I have made a GIF.  It will come in handy in the very near future, I am sure.

Bog standard?  I guess.  I can play something like Dragon's Dogma and get the same level of responsiveness I'd expect from Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden Black, or any other top tier action game.  It doesn't even have to play at a frantic pace, as Dark Souls also has excellent controls.  Nier is clunky, sloppy, and sluggish from start to finish.

It's much like how you can distinguish between a good platformer and a bad platformer.  The bottom-most button on the right-side of a controller may make you jump in all platformers, but I'd argue that Little Big Planet's controls are mediocre at best versus say, Rayman: Origins or Super Mario Galaxy.  Or if we want to talk about racing games, Sonic R on the Sega Saturn having abysmally awful controls versus Mario Kart on the SNES.

I stand firmly by my statement that Nier's controls are terrible.  But then, I'm also pretty cutthroat when it comes to my gaming opinions.

Like I said on page one, I couldn't get past Nier's shit controls.  It's not like I'm just hating on it for the sake of it.  At the end of the day it's a videogame, and if I can't enjoy playing it, it really doesn't matter how great the writing is.  I won't be able to enjoy the experience even if I forced myself to play through it.  It's not like I wasn't interested to see what happens, because I was.  The soundtrack is also phenomenal and it's a frequent listen for me on my computer and even at work.  But originality and ambition do not equate to good games for me.  It's the same reason why some people will champion Alpha Protocol while I think it's an utter pile of shit since no matter how ambitious the game attempted to be, the gameplay and controls were garbage.  I'll take a functional, run-of-the-mill, average-looking house over an ambitious, original, impressive-looking house that doesn't have working plumbing any day of the week.

I'll watch Drakengard 3 like I do every other game, but I am suspicious of it by default.

I'll be upset if you don't make a galka this go-around.

I'm probably the only guy on this forum that couldn't get past Nier's utter shit controls and went back to listening to the game's soundtrack instead.

PS3 launch is simultaneous.  Phase 3 is when the PS3 beta begins.  Phase 2 is gamepad testing on PC, of which feedback for gamepad testing will impact both PC and PS3 players.  I'm a gamepad guy, so I am really pumped for phase 2.

Everything I'm about to say is stuff that has already been unveiled in some manner through developer commentary and Youtube videos.

In terms of content structure, it's pretty much your standard theme park MMO with some Warhammer/Guild Wars 2/Rift public quests thrown in, though with a more methodical combat system that doesn't allow you to spam moves.  You can see what I mean from the Youtube combat videos released so far, where you can see the global cooldown timer kick in for every attack.  Some don't like it and want something more... faster paced.  Personally, I'm OK with the methodical pacing.  Twitchier MMOs would be better served as full-on action games, which they are not, and I find myself not enjoying them as a result.  The pacing for FFXIV's combat sits between your standard theme park MMO and Final Fantasy XI which is exactly what I've been looking for.  I'll get my twitch gameplay from Dragon's Dogma 2 (or Deep Down or whatever Capcom wants to call it).

There is no shortage of theme park MMOs, but this one comes with the Square Enix level of polish you expect from them for their big budget releases.  As we all know, FFXIV 1.0 was NOT given that level of polish, which everyone got to listen to me bitch about ad infinitum.  With 2.0 however, there is no mistaking that this is a Final Fantasy product with love and care put into it, and it is a tremendous improvement over 1.0 in almost every department (I miss a few of Uematsu's songs which seem to have been almost completely replaced).  I want to say a lot more about the game's world, but I can't with the NDA.  All I can say is, I'm very impressed with what they've accomplished, especially in the small timeframe they've done it in.

I can say with certainty that I will be there for launch.  I can also say with certainty that I will definitely not be starting in Gridania when the game releases.  Alpha and the first two phases of beta are Gridania only, so I won't be wanting to start a level 1 character and going through Gridania's level 1 content for the fourth time right at launch.  In fact, I'll likely be starting in Ul'dah like before since I'm feeling that itch to tank once again.

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar was my first RPG, ever.  It's kind of weird, seeing two gaming properties from the long-defunct OSI coming to life through different naming conventions via Kickstarter (the other being Wing Commander).

Exclusive footage of Square Enix developing Versus XIII:

Me at 11 years old from an old passport photo.

God, I wish I could take this week off, but I have way too much work to do.  The worst part is that I may have to work late on several of those days.

Maybe I'll wake up early tomorrow and fool around with the character creator a bit before I head off.  Heh.

Edit: Also have been messing with the benchmark more and have found out what settings to turn off to maximize performance.


I might turn on the FXAA anti-aliasing depending on how much it affects my framerate.  I'm disappointed that I couldn't run the benchmark at 2560x1440, which is the resolution I was at during alpha testing.  I set the framerate cap to 30 during the alpha and it ran really nicely, so I'm expecting similar results this go-around.

Not too bad on my mac, especially since it was checking for and downloading updates for windows 7 while I was running it.

Quit giving them your business.

No one is going to buy these.