The Gay Game

So, back in September I took a break from Halo and started playing a supposed PS2 "classic".  I never told anyone what I was doing because it embarrassed me to admit what I was playing.  My absence on the XBLive was getting noticed and Mike James even called my cell to check up on me.  I have finally come to terms with my actions back then and have decided to come clean. 

I spent the month of September playing a gay game, Final Fantasy X.

Now, I have always been a huge fan of the Final Fantasy series ever since Final Fantasy VI (FF3 US).  I have played every Final Fantasy game since including the Tactics versions.  It used to be that my console decisions were based around where Final Fantasy was going.  However when I saw the character designs for FFX, I was appalled by them and avoided the game for years.  The game was pretty but so were characters.  Eventually, the price of used copies dropped down under $15 and I was curious to see if there was a good game underneath all the gayness.  I mean, it can't be that gay, can it?

I was wrong.  The main character, Tidus, is a cross between a Backstreet Boy and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  He has frosted blond hair that is feathered and gelled and uses more hair products than Vince Neil during early Crue days.  His chest is waxed and his keeps his hoodie zip down so its bared for all to see. It even looks like he waxes his facial hair and you can bet your bippy red rider that he uses moisturizers.  Now, typically when Final Fantasy gives you the chance to rename your characters, I don't do it so I won't get lost when following the walkthrough.  But this guy was no "Tidus".  He looked like a poofster, and "Poofster" is what I named him.


How gay am I?  So gay.

<Spoilers Ahead>
So you take control of little Poofster, who by the way loves to play Blitzball which is like water polo and all the other players are waxed half naked boys as well.  He somehow gets zapped to the past battling huge monster, Sin.  He meets up with a rag-tag group of misfits (RPG cliche #14) and supposed love-interest Yuna who have teamed up together to defeat big baddie Sin in order to save the world.  Pretty standard RPG fare except for the fact that Yuna will supposedly die defeating Sin and Sin is somehow Poofster's father.  It is all an allegory representing Poofster's repressed homosexuality.  Poofster thinks that being gay is wrong and sinful and his battle with big baddie Sin is actually him battling with his own emotions.  If he defeats his Sin his girlfriend dies, meaning that if he accept his gayness his relationship with Yuna will be over.  This game has more homosexual undercurrents than Top Gun. 

Iceman:  "Maverick, you can ride my tail, anytime." 
Maverick:  "No.  You can ride mine"

The worst part of playing this game was my wife watching over my shoulder.  Her first comments on Poofster were, "Is that a girl?"  When the game would transition into a cut scene and start playing the sappy music, she would pipe in, "Looks like someone is getting in touch with their emotions over there."  And eventually, it was just, "Are you loading up that gay game again?"  Humiliating, to say the least.

But underneath all the gayness, was the game any good?  Not really.  They implemented this complicated sphere leveling up system in which you could take different paths on this grid to customize each character.  But there were a limited amount of paths so that if you deviated from the main path, you ended making a character similar to another character.  So instead of having a thief and a black mage, you would have two thiefs.  You still had the long pause transitioning from the overworld to the random battle encounters.  The story was convoluted and uninteresting.  I would rank this as the worst Final Fantasy game I have played, below VIII even. 

PS2 owners rave that their system is the best for RPG's but I think the class act of this generation is Knights of the Old Republic.