PixlBit

Stage Select: Overrated Games

1. Grand Theft Auto as a series. Disregard my Pixlbit user name, which was from the series but was more of a video game-related play on my real name than anything else. When GTA III came out, it was fun just causing havoc in the streets, especially when you could jack the wanted level up to 6 stars and steal a tank. The story was as goofy as anything from an anime. But from there, the novelty of its sandbox died. Vice City was fun for a bit, then the series got too serious and full of itself. They've focused more on creating ersatz versions of NYC and LA, which is ambitious but kind of sterile. Since GTA V still shows up on top 10 sales lists four years later, that is the direction the series will continue to use, and maybe I'm just full of you-know-what. But the sandbox stuff has fallen by the wayside. Even the sandbox veneer wore thin kind of quickly once you realized that you could instantly erase all the havoc you just created with a tank rampage by just driving into a Pay 'n' Spray. The gameplay mechanics in the series today are just as unwieldy as they always were. There are a lot of games which do sandbox play a lot better than GTA, like Bethesda RPGs and now Breath of the Wild. I'd also like the series to take its parody of American culture off of the coasts and roast Middle America in its next entry. And I'm not talking Chicago either, which has also been done to death in gaming. Let's see places like Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, or North Carolina skewered by Rockstar Games. I even wrote a blog on 1UP and on Pixlbit detailing a GTA treatment of Texas. Then I might be more interested in the next entry.

2. Metal Gear Solid series. I realize that Kojima is seen as something of a Japanese auteur and was a rare success during the lean era for Japanese games that was the 360/PS3 era. The games are unparalleled at stealth gameplay mechanics. And Kojima brings his experiences growing up into his games. The series just never really clicked for me, and I don't have the same reverence for it that a lot of my fellow PixlBitters do. I do tend to be a RPG guy, but I enjoy action games as well.

3. And now to really kick the hornet's nest. I enjoyed Final Fantasy VI much more than I did the game which shows up at the top of a lot of people's best-ever RPGs, Chrono Trigger. In fact, I honestly enjoyed the Lunar games, which were probably made on a budget a fraction of that of Chrono Trigger, more than CT. It's a great game with good design. I just enjoyed a lot of other RPGs more.

Please send all hate mail with regards to the above to: Andrew Tiberius "Rusty" Shackleford, 61923 Dead Weasel Road, Tent # 469, Kivalina, AK 99750.

Chrono Crossing (1988):

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. For a whole year or so, every video game my friends and I played was just a way to kill time until Zelda II came out. We checked the mailboxes daily for the next issue of Nintendo Power and groaned when we read stories about the supposed DRAM chip shortage that conveniently delayed the release of Zelda II into December of that year.

Zelda II is the black sheep of the series today because of its unusual design. Gameplay-wise, it was heavily inspired by Xanadu/Faxanadu and Ultima, with side-scrolling gameplay and RPG leveling mechanics. Given that A Link to the Past was (thankfully) a return to the top-down view of the original game, clearly the changes in Zelda II didn't take with fans. But Zelda II was a typical sequel of its time. Nintendo didn't want to simply rehash the first game, they wanted to make a bigger, better, and different game within the limitations of the NES hardware, and in the "bigger" and "different" aspects, at least, they succeeded. A lot of game designers wanted their sequels to be different from the original games in that way. A lot of times the changes didn't work out too well, but they were still interesting experiments in game design that are a contrast to the annual Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed iterations we were getting on the Xbox 360 and PS3. See also: Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA), Castlevania II, Final Fantasy II, Ultima II.

Despite being a huge fan of Metroid on NES, I never got this game until it came out on the 3DS virtual console. I think I asked for it for Christmas but never got it. My next Metroid game was Super Metroid on SNES. Along with Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters (which I did own), it signified a turnaround in Nintendo's approach to handheld gaming, where they tried to make a Game Boy game as good as a console game within the limitations of the hardware instead of half-assing it.

Those are good purchases. I have most of them already. My next purchase will be Ys VIII.

I loved this series, it was my go to series along with the Simpsons and TMNT when I was a teenager. It was better written than most adult sitcoms and dramas. I had a long post here, but it pretty much turned into a blog. :)

Is this dubious food anything like, say, the Andale sidequest in Fallout 3?

Your post is an example of why I will never again live with anyone that isn't a family member or a close friend. I have never had a positive experience living with strangers. No more roommates.

Each character can choose two license boards, which can't be changed once they're set. The second one doesn't come until after a certain milestone in the story. You really have to think about your builds if you want to get the most out of the game. The Espers and Quckenings also play a role in the license board as a lot of licenses are locked behind Espers and Quickenings, and each Esper can still only be assigned to one person.

The Espers are much more powerful, especially the level 3 Espers. They can also be actively controlled when they are on screen.

Your characters can now inflict more than 9999 damage and can have up to 19,998 HP with a base 9999 HP and the Bubble Spell.

The elite weapons and armor, by contrast, are somewhat harder to get for the most part. That invisible merchant in the Necrohol of Nabudis no longer sells you every top-level spell in the game, you have to actually go out and find them.

I haven't beaten Yiazmat yet. I'm trying to get Zodiark, and am using a lot of colorful language in the process. Zodiark is a cheating SOB.

I hear you on trying to eat healthier. I still eat a lot of crap.

My preferred snacks change. One day it might be peanut butter M&Ms or Reese's Pieces. One day it might be Nutter Butters. One day it might be Ruffles with jalapeno cheese dip. My beverage of choice is either Coke or Dr. Pepper. I don't snack often while gaming. I'll usually get something to eat for an actual meal and then go back to playing when I'm done.

I need to stop eating so much crap. :)

I'm also sorry I missed out on contributing to this blog. "Anime games" is a massive, massive category in my game library. My top three would have been Valkyria Chronicles (which someone else covered), Sakura Wars: So Long My Love (made by many of the same designers), and probably Lunar, a game I've mentioned here before. I could probably do a top 20 of this one.

Life got in the way, sadly.

Most of the high-end hunts are indeed endurance matches. Zodiark, by contrast, has only a fraction of the HP but is a complete asshole, and the game forces you to get your gambits together to beat him as quickly as possible or you're going to have a lot of problems.

The Espers are a lot more buffed in this game. The more powerful ones can have HP in excess of 9999 (it just shows as 9999 unless their actual HP drops below that), and they can now do more than 9999 damage (so can your characters, for that matter, with the right weapon/armor combos). They can also now be controlled actively through the battle menu and even be made the controllable character while on-screen, whereas before they just followed their gambits, which includes choosing when to use their super attacks. You don't have to wait for the exact right one-in-a-million combination of circumstances for Ultima to use her big attack. With those things in place, the weakest link ends up being the summoner, who can still get dogpiled on by the enemies.