After two weeks of struggling to even force myself to play Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth (much less WANT to play it) amidst a burst of burnout, depression, and other pastimes that needed my attention more immediately, I’ve finally figured out why I’ve been avoiding it. In retrospect, I think the main reason it took me this long was because I was up to my waist in denial, and the rest of it is made up of my general patience, my habit of having a podcast to listen to when there’s not much going on in terms of audio, and my genuine love of Final Fantasy 7: Remake. It is difficult to see clearly past all of those blinding or rose-colored filters. But now I have and I can firmly say that the reason I’ve been struggling to play Rebirth is because the open world is boring and empty. Sure, there’s lots of little collectibles, but having junk to pick up doesn’t make the world feel any less empty. It actually makes it feel even more empty most of the time, especially when I have to wander further and further afield to get all of the random junk I need to craft my own items since the people who made the game decided it would be better to fill your inventory with junk than to just give you chests with items in them. And it’s not like you can just keep collecting this stuff so that you never run out. No. You can have ninety-nine of something and then you can’t pick up any more, which sucks because this is your main avenue for collecting potions and items. You have to craft all this crap, mix up weird combo items, and make sure you’re leveling up your item crafter device so you can make level-appropriate items. It’s a whole-ass crafting system created for the sole purpose of filling this empty world and all it has accomplished is to draw attention to the fact that the world is pointlessly massive.
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Taking A Break Between Final Fantasy 7s Remake And Rebirth with Intermission
Over the weekend, taking much longer than I expected, I played through both chapters of the Final Fantasy 7: Remake Intermission. I’m pretty sure I’m missing part of the name, but even after looking it up, it seems confusingly similar to what they’re calling the remake of Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core, so I’m just gonna call it “FF7: Remake Intermission” or just “Intermission” for short. Despite my confusion and unwillingness to engage with it deeply enough to deal with the overly complex naming scheme used for parts the remake of Final Fantasy 7 that aren’t a part of the “core” game, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The Fort Condor minigame was a lot of fun, if a bit frustrating at times (I beat the grandmaster, but only be restart spamming so I could get an advantageous start and then getting a bit lucky as the match continued), and seeing the other side of Avalanche was an interesting addition to the world. I got a bit tired of how many references were crammed into the game, partly because it made it very clear that Rebirth was going to have less going on in the periphery than the original game did. Which, you know, makes sense given how much they’ve expanded the part of the original game that they turned into Remake. Games aren’t infinite, even if this one comes on two discs unlike literally any other massive PS5 game I’ve played (though not needing the internet to play this game is a pretty big plus that none of those other games can claim), so it makes sense to trim down some parts of the old game to make room for additions like riding Segways.
Continue readingSpider-Man 2 Moved Me More Than Any Triple-A Game Ever Has
I finally finished Spider-Man 2 over my holiday vacation. I actually finished it so early in my vacation that I forgot that I never wrote about my final thoughts and impressions of it, which feels like a disservice to what was an incredibly memorable game. As I said in my last post about Spider-Man 2, this game has improved on every part of the previous games, not only mechanically but in terms of storytelling and game craft. It feels like a triumph that somehow got overlooked by most of popular media as it somehow vanished incredibly quickly from the public consciousness in the weeks after its release. I honestly don’t think I could recommend any other Spider-Man game after playing this one, except as a way to get caught up on the plot and so the payoff of events from older games can actually hit as hard as they would if you’d spent so much time getting to know the characters. All in all, Spider-Man 2 is definitely one of my top games from 2023 and I think I got more genuine emotional responses from this game than I did from my hundreds of hours playing Baldur’s Gate 3 (which is the only comparison I’ll make since any other comparison of these two wildly different games is a disserve to two stellar releases from 2023). It just delivered on everything I wanted from it and even went so far as to deliver plenty that I didn’t even know I wanted.
Continue readingBaldur’s Gate 3 On The PS5 Has Awoken Something In Me That I’d Long Forgotten
Over the course of the last couple years, I’ve noticed I have a tendency to write a “My Final Thoughts On Video Game” blog post once I finish a video game. Pretty much every game I’ve played and written about in more than one post falls into this pattern. Except for Baldur’s Gate 3, which is probably good because this is the sixth time I’ve written about the game since it was fully released in early August and I have no doubts in my mind that I will write about it again. Today, I’m condensing another month of playtime into a single post because I not only returned to the game much sooner than I exepected (likely because it is a more manageable investment of my time to play it on my PS5 than on my PC since I can more easily kick myself off my couch than I can kick myself out of my desk chair), but I’ve moved from playing a single file to playing through several at once. It is a significant depature from my gaming habits with games of this size and complexity, though I’ll admit that this falls more closely in line with how I used to play games back in college and high school. What is most noteworthy to me about all this is the last time I played a large RPG with significant story variability on a console was in college. I’ve played every major RPG (and any other game with a story that is altered by player choices or moral alignment) on my PC since 2012 and don’t know if I’ll ever going to go back to that now that I’ve broken away from it.
Continue readingSpider-Man Is A Very Moving Game
I’ve spent the last week or so, ever since I finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, playing Spider-Man: Remastered on the PS5. I’ve already written about it a bit this week, as I rambled and ranted on about how I am finding less joy than ever in what used to be my favorite video game occupation: collectibles and collectible-based challenges. I even wrote about it back in 2018, during my initial run of daily blog posts (and I’m not linking anything that old to a current blog post), but I’ve only ever glossed over my favorite part of the game. I’ve mentioned it, but I don’t know that I’ve ever really talked about what draws me to Spider-Man games and Spider-Man in general. The latter is a bit more complex, though I can probably summarize it by outlining how much of myself I saw in Peter Parker and how much Peter Parker was always present whenever Spider-Man was on the screen or page. That, plus the enormous responsibility placed on this teenager’s shoulders, the grief that overwhelms and informs his early years as a superhero, and the fact that he is almost always fighting an uphill battle no matter what situation he finds himself in. A lot of reasons why I’d identify with this character as a kid and why the stories told through him might resonate with me. When it comes to the games, though, the answer is much more simple.
Continue readingThe Improbable Spider-Man and The Case of the Incredibly Stressed Author
When I finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and wanted to relax with an older, more simple favorite, I decided to replay Spider-Man: Remastered. Since I bought a PS5 just a couple months ago and opted not to transfer my save files, I wanted to make sure I had a finished file on my console before the sequel comes out (well, besides Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which I bought and am excited to play once I’m finished with SM:R). I figured this would be a great opportunity for it, since I also wanted to catch up on my podcasts a bit and the storytelling of the game isn’t strong enough that I feel terribly compelled to follow it on a replay. Plus, I love Spider-Man. I’m a big fan and I’ve always enjoyed swinging around New York in every Spider-Man game I’ve ever played. For the most part, I’m having a great time. I’m much better at fighting enemies than I was the first time I played it (so much so that I can’t even comprehend why I used to struggle in battles since now I can handle everything with ease unless I’m going for style points and focus too much on gimmicks rather than effective combat strategy), so the main source of mild frustration I used to feel is now entirely gone. However, I have a new one and it’s odd because I think it is pointing to a change in my gaming preferences rather than a change in games as a whole.
Continue readingStar Wars Jedi: Survivor Was a Great Sequel
After almost two months of intermittent playing, I’ve finally finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. It was a lot of fun, even if I struggled with just how many collectibles there are (though the game gets points for giving you the ability to eventually unlock map icons for all of them) that I just did not care about. Honestly, the thing I was most-consumed with hunting down was enemies, so I could unlock the extensive collection of skills that were made available to me over the course of the game (and I’ve still got about a third of them to unlock despite having run through as much of the game as I care to at this point). The variations in combat options was incredibly refreshing, as was the variation in enemy combatants. Sure, it could be frustrating at times if my loadout was absolutely not the right set of powers and moves to be using in a given combat situation, but the number of options available within those loadouts meant only that I’d need to be a little creative to overcome these limitations. Throw in an interesting plot, some fun references to the greater Star Wars universe, a cast of great characters, and I’m willing to overlook the buggy and visually lackluster experience I had playing the game.
Continue readingMy (Incredibly Loose) Summer Plans
Now that I’ve finally finalized where and when I’ll be moving next month, I can start to make plans for the rest of the summer. Broad strokes only, of course, since I’m still too far out from any chance to rest to get specific. Gotta pace myself, you know? I don’t want to give myself so much to do that I wind up just exacerbating my current burnout. So I’m mostly focusing on the ways I’ll spend my time in general rather than things tied to specific dates. Which, in my case, means video game plans. After all, there’s a whole lot coming out this summer that I’ve been looking forward to, so it’ll be a good summer for gaming, even if I might want to (eventually) make some plans to get me out of what will hopefully be a much cozier, more comfortable apartment.
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