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7/28/2015

Spoony Plays Ultima VIII: Pagan, Part 5

We meet up with Pagan's forgotten gods and finally get a bit of direction to our quest.  Unfortunately, that direction entails solving more annoying magic quests...



I neglected to show it on-camera, but here's the purpose of the Skull of Quakes.

(Thanks to Prescient Dragon's Ultima 8 site for the map!)


From the entrance to the Birthplace of Moriens, head east by southeast to find a small area with an odd structure and a red indentation in the wall.


  Use the Skull of Quakes on the indentation and the structure will collapse, revealing a small area below.  Drop down and enter the door to find a hidden teleport pad.


A letter in the palace reveals that Mordea was seeking the Skull of Quakes, hinting that it may have had a larger role in the plot at one point.  It was probably intended to open the path to some dungeon or another, but as it stands, it's just a curious remnant in a very hastily-tied-together product...

Another leftover in the game was also brought to my attention.



If you follow the path out of town in West Tenebrae and then head north, you'll come to a small waterfall.  Climb up onto the ledge next to it and you'll find a hidden cavern with a skeleton and two mandril enemies.  Inside is a chest with some chainmail armor, some explosives and a red and black potion. A decent little bonus for the early game, but there is also a curious oddity here: searching the skeleton in the south corner of the room also reveals an odd blue bottle with no name and no apparent functionality.


  To the best of my knowledge, the bottle does not appear anywhere else in the game.  Was this intended to be some kind of plot item that ultimately went unused?  We may never know for sure.

7/26/2015

Spoony Plays Grandia, Part 6

Garlyle isn't done with us yet...

7/24/2015

It Was Better When (Final Fantasy X / Grandia II)

Final Fantasy X was better when it was called "Grandia II".

The story follows an egotistical hipster douchebag with spiky hair...


Who becomes bodyguard to a priestess...


Who possesses a monstrous power within, collecting parts of which comprises a majority of the events of the story...


and they begin a journey to find an ultimate weapon...


in order to combat a nearly omnipotent evil force plaguing their world.


Over the course of their adventure they befriend a cute blonde ostracized from society at large for their clan's beliefs...


and a quiet yet kind beast-man...


and fight several of the big bad evil power's minions.


Along the way there is much talk of the hero's rotten family member.


He is eventually revealed to be corrupted by the big bad, and the hero eventually confronts and defeats him to settle a long-standing grudge.


Eventually one of the church's agents is revealed to be an insane zealot...


which soon unfolds into the entire church being corrupt at its core...


and enacting a nihilistic plan to bring about the end of all life...


...which the priestess was an unwitting pawn in, as their "dark powers" are key to sustaining/restoring the big bad's existence.


The plot twists again when another character is revealed to be privy to the ultimate truth behind the nature of the game's events...


and reveals that the "big bad" and the "ultimate good" are one and the same, and the product of ancient man's hubris to boot.


The hero then finds the power to confront the big bad on equal terms through a particularly corny anime trope...


the group enters his body...


Inside, they confront the corrupted clergymen with delusions of godhood...


...and bring salvation, peace and eternal happiness to the world in a matter of months.  An extremely unbiased and realistic depiction of what would occur if an entire world's belief system and governmental body were completely and inexorably shattered, I'm sure.  Every atheist bigbrain I've ever spoken to says that's exactly how it'll go down one day, and they must be right because the braindead lapdogs they've bullied trained into mindlessly parroting it back to them on command all say so too!  And if they're in the "majority" in a vicious hate-fueled dogpile on anyone who ever questions them argument, that means they're never wrong!  So you'd best lie down, roll over and start kissing their assholes from here until doomsday, because it's only a matter of time before all their armchair moralizing on Facebook finally radicalizes hundreds of millions of highly trained soldiers willing to die in their name and the revolution finally gets underway. Then, once all the dust from the theist-clearing warheads and death squads settles and they're finally recognized and crowned as the one true ubermensch for all to obey forever and without question, the first undesirables quietly "disappearing" from their new utopia will be every single person still alive who ever told them they were wrong about anything, followed by anyone who doesn't immediately comply with their new humanity-saving eugenics program, followed by an extremely modest 99.97% of people who do!  But don't you dare imply this is the exact same kind of depraved wishcasting employed by sanctimonious right-wingers who think the Rapture is coming soon and that once it does they'll instantly be welcomed into eternal paradise and completely exonerated of all the acts of malice, avarice and vice they wantonly enable and/or commit themselves, this is completely different damn it! Boy, who would ever guess that the one true path to enlightenment was graduating high school with a 1.4 GPA, dropping out of college after two semesters of majoring in partying, working the same thankless minimum wage retail job for fifteen years while attending the church of Fight Club On DVD twice a day and never getting that promotion you "deserve" because your NPD and the Dunning-Kruger effect prevent you from realizing you're a mediocre narcissistic asshole who treats everyone like shit?
Oh, and the priestess character arbitrarily decides to become a musician at the end.


...though to Elena's credit, she at least spares us the indignity of an unbelievably shitty sequel with herself in the starring role where she is strongly implied to be in an incestuous relationship with her cousin.

So there you have it.

7/21/2015

Spoony Plays Ultima VIII: Pagan, Part 4

WARNING:  This video contains rapidly shaking/flickering images which may cause motion sickness or epileptic seizures.

More lousy, unresponsive platforming and nonsensical puzzles?  While the screen is endlessly shaking at seizure-inducing speeds?  Don't mind if I do!

7/19/2015

Spoony Plays Grandia, Part 5

Dungeoning, and quite a lot of it.

7/16/2015

It Was Better When (Metal Gear Solid 4/Deus Ex)

Metal Gear Solid 4 was better when it was called "Deus Ex".

The story follows a super-soldier...

one of a line of several...

 


created by a shadow government...


that controls the world's population through sinister means...


until one of its agents goes rogue...


and creates a private militia...


headed by cybernetically-enhanced commandos with implausible superpowers....




and uses the shadow government's own AI system...


to try and take over the world.  The player must then ally with another rogue agent...


to stop them.  Along the way they are assisted by two others working for the shadow government...



and a super-genius computer engineer...


to foil the villain's plans, eventually culminating in a showdown at the villain's base of operations...

 

which the hero is able to access through implausible means.


Said base is replete with deathtraps...


and the hero's actions ultimately culminate in the villain's power base being crippled and plunging the world into a new dark age.


So there you have it.