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• Facepalm: Gaming While Driving

  Two Facepalms in two days? Madness! A bus driver has been supsended for playing a PSP while driving. HONOLULU -- Less than a day after KITV broke the story of a city bus driver playing a video game while driving a bus, the driver is on unpaid leave and being investigated Wednesday. The president of The Bus apologized for the incident and said he's "embarrassed" by it less than a month after another bus driver was arrested for drunk driving while operating a city bus. Read More... Posted Sep 25 2008, 10:00 AM by Cole Stryker with | with no comments Filed under: psp, cole stryker, addiction, facepalm

• Games You Keep Coming Back To

  There are a few games out there that I know I'll never finish, but will continue to perpetually play for the rest of my life.  The greatest offender (in the nicest of terms) for me is Final Fantasy XII; I bought it the day it came out in 2006, and to this day I still play it ten hours at a time in shifts five to six months apart.  Even now, nearly two years later, I'm thinking of picking up my old save to try out some of those trickier hunting sub-quests, mainly because my brain has been completely ignorant of the game's story since pre-2007.  I know it has something to do with evil twins, but I might be confusing FFXII with an episode of The Patty Duke Show. Honestly, I can blame Final Fantasy XII itself for my bipolar feelings; director Matsuno gave the franchise a much needed shake-up (which will be all but forgotten by FFXIII), but the game's skill system is in dire need of refinement--which is why it was refined, in a Japan-only re-release.  As things currently stand with America's only version of the game, all the characters in your party are basically the same, and any kind of planned specialization soon falls apart when you realize just how counter-productive this strategy is.  With the addition of refined license boards built for specialization in the aptly-named Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System, it's possible that XII might actually be my favorite Final Fantasy; but I'll really never know. Final Fantasy XII isn't the only game that I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with; while there are many games that I never finish and which subsequently haunt my dreams, I've come crawling back to quite a few others after months of downtime. Read More... Posted Sep 11 2008, 01:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: dragon quest, addiction, bob mackey, the wind waker, final fantasy xii

• Ragnarok Online Reminds Me Why I Don't Like MMORPGs

  I've recently re-entered the hyper-colourful world of Rangarok Online because I must play it for work purposes (honest). I say "re-entered" because I've been down this road before. It didn't take me a whole lot of time to remember why I left Midgard to its fate in the first place. Lots of people are capable of playing massive multiplayer online RPGs casually, but others can become hooked for life, even abandoning work and family for the sake of riding on a tiger. I'm not one of the latter. Sure, MMORPGs are a fun distraction, but I can't concieve of why anyone wouldn't tire of it after a few hours of grinding. I'm playing as an archer named Fuzzy Stone and I've been killing bugs and rabbits for hours upon hours just so I can get strong enough to safely beat up differently-coloured bugs and rabbits. If I stick with it, I can blend in with hundreds of other generic mid-level warriors as we band together to fight the menace of--what are we fighting against, exactly? There are a chosen few who Lord over the rest, who stride through the n00b fields, literally radiant with power while we collect ten-zenny clover dropped by catepillars. Some might aspire to have their name echo through the servers. I don't. I remember when I initially played, I was so proud when I gained enough levels to ride a pecopeco, a sort of Chocobo ripoff. When I rented my ride, what was around me? Dozens of other riders who looked just like me, except I was wearing a jaunty hat. I once talked to 1UP's Solid Sharkey about the appeal of the vague goals MMORPGs dole out and he more or less agreed that there's little to keep you going after a certain point. When he got his pecopeco, he said, "I can ride Big Bird now, so does this mean I won?" My disdain for MMORPGs is partially the fault of my own quirks: I have no interest in cooperating and forming a party. I kind of like doing that sort of thing with my friends, but they all inevitably lose interest and leave me with fifteen-year-old acolytes who beg me to join the Sephie x Cloud Yaoi guild. Read More... Posted Jul 22 2008, 08:36 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: gravity, distraction, ragnarok online, mmorpgs, addiction