A Green Mushroom

I haven't had a lot to post about lately.  I've been mostly just killing time by playing League of Legends and Red Orchestra 2.  League I've already talked about in depth and I'm still not sure what I think about RO2.  It's a WWII game set on the Russia/German front that's a lot more realistic than most first persons shooters.  I'm hoping my brother will do a write up for A Green Mushroom on it soon, since he's had more hands on time with the game than I have. Gears of War 3 is releasing tomorrow, and I'm very excited for it.  I'm not expecting anything new or groundbreaking.  I'm just looking forward to playing a series I love that's been polished to perfection.  All the reviews I've seen have been positive.  It's also a great excuse to get someone to sit down and play couch co-op with me. On the MMO front I'm starting to feel twinges of interest in Guild Wars 2.  That's saying a lot since I still feel burned out ...

The 3DS is bombing.  Sales numbers are way lower than projected and Nintendo has already done a massive price cut in the hopes of increasing holiday sales and hype.  Executives are taking pay cuts and apologizing to investors.  The rumors are circulating that Nintendo is considering a hardware redesign already.  They have rewarded early adopters with free games , but that doesn't fix the main problem, that people aren't buying their system. I can't speak for everyone, but I can tell you why I don't own a 3DS.  In a nutshell, I've been spoiled by the price of mobile games.  I play games on my ipod touch almost every day and the most I paid for one was around the $8 mark but even that is the exception.  95% of my games were in the 1 to 2 dollar range.  I get hours upon hours of play out of the games I purchase and for $1 it's a steal. When I'm getting so much playtime for a few bucks on my mobile device how can I justify paying $3...

Despite the title, I like Final Fantasy II.  I'll get to the face hitting part in a moment.  Overall, Final Fantasy II is very similar to FFI and, really, any other classic JRPG out there.  All the genre staples are present; armor, weapons, gaining power, new abilities, a heroic quest.  The 2D sprites are classic, but nothing to write home about.  It's obvious that when Squaresoft was making FFII they wanted to keep it close to the first game. Don't count out those game designers at Square completely, there are differences in FFII.  Whether they're good or not is another question. The leveling system has been completely redesigned.  Each individual skill levels up with use instead of leveling up as an entire character.  In theory it sounds interesting, and it's been used to great success in some modern games, but the problem is with the execution.  For example, if a character ends a battle with much less health than they started it wit...