Holidays and Holidonts

The holidays have finally spent themselves in a turgid eruption of parties, family gatherings, and prodigious amounts of ruptured corpses littering the streets, hemorrhaging a chunky sludge of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. Though I did succumb temporarily to the sweet beckoning of various confectionery and caloric temptations, my unbreakable DDR addiction has kept everything under control.

Jen has once again fed my video gaming addiction with Final Fantasy X-2. Though it was off to a rocky start due to the complete lack of an introduction to the story. I was launched directly into a fight with an unfamiliar and unprecedented contrivance Square Enix calls an innovative battle system. Games like Xenogears got the difficult question of RPG battle mechanics perfectly represented, yet Square never seems satisfied without arbitrarily generating a completely unrelated design. Some of the Rube Goldberg contraptions they come up with often defy description.

Now that I’m accustomed to the quirks of this particular incarnation, things aren’t as bad. But I still think Hellen Keller could have designed a more comprehensive method for fighting assailants. Magical costume changes powered by video spheres arranged into a grid? What? The next time I see an old bum on the street shambling down the road with old DVDs and VHS tapes dangling haphazardly from his clothing, I’ll know he’s actually learning new fighting skills. Thanks Square!