VIDEO GAME DISCUSSION! HERE! NOW!

Let us speak of the many games of the video nature that we are playing (or even look forward to playing).

I recently picked up Picross DS, which is totally great. School starts next week for me, and Picross will be an excellent way to kill time during the one hour(ish) breaks that I have Tuesdays and Thursdays.
If you don't know, it's sort of like sudoku mixed with crossword puzzles (the name itself comes from picture crossword, I've been told). You have to reveal a picture by chipping away blocks on a grid. There are numbers for each vertical and horizontal line that show how many blocks must be hit; so a 2 and a 1 mean that there is a group of two consecutive blocks followed by a single block that is separated by at least one space.

Anyone who likes solving puzzles and owns a DS should absolutely pick it up, especially since it's only $20!
And I think I should mention now that Sei's Push! (http://www.rpgmaker.net/games/11/) is also a great, but less portable and stylus-free, version of picross.

As 360 owners may or may not know, the BioShock demo came out today. Having just finished playing through for the first time, here are my thoughts:
The graphics are goddamn spectacular, especially in the beginning, when you have time to admire them and aren't constantly paranoid about enemies being around the next corner.
The game definitely succeeds in establishing atmosphere. It's dark without being Doom 3, the music is creepy (in two different ways), and hearing the enemy splicers talking to themselves before they spot you can be slightly disturbing.

Even though it was just a demo, it did a good job of displaying the various possibilities that exist. There was a particularly intense moment towards the end of the demo where I set off an alarm (which I could have avoided by electrocuting the security camera beforehand). While the alarm was blaring, I had to switch between blasting electricity at a puddle full of splicers, staying out of view of the camera (so the alarm didn't reset), and shooting down security droids with my revolver.

If you own a 360 and don't mind playing first person shooters, you seriously need to try out this game.

Final Fantasy 12 hints and pointers, eh?
Well, here's a couple of things I did, and I haven't had too many problems:

- Get all the Quickenings (3) for each character. This will increase their max MP by three times.

- Get all the HP licenses for each character. More HP is always better.

- Use Gambits. If you aren't already, automate everyone (including the characters you primarily control) through Gambits. The only time you should ever directly be controlling combat is when you're fighting a boss or a particularly tough crowd of enemies.

- Use all of your characters. Divide them into two warriors, two mages, and two thieves. Level them up equally, so when one warrior reaches level 40, switch him out and let the other one level up to 40 as well.
The mage character should be focused almost solely on healing. Everyone, however, should have a healing gambit as their top priority. The warrior and thief should require lower HP before they get involved. If your first priority is survival, you shouldn't ever have to touch the controller against regular enemies.

- KEEP YOUR GEAR UPDATED. Your equipment (particularly armor) has a large effect on your party's ability to survive. If you skipped one set of equipment, you'll definitely notice the effects by the time you purchase the next one.

- Buy Bubble Belts as soon as you have access to them. I think you get access to Golden Amulets before Bubble Belts. If you still don't have access to Bubble Belts, get Golden Amulets, then replace them with Bubble Belts.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Played more Odin Sphere today. I finished Valkyrie and moved onto The Pooka Prince. I'm at the second chapter.
The first chapter's boss was a little weird. Without going into spoiler territory, she wasn't nearly as strong as she should have been. It makes complete sense from a gameplay perspective, but it's a little deflating when Gwendolyn's story is taken into consideration.

The gripes I previously had about balancing things no longer seem particularly serious. Maybe it's because the game itself is more balanced at this point or maybe it's because I have a bit more perspective on what to expect from it now. Either way, I'm enjoying the game more. I'm very interested to see where the story is going right now, because it's currently exploring a character and plot thread that wasn't even hinted at during Gwendolyn's book.

I haven't had any problems with the game's difficulty since my last post.

That said, I'll admit to setting the difficulty on Easy (I actually did it fairly soon after picking the game up again, so my last Odin Sphere rant was also mostly on Easy). I normally like to play games on Normal (and if I'm serious about the game, Hard), but I just don't have the time to do it this time. I want to finish this game soon!

Still playing Odin Sphere. I wrapped up The Pooka Prince and moved onto Fairy Land. I've made it to the third chapter. The more I play Odin Sphere, the more I appreciate how perfect the story is as a fairy tale. This game is waiting for a Disney adaptation.

I liked Cornelius's story and certainly didn't expect a few of the twists and reveals in it. His epilogue was damn hard, though. There is no way the average person could reasonably be expected to beat it on their first try. There is a certain enemy that essentially can't be defeated by normal attacks. I guessed (correctly, after consulting GameFAQs) one of the ways to beat them, but I didn't have the resources to create the correct potion, so I had to exit the stage and replay an earlier area. I don't mind that there is a trick to beating them, but the resources should have been made available in that stage.
That was the only stage in which I had skipped some of the areas.
That said, I still enjoyed his book.

Playing as Mercedes has presented some unique challenges and benefits. Although Cornelius certainly played differently from Gwendolyn, they both at least had melee weapons. At first, I didn't like Mercedes (from a gameplay perspective), but I'm starting to like the ability to float out of certain enemies' range and charging a deadly homing shot. I didn't find Gwendolyn's special attack particularly useful, and although I had fun with Cornelius's, I'm not sure it was all that useful either, but Mercedes's has proven invaluable so far.

Mercedes licks her fingers after eating, which is indescribably cute.

It was a bit of a shock to see Oswald during one of the intermissions. By the time Gwendolyn's chapter finished, I had already forgotten he was one of Ringford's soldiers.

I'm making good progress, if I do say so myself! Hopefully I'll be able to finish the game by this time next week.

I played a little bit of Picross DS today, but I've definitely slowed down a lot from when I first bought it. The puzzles are getting even harder now, and it's becoming less fun as they seemingly start to require more luck. I wish there was an overlay in Normal Mode, because that's a feature I really like in Free Mode. My classes start tomorrow, and Picross DS will be one of the things I rely on to kill time during my nearly one and a half hour breaks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'll likely pick Pokemon Diamond back up again as well, since I stopped at the sixth badge.

BioShock's coming out tomorrow, but I don't plan on buying it until the next time I deposit my money, which should be next weekend. Damn, though, do I look forward to that game.

Squeezed a little bit more Odin Sphere in tonight. I've just started Chapter 5 of Fairy Land. I have to say, the difficulty in Odin Sphere is a little wonky. Sometimes, the game is pretty average in terms of difficulty, sometimes it's a gigantic pain in the ass.

The boss battle of Chapter 4 falls squarely in the latter category. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with Titanians? They need to stop taking those damn steroids. Maybe I just suck, but it is @*#%ing hard to fight those Axe Knights as Mercedes. I couldn't dodge their jumps at all. The boss itself wouldn't have been difficult if it weren't for the fact that you have to deal with two stupid Axe Knights as well. That said, I did appreciate that the boss had hardly any HP.

Also, I totally expected the plot twist regarding the frog's identity. At first. As I played through more of Mercedes's book, I started feeling like it couldn't possibly have been who I thought it was, because that would have meant that character was absent for much more time than I thought possible.
Then I looked at the timeline again and realized it actually fit. I'm sure my remaining questions regarding Mr. Froggy will be answered in the fifth book.