ReadingLirael, As You Like It, The English Patient, Heart of Darkness, Suikoden III, Candidate for Goddess
Watching House, Rick Mercer's Monday Report, Gilmore Girls, Scrubs, Corner Gas, Aishiteruze Baby, Prince of Tennis, Hikaru no Go
Playing The Bard's Tale, Katamari Damacy, Curse of Monkey Island, Final Fantasy VI, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Pretty Barbie Dressup Party Final Fantasy X-2(group gaming)
Back-burner Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Star Ocean: The Second Story, Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, Planescape: Torment, Final Fantasy VII
Obsessing Firefly, Erik and Ray, Impulse/Bart Allen, Ford Prefect, Monkey Island, Nostalgia.
Upcoming Things of Importance January 5 First day of classes January 14 Birthday party January 16 Jaryn and Matt Are Old Day
layout
Is by Meimi, that wonderful Goddess who brings joy and happiness to the hearts of Ingrids.
This time, Meimi brought joy by doing a layout of Isumi Shinichirou and Waya Yoshitaka, of Hikaru no Go. It is full of wub.
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Pain from all Four Directions: Fish, Internet, Library, and Final Fantasy X
7/24/2004 07:37:23 AM
"You know what it is? She's just jealous we have a Rafi and she doesn't." "Because everyone needs a short Satanist to eat their food and never leave their guest room . . ." - Nefertari and Padma Maharassa, Friendly Hostility.
Absurdly long post follows. Because when I don't post for days, and then do, it's almost invariably long, rambly, and pointless.
I stabbed myself with a fish yesterday at work. Really, I think that statement speaks for itself.
I also served a customer with some form of tongue piercing. Thanks to the internet, I can no longer see someone with a tongue piercing and not think of Boots o'Neal. The internet has a lot to answer for.
In less traumatizing or fish-related news, I went to the library the other day and got myself a card. As much as I firmly believe in the good of libraries, it comes as a bit of a shock to me that the public library in Saskatoon, the biggest city in my province, seems to be smaller, with a poorer selection of fiction, less in touch with technology, and in general poorly organized. I mean, we've had an electronic checkout at the Prince Albert library for ages, and a computer-search system that actually follows some casual form of logic.
Also, finding out that they take older books, or books that don't get taken out much, off the shelf and put into "storage" makes me think they're just one step away from being the library in Bellweather, discarding Dickens and who knows what else because they aren't popular.
I went looking for Gordon Korman's Son of the Interflux and Beware the Fish! and couldn't find either of them, but I found multiple copies of Son of the Mob (2002, so very, very disappointing, and nothing like an appropriate substitute).
The audio books are only to be taken out by persons of the blind variety. Now, I understand that they want to make sure things are available for the people who can't read regular books, and I have nothing against that (what am I, a moron?). But really - how many people, on average, who aren't blind, are in the practice of taking out books on tape? Because most people I know find them boring. Me? I like listening to books on tape, particularly when I'm doing rather repetitive things like levelling up in a video game. Or when I'm sick and having serious difficulty sleeping. Books on tape are a godsend then. Alas, here in great and cultured Saskatoon, getting my hands on books on tape that aren't possessed by yours truly doesn't seem like it's going to happen. This is more irritating than the collection of audio books that you couldn't take out if you weren't blind at the Prince Albert library, that they hid from you.
And no, I'm not still bitter about the audio of The Lives of Christopher Chant that never, as far as I could tell on the computers, got taken out, but that I still couldn't get my hands on.
Despite mounting misgivings about this the (other) library I'm going to have to deal with (and I am going to have to deal with, because they have a copy of Poppy Z. Brite's Liquor -somewhere-, and dammit, I'm going to read at least -one- of those books, and this looks to be the only one I'll get even near without spending massive wads of cash), I got out some books anyway. The aforementioned Son of the Mob (did I mention the burning disappointment and sadness for what has been lost?), So You Want to Be a Wizard? by Diane Duane (both Ven and Jinxer have mentioned it recently (i.e. in the last month) and if something's drilled into my head often enough, I will remember), a dictionary of Italian slang (which is cooler than I have words to express), an Italian-English dictionary with pictures (!!) (I remember similar dictionaries of the French-English variety growing up - ah, memories), and, uh, some book about Diplomats that'll probably be a complete bust. Because trying to wrestle with that computer catalogue and find stuff on diplomats, embassies, and ambassadors? Painful like a nail to my brain. I think I'll have better luck hunting at the campus library, as much as it's very essence frightens me.
On the bright side - damn they have a cool collection of dictionaries.
Topic change! Linked only by the fact that the previous discussion and the one to follow both cause me pain.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that Final Fantasy games and I have a difficult relationship. I insult their mother, they try to anally rape me, and as result I refuse to hail them as the greatest games ever made. It's a highly dysfunctional relationship, but I pursue it anyway, because I don't have enough gaming cred to be allowed to hang out with the other gamers if I don't play the damn things.
So I've been easing myself back into Final Fantasy X.
Final Fantasy X, I realize, has way too many damn sidequests. This is a problem for me, someone who makes a point of completing as many sidequests as humanly possible.
I've got all the optional Aeons - this is a doable sidequests.
I've got all the Jecht Spheres and gotten all of Auron's shiny, alochol-filled overdrives as a result - this is also a doable sidequest.
I've gotten Auron's maximized ultimate weapon, without trying to - this, obviously, is a doable sidequest, even though the FAQs I've skimmed complain about it taking too long. Uh . . . whatever, guys.
I've gotten Yuna's maximized ultimate weapon, which actually makes it viable to use Yuna in battle for something besides summoning slavering ethereal monsters - this is a doable sidequest that makes life so much easier.
I've gotten Rikku's maximized ultimate weapon, which still doesn't make Rikku any good in a real battle - doable in that painstaking kind of way.
I've gotten ten of every fiend from every area except Omega Dungeon and (presumably, because I haven't been there, so it isn't actually unlocked) the listing that every force in the game is pointing me toward, Sin - doable . . . if you're insane. Like me.
I've gotten every -kind- of fiend from Omega dungeon - doable . . . if you don't go insane from the uberdeathgodfuckfuckfuck malboro killing you at inconvenient intervals.
I've unlocked all but three species creations, one area creation, and three original creations - the result of all the above, so doable. See: Insanity.
I've gotten Tidus' ultimate weapon - doable, if you don't murder the damn chocobo, but more on that later - and the Sun Crest - easily doable, but . . .
I've gotten Lulu's ultimate weapon - doable, but annoying thanks to the "who needs camera control?" decision of the game designers - and the Venus Crest - also easily doable, and again with the but.
I've gotten Kimahri's ultimate weapon - doable, and much less annoying than I expected it to be - and Saturn Crest - easily doable, but . . . do you sense a trend?
The problem with the ultimate weapons, their Crests, and their Sigils, is that they need to be unsealed (with the Crests and Sigils). All the Crests do is give the weapon Double Overdrive, and -don't- remove the No AP "ability". The Sigils are what you need to make the weapons in any way useful and, you know, -not- sucky. And for Tidus, Lulu, and Kimahri, getting the Sigil's involves the most satanic, painful mini-games the game designers could invent.
For Kimahri, you need to play some version of the butterfly game. The hateful, hateful butterfly game. The butterfly game that makes hardened gamers burst into tears and curl into the fetal position, mumbling incoherent but soothing words to themselves in hopes of making the pain stop. Since Kimahri's not exactly the most useful character in battle anyway, this is no big loss. But it's just annoying, knowing this is a problem that's in place.
For Lulu, you need to dodge lightning bolts on the Thunder Plains . . . two-hundred consecutive times. As I pointed out to Matt, it's really hard to choose between getting the ultimate weapon of a character I really like and . . . seeing Tidus McWankerson getting hit by lightning. As it's also time-consuming according to everything I've read, and very, very frustrating, I've kind of decided it's probably not for me. Especially when I tried it and couldn't even make it to ten.
For Tidus . . . you need to race chocobos. But that's not all. Listen to this description and tell me this game wasn't designed by one sadistic, animal-hating fuck. You ride a giant yellow chicken, which is either drunk, on drugs, or suffering from some kind of pre-natal damage, and are expect to explode shiny balloons as you try to keep it from running into the cliff face. If that's not fun enough, you also have to do this while dodging seagulls or pigeons or something, which are being violently hurled at you by, I imagine, the aforementioned sadistic fuck in order to stun your already damaged crackbird mount. And, of course, you're competing against the AI controlled crackbird, which doesn't appear particularly intoxicated.
Oh, and to get the Sigil for Tidus' ultimate weapon, you need to beat the AI with a time better than 0:00:00.
And this is where I want to pull the game designers aside and explain to them gently, very gently, because as we know game designers are twitchy drug freaks who must be approached with caution and spoken to softly, that I -understand- their desire to put a challenge into a game. It's perfectly acceptable to put something into a game that's very difficult for player's to accomplish. I see nothing wrong with this attitude when the difficult to accomplish thing is something called "Emerald Weapon", or "Hades", or "Ozma". There's certainly no problem with it being "Recruit that stupid fuck who'll never do anything for your party and you need an item to do it that one monster in a million drops" or even "Play through this game in twenty-hours to see all the bonus stuff with this one character who you might otherwise ignore". Ultimate weapons, however, are a different matter. Different as in - should be within the realm of something more than .000001% of the players can actually accomplish without needing professional help to recover. Ultimate weapons are, well, weapons. Items. Things used for killing. And to not be able to get them, not because you aren't levelled up enough, not because you haven't found a secret location, but because -you can't manoeuver a damn drunken chocobo and avoid being hit by seagulls in record time- is ridiculous.
Remember the bit where this is supposed to be -fun-, game designers? Fun, for me, doesn't involve wanting to hurl by television set out the window in an attempt to make the drunken chicken of death go away.
Oh, and Wakka's ultimate weapon? Yeah. It involves playing, and winning, a minimum of twenty-five blitzball games. It's a randomly awarded prize. It could take -hundreds- of games before it showed up. And every blitzball game takes about half an hour.
Wakka, I love you. And I hate the stupid, stupid game you devoted your life to. I'm sorry. But I recognize that if I didn't hate it, getting your ultimate weapon would also be doable, and involve a distinct lack of drunken death chickens. Which is why you're once more better than Tidus.
And on top of that? STILL MORE THINGS TO DO IN OMEGA DUNGEON. Hey, game designers? Why didn't you take the time you poured into Satan-spawn sidequests and put some of it into helping reintegrate that alcoholic chocobo Tidus has to ride into sober chocobo society. Or making Tidus less of a wanker. Even after all this, I still have some faith in you. Not much, I admit, but I'm sure if I wish -really- hard, you'll get your heads out of your asses, stop doing LSD and crack, and finally stop hurting me.
This has been your elongated message of pain and suffering for the day.
You didn't know "Fish" was a direction? Almighty Ingrid, Signing Off
