The Age-old Treasure Chest, and its Location

I'm about 14 hours into Final Fantasy XIII, and I'm loving every aspect of the game except for one thing: placement of the chests. Chest placement is done in the same manner as it was in Darksiders, but that was a game I had a bunch of issues with. This game is almost perfect (so far) in my book, so why the lazy chest placement?

It breaks down like this: you're running along on your linear path, owning mobs left and right, having a grand old time, when you see either a little path branching off from the main road, or you come to a fork in the road. For the first, you know there is a chest down that little path. Walk down, defeat the mob guarding it, move on. The second is a bit more annoying. Which path do you take? One of them is going to lead to a chest and a dead end, the other to the next area. It's just an irritating situation when you start down a road and realize the chest was on the other one. Back track, kill, chest, continue.

The REALLY obnoxious chest location is right in that nook of path right behind where you start or at a T-cross section. You come to the end of a path that connects to a new one. From the mini-map, you can tell that this new path clearly going to head right, but you also notice that there is a little bit of room heading to the left. CHEST LOCATION! I mean come on, give me just a little bit of a challenge. And the worst part about this one is that it gets you searching random places that you know shouldn't have a chest, such as the location directly behind you right when you start up again after a cut-scene.

What ever happened to teasing you? What was the best part about some of the best games in the past? Chests. On a recent playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, I realized how well Nintendo motivated its players to get to that chest. You walk into the main room of a dungeon and what do you find? A chest, right in the middle of the room. But there is something keeping you from getting to it. Some chasm that must be crossed, some puzzle that must be solved. And you know there is something awesome in that chest, something that you'll be able to beat the boss of the dungeon with and use to your advantage for the rest of the game. Opening that chest was awesome! The sound bite and the animation of Link holding the treasure above his head gave you the greatest feeling of accomplishment. I can't name any of the items I've found in chests in FFXIII. They just don't matter to me, because Square Enix never showed me that they should matter.

With achievements such as "getting every weapon and accessory in the game", looking for these damn chests turns it into a game of "did I check every nook and cranny". I'd much rather there be fewer weapons and accessories sealed away in fewer chests that are accessible through the challenge of a hard fight or complex puzzle. I could go on for hours about the improvements in the battle system alone, yet they cant put one single improvement into the positioning of chests. To me, next-gen means innovation in all departments, treasure chests included!

/rant

What a week!

No specific topic today as there is too much going on to decide on a single thing to write about. Playing the hell out of Mass Effect 2 and loving every second, especially now that I'm able to use an assault rifle on my Adept. Cant wait to go home today and finish getting all of my team members and doing their loyalty missions (tonight's goal). I loved the first game, and Mass Effect 2 improves upon every aspect of the game. I'd play this game even if there was no fighting involved. I can seriously spend hours just running around the towns talking with people and admiring how much detail was put into everything. It's a truly immersive world; Bioware has outdone themselves.

GDC is also happening this week, which means a ton of news on all of the big gaming sites and blogs. Sony has released a lot of information on "The Move" and I'm pretty excited about it. I believe I will finally be purchasing a PS3 in the fall with The Move bundled in.

Other than that, I'm extremely excited to start Final Fantasy XIII. Various friends from home in New Jersey and up here in Boston are raving about the game, some clocking in with over 20 hours of play time already after only 3 days of playing. If only I wasn't enjoying Mass Effect so much, I'd rush through it =P.

Thanks for reading.

When do pre-order bonuses go too far?

Last night I finally got around to reading the Final Fantasy XIII mini-guide I was given when I reserved the game from Gamestop, and it got me thinking about the things you get when you pre-order or reserve a game. I remember showing up to my local Gamestop and being handed a totally unexpected action figure of Alex Mercer along with my copy of [PROTOTYPE]. That was awesome! What a great way to get customers to keep reserving games at your store: give them free stuff for ensuring their purchase is with you.

For a long time, pre-ordering the game meant you put down a five dollar deposit on a game, and you were guaranteed a copy of the game on the day it came out. That was it. Now, with the rise in Downloadable Content (DLC) and a huge amount of competition between the retailers (AKA everyone trying to take Gamestop down), you are offered many different things. Gamestop, Best Buy and Walmart all seem to have different downloadable characters and extra levels that you can only access by reserving the game at their store. The most extreme example is the pre-order fiasco taking place over the highly anticipated Red Dead Redemption, by Rockstar games. Their pre-order bonuses include:

1. Gamestop: Deadly Assassin Outfit (increases dead eye regeneration)
2. Amazon.com: The Golden Guns Pack (increases fame gained from killing) + $10 amazon gift card
3. Best Buy: The War Horse (Faster + Increased Damage Resistance)
4. Game Crazy: Exclusive Mini-Guide
5. Target: $5 Target gift card
6. Walmart: $10 Walmart gift card
7. Rockstar Warehouse: Red Dead T-Shirt

This is the beginning of a huge problem in the gaming industry. Every copy of Red Dead Redemption is programmed with all of these things (the outfit, the golden guns and the war horse), but you can only unlock one of the three with the special code. Why is Rockstar letting these retailers control what their dedicated fans have access to? And if Rockstar, one of the best and most respected game developers of our time, can do it, why shouldn't everyone else? Developers need to stand their group and tell the retailers they're not playing into their stupid marketing schemes.

I guess I'm guilty for the continuation of this though, since I pre-ordered the game from Amazon. There's something about golden guns I can't resist! That and the $10 card and a reason to not buy from Gamestop.

Beautiful Katamari

I've been gaming pretty hard lately. Rented Beautiful Katamari along with ODST and beat it Friday night. What a fun time-sink.

Likes

• Low stress factor - It really is just a great way to kick back after a long day and relax.
• Quirky Japanese theme - Only the Japanese make games like this!
• Sense of progression - As you move forward in the game, you start the levels with larger and larger katamaris, and the goal becomes larger and larger too. This is the obvious progression in any game. In Katamari, however, you go from only being able to pick up small things like bottlecaps and pennies to rolling up entire groups of people.
  
• Sound track - Great mixture of many genres popular in Japan. I need to torrent the soundtrack =P

Dislikes

• Controls - This is the first Katamari game I've played, so I didn't expect the control scheme to be the way it was. I was under the impression that you just pushed the ball the direction that the left stick was pointing, but it actually uses a combination of the two sticks that feels kinda clunky. I ended up just rolling the ball sideways most of the time because it was too much of a hassle to reposition the character.
• Instructions - The game hardly ever tells you what you need to do right from the beginning. Maybe I didn't realize the level's requirements because I had never played another Katamari game before, but it certainly wasn't obvious for a first timer how big I needed to get my Katamari each level. It was only until I lost the level that the King of all Cosmos told me it was too small, and how large it needed to be.

Overall fun game. It was also really nice to have some sunny 45 degree weather to wake up to on Saturday morning when I had to return the games. Got to do a little skateboarding for the first time in a while :D! Just started Mass Effect 2 on Saturday afternoon - more on that soon.

Have a good one!

Halo: ODST

Last night I beat Halo: ODST. I chose to quickly play this game after beating Darksiders, needing a bit of a break before taking on another long game. I'll talk about Darksiders more in length soon, as it had so many flaws that I was just plain agitated by the time I finished it. I needed to jump-start my will to play games again, and knew I'd get a solid experience from a Bungie game.

ODST (which stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, the type of soldier you play as in the game) was pretty interesting and definitely better than I had anticipated. The story-telling aspect of it alone makes it stand out from the previous three games in the Halo franchise, and is definitely a must-play for anyone who is a fan of the series. I really loved the sections where you were playing as "Rookie", wandering the dark and Covenant infested streets of the recently attacked New Mombasa. The struggle for survival was conveyed perfectly by making the player choose his shots carefully, not wanting to waste the limited ammo supply available from enemy's weapons or to attract unnecessary attention.

These parts of the game were split up by action-packed segments consisting of the battle that had taken place earlier that day, from the points of view of the other members of the ODST unit. Here is where we got our classic Halo experience. Big weapons, big vehicles and big battles. For me, the formula never gets old. These sections were even more fun after spending a bit of time creeping from skirmish to skirmish in the dark.

The game also had a great achievement system. It had small 5 point achievements for doing special things while playing through levels. There was one for killing 5 people with sticky grenades in a single level and another for killing 10 people by killing them with the needler's overload function. It was great that every time I killed an enemy this way, it tracked my progress like an MMO tracks your progress through a quest. It also gave me a reason to try out all of the guns and multiple ways of killing people, altering my play style and keeping me from just abusing the best way to kill enemies. This is how achievements should be worked into a game.

Overall, I loved Halo: ODST, and it left me CRAVING Halo: Reach. I might have to go out and buy a copy of ODST to play Reach's multiplayer beta, which will be playable through ODST's multiplayer disk. If you're not so interested in the Reach beta, ODST still deserves a rent from Blockbuster.

An Introduction

This blog is getting started a lot slower than I had anticipated. The idea to start writing a blog came last week when I had pretty much nothing to do at work and nothing but video games on my mind (which is typical, even when I am busy doing work). Regardless, it’s time to kick things off.

Welcome to Netoge Haijin! This Japanese saying means “online gaming addicts”, literally translating into online game invalids. I believe we are a very intelligent culture capable of great things. We have the ability to come together as people of all races, nationalities and religions under a love of playing video games. This phrase is usually used in an ugly way, though. It is used when a person lets video games take over their lives, interfering with their school work, job or obligation to family and friends. I am no stranger to this side of gaming. I have lived through the ugly side of video game addiction (which I will talk about at length in future posts). I want this blog to help change this trend. Having a love for gaming can and is a good thing. By communicating with the outside world about video games, we are breaking out of our shells. I know it will be good for me to speak my mind and vent from time to time on this site, and hopefully help others in the process.

Not many people know of my love for video games and otaku (which will also become a main topic of discussion here, as it ties video games into other aspects of Japanese culture and vice versa). I guess you could say I was well-liked in high school and was friendly with pretty much everyone. I grew up in an area of New Jersey with a large population of Asian Americans making up a good portion of the student body. Most of my closest friends were (and still are) Asian, which is what I attribute my love for video games and Asian culture to. The rest of the kids I knew didn’t really know me as a gamer though. I guess they thought that I was into skateboarding and music, which is what you’d expect since I wore band T-shirts and kept my skateboard in my locker. In college, I don’t have as many friends, but still know a lot of people. Again, only my closest friends know of my true passions.

It’s time for people to get to know the real me, the true video game addict that has been the biggest, but most hidden, part of me for my entire life. It’s time for me to tell the world about my opinions on video games, the industry, culture, history and future.

Thank you for reading my first post! More will follow soon.