few save points). Since I’ve been busy working, I don’t have hours to spare. Therefore, Star Ocean is out and Oblivion is in. With Oblivion, I can play for 20 or 30 minutes and save wherever I want so I can do crazy things like eat dinner or go to bed.

    Besides, Oblivion is good fun.

  • Star Ocean movie

    I got a nifty HD capture device (more on that later) so I can upload game videos. Here is the first: a short battle in Star Ocean: Last Hope. You can easily see that some of the artwork is well-done and looks great, but other bits, particularly when zoomed out in the battle are lo-res and horrible.

  • iPhone Game: Solebon Solitaire

    Probably my favorite iPhone game is Solebon Solitaire, a huge collection of card games in one iPhone app. It has the usual Klondike in two variations, as well as tough ones, like Demon, and many others. It is very high quality, yet quite inexpensive (I think I paid $0.99 for it shortly after the App Store opened). I wish it were updated for the iPad, but it looks good enough on the iPad even at 2x zoom that I sometimes play it there. If you’re looking for something that can give you quick card games or long, complex ones, I highly recommend Solebon Solitaire.

  • More Star Ocean thoughts

    I’m still enjoying Star Ocean: The Last Hope International, but it is clearly a family (and player) unfriendly game because of its stupid save system. In order to save, you need to find a save point, which is a pink/purple glowing floating sphere thingy. From there, you can save into one of 20 save slots, overwriting as needed. I’m sure this sort of thing evolved back when consoles had no built-in storage and users had to buy overpriced memory cards to save their games. Now we all have big hard drives in our consoles (except for the crazy Xbox 360 Microsoft is coming out with with only 4GB of Flash memory), so let us save whenever we want! Anyway, the problem is that some areas don’t have any handy save points, so it could be hours before a save is possible. This means things like eating dinner and going to bed are problematic if you can’t get away to do them. I’ve had to leave the game paused during dinner because I couldn’t save when I needed to. Bloody annoying.

    On the other hand, the game has a huge amount of content. I have clearly gotten my money’s worth, particularly since I only paid $30 for the game from Amazon. The game has so many aspects that I haven’t really explored yet, like crafting. It is funny to see the Japanese influence (it is a JRPG, after all), with all the Japanese food items rather than pizza and burgers. It’s a bit incongruous that the voices are all Americanized (at least the English voices are). And, yes, the voice acting is as bad as you would expect, but that’s okay, because the game is fun.

    Oh yeah, another annoying save issue: after you save, it writes “system data” (whatever that means), then it asks you if you want to continue saving, at which point you can save again. But I just saved, why do I want to save again? Seems crazy, so I always say “no,” but surely the developers had something in mind…

  • The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

    Even though I already owned the DVD version of Oblivion and Shivering Isles and most of the add-on content, I couldn’t pass up last week’s Steam sale where I bought the complete Oblivion, which seems to include at least one add-on that I didn’t have, for less than $8.

    I fired up Oblivion and was reminded of just how great a game it is, and not just because it has Captain Picard as the Emperor and Wonder Woman as various other voices. It really is a good-looking, easy-to-play game that is intriguing, deep, and fun. It has swords, sorcery, magic, crafting, and a huge, beautiful world!

    There are many wonderful things about Oblivion, but I’ll give you a couple of my pet peeves from my earlier play through (these also exist similarly in Oblivion with Guns, err Fallout 3). Even though I was Champion of Cyrodiil and had closed the gates to Oblivion and kicked butt and taken names, I still got attacked along the road by petty thugs and bandits. C’mon, couldn’t they see I was wearing armor and carrying weapons so far above theirs that they wouldn’t stand a chance? The only game I’ve played that got this sort of thing right was Freelancer, in which you could hear the other pilots chatter about you and decide not to engage because you would kick their butts. Surely other game designers could implement something similar. Also, why do wolves and bears always attack? They’re no match against a high-level champion and in real life, the attack probability is much lower.

    Anyway, I love having Oblivion available from Steam, because now I don’t have to keep track of the DVDs from before. I’m not saying I will play through Oblivion again soon, but I’m not saying I won’t…

  • Star Ocean: The Last Hope International

    I recently bought Star Ocean for PS3 because I was looking for an engrossing RPG. Despite many annoyances, it looks like I’ve found a good one. Star Ocean is a JRPG in which you control a party of up to 4 characters who fight evil monsters and try to save the Earth and more. The graphics are surprisingly low-res. Even though it is only a 720p game, most 720p games look pretty good, but sometimes, this one looks like PS-One quality. At other times, it does look quite stunning, particularly as the camera zooms up on the female characters’ body parts.

    The combat is pretty terrific and really makes the game fun. It is real-time combat where you control one character and the others act on their own, though you can switch which character you control on-the-fly. The combat can be either physical damage (swords and arrows) or magic damage, which they call Symbology in the game. For physical attacks, the game emphasizes “blindsides” where you can race around an enemy, confuse it, and make some critical hits. There is also a “rush mode” and combo attacks to liven things up.

    The biggest negative is that the game uses save points, so you have to find one in order to save your progress. The problem is that there are some stretches that don’t have them. I spent an hour and a half looking for one last night. Very annoying. The game is good about putting them before bosses, however.

    The other bad part is the battle mode vs. travel mode, as in Final Fantasy games and others. It is tedious to enter battle mode, fight, and then conclude battle mode, all of which sometimes double the battle time (for easy enemies, at least).

    Bot overall, it is a very good game, so far, and I like it.