I was going through my feeds this last week and came across this Joystiq article on JRPG dialog.

The best quote from the post is this:

Thanks to a lot of silly jargon and awkward phrasing, a large chunk of Final Fantasy XIII-2’s conversations elevate it into the “wouldn’t want anyone to watch me playing this” category…

I can’t speak for FF XIII-2, but that is exactly how I felt when I was playing FF XIII. I don’t think it was necessarily the dialog, though, so much as the voice “acting” in the game. Some of it was okay, but I’m pretty sure every breath from every character was fully vocalized.

*GASP* *SIGH* *other annoying vocal sound that sounded overacted*

People don’t talk like that. It completely took me out of experience. Maybe that’s why my favorite Final Fantasy games are the ones prior to spoken dialog. FF IV (II in the US), FF VI (III in the US), FF VII and so on. I also got annoyed by the songs that were added beginning in FF VIII… I don’t play Final Fantasy games to be sung to. The orchestral style of music is what I miss. I’m pretty sure FF VII was the last one that had truly memorable music for me. There are a few high points from FF IX and FF X, but my favorites are easily the earlier ones.

Maybe I’m just getting old.

Oh, and get off my lawn. You crazy kids with your loud music. Back in my day…

I bit the bullet last night and preordered Batman: Arkham City… Arkham Asylum was one of my favorite games after it released so I’m really excited about the sequel.

It sounds like I’ll be getting a $10 credit, too, and that will likely go towards Uncharted 3.

I wonder when I’ll play all of these.

I just finished watching the trailers and videos from my feeds tonight so I thought I’d post some thoughts. This is my stream of consciousness post on E3 thus far.

So, the first day was all Xbox 360. First off, there was a lot of Kinect stuff. I find Kinect fascinating, but I don’t find it particularly compelling as a means of playing video games. UI interactions, sure, but games, nah. I picked up the Wii when it came out and I haven’t played it in at least a year probably. Part of the draw of playing games is sitting on the couch, at least for me. So, the games. I’m probably most excited about Mass Effect 3 (again, don’t care about the Kinect stuff or the voice control). I’m a huge fan of Bioware games and Mass Effect in general, so I can’t wait to see the end of the trilogy. I’m also excited about the Halo games (both the re-release of Halo: CE as well as Halo 4). I really liked the story of Halo and I’m pretty fond of both the Master Chief and Cortana characters. I’m looking forward to Gears of War 3, too but it isn’t as high on my radar right now. Other than those, though, I wasn’t all that interested in the rest of the 360 stuff. New Fable? Meh. I don’t want Kinect in my Fable. And as far as I’m concerned, the Fable games have diminished in quality since the first one.

The next day was Sony. Even more so than ME3, I can’t wait until Uncharted 3 comes out. The Uncharted games encompass everything that I love about video games - amazing story, amazing action, amazing amazing. I could just watch the Uncharted games and have a blast and the next one looks great. I think the PS Vita looks great, too. It sounds like the price point is right ($200 for the Wifi version I think), though I could care less for the 3G one.

On the Nintendo side, the big news is the Wii U. What a weird name. The Wii was revolutionary, of course, but my feelings towards it are mostly a letdown. I can count on one hand how many Wii games I really enjoyed playing. If they can get some really good games on their new system, then I might be interested but it will not be a day one purchase for me. The controller seems neat I guess, but I’m going to reserve my judgement until I get to actually try it out. I’ll admit, I’m glad they’re finally making it HD capable.

So, I guess my top 2 picks are Uncharted 3 and Mass Effect 3. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Bioshock: Infinity and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. As far as console reveals go, I’ll vote the PS Vita over the Wii U for now.

What about you? What did I miss or forget?

I’m now the proud owner of a PSP thanks to my awesome wife! As background, she is a master peruser of garage sales. On this particular trip, not only did she find a gas-powered weed-eater for $15, she also found a PSP-1000 for $5! Unfortunately, it didn’t come with a charger, so I’m currently borrowing both a charger and Mega Man X from a friend.

Once charged, it works great. Any PSP game recommendations? Or perhaps you’re looking to part with a PSP charger? :)

So, I’ve got quite a few games that I’m either playing through or planning on playing through.

First, is Fallout: New Vegas. I played through Fallout 2 multiple times (that was probably 10 years ago… correction, 13 years ago, it came out in 1998). I played through Fallout 3 when it came out and subsequently purchased all DLC content for it, too. So, you might say I’m a huge Fallout fan. I’m having a lot of fun with New Vegas now. Granted, if you weren’t a fan of Fallout 3, you probably won’t like New Vegas. I, on the other hand, am thoroughly enjoying my journey through the post apocalyptic state of Arizona. I think I hit level 18 last night.

The other big game awaiting me right now is Dragon Age 2. Bioware is one of my favorite gaming companies right now. I played the Baldur’s Gate games, the Neverwinter NIghts games, Knights of the Old Republic, etc. I love Mass Effect 1 and 2 and I loved Dragon Age: Origins. So, needless to say, I can’t wait to get into DA2. But I can’t play two huge games like this at one time. I just need a summer vacation like I had back when I was a kid. Yeah, that’d be great.

I also picked up Beyond Good and Evil off of Xbox Live - I had heard lots of good things about it but had never given it a chance. So, we’ll see how that goes.

Other than that, I picked up Darksiders on Steam last week when it went on sale. I played through it on the consoles earlier and had a blast, but I couldn’t pass up a $10 price tag. My only issue is that I really need a good controller on the PC to play it. I’m planning on picking up a 360 wired controller at some point, but there isn’t any hurry since I’ve got so many other games to play right now.

Anyway, that’s what I’m playing. What are you playing?

So, I started playing games back in the olden days of video games… you know, back when hard drives didn’t exist, so you had to put your boot disk in and then your game disk in. That was before I got a Nintendo… never did have an Atari, but some of my friends did. Post-Pong days, but not by much.

Anyway, one of my friends (hi Joe!) has given me the crazy idea that I should create a video game blog. So I did. You’re reading it. *gasp*

Will there be any content here worth reading? Who can say? Will there be any great insights that aren’t on other gaming sites? Likely not. No big deal either way - it’s for fun, just like the vidja games.