drqshadow

I hate audiences that applaud a movie in general. If you're at a film festival and the director is sitting in the front row, maybe. If you've just watched a shitty summer blockbuster with a bucket of Milk Duds in your lap, you're a moron.

"the long-dead Gamecube"? The Wii hasn't been around THAT long...

Yeah, I loved the Oddworld series. Still do. Munch is one of those rare games that takes a successful 2-D formula and exports it to a 3-D world without losing any of the magic that made it so special in the first place. Has anybody played Stranger's Wrath?

Needs more cone of silence.

Yeah, I think "mediocre" sums up the first X-Men film pretty nicely. It was about what I expected at the time, nothing exceptional. X-2 hit it out of the park.

Why do away with the iconic white spider on the chest? Seriously. He looks more like a dark Carnage than Venom. Ugh.

What do you MEAN there's porn on the internet?

Haha, very nice.

Very cool. I'll avoid buying it for the PS2 then, since I was seriously contemplating it.

Man, just drop the freaking price already. I want one, but refuse to pay $400 for it.

Well, that strategy will change when you meet some of the higher-HP bosses. Even if you luck out and manage to hit Black Hole every time out, that's a maximum of three (MAYBE four, if you get lucky) castings before you're out of MP and have to dig into your hi-ether collection or begin charging. At about 80K HP a shot, that's a max of 320K HP - and some of the tougher hidden bosses have HP well into the millions. When you find yourself out of MP in a room with an enraged monster and you start trying to charge and stay out of damage's way... the battle doesn't last much longer. Quickenings are best used to polish off a boss who's down to his final quarter HP or so. Anyway, Pablo, for the ice boss I did actually use an early quickening to wipe out the little ice elemental things. If you don't have enough mist charges to trigger any of the big spells that follow a quickening, just concentrate on an area fire attack like Firaga. You definitely want to wipe out the elementals ASAP.

Haha, that's awesome. I like when the room full of children kicks the shit out of the flying Hillary Clinton monster. Or whoever that was...

Right now, since I'm leveling up, I have everyone's, including the party leader's, primary gambit set to attack any enemy within sight. That way I don't have to go into a menu to attack something, I just have to steer in their direction. Everyone also has an "any ally - phoenix down" or "any ally - raise" gambit, which the system knows to only use if one of your teammates goes down, as well as a "ally status: confuse - smelling salts" combo because confuse is just freaking annoying. I'll always have a healer in the party with a "ally hp < 50% - curaga" gambit. Other than that, I just play around with different combinations. "enemy status:protect - dispel" "enemy status:oil - fira", that kind of thing. I also got the licenses for every technick with Balthier and have a "party leader's target - expose" gambit I'll manually toggle on or off when I'm in a boss fight and want to do some big physical damage. When I'm in a big battle, though, I usually like to do things manually.

I crossed the 80 hour mark this weekend, basically spent the whole of New Year's Day hunting marks and hunt club rare monsters. My party is universally at or above level 43, and I'm steamrolling through certain portions of the map while avoiding others (the Deadlands, the Necrohol) because I only seem to get ambushed and annihilated. I've unlocked five or six espers, but like cvskin said, they're just about worthless. I've only summoned two or three of them in a battle, and usually don't even bother. I love this game. I can't stop playing.

I'm still working on FFXII. I crossed the 60-hour barrier this week, and have finished about two thirds of the mark hunts.

I posted about this on the Oratory, and basically changed my view on it mid-reply. When I think of Gaiman, I think of slightly skewed fantasy and alternate takes on fairy tales, not horror. However, that's just because the majority of his work falls under that umbrella. Anyone who has their copy of Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes handy, go reread issue #6, "24 Hours." I'd actually forgotten about this story until it jumped into my head during the aforementioned Oratory reply, and it was always one of my favorites of the entire series. Gaiman can do psychological horror, merged with a fair amount of physically disturbing imagery, almost as well as anyone. I'm eager to see his take on the Silent Hill universe.

Sounds like a great idea for a series! Hopefully my upcoming review for FFXII doesn't get in the way. If you've already played FFV, you've got nowhere to go but up. Far and away the worst of the series...

I had no idea WTF I was watching until I read that post explaining it. Bizarre.

So, you can't play these online against others, right? What's the point?

Mother FUCKER. Make it right the first time, guys.

I just got a DS as an early Christmas present, along with the new Super Mario Brothers, and I'm stoked about expanding my library. I never thought I'd enjoy it as much as I am. It's only a matter of time until I grab FF3. As for what I'd like to see? Hm, let me get back to you on that.

I've been pondering getting one myself. My old PS2 sounds like an old man in the morning when I try to power it up, and takes for freaking ever to load. For $129, it's almost manageable to pick one up solely for replacement / mod chipping reasons.

Goddamn MTV, Flash video is NOT the answer. I'll have to watch that at work. It's choppier than hell on a Mac.

Yeah, that sounds entirely like the Wii, and not like the old NES Light gun... which came out about twenty years before their patent.

Yeah, I have the first two seasons. I'm done with season one, and a couple episodes deep into season two. Love it. Freaking love it.