Episode II
In which Captain Gaypants joins the cult volleyball team
Our adventure today starts with The-Girl-Formerly-Known-As-Nipples-Who-Is-Apparently-Underage-So-We-Should-Call-Her-Something-Else explaining the sphere system of character advancement to me. This explanation comes in the form of one of those tutorials where you watch the game do part of it, read the explanation and then hit the button and watch the game do something else and give more explanation. And the tutorial is over 60 steps long. I counted.
Note to game designers: If you create a game system that requires a 60+ step tutorial, scrap it and try again. I can explain how to play chess in less than 60 steps.
The end result of this is that Gaypants gains a new skill called 'Cheer'. Disappointingly (and rather surprisingly), no pom-poms manifest when he does this.
Inappropriately-Dressed-High-School-Student and I jump off of the spaceboat and swim down to an underwater ruin. She thinks it might still have "some power". Apparently, we want this power. Gaypants manages to reactivate the place by banging on a control panel over and over. Fortunately this is done in a cutscene as this technique of reactivating the power of a millenia-old ruin simply would not have occurred to me. It also wakes ups a squid which we have to fight. Sometimes the squid swims away from us giving us the opportunity to do a flanking maneuver. The combat apparently plans to grow gradually more complex over time.
Back to the boat and I'm-Not-Naked-This-Really-Is-A-Flesh-Colored-Skin-Tight-Outfit decided to give Gaypants some food (presumably some of the squid) so that he'll stop whining about it. He eats it by frantically grabbing handfuls of it and shoving them into his face with lots of grunting noises and almost chokes to death in the process. On such a person the fate of the universe rests.
The laser bolt shooting tidal wave shows up again only now it seems to prefer manifesting as a giant, non laser shooting globe of water. It performs its evil purpose just as well, however, which seems to be destroying everything in a chapter so that Gaypants will wake up in a new chapter without anyone having to write anything resembling a segue. Aquaglobius-ex-machina.
This time Gaypants wakes up in the water near a tropical beach on which some surfer dudes are playing volleyball. This excites him enormously, as he is the greatest volleyball player in the universe. They accidentally knock the ball out to him whereupon he jumps 50 feet straight up in the air and kicks the ball off into the jungle somewhere. The surfer dudes are quite impressed and immediately recruit him for their volleyball team. Seems they are about to compete for a championship despite having not won a single game in the 15 years of the team's existence. Considering that most of the team looks to be about 18 years old I can at least surmise why the first decade or so was a rough go. The fact that this record seems to qualify them for the championship tells me that there's only one other team in existence.
Gaypants also learns that this is the future and that his city was asploded by the water ball 1000 years ago. The head of the surfer dude volleyball team, hereafter referred to as Dude, takes Gaypants up to his village and then basically abandons him. Seems the designers felt that the player should actually have to do something for a minute or two. The gameplay intrusion consists of walking around a 6 hut town and talking to everyone. If they have a conversation you know they are not important. If they have a cutscene then they are. Dude's in-game name, incidentally, is 'Wakka'. I can only hope that there is an upcoming scene where he and Gaypants are separated, leaving Gaypants to wander around calling his name over and over. Three times quickly should do it, I'd imagine. Dude has a hairstyle reminiscent of Cameron Diaz in that Ben Stiller movie that I can't remember the name of. Presumably he achieves this hairstyle in precisely the same way which may explain his instant liking for Captain Gaypants.
There is also a temple where the priest gives Gaypants a vague bunch of gobbledygook about founders and summoners and guardians and adepts. He also tells him that the inner chamber of the temple is forbidden to everyone but summoners and guardians, of which Gaypants is neither. He's worried, though, because the summoner in there is late coming back and it's dangerous in there.
Gaypants reaction to this, naturally, is to charge into the forbidden temple chamber of the island cult. He spends a few minutes sticking marbles into walls to get them to open (I believe this was intended to be some sort of puzzle?) and then finds the summoner who turns out to be a hot chick, presumably of age and with nipples though she is a bit more demurely dressed.
Gaypants proceeds to awkwardly attempt to flirt with her in every subsequent conversation. Fortunately she seems absurdly insecure with rock bottom self esteem so he may actually have a chance. She hasn't asked him about his pants, though, so an unpleasant doom could still befall his courtship.
Rather than winding his intestines on a stick and roasting him in a banana leaf lined coal pit as a sacrificial feast to the island gods to appease their anger for his violation of their holiest of holies, the island cult chooses to let the transgression pass because Dude says s'all cool.
In which Captain Gaypants joins the cult volleyball team
Our adventure today starts with The-Girl-Formerly-Known-As-Nipples-Who-Is-Apparently-Underage-So-We-Should-Call-Her-Something-Else explaining the sphere system of character advancement to me. This explanation comes in the form of one of those tutorials where you watch the game do part of it, read the explanation and then hit the button and watch the game do something else and give more explanation. And the tutorial is over 60 steps long. I counted.
Note to game designers: If you create a game system that requires a 60+ step tutorial, scrap it and try again. I can explain how to play chess in less than 60 steps.
The end result of this is that Gaypants gains a new skill called 'Cheer'. Disappointingly (and rather surprisingly), no pom-poms manifest when he does this.
Inappropriately-Dressed-High-School-Student and I jump off of the spaceboat and swim down to an underwater ruin. She thinks it might still have "some power". Apparently, we want this power. Gaypants manages to reactivate the place by banging on a control panel over and over. Fortunately this is done in a cutscene as this technique of reactivating the power of a millenia-old ruin simply would not have occurred to me. It also wakes ups a squid which we have to fight. Sometimes the squid swims away from us giving us the opportunity to do a flanking maneuver. The combat apparently plans to grow gradually more complex over time.
Back to the boat and I'm-Not-Naked-This-Really-Is-A-Flesh-Colored-Skin-Tight-Outfit decided to give Gaypants some food (presumably some of the squid) so that he'll stop whining about it. He eats it by frantically grabbing handfuls of it and shoving them into his face with lots of grunting noises and almost chokes to death in the process. On such a person the fate of the universe rests.
The laser bolt shooting tidal wave shows up again only now it seems to prefer manifesting as a giant, non laser shooting globe of water. It performs its evil purpose just as well, however, which seems to be destroying everything in a chapter so that Gaypants will wake up in a new chapter without anyone having to write anything resembling a segue. Aquaglobius-ex-machina.
This time Gaypants wakes up in the water near a tropical beach on which some surfer dudes are playing volleyball. This excites him enormously, as he is the greatest volleyball player in the universe. They accidentally knock the ball out to him whereupon he jumps 50 feet straight up in the air and kicks the ball off into the jungle somewhere. The surfer dudes are quite impressed and immediately recruit him for their volleyball team. Seems they are about to compete for a championship despite having not won a single game in the 15 years of the team's existence. Considering that most of the team looks to be about 18 years old I can at least surmise why the first decade or so was a rough go. The fact that this record seems to qualify them for the championship tells me that there's only one other team in existence.
Gaypants also learns that this is the future and that his city was asploded by the water ball 1000 years ago. The head of the surfer dude volleyball team, hereafter referred to as Dude, takes Gaypants up to his village and then basically abandons him. Seems the designers felt that the player should actually have to do something for a minute or two. The gameplay intrusion consists of walking around a 6 hut town and talking to everyone. If they have a conversation you know they are not important. If they have a cutscene then they are. Dude's in-game name, incidentally, is 'Wakka'. I can only hope that there is an upcoming scene where he and Gaypants are separated, leaving Gaypants to wander around calling his name over and over. Three times quickly should do it, I'd imagine. Dude has a hairstyle reminiscent of Cameron Diaz in that Ben Stiller movie that I can't remember the name of. Presumably he achieves this hairstyle in precisely the same way which may explain his instant liking for Captain Gaypants.
There is also a temple where the priest gives Gaypants a vague bunch of gobbledygook about founders and summoners and guardians and adepts. He also tells him that the inner chamber of the temple is forbidden to everyone but summoners and guardians, of which Gaypants is neither. He's worried, though, because the summoner in there is late coming back and it's dangerous in there.
Gaypants reaction to this, naturally, is to charge into the forbidden temple chamber of the island cult. He spends a few minutes sticking marbles into walls to get them to open (I believe this was intended to be some sort of puzzle?) and then finds the summoner who turns out to be a hot chick, presumably of age and with nipples though she is a bit more demurely dressed.
Gaypants proceeds to awkwardly attempt to flirt with her in every subsequent conversation. Fortunately she seems absurdly insecure with rock bottom self esteem so he may actually have a chance. She hasn't asked him about his pants, though, so an unpleasant doom could still befall his courtship.
Rather than winding his intestines on a stick and roasting him in a banana leaf lined coal pit as a sacrificial feast to the island gods to appease their anger for his violation of their holiest of holies, the island cult chooses to let the transgression pass because Dude says s'all cool.
I've been unable to force myself back to this, so this is likely the end of my Final Fantasy X experience
Part 1 here
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