MY FAVORITE IS THE BEST!

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Okay so seriously now this is an idea I had where...basically. I give a topic and you tell me, and everyone else, why your favorite, whatever the topic is, is the best. I would prefer somewhat serious and as lengthy as you can but you can be goofy as well. But I really want to see how this'll go.

Respond to people telling them how well/badly they got their point across and stuff. But please please no bashing. You can even say you think they're wrong if you want but yeah.

 

 

If this could go somewhere else let me know but this seems the best place for it to be honest. ^^;

 

First topic.

 

Video games. What's your favorite and why is it the best?

 

 

[JellybeanSensei]

Have y'all heard of Fossil Fighters? Because if not, I'm about to give you all a lesson.

 

Fossil Fighters is a game. 

 

Fossil Fighters is a game where you dig up fossils.

 

Fossil Fighters is a game where you fight with said fossils. 

 

Also, it has a pretty good plot about saving the world from the sentient evolutions of dinosaurs, which is pretty badass, and the Professor in the show is super lovable.

[Yui]

Favorite video game for me changes a lot, but overall I'll have to say Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask on the Nintendo 64 (and yes, the N64 version specifically, since I didn't like some aspects of the 3DS version).

 

Legend of Zelda is my Nintendo franchise of choice; I love it to death as I'm sure I've mentioned before.  And I'm certain I've said it before that Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game.  I'm also a big fan of side-quests and stuff, and for a game of its time, size, and production budget (both in money and time), Majora's Mask had lots of that.  On top of all that, there's a lot of plot to the game; more or less everybody you meet has their own life and you somehow get tied up in all of them.  Overall, there wasn't really anything I disliked about Majora's Mask outside of some 3DS features.

 

Not having Navi tag along was a side-bonus.

[GarlandChaos]

Favorite Video Game?

 

Shin. Megami. Tensei. IV.

 

This game was my first foray into the main-series SMT games, and I love how it handles just about every aspect the series is/was known for, both new and old.

 

Miss the Cathedral of Shadows music from previous SMT games? Fear not, quite a few are present in this game's Cathedral.

 

Liked how games like Digital Devil Saga, Persona, and Devil Survivor had voice acting? This game has it too.

 

Getting tired of seeing the same demon designs over and over? Don't worry, quite a few demons have new looks. The Minotaur, Dullahan, and Medusa come to mind.

 

And of course, the difficulty is completely relentless, offering a great deal of challenge to dedicated RPG enthusiasts.

 

The graphics, both 3D areas and models and 2D backgrounds and character/demon sprite/portraits, look great, and the music is as fantastic as ever.

 

As is SMT tradition, there are multiple different endings: Neutral, Chaos, and Law. Neutral is the hardest to obtain because of how many hoops you have to jump through.

 

After you've finished the main game, New Game Plus, which has been an RPG staple ever since Chrono Trigger, is unlocked. You could do the traditional new game +, keeping your level, equipment, etc., OR, and this is why I love this style of NG+ in particular, you can play the game over from the beginning with the mandatory stuff retained, but your level, equipment, etc. reset.

 

In New Game +, there are exclusive Challenge Quests you can partake in, which net you new demons that you can fuse, among other things.

 

Overall, there's just so much I love about SMT IV that it's hard for anything else I've played so far to surpass it. Valkyrie Profile did come really damn close, though.

 

If you're an RPG fanatic who owns a 3DS, there's really no reason you shouldn't pick up SMT IV. So please, if you find a copy, buy it. Experience what I did, and who knows? You might come to have the same mindset on it as me.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Garland gj that was pretty good there :3

 

Also btw attempting to get this put back into Misc where it was moved from. So if this is not in Games later that's why.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Well if it's gonna be stuck in here might as well do what I can with it...

 

Next topic since it's been a while.

 

SONGS

 

Favorite song, why is it the best, go!

[Yui]

I had a hard time deciding but it didn't feel like any other song fit the spot of my favorite so much as Dream Theater's "Octavarium"

[spoiler=Somehow I wound up writing a synopsis of how the song goes]

I tend to like longer songs (even if I don't always listen to them all the way through), and this being a 24-minute beast of a prog metal piece is only the start for me.  The song starts off with a long instrumental intro that eventually establishes two melodies that will appear a couple more times throughout the song.  The first one appears earlier in the same album, but I for one really like the latter; a flute part that starts at 4:33.  Not long after this, we're treated to the second movement of the song, "Someone Like Him".

 

This part isn't really something I typically listen to, but if anyone can pull it off and make me interested, it's probably Dream Theater.  The lyrics detail the story of a man who vows to never be someone like "him"; the average man.  Unsatisfied with the life he'd had, he lives his life extravagantly, but in the end finds himself unsatisfied.  Now all he wants is to be someone like "him", and this story ends where it begins.  Keep note of that "ends where it begins" comment, as it's a prominent theme throughout the song.

 

Next part is "Medicate Me", which goes over the story of a man who has just gotten back up from a coma of thirty years.  Do you recognize the melody used in the chorus?  In any case, in the end, the man ends up going back into a coma, despite an increase in medication.  Once again, this story's ended right where it began; a hospital bed and a coma.

 

After "Medicate Me", we're treated to a nice lengthy Dream Theater-style instrumental.  I've mentioned that I really like Dream Theater's instrumentals before, right?  If I haven't mentioned it, I really like Dream Theater's instrumentals.

 

With the instrumental part over, we move on to "Full Circle".  The lyrics on this part's verses are pretty interesting, since the last word/syllable of one line is also the first word/syllable of the next one.  Up to this point, we've gradually been getting a bit more intense at a time with the song, and it's all going to peak out soon.  After another instrumental break, that is.

 

At around the 18:30 mark, things finally reach the climax.  We're treated to a short set of lines that go and describe the seven previous tracks in the album (you can also hear parts of them as they're discussed in the background), peaking with repeated use of the line "Trapped inside this octavarium".  Not long afterwards, we come to the end of the song.  Recognize the melody played by the strings part?  After a bit more singing (including the line "This story ends where it began") and a bit more instrumental that features the verse pattern of "Someone Like Him", the song comes to a close.

 

The end of the song is interesting in two ways.  First off, two versions of Octavarium seem to exist; one where the end of Octavarium is simply the piano note that begins The Root of All Evil (the first track in this album), and one where the main theme of this song is simply played by a solo flute at the end, similar to the intro of the song.  The former of the two is also interesting in that it not only adheres to the theme of things ending where they start like the latter does, but also breaks a pattern Dream Theater had maintained for seven previous albums, where the last note in one album would be the first note in the next one.

I like this song because it does a wonderful job at playing on the theme of "everything ends where it begins".  Simply on terms of composition and how the song is laid out and performed, it's quite possibly my favorite song of all; definitely my favorite that Dream Theater has put out.  I also appreciate its 24-minute length, since it means I can listen to it for quite a while and it won't grow repetitive.