Archive for the ‘Editorials’ Category
Posted by CmdrKing on
June 13, 2011
Welcome once again to the demented hellscape that is Thematics. And if you have a snappier name, by all means speak up. In the previous article, I mentioned offhandedly that Final Fantasy VII was probably the first video game that could take serious literary analysis. But this isn’t to say it had the first game to attempt serious storytelling. It was just the first to have enough dialogue to avoid jarring gaps in characterization and plot flow. Fortunately, since we’re concerned with broad stroke and looking at trends and conclusions when hunting themes, this doesn’t matter. As such, sit back as we go way back to 1994 and the launching point of the modern jRPG, Final Fantasy VI.
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Posted by CmdrKing on
June 7, 2011
Welcome to Thematics, where everything’s made up and the plot points don’t matter. That’s right, they’re like armor in a Nippon Ichi game. Today we’ll be looking at that perennial favorite of any conversation, Final Fantasy VIII. The follow-up to the greatest game ever circa 1999, Final Fantasy VIII had more or less infinite expectations behind it, and so had to blow everyone out of the water with its gameplay, character building, cast, villains, and of course plot, especially since Final Fantasy VII had quite possibly the first video game plot with both the concepts and scripting to make serious literary analysis worth anyone’s time. So naturally, FFVIII had a complex theme requiring hours of in depth examination of the script, character relationships, and overall plot arc to divine. Or wait, I have that wrong. It loudly proclaims itself “An epic story based on the theme of love, set in a massive new world”. Huh. Well that was easy.
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Posted by Grefter on
May 11, 2011
Do you like Grandia 2? Are you a someone who takes pride in your taste in video games? Do you want to read some nonsense about all of the above? Then this is the article for you. Do you none of the above apply to you? Well I don’t really fit the categories either but wrote some junk about it so you could totally check it out. There is some jokes and some ranting. Mostly the jokes though.
Disclaimer: Post contains words of a degenerate. The contents of which may be vulgar and disgraceful. Read at your own discretion.
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Posted by CmdrKing on
April 15, 2011
Valkyrie Profile: a gameplay-driven yarn featuring loosely adapted Norse Mythology detailing the events of Ragnarok. We take the helm of Lenneth, middle sister of the Valkyries, as she searches Midgard for worthy souls and trains them for the coming battle in Jotunheim. But with the evil pedo wizards, the business end of Odin’s dickery, the fire giants and watching people die and slaying vampires, what’s Valkyrie Profile trying to say? What’s the idea at the center of its unique take on a story older than the written word? That’s the task for Thematics, a little experiment I’m running in which we’ll be applying something approximating literary analysis to RPG plots and seeing if there’s anything left.
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Posted by Grefter on
April 10, 2011
A discussion article on the ever growing trend of including RPG Elements into the First Person Shooter genre, what is wrong with it in the current trend. Not actually an article about how they totally took our gimmick and should give it back. Disclaimer: Post yet another post containing words that display the vulgarity and disgrace of the wretched and the wicked. Read at your own discretion. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Grefter on
March 24, 2011
A discussion about a few different ways to think of Artificial Intelligence. All of which doesn’t discuss much of anything, but is a lot of words. Do you want to read someone call Final Fantasy 6 enemies dumb and praise the suicidal Final Fantasy Tactics as far smarter? Well you can do so here.
Disclaimer: Post does not contain your daily quota of vulgar content. You will have to go elsewhere to get your hard swearing today. Read at your own peril.
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Posted by Grefter on
March 12, 2011
Do you like to play a game with a fully fleshed out world? Do you like to read far to many words to say far to little on a topic? Either do I. However here is a rant with far to many words talking about ways that games have been made to have fully fleshed out worlds examined through a focus on how the player experiences the world rather than how they were explicitly designed.
Disclaimer: Post contains words of a vulgar and disgraceful Malefactor who should know better. Read at your own discretion.
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Posted by CmdrKing on
March 12, 2011
*Platform: Nintendo DS
*Publisher: Atlus
*Developer: Atlus
*Release Date: February 2011
While gaming as a medium has a more favorable relationship with sequels than cinema or literature, it’s still all too susceptible to the same pitfalls movies suffer in terms of genre mutation and imitation. That is, all too often developers, eager to cash in on the big new things and generally following the leader, will take elements from bigger, more successful franchises without considering how they function within their work, or even the genre their work is in. Sure, you can still find older style games, but they’re almost like time capsules, thing untouched from an earlier era with no change, making the same mistakes. But once in a great while, you find a game, movie, whatever where the creators truly loved an older era. They seek not merely to replicate the works of times past, but instead to look at them critically, see what made them work, what they loved about them, and assemble them into a better, stronger whole. Radiant Historia is one of those games, and you should be playing it.
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Posted by CmdrKing on
March 5, 2011
Super Robot Wars J
Platform: Gameboy Advance
Publisher: Banpresto
Developer: Banpresto
Release Date: September 2005
Patch: Romhacking Aerie
Patch Release: December 2010
Super Robot Wars (or Super Robot Taisen, whichever floats your boat. We’ll be calling it SRW for the rest of this review) enjoys a comfortable margin of obscurity in the English speaking world. If you spend some time among the sufficiently geeky, or just like giant robots and use Youtube, you’ve probably run across some reference to the series. However, due to the myriad issues of licensing in anime, video games, and massive crossover plots, the series would be too costly a venture to try and bring across the pacific, at least considering the need to build up a sufficiently large fanbase. While Atlus did, quite surprisingly, roll the dice on the first two Original Generation games, as well as its spin-off Endless Frontier, a shoestring budget will just never be enough to publish a traditional game, with all the bells, whistles, and rocket punches of a dozen different series welded into a single narrative. Fortunately, a fanbase as geeky and dedicated as SRW’s has all the ingredients needed to put together a fan translation, and thus we have Super Robot Wars J, the final release from the GBA, to enjoy today.
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Posted by Grefter on
February 25, 2011
Here is a condensed version of my posts regarding Golden Sun: Dark Dawn – a game that everyone should play as a way to know what not to do with RPGs. Note that this takes place over a month or so as play takes place mostly on the bus to and from work or just prior to sleeping. That and I just plain had better things to do, like eat lead paint chips and to defecate on police officers in an attempt to get myself away from this game.
Disclaimer: Post contains words considered vulgar and disgraceful. Read at your own discretion.
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