Atlus is the Abusive Ex I Can’t Quit

An Atari afficionnado at the age of three; I think it’s safe to say that I’m a longtime gamer. I’ve also always been the sort that can easily master a new game and, to my surprise, eventually became a fan of RPGs – a genre that had left me perplexed until I played Final Fantasy VIII.

I say all this because I want to firmly establish my gamer creds before I declare the following: I cannot seem to finish an Atlus game. Specifically, any game in the Persona series.

It’s not that I can’t get my characters leveled up enough to beat boss after boss, it’s that there’s too much to ****ing do in-game in the meantime. To be frank, Atlus games require a dedication akin to autism, or at least a cavalry of game walkthroughs and forum buddies, to play to completion. And to me, playing a game while someone holds your hand the entire way isn’t fun.

YOU WANT ME TO DECIDE WHAT TO WEAR? AAAHHH!

So I consistently find myself at a point in an Atlus game where I just can’t decide what to do next. I’ll spend hours fusing, summoning, and trading Persona (magical beings used in battle whose numbers and variety rival that of Pokemon’s) until I forget the plotline, or obsessively max out social links (Atlus for “character relationships”) only to realize I forgot about grinding my characters in time for the big boss battle. Then I’ll restart from a last save, repeat the whole section, and mess it up in reverse, e.g. missing a crucial social link event or fusion day because I was busy leveling my characters.

Atlus is also a harsh judge in relationships. :(

As I write this, Persona 2 for the Playstation is somewhere in the back of my closet, my party trapped on a cruise ship with an inadequate amount of items because I was obsessively trying to map out every portion of the ship in order to sell it a NPC. My Persona 3 characters, meanwhile, are waiting for me to save Fuu without realizing that I abandoned them to start a new game with Persona 3: FES, which I dropped because I OD’d on the new social link events.

Atlus sometimes threatens to shoot himself if I were to leave him.

No matter how good my intentions are when I pop in an Atlus disc, it always treats me the same way: too many choices, not enough time, and hardly any SP items. Sure, I could opt for the easy setting but what would that say about me? Atlus would never look at me the same way. I can see him now telling all of the other RPG developers that I’m easy! Then Squenix and BioShock will never want to talk to me again and I’ll be left with only Banpresto to take me to the prom and he’ll try to get me to play Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia in the limo and no one will believe me if I tell them I hated it.

Dramatization.

And this is why I’m 15 hours into Persona 4.

** The Persona 2 pic is borrowed from the amazing Classic Gaming site. Go there now.

Unexplained and Unwanted

I tend to stay away from Animal Planet given that half the programming is taken up with animals starving to death and the other half with animals being mercilessly slaughtered by other animals in danger of starving to death. It’s pretty much the most depressing channel ever next to Lifetime and MTV – both of which make me question the existence of anything right and holy in this world on a regular basis.

But every so often my parents turn it on and I, in the midst of freelancing, become an unwilling audience member. Like today, when “Unexplained. Unexplored” came on. It apparently first aired in 2004 and continues on its quest to **** with people’s minds. Taking the form of tabloid expose, the show lives on gruesome close-ups, lots of dead animals, and a British voice over that strives to add an air of legitimacy to the proceedings.

Considering that the episode I saw focused on such animal mysteries as farting snakes, killer kangaroos, and deers that decapitate, it’s an uphill battle made more difficult with the addition of alliteration (“fits of flatulence,” the announcer intones), painful puns (the deer is a “doe-eyed killer,” ha), and references to modern culture (“The Silence of the Ducks” is brought up as a duck faces a microphone). Though the science and facts are real, the presentation is unreal, making the whole thing surreal. In all, it’s a healthy dose of WTF that I recommend to no one.

Oh, and now they’re showing snails having sex. Well, my night’s complete.

Why Matt Smith Will Be Awesome

I have absolutely no concrete evidence whatsoever as to how good of an actor Matt Smith is, or will be, as the newly cast Eleventh Doctor of the BBC’s long-lived Doctor Who. I can, however, intuit that Mr. Smith will raise the awesome flag when he takes up the Tardis helm.

In theory, the Doctor’s regenerations are a writer’s dream, allowing for constant plot and style retuning. We’ve had ornery Doctors, zany Doctors, crazy Doctors, vaguely insidious Doctors, and Peter Davison’s sweet-as-pie Fifth Doctor. With the actual regeneration of the series into “New Who” — spearheaded by Russel T. Davies – we’ve even witnessed Manic Depressive Doctor and Bi-Polar Doctor.

The problem is that I’m not sure who was who lately. Despite all the subtle personality differences between them, the Ninth (Christopher Eccleston) and Tenth Doctors (David Tennant) both carried a considerable amount of emotional baggage and were able to go from “Scions of Death” to “Kids with a New Toy” in a matter of seconds making them practically indistinguishable. It’s about time to switch things up.

Smith, with his youthful looks and relative unheardofness (or “obscurity” for those readers who like to use real words), and new head writer Steven Moffat, are exactly that needed change of pace. So here, in no particular order, are my reasons “Why Matt Smith Will Be Awesome.”

There Will Be Blood
Using my amazing power of deduction, and two BBC-released pics of Smith in front of the Tardis (see above), I can predict that the Moffat-Smith era will bring with it gothic horror, macabre settings, and a vaguely Emo Doctor. Never fear though, because he will be a self-aware emo (note the smirk). He’ll wear the clothes and carry the card but mock the entire concept as well as any companions he meets up with. Enough of the lovey-dovey Doctors, we need a baby-faced Doctor who makes secondary characters cower with self doubt and inferiority.

Worst Case Scenario: The Eleventh Doctor will actually be emo, painting the interior of the Tardis black, and cutting himself methodically as Fall Out Boy plays in the background.

The Young and the Restless
Now the hazard is that because Smith is so young and arguably good looking (and people have been arguing about this all over the forums) they’ll slap him together with a bunch of young female companions who will all fall in love with him in a never-ending cycle of angst and hilarious antics. As this already happened in “New Who” and even included a male amongst the casualities, I doubt Moffat will go the same route despite his Coupling roots. (Although, Moffat was responsible for the omnisexual Jack Harkness, so who knows? This could be the first gay Doctor on record.)

Worst Case Scenario: Doctor Who will become a time-traveling version of Friends, making the whole Ross-and-Rachel-on-a-break thing that much more confusing.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Smith’s look begs for a playful juxtaposition in assumptions and expectations. After all, the Doctor is canonically over 900 years old and now looks in his 20s, so we can only hope for a similar contradiction in personality (ornery and cynical) and looks (period clothing as opposed to the modern looks Nine and Ten sported.) If the thought of having a bad ass, 20-something in a top hat with pimp cane tell you what’s what doesn’t seem vaguely cool then I don’t know what to do with you. (Promotional pics show Smith in decidedly modern apparel but as shooting doesn’t begin until summer I shall hold out hope for a costume change.)

Worst Case Scenario: He could be dressed like he is in the above photo all the time. Although, the Batman shirt does rock.

And finally…

Chain of Fools
The Eleventh Doctor will stop angsting over former companions Rose, Donna, and Martha, and he won’t meet River Song. I have nothing to back this up except for wishful thinking.

Worst Case Scenario: He won’t. Bugger.