Since my nVidia drivers crashed again on my computer, I eventually decided to start playing on Final Fantasy XIII-2 instead of my PC games. The nVidia drivers have been rather unstable after that one time I tried to upgrade the drivers and then roll back to the old one because the upgrade made the TV connection not work… Somehow managed to get it to work again until today. I’m planning to reinstall the PC now, and I’m considering just installing Windows 8 while I’m at it.

Anyways, XIII-2. Old photo:

Those who are interested in the game probably know most of the stuff about it already, so I’ll just list some random thoughts I had when playing the game.

• Checking out the available DLC: Why is half of the DLC just different costumes for the characters? Why would anyone want to OH THEY HAVE ASSASSIN’S CREED COSTUME FOR NOEL AND N7 (Mass Effect) ARMOR IT’S AWESOME!
• Unlike the first game, the tutorial doesn’t seem to last for the first 9 chapters of the game.
• Character upgrade system is simplified. Probably a good thing.
• The game is not as linear as the first one, because you can do a bunch of side missions already from the start of the game. Quite a few fetch quests though.
• Quick-time events! How I not have missed you from Resident Evil. Jokes asides, it’s not that bad, and I also wonder if they have a different animation/cut scene when you miss some of the button presses. (I think I missed once or twice, but the cut scene continued so I’m not sure if anything changed.)
• Battles are sometimes cinematic, with cut scenes and quick-time events happening half-ways through a battle. Pretty cool!
• Oh and the game features time travel. I wonder if you can travel to the same areas in the past and change things to see the changes in the future, like Chrono Trigger! Probably not though.

I also played through the latest DLC for Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3, called “The Beginning of the End”, which tells the story of what happened to the player character from the previous two games. It didn’t really explain much though, I feel like it was just a quick and dirty way of “disposing” of your old player character. But oh well, it was amusing to play through nevertheless.