Gather Your Party

 

Welcome to my new weekly column (On the Crapper was my previous one).  I’ll be your host and, my brother, Jeff will be along each week to offer his insights.  Let’s start with introductions and move from there.  I’m 28 and Jeff, who just moved up here to Seattle to live with me for a year, is 18.  I’ve been playing video games since I was about 13 and he, well… let me ask him.

Del:  When did you first start playing games, Jeff?

Jeff:  The first game I remember playing was Final Fantasy VII

D:  That game has some serious mileage in our family.  I bet between you, myself, and the rest we’ve beaten it a dozen times.  Maybe more.  I don’t know.  And that was, what, back in Arizona?

J:  Had to be.  I guess I was five or something.

D:  And what’re you playing these days?  You were going through Lolipop Chainsaw the other day and beat it, right?

J:  Yeah.  On your PS3, but then I couldn’t transfer my save to my PS3 and got about half through that time.  Went to Final Fantasy XIII after that.

D:  How does XIII compare to VII for you?  Better?  Worse?

J:  Well, the graphics are obviously better on XIII, but that’s about it.  Pretty much everything in VII makes it a better game.  For me voice acting plays a big deal.  So…

D:  You mean it makes a game better or worse?

J:  Well, it can go either way.  It can be good, but it can be a really bad thing too.

D:  And the acting inXIII?

J:  Bad.  It’s…  I mean, they’re adults, but they’re acting like little kids.  Like, “Save me!”  No one says that.

D:  Hahaha.  Best character and worst in both VII andXIII?  Or favorite I guess, either one.

J:  I’d say in XIII it’d be Lightening, they clearly spent the most time on her.  Everyone else seemed like an afterthought.  In VII I liked Cloud.  Everyone does, but I think he’s good.  Worst in XIII is easily Vanille.

D:  What didn’t you like about her?

J:  Everything.  She’s just bad.

D:  And worst in VII?

J:  Reno.  He’s not really bad, but he just keeps coming back. He’s annoying.  I would think, ‘How many times do I have to kill you?’

D:  Ok, let’s get off of the Final Fantasy games.  What’re you playing these days aside from Lolipop Chainsaw?  Or rather what’s something you’ve really liked recently?  I know you played a ton of Skyrim, right?  How many hours do you have in that?  You wanted to Platinum it right?

J:  Yeah.  I didn’t.  I think I have about 200 hours in.  I didn’t know on the PS3 you couldn’t have more than one save file, or more than one on the same PSN account.  So I had one guy with over a hundred hours.  Maybe a hundred and fifty.  No glitching on him either and he was level 60 I think.  But then I made a new character and it erased him.  Besides that I began to replay Assassin’s Creed II, I have Sound Shapes on my Vita I play some, and I started that copy of El Shaddai you gave me.  It’s really weird though.  I have no idea what’s going on.  Vanquish was really cool though.

D:  Yeah.  You beat the game off my file I saw.  I didn’t know I was that close to the end.  Did you like Bayonetta much?

J:  Eh, it was ok.  It was a bit too cheesy.

D:  Too… Japanese?

J:  What does that even mean?

D:  Moving on.

D:  I know you played Deus Ex:  Human Revolution, did you like it?  Have you seen anything on Dishonored?  What do you think about it?

J:  I liked Deus Ex a lot.  I liked how there was different ways to do things so it made you want to play it more than once.  Dishonored’s art style reminds me of TF2 a bit.  That’s not bad, just what it reminds me of.

[We then watched this]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZCA6DvtCkY

D:  I think it’d be kind of cool in a game like this or Deus Ex  that the main character would read what you’re reading.  I know some people read all those emails in Deus Ex and will read all the books or whatever in Dishonored if it has stuff like that, but I rarely do.  I might skim it at most.  It’d be neat if that was actually read, but kind of mumbled like it was internal reading.

J:  Might get annoying.

D:  Maybe, I dunno.  I think it could be done right.  I know you’re looking forward to Assassin’s Creed III, any others?

J:  Yeah, that.  The Last of Us looks like it’ll be pretty good too.

 

And that’ll do it for this week.  If you’ve got something you want us to talk about, a game, a specific thing in a game, or anything else (related to gaming) let us know below.