Today Was A Good Day

Thanks to spamming Facebook (sorry) there may be a few new readers to my site. For all of you who have never been here or who don't know who I am I'd like to formally introduce myself.  I am Cory Ragsdale, I am a student at the University of Puget Sound, and one day I hope to be a video game designer/writer. This site is a place for me to discuss what's on my mind as well as to improve my writing skills, so any comments, whether about my topic, my writing, or how much you hate my breath, I welcome you to post them or to contact me directly, either in person, through my email account (cragsdale@ups.edu), or my AIM (deadlychair). Whatever you have to say, I would love to talk to you (especially if you disagree with me on a point).

This weekend has been one of the best weekends I've had in a good long while (excluding those over Winter break). It started off nicely with my brother surprising me by driving up here to Tacoma to take me out drinking at a bar for my 21st birthday, which was quite fun thanks to pool and my brother actually talking for once. Saturday was a nice relaxing affair, I spent most of the day playing video games, which I surprisingly haven't really been doing lately. Then came Sunday. Sunday was almost perfect. I woke up in the afternoon, still in a good mood from my brother's visit, and I spent most of the day cleaning up my room and organizing my music. 

This may not sound like an awesome day to you, but I was in such a good mood, and I'm really happy with the music on my computer now, that it felt like it was Summer again and I didn't have any schoolwork or freezing temperatures to worry about. I also found a new writer today who I can only describe as amazing. I have her blog (Sexy Videgameland) as a link to the right, and I really recommend anyone to it. Though it's a bit risqué, her writing is some of the best I've read in years and what she says is extremely insightful and carefully constructed.

Also the game I spent most of Saturday playing was Star Ocean 3. Star Ocean 3 and I have what we call, a complex relationship. I love some of the things done in the game: voice acting, battle system, menu sounds, art style, and the universe it's set in. Unfortunately Star Ocean 2 did all of these better. In addition, many of these things I love are hampered by other problems: awkwardly long pauses when characters are talking that ruin the dialogue, too many battles for me to care about them anymore, a unique character art style, but the characters faces are incapable of showing emotion most of the time, universe is made stupid by hackneyed and ugly plot (really Fayt Leingod, who are you kidding). 

Last time I played this game I ended up stopping, because after I spent ten hours or so making my way across a continent I was asked to go back to where I started so I could get a material needed to get the good guys awesome magic beam cannon to work. I was fine with this, a little unhappy, but I could deal with it, since it's an rpg. The material turned out to be copper. The good guys needed copper wire for their MAGIC BEAM CANNON, and I had to trek back across a continent to get it. Couldn't they just, I don't know, melt down some copper they have in their capital, I mean there has to be some right? Whatever, I decided fine, since one of the things I like about the Star Ocean universe is that the main character is from a future space Earth, and he's dealing with people who are still in the Middle Ages, so his knowledge of high school chemistry makes him a god. Then they tell me it's guarded by dragons and I said, "Fuck this shit, I am not marching across a continent to get some copper wire that is guarded by fucking dragons!" 

Fast-forward to Saturday, I got the copper wire, the good guys didn't get to use the cannon in the fight it was made for, and now I need to go get some god-dragon who can lift the damn thing, and again I said fuck it. Perhaps the game gets amazing, perhaps, once I get off the damn planet I'll be happy with Star Ocean 3, but until then, I'm going to go play Star Ocean 2 because as far as I can tell, it is literally better in every single way than its sequel, which is just wrong.

Really, a good sequel should upset people's expectations of what that series is (Super Mario World - Super Mario 64), or it should be more of the same, but better (Devil May Cry 3 - Devil May Cry 4 (supposedly), or Disgaea - Disgaea 2). Honestly, I'd probably be happy with just more of the same, as long as you don't remove features, a sequel should never have less that you can do than before, this is why Armored Core 4 wasn't as good as Armored Core 2-3+expansions, sure it was faster paced, but they got rid of most of the customizability that made Armored Core what it was.

Really, what this all boils down into, is that I can't wait to get my hands on Devil May Cry 4.