[This blog contains spoilers for the video game Final Fantasy VII.] ‘Mega fire’ measuring 1.5 million acres forms in Australia as bushfires merge (sfgate.com) The phrase “video game logic” doesn’t get used as often as it used to, and I have to wonder if that’s necessarily a good thing. I don’t long for the days when older people would smugly assert that there was no rational way Mario should be jumping several times his own height to stomp down on a goomba, but as video…
[This blog contains spoilers for the video game Final Fantasy VII.] Final Fantasy 7 Remake Demo Intro Leaked (gamespot.com) I didn’t understand the appeal of online “reaction videos” until four and a half years ago, when the long-awaited Final Fantasy VII Remake was finally announced at E3 2015. After waiting nearly half my life for a modern remake of my favourite video game ever, this news was almost too much for me to handle, and I didn’t have many people in my life whom I…
I went through my Dungeons and Dragons phase at such an early age that I was out of it before most young people start theirs. (This meant that I got to experience the tail end of the “devil worship” moral panic surrounding D&D in the eighties, which probably did more than a little to shape me into the person I’ve become today.) Before I could really understand how to use role-playing games as storytelling devices, though, I got burnt out on them, mostly because everyone…
FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE Trailer for E3 2019 (youtube.com) I can still remember my reaction to the first official announcement that Square Enix was going to do a total remake of my favourite video game of all time, Final Fantasy VII, at E3 four years ago. I don’t watch video game conferences live, so someone who had watched it live directed me to a YouTube clip whose title spoiled exactly what it was of, and I didn’t get the opportunity to be as surprised as…
One of the things I loved the most about classic console video games was the “second quest” feature that many of the best games had. The original Super Mario Bros., after you beat it for the first time, then proceeded to offer you the chance to go through the game all over again, and even though the levels were laid out in the exact same way, the enemies were changed to make the game even harder to get through. Back when programming space was extremely…