From last time where I left off, I did make some way into disc 1 and seem to be on track to complete this resolution.  This past month, is no different.  I went all old-school gamer boy to get my goal, my resolution, my bane of my gamer existence to be completed.  In fact, I think I went a little too gamer boy on this past month.  It was almost every waking moment that I had that wasn't tied into work and family time I was on my PS3 playing VII.

As far as progress has went, I was certain that I would be finished with the game by June.  But I wanted to saver this moment and by the end of the month I knew that I should ween myself back to take in all that need to be taken in.  So let me just start that I didn't think I would make it to disc 2 so soon.  But before I go any further, let me just start from where I left off.

So onward towards the Nibelhelm's Mako reactor in which what did most people would have expected to happen would be a Cloud freak-out.  But alas, it wasn't so.  Just a bunch of mid level monster bosses and a tad mention about Sephiroth.  But since the game must go on, we climb down on the other end of the great mountains and find ourselves a new plain of field to level up (and man was there some level upping being done, mostly because I was lost.)  Our party finally find their way to Rocket Town.

Why is it called Rocket Town you might ask?!?  Maybe it's because of the huge friggin' piece of 'failure to launch' sticking up like a sore pixelated thumb.  That's my guess.  From here you'll get your next member of our entourage, Cid.  We finally meet up with the Cid of the game, and as far as Cid's go in the Final Fantasy universe, this one is one of my favorites.  He's a formal pilot that got screwed by Shin-Ra when they scrapped the space program for more capitalistic agendas.  And now fat bastard Palmer is trying to steal his plane to chase Sephiroth in some other continent (obviously.)  So you kick his ass, try to take off in the plane but it gets shot down and is only a glorified water ski that can only go in shallow land.  Queue up the Final Fantasy fanfare music we have a new mode of transportation.

So now we go to what is needed to go to which is the Temple of the Ancients which is the other major plot point.  But just before that I realize that I am being tailed by some annoying teenage ninja (as if any other character in the Final Fantasy series isn't normally annoying.)  I beat her, she joins my team, and we are introduced to Yuffie.  And because I know what's gonna happen if I continue to go to the Temple, I decide to go to her homeplace, Wutai.  I get there, because why the hell not, let's continue with other people's storylines.  Big surprise, it bites me in the ass and the little bitch stole all my materia.  And to make it worse, she gets herself kidnapped with my materia by the Turks.  I'm almost like, kill the kid, but I want my materia.  Thankfully they're on holiday and don't want to get their hands dirty.  Let her go and my materia's a mess.  I then decided to go back to Nibelhelm to get Vincent but I made a blank at that time.

So I decide to go en route to the Temple, where I then find out the whole damn game up to this point is to obtain some powerful stuff called Black Materia.  Apparently it has the power to destroy the world by unleashing a giant meteor and causing the Ancients to heal the earth and eventually embody someone to make their second coming into the planet.  Which makes me think why would anyone want to rule the world if they're the only one in it; taking the master of their own domain thing too seriously I think.  So to keep things going, the team tries to get to get it before Sephiroth does.  But the Temple requires a sacrifice, so Cait Sith decides to let himself be it.  The team says, let the back stabbing double agent sunnuvabitch take the bullet.  And the team does the biggest mistake ever and let their schizophrenic leader take the materia.  Two seconds later, Sephiroth swoop's in and convinces Cloud to give it to him.  It makes me sick on how stupid this "Hero" is.  Oh, and along the way, Aeris leaves the party to go all Dog the Bounty Hunter and get Sephiroth.

We head north because, well, that's the only untreked placein the game.  We find the place that is called the City of the Ancients.  Man, these Ancients really get around.  This is where we finally catch up with Aeris as she is ready to return to the planet, whether she wants to or not.  Yup, THE BIG KILL SCENE where Sephiroth falls from the sky and impales our heroine as she releases her white materia into the pool.  We then lay her down to rest and end Disc One.

Disc Two starts with us making way further north to some snow resort where there has been a "Man in a Black Coat" sighting and they want to go down and get them in this snow maze.  After getting lost a couple of times, I finally able to find myself to get to the next place in the journey and fight another boss.  That leads me into a crater from the last Meteor attempt years ago.  We find a bunch of Sephiroth's oompa-loompa's making their way to the center and sacrificing themselves to give him, well, as far as I know, a god-complex boner.  No, it's to summon what they call Weapon, it's a beast that the planet created to protect it from harm, no matter what the cost is.  Of course I'm playing the American version of the game and there's three Weapons (more on that in future posts.)  The team makes it to him and then Sephiroth pulls some crazy jedi mind trick and tells Cloud that he's just a failed experiment and wasn't meant to be.  Hojo (the crazy Shin-Ra scientist guy), Scarlett, and the Turks come in and pretty much comfirms that Cloud was a failed experiment.  He finally realize that he's a threat to the team and abandons them to be Sephiroth's bitch in his hibernation status.

Oh, and the team gets captured and is prepped for execution, fan-fuckin'-tastic.  Well, Weapon comes and causes havoc where the team is being held for execution by Shin-Ra and it causes mass confusion and hysteria.  The party escapes and hijack's one of their airships.  And that's just about as far as I gotten in January.

I almost felt bad that I went this far and it's only been a month into it.  But keeping in mind that this game is a real pain in the ass to complete, it was worth getting as far as I did.  We'll see how February pans out and see what comes in next month's update.  Until next time...

BootLeG sampler.. signing out...

Quest to Beat Final Fantasy VII: Pre 2012

In my effort to make good with my resolutions, I decided to post some updates on the blog giving my thoughts of what was the best game of all time 15 years later.  Final Fantasy VII was a groundbreaking success when it came out in 1997 and redesigned the RPG genre since.  Although they're have been critics that doubt that the Final Fantasy franchise is nothing more than just a lame emo-complexed love story, but I think they're engaging and yeah, they're confusing to hell with some of their story, it's still captivating.  But so far, let me just breeze though this to get to my main goal.  It's been a long way coming and I am determined now more than ever to finish that damn game before the end of this year.  


Of course to do so, I took the initiative and started playing it about 3 weeks ago, with a little time set aside to obtain my goal.  Also I'm going to try to get though this based off of memory alone, no GameFAQs, no outside saves to get me to the end, not even my old strategy guide from Brady Games.  It's all a la BootLeG from this point forward.  Here's my progress so far.  I'll give it to you in text form for now, still planning on recording my progress to video, another one of the many things I need to get going on.


So far I'm 21 hours into the game.  I'm in awe with getting my base characters revisiting them all.  Cloud, my swordsman with apparently more of a mysterious past than the meat in Wendy's chili.  Barrett, who all I can think of at this point in the story is a gung-ho hippie with a machine gun.  So he's spreading his message with fire power instead of flower power.  Tifa, who's along for the ride because she new Cloud before he became a member of SOLDIER and a complete tool, wanting revenge for her father's death.  Aeris (not Aerith, because dammit I'm playing it the way it was developed not how it was actually in the story) is the lovable Ancient who is the last of her kind trying to live a simple life.  Red XIII, who is a mysterious creature that wants nothing more than to just go home to his grandfather.  And last (but not least, so far in my game) is Cait Sith, a fortune telling cat riding on an overweight mog.  


The game took me (as in they took Cloud) to blow up a reactor with a rebel group full of disposable characters as well as Barrett and Tifa; and eventually led them to their death.  Along the way Cloud meets up with Aeris rescuing her from a tyrannical militant group subcontracted by the government, which is run by a major energy sucking corporation.  All I can say at this point is "how very pre-post apocalyptic this sounds."  Later to find out this super powered being killed the president and the rebel group is caught in the middle.  They escape and flee from the home city and is on a quest to track down Sephiroth, the main antagonist from bringing the end of the world because he thinks he's an Ancient that is bent on purging the humans from existence bringing a peace to his kind only genocide could provide.  In the mean time, my team is being man-hunted all across God's green earth trying to find the sunnuvabitch that is actually trying to kill everyone.  It's like if they made The Fugitive into an emo, semi-steam punk-ish RPG.


They go to a near by place called Kalm where Cloud eventually tells his side of the story and why he needs to bring Sephiroth to justice; being that he on a mission burnt down his and Tifa's home town of Nibel and killed her father in nothing short of a powertrip thinking that he was an Ancient because he read a book with his mother's name in it.  That, and he hears voices too.  From there they start going near and far tracking Sephiroth's path to no avail.  They find themselves in a place where Barrett's story start to unravel on how he caused so much trouble to his home town of Corel to the point where he was banished.


Along the way we meet with Cait Sith who is just wanting to tag along because he read the future and doubts his own abilites to tell such and want to see it though.  We get captured and thrown in jail only to be whored out as chocobo jockeys for our freedom.  Yeah, because prison is totally like that.  Barrett meets another person with a gunhand that wants nothing more than to just die.  So he kills him.  I'm certain the story could've developed that more but it's all backstory for a secondary character and that doesn't mean a damn for later on in the game.


Later on, we go to Red XIII's home and he has to make the decision to whether he should stay home and be a complete pussy whining about his parental issues, or continue to fight with us.  His grandfather (which is practically a hybrid of Modok and Bob Barker) tells him to go and continue to fight.  Why was this so important, because everyone needs a fuckin' backstory, that's why.


Now I'm currently in Nibelhelm, where it looks completely normal, outside of half the population is in black cloaks with tattoos based off of which one drank Sephiroth's Kool-Aid first.  Cloud's shocked that everything isn't burnt to a crisp and is starting to doubt his own recounts of what happened a few years prior.  They start their trek to the Mako reactor at the top of the mountain to see what the hell is going on.


And that's where I'm stopping at this point.  Join me next month for what I've done for all of January in playing and eventually beating Final Fantasy VII.  In the mean time, a normal post for next week.

BootLeG sampler.. signing out...

Early Start on New Year's Resolutions

Here it is getting towards the end of the year and I'm certain among the list of holiday parties and presents and get-together's, I'm certain that somewhere you might have contemplated about what you're trying to do to improve yourself for the next year.  The setting of resolutions and the eventual breaking of them by spring.  Hence why I didn't set any this past year, but I'm feeling a little different this year.  I was thinking about what I could do to improve personally and what goals I thought of what I should do that I haven't accomplished yet.  So I've compiled a reasonable list and this is what I think would be great for resolutions, at least for me.

• Beat Final Fantasy VII, finally :: It was the RPG that changed the landscape of all other RPG's for a generation.  I remember when I first played it back in high school and was fascinated by how badass it was.  It's been a goal since I can remember for such.  So I figured why the hell not.  I've already downloaded it off of the Playstation Network and figured this will be the year I will beat the game that haunted me for the past 15 years.  I'll even post some updates about it later, but this will finally resolve my obsession of beating my white whale.
• Read, something else that isn't webcomics :: As a homeschooling parent the wifie and I stress very strongly the importance of reading to my sons.  They see my wife read a lot, me not so much outside of articles online.  I feel that this is a personal resolution to not help myself be more literate, but be a good example to my sons.  I'm a strong believer that reading is indeed fundamental, and I want to take that example across the board to my sons.
• Write a new song/lyric a month for next year :: I've been personally neglecting myself with writing new material for the past two and a half, well, close to about three years now.  A lot of stuff happened and I wasn't feeling much creative and that I was kind of depressed at that time.  But now since I felt that I've took a long enough hiatus, I want to bring my musical juices back and ripen them for the thoughts that I've had the past time.  I feel pretty good about this and I am assuring myself to put a new song/lyric up once I'm done by the end of each month in 2012.  Get ready for some kickass stuff to come out of this.  And to further on with this, by the end of the year, I will make sure that I learn how to play the guitar and preform one of my songs via a youtube video.  I figure guitar because bass solos, even though I like them, not as sexy as an acoustic guitar.  So look forward to some great content on that end.
• Learn to manage all that's on my plate ::  Lately I've been trying to work on other web content manage systems such as Wordpress and Joomla to help with other's requests for sites.  I have been stuck putting my stuff on the back-burner thinking of other's need before mine.  Which is in essence a good thing, but I need to take some me time to get my stuff off the ground.  I didn't do as much as I thought I would do such as videos on this blog or even upgrading the look and feel just yet, but I will with this resolution.  I want to make time for me to do what's good for me while not neglecting any of the time I devoted for others.  Of course I still need a day job and family time, that's not gonna go away, but I feel that with this resolution, I can get something going for myself as well as others.

So those are just some of the resolutions I plan on taking.  It's not as serious as others like losing weight (which I do need to do) or stop smoking (which I don't smoke to begin with), but it's stuff that I contemplated for for a long time and I really want to get this going.  I love to continue on with this blog post but I really feel that this is enough for now.  It'll be a great year, and I hope that your's will be as well.

Happy holidays and a wonderful new year.

BootLeG sampler.. signing out...

I'm Still Too Cheap for a PS3

With Christmas time coming around the corner, it's usually the time of year to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, goodwill towards men, and being merry and all that jazz. Trust me; those are all good things and as well we should be doing all these things, but there's still something that's been very elusive from me for the past 3 years or so. The Playstation 3. Sure, I've seen friends play it, I hang out there a whole helluva lot just to play Street Fighter IV and Modern Warfare 2. But for a good long while the Playstation 3 has eluded my grasp. And with the release date for Final Fantasy XIII set for early 2010, the urge to get one has magnified ten fold.


And just a little quick rundown as far as what I currently own as far as current-gen consoles is the Wii. There's 2 reasons for that and not owning a 360 as well: 1) I'm a cheap bastard and, 2) there's more stuff for my kids for the Wii then on the 360. But I figure the time has come to step up to the majors and get me a PS3. And now you're saying why not get a 360, it's cheaper and FFXIII will be on that as well. Well, it's not like I got anything against the 360, it's just that I prefer having blu-ray and all the other good stuff that the 360 don't offer as well as that I'm a bigger fan of Sony than Microsoft any day of the week. That and the whole red ring thing's a real turn-off. Just sayin'...

Anyways, with that being said, I'm on the trek to save up for a PS3. Sure it's late in the season for a cheap bastard like me to get enough saved along with bills and other stuff. So I vowed to save enough for a PS3 and get it FFXIII on it's release. So that's what I'm venturing to do. March 9, 2010, the day I start to live as a true gamer again. A long anticipated game of epic proportions on a system that does everything; oh hellyeah that'll be excellent!!!

But for the mean time, I guess it's just going to have to be New Super Mario Bros Wii to satisfy my palette. And oh yes, it's does.

BootLeG sampler.. signing out...