Sometimes I really feel like I am still an adolescent, and not just because I routinely show the maturity level of fabric softener. There are other reasons. For instance, I swore a while back that I would absolutely never, under any circumstances, ever, purchase another video game, ever. Boy, did this quickly prove to be a lie. (I was six.)
So naturally, when the latest, greatest, super-hyped, revolutionary, end-all, be-all video game hit American markets in September, you can imagine what I did. I ran right down to the local Toys "R" Us (Toys "S" Nosotros, in Spanish). Then, I took $54 out of my pocket. Then -- like any true adolescent -- I thought about girls.
A while later, what I did was that I bought the video game, titled "Final Fantasy VIII". Clearly I, like several hundred thousand other consumers, wasn't thrown off that there have been seven (or VII) previous "Final" Fantasies in this particular series. No way we're missing out on a major happening, that's our motto. This one could be the actual honest-to-God Final Fantasy -- one grand Final installment, putting to rest the giant cumulative Fantasy, once and for all! (i.e. until the holidays.)
Now, I am no electronic gaming "aficionado" (literal translation: "a fish in Otto"), but I remember quite vividly from my childhood, which ended sometime last television season, that all successful video games in the past have had one thing in common: ethnic plumbers. Indeed, the true classics, for the classic Nintendo system, contained as their main characters classic Italian-looking plumbers in overalls with names like Mario, Luigi, Grimaldi, Linguini, Puccini and Rotunda. Which, as anyone will tell you, are all highly unusual names for overalls, but kids and adults alike just adored these plumbers anyway. You could make the plumbers move in exactly two directions (left and right). My plumbers invariably ended up falling into ditches.
In the revolutionary new Final Fantasy game, however, you are not asked to manipulate any ethnic plumbers. Not even any hedgehogs. Instead, you get to control -- this is an actual fact -- an eighteen-year-old sword-wielding mercenary soldier. Hilarity ensues, as it can only in that fun, freewheeling, eighteen-year-old sword-wielding mercenary soldier kind of way. For realism purposes, you can move in many directions, including left, not right, over there to your left, and south for the winter. You even get to name your character at the beginning of the game. (I named mine "ethnic plumber".)
The plot of the game goes something like this: first you, played by you, pass a test to become a soldier by fighting a big machine that looks like a crab. Then you find out that an evil sorceress is trying to take over the world, and because of this you fight your friend. But surprise! Everyone you know all grew up in an orphanage together. Except the princess, who you bring back to life, but who knows why, as she is dressed in an annoying shade of blue. Then monsters fall from the moon, and so you have to fight your friend again. And then another sorceress, who is more evil than the first sorceress, and then a third sorceress, who is basically evil incarnate, and then at the very end of the game, a fourth sorceress, who is a Republican.
So the point is, you are pretty much just whacking successfully away at evil, in every which direction. Or at least this is what is supposed to happen. My characters, apparently, have not been told this. Instead of actually advancing the story line, they keep themselves busy by wandering around aimlessly and being attacked by mutated wildlife. I have played this game for a grand total of just over sixty hours, and I do have the flying red thing mind you, but the gang is so far behind where it should be, with regard to defeating sorceresses, that everyone involved is strongly considering quitting and going to plumbing school.
But wait, teenage mercenaries! (Note: not you, specifically.) Help is never far away. Throughout the Fantasy, your characters are able to call to their collective defense a bunch of big friendly good guy monsters, which include a fifty-foot duck that flaps around and shoots lightning, a three-headed dog from Hell who makes you do three of everything (but what three-headed dog from Hell doesn't?), and a gigantic anti-Christ made out of bats. (All are former employees of the Internal Revenue Service.)
Even though everyone else in the world is better at video games than I am, and when I say this I fully include overweight golden retrievers, I am still inclined to think that they (the video games) might be a worthwhile solution to the recent budget surplus. Congress could allocate $54 apiece to everyone in the nation under age 18 so that they may all have a copy of "Final Fantasy VIII". Our nation's adolescents will spend long days summoning monsters, outwitting fearsome dragons and casting magical spells. Then, when they get home, they can play the video game.
And when the general public saves the universe from numerous very bad and evil things, just four minutes after turning on the game machine, everybody can eagerly await the next upcoming "Final" Fantasy, by going back to thinking about girls.
