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• Whatcha Not Playing: Persona 4

  Persona 4 may not actually be out, but I'm still making an effort to actively avoid it.  This is more than a little depressing, because I'm sure it's a fantastic RPG, and, quite possibly, the last good Playstation 2 release--unless the series decides to stay on Sony's eight year-old console.  I'm not one to have a restraining order on good JRPGs, as they are kind of rare these days, but playing Persona 4 could be very hazardous to my health.  It's not all of the demons and Satanic imagery that's got me scared; it's the fact that this game could very well take over my upcoming (and desperately-needed) break from work, school, and life. Typically, it's extremely rare for me to play a game for me than 100 hours--and hell, most games don't have that much content to spread around. But the last Persona game, Persona 3: FES, can be found in the handful of games where I've actually spent hours in the triple digits.  Before you think that I'm a loser with too much time on my hands, please let me explain: Persona 3: FES was released at a time that I could take advantage of the most: the end of a long, tortuous semester, with 12 weeks of absolute freedom in front of me.  Grad school doesn't give you much to do in the way of jobs or work during the summer. Essentially, I had a Summer of George. And Persona 3 was the catalyst that kicked it off. Read More... Posted Dec 04 2008, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: persona 3 fes, atlus, jrpg, bob mackey, gaming habits, persona 4

• And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2

  I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I’ve got issues with Japanese role-playing games. I tend to, well, disappear into them. And as much as they make our own Bob Mackey OCD within the confines of their battle systems, item management, and quaint townships, they tend to make me OCD in my waking life. When I start one that really gets its hooks into me, I don’t do much else with life until it’s done. Much like the troubles I had with Dragon Quest VIII back in 2005, Persona 3 ruined me for September 2007. Eighty-nine hours of level grinding, managing completely fictional friendships (whilst ignoring real ones,) and bouncing J-pop that nearly drove my roommates to murder me. It was my first time with the Shin Megami Tensei franchise and I couldn’t have been more impressed, or obsessed, with it. Needless to say, I’ve been dreading Persona 4. Not because I think it won’t live up to Persona 3. No, I’m afraid of what it’s going to do my brain. And now, for seemingly no other reason than they are awesome, Atlus is making everything worse. The publisher sent out an email today announcing that they are reprinting Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, a Playstation 1 game, “to commemorate the upcoming release of Persona 4 and to thank you for your interest, dedication, and support of the SMT series.” Who does that?! Who reprints an eight year-old game for a long-dead console? Someone who loves you, that’s who. Read More... Posted Nov 13 2008, 07:15 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, shin megami tensei, love, dragon quest, persona, atlus, persona 2 eternal punishment, persona 4, persona 3, dragon quest viii

• Going There: Persona 4 and Feeling the World

  Cable television, on the whole, baffles me. Twenty years ago, the joke went that there’s fifty channels and nothing good’s ever on. Now it’s one-thousand channels. You do stumble on something great here and there, though. For example, I watched three episodes of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern this past weekend. The deal is that chef Zimmern travels all over the earth and eats every bizarre local delicacy he can get his hands on. It is awesome. In one episode, he went to Iceland, and dined on puffin. I was fascinated. Not by the unusual choice of fowl, but by the process and ritual behind how puffins are hunted. Puffin hunting is apparently an old, Icelandic father-son bonding tradition. The men go out to one of the insanely remote islands where puffins nest and they catch them with small nets on the end of giant poles. It’s all they eat for days. They hunt on the edge of huge cliffs beside the ocean. Naturally, this got me thinking about videogames. Read More... Posted Jul 08 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, persona, atlus