Bitsmack

Final Fantasy 1 – Rude Awakening

RC — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:58:34 +0000

I’m hoping to have comics back next week. For the past couple months work has been busy. We’re trying to release a new version of our software that we’ve been working on for well over a year. In the meantime I decided to share my thoughts on Final Fantasy.

When I was younger and the Final Fantasy games came out for NES and SNES I thought they were pretty stupid. “You mean I just pick Fight from a menu? I don’t actually fight?” is what I would say. When Final Fantasy 7 came out for the PS1 there was a big marketing campaign with commercials showing the amazing cutscenes. I got FF7 that Christmas and started playing it. Now that I was older I liked the strategy aspect of picking the right items to go into battle. I didn’t understand Materia and probably didn’t even have it equipped right, but I liked the game. Even though I never finished it but I did buy Chrono Cross a few years later and played all the way through it. I absolutely loved Chrono Cross. The battle system, the story, the large cast of characters, it was awesome at everything. Some more years passed, I tried Final Fantasy X but Blitzball was so stupid I abandoned it pretty quickly. I picked up Final Fantasy XII last year and really like it.

The reason I say all this is because I am not a hardcore Final Fantasy fan. I’ve played a few here and there but I am not an expert in any way. When SquareEnix released FF1 and FF2 for iPhone I thought I would try these RPGs from the school of old. My friends Brad and Cassadi still play these games so they must have some lasting appeal. However, the result of my initial playing was a hilarious fail of epic proportions.

I start a new game of Final Fantasy and it asks me to pick 4 classes and give them names. Following the same method I use for Oregon Trail I named my party after my friends. RC the Warrior, Ashley the White Mage, Brad the Monk and Cassadi the Black Mage. I knew the Warrior would be my fighter, White Mage would heal and Black Mage would do magic attacks but I have no idea what a Monk does. I only picked him because I thought it would be more useful than a Thief. In other games I’ve found that monsters who live in the woods don’t carry a lot of cash on them to steal. Now that I have my party I make my way to the castle. Oh no the King’s daughter or something has been kidnapped and is being held to the north of here. In exchange for her return the King will build a bridge for me, which is something I wasn’t even aware I wanted. My party heads out of town and makes a beeline for the north. Whoooosh, it’s our first random battle. Wait a second, none of my party members have any abilities. I thought everyone started with something. Despite not having abilities my team still defeats enemies easily and makes it to the bad guy’s castle. Once inside the castle I make the mistake of exploring instead of simply going forward into the main room with the chick I need to rescue. This was a big mistake because the dudes inside the castle kick my ass throughly. RC goes down first and I have no items at all to revive him. RETREAT! I make it out of the castle and start heading back to town. Brad goes down next. I’m almost back to town. Then Cassadi is knocked out. Ashley has to run away from the last two battles but makes it back to town. “well that was a colossal failure” I said aloud to no one. First things first, let’s go to the inn and revive everyone. I spend the night, but wait a second, everyone but Ashley is still dead. K-Dog was online so I asked him how to bring people back to life. He said I have to find some priest dude in town. I find him in the one unmarked building and he brings my party back to the living. It’s at this point I decide to buy some spells, equipment and potions. It’s funny how many things I take for granted in new RPGs that weren’t there back then. I saved the chick, went to the next town and beat up a pirate, then took his ship to Elfland. I’m not sure if this is where I’m supposed to go next but all the random battles really discourage exploration. I’ll keep playing the game because it’s easy to do in small doses. Although I still don’t know what a Monk does.

Comic – Star Trek Online

RC — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:12:01 +0000

Comic – Sherlock Holmes Alternate Ending

RC — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:07:40 +0000

Comic – The Nightmare Before Bitsmack

RC — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:36:18 +0000

Comic – RC’s Eleven Finale

RC — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:27:33 +0000

4 Days of Christmas – Deck the Halls

RC — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:09:34 +0000

Ashley warned me going into this movie that it wasn’t going to be good. She wasn’t wrong. Oh Matthew Broderick, you went from being the coolest guy in school to playing the pathetic shlub in every recent movie. Sometimes it works (Election) and most times it doesn’t (this movie, Producers). In Deck the Halls, Broderick is anal retentive when it comes to having every minute planned for family holiday activities. Danny Devito’s family moves in next door and upstages Broderick by putting a ridiculous number of lights on their house. Devito becomes all consumed with making their house viewable by satellite. Haven’t they ever used Google Maps? Their house would have been easily viewable and the lights would have made no difference. Broderick and Devito start a feud and try to screw each other over resulting in nonhilarious corny physical comedy bits. At the end the movie flips from groan-worthy comedy to groan-worthy sappiness. The only cool things about the movie are that Devito’s house has so many lights it makes Clark Grizwold’s house look like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, and Kristin Chenoweth sings at the end. I can’t really recommend renting this one, but if it’s on TV you could give it a try.

Comic – RC’s Eleven Part 9

RC — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:43:42 +0000

7 Through 5 Days of Christmas

RC — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:57:47 +0000

Since we had parties to go to on Friday and Saturday we decided to watch 3 movies on Sunday. I decided to stop rating these movies because they were so inconsistent and I really didn’t have set criteria I was basing it on.

Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer
This is a holiday classic. It’s a heartwarming story that says “you should be ashamed and hide anything different about yourself unless your difference can be useful to someone else.” Conformity rules!

The Santa Clause
I think this is still a solid movie and worthy of a viewing every Christmas. I pretend there were no sequels. At the time this movie came out Tim Allen was at the height of his popularity on Home Improvement. A lot of the same humor of that show found its way into The Santa Clause.

Love Actually
I had never seen this movie before but Ashley said it counted as a Christmas movie. It is definitely a chick flick but not terrible. There is some nudity thrown in there to make it interesting for guys. Basically the movie follows 162 separate stories played by every working British actor. It works well because none of the stories need a lot of time.

4 days to go! I seriously regret deciding to write reviews for all these!

8 Days of Christmas – Scrooged

RC — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:00:24 +0000

This is the 3rd version of a Christmas Carol we’ve watched and it is the funniest. The movie has one of the best opening sequences you can have: Lee Majors with a Gatling gun protecting Santa from a bunch of dudes on snowmobiles with automatic weapons. I don’t think anything in the rest of this Bill Murray is a TV executive and the Scrooge-like character, but at least he’s funny when he’s mean to people. He’s visited by his old boss (aka Marley) who looks like a pretty convincing zombie. Murray’s old girlfriend shows up, who is also Indiana Jones’s girlfriend so this is a big step down for her. Also, Murray is worried he is going to lose his job to Lex Luthor’s dad.

What can I say, the three ghosts came and showed Bill Murray his past, present and future. Once he changes in to a good guy at the end it’s pretty funny to watch. Overall, it wasn’t as hilarious as I remember it but Bill Murray is still really funny throughout. I’ll give it a 3 out of 5.

9 Days of Christmas – White Christmas

RC — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:27:42 +0000

Here we go another old movie. At least this one is in color. Hey this one has Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, I think Clark Grizwold said something about them. Ok so Crosby and Kaye meet when they’re in the war together. They put on shows for their fellow troops. After the war they start performing together as a singing duo and become quite famous because the internet hadn’t been invented yet. Kaye is like the wingman and he’s always trying to get Crosby some action. They go check out a new act of two sisters and help the girls evade the police by performing in their place. What I don’t get is when the guys go out and perform the song “Sisters” it’s still the girls’ voices. Does that mean the sisters always lip sync their shows? If I was a patron there I would be pissed!

The two guys and two girls go to a small resort in Vermont for the holidays but there’s no snow. Also the resort is owned by the guys’ commanding officer in the Army. They decide to put on some shows there to help business. And then like Kaye pretends to be engaged to one of the girls to trick Crosby and the other girl into hooking up or something. I wasn’t really paying attention after awhile. At then end all the Army guys come out to the resort and surprise the old general.

If it seems like a short movie, it’s not. There’s like 20-30 singing/dancing numbers in there. Overall it still wasn’t at bad movie. I’ll give it a 3 out of 5.