Donkey Kong Country Week: The Kongs

Half the fun of talking about Donkey Kong Country series is its being indecisive about who you play each game. Although all of them are called Donkey freaking Kong Country (freaking, mine), only the first one stars the titular gorilla. Then the sidekick from the previous game takes the starring role in the next, and then the sidekick from the next game takes the starring role in the next next, and Donkey Kong’s appearances become fewer.

I don’t know how Rare got away with this. If this were any other gaming franchises, you bet people will be complaining all over message boards. BAWWW NERO! BAWWW RAIDEN! BAWWW APOLLO JUSTICE! BAWWW AXL! BAWWW SHADOW! The funny thing is that each of those games gave its lead sufficient time to develop before switching to another. DKC didn’t. Maybe no one heard much whining because Internet weren’t very accessible yet.

(Apollo Justice can die in a fire.)

Donkey Kong

Someone I follow on Twitter (@T3h_Kaiser) has been saying that Donkey Kong being a grown-up Donkey Kong Jr. is a lie cooked up by Rare. It’s like telling me that everything that I believed in was wrong! I’m now back from my shanty where I cried my hearts out, and is ready to debunk his claim. Because clearly it is he who was lying and wrong.

So. Donkey Kong Jr wore a tank top and a diaper. DKC’s Kong goes full-commando, and is naked if not for the tie. How could a conservatively dressed toddler grow up to be such an indecent gorilla? Really simple. He must have watched some Madonna after-midnight MTVs. Or maybe bought Prince’s Lovesexy. At least he does it with class. Hence, the tie.

And why did he go from round-headed to having this pointy hair? It must be the grunge rock, which were peaking in popularity during the early-90s.

See? Rare did not lie. Also, I just wasted time stupid-writing.

Donkey Kong from DKC gets cool points for being the first lead, and also for being the only Kong (besides Cranky) remotely tied to the Donkey Kong arcade classics. The powerhouse of DKC, he can effortlessly raise a barrel above his head, and his stomp devastates even foes who wear head protections. He can even dig up hidden bananas by clapping the ground. He’s hardcore, so don’t mess with him. And don’t go telling him he’s not legitimately Donkey Kong Jr or he’ll beat you up real bad.

Best moments: Everytime he defeats a muscular foe and the player inevitably thinks that Diddy couldn’t do this. In co-op mode, the first player (who plays Donkey) sneering at the second player (who plays Diddy) for getting the short end of the stick.

Worst moments: Getting kidnapped. Twice. So much for being the powerhouse, huh?

Diddy Kong

As I hinted while talking about Donkey Kong, Diddy gets major disadvantage for not being as powerful and useful as his partner. He’s supposed to be the Robin to Donkey Kong’s Batman, but when he becomes star in the second game he still gets outclassed by his sidekick Dixie Kong. To shoehorn another comics reference, imagine Dick Grayson becoming Batman and Damien Wayne as Robin still outdoing Batman at everything. I’m perplexed by why Rare never gave him unique abilities. He might be more mobile than Donkey Kong, but then again it might only be my imagination.

So what is Diddy’s handicap? His lack of strength. While most foes can’t resist Donkey Kong’s stomps, the bulked-up and the fat ones are immune to Diddy Kong’s. Which means that unless Diddy has a barrel or is riding a destructive animal friend, he has no way of defeating them.

For this, my brother and I would often use Diddy Kong as Donkey Kong’s shield. Whenever we find the duo in predicament, we would switch Donkey Kong out and offer Diddy to the gods. This we call “Sacrifice of Diddy”.

Best moments: Well, I guess after more than 15 years, Diddy Kong will finally make himself reliable. In DKCR, he wears a jetpack. Damn.

Worst moments: Every time he steps on a bulked-up crocodile, bounces back and falls into a bottomless pit.

Candy Kong

Question. Why would monkeys or gorillas have womanlike blond hair covering the “furs” on their head? And what’s with the Kong’s fascination with blondes anyway? Donkey Kong has this ultra-creepy and gigantic Candy for a squeeze. At least Dixie and Diddy look like a legitimately sweet couple, inasmuch as primate couples can look sweet.

Candy lets you save your game while saying cloying things such as “Honey Kong”, then blowing a kiss at you. Will creep out anyone but furry fanbases. Monkey-furries. Yikes, I hate myself for thinking those kind exist. Appears only in DKC1. Has a Dance Dance Revolution like minigame in DKC GBA remake.

Funky Kong

Yea he’s a sunglasses and bandana wearing surfer monkey dude. His barrel plane lets you go back to earlier levels. Useful for when your lives are depleted and you need to restock.

In DKC3 he becomes a mechanic and he will constantly upgrade your boat so that you can drive it to previously unreachable parts of the map.

He usually has a funky BGM. Because he’s funky. Clever, right?

Cranky Kong

The original Donkey Kong has grown old and became a curmudgeon who tells you how much better he and his games are in his prime. Dispenses obvious advices in DKC, will give you hints on every level in DKC2, is your sole competitor (and a sore loser) in a ball throwing minigame in DKC3.

Wrinkly Kong

Teaches school on DKC2, then retires in DKC3 and spends her days exercising, sleeping, and playing Ninty 64 (and you can hear the Mushroom Kingdom theme from Super Mario 64). She works as the in-game tutorial and the save spot. Dies off-screen after the end of DKC3, and becomes a ghost. Wow, this is depressing.

She is (was) Cranky’s wife. Has she always been named Wrinkly, even when she was 17? Hey, I like posing needless philosophical questions.

Dixie Kong

She’s Diddy’s beret-wearing ponytailed girlfriend. Sidekick in DKC2, lead in DKC3. She must have mastered the art of hair-fu because she uses it to raise barrels, when Diddy can’t even lift barrels above chest level (that wuss). She can also use her hair as a whip. Millia Rage from Guilty Gear must’ve learned a few tricks from Dixie.

But there’s more. She has this cool and very useful ability of making herself glide by spinning her hair like it’s chopper’s blades. So while her physical strength equals Diddy’s, she has better survival skills.

Best moment: Being the star of DKC3.

Worst moment: Cries when she loses. Because girls are tear-ducts! Gender equality!

Swanky Kong

He lets you play minigames so you could get yourself some swank and thus his name is oh dear this is so stupid why am I even writing

Has a game show where he asks DKC2 related trivia in DKC2, and a carnival game booth in DKC3. Also has a terrible Sonic rip-off 3d tunnel minigame in DKC3 Advance.

Kiddy Kong

Kiddy Kong almost makes up for Donkey Kong’s absence. For a toddler, he has a rather impressive strength, and is capable of destroying even the bulky looking foes. He doesn’t have the “pound the ground for bananas” ability, but those aren’t a necessity anyway. To make up for that, he can skip on water, and you can roll him and have Dixie stand on top of him like he’s a circus ball (excepting a few places, neither those are very useful).

Best moment: Skipping on water for the first time. Can you think of any other games that let you skip on water? Exactly.

Worst moment: Dixie cries, he WAILS. Because babies are wambulances! Age equality!

Brother Bears

Technically not a Kong, they treat you as a chore machine in DKC3.

Banana Bird Queen

Also not a Kong. She will help you defeat Baron K Roolenstein if you find every Banana Bird.

Donkey Kong Country Week: The Games

Among the many retro-revivals that the Wii has enjoyed in 2010, Donkey Kong Country Returns (DKCR) is the title that I’m most hyped for, no small feat as NBA Jam Wii also came to tug my nostalgic and basketball-loving heartstrings. I planned all along to begin my Donkey Kong Country retrospective posts today and I seem to be sticking to the plan so far. My original intent was to write a week before DKCR hits stores, as a way of anticipating it, but I got a few details mixed because instead of getting released next week like I initially thought, it’s out today.

With the confession of my failures out, I’m gonna start talking about Donkey Kong Country (DKC).

DKC is one of the few videogame series that I hold close to my heart (or is it many? I have to evaluate this later). Back in 1994, my brother and I didn’t have a SNES, so when we had a videogame fix we would head to a store where we can pay to play a videogame of our choosing for a limited time. In one of those sessions, we were seated next to someone playing DKC. It struck me as a surprise that Donkey Kong, formerly Mario’s foil, now has his own platformer, and a really beautiful one at that. All to my design, I got a SNES along with DKC months later, and it would become a game I would enjoy over and over again.

Donkey Kong Country

Donkey Kong Country and I didn’t get off a good start. I don’t mean to say I hated this game initially; it felt more like the game hated me. I was a seasoned Super Mario Bros veteran by then, so I reckoned, its being platformer also published by Nintendo, that I would breeze through it, deftly avoiding any obstacles with my dexterous Mario-trained hands (I would since then learn that Nintendo only published the DKC series and had nothing to do with their creation, which is handled by Rare). Was I wrong. In as early as the 2nd world (of 7) the game would hand me my ass many times. I even saw the game over screen in that darned mine-cart level. And then in that snow barrel-blast level. And then in that factory level with flaming oil drums. This was a challenging game and it would take my brother and I 3 days of non-stop playing to beat what is essentially a 2-hour game.

This was also a game of marvelous beauty at the time of its release. Its use of pre-rendered 3d gave its detailed characters and lush backgrounds beauty then unparalleled. I remember my dad, a baby-boomer who usually doesn’t care about videogames, would usher house guests to our game room just so everyone can marvel at how far videogame presentation had gone. If its property enticed me to buy it, then so did its visuals. It was a stuff to brag about, to SNES what the original 1st-gen Optimus Prime was to toys. People may laugh about them now, DKC for how dated it looks and Prime for not being very posable, but they were legitimately cool back then.

Anyway, the Donkey Kong in DKC, as it turned out, isn’t the Donkey Kong who kidnapped Pauline for Mario to save. That Donkey Kong became DKC’s Cranky Kong, and the Donkey Kong here is the junior Donkey Kong from the time when Mario incarcerated his dad (It was a phase, he was in college! Mario has since then sworn off gorilla cruelty. Oh wait, there’s Mario vs. Donkey Kong. Forget I said anything to defend that jerk.) In DKC, the Kongs store a huge array of bananas, guarded by Diddy Kong who is so rad he wears a cap. He isn’t rad enough to prevent K Rool’s army of crocodiles from stealing the bananas though. Pride hurt, he joined Donkey Kong, now sporting a tie, in a quest to reclaim their bananas, with nary a cutscene about vengeance because videogames, then, don’t overindulge in pretentious tales about light dark heart darky lightness.

Of all the 3 DKCs, the first one is the most straightforward platformer, to the extent that you can say that it’s a jazzed-up Super Mario Bros. They share the sole objective of reaching the end of the level, along with other gameplaysimilarities. You hurt enemies by stomping on them (in DKC you can also hurt them by using a roll attack). You collect 100 bananas for 1up. You can access bonus rooms. There are some differences, notably the barrels, which the Kongs can pick up and throw (and occasionally ride on), and some of which act as cannons that can blast the Kongs across different places. Another element unique to DKC is the tag team. Tag team, though, isn’t adroitly executed in this game because having a partner only means you have additional “health” before losing a life. You can play two player co-op, but since only one Kong can be active any given time, the player assigned to the inactive Kong can only be spectator. Each Kong has his quirk, and I will discuss this in an upcoming post. Like Super Mario World, there are animal friends assisting Kong. Think Yoshi, but five of them with individual traits. The animal friends prove to be the game’s strengths because they give a refreshing way of playing platformers, and it didn’t hurt that they made you feel powerful. I will also discuss the animal friends in another upcoming post.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

Donkey Kong Country 2 (DKC2) is considered by many as the highest point of the series, and it’s easy to see why: most of DKC’s kinks has been ironed out. Tag team matters now as either Kongs can boost the other to unreachable places, which is vital for finding many bonus areas. The bonus areas have been repurposed as farming grounds not for 1ups as they were in DKC, but for tokens required to unlock a secret bonus world.

Playing DKC2, it’s immediately clear what motif the game is going for. While DKC had a jungle feel, DKC2 opts for a more pirate theme, and it was blatant with it. The game encourages treasure collections, which would start an (unfortunate) trend for collect-a-thons. The enemies wear pirate hats, wields cutlasses, and had hooks for a hand. Even the story, what little it has, is pirate-like. Donkey Kong is kidnapped, and it’s up to Diddy and his girlfriend Dixie to get him back along with, yet again, their stolen bananas. Just how bad is Diddy at standing watch over Kong’s bananas anyway? Why is he still the hero despite his repeated follies?

DKC2 is leaps and bounds better than DKC in everything: the visuals more inspired, the animal friends less nerfed (compared to a few from DKC), and the music more dramatic. With its collection aspect it also offers more incentive for replays. Fan of the game will be turning every areas inside out looking for bonus areas, or grabbing DK coins as bragging rights. Hey, you can even try to beat Mario in no. 1 spot. (Could this be a precedent for Xbox 360’s achievement points?)

My only beef with DKC2 is that I wish I had a way of playing Donkey Kong instead. Of all the Kongs in DKC, I found him most memorable. Alas, DKC would be the last time in the trilogy he’s playable. He would sit out again in DKC3.

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble

Diddy Kong also sits out in DKC3, because his folly has now cost him an absence. King K Rool has abandoned his Captain Hook stint to become a… scientist named Dr Baron K Roolenstein? Wow how does that work? I don’t mean to discriminate, but aren’t pirates too roughnecked to be inventors, even if only to devise pillaging robots!

The enemies have again been redesigned, some of them now fitted with mechanical parts. Also, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong have yet again been kidnapped. Why can’t they look after themselves for once? You think after getting past DKC they would learn a few skills on looking out for themselves. In any case, the duo you use now compose of Dixie Kong and Kiddy Kong, Dixie Kong’s gentle giant of a cousin.

Perhaps it’s becoming clear that I am not putting much effort into writing about DKC3, and for that I’ll give you a good reason. DKC3 is the most forgettable game of the trilogy. When examined as a standalone product, it’s above most platformers of its time, but against DKC and DKC2 it felt uninspiring. DKC is challenging, and while I had less difficulty with DKC2 because of my experience with DKC, I still died a few times there. DKC3 is cakewalk even amongst other platformers, and you have to cheat your way to make it hard, otherwise only the bonus room locations prove to be tough.

What worked against it is how much the feel has changed. Both DKC and DKC2 relied heavily on twitchy reflexes, and DKC3 didn’t, so players were less thrilled in beating DKC3. The laid back tone and the care bear families may have turned people off because no one cared for them. Part of the blame also falls on player fatigue. Approach DKC3 as a platformer and you’ll get a game that’s fundamentally the same as its predecessors, but not as exciting.

I get what the developers tried to do in this game. They added greater focus on exploration and puzzles. They remade the world map to be more dynamic by fitting in fetch quests that would unlock different areas. The player had to analyze in-game clues to find the Lost World and even free banana-birds from every crystal caves to get the true ending. So when it comes to longevity, DKC3 would surpass both games because of its heavy exploration. The player should analyze every region of the maps to get the most out of it.

DKC3 sold the worst among the trilogy and underperformed under stiff competition (including Nintendo 64 titles), leading Rare to abandon their 2d platformer endeavors. SNES would soon be retired, and DKC fans would wait until 2010 to get DKC’s next offering, developed by Retro Studios in hopes to recapture the delight from Kong’s finest hours.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any videogame will by itself spring a few nerd arguments. Does Ryu fight better than Ken? Is Aeris or Tifa the better girlfriend material? Does a homoerotic tension exist between Snake and Otacon? For Ace Attorney, the most recurrent one is whether Phoenix Wright or Miles Edgeworth is the better character. Whenever a Team Miles guy loses the argument, his last resort would be to state that Miles hadn’t starred in his own game. By making Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (AAI:ME), Capcom gave Team Miles what they wanted. Perhaps he is compelling enough to carry a game on his own, and can issue an ultimatum to Team Phoenix that he should’ve reigned supreme in their hearts.

A Miles game would work with minimal effort by making it similar to a Phoenix game, excepting one twist in the formula. Like Phoenix, Miles would have to work as both an investigator and as attorney. Unlike Phoenix, his goal is for the court to find the defendant guilty.

What Capcom actually did was take Miles off of courtroom and then give him the role of a detective who argues with people at key moments. Is this change praiseworthy or cringeworthy?

After four games, Ace Attorney’s formula is beginning to grow stale, so Capcom shouldn’t be faulted for trying to make it different. The most noticeable change apply in the investigative portions, where the player now sees his/her  character in third person as opposed to the predecessors’ first person. Instead of pointing a cursor to different objects of the screen, one would have to drag Miles around for him to interact with objects and with people.

But really, all these are cosmetic changes. You’re still doing the same thing from four games before, i.e., collecting evidences and interrogating witnesses/suspects. Your interrogation would frequently transition to a verbal battle, which plays like courtroom testimony but with the noticeable lack of courtroom and that lovably naïve bearded judge’s inappropriate cracks. This can happen at a moment’s notice, which is quite unlike the previous game where investigation and courtroom portions are demarcated, as are the story’s current mood - mellow and expository for the investigation, high stakes for the courtroom. Here, the mood can swing whichever way, any time.

Oddly, that didn’t work in this game’s favor one bit.

The foremost defining trait of Miles Edgeworth is that he’s a prosecutor, as Phoenix a defense attorney. Is it unreasonable to expect his game to play on his profession’s strengths? No, but Capcom disagree, so instead of giving him actual prosecutorial work, they had him play a detective, despite characters like Detective Gumshoe or professional menopauser Ema Skye already fulfilling that purpose. In fact, the original plan was to make Ema Skye the star of Ace Attorney Investigations. But fickle as they were, Capcom used the framework for her game to someone who is not a detective. Miles’ lawyering is never prominent in the story, and for that it suffers a loss of impact. I never got the sense that anything he does here matters, because even if he finds a person guilty of murder, what’s to stop the murderer from hiring an attorney that would acquit him/her, unless if Miles follows the murderer through to the courtroom? By the time he does that, the credits roll, which means you never get to play the renowned prosecutor as a renowned prosecutor, ever. All a tease.

AAI:ME stumbles even as a detective game for being only ostensibly different to previous Ace Attorneys, which didn’t sell themselves as games where you play detective. Only one trait - his ability - sets Miles apart from his peers. While Phoenix has a gem that can see through lies, and Apollo Justice a bracelet that senses suspicious body languages, Miles has “logic”, which is his way of stringing observations together and seeing if they make sense. Phoenix and Apollo do that automatically, but with Miles the player is required to tell him “hey, the window is high. Look, a ladder! Now to use logic to tell Miles that WE CAN CLIMB THE LADDER TO GET THROUGH THE WINDOW!”

The fifth episode of the 1st Phoenix Wright game and the entirety of Apollo Justice had more thorough detective works, as they require players to turn every collected evidences inside out, analyzing not just their surfaces but also using various gadgets to scan traces of blood and fingerprints, among other things. Even the many CSI videogames, which many review outlets rate lowly yet I consider underappreciated, fare better as detective games. In AAI:ME, nothing is done with the evidences picked up along the way besides rotating them in 3d.

As a game starring Miles Edgeworth, the only thing it manages to do is to get me more annoyed at the titular protagonist than I expected, and I fault this for two things. The first is that Miles does not have Phoenix’s humor, which makes his inner monologues not as entertaining to read. The second relates to the first, in that Miles, frankly, is a bit of a jerk. I constantly have to read his thoughts about how obsessed he is with perfect cases, which leads him to respond horribly to those who get on his way, even if they may have meant well. His biggest victim? Dick Gumshoe. I can only stomach so much berating of Dick before I start wishing I could reach into my DS and give Miles a little beating. Upon reaching the last part of game, I was so sick of Miles that I had to consult a FAQ just to get it over with quickly. The saying “overfamiliarity breeds contempt” applies here. Miles is not as endearing as his mystery.

The story claims to interconnect every chapters of the game — a series’ novelty — but that’s done only ostensibly. The game repeatedly tells the player how the crimes from cases 1-5 are connected, but one never sees what motivates the other characters to commit murders for the sake of the big bad guy. Yet, the game ends by reminding you again that they are related, in case you’ve forgotten. We know that, we just don’t know why.

Characters old or new aren’t very engaging (look, it’s cheeky girl with thief now instead of cheeky girl with spirit channeling, cheeky girl with science, and cheeky girl with magic!), with the fake-proverb quoting Wolverine-lookalike providing the sole, genuinely funny comic relief (and boy, that was his only shtick). Neither Miles nor any of the returning characters develop. As a result, the story amounts to nothing but a glorified Scooby Doo episode - hey, let’s get some beloved Ace Attorney characters reunited so that they can solve yet another batch of murder cases! If Ace Attorney games could enjoy minor successes, what’s to stop Capcom from pumping out lazy sequels of more Scooby and Friends detective time? As it were, Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is already in the works, coming to a store near you next February so you can enjoy watching more of Miles and pals’ random irrelevant escapades.

So Miles fans, I’ll be seeing you at Phoenix Wright vs. Professor Layton. I’ve always been Team Phoenix anyway.

Synergy 2010 Posts Index

(only tangentially related) On Events and Benefit Concerts

2010: Ode to Synergy

My Synergy Photograhy Odyssey

Conversations with Synergy

Synergy ‘10 Snippings

(also, Synergy 2008 stuff)

(only tangentially related) A Week in Taiwan 1: Shuangshi

A Week in Taiwan 2: Synergy

A Week in Taiwan 3: Snippings

Synergy Snippings

Yeah, doing this again just like last time.

* I’ll say it now and I’ll say it over and over again: either come back, or go to Taiwan. I’ll be the first to tag along. I hope you don’t mind.

* Friday. Slow day, yet I could hardly sleep, thoughts fraught with uncontainable anticipation for Synergy tour. As an attempt to suppress my overly excitable state, my sis and I saw the movie “Shall We Dansu?” (the Japanese one, not the remake starring Richard Gere) I liked it very much!

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Conversations with Synergy

* Conversation 1

Antonio: PAGCOR is a Casino where all the money you gambled away will be given to the government, which they use as funding for their projects.

Me: Cool. Gambling in good conscience.

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My Synergy Photography Odyssey

To avoid feeling mediocre like I did the last time I traveled with Synergy, I tried to make myself useful to the group by doing two things. First, by being a useful guide. I wasn’t half bad at it. Though I do not possess the same encyclopedic knowledge as our travel agent Antonio Tan (he’s a pro in the business, after all), I’m well versed with its culture and I speak its language fluently enough to get by.

Second, I took a dSLR camera with me, effectively giving me the same duty as Dane Christensen’s back Taiwan, 2008 (he wasn’t on this trip as he’s serving in Denmark). What it boils down to is that I have to take as much photos as I can of this group. I might not have any gears – not even tripod; hey, cut me some slack, the camera is new – and I don’t have a telephoto lens, but with the camera being a Canon EOS 1000D (or Rebel XD as it’s called in the west) I thought I was well prepared.

The camera wasn’t the problem, and even if I had the gears I don’t think they’d make much of a difference. The one to blame? Me. I wasn’t even a photographer, but more of a wannabe with a dSLR. Despite lacking the experience, I volunteered to take concert pictures. Someone is overestimating his abilities!

Needless to say, it often yielded disastrous results.

(Hit the jump to see the pics)

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2010: Ode to Synergy

The worst part of writing this blog is the realization that it’s gonna take a while for this event to repeat itself.

A Voice to the World

What happened? I hinted at it in my previous post: Synergy, a performance group from Utah, came to perform in the Philippines for 10 days. They went back to Utah last Monday, leaving me feeling crushed and having yet to come to terms with returning to my daily routine. Hence, I write this post as a way to counter the stress the abrupt return to normalcy causes.

Personally, I don’t open up to people that much, and would not have been this emotionally invested with just about any tour groups. To be fair, I haven’t toured with other groups, but my sis has had with many, and she told me several times that she felt more connected to Synergy than most, a few of them having bored her. We are fond of Synergy because despite the enormous talents each member possesses, they behave like anyone you befriended in school or at other social gatherings. They don’t look at you with disdain just because they can do something you can’t. They’re down-to-earth individuals, who happen to have passion for singing and dancing, and rehearse 7 months so that they could go around the world and touch people’s lives with their songs.

Synergy’s song and dance numbers remind me of Hairspray, in that both are so happy and chipper that I can’t help but smile whenever I experience them. Synergy’s performances get me every time, with feelings of optimism inspired by the heartfelt and positive messages of love, friendship and peace. They also please the crowd with their acrobatic stunts that could land them roles in action movies. I’ve toured with them twice (the first time being 2008, which I also wrote about), and I’m still left craving for more. I will never tire of them, and I’ll watch and support them as many times as I want.

So thank you, Synergy. Though brief, our times together brought me nothing but joy.

On Events and Benefit Concerts

People led to believe that event organizing is an easy and worthless job should lose that notion, fast.

Yes, I understand why you write this profession off. You read about them in magazines and newspapers. You say, it’s for the rich and annoying. You say, you don’t need talents to arrange events, only connections. After all, compared to plowing the fields, sweating under intense heat, just how hard is it to band people together in an electronica club? You see feature articles of events with pictures of the indulgent lifestyle of the rich and fabulous, while the rest of the country get poorer. You detest people those self-proclaimed “eventologist” who made statements supporting all the partying from the elite class while calling the mindset that one should feel guilty about it passe.

My post won’t defend those eventologists, which I despise as much as I dislike watching the rich not reaching out to help the poor. On the other hand, what they do and what events they cover do not represent the whole profession. Did you know that you need event organizers for benefit concerts? How about distribution of goods from non-profit organizations? Or, just about anything where you need groups or individuals to get things done in a manner presentable to the public? While the difficulty of their job may vary, only a few would have everything on leisure pacing. Worse, they don’t always pay high.

My sister is an organizer of tour for benefit concerts, and last week I saw her at work for the second time, with the first being in Taiwan back in 2008. Those days I spent with her back then became one of the memories that I most treasure, having met some amazing people. After we parted ways, I wrote that I missed the tour group, Synergy, and wondered if they’d ever visit Philippines.

Call me a psychic, because Synergy fulfilled my “prophecy” by coming to the Philippines last week. Of course, I would give full credit to my sister for making it happen. Her planning of the tour didn’t go easy, though, for she had to do myriad things, which started with asking various contacts to let them perform in certain venues, only to be rejected by many (including the college I’m an alumnus of). She searched for travel agencies to help her with their itineraries, one time having to meet one while braving the merciless Ondoy, only for that endeavor to turn out futilely. When she eventually got everything planned out, with a few universities and a travel agent agreeing to accommodate her, she hardly saw the end of all troubles. What with life being unpredictable, the tour met many hurdles, incompetent airport staffs, uncooperative people, uncoordinated people, and bad venue surprises, like the mystery cafeteria food that tries even the hungriest. To add, she not only had to do this in Philippines, but also in Peru, China, Taiwan, and Japan, in the span of two months. Without the resilience, one would be quitting this job before long. Only the assertive, patient, and strong-willed ones press on.

So leave aside your prejudice for event organizers. They don’t have it easy.

What of the groups going all over the world for their benefit concerts then? They impact their performers significantly, especially when they take place on less-trodden venues. Many performers live every day spoiled by the comfort of their suburban homes, and yet they are discontented, seeking out greater material wealth. They’d think, wouldn’t it be nice if I get this new gas-guzzling SUV? Or that Prada bag? Without taking them to places where they perform in the presence of the homeless and the orphaned, they might never understand how fortunate they are, and might never feel compelled to help out. They look at this and it affects them on an emotional level:

In other packaged tours, all you get to see are the presentable, sanitized, gentrified parts of a country. A travel agent in the Philippines rather takes his/her tourists around the commercial areas like Makati or the beaches with pearly white sands, but not revealing the true state of the poverty existing within our soils. Few dare let foreigners see the people who live in house the size of matchboxes, breadwinners scraping the deepest recesses of sewers to put food on their tables. We don’t realize the impact that these sights bring to our tourists, but those who help make the benefit concerts happen reveal to the performers the harsh realities in many parts of the world, that many lives are lived in dire conditions. They learn to be content, to value the people around them, and, most of all, to reach out.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (A Retrospective)

** Post contains heavy spoilers for Apollo Justice **

Let’s say that Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (AJ) worked like a traditional videogame. It only has to have a great gameplay for it to be good, and with features the previous 3 Phoenix Wright games don’t have (sans the DS-exclusive fifth chapter of the first game), AJ could easily be considered a superior game. With AJ, investigations are more involving, since evidences are no longer static objects and you had to view them in 3 dimensions, occasionally requiring that you use cool scientific implements to see traces of fingerprints, footprints or bloods, or to manipulate recording equipments to find telling signs of struggle. It’s also more streamlined, in that if you’ve picked up every evidence and spoke to every witness in a given location, the game will not permit you to stop by here again.

By the standards of a normal videogame, AJ bests Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 1-3 (PW).

Of course, AJ being a text-heavy adventure game means that it should be judged differently, with its technical aspect playing only a side fiddle to its leading component, the story. Point and click adventure games were first conceptualized at a time when game designers wanted to offer players an interactive role within a complex narrative, but technologies limited the ways videogames can accomplish this. Enter Infocom’s Zorks, the Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker games, with their workarounds being that while you’re reading copious amounts of texts, you’re still “gaming” by typing the correct verbs and nouns to “win”. Then that kind of gaming evolved into what became the colorful Sierra and the LucasArts point-and-click-fests where you’re presented scenarios, then met with obstacles you’re, hopefully, creative enough to make sense of with the items that you’ve picked up along the way (how’s chicken on pulleys work for you?). Any game of the Ace Attorney series is the mix of the amount of reading from the Infocom era, plus the graphical presentation and puzzle-solving from the Sierra/LucasArts offerings. They all require that the gameplay be functional, but only in the sense that it should not get in the way of enjoying their stories and clever writings.

I was not prepared for AJ’s story to be as weak as it turned out to be. A post I wrote in January 2008 reflected the uncontainable hype I had for this game after having played the demo of its first chapter. It’s funny that I should be disappointed, because I knew and accepted right away that I’d play as another rookie lawyer Apollo Justice instead of the much beloved, my personal favorite Phoenix Wright. Phoenix Wright in this game has fallen from grace, with his attorney badge revoked and his whole career changed to that of a gambling lord moonlighting as pianist in a shoddy bar. I was genuinely interested to understand why all these happened, and more to the point, why the writers decided for someone like the eponymous Apollo Justice to replace Phoenix Wright as the leading guy.

Apollo Justice is awful. He and Phoenix Wright are not exactly fan-base dividing new-versus-old leads like Kirk and Picard, who each has his own personalities and quirks; everyone will prefer Phoenix over Apollo, the latter practically the former’s copycat. Both are bumbling lawyers who lack self-confidence, the only differences being that Phoenix is more passionate and more cognizant of events than most of the cast, while I never got the sense that Apollo cares to win his case. He’s so slow that people like his rival prosecutor Klavier Gavin and even his sidekick Trucy Wright have to spell out the logical context of the events for him. Those would’ve make Apollo Justice far less interesting than Phoenix, but to add insult to the injury, it has never been made clear why he became a lawyer in the first place. He has one thing going for him though, which is that he has a special ability to detect suspicious body movements; unfortunately he could only do that when witnesses are testifying in courtroom, making that feature under-utilized. What his motivation is for taking up his profession, no one knows, and after playing as him in one game I’m not sure I care to know anymore. He’s like what happens sometimes when I meet an acquaintance and in our brief interaction, I can’t say I know everything about him/her, but know enough to decide that I’m not interested in learning more about him/her.

Has Capcom learned nothing from Raiden of Metal Gear Solid 2? You don’t replace a popular lead with another guy who’s exactly like him and expect this to go over well with fans. Devil May Cry 4 is another game where Capcom has done this (and released on the same year, to boot!). What’s odd is that Capcom has effectively replaced the lead of one of its franchises before. While no one is ever going to mistake Megaman as a series known for quality storytelling, the way it made us accept Zero should’ve become a model of how to change leads. First let the audiences warm up to the new guy, such that by the time he takes over they’ll embrace him like they did in Megaman Zero.

Apollo Justice, though, isn’t the only guy holding the whole game back from achieving the wacked-out greatness of the previous titles. All the main characters pale in comparison to their PW’s counterparts. The sidekick, Trucy Wright, is exactly like Maya or young Ema Skye (from PW1’s case 5) except that she is a magician-in-training (as in, a prestidigitator) instead of spirit-medium or forensics scientist. The grown-up Ema Skye is not the lovable oaf that Dick Gumshoe was but rather a detective with so much attitude you’d think she was perpetually PMS-ing, making most of your interactions with her thoroughly unpleasant (she keeps throwing snack bits at you).

But, by far, the biggest wastes of great storytelling opportunity are the Gavin brothers - defense attorney Kristoph and prosecutor Klavier. Kristoph is Apollo’s mentor, who turned out to be the true culprit of the first case (and tried to frame Phoenix for it). Later it is shown that his heart is full of darkness, hiding secrets so wicked that not even Phoenix’s truth-seeking gem (Magatama) could unlock them. I don’t know why he turned this evil, and if you presumed that his outlook has any relation to his younger brother Klavier you’ll be dead wrong. Nothing about Gavin’s brotherhood mattered – I wouldn’t know they’re brothers if they didn’t share the same surname and hairdo. Consequently, Kristoph is an interesting character who ultimately lacks depth because of writer’s neglect.

Klavier infuriated me the most. Here is a new prosecutor designed with every pop star appeal that women squee over – he’s good looking, he’s part of a rock band, he has swagger. He’s clinically made to rock, and yet he failed big time at that. Unlike most prosecutors Phoenix encounters, who stake their reputation to defeat Phoenix, Klavier couldn’t care less that he loses cases as long as he’s on the right. The whole “white knight fighting for justice routine” that made Superman and Captain America iconic yet boring, except that Klavier is not iconic because he looks like a rejected design of Devil May Cry’s Dante – who’d definitely be a better prosecutor than Klavier. Am I against a story having a goody-two-shoesy guy? No, but that guy needs to resemble a flesh and blood human being rather than a cardboard cut-out placeholder of justice. His non-reaction from seeing his brother (in cases 1 and 4) and his band-mate, who also happens to be his best friend (case 3), getting convicted of murder is so inhumanly and emotionless, Rick Deckard from Blade Runner should’ve suspected him of being a Replicant.

By the time I finish the game (which didn’t take long) my indifference to the game’s story bothered me enough that I started a minor discussion over at some forum saying I wasn’t feeling any of the game’s characters. One guy told me that AJ’s brilliance is that if one would sit back and think about it one would observe that all its key characters deliberately reversed the roles of their counterparts in PW. The mentor is evil unlike PW’s Mia. The sidekick can take care of herself unlike PW’s Maya. The prosecutor is nice and isn’t antagonistic like Miles Edgeworth. The detective, unlike Dick Gumshoe, is smart yet hates her job. Cool if you’ve noticed all that, and I would agree, but I’m not exactly asking for role reversal. All I wanted was fresh story, and genuinely engaging characters. Besides, in the process of reversing everything about what made PW’s characters likable, you get aloofness as opposed to passionate, and you get boring instead of engaging. No one in AJ is developed well, and they don’t seem to care that you don’t know them either. So why should I bother?

I didn’t want nor expect AJ to leave aside Phoenix from the story, but boy does it feel like everyone else is a bit player to his personal drama. Apollo, Trucy, Ema and Klavier pretty much are fencesitters throughout the game, observing their clients and Phoenix’s lives with nary a care. What’s most damning is AJ’s very own Phoenix Wright, an unrecognizably aloof, lazy-eyed, indifferent, overbearing hobo figure, a ghost of the awkward excitable guy everyone loved in PW1-3. The game goes at great length to explain why he’s changed. In case 4, he is revealed to have inadvertently submitted fake evidence on court, where he got penalized by a ban from practicing law. I don’t buy this, and here’s why:

1.) In PW1-3, Phoenix wouldn’t take this sitting down; here there’s no desperate plea to set his record straight.

2.) AJ betrays its world’s logic because there has never been an issue with Edgeworth and both of von Karmas when they submitted fake evidences.

3.) The many lives Phoenix saved and the reputations of the court of justice he helped preserved, and he gets severely punished for the one folly he did not intentionally do?

By case 4, we’re presented a supercomputer by which all the remaining events of the game – the courtroom and the investigation – will be viewed, while Phoenix Wright travel back and forth from 7 years ago to present, unraveling the mystery that led to his loss of lawyer stint. The game screws up logic square in the face, requiring that you present evidences you acquire in the future to people of the past. Then once the game is near completion, the game flat out asks you if you would like to see the good or the bad ending (and since the credits don’t roll in the bad one, everyone can be secure in the knowledge that this won’t be the canonical end). Sci fi and AA blend about as clumsily as a plumber critiquing the art exhibit of Salvador Dali, but if anyone has to do the time traveling, the writers have to do it. Please go back to the drawing board and may I have your attention: will the real Ace Attorney please stand up?

Sick Man

I don’t know if there’s a good time to be sick. Mildly sick, maybe, like when you can get your body temp somewhat high that you’d convince your boss that you need to stay home and rest, when all you wanted to do was to read or play books or videogames you just got your hands on.

On the opposite, I haven’t thought up a list of worst times to be sick, but if I were to do that, “while traveling” would rank high up. In my past 6 days I was spending every waking hour loathing that fact, suffering through my fever as I traveled Taiwan’s locales.

I usually deal with my sickness by resting and fasting. This fever I contracted on Taiwan, though, came when it’s not convenient for me to be lying on a bed all day, covered in blanket and taking drowse-inducing pills. I spent my days there busy, and even as my condition wore me out I had to stay awake, doing my job. I needed a fast cure, even one that might not be the best cure. I did not know how to do this, so I consulted from an assortment of people – relatives, people who handed out those brown Chinese medicines with weird bitter tastes, acupuncture therapists, and doctors who prescribe western medicines.

When it comes health advices, I find myself surprised that there’s rarely a consensus. In my six days recovering from a fever, I’ve heard one guy tell me that I should not eat because fasting is a way for the human body to clean up, but then another guy would say that, in spite of the lack of appetite, I should eat lest I don’t take in any nutrients that would cure the disease. One would tell me to not take a bath, another would say it’s ok to take a bath – and with the weather reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s hard to not resist a shower now and then. The only thing that people agreed on was that I needed to get some sleep, but then even the condition of sleeping was subjected to debate, like if it’s ok that I sleep on an air-conditioned room or should I sweat it out in the absence fans and air-cons.

In six days, my back was all red because of Gua Sha (a Chinese back scraping treatment), I’ve spent 30 minutes with needles punctured on both my hands, I’ve gone to “nasal treatment center” (that rose in popularity because of SARS and H1N1) where my throat and nose were dabbed with weird concoction sticking on a cotton swab, and I got some neck twisting massage that was so rough that I’m surprised my breath still hasn’t left me. And then, finally, I went with eating pills, which let drowsiness hit me as fast as a train traveling at bullet speed would kill me. I don’t know which of them were most effective, but although my fever has gone away, I still have persistent cough bugging me.

My days in Taiwan, all spent in illness. I don’t think I have much travel insights for this time around. There was something I wanted to say in this post, but some time in the writing, I forgot what it is.

Kung Fu Dunk Live Tweet Experience

I’m tempted to watch Jay Chou’s Kung Fu Dunk just to see if it’s as ridiculous (in a good way) as the title suggests

Also, Jay Chou and I have the same surname. You’ve just read a fact that you could not give a rat’s ass about. Thanks for reading.

I’m gonna live tweet Jay Chou’s Kung Fu Dunk. At the first 5 mins now and it already has 3 jokes that fell

Ooh slow mo already? It took Shaolin Soccer half an hour into the movie to use that gimmick. MORE IS MORE!

Stephen Chow’s character in Shaolin Soccer didn’t have to rely on some wish fulfillment scenarios, but Jay Chou has to?

I mean what the hell, every girl in Taiwan thinks Jay Chou is a stud, yet I’m supposed to be convinced that he’s a dweeb in this movie?

[the_nutbox responds: My name is J too but nobody thinks Im a stud. The world is so unfair! ]

I’m pretty sure no master in history has ever died from practicing kung fu stances in the snow.

Jay Chou’s acting is horrible. Like, there’s no heft in his enunciation, in a language that often sounds animated.

Oh so we’re supposed to think that a guy who can shoot coins straight into the mouth of a man is a basketball genius?

Btw just a disclaimer, my tweets for the next few minutes will contain major spoilers for Kung Fu Dunk

So look away if you’re someone who gets bothered by somebody spoiling a sports movie.

This is the kind of annoying strawberry generation pandering movie where the young people always have greater abilities than the elders.

Look, shooting bullseyes on dartboards doesn’t make one a better baller! Why not just call the movie “kung fu shooter”?

maybe nba teams should take cues from this movie and draft players by going to those shoddy bars with dart games in it

first fight scene kinda decent even if it looks like a gentrified suburban kid trying to flail his foot around

btw Stephen Chow’s surname is also the same as mine! Yet another fact no one cares about.

you know a movie is not doing it for you when its protagonist get beaten up, dramatic music plays, and your reaction is tweet about surnames

So Jay Chou guy gets to learn to play basketball by watching a powerpoint slideshow about its rules? THAT’S HOW JORDAN LEARNED TO PLAY TOO!

why do these movies make it so obvious who’s going to be the love interest by playing some romantic piano music when the girl first show?

Jay Chou is so stone faced, like Richard Gutierrez but Chinese. In Taiwanese I would call him “Jiu Tao Bin”. In Tagalog “Batong mukha”.

“Whoever gets the rebounds wins the game” yeah good job stealing lines from Slam Dunk, which is infinitely better than this trainwreck

Jay Chou can consistently shoot 3s from half court despite having never played before and having only practiced by shooting cans on bins.

Another plot stolen from Slam Dunk: the love interest being the younger sister of the team captain. Wow.

The dribblings from the obvious pop stars are so bad they would be called traveling, except when Lebron does it.

Why the hell does a jumpshot need a slowmo?

I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to drink wine while on bench. Hmm lemme ask ron artest to confirm this!

What the hell, the gym this team practices on look like those halls from taiwan’s famed computer expo. Maybe even its world trade center!

(looks at wikipedia and learns that it’s actually Shanghai’s Science Museum. Scrimmage in a science museum?!)

THIS IS SUBURBAN BASKETBALL, NOT THE REAL BASKETBALL WHERE PEOPLE FROM THE POOR HAVE TO TOUGH IT OUT

No joke, people in this movie can jump higher than those players from NBA Jam

A ball arching downward getting blocked was not called for goal tending and then it magically catapulted to the other hoop and went in.

The only comedic moment that managed to illicit a response from me came from a player making fun of Jay Chou’s gentrified upbringing.

First dunk Jay Chou does in game is a 3 point line dunk WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THIS!

the acting in this movie is so bad there are more awkward silences in it than there are dialogues

What the, there’s a team who wears american gladiators-like costume as basketbball jersey!

wow the opposing team flying kicked a baller and did not get called foul

i’m pretty sure you’re not permitted to wear metallic shoulder blades in a ball game

between the leg reverse layup ???

so the match is cancelled because the power was cut off, and will be resumed in 3 days. The score? 50 against 4. riiight.

how come everybody who’s into “illegal business” in this movie speaks cantonese? hk stereotype much?

another chinese movie trope: camera panning around the female actress when she’s crying

KFD’s idea for a pickup line: “i’ve always wanted to eat ice cream since i was a kid, but never had the chance. you’re like that ice cream”

ok i’ve stopped being entertained by how bad this movie is. it needs to end post haste.

what in the world, now some Qi bao wearing group shows up in a basketball game and plays?!

i’ve witness like 10 whole court pass alley oops already

some kung fu guy blocks a shot by sticking his body on the board!

why is no one in the movie indignant over how poorly officiated the game is?!

it makes home court games in Cleveland Cavaliers look like professional, balanced officiating!

an all out kung fu brawl in the court but no one in the audience was terrified for what happened. Malice in the Palace taught nothing

KFD is trying so hard to be Shaolin Soccer and even Kung Fu Hustle, and fails tremendously at either.

i give up. not watching this any longer.

(hours later)

So I’m gonna finish this crappy piece of crap movie “Kung Fu Dunk”. Live tweeting the remaining 10 minutes.

What an awful looking dunk. Toss the ball up while you’re at the peak of the jump, then catch it while you’re stationary airborne

WHY IS IT THAT THE MUSIC THAT PLAYS ON THAT BASKETBALL GAME HAS A GUY SINGING “TOFU TOFU TOFU”. HOW IS TOFU RELATED TO BASKETBALL?!

OH I GET IT I GUESS THAT MEANS VEGETARIANS WILL LEARN TO BALL LIKE PRO. I GUESS I STAND A CHANCE AFTER ALL!

3 pt line between the leg posterizing dunk my God this is so ridiculous

And why isn’t any one of these ballers sweating at all?!

OK so in final possession is the only time any players started working a sweat? In the last 2 sec?

Block the ball by punching it up below the hoop, and no one protests. Wow.

Step aside Christopher Reeves’ Superman, Jay Chou can reverse time by using kung fu moves, so that he can do the last possession again.

I mean sure, what Shaolin Soccer was missing was some sci fi time travel plot, right? THAT MAKES KUNG FU DUNK SO MUCH BETTER.

(Batrock responds: I didn’t much like Shaolin Soccer, myself. )

@Batrock I don’t either, but it’s “Hoop Dreams” in comparison to Kung Fu Dunk.

Time travel meant background became full of clouds & assorted objects like airplanes and evil faces. You got nothing on this 2001 Space Odd!

Next in Kung Fu Dunk 2: Jay Chou learns to use the fifth dimension and can tesser from hoops to hoops at will.

Not an ounce of this movie is genuine. It’s so crass and calculated and pandering.

Whole crowd cheered for the “villain team” when they won in d alt timeline, & did d same when d hero team won. Whose home is this anyway!

What the hell is with this abandoned son reunites with his guilt ridden rich dad scene? It’s so sappy and pointlessly sentimental

His mentor gets cast aside coz “real dad who abandoned you in bball court” loves you more than “wine expert involved in shady dealings”.

But then of course they get some teary reunion because Jay Chou eventually realizes who has been there for him all along.

You know people can’t tell if a scene is supposed to be sad or not unless you play violin in the background, of course.

Why is the theme song of this movie “please wear some qibao or else I’ll eat your tofu”? Isn’t “eat tofu” chinese slang for “eating skin”?

Charlene Choi in KFD looks uncomfortably close to one girl I dated and parted with much bitterness.

What is the point of stealing Slam Dunk’s “whoever gets the rebound wins the game” when the people in KFD don’t rebound, like, ever?

KFD is terrible and those who want to see it because it’s a Jay Chou’s product are better off diving into his mansion’s sewage.

Robo Bunny

There are a few constants in life that never cease miffing me, and I’m gonna mention one now. It’s spammers. My blog here used to have moderate exposure, because I was consistently posting back then. Oftentimes I would get comments that responded to my posts. Sure, I have only myself to blame for not writing as actively as I used to, but dang these spammers just won’t stop posting garbage everywhere, and I’m not going to tolerate them anymore.

So I’m going to permanently delete my shoutbox.

Anyway, I’m still in the process of finishing my Ace Attorney blog posts. I’m still trying to be energized about the whole business of blogging again, because as it happens I’ve fallen to the wayside for too long that it’s hard to find the main road again.

By the way, here’s my latest digital art creation:

Final Fantasy 13 Posts Index

Just to put the table of contents on top again.

Intro

1st Failure: 25 Hours of Linearity

2nd Failure: Unintuitive Open World

3rd Failure: Mortally Repetitive Combat

4th Failure: Eidolons, Agents of Uselessness

5th Failure: Pointless Crystarium

6th Failure: Confusing Equipment Upgrade System

7th Failure: Terrible Storytelling

8th Failure: Dialogues

9th Failure: Characters (MAJOR SPOILERS)

10th Failure: Villains (MAJOR SPOILERS)

11th Failure: Lightning (MAJOR SPOILERS)

12th Failure: Poor Design Choices

13th Failure: Repetitive Theme (MAJOR SPOILERS)

The Failures of Final Fantasy 13 (part 13): Repetitive Theme

(spoiler town)

(more…)

The Failures of Final Fantasy 13 (part 12): Poor Design Choices

Possibly the biggest recurring rebuttal that I could get for all my gripes about FF13 is what I’d call the “big picture” rebuttal. It happens when people say I can’t appreciate the beauty of the product as a whole because I concentrate on picking apart its finest details. After all, I should, as they say, acknowledge FF13 for the thought that has gone behind its designs, its sceneries, and its wondrous spectacle. I should like its “big picture”

To which, I respond: No. I don’t like FF13’s designs. I think they could use a lot of work.

Sure, if you’re talking about the abuse it must’ve given the graphics processor, I will acknowledge that the amount of graphical details rendered in FF13 has yet to be surpassed by other games. When considering that its characters wear elaborate accessories, it’s mighty impressive that neither the accessories nor the hair clip through themselves or other objects. Other games have struggled, mostly failed, in rendering 3d objects that don’t clip with each other. I praise FF13’s graphical department for this feat.

As for the design, now that I will pick on. I found that all the sights, the sceneries in FF13 as nothing more than glorified recycles of the earlier games. Sure, I think there’s a target audience who will be thrilled to see some locales from earlier FF games rendered in full-3d, but I’m more of the camp who, whenever he/she plays an FF, expects that it would be unique, with different feel from its predecessors. Not so with FF13, no. Specifically, its many futuristic interiors, forests, and cities felt like cutouts from FF10 but with brighter lights and greater details. With the exception of Gran Pulse, which, really, was but one great field of plains, none of the locations left a mark to my memory. So I guess a plain is what I would associate FF13 with. Not impressive. I had a steampunk city of Narshe for FF6, a cyberpunk junkyard-town of Midgard for FF7, a moving school of Balamb Garden for FF8, a seaside town of Besaid for FF10, and a sprawling medieval marketplace of Rabanastre for FF12.

Even the characters designs felt uninspired. I hinted at this when I talked about Eidolons, but Square Enix’s characters’ fashion styles have become one of my favorite stuff to ridicule because they, like Rob Liefield’s characters’, reveal weird fetishes. Since FF7, at least one character in a Final Fantasy or other SE game, notably Kingdom Hearts and The World Ends With You, wears superfluous belts, zippers, and pouches, and is asymmetrically accessorized. It looks jarring. Not just that, some of the characters in FF13 reuses previous designs. For instance, Hope…

looks like Vaan (FF12).

Lightning and Princess Ashe (FF12) share the same color scheme.

Snow…

looks nearly identical to Seifer’s Kingdom Hearts’ incarnation.

They also are one-dimensional, overused anime archetypes: Hope is emo, Snow is heroic, Lightning hates people, Vanille is hyper, Fang is the strong female, Yaag is ruthless and has a name that sounds like a yell (YAAAAAAG!!!!), Jihl is sadistic, Dysley is the evil pope. They lack identity in how they look and in how they’re written.

I hate saying this because I would come off as a writer who knows better and could do better (when I probably couldn’t), but if there’s one thing I learned about reading various books and instructive writing guides, it’s that if you’re crafting a fantasy world, you’re going to have to make the world come out as alive as you can. Meaning that people can get immersed into it. I realize that “immersion” is a loaded word warranting further, more academic scrutiny, but all I could give you is, I hope, a primer, and why I think FF13 fails in immersion.

First I’ll talk about how FF13’s world-building runs counter to the qualities that would make an involved world. FF13 has all these locations that the player will have trouble connecting. Some people would think that this problem stems from the game’s lack of world map, and that makes sense, but I think that even without a map you could somehow comprehend its world’s scope if you could get a feel of how each areas are related. FF13 fails here, because it constantly whisks your party members from one location to another without giving you a sense of which direction they’re going. Is it north, east, south or west? Who knows. Yes, those cutscenes with planes and various assortments of vehicles may impress as technical showcases, but they’re done at the expense of obscuring how a forest connects with the base you’ve left, how this city connects to that tower, how far the mountain is from the airborne base, and how the world below and above can come into contact. I’ll repeat the last one: the central plot of FF13 has to do with the above and the below world, yet it’s too much to ask to know how they connect.

Much has been made about FF13’s lack of towns, it being the hater’s greatest knock on FF13’s failure as an RPG. While I don’t necessarily think that towns are a requirement for an RPG, I believe that they help give significance to its main crisis. A good 90% of videogame’s stories (and RPG’s specifically) are about saving their world, and I hate to put this bluntly, but I really don’t have the time and the desire to save every fantasy world. A game has to make me feel something about its world — and for that to happen, I have to feel something about its people. I have to feel that it matters for its people to be free of all sufferings.

A game with good towns accomplishes this. For example, Fallout 3’s Big Town. Now, Big Town is an optional area, and you may finish Fallout 3 ignoring it altogether. Yet, when I visited and heard about flesh-eating orcs (or mutants, as they are called) coming here to abduct its residents, I was impelled to go the trouble of rescuing all of them by going into the mutants’ hideout. I returned to Big Town having rescued the abducted, and stayed behind so that I could help defend its residents against another mutant attack, sending mutants message that no, we’re not taking your abuse anymore. After I succeeded routing the mutants in Big Town, all of its residents cheered me on, thanking me for all the help that I’ve brought them. By then, I got a rush, a joy I rarely felt elsewhere, because of a sense that what I did actually mattered.

By keeping the towns and their interaction at bare minimum, FF13 gave me none of the satisfaction to care about its world. I don’t – I can’t – get involved with anyone populating it, even in the barest minimum way. Support casts, those not part of my group, come and go within a matter of 2 minutes, without appearing again. Even if I get to see people partying and watching light shows in cutscenes, when I’m playing, its world might as well have been an unpopulated dystopia. If someone nukes its whole world down I would’ve felt nothing, no remorse because I don’t have anyone to mourn for! Not for the kid who gives me pies, not for the drama club schoolgirl who has feelings for me, not for the granny who gives me foods for thought, not for the shady merchant who welcomes me out loud whenever we do business, nobody. Since no one mattered to me, why should I be compelled to crush its enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of their women? Why should I care to defeat its evil rulers who intend to annihilate its world?

Sure, I get that some people are annoyed by the quests that come with towns. But you know what? So long as they’re optional, are enjoyable, and don’t require insane amount of time commitment, I don’t mind. Besides, don’t we all play RPGs to earn rare items? If performing these chores would reward me a legendary weapon like a lolcat-slayer-DX, I’m all for it.

In terms of story, the game often looks like it’s going out of its way to be as anti-immersive as possible. For instance, the gobbledygook. When you’re talking about a fantasy story with lots and lots of fantasy proper nouns, you’re going to have to warm the readers up about what these nouns mean to ensure that you’re not losing the readers. Which isn’t what FF13 did. What FF13 did is start off with characters talking to each other knowing full well what’s going on, but not cluing us in because we’re nothing but ignoramus viewers – so screw us! Go read the bloody datalog and if it bores us we only have ourselves to blame! And when the dialogues aren’t confusing, they’re hilariously hokey. How can anyone possibly take a drama seriously when its people say “moms are tough” twice before dying?

(The wikiquote entry of FF13 is somehow longer than The Godfather, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars combined. I don’t know if that’s a sick joke, but at least I can always refer to it whenever I’m feeling down and need to “revel” on gems like “We live to make the impossible possible.” Or “When prayers turn into promises, not even fate can stand in their way.” Or “Here comes the Hero!”)

It’s not even for a fact that FF13’s terminologies couldn’t have been made more comprehensible had they made certain design choices. Since Fang rose to the upper world by her lonesome, she would’ve spent time understanding what’s the deal with all the l’Cie and fal’Cie. Wouldn’t it have been better for FF13 to tell its story in Fang’s POV, instead of Lightning’s? Someone care to tell me what Lightning’s worth is again?

Finally, we come to player’s output. When I play a game, I just want to feel like I am of any import to its world. In the modern era of gaming, we’ve reached a point where the illusions of choice are seeming less like illusions. Game like Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3 oblige the players to make some tough decisions, which would affect the course of the game. Even the older games that we’d consider “retro” now allow more freedom than FF13. FF7 permits you to date various party member when you visit Golden Saucer. In Chrono Trigger you can fight Lavos anytime and get different endings from it. Can you do anything in FF13 that would alter its course even in the slightest? Well, the greatest variation of your experience from others is if you see the poorly-animated optional cutscenes from Gran Pulse, which are nothing but fillers, like most “deleted scenes” from DVDs/Blu-Rays. That aside, everyone playing FF13 gets the same story, follows the same linear path, and does the same three things over and over again: to fight, walk, watch cutscene. Fight, walk, watch cutscene. Fight, walk, watch cutscene. You can’t even interact with the objects rendered by this game with its supposedly jaw-dropping visuals. All the columns, the forests and the faunas here, the cars and the statues there? Meaningless window dressings.

So there you have it, the elite RPG company that is Square Enix spending millions of dollars on a game that is so counterintuitive to everything an RPG offers. The gameplay is broken, the story is silly, the world-building is ignored in favor of all its overcompensating, yet pointless, visuals. Messed up priorities if you ask me.

The Failures of Final Fantasy 13 (part 11): Lightning

(Yep, spoiler central again)

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The Failures of Final Fantasy 13 (part 10): Villains

(includes major spoilers)

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The Failures of Final Fantasy 13 (part 9): Characters

(with major spoilers)

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The Failures of Final Fantasy 13 (part 8): Dialogues

“Moms are tough.”

“We live to make the impossible possible.”

“When prayers turn into promises, not even fate can stand in their way.”

Need I say more? In FF13’s dialogue, you’re either sifting through confusing made-up words, or enduring hokey dialogues. Sometimes, both; Sazh said, “Cie food”.