Final Fantasy X

When you're ill, you're ill
I've been pretty ill this last week. I'd just about managed to get coursework done for my MA, and finish going to the Cornish Film Festival when I came down with one of the worst stomach bugs I had had in ages. So once I had gotten home, yesterday, I found that I was in too much pain to sleep, but didn't really want to do something I had to concentrate on.

Comfort Gaming
It was time for 'comfort gaming', (definition: where you play a game you've completed many times before, and you enjoy playing it, thus you don't have to concentrate on it too much, but you get to try out different tactics). I got my fiancé to hook up my old PS2, which hasn't seen much play time this year, and booted up SquareEnix's Final Fantasy X.

What is FFX?
Final Fantasy X was one of the best games to be released on the PS2 within the first year of the console's launch. The computer game is an RPG (Role Playing Game), and has the kind of game world that has levels of detail and background (cultures, religion, societies) that even now are often missing from RPGs. The detail within the game is on par with numerous best selling fantasy novels; it is a fantasy game.

Ignore the voice acting...
Just don't pay too much attention to the dialogue and voice acting in the English version. The story is pretty sound.

Story and plot
You play as Tidus who is 'transported' from one time to another through the carnage caused by the titan Sin. Tidus wakes up in a world, unlike his own and is soon battling to save it, whilst knowing who the true cause of the world's suffering is. He doesn't do this alone, there are six other characters: Wakka, Rikku, Lulu, Kimahri, Auron, and Yuna (the love interest). They all have unique weapons and abilities, but they can all become equally mastered in each other's skills.

Ground breaking
The graphics of the game pushed the console at the time. The battle system is one of the best in the series. Also, if you play the game quite thoroughly, you're looking at least a 120 hours of game time. This is a narrative, and levelling up heavy game.

How I love to play it. That's why it's a comfort game for me.

Related link
Official FFX European site

Spore

Another gaming weekend
I spent yesterday having a really long go on Spore. This computer game was only released in September, but I hadn't had a good play through it, despite having it for a month. Oh, and by good play through, I mean more than half-an-hour.

Gameplay
The game play is quite simple and highly addictive as each new stage in your species’ evolution unlocks new tasks and goals to complete and go for. Everything you do affects what your species will become: peaceful or warmongers, or fence sitters. During my play through yesterday I created and moulded a species of creature that were extremely violent and once they reached the civilisation age, wanted to do nothing but build nuclear weapons.

They haven't got the bomb... yet.

So Spore is?
This is a strategy based game to some extent, and there's no over arching story. There's just you, the creatures you design, and millions upon millions of years of evolution to get through.

It is a fun game to play, and that's what is most important.

Related link
Official Spore website