Evan Sims

Final Fantasy XI Chat & Macro Commands

Decided to throw this together for my own quick reference. It’s based in part by a guide by Amanda Dean (Nalyr). These commands can be entered into the chat window (hitting space in the usual keyboard figuration on PC.) These commands can also be used to design macros for your convenience. Commands are broken into the follow syntax: /command [optional] {required}.

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Thoughts on Returning to Final Fantasy XI

So as many of you know, either because of my Twitter stream or because you know me personally, I’ve made a return to Final Fantasy XI along with my friends Ryan, Will and Jim. I began playing FFXI when early 2002, when I was accepted into the beta for the PlayStation 2. At the time I really didn’t have much faith in the game, or interest to be honest. I was more excited about getting a free hard drive unit for my PS2 than the game itself. That’s probably why I never made it past level 8. That and the fact that I was trying to play it on my tiny, shitty television at the time.

Fast forward to November 2002, and I’m over in Arizona visiting Jim. He wasn’t very interested in the game either, but my consumer whorism got the better of me, and I talked him into trying it by buying him a copy. We headed to EB and picked up FFXI, and the rest, as they say, is history. Jim’s girlfriend Stephanie joined us, and together we started a guild. In time, the guild grew and grew, thanks almost single handedly to great efforts of Stephanie and Jim. The guild eventually grew to become one of the better known linkshells on our server, and we made a lot of friends during the time we played. But all good things must come to an end, and ultimately the guild was disbanded.

Recently the idea of returning to FFXI was brought up. I had tried to load up FFXI several times since the guild, but as I expected I couldn’t get into it. With the exception of Ultima Online - which was to thank for my meeting Ryan, Will and Jim in the first place - I’ve never played an MMO by myself. Or, I should say, I’ve never seriously played one. I load them up and then get bored. So I was very pleased to hear that the guys wanted to go back to FFXI and jumped at the opportunity.

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Bioshock: Greatest FPS Ever?

So, I just finished Bioshock this evening. What a crazy, brilliant game. The game mechanics and level design are top notch, there’s a very deep and involved storyline, and the gameplay doesn’t get stale after the first five levels. I have to hand it to them, I think they may have built the greatest first person shooter to date.

I loved the hacking minigames, the “virtue tests” involving the children (and subsequent alternate endings), and the plasmids were a blast. Not a dull moment in the game. My only complaint? I suppose the ending left me a little wanting… the ending boss fight wasn’t overly difficult, but more importantly it kind of of felt unfinished. You get there, he dies, roll one of three possible endings, fin. Regardless though, total blast, and I can’t recommend the game more.

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“Lost Planet: Extreme Condition” for PC is Gorgeous

Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: I’m not a hardcore gamer. I may be looking at designing them for my career, but I don’t enjoy spending all day playing games- unless it’s a game that really pulls me in (which hasn’t happened since Final Fantasy X.) I’m what the industry defines as a casual gamer. To make matters worse, I’m a loyal PC gamer, a tier of gaming that is seeing a rather ugly drought in new titles right now. I don’t like playing consoles in general (except perhaps for the Wii), and if I buy a console I usually do so only at the end of it’s lifetime. To put this in perspective: I haven’t owned a console since the PlayStation 2. Yeah. Shameful.

Why do I bring this up? Because I’ve just discovered a game on the PC that’s been out on Xbox 360 for awhile now, and I’m in awe of it’s visuals. It’s called Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. You can find it on Steam, and the damn thing is gorgeous if you’ve got the hardware to support it. You’ll need a beefy processors and an even beefier graphics card- I can’t even crank up the graphics all the way on my NVIDIA 8800 GTS 640MB and Quad Xeon Mac Pro. (Sidenote: If you’ve got an 8800GTS and are having crash issues; check the Steam help pages for a link to some beta drivers that fix the issue right up.)

The screenshot above isn’t CG, or pre-rendered video. That’s real, in-game cutscenes rendered in real time. Like I said, the visuals are just incredible. The detail that Capcom put into everything - the environments, the characters, the animations, the special effects - is really just top notch, and I haven’t seen anything like it before.

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