Video Games

[NativeJovian]

because Chrono Cross sucks monkey fuck

I'm sensing some bitterness here.

[Maxus]

because Chrono Cross sucks monkey fuck

I'm sensing some bitterness here.

The tears of all orphans, of all athletes who lost a game at the last second when they could have pulled it off, of aqua fortis, could not be more bitter.

[Lago PARANOIA]

This would be the point where I went into great detail about how Chrono Cross was raw, unfiltered hatred and despair but I'm tired of ranting.

Someone else can explain how much it sucked.

[cthulhu]

If you don't like online activation, at this point you pretty much have to buy a console.

[Starmaker]

If you don't like online activation, at this point you pretty much have to buy a console.

Online activation is shit, mandatory internet access while playing is even worse.

[Koumei]

If you don't like online activation, at this point you pretty much have to buy a console.

Pfft, learn to pirate.

[PhoneLobster]

Pfft, learn to pirate.

That does seem to be the lesson learned by any sane customer of the modern PC game industry.

It's like EA and co are sticking one gun in their mouth and pointing another one at their customers and yelling "Pull the fucking trigger, blow my brains out, I hate you you stupid fuckers!".

Of course increasingly there is nothing worth pirating anyway. That's what happens when the only stuff being released consists of barely playable half games with failed vapor ware "additional content".

[MGuy]

But new games look pretty.

[erik]

Yah Starcraft Ghost is gonna look awesome.

[TOZ]

Someone else can explain how much it sucked.

I believe Frank of someone else already did. Lemme go look around the 'entertainment totally lost you' thread.

Edit: So he did, second post. In response to your rage against it as well. XD

Chrono Cross lost me the very moment they threw down the revelation that they were not in fact going to travel through time or interact with the original Chrono Trigger plotline at all. The fact that they subsequently killed all the characters from the first game and then wrote them out of history was just urine on top of the shit cake.

[Cynic]

Yah Starcraft Ghost is gonna look awesome.

God, I Hope it comes out SOON!

[erik]

Oh, I hear it will be Reeeeeal Soon Now.

Ahhh, I remember when I first heard about Starcraft:Ghost and even put it on my Amazon wishlist for pre-order. I don't remember if I took it off myself years later or if it just quietly disappeared on its own.

I recall and enjoyed this little write-up about some even more famous vaporware who finally had the casket closed in May this year.

http://duke.a-13.net/[/url]]
Things that have taken less time than Duke Nukem Forever's Development:

• Pop Culture:
  
  * The Beatles formed, released every single one of their albums and broke up. During this time they also toured the world several times.
  * Led Zeppelin released 7 albums, 9 singles, and toured around the world, crossing international borders 27 times (not counting mainland Europe.)
  * Calvin and Hobbes started in syndication, over the years became widely considered as the best comic strip ever made, then was ended by its creator.
  
  Science & Technology:
  
  * The Wright brothers designed and flew the first airplane.
  * The theory of General Relativity.
  * The United States' entire program to put a man on the moon, from Kennedy's challenge to the landing.
  * The complete construction of many monumental buildings and engineering projects. To name a few-
  o The Empire State Building (Jan 1930 - May 1931)
  o The Channel Tunnel (Dec 1987 - May 1994)
  o The Golden Gate Bridge (Jan 1933 - May 1937)
  o The World Trade Center (Aug 1966 - April 1973)
  o The digging of the Suez Canal (by hand) took 11 years, from December 1858 to November 1869.
  o The building of the Titanic took 3 years, from March 1909 to March 1912.
  o The Hoover Dam was built in 5 years (1931-1936), although it took 9 years on top of that (starting in 1922) for the paperwork.
  o The tallest structure on Earth, the Burj Dubai, was built in 5 years (2004-2009, technically they're still doing the finishing work).
  
  Wars:
  
  * The American War for Independence
  * The United States Civil War
  * World War I
  * The United State's involvement in the Vietnam War.
  * World War II and the entire Manhattan Project. Yes, even the complete development of the atomic bomb took less time.
  * Alexander The Great's conquest of Persia took 6 years, from 334BC to 328BC
  * Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul took 7 years, from 58 BC to 51BC

[Koumei]

The Wright brothers designed and flew the first airplane.

WRONG! And for that you lose ten points, I'm afraid.

In actual fact it was created by an Englishman by the name of John Stringfellow of Chard in Somerset. Before him, some had created horse-drawn gliders and similar things.

[NativeJovian]

Chrono Cross lost me the very moment they threw down the revelation that they were not in fact going to travel through time or interact with the original Chrono Trigger plotline at all. The fact that they subsequently killed all the characters from the first game and then wrote them out of history was just urine on top of the shit cake.

The fact that it's not Chrono Trigger 2: Electric Boogaloo: And This Time It's Personal does not, in fact, make it a bad game. I can understand why you'd be disappointed that it WASN'T a direct sequel, but it stands on its own feet pretty well, and hating it because it wasn't what you wanted it to be is akin to declaring that a delicious chocolate cake tastes like shit because what you really wanted was some key lime pie.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The fact that it's not Chrono Trigger 2: Electric Boogaloo: And This Time It's Personal does not, in fact, make it a bad game. I can understand why you'd be disappointed that it WASN'T a direct sequel, but it stands on its own feet pretty well, and hating it because it wasn't what you wanted it to be is akin to declaring that a delicious chocolate cake tastes like shit because what you really wanted was some key lime pie.

No, it's not. Even disregarding the actual continuity issues, the actual experience of playing the game is a bowl of dicks for many reasons which I will be happy to whine about if you ask me.

But what pushes the game for me into 'this is godawful' to 'I want to punch the dev team in their throat' is the fact that this fucking game retroactively takes a dysentery-infected shit on the previous game, too. All those themes about fighting fate and finding common ground with others and making the world a better place? Fuck you, now it's a game about how you can only make things worse and how humans are parasitic bastards that shouldn't exist! Chrono Cross only interacts with the old game to give the finger to old plot elements (HURR HURR LUCCA DIED IN AN ORPHANAGE FIRE) and to whinge upon ridiculous plot tumors no one gave a fuck about. Dinotopia? Seriously?

[NativeJovian]

Chrono Cross only interacts with the old game to give the finger to old plot elements (HURR HURR LUCCA DIED IN AN ORPHANAGE FIRE) and to whinge upon ridiculous plot tumors no one gave a fuck about. Dinotopia? Seriously?

Hey, guess what. You're still complaining because it's not Chrono Trigger 2.

[TOZ]

And that's the bloody point. It was SUPPOSED to be Chrono Trigger 2. And instead they threw out everything about the original game and made something else. They used the brand name to sell a completely different game that should have been released as a stand alone title.

[NativeJovian]

Sure, I already said I can understand why you'd be disappointed that it wasn't Chrono Trigger 2. But the fact that it wasn't doesn't make it bad. Chocolate cake is not bad just because that's not what you were expecting. Chocolate cake can still be pretty tasty if you're not so focused on the fact that you wanted key lime pie instead.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I enjoyed Chrono Cross when I borrowed it from a friend, but then again, I got stuck and returned it around the time you are looking for a dragon or something, but all you can find are fairies fond of making terrible and repetitive puns.

I did go through the irritating hydra and... beeba? based story arcs, and they felt like low points.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Hey, guess what. You're still complaining because it's not Chrono Trigger 2.

No, I'm complaining because it is Chrono Trigger 2 but they also took a shit on it.

Drawn Together is funny (well, your mileage may vary) but imagine if there was an episode where the Transformers were STD-infected prostitutes who changed into sex toys and Optimus Prime was actually a set of anal beads. Now imagine if a week later Transformers said that what happened in that Drawn Together episode was henceforth canon and that from now on episodes of Transformers will have the sex-toy transformations as canon.

People would be right to be pissed off. But you know what? That fictional episode that I talked about would still be better than what actually happened with Chrono Cross. At least that DT episode didn't retroactively deconstruct the series to claim that Jazz was a child rapist all along.

Sexformers would be a funny parody of the series. Transformers declaring that it is now sexformers is not.

[Avoraciopoctules]

By way, has anyone else played Legend of Mana? I think that was my favorite PS1 RPG. It had nice graphics in that it had every advantage I want out of 3D without discarding the fact that 2D and/or drawn graphics generally look better than 3D objects to me. The gameplay was fun and had 2-player co-op, the stories were enjoyable and often surprising, and I really liked all the customization aspects for equipment, party members, and even the structure of the world.

Odin sphere reminded me of Legend of Mana quite a bit, but there was more emphasis on the action part of action-rpg and the combat was better.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I've heard a lot of things about Legend of Mana, the good things being what you described and the bad things... well, pretty much the bad points of Oblivion. And it also has the stupidest plot bottleneck in history, which I am not going to spoil. Let's just say that the Edea assassination scheme? Fucking genius compared to that.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Could you put it in spoilers, then? I've played through the game twice, and I vaguely remember a few characters being irrational... Oh wait. The underworld?

[NativeJovian]

No, I'm complaining because it is Chrono Trigger 2 but they also took a shit on it.

Let me try rephrasing this.

You don't like Chrono Cross because of its relationship to Chrono Trigger. If it weren't for the way it was connected to Chrono Trigger, you wouldn't have a problem with it. (Or at least, all the complaints you've made so far were about how it dealt with Chrono Trigger, not with the game itself.)

If Chrono Trigger didn't exist, or you'd never played it, or you didn't treat it like a sacred cow to which no insult could be tolerated, then you might consider Chrono Cross to be a good game. If you judge Chrono Cross, on its own, without reference to Chrono Trigger, it's a good game. Seriously. The battle system is interesting, the graphics are good (not just in a "zomg more polygons!" sense, but in an art direction sense), the music is great. The storyline is a bit obtuse, but no more so than any number of other RPGs.

Or maybe not. Maybe you wouldn't like it anyway; I'm not a mind reader. But I can honestly say that I enjoyed both Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, and every complaint I've seen you make here about Chrono Cross has actually been about how it treated Chrono Trigger, not about Chrono Cross for itself. If you thought the characters were retarded, the storyline was asinine, the music was forgettable, and the battle system was tedious -- fine. That's your opinion and I certainly won't hold it against you. But if you hate it because it killed off three Chrono Trigger characters (which honestly amounts to less than 15 minutes of exposition in a 30+ hour game), then all I can say is that you're missing the point entirely.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you thought the characters were retarded, the storyline was asinine, the music was forgettable, and the battle system was tedious -- fine. That's your opinion and I certainly won't hold it against you.

The battle system was a complete disaster. It was insanely repetitive and the stakes were kept as low as possible; you barely got anything from fighting most enemies and you got your hit points refilled after the battle. There was almost no resource management to speak of. The characters had no synergy with each other except for a sprinkling of Dual Techs. There weren't even many special abilities which is inexcusable for a jRPG this late in the development cycle. So you have a battle system that's not fun to play and by and large encourages you not to interact with it. Since the battle system of a jRPG is most of the selling point, we better hope that the other points are good.

The characters were retarded and by and large had no relationship to the plot. I'd criticize the characterization more, but what is there to actually criticize? The dialogue was done through an accent filter. The story could not support the 50+ protagonists the game thoughtlessly dumps on you and it didn't even try.

The music is acceptable for the most part, but it's much too somber. If it was trying to evoke a mood other than 'dreamy wandering' it for the most part failed miserably--though I did love the battle tune.

The art direction... was not good. I don't know why people said it was. It wasn't not any better than many other jRPGs out at the time like FF8. Though I admit that a lot of problems stemmed from the next two problems.

There's barely anywhere to explore in this 'world'! You have a tropical island, some dungeons, a technological ruin, some underwater bullshit, and a handful of nearly-identical towns. The whole feel is just claustrophobic. Which isn't an inherently bad thing, but the theme of the game is supposed to be dimension hopping. What's the point of doing dimension hopping if the locales are so similar?

The storyline had problems. It was interesting enough at the beginning with the 'you're dead in this world' but it completely falls apart after Viper Mansion. Then you chase down Lynx and from that point on the game was just throwing increasingly ridiculous plot threads at you with no foreshadowing or drama. The main aesop of the game is retarded, too. They tried oh-so-pathetically to push a 'humans are bastards' theme on us but they did so in the most trite, mawkish way. The dwarf screeching at humans for being a freak of nature was one of the dumbest things I have ever read and then they manage to top themselves by these retards claiming that humans are a blight on this earth go on to genocide fairies. I mean, WTF? And the protagonist. God, what a miserable fucker this guy is. Crono specifically makes things worse in this world several times just out of pure ignorance or even stupidity (mostly ignorance though) and never really has a positive effect on the plot. He's just content to be led by the nose by Kid and Harle, a placeholder that doesn't do anything. So did the first Crono, but at least he brought ass-kicking to the table! All Crono brought was misery and bumbling.

The battle system was boring and repetitive, the characterization was stereotypical and nonexistent, the gimmick was underdone out of laziness, the storyline was attention-whoring and convoluted and the underlying message is intolerable. In what way could this be considered a good game?

But if you hate it because it killed off three Chrono Trigger characters (which honestly amounts to less than 15 minutes of exposition in a 30+ hour game), then all I can say is that you're missing the point entirely.

That is stupid. Why should I not hate a game that takes a dump on themes established by earlier works and doesn't even have the courtesy to replace it with something better?

Seriously. The whole motherfucking point of Chrono Trigger was to ensure that the protagonists, if not themselves, then their offspring had a good future. Chrono Cross takes significant steps to undo this.

But even beyond that a significant portion of the plot of the first Chrono Trigger was also spent on them using time travel to improve their lives: i.e. Frog coming to terms with his past, Ayla successfully fighting for mankind's survival, Lucca undoing a traumatic childhood accident, Marle reconciling with her father, Crono COMING BACK FROM THE FUCKING DEAD. The last part is one of my favorite moments in all of fiction.

When Chrono Cross strolls along and says 'lol sorry all those things didn't mean shit Crono and friends now die OFFSCREEN hurrrrr BTW it's canon' there is no reason in the fucking universe why people shouldn't get angry.