Feculent fantasy

Well, okay, I wouldn’t go so far as to call Final Fantasy: Anniversary feculent, per se, but man, it really has some issues. Rest in peace, Square. You were glorious, inventive, flawed but magnificent in your time, before the dark times. Before the merger. You done good all those years, and I can’t think of a more glorious swan song than Final Fantasy XII. I’ll pour a 40 of Potion on the curbside in your memory.

Because seriously, who wants to drink that crap?

My vow to swear off of Pokémon has been only moderately successful. I’m not really playing, but when I can pop open my DS lid and get a five-minute fix anytime, the clock time adds up over the course of the day. Mostly I’ve been dooting around with the breeding and trading mechanics. The Global Trade System is a glorious invention, and I’ve found that certain uncommon or version-specific creatures make for excellent bargaining chips. I have duplicates of all three starters thanks to my mad scheme to breed Combees and Heracrosses, for instance.

I do feel a little guilty about the breeding thing, honestly. Someone sends me a level 1 Piplup and the first thing I do is send it to the mating farm to start churning out babies. You hear complaints that the game encourages cockfighting, sure, but the “child sex trafficking” aspect is, in my opinion, far more vile. Nintendo, what values are you teaching our children?

One of the forum regulars compared Pokémon to Animal Crossing, a comparison that had been lurking somewhere in the bowels of my mind. More to the point, the two games share some common principles — making Pokémon a sort of compressed take on some of Animal Crossing’s mechanics. There’s lots of side crap to keep you distracted, lots of daily things to juggle (the Berry Master, for example), lots of social trading, lots of things to collect obsessively. And then when you get bored of all of that you can mosey back onto the main story track.

Of course, for those who sneer at Pokémon for being repetitive kiddie fluff, there’s this week’s Retronauts. It’s about Diablo. Which is built on a similar kind of repetition feeding obsessive-compulsion, except with devil motifs, so therefore way more mature. Or whatever.

29 thoughts on “Feculent fantasy”

  1. Oh, damn mergers. At least they are better than takeovers. Like damn EA taking over Bullfrog and forever putting Dungeon Keeper 3 to rest. And do you know what happened to the Bullfrog team? They make Harry Potter games.

  2. You know what to do about that, Billy. Go on a mad punching spree and punch alligators in the face until they turn into turkeys.

  3. You know, even if Square weren’t going to hell, I’m not sure how they could top FFXII. I mean, I’d sure love to have been pleasantly surprised in that regard, but oh well. Couldn’t agree more about it being the best possible swan song. Heck, the only reason I’m not replaying it right now is because I don’t want to get burnt out on it any time soon.

  4. And yet, FFXII isn’t as perfect as it could be, thanks to that crapy last third of the game (both in story and gameplay). Tsk, tsk, tsk.

  7. What are the odds of XII being released for 360 with some sort of downloadable content?

  8. FFXII on 360? Slim to none.

    I’m not really sure I’d want to play an Ogre game without some sort of input from Matsuno, honestly. I’m willing to accept the wackiness of Revenant Wings since it centers on the two most insubstantial characters from FFXII, but I can’t imagine the Ogre series being subjected to that….

  9. Thanks for the info about FF:A having the english language option, and the link to NCS! A godsend for me all the way down in New Zealand.

  11. I honestly think Ditto is more disturbing than the “child sex trafficking”- that thing makes babies with anything that moves.

  12. I think that Ditto will only breed with genderless, non-legendary Pokémon now. It never returned my Venusaur’s calls.

  14. “Before the dark times…. Before the merger.”

    I’m totally imagining Clive Owen in Sin City narrating that line…

  16. Before he goes on to rant for 5 minutes over Magician Lord, let me tell you I personally know someone who has 1CC that game.

  17. ‘”Before the dark times…. Before the merger.”
    I’m totally imagining Clive Owen in Sin City narrating that line…’
    “I recommend envisioning Alec Guiness in a tattered brown robe.”
    Damn… I keep seeing Ewan McGregor in old man makeup instead… Is that bad?

  19. I found myself at some games retailer today, and the employees were attempting to explain the pokemon multiverse to a reluctant father and his enthusiastic, if clueless, son. I became so fed up with their poor explanation that I bought Diamond. I played it until the battery on my DS died…curses!

  20. Hey wait a minute, that’s like enlisting in the army because someone wasn’t able to explain correctly to another person what the army does?

  21. Isn’t that the way everyone gets enlisted in the army? Anyway, I am sad because most people don’t remember the ultra famous lines “For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the Empire.” I mean, am I that old? Clive Owen, pffft. That loser has not said one quotable thing ever with that nose of his with which he speaks.

  22. It’s not just you, Billy. I was barely restraining myself earlier from posting, “Shouldn’t that be Alec Guinness…?”

  23. I kinda can’t stand Clive Owen, but I just imagined him saying that…
    Forgive me father for I have sinned.

  24. For some reason, when I think of Clive Owen quotes, all that comes to mind is “They want your baby” from Children of Men. And that’s only memorable because I like to imagine that he’s referring to dingos.

  25. Well I mean I did play the original Pokemon, so I guess it would be like re-enlisting in the army to prove that it hadn’t changed nearly as much as they claimed.

  26. Hehe.
    But that’s like committing a felony so that you can go to jail and prove (or find out) that you do get butt raped.

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