Words On Wednesday

While video games are typically platforms for entertainment first and foremost, there are often alternative goals and functions at play. In the case of Far Cry 4 , there is an interesting dynamic between governing bodies that serves as a sort of exploration of political policies on a micro scale. Though the main story of the game is mostly set, there are a series of decisions that the player can make to affect side story lines around the leadership of the Kyrat people. The political situation of Kyrat during the events of Far Cry 4 is a dire one. Pagan Min serves as the reigning power, the King of Kyrat. The Golden Path, a rebel movement, seeks to dethrone Min and reclaim Kyrat under their own leadership. Due to stagnation, the Golden Path is in a tumultuous position without a singular leader and direction. There are two main contenders for the head of the Golden Path, Sabal and Amita. Coincidentally (or at the design of the game’s creators), Sabal and Amita take drastically diff...

Finally, after all these years, I have beaten EarthBound. The Circuitous Journey I’ve started and restarted the game more times than I can recall. My first exposure to it was actually in the original Super Smash Bros., as seems to be the case for many younger fans of the EarthBound/Mother series. I’d never heard of Ness, nor EarthBound, when I encountered him as a playable character in SSB. As my blog post from back in 2015 indicated, my cousin had a modded Xbox console at some point in the early 2000s, which had a number of emulators and ROM games on it. When perusing the different SNES games on his Xbox, I stumbled across EarthBound. Recognizing the name from Ness’s info page on Super Smash Bros., I decided to try it out. I played around on the game for a while, making it as far as Threed, before I lost interest and he moved out to California and brought the Xbox with him. I restarted EarthBound numerous times through the years, across several different devices. Most recen...

I recently installed a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator on my phone, and I’ve struggled a lot with the ethics of using save states. Previously, I used a Game Boy emulator , but save states were a paid feature and I just ignored them completely. When I got the SNES emulator , I didn’t even bother looking. I was so accustomed to *not* using save states, I didn’t care if they were even available. The actual games didn’t have save states, so avoiding them is more true to the original experience. For a while, I stuck with strictly RPGs. Touchscreen controls aren’t responsive or reliable enough to play platformers and adventure games proficiently, but they do alright for slower paced games. When a coworker sold me his SteelSeries Free controller , I decided to test it out on Donkey Kong Country 2. DKC2 was probably my favorite platformer on the SNES, and I hadn’t played it for years. Fortunately, the controller worked well for the game, and I decided to continu...

Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday, and it is a holiday that I have come to appreciate more and more as I’ve gotten older. Growing up, I didn’t really care that much about Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Not that I didn’t love and appreciate my parents, but it was more or less just another day. As a child, each parent got the other a gift. Once I got to the age where I would buy them a gift myself, it was mildly stressful. I’m not good at buying people gifts, so I have a hard time getting something sentimental even for people I’m close to. The first thing that gave me a better appreciation for Mother’s Day was the death of my father. I’ve mentioned it before , but it deserves to be mentioned here. Suddenly going from having both parents to only one really makes you appreciate the remaining parent. I may discuss my father’s absence more, but his death gave me much more gratitude for my own mother, and all she continues to do for me. Into adulthood, I gained even awareness for Moth...

After several years of playing off and on, I’ve finally reached the end of The Legend of Dragoon . For those unfamiliar with The Legend of Dragoon, it was a JRPG released on the original PlayStation back in 1999. Though never as popular as Final Fantasy, it was a solid game and got a lot of attention in both Japan and the United States. It’s become something of a cult classic or sleeper hit, with fans raving about it still. I first played the game many years ago with the original PlayStation disc. Though I didn’t play it on the PSX (which I never owned), the PS2 was backwards compatible, so I played it on that. It’s been so long ago, that the details are hazy. I didn’t own the game, it belonged to my cousins who did own an original PlayStation. I didn’t get very far, probably not even through the first disc, but it was enough to make me want to finish the game. However, I eventually migrated fully to my PS3, and the original discs for The Legend of Dragoon were either lost, sold, ...