It’s only natural to feel a strong association with role-playing game characters while slaying exotic, imaginary creatures and fighting the good fight against dastardly, evil villains with a humorously over-sized sword. Most RPG’s take approximately 238 hours to complete, after all. Or at least, the Final Fantasy games do.

You’d also likely be lying if you tried to say you were not particularly fond of one of the main characters much more-so than others. The one whom you identify most with and mistakenly pretend is practically a mirror-image of yourself in digitized sprite form. Maybe you’ve done so subconsciously and weren’t even aware of it and maybe you even despise RPG games with a vehement passion unrivaled in the realms of men.

No matter — you still need to take this quiz. The world can quite literally not go on until you’ve discovered the answer to the age-old question of…

Which Final Fantasy Main Character Are You?

Note: Following each question’s answers is a key. Simply write down the number value for your answer to that question and continue on. Seriously, it’s not that hard…

1.) Which of the following is your favorite Materia?

A. Wait, what?

B. Black. Because black like… just totally gets me, ya know?

C. Ultima. Obviously.

D. Chocobo Lure. They are just so adorable, hehe!

Key: A: 2, B: 0, C: 4, D: -2

2.) Which of the following is your favorite summon?

A. Anima. Always a good compliment to my mood.

B. Carbuncle. He’s so cute you could just squeeze him!

C. Knights of the Round. End of story.

D. Odin. Was uhh… this a serious question?

Key: A: 0, B. -2, C: 4, D: 2

3.) Which Final Fantasy character would you want most in your party at all times?

A. Aeris. Chick’s fine. *shrug*

B. Seifer. He’s almost as bad-ass as I am.

C. Vincent. So dark. So MYSTERIOUS!

D. I prefer my own company actually, so you can leave now. Thanks.

Key: A: 2, B: 4, C: -2, D: 0

4.) Your journey is abruptly hindered without warning. What would you do?

A. Bitch and moan like a little girl. It’s just not fair!

B. Uh, hit on one of the female party members? Der…

C. Remain stoic and entirely-too-cool-for-school. Per the usual.

D. Go kill some shit and level-up to pass the time. Beast.

Key: A: -2, B: 2, C: 0, D: 4

5.) Which of the following is your preferred weapon of choice?

A. A sword. That is preferably larger than I am.

B. A gun. Wait, no… a blade. Actually no, no — a gunblade..Non-conformist, ftw!

C. A dagger. With uhh… poison on it. Yeah, that’s it — let’s roll with that. The poison…

D. A sword that.. looks like the sea. Yes! My oh my, how it would shimmer!

Key: A: 4, B: 0, C: 2, D: -2

And so it comes to an end…

Which Final Fantasy main character are you? Well, tally up your points and let’s frigging find out, shall we?!

Drum-roll please!

If you scored 14-20 points…

You’re Cloud Strife! Straight-to-the-point and concerned primarily with being a straight badass, you have time for nothing more than saving the world and kicking the shit out of anything that stands in your way.

If you scored 7-13 points…

You’re Zidane Tribal! You’re efficient and effective, but don’t let a simple world-saving quest get in the way of getting it in with the lady friends if you catch my meaning.

If you scored 0-6 points…

You’re Squall Lionheart! Dark, sullen and full of a multitude of frowning-pout faces, you are primarily concerned with the almighty Me, Myself and I. Oh, in addition to being totally non-conformist bro.

If you scored anything less than 0 points…

You’re Tidus I-Don’t-Have-A-Last-Name! While you swear you’re just totally metero-sexual to your core, others… well, others… aren’t so sure. Maybe it’s the perm?

Note: This review is for the Xbox 360 version of the game.

This review was tough. Mainly because — in addition to being a huge, huge gaming fan and aficionado, I’m also a huge, huge MMA fan and aficionado. I even used to box for a few years back in the day — a fact I bring up whenever and wherever possible (even when entirely inappropriate) in conversation to hopefully allow me to appear more tough. Mainly because I’m a huge dork.

But back on topic, I think that there’s two different types of people one should take into account when reviewing this game: MMA fans and non-MMA fans.

For MMA fans, well — your version of this review will be very short. This game is the fucking bee’s knees. Go out and buy it immediately as you’re going to love it. If you’ve played any of the previous two UFC Undisputed iterations and even remotely liked them, you’re going to just love this game that much more.

In regards to non-MMA fans and possibly fans/non-fans of the previously aforementioned UFC Undisputed games, well, you’re still likely to like this game as it’s an honest-to-goodness enjoyable and entertaining video-game form of MMA. At its finest. Granted, it would certainly help if you’re a fan of the fighting and/or wrestling game genres in particular, but if you’ve even had the slightest inkling of pleasure when playing a fighting game of any kind, this may very well be the game that propels you headlong into MMA fandom.

Anyway, in regards to the actual game, consider practically every sub-par or needing-improvement aspect of UFC Undisputed 2010 fixed and improved. The game actually caters more to casual players now what with a much easier grappling/transition system than past games.

The graphics, presentation and audio are all fantastic — what with the two differing UFC and Pride modes, these three things are really showcased and taken to the next level. Both commentators on either end — Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan on the UFC side of the fence and Steven Quadros and Bas Rutten on the Pride side — are simply fantastic, knowledgeable and never seem to grind on your nerves. Which is something that is oftentimes a concern in any sporting related video game.

I must confess here, I am a super, super, super-fucking-duper Bas Rutten fan in both his former fighter and announcing careers. The guy is just the man on any and all fronts. And if I had to be stuck with someone in a car due to snow or other increment weather for several hours with literally nothing to do at all, I’d want to spend that time with Bas Rutten (no homo). So there’s that.

The character models have all seemingly been improved in Undisputed 3 as well as the animations — both in amount and fluidity. With the recent acquisition of new bantamweight and featherweight classes into the UFC recently (namely via the WEC), theirs pretty much everyone you’ve ever wanted to play as in MMA in a video game — except perhaps Alistair Overeem. Which kind of sucked ass since he was the first person I tried to play in after I fired up the game via an Exhibition match, but whatever, he’s rumored to be included via downloadable content and such down the line so it’s all good in the hood, I guess.

All in all, the various modes are exactly what you hoped they would be. The Ultimate Fights modes is just as exciting and interesting as in past years but is also much more complicated and in-depth now in this third installment. The Career mode has been simplified — almost overly-so — in order to focus on the fights and only the fights throughout your created or selected characters career. Exhibition fights are just as fun as they’ve always been — especially when playing with friends as every single fighter has their own distinct fighting style and control feel thanks to the newly revamped control system that equips each fighter with several unique and special attacks/defenses.

When it’s all said and done, I like this game probably more than most thanks to my MMA fandom, but I’m also akin to think that this game is just as finely made and well-crafted when taking a step back and just considering it as a video game as a whole. If you’re an MMA fan, you shouldn’t even be reading this right now — go and buy it. If not, well — if it sounds intriguing, then just roll with it. Here we go!

Final Score: 9/10

It’s okay, folks. It’s finally been revealed and can be marked as official.

Courtesy of Kotaku’s recent interrogation questioning of Bethesda’s Todd Howard:

“The reason they are there – and I will not say if we are or are not using them in the future – is when we first built the landmass for Skyrim we knew we were going to have these tall mountains.

“And what can you see see? We have views early in the project where you can see into the [neighbouring] province from the other game. We needed to have something [there].”

So there you have it. Howard would go on to reveal that Bethesda kind-of/sort-of has plans to maybe/possibly use said land mass in the future, but other than that… well, that’s the official story.

And quite honestly, it makes sense. We all know full-well that if Bethesda instead chose to put randomly generated landmass there in lieu of specific, exactly-true-to-the-canon versions, than there would have been an uproar all across the Internet of epic proportions. That’s just how the world works.

But hopefully, the promise to potentially/maybe use said landmass in the future for some potential downloadable content rings true. Because that boys and girls, would be absolutely, positively fantastic.

Over and out!

All of us here at OWNT just wanted to wish you a happy, safe and hopefully “successful” (wink, wink!) Valentine’s Day. And please don’t do anything we wouldn’t do. Although this doesn’t really constitute very much…

Okay, so by now you’ve no doubt already heard through the grapevine or a conveniently delivered email from Gamestop themselves that they’re now accepting iPod trade-ins for both cash and store credit. And when I say iPods, I mean literally every possible iPod you can think of: Nano’s, Shuffle’s and Touch’s — oh my! Oh, and iPhone’s and iPad’s as well.

If you’ve ever had even minimal trade-in experience with Gamestop than you know full-well that the very best time (if any) to trade anything into them in order to get the best deal possible is soon after a game/item is first released and/or shortly after they start a promotion of some kind. A promotion just such as this one, actually.

Anyway, suffice it to say, having a vast plethora of old and unused iPods lying around my house and currently finding myself on the verge of another Xbox 360 purchase (this will be my fourth one… keep up the great work Microsoft!), I quite literally went batshit insane with excitement upon receiving one of the aforementioned emails. Like… seriously. I’m pretty sure I got entirely-too-excited. But whatever.

Unfortunately, two of the iPods I was planning to trade in — an iPod Touch First Generation and an iPod Nano Second Generation — had some nicks and scratches on the backside. The screens were just fine and dandy and looked like new, but from having personally been rejected approximately 198 times when trying to trade in games for even the most minuscule of scratches, I went into the adventure fully planning on utilizing every single shady and snakeoil salesman charm tactic skill I picked up when selling used cars back in the day.

Now here’s where the juicy and useful information comes in. My first stop, naturally, was the Gamestop closest to my house. It was a brand-new store so I imagine it was staffed by the most strict and take-company-policy-entirely-too-seriously employees in all the land. Things started off well as the initial employee that greeted me cleared the iPod Touch as passable, seemingly deciding that the scratches/nicks weren’t bad enough to warrant rejection. Unfortunately for me, another employee ear-sniped the conversation from half the store away and came over proclaiming, “They must be in mint condition! Like new!”

At this point I let out a small sigh, knowing things could only go downhill from here. And I was correct.

Even after busting out the newly issued Gamestop iPod Trade-In manuals that the company issued each store and basically revealing that his “Mint condition and/or like brand-new” comment was complete bullshit, he was still steadfastly refusing to give me a frigging break. Another employee chimed in that it didn’t look too bad in his opinion, to which the Trade-In Grinch decided to send the matter upstairs to the Bossman, who apparently couldn’t be bothered to emerge from his back-of-the-store managers-only hovel.

To his credit, the Trade-In Grinch emerged with bad news, saying the manager ix-nayed the trade-in, to which he seemingly and surprisingly sounded disappointed. He then gave me an explanation of how they have to ship everything they buy trade-in-wise to Apple and it must be in tip-top condition.

All well and great, except that this wasn’t what the e-mail I received set. But whatever — I appreciated the frankness and apologies and bid farewell to everyone.

Luckily for me, there was yet another Gamestop store just down the road inside of an indoor shopping mall. Upon entering, it was immediately apparent that this store possessed a more laid-back atmosphere. The employee that greeted me was enthusiastic and quite literally showed precisely zero concern for the scratches on both of the previously-rejected-at-the-last-store products. And to top it all off, he was making fun of Apple for making the product ID numbers so fucking small as to barely read them. All in all — at least in terms of Gamestop visits — it was a good time. And a successful one.

The moral of this story though, boys and girls, is that if you’re planning on trading in your old iPods to Gamestop, don’t take one stores opinion on your swag. From hearing the official Gamestop employee iPod trade-in manual read out-loud, the guidelines for refusing to accept an item for trade-in are extremely subjective and ultimately, based on personal opinion if it goes that far.

As such, it would strongly behoove you to make several trips to a few of the different stores in your area if necessary. Oh, and in regards to what you can expect for trade-in value, I traded in an iPod Touch First Generation (8MB), an iPod Nano Second Generation (2MB) and an iPod Shuffle Second Generation (2MB) and received $87. And if you’re a Power Up Rewards Pro member, you get an additional 10% extra in trade-in credit if you opt to receive store credit. Good stuff.

Happy pawning!

Ah, it’s that time of week yet again my friends…

That’s right — it’s time for the OWNT Weekly Link Review Roundup! Hip-hip-HOORAY! <insert conveniently placed, clearly fictional round of fake audience applause here>

I know you’re all excited and I know you’re all well aware of the particulars. So let’s just jump headlong into the recap, yes?

In this week’s edition of the Weekly Link Review Roundup,

• UFC Undisputed 3 Review (IGN)

It appears we have a winner in the game-that-will-finally-help-wean-you-off-your-clinical-Skyrim-addiction sweepstakes, folks. Yes, that’s right — Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is pretty much everything we’d hoped it would be and then some. Less some in certain areas, mind you, but thankfully said areas aren’t of any major concern. But we’ll get to that portion of the review in a moment.

In case you’ve been living under a rock the past few months and haven’t been debriefed, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning puts you in the recently deceased shoes of your choice of a human, high elf or dark elf hero in an epic quest to save the noble realm of Amalur from a rogue, immortal king with world-spanning visions of grandeur. In a nutshell, at least. It’s pretty standard fantasy RPG fare from the get-go, but quickly evolves into something much, much more enjoyable and intriguing.

Which is exactly what you’d expect from a narrative penned by the infamous and positively fantastic R.A. Salvatore. And for the record, my dark elf hero was modeled exactly after a one Drizzt Do’Urden and I loved every minute of it. </dork>

Perhaps the best way to describe Reckoning is a skilfully mixed melting pot of some of the best parts of open-world/action role-playing games of the past few decades. It surprisingly does this in a way that isn’t a knock-off but instead more of a respectfully complimentary tribute — it’s hard to describe but you’ll experience it within moments of starting up the game. It’s several parts Fable, Elder Scrolls, God of War, Devil May Cry, Diablo, Borderlands – the list goes on and on.

Thankfully though, after a while you’ll stop trying to identify the similarities and inspirations used in the game and instead view it as it’s own individual game the way it was likely meant to be viewed.

If you’ve read any other reviews for Kingdoms of Amalur yet, then one of the common threads expressed in practically all of them is the giddy enthusiasm regarding the games combat system. It’s deep, it’s satisfying and — perhaps most importantly — it’s got staying power. While you may tire of fighting the same kind of enemies over and over in waves at some points in the game, this negativity is quickly eclipsed by the realization that you’re wading headlong into the delicious combat you’ve come to know and love.

Perhaps the biggest reason as to how the combat never manages to get stale throughout the playthrough lies in the fact that said combat system is so multi-layered. Attacks come in one of three main formats — primary weapon attacks, secondary weapon attacks and ability/spells that use your characters mana. While some may go through the entire game simply swinging a bigass sword the entire time, the game — I think — is meant to be played mixing up this combination in what you personally determine to be the perfect combination.

If you want to wield primary and secondary daggers — perhaps with one of them exhibiting some kind of poison effect — and not utilize your abilities and magic spells at all, no problem. If you’d rather a more balanced approach via a primary greatsword, secondary bow and plenty of spells sprinkled liberally throughout, you can do that too. No matter what combat setup you ultimately choose to roll with, the game rewards you thanks to its unique destiny mechanic that essentially gives you stat/attack/defense boosts depending upon your particular style.

Leveling up is done via allocating points into either might, finesse or magic, with the aforementioned destiny cards’ availability being dictated by how you choose to bank your experience points. If you want to focus on just one stat tree and be a straight-up mage, warrior or rogue then you’ll be awarded destiny cards focusing solely on these skill-sets. However if you decide to focus on two trees at once — or even balance out all three — then you’ll receive hybrid destiny cards that give you statistical boosts in all three areas. It really is a very enjoyable, strategic and refreshing way to approach leveling up an a role-playing game — not to mention naturally predicating replayability and preventing the way-too-much-of-a-good-thing syndrome.

Graphics-wise, it’s everything you’d expect of a Todd McFarlane designed game — what with heavy, heavy design influences from Fable for whatever reason. It’s almost literally like someone took the Fable games, injected a much more in-depth and enjoyable combat system along with a much more fleshed out and realized narrative (shout outs be to Mr. Salvatore once again!) and let things lie.

And surprisingly, the culmination of said things lying culminated it arguably one of the most purely entertaining RPG’s — not to mention just strictly games – to date. The voice acting is of a consistently high-quality and the music — while not poised to win any awards anytime soon — suffices aesthetically just fine. For some reason, there’s a bit of lag when selecting dialogue wheel choices (straight from the Mass Effect 2 playbook)  which I must say, was quite annoying.

But other than the fact that the game’s story/side-quest dungeons — while individually hand-crafted and designed in their own right (take that Dragon Age 2!)  — are quite linear in every sense of the word, this game succeeds on almost all fronts. Considering it’s the rookie installment from Big Huge Games/38 Studios, I’d venture to say it’s a huge success.

If you’re not a very big fan of open-world or action RPG’s then you probably won’t be as ridiculously pleased with Reckoning as I am, you’ll still likely have a good time with it all. But if you are indeed a fan of the aforementioned, then just stop reading this and go and buy Reckoning immediately. It’s that good.

SCORE: 9.0/10

That’s right boys and girls. I’ve been neck-deep in all of the fantastical, colorful, damnit-it’s-like-Fable-legit-had-a-video-game-cousin-this-is-insane goodness that is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. My review was originally slated to be up and live today to coincide with the game’s official release but… well, what can I say. I’ve been playing whilst simultaneously keeping one eye glued to my nine month-old son in order to ensure he wasn’t trying to rip the USB cord from my laptop and start trying to eat it again.

Among 159,943 other potentially dangerous things. So cut me some slack, yeah?

Anyway, if you’re unable to contain your excitement and unadulterated joy so close to the release of yet another amazing and magical OWNT video game review, feel free to check out my first impressions-esque recap of the time I spent with the demo early last week by clicking right here. It’s essentially a review of the demo… without being an actual review. Because it’s… a demo. And stuff.

In the meantime, I can tell you in good confidence that you should go out and purchase Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning immediately if you’re even a casual fan of open-world’action RPG games. It’s not on the masterpiece-caliber level that Skyrim was, but then again… not many games are. Believe me when I say though that Reckoning does a lot of things much, much better than Skyrim.

And if you’ve had enough of the whole exploration-in-the-hopes-that-I-won’t-have-to-fight-too-much aspect of Skyrim, then Recokoning‘s deep, visceral and insanely-fucking-satisfying combat system will likely plaster an occasionally returning shit-eating grin to your face. I’ve got one on my face right now just typing this!

Enough jibber-jabber, though. Look for our in-depth, comprehensive and — perhaps above all else – entertaining review of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sometime tomorrow afternoon/evening (EST).

Until next time!

Ever since Diablo 3 announced that they would implement a real money auction house into their game, they’ve been stirring up controversy in South Korea.  South Korea has strong rules and regulations against gambling of any kind, and the ratings board in South Korea felt like the real money auction house went against those rules.

Diablo 3 had submitted a game client to the Korean Media Rating Board (KMRB) for review, and they rejected the idea of the real money auction house in December of 2011.  The Korean arm of Blizzard made modifications to the game and resubmitted it for review by the KMRB.  After a months time the KMRB came back with a rating of 18, saying that the game is only allowed to be played by those over the age of 18 and the real money auction house is not allowed to be in the game.

Blizzard originally announced that a cash auction house will be incorporated into Diablo 3, allowing players to use real money or in-game gold in Diablo 3, and gold, weapon, equipment and other in-game items can be traded in Diablo 3.  There’s been debates from gamers all over the world about whether or not this would ruin the game or improve it.   One of those debates however, was a legal one, according to Game Industry Rejuvenation Act of South Korea, it is forbidden to sell items obtained during gaming, including gold. So, South Korean media questioned whether the cash auction house in Diablo 3 might conflict with the Act. Blizzard also emphasized that if South Korean law explicitly forbids real money trade, the cash auction house will not be included in the South Korean version.

KMRB has indicated that if patches are submitted for changes that include the real money auction house, the entire game will have to be submitted for review again as opposed to just that patch.  Blizzard is dedicated to bringing the game to South Korea, even if they aren’t able to include the real money auction house in the South Korean version.

“We’re actively preparing for the launch of Diablo 3′s closed beta testing in South Korea. But it is still uncertain whether the gold trade function will be incorporated into the game,” commented a responsible person in Blizzard’s South Korean branch company.

Personally I’m excited for the real money auction house in the North American version of the game, so we’ll see how it goes!

The holiday season may be over, but the trauma to our bank accounts is probably just now starting to become apparent – I know I’m thinking about taking on a third job just so I can afford the Prozac my checking account is clearly in dire need of, anyway – but just because you’re mostly broke doesn’t mean you can’t afford a little retail therapy in the form of some new games, right? Right!

Thankfully, there are two pretty major sales going on right now, and they’re both chock full of the low, low prices on games of all sorts, so you don’t have to feel too guilty about it.

Unless you’re buying games instead of food for your pet parrot or whatever, of course, in which case, shame on you, and also OWNT is not responsible for any ex-parrots that you may incur as a result.

Anyway, first up, for all you PlayStation 3 owners, is the PlayStation Network’s “12 for ’12” sale, wherein you will find 12 games on sale for 2012. As usual, the folks that are PlayStation Plus subscribers will reap the most savings, with 50% off the selected discounted games. Regular PlayStation Network users will receive a not too shabby 30% off. The sale started today (that’s the 17th, for those of you that keep track of trivial things like time) and runs through January 23rd. The full list of games on sale is as follows:

• PixelJunk SideScroller – Regular $9.99, Sale $6.99, PS Plus $4.89
• PAYDAY: The Heist – Regular $19.99, Sale $13.99, PS Plus $9.79
• Dungeon Defenders – Regular $14.99, Sale $10.49, PS Plus $7.34
• Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection – Regular $9.99, Sale $6.99, PS Plus $4.89
• Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition – Regular $14.99, Sale $10.49, PS Plus $7.34
• Eufloria – Regular $9.99, Sale $6.99, Plus $4.89
• BloodRayne: Betrayal – Regular $14.99, Sale $10.49, PS Plus $7.34
• Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken – Regular $11.99, Sale $8.39, PS Plus $5.87
• Cubixx HD – Regular $9.99, Sale $6.99, PS Plus $4.89
• Sideway New York – Regular $9.99, Sale $6.99, PS Plus $4.89
• Rochard – Regular $9.99, Sale $6.99, PS Plus $4.89
• Okabu – Regular $14.99, Sale $10.49, PS Plus $7.34

Not too bad, eh?

The other sale I wanted to let you all know about is happening over at GameStop, with up to $30 off select titles.  There are WAY too many games on the list for me to be able to put them all here, but there is a little something for every platform and every genre on sale, including the Game of the Year Edition of Borderlands - a perennial favorite ’round these parts, and one I heartily recommend if you haven’t played it yet – and accessories like a Rock Band 3 bundle for the 360 and a PlayStation Move bundle for the PS3. Here’s the entire sale page for you to check out.

Happy spending!