However, I had an experience today with a security question and answer that I initially enjoyed.  Soon afterward, I was shocked and dismayed.

I found myself unable to log into a website, having forgotten my username (and my password, though I was not as sure of that).  Said website did not allow me to rediscover my username – although there was the feature, it asked me to call a toll-free number to do so.

Being a dutiful customer, I obliged.  I had the following exchange when I got to a representative.

Me: I seem to have misplaced my username.  Could you help me recover it?

Rep: Sure thing.  We just have to verify against your security question.  Let me look it up.

Rep: “What is the *mumble*”

Me: Sorry, could you repeat that?

Rep: “What is the favorite haunt of the most respectable brother?”

What the hell kind of question is that?  I probably got it from a novel or something.  “Most respectable brother” is a hint – that implies there are multiple, so it was probably the Amber series (which appropriately begins with Nine Princes in Amber).    So, then, it was a matter of which was most respectable.  That’s probably Eric, from a governmental perspective, which meant…

Me: Uh, “Amber”?

Rep: I’m sorry, that’s not what I have here.  Let’s verify something else.

Damn!  Okay, so “most respectable” was probably Benedict, who avoided involvement in politics.  When Corwin finally tracked him down, he mentioned that he had been in…

Me: Ah, I just thought of it.  It’s “Avalon”. [the question was actually different, but less specific in context]

Rep: That’s it!

We continued on our merry way, and my newly-relearned account was set up with its new password.  As the conversation ended,

Rep: By the way, you have a great security question.

Don’t I, though?

This was, unfortunately, the end of Act III of my little tragedy.

When I logged into my account, I was faced with the reason I couldn’t look up my username online: They changed security question policies.

So now I was faced with a dozen or so options, all of them the same bland stuff:

• What is your [extended family member]‘s middle/maiden name?
• What was the name of your first pet?
• What street did you grow up on?
• Where did you go for [elementary/junior/high] school?

The worst part was that I had to pick multiple.  By the time I had narrowed down the questions which weren’t blindingly obvious from just about any social networking site, or alumni information one could find by googling, and so on, I had picked the best questions.  They were still awful.

The worst part is, they had found the perfect solution for me.  I now recall (since I have a little more context) gleefully picking a question that was so obscure that only I (or perhaps immediate family, if they did some research) could answer.  In fact, it was difficult enough that I couldn’t on the first attempt, because it constrained the subject matter to a specific interpretation.  And the company changed it (possibly because people had picked expletive-filled questions so that representatives would have to say them).

However, from my point of view, the point of a security question is security.  I’m a weird guy (if you can’t tell from the site), so I could answer a question like this on-the-fly.  But, more importantly, nobody else could.

And it’s not like only I could create a question like this.  A more sociable person might ask a question about where they met a good friend.  A Lord of the Rings buff could ask who survived a victorious single combat with a Balrog (hint: not actually Gandalf, since he didn’t survive).  A statistician might ask “What is the simplest explanation for the answer to the Monty Hall problem?” (Assuming they could reliably come up with “You have more information.”).  My siblings could probably ask “What is your grandmother’s favorite expression?” (to which there are multiple colorful, correct, and secure responses).

Asking what your first pet’s name is may be a good question – from the perspective that most people (in the US) probably have an answer.  But it’s not secure, since there is a heavy skew towards certain names (Bowser, Spot, Fluffykins McGee).  And asking which highschool you went to is just asking for some facebook stalking.  Even googling might get you that information.

We’ve seen the system as implemented elsewhere fail multiple times – most notably when Sarah Palin’s home email address was hijacked because the answer to her secret question was public knowledge.

So my request to anyone making an authentication system that includes security questions – let me write my own.  Please?  I have so much fun with it.  It’s like writing trivia tailored to myself.

However, Journal #10′s 7th Saga segment, posted just today, has in my view wronged a game.  I do not protest the overall treatment; I agree fully with the overall premise that 7th Saga is bad.

However, since I played the game to completion for the first time just a few months ago, I feel obligated to point out some incorrect or overblown parts of Jake Alley’s article.

First off, the article points out that because 7th Saga didn’t sell very well, we didn’t get actually good games like Dragon Quests, Terranigma, and so on.  This is a perfectly good opportunity for the article to be written as a tragedy – because Elnard, which became 7th Saga in the US, was actually a much more bearable game.  Its difficulty was magnified three to four times.  My guess is that it was partly on purpose and partly on accident – and, because Enix did not localize the game correctly, it received appropriately poor reviews and thus they didn’t localize more games.

I would argue, though, that the game not only has redeeming qualities, there are worse games.  Arcana, for example, is a grind-fest every bit as simplistic as 7th Saga mechanically.  Its story starts out dark, but asymptotically approaches the ultimate bland point of RPG plot.  7th Saga at least has a few decent betrayal scenes scattered throughout as well as a couple of randomly generated events that can spice things up.

I’ll address a few points that I particularly think are debatable, and then leave it alone.

Part 2 claims that 7th Saga “has no heart” because it is completely unlike the lively, happy worlds of other games.  To me, this is its draw.  A minimalist world, with small patches of humanity surviving here and there amongst monsters that actually look monstrous is different from other games in a good way.  The concept of each of the characters being entirely selfish is something that should make you think.  It was intentional – even the priest character starts to lose his faith when confronted with the unbridled self-interest of his companions.  The elf starts on the journey as a flight of fancy, and has to adjust quickly when things start getting serious.  This plot is there if you look for it – there is a heart, although it is told one line at a time.  The character development is brief, but dark by design.

Part 4 claims that all boss battles are one-on-one, and scale to your level.  Setting aside the localization difference (which screwed up the scaling) and the argument about status effects (other than de-buffs, there is one status effect in the game – de-buffs are effective against all enemies including bosses), this implies the fact that duels between adventurers are “boss battles” when only two are required in the entire game.  Real boss battles don’t scale at all.

Part 5 is absolutely true, and I posted specifically about it in September.  This is the primary reason the article should have the tragedy of 7th Saga, and not an excuse to bash a game that deserves our pity rather than ire.  I will point out, though, that the middle third of the game flows very differently for Lux and Esuna than it does for the other characters, and there are inherent character compatibilities that can make replays varied.  Among other things, your chosen companion can betray you when you get a rune if you are incompatible.

Part 6 claims that the game doubles in size at its “halfway point” – which was closer to the four-fifths point for me – and that you “lose your companion”.  You absolutely do not lose your companion for the final section of the game.  The game difficulty does spike significantly, especially in the US version, but the world is not exactly the same.  If you’re piling on reasons to hate a game, there is no reason to make things up (or misremember them, and not look up what actually happens).

Is 7th Saga a bad game?  Yes, absolutely.  But I don’t think it is the worst game on the system by any means.

I don’t usually visit the big booths on the Expo Hall floor, since – by and large – the same content is out in a few weeks, and coverage on it is out in a few days.  I did try out the intro for Mass Effect 3, which was fun enough, but not worth the 2-hour wait.  The best under-the-radar game I saw there was Shoot Many Robots – a co-operative, 1-4 player shoot-em-up, which feels like a post-apocalyptic, hick-themed Metal Slug.  Some brief bits follow:

• Got to (briefly) meet Rob Boyd of Zeboyd Games, developers of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World – and, soon, Penny Arcade Adventures 3.
• Tried out League of Legends: Dominion.  It’s faster, but still LoL.  I think they’ll have a hard time balancing it, but it is definitely a good way to keep the game fresh.
• Good Old Games was passing out cookies.  They recently released Ultima I-III ($6), and Ultima IV (free!).
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2′s demo indicates (to a non-Monsters vet) that it is like Pokemon, but with a much more adaptable leveling system.  I think it’s worth a look.  The free shirt I got cannot be worn in public by a guy with any sense of shame.
• Wakfu, a free tactical MMORPG long in development, is nearing release.  It promises an EVE-esque fully player-driven economy and world.  The demo indicates there will be lots of beating up of cute bunnies, but the lengthy class list does seem interesting, and the art style is certainly unique.
• Saw some pretty good cosplay, including a particularly awesome Recette (from Recettear).
• World of Tanks was there.  Didn’t visit the booth, but I did get to see a guy in WW2 gear swigging a beer while sitting in the cupola of a tank.
• Retronauts’ panel, the only one I actually made it to, was awesome.  Didn’t get to hear why Suikoden II is awful (sad), but I did get to see mass confusion when someone claimed the NES’ Rockin’ Cats was their favorite game.  I may have been one of a few people in the room who played it – and I don’t remember much.  Otherwise, the panel was mostly much-repeated complaints about well-known games (for example, FF6 is buggy as hell and has several irrelevant characters).  I enjoy Retronauts as much for the banter as anything else, though, so that was fine – it’s also awesome to see the well-versed people in the panel doing so well in the industry.

Finally, a couple of low points.

I missed out on the League of Legends tournament this year.  Signups were available Friday and Saturday, but both days the entry lines were poorly organized (a flyer at the hotel basically said “hey, line up anywhere you want!” but there was only one entry line).  I doubt our team would’ve done that well, but we have 2/3 of our 3rd place team from last year, so we wouldn’t have died off that easily.

This may be strange for someone who’s “only” been to three PAX events, but they are getting noticeably more commercial.  Part of this is growth – which is natural, and not too bad.  All that part does is make badges sell out months ahead of time and crowd the Expo Hall.  But since game companies are increasingly making major announcements at PAX, it becomes as much a media event as a gamers’ event.  I saw more media badges than ever, and I know they’re not that hard to get.  I could probably get one for this site, crappy and bare-bones as it is, if I wanted to fill out the paperwork – much less a more formal site like videolamer.  In 2009 and 2010 – and even 2011 East – the convention felt more informal – something organized from the roots of gamer society up.  Seeing the ever-larger displays like Firefall, Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and The Old Republic makes it seem fully organized by their respective developers.  Even League of Legends and World of Tanks had huge, flash-and-microphone-heavy booths.  Nintendo’s was actually quite tame and felt more appropriate for a gamers’ convention – just the demos, please, no need to make a big deal out of everything.

That said, I would still continue going to PAX for the atmosphere and the attendees.  It’s not often I get to see cool cosplay, chat with people in lines, randomly come across indie developers, and do Pokemon or Dragon Quest multiplayer.  With a couple panels like Retronauts or Kajiya Productions’ on localization, it’s a really cool event even if you don’t set foot into the expo hall.  I do wish they had a PAX Midwest, but I don’t think any cities out here have an atmosphere like Seattle’s or Boston’s.

I’d apologize for not covering it yet (after all, it’s been three whole weeks!), but honestly I doubt enough people read it who care.  Might sound a little crazy, but this is more an outlet for myself – writing on my own interests – than out of a particular desire to share, which is a nice enough side effect.

So anyway – PAX East.  Far and away the coolest part of it was meeting these people – one in an unofficial capacity and the other set in an official one.  I went to Kajiya productions’ localization panel Friday night.  Don’t get me wrong – I love the translation for Phoenix Wright (Roger Wright?), and Tactics Ogre is nothing short of fantastic – but the best part of the panel was that someone was talking about it.  And the panelists argued that was the best thing we could do to help them – spread awareness of the importance of localization.

Talking about localization has been a hobby of mine for awhile. Doing it’s another, but while I enjoy doing it in a fan-capacity (re: three projects nearly complete in five years), I like it all the more so in commercial games. I may have not at all known what I was doing back in 2008 – it’s a meandering article – but the localization of some games, especially Revelations: Persona, have captivated me since their release: What brought about these bizarre decisions? How did they make the game feel so natural, despite the translation’s crazy premises (aside from the decision to change portraits, sprites, and text to claim to take place in the USA, it’s not a bad translation)? How does one work on an actual game?

Thankfully the Kajiya guys came in to speak to the last two.  One – know your audience. The Atlus translation team didn’t bother to do jokes literally, instead adding movie references and other such nonsense.  Two – generally, much the same way fan translation happened, at the time.  Text files.  More recently that’s changing, and most interestingly the most recent effort they did used the now-defunct-or-getting-there Google Wave. It sounds like there’s a market for something like Wave but more geared towards translation – but what would I know, I’m just a measly programmer. Said market’s probably pretty small.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is, this was a really cool panel to go to. I’ve already thanked those involved twice, so I’ll go ahead and link to the youtube videos of the panel instead. I guarantee the panel wasn’t sideways when I saw it.

Among the interesting trivia:

• FF7 was done in around three weeks by a bilingual employee of Square who wasn’t familiar with writing (one of the big issues; to be able to localize, you need to be able to write).  Its justified mocking here was the main reason Square started forming an actual localization team.  Off course that makes sense.
• The names in Phoenix Wright were decided upon collaboratively. The translator, Alexander O. Smith, put together lists of first and last names for Capcom to pick from.  His original top choice for the titular character was Roger Wright for the double pun on his original name, Naruhodo (“I see”).
• One of the biggest issues in localizing FFX and FFXII (I think the former had more issues in this dept., personally, old man) was that there was no budget/tech to modify lip syncs for the language.  Thus there is a lot of people saying “yep” and “nope” in FFX – the fastest to say – and in FFXII, there is a good deal of dialogue crammed in wherever the speaker’s mouth is offscreen.
• Finally, we missed out on something really big.  The implication was that the Kajiya guys were working on a project that got canned.  I’m open to speculation – Mother 3, SaGa2 (ha, only I care about that) and Xenoblade would’ve been my guesses.  Some major project that never made it stateside.

• Final Fantasy XIII

I’m sure lots of people will disagree with this based on the battle system being innovative.  It is.  Too bad you have to get through 40 hours of Press X ELSE Press Forward, Lightning’s “I’m too cool to have my backstory explained”, Hope’s “I’m too pathetic to stab the most deserving character in the game”, Snowe’s “I’m too thick to realize that everything I try has the opposite effect”… all of the stories are explicitly written to be as heart-wrenching, obvious, (and interconnected, where feasible in the slightest) as possible – this isn’t “Hey, I came up with a good story, let’s share”, it’s “You know, this would be more sad if X died”.  It’s a set of coincidences that makes Tintin’s continued survival look ordinary.  It’s not a good story, it’s just plain manipulative – it’s a soap opera.  Paradigm Shifting is sort of fun, but it wasn’t enough to make me continue playing the game.

Seriously.  I rag on FFXII because of Vaan alone.  Every single character in FFXIII except Sazh is worse than Vaan.

• Nintendo of America being Nintendo of America

Xenoblade, Mother games, Last Window, Another Code R, taking forever with DQ9… The DS and Wii have a lot of hits, but Nintendo of America refuses to bring some of the more interesting ones over.  Granted – they’re not solely responsible for the lack of Xenoblade in our American diets, but they’re acting an awful lot like Sony of America did when Working Designs was on its last legs.  Reggie has supposedly admitted to being a Dragon Quest IX nut; I don’t pretend to believe he’s solely responsible for these games not making it over, but surely he could push for interesting games a little more?

• Dead Franchises, especially JRPGs

Suikoden has been in hibernation since the slow-starting Tierkreis and the producer of the Wild ARMs games quit Media.Vision (relegating its releases to the likes of the ho-hum Wizard of Oz RPG).  That leaves two of the longest, most consistently good RPG franchises more or less dead in the water.  Cing is apparently on the edge of bankruptcy, making continued Another Code / Hotel Dusk games unlikely at best.  Final Fantasy, of course, hasn’t been good since {n <= X here}.

At release, I picked up Etrian Odyssey III. I finally started it up and the class variety is much better – and class choice more significant, it seems – than in the original.  I never played II, but I don’t think I’m missing out on much for not having played it.  If you’re in the mood for a long dungeon-crawler with lots of cute art and frequent frustration, it’s probably right up your alley.  I think it’s parallel to mine, but not quite exactly right.

More recently I picked up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.  Most any franchise that is inspired by Journey to the West (or Saiyuki, or whatever you’d like to call it) has at least the core of a good story.  Enslaved has three decent characters, a lot of frustrating gameplay, and the occasional beautiful view.  I finished it, and I’m convinced it’s really not worth release price.

Finally, I found a cool thread at NeoGAF that discussed an iOS game called Game Dev Story.  Although it was briefly tempting to pick up an iPhone (why yes, I will consider it seriously for a dinky $4 game), there is a free-to-download PC version.  The thread calls it a “sequel”, but it seems to be the same game with a slightly different feature set.  Given it’s incredibly awesome (devoured most of a weekend), I made a quick guide for the layman English speaker.

My main purpose in posting here is to point out the nice swath of RPG/strategy (or in one case, just incredibly interesting) games that are coming out in March.

Infinite Space is a Sega RPG on DS that looks to have more breadth and depth than most of Sega’s fare; I’m hoping it turns out as good or better than Valkyria Chronicles.  From what I’ve heard so far, you get to do some exploring reminiscent of Skies and command a fleet of ships, assigning roles to various crew members and such.  It sounds very interesting, and I haven’t read anything negative about it yet – but it’s a bit early for that, obviously.  It’s out 3/16.

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is an adventure / survival game for the Wii where the main character wanders alone in a post-apocalyptic world filled mostly with ruins.  Although it has combat, it sounds like the focus is more on puzzle and story elements.  I love any game with a somber or lonely tone (if only because they’re so rare).  It sounded for a while like this was going to be yet another Japan-only game, but XSeed picked it up and it will also release 3/16.

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love is appropriately titled, given it is a PS2 game.  It will also release on the Wii in a less-deluxe set.  It’s the first game in the much-vaunted Sakura Wars series to reach our shores.  Other games in the series routinely find their way to the top of fan-voted lists, so even if this game is a pale shadow of the best games in the series it will probably be worth it to see what all the fuss is about.  The series is sort of relationship-RPG-strategy, where how well you get along with your companions affects their performance in battle.  It will probably be at least partly Guilty Pleasure genre, but still should be a good time.  It comes out on 3/23.

Finally, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey will be coming out for DS.  The SMT series is so consistently solid mechanics-wise and intriguing story-wise that it would be hard to pass this one up.  Particularly after Devil Survivor was so good, Strange Journey should be one hell of a trip to the Antarctic.  It will also release 3/23.

January and February look sort of slow – the actual US release of White Knight Chronicle aside – so I’m hoping to knock my current set of games well out of the way so that I can start in on these entries once they arrive.

Lately I’ve been playing Eternal Sonata and Civ 4: Colonization.  Eternal Sonata is pretty and sounds very nice, but the difficulty is just short of crushing.  If it gets much worse, I might not end up beating it.  Story-wise it’s like a standard JRPG interrupted briefly by History Channel-esque segments on events in Chopin’s life.  I’m not even seeing much in the way of allegory here.  As far as Colonization goes, I enjoyed the original a lot and this is just more of the same – slightly improved, spiffier-looking, and more expensive.  Can’t really complain.

Projects are trucking along as always – sometimes more, sometimes less, including some minor work continuing on Jesus.  There’s not much to show at this point – or more accurately, what there is is hardly mine to show, as I’m just retranslating.  Stardust Crusaders of romhacking.net offered to take a look at expanding things, so he’s doing the hard part.

The biggest positive is that the relatively low-quality and occasionally downright strange original localization has been replaced with a spiffy, high-quality and more accurate job.  No longer does the game pretend to take place in the sleepy U.S. town of Lunarvale, and no longer does Guido Sardenia plot to do evil things to said sleepy town.  The localization work in PPSP is overall great and, near as I can tell, accurate (aside from one small gaffe; apparently the “Hiremon Stone” is in St. Hermelin’s courtyard, rather than the Philemon Stone).

The only negatives I’ve seen thus far have to do with sound effects.  While I do miss the original voicing (remarkably good for the time) the new stuff is better.  But the small pieces that formed a greater feel for the game – the sort-of-scifi sound effects, the Persona summon sound effect, even the surprised scream when you walk into a trapdoor – all are missing, usually simply silent.  When the Deva System goes into overload, there’s no indication whatsoever.

While it’s still worth picking up – I can’t help but think that it still lost something in the process of gaining a new subquest, improved translation and reworked soundtrack.

In the past several weeks, I have beaten two games that start with “P” and end with “4″.

First off is Persona 4, which is an excellent game.  At this point I think it’s in the running for my favorite RPG ever.  It is leaps and bounds beyond Persona 3, and far easier to stick with than many RPGs, since it uses the Social Link system and does not focus only on battles  – though it also takes a bit longer than most to really get going.

Second is Phantasy Star 4, a Genesis classic which I have experienced for the first time on Virtual Console.  It’s a bit rough by today’s standards, but it is a really nice game – the cutscenes, done in panels of drawings, are unique – the only game that comes close is Wild Arms 4′s random juggling of character positions and expressions.  Overall, though, PS4 is a solid game, and is particularly good for anyone who enjoys a bit more sci-fi in their JRPG.

Some good news has trickled out of Japan, and I’m a bit excited about it.

The first piece is that that SaGa 2, AKA Final Fantasy Legend 2 over here, is getting remade for the DS.  Here’s hoping Square localizes it!  FFL2 is my favorite GB game by far, so I’m looking forward to seeing how (or if) they can improve it.

Second is that Persona 1 and Growlanser are being ported to the PSP.  If both are localized, that makes four (!) great PSX RPGs that are available for PSP, and I may just have to finally get one – that doesn’t even count the Star Ocean 2 remake, which I haven’t heard much about yet.

I don’t know what’s more sad – that companies can make so much money off of reworking old games, or that I think these ports and remakes will be among the best games to come out in the next year – and I’m perfectly willing to buy them despite owning many of the originals.

First, the game really is cinematic.  It makes great use of perspective, like the Resident Evil games, except in PE a sudden shift in perspective won’t kill you.  It has a great realistic ambiance and feel to it despite the fact that its premise is campy and the “engine” abandons any sense of realism (i.e. kill a rat, get 6 bullets, kill a T-Rex, get a nice pistol).  Whereas RE, Doom, and the like tend to go for cheap “shocks”, PE follows the footsteps of the System Shocks by generating an atmosphere of menace.  Its puzzles are likewise more realistic – instead of finding a key lying on the ground in a room, you might find it in a desk, or on a corpse – there’s a motivation to search everything that might contain something.

It’s also short.  For an RPG this isn’t always a good thing, and most RPGs are expected to be 20+ hours.  PE was 6.5 hours, but feels like Symphony of the Night – it’s a game that knows not to overstay its welcome.  The Chrysler building is available for those who insist on more, but I felt pretty good leaving it as-is.

Arguably, there are only a couple ways PE could be overall improved.  Voice acting (if good) would help it out a lot, since its scenes are short but emotional.  Its battle system gets unbalanced quickly though, and some of the bosses reach the point where attacks are unavoidable.  For its length, it’s good enough – I have no idea if PE2 kept the same engine, though.

Other than PE, I have been playing FF4DS.  I’m pretty impressed so far, but it’s starting to drag a bit.  Even at the fastest setting, using the very nice auto-battle feature, things run a bit slow, and the encounter rate feels too high.

I have also started a non-hacking side project, which may never amount to anything.  In the event it starts to do so, this will be the first place I’ll post about it.