Final Fantasy XIII-2 DLC Special

Here's that post where I complain about trends in Final Fantasy!  *thumbs up*

So it has now been three months since I've played that wretched abomination of a game called "Final Fantasy XIII-2:  The Legend of Curly's Gold".  If you recall my response to that game, I hated it so much that even three months later I still refer to it as a "wretched abomination of a game".  Ever since my experience with Motomu Toriyama's latest unspeakable catastrophe, I've found myself increasingly morbidly fascinated by the slow trickle of DLC stuff.  Mostly in the now-clearly delusional hope that one of those DLC items would happen to contain the real ending of the game.  As we all know, FFXIII-2 does not have an ending.  And as we all equally should know, all video games need to have endings.  Preferably clear unambiguous endings where the heroes succeed and you're left with the warm knowledge that you didn't waste thirty hours playing some lazy half-assed piece of shit developed by cynical bastards who stopped giving a shit about their flagship RPG franchise seven years ago.  Sadly, that's not the case.

Ultimately I had no choice but to once again return to the sordid tale of FFXIII, because just this week, Square Enix released the last bit of DLC for the game.  This, as far as I know, is actually going to be the very last thing released for the entire FFXIII saga, barring of course the seemingly inevitable FFXIII-3.  So far most of the DLC has been rather harmless.  You got a battle against some old Final Fantasy veterans like Ultros and Gilgamesh, a fight against Lightning in her original costume, a really stupid Sazh-based poker game, and costumes, lots and lots of costumes.  But this last DLC, "Requiem of a Pretentious" is actually the very last event to occur in this game, so its the closest thing to an ending we may ever get.  And guess what?  This ending is just as horrible and inconclusive as anything else.  So if you spent six bucks on this bullshit (like I didn't*) you were left just as unsatisfied as ever, perhaps even more so.  All in all, FFXIII-2 in its complete form adds up to something like one hundred dollars, assuming you bought it new.  And the game still sucks.

So let me do a brief post explaining why this new DLC is horrible.  Because it will be cathartic.  Also, let me begin by saying this:  Motomu Toriyama, please retire.  You do not make good games.  You are a shame to your entire family.  Go do something else.

Outting Obama

This week the number one issue in America has been Gay Marriage, though at first I didn't think I'd need to write a post about it.  I was with lots of people on Tuesday when North Carolina's surprisingly horrible voting population decided to throw a constitutional amendment against Gay Marriage, thus cementing years of prejudice and shame for that state.  But that's nothing new, states all across the country have been putting in place these bans, and one day we'll all have to suffer the accusatory eyes of our grandchildren when they come home having learned about this sorry issue in their school history class.  I wonder what explanation North Carolina voters will be able to come up with when trying to explain why they acted in such reprehensible ways?  "You don't understand, it was another time!"  "We thought God was telling us to."  "We were misled by the Republicans."*  I'll have a clear conscious, my grandkids could read this exact post and know I'm clear of history's judgment.

But what really made this week interesting was President Barack Obama's decision to appear in public and declare himself a supporter of Gay Marriage.  Previously Obama has claimed that he was either against Gay Marriage (and even more previously claimed to be a support in the 90s), then he claimed to have his views "evolving" in what everybody knew to be bullshit political talk for "I'm support Gay Marriage, and I'm going to be open soon enough, just when its most political expedient to me".  This week in a rather bold move Obama, gathered all of America together, looked us right in the eye, and said "Yes, I'm Gay... for same-sex marriage".  You have to give him credit here, even if this was a crass political move, or something he wasn't planning on doing directly, I don't really care about motives.  Obama is a politician, not a saint, his integrity means little to me as long as he does what needs to be done.  And supporting Gay Marriage is what needed to be done.  This is a huge step, when the most powerful man on Earth tells the world exactly what we need to be told.  Yeah, North Carolina won a minor battle for the Right Wing, but they lost a huge battle here, when the Presidency legitimizes homosexual couples and their way of life.

Of course, there was a response.  The one that's most interesting to me was Mitt Romney's, since he jumped immediately into "no same-sex marriage for anybody!"  So Mitt, I guess you wanted my vote in November, huh?  Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen.

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* Given the current trajectory of the Republican Party into downright fascinating levels of absurdity, to the point that respected moderates like Rick Lugar cannot hold their place against Tea Party fanatics, I wonder if there even will be a Republican Party by the time we have my hypothetical conversation with our grandkids.  Mitt Romney actually could be a real option for President... only he has to flip deeply into extreme Conservatism just to appear viable by the Republican base, and even then they still hate him.  Its really a shame, an entire half of our political thought in this country has been highjacked by crazies, which even in the best case scenario of their total defeat leaves me worried about a solely Left-run future.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

So here's what I hope will be a nice short simple movie review to a nice short little family comedy.  Its "The Pirates! Band of Misfits", the latest in the long-running "Pirates of the Caribbean" series.  Now, I've loved the "Pirates" series from the beginning, and I even loved last year's rather mediocre "Pirates 4", but I was pretty skeptical when Gore Verbinski decided to abandon every major character, including people's champion, Jack Sparrow, and then switch the series' style over to stop-motion animation.  Some fans got so mad they did the unthinkable:  they complained on the Internet. Johnny Depp seems to not be taking it well, just watch "Dark Shadows" to see how low he's sunk.  But I for one, was pleasantly surprised.  This stop-motion British children's comedy thing might just be the rejuvenate spark "Pirates of the Caribbean" needed.  "Pirates 5" was shockingly enjoyable, you should see it now.

...Wait sorry, I seem to have written the first paragraph of this review in some bizarro pocket universe.  Let me correct my dimensional perspective and do this seriously.

"The Pirates! Band of Misfits"* is a UK stop motion animation film by Aardman Animations, who you may better know as the guys who did "Wallace and Gromit".  I don't really know Aardman as well as I should, but they've made a few movies that I've liked, especially 2006's "Flushed Away".  By the way, funny story about that one, "Flushed Away" was only made because Aardman was told that because of the popularity of "Pirates of the Caribbean", nobody would want to see a pirates movie, which is what they were originally going for.  Now that "Pirates of the Caribbean" has exactly zero avid fans left (besides yours truly), they finally got to make their dream project.  So you got pirates, a thing I like, and irrelevant British humor, I thing I really like, and finally David Tennant, a thing I REALLY like to the point of questionable heterosexuality, plays Charles Darwin.  What more could you want?

And indeed, I left this movie wanting exactly nothing.  "The Pirates!" seems to be pretty low on the pop culture radar, it isn't some huge cultural event like "Avengers" or whatever.  Its just a fun little movie.  Really funny, really clever, really silly, and it just leave you happy inside.  A sweet thing, like "The Muppets".

The Avengers

Right now "The Avengers" has hit 200 million dollars in box office sales in the first weekend, and I believe it.  I went to see this movie today, Sunday afternoon, and apparently so did the rest of my entire hometown, because my theatre was packed.  Crazy packed.  I'm talking a line stretching out to the parking lot, and shows sold out for hours.  Like, holy damn, this is a Sunday.  This isn't a midnight release of a "Twilight" film.  I haven't seen a movie threatre so packed since "Inception" two years ago, and actually, "Avengers" wins.  So it looks like Disney is going to have a nice happy surplus of cash to get back everything they lost from "John Carter of Mars".

So I think somewhere on this blog I muttered in one of my depressive episodes following my disappointment with "Thor" or "Captain America" that "Avengers" was going to suck and I had no interest in seeing it.  Well, I was being a snob and a terrible person, so I'm going to stop that right now.  Ultimately I guess I don't really have any problem with Superheroes per se, its just that Superhero movies are typically the most mediocre of the mediocre blockbusters.  Let's review:  "Daredevil", both "Punisher" movies, both "Fantastic Four" movies, "X-Men 3", "X-Men Wolverine", "Captain America", "Iron Man 2", and all three "Spiderman" films, all mediocre.  Or you get something like "Green Lantern", which is just so bad you wonder if the move you're seeing is some kind of sick joke made by the Joker.  Seriously, any moment during "Green Lantern" I was certain the movie would cut to a blank screen with the words "HAHAHAHAHAHA" written on it, and then Joker laughing gas would be pumped in from the vents.  That only could have made that movie better, come to think of it.

Luckily "the Avengers" is not a bad movie.  Or even a mediocre movie.  It was actually good, shockingly good.  A lot better than I dare would have believed considering last year's crop of Marvel films.  Yeah, there was a part of me wishing this movie would be a miserable trainwreck considering that "Captain America", a movie I wanted to love, sucked primarily because it only existed as a two-hour trailer to this film, but I won't be.  I'll be a better person and be glad that a decent movie got made that everybody in America can enjoy.  This is basically as good of a movie as ever could have been made about the Avengers.  And remember, if America wasn't out breaking box office records "The Avengers", they could be out watching a Transformer film or the certainly-shit "Battleship", that's coming out in two weeks.

The Motherfucking Dark Knight Rises Trailer

"Batman 3" was already the biggest movie of the year for me.  Now I know this week I'm supposed to be going gaga over "The Avengers", and don't worry, I'll do my patriotic duty and watch that film on Friday.  It actually looks a lot better than I thought it would be.  But I'm finding it hard to give a shit about Marvel's silly comic book sideshow of a superhero movie.  Because this is "The Dark Knight Rises" trailer.  And it looks HARD CORE:

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!

Now if that doesn't look like the greatest movie ever made, I will eat the Youtube video embedded into this post right now.  I had my doubts that "Batman 3" wasn't going to be as good as "Batman 2".  I never doubted that it wouldn't be a solid satisfying movie, but I figured that nothing could top the Joker, and that this would just be a "Return of the Jedi" to "Empire Strikes Back"*.  But this trailer is suggesting otherwise.  Looks like the stakes have somehow been ramped up even higher!  Did you see that bridge go up?  The flying Batmobile!!?  Bane cutting a plane in half??  It looks like Gotham is quite truly screwed this time, and Batman is going to even farther than he's ever gone to save it.  This is going to be amazing.

Can't wait for July 20th folks.  This is a movie than I need to see on a midnight opening.  ｡◕‿◕｡

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* And before you stark bitching about Ewoks, "Return of the Jedi" is an awesome movie and a great ending to the Star Wars trilogy.  Anybody who thinks otherwise has my permission now to fuck right off.