FF Game Night

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands was a blast of a game. I picked this one up as soon as it came out, and played it quite often. Just tonight I finished off the main story and wanted to put down some thoughts on the game. I am doing this while listing to the ending credits. What I loved about Wildlands was the ease of playing; either by myself with my AI squad, or with my Xbox Live buddies. It was essentially drop-in/drop-out gameplay. Most of my friends finished the story a while ago, but as you may know, I take my time with games and try to get the most out of it; searching for every hidden item, skill up, and accessory. In Wildlands you take the role of one of four special forces soldiers sent to Bolivia to take down the drug circle one mob boss at a time. When you zoom out on the map, you can see them all.  The other three soldiers are played by AI, or you can have 1-3 of your buddies instead. Those spots can also be filled in via matchmaking. I found the team...

Something that I have wanted to do for years is to attend a Distant Worlds concert. Distant Worlds has been around for 10 years. This concert is dedicated to the music from the Final Fantasy franchise. A full symphony orchestra and choir plays various arrangements from the Final Fantasy series of games, played in front of a huge screen showing scenes and artwork from the games. It's conducted by Arnie Roth since the beginning, who is a Grammy Award winner by the way, and a funny guy. The other great thing you will find at concerts are fans.... and with video game fans comes COSPLAY!!!. I had a great time meeting people that were dressed up as their favorite characters. The concert was on June 3, 2017. The venue for this concert was Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was an awesome place to have a Final Fantasy concert, and I loved the decor inside. Who could this be walking by inconspicuously? The Orchestra, Choir, and A rnie ...

Ori And The Blind Forest, what a wonderful and beautiful game. Playing this game reminded me of the best part of a few other games: from  the jumpin g mechanics  cl assic side-scrollers , to the upgrades that unlock areas you can see but can't quite get to like Zelda and Darksiders, to the deeply moving story and themes like The Last of Us. It was truly a pleasure and one of my favorite platform games for the Xbox One! From the moment the game starts, you can see that there are no spoken words in the game. Much of the story that is told is done so from a visual or audio perspective. There are also text boxes when needed.  The different areas of this game are just stunning to see and play through. But even as great as it is, the sounds may even be better. The music is nothing short of fabulous, and very moving. It fits the situation whatever is going on in the game, whether it is sad, exciting, or scary. It's actually so good I have listened to it occasionall...

Introduction  My background  In 2014, I was given money for a computer game from my parents. At first, I chose Titanfall, as I loved the run and gun mechanics, as well as the parkour and titans. But after realizing that the old laptop I was using didn't have enough USB ports to plug a mouse and external HDD into, I decided to take the game back, and get a smaller game that didn't need the external HDD. I looked up and down the aisle until I found Skyrim Legendary Edition. I purchased the game, and have loved it since. To this date, I have logged almost 500 hours into the game, and I plan to expand upon that. Skyrim Tips and Tricks Synopsis  This tips and tricks series will be me sharing my experience with the game, and how you can get ahead in some areas that you maybe didn't know before. I'll be teaching you things from how to get level 100 conjuring in under an hour, to getting loot from a secret chest that can only be found by glitching the game. So sit back...

Lightning Returns:  Final Fantasy XIII ... I can't wait to explain how I love this game... or not: Okay, so even though the first Final Fantasy XIII had many areas that felt like corridors, I still loved it. I was less enthusiastic about FFXIII-2 due to the time jumping nature. In that game, I felt disconnected from the main story as though I didn't have a home. Each time we started a play session we had to spend 15 minutes trying to figure out what place/time to jump into in order to complete the next task. But now we have Final Fantasy XIII Lighting Returns. Just like Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi, Lighting is coming back with a vengeance to set the evil empire of lame games on its back heels. Will Lighting show the world that she can come back into the scene and restore the miss-steps of the previous installment?  You don't know how much I would like to say YES! Actually, my answer is a little more complicated than a yes or no. First, thi...

Our first official "Game Night" in a while, we decided to focus on our new game, Final Fantasy XIII-2. This game feels to hearken back to the glory days of Final Fantasy, with more options and choices available. First thing I noticed is the packaging and the book are the quality... TOP NOTCH! The Collectors edition has a surface on the box and foldout that feels somewhat like felt. It came with the Xbox 360 game, an art collection, the game manual, 4 soundtrack CDs, and the track list. It looks distinctly better than the standard Xbox 360 version of the game.  If you preordered the game, you also got the Final Fantasy XIII: Episode i. This is a small book that has the story of what happened directly after the first game Final Fantasy XIII. The Collectors Edition guide had slightly padded covers, and it comes with not one but TWO bookmarks! This was a well organized book, and was the only thing the kept us on track during our se...

After a few weeks off, we had a Lan Party at Joe's place. We try to have one about every 6 months, but I think it's been over a year since the last one. We had a pretty good turn out; I think we have about 14 there at one time, but a few overall. We focused on a few classic games and we had a great time. About 5 of us were still up at 3am. Alien Versus Predator 2 We started with AVP2. This is an older game and you can see the dating by the graphics. It still offered some "new to us" play styles that kept us all coming back for more for several hours. I think the favorite mode was Survivor. In this mode, there is a Survivor race (default is Human), and Mutate race (default is Alien). At the start of the game all players are Human, and each player receives a prompt to kill their neighbor. The first Human to die then turns into an Alien and Survivor mode starts. Once Survivor mode starts, the goal of each human is to stay alive and kill Aliens. The goal of the...