Stupid Biorhythm

I never knew how important this stupid feature in Path of Radiance was until Chapter 13 on hard mode. Holy crap. It's the level where you, as the player, must defend a ship for ten turns. One of the characters that starts off on the "Other" force, Astrid, is squishy. I am playing the game so no playable characters get killed. Astrid is one of these characters. If her biorhythm is on par or on the downswing, she will die no matter what you do. If it's on the upswing, the swordsman that ALWAYS offs her only gets one shot instead of two. This is a problem because I had to restart the level FIVE TIMES last night because I didn't even think of biorhythem. In fact, I couldn't even understand what the hell was going on. Today I started playing and realized it immediately (must have been lack of sleep or something finally affecting my mental processes...). Even Oscar and Kieran had differing attacks and hit percentages, which struck me as curious as well (determining if they could kill one spearman or not). This is also biorhythm. As frustrated as I was (am), biorhythm is actually a clever aspect of strategical play that I hadn't thought to work around or take advantage of.

This just struck me as a perfect example of my inability to take certain aspects of gaming to another level. As a rule, I don't like to compete or play multiplayer matches with a) people I don't know and b) little or no knowledge of the game or what I'm supposed to be doing. The point is, however, I don't ever spend enough time with one game to become an expert at it. At least not good enough to actually have fun without getting frustrated every two minutes. I love playing single player games because I can work at my own pace, faff about and actually enjoy what I'm playing. When I play multiplayer, especially with competitive contexts or even with competitive people, I feel panicked, confused and nervous because I feel like I look like an idiot. This is why previous endeavours into Star Craft and Diablo II didn't work for me. I was constantly playing with people way out of my league, and they expected more from me. Though it's good to play with people better than you, I wasn't willing to spend the time becoming better. I didn't feel like I could get better, and I was constantly embarassing myself. I don't have huge amounts of confidence, a hurdle I've constantly had to scramble over. Some of the people I played with made me feel as if I was screwing them up or constantly disappointing them, which didn't help either. And yet I couldn't stop, because I was convinced I could get better and kick these people's asses. It wasn't healthy, and I'm glad that I don't play like that anymore, though I do miss playing with these people at times. I felt like I was one of them...part of their community. Like many other aspects of my life though, I think I'm destined to be an outsider. This is why I haven't touched the multiplayer of Star Craft 2 and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. I was eased into Call of Duty Black Ops because of the co-op multiplayer option, which was brilliant in that game (even if the rest of it just looked like the same as every COD game before). My brother, a player much better than myself, was able to play with me and help me get better.

I don't know if I'm just afraid to get back into it because of bad experiences in the past playing even with friends, but I just don't get the same level of enjoyment out of this aspect of gaming. I am becoming a lot better at games like Fire Emblem because of my will and time spent in-game. Every level I learn something new or tactical. I learn tricks for the levels and how to cycle my characters and use healing at the right times to keep them all alive and as effective as I can. I have learned about biorhythm and special abilities, chance to hit (which is TOTALLY rigged in some cases) and how to level characters to make a strong and rounded team. Same with Dungeon Keeper. I've spent hours with that game, playing, recording, reviewing, commenting and in some cases re-playing when I fail. I've spent enough time with the game making a walkthrough series that I am a stronger player. I just can't find anyone willing to play with me on multiplayer. Sadface.

Still Writing Those Papers

But I chose to write this instead.

I must say I'm freaking out, because I left everything to the last minute again. Honestly I don't know anyone who hasn't done that, and those of you that have please share your infinite worldly knowledge of time management. That or fall off a cliff so I don't look so lazy. I'm thinking that a friend of mine and I have a creepily similar mindset, for not 2 days after I made CDT, he makes his own blog...WITH THE SAME TEMPLATE. This happened with Freewebs too. May have even happened with Youtube, but I think I prefer to keep that knowledge unknown. Getting way too weirded out.

Today to waste time (and a little self-preservation) I have decided to talk about the new Fire Emblem for the DS. Fire Emblem has had a special place in my heart right next to Sonic the Hedgehog for gaming since....ehhh about four years. I love the story, I love the gameplay, and I love the challenge. I don't know about any other Fire Emblem players out there, but I make the game harder by not letting any of my characters die. Yes, this means that any time one of my characters die, I start the level over (or from the last save point). I even try to save and recruit all the characters....despite how useless some of them end up being. For anyone who hasn't played Fire Emblem before, the games are turn-based tactical RPGs. The Fire Emblem games take place in fantasy worlds with classic good vs. evil storylines. They also seem to favour the way-ward royal plotline, where the prince or princess' country is taken over by another nation flexing it's superior military might (and usually because some dark, overly malevolent force is bending the ruler of these so-called nations to their will). Though I'm not too sure how these nations accomplish this, for though they have the numbers, all of their generals and soldiers all appear to be giant twats. Then any good soldiers that they have end up being converted to your side anyway. That's besides the point though...ON WITH THE REVIEW YOU GREAT BABBLING TWIT!

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon is a remake of the original Fire Emblem released only in Japan. I myself have never played the original NES game, but the remake is absolutely brilliant. What it lacks in storytelling, it makes up for in gameplay and prettiness. YES prettiness. This game was so pretty that if this game was converted into a living, breathing human being, I would probably date it. Well that may be going a bit far. If this game were a person it would be making up words and speaking in cheesy clichés. Which would get very irritating after the first few giggles.

Anyhow the game makes use of the duel-screens better than any game I have seen so far. I always found in other Fire Emblem games how annoying flipping between the stats and maps and objectives was. In Shadow Dragon, these screens are displayed on the top half, while the actual game is displayed on the bottom. Everything is laid out for you on the top: character stats, weapon levels, inventory, health, movement and range. Then by pressing the R button you get victory conditions, a lovely little minimap, terrain information, selected character (which shows equipped weapon), turns, number of allies and enemies (and their affiliations) AND the chapter you are on. Absolutely brilliant. Another wonderful set up involves movement. You have the choice of controlling with the buttons or the stylus depending on your style and preferences (I myself prefer the buttons because I find it much quicker). The X button shows you the total movement area of the enemy to better place your units. Selecting a single unit will show that individual unit's movement. The only thing I found irritating about this was that the B button didn't deselect the unit (it does in other Fire Emblem games...). I'd be continually pressing the button before I remembered that it doesn't perform the desired function. I'm just nit-picking now though.

The story is decent. It's not by any means outstanding, but it's decent. The plot keeps you interested enough to keep playing in other words. An obvious "bad-guy" exists, and it's up to blue-haired, boy-wonder, Marth to save the day. That's one thing I never understood about Fire Emblem games. Why does the protagonist always have blue hair? Sure they're different SHADES of blue...but why blue? Ike, Marth, Ephraim/Erika...well you get the idea. Also, at least one of the other starting characters have red hair. Seth, Cain, Titania...WHAT'S GOING ON? Anyhow I'm off topic. The story is simple, and moves rather fast. Essentially Marth is trying to re-conquer his country that was taken over by a super-powered country with an evil sponsor. He moves from map to map with the objective of seizing the main castle or fort in the land. Don't get me wrong, each map is unique and poses new challenges, but the objective is always the same. There also seems to be a lot of random people willing to join you on your quest. Allies are extremely easy to come by in this game. They will join you for reasons like "I want to free my country" or "I cannot attack such a pretty women" or "I am falling in love with you on the spot so I may as well join you" or "My wife's feet smell bad so I'd rather join you than to stick around with this incredible stench". Well maybe not the last one, but at least you get a wide variety of fighters to mix and match on the battlefield. Then there's the dialogue. Oh God the dialogue. It's not THAT bad, but the characters sound so robotic and state the obvious way too often. They also have a tendancy to make up hilarious new words...I can't remember for the life of me what this one character said, but when I do I'll remember to post it.

That's pretty much it for now. Overall an excellent game. I don't care what a lot of people say about it being a crappy remake, I think it was very well put together. Of course some of the things COULD have been better, but games usually have aspects that could have been improved. That concludes my little talk of the day. It was nice to write about something fun after all I've been doing this week is ripping a poem's entrails out and feeding them to my hungry monster of a paper. That and I have to spit out something for my history paper due Friday. Lordy.