Gaming Holiday: Day 3

I gave PC gaming a break on Wednesday, after having beaten Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend on Tuesday night. ^[1] Unfortunately, Lara’s enemies weren’t the only impediment to my success.

In the midst of playing though LCTR:L, my computer came down with a case of the gremlins. Eventually, I tracked this down to the fact that my wireless game controller (or more specifically, the receiver that came with it) is a serious power hog, and wants its own USB bus from which to draw. It wasn’t even satisfied with its own powered hub! Fortunately, I had a spare USB 2.0 PCI card lying around, so that situation is averted. However, I now strongly recommend that you buy the wired version of this controller for PC use. It works just as well, and won’t eat all your power.^[2]

I gave in late Tuesday night and started Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions on the PSP. From a couple of missions in, it seems to be just a port with some new animated sequences thrown in. This is good news for me, because I never finished the PSX version, even though I have always meant to. I just wasn’t prepared those years ago for the tactical gameplay style, and it kept putting me to sleep. ^[3] I also spent too much time worrying about all of the different jobs and weapons, instead of focusing on the gameplay itself. Now I’ve played the GBA spin-off and dabbled in a handful of other games in the genre, and I’ve got the tactics bug. If I can just leave my spreadsheets alone,^[4] I should be able to have a good time with this game.

Traveling to Ivalice for FFT/PSP made me nostalgic for FFXII, which K and I have let rest for a few months. After the first 60+ hours and some intensive levelling in a cave,^[5] we needed a break, but it’s nice to come back to it now. The Gambit System (which I still love) made it pretty easy to glide right back into the pattern of play we’d set out, since we essentially had our strategy’s source code in front of us, and we barrelled through a few areas on our way to the next major plot point before K needed sleep, and we packed it in.

That means I’m back to FFT/PSP for a while before I drop off. I can’t remember, though: is it bad karma to rename Ramza as Pika?

1. It was pretty good, but I’m not sure whether to recommend it. It was definitely worth playing in my case, since it’s included in GameTap, and I like Tomb Raider and related Parkour simulators. I still liked Anniversary better, but this one at least had more to do with relics and ruins than cargo ships and cities. The tie-ins with a well-known legend were a plus. At times, I felt the same “discovery-of-the-strange-among-the-familiar” as when I saw National Treasure or read The Da Vinci Code. (Obligatory DVC disclaimer: good novel. Ranks right up there with Harry Potter as a work of entertainment. Also ranks with Harry Potter as a work of biblical scholarship. Please read responsibly.) [↩]
2. By the way, I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: if you want a console-style controller for your PC games, the Xbox 360 controller really is superb. I’ve bought and used a shamefully large number of controllers over the years, and it’s the best I’ve ever used on a PC. It’s even better than the Gamepad Pro. If any Rosies or other friends are considering picking one up, feel free to ping me for any further information about the wired or wireless controller, as we have both here at Fort Pika… even though we do not have an Xbox 360! [↩]
3. It also probably did not help that I was playing right before bed. [↩]
4. No joke — for FFT/GBA, I have a spreadsheet in Documents To Go on my Palm Pilot that kept track of each clan member’s job progress and prospects. I have to be careful that I don’t turn FFT/PSP into a programming and analysis project. [↩]
5. Level 40 and Deathbringers for everybody! [↩]