Final Fantasy II - A Threat from Within (SNES Emulator)

This is a hack with a new story set 40 years after the original (but seemingly ignoring the events of The After Years). Following the moon’s depature, the crystals lost their power, making magic unreliable and airships fail. In Eblan, Edge’s son, Furio has completed his ninja training and is sent off to Agart on a mission. When he gets there, monsters appear and chaos reigns.

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Overall: This is crazy-ambitious and I’m not sure the hacker can actually pay it off, but I’m very impressed with what they managed to put together. Whenever Part 2 appears, I suspect I’ll find out!

Jeez, Even More Movies?

Hooking Up - She’s a sex-addicted sex columnist; he’s a recently-dumped cancer patient. Through a ridiculous series of events, they end up on a road trip having sex in a lot of weird places. It’s a sexy romcom (though thankfully lacking in gross-out parts) that follows most of the usual formulaic self-discovery. It gets credit for a coda in which they get together after a year of just being friends and getting their own shit in order first. For that matter, they dance around “being slutty is bad” while they’re trying show Darcy’s problem as “being shitty and treating the people you sleep with as objects is bad.” How well they manage is probably very viewer-specific; but at least they’re trying. I think, though, that my favorite part was they way they treat the dad who owns a chain of gyms with the same gravitas as, “You need to settle down and come work at my bank, son.”

Promising Young Woman - A woman, driven by the rape and suicide of her best friend, seeks revenge against both the original perpetrators and men who take advantage of drunk women in general. It’s got a Gone Girl sort of flavor to it; and I’ll admit I was disappointed when it turned out she wasn’t murdering the would-be rapists who took her home. But I give them credit that it wasn’t formulaic and it wasn’t just a wish-fulfillment revenge film. (Upon reflection, we need more female-led wish-fulfillment revenge films. Where’s “Joan Wick”?)

Terminator: Dark Fate - In this variant of the Terminator timeline (it’s the fourth major branch, I think), the events of the first two films happened, and Sarah and John succeeded in stopping Skynet for good in Terminator 2. Unfortunately, things sent to the past obey the “time remnants” theory from The Flash and more T-800s kept arriving, including one that killed John in 1998. Twenty years later, Sarah Conner is a brutal machine-killing survivor when an evil AI called Legion from a different future sends back a terminator to kill a girl named Dani Ramos. I’m entertained that this series has used its timey-whimey mechanics to reboot itself so much and generally keep the best movies in continuity while doing so. It’s a pretty decent action movie and both Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger get some solid material to work with (the scene where this movie’s T-800 is introduced is gold). Maybe a little long, but I enjoyed it. (My friend Ben’s review: “Did you like Terminator 2? Here’s three more hours of it!”)

The Late Bloomer - Did you miss late-90s cringy comedy? Have we got a movie for you! It’s about a sex therapist who discovers a brain tumor that has prevented him from properly hitting puberty; which means he has a massive onrush of testosterone at age 30 and they wrote a movie about a 30-year-old acting like he’s suddenly 13. Apparently this is based (loosely) on a true story, but I feel like the writers had to actively avoid having a conversation with any trans men in order to get this script together. (Short form: Testosterone is, indeed, a hell of a drug, but it doesn’t make you forget how to actually interact with society when you’ve already been an adult for a decade.) In addition, the sexual politics of this movie are a goddamn mess, attempting to make points about “being a man” when in fact the only message they manage is “being asexual is bad.” (The high points are pretty much when J.K. Simmons or Jane Lynch are on screen, in which they’re playing basically the same characters they always do. I’m glad they and Brittany Snow got paychecks, but this isn’t a good movie.)

The Final Girls - I’ve never been much for horror films, but I clearly appreciate self-referential horror comedies. (I think this one was recommended to me after Happy Death Day, and it has a similar vibe.) Three years after her mother’s death, a girl and her friends are transported into the terrible camp slasher film her mom famously starred in. Which leads to a lot of trying to use and subvert the film’s conventions to keep everyone alive. (The sequel hook means that the movie doesn’t properly end or actually explain much of anything, but the emotional arc is all there, so that’s something.)

Shadow Hearts: Covenant (PS2)

This is less a review and more just a record for myself: I played through the first third of this game in 2010, after playing both the first game and From the New World in 2009. It was the very last PS2 game left on my backlog since I finally played Grandia II in 2017. I started up a new playthrough of it late last year (using Action Replay) with the intent of powering through it, but I petered out maybe a quarter of the way into the game. At this point, I don’t remember where I was or what I was doing and I’m not going to try starting a third time. I’m declaring the game culled.

I don’t want this to be read as my thinking it’s a bad game, though theme-wise it’s a bit weaker than the first and system-wise it’s not as good as the third. Clearly, some people on staff were trying to make a horror game (dungeon and monster designers, certainly; but likely also whoever conceived the main story) but others were making a goofy romp (the dialogue and character designers primarily). But it’s not what I’m in the mood for now; I think I’ve closed the book on the PS2 game era and it’ll be a while longer before I’m interested in revisiting it for nostalgia.

The Playstation 2 and Playstation 3: A Retrospective

My PS2 dates back before 2009, when I started my current recordkeeping system. I got it in 2002 along with a copy of Final Fantasy 10. On my old log system, I see a lot of time spent on Dynasty Warriors games, interspersed with things like Karaoke Revolution, the two Katamari games, and long playthroughs of games like Wild ARMS 3-5, Suikoden 5, Disgaea 1 and 2, Final Fantasy X-2 and Final Fantasy 12. At least 20 different titles are represented. Starting in 2009, I have logs for 34 games and over 600 hours of play time, but the total play time counter could easily be twice that.

The PS2 spent basically a decade as my primary console: The backward compatibility meant I played or replayed a lot of PS1 titles on it, the ease of local multiplayer meant it saw a lot of time with Jethrien or other friends, it had a few titles that made good party games, and it had all the solid JRPG series that I was interested in. Oh, and it doubled as my DVD player. I went through several handhelds (this was the GBA -> DS era) and those tended to be my pick-up-and-play games, but my central game system was the PS2. (I actually purchased a second PS2, though I don’t recall exactly when, and all of my later playtime was on a slimline model.)

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