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leftonred1985 Blog

Game #2: Jak and Daxter (PS2)

My objective with this game was to finish 100% which proved easy enough.

THE GOOD

Still a good looking game, even today.

Good, varied level designs made me sort of enjoy hunting around for all those orbs.

Solid controls.

Voice acting (other than Daxter).

Overall, just a lot of fun (assuming you like platformers).

THE BAD

Camera can be a little unruly at times (not as bad as in some games, but did make some sections more difficult than they needed to be).

Maybe a little too easy.

The MEH

Story. It's really not very good, but since it's not something I consider a priority in the genre, I'm apathetic about it.

Overall: B+

Up next, Jak 2.

Game #1: Final Fantasy X (PS2)

I've already sort of finished FFX. I say sort of because I did go ahead and complete the story, but I have a save file right before the point of no return that I'm using to build a rediculous save. All ultimate weapons (**** you, chocobo race), stat maxing, killing Nemesis, all that jazz. I'll be doing all of that slowly over time though instead of holding up the rest of my playing. Brief thoughts on FFX follow.

All in all, it's one of my favorite games in the series. The story isn't bad, but the gameplay is fantastic. I'd say my biggest complaint about the game is the voice acting. It's pretty uneven. Some characters are solid, others not so much. The two in particular the bother me are Yuna and Tidus, which is unfortunate as they're the two main characters. Yuna just has too many pauses in places that don't make much sense to have pauses. It's like listening to Shatner. Tidus is somewhat different though. He's not always bad. Some scenes he's completely fine, but then others he's among the most whiny, annoying sounding characters you'll find.

Overall, I do enjoy the story in this installment. It's a somewhat emo thing to say, but I like that the ending isn't entirely happy. I remember finishing VIII for the first time and thinking I would have actually preferred that the very last shot at the end of the credits had not been there because more tragic ending seemed a better fit. So FFX delivers on that for me. Really, what kept me interested in the story was the characters more than the events. I wasn't all that compelled by the giant flying squid as an enemy, so it was all about the growth of the relationships between the characters for me here.

Really, it was the battle and leveling system that made the game for me. While the way it's contructed means the sphere grid sort of nudges you in a particular direction with each character, you really can ignore that and do whatever you please with each character, really giving you a lot of control over how you want to construct your team. There are a couples minor flaws with it, but those are mostly related to the navigation of it so not really worth mentioning. The battle system is what makes it for me though. Just because it allows you to slow things down and think of your strategy, I like it more than any other system the series has used. Not going to talk any more in depth about it because I'm writing this at 1 in the morning and have another game to cover tonight.

Overall: A-

Getting Started

This is the story of me doing something insane. I have decided to play through all the games that I own and talk about them for my own personal reading...pleasure? The reason this is insanity is because the current count of games is 247, counting expansion packs as different games. They range in length from about 5 hours to games that could take several months to completely finish playing. The shorter games I'll likely go ahead and play through uninterrupted, some of the longer ones may be broken up a little because I feel like spending 3 months playing nothing but Oblivion would be counterproductive to my goals with this. Onward we go into the abyss...