Savior Gaming

Top 5 Final Fantasy Games

Yesterday I did the top 5 games not named Final Fantasy, so today its top 5 Final Fantasy games. These are also in an order for once but because hey why not.

Number five happens to be Final Fantasy 5, the game is terribly underrated game. The job system was great, the cast of characters were fun and varied including a female pirate pretending to be a man. and the quest to save the crystals from Exdeath was fantastic.

Final Fantasy 10 seems a bit low on the list, and hey i’m sure some of the higher ones will come across as nostalgia but I will explain my logic later. FF10 was actually fairly linear but it worked out, a big part of why is it went with the story of the summoner being on a pilgrimage. They did a great job at making you feel like you had to be in a hurry without actually rushing you around. The game may not be perfect, but damn if it didn’t come close for its time.

Final Fantasy 7 may actually be the most influential title in the series. Before that the series and JRPG’s in general were kind of a niche hidden secret of the gaming world in the west. Actually many people in Japan thought the western world was to stupid to even play them properly at one point. Then this game showed up and exploded and opened up a whole world to people. The game graphically hasn’t held up great, but the materia system is top noth, and to this day is still one of the best systems in a game and the story is fun. Tho, as you can tell I don’t believe it is the best in the series.

Final Fantasy 9, what many believe is truly the best Final Fantasy game. In fact most of the time I hear people arguing between 7 and 9, and while 7 is great and far more influential 9 is just the better game to me. The story is better, most of the characters are better. The only real flaws is the materia system was better and the final boss of 9 made no damn sense at all, he just kind of showed up. But I am sure many of you are wondering, if 7 is number three and 9 is number two, how the hell do I choose number 8 as number one? Well I didn’t. In fact the best Final Fantasy doesn’t have a number.

Yes, Final Fantasy Tactics, the War of the Lions is to me the best of the Final Fantasy games, and easily the best Tactical RPG ever made. With dozens of classes and monsters to choose from with plenty of characters and an amazing story about the tragedy of war, betrayal and the secrets of history. It is actually a great tragedy the game never got a true sequel, tho there are some theories that Final Fantasy Tactics and FF12 are connected as well as Vagrant story, tho its not really the same thing. All in all however Final Fantasy Tactics is one of those games I would love to see remastered again for the PS4. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Matrix: Path of Neo

path of neo

While Enter The Matrix was an original story, Path of Neo we get a loose recap of the Matrix trilogy. There is of course similar themes but this time we get to experience the powers of the One. You can stop bullets, use Neo’s famous moves, and you can fly at points during certain fights. When the game sticks to the movies, it does pretty good, though you don’t get anything but the final fight between Neo and Smith at the end of Revolutions for the finale. A lot of the filler is pretty entertaining too, like many of the tutorials are themed after martial arts flicks or a Yakuza shootout but some of the middle filler can be kind of irritating. Many know of how the finale changes, instead Neo sacrificing himself for all man, Smith pulls billions of his clones together with pieces of the Matrix to make a humongous Smith…that was something. The biggest flaw are the unskippable cinematic cutscenes; before the final fight, you’ll be waiting nearly ten minutes. In the end, it’s a fun game just not perfect either. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Little Witch Academia:Enchanted Parade (2015)

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Now I am not a fan of Little Witch Academia, in fact until I saw this I had never even seen it. This just happened to catch my eye and I figured I would kill an hour watching it. It was actually pretty funny because the English subtitles did not at all match the words they were using, it kind of reminded me of the old Godzilla movies where people would stop talking but their lips would keep moving.

The story itself is a rather cute story about these magic students having to manage the annual witch parade. Clearly this show is meant for kids and teens, but its cute and fun and despite the childish nature of the show I had a lot of fun watching it. The local kids disliking magic and preferring their technology was also a nice touch of social commentary. It is definitely a series worth checking out for anime fans, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Enter the Matrix

enter the matrix

Remember the early 2000’s when the Matrix ruled the world? Although I’m not the biggest fan of the movies, I do however think the games were fun as hell. For Enter The Matrix we play as Niobe and Ghost in a plot running parallel (I believe ) to Reloaded and Revolutions. Using a mix of hand to hand combat and gunplay, we get to slow time through the Matrix and take down cops, SWAT, and agents. While not perfect by any means, this game still has some really entertaining combat and graphically was pretty damn jaw dropping for the era. The driving portions can be fun but much of the time can be annoying as hell. There’s a car chase about halfway through where you have to follow a plan that almost made me rip my own hair out. Fighting is mostly button mashing and easy to master, which kind of kills any real threat the agents may have. The epitome of a review I can give this game is it’s fun but flawed but still worth checking out, especially if you loved the movies. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Top 5 PS1 RPGs, Assuming Final Fantasy Didn’t Exist.

If you were to make a list of best RPG’s for the Playstation one, or even of all time you couldn’t do it without a Final Fantasy game showing up on the list. Hell you probably would have to include at least one of them in the top 5 if we are being honest, whether it be 7 for the influence it had, or 6 because for some reason I don’t understand people think it was amazing or even 9 because it was actually as good as people think 6 or 7 was. But what would a list look like if we pretended it simply didn’t exist? Well here is my top 5 list, for once from 5-1 as if Final Fantasy just didn’t happen.

Beyond the Beyond is a title many people didn’t seem to play and as such doesn’t get much love. Its also a typical RPG in every fashion. Your home kingdom is attacked, you set out to find your dad, you flee the country, you end up as the chosen one to fight evil. But with how its presented and it turns out better than most on PS1.

Long before Persona 5 practically perfected balancing a home, school and dungeon life and before 3 introduced the concept, we were given Persona. Persona didn’t introduce the idea of an adult philosophical RPG, but it certainly was the most in depth and best done at that point. With the power of the PlayStation starting to hit its stride we were challenged to ask which one is the real you, and even shown why you don’t mess with crossing dimensions.

Grandia is one of those games I don’t even know how I ended up with. I think my mom thought hey hey this looks like the stuff Matt likes and my dear dead dad went ” hey this chick has green hair” and bought it ended up as a Christmas gift one year. Be that as it may it wasn’t long before I was calling Justin an idiot for not knowing Feena was in love with him and wondering how the hell I was supposed to win that fight against Gadwin, which it turns out I wasn’t supposed to.

This game was damn near number one, but you will see why it wasn’t. Breath of Fire 3 has multiple endings, great battles, character customization to rival many games even today with its master system and ability to learn moves and transfer them to others and it even had dragons. Add to that an amazing story about a war between dragons and a god and a possible betrayal and its no wonder this thing is remembered so fondly.

Anyone that knows me knew Suikoden was going to be number one, that being said while I prefer one over two, they are pretty much interchangeable to this spot. Both are amazing games, with amazing stories and their sprite characters hold up well even in 2018. Both involve wars in their respective kingdoms that take place in the same world, just different kingdoms. In fact you will visit the kingdom from one in 2 and many of the characters show up in multiple games in the series. Regardless collecting the 108 stars of destiny is an amazing feat to undertake that is both manageable and challenging at the same time. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Bug

bug

I never knew a romance movie would ever make me speechless, but it did. I’ve never been so impacted by a love story than this strange psychological horror film. Bug doesn’t delve into ghosts, monsters or aliens but delusions, mental illness, and madness.

Agnes is a damaged waitress: her child was abducted, her asshole ex blames her and beats the shit out of her after tracking her down to the middle of nowhere, and she copes with booze and drugs. Than one night, she meets Peter. Peter seems quiet but polite. Agnes starts to fall for the strange man when he defends her from her ex. They make love. Apparently Peter is a veteran who suffers from schizophrenia and a host of other issues. He believes the government is hunting him and he believes they planted bugs under his skin. These two people make a lovely couple…

This movie is incredible but hard to watch. Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon are brilliant as the leads and there relationship intensely carries the film. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen once the movie really gets going. The only real flaw is the beginning half hour is pretty slow but once it starts moving, it really rolls. The climax is jaw dropping. If you want a anti- normal love story this Valentines Day, seriously check this out. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Slither 2nd opinion (2006)

Oh slither, Torsten showed me this movie a long time ago with the claim of ” hey you will love this horror movie.” In his defense he was right, it quickly became one of our favorite movies. The story is pretty basic stuff, alien life form shows up, takes control of people, people die. You all know the drill. Its how it is done that makes the movie great. The movie knows what it is, I wouldn’t say it is self aware, for example you won’t see any breaking the 4th wall moments. But it is aware it isn’t a AAA blockbuster and it does not try to be.

My favorite example of this would be early in the movie the first guy infected has what appears to be a rash and uses the excuse of poison ivy. Much later in the movie two twin girls actually say in unison “we’re itchy” in a subtle but nice reference once you start to find the life form has a sort of connected hive mentality. @torstenvblog and I actually have a small other reason for doing this movie today, the greatest love song of all time. Enjoy it below, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Slither

slither

Happy Valentines Day everyone. So to celebrate the day, let’s talk about an amazingly underrated horror comedy from James Gunn, future directer of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) . Also, it’s pretty much Savior and I’s bromance movie.

Slither is the story of a small town being invaded by alien worms from a alien planet. Grant Grant, about to cheat on his hot wife, found a meteor crashed in the woods and like every drunk ass dude with raging whiskey dick decides “hey, I gotta poke this thing”. A needle pops out and stabs Grant as something passes into him. Grant suddenly has an obscene craving for raw meat and has tentacles coming out of belly buttons. His poor hot southern wife Starla, thinks Grant is having an affair only to get dragged into the terrible truth- Grant is mutating into a squid monster thing. She teams up with her old beau, the town sheriff and his posse who find Grant’s enlarged, impregnated mistress who explodes into thousands of worms that take over the town…

Slither is a strange but wonderfully awesome. I love the characters, especially the mayor. The monsters are cool but reminiscent of older horror films which is a cool throwback. I get why many wouldn’t like this movie and I’d definitely would say it’s a cult classic; no joke, the only reason I happen to have it is it’s on a $10 four pack I got from Wal-Mart. I hope more people look into this movie and it has a reemergence in the future and more people discover it. So to end my review, I recommend it, and I’m ending this with my favorite end credit song, and the song I literally listened to moments after breaking up with my ex-girlfriend. Be safe and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Crazy Taxi (Sega Forever)

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Crazy Taxi is one of those games I played as a kid and finally got around to trying out the Sega Forever version. I won’t lie, I was worried about this one. Graphically it is one of the more impressive games they released and the sound is also higher end of the stuff they have given out. So how does it hold up?

Well honestly it holds up pretty damn well. Graphically my G6 played it very well and the sound played beautifully. Both of these things actually surprised me but not as well as the actual controls worked themselves. I was expecting this to be the worst in the series of Sega Forever games so far but in fact it functioned the best, so if you are a fan of Crazy Taxi give this one a shot. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Planet Terror

planet terror

Robert Rodriguez is the only man I know who can write a scene where a badass guns down pus riddled zombies while popping a wheelie on a pocket bike. Seriously, this movie is hardcore WTF but it is one of my all time favorites.

Cherry Darling is a spunky, sarcastic stripper- I mean go-go dancer- who wants out of her crappy life. After encountering her lost love El Rey at a truck stop and on a ride with him on a dark. misty night, they crash and Cherry is yanked from the car. And her leg is bitten clean off. El Rey shoots the sickos with a gun he ain’t supposed to have and they take off. This small Texas town is having small problems when these sicko zombies are running amok and the infected soldiers are quarantining the town, and the hope for a eclectic survivors is a stripper with a machine gun leg…

I love this movie with all my heart from the mock “Machete” trailer in the beginning that years later would become real, to the final reels of the film. The characters are all great and memorable, whether it’s Cherry and her sour sarcasm, the Josh Brolin as a vengeful doctor catching his wife in a lesbian affair, or a chemical engineer/ druglord that has a unhealthy obsession with collecting testicles (no that is not a typo, I did mean this dude collects testicles) as well as great and WTF cameos like Fergie, Bruce Willis, and even Quentin Tarantino. The score is a lively jazz inspired that brings a welcome Cowboy Bebop flavor I really enjoyed. Don’t watch this if you can’t handle pretty extreme gore and disembodied testicles (it’s my Birthday today so pardon the frequent use of the word testicles). If you want a really cool WTF kind of movie with a lot of heart and gore, absolutely check this out. May the gaming gods bring you glory.