Just a quick post to illustrate that there is certainly nothing better than having friends. This is just a sampling of the reactions I received when telling people I made an Eve/Gaming blog.
Wow, hardcore fanboy.
oh god, you nerd
You are a dork
Oh...great...
Well, instead of waiting for more reactions to come through, I'm forging ahead. I can't be stopped folks, your negative vibes mean nothing to me! Anyway, before I tell you about my latest Eve goal let me mention a goal of gaming past that still haunts me today.
Full disclosure here, I love the Final Fantasy series. I don't wait for the release day like it was Christmas anymore but as a series that grew up alongside the video game medium it is hard to ignore its quality and progression. I promise to take some time on a different day to delve into my thoughts on the evil underbelly of the Chocobo and what I feel about side games and side games within side games. Square and I have disagreed from time to time but I've given them hours of my life so they can suck it up and take a little of my ribbing. Later though.
This short story comes out of Final Fantasy VIII, 2 years after the excellent reemmergence of the series with VII. After VII, which brought an already great game into the modern world of more pixels, VIII had all the steam it needed to be a success from day one. There were certainly mini games that they wanted you to play but we're here to talk about the mini game that I created in my head. My problem begins on Cactuar Island. On that island lived the sexiest Cactaur of all time, the JUMBO CACTAUR. Why they put a mustache on him is still a question I want answered, but it worked for him. Burt Reynolds himself was jealous of that stache. Moving on.
Unlike the cast of Lost, you didn't start your journey on Cactus Island, you could actually only get to this island with the airship which you obtained later in the game. I didn't get stuck fending off a smoke monster due to some twist of fate or dream sequence, or death rattle, damn you Lost, I chose to go there. So you obtained the airship, you flew to Cactuar Island, you ran around, and then whammo, there he was, the King of the Desert himself. He had a stupid number of hit points which was a challenge in itself. Additionally, as he got near the end of his lifespan he started to get nervous, and if you didn't unleash the mother of all attacks with a coordination that Patton himself would be proud of, that damn cactus would just run off the screen. Stupid cactus. Buuuuut, if you did manage to wear him down and cut him into 1000 regular sized cacti he might just drop a rare item called the Cactus Thorn. Ok great, but what can I do with that? Nothing immediately is the answer but if you collected 100 of those bad boys THEN you could make an item called Hundred Needles. That you could use! With that Hundred Needles your character could eat it, put it in its belt, or whatever it is they did with it but regardless, the character gained a +1 speed boost. Can I get a woot? For those that have not played Final Fantasy VIII, a character could hypothetically max out their attributes at 99 though that number was as unattainable to a FF8 character as ten million dollars might be to you and me. It didn't matter though because all I wanted out of FFVIII was for all my characters to have a 99 speed so I could walk through the final sequence and spit in the face of the boss. Not only would I spit in his face but I would do it so quickly he wouldn't even have the chance to see who it was that did the spitting. What a plan!
The plan was stupid. The math alone is just foolish. Even if all my characters started at a speed of 49 (which they didn't) and I won every fight I fought (which I didn't) and every time I won the Jumbo Cactuar dropped a thorn (they didn't), I would need to fight 5000 battles per character. Let me take it a little further. If each battle took only 30 seconds, then I would spend 2500 minutes or 41 hours, 40 minutes per character fighting for perfect speed! Of course these figures are all amazingly generous and it would have taken much much longer than a full work week per character. I fought the good fight for a while though and after getting faster and faster I just stopped playing. Sitting on the doorstep to the end of an enjoyable game I simply put it down because I couldn't play anymore. I was the fastest gunslinger on that island but I was face down in the sand looking for a reason to go on.
So nothing about Eve this post. I think retelling the story of FF8 made me second guess my Eve plan but don't fear, I'm doing it. It is underway. I'll let you know what that is when these tears stop pouring from my face. What is that Squall? Speak up, I can't hear you. You say you still only have a speed of 88? You want me to finish what I started? I've got to run...
Did anyone else try for perfect speed?
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