Top Five Final Fantasy Characters... on MSNBC?

What about me?

Apparently we live in a society in which mainstream news outlets care about Final Fantasy.  MSNBC recently posted a list "the top five greatest" FF characters.  My feelings are mixed.


Pro: Hey!  FF on MSNBC!
Con: Isn't "top five greatest" redundant?

Pro: Vincent Valentine!
Con: Tidus?  I mean... Tidus?  The crybaby?  Not Auron?  Or Yuna?

Pro: Balthier!
Con: Why aren't there any characters from before 6?


Pro: Sephiroth!
Con: Sephiroth?  Obvious much?

While I am glad to see a big news site taking an interest, I am disappointed in the choices.  How were these characters selected?  Perhaps something more specific than "top greatest" would have been helpful.  Most memorable?  Coolest? 

The stories of Final Fantasy are certainly complex enough to merit actual literary analysis.  If you're going to say "greatest", I want to see a PhD involved.

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Urgent EVOKE - Week One Reactions

Could a video game change the world for the better?  Let's find out.

The concept of EVOKE -- the browser/RL mmorpg which calls itself "a ten-week crash course in changing the world" -- is to take all of the highly addictive and social aspects of online gaming and use them to turn the click-happy into engineers of social change.  Curious?  A slick online presence, with a well-made comic and  hip grunge graphics, will seal the deal. 

Naturally, I signed up for an account.  Mission #1 came today, and instead of pondering which flash game to try on jayisgames.com I found myself deciding exactly what my social agenda will be.  Do I care about the greening of the world?  Access to education? 

Each piece of Evidence (e.g. following a social innovator on twitter, reading an article and posting about it on an EVOKE blog) yields character points which you allocate to your powers.  Yes, powers.  Not Ranged Weapons or Mana Recovery, though:  Collaboration, Sustainability, Local Insight, etc.  Each action you log is reviewed, and if found suitable awarded points.  And as other users check out your stuff, they can give you points for it as well.  Forget grinding in a dungeon -- grind on the web looking for examples of urban farms.

So far it's a great concept carried out with flair.  I'm concerned about scalability, though; if it gets huge, how many staff will be needed to review the Evidence?  Either way, being a "certified EVOKE innovator" is sure to be more fulfilling than making Commodore Emeritus on Super Star Trek.  Not by much, but still.

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DSi XL Feature News: Update Your Gray Matter

Yes, the DSi is the apex of gamer lifestyle hardware.  And yes, bigger might just be better.  So much marketing has gone into selling this little guy as the magic keep-your-brain-active tool that the pressure to make the screens legible to people over the age of ten has presumably been rained down upon the R&D folks in a torrent of directives and memoranda.  While the 'nets are all hoping/assuming the DSi XL is meant to compete in the burgeoning e-reader market, perhaps it's meant for something else.

The list of included software pretty much clinches it:

• Brain Age™ Express: Arts & Letters
• Brain Age™ Express Math
• Photo Clock

What in Helsinki?  Where's the Classic Book Collection?  How about a little PDF reader action?  HEAR MY PLEA!

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Nintendo DSi XL Release Date and Price on G4

G4 has the info you need, apparently:

    "Do you like your DS? Would you like a bigger DS? Would you like this bigger DS to be called the DSi XL and be released on March 28 for $190? Well, such a prediction would lend credence to the theory that you're a psychic freak, but I'm going to let that pass for now. You got off lucky, dude.

    Nintendo of America announced the March 28 release date this morning at their media summit in San Francisco. G4 is on-hand at the event to check out Nintendo's lineup -- stay tuned."

Thanks to TRB for the heads.

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Gamer Tattoo Tuesday: Modern Warfare 2

I have yet to see any photos of MW2 ink anywhere, and that's a good thing.  This game, while certainly well-made, should raise the eyebrow of any participant.  Do you really want this much realism in a war game?  This is fun for you?  Killing Nazi zombies -- good times.  Killing people whose concepts of a virtuous life differ from yours -- worth a pause. 

Seems the most eligible image for a tattoo would be the insignia of Task Force 141.

Seriously, though.  Think about it.  Do you really want some vet stopping you and commenting on this? 

"Never seen that insignia before.  What division you in?" 
"Me?  Oh I just pretend to be a soldier on my PS3."  
".... You mock everything that makes America great."

(Note -- I had no idea joystiq had posted this Nazi zombie MW2 article mere hours before I posted.  Yes, it's an archetype.)

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Assassin's Creed II Screenshot Vs Reality

Here's a nice screenie of some architecture near the duomo in Assassin's Creed II.

Oh, wait.  That's a photo of real life.  Here's the screenshot.

You just try to tell me that's not amazing.  My dad starting playing AC2 a little while ago, and realized he could clamber his way up to a viewpoint not unsimilar to the view from an apartment he stayed in. I assume I'm not alone in eyeing churches a little differently after having played this game -- judging handholds and looking out for glowing feathers.  These two images speak to just how faithfully the developers recreated reality, and if I ever find myself in Venice I had better see haycarts all over the place, for my own safety.

A recent WSJ article with the SEO-friendly title "Time Travel Gets Closer to Reality" addresses this topic.

The game's producer-authors chose those years as the most eventful of the era and labored lovingly to re-create the environs as exactly as possible. They hired Renaissance scholars to advise on period garb, architecture, urban planning, weaponry and the like. They took tens of thousands of photographs of interiors and streets. They used Google Earth liberally to piece together the ground-up and sky-down perspectives through which the action flows.

Well, it worked. 

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Final Fantasy XIII Music -- Will You Preorder?

Image by GogDog via Flickr

Now this takes giant balls of manufacted nethicite.  Square Enix sent a polite missive today, declaring that we now have an opportunity to preorder the soundtrack for FFXIII.

Experience the music from the latest chapter in the FINAL FANTASY series in a world filled with unlimited possibilities.

Composed by Masashi Hamauzu, the soundtrack is comprised of 85 tracks on 4 CDs, and includes the Japanese theme song "Kimi Ga Iru Kara" and additional song "Eternal Love". *English theme song not included song not included

Directly imported from Japan, this is your chance to own the distinct FINAL FANTASY sound that the world has been waiting for.

Seriously?   They want us to buy a the soundtrack for a game we haven't even played yet?  Their dominance over the minds of the gamer world is hard to question, but this smacks of hubris, even for them.  Have they realized they have become Shinra?

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