Rikku takes a slight detour from pursuing Britney Spira when she reaches the dock stacked with crates. You’ll remember this is the very spot Tightass made an ass of himself with a megaphone. Ah, memories. Horrible, aren’t they? Rikku finds a person in a Moogle suit on her knees behind some crates, and by speaking to the Moogle person, she and Paine are healed up, replenshing all thirty-fucking-four of Paine’s magic points. Believe it or not, doing this is crucial to getting the 100 percent completion for the game. Since it’s something that would be easy to miss, and since getting everything in a game is what strategy guides are supposedly made for, you’d think there’d be a big, blaring TOUCH THE FUCKING MOOGLE notice in the walkthrough. Actually, it’s mentioned in tiny print under a tiny screenshot. This is the reason I missed this bit of completion percentage the first two times I played this game. If you people still aren’t getting why I hate Bradygames so much, don’t worry, because I’ll be whacking you all with the “Bradygames Sucks” Clue Bat plenty from here on out.
Loading ...This side trip to caress the Moogle earns Rikku a date with about twenty more goons, but eventually she and Paine make it to the third dock. Rikku yells at no one, “Hey, you run too fast!” A strange voice behind her replies, “You’re too slow, little girl.” The accent of this voice…I don’t know what it is. Faux British? For lack of a better term, I’m going to call it Butlerese. Rikku whips around and sees the butler walking toward her. He’s very tall and thin, but wearing bulky robes and shoulder pads, and sporting two old-fashioned pistols. The look on his face suggests that he hates his life and wants to die. It’s very pinched. From Rikku’s other side, a short, fat guy with a huge circular shield on his back and an outfit closely matching the butler stomps toward her. “Show’s over! Bwahaha!” he chortles, and the “Bwahaha!” sounds about as natural as an “I love you” from Squall to Rinoa.
“Yeowch,” Rikku cringes hysterically, like Butler and Fatty here are really all that threatening. At Paine’s suggestion the two girls run away toward the end of the dock. Their two big bad scary enemies follow, Fatty letting out another annoying “Bwahaha!” in the process. Ladies and gents, I believe we have our Comic Relief Odd Couple. But before the duo can reach Rikku and Paine, a volley of gunfire bursts out from behind them. Both men dance around like little girls to a Hilary Duff single, but neither one suffers one gunshot wound. Whoever this is must have trained at Stormtrooper Academy.
What would this series be without evil zombie grins?
Surprise, the piss-poor gunner is Yuna! The camera pans left from the Odd Couple over to her, the shot firmly focused on Yuna’s boobs and torso, her face mostly out of view. I think the game designers did this to keep us in “suspense” over who this girl with the weird Wild West outfit and the rat-tail is, but I think they also wanted to keep her boobs and ass in the same shot, as they are perverts. Speaking of her outfit, it’s a doozy. The Real McCoy Yuna is wearing a long, frilly jean skirt that appears to have been chopped in half, the better for us to see her hot pants-clad booty. Over the boobages she’s sporting a halter top of sorts with a pink hoodie that connects to nothing. The front of the top is “laced” together with what appears to be the Zanarkand Abes logo. This fashion travesty, combined with Yuna’s somewhat spiky new coiffure, spells out a horrible truth: Yuna is trying as hard as she can to look more like Tightass. Apparently making out with the guy just wasn’t wrong enough–now she wants to be him. Sweet Chocolate Methuselah.
Yuna runs toward Fatty, jumps off his back, and in FMV!Mode, does this complicated twirling backflip while firing some more shots at the Odd Couple, no doubt missing with every single bullet. She lands in a crouch and points her guns at them again. Paine gets in on the action posing and brandishes her gleaming phallic object in the Odd Couple’s direction. Rikku spins her bizarre dagger things, which remind me entirely too much of Rinoa’s pinwheel weapon, and waggles her ass a bit. Hey, one of them had to do it. All three of them miraculously move into a tight formation, all while keeping their poses, as one more glamour shot informs us that this trio is, in fact, YRP. Thanks for the info, glamour shot. I didn’t figure this out ten minutes ago or anything.
During that exchange, by the way, the music changed from the psycho horns music to Yuna’s wet noodle of a theme. Bah. YRP goes into battle directly from their action pose positions, and if Butler had any sense he would have blown out their kneecaps by now. “Where’s the imposter?!” Yuna demands in battle, trying to be forceful. Ha. The only useful information to be had from this is the real names of Butler and Fatty–Logos and Ormi. Since they’re a comic duo consisting of one tall, thin guy and one short, fat guy, you know I have to rename them Laurel and Hardy. And I thought Logos could use a girly name. Nudge nudge wink wink. The girls use their abilities on the guys, not like that, and basically Paine kills both Laurel and Hardy. Rikku just steals stuff, and while Yuna tries using Trigger Happy, it does literally zero damage to Laurel. Is she using fucking paint pellets or something? Wait, even paint pellets would hurt a little. Yuna just sucks.
Following the battle, Britney Spira shows up to chastise her incompetent flunkies. They immediately run behind their frail girl boss like the wusses they are. “Persistent, aren’t you?” Britney sneers at them. We get a split screen of Britney and Yuna, as if we need pointed out to us that OMG THEY L@@K THE SAEM!!!!!1111 “My grid!” Yuna demands. Rikku backs her up: “You give us back Yunie’s Garment Grid right now!” Whatever the fuck that is. Britney just wants to share this Garment Grid whosawhatsit. “Give it back,” Yuna says with just a wee bit of a threat in her voice. Hey, I’m not complaining. If this were FFX, Yuna would have Shatner’d the fuck out of that line. Anyway, Britney sighs in exasperation and chucks the Garment Grid back at Yuna. Then she whips out a metal folding fan and holds it up in front of her face. Semi-hidden behind the fan, she changes into a trashy blonde in a really revealing hot pink outfit. She also has a red heart tattoo of sorts right above her cleavage. I’m starting to think “trashy” isn’t quite strong enough. She gives an empty threat and we’re back to battle.
This battle is basically a tutorial for using the Garment Grid that was just returned to Yuna. The on-screen tutorial demands that Yuna use the grid to change into her Songstress dressphere, and won’t let me do anything else until I comply. I guess fire would rain from the skies and the world would end if Yuna wanted to keep playing with her guns for this battle. In a flashy transformation sequence, the real Yuna dons the Britney Spira getup. The tutorial box then tells me to have Britney use Darkness Dance on “Leblanc.” I believe I’ll take Ryan’s advice and call her Lesbianc instead. If you think I need a reason for this, you obviously haven’t played this game.
Back in the battle, the real Britney is still only allowed to do what the tutorial says. Laaaaaaaaaaame. “Hey, eyes on me!” she wanks, sending a FFVIII-related chill down my spine, as she uses the aforementioned Darkness Dance, which, guess what, blinds Lesbianc. Lesbianc mainly uses Thunder, as before, and whacks our girls with her folding fan. Paine does all the damage and takes down Lesbianc, in what I’m sure will become a very familiar pattern. For her efforts Paine learns Flametongue. Heh. Hehehehehehe.
Stammering, Lesbianc yells, “I won’t let you off so easily next time!” She, Laurel and Hardy run off. Rikku is about to give chase, even though they got Yuna’s stupid Garment Grid back, but Paine calls her back for another FMV.
Okay, this scene is pure, unadulterated fan service. The game designers would probably like us to think that it has meaning in the story, but…no. Just no. In this short FMV, we see Yuna as Britney Spira doing a little jig to herself, complete with hopping and twirling. The catch is, all this “dancing” is obviously out of Yuna’s control, as she keeps grunting and squealing in what’s supposed to be surprise, but it sounds more like the audio track for a lesbian porno. All that’s missing is the sound of Rikku Paine Lulu talking dirty to her and smacking her ass.
Where is the man gay in this game, already? I think I’m having withdrawal pangs.
In mid-twirl, Britney freezes in one final pink glamour shot, but there’s no question mark this time, as this is, sadly, the real Yuna. We’re all supposed to cheer because LOOK! Yuna’s a whole new PERSON! She’s come out of her SHELL! So she’s gone from demure and wimpy to…what, exactly? Chipper and squeaky? Skimpy and slutty? Heroic and courageous? I’ll go with option three, since it obviously takes a lot of bravery and skill to repeatedly miss a couple of stationary targets.
Loading ...In the FFX spirit of interrupting “plot” with gameplay-related non-sequiturs, the FMV is immediately followed by the “Mission Complete!” screen and the experience points screen, accompanied by a truly Bill & Ted-inspired guitar riff. I’m getting the distinct feeling that Square’s in-house composers were on a major David Lee Roth-era Van Halen kick when they got this assignment. And when Nobuo Uematsu walked in and told them to listen to “real music,” they were all, “No way, old man! Eddie’s guitar rocks my soul! You’re just not with it!” And then Uematsu walked away, muttering about kids these days and their rock music and their crack-cocaine.
As we see a bizarre red airship flying toward the dock, we resume our story. We also resume something else, something we thought we’d be rid of forever after the Death of Tightass. That’s right: Yuna takes the next step in becoming her dead boyfriend and begins speaking in Wankese. Assume fetal positions. My body just started dancing by itself, wanks Yuna. I didn’t know what was going on. I was…frightened. Oh NOES, you were dancing. Scaaaaaaary. Then, she continues, because Square hates all right-thinking people, while I was dancing, something happened…
I started to feel funny down there…
Thankfully, we don’t find out what that something was. It most likely has something to do with her panties riding up, and I can’t believe I just went there. I’m becoming everything I hate. The new scene begins with a shot of the aforementioned weird red airship. I can’t accurately describe this thing, so let me just give you my first impression: it looks like a ghetto fabulous, tricked-out, flying El Camino, right down to the purple flames on the custom paint job and the snazzy chrome hood ornament. I have no words.
Would an airship have hydraulics?
Once we’ve had an eyeful of the bitchin’ ride, we cut to the bridge, where Yuna is aww-shucksing to the best of her ability, as she locks her arms behind her back, thrusting her boobs forward. Rikku is saying, “You sure looked like you were enjoying yourself.” You know what, fanboys? I’m sorry. For the sake of my sanity I kept telling myself you’re imagining innuendo that isn’t there. I was wrong. Please forgive me. Yuna replies, “I was. It felt like some other person’s excitement just took over.” Oh, yuck.
A little dude named Shinra, wearing coveralls and a gas mask, tells Yuna–in the most annoying, nasal voice I’ve ever heard–that using the Garment Grid can have this vaguely sexual effect. “The emotions of the person recorded in the sphere pass to the user,” he adds. I’m just going to stare blankly and pretend I know what’s going on. We find out that Garment Grids are of Shinra’s own invention, but even he doesn’t know entirely how they work. Welcome to the player’s world, Shinra. We never know how anything works.