Wow, Riddles is fail. I stayed up extra late for the mother fucker because he promised he’d be around at a certain time so we could do those IMpressions that I promised last night. Now I just look like an asshole! Granted, midnight typically isn’t late for me, but it has been recently, and Riddles knew that, so don’t hold back your hate.
Obviously this is a Final Fantasy issue, so there’s no need to hesitate.
I don’t find Vanille that annoying -
I needed to get this out of the way right off the top. I mean, I agree with Riddles that she sounds like she’s perpetually having sex, but that’s not so bad, right? And when compared to Rikku, Vanille is a godsend. At least Squeenix isn’t obsessed with giving terrible hooks to these characters. Remember Rikku’s unforgivable “Yunie, y’know?”. Goddammit, it makes me want to kill babies just thinking about it. Anyway, Vanille’s far from my favourite, but she’s not so bad.
Dude, the battle system is fucking awesome –
Excepting recently when I’ve been killing it a bit more easily, the battle system is consistently engaging and fun. I noticed something that I think is the reason why I love it so much. In a game like FF9, the battle system itself is pretty boring really. Now, it never really bored me because I enjoyed seeing the payoff from my leveling and the decisions I made with equipment and abilities and such. The battles were payoff for working the backend. The fantastic thing about FFXIII is that not only is there still that noticeable difference in battle for tinkering with the backend, but the battles themselves take quick reactions and deep strategy to master. It’s a beautiful balance. If you power-up the wrong roles or don’t construct a key paradigm, you’ll find yourself fucked in battle. However, if you made fantastic choices in the menu systems but make a few grave errors in battle, you won’t survive either. The result is easily the most engaging and satisfying battle system ever created. Pogo came to watch me play for a bit, and I took 10 seconds to try and explain something without pausing, and I was very quickly slaughtered. No longer are battles part of a larger grind to manage overall HP and MP until the next inn, but rather individual efforts. It brings you into the moment and makes the game perpetually exciting.
Yeah, there’s something missing -
Although I’m enjoying the cast and story, and immensely enjoying the battle, paradigm, and crystalium systems, I have to mirror what everybody else is saying in that there does just seem to be something missing. And I’m actually okay with the linearity and lack of towns, but there isn’t even a sense of different cultures. It’s fine that there’s only humans, but Final Fantasy has been so great at representing diversity, and while Cocoon has a rich culture, I’m surprised and disappointed to not have more insight. Also, while I say I don’t miss towns, I do miss what they represent: gathering information. While I’m enjoying the datapad, or whatever it’s called, I do miss picking up that sort of insight from the scattered comments of NPCs. They also provide quirk and personality to the world. So although I’m thoroughly enjoying the game, I am missing that extra layer of depth.
The music’s a mixed bag -
While it’s not a soundtrack I’d import the sheet music for, I’ve been very impressed with a lot of the music. It can be moody, unique, and very effective. Yet once in a while, there’s a track that comes on and I have to mute and unmute the sound to make sure it’s actually coming from the game. I think it’s Sazh’s theme, actually, because it usually props up when he’s diving into his past. Bad, bad choice.
That’s enough for me! Back to the game!
Silly Paranoid Riddles. We all know Scatter Storming is better.
Hello! Welcome to a very belated issue of Scatter Storming! While some of the lateness is indeed due to laziness/Olympics, I was also working on the new look for the series. I’m actually a fan and I think it might stick around for longer than 10 issues, but we’ll see. For this new “magazine” series, I’ve opted out of titles because it didn’t seem to fit, although I am required to make the cover after I write the issue for it to work, and therefore this blurb is the last thing to go in. It’s all new around here! Anyway, let’s dig in!
Here it is, folks. The end of another 10 issue run of Scatter Storming. We all hoped it wouldn’t happen. People ran screaming in pain through the streets because of this feature’s continued existence but still it presses on. While this 10 issue run was supposed to have “classy” as the theme, it definitely deviated from that on a few occasions. Still, I’d like to pretend that I was more consistent, so I’ve made one final simple and clean cover for this twentieth issue. However, I still haven’t really played any games. The Olympics are liquid crack and I had to prepare for Doofus McDoofus’ arrival. Actually, speaking of that dude, maybe I’ll dedicate this issue to him.
Hello there everybody! Welcome to 6:30am Eastern Standard Time. The ONLY standard time in my books, because I’m a Torontonian and we’re assholes like that! Anyhoo, this week has been a blast so far. Good ol’ Riddles/Ethos rivalry, incredibly stupid pictures, and solid video game impressions. So let’s add to this cesspool of nonsense with the most pointless feature on the entire site: Scatter Storming!
Well these “classy” series Scatter Stormings didn’t stay classy for very long. This cover is a screengrab from an old sketch “comedy” movie I made with a dear friend of mine. “I have giant testicles” is a line from the scene that that unfortunate grab was taken from. I decided it would be appropriate to have something horrible as the cover for the first February issue of this illustrious feature, so there we have it. Let’s talk about games.
Yes, I really look like that right now and for the past 30 hours or so. It’s because of Mass Effect 2, and since that’s all I have to talk about, let’s get to it.
Way back when I wrote for Lusipurr.com, I “went” to E3. Somehow, miraculously, I was also in Toronto working on a gameshow for the Discovery Channel. It was called Qubit. The cover is a still taken of me when I was standing in for the host while the control room was figuring some shot out. Anyway, that show was sort of the start of my new position in my current job. And since that’s been my life this past month, I decided to make it the cover. How is it working out? Me and my attempts to make the covers for this feature relevant, I mean. Am I selling it? Anyway, let’s talk about me and my gaming brain.
No, my name’s not Ryan nor am I trying to change my name yet again. Ryan’s Apocalypse is a short story I wrote 3 or 4 years ago that essentially asks the question, “does it even matter if the world is ending if your own world is crumbling around you?”. This picture was taken by a friend with that short story as inspiration. Now my world isn’t crumbling either, but I have been notably exhausted and stressed the past two weeks. But hey, at least the cover art for this issue is semi-sorta-relevant, that’s better than most weeks. Anyway, it’s almost been a month since the last Scatter Storming – yup, it was December 16th, people – so let’s talk games.
Hey there!
