The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

For he's a Jolly Good Fellow

I almost forgot in the midst of things, but yesterday, 3 days before my own birthday, was the one-year anniversary of this Project! Yay!
That's right, July 28th 2004 was the first day I popped in Alone in the Dark to embark on a quest that would absorb most of my free time for the rest of my life until now. I had been toying around with the idea for some time at that point, but I finally decided on that prodigial date that something had to be done.
A lot has happened in that one year, and I'm not just talking about games. Life hasn't been very nice to me, but I've just spit it in the face and tore up the tyres of its car. Asshole.

Unfortunately, I didn't get this blog until much later, when I was already deep into my quest, which is why I'm offering those backlogs for your reading enjoyment. Aren't I nice?

So far I've played around 66 games, so if that is any measure to go by, I will take another 2 to 3 years to finish, which will of course all see new releases and must-have games, so it's likely to last even longer. It's a good thing to know that I will be having something to do, even if I graduate and become unemployed, like most of my graduated friends.

Let me have a short celebrational look then, at which experiences have stood out the most.

- Baten Kaitos: man, I LOVED this game. It's fantastic. The graphics are gorgeous, the music is great, the battle system is fun, it's a great RPG, and it's a GC exclusive! It has become clear to me at least that the GC is a far bigger success and a machine that one should own, than the N64 which I'm still not too excited about. It had its share of great games, but very few were as impressive and timelessly fun as the GC. Sure there was Ocarina of Time, but that was released on GC as well, so you don't necessarily require an N64 for that.
It's still sad to see the GC doing relatively poorly, but I think it did better than the N64, or at least it should do, thanks to games like this. The N64, in its entire life-span didn't have a single good old-school RPG, and I need at least one for a machine to be a success.

- BioHazard 1 (GC) and 2. The first one sports THE best and most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I've ever seen, to this date, better even than Biohazard 0, and the second is simply the most fun Survival Horror around. That is, in these 66 games I've played ;)

- Also, since I'm talking most memorable, and not best or most fun exclusively, I need to mention Brave Fencer Musashiden as being one of the most frustrating and annoying games in existence. What Square were thinking here is beyond me, but someone really needs to be shot for making a piece of sadism like that. It made Satan cry, and I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of flashes of it in Clockwork Orange.

- For some reason Boken Sword and Beyond Good and Evil, still regularly pop into my mind as being a lot more fun than I credited them for. Especially Broken Sword was a great experience, and one of the better adventure stories I've seen.

- I simply MUST point out that, even after all this years, Castlevania Symphony of the Night is not only a great game, but has one of the best soundtracks in existence. A lot of the critically acclaimed soundtracks in PSX games have aged, not so gracefully. I was listening to some Xenogears music the other day, and it struck me as mediocre and generic. I don't even like most of the tracks anymore, which cannot be said for SotN, it remains outstanding.

- And then there's the whole bunch of Square RPG's I've played. They all score great, even though I've played some of them SO many times that it's hard to get really excited about them anymore. It surprises me that the Final Fantasy series has been receiving a lot of criticism since they came to, well FF8, but I honestly think they've been better on the PSX than most of the prequels, excepting 6.
I guess the new ones are shunned because they became too popular. Suddenly FF was something the masses enjoyed, and that HAS had its influences on the look and nature of the series, but that's really not a bad thing, since they're still very solid fun RPG's. Die-hard fans of the first hour suddenly turned away only because it was mainstream now, and started disliking it purely because of its widespread success.
Rather stupid if you ask me, and at least as non-sensical as fanboys who like the games purely because they say Square of Final Fantasy on the box.
I say, play these games objectively, and you'll find that they are professionally made Huge games produced by a company that knows what it's doing and has been doing for years, and knows how to make a beautiful, fun RPG.

And that's about all that has really sprung out. There've been moments of great joy, and there've been moments of extreme frustration and hair-pulling (you should compare the amount of hear on my head in the beginning and now; it would make a nice hair-growth commercial if you turn them around), but I've been confident in the fact that I was doing something totally insane and wasting my time, like no other person has even done before me. And that feels good.

Here's to another year!

posted by Ingen! @ 11:07 AM