Saturday, October 2, 2004

Adverbs For Sale

“Hypello Potion” is a reference to Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2.

The lovely Mimmi guessed correctly first, and as such she earns a point(!) This brings the current score up to…

Current High Scores
Shinmaru: 3 Points
JC Baggee, Mimmi, Semjaza Azazel: 2 Points
Ben, Solo Tremaine, Sara,
Nerdsy, Arcadia: 1 Point

Also, since it’s Friday we have Shy‘s Obscure Question!. This question is worth 2 points, meaning it is of slight obscurity.

This week’s question: Who is the Mayor of McDonaldland?

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Wednesday I made a terribly rash decision that I probably shouldn’t have -- I bought X-Men Legends for the GameCube. Now I’m going to go into some detail about the game later in this post, but since I can’t really afford to go out and buy video games whenever I want. I’m sort of beating myself up over that, but after the very expensive traffic ticket my disposable income is um… nonexistent at this point.

Gas is so expensive at this point, I can’t even tell you how worried I am about rising gas prices. I drive 40 miles to work every day, and 40 miles back. That really adds up, and in only the past year I have logged in about 35,000 miles on my car. That’s about 15,000 less than my warranty covers and I’ll easily go through that by the end of the Winter season. I drive an awful lot, and the slightest change in gas prices really starts to add up for me.

As long as gasoline is at $2.20 a gallon (where I live, at least. It’s cheaper near work for some reason) I should be saving my money and not buying all of the clothes, DVDs and video games I want so very, very much. I need a job that pays more if I plan on doing that sort of stuff; I chose a job I love over a decent paycheck. Bah. Expect some sort of lengthy post about how I chose the wrong job in the immediate future.

X-Men Legends is the most frustrating and glorious multi-player game ever made. It’s a completely different machine than Halo or Super Smash Bros., there is a huge element of teamwork involved and some stages are so difficult that if you don’t have a set strategy with your friends everyone will die a quick and painful death.

Basically it is an Action/RPG in the same vein as Baldur’s Gate or Gauntlet Legends starring the X-Men characters. The game itself is based on the mythology of the X-Men series, meaning it is not set in any particular continuity and borrows the best elements from the characters’ many incarnations. The story plays out like a traditional comic book story, but the tone is similar to that of the films, while the costumes are from the Ultimate X-Men comic series… yeah. The game knows it’s stuff, and a lot of the throwaway references it have stumped even a diehard nerd such as myself.

You go from one mission to the next with a team of four X-Men. You have control of one X-Man, while the other three are controlled by the computer. Fortunately their AI does not suck and in many cases they will save your butt from total and utter defeat. You can switch between the characters, so by simply pressing a button you can take control of any of the members in your party. By defeating enemies your team receives experience points, gains levels, and as such you get to choose which skills and abilities you want to upgrade in your team as they improve. Maybe you want to focus on Storm’s whirlwind abilities, or maybe her flight, or something. It’s entirely up to you, and as such there is a lot of depth in the types of characters you can end up with. That combined with the fact that four players can play at once make for a really entertaining game.

I do have some minor complaints with it, though. The camera is an evil monster that must die. When in multiplayer mode it has problems focusing on the action going on, and tends to shift away towards the characters who are not actively involved in any type of combat. So while Wolverine may be getting tossed around by a Sentinel, it will choose to focus on Emma Frost who is picking her nose and collecting items on the other side of the battlefield. Characters can die really cheap deaths from certain enemies, who seems to have a large amount “one hit kill” grenades. Some of my characters with the most hit points, such as Wolverine have fallen victim to this and since it is sometimes difficult to resurrect a character (you need to be at a save point) they could have tried to reduce the amount of damage such an attack does, or simply add more save points throughout the level.

I must say, however, that this is one of the most difficult games I have ever played. I go through most games without ever seeing the “Game Over” screen, but so far I cannot get through a mission without it popping up at least once. The game is so addictive, though, I don’t really mind.

Buy this game. If you listen to one shameless plug on myOtaku this week, this is the one.
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