Reviews: And No, I'm Not Dead.

I have come to a bit of a decision. I want to keep on doing this blog, in one state or another. But it won't be so set. More or less, I'm going to lose a lot of the history, inspiration, etc. parts of my blog. I was running out of things to write about, so what's the point? I will, however, likely still talk more about my life as it is now. It may get more personal as a result, and probably more whiny, but eh, nobody reads it anyway.

Expect more of my ideas, though. That's really what matters to me. Hell, until I get my social life together, it's practically who I am. But that's for another night. It will, I sincerely hope, be a night this week, but I can't tell you exactly which. That's how things work now, I'm afraid.

For tonight, I'll just polish off two quick reviews. The first is of Dr. Horrible, a 45 minute web thingy done by Buffy creator Joss Whedon, so of course I had to watch it. It was done in three acts that were released over last week and were free to view at drhorrible.com until...yesterday. Sorry! Eh, get it on iTunes or wait for the DVD. Basically, the thing is three mini-episodes of a musical partially done as a video blog. It stars Dr. Horrible, a lovelorn hopeful mad scientist torn between the path towards evil and the woman he loves, a decision made more difficult by Captain Hammer, a jerkish hero who soon battles him on both issues. Also, the whole thing's a musical.

Anyone who remembers the Buffy episode "Once More With Feeling" knows that Joss is surprisingly good at musicals, wringing both comedy and drama out of the musical format and making the songs themselves good as well. Dr. Horrible is no different, and it has enough brilliant lines ("Oh, look at my wrist! I have to go!") and concepts (the head of the local council of evil is a horse. An evil horse, but still a horse.) Just remember that this IS Joss we're talking about. He loves to open with a funny and light concept and toss in darkness and drama as it goes. Even with a total runtime as long as one episode of a television show, he manages it here as well. Nonetheless, I highly recommend the videos and would easily pay for them. If I had to.

The other review is for the Japanese RPG Rogue Galaxy, an oldish game for the Playstation 2. I wanted this game for two reasons. First, it filled a traditional RPG gap I needed to fill after Persona 3. Secondly, it had an interesting setting. Instead of ye olde, fantasy worlde, it took place in a futuristic galaxy, suggesting a space opera, and revolved around a group of pirates.

At least that's what I thought at the time. This game gets weird fast. For starters, the setting is certainly magic, and most of the monsters are technically mutants created by some weird energy, but this thing barely goes five minutes without invoking fantasy. Most of the character's "skills" are weird powers with no explanation, scientific or otherwise, given, leading to the assumption of magic. And then we get into people using voodoo for powers and ghosts, and everything just goes off the rails. But that's fine, I don't mind a little science/magic juxtaposition.

I do feel like the game bait and switched me on the plot, though. For starters, these are the Pirates who don't do anything. Okay, they do things, but they don't do piracy, ever. Now, I didn't go in expecting to rob harmless merchants or anything, but I expected at least raids against the evil government or something. Instead, the government, despite being in continuous war with an off-screen enemy and enslaving the main character's homeworld, barely gets acknowledged. Instead, much of the enemy duty falls upon an evil corporation, and even the party doesn't so much rob them as steal ancient artifacts nobody owns shortly before they can.

And speaking of evil artifacts, the second issue I have with this game is plot gets stupid fast. Now, it started out generic; we have an orphaned hero on a desert world who longs to get off and explore the galaxy. That sound familiar? And I'm guessing you, like me, figured out who his real father is really damn quickly and way before the game tells you. But I didn't mind that. I only slightly minded when the four quests that immediately followed the introduction involved our heroes stranded on two separate planets, first to get gas and the second to get their ship's license registered (Again, Worst. Pirates. Ever.) But shortly after that, any hope that the intrigue and politics suggested earlier, or at least a galaxy wide romp across countless mysterious worlds, ends when you learn you have to find three MacGuffins of power to visit some magic world lost to history. And then we got stuff about lost princesses, and reincarnations of ancient heroes, and yabbity yabbity. In short, it used every cliché used to disparage Japanese RPGs in a matter of hours.

The game has its up sides, of course. The visuals, especially for the cities, are often incredible. The Coruscant-esque city of Zerard in particular took my breath away. And the combat, a traditional/action-RPG hybrid, was often unbalanced but at least entertaining. I only really got sick of it in the occasional overly-long dungeon, and at least the use of long-ranged secondary weapons and spells that easily destroyed the more annoying random encounters helped. I'd recommend the game to fans of Japanese RPGs, but not to completionists unless they have a lot of free time. The game took me 50, but getting everything involves finding and kill as many as 30 of every random encounter in the game, including rare ones and ones that get much less common as more powerful ones replace them, and a stupid fighting insect mini-game I barely explored. At the very least, though, stay for the almost Cowboy Bebop-esque chapter 6. Well, it's Cowboy Bebop with an anthropomorphic dog, but otherwise it's fine.