EPISODE 46.5

This video has been far too long coming, and I apologise. You can blame my indifference to Robotrek. But it's all done, and here it is...

I can always be sure that if I'm making a video about a Mega Man game it's going to turn out pretty epic. And this is absolutely, finally, the LAST TIME I play a Mega Man game as part of the Year (ha!) of Retro Gaming.

Are you familiar with any of this week's games? Here are the results...

In between levelling up my awesome-looking cat-man in Final Fantasy XIV (finished the game as a summoner, now I've levelling white mage - I'm only Lv.32 at the moment) I've been replaying The Wind Waker lately, this time in glorious HD. The graphics look beautiful, and it's truly a wonderful game, but I still feel what I've always felt with this game, in that it seems really insubstantial for a Zelda game. The open-sea world is huge, and there's so much to explore and discover, which is great. But the majority of the game seems to be taken up with exploration and discovery. Whereas it was standard to have 8 main dungeons in a Zelda game, Wind Waker only has 5. I can remember the feeling of being cheated, the first time I played it. When I found the giant fish Jabun, I was eagerly awaiting dungeon number 3. Maybe it would be inside the fish's belly like in Ocarina of Time! But no... Jabun just gives you the pearl and you leave without having to do anything.

Similarly, late in the game (I just played this bit tonight) when you finally confront the terrifying-looking ghost ship that you've been dreading the whole game, it's only a single room with a couple of enemies that are already familiar by this point in the game. That could have been a whole dungeon.

(Thankfully, in Phantom Hourglass they made the ghost ship much more substantial, and the sand ship in Skyward Sword was a great dungeon)

Don't get me wrong, Wind Waker is still a wonderful game, and over the last couple of weeks it has owned my soul in a way that only Zelda games can. But it's not my favourite in the series. My three favourites are A Link To The Past, Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. Those three just did pretty much everything perfectly. I wonder what the new 3DS Zelda will be like... That's only a few weeks away, isn't it?

In other news, the new Batman game (which by all accounts isn't as good as the previous ones) came out yesterday... on Xbox and PS3... But not on WiiU. What gives?? I want to support the poor struggling console and show the game makers that yes, WiiU owners DO want to buy games for it. But they make it difficult when they delay the WiiU version by two weeks, but let everybody else play the game! No official reason has been given for the delay. I'm thinking surely Microsoft and Sony have put a little something into Ubisoft's pockets to make this happen. Eurgh.

The new consoles come out in a couple of weeks. As it is, I could not be less interested in getting one. There is not a single game even on the horizon that makes me keen on shelling out top-dollar for a whole new machine. I'm thinking when the PS4 version of FFXIV gets released I might upgrade (since Square-Enix will apparently let you do it for free) but until then there is nothing. Nothing at all. Possibly one of the worst launch lineups ever.

So I'll keep on gaming! I have FOUR MORE VIDEOS scheduled for this blog. I'm hoping I can get them done by the end of this year, because I want to start a whole new blog in 2014... Watch this space! ;-)

Hope everything's going all right for you! See ya! ^_^