Yay for English class.

I have an idiotic English instructor.

On the first day of class she showed up 45 minutes late. She had no materials with her. She said that she would email the syllabus and first assignment to us. Three days later I still had no email.

On the second class we had a writing assignment that I turned into her. I handed it to her, she took the paper from me.

The next week she told me that I didn't give her anything. After reminding her that I had in fact done exactly this, she admitted that she might have, just possibly, put it in a folder with another class.

Huzzah.

On this same day, we had peer editing for an essay due that day. I am not sure why exactly we have an essay due on the same day that we are supposed to edit it in class. I am not the brains of this operation. But this is how it is done. 3 hours of peer editing. One student told me that my opinion isn't clear in my essay. Another told me that my critical analysis of MLK's "Letter From Birmingham Jail" was too much like a critical analysis. They meant it as a bad thing; I ignored them all and took the essay home and changed some things that I had noticed. I emailed the teacher the essay at 5:31pm that Saturday.

The next week the teacher had not graded it. She also had not recorded my grade for the in class writing assignment.

This week I got both back. A 100 on my essay, a 98 on my in class writing. Apparently I can write. But I'm still going to have 3 hour classes of other students telling me things contrary to this. Now this is fine since we have to. But I don't think any of us students should be going over another's paper, especially not with an intent to correct something. Giving me an opinion on a topic sentence or something would be fine. My thesis isn't clear. Hey, thanks. But what a waste of 3 hours of my life to have somebody tell me that I should have "I" in my essay much more and that my analysis is too much of an analysis.

I love school.

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core

I have to preface this by saying that I'm a /huge/ fan of Final Fantasy VII. This seems to affect other people's views on another's opinion for some reason. Now, I am not an FFVII "fanboy", but I do love the game. I loved it when it was released, I love it just as much now. I can, however, realize that the game has aged and not well. It is not the be-all-end-all of rpgs. But I think it IS a great game. One that I adore.

So that out of the way, on to FFVII:CC. It starts out with a scene that anybody who has played FFVII should be familiar with: A train rushing towards its destination, a man in blue clothing aboard. The direction of the game continues the over the top action that Advent Children began. Zack jumps off of a helicopter, lands lightly on his feet, and makes short work of some grunts that are shooting at him. When the train stops and Zack gets off, it sets up the major differences between Zack and Cloud. Where Cloud couldn't be bothered to say anything more than "I don't care." for the first 20 hours, Zack is talking on the phone when some enemies run up to him. He continues talking even when the soldiers show that they want to fight. He reluctantly hangs up his phone and pulls out his sword and you get your first glimpse of the combat of Crisis Core.

You get to move around in realtime with the D-pad or the Nub. Circle is attack, Square is dodge, Triangle is guard. You have 5 different slots for actions: Attack, 3 materia slots, and Item. You can not mash attack all willy-nilly. Actions seem to be timed, although it isn't very extreme: half a second at most between attacks. Magic has a little bit of charge, leaving you open to be hit by opponents. This WILL interrupt your casting, which I think is a nice touch for strategy. And enemies will move! Blizzard creates the typical block of ice that drops down on your opponent. The only problem is that it drops down on your opponent...and they move. In contrast, Fire and Thunder track the opponent. Maybe Blizzard will be better when I level it up. What I'm surprised by is how much skill that you can put into the battle. Enemies shoot a Fire spell, and if you're paying attention in between attacks you can easily dodge it. Fighting two big, slow, lumbering brutes I managed to defeat them with minimal damage due to smart attack management, guarding and well-timed rolls. I loves it.

The subsystem of this game is called "Digital Mind Wave" or DMW for short. This is the slot machine thing that's been seen in screenshots. It will randomly stop and give you a "Modulation Phase". If you get favorable faces lined up, three Sephiroths say, then Zack will unleash a special attack similar to limit breaks from FF7. Zack's skills make Cloud's omnislash look like a low level ability...and I've only got 4 hours. It's a weird system, though. It's completely random and seems to control everything from leveling to HP boosts. Not sure what I think of this yet.

The game is mission based. So far there isn't any type of world map. You can talk to people to progress the story or access optional missions. They show the assumed difficulty of the mission beforehand so you know what you're getting into. Since you can only access them from save points there's little risk to them except for the time you spend if you die. They net you items or materia, some of the summons are optional missions.

I'm shocked at how good this game seems to be so far. It looks amazing, topping MGS for the best looking portable game ever. The CG is advent children quality, the voices sound awesome. The music, most of it so far, is remixed FF7 tracks. Given the change in direction the kind of rock alternative really fits it. I love the new boss music.

If I have any complaints, it's that the camera isn't always the best. But I've yet to play a 3d fighter where the camera isn't a minor complaint.

Yuffie wins you.

RIP: Robert Jordan

Not the update I'd had in mind :(. Robert Jordan, Author of The Wheel of Time, passed away. The breadth of his imagination was incredible. It is saddening that he did not live to complete the work which spanned over 18 years of his life.

He inspired me to want to write, to create something with as much vision as he has had for Rand al' Thor. He was an extraordinarily talented being.