PixlBit

On EA: It isn't the things they do to their own games, although that's bad enough. I'd have been royally pissed about SimCity if I'd bought it. I have no reason to patronize EA personally. I don't like sports games, I'm not overly fond of Bioware,  and everything else EA does is better done by someone else. So if EA were just hurting itself I wouldn't care. The problem is, they buy and kill one studio after another, and have destroyed a terrible amount of talent in the industry. Origin, Westwood, and Maxis come to mind, and I doubt Bioware will last another three years. The other problem is, EA's noxious practices spread like a superflu virus through the industry. EA was DRMing its games back in the 1980s long before Microsoft sought to do the same to its business software, if that tells you anything.  If there's something you hate about video game industry practices, chances are it originated with EA. Sadly, that is not hyperbole. And for all of its cash-grabbing and DRMing, EA still posts net losses of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, sometimes per quarter. They really need to rethink their whole business.

Activision, I don't have any complaints about. I simply don't buy Blizzard games or Call of Duty. The best I can say about Activision, is at least they only shit on their own properties, as opposed to EA shitting all over the entire industry.

I'm hoping that dumping Yoichi Wada will turn things around at Square Enix, and I've heard SE has enlisted Sony to help with Final Fantasy XV. I, too, am sad that they haven't been as prolific as they were on PS1 and PS2, but I also don't think they deserve all the hate they get, either. In the meantime, Namco and Sega have done much to fill the RPG void, as has Bethesda with Fallout 3 and New Vegas, so I'm not really suffering either.

Spoilers don't bother me as much, but I can see where they might be important to a fan of MGS games, which rely a lot on mystery and suspense. That said, I'm glad I got to experience the death of Aerith firsthand with no advance warning when I first got FFVII.

This post reminded me of this video (start at 2:40)!

Heh, I'm used to your April Fools' jokes by now. But man, if only half the stuff up here were actually true.

I never found the 2-D versions of FF4 to be very difficult, although it was still somewhat more difficult than VI (which is far and away the "easiest" FF game). The DS version, however, is quite brutal.

I'd say the toughest of the main FF games is probably FFV. In that game, the difference in power between your party members and the enemies is very thin, and the bosses are cheap bastards.

Fun fact: Uniracers was made by DMA Design, which is now called Rockstar North - the studio responsible for Grand Theft Auto.

What I'm facepalming over is the number of stories, as noted above, where North Korea is the bad guy. North Korea isn't going to nuke or invade the US. They have no way to get a nuke or troops to the US. Their sole purpose of existence is being a big fortress to keep the United States Forces Korea from invading China by land. China is never the enemy because the Chinese government is notoriously thin-skinned and American companies are afraid of losing their cheap, obedient Chinese labor and iPad and movie ticket sales from the Chinese middle class. :)

We've had Red Dawn, Homefront (a Red Dawn video game remake written by John Milius, the original Red Dawn director), and now Olympus Has Fallen.

Happy Peeps Day!

Don't forget Homefront, which was a video game remake of Red Dawn written by John Milius.

That was before Capcom steroidized its character designs to the point of ridiculousness.