Final Fantasy X Playthrough Part I

I referenced this is my last post so I figured I might as well stick it in here, as non-timely as it may be...

I've always been an RPG fan, be it old school pen and paper gaming to massive Bioware epics. When talking to other RPG fans the topic of the Final Fantasy series occasionally comes up whereupon I am forced to confess to having never played a single entry in the series. This is generally met with shock and amazement. How could I have missed this fabled cornerstone of the genre?

But then the stars realigned. Our neighbor bought himself a new PS3 and sent over his PS2 and a stack of games for us to babysit until he gets around to getting it to his assorted relatives in South America. And there, atop the stack, Final Fantasy X. A quick glance at the IGN review announced that X was, perhaps, the greatest of the series. At last I would get to experience what all of the fuss was about.

And so begins...

The Adventures of Captain Gaypants

Session 1

The game starts with a slow pan across what appears to possibly be a new incarnation of The Village People. One of them gets ups, pats a girl on the shoulder and then wanders up a hill to gaze dramatically over a foreboding landscape. The effect is somewhat ruined by the fact that the character is wearing possibly the stupidest possible version of pants that I've ever come across. They are shorts. One leg is Lara Croft length, the other leg is knee length and appears to be hemmed with a fringe of lace. They do seem to go well with the lemon yellow top, however. That plus the glittery diamond earring and the Meg Ryan hairdo make me uncertain as to the character's gender as it otherwise seems vaguely male. The character starts an internal monologue in a male voice so, apparently, that's the sex that their id has chosen to identify with. I also start to come to the disconcerting realization that this is to be my representative in the game world.

Apparently this is the near future, however, as we then drop back to an earlier time. What is apparently a sci-fi disco of some sort, based on the cheesy synth music and an assorted crowd in odd clothing. Someone steps into the foreground and everyone screams and runs away. An attack? An action packed intro to the combat system? The game drops out of the cut scene and I run forward, ready to defend the screaming people. Ah, I see. There's no attack, they were apparently screaming in joy at seeing me. It seems I am sort sort of celebrity. Lead singer of a boy band, perhaps. That would at least slightly explain the pants.

But no, some of them are carrying volleyballs that they want me to sign. So, apparently I'm a volleyball player of the sort that has screaming fans. I have a few awkward conversations with them and then try to leave with no luck. I must, instead, have awkward and completely non-interactive conversations with the rest of them before we can move into another cut scene. Some of them want me to sign their volleyballs at which point I take the opportunity to name myself Gaypants. This is the maximum name length allowed. In my heart, however, I am Captain Gaypants.

The cut scene ends and I move towards the stadium, anticipating that I will now get to fulfill my role as a mega sports star...which I do, in another cut-scene. Seems that I am not a volleyball player. The game appears to be some sort of zero gravity rugby played while wearing David Bowie costumes. At this point I'm wondering why the game is called "Final Fantasy" rather than "Final SciFi".

We cut to a man who looks like Elvis in a Liberace costume. He waves his arms around and a giant tsunami appears on the horizon, bearing down on the city! As if that's not enough, the tsunami shoots laserbolts! Destruction! Chaos! The villain is introduced! Oh, wait. Now I'm talking to Elvis. Apparently we're friends, somehow. Big Starcraft looking insects are dropping around us. I'm not sure what they have to do with the laser shooting tsunami. I flail at them in precisely the way a six year old girl would if you threw a spider at her. This makes Elvis see fit to hand me a sword the size of a small canoe. I flail ineffectually with it also until it glows and suddenly I am able to use it. Damned useful feature in a sword. The cut-scene finally ends and we drop into turn-based combat with the bugs accompanied by the sort of battle music that might be inspiring to someone who wears the sort of pants that I do..

"Great," I think. "I love turn based combat! The careful maneuvering, hordeing of precious action points, careful flanking maneuvers..." Or, combat could consist of pressing the X button two times.

More bugs attack and Elvis comes up with the strategy of breaking a techno thingamajiggy so that it falls down and destroys the bugs. As well as what appears to be a major freeway interchange. Somewhere in here we fight a really big bug and I get the option of 'overpower' attacks. These consist of mega attacks which I apparently must play a minigame in order to use. Elvis's minigame consists of hitting a long series of buttons in under three minutes. Captain Gaypants is simpler-he just has to hit a sweetspot on a moving bar like in a golf game. He has two minutes to accomplish this Herculean feat.

Rather than making me actually do something that might resemble playing the game, the escape from the destruction of the freeway is another cut-scene. This is a pattern that repeats itself often. Cut-scene, gameplay consisting of walking five feet in the direction of the arrow on the minimap, next cut-scene.

Somehow we get from the exploding freeway to me floating in the air above the city. I swim through the air for a few feet and land on a platform in order to activate a cut-scene dream sequence. I wake up from this to find myself washed up on a rock in some fantasy looking ruins. Aha, I think. The Fantasy part seems to be kicking in. I swim through the ruins, get out of the water, find a chest and then another cut-scene which knocks me back into the water. Fight some fish...X,X...X,X...X,X. Then a giant fish with tasteful light bulbs attacks! X,X...X,X...cut-scene. The giant fish chases me and I escape into the ruins. Not a lot of suspense to this sequence as it's done in a cut-scene. Killing off Captain Gaypants in a cut-scene would be a pretty cheesy thing to do.

I find myself in the ruins of a big round room. I find some dead flowers which, the game informs me, are too rotten to burn. Good to know. I find the remains of a fire pit and whine about how cold I am, causing my precognitive lament about the non burnable flowers to make more sense. Perhaps if I were wearing longer pants...

I inform myself that I need flint and tinder. Conveniently, these are located mere feet away. The search for them constitutes the most gameplay I've yet encountered. I get the fire lit and start whining about being hungry. Rather than looking for a sandwich we drop to a cut-scene where a bunch of people burst into the room. I am not sure who they are but they have a vaguely space pirate feel to them. They gabble at me in space pirate language. One of them is female. She is, as best as I can tell, stark ass naked save for a couple of belts-one around her waist and one worn vertically to hide her lady bits. Except her boobs which thrust out, gloriously free...AAAAH, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR NIPPLES?

Either she is actually wearing a full body skin colored leotard or space pirate women are nipple free. Perhaps she keeps them in the goggles she has atop her head. I am tempted to call her Nipless, for the slur pun, or Nippless, for the simplicity and elegance of a single 's' changing the the entire meaning of the word. Neither of these, however, quite have the ring of simply calling her 'Nipples'. A word with a true and magnificent ring to it. Try it now. Yell out "YO! NIPPLES!". See how great that sounds? Especially if you're at work? Come to think of it, it really is an underused nickname. Try adopting it for your significant other or for a coworker. Let me know how it goes.

Nipples helps Gaypants fight off some creature thingy while the other space pirates stand around and watch. Then they take me to their spaceship which actually turns out to be a boat that just looks like a spaceship. I am apparently to function as some sort of cabinboy. I look at a crane and get yelled at. Then I find a book that explains to me that in space pirate language Y=A. This is the extent of my cabinboy duties.

I am informed that there's some watchamacallit in the water beneath the boat and that Nipples and I are going to swim down to it and watch some cut-scenes together. We fight a couple of fish on the way. X,X...X,X...

At this point our power mercifully went out, bringing us to the end of Session 1

Part 2 here