Explaining My Decision In More Words Than Is Really Necessary For A Post Like This One Here.

I recently (as in a month ago but it was "recently" when I began typing this all out) purchased Theatrhythyhm: Final Fantasy Curtain Call.  I can never spell that god damned word!  T-h-e-a-t-r-and then I'm lost.  Theatrhythm.  Let alone that I have a hard enough time spelling rhythm, rhyme and garuntee. . . I mean guarantee, which I didn't need spell check for that last time.

ANYWAY!

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy: Curtain Call for the 3DS.  If you don't know the game yet, it's a rhythm game using the music from the Final Fantasy series.  I recently (see above reference to "recently") purchased this and I would like to give my long and drawn out thought process for my decision because this is the Internet and things like this were the reason for its creation.

So I had $35 of Gamestop gift cards in my possession and following Steam's Wallet Drain Sale (aka: Winter Sale) and I knew that I wanted to use this for buying a 3DS game.  I knew my choices ahead of time, and even then, the choice was not made without great thought and care (stop laughing Ma).

Bravely Default

I played the demo for this game earlier in 2014 and I immediately loved it.  The visual style reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light and the music, while not of Nobuo Uematsu's creation, was very fitting for the game and setting.  I very much enjoyed what was shown to me, being an introduction to how navigate towns, how battling and the "Brave" vs. "Default" battle commands worked.  It was everything that you wished all demos could and would do.  There was even the option of transfer over experience earned from the demo to the main game if you played one and purchased the other.  Very enticing.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

This was a great looking game and I really liked the concept introduced by the trailer.  Even the title, for me, was a call back to A Link to the Past and after starting and not getting beyond the first temple in Spirit Tracks or finding the chutzpah to finish Twilight Princess, I was hoping that this would be the Zelda game that got me back into the series.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

I loved the fecal matter out of this game, even more so than Ocarina of Time, and when I saw that this game was finally getting a remake on the 3DS, I was very excited along with the rest of a good portion of the Internet.  Currently, Majora's Mask has a release date of February 13th of this year, but at the time of purchasing, there was no official release date.  Plus, I have already played this game before and I still have a functioning copy for the N64.

Fantasy Life

No, not another Final Fantasy game (thank Odin SquarEnix hasn't been a douche-canoe and copyrighted either the words "Final" or Fantasy").  From what I understand, Fantasy Life is an open world RPG, which doesn't sound all that original except that it's on the 3DS and has gotten some pretty decent reviews.  It looks and sounds like a fun little game when I'm not busy escaping some prison in Tamriel or traversing some apocalyptic wasteland (take your pick on that front).

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Now, I've never played a game in the Animal Crossing series and (most) everything that I've heard about New Leaf has been positive and that it's a shamefully addicting game.  I figured that this might be a good game to get started in that world.

Tomodachi Life

Similar to New Leaf, Tomodachi Life is a life-sim-type game where you use your Mii avatar along with other characters you create and have them interact on an island full of shops and activities.  Knowing me, this doesn't sound like something that I would normally go out and buy, but what sold me was the concert arena where you can have your characters perform.  This was one of the last options in the demo and I had to wonder if the game somehow tailored it to my own interests.  The band (and it being the only option in the demo) was a power metal band that sang about wizards and dragons.  How'd they know!?

So ultimately, as you by now already know, I went with Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy: Curtain Call.  As I told Conklederp the other night, I made my decision because I really just wanted a game that would  not require a massive amount of my time as I already have a backlog of RPGs that I am eagerly looking forward to playing.  A game that I could pick up and play anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour without fear of losing my place within a larger story.  Plus with 220+ wonderfully composed songs from a series that I have been playing off-and-on for 26 years.  There will probably be another post about Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call on Monday, so come back Monday. . . or don't, that's cool too.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
It's Been Three Whole Weeks

Zelda Fan Art

Well, I don't have a post for you all, so I thought I'd just go through some of my bookmarks for some sweet video game art.  Fan art, on a whole, is an incredible thing.  Some amazing stuff bubbles to the surface on the internet.  Like that sweet Ganon picture up there.  Isn't it totally awesome?  That image is part of a series of of Legend of Zelda images I found over at this place called the Zelda Dungeon.

I really appreciate the art style, and I also appreciate that it is all images from the original Legend of Zelda game on NES.  We've waxed about nostalgia for this series before, and about the potential it may have lost over the years.  Images like this remind me of that potential, of how these simplistic critters could look totally sweet and how there could be a rich mythology behind the happenings in the Zelda games.Also, it reminds me of all the cool names the baddies in Zelda have:  Gleok, Dodongo, Keese.

The artist is called Deimos-Remus at deviantart.com.

Also at Zelda Dungeon, I found an interesting article about Skyward Sword that used terms like 'skill scaling'   'sub optimal dominant strategy' and the like.  I love this game theory stuff, and I harbor dreams of being that kind of a smarty pants and getting to talk about video game design all day.

The writer for this article GaroXIcon, and I like him so far.  In addition to the above article, he pitches a direct sequel to A Link To The Past, and says that Majora's Mask is his favorite game of all time.  How do you like that?  GaroXicon is my new video game critic crush.  and Deimos-Remus is my new video game art crush.

-D

The Legend of Zelda Becoming Legend

I've been a fan of the Legend of Zelda games since after we first got our Nintendo, which I talked about in one of my first posts.  Something about the simplicity of the game play and the memorableness of the music made for such an amazing gaming experience for a 10 year old.  Over the years I've played through many of the games that make up The Legend of Zelda franchise, with the exceptions of Oracle of Seasons, Oracile of Ages, Four Swords Adventure, Minish Cap and Skyward Sword.  Just for whatever reason, I never got around to playing the LoZ games that came out on the GBC and GBA; Skyward Sword I haven't played because I don't own a Wii.  However, with the two aforementioned games in the series that I haven't finished, because I had stopped playing them, because I began to lose interest, I've felt in recent years, a fading of The Legend of Zelda series.

Some of my views about the games in the series, while not necessarily controversial, I don't feel are common with the rest of the LoZ fan base.  For example, I feel that Majora's Mask is a stronger game and a lot more fun than Ocarina of Time.  I also feel that music MM is more of music that I can listen to by itself and less atmospheric than in OoT.  I also think that Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a great (albeit pain in the ass) game.  So much so that I can't imagine any of the polygonal Zelda games happening if it weren't for the side scrolling, expansive vision of Hyrule that Zelda II introduced.  I also love the animation and art style in Wind Waker.  No, I didn't mind all the sailing as the end of the game gave a fantastic explanation/reasoning behind the world existing.

And then it was great to see the same style of art/animation again in the two games on the DS, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.  Sadly though, this is where our tale ends.  After I finished Phantom Hourglass, I started Spirit Tracks, expecting a somewhat similar experience.  I played ST for a couple of hours before the Left Trigger button on my DS decided to stop, but by that point I had already felt like stopping.  I wasn't feeling engaged with the story and I felt like I had somewhat figured out the basis and arc of the game only after watching the opening cinematic.

I received a similar feeling while playing Twilight Princess.  I had reached a part in the game where I felt I needed more heart containers, which meant I had to forego the main storyline and wander around the beautifully created re-re-re-re-re-re-imagining of Hyrule looking for, what is it now? Five pieces of a heart container to give an extra heart?  I remember being annoyed in A Link to the Past when you had to find four pieces to create a heart container.  I however came to terms with this being another alteration in the series, so I accepted it and got over myself.

True, the LoZ series hasn't had a great deal of original-ness, with the main storylines being that you have to rescue Zelda from Ganon, or some itteration on the save the princess theme, but they've still been fun to play.  Just like the Super Mario Bros., Metroid and Castlevania games, there is not a lot of originality, but still loads of fun to play (except I haven't played through a Super Mario Bros. game since Super Mario World and Super Mario RPG, so maybe that's not the greatest of arguments).

On a similar, but slightly different note, a few months back I came across on Last.fm called ZReO or Zelda: ReOrchestrated, which initally billed themselves as symphonic orchestrations of the music from the Legend of Zelda games.  I was really excited.  I'd heard a number of symphoic orchestrations of music from this series, but the music from all the games not only sounded epic in it's attempt, but amazing in that it came from ALL OF THE GAMES!!  I began typing out an article about this ground a number of months ago but in the information gathering process, I discovered than the "group" only uses audio samples for the instruments that make up this "orchestra."  Don't get me wrong, the music sounds good and I would love to hear it performed by an actual symphony, but needless to say (which is why I'm saying it), I was a little let down.  But that shouldn't stop anyone from giving what they've done a listen as all their music is free to download.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And They Will Play On Forever More