...Fantasy Finally

With only days to go until I hear the sound of fabulous new premium Final Fantasy dropping through the letterbox and with me getting a tad giddy at the prospect, I thought I would channel the excitement into an extremely short Exposé on my, frankly obsessive Final Fantasy world I live in.

This really doesn't have been be explained to my closest friends who I repeatedly bore (and drag to concerts etc...) but for those who didn't know....ahem.....

I'm not going to bore you to death with the history of my obsession....yawn....zzzzzzzzzz

I'd actually just like to draw your attention to the latest FFXIII-2 soundtrack of which I had imported from Japan !!! (...arm and a leg would have been cheaper...) I just have to tell someone about it before I explode so it might as well be you !!!

This 4 disc masterpiece composed by Masashi Mamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta & Mitsuto Susuki, I have to say pleasantly blew me away me as it's not the usual FF offerings is really different. They have gone hardcore uproar.....and I LOVE IT !!!

Yes, there is still the usual orchestral themed masterpieces and emotional ballad tracks which are the main staple of final fantasy. In between though they have come up with level & area themes that are a mix between chillout grooves that mix into hardcore house and drum 'n' bass versions which are credited as "agressive" mixes which I can only assume are for when the gaming action turn into a battles, as it inevitably does in FF. I'll have to wait and see...

I was also surprised that all the lyrics are in English, especially for an import. (I'm not going to mention at this point, good old Leona Lewis on the previous FF XIII soundtrack... as that was surely someones idea of a joke and surely the real reason, FF XIII got so much stick......damn I just mentioned it....)

The text inside the box isn't in English however so still no idea what they are talking about (I never did get the hang of Japanese Kanji...)

Anyhooooo, click on the links to get an idea of the diversity of this fabulous 4 disc masterpiece (I did not upload to YouTube myself by the way, as that would be naughty and I'll leave that kind of behaviour to others...ahem)

• Caius's Theme (Your typical Final Fantasy Orchestral Goodness...)
• New Bodhum + Aggressive Mix (The new and improved style - dance mix kicks in about 5.25...)
• Worlds Collide (Another of the new style with ridiculous lyrics sang in, I think they call it rap ;o)...)
• Xanadu, Palace of Pleasure (And this is obviously 80's American Comedy TV Show theme tune without a doubt...)

Although it's not surprising an outrageous fan like myself hasn't stopped listening to this album, as they can't really help it, I can't wait to see the tracks in there proper places in the game... So for now I think this little outburst has satisfied my FF pangs until I lock myself in a room on Friday with my limited edition FF XIII-2 PS3 game and spend another 140 hours of my life moogling with the chocobos.
Right, where did I put my Yuna outfit...???

Aaaah, that's better.... ;o)

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After an extremely successful Game Design module (...still doing the occasional jig btw) it's time to turn my hand to programming and put my Bender head on (well my other one anyway....)

This is the module that I am least concerned about since as I do web development in my day job, so programming is part of that.

The first lesson started with the obligatory "Hello World" which I must have done a million times in a million different languages (exaggeration inserted for effect) times before and I expect that the first few weeks not to be too taxing on the brain for me at least.

But I am not about to be all dismissive about it either. It's good to go back to basics every now and again, as I have no doubt picked up some incredible bad habits along the way and I definitely don't "know it all".

I'm really looking forward to learning XNA, which I have never used before and also, I'm only guessing about how you would actually code games at this point. I could be barking up the wrong tree...

Matt seems cool and knows his stuff so looking forward to seeing how the module progresses.

So for the time being.... Console.WriteLine("PLAYER ONE READY");