March 2003
Well, it's Spring Break.
Actually, it's mostly over by now, but I had a good time. I didn't
go to Mexico or the Bahamas or anywhere like that, but I did get a chance
to go home and see my family once again, and I got to continue my Playstation
2 game progress. I finally finished Final Fantasy X, and I found
all the secrets and got all the skill points in Ratchet and Clank.
The end of FFX was actually a little harder than I thought it would be,
and I died the first time I tried it because I got ambushed by a Malboro,
who used the Bad Breath attack on me. All I could do was sit there
as my characters spun around in confusion, slowly dying of poison while
trying to beat each other to death with their weapons. The next time
I tried, I didn't have to fight a Malboro, but it was my first time doing
the Summoner battles at the end of the game. Luckily I was able to
beat them all, including the Magus Sisters. Then came the final boss,
which was actually easier to beat than I thought it would be because I
had powered up Yuna so much, including getting her ultimate weapon, that
her Holy spell did a really high amount of damage. I've also been
playing Kingdom Hearts, which is really fun. I just got into building
really souped-up gummi ships with tons of weapons and complex wing designs,
and I'm getting into the second set of stages including the Aladdin and
Little Mermaid worlds. The Little Mermaid world was tough, and at
first I had a little trouble defeating Ursula's second form, but then I
went and got some items that increased my magic abilities so I could cast
the cure spell more often, and I was able to stay alive long enough to
beat Ursula. Now I'm going into the Nightmare Before Christmas world,
which has the spooky graveyard design found in most video games.
When you arrive in that world, your characters start out dressed up like
monsters, just like they started as sea creatures in the Little Mermaid
world, so that's kind of a cool feature. I sort of wish you could
take the world-specific characters, like Tarzan or Ariel, into other worlds
with you instead of just having Donald and Goofy be the only full-time
supporting characters, but I suppose it would have become harder to keep
track of everyone and keep them equipped. One other game I tried
was Super Bust-a-Move 2, which is part of the Puzzle Bobble series of games
where you shoot bubbles and try to attach them to other bubbles of the
same color. It's a good game, but I tried the story mode, and the
voice acting is awful! I mean, this is really some of the worst voice
acting I've ever heard in a game. But then again, just like the game
Kirby's Avalanche for the Super Nintendo, the game wasn't really built
around a story, so the poor voice acting and dialogue translation is forgivable.
Today I got the old games Thief and Thief 2 in a single package, and I
installed them on the computer here at home, but there must be something
wrong with my video card drivers because all the world geometry appeared
in full brightness, with no light variation, while the objects in the world
were lit correctly. In most games, that would be a sort of advantage
even if it made the game look ugly, but in the Thief games it's not good
at all because I need to see how bright everything is to determine where
I can move without getting seen by guards. I'll be going back to
college tomorrow, so I won't get to comment on the Oscars or anything until
May, when I get back home again. Until then, I'll be working on all
sorts of projects and studying for tests, and maybe I'll try to do something
with Azenera, like remove some of the hundreds of items I scattered all
over the place or implement the ghost-fighting system, and maybe I'll get
some work done on level 5. I really am still working on this level
series, so don't worry.