Xenoblade Chronicles (2011)
So it’s another up, down, will it won’t it ride on the Bitcoin rollercoaster lately, or whatever other cryptocurrency you’re having yourself, and for us losers it’s another hard luck story. If I’d only been a few years older, or a bit more willing to put money into dubious sources, or if only I hadn’t destroyed that old hard-drive under police duress for reasons which cannot be specified – I could have sold one or two of them bitcoins, whatever they are, and made millions off them. Like you wouldn’t have soiled yourself at the prospect of doubling your money to a mere eighty quid.
It all comes down to knowing how things are gonna pan out, doesn’t it? You could have been asked to put twenty dollars into Microsoft in the very earliest days and thought that it was a waste of a score. I suppose the problem is that there simply were’t enough DeLoreans manufactured tfor everyone to enjoy time travel, so most of us mere mortals had to be good little boys and girls and submit to the passage of time instead, which is as dreadfully slow and unprofitable as you can get.
But you don’t know a vaguely criminal, definitely dodgy Northern Irish bankruptcy vehicle to do time travel, you know. You acn use the Monado instead, a red-shelled lightsaber type of weapon that’ll be introduced to you within the first ten minutes of Xenoblade Chronicles and referenced thereafter, oh, about nine million times, just o make sure you get it. The game’s protagonist, Shulk, who incidentally looks quite good in his udnerwear, wields the Monado but is haunted by all sorts of grim and grisly visions of the future. There ain’t no stock market or cryptocurrency on Bionis, the biological living yin to the other half of the world, the yang of Mechonis. Anyway I won’t throw anymore proper nouns at you at this point, except for maybe Dogecoin, because there’s an awful lot of meat and bones in Xenoblade Chronicles to get through.
No kidding, this is one of the most expansive games out there. As you get older and creakier like me, and this is a very unfortunate fact of life, games that advertise themselves as being 80 or 100 hour adventures simply doesn’t register anymore. If anything, it’d put you off. You already have a full-time job and some children holding you back from your gaming ambitions, for God’s sake, another massive commitment will only mean that your dog will get less and less walkies, and he won’t like that one bit.
Or of course, you could innovate – the original Xenoblade is abailable portably now, although you’ll be more likely to pick up the Switch version because the 3DS version needs to be played on one of those newfangeld 3DS re-releaes, the ew Nintendo 3DS Lite or whatever (I take back what I said about proper nouns), one of about three games to do so and it still looks like someone’s poured stock granules and rainbow sprinkles all over the screen, so sod that. Get the Wii version, which will probably only go up in price (a little stoks and futures tip for you there), or more likely the Switch version and sink your teeth in from there.
But bloody hell, it’s easy to burn out. There’s hundreds of quests in the massive world of Xenoblade, and if you’re gonna go on the hunt for 100% then your playtme really will get into three figures. This is exactly the type of hardcore, lengthy, I might even say epic adventure that the Wii was crying out for, unfortunately a little bit too late in the day. But you knnow what it is about true art, and artists like you and I – we may not be fully appreciated in this lifetime, right?
I’d appreciate it if the characters in battle would stop screaming the same five voiced lines at the top of their lungs in every single thousand battles you’ll partake in, firstly because the repetition gets a bit annoying but also because it really becomes sensory overload. There are so many metres and tutorials and dashes and dials and windows popping that your head will start spinning, but at the heart of it it’s still all about making sure your numbers are better than the opponents.
You won’t be doing that through your common and garden grinding, no sir, that’s where your quests and such will come in. You can just have the battles be automatically controlled anyway, although it’s much more fun joining in – otherwise you’d be left with a Final Fantasy 12 scenario. You leave your guys out on their own, and they’ll fare about as well as the life savings you threw into Yahoo or Tumblr, where their line graph went into such a spiral it almost went backwards.
It’s really what you’d eloquently have to call a proper lush game, with some pretty memorable moments – sorry to slap you with some more proper nouns that’ll mean absolutely nowt to people with no knowledge of the game, but you won’t forget stepping out onto the vast expanses of Gaur Plains for the first time. Or how about seeing Satorl Marsh in all its majesty at nighttime? Even on the original Wii version, this was a beautiful game, so much so that the Switch Definitive Edition didn’t do a huge amount to improve upon it. Of course, the music is different class as well, with varous night-time themes in particular finding a home on many’s a relaxing game music playlist on YouTube – no finer homework motivator out there.
You might think you can just dip your toes into crytpocurrency, or any kind of speculation from that matter. But seasoned capitalists know that you want to trample all over the working classes, you’ve got to dedicate yourself full time to the endeavour. It’s the same with Xenoblade – playing the odd half-hour here and there isn’t going to get you anywhere. What’s the matter, can’t you back yourself? You’ve got to give it full commitment. Indeed, Xenoblade is the type of game that you’ll be throwing entire days into, consulting guides, combatting an ever-increasing to-do list, so much so that it becomes one of those games that makes you take stock of your life and wonder if you wouldn’t be better off self-improving instead.
Go out there and get yourself a missus. Otherwise you could risk emerging from your bedroom months later, white as a sheet and with flies permanently stuck to your sunken eyeballs. You’ll have missed the whole summer, but even worse than that you’ll have missed the rush on BurkeyCoin, which ofers absolutely no security, cannot be transferred, and will forever be worth sweet Fanny Adams. But it’ll look great in your wallet, just like Xenoblade Chronicles would look great in any gaming collection.
27 August 2021
Burkey Gaming 