Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers

Hello, Space Monkees!

Remember that needlessly long Dissidia epic I did last week?  Remember how that game was a Final Fantasy title?  Well, this is absolutely nothing like that!  Which is absolutely perfect for me, since I really don't want to be talking about that game anymore!

So if you're waiting for that Part 11, I'd be on your toes, since it may or may not happen.  I'm not sure myself.  Sorry.  Instead I'll be commenting on a game that I personally have been looking forward to for quite some time now, "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles:  The Crystal Bearers".

What?  Don't tell me I'm the only one who cares about this game?  This is like the Final Fantasy that time forgot.  Are you all really that interested in the Japanese release of "Final Fantasy XIII" to ignore one that's on your own shores?  Well, you enjoy your Doki Doki Japanese-only game, for now I'll be playing this.

Anyway, let's give some backstory here to explain this bizarrely long title.  Final Fantasy is a strange kind of series.  In fact, I don't even know if you can call it a "series".  Its more of a brand name really.  Each game has pretty much nothing to do with the last one.  There's even a debate over what it means to be a "true Final Fantasy game".  I'm not going to get into the subject, but personally I believe its the Chocobosy.  And whether or not your game will be counted in the main series is based entirely on whether or not Square Enix feels like it.  "Final Fantasy XIII" is actually something like the thirtieth game to come out with the words "Final Fantasy" in the title.  Within the Final Fantasy series itself, there are a few real series out there, like the "Final Fantasy VII" games, which all feature the same characters and the same general plot.  Crystal Chronicles is a series based entire on Nintendo systems, all of which take place on the same world just in different places in time with completely different characters and completely different gameplay.

"Crystal Bearers" is the latest game in that series, both in the real-world sense in that it came out just two weeks ago (the official release date was a lie) and that it comes thousands of years after the other Crystal Chronicles games.  Unlike most Final Fantasy games, this is not really an RPG.  Its much more action-adventure oriented, and is completely free of any sort of numbers at all.  You can equip accessories, and those raise the strength of your combat abilities, but that's it.  Instead of a party, you follow a single character:  the magically powered Layle, who is a Crystal Bearer.   The free-roaming kind of gameplay immediately made me think of "Final Fantasy XII", and anything that reminds me of "Final Fantasy XII" definitely has my vote.

In this stage of Crystal Chronicles one of the four major races, the Lilties have become the dominate power, and have outlawed all magic.  The only people with magic powers anymore those with shards of Crystals embedded in their skin, called Crystal Bearers.  Back during "the Great War", the Lilties destroyed a rival tribe, the mechanical creatures called the Yuke.  The main plot of this game is to determine what is behind the mysterious attack of a modern Yuke with the Crystal Bearer power to warp time and space to summon monsters.  There are a few twists along the way, and plenty of fully-fledged characters to interact with.  This is no Dissidia right here - this time Square Enix has written something that actually goes someplace.

Layle, our hero, is much better than the usual Final Fantasy hero fair.  Instead of sitting around finding himself during the journey, Layle is far more confident and cocky.  He jumps straight into the action, relishing the adventure of it all.  His main power is a command of "the Force":  Layle can telekinetically grab objects and throw them around.  Instead of weapons, you'll have to grab whatever junk is on the ground to fight enemies.  Of course, Layle also uses his Force powers on himself, using it in platforming parts and as a dash move to dodge enemy attacks.  The real meat of the game is using the Force to figure out how you can affect the environment around you:  be it turning a floating explosive enemy into a land mine or giving balloons to little kids.  This is a game that rewards exploration and curiosity.  Its really unlike anything else I've ever played.

However, it isn't all combat.  Much like a Legend of Zelda game, you'll be spending quite a bit of time playing minigames outside the main battle system.  One minute you could shooting down dragons in the sky, and the next moment you'll be helping bikini-clad girls win an ass-bumping contest (yeah, an ass-bumping contest).  Very few of these minigames are particularly hard, but they are usually a great deal of fun.  For example, "Crystal Bearers" has managed what I thought was impossible:  it actually has a fun stealth minigame!

Your crystal powers extend beyond the battlefield, so even while walking through town you can grab pretty much anything that isn't nailed down and throw it at anyone.  So you can throw people off their Chocobos and steal them to ride around on, or you can mug Moogles for a few pieces of coin.  Its a weird kind of world, you can throw people around without them really seeming to care.  In fact, you can only talk to people running minigames or the helpful direction Moogle Stiltzkin, who is still traveling the world even after leaving "Final Fantasy IX".  Instead you run through towns filled with all sorts of baby talk and various other grunts.  It is nice and rewarding to make them happy sometimes though.  There's tons to discover throughout the world.  I like changing the channel on the big TV in the capital city, personally.

Some of the more negative reviews of the game have claimed that its all fluff, and has no real challenge.  that mght be true of the minigames, but the boss battles are actually quite challenging.  And I've had my own share of troubles against the regular enemies, I can tell you that right now.  The controls do take a bit of time getting used to - it is all too easy for you to just throw your object away instead of holding it at first.  Also the camera has something of an usual system:  you use the D-pad on the Wii-mote to move the shot.  So your thumb needs to rest further up the Wii-mote, it should not be resting on the A-button, which is used only for special things like opening chests and talking to people.

Of course, as much fun as this game can be at times, there are a few major faults that really bug me.  For some reason, Square Enix has completely made an ass out of the navigation system here.  On your minimap, you can only get little red dots showing where enemies are; you don't get any kind of an outline of the boundaries.  The worst problem in navigation is that the game does not have any kind of map.  You do get a little picture showing what the world looks like in your menu, but you can't use it to find out where anything is.  So if you're trying to find Bridge Town, you have to rely entirely on luck and Stiltzkin.  I cannot imagine what they were thinking when they refused to add a real map.  Combat is made a lot more annoying than it needs to be by having it come in cycles.  Every five minutes or so enemies will appear in certain locations, and then five minutes later they'll leave.  In order for you to really accomplish anything you need to kill every enemy and close a sky portal that comes straight out of "Twilight Princess".  Sometimes I'll just have a single monkey left to defeat, and then the portal will close on me.  Darn it all!  Another major complaint I have is that early on there are no less than three opportunities where there should have been a boss fight, and instead the game plays a little cutscene instead.  There's no reason for these segments not to be playable, I don't know what happened.  Luckily the later boss fights make up for this.

The game also seems to be lacking in polish in certain places.  Like when Layle walks a tightrope, his feet move on it like he's running on flat ground.  He's flying over the tightrope.  The least they could have done is thrown in a little blue whirr under his feat to make him seem like he's using the Force to walk.  Also the camera gets a little crazy at times, sometimes shifting over for a split second over to something else.  The voice acting is a little hit or miss too.  Otherwise they've managed to create a very living and breathing world for you and Layle to explore.

What is definitely one of the better parts of this adventure is the music.  All Final Fantasy games have great music, and "Crystal Bearers" is certainly no exception.  The soundtrack jumps wildly to all sorts of genres and styles.  In one area it could be an upbeat western theme, and in another you'll hear what can only be described as "extreme bagpipes". When the music needs to be epic, its epic.  When it needs to be haunting and mysterious, it throws some nice harmony arias your way.  If I must complain about something, it would be the Chocobo Theme, its one of the worst remixes of the entire series.  Sorry about that.

So ultimately I have to give "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles:  The Crystal Bearers" a recommendation from what I've seen so far.  I'm only about a third of the way through the game -I think- and so far its been quite a bit of fun.  Unless something incredibly stupid happens (unlike Nintendo, Square Enix cannot be trusted to not drop some bullshit on you in the eleventh hour) this has been a very good addition to my video gaming experience.  Despite the generally negative reviews, I have to say I've been liking this game.

Super Mario Galaxy

Hello, Space Monkees!

Thanks to what I imagine had to be a horrible clerical error at the North Pole, I somehow managed to end up on the "Nice List" this Christmas, and so Santa Claus has rewarded me with a shiny new Wii!  And along with that, two great games for it... and Wii Sports.  But who cares about Wii Sports?  I don't!  Its especially hard to focus on that title when you have a huge behemoth of an Italian platformer staring you in the face.  Yes, its my thoughts on "Super Mario Galaxy" - only two years too late!

I love Mario.  In fact, I think I've always loved Mario.  Me and that Goomba-stomping plumber have had years and years of fun together.  Saving the ever-kidnappable Princess Peach, throwing Bowser into a pit of fiery lava, getting our asses handed to us by the Cloud Guy...  ahh, so many good times.  I mean, just pick a Mario game, odds are that I've not only played it, but that I've played it six million times.  "Super Mario 1" - awesome, "Super Mario 2" - awesome, "Super Mario 3" - awesome, "Super Mario World" - awesome, "Super Mario Land" - awesome, "Super Mario 64" - awesome.  Heck, I'll even make a slightly controversial judgement and call "Super Mario Sunshine" awesome too.  I know some people didn't like it because of the water gun thing, but I say it was just as good as 64, if not better.

However, the last level of Sunshine is complete bullshit.  I do not actually believe that any real person has ever navigated the lava river on that boat, and will refuse to believe it until my dying day.  Yeah, I never could beat that game.  Sorry, Peach, but you're just going to have to stay kidnapped for that adventure.

So without further ado, here's my thoughts on "Super Mario Galaxy":

Let me open by saying that from what little bit of the game I've played (fifteen Stars worth), I can say without a hint of hyperbole or exaggeration that this is without a doubt the single best Mario game ever made.  Its as perfect a platforming video game can ever hope to be, at least to my limited imagination.  Its wonderful.  Its fantastic.  Its beautiful.  Its glorious!  Hallelujah, Blessed Be Its Name, "Super Mario Galaxy" is my new God.  I would kiss its feet if the game disc had them.  Before I put the disc in my Wii, I make sure to take the time to give it a bow of respect before I begin playing.  How something of such brilliance was allowed to come into the hands of lowly unworthy me is a question for the limitless ages.  I really like it.

The plot is basically the same as every other Mario game you've played - Bowser comes from the sky, steals Peach, and decides to take over the world  -nay make that universe this time.  So Mario must take to the oddly oxygen-filled cosmos to fight his rival's armies of minions and rescue all the Stars, because that's how a 3D Mario rolls!  The same classic basic plot with the same general goal, only with a very cool twist.  Instead of running around a regular terrestrial world you're running around tiny star systems.  Its the first truly 3D platforming game ever made.  This shift to the stars opens up limitless numbers of opportunities for game design, and knowing the creative teams at Nintendo, by the end of this journey I'll have visited every single one of them.

But its not like the regular flat worlds have been ignored for this jump into space - there are still plenty of worlds where gravity is an absolute direction - down.  Mostly the game does this by throwing black holes below certain areas, but in other locations the game just throws you into a blue sky world.  So while you're jumping through space and riding space junk one moment, the next you'll be riding down a floating river on a giant pirhana. It all looks as good as a Mario game ever has, with the minor details really selling it for me.  For example, if you run to the side of a planet away from the Sun, the area will be covered in shadow.

The controls are quite good, with the Wii-mote serving as an addition to the regular Mario controls, rather than a replacement.  You still jump around, run, and do the ground pound the same way you did in 1997, but here they've thrown in various other moves.  If you give the Wii-mote a nice waggle, Mario will do an extremely useful spin move.  The Wii-mote is also used to shoot various targets and collect star bits, which are used both as ammo, but also as a way to collect another life once you reach fifty of them.  It only takes a few moment to figure out the duel controls, and it works perfectly fine every time.  When I first started playing this game I was worried I would feel that it would have worked better on the GameCube but after several hours of play, I wouldn't have it on any other system.

Okay, some minor complaints:  every so often the controls get a little crazy when you're going from the top to the bottom of a planet.  Also, the game seems to be a bit more linear than the other 3D Mario games.  Instead of having an expansive hub world like Peach's Castle or Delfino Plaza, its just a small satellite world with very few secrets to find. I still haven't found anything like that sliding game that "Super Mario 64" had hidden in a window of the castle, its a little confining.  And like all Mario games, the bosses are piss-easy.

But other than that, this game is basically flawless - its exactly what its trying to be:  an adventure.  It took me quite a long time today for me just to stop playing so that I could write this review thing.  Obviously is this something that any person who plays video games:  children, teenage man-children, jaded older game critics, whoever you are, can enjoy.  Also look forward to a sequel, as "Super Mario Galaxy 2" is coming soon enough.  Yes, this is the game so good that Nintendo has to release a sequel immediately, instead of the usual half a decade we have to wait for a new 3D Mario game.

Look for a review of the other Wii game Santa brought me:  "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles:  The Crystal Bearers" tomorrow.   ...If you can really call these things "reviews".  Uch, I don't like that word, it makes everything so formal...

Fanwank Corner:  Why does Mario even bother with Princess Peach when he meets a much prettier and more celestial character heroine in Rosalina?  If there is a God, she must be either Rosaline or Cosmos from "Dissidia".  These last two video games have convinced me that God must be female, and gorgeous.  This being one of those days that I feel like believing in God.

Sherlock Holmes: The Movie

Hello, Space Monkees!

Here's a good tip for when you're wavering on whether or not you want to see a movie:  Robert Downey Jr. is always a safe bet.  For his first twenty-five years of acting, his quality wavered a bit.  You had great roles like in "Chaplin" and "Natural Born Killers", and even a very early minor role in the 80s teen classic "Weird Science", but mostly it was all a whole lot of fluff.  But in the last five years, even since the criminally underrated "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", the man has just been on fire.  Its been great movie after great movie.  "A Scanner Darkly", "Good Night and Good Luck", "IRON MAN", "Tropic Thunder", along with even a few shining performances in otherwise completely forgettable movies like "Zodiac"; this alone is a more glorious career of work than beyond most people's wildest dreams.

And do you know what the best part of all this is:  he doesn't seem to be slowing down.  We got two more Iron Man movies coming down the line, and something called "Cowboys vs. Aliens" (if that isn't the great idea for a movie ever, I don't know what is).  Happily, I am glad to report that the Christmas release "Sherlock Holmes" is just another triumphant step on Robert Downy Jr.'s seemingly unbreakable winning streak.

So I guess by now you've used your deductive skills to gather that this is going to be a glowing review.

First things, first.  I'm going to be honest here and admit that I know next to nothing about Sherlock Holmes or his mythos.  I do know that he has a sidekick named Dr. Watson, to whom much is "elementary", and that he has an arch-villain named "Professor Moriarty", but beyond that I'm basically in the dark.  Without having actually read any of the turn of the century detective novels, all I can imagine when I think of Sherlock Holmes is the cliches:  a man in a plaid coat and deerstalker trudging around a crime scene with a magnifying glass.  My sum total of Sherlock Holmes experience is a newspaper puzzle called "Slylock Fox" and an extremely short-lived Saturday morning cartoon called "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century".  From what I've heard, this movie is more or less faithful to the original works, but it includes elements that are often forgotten in the pop culture image of the character.

The film is essentially a complete reinvention of the Sherlock Holmes character, making him act and dress very differently than what you would normally think of when you imagine that famous Victorian detective.  Through Robert Downey Jr.'s excellent British accent (to my American ears, anyway), you'll see a Sherlock Holmes that has more in common than Dr. Gregory House than the prim and proper idea we have in our heads.  Or maybe that's just my original idea of what Holmes was, I could easily be mistaken, considering I know nothing.  He's a very slovenly character, almost Bohemian - solving the riddles of the universe by day, and beating up guys in the boxing arena by night.  Its a rare character who can pull together all the deductive genius and outright clairvoyance of Dr. House and add it to the sheer badass power of John McClain.  So what we have here is a mystery movie mixed in with an action flick, along with some ancient conspiracy and magic stuff just for fun.  All of this is thrown into the backdrop of the brilliantly re-created corrupt and smoggy Victorian era London.  Can this combination possibly fail?

Of course not!

Though my favorite part of the movie has to be the most important interaction:  that of Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson (played by Jude Law).  The relationship is - to use another House comparison - like that of Dr. House and Wilson.  On the one hand, Holmes is completely intolerable, forcing Watson to fight crime, repeatedly killing his dog, getting in the way of his marriage, and just living a life of eccentric madness.  But even during their worst bickering, you'll still get that smirk of friendship between the characters.  This is the driving force of the movie, the real core emotion beyond all the fist-fighting and mystery.  And just in case the movie made you fear that perhaps Holmes and Watson might be "more than friends", they pair them up with different women.  Even so, the movie isn't afraid of making jokes about the homoerotica flying around.

Other characters aren't quite as good, but they all work universally.  The main villain brings fear and looks like Andy Garcia (but he isn't, he's actually Mark Strong).  Watson's girlfriend plays her minor part well, but doesn't get enough screen time to really shine.  If I had to pick a character I liked least, it would be Sherlock's New Jersian faux-action girl friend.  At first she's shown to be an extremely independent character, even able to outsmart Holmes at times.  However, the movie quickly knocks her armor off, turning her into the Damsel in Distress twice, and even having her made a tool of the shadowy character, hiding off in a sideplot to be the villain in the sequel.  But at least she's cute, so yeah.

In the end, I really can't say this was the absolute greatest movie ever, but it definitely works on every level it needed to, and I am looking forward to several sequals - as long as they can keep up the quality.  If you need a good movie to scratch your itch, this will scratch that itch, and more so.  You really can't ask for much more out of a film, can you?  "Sherlock Holmes" is a perfectly fine way to end your 2009 film year.

And if you're having any doubts, just know that full of shit New York Press film critic Armond White hated it.  That's always a good sign.

Merry Christmas!

Its a lovely time for friends and cheer, the happiest day of the entire year.
Santa is has come with merry glee, bring presents and joy to all who be.
I'm not rhyming very well, because my mind is stuck on jingle bells.
A rushed poem is not much to see; its hard to write when you're happy.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, Space Monkees!  Now back to my shiny new Wii.

Dissidia Playing Log: Part 9

Hello, Space Monkees!

I BEAT THE GAME!!  Oh yeah!

Following the end of the ten unsatisfying Destiny Odyssey chapters, the game then opens up the four-part finale epic called "Shade Impulse".  Instead of blindly running around collecting Crystals and finding themselves, the heroes now have to band together to save the world without the help of their fallen sexy Goddess.  You see, thanks to an extremely convoluted series of events that will take me until Christmas 2010 to explain, finding the Crystals has killed Cosmos, and now "the Great Will" (whatever that is) has decided that Chaos will win the war.  And being a Final Fantasy villain, Chaos has decided to end existence so that he doesn't have to feel so lonely anymore.  Pretty much par for the course then.

So this is looking good, the tension has finally been picked up, we get to see plenty more of Keith David, and its all flying towards an explosive final battle.  Indeed this is finally where Dissidia picks up.  Took it long enough.  So you run forward through the enemy boards, slowly killing off all ten Chaos villains one by one until finally you fly right into Chaos, for a three-part ultimate boss battle... which has some of the lamest and most inappropriate final boss music ever - but its still epic!  Keith David drowns out the music, so no worries!  Beat him, and then all the heroes return to their own worlds.  Except for the Warrior of Light, who then marches off to Cornelia in what I believe is the start of "Final Fantasy I".  That's pretty awesome right there.

Easily the best part of these chapters, and indeed, the entire game for that matter, is the touching ways that the story sends off the villains once they're killed.  Unfortunately, only three of said scenes are mandatory in the main storyline:  Garland, the Emperor, and (weirdly) Exdeath.  For the rest, you have to load up the chapters with the right characters.  So if you want to watch Sephiroth's big moment, you have to fight him as Cloud.  I, still going with Onion Knight, only got to see the one for Cloud of Darkness.  Luckily we live in a modern age, so if you want to see Kefka's end, go to Youtube and find the right video. Saves mr a Hell of a lot of trouble in leveling up the other characters who I've been neglicting.

Anyway, here's a few final scattered comments I need to make about the storyline:

• No, I have no idea what the heck is going on half the time either.  Everything is left really vague, characters are mentioned in passing, random dialogue is thrown around without any explanation.  This is all in anticipation of a sequel, I imagine.  Watch, much like the Kingdom Hearts series, things are going to get more and more complicated, darker, and more absurd in Dissidia 2.  Though I'd follow Kingdom Hearts straight down into Hell if it goes there, I don't think I'd follow a possible Dissidia series for that long.
• All game, the Emperor from "Final Fantasy II" had been built up, with plenty of claims about how he'll "be greater than the Gods" or whatever.  All this time they've made such a big screaming deal about his evil scheme... only for it to go nowhere.  He decides to fight the heroes for no good reason, and well, dies.  I'm disappointed.
• I neglected to mention this earlier, but Golbez's voice sounds ten times better in this game than in "Final Fantasy IV DS".  It was bugging me why, until I caved and looked it up.  He's changed voice actors.  Power to you, Golbez.
• The way this game treats the "Final Fantasy VII" characters, even in the end, is completely lame.  But I can accept them being out of the spotlight, this is supposed to be an ensemble piece.  Still, I would have liked to see more out of Sephiroth instead of just recycled lines from old games.
• During the end credits, there's a long orchestral piece made out of tunes from the main series.  Its like traveling through time, watching the series' evolution through the years.  Sort of like we're watching the series grow up from the mediocre NES games to the glory its become...  Well, until "Final Fantasy XI", because everything after that doesn't count as much in the universe of Dissidia.  Which curiously enough leads me to my final word and conclusion on the subject of this game:
• WHERE IS "FINAL FANTASY XII"?????  (Actually this was my original word on this game, so if nothing else I've remained true to who I am.)
  

Gameplay:  Naturally, things get more and more difficult as you go along in Shade Impulse.  You start out fighting enemies at level 20, but by the last few boards of Chapter 3, the enemies are in the 60s and 70s.  I even ran into a level 99 Garland... who I couldn't beat (I suck), so I just restarted that board and ran straight to the real boss.  This is interesting, since you'll run around fighting level 70 regular enemies, then fight the real Sephiroth as a boss, and he'll only be at level 44.  So after huge epic battles where you survive only by the skin of nose, only to fight a boss who is wiped out in ten seconds.  Then for the last two boards before Chaos, the game's difficult suddenly nosedives completely off the radar.  These final enemies are so piss easy that I thought I was playing a Mario game for a brief second there.

With only the slightest bit of level grinding outside the main storyline, I was up to level 70 by the time I ran into Chaos.  So it just wasn't a fair fight at all.  He has three forms...  all of which are more or less exactly the same, though I didn't get to see enough of it to really know.  Here's a play by play.  In the first battle, I guarded against his attack, then killed him with a ground HP attack.  Over in five seconds.  Second battle, took a bit longer, but still won with ease.  Final Battle, Chaos beat me up a bit this time, had me down to 1500 HP, and then started using his Limit Break.  He suddenly grew to five thousand feet tall!  This is no job for the little Onion Knight:  we need Godzilla or the Power Rangers for this!  Luckily he couldn't hit me the first time because I broke his Brave, and the second time I learned how to dodge the attack.  Finished with Comet.  Sorry Onion Knight for doubting your ability to fight five thousand feet tall avatars of pure evil.  You're my little buddy, you know that?

Its a curious thing being much more powerful than the boss you're fighting.  Backwards, to say the least.

Now that I've beaten the main game, Dissidia has finally decided to let loose the FFXII that I've been wishing for all game.  Its just an extra mode where you fight all the main villains then Gabranth, after which you can get him as a character.  I'm playing it now, and rocking out to the Theme of the Empire.  Even so, this is certainly not enough FFXII...  not at all.  Maybe in the sequel it will be properly represented, by which I mean anybody but Vaan.  Also we need some "Final Fantasy XIII" and "Tactics" too come to think of it.

Next on the Log, the very last entry. Its nice we have ten parts, but why have ten, when you can have eleven?
 
Update:  There never will be an eleventh chapter to this.  The FFXII and FFXI sections were so incredibly boring that I simply could not bring myself to write anything about them.  Its like describing a sandwich you kinda enjoyed back in fifth grade.  I don't want to talk about it and nobody wants to hear it.