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Well, my California trip is finished, but come Wednesday I'll be heading off to visit my brother in Arizona for a week and a half. Pebble Version updates shouldn't be affected though. I'll be doing more Ink updates later this week, but first a quick rundown of my recent trip.
As previously mentioned, I went to San Francisco last week for the Game Developers' Conference. It's a big yearly conference for people in the game industry (no, duh). Unlike E3, GDC isn't the place to show off new games (though there's usually a few that work their way in somewhere). Instead, it has a relatively small expo focused on hardware and software used in game development and distribution, a career pavilion for job hunters, and a lot of lectures and round tables by famous industry figures. This year, the decided to try something different and run the main part of the conference on Thursday through Saturday, instead of the usual Wednesday through Friday. From what I heard, the change didn't seem too popular. I sure didn't like it. For religious reasons, I can't do work related stuff on Saturday and I try not to fly on that day either so I ended up with only two days at the conference even though I had to stay in San Francisco until Sunday. But anyway, on to what I actually did on the trip...
I got into San Francisco on Wednesday so I'd be able to get to the conference first thing Thursday morning. Since I was getting in a day early, I figured I might as well try and get in early in the day as well so I'd have time to do a bit of exploring. I ended up at my hotel around noon and, luckily enough, my room was ready early so I was able to drop off all my stuff. The hotel was an interesting one. I chose it because it was within walking distance from the convention center (a bit over a mile, but not too bad), cheap, and had fairly good reviews. The whole place was done up in an old Victorian style. My room was a little small, but the decor was kinda neat. Certainly different from any other hotel I've ever stayed at.
Since I had time to kill, I decided to check our the nearby Japan town. Though fairly small (several blocks) it was a pretty nice place with a large mall filled with Japanese shops and restaurants. Not quite the same as being in Japan, but probably the closest I've come since returning to the US. There was even a US branch of Japan's Kinokunya Bookstore, which was pretty awesome (even there was a bit of an import mark-up on their stuff). Later that evening, I met up with some friends of mine from UAT (my college) and we headed down to the bay to get some food.
I spent all of Thursday and Friday at GDC. It was pretty much the same as past GDCs. Kinda interesting, though not overly exciting unless you really love looking at various software utilities and the like. There were a few interesting pieces of hardware on display. One company even had a giant hamster ball thing that rotated when people walked, for use with VR goggles (kinda amusing, but I can't imagine it catching on). I did get to check out Sony's new 3D TV and the Playstation Move (their motion controller). The TV was cool, though you still need to wear special glasses and, though cool, I'm not sure if it really adds enough to the gaming experience to justify buying an entirely new TV. The Move, on the other hand, worked really well. It's far more accurate than the Wiimote and the games they had on display (a Wii Sports type mini-game collection and a rather cool virtual pet game) worked really well. For those of you who have spent a lot of time with the Wii though, you have to get used to making complete motions with your arm instead of just flicks. The fighting game in the sports collection, which had you using one Move as your weapon and a second as your shield, was really cool. Assuming it gets good software support, the Move seems to have a lot of potential.
I spent most of the conference talking to people at the various job booths and checking out the latest hardware and software stuff. Highlights (aside from checking out Sony's new stuff) included the annual Independent Game Festival and Game Developers' Choice Awards (once again, with hilarious videos by Mega64) and Sony's Buzz! Quiz World tournaments (I got a close second in the first and then won another close match the second day, winning a free copy of the game). As for the job search, there were some people who seemed pretty interested in my resume, but it's too early to tell if anything will come from it.
Saturday morning was taken up by synagogue services. On the way back though, I passed the capital building where they were having a big St. Patrick's Day celebration. Since I had some time to kill, I decided to stay and watch the parade for a while. There were plenty of cars, bands, marching people, dancers, and more. And more, and more... I watched for over half an hour and still didn't see the end. At that point, I'd been on my feet pretty much since arriving in San Francisco and wanted a break so I hung out in my hotel room during the afternoon then went back to Japan town to eat (there's some great restaurants there).
Sunday (nearly all of Sunday, unfortunately) was spent traveling back to CO. And that's that. I enjoyed the trip, for the most part. San Francisco has a lot of nice areas, and Japan town was cool, but there were plenty of dodgy looking streets downtown as well and I got tired of all the homeless people hanging out along the streets. When it comes to big cities, I really prefer either the more spread out ones (like Phoenix) or the cleaner safer ones (like Tokyo). At least on a long term basis.
Anyway, I've got another trip to get ready for so I'd better go. See you Wednesday!
Josiah
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As I mentioned in my last update, I'm off to the Game Developers Conference today. Depending on how the internet at my hotel turns out, and how busy I am at the conference, Friday's update may be late (or skipped entirely if it turns out that I don't have internet).
After years and years of waiting, Final Fantasy XIII is finally out! For those of you who don't know, the Final Fantasy series if my favorite game series of all time. It was Final Fantasy VII that both convinced me to get a Playstation and got me into RPGs (which eventually led me to Pokémon). Since then, I've eagerly awaited each new Final Fantasy game (a few spin-offs and the MMO aside). FFX is my current favorite game and many other FF games are pretty high up on the list. I've got nearly every Final Fantasy game, soundtrack for most of them, a bunch of figurines (most of which were bought while I was in Japan), and several wall scrolls as well. So, of course, I've been eagerly looking forward to FFXIII ever since the first trailer debuted. I was particularly happy to hear that XIII had a lot of the team from X working on it, since X was my favorite and all. While there were a lot of things I really liked about XII, I had a few fairly serious issues with it as well and, in the end, it wasn't one of my favorite entries in the series.
Anyway, back to XIII. Gamestop had a midnight launch so I hung out at the store for a couple hours (while playing (and joking about) Dante's Inferno with a couple of other people there) then picked up my copy. I thought about playing it as soon as I got home but I figured that I'd rather wait till I was completely awake and alert instead. Since I'm leaving today and won't be back until Sunday evening (really lousy timing) I wanted to get in as much playtime as I could so I ended up playing nearly straight for about nine hours yesterday. Which was in itself unusual since (outside of car and plane trips) I rarely play games for more than two or three hours at a time (often I just don't have the time, but sometimes I just want to go do something else instead). I'll give FFXIII a full review once I finish it, but for now here's my thoughts so far.
Final Fantasy XIII is, without question, the best looking game I've ever played. The characters, world, and animations are all spectacularly done and filled with nice little touches and details. The music is excellent too. It's too bad Uematsu didn't compose the score for XIII but I've really liked the music I've heard so far and the normal battle theme is one of my favorites ever. I like the characters and the story is interesting so far, though I really can't say much about it until I get a lot further in the game. The level structure is more like that of X and XII (more linear and tightly done than sprawling and open), which has its pros and cons (better design and appearance but less freedom). I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of towns to explore but, considering the level of detail they put into the graphics in every scene, I can believe the devs' claims that modeling big sprawling towns like those in past games would have taken way to much time. And hey, it makes sense from a story perspective that the characters aren't wondering around towns anyway. The battle system is something like the one from X-2 (really fast with the ability to change jobs mid battle) with a bit of XII (AI controlled party members, though this time you don't have to set their strategies, they're pretty smart) and Chrono Cross (creating chains of actions). Though the first few hours are more or less a big tutorial, once you get access to most of the features, there's actually a lot of strategy involved. It's fast and fun and even many of the ordinary enemies offer a decent challenge. I already died several times, which is usually rare for me outside of optional super battles, fortunately there's a ton of save points plus if you die you always have the option to restart from right before the battle and try again. While I'll have to see how the battle system fairs in later more complex fights before I can give a final opinion on it, I like it quite a lot so far. The character development is good too (a mix between X's sphere grid and the job system) if a bit simpler than that in past games.
To summarize, while I can't give my final opinion of XIII until I've played all the way through it, it's been pretty awesome so far. In many ways it's a departure from previous entries in the series but, when it comes down to it, the FF series has always been about trying new things and redefining the RPG genre. Will XIII supplant X and my favorite game? I have no idea. But I can't wait to play more and find out. Even if you're not normally a fan of RPGs, I highly recommend giving Final Fantasy XIII a try.
Josiah
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