I bought Jade Empire a long time ago so that I'd have something to do when my computer was otherwise occupied, or when I just happened to be downstairs where my computer isn't. I had trouble at the beginning and stopped playing it. I thought the combat system was crap and didn't want to bother with the very difficult situation right at the beginning (it involves cannon fire and dying a lot). Halloween night came along, and I actually had to stay downstairs. I baked bread that night. While waiting for the bread dough to do its thing, I started playing Jade Empire again. Then I figured out how to work the combat system.

Granted, I was not very good with the controls for the combat still. However, I managed to figure out how to get past the cannon fire thing. I also figured out that, somehow, my martial skill got unbound from my controller. No wonder I wasn't able to attack anything once I ran out of focus (focus is required to use your weapon, and you can run out of it). So, once I got the martial skill bound back to the controller so I could use it, and I figured out that the cannon fire will never hit you if you keep moving around, I was able to get past that part. Bitch of a time, really.

Then I had to fight some undead that throw ice at you. I couldn't get close enough. Then I realized that you can hit the block button and forward and your character jumps forward a long distance, doing a flip in the air, and not only closing the gap between you and your ice-flinging enemy, but landing behind them. I started experimenting with blocking and jumping around. Suddenly the combat system didn't suck so much anymore. Further experience would reveal that the combat system is actually quite awesome, it's just not something I had ever dealt with before, so it took some time to get used to it.

I like shorter paragraphs. I didn't get very far that night, but I did figure out quite a bit there. Regardless, I didn't play the game again until last week. I took the XBox with me to the relatives' house for Thanksgiving. I set it up there and began playing it again.

To describe the experience of playing Jade Empire, it reminds me of both Baldur's Gate and Symphony of the Night. While it shares more elements directly with Baldur's Gate, the feel of Symphony of the Night is still there during the combat. Honestly, I don't think there's enough combat in the game. The combat system is a lot of fun once you get used to it, and you start looking for fights. It's pretty easy to follow the evil alignment, the "way of the closed fist", just so you get to fight more often. Well, that, and sometimes you just want to see how people will react to your overwhelmingly negative responses.

On that note, like Bioware typically does, they reward you for taking the low road as well as they do for taking the high road. Most games punish people for following the path that isn't morally correct, but not Bioware. They want people to have the realistic option of playing evil. In fact, avenues open up to you when you go evil that you normally wouldn't have. It's really a great thing they have going there, and I always look forward to it in their games. Aside from that, there is still a limited amount of freedom, not just in what order you do things, but which things you choose to do, and how you do them. What choices you make affect what choices you will have, and what things you have to do. But, if you're familiar with Bioware games, I don't need to tell you that.

The game becomes quite addictive after a short while. Not addictive as in the MMORPG sense, where you're just doing the same thing over and over, but rather addictive in that you want to go further, make actual progress through the world rather than just building your character.

One thing I am disappointed in is how little there is in the way of equipment. You get to wear 3 amulets at any one time, and you find many amulets. Also, you can upgrade your weapon, however few and far between those upgrades are. And that's it. You've got your 3 amulets, and the occasional weapon upgrade. I was hoping for more in the way of equipment than that. But, then, I guess my female character wouldn't be so hot if she was wearing armor. Well, I guess it would be nice to upgrade her mini-skirt, or something. Well, it's not a make-or-break aspect.

The other two complaints I have about the game are excessive load times (which we can really thank Microsoft for), and the fact that the game's only on the XBox. Granted, I have an XBox, but the only other game I have for it is the Dead or Alive Volleyball game. Really, the only reason I got one was so I could put Linux on it and take it around with me, but it's so big that I could build a regular computer in a smaller case with a handle and just take that around instead. I know, I read the Penny Arcade comic, but I thought they were exaggerating. Anyway, at least now I have an actual game for it, rather than just something to ogle.

In closing, Jade Empire is good. Xbox still sucks, but Jade Empire is good. If it comes out on PC or a console that doesn't lock up every now and then and has decent controllers, then it'll be great. From what I hear, XBox 360 is backwards compatible, but doesn't solve the problems outside load times. Instead of locking up, it crashes, and with more frequency. If you want to play Jade Empire, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to get a used XBox pretty cheap somewhere now that its next-gen is out.

Hooray for long posts!  :/

Anime USA 7 is this weekend. I'm on staff, so I'll be there. I made the program book! Hopefully it looks better on paper. Lots of work to before the convention, though. I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to the convention because it'll be great, or if I'm looking forward to it because when it's finally time for the convention, I'll be done with all my work for it.

I'd like to see a harem anime where, instead of a bunch of girls going after one guy, it's the one guy going after a bunch of girls, and he's really good at getting them. How the wacky antics would ensue is that he's trying to juggle them all. Instead of being indecisive and not picking any of them, he would be quite decisive and pick all of them... and he'd try to keep all of them. I think that would make for a good twist on the genre.

I think I realize what really makes the Grand Theft Auto games fun. Sure, picking up hookers, fucking them, then beating them and getting your money back does have its sadistic appeal, but the truth of the matter is that the excessive violence and law-breaking isn't what keeps you playing the game. It's all the cool shit you can do. Yeah, there's a story, and a series of quests you must carry out to open up new parts of the game. However, most of the time you're just running around, stealing cars, and seeing how many buildings you can jump over, or if you can land it on a plane and then fly the plane somewhere with the car on top of it. It's stuff like that. It's a very free game, in that you can do what you want. Yeah, it's violent and scandalous, but I think if you took away the sex and violence and law-breaking, you'd still be left with a fun game.

I think more games need to allow as much, if not more, freedom as Grand Theft Auto. The Elder Scrolls series of games claim to be so open-ended, but all they are is really big worlds with a bunch of the same stuff in it. You come accross a village of 50 people, and they respond with 8 paragraphs of dialogue when you ask their name, but that dialogue is repeated by every other person in the village, only changing the name given. There's not a lot you can actually do.

I'm getting tired of World of Warcraft for this reason. When it comes right down to it, all you're ever doing is going somewhere and killing something. It's a repeat 2-step process. There's not really any room for diversion. I've enjoyed the game for the past year, but I really want something with more freedom, more options. I know they're introducing flying mounts in the expansion, but you're not going to be able to do anything cool with them. It's just an improvement to step 1. Anything you do in the game is either an improvement to your step 1 or to your step 2. I need something more than that. Lately I've just been playing the Battlegrounds, but that's gotten dull. You can only play the same map so many times, and if you want to get any real returns, you have to play the same map so many times (I'm talking hundreds).

Of course, I'm still playing World of Warcraft. It's not the only game I'm playing, and it's certainly not got the stranglehold on my life it once did, but it's still fun for a bit. I'm unemployed and I'm down to only playing a couple hours a day. Building a character just isn't as enthralling as it used to be. Now I just want to do stuff.

Maybe I'll give this thing called "life" a try. I've heard a lot of good things about it, but I've heard a lot of bad things, too. It also costs a lot more than World of Warcraft, and the risks are far more dire. I hope things work out.

It was pointed out to me last week sometime that Raven actually made Quake 4, not iD (the single-player portion, anyway). Either way, I've finished the game. The squad-based gameplay becomes less-and-less throughout the game, until it's entirely done away with near the end. However, the game still held up. I finished it the other night. The ending was very short and disappointing, but considering the endings in the other games, I wasn't really expecting much of anything.

The only time it got ridiculously difficult was in this one room where a few of these floating rocket launcher guys come out all at once, and they leave holes in the floor. The slow rockets don't deal much damage, but they do knock you across the room. Almost every time I got knocked across the room, I fell into a hole and died. There was just no avoiding it. I finally got through it by luck. When you get to this room, just use the dark matter gun. You'll get enough ammo for it before you need it again.

So, all in all, it was a worthy game experience. No real replay value, but I guess that's what the multiplayer is for. Right now I'm not really interested in a game where you die every 1-2 minutes, so Quake 4 gets the shelf.