Predicting the Future: Socialized Prostitution, Meat-Bots, and Transporters

After I'm dead, I want to be remembered for predicting future trends of human civilization because I like to be right. The first thing I'm predicting is that in 200 years, maybe even 300 years,  but at most, 500 years, human kind will have socialized prostitution. That's right, someday, your descendants will be able to call a tax paid, government agency and request that prostitutes be sent to your house. It's hard for us to imagine what that will be like since we're such prudes here in the year 2011, but our descendants will be much more sexually liberal.

Pornography will become obsolete, as the real thing will probably be a click away because by then we'll probably have very realist humanoid robots and teleportation. Actually, let me elaborate on the sci-fi tech here. I think we will have computers encased in meat instead of metal and plastic. Robots will actually be human clones without a brain and central nervous system. Those things will be replaced by a computer and miles of wires respectively. Well, maybe you can keep the nervous tissue. But yeah, anyway, prostitutes will be human clones with computers instead of brains, and they'll be teleported to your house. Actually, it won't be teleportation per se, it'll be more like the tranporters in Star Trek. The science of Star Trek explains that the transporters deconstructs you atom by atom, saves the blueprint of you digitally, then reconstructs you somewhere else. Logically, you can't do this to people because it's technically a murder and then cloning, but you could definitely do it to a lifeless meat-bot. So in summary, you surf the net for a meat-bot prostitute and click. Then the meat-bot is transported to your house. Who could go back to porn after having access to meat-bots?

Well, maybe we won't have meat-bots beamed to our houses, but there will definitely be socialized prostitution one day. Count on it.

A Review of FFIX

I want to level with you, there are aspects of ffix that are really positive, but there are also aspects of the game which are not, such as the main villains' pants, but I feel the pluses grossly outweigh the negatives and this is a game worth trying.

I think everyone's primary concern with this one is the art style. Most gamers are immediately deterred by the art, but I think you'll find that it won't be an issue for long. While the box art looks pretty unattractive, the game itself looks pretty sweet. There's a subtle cartoon-y aesthetic to the whole game; the settings, the characters, the monsters, and I think you'll find that it makes the fact that this game is a fantasy really stand out. The settings themselves are detailed and creative, and they're very beautiful from an artists' perspective.

The music in this game is also great. It complements the look and feel of this game. I can't say it's stellar, but your definitely getting good music. There are many times when you just become aware of the music's role, even while dungeon crawling.

The second problem for most people who play this game is the main character, Zidane. I don't remember how, but I got over his immature personality real early and without even realizing it. I think this is because the story puts a lot of obstacles in his way right at the beginning, giving his chivalrous nature real showcase. Also remember that characters change over time, especially on a hero's journey, so that initial immaturity of his is short-lived, and by disc three I begin wondering when he got so cool.

FFIX has a really good story based on a basic fantasy premises that takes you back to the roots of the FF series. There's a great kingdom called Alexandria, and recently the queen has become inexplicably cruel and wicked, so her brother arranges for his niece, princess Garnet, to be spirited away by some meretricious thieves in a spectacular fashion. The kidnapping gets complicated, and the escape is messy. Their fabulous mobile-theater/airship crashes in an Evil Forest where the princess is stolen from the wreckage by monsters. Out of responsibility and young idealism, mostly, Zidane chooses to rescue the helpless princess over staying by his family, and he protects her on a long dangerous journey with a dysfunctional party where they must brave the wilderness while being pursued by assassins.

Later on, a mysterious, otherworldly puppeteer with a god complex manipulates the world powers into a short and very one-sided war that leaves all sides miserably torn apart, and our heroes must hunt him down and stop him from completely perverting the planet. Unlike later games in the FF series, FFIX brings back something that was lost somewhere – it's that feeling you used to get when you played a good rpg that you were watching a play. These characters are alive on screen. They emote well and each of them have personalities that come from real human experience. They all grow and overcome their problems over the course of their adventure. I can't remember the last game I played where I knew that the characters had a bond of friendship.

Gameplay is good. Some recent RPG innovations are gone and some more traditional RPG elements are back. The characters have built in classes with specialized equipment and skills. I'm very fond of the way you build up your characters. Your characters learn abilities and magic from armor and weapons. Each piece of equipment in the game has at least one, but usually more, abilities, which your characters will slowly master as you fight. Many of these abilities don't matter in the long run; If you just hold on to your old equipment you can utilized specific abilities when you need them, and there's little need for any monotonous grinding.

Something else about the gameplay I'm really excited by is the stealing. Because your main character is a thief, Square developed an RPG full of monsters with loads of goodies to steal. There's a problem though, this being that you can be overwhelmed by the amount of things there are to steal. In my case, this problem is actually an hindrance. Stealing from bosses can require a lot of patience. Some of them have such attractive goodies that I'll have my party tolerate rounds and rounds of sometimes hardcore punishment because some steal items have such a low success rate. I think its a really neat idea, but it's execution actually takes away from the game.

Don't get upset, but FFIX has two mini-games. One of them is a bullshit card game you can almost completely get away with overlooking, but the other one is actually pretty fun and very rewarding: It's called “Choco-Hot'n'Cold” I think. It's basically a scavenger hunt riding a chocobo, but on a global scale. Cool, right? Who can say no to a scavenger hunt, especially one that rewards you with a full set of ancient samurai armor and the lance they used to kill jesus? The choco-Hot'n'Cold mini-game is actually the only side quest in FFIX, and there isn't much content in this game to distract you from the main story.

There's also an item creation system, and it's very simple. There are special shops in the world called Synthesis Shops, run by craftsman who can take your old, junky equipment and forge it into unique and powerful swords and armor. Finally, some use for my old crap. I found that this is actually a fun way to shop.

The only real problem I have with the gameplay is the ATB. I can't help but feel that the monsters are getting in more turns than me. This is especially obvious if you use the spell Haste to make your characters faster. Haste is definitely redundant. You'll find that all it does is make it so your characters turns come up sooner, and doesn't increase the number of turns they get over time.

Like I said earlier, this game is worth trying. If you nit-pick, you'll miss out. You can nit-pick anything. Being overly critical and approaching everything with a negative slant is real trendy these days. You should always remember that a video game is a piece of art, and also to try to look at art with an open mind. Start with the positives. Try to find something you can appreciate about the art first. It's natural that sometimes, we just hate particular art. Just accept FFIX for all that it is and see if you enjoy the ride.