New Trailer for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

Gotta share this now!!!!

I'm actually excited about it, now that this latest trailer has revealed the release-date for this video game.  There are quite a few nice surprises in here.

I won't tell ya.  You have to  watch it.   :3

Link:  New Lightning Returns Trailer: 13 Days

I guess I’m not playing Sonic: Lost World for the Wii-U

I’m not even totally devastated that Sonic: Lost World is only for Nintendo consoles.  I mean, it’s still a downer for me cuz I’m not getting a Wii-U, but I don’t know of any titles I’d be interested in getting for it anyway.  I’m still digging away at Sonic Generations (the Act 1 and Act 2 challenges).  I could go to the third BOSS but I feel like I have to complete most of the challenges first, plus to unlock goodies like music and art.  And in Sonic Unleashed it’s the same thing; there are stage challenges and even Stages to still visit there too.  So yeah, I’ve got enough Sonic the Hedgehog video game stuff that I can play in the meanwhile.  And Sonic Rivals 2!!! I have so much fun with that game and I play it at least once each week.

            Sorta makes me think about getting the first Sonic Rivals.

KINGDOM HEARTS 3 AND FINAL FANTASY XV FOR PLAYSTATION 4?!!!

When I first found out about this last week, I couldn’t tell whether I was laughing or crying.

These two Square Enix video games—Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy Versus XIII (which I found out is now titled Final Fantasy XV)—are going to be released for the SONY Playstation 4.  The friggin’ PLAYSTATION 4?!!!  WHUT THE AKSKJFHSGLDK@#*!

 Kingdom Hearts 3  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQKhr6s_TXM

 Final Fantasy XV   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3xKbPooKAo

Okay…okay…I am calm.  I must admit, I was hoping that Final Fantasy Versus XIII would still be released for the PS3.  I mean, that is the friggin’ reason why I wanted the PS3 in the first place.  I only have three video games for the PS3: Sonic Generations, Devil May Cry 4, and …uh… used Prince of Persia (2008) that I just bought this past March.  That's all the PS3 games I personally have.  I can play Blu-Ray DVDs on it too (which allows me to watch my #1 favorite movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete) and Casshern Sins on Blu-Ray.  My parents also enjoy the Blu-Ray DVDs on occasion, and my dad has his PS3 games.  Maybe some day I’d like to try out DmC: Devil May Cry on the PS3.

So, I am glad that Kingdom Hearts is returning with a real sequel, not to mention that Sora is returning!!!  And I am also happy that the now-titled Final Fantasy XV is continuing development.  I just wish that I foresaw that it wouldn’t make it to what is a “current-gen” console right now, the PS3.

$400 for the PS4 is not so bad; in fact, it’s reasonable.  But the video games for this gaming system are going to be $100 a pop.  Sorta balances out the surprisingly reasonable release price for the console. What I mean to say is, buying the console would cost $500 anyway if you were to also buy a video game along with it.

Well, I am not going to worry about buying the PS4 or Kingdom Hearts 3 or Final Fantasy XV any time too soon.  They won’t be out in a while, and then when they are out, the games should be $20 less and then maybe I’d consider purchasing them.  In the meantime, I‘ve got some other video games I have to finish.  I’ll just name some right off my head:

• Sonic Generations (PS3)
• Sonic Unleashed (Wii)
• Prince of Persia 2008 (PS3)
• Dissidia Duodecim: Final Fantasy (PSP)
• Mega Man X8  (PS2)
• Shadow the Hedgehog (don’t hate me  >X ) (PS2)
• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (Wii)

 

They will keep me busy in between my new workdays, I suppose.  Next-gen can definitely wait.

 

Am I Playing Sonic Generations Too Much?

Sigh.  I haven’t touched Dissidia Duodecim: Final Fantasy for maybe a month and a half.  The video games I am playing currently (returning to the most) are Sonic Generations and Sonic Rivals 2.  I should have finished Sonic Generations last year but other things got in the way (my cat’s surgery was a big part of it, but I was also doing some volunteering for work experience).    I lost interest in playing video games for several months.  I actually, lost interest in a log of other things at that time.  Now that life is looking up, some of that “life” in my interests has returned.

When in late March I visited one of my favorite websites, the fan-art galore that is DeviantArt, I came across some interesting Sonic the Hedgehog fan-art, along with fan-art of my other two favorite hedgehogs Shadow and Silver.  Some of the fan-art sparked story ideas in my head that I wanted to write as fan-fiction.  But then soon, I thought, Well I haven’t played Sonic Rivals 2 for a while, and Sonic Rivals 2 is the only Sonic game I have where I could play as Silver. (I don’t have SONIC ’06 and I probably won’t get it or play it ever.  Sad, huh?).  I tried it again and I forgot how much fun it was; I liked the music (it’s not bad, not spectacular like in Sonic Generations), and it can get frustrating but then I laugh when I lose a race or battle.  It’s good light fun.  I can play it in my bedroom or in the living room because it’s on the PSP.  I really enjoy the Acts for the Haunted Mystic Zone, especially the music for Act 2, the battle against Shadow and Silver (that was the story I was playing when I first got to it).

For Sonic Generations, I didn’t touch it since March last year and then once more in November.  Now I’m trying to play it maybe twice a week, when I ‘m not training for my new job and the TV in the den is available.

AT this point I visited both Acts of all the Stages in the game and still need to finish many Challenge games for Act 1 and Act 2.  I defeated Metal Sonic, Shadow, and last week was Silver in their respective Rival Battles.  I beat Silver Rival Battle in Hard Mode on my first try, because by that time I went through so many trial-and-error runs with Normal Mode and got to know Silver’s attack pattern.  So many trial-and-error runs.  So many.

I still need the 3^rd Key to unlock the third Boss, but also in the meantime I will complete the other challenges in order to gain some new Skills for both Sonics.  I gotta say something: I love the music for Planet Wisp Act 2.  It’s been stuck in my head for the last several days.  Now Act 2 (and yes, Act 1 also) are very frustrating, but its music helps me to deal with it.  I also really like the song for Crisis City Act 2 from SONIC '06; I fell in love with that one almost a month ago.  I went to iTunes and had to get the original version from the SONIC ‘06 soundtrack.

How awesome would it be if Sonic could race against either Shadow or Silver in what would be the “Doppelganger” races?  Well, Shadow, yes…but Silver can fly, and that might be cheating :3 so maybe it wouldn’t make sense, but at least with Shadow it would be neat!  Oh well, I guess that is only possible in Sonic Rivals or Sonic Rivals 2.  At least on their feet, unlike in Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing/Transformed their they drive vehicles.  That is...what it is.

 

Below is a link to the YouTube video of the music track "Planet Wisp Act 1" from the original Sonic Colors.  I love the version in Sonic Gererations as well, but the guitar bass for this original version is boss.  (I tried to embed the video here but the HTML can't be accepted for some reason).

 

http://youtu.be/eODArFqHbf0     (Sonic Colors "Planet Wisp Act 1" Music)

It's been in constant repeat in my head for the past week!!  I whistle the melody on occasion.  O3O

 

Should I Return to Playing… Final Fantasy X?

Friday on February 15^th I finished playing the Story Mode for Tidus in Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy.  I enjoyed watching how even though Tidus hated his father Jecht, he also respected him and wanted to fight him when he wasn’t already beaten down by, uh, the Emperor of FFII.  It was then that I had this thought:

I should get back to playing Final Fantasy X.  Should I?

I haven’t played that video game since, well, since maybe 2009.  I need to check the memory card data to confirm that, LOL.  But I think the reason I haven’t played it so much the last uh, TEN YEARS, is that I…I dunno.  I still have the BradyGames Official Strategy Guide for FFX.  Ah, yes….I absolutely HATED the BlitzBall game going on in the middle of things.  Hey, I don’t play football, I don’t watch football, so why do I want to play Blitz ball which is kinda the same thing except underwater?!  It just really turned me off and I put the game away for some years.  There are so many stats and rules for the game it just didn’t make the actual video game fun.  I wanted to play more into the story, darnit!  Let me f#!%&^n’ go!

Oh, here’s another thing that made me lose my patience for the game:  the Sphere Grid.  Yuck, it is frustrating because I don’t get the necessary Ability Points and Grid Spheres fast enough to level up the characters.   EDIT:   It’s a little easier to work with now after getting back to it a couple of weeks ago.

Looking back though, at some point I did go through with the BlitzBall, as frustrating as it was, and I think I did defeat the boss Oblitzerator.   I also think I left off right before the party was going to go somewhere else.

I had to go to iTunes and find this battle BGM that I remembered but didn’t know the title to it.  I looked and it’s called “Enemy Attack.”  I always loved that music track from the game.  I preferred it from the other battle BGMs I’ve encountered so far into the game.  It would have been cool if Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy had this as an unlockable extra Battle BGM.  At least, that’s my opinion.

Note:  My favorite weapon Tidus uses is the blue longsword called Brotherhood.  I realize that now after seeing that Bartz uses this weapon when he mimics Tidus.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengance is coming!!!!!

Okay, I don’t have a Playstation Move video game controller, but IF I had to buy one eventually, it would be for this very game.  I don’t care if I didn’t play the other video games from the Metal Gear Solid series; I still want to play this game!!

But like DmC: Devil May Cry, I believe I should rent it first.  I want to have that feeling where I can’t wait another day to get back to the game and play some more of it, before I spend money on this thing.  And besides, I don’t think I will be buying any more games for a long while.  Pretty much the games I return to often are Dissidia 012, and uh…Sonic Generations?  And what about Mega Man X8?  I really gotta beat the Normal Mode for MMX 8 because there is supposedly an extended ending for the game if I do.  I don’t know how I’ll do in Hard Mode for that; I don’t got the PATIENCE, man.

I ramble again.  The main reason why I am interested in Metal Gear Rising: Revengance is the fact that Raiden is a bad-ass cyborg, and I just love those kinds of characters, especially when they are the good guys; cyborg or robots.  He is just—awesome!  But man, I don’t know too much about him and his past.  So…oops about that.

Excited about Lightning Returns: FFXIII + More

I don’t know if I am even going to bother playing parts 1 and 2 of the FFXIII series.  But I think I’ll really like this new one coming up.  Why?  Because I only have to worry about controlling one character, Lightning.  I am sort of DONE with Japanese role playing games now.  I like to be able to have my character attack when they want to rather than when it’s their turn.  My patience is gone.  I want to do everything in a day but I can’t.  So something’s gotta give.

I saw the extended trailer for this video game on TheLifestream.net, and then I read up on what it is about in Final FantasyUnion.  I like the ticking-clock type of story (maybe I should go and see the Justin Timberlake movie In Time).  I’ve had dreams where I also had numbered minutes to live and when time ran out, I woke up.  But I’m digressing now.  I’m still waiting for more news on FF Versus XIII.  I know I am going to love the game-play on that one.

Is there ever going to be a Kingdom Hearts 3?  I don’t think there could be any more, to be honest.  If I have to play another KH game, I suppose I can try KH: Birth by Sleep sometime, even though it doesn’t feature my favorite KH character Sora. 

Another thing I am excited about: trying out DmC: Devil May Cry.  I’ve decided that I will rent it and see if it is worth buying.  I haven’t seen any TV ads for it at all.  Maybe they are not shown in the U.S.A.  I’m not done with DMC 4; in fact I think I may need to start the third stage all over again because I am completely stuck on what to do next to make things move on along.

Ehhhh, I have been neglecting this blog for far too long. 

CYBORG HAVEN UPDATE For August 24

The following item has been added to the list titled Video Games I Look Forward To:

• NiGHTS into Dreams…!!!!!!!!!

This is why:  Dreams Do Come True! SEGA Announces The Return of NiGHTS into Dreams...

I am so happy that I know I will be able to play NiGHTS into Dreams, even if it is going to be on my computer instead of a console.  I think it would be fun to play NiGHTS on my computer and use the mouse to point NiGHTS to the direction I want to go…at least that’s what I hope is going to happen.  I hope I don’t have to click the mouse for NiGHTS’s movement to count.   How do you play NiD with a video game controller, anyway?

 

If there is one PC video/computer game I’ll ever play, it’s going to be NiGHTS into Dreams.

MY JAK X: COMBAT RACING DISC HAS THE MEMORY CARD GLITCH

It happened.  Again.

And I found out I’m not the only one with this problem.  Many other players of Jak X: Combat Racing had this problem as well, preventing some of these guys from ever playing the game or forcing them to buy another copy.  I read the reviews for the game from Amazom.com, and then the Wikipedia page for Jak X to learn more.

I was one of those people who, for some games, HAD to get it soon after it was released in stores.  Jak X was one of these games.  I was excited about it being a nice change from the adventuring that was in the Jak and Daxter trilogy.  I’m not interested in ANY other racing game.  This game was the only racing game I would ever buy, because it had a story and the lovable, familiar characters I’ve come to know sharing the story together.

I played the game into 30% of its completion.  There were no saving problems.  Then, one day, after leaving the Garage part of the menu, the Save icon didn’t go away; it kept on flashing.  I went to the Stage Select screen and it was still flashing.  I played one race, and the entire time the Save icon still flashed non-stop.  I made a mistake of trying to save the game manually while the game was trying to save automatically, and it just froze up the progress.  I didn’t know what else to do; the only way to get out of it was to reset the game.  It corrupted my card, everything that was in there: Chaos Legion, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak 2, Jak 3, my progress for Jak X, Sonic Mega Collection Plus, all of it.  Finished games, gone.

So Tuesday I try Jak X again.  I got through the tutorial all right.  Then I finished one full race, in which I earned a Silver Medal on the first try.  Then after saving, I wanted to check the garage, since I got two new vehicles.  The game auto saved, even though I did not make any changes to the race car whatsoever.  And the Save icon kept flashing.  And kept flashing.  And kept flashing.  I stood up from my seat and paced around the room figuring out what to do.  I haven’t backed up the data from Jak and Daxter R2 and Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier.   I was afraid I was going to lose data again.

Funny what happened though.  I tried to Load my profile to hopefully “counter” the stuck-on-auto-save mode.  I left it like that for over thirty minutes.  Nothing changed, and I had to reset the game or nothing else would happen.  But actually, when I browsed the data in the memory card, the data was still readable.   The first time Jak X corrupted my data, the data files in the memory card showed up as gray cubes and a verbal indication that the data was corrupted.  The PS2 did not recognize the memory card’s data and the icons for each game didn’t show up.

This time, the data icons DID show up:  for Jak and Daxter: TLF, Jak and Daxter, and Jak X.  It was a relief to see that two of the icons showed Daxter and Jak X had its title logo there.  I may have saved my game data from a horrible fate.

I would buy another copy of the game but I want to see if I can do what Wikipedia suggests for this particular “Memory Card Glitch.”  Keep the memory card out and just put it in when you want to save, and then save it manually from the Main Menu screen.  I wouldn’t mind doing that; the auto save feature just doesn’t help for this game exactly like it should, huh?

Meanwhile, if the data for Jak and Daxter: TLF is okay, I should back it up somewhere else and delete it from this memory card so that this glitch won’t happen again.

Here is the link to the Wikipeida page for Jak X: Combat Racing: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jak_X:_Combat_Racing

Go to the section that says “Autosave Memory Card Controversy” and read up on it.  If this happened to you, I suggest following the “workaround” advice.  It may be a bother, but at least you don’t have to go buy a new copy of the game, and you can keep your currently non-corrupted memory card.

I Want to Play Journey…

This video game is just something I don’t think I should miss out on.  Unfortunately it is a PlayStation Network game, not a console game, and I DON’T HAVE A PLAYSTATION NETWORK ACCOUNT.

I’ve known about Journey for a while, and when I first saw videos of it (E3 or some other program like that), I was mesmerized by the desert terrain and the music.  The video game is about a light-weight, cloth-garbed character (which you control) whose story is to go on a journey to reach the mountain with light behind it.  But it is far away.  You can choose how you can get him there; as straight-forward as you want, or stop from time to time to enjoy the sights, explore the terrain or remnants of a village.  You can go alone or if you find another traveler, you may make a companion out of him and journey together.  On PSN, it would be possible to find others playing at the same time, even several players at once.

What is interesting about this game is that there is no spoken dialogue… which is fine, because I think the game doesn’t require a scripted dialogue anyway.  I think it is still possible to communicate with the other travelers.  According to a comment about the video game’s soundtrack on iTunes, you may communicate with Morse Code if you are familiar with it.  This makes me want to learn Morse Code, just to be able to do this… or just because I’m curious.   It is another language to learn.  I mean another alphabet to learn.  Better not make that mistake.

There is hope yet.  I found out that there is a Journey soundtrack available in iTunes, and I put it in my wish-list already so I don’t have to find it later.  I listened to a few music tracks from this album and oh my goodness, the music is so beautiful, I just want to imagine myself travelling around a desert as the background music plays.  I decided to look up this game on Amazon.com and I discovered that there is going to be a video game collection for the PS3, called the Journey Collector’s Edition.  The description on the page says that it includes three full games from thatgamecompany : Journey, Flower, and flOw.  I hope this means that I can play this game without needing to have an account for Playstation Network.

Unless…that just means that whatever parts of the game that had to be downloaded are all included in the game, except—and this kinda breaks my heart—it still might be a one-player game after all if I don’t have the internet on the PS3.  If I wanted to experience other Journey characters, I would have needed to sign up for a PSN account and WiFi this and Internet that, and I just don’t want to deal with that mess.  That’s me, anyway.  So, it turns out that I might make this journey alone.  Hmmm.

I like journey stories.  I have a couple of novels that are journey stories, in which the main character or characters are on a journey to a certain destination, and events and emotions happen along the way that make them grow as a person, and be enlightened and even at peace.  I am drawn to that kind of stuff.  Even Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was a journey, in a way.  It was certainly an adventure.  So the video game Journey is—what can I say—the very journey game I’ve been waiting for?

You can find a trailer of Journey Collector’s Edition on this Amazom.com webpage.  It is located under the image for the product.   Here's the link: Journey Collector's Edition