Final Fantasy 12

I have always been a big fan of the FF series. I love the art work, the cut scenes, the story line, and the somewhat complicated characters. This series has definitely evolved over time because the main character always remains the same; the tough but small blond kid with an in-your-face attitude and a heart of gold. Inspiring isn't it?

But something is nagging at me. I can't figure out what exactly, but this time around playing FF just feels a little off. ? The experience is different, not as enjoyable as it was when I first picked up FF 7 back in high school. Back then I even played the original version on my old NES, which I still have. Maybe I'm getting old, maybe I've changed...maybe we've grown apart. :(

It's not surprising though, FF hasn't really changed at all in the past ten years. Die-hard fans of the series refuse to admit that they've been playing the same game for their whole teenage life. Each new version is prettier than the last...like I said before, the characters will always remain the same. There was one unique deviation in the series and that was FF 9. It's bubbly characters put a different twist on the old game, but really nothing changed besides the art work. The same characters are still represented.

Look at the boy hero, for instance. He's tough, but short, blond, has attitude, and will end up saving the world, so he also has a heart of gold. Then look at the girl heroine, she looks almost exactly like Tifa from FF 7, only a little more fleshed out. There's the standard big guy, the wild guy (with appropriately red hair) and the reclusive sorcerer.

Hmmm. Why am I still playing these?

Well, for one thing, although it is true that each new version is essentially an improved copy of itself, FF does have some new features that are new and exciting. Like this new battle set-up, for instance. The old games would break away from the world and the battle field existed almost on a separate plane from the adventure game. It was kind of like a cut-scene in itself, but here FF 12 follows other games' style of walking and encountering monsters that you either choose to engage or run from. Magic is now shared amongst party members so that only one kind needs to be purchased instead of having to equip each character individually. But still, if this is all FF 12 has to offer...why am I still playing it?

I've been thinking about marketing and how game series like Final Fantasy come out with one game, and then never stop. However, although it is kind of dull, it still works. I bought FF 12 with no hesitation because my past experiences in playing the FF series has always been enjoyable, I never stopped to think that even though I liked all the others, I might not like them anymore. After having played Katamari Damacy and its sequel We Love Katamari, I'm finding the FF series lacking in entertainment. It's almost like a ball-and-chain with me now, I am compelled to continue on with the series because I'm afraid that if I stop playing each new game I might miss something spectacular. This addiction needs to end! And what kind of video game programmers rely on so heavily on graphics? God of War is entertaining because of its simplicity, but the FF series keeps getting more and more complicated with bigger and better graphics and more expansive, movie-like cut-scenes. When will it end?!?

It's almost unfair that games like Final Fantasy can still be so captivating, while games like Katamari Damacy are hardly known. By the way, I've been looking for Katamari in both its forms but have yet to find it on any shelf, while Final Fantasy 12 is everywhere.

Comment on "Game Theories"

"Game Design as Narrative Architecture" by Henry Jenkins

The relationship between games and story...

I agree with what Jenkins says on page 120 about how games tell stories differently than other forms of media and "We must therefore be attentive to the particularity of games as a medium, specifically what distinguishes them from other narrative traditions." But with this statement, Jenkins is also making it appropriate to underscore the kinds of stories that can be told through video games. Just like how the Sci-Fi genre has always been classified as a lesser form of literature, so too will the games we play be less significant than what the other forms of media can portray.

Later, Jenkins goes on to say that a game designer has less control over narrative information than authors of books or filmmakers do. I do not agree with this, I think that authors and filmmakers have less control over what narrative information is released. In fact, I think that authors and filmmakers intentionally reveal more narrative information than video games do.

First, when I was younger I used to read the last page of a book first so that I know how it ended. Even today I will sometimes go to Border's Books and flip through a book that looks interesting. If I can read any random page and it peaks my interest, then I'll buy it. Also, books today have their own versions of trailers that precede the release to peak interest, like on the Today show, or any morning show for that matter that brings an author on to discuss the content of their new book.

Second, filmmakers are even more famous for revealing the most interesting aspects of their movies in the very commercial advertisements they use to generate interest. Especially where action flicks are concerned, all the best stunts and c.g. are the first things we see. Also, filmmakers and actors make up the majority of guests featured on talk shows, purely to promote a new movie. You know how on David Letterman's show or Jay Leno's show there will be an actor on promoting a new movie, and they show a clip from that movie at random, and then the actor explicates the scene for the audience? It's the same thing as going to Border's and picking up a book and flipping to a random page and reading it.

Finally, I hesitate to say that video games reveal more, or that video game designers have less control over narrative information, because buying a new video game can be a gamble. Yes, there are trailers for new games, but games have way more content to consider than books or films do, so the ratio to information being prematurely revealed is slim compared to the amount of information revealed in one, three minute movie trailer that acts as montage of all the best scenes and reveals the entire plot line. For me at least, and I'll try to keep my comments as personal and not general as possible, I am grabbed by the cover of a game, or I'll stick with a genre that I like, but I never usually research a new game before I play it the way that some people do with books and movies with their Arts & Entertainment section of the Sunday Times.

And my final point about this is that games reveal their narrative information within a sequence of events that needs to be followed by the player. If I were reading a book instead of playing a game and I wanted to know what happens next, I'd just flip the page until I got that information. You can't do that with video games, you can't even break the code with console games to find the information you're looking for, or you shouldn't! Because that's the fun behind playing video games, you need to accomplish something before any new information is revealed to you. With books and movies you can just skip ahead, and that means that authors and filmmakers have less control over narrative information than video game designers.

Easter

So this weekend I went home for Easter and it was fun. My mom still buys us 2 dozen eggs every year...just in case. I went out Sunday night to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with a friend of mine. When we were kids my friend used to make me play TMNT with him, and in exchange he had to play barbies with me. It was a sweet deal until the day I got slimed, that ooze must be radioactive because it took several washings to get it out of my hair. Anyway, the movie was great. We felt a little childish watching with young kids in the theatre, but it occured to me that the makers of this new TMNT version would probably be counting on the patronage of former fans. That eventhough the story is meant for children, the event itself appeals to all ages, from kids to thirty-year olds.
Video game nostalgia brings older games to newer systems like the Wii and XBox360 which both offer the feature of downloading old favorites. The only downside to this that I've noticed is that the lag time between the action you take on the new system's controller and the response to that action on the screen. My NES never took half a second longer to respond to my jump comand, and that is a very irritating aspect to playing old games on new consoles. Frankly, I'd rather think back to 1989 when I got my first Nintendo (also the year I found out Santa was a hoax) and keep the original gaming experience a fond memory. It changes, sours when you go back to game you played as a child and you realize that it isn't as much fun as you remember, or nearly as exciting. My reflexes have changed, games today aren't as predictable.
TMNT has nothing to do with this, it just popped into my head. But TMNT was a new experience too. The animation was great, your standard save-the-world scenario, and new villains, but the ending suggested that a new TMNT would be out soon, and this time with Shredder (crossing fingers). I noticed though, that while watching the movie I was paying less attention to the plot than I was to the details, for instance do these new turtles sound like the original ones? Oooh, look, there's the scepter that brings you back in time...stuff like that.
My friend laughed every time one of the turtles made a cheesy remark that is so characteristic of TMNT style.
Overall, my friend and I had a lot of fun reminiscing, but I'm wondering if there was ever an old TV show, well old for me...80s-ish?, that was remade into a feature film specifically for an adult audience.

Katamari Damacy 2

Some thoughts that I'd like to expand on in class:

-Dr. Jones said in his chapter that he sees Katamari Damacy as a witty parody of the collecting culture surrounding video games, and that Katamari Damacy's ultimate meaning is this parody.

-He also says that it is like the campy gigantic monsters in Japanese sci-fi movies, rampaging through the streets. As well as the fight clouds and rolling snowballs from early cartoons.

I can see the resemblance between the fight clouds and out-of-control snowballs, but what the creator says later is that he wanted to make a game that was simply fun. This does not mean that Takahashi wanted Katamari Damacy to be devoid of meaning, but that the meaning is of little consiquence when compared with the pure enjoyment derived from physically playing the game. I don't think that Takahashi was downplaying any meaning that Katamari Damacy may have, but whatever meaning we can see in the game isn't necessarilly the meaning that Takahashi intended. And what's wrong with just accepting the fact that fun can be meaningful? Maybe that was Takahashi's goal, to present the world with a game that has nothing say, nothing to contribute to society at large or the gamer culture in particular, but just to be, and that could be precisely why we love it so much. It presents us with a blank slate that we build on, that we give meaning to ourselves. I don't think Takahashi's trying to pull a fast one on us, or that meaning within games isn't important. I think he's simply trying to offer up something fun and pleasant and colorful and happy.

I found this picture and the one below it on google images. This game inspires.

Legos, advertisements, cakes, knitted hats...

Ya, I know, every Harry Potter fan has at one point made or bought a hand-crochetted Hogwart's scarf, so fan manifestation of their favorite games isn't new, but doesn't something like that picture of Lego men running in stop-motion terror put a smile on your face?

-Katamari Damacy as a text.

I can see how the type of stuff collected on the Katamri can be read, or made more interesting by just focusing on umbrellas, or objects of Japanese culture. BUt once again, the player is in control of what he or she rolls over, thereby creating the text of images that slowly accumlates on the surface of the ball. From my limited experience playing Katamari Damacy, it didn't occur to me that there were levels in which you could only pick up items in significant groups. In other words, there isn't a stage that only has umbrellas, if I wanted my Katamari to only have umbrellas, I would have to be really careful and avoid everything else. I guess I'm getting back to my point about how we as the players give meaning to the game based on our choices while playing. The meaning that the advertiser of this poster gave to Katamari Damasi was one of popular media culture, you can only see audio-visual media related material on the ball of stuff (rolling through the streets of Dublin).

Speaking of rolling, on page 12, Dr. Jones says that "katamari rolling is less an allegory of labor and more a parody of labor." I liked that a lot.

On page 15, Dr. Jones says that Katamari Damacy's meaning lies within its parody, or the ability to parody...I wasn't sure because there were more than one instance where the game parodies something (subsurface)?

I also liked the description of the katamari as having the look and feeling of database arrays. clever But as I would see it, those data base arrays are meaningful, but only because they were intentionally constructed by the player. Is Dr. Jones making this implicit in his statements? That the player is ultimately the all-powerful meaning giver? Maybe he is making that implicit and I'm just not getting it.

This is one scene from Lost in Translation where Charlotte (Scarlette Johansen) is walking around in an arcade center in Tokyo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17GYe8-NQc0

I completely agree that Katamari Damacy is related to the Japanese aracade culture of collecting game related objects. It is normal within that culture to find cows with snacks with toys because that is what you'd find in any UFO catcher in Japan, and it certainly makes sense that we as Americans would find that a little funny (absurd-funny). But wasn't Katamari Damacy made specifically for that culture, and then, like all other popular Japanese games, it was translated to English and shipped off to America for us to enjoy. So any possible meaning we as Americans could give Katamari Damacy, although valid, would be essentially flawed because we are not apart of the culture for which this game was intended. And any meaning it would have initially had for the Japanese arcade culture would be probably be Lost in Translation.

Katamari Damacy

Katamari Damacy

Once again, I found myself at the weekly LOST party when one of my friends popped in a video game before the show started, and this week it was Katamari Damacy. Wow. I love this game, it's so unique and simple and addictive. I was confused at first about how to operate the the ball, and my friend said "Don't worry about it, it's just like driving a tank." This, I think is a testament to the level in which video games have influenced our culture...not only has my friend never driven a tank, but he can safely assume how to operate one and can assume that I knew how to operate one as well...which I did, of course.
I have to get this game for PS2. I was playing FF12 for a while, but the adventure aspect of it was getting a little dull, what I now realize I needed was some good old destructive fun. Can you even say that it's a puzzle game? No, I don't think so. It's not really an adventure game either because it's purely a one-way interaction.
The only thing that bothered me about this game was the limited field of vision. You can't look up or down, just ahead and behind if you push down on the joysticks. I kept getting warning signals that other larger things were on their way, but I could never see where they were coming from and before I knew it I'd lost a turnip.
I'll expand on these thoughts after reading chapter 2.

God of War II

I was at friend's house the other day for our weekly LOST party, and for about an hour before the show started I watched him play God of War for Playstation 2. I was very impressed by this game, and surprised that such a sophisticated single player adventure game existed for the PS2. Then I was even more shocked when I learned that God of War II had been released for the PS2 as well, instead of for PS3 or XBox360. Seriously, this game is awesome.

And to emphasize just how awesome, here's the link to the New York Times article about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/arts/16Game.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The author of the article, Seth Schiesel, talks about God of War's extrodinary balance, and that the game is unique because you never get bored while playing. Being an adventure game, God of War incorporates battles, puzzles, and fun accrobatics in an even distribution. So instead of getting tired or frustrated with one level because of all the redundant puzzles (Myst, wink wink) your constant movement from one area to the next keeps your interest rapt to the screen, and never do you feel that you need to take a break from the game.

The article was published in today's (March, 16th 2007) paper, but it wasn't clear when the video game was released. The picture in the Times says it's been on the shelves since 2000, so that would make the article a tad belated, but it also proves how some games are so good that they can stand the test of time. It's really amazing that a game this good isn't brand new.

Here's the link for the God of War official website, and it's spectacular as well, at least artistically speaking.

http://www.us.playstation.com/Content/Sites/192/Info/default.html (site for both)

http://www.us.playstation.com/GodofWar2/ (site only for GoWII)

If I could go back to the beginning of the semester, I would try to convince my play group to cover God of War instead of racing. Oh well, maybe I'll change my final project topic.

Mario and Luigi go to Vice City

I was watching an episode of "Robot Chicken" the other night when I saw this skit about Mario and Luigi riding along in their cart down a cute cartoon road. They take a right turn towards a city, that the viewer finds out is actually Vice City, from Grand Theft Auto. Mario and Luigi run into a little bit of trouble, as you can imagine. It's hilarious because the creator of this cartoon used satire to meld the prominent characteristics of both popular games into one event.

watch it here on youtube.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHd5b3Mb2eQ

I know it sounds silly, but each game really does have its own universe. And no matter how far the paratextual elements of video games extend, they very rarely extend to the universes of other video games.

One example I can think of where a video game incorporated many characters from several games into one is _____________ (fill in the blank cause I can't find the title). Anyway, it was a game that incorporated characters from Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy, Zelda etc...all the uber-popular video games, and their characters, got together for a battle in a completely separate universe. None of the worlds in which they fought (Mortal Kombat style) were interactive, you as the player only interacted with your opponent. So my point is that games' universes are separate. You can pull the characters out and put them together with other video game characters, but you can't take the video game worlds and put them together, and if you did you'd have something a-kin to the "Robot Chicken" Mario in Vice City episode; nonsense.

This hillarious cartoon shows that Mario and Luigi don't belong in a place like Vice City.

Aha! I just found something else on youtube.com about Mario in Vice City that might have been the inspiration for the cartoon creators of "Robot Chicken."

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Super Mario Mod 2 by:jessrocked

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EANBQDrm