Top of Cool

Remember, remember, the 11th of September.

So, I picked up my iPod, told it to play a song, and then it crashed. Tried to reboot itself, apparently, showing the Apple logo, then gave me a folder Whammy.

Yeah, that thing. So, checked Apple’s iPod support website, which seemed to indicate that this icon denotes serious problems with the embedded software. Well, I was a little dejected. I hate reformatting my iPod and re-copying all my music onto. Such a pain.

Then, this made me think of the Millenium Falcon. (Because, as Joss once said, all things do.) I mean, what would Han Solo do with a non-functional iPod? So, I decided to drop it from a height of 18 inches. Hmm, didn’t really do anything. So, I tried 3 feet. Blam-o! The iPod spontaneously rebooted after the drop and booted right into the normal iPod software. All my music was still there, and everything seems to be fine!

So, once again proving that the Han Solo method of fixing things really is the best way to go sometimes.

Well, at least in Japan, where they are apparently more interested in another craptastic Final Fantasy game than just about anything else.

Famitsu, the ultimate Japanese video game mag, published a poll of what readers were most interested in during E3. It’s all Sony, Squeenix, and PS3. Even the one non-Sony item was on the list because of a character made popular (recently) through the Metal Gear Solid games on Playstation.

1. Impressions of the PS3 controller
2. Final Fantasy XIII information
3. PS3 Price and Release date
4. Super Smash Bro. Brawl and Snake playable announcement
5. PS3 menu & interface
6. PS3 online service
7. PS3 game pics
8. Polymorphic content surrounding FFXIII
9. Dragon Quest Swords
10. Square-Enix game pics

What the heck? It’s no wonder that it seems Sony isn’t trying very hard. They don’t have to! Of course, I guess this really prooves nothing except Famitsu readers are Sony/Final Fantasy/Squeenix fanboys. Naturally, we should expect this judging by the Famitsu Readers’ top 100 games of all time, with it’s top 10 being an almost complete Squeenix lovefest.

Contrast that with the top user-rated games on gamerankings.com. I don’t want to bash or generalize, or proclaim one segment of video game players to be better than another, but at least the majority of gamers over here aren’t proclaiming Final Fantasy X, of all things, to be the best game ever.

If I were Sony, I guess I wouldn’t be too worried, because as long as I have Final Fantasy XIII, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Dragon Quest IX, then the PS3 will sell millions in Japan.

I’ve played about an hour of the DS2 demo and you may color me less than impressed.

The graphics in the demo are improved over the first DS for sure, but they’re still pretty much crap. I was surprised how crappy the graphics were, in fact. Fate had better graphics, IMHO. The characters were low-polygon affairs that shared the same basic look and feel as the models from the first game. Actually, it looks like they may have just copied the models straight over. Spell effects are nothing new. You’ve seen them all in Diablo 2 and Neverwinter Nights.

Game-play wise, it’s the same tired gameplay that was in the first one. Linear maps that take you pretty much from point a to point b, oh look, a mini-map, so now it’s even easier to follow the linear maps. They could’ve just removed the movement controls and made a pretty decent rail shooter.

The story seems somewhat cliche but is not entirely devoid of interest. *yawn* another evil guy gets powerful by means of some ancient artifact and tries to track down more artifacts. Blah blah blah. I’ve played this game. It was called Diablo 2.

So, yeah, I’m a little cynical about DS2, especially because it feels less like a sequel and more like an expansion pack or a user-created mod of the first game.

Maybe the editing tools will be decent this time around. I doubt it.