Final Fantasy X

I played the first three hours of Final Fantasy X the other day.

Let me put that statement into perspective. My entire experience with video games in the past consists of the first two levels of SuperMario Bros. for Nintendo, jumping on little mushroom-men to stay alive (they kill you if you don’t) and collecting gold coins.

Brandon the Pirate bravely undertook the task of introducing me to the game, and with apparently infinite patience sat beside me and coached me the entire time. For this reason, Tidus—the main character—still has a life and a task to do, something beyond wandering around trying to figure out how to get off that first level where all the kids want him signing autographs.

And, now that I have actually begun to experience a serious video game, I have to say: Cool. Video games do not fit the idea I had of them till recently, which was something along the lines of Pac-Man with guns. Wander through the halls and shoot stuff. No, they have a plot, and a point, and even deep thought. For instance, the evil power in the game goes by “Sin.” Whether “Sin” is the translation of the Japanese word, or the Japanese word itself, I have yet to determine; it makes for some interesting ideas, though, from the characters’ conversations about it.

I enjoyed finding out where Tidus would go next, and killing piranha-like fish with huge teeth, and the fact that Tidus, Ahron, Brandon and I outlasted the tentacled tower thing in fair battle. I also enjoyed watching the story progress.

As for my current position in the game: I like the Hawaiian sort of a place where we left Tidus about to play blitz-ball with the surfer-dudes. Wakku, the head surfer-dude, cracks me up. He seems good-hearted and loveable. That girl with the bad taste in clothes got left in the last level, which was fine by me; as Kate Hudson says in Alex and Emma, “She’s flighty, she’s flirty, and she’s a flawed character!” Now we have a pretty, gentle girl who just called down a hot-pink eagle-looking thing. I like her. If I have anything to say about Tidus’s destiny, which I doubt, he’ll marry her.

Anyway, Tidus has begun his journey. We’ll see where he goes from here… provided the piranhas don’t get him.

P.S. I’m completely, over-the-top excited about actually making a hotlink in my own text! After a full day of studying SGML, markup languages rank tip-top on my cool list. Hopefully I’ll feel the same way about PERL tomorrow evening… wish me luck :)