I finally beat Final Fantasy 8. The last boss took over an hour to beat. Total time playing the game was a little over 40 hours. Thing is, the only reason I was playing it was that I had nothing else to play in the mornings while I'm on the exercise bike. I really disliked this game. Here's why (expect spoilers... as if anybody cares):

Idiotic story - People seem to be focused a lot on the story in games today. FF8 had one, it was long and it was twisted, but damn, was it idiotic. I mean, the storyline of this game was bang-your-head-against-the-wall stupid. A bunch of kids training to be soldiers stumble around and some of them get their minds sent back in time by the main character's sister and eventually realize that they all grew up together in an orphanage that was run by their leader and his wife before the couple founded the training center to battle "the sorceress" and then it turns out that their leader's wife is the sorceress they're all trying to fight anyway and then the kids discover that the sorceress is actually possessed by another sorceress from the future who travelled back in time in order to find the main character's sister so she can (I guess) travel back further in time in order to cast some spell called "time compression" which will actually destroy time itself so (I suppose) everything will happen at once and she'll rule the world (universe?). This doesn't even include all the nonsense about the third sorceress (Adel) or the fourth sorceress (Rinoa) who also turn out the be targets of the evil sorceress from the future. I'm also sparing you from all the other stupidity that goes on and you have no control over any of it! I think that's the worst part. When the good guys uncover the evil sorceress's plot to capture the main character's sister, what do they do? They stick her on a boat of complete strangers who show up out of nowhere demanding that she be turned over. Real fucking smart, guys. The best part is that later on they spend hours trying to figure out where she could be. And of course the most torturous, unendurable part of the whole game is the unbearably imbecilic love interest between the main character (Squall) and the sorceress Rinoa. The worst of it is what brings me to my next point.

Atrocious dialog - I swear I wanted to open up my wrists at times when listening to this ridiculous drivel. Maybe it lost something in the translation (from Japanese)? No excuse: I still had to suffer through it. Maybe the writers thought they were developing a story. All I know is that they were delivering unmitigated pain and suffering for hours on end. I firmly believe that the average age of the writers was somewhere around 8 years old.

Unexplaind side quests - There are numerous villages, caves, and buildings strewn across the world map which had nothing to do with the main storyline and were never referred to anywhere in any dialog with any character. This is strange, because of course you had absolutely no control whatsoever over the progression of the storyline so it's not like you could have missed something. It turns out that there are a number of side quests that can be completed to gain powerful items and magic... but of course, you know nothing about them. Apparently the developers don't understand that a quest, even a side quest, needs a goal. If you don't know what the hell the point of going is, it's not much of a quest. Needless to say, I wanted to finish this game as quick as possible so I didn't waste a lot of time hunting rocks for the Shumis or trying to capture those motherfucking chocobos that have infested every goddamn Final Fantasy game since like #2.

Enemies won't stay dead - How many times do I have to fight Seifer. For the love of God, someone drive a sword through his heart. And his retard twins; I crushed them, what, three times? And each time my stupid characters apparently let them live. And what happened each time? They came back later to fight some more! And don't get me started on Wedge and Biggs. The only reason I stopped having to fight them was because they finally decided they'd had enough and quit the Galbadian army.

Overly complicated systems - Anyone who's ever played FF8 or seen someone play FF8 knows how overly and unnecessarily complicated the whole game system is. See, your characters are actually a bunch of pathetic wimps. It isn't until you "junction" them with a Guardian Force, some kind powerful being, that they are actually worth anything. And so you have to attach these GF's to your characters, and then pick which abilities to use, and then pick which bonuses to take advantage of, and then pick which spells to match with your skills, attacks, and defenses. Yes, it has a bit of a learning curve. It also has a number of flaws inherent to it. For instance, a Guardian Force may have a number of useful abilities that it's gained. However, a character can only use 3 at a time and can't switch once they enter battle. So the most important and most useful 3 are used almost exclusively. What the hell is the point of all the others? It's an incredible chore trying to decide how best to divide up your GF's because each one offers bonuses to different skills. Obviously you want to prevent overlap of these bonuses, because they're not cumulative. But there's nothing in the game that really helps you accomplish this.

Excrutiatingly long animations - Speaking of Guardian Forces, their main advantage (besides being the sole reason your characters can use magic at all) is using them to attack enemies directly. The problem is that the animation sequences that follow are so long and redundent that you'd soon rather pray for death than use them in combat. I mean, these sequences are so flashy and over the top that they make Jim Carrey seem as dull and lifeless as Al Gore. Quezacotl can't just shoot a lightning bolt, he has the spray electricity everywherere, then form this giant energy dome, then have this huge blast of lightning shoot down from the top, then have the ground erupt in blinding light. Shiva can't just freeze the guy, she has to break out of an icy cocoon, create this huge, elaborate frozen valley, and then cause it to shatter, spraying shards of ice in all directions. The more powerful spells aren't much better. The 40 hours I spent beating this game probably would have been more like 10 or 15 if I could have eliminated all these life draining animations.

The whole magic system - Didn't like it. First of all, like I said, your characters are pathetic worms that can't even cast a single spell without the help of a Guardian Force. Even Rinoa, the (a) "sorceress", is useless without one. Second, the only real source of magic in the world is to suck it out of monsters that you encounter along the way. Yes, in the heat of battle you have to stock up on various spells by "drawing" them out of the enemy you face. The more powerful foes usually hold the most powerful spells, and if you pass up the opportunity to fill yourself up, chances are that you'll regret it later. Whose idea was this? Apparently humans are pathetic losers who have less innate magic ability than a giant fly! (A great source for cure spells, by the way.) What's worse, you have a limit on the number of different spells you can carry. Once you have 32 different kinds of spells, you can't draw any new ones. Which really sucks, because the only way to get rid of them is to use them during combat. Look, if you're going to limit me in such a ridiculous way, at least give me the ability to simply dump the spells I don't want. You generally end up having to pass them off on the characters you aren't playing at that time (you can get up to 6 but can only have 3 active at any given moment).

Weapons - Chances are that you'll stop using weapons completely not too far into the game, because it's nearly impossible to improve them. See, you don't buy new weapons, because that would make too much sense. Instead, you look for things like pipes, rocks, and goat testicles so you can take your weapons to a Junk Store and get them upgraded. Of course, goat testicles are pretty hard to find so you're generally stuck with the crappy weapons you start out with.

Map design - While it's hard to argue with the visual detail given to the game's backgrounds, the problem is that the viewpoints seemed to have been a matter of aesthetics rather than focusing on gameplay. All too often an exit from an area is invisible from the "camera's" perspective or, even worse, what looks like a valid egress turns out to be a blind dead-end after your characters pass out of view. You're left pushing the direction button and wondering what's going on, since you can't see your characters running mindlessly into a solid wall.

And last but not least... that stupid card game. The most mind-numbingly asinine aspect of the entire game. Demonstrating that Pokemon and all those other dumb-ass Magic: The Gathering card games have permeated all layers of our lives, the makers of Final Fantasy VIII decided to include some lame card game that you can play against the various inhabitants of the world. All the cards have monsters or important people on them, and you get them by killing enemies, "draw"ing them, or winning them in card games. The only point of winning cards is so that Guardian Forces can use their powers to turn them into useless junk, like magic stones, which they can then turn into pointless spells, like "Blow Nose". Okay, I exaggerate, but this is just another aspect of the baroque and outlandish game system that quite simply goes too far and yet falls so short.

No, I do not recommend this game to anyone. It's long, it's boring, and it's extremely painful to sit through. Now I gotta go see how much I can sell it for on E-Bay.

I beat Thief: The Dark Project last night. Though aged, this is still a terrific game. I have to admit that not since Quake 1 has a game instilled such a sense of fear in me. The overall atmosphere, ambience, and background sound effects all contributed to this, as well as the moaning zombies which were lifted almost right out of the original Quake (except that they thankfully couldn't hurl parts of their own body at you) and other undead. The focus on stealth and patience is a welcome departure from the standard shoot-'em-up. It even relied on them more than Rogue Spear.

I realized this weekend that my "Gun Of The Week" section has completely failed to live up to its name. Well, I'll see what I can do about that, but my time is available in rather limited quantities lately.

On a final note, I released the first five screenshots from Night's Edge. Check them out.

Well, there's something you don't see everyday... frontal nudity on NBC at 8 in the morning. You see, the Today Show is broadcast live, and they often pan shots of the crowd assembled outside the studio. One girl, quite casually, opened her shirt as the camera slowly swept past her, letting the world know she wasn't wearing anything underneath. Thought nothing was said about it (while I watched, anyway), Katie Couric did cover her mouth in obvious shock.

I predict a large rating boost in the near future...

Believe it or not, DC-Con 7 was the first real LAN Party I've ever attended that I didn't help run. A lot of people are surprised at this -- but you have to realize that I'm talking large, organized LAN parties. You know, anything larger than the group we can cram into Mojo's place for his MiniMojo events.

My first impression was: this is smaller than I was expecting. The space didn't appear to be any bigger than the larger of the two rooms we used at F.R.A.G. v5.0 (which was about 40x50 feet). I was expecting a little more from a party that claimed an attendance of 450 at their 4th party -- and 150 at their fifth event. Most of the people I went there with estimated the crowd at about 80 or so. The frustrating part was how cramped the setup was, even though some entire tables were empty. It was often difficult to work your way through the aisles, because people were sitting on both sides and there wasn't a lot of distance put between the tables.

My second impression was: fuck, it's cold in here. And that never really changed (except on the few occasions when I snuck back to the thermostat and adjusted it myself). Everybody, I mean everybody, complained about the cold but nothing got done about it. The few times we brought it to the attention of Lunch (the main staff member), we were told "I like it cold" and then placated with "I'll turn it up a few degrees", and once that there was some issues with the servers running hot. Uh, yeah. I came down Saturday morning to find the thermostat set to FIFTY-TWO DEGREES. Everyone in there would have died if I hadn't turned it up. The only thing I can deduce is that Lunch simply gets warm at temperatures others find comfortable and that he (and maybe other members of the staff) didn't care about the rest of the attendees or just didn't get how cold it was. Granted, the server/staff area wasn't as cold as the rest of the room, but that didn't make me feel any better as my teeth were chattering.

I was relatively lucky enough to avoid the power outages that plagued the event on Friday. There were still a few circuits getting tripped after I got there, but none hit my area. This was apparently the result of bad planning, as they were running too many people off of a really small breaker that simply couldn't handle it. They seemed to have it resolved by Saturday. I think. Though, it may have had something to do with why they had the lights out for the entire party, even when we were leaving. There wasn't a lot of info forthcoming from the staff. In fact, there wasn't much interaction with them at all. When others of my group made inquiries or had problems with servers, they were told to wait while the staff members finished their games of Quake 3. Maybe the attendees were introduced to the staff before I got there, but it seemed that there was more F.R.A.G. staff there than DC Con staff.

I guess I should have gotten a bit more info about the party before I agreed to go. It was almost exclusively Quake 3, with a few players starting up a Counter-Strike server. Since I'm not a big Q3 guy, I played some CS with the rest of them and Diablo II with Bad Mojo, Smeg, and Gouki. In fact, as it turns out the major purpose of the party was as a Q3: CTF qualifier round for some large (inter?)national competition. Everything else was (or at least felt) secondary. We got to listen to one particularly loud clan scream at the top of their lungs to their teammates sitting five feet away as they played in the Capture-The-Flag tournament. This is when they weren't trash talking to the enemy team at their maximum volume possible. And I am completely serious when I say that. It's a wonder they weren't spraying blood from their injured larynx all over their monitors. The staff wasn't about to tell them to keep it down, because this was the big tournament, the big money maker, and the team in question was one of the best ones there. So the rest of us were treated to the deafening shouts of "ENEMY QUAD" and "GO TO RED! GO TO FUCKING RED! GET TO FUCKING RED RIGHT NOW". What a wonderful way to spend a weekend.

The highlight of the weekend was the unfortunate forced extraction of a younger player by his grotesquely obese mother. From what she said, she'd been trying to contact him for several hours Saturday evening. Apparently the hotel wasn't able to get through to the gaming room for some reason (I didn't even know there was a phone in there, and if there was, it doesn't explain why the hotel couldn't physically send someone to the room if they were having problems contacting the staff). So she shows up, angry and irate, and proceeds to berate her kid in front of everyone, telling him that the game he's playing is sick (I don't know what he was playing... probably Quake 3, like everybody elese). She calls her husband, telling him this, and when she's done she stands there and rant dementedly about how what we're doing "is sick", and how "this is a road to nowhere." Over and over, she stands there are exclaims "This is sick." Some people tried to reason calmly with her, telling her it was just a hobby. "This is no hobby," she responded hotly. "This is sick. This is just sick." She likened the setup to a "vampire room" because the lights were all out. All of us who were there were on that "road to nowhere" and we'd "never get on Wall Street." Uh, sure, whatever. Apparently the only yardstick of success is to be on Wall Street. And any activity that doesn't actively serve to get you there is a waste of time. There must be something going on at all those fishing trips that I just don't know about. "You ever heard of a company called Merrill Lynch? That's who my husband works for. He flies all over the country." Who cares? How is that a measure of success? Simply working for Merrill Lynch means you're successful? Simply flying all over the country? Unfortunately, there was no reasoning with the massive land whale of a woman, which is pretty characteristic of the closed-minded masses when presented with something they don't understand. To them, it really is as simple as [ Success = Merrill Lynch ] or [ Unfamiliar and Incomprehensible = Fear and Hatred ]. Somewhere along the line these people's minds were irrevocably closed to anything beyond what they were taught was "good" and "normal". But I've strayed way beyond the scope of this document's original intent. Suffice it to say that that particular scene will be discussed for a long time to come.

In the end, I think it was a good experience for me to see what other LAN parties are like. Will I go back? Nope. I don't think it was a very enjoyable party, but then my perspective isn't likely shared by the majority of the people attending (who were quite happy playing Quake 3 for the entire event). At the very least, I thought it was a good opportunity to see how a party turns out when you make a lot of bad choices.