I'm thinking about upgrading from my "This Changes Everything" plan, so this was really helpful.
And I've always wanted a phone in metallic pumpkin.
Ahhh, but if you believe some around here, they have "no organizational structure", so this whole press release is just a big lie anyway.
I'm 20 hours into the game and I haven't heard much of anything about "love and friendship". It's a game about Serah looking for her sister and trying to reset the timeline so the world doesn't destroy itself. It's not about kids having emotional problems or angst about love. Are you sure you're talking about the right game? The story is nothing like FF8.
I haven't heard actual sales figures, except that it was not even mentioned among the top sellers of January (the top sellers have been announced). Granted it was out for a single day, but monster games can do a lot in one day... I mean we often hear about games these days making $250 million or whatever crazy amount in a single day on their first day of release, with a combination of preorders and walk-in sales. FF games *used to* be in that category. If this was FF8 and it came out on January 31, I'm sure we'd still be talking about it as one of the top sellers of January.
It seems rare that any Final Fantasy title does much different in Japan vs. the US... some games do, but I think the fan base for FF games is pretty similar between the two countries, and we like similar things and react similar ways to good or bad news about the series. So if it sold 1/3 what FFXIII did in Japan, I'll bet it will sell about 1/3 of what FXIII did here. The only thing that might help it here is the fact that westerners have had reports from the Japanese release of the game to get themselves more excited about it, whereas the Japanese initially were probably just really skeptical because all they had to go on was their experience with FFXIII. It might be one of those titles that sells consistently well there (and here) for a good period of time, though, through word of mouth.
On the other hand, I feel like it is a *very* Japanese game, right down to its dainty main character, and that might hold it back here a bit.
It definitely seems like more of a genre title than a blockbuster, though, even as good as it is.
You could say that about books, record albums or anything else. The fact is first pressings have always been more valuable to collectors; it's got nothing to do with video gamers and whatever perceived mentality you think game collectors have. Collectors of all things have this same mentality.
If you don't understand the mentality, then you're not a collector - which is fine, but those who are will always value a first pressing more than a later pressing. I've got a few games in both first and later pressings that are indistinguishable from each other (Rez being one example), and it's pretty annoying because at this point, I can't even remember which is which. And it's got very little to do with value, because most collectors would never sell their collections anyway. Collectors enjoy *having* things. But it diminishes that enjoyment if you don't even actually know what you have.
I agree with Bubbleman! that it's hard to distinguish your game with a name like that. Soooooo many random Japanese games have names like that, and most of them are junk. You could make one of those internet name generators for Japanese video games and have it spit out a title like "Radiant Historia".
I'd say you're onto something except that sales of FFXIII-2 have apparently been crap. I blame the reliance on DLC and the reputation of XIII more than the quality of XIII-2, though - the game itself is great. And it is actually why I clicked on this story - playing FFXIII-2, I feel a renewed interest just in JRPG's in general, which is a genre I'd pretty much forgotten about since FFXIII.
They fixed pretty much 90% of what everybody complained about in FFXIII, and just generally made XIII-2 feel like a real FF game again. Generally there's a feeling of greater control - you can take things at your own pace, you can explore, you can get totally off the story for a while if you want. There are towns now (some of them are HUGE and really visually impressive) so you can relax and just go on side quests if you feel like it. Moogles are back, chocobos are back, casino games are back. There are many, many things to do off the beaten path.
The story itself is simpler but more engaging. I really couldn't follow what was going on in FFXIII, and by the end I was just playing to finish it, I had no clue what I was really doing but it was pretty obvious that there was only one path to take anyway. In XIII-2 you have basically one clear story goal but many paths you can take to get there. You just need to find Lightning and restore the timeline. Some people have apparently gotten confused by all the time jumping in XIII-2 but it's like Inception - if you're easily confused, I guess you can be confused by it, but really you shouldn't be.
They made the battle system better; there aren't any real wholesale changes there (and it's not my favorite FF battle system) but they tweaked things to make it less frustrating. For example, there's no big delay the first time you do a paradigm change in battle now. You can also customize paradigms so that AI targets go for specific targets or the entire party. You can now more quickly get a preemptive strike, because it's no longer about "sneaking up" on enemies, you just have to engage them before the "mog clock" timer runs out. And character customization is both simpler and easier, because the characters are less specialized and the crystarium only has one path per role.
The one bad thing about the game is that you're stuck with two characters through the whole thing. I'm surprisingly not minding that so much, though. I actually really like Serah, so that helps - she reminds me of Aeris from FF7. She's actually one of my favorite FF characters ever, probably since FF7. Noel is annoying, but whatever. The third slot in your party is taken by tamed monsters, which is a new game mechanic that's kind of interesting.
There's also a lot more humor and goofiness, like FF games are supposed to have. It really does feel like a "real" FF game again, which I didn't think FFXIII did. It's honestly the game XIII should have been.
Both spellings are correct. [www.worldwidewords.org]
Still playing FFXIII-2 and god help me, I LOVE IT. I did not much like XIII and really I don't think I've actually liked an FF game since X. But I love XIII-2.
Oh, I know I will get pissed off later at the DLC they want me to pay for and the crappy ending, but what I am playing right now, I am having the same feeling about as I felt about my favorite FF games ever. I just love it. Every time I unlock a new area I find something that I just want to stare at in awe or giggle with glee about. I am honestly a little *too* into it. But then that's the way I get with FF games sometimes; if you're not an FF fan, you *really* do not want to be around me when I'm on a good FF bender because I will not stop talking about paradigm packs and component farming and the fact that Serah sometimes says "Sorry" when she hits an enemy during battle and "I kinda feel bad" when she wins, which always makes me laugh.
When I'm not playing this game, I think about playing it. I actually don't want to finish it.
I also don't understand people who claim to have finished it in 20-25 hours. I'm 20 hours in right now and only about 1/3 of the way through the story. Are people not even trying to take the time to enjoy it?
/b/ is not where the action really happens.
I believe I just told you where I get my information. And I could just repeat my analogy, but I won't, except to say how about that Bay of Pigs invasion? I just love a spontaneous uprising like that.
The problem is you'll get banned if you say it's "just a blog" about most Gawker sites (seriously, try that on Gawker itself, and even Kotaku yesterday said you "probably shouldn't call us a blog" in one of their posts). They see themselves as a serious journalistic organization that happens to be on the web and begrudgingly offers a "blog view" to those who select it. And that's fine - I have no problem with that, but there are greater expectations that come with loftier rhetoric.
So I don't begrudge a commenter who points out when a writer is failing to uphold the standards of the kind of site this and other Gawker media sites aspires publicly to be. If they want to be a blog, great - they can write about whatever the hell they want from whatever perspective they want and have all the typos they want. If they want to be something bigger and better than a blog, though, that's also great - but then it's hard to complain when somebody calls them out for not living up to the standards they set for themselves. And no matter how many commenters you cull, it will keep happening until the disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of the site is resolved.
I was not offended by Kyle's post and actually wrote a pretty innocuous reply that just focused on my own feelings about losing a laptop, but I could understand someone writing a different kind of reply.
It *is* an organization with a hierarchy, as both Gawker and Gizmodo have reported - in depth - probably a dozen times. The only rebuttal anyone has ever come up with against those reports basically boils down to just calling everybody a bunch of liars with no real evidence to back that up. But there is a ton of evidence for a hierarchical structure.
It's true that anyone can go out and say they're part of Anonymous, but that's like how anyone can go out and say they're an American as long as they were born here or naturalized. That doesn't mean there's not a centralized government at the center of it all controlling things. Do you deny the existence of the president, congress and supreme court just because you're not part of them and don't personally know anyone who is?
Walking around with a 65" iPad, you won't need the gym anymore.
You've got me pegged!
Maybe I'm missing something but it sounds like you guys are complaining about the prices of top-of-the-line TV's. And those prices don't sound out of line given that.
I'm more interested in what the low-end to mid-range 46-50" sets are going to cost. I have a TiVo so I really don't even need a "smart" TV, I just want a TV with the best picture quality for the money, on which I will spend part of my tax refund.
Call us when you have a 65" iPad.
If my laptop was ever stolen, I'd probably just end it all right there. Everything is on my laptop, including both ultra-personal and ultra-important business stuff. And it's not that I don't have it backed up - I do - it's that I can't stand the thought of other people seeing it all. Yes, of course my system's password protected, but I doubt that really does anything. It's not encrypted - I've thought about doing that, but I'm also not convinced that's really all that secure either, and I've always been afraid of the performance hit.
I sometimes go out with my laptop and I treat that thing like it's handcuffed to me (and it may as well be). If I'm in a restaurant, I literally leave the bag strap on my body at all times, and I position the bag in such a way that no one can surreptitiously unzip it and take the PC out. I do this *every* time; it actually takes surprisingly little effort and I never forget. If I can, though, I will leave the laptop at my business (where I have a locked gate, two giant padlocks and a locked door someone would have to get through) and go get it later.
Dude with the camera on the first one's a bit of a drama queen. "Shit!" "aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh braking heavily!" I'm sure this is a challenging approach, but these pilots probably do this every day. This looked pretty textbook.
