If you've followed me since the start of this year, you may have noticed something. I was fairly critical of Final Fantasy XIII-2. Case in point. The fact of the matter is, I've been a massive fan of Final Fantasy for a really long time. I thought Final Fantasy XIII was deeply flawed, but pretty fun none the less. I thought it had a lot of potential, and XIII-2 promised to deliver on that potential. Instead we got a couple fixes at the expense of a floundering mess of a game. Sure, it fixed the mistakes of it's predecessor, but it create more (and bigger) problems in the process. When I was done with XIII-2 I felt disappointed, and a little betrayed even. So suffice it to say that when I heard the official announcement of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, a lot of thoughts went through my mind. Read on for my best attempt at arranging those thoughts into something coherent.
I type these words mere minutes after completing an indie game by the name of Limbo. While you may or may not have heard of the developers, Playdead, you've likely heard of Limbo. You know, it's that game about the kid and the silhouettes and the giant spider. Coincidentally, tomorrow marks the game being out for two whole years, but I only just got around to playing it. Nevertheless, I thought I would post some thoughts on the game, because it is an interesting one indeed. It's not particularly long, taking about three hours to beat, but given the length of triple A titles these days, that's not so bad for an indie game. Of course I already said some things over on my Twitter, but surprisingly enough, it's kind of hard to ramble on the way I do in a mere 140 characters. So, read on for the long version!
So I had the chance to run Temple of the Jade Serpent the other day. Originally I planned to Fraps the whole thing for you guys, but my client bugged out and made everyone but our bear tank invisible (including myself), so I figured it was a bit redundant. Instead however I will talk a bit about my impressions of the changes made to Holy.
I've been trying to decide when to make this post, and given that Guild Wars 2 just announced it will go on sale on April 10th, along with sales model and system speces, I figured now was a good time. So I've been really excited about Guild Wars 2 for a while now. Basically ever since I started seeing the live demos they were putting on at various trade shows last year. As it gets closer to release (2012 release was confirmed in January, plus I mean, it goes on sale in a month) things just get more exciting. A few weeks ago the press had access to a weekend beta event and the reports seemed to be glowing from all sources. I fully intend to give the game a major whirl, and you should to! DO IT.
So making video games. This is something that occupies a considerable amount of my time these days. That is of course because I am going to school to study just that. So the way my school operates is a little odd sometimes. One such oddity is that we periodically get what are called "lab weeks". Basically these are an excuse for the teachers to take the week off, but students are still required to do 20 hours of work for the week. So we get two options: either the teacher will assign us a project to do, or we can come in as normal and work on whatever we like. A chunk of my class chose the latter, and this is what came of it:
