Retro Review: Final Fantasy IV redux

Nick here, so I got a Vita and the first thing I buy for it is Final Fantasy IV.
As a preface, there is a way to show when you grew up. You simply ask the question, "What is your favorite Final Fantasy game?"
For me, the answer is, and always has been, Final Fantasy IV. However, I loved it when it was Final Fantasy II on the SNES.
What FF4 is for me is a game that really pulled me into gaming. Before FF4 I played Mario, Zelda, a lot of the old NES games at friends' houses. However, FF4 was the first time I put a RPG into a game system and just played and played until my eyes bled.
Not literally, mind you, I was a young child, but this was the first game I ever worried I would play so much I wouldn't go to sleep and it would have messed with my chores in the morning (it never really did).
Back then I loved the stories of Cecil's fall and redemption, his love affair with Rosa and the friendship-enemy back and fourth with Kain.
Then there's Rydia, sweet Rydia.
Rydia is my favorite FF character of all time. It's not because I had a youthful crush on her back in 1991, though I did as much as a real boy can have with an 8-bit pixelation of a girl with green hair.
No, the reason I love Rydia is because she can summon monsters, and more than that, she can summon dragons.
To understand that love you have to understand my childhood. We didn't have cable television, and we didn't really watch much TV at all. Instead, I being the youngest of five kids with the next youngest being 10 years older than me I got to watch the other four play role playing games around the kitchen table.
I would sit there with my jaw wide open and my eyes locked on miniatures while they played Dungeons and Dragons and BattleTech.
As soon as I could read, I was grabbing those manuals and reading them myself. However, by that time many of the older siblings had started to move away, and all were too old to play those games anymore.
So I spent a lot of my youth in my room rolling up characters and imagining wild adventures through the realms of D&D and BattleTech.
It was the D&D Monster Manual that I loved to leaf through the most, looking at Beholders and Dragons for hours. I don't think I ever really memorized any of the crunchy numbers, but it was the ideas I soaked up like what color dragon spit what and what they were vulnerable to.
So when I saw a video game a few short years later that had the same kind of D&D adventure I had been playing forever, I was in love.
When Rydia was able to summon that Mist Dragon I was even more in love. When she got Bahamut? I was sold forever.
So when I bought it on PSP I was a little worried that all of those wonderful memories would let me down. That I had put the game on a pedestal that it could never reach up to.
To my joy, those worries were dead wrong.
Instead, FF4 delivered me  back to those days in front of the old TV in my family room, sitting cross-legged on the floor and cursing the name of Golbez. It was just an amazing time to go back and feel lost, but at the same time feel like you never left Baron, Fabul and Mysidia.
The story even holds up over time, and certainly doesn't seem as campy as many of the games from that era are. The graphics are not great, for sure, but they are decent and have really stood up well.
In all, I couldn't recommend a game more, if not just for a stroll down memory lane if you ever played it before.
It's worth every penny.

E3 Impressions

So I'm a few days late. I apologize but I was really busy at the end of last week. Here are my thoughts of E3 2012.

1. Beyond: Two Souls - I loved Quantic Dream's 2010 title Heavy Rain. I'm a big fan of engaging, deep storytelling in video games. Heavy Rain was a playable movie basically. Contrary to popular belief, it's not just a series of quicktime events. At any rate, Heavy Rain was a wonderful murder mystery tale. Beyond looks like it's going to blow the doors off of Heavy Rain. It will feature the same type of gameplay, but with some tweaks. Ellen Page (Juno) stars as Jody Holmes who possesses a unique "partnership" with a supernatural being named Aiden. Quantic Dream didn't show any gameplay at the Sony Conference, but the cutscene (which is presumably from the game) they did show was amazing.
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NEup8y0g-Q

2. The Last of Us - I love Naughty Dog and this game looks simply amazing. There's really nothing I can add to what Nick thinks. Just know that I'm unbelievably excited for this game.

3. Playstation All-Stars - Well they didn't change the name. Oh well. I love Smash Bros and I love Playstation. Perfect mix for me. I wish they would have just copied Smash Bros 100%, but they are trying to make it a little different. It's going to be extremely fun and the addition of Big Daddy was awesome to see.

4. Playstation Vita - SONY WHY YOU HAS NO VITA GAMES AT PRESS CONFERENCE!? Really Sony? The Vita is fledgling (though I LOVE mine and don't get why it is) and everyone was wondering how you going to "save" it. And all you mention is Call of Duty: BlackOps Declassified (no trailer, gameplay, nothing), Assassin's Creed: Liberation (with pearly white Vita!) and that All-Stars will be on Vita (which was a given). Where are the new Vita games? Guacamelee? Why didn't you try to blow Vita out to help it? Instead you spent what seemed like an hour on Wonderbook. Amazing technology to be sure, but wouldn't that time have been better spent trying to hype Vita. I'm deeply concerned. Why not do what Nintendo did and announce a price drop and incentives for early adopters? I don't get it. Sony may come to rue E3 2012 by not helping Vita if it continues down this path. Sad. 

5. Dishonored - This game looks fantastic and the wealth of gameplay options that are possible is astounding. Dishonored could be the best game released this year, but I'm still wary of it. Everything in this game seems to point to a deep story. But what if it isn't? We don't really know anything about the story. It looks unbelievably fun to play, but what if the story is bad? I'm cautiously optimistic.

What I'm playing: Resistance: Burning Skies (enjoying it, review soon-ish) and Plants vs. Zombies on Vita (three trophies to platinum!)