Bite Size 2008: In the Palm of my Hand

Slightly delayed. I was benched due to not feeling good and not wanting to sit and think about stuff I have to type, interest in the Windows 7 beta, and various Princes of Persia, so here’s my next post in the series only a bit late.

Bite Size 2008 is my wrap-up of moments in games from the past calendar year. This post is themed around, you guessed it, handheld games! Specifically, DS games, as I delayed my purchase of a PSP once again. The DS was a pretty big component of my gaming in 2008, because portability is awesome, and good games with said portability is even better. Check out this listing for the rest of my Bite Size 2008 posts!

To be Honest, I’d Spend My Quarters on it Again

In 1995, I was nine years old. I had just recently completed my first full playthrough of Final Fantasy III for the SNES, after many failed attempts, and I was looking for something new. In these days, I didn’t own many games. I saved up my quarters and change I got from returning bottles for my grandmother and helping my dad out with odd jobs around the house, and I rented games. One day, I rode my bike up to the nearby Family Video (which was brand new at the time) and rented a game that sat on the corner of the shelf called Chrono Trigger. I took it home, and played. It was a fun game, with cool characters, and I spent many of the aforementioned quarters on renting it in consecutive rentals. I still remember the way I felt when I first traveled into the future, after the Day of Lavos, to see what became of the world. I never completed it at the time (I ran out of funds, and did not fully complete the game until I was running an emulator on my PC a couple years later), yet the game had such an impact on me, it stands as my favorite game of all time. With the DS re-release of the game, I’m on something like my 7th playthrough of the game, and I still enjoy it. It holds up well against the test of time, and I can’t wait until the day I get to show my children what an amazing game it is.

 

Experiencing a Classic

In the last paragraph, I mentioned my love for Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger. The 16-bit era was the birth of my love for RPGs, with those two games, as well as The Illusion of Gaia, The Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, and more. However, one game I overlooked in this time frame was Final Fantasy IV, known as II at the time. I had started it once in my also previously mentioned emulator phase, but I never stuck with it. This year, I was given a new chance to take a stab at it, and with the release on the DS, it looked more than likely that I would give it a go. I finally see why so many give it high regards. The tale of Cecil and company is a well twisted one, with plenty of drama, excitement, and mystery to craft an interesting narrative. The implementation of an Auto-Battle system also helped to make the game a little less button-mashy than some old school RPGs tended to get in their later stages. While I’ll admit I have not yet finished the game (I picked it up late, and Chrono Trigger may have interrupted me), I’m about 75% complete, and I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit. My only complaint is that Cecil looks a bit too wimpy after his transformation.

 

It Is Four In The Morning, Oh Damn… One More and I’m Done

I was always the kind of kid who liked story problems in school, while everyone else sat there hating them. I love a good mind teaser, and that’s why I love puzzle games. I’ll admit I’ve picked up a paperback logic puzzle book here and there as well (more recently than one would think). Given that prerequisite, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a no-brainer as far as whether or not I should pick it up. Throw an actually interesting story on top of it (classic murder mystery, with a twist!) and add in downloadable puzzles, and upon picking it up, I was damn near ready to call it my game of the year. I spent so many nights up until 4 AM trying to figure out puzzles. I’ve completed every downloadable puzzle and every puzzle in the game except the very last bonus room puzzle (the block moving puzzles are my least favorite anyway). I’ve already decided that when I have my own classroom, I will start the students off with a warm-up puzzle, just to get their minds running. The only thing I can wait for now is for the second and third games to make their way stateside!

One more piece left in the puzzle of Bite Size 2008, and then it’s off to the races for 2009!

A Sad State of Affairs

One of the drawbacks, actually, THE drawback to being a student and a gamer is that midterms fall the same time all the big holiday-shipping games start to hit. It's bad when the only experience I got to have with gaming was a few battles in Final Fantasy IV or a couple of rounds of Lock's Quest.
Luckily, the biggest of my assignments, the first half of my paper on studying narratives in videogames, was due this past Monday. To reward myself, I dropped some MSP on Wednesday and bought Portal: Still Alive. With the thoughts of my paper fresh in my head, I was thinking about the story behind Portal, and how much I enjoy it. It's one of the few games I've finished multiple times, and although the length is one factor, the story is the real driving force. The simplistic brilliance of the story, and the way it unfolds as you progress, is totally worth the game's price tag. I never purchased The Orange Box, only rented it for the sole purpose of Portal.
If I'm going to play through any game multiple times, I want it to have a story that can engage me just as much with each successive playthrough. I've played through Resident Evil 4 multiple times because I enjoy the story. Granted, I enjoyed the gameplay more, but the story was good enough so that I didn't mind playing through multiple times. RE4 brings me to my current rental, Dead Space. That game is a whole new level of creepy. I'll probably mention more as I get through it, since I'm still in the first chapter, but I'm already enjoying it and I'm sure I will enjoy the rest of it if the reviews are any indication.
So I've got that on my plate, with intentions of checking out Fable II soon. Next week the cascade begins with Fallout 3, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and C&C: Red Alert 3. If Legendary is ever released I'd really like to check that out. November brings Call of Duty: World at War, Mirror's Edge, Left 4 Dead and the GTAIV episodes. Everything is moot however once November 25th rolls around, however, as I devote my time to Chrono Trigger on DS, and play through that for the 851st time.
I wanted this post to have a point, but it seems it never ended up that way. Maybe next time.

This Stack of Books is My Own Personal Mountain

So, apparently, not posting is not the way to get a blog rolling. As much as I had hoped it would be one of those "if you build it, they will come" sorts of things, it is not.

What you see in this lovely shot are the things that I have to deal with right now that have taken my time away from thinking about intelligent thoughts to post here. I could fill it with mindless drivel, but that does nothing to further my cause, and is more than likely to push people in the wrong direction (assuming one or two folks find their way over here).

However, in regards to the stack of texts you see here... There's a lot of good things in that stack, and I've only gone through about an eighth of what I need to. First off, the textbook on IPC at the top of the stack, is a great overview of IPC theories. The chapters are very easy to read, they convey the general points well enough, and they make things concise. It's a great starting point when writing on theories in IPC. The videogame book that has intrigued me the most is Steven E. Jones' The Meaning of Video Games. It's also the newest book of the stack, I think. However, he starts off discussing LOST and its relevance to video games, and ends on discussing Spore and the future of games, so that should give you an insight as to what it holds. I was looking forward to Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games, but I fear I may not need as much of that text as I thought, so I may have to save reading that one for another time. All of these videogame texts are library books, though I'm hoping to add some of them to my personal collection soon enough.

At the top of the stack is my DS Lite, which was actually put there to hold down the cover of the IPC book since it furls up when untouched. The DS Lite is my only current escapism to gaming, since I rarely leave the desk these days (it seems). I've been playing Final Fantasy IV and I also started a new playthrough of New Super Mario Bros. just because that game is so damn enjoyable. When the DS needs to charge, I find myself heading back to Sanctuary and killing some time in Diablo 2 as I await Diablo 3. However, right now it's time to pick up that DS and crawl in to bed.