Kathy Lin

Wii wii wii wii wii.

I own a Wii!! Please leave me a message. You won’t be hearing from me in a while. Chris has one too but that’s her Christmas present. She already knows because she had to buy it for me (limit one per customer). That’s ok though. We can play mine now. :)

YAY!

Let the madness begin! More updates to follow, I’m sure. So far, the game has been really enjoyable. I tried taking on the dinosaur and mutant wolf (Tellstra?) by myself, which maybe wasn’t the wisest thing to do. The dinosaur attacked once for ~650 damage which pretty much killed me 5 times over. I was doing pretty well with the wolf until it called more wolves.

Anyway, my only complaint about the game so far is the sound that plays when something is near. An exclamation point is displayed about your head, and at the same time a noise is heard. However, the action can’t actually be done (opening a chest, moving a switch) until you move a little bit closer to what caused the exclamation point to appear. Many times I’ve heard the noise and just pressed X by reflex, only to open the Battle Menu.

But, that’s a small gripe compared to a game that’s been great so far! The graphics and storyline can only be described as a Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings hybrid. There are fantastic airships that sort of look like sailing ships but fire laser cannons, etc. But on the ground, the forces fight mainly with armor and Middle Ages type weapons: swords, maces, bows, staves, etc. Personally, I’m ok with that. Leveling up a blaster feels different than leveling up a sword or bow.

Few more observerations: Square Enix seems to have changed the names of the spells slightly (yet again) and the enemies no longer drop gil (or gold/gp if you’re old school). They drop loot, which you can chose to sell. I haven’t yet encountered a use for most items so I have sold them. It would be a real pain in the ass if later the only way to upgrade to Ultima Weapon or something similar would be to have 99 of some item.

Yay! I’ve finally beat Kingdom Hearts II. I put roughly ~74 hours into the game — that time was mainly spent working towards 100% completion of Jiminy’s Journal. Well, good thing I enjoy leveling up. Although 100% journal completion is a pain in the ass. The most annoying parts were probably getting the “Poster Duty” time under 30 seconds, beating Sephiroth, and completing Hades Paradox Cup with 15,000 points. Frankly, I would rather have beat the game in Proud Mode.

Anyway, the whole point of completing the journal was to see the extra little movie after the end credits — which really didn’t reveal too much except for “yes, there will be a Kingdom Hearts III.” Well, go figure. This bizarre mixture of Square-Enix characters from Final Fantasy and Disney characters from all over has proven to be pretty profitable.

I didn’t play the first Kingdom Hearts, so I’m not going to make comparisons. I really enjoyed the battle and system and menu layouts/status screen for this game. They were very clean and self explanatory. Although you can’t control the other characters in your party directly, they do a pretty good job of doing what you tell them via the menu options. You can have them attack the same enemy you are, concentrate on an enemy until it dies, attack the enemy you aren’t, and so forth. There aren’t a super large number of extra armor and accessories, you can keep a huge inventory, and the armor, etc doesn’t sell for a huge price so you don’t have to worry about selling something and wishing you didn’t later. Money (munny) isn’t a problem in this game either. By the end you’ll have tons of it.

The graphics are also very nice. Some of them are of the neat/detailed/shiny variety — others are clever bits of animation — think the curly smoke in the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I also thought Sora and the others had pretty good facial expressions.

Sora can also interact with Donald and Goofy in powerful combo attacks that can hit for a lot of damage. Sora himself can master four different forms, Valor, Wisdom, Master, and Final. These forms allow him to take advantage of certain stat boosts at the cost of losing one or more party members for the duration of the form. These forms make Sora uber-powerful — but only last a limited amount of time. Like everything else in the game, they can be leveled up.

The Gummi Ship is another large part of the game — large but inconsequential. I never completed that mini-game. The gummi ship is a ship that allows you to travel in between worlds — while you are travelling, you shoot things. One can upgrade ships, collect rare ship parts by defeating rare enemies, and custom build gummi ships to master other “gummi routes.” Well, let’s just say I wasn’t even going to go there. :) I was bad enough at Star Fox: Assault.

Of course, that being said it’s definitely a kids game. It isn’t gory, the story isn’t too dark, and everything works out in the end! Friendship rules! Some of the levels are downright easy, and a bit annoying. For instance — the “Little Mermaid” level, called Atlantis. BORING. I could have done without it. Also, the 100 Acre Woods was cute, but what was done? Nothing. Also, there were a few worlds that seemed a bit out of place, namely Space Paranoids. I haven’t seen the movie Tron, so I can’t say how accurately it was represented. But yeah, Hollow Bastion, a quaint town, actually has a super complicated computer underneath it that can make Heartless? Yeah, ok…

I enjoyed it though. Otherwise, why would I have played it so much? Now, I have to play Final Fantasy VII. Cloud has such a great outfit! Does anyone have a copy for PlayStation I can borrow?

The following titles are confirmed for the Nintendo Wii’s launch (whenever that is). I’m looking forward to Zelda, and Final Fantasy, arguably my two favorite game franchises. Anyway, this list came from Nwizard.com and the actual post can be found here. You should go digg it or whatever.

Brain Weight: 1771 grams

Brain of: An architect.

Yesterday I finally managed to get an “A” in this game, which is really amazing.  The game is hard, but if you play it long enough, you can see improvement in your score.  Whether or not that improvement comes from the fact you’re actually training your brain or if you’re just getting used to the various mini-games has yet to be determined.

Unlike Brain Age, this game calculates your brain’s weight and then assigns you an occupation based on how you performed in five categories: Calculate, Identify, Memorize, Think, and Analyze.  There are a lot more minigames, but disappointingly, nothing to unlock.  You can choose to Practice in the different areas or take the test, which chooses one minigame from each of the beforementioned categories.  If you get really lucky, you won’t get a really annoying game.  Like, the coin-parison game.  That one is lame.

I recommend getting this game in conjunction with Brain Age, because they are both different and both fun.  Don’t favor getting one over the other.

Sadly for me, multiplayer is very frustrating because I am too competitive.  A nice touch is that they made the mutiplayer mode downloadable, so to play with others you do not need more than one game.  Finally, Nintendo has moved away from the “everyone must own a game and link cable” mentality.  Let us keep some of our money, please.