Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.

by Jamison DeLorenzo

You seriously didn’t think that I forgot about the Gaming Sabbatical Part I did you? Yes, it is true that basic grammatical errors and horrifying sentence fragments appear in my articles occasionally. While you may think this all points to a glaring lack of proofreading or that I paid someone I met in an online forum to use English to write some thoughts down instead of their standard Netspeak, it is all to keep you in anticipation of when I may actually finish putting together a coherent thought. This article just may be what you have been waiting for.

In the very near future, as in later this week, I will be making a trek out to Seattle once more for another epic week of gaming or some other form of non-productive activity. After putting together the base skeletal structure of our gaming activities I compared it to our past treks and noticed that Final Fantasy has once again forayed its way into the limelight. Gamers can be quite the creatures of habit, and it only logically follows that we follow an event that featured Final Fantasy VII with one that features Final Fantasy VIII. Life just seems to make sense this way.

In what has been to date a vain and futile attempt to recover some base knowledge of a game that I have played through close to 4 times I have been scouring through some saved games, looking for any notes written down about the game, and peeled through some guides on the Web. Perhaps I will have one of my special moments similar to recalling the activation code for the Blue Huge Materia in VII (which I still cannot explain remembering) and start down the right path to collecting all of the Triple Triad cards, Guardian Forces, and Limit Breaks. Maybe the subtle tricks in the Chocobo Forests will spring forth once more. I suppose it is equally likely that the Mets will call my cell phone and name me the new general manager, but those are bets not worth placing.

What bothered me, and for no real reason other than finding more holes in my memory, is that my memory of all those little details in Final Fantasy VIII are fading. It cannot be a realistic expectation to recall information on this level about games that haven’t been touched in over 5 years. This is what I tell myself. It does reinforce the notion that getting a good run through the game once more is going to require a team effort. Even the dreaded curse words that real gamers dare not mention (rhymes with ofladgety guide) were implied in conversation revolving around getting through the game one more time. I am confident that this will be unanimously shot down once the topic is discussed rationally, but until then I am left to wonder how much about the series I fell in love with when discovering Final Fantasy II on the SNES I’ll remember once the images are on the screen once more.

To no surprise finding a plethora of trivia questions online on several installments of Final Fantasy requires only a minimal effort. This is the crux of my thesis that the Google search engine has been the defining invention in the Information Age (Sour Patch Kids coming in at a close 2nd). After being crushed by several Final Fantasy VIII questions to which I could barely recall the topic in question I decided to go through VII, VI, and a couple other games I have played several times over. What really scared me was that my knowledge of VI, which I consider to be the best overall game of the franchise, despite what my massive Final Fantasy Review article indicates, was severely lacking. It is always fun attempting to answer questions to games you swear could also be referring to an authentic Greek pastry. That is the Web in a nutshell – a gigantic collection of information at your fingertips designed to show you how little you really know.

Despite failing to remember a decent amount of information on these games I do not let it phase me. It is never about the destination but about experiencing the journey (the games and I will not go our Separate Ways). Thinking about getting ready to experience this game once more has been remarkably enticing. Even if it may seem boring, perhaps the best way to remember why you love gaming in the first place is to fire up an old game that you cherish. This may even be the best cure for the current console war. Instead of everyone trying to convince themselves they made the right choice in their purchase or primary use of a console, or grinding an axe, or whatever else it can be called, gamers should just pick up a game they worship and play it once more. I find that playing a hallowed video game is much more enjoyable than arguing the merits of the current gaming mediums.

Then again, that’s just me.

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