Let it Snow, let it Snow, let it SNOW! - A story of SNOW

This is totally dedicated to livi =P and spoilers ensue...sorta...and pics got progressively worse cuz i had to take pics from my phone since my camera shutter won't turn on no more...boo...=(

Once upon a time in a futuristic fantasy world (with really cool bgs that i will post later), there was a girl named Serah (or however they want to spell)...
Serah met a boy...very "big" boy to be exact named Snow...

who has a motorcycle shaped with 2 chicks on the seat...

They fall in love in the typical "petite skool girl meets really huge guy who's in a gang that does all this illegal stoof"...
Serah gets capture with this god-like being that has water as hands...to do its bidding...

who makes her find cooler ppl to do its bidding...

her sis

her macho boy toy

some black dood that has a chocobo chick living in his afro...

some pop-tarty aussi chick that wears fur and is on the run from peta...

emo kid that looks at ground

Serah succeeds and gets "eternal life"...while her sis (one of the cool ppl that Serah found for the god-like with water as hands creature) goes on a rampage to kill everyone that pissed her off...including snow...

snow then gets hit by this other chick that controls dragons...(awesome!)
and then he gets captured
by this really cool brigadier general who has its own ship/fleet (u know he had to be there...)
and has a richter lookalike as a lackey...

he gets let go on good behaviour...and encounters emo kid with knife...who gets even more emo with snow's annoying dialogue about how he's going to save the world, etc...
and the kid w/ knife gets even emo when snow hugs him in free fall for no apparent reason...

so emo kid w/ knife tries to blow him up...

but snow, having indestructible android armour and cat-like reflexes, lands on his back and only limps away...taking the emo kid w/ him to further thicken the plot...(pwp?)
he gets invited to a party in some old guy's house where he had to strip to show off his huge, smooth pecs...
...and gets a confession by Serah's vengeful sis...
then a confession from the emo kid with knife...

then a confession from dragoon lady...*snickers

then finally the old guy
he is flattered and begs them to stop...
then, a general appears from the outside...
who brought his own spotlights, lighting crew, etc. and confesses his love to our "hero"...
snow being torn between all these confessions, strips off his jacket...

and the general tries to engrave "hands off my man!" on snow's awesome, manly chest with laser beams
but fails miserably as he forgot his glasses...
snow turns him down by confessing his undying luv for serah (remember the chick at the beginning?)...
obviously someone gets mad and started shooting up the place...
and accidentally killed everyone in the process, including the general with the lighting crew...
surprisingly, snow comes out alive because of his android armour with only breathing in the nerve gas...
and they all live happily ever...after they go and save the world from god-like creatures....the end!

Hope u guys enjoyed that...as none of it was really true...except for the pics (character pics were from ffxiii official website)...and how in my mind, it would be how the story should be...sorta...well if i had a lot of tequila and ice-cream in my system...by a lot i mean 4 gallons at least...mmmm....i'm gonna go have cookies now!

First look: Character

As my last post indicated, I finally, finally, finally got to playing this week. As I find plot and character most appealing (call it the English student in me), allow me to treat one of these first :)



Lightning: Lightning is Paine from X-2 with her hair dyed pink, which is neither a jab at Lightning nor Paine. Stand-offish with just enough humanity to allow for sympathy, she scores points (from me, at least) for not taking any of the crap Snow and Hope sling around. On the battlefield, she does fancy jumps!! And has a horse that could almost be a unicorn!! What's not to like?


Snow:I was trying to locate a particular picture of Snow. FYI, never, and I repeat, NEVER type in "ffxiii snow shirtless". You come across many pictures of shirtless men who are not Snow (I found the picture anyhow. It will feature in a future post, as soon as I am able to wash out my eyeballs sufficiently). There might have been a time in my youthful girlhood where I would have appreciated such a man. As stated earlier, Lightning punches him so I don't have to, which is great. While I appreciate his loyalty, his undying love, his persistence, his optimism, his muscular chest, wait, what was I saying? Right. I think I am most offended by his overly earnest dialogue and the 2-dimensional character that results. All the right sentiments are there. I'd just prefer it if I didn't feel like puking a little after he shared his feelings.

Sazh: I quite like him so far as a character. He stands up to Lightning, looks out for the kids, and has a chocobo living in his hair!! I hope you gathered that I was just kidding about the Sazh/Vanille pairing, and I hope that no fics actually exist of this (although to each their own). I am also afraid to look.

Hope: I have admittedly warmed up to the kid since my last post, but I have a feeling that this might be short-lived, given his plot-line. I think, perhaps, to give Square-Enix the benefit of the doubt, that the creators were reacting to a general fan dislike of Vaan from ff12. Instead of an overly-positive boy in his early teens, then, their solution was the provide us with the absolute antithesis. This is not an effective strategy. Just because he's a cute kid, doesn't mean he gets to be emo. No one gets away with being emo. No one.

Vanille: In Cocoon script, Vanille's name translates as "Fan service". Because, really? Her perkiness (and by that, I mean her personality, thank you) is not offensive, so far, and she works well with Sazh. Oh yes. She works in the best way possible (on the battlefield).

That is actually as far as I've gotten, in terms of playable characters. Fang is floating around, but so far, she has only taken up Lightning's place as "beater-of-Snow", which has been comforting. Slowly losing the ability to write. That must mean it's time for bed.

And now...disturbing fanfiction pairings

As this must be brief, I thought that I'd leave you with my favourite disturbing pairings as part of my first glimpse into FFXIII.

Snow's face + Lightning's fist
Sazh + Vanille (That's right. I went there.)
Hope + whatever ledge his mom fell off of (ouch. That was admittedly a little too mean)

All that remains is going to fanfiction.net to see if such pairings already exist. Or to write them (eww).

My Tribute to Cid! (as promised =P)

Hail to the Brigadier General! he's awesome...not just how he acts, but he's also fun to fight...yesh unfortunately this Cid is evil....but he's pretty so it's ok...he pretty much hit most of my requirements of a perfect bf...even tho taking over the world wasn't exactly on my list...but that just means he has ambitions which is on my list....lol...see my twisted way of thinking, huh? and he's just cooler cuz he owns the warship Lindblum....who doesn't luv a guy that owns a mode of transportation which can level an entire city? plus it's shiny....really shiny....it's almost hypnotic looking at it....ahem...anyways...more pics...sorry livi, no pretty hearts and photoshopping my pic to look like we're a couple...i'm not that crazy...and it's cuz i'm lazy...and don't work photoshop well...and i don't want to post my face all over the web...=P














































another reason he's hot...he gets Castlevania's "Richter" (Rydea is the real name) as his lackey...no whip for him but he's got some pretty good gunner poses....not very useful but cool villains always need some lackey to taunt them about their plans for world domination....lol....and for those that have been keeping up with this blog and the blog that inspired this one....it is NOT a spinning top above cid's head...as u can clearly see it's a martini glass on a table behind where cid is sitting....u can see from different angle...

and yesh...once again alcoholic accessories have come to me again....see? i totally didn't do anything, they just appear wherever i go...in real life or in game world....sigh...it's a clear sign that i can never escape alcohol....anyways preview for next blog...i'll prolly put some bg pics...there are some really kickass scenes that i took pics off....livi where are ur posts???

This was meant to go on this morning at 7:28am but my computer crashed...

I did it! I finished it! i didn't sleep for 2 days, went out on friday nite, sat, and sun to maintain my social life, had incoherent conversations with various friends, near drunk driving, 6 cups of McD's free coffee on their last day (+ 2 hash-browns), but i finished FFXIII! Exact time was 38:14:02 give or take 20 min cuz i couldn't tell how long the ending was....but hah! i'm $100 richer...and i'll never rush thru a ff again and/or make any sort of wager for a very long time...i think i could've finished it faster if i wasn't playing "tourist" and looked around the bg and took tons of pics for the blog....

i'll be backdating the upcoming blogs that chronicled how i rushed thru this with tons of pics...and look forward to a tribute to my fav brigadier general, Cid on my next post! i'll also be replaying it now that i have my fantastically, pretty, shiny, white, and hard cover strategy guide (thanks livi!)...so i can actually fill in any gaps that i missed....and actually play the sidequests!

ok i have to go to work now, which i'm sure my high will come down while i'm there T_T i plan to sleep tonite =P

I'm beginning to rethink this....

Yesh, i know i'm like 4 days late in posting...but with working a 8-4pm job, doing various heavy lifting at work while recovering from a stubborn flu and various illnesses...i'm a little sluggish (not to mention lazy to drag myself out of the couch and post)....but those are not good excuses...so let's get on with the show...

so the "rethinking" in the title has nothing to do with the game (because i'm still in awe with its prettiness)...but a bet that i stupidly made with a friend of mine...bet is to finish the game in 5 days (which means my deadline is this sunday) with certain requirements like completing a number of sidequests, trophies, etc....and i'm beginning to think that it's an impossible task because I'M SLOW! I have made myself a schedule and i sadly have not been following the timeline...i'm suppose to have at least finished chapter 7 yesterday, but after being dragged out to various outings by friends, i've been "distracted" of sorts (because sadly i do have a social life still)...i only just got to chapter 5, even after staying up till 4am this morning....

before i get into the game, so let's give ppl a glance at my game resume so ppl know that i do play video games and not some fan girl that goes ga-ga over tall men with murasumes, with flowing white hair....(sorry livi, just had to put that in)....i have played and finished every single ff game to date with the exception of ffxi and ff crystal chronicles: echoes of time on wii...we are going to go with japanese versions here as the US version has some numbering issues...by far i think ff tactics is my fav...follow by ff6 and ff12....and i do own most of these games that are on PS....for this game, i have already played thru the jap version but had no idea wat the plot was like cuz i'm not fluent in jap...yet...

so far in the game (and spoilers will ensue)...

i'm luving the graphics...no more awkward corners or flattening issues on characters when they're in non-cg mode....cutscene movies are great...not a lot of lagging that we're used to seeing in the previous games on PS, very fluid....and i find this one is a lot sharper than ff12...i know it's mostly cuz this is made on blu-ray and next gen game console and all....but if we put that all aside...i found that ff12 characters were a little too "animal-like" to me...and the whole sand-blowing-effect-because-we're-in-a-desert just made everything blurry to me....u'll get none of that in ff13...it's like getting the correct prescriptive lenses for ur eyes! altho...i do wished there was blood in the cut scenes for dramatic effect...

voice-acting...this could be better...but i like how they've improved on the lip-syncing....and i am in luv with sazh (the lionel richie clone)...he is an awesome comic relief...not to mention luving that chocobo chick...

characters...luv lightning if she doesn't talk...lol....really can't stand the vanille cuz of the whole peppy pop-tarty personality but that could just me (cuz i'm dark and twisty)...but i luv her hair....the detailing on the characters are extremely well-done in my books...check out the facial hair on snow...



gameplay....exploring...kinda wished they gave us more freedom in this one, i kinda miss jumping and go thru all the nooks and crannies to find weird things...but i can understand how they gave that up for the graphics...most of the time, i find myself spinning around in circles to check out the background...it's just amazing...the temples, the crystallized lakes, etc...but being the first game on ps3, i can forgive them on this part...


battles...really simplified it (not sure if it's to attract noobs)...i'm used to facing impossible battles where i get to escape if i face impending doom....but it's duel or die for this one...and u get these ratings at the end (out of 5 stars)...i have yet to figure out how this works in detail but scoring seems to be based on how innovative u use battle techniques, and how u fast u beat the enemies (yesh they do have a "recommended" time)...i've been obsessed with getting a perfect rating in every battle (which with the exception of the first battle cuz of the tutorial), i've done quite well...(now keep in mind, i haven't read any walkthrus and don't plan on reading them until i finish this bet)...and font size get bigger as u battle bigger monsters so u don't have to guess how much damage u dealt...



so i'm pretty satisfied withe the game so far...i'm still waiting for my darling (cid raines) to show up which will be today when i start playing =P....but my dragoonette (fang) and richter (rygdea) just showed up....looking forward to more! here's some screens i took with my camera...sorry for the blurriness...