RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! And welcome once more to the part of the week where we sacrifice baby birds and other fluffy animals in order to summon the Dark Lo… Oh wait, that’s Wednesday, isn’t it? My mistake. It’s time for Quests!

Cortney “Alethea” Stone has been running around in Final Fantasy Tactics: the War of the Lions, in an attempt to defeat the notorious Riovanes Castle section. Seriously, all those improvements to the game, and they couldn’t improve one little girl’s AI? Poor little Rapha still runs headlong to her doom.

In a shocking twist, Derek “Roku” Cavin has actually had time to play a video game this week! After tunneling his way under the barbed-wire fence of higher learning, Roku managed to breeze his way through Dragon Quest Swords in his usual fashion – ie., very, very fast. A review is forthcoming, as is, undoubtedly, more schoolwork for our beleaguered colleague.

Next up, Jerry “XeroZohar” Swain has spent the week both digging through people’s brains in search of monsters, and then lassoing ships and using them as tools of destruction. While these acts would normally get one arrested as a pirate, an unlicensed surgeon, or at the very least, a frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic, in Xero’s case they were carried out in Psychonauts and TriggerHeart Exelica, and so arrest is somewhat unlikely. At least for those particular crimes.

John “Karlinn” Boske has been committing crimes of his own, playing through Mass Effect as Shaft. Though I’m a little uncertain what specifically this would entail, I hope for his sake it involves a lot of freeze-framing and cries of “SHAFT!” Because I can dig it.

Jordan “J_Sensei” Jackson recently pulled off a stunning victory in Lost Odyssey, and will be favoring us with his views on the subject later in the week. In the meantime, he’s following in Roku’s steps and slashing his way through Dragon Quest Swords.

Contrary to most of our members, Michael “Slayer of God” Kozinko has been playing a whole smorgasboard of games, from Devil May Cry 4, to Yoshi’s Island, to various incarnations of the Resident Evil series. I was going to make a joke about Devil May Cry 4 being one part of the smorgasboard or other, but in all honesty, I’m not really sure what goes on an actual smorgasboard. Fish, I think? I don’t think Slayer would take well to me calling his games limp fish, so we’ll just leave it there.

T.J. “Nerdboy Himself” Condon has apparently spent the last week crafting some sort of cicada Jesus in Pokemon Diamond, with which to defeat me. I have to say, had I known defeat would sting him so hard, I would have crushed him more fully the first time. At any rate, his training regimen has apparently meant lots of trips through the Elite Four, which means little time for anything else.

As for me, I’ve just recently finished Dungeon Explorer, which turned out to be only about ten hours long. This was the DS version, so I’m wondering if the PSP version was any longer? At any rate, beyond the dungeon delving, I’ve been fiddling around with AudioSurf, which is a game that takes music files and turns them into mind-melting race tracks. It’s really a bizarre little game, and I intend to feed some IOSYS music into it later, to see if I can get it to rip open the fabric of space and time for me.

At any rate, that’s it for this week’s Quests. You may have noticed some new columns and things going up at the site, and we’ll be bringing you a lot more over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!