FFXIII-2 DLC Jihl Nabaat coliseum battle strategy

Instead of dishing out only the playable characters from the first FFXIII, Square Enix released Jihl Nabaat, the silver-haired antagonist in the first game. Surprisingly, Nabaat is a much tougher opponent than both Lightning and Amodar. This is not a battle that you can go in unprepared with the usual ravager and commando decks. Most tough battles in FFXIII-2 can be conquered with ravagers, commandos, and sentinels, but Nabaat practically wrote her own rules for the fight and thus call for a different sort of strategy.

For starters, Nabaat is practically immune to any sort of attacks. Her most powerful attack, Sadistic Surge, will most likely kill at least a single character, and it even ignores defensive advantages like the Tortoise paradigm. Nabaat doesn’t fight alone. She summons Azure Behemoths, Nightblade Pumas, and Psicom Wardens to aid her. That means for most of the fight, you’ll be fighting 6 separate characters. Thankfully, they aren’t too powerful and can be ignored. Defeating the individual monsters won’t do much good because she’ll just resummon them in full health. There is a way to defeat the monsters in a strategic order to defeat her, but that strategy is not recommended.

Twisted Metal: the reason why online passes don't work

Publishers combat the used and rental games market by using online passes in a form of a code in new copies of games that must be activated to play online multiplayer. Online passes wasn’t a problem for me until I rented a copy of Twisted Metal for the PS3, and as a long time fan, I was thrilled to try the game to see if I wanted to buy it new. The available single player, however, did nothing to make me want to play more. I can definitely feel the potential for some multiplayer fun in what was offered, but as I keep progressing through the game, the challenges just keep getting more and more unbalanced. When it becomes apparent that everybody in the arena was only aiming for me, it really breaks the fun.

In online multiplayer, I don’t expect that to happen, but I don’t get to try out any online multiplayer because of the online pass issue. That’s a real shame because the only way to play any multiplayer at all is through local split screen, and local multiplayer is never representative of the online multiplayer experience. Not getting to try out the online portion made me put away my $60 and return the game thinking I would only revisit Twisted Metal when it’s much cheaper.

Sony is capable of doing great trials, however, with the recent release of the Killzone 3 multiplayer and its demo on the PSN, which gives players a limited time to play the multiplayer. It’s enough for players to get a feel for what the game has to offer while teasing the player of new items by gaining levels. Maybe they can do the same for Twisted Metal. Online passes with a limited trial; that’s the way to go.

Q&A session with Jenova Chen of Journey from CAAM’s Play Salon

Journey just came out this week, and there has been nothing but praise for the game. I, of course, loved it and I’m sure all those other people that journeyed with me loved it too. Thatgamecompany’s games are always able to come up with game experiences that have never been done before.

After GDC, I was fortunate enough to attend a Q&A session with Jenova Chen and other game designers in San Francisco at an event called The Play Salon held by the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). Here, I’ve transcribed the event, specifically what Jenova Chen said in light of Journey’s release. With the game finished, Chen was ready to answer questions about game design with what he learned during the development of Journey as well as all of his other games. Many of the questions asked were fairly unclear, but Chen was able to answer them clearly and concisely. That said, I replaced the questions with simple subject lines and paraphrases. 

There are a lot of insightful thoughts on design and fans of thatgamecompany’s works should have a lot of fun reading about them. I was always curious about how thatgamecompany is always able to communicate the game mechanics and objectives without beating the player over the head with tutorials and guides. Guiding a player through the vast desert was no small task, and Chen and his team at thatgamecompany really mastered the level design in the game. Some other interesting insights include his method of game design, his take on the current innovation of games, and his perception of the different platforms from console to mobile and PC.