Well, I knew of a web service you could use to make your own gamer card. So, I thought that I could use it pull in achievement information, and then weight the games by their aggregate scores on metacritic (I was also going to have games older than four years automatically drop off).

The first hurdle was trying to find an api for metacritic. Let me save you some time, there isn’t one. What I ended up doing was writing a quick screen scraper that I could use to extract the information, and then cache in my database. It was a pain in the ass, but it worked.

The next phase was pulling in the achievement information. This is where the wheels fell off the truck. I had not tried to pull achievement information form this before and, I was horrified to discover that it only pulls “Recent” game achievements. Or, roughly the last twenty or so game you played. So, for me, it was missing over 13,000 of my total gamer score. That’s no good.

Upon doing more research into the matter, there is no public way to retrieve this information. Basically, what you would have to do is log into people’s accounts on xbox.com, and then download all the html files with achievement information, and parse them. Fuck that.

I declare this project officially dead for the time being.

SPOILERS

The movie was pretty good. I am both excited to see another original science fiction movie this year, and disappointed that it used one of my ideas (humans as the evil invaders). I am sure may people are going to dissuaded by the length of the film (161 minutes), but it really doesn’t feel that long. And, the length allowed for a proper exposition.

Unfortunately, as you probably know from all the ads for the movie (vanberge has informed me that there are many of them) that the movie has a strong CGI look. This is pretty consistent throughout the entire film. I would say it looks kind of like the next generation of the visuals used in Final Fantasy the Spirit(s) Within.

Initially, the visuals are quite impressive. And, its is clear that a lot of effort and planning went into making this project. The awe of the visuals wears off pretty quickly. After you are done being distracted by all the “purdy colors” you start to get to the core mechanics of the film. At its core, the film is pretty humdrum. It has many formulaic elements, such as the “tough” old mercenary. The money driven corporate director. The scientist without any respect for “jar heads.” The star crossed lovers, etc, etc, etc… So, despite being an original idea, there is not a whole lot about it that is original.

There are also some weird mixed messages in the film. Some people have been talking about topics of imperialism, and biodiversity. However, these topics are only addressed in the most superficial sense. Sure, you have the more advanced race coming in to dominate the backwards civilization. However this whole theme breaks down in the end when the primitive tribal people win.

That’s right. The blue people, with bows and arrows defeat mechanized infantry, air ships, and all kinds of things. It shatters the suspensions of the disbelief for the film. I do not care if you are supposed to be rooting for the blue people, they would have been crushed, without question.

However, I will concede the that tactics the humans used were incredibly stupid. I guess in this new space age of 2154 the human race has forgotten rocket science. Seems to me that it would made a lot more sense to bombard the stick people with artillery/missiles from a safe distance. Instead, they decided to fly in low so they were completely vulnerable. And, yes I remember in the film when they tried to explain this all away with “magical” interference from whatever. But, you don’t need a GPS / laser guided missile. Lets use math people.

The whole romance angle of the film didn’t do anything for me. I suppose it was pretty convenient that they happened upon a planet with a humanoid race that has such similar social norms as humanity. Granted, they are animist beliefs, but there are humans who believe in that crap. I did not really relate to the transformation of the main character. He seemed to have developed some kind of dissociative disorder, and allowed his fantasy world to supersede reality. Unfortunately, this problem had dire consequences.

Sure, he saved hundreds of sentient life forms, but I cannot even imagine the economic harm that was wrought when the company was forced to leave the planet. After loosing access to such a rich supply of a valuable resource must have sent their stock into a downward spiral. Think of the poor investors!

Granted the way the company handled the situation was also flawed. The Na’vi (blue people) just happened to have built an entire tribe over top of a huge mineral deposit. They should have known better, perhaps if they were so dedicated to living like savages they could have done something about it.

Speaking of savages…the Na’vi worship some kind of organic neural network. This network allows them to store and retrieve memories at certain data port trees. It seems to me that if you were able to build such a wealth of generational knowledge you would be able to develop a pretty advanced civilization. Instead the system just seems to re-enforce their ignorance.

I found myself quite conflicted during the final battle. I wanted to root for the humans, since I am a human. But, the movie tried hard to make the humans unlikeable, and the Na’vi the scrappy underdogs. So, I ended up just watching the sequence on the screen wondering if the unintelligent humans, or the valiant savages were going to win the day, not caring one way or the other.

Ultimately, the movie had an entirely too saccharine sweet ending. Their only real loses were the annoying scientist that at one time hated Jake Sully, and then liked him later one without any on screen explanation why. And, the pilot played by the dreadful Michelle Rodriguez, so once again no big loss.

There is a big “happy ending” sequence, where the “hero” has his human body killed, and all his memories transferred into his Avatar. I guess this is good because it means he doesn’t need to use the machines to connect to the Avatar anymore. And, he doesn’t have to go back to his human life that he has abandoned. Unfortunately, all he had to do was die to achieve the goal. Lovely.

His teacher, become lover survived. And, the once tribal leader in waiting was killed in the battle with the humans, so that took care of a nasty issue, since he was supposed to mate with Neytiri before Jake cockblocked him. The company personnel were forced to the leave the planet, but if they’re smart they would just come back with some orbital payloads and wipe out the Na’vi. But, they proved without a doubt in this film that they are not smart.

While I think the film was pretty average, I do support original science fiction, and I do think the visuals are worth seeing on the big screen, so I am going to give this movie a 2. Feel free to see it.

Now, a year later I have finally got an opportunity to play the game in earnest. And, I have to say it was pretty fun. Wes and I started playing yesterday. And, we got off to a bit of a rough start. The rooftop of the first campaign was particularly brutal. I don’t even know how many times we replayed that rooftop.

Eventually one of Wes’ friends, Ryan, came on, and after several more attempts we were successful…sort of. Wes got himself killed, and Ryan sacrificed himself so I could get to the copper. Good times.

My brother joined in for the next area, Dead Air. And, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the game is amazing with four people. We had a great moments, particularly when Wes was off the comm. It was a part where we needed to turn on a van to break down a barricade. This triggered a huge horde flood. The three of us on the comm coordinated into a closet so we handled the flood without incident. Wes however, was left out and the open. The zombies picked his bones clean in seconds.

Today we finished up the other two areas. And, I think I actually liked them a bit more than the ones we played yesterday. However, they were rather similar. I liked how they were a bit more open. The hospital and the airport consist of primarily enclosed areas. Vanberge joined in the carnage so we were able to get another four player slaughterfest going. Highlights included Jason and Wes going toe to toe with a tank and getting obliterated.

Since I am not sure when Left 4 Dead 2 is going to come from Amazon, I think that I am going to purchase the DLC to check out the other areas.

Based on the past two days of game play, I am going to give the game a 2 (above average) on the undecim rating scale.

**PLAYER FIGHT**

You have encountered Vanberge!!

Vanberge surprises you.

** Vanberge misses you Completely! **

Your Hitpoints : 534
Vanberge’s Hitpoints : 548

(A)ttack
(S)tats
(R)un

(D)eath Knight Attack (1)

Your command, jjafuller?  [A] : A

You hit Vanberge for 173 damage!
** Vanberge misses you Completely! **

Your Hitpoints : 534
Vanberge’s Hitpoints : 375

(A)ttack
(S)tats
(R)un

(D)eath Knight Attack (1)

Your command, jjafuller?  [A] : A

You hit Vanberge for 60 damage!
** Vanberge misses you Completely! **

Your Hitpoints : 534
Vanberge’s Hitpoints : 315

(A)ttack
(S)tats
(R)un

(D)eath Knight Attack (1)

Your command, jjafuller?  [A] : A

You hit Vanberge for 179 damage!
** Vanberge misses you Completely! **

Your Hitpoints : 534
Vanberge’s Hitpoints : 136

(A)ttack
(S)tats
(R)un

(D)eath Knight Attack (1)

Your command, jjafuller?  [A] : A

You hit Vanberge for 180 damage!
You have killed Vanberge!

You receive 0 gold, and 417487 experience!

You also find 4 Gems!

You mean Vanberge? [Y] Y

You hunt around for Vanberge…YOU FIND HIM!
He is brandishing a dangerous looking Bone Cruncher.

Attack Vanberge [Y] :Y

**PLAYER FIGHT**

You have encountered Vanberge!!

Your skill allows you to get the first strike.

Your Hitpoints : 348
Vanberge’s Hitpoints : 353

(A)ttack
(S)tats
(R)un

(D)eath Knight Attack (1)

Your command, jjafuller?  [A] : A

You hit Vanberge for 8 damage!
** Vanberge Executes A Power Move **

** Vanberge misses you Completely! **

Last week I managed to procure this game. Sadly, I had to put it on a credit card since I am too broke at the moment to be able to pay for it in cash. Hurray for interest. Sadly, since my purchase was delayed, I missed a marathon session with vanberge, and vanlandw (who wussed out and played on Heroic). Luckily, vanlandw was up for a second play through so I was able to obliterate the campaign on legendary with him and my brother, Jason. Good times.

The game itself is basically halo 3, but a little suckier. There is HUD system that obscures a lot of screen, and sucks on split screen. Additionally, they decided to put health back in to the game. So, it effectively works a lot like the original halo, where you have a “shield” and health. I have to say that the past two games have made me a bit soft, because it sucks to have to find health packs again. There are a few quirks in the system as well, for example, if you pick up a turret it makes you run faster, whoops.

When we started there were some serious lag issues. For the first couple of levels the game was lagging so much it was barely playable. However, during this time vanlandw was experiencing smooth game play, so I assume my degraded performance was due to caching data to the hard drive or something. Anyhow, after a few levels everything started working smoothly.

The campaign was pretty fun, not as good as Halo 3, but better than Halo 2. I hate the flashback aspect of it it though. And, the story is not particularly interesting, especially if you listen to the audio clips. The whole “save the girl” storyline…give me a break. The campaign was effectively short though, as the three of us were able to beat it on legendary in under five hours. And, there are not really any tough choke points like there are in Halo 3.

Firefight kind of sucks. It is not fun to solo, period. And, while you can play with friends, there is no matchmaking so if none of your friends on online you’re by yourself. Also, the skull handling is pretty annoying. I would really like to have more control over it. I tend to prefer things that are set so you know specifically what is required of you. This constantly changing the terms of battle only deters from the experience. Even if all they had was a way to “buy” disabling of a skull with points kind of like you do in Cal of Duty: World at War in Zombie mode.

Most of the achievements in the game are pretty easy to get, in fact you get about half of them just by playing through the campaign. However, there are some tough ones, particularly the vidmaster challenges. I am not sure about the fightfight achievements. I haven’t been able to get four people together to play it, and so far the best I’ve done with a group is 120,000, and that took quite a while to get.

I am not exactly sure why, but I think the game designers took a page out of the Gears of War book with the way things are setup. The level designs are much more muted than what I’m used to in Halo. And the “visor mode” just washes things out worse.

Basically, I’d say the game was fun, but not great. I would recommend it to every Halo fan. However, I think that most casual gamers would not get a lot of enjoyment out of it. I’m giving the game a 3 on my undecim rating system.

When I hoped on my xbox to try out Shadow Complex, vanberge sent me a party invite. So, I joined in to watch “The Union: The Business Behind Getting High” which was painfully slow, and not a group film. However, after that vanlandw queued up “Double Team” with JCVD, which is a much better party film.

Unfortunately, during the viewing vanberge and vanlandw had to take off, and when the party was disbanded it booted me from the theater ending the film. Bah.

Exciting World of Micromanaged Combat

There is a huge problem with the combat in FFX. Characters can only get experience if they are actively involved in combat. For example, if you had three people in your party and only one person killed the enemy that person would be the only one to get experience. Your other team members would be left with nothing. This violates a convention that RPG gamers have gotten used to over the years. That standard is everyone in a party splits experience regardless of what they did during the battle.

While this new system may be innovative, and slightly more realistic is makes battles a pain in the ass and utterly tedious. This is because you have to swap out party members during battle so they can do something. This requires constant juggling of characters and a lot more micromanagement that I’d like to think about while grinding. My preferred method is what was used in FF7: everyone in the party gets full experience, and everyone not in the party gets half experience.

Wretched Crystal Room

I do not even know what you would call this area, but people who have played the game will know what I am talking about. Within Sin there is a room you have to run around and collect gems that appear, and disappear (usually just before you get to them). While you are running around trying to collect the gems before they fade away there are crystal shards that jut up from the ground at random. Normally, this isn’t that big of an issue, but the way it is setup is just sadistic. You spend almost the entire time running blind across the circular area trying to find the gems, because the camera is facing your character so you cannot see where you are running. I can only assume the game designers did this to be dicks, and to increase your chances of running into shards.

If you hit one of these shards you are instantly propelled into battle. And, these battles are nothing to laugh at. Most of them just force you to spend precious items you have collected. But, one in particular is just sadistic. The Great Malboro is an insidious creature that has a special attack called “bad breath.” This horrible ability utterly screwed my team, as it inflicts various status ailments, including some kind of confusion. The result was that it could slowly pick away at my characters while they slaughtered each other, and all I could was watch.

Sadly, I had never encountered anything like it in the game up to that point. As a result, I was not at all equipped to face it. Luckily, I happened to have a return sphere so I was able to add first strike to one of Auron’s weapons. I charged his overdrive and held it until I fought the creature. I was pretty strong when I faced it, so that over drive was usually enough to get it before it could get me. Ugh, I still get furious just thinking about it.

Moonflow

Be careful what you name things. I have read several books that use the term “moonflow” to refer to menstruation. Unfortunately this made much of this sequence of the game quite disturbing, and / or just gross. The thought of moonflow glowing is just wrong. And, riding a creature the lives off of organisms in the moonflow, ugh. The stories about Yuna repeatedly jumping into the moonflow as a child…and then, when Tidus and Wakka just jump into the moonflow…the thought of that battle still makes me feel dirty.

Although this should be an unwritten rule, it is an important one: do not name things after menstruation.

Spare No Expense

The worst movie I have ever played.

Over the past week I have made a short pilgrimage to hell and back, all in the name of gamer camaraderie. Vanlandw decided to play the game because he has been suffering no end of torment from others that have completed game. Apparently, during his college years he played the game near completion but walked away. Thus, the goal being to complete the game and shut people up. Since the game is so old, and I had never played it, I agreed to play through it at the same time so he had someone to discuss it. What a mistake that was.

I have been playing video games since the last 80’s and I cannot think of another game that was as miserable to play as Final Fantasy X. Sure many games have glitches, bad stories, linear gameplay and a variety of other issues but Square really kicked it up a notch. Throughout this post I am going to break down the major issues of the game and try to explain why they made the game so unbearable. I hope you enjoy.

Video Games Should Not be Movies

Not everyone agrees with me on this, but I fervently believe that videos are for playing not for watching. Granted, I don’t mind a small cut scene that shows up between major levels to give you a little breather. Final Fantasy X takes cut scenes to the extreme. Rather than having gameplay occasionally interrupted by cut scenes FFX has cut scenes intermittently interrupted by gameplay. A vast majority of the game consists of you either walking for a couple of seconds to get to the next cut scene, or fighting a battle in the middle of a cut scene. Periodically, the difficulty is ramped way up so you have to grind by walking back and forth in a small area that is between a cut scene and a boss battle.

To add insult to injury, not only are you constantly being forced to endure cut scene after cut scene, but you cannot skip them. That’s right, you are forced to watch hours of cut scenes. Many of them do not even contain dialog, or advance the story at all. I clocked a lul in one cut scene that consisted of five minutes of nothing more than the camera panning around. How emo of Square.

FFX is the first FF game to contain voice acting. I think they must have paid a fortune for it, because they really wanted you to experience it. While you can hit X to advance dialog in some places (it doesn’t speed up the cut scene it just clears the text and ends the voice) you cannot in many places. The really frustrating part is the inconsistency. You may have a cut scene where you can skip every dialog line, and others where there are certain lines that you are forced to listen to. And, in some cut scenes you cannot speed up anything, you just have to suffer through it. In many ways it reminds me of Xenogears, where you were frequently forced to endure long stretches of text that you could not speed the advance of. The main difference being that Xenogears had a compelling story.

If You Lean on Your Story it Better Be Good

Since you’ll spend 90% of your time “playing” FFX watching cut scenes it would have been nice had they actually crafted a compelling story. You play as a homeless person who isn’t actually a person. Apparently his father treated him like shit when he was a kid. But, its ok because his dad isn’t real either. Also, you get to kill him. I laughed aloud when Tidus slew his father and then informed him that he hated him. For some reason your character decides to follow some woman on her quest to kill a thing that will only get resurrected immediately after she kills. By the way, in the act of killing that thing she’ll die. Sounds a like a great plan. Not surprisingly a corrupt religious organization is behind all the bullshit.

They try to do a little philosophical stuff relating to peace, order, death, and hope but it rings pretty hollow because all their explanations are either glazed over or poorly thought out. I spent most of the time feeling like I was being lectured to by a stoner. Not just any stoner, an OLD stoner.

Pretty Graphics Do Not a Good Game Make

FFX is an excellent example of why companies should focus on game play and not worry about trying to make pretty graphics. The problem with fancy graphics is that they do not withstand the test of time. Sure, FFX may have been cutting edge at the time, but where is the replay value? It just looks dated. And, it is painfully obvious that the gameplay they cobbled together sucks, so the whole experience is just dreadful. Some may argue that it is enough to have fancy graphics to drive sales shortly after the release of the title. To a certain extent that argument makes sense, but it does not add lasting appeal.

FFX would be a capable Commodore 64 game. Sure the game has fancy, “lush” 3d environments but they are horribly ridged. You cannot just walk around an explore, you have to follow the set path laid out for you. This would be incredibly frustrating if you were just wondering around bumping into invisible walls, but they were nice enough to put a 2d map in the corner of the screen. So, if you are like me, you just ignore the 3d environment and look at the 2d map to navigate. The nice thing about the 2d map is that the controller tends to reflect the direction you need to move is better reflected than it is in the 3d environment. In some of the really zig-zaggy areas you had to hold up to go down on the 3d map, and visa versa, truly maddening. Everything else could have easily been text. Like I said, the graphics just do not hold up.

Follow the Blinking Red Arrow

Role playing games have a rich history of exploration and character building. Part of the fun is talking to people and puzzling out what you are supposed to do to advance your quest. FFX decided to go in another direction. As I mentioned a moment ago, even though the game has a 3d presentation it is actually strictly 2d. Worse yet, the paths you are constrained to are painfully linear. Rarely does the road actually fork, and when it does you get a blinking red arrow telling you where to go. A few places don’t give you an arrow, but they are pretty mundane.

At each one of the temples that you go to get new creatures to summon (long uninteresting story behind that), there is an extraordinarily lame puzzle you have to solve using “orbs” that fit into “slots.” There are no random battles during these puzzles, so you cannot get any grinding out of the way, and the puzzles themselves were all very easy, but very time consuming and / or tedious. Imagine you are making yourself a sandwich. But, you can only make the sandwich on your porch, and you can only carry one ingredient at time. Sure you could do it, no problem, but it seems like a pretty ridiculous way to make a sandwich.

Blitzball, Worst Game Ever.

If you create a stupid minigame, you should not force anyone to play it. Blitzball is kind of weird twist on water polo and soccer. The gameplay is absolutely dreadful. For the most part the game plays itself, you have to change the mode to actually take control of someone and that only works when you are on offense. Swimming around is periodically interrupted by “encounters” where everything stops so you can figure out what you want to do. There is some math involved but it usually doesn’t matter because the odds are stacked against you. You can level your characters, pick up different character, and learn techniques. But, the game isn’t fun so you probably won’t do this. And, if you take a moment to think about it, the game does not even make sense.

Before I get into the longer description, you should know, the characters in the game can apparently hold their breath forever. I am not exactly sure why of this, I do not recall an explanation. This is critical to note, since an entire game of blitzball is played underwater. That’s right, they take an enormous sphere and fill it full of water. It’s an interesting concept, but they do not capitalize on it. The game field is a 2d sliver in the center of the sphere. So, you have this interesting 3d environment and you are once again constrained to a 2d scape, sweet. Aside from the annoying aspects of this, there are all kinds of physics problems.

Since the players are swimming around at the center of the sphere, there would be all kinds of pressure changes. This would not only affect the trajectory of the ball, but it would horribly effect the players. I am fairly certain players would suffer a nasty case of the bends from a regular game, even though its only 10 minutes long. The ball itself I can only imagine is magic. I cannot think of any substance that it could be filled with that would allow it to follow its intended path when thrown through a pressure gradient. Even you do manage to maintain your suspension of disbelieve there are some other issues that are just plain silly.

I have never jumped into a body of water fully clothed. Have you? Apparently every single person in all of Sphira (what they call the archipelago of the game world) only owns a single outfit (which the exception of Rikku, I guess she got lucky). The outfits look like something you would scrounge together out of bits of clothe must be unitards because no one strips anything off before they jump into the ocean, or blitzball sphere, or any other body of water.

There is a really weird scene in the game where Yuna (the chick you follow around for some reason) is wading in a pool of water. She is in this pool fully clothed in a kimono. I cannot imagine how much water all those layers of clothe would soak up, or how miserable it would be walking around in them while you wait for them to dry, if they would even ever dry while layered like they are. Can you imagine how bad it would smell to walk into a room full of people that have been wearing the same clothes in and out of water in various states of moistness?

Conclusion

Finally, Its Over

I decided to cut my feedback on the game short, and only pointed out the issues that I felt the most strongly about. Video games really need to focus on excellent game play, and put visual presentation in the back seat in order for games to have lasting appeal. And, when they are making a story element the forefront of the experience, at least allow people skip things once they have seen them, and do your best to uphold the suspension of disbelief. With these things mind I will issue my final verdict.

According to my standard rating scale, everything starts as a 0, thats “average” in my book. From there things can go up or down five points, resulting in a -5 to 5 scale. I have played some bad games before, but I think this is going to be my first official -5 ranking. Not doubt I will get some nasty comments from fan boys, but everything I stated needed to be said.