There are very few games that I finish, and even fewer become my favorites. Final Fantasy IX earned its place on my list of all-time favorites this past weekend, which is a remarkable feat considering that it was released nine years ago.

FFIX was not one of my favorites when it was released. While I enjoyed the game at the time, I wanted it to be more like Final Fantay VIII, my favorite at the time. As a middle-schooler, I didn't mind the angsty protagonist in FFVIII and found the spunky lead in FFIX to be less appealing. I wanted FFIX to be more serious. I was also relatively green as a player; FFVIII was my first RPG. I didn't understand why FFIX's mechanics were far superior.

FFIX was designed to be forgiving and very rewarding for those who invest a little time. While playing through the third and fourth discs, I found a lot of fun sidequests. Some of my favorite sidequests were those that used chocobos. Special chocobo-specific areas, such as Chocobo's Forest and Chocobo's Lagoon, include a mini-game where you can dig for treasure. While many items are health or status ailment potions, the best items by far are the chocographs. Chocographs are essentially clues to find hidden treasures. Some treasure chests give your chocobo the ability to traverse mountains, oceans, and even the skies. Others contain very valuable items, armor, weapons, and cards. Treasure is hidden throughout the world map, and the hunt feels like a real adventure.

I also really enjoyed the optional moogle sidequests. The moogles are adorable creatures who play a big role in FFIX. They allow you to save in the game, but they also provide valuable comic relief, especially in dark areas. Moogles are constantly writing letters to each other and they ask you to deliver them. The letters may not tell you anything essential to the story, but they are great for flavor. Moogles are always so happy to hear from each other and they have a positive outlook even when cities are crumbling around them. The idea of delivering letters for moogles may seem ridiculous, but you are actually providing a valuable service since the moogle mail service, Mognet, has been out of commission. There is an optional sidequest at the end of the game to get Mognet running again. It is very rewarding to fix this service, as it frees you from mailman duties and helps all the moogles you met throughout your journey.

There are several other clever design choices that help players get the most out of the game. Fairies are special encounters scattered throughout the world that can help you learn abilities much faster. There are also special enemies called Grand Dragons that provide a massive amount of experience, helping characters level up. Quina's ability, Level 5 Death, can kill them in one hit. These are great enemies for leveling, as Freya's Dragon's Crest ability does damage equal to the square of the number of dragons killed. Thus, 100 dragons killed gives her a guaranteed 9999 (max damage) attack for minimal MP. While this type of strategy may seem like exploitation, such clever design choices are likely very carefully made to help players level up for the end of the game.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I used a strategy guide and additional online guides to get the most out of FFIX. Some of the features are so well-hidden that you practically have to buy the guide if you want to be a completionist and not waste half of the game running into walls, looking for items. The strategy guide is also very helpful when it comes to bosses, as you can equip to guard against status effects such as heat that could otherwise create a very frustrating battle. I understand that some feel that strategy guides are cheating, but I find that I enjoy elaborate RPGs such as FFIX much more when I don't have to worry about missing something. Unfortunately, the official guide for FFIX was designed to promote the use of the website PlayOnline, which is now a FFXI site. This means that certain details are left out of the guide, which is part of the reason why I constantly looked up answers in FAQs and Walkthroughs. I happened to miss a particular item that was only available for a brief period of time because it wasn't listed in the guide, and I was very disappointed. Initially, I thought the game wouldn't limit the availability of an item, but it appears that there are a few optional items that are the exception.

By the time I reached Memoria (the final area), I was at the top of my game. I didn't want the story to end, but I had played through all the side content and enjoyed every minute of it. I'll admit that there were some frustrating moments during my many attempts to beat Ozma or the stubborn Yan, but the victories were very sweet. I became addicted to auto-regen and rarely had to heal my party. I had three characters that could consistently do maximum damage attacks and my inventory was overflowing with potions and other valuable resources.

After playing consistently every night, I was sad to see FFIX end. The game had a very satisfying ending. I became attached to my characters - the story fleshed them out and made them feel real. It's going to be difficult to find an RPG to follow FFIX now that I've seen how good they can be.  

It is rare to find a demo that leaves you satisfied at the end. Many end with cliffhangers, hoping you’ll buy the game. With Viva Piñata: Party Animals, the mini-games created a satisfying experience in just a short demo.

I wasn’t sure whether or not I would like Party Animals. I have never played Viva Piñata, but it was one of my sister’s obsessions. I have been hesitant to start the game because we have similar taste and I don’t want to get distracted from my schoolwork. When I heard that there was a party game using these characters, I thought it would be worth checking out the demo.

In the first few minutes, I was impressed by the amount of character packed into the game. Each piñata animal had its own personality, through exaggerated body language and careful character design. The mini-games were summarized and scored after each round with voice-overs imitating sports commentators. It was cute and clever.

After playing two other party games for quite some time (Rayman’s Raving Rabbids and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz), I have to admit that this game won me over with its charm. While the games themselves hardly seem innovative (from a Mario Kart race clone to sailboats powered by burps), they are certainly fun covered in the Viva Piñata theme. The humor is not quite as gross as Rabbids, yet it still seems to have a good balance of humor to appeal to younger boys and girls.

However, I would not limit the audience of this game to children. My coworkers were playing through the demo one day and had a blast. While neither grown man would likely admit to enjoying a kids game that much, I saw first-hand how much they became immersed. The game became a way for them to compete and tease each other to a greater degree than they do in real life. Also, the stakes were quite low, keeping the fun level high.

I really enjoyed the limited demo experience I had with Viva Piñata: Party Animals. I plan to rent this game later. I was glad that I was able to gain an understanding of the strengths of the game from the demo. I would recommend this game for children and encourage curious older gamers to consider trying the demo.  

I finally decided that it was time to stop avoiding Chocobo Tales because of one silly race. After all, I was close to the end and I couldn’t let it hold me back. I had really enjoyed the rest of the game and wasn’t ready to give up yet.

I began the race and found myself much calmer. While I didn’t win the first time, I was consistently improving and beat it shortly. Without my emotions running high, my hand was much steadier and it made all the difference.

While the game had a little twist at the end that kept it going a little longer than I expected, it only took me a couple of hours to beat the entire game. The final battle was a mini-game much like hockey. True to the rest of the game, nothing was too difficult after that one race that held me back.

As the credits rolled, I was surprised by their length. Instead of normal scrolling credits, each name or names appeared separately with a screen for each person’s title. I didn’t want to touch the screen for fear of missing some “reward” movie for sitting through the credits. However, I touched the screen by accident once and was surprised to see a letter turn a color and make a noise. After a few screens, I figured out that, if I touched all the letter O’s, the whole credit would turn rainbow colors and I would hear a happy chocobo “KWEH!”

When the credits finally ended, I saw a score. The credits themselves were one last mini-game. I was impressed by the creativity in using the credits as something more than another movie to sit through. My final play time was eight hours and 25 minutes.

Looking back, I really did enjoy Chocobo Tales. Aside from the two mini-games where I was temporarily stuck, I had relatively few problems. The card battles, which had a large chance element, were often very close. I almost always won, but the opponents seemed well-matched to my level and created a challenge. I hope that I will soon be able to try out the multiplayer mode and play it in a new way.  

I was really excited to play Chocobo Tales the day after I beat that pesky Leviathan. Once I had regained my gamer’s enthusiasm, I set off to gather a couple of items. These items unlocked the final level and soon I would complete the game!

Soon, I had obtained the final items (energy cells) that allowed my friend Cid (who appears in all Final Fantasy games) to reboot his airship. We sped off to a remote tower in the sea and I jumped into the first picture book. It was The Cactuar and the Adamantoise, Vol. 2. I passed all levels up to level three with relative ease. I unlocked a card, but I could not move forward in the level until I had beaten the racing mini-game on level four.

I raced over and over again, but soon I had plateaued. I was consistently coming in half a second to one full second behind Volg, an annoying black chocobo. Once again, I would turn down the music and shout at the screen in frustration. In the race, my chocobo was riding on the back of an adamantoise, who you would steer by moving the stylus clockwise or counterclockwise on the lower screen (around an image of an adamantoise body that moved with the stylus). The adamantoise was slow to respond and the dual screens were distracting. I found that if I messed up in the slightest, I would lose the race.

After my recent frustration with the leviathan mini-game, I promptly quit. After seeing no improvement during the previous four attempts, the happy music and bright colors only served to annoy me. This time, however, I did not come back to my game after an hour. I haven’t touched it for a few days now.

Given the friendly nature of the game, I find these two difficult mini-games to be horribly frustrating. Unlike many longer games, I didn’t need a guide to help guide me along my way; all I had to do was eat one of many red apples scattered about the base level to get a hint. Friendly features like those apples were very helpful, but a couple mini-games exhausted my patience for this otherwise enjoyable game in a short amount of time. I discovered today that even the best design in a game is wasted if someone becomes so frustrated that they quit.  

Over the past few days, I have been whipping through Chocobo Tales. I sit down to play one or two mini-games and soon discover that I’ve been playing for an hour. I have been moving the story forward without too much difficulty. That is, until I reached the Boy Who Cried Leviathan.

Most of the mini-games are exceptionally well-paced. I generally like to play mini-games no more than four or five times in order to beat them. This had been the case for most of Chocobo Tales. Only rarely did I find myself shouting at the DS, feeling cheated or angry. There is a large number of mini-games, all of which use only touch controls, so some of the games fit the controls better, making them easier. It reminded me of playing Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz on the Wii. Some things work well with unconventional controls and some just don’t.

One game that is very unusual in its control scheme is the Boy Who Cried Leviathan. The point of the game is to get a far as possible through a tunnel without touching the edges or other obstacles. The premise is that your little chocobo is outrunning a leviathan. However, you cannot control the chocobo's speed, only his depth. You can do this by moving the stylus up and down vertically on the lower screen, while watching the chocobo move through the tunnel on the upper screen.

The controls seemed simple enough and I had few problems with the controls themselves. However, the chocobo was supposed to be underwater, and the simulated physics meant that he sunk gradually which was slow enough to be annoying. Most surprising was the fact that I could not get past this level. I tried again and again, losing over ten times. I had worked my way up through the easier levels, but, for whatever reason, I just had a horrible time with that particular level. I grew so angry that I would turn down the volume right after I lost so I wouldn’t have to hear the chocobo theme in minor yet again. I began to feel that there should be some flexibility in the game, such as allowing you one free pass to skip ahead if there was some mini-game that was giving you an awful time. Each player is naturally going find some games more challenging than others, and it’s aggravating to get stuck on such a trivial level.

Finally, I decided to take a break. I came back about an hour later and beat the level after three tries. My final record was 15 losses, one win. (This was displayed, which didn’t help improve my morale earlier.) I was so excited that I continued forward and played a few more mini-games. However, my patience had worn thin from the frustration of continually losing, so I quit shortly after.  

I had heard of Chocobo Tales before, but the good reviews somehow managed to slip under my radar. However, this game is right up my alley. After all, it is cute, clever, and screamed Final Fantasy. After a friend told me of his interest in this game, Chocobo Tales flew to the top of my list of DS games to buy. Fortunately, I received it from a perceptive friend for my birthday.

The opening movie for Chocobo Tales was short and sweet. The chocobo theme blared out of my little DS and the screens flashed bright, happy colors. The story is rather ridiculous: an ancient book comes to life, as it is inhabited by a demon, and captures chocobos on cards. This ancient book wants to rule the world, with the help of a few bumbling henchmen and an evil girl with cones that resemble party hats sticking out of her head.

After the opening movie, you gain control of the chocobo. The controls consist almost entirely of the touch screen. You move the stylus and the chocobo follows your lead like a lost puppy. From the base world, there are several pictures books into which the chocobo will jump, each leading to a mini-game. I have described before how I have low tolerance for mini-games, and over half of this game was the mini-games.

I found the mini-game format of many of these games to be superior to many I have played before, making Chocobo Tales much easier to enjoy. The mini-games are all split into five levels. Level one could often be beaten with your eyes closed, but the levels become more difficult at a rapid rate. Fortunately, the story can be moved forward most of the time by only passing the third level. I found this to be a great system, since at that point you have played the game once or twice before, improving your skills. Instead of being prohibitively difficult, each mini-game will let you work up to levels to match your ability. For example, if I won an easy race very quickly, I could advance to level three or right away.

After conquering a few mini-games, I encountered a masked moogle. This moogle was pretending to be a superhero. I had never seen anything so silly in a Final Fantasy game, but I thought it was fantastic. Not only was the game about chocobos, but my all-time favorite Final Fantasy characters, moogles, also had a place in the game. This particular moogle explained the fighting system. The combat system is based on cards. One of my friends found it to be similar to Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I didn’t have much time to explore it yet, but it seems fun.

I have only played Chocobo Tales for a few hours so far, but it is very engaging. The mini-games seem to be very well-designed, systematically as well as artistically. The mini-games are in a 2D style that suits the game very well. The same style carries through into the battles, where characters jump off the cards into the battle. The rest of the game is 3D, in an anime style like the older Final Fantasies. I am really enjoying the game. It is very fast-paced, and I am looking forward to the hours ahead.  

Five months ago, in that basement classroom we Interactive Entertainment majors can call home, I had my first taste of Zelda. I wrote about it on this very blog last October and how impressed I was with the puzzles and charming fantasy world. I thought about buying a GameCube to play it, but it was good thing that I didn’t. Two months later, I had a Wii.

My excitement with Wii games temporarily made me forget that the Wii had backwards compatibility. I had forgotten about playing Zelda until I stumbled upon the Wind Waker strategy guide in a used bookstore for $3. This guide is hard to get for under $30 these days, so I was very excited. I then bought a used GameCube remote and memory card. Now I could play Wind Waker again.

I wanted to savor my return to The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I sat down on a Friday night and played to my heart’s content. With the help of the strategy guide, I felt like I got a lot more out of the first hour of the game (which is how far I had played before without any help). I already knew what to do for the most part, but it was neat to know certain things, such as which spots to avoid if you don’t want to trigger events yet.

I also discovered some new content in previously-visited areas of the game, such as a mini-game. There was a pig-herding side quest on the island. When I first played, I simply thought it was fun to run around with a pig over my head. However, I now knew that there was a purpose to this silliness. I usually don’t care for mini-games, but I found this one to be fun because of the novelty factor. Some games, like Spyro, have silly herding games with creatures you kick and then make annoying noises. You have to do mini-games like this to move forward. In Wind Waker, this herding game involved pigs that would run away from you but were never too hard to catch if you used your brain. The pigs were believable and not aggravatingly stupid. I felt like I had accomplished something simply by being able to catch the pig, especially since I was rewarded with the amusing animation of a plump pink piglet squirming above my head.

Despite my appreciation for this game, I did learn one important things: I should really spend more time practicing jumps. There is one portion where you must swing on lanterns to get to platforms in a pirate ship. I had a lot of trouble with this thre first time I played, and my previous attempts provided no help when I had to do it again last Friday. Fortunately, I made it through by telling myself each time that it would be the last time. Then, I discovered that all my time spent jumping on lanterns was actually meant to help me. The pirate ship drops you off on an island fortress that also has several lantern jumps. Usually it was only one at a time (and not a string of them). I was glad I had some practice because it significantly reduced the number of times I fell.

Even if I do have a little trouble with jumps at first, I do learn eventually. This is no fault of the game and I actually appreciate a good jump now and then. After all, it’s much more fun to virtually rope jump for me because I’m way too scared to perform many of those stunts in real life. I really enjoyed my experience in Wind Waker and I look forward to playing it more again.  

Since I have a Wii, I though it would be a good idea to rent a lot of different games to see what works and what doesn’t. I want to play the new Zelda, but FFXII and now FFVIII are going to fulfill my RPG quota for the next month or two. In the meantime, I decided to check out some more casual games like Rayman Raving Rabbids (discussed earlier) and, more recently, Super Monkey Ball.

I began playing this game with my sister’s boyfriend, who has more of a natural knack for games than I did. For this reason, I didn’t expect to win any of the short mini-games against him, but I really did value his feedback.

The first game we played was a shooter game where the monkeys were in space shuttles and had to shoot aliens. The arena was circular with a bunch of geyser-type structures scattered around that would spit out aliens. The game seemed simple enough, but I had an awful time trying to steer my ship with the Wii motes. Then I had a lot of trouble aiming. I thought maybe it was just me, but my sister’s boyfriend didn’t seem to be doing much better. His score was higher, but he was also complaining about the controls. I wondered if some types of games just don’t translate as well onto the Wii. However, I do not think shooters and the Wii are incompatible – the Raving Rabbids Western-style shooters are very well-designed. I just think this one was put together in a short amount of time and it shows.

One of the advantages to Super Monkey Ball is the fact that there are so many games. So, it was easy to move onto something else after that disappointment. Like Rabbids, each mini-game would provide very limited instructions. This is an effective way to get people into the game quickly, but, if you’ve never even seen the game before, sometimes it can leave players like me a little baffled. One of the games we then played was a game with the goal of collecting as many bugs on a stick as possible without the bugs falling over. The controls were okay, but any temporary lag in the Wii-mote sensor tracking could spell disaster.

We continued playing other mini-games, but were not impressed. There were a few games, such as shooting hoops or catching fruit, that just weren’t that fun. The goals were cute and the ideas all fit well into a theme, but the game felt sloppy. The tuning that comes with repeated playtesting was lacking. I would have appreciated a style more like Rabbids with multiple games of the same type and increasing difficulty to refine the mechanics of the game.

However, Super Monkey Ball is not altogether awful. I think it would be a fun game for a party, as long as no one was playing the game for too long. For casual players, such as my girl friends, I think this game could be fun. It’s very cute and happy. A game like Rabbids would also be fun at a party, but it requires a little more skill. Rabbids is also more crude – some games are based around drilling a rabbid’s teeth when you see a worm and shutting rabbids in outhouses. I would choose this game for a crowd of people who have played games more and come to expect more from them. While I have not personally taken a great interest in Rabbids, I often watched my sister play it with her boyfriend and I thought it was a lot more fun to watch, making it a good choice for parties.  

I finally rented a game for the Wii other than Wii Sports. I got Rayman’s Raving Rabbids. This may seem like an unconventional choice considering the release of the new Zelda game and the popular Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but I was captivated by the French commercial for Rabbids that I viewed on YouTube. It has a bunch of rabbids playing the game, and there is one particularly memorable scene where there are several rabbids huddled around a couch, all shaking their Wiimotes and nunchucks at the same time. Check it out here:

Rabbids French Trailer

My sister and I finally got around to playing it. The game is set up as levels of four or five mini-games in a gladiator arena base level. There are one or two games from different categories (rhythm, precision, etc.) that all involve different uses of the Wiimote. Many of the games fit into my ideal of mini-games, where you have to play them for two or three times before you can beat them. Some are more successful than others.

By far, I found the rhythm games to be the most fun. They involve shaking the Wiimote and nunchuck in time to the music as raddibs hit a certain spot on the screen. I enjoy music a lot and am a big fan of DDR, so it really appeals me. I also think it is one of the most fun games to watch. My sister and her boyfriend played it in versus mode, and it was hilarious to see two people seated side by side, shaking sticks in time to the ridiculous music and looking completely focused.

Another type of game that seems to translate successfully onto the Wii is the shooter. There are several Western-style shooters in rabbids that are mandatory to complete a level. The Wiimote is used like a computer mouse to aim at the rabbids and shoot them with a plunger gun. There are many friendly features, such as a fairly generous target range (anywhere on the body knocks most rabbids down), short breaks before strings of rabbids, and an endless supply of ammo. The nunchuck is shaken to reload, and the trigger in the right-hand Wiimote is your trigger.

The design is fairly intuitive, and this extends to a great GUI (Graphical User Interface). The ammo and score are displayed along the top. When ammo is depleted (5 plungers at a time), you they turn opaque. The colors and placement of the GUI is very easy to read over a short period of time and never clutters the view.

Some of the other games are severely flawed, however. I grew so frustrated playing one particular game that I quit playing and considered returning the game. It involved pointing the Wiimote at each rabbid’s snorkel mask and then pressing a button to shoot some sort of drink at them. The aiming was absolutely terrible. I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to aim at the eyes of the mask or the snorkel. Also, you have to manage the flow of the drink by constantly shaking the nunchuck, which wasn’t an easy task. I found it very stressful, as the rabbids would creep up to the front, getting bigger and bigger, and then scream in a gremlin-like voice.

This wasn’t the only game with flaws. Many of the games offer only a very brief set of instructions, which is fast and convenient but often fail to tell you important details. For example, on a labyrinth game, you had to figure out that you could slide your ball into a weak wall to break it and take a shortcut necessary to win. Certain secrets are fine with me, but I really prefer to play games where the secrets are not mandatory to win. Games become much more accessible to a wider audience if you save the secrets for those who really want to go through the trouble to find them. Secrets such as those involved to complete puzzles in adventure games turn many players off; veteran players often look up the answers online or use strategy guides. With so many games to play, there is less time to waste on frustrating secrets.

Despite Raving Rabbids’ flaws, I think I will continue playing it for a little while longer. It is nice to be able to pick up a game without worrying about when to find the next save point (each game is about a minute or two long). Even so, I do not find it a stellar use of the Wii technology and hope to find something that better utilizes the Wii’s potential.  

There are few games that make me want to cry. Okami came close.

While the touching ending could be considered sappy, I found it to be very appropriate to the spirit of the game. When you have a game about Gods and demons, it is difficult to make something that is not based around fantastic violence or faith. Okami’s ending incorporated both.

The theme of faith has been an undercurrent in the game, but it really rises to the surface at the end. People who believe in the power of the wolf help empower her throughout the game. The wolf is touching in its realism, and, as an animal lover, I find it amazing that the game created so much personality for the wolf without hearing her thoughts.

So what made me want to cry? It wasn’t the heartwarming faith message. It was beauty. At the end, you are able to see the wolf in a different form. The majesty, the music, and the miracle of it all is almost overwhelming in its artistry. It is a rewarding experience in itself.

I would love to recommend this game to anyone I could, but I feel that I can’t. The sheer amount of time necessary to appreciate the reverent tone and subtle humor of Okami will make it inaccessible for many people. I logged 54 hours and eight minutes. Although that included many sidequests, that type of dedicated gaming is not for the average person.

When the game finally ended, I was satisfied by the final fight and the conclusion. The story felt solid. Thinking back on my experience, I felt that the mini-games were frustrating at times, but those required to continue were never ridiculously tiresome like those in Kingdom Hearts II. I finally did find Moley’s treasure eventually and was able to complete the quests I really cared about.

Perhaps one of the best aspects of Okami was the fact that dying was more of an annoyance that a danger. I think I only died once in the whole game. If you fell off a cliff, you would only lose a portion of your life. This lead me to always have a sense of security, which fit the game, as the character was a God and should not be defeated by such a paltry setback.

I really enjoyed Okami and hope that my future gaming experiences can live up to it.  

As an aspiring game designer, I knew that I had to play Zelda sooner or later. Embarrassed not to immediately associate the name “Link” with happy childhood memories unlike many of my peers, I decided I could avoid Nintendo no longer. I had always had a PlayStation and never bothered to play Nintendo games (due to the seemingly limited options available for games on their consoles) and had never been a big fan of Mario. Yet the Zelda series kept coming up in class discussions and casual conversations. As an RPG fan as well, I was long overdue to play Zelda.

Fortunately, my professor brought The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker to class today. I jumped at the opportunity and sat down to play. I was engrossed in the game and found the island strikingly similar to that in the original Kingdom Hearts. I played for a good twenty minutes before noticing that a few people had gathered around to watch. I offered to let them play, but was glad when they declined. I was finally getting the hang of the controls and the style of the game.

When a mystical bird flew in with a girl in its talons, I was quickly reminded an article on Shigeru Miyamoto. It talked about his sense of exploration and fun. The colorful world of Zelda held the distinctive, imaginative style that has defined Miyamoto’s games since the original Mario series. I began to see why such a fan base has grown.

An hour later, class was over. Sadly, I could not save my progress or return to play Zelda later. However, I was excited to play again. I even considered buying a GameCube. I would not mind playing that hour again because it was a lot of fun.

When I returned home, another game in the same genre was waiting in my mailbox: Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. I had an opportunity to play it later in the day. After feeling stressed from the week, I was glad to have a fun game to play (after having rented so many games exclusively for my school project).

This game started out with a lengthy cinematic process. Once into the game, however, it was mainly platformer action. I enjoyed the playful style and friendly characters. One particular task, herding creatures resembling water buffalos into a pen for a farmer, reminded me of a very similar task in the third Spyro game. I player for a couple hours.

However, I ran into much more frustration in Jak and Daxter. I was continually dying, but there wasn’t a limit on the number of lives. Toward the end, I believe I spent about ten minutes trying to beat a boss. I kept dying, but about 80% of the time I died was from carelessness during the simple jumps to get to the boss. I was so angry about losing that I lost my focus. I was so stubborn that I kept at it over and over again, and finally beat the boss. I played a little bit longer after that, and got stuck. I was still upset from beating the boss and quit around 1 a.m. to get some sleep.

After playing both platformers, I began to wonder why one had appealed to me so much more than the other. Both games were made into best-selling series. Both had whimsical creatures and bright, playful levels. The characters and stories were rich. It seemed to come down to the puzzles and difficulties. The Zelda game felt more intellectual and charming, such as when you could discover that you can hide under barrels to avoid getting caught unarmed. The Jak game had more meaningless mini-games, such as catching 200 fish (catch only two of the three types and the speed at which they swim increases) or the animal herding. It reminded me of Kingdom Hearts II and getting frustrated with ridiculous tasks.

While both games may be strong, I believe that they do appeal to different types of players. Zelda requires more of a puzzling mind, where you have to ask yourself how you can use what you know to solve the problem. Jak and Daxter gave less initial guidance but left the world so open that you had to discover things for yourself that had less bearing on mental challenge and left more to chance or physical skill. While both games satisfied my need to run around and collect items, I found that Zelda was more fun, simply because it was crafted like a puzzle; all the pieces were there and you just had to figure out how to use them. I felt like I was respected as a player to solve simple challenges that were attainable with a little thought. With Jak, the action was there, but the cleverness and subtlety was not.

I am not sure whether the fluidity of Zelda was due to the countless iterations and since the beginning of the Zelda series or simply more compatible elements (simple puzzles as opposed to mini-games in the same game type). However, I do think that the Jak games would appeal to players who are less inclined to want to think through a puzzle and simply win by pushing through the incidents of ridiculously menial tasks.  

After a stressful week, I find that playing a video game can be rather therapeutic. You can project your enemies onto the plethora of monsters you must fight and gain a sense of satisfaction from completing in-game tasks. While the individual tasks in a game as long as an RPG can be quite nominal, they are fairly easy to complete. I am a person who makes lists and loves to cross things off of them, so it is fun for me to go through with a strategy guide and mark my progress.

Richard Bartle would probably classify me as an achiever for this reason. I do thoroughly enjoy running around the levels and collecting items. I like playing independently – I enjoy competition most if it’s against the game or myself. I don’t mind leveling up at all, but there could be two possible motivations for this. The first would be that I enjoy gaining levels, another form of achievement. I find that higher levels make boss fights a little bit easier, and I am a fan of low-stress games. My second motivation is that I enjoy killing monsters. As I mentioned earlier, I can unleash any pent-up aggression on the virtual monsters. If a monster scares me, it shatters that line where I feel safe (like when I jumped and screamed after the sudden appearance of a monster in Doom). This takes me out of the play and I would much rather fight monsters when I can see them clearly.

These two motivations are not mutually exclusive, however. While Bartle’s ideas apply mostly to MUDs, I do think that it is possible that people can fit multiple classifications, and these qualities may be seen more clearly in different games. I believe that I do have a bit of a killer in me – I’ve been known to shout Bartle’s “Die! Die! Die!” (a killer classification quote) when excited about any fight. However, I think that my neurotic collecting and leveling up would classify me as an achiever, even if I do decide not to go after EVERY ultimate item at the end of these games. (Usually, at the end of RPGS, I am at such a high level that it really does not matter if I get all the items since it would not make it significantly easier to beat the game.)

I had been neglecting my RPG addiction in an effort to spend time with my mother during her recent visit and get my homework done. However, once I had a few spare hours to myself, I decided it was time to jump back into that genre I love and give Kingdom Hearts II another try.

I was so excited to play again, thinking that after my first five hours, the game would really take off. I had regained control of the original party (not the main character’s doppelganger and his friends). I was thrilled to have to chance to run around and collect items, and maybe slay a few enemies along the way. Unfortunately, I had triggered a story point before I saved that cleared the area of monsters. How disappointing. While it was nice to run around quickly, I missed the satisfaction of slaying the monsters. I told myself not to get too upset, as I would soon enter a new area that was sure to offer more enemies.

I was bitterly disappointed when I played for the next two hours, when I encountered fewer than 20 fights (lasting about 15 seconds each) and more and more movies. The movies were obviously being used as a crutch to patch together an overly complicated story. I was in control of the characters for less than half of the time again. I found that the play mood was interrupted and I was rudely thrown outside this game “magic circle” each time a new movie appeared. There were so many that I kept wondering how long it would be until I would get to play again. This game me the felling that I was not invited to my own party – they didn’t need me, the player, to help them tell the story. I was just there to hack up the occasional enemy (ridiculously easy) and move along a very clear path in order to trigger more movies. It not longer felt like play.

Even if the killer in me could not be satisfied by the fights, I had hoped that the achiever part of me could find satisfaction. However, the collection of items didn’t even seem fun anymore. After eight hours of gameplay, you could collect synthesis items to synthesize better weapons but you didn’t have enough to actually improve weapons yet. Even the ready-made weapons were (what I considered) worse than what I already owned. Plus, I did not have enough money because I had barely been allowed to fight. The only other way to gain money in the game was to complete ridiculous mini-games and I really did not want to waste my time re-playing games that were ridiculous when I completed them earlier as the doppelganger.

After all this, I really thought that I would give the game one more shot or at least play it until I got to the Pirates of the Caribbean level. Unfortunately, my strategy guide walkthrough showed me that it would be at least 5-10 hours away, and I simply did not have the patience to wade through so many movies for a level that I heard wasn’t nearly as cool as it seemed.

The magic circle was shattered and my needs as a player were not met. I decided to send this game back and stop wasting my time being disappointed by a game that would not satisfy my player types.