Alonzorion's Gaming Blog

Final Fantasy XIII-2 OST album review

2012-01-23T20:56:00.004+00:00

Last week I dared to watch a trailer for Final Fantasy XIII part 2 despite having an immense dislike for Final Fantasy XIII and just about everything else Square Enix has produced since it was formed! I was delightfully shocked by how good it was, something really stood out about it too and you can probably guess what... yup, the soundtracks! So I decided to listen to a few more picked out at random and after my eardrums agreed with those, I decided to search for the entire OST album. Four discs, 79 soundtracks, and I love them so much that I wish I could show my appreciation by purchasing a physical copy of the album however it seems it isn't openly available in the UK, or at least it isn't YET, I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

This is quite easily my new favourite OST album.

The soundtracks can be separated out between the main three composers of the album, Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta, and Mitsuto Suzuki.

Masashi who's contributed to the least number of soundtracks of the three appears to have focused on maintaining the originality of the Final Fantasy series by providing us with some orchestral pieces such as the opening, ending and title themes, a few epic battle themes such as 'Knight of the Goddess' and emotive character themes!

Naoshi has provided the game with some of the most seemingly unfitting soundtracks I've ever come across, they're very conflicting and inconsistent yet beautiful at the same time, 'Worlds Collide' is probably the best example of unfitting, Naoshi worked on this using the vocals of David Whitaker who essentially, is a rap artist. When I first heard this soundtrack I thought it'd never fit into the game so I researched, and after finding the part of the game it's in, and watching it, I was glad to discover I was wrong.

'Run' is an interesting soundtrack by Naoshi, it sounds like a battle between strings, keys, and percussion, an amazing sensation for the ears, something I feel I've longed for. 'Noel's Theme' which follows is essentially a softer vocal version of it, a number of the soundtracks by all three composers are a reproduction of another with different arrangements and instruments, one normally more energetic than the other, they can normally be found together.

There's the contribution of trippy, lush, ambient, downtempo soundtracks from all three composers which really strike a chord with me, see 'Invisible Invaders'. Many of soundtracks on the album contain some fantastic female vocals and many others are what I call a 'transitional soundtrack', a soundtrack which merges seamlessly into another, I'm all in-favour of the use of these in games, they really work perfectly and keep the game fresh and free of repetitive soundtracks, 'Plains of Eternity' and 'Plains of Eternity -Aggressive Mix-' are a good example of this however, just one of many.

Finally we've got Mitsuto, futuristic atmospheric techno is what he adds to the album, a lot of which I hope fit the part in-game as much as I'd like to imagine they do, though I hope that of all the soundtracks! Obviously it's a little hard for me to review that part without actually playing the game! A number of the soundtracks Mitsuto has worked on use the vocals of, ORIGA, a female vocalist, Russian by nationality, she has such an enchanting and unique voice, see 'Historia Crux'.

The only thing that I can criticise is that the chocobo themes are terrible, all three of them, they shouldn't have to be resurrected for every new edition to the Final Fantasy series, just, leave, it, dead, make, something, new! Originality, urgh.

So, am I encouraging to buy the game on it's release? No, no I'm not, I've not even so much as touched it myself! What I do recommend though is that you keep your distance, pray for a good game and if you haven't already, watch the trailer, play the demo available on PSN or Xbox Live or alternatively do what I did and watch it, oh and of course, give the soundtracks a listen, they can all be found on YouTube! Thanks for reading!

Set the difficulty to 'unplayable' mode

2012-01-05T22:32:00.000+00:00

The King of the Night has nothing on this, he's just a boss after all.

Here we have Chaos Legion, an entire fucking game that seems unbeatable.

A Playstation 2 game produced and published by Capcom, I got it upon it's release in 2003 and haven't touched it for a few years. I quite enjoyed playing it as a kid so I figured I'd give it another shot and perhaps produce some recording from it... you sadly won't be seeing any of those now, why? Well, because I struggled to play it from the beginning of the game through to stage 6 on NORMAL difficulty... if memory serves there's about 14 fucking stages!

Stage 7 made the game unplayable, the stage itself took me about two hours to complete and I felt I was going no where! Fighting re-spawning enemies over and over, then came the boss, this fucking shell thing... unreachable, unbreachable (yes I did just make that word up) and seemingly unbeatable. Basically it forced you to fight minions while it stayed at just enough distance to be out of reach, occasionally to move in and attack you with a shock-wave, providing you with about 5 seconds to kick the shit out of it.

Now the part which made the game unplayable is the fact that this boss fight forced me to exhaust all my healing supplies and they happen to be a necessity if I wanted to continue the game, so I thought, fuck this game, not before raping that seventh boss though, hahah. Bitch. May do a Let's Play Short of this to prove it's ridiculousness so keep an eye out.

(Originally wrote in Nov '11)

Too many hobbies, too little time

2011-12-30T15:23:00.002+00:00

I've been playing Skylanders... I heard a soundtrack I quite liked so I decided I'd look it up, sadly it turned out to be one of those segmented, disjointed, transitional soundtracks... I was disappointed so I decided I'd take it upon myself to use my pro sound engineering skillz and fix up a more attractive, flowing version of it and after a couple of hours of toying I realised I didn't have time for it, and that there's a lot of other people out there that could do a better job than I, so I gave up... I decided I'd upload what I'd produced anyho, obviously it's unfinished, but hey.

Since I uploaded it I've received nothing but praise, listening back over it I didn't do such a bad job and probably should have another crack at it some time soon.

Obligatory end of year post

2011-12-28T19:30:00.003+00:00

So I can't help but notice how much dust this blog has collected over the later half of this year... when was my last well written post? Appears to have been published in July... oh dear.

So what's going on? Why has my blog activity decreased? Well it's a for a number of reasons, primarily because I keep starting posts, getting so so fucking close to completing them and then putting them to one side... permanently, other than that, it's pretty much just me being picky and neglectful.

So here's what I'm going to do... first off, I'm going to polish off the posts that I've left unfinished and once I've started, I'm not going to start doing anything else until they're published. Once that's all out the way, I'm going to keep a more active mind about what I can post about on my blog, so there, obligatory end of year post complete... now I've just got to address everything YouTube wise, I'll attach the video I recorded addressing that below once it's uploaded!

Guild Wars print screen montage - part 2

2011-11-05T17:12:00.000+00:00

Part 1 of my Guild Wars print screen montage included print screens taken between 2006 and 2009. Sadly I lost all print screens taken during 2010 due forgetting to pull them off my hard drive before reformatting, luckily my good friend and in-game partner Noucten Hearsay still had a few of hers from 2010 and she offered to pass them on to me for the purpose of making a part 2! So here we go, all credit goes to out to her!

Please note the majority of these pictures can be enlarged by clicking them.

A little glitch that occurred in a Kurzick outpost when Luxon invaders attacked caused them to chase each other around this post in circles, was hilarious to watch, and join in with!

When I found out that I could make all my heroes copy what I do, I used it to my advantage.

Noucten wasn't mournful at all, in fact, I think this was her doing.

Another glitch, effectively you can create and display as many replicas of M.O.X. as you fancy.

A player with multiple accounts created a line of dancing female Monks, myself and Noucten decided to create two contrasting male Elementalists and join in!

Our saviour.

April Fools Day 2010 caused all mini-pets to grow to character size and all characters to shrink to mini pet size! Talk about role-reversal.

Guild Wars print screen montage - part 1

2011-09-08T20:57:00.004+01:00

These are print screens that built up on my computer between 2006 and 2009. They aren't really doing much and deserve attention so I thought I'd crop them, clean them up, and stick them here for your viewing pleasures, I've also added a bit of descriptive caption, enjoy!

Please note the majority of these pictures can be enlarged by clicking them.

We start here, five years ago, in 2006. This was my first and most short lived character, Logos Kinneas. His name is a merge of two Final Fantasy characters.

HAWT. Totally my scene.

Second character, a Ranger, Master Song Xian, based on a military general who existed during the late Chinese Han Dynasty.

Quite the attention whore aren't we?

Third character, a Monk, the Alchemist of Virtue, had no particular basis.

Not long after I started playing I started up my own rather unsuccessful guild called the 'Raiders of Vitue'... note the spelling error. I could spell 'virtue', I just did so incorrectly at the time.

Teamwork! Fuck yeah!

And then like any other day in my young teenage life, we blasted off to save the day.

One of many structures that can be seen emerging from the tar pits in a wasteland area called 'Dragon's Gullet'. One of my favourite things to do in-game was explore, I found the map designs interesting and attractive.

My forth character, a Mesmer, Emperor Xian of Han, based on the last Emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty.

Moody Emperor.

The Emperor and a few of his finest men!

Gaming should never be taken seriously.

She's my man! My in-game partner from 2006 till present, Noucten Hearsay.

I can tell you two things she's into...

After my own Guild disbanded, one of the members made a new one! This was the online party we had Christmas 2007!

Glitch caused the floor to disappear.

The Lonely Vigil, a giant statue in the crystal desert, once approached it collapses to form a bridge.

My fifth and most used character, a Warrior, Old General Zhong, based on Huang Zhong, a military general during the late Han Dynasty who lived till 75 years of age, amazing.

Disco fever!

Ribbit?

A sight in the games first expansion, Guild Wars Factions. It has a beautiful far east theme.

My sixth character which was originally based on me, Prettyboy Xander. He really held no similarities at all, just stunk of how vain and egotistical I am.

Even if there were any similarities, they'd all disintegrated by this stage.

My Guild came with a few exciting offers.

Including fun times.

A guild leader and his five finest officers, all stood to attention.

The sheer number of print screens I have of dance parties really suggests what I spent the majority of my time online doing.

My seventh character, a Paragon created on the release of the second expansion, Prince Liu Shun. My own creation entirely though I had a cousin of the Emperor from a distant land in mind if I recall correctly.

Wasn't to good at handling monsters.

Could totally hold his own in a dance contest though.

Christmas was fun.

So was swimming in tar pits.

Finally, the scene in Majesty's Rest, my favourite in-game monster a bone dragon can be seen sat in the distance.

Guild Wars print screen montage - part 2

Turning a game into a movie

2011-07-27T23:22:00.008+01:00

After finding that it's getting increasingly popular to create and upload 'Video Game Movies' to YouTube, I set myself the goal of turning one of my favourite games into one. 'The Bouncer', a Square Soft game released in 2001 for the Playstation 2 was clearly designed to give the effect of a movie. This is evident due to it's lacking gameplay and sheer amount of visually impressive cutscenes, the ratio of which being roughly about 2:1, 2/3rds cutscene and 1/3rd gameplay. Below is the first part of the movie I've produced, I uploaded it today!

So what's the difference between the raw gameplay recordings and my edit? Well a number of the things I'm about to mention won't have been demonstrated so much in the above part because of the lengthy introduction which spans 6 minutes into the video (the first edit occurs at 6:05), part 2 better demonstrates the points I'm about to make. :)

The main thing I've done is removed all the loading screens and lengthy blackouts (the game does contain an excessive number of both), I attempted to make the transitions between the cuts seamless for a smoother result. Aside that I've taken the best parts out of the three-way forked story (one for each main character) and merged them. Believe it or not I've also rearranged and removed parts of the story so it makes more sense? Many elements of this game such as that, the bad lip syncing, non-sense lines, and terrible camera angles suggest that Square Soft rushed it, I've avoided them where possible or at least attempted to fix them! How long does all this take? Approximately 4 hours per every 6-8 minutes!

All in all I have to say The Bouncer is a great game but with it's lacking gameplay... well let's just say I hope you'd rather watch my edit! :P

05/11/11 update: Due to lack of interest shown in this project, I stopped showing interest myself after producing three parts. I'll leave them uploaded, this is however discontinued sadly.

Why didn't anyone tell me...

2011-05-23T19:25:00.000+01:00

that I'm in Pokémon Black and White?

image by S2daam on Bulbapedia

Presently my only reason for wanting this game

2011-05-22T08:06:00.000+01:00

That's without looking into the game in any depth... it's a good enough reason, right?

Errr what?

2011-05-09T01:23:00.000+01:00

Is anybody anywhere NEAR as sad as me in the sense that they've actually played this game enough to get this far? What the picture above displays is the games 'endless survival' mode post 20 flags, yep, it feels like the games entire contents is being thrown at me. :S Incredibly challenging I must say, especially since I originally avoided this game claiming it looked mind numbingly boring!

Compulsory weather

2011-05-03T21:42:00.001+01:00

Need I introduce the fact I play Minecraft? I mean, who hasn't at least tried it before?

I like to play it in short creative bursts, they produce architectural landmasses.

A big thank you to my boyfriend for getting me into this game and also for making the character/skin shown below in picture, a soft look alike of myself in real life when I had blue hair. :D

In regards to the title, here's a small rant; with Minecraft update 1.5 (April 15th '11) weather has been introduced and along with it, various environmental effects, it's all rather cool and stuff however I wasn't expecting it to be so... realistic! I react the same to the thunder and lightning as I do in real life, as in, hide indoors and get very distressed, I really wish I could turn it off, but sadly it's compulsory!

New Addiction

2011-04-20T00:20:00.000+01:00

I saw this coming, anything where I can listen through my ridiculously large collection of music and play a game was bound to be a hit with me! In this PC game you play a small hovership, your music produces a track for you to run down, objects and speeds vary based on different song elements, simple! :) If I can manage it, I might start producing some YouTube gameplay videos!

As a strict vegetarian...

2011-04-19T23:46:00.002+01:00

My boyfriend's brought Super Meat Boy for our Steam account and despite having a putrid hatred for platformers and a dislike for the concept of Super Meat Boy being meaty, bloody and squelchy since I'm well... I'm vegetarian, I've decided to play it and I'm actually really enjoying it!

It's not the type of platformer that annoys me, I can see why it's an award winner... very simple, really good controlls, I'm really good at it which makes SUCH a change, the only thing I dislike is the collection side of it and that's not compulsory. The meaty, bloody and squelchyness did at first bug me but I very quickly got over it as I stopped relating Meat Boy to err... dead animals and started seeing him as a separate being that isn't actually meat... just a block of red that leaves red trails? I'll try not to think about it too much, noticed you can unlock other characters so I look forward to that!

It's not you, it's me!

2011-04-18T19:49:00.000+01:00

I actually vowed to myself to never play this game again, hold me against it.

There's nothing wrong with it, in fact I'd go as far as to say it's the best tactical game I've ever played! The problem is well... as you've seen in the past, me and tactics, we just don't go! Why? Because I take so freakin long to advance due to being such a perfectionist and I always make sure my 'restart entire game' button is at hand in case I make any minor fuck ups! ._.

The King of the Night has something to say...

2011-04-17T08:49:00.002+01:00

Oh hai guys! I'm the King of the Night!

I'm the final final boss of Ninety-Nine Nights... if you can remove 45 minutes of your life and attempt to defeat me and then despite the incredibly slim odds: succeed, you'll be presented with the most abrupt ending to a game ever!

It explains nothing. D:

The key element to producing an amazing game...

2011-04-13T18:37:00.001+01:00

...Hideous voice acting!

I couldn't stop laughing whilst watching the video above, it's so over-exaggerated and confusing and YES! It IS from the original English dub of Dynasty Warriors 3, not a fan dub or something down those lines! My little brother re-purchased this game so I decided to have a little go on it with him today and oh nostalgia! This game really DID kick off the Dynasty Warriors series and well... the general KOEI Warriors series. :) Oh, and to mention, this game has the best versus mode of the series! It's simply random officers slammed against random officers in a 4 vs 4, fun fun fun!

Games just aren't as ruthless as they used to be!

2011-04-12T13:39:00.000+01:00

One of my favorite titles for the Playstation is an action-advernture called 'Alundra', I played it last night for the first time in 10 or so years! I'd forgotten a lot about this game, particularly how sick and twistedly merciless it is with it's one set difficulty, random death traps, barfing out monsters everywhere, brain wracking puzzles and general complexity! I made the same hilariously hideous mistake I made last year when I played Tomb Raider... playing into the game for about an hour and a bit then suddenly dying finding I only had the option of restarting the entire fucking gaaaame, urgh, why do you punish me for playing you?

Yes I did! Now stop patronising me!

14/04/11 update: It took me awhile to figure out but I'd accidentally mapped 3 actions to one button so when pressing square, Alundra was attempting to dash, attack, and use a selected item all at the same time... since I haven't played the game in such a long time, I failed to notice any abnormalities and have continued to play like this for roughly 2 hours! :S

A decent rip-off courtesy of Activision

2011-04-11T00:00:00.000+01:00

Screenshot from Smash TV

Me and my other half were looking through games we could cooperatively play. A game he recommended was "Smash TV" for the SNES, a very unique overhead run and gun arcade style shooter... upon playing it, it reminded me of something I'd previously played and enjoyed, after a little thinking I realised it was "Dead Ops", an arcade style 4-player mini-game on Call of Duty: Black Ops, no doubt a changed theme rip-off of Smash TV, but a decent one!

So err nice one on resurrecting a classic Activision, something I can actually praise you on, oh, but overall... you're still twats.

Dynasty Warriors eight hundred and twenty seven thousand, four hundred, and thirty six

2011-04-03T13:33:00.004+01:00

Once upon a time Dynasty Warriors 2 could be found where I originally purchased it, in Morrison's 'not a great seller' bargain bin, ten years on and the Dynasty Warriors series has indeed made a name for itself producing a further 4 remakes and numerous spin-offs. As you may or may not know Dynasty Warriors 7 is soon to be released... my main concern in all honesty is if it's an improvement on Dynasty Warriors 6 or for that matter if it's an improvement on Dynasty Warriors 2 from which these screenshots scattered above and below this block of text are snapped.

A quick look on the wikipedia page of Dynasty Warriors 7 shows that Famitsu amidst other reviewers state "it's great improvement over previous titles". Although reassuring I'm not going to let it rest on Famitsu's opinion, I'm going to have a decent look at it myself, that'll probably require me playing it. Before I wrap this up let's take a glance at what Dynasty Warriors 7 has to offer...

For me the most exciting new features are:

- Extended story line, Dynasty Warriors 7 WILL cover a larger time scale than all it's predecessors, introducing a further decade or two of history to the series along with sparkly new characters and a new force.

- The capability of equipping any weapon along with duel wielding, the new combat system itself looks incredibly impressive and contains plenty of much needed visual wankery.

- An additional mode called conquest, perhaps this'll cancel out additional add-on games although I doubt that, downloadables have already been announced...

My favourite feature by far is interlinked cut scenes, the action just flows, very visually impressive, tasty.

My first orgasm

2011-02-22T16:02:00.000+00:00

I just lost a game of Minesweeper for the three hundredth and something time when my plugged in Xbox360 controller which was resting on my crotch decided to suddenly start vibrating giving me the shock of my life, damn you Microsoft. D:

Have you ever desired a game for it's soundtracks?

2011-02-09T11:26:00.003+00:00

After watching my dragon house mate play 'Beautiful Katamari' for the seXbox360, I got curious about the soundtracks. Whilst searching for them, I came across the soundtracks for one of it's prequels entitled 'We Love Katamari' and yes, I'm now looking to get this game on the basis of loving it's soundtracks! *dances*

The dead are indeed rising... finally!

2011-02-07T14:07:00.002+00:00

This post is long long overdue! I started writing it back in August but didn't publish it since I couldn't find contentment in the way I structured it. When reading over the other day it came to me that I'd actually wrote the post backwards... so I reversed it, brushed it over and here it finally is! :L

Dead Rising was one of the first games I picked up out of my house mates large collection after moving in months back, I'd been incredibly eager just to TRY it since it's release in 2006 and now with it at my fingertips klbgd;jyrufgilhjohuireikyuhgvikjkTHANKYOUCAPCOM

Allow me to rearrange my underwear...

Dead Rising is a sandbox style game set in a mall which contains an unrealistic yet impressive amount of dumbass zombies everywhere so that already gives you a hell of a lot of things to do since practically everything in said mall is an interactive item. You play a photojournalist called Frank West, the story plot reveals him to be an hilarious character who just does not give a fuck about anything other than his job, I mean at one point in the games storyline he turns up to a cult sacrifice and starts taking photos as opposed to saving the person being sacrificed... oh and err Frank... he's errr covered wars... you know?

On top of numerous hours of toying with zombies, there's an OPTIONAL storyline (woop) to work through as well as other less important sub-plots such as rescuing innocents, opening up new areas and my personal favourite... defeating spoofy stereotypical psychopaths.

Screw Freddy vs. Jason, Cliff; one of the psychopaths looks like a cross between Freddy and Jason?

So overall Dead Rising is action packed, comical, challenging and fun, it's definitely a game that'll keep you preoccupied for hours and hours unless you regularly find in-game elements tedious, you spend too long analysing the 'WHAT THE FUCK?' factor, or you just don't like zombies... I've just completed it for the second time earning the best ending; I can honestly say it's been a fantastic gaming experience and I cannot wait to try the already released sequel.

Ow! My childhood

2011-01-14T01:27:00.000+00:00

As I made obvious, I have indeed started playing Final Fantasy IX as I so DESIRED. Out of the first few Final Fantasys I've played, it's the one I progressed in the least but also the one I'm most confident would maintain my interest beyond the point I quit, so it'd be silly not to try it again...

Playing this first part of the game reeked of negativity, I can quite easily relate it to being bullied in high school, being ill and the disgusting taste of chicken soup. Now to explain... last time I played this game was when I was waiting to have my stomach x-rayed, I couldn't eat anything too filling, it was vile and this was during my second year in high school, which I recall being the worst.

I've also now been vegetarian for 4 years so if chicken soup didn't appeal to me much then well errr... Bad memories aside, the first part of the game really is similar to torture... why? Well the main reason being that you engage in absolutely no action and instead spend ages collecting pointless shit that Square has conveniently scattered EVERYWHERE.

The most action you do get is playing card games... you can learn how to play using the handy tutorial, however it doesn't really teach you what the hell the random letters and/or numbers on the cards MEAN leaving you to continue guessing through the rest of the game... the cards, what are they trying to tell me? What does 1POO imply? D: Can ANYONE enlighten me?

A reoccurring element to the Final Fantasy series which immediately became obvious is the fact that no one is bothered by you breaking into their house and pillaging it. Go on kids, follow in suite! :D

I'm really making it sound like I hate this game right? That's not true AT ALL. :P I know for a fact that things begin to pick up soon, I'm even tempted to record a little...

05/11/11 update: I went ahead and did a Let's Play Short of Final Fantasy IX, that can be found here.

Atmosphere or Annoyance?

2011-01-13T14:18:00.002+00:00

I'm open to all kinds of judgement here.

The other day my boyfriend was playing Silent Hill 2 for the first time, he was rather freaked out by the game and occasionally fired a question or two my way in regards to what happened next... each time he did, I wouldn't give him a straight answer, oh no no no... I either answered his question with a question of my own or... provided him with complete uncertainty instead of a 'yes' or a 'no'! I also kept dropping the odd sentence here and there to create a little more paranoia, you know the kind... 'are you sure you want to do that?' :P

Now hopefully with your understanding, we venture back to the title. I'd like you to answer this question... does this kind of behaviour add to the atmosphere of games or is it just plain annoying? :)

I love playing the BITCH!

2011-01-11T19:50:00.003+00:00

I recently repurchased Mercenaries for Playstation 2 since it was selling for cheap; it came out in 2005. It's a fiction based game with a little influence from a potential future reality; the game is set in North Korea and military action is taking place, not by one nation, but numerous nations, thus creating factions... it's partially controlled by The Alliance (formed by USA obviously), China, Mafia Russia and South Korea, other than them there is of course a North Korean resistance. As the title states you play a mercenary, you must work for each of the factions in order to discover and capture your main goal: the generals of the North Korean army with bounties on their heads... you get to do lots of dirty work, so much, fun.... this game is all about a mercenrary who's after nothing but thrills and dirty dirty cash, they're willing to be anyones bitch and that's what I love doing the most. ;)

Did I mention this game has a sequel? It's called 'Mercenaries 2: World in Flames' and it's never going to be mentioned on this blog again... everyone knows that when someone mentions that game, a puppy dies... imagine what happens when somebody plays it? D: