World of Final Fantasy: awesome, or are my standards too low by now?

Buy here.

Against my better judgment, I purchased a full-price copy of World of Final Fantasy shortly after it came out. Most Square Enix games I've played in the last few years have been crushing disappointments, but I guess old habits die hard. For better or for worse, my hindbrain associates Square with games I enjoy. I briefly considered buying Deus Ex: Manking Divided even though I know it's not the kind of game I like to play. It was published by Square Enix, apparently.

The only logical, if unflattering, explanation is that I'm not as immune to bitter brand loyalty as I like to pretend I am. For now, I'll console myself with the fact that, at least in the case of World of Final Fantasy, brand loyalty didn't lead me astray. I've not had this much fun playing a videogame since Fire Emblem: Awakening. And considering Awakening is one of my favorite games ever (Chris, I'm still gonna harass you into buying a 3DS and playing this game), that's saying something.

Much like Persona Q, World of Final Fantasy is a blatant play for long-time fans' wallets. And much like Persona Q, I was floored by how much the developers seem to have cared about making a fun game even though name alone was going to move copies.

You play as a pair of twins that. . . honestly, who cares? They travel from dungeon to dungeon, meet heroes from previous Final Fantasies, while catching classic Final Fantasy monsters like they're Pokemon. I can't even pretend to be able to judge this game with any objectivity because did you read that description? 

That being said, I'm going to try.

Tumor of the day: GIST

My job makes me wish I was a better artist because things like these are worthy of watercolors, no matter how tragic they may be:

The detail never looks quite right outside a microscope

You can see a bit of gastric epithelium in the bottom part, at the center. This is a low-power view of a GIST (gastrointestinal stromal tumor), spindle pattern. It's a sarcoma of the gastrointestinal tract, originating from the interstitial cells of Cajal, which are the pacemakers of the gastrointestinal tract. At high power, they look this:

GIST, spindle cell pattern

These cells stain with DOG1 (discovered on GIST) and CD117, and other stuff I'm not remembering off the top of my head.

The Sociopath Next Door: A psychologist's thoughts on the nature of evil

Buy on Amazon.

I don't remember if I ever mentioned it, but I have a psychology baccalaureate. At the time I chose my major, I thought it would be useful for a doctor to know as much as possible. And I also found the subject inherently interesting, though even back in the dark ages of 2007, people were warning my that a psychology baccalaureate would only prepare me to work as a cashier at Rite Aid.

I don't much use my psychology degree these days, unless you count the times I tell myself to be patient at work because we're all under a lot of stress. Mostly, I like to tell myself that I use what I learned about psychology in my writing hobby to help me with characterization. It's how I justified buying The Sociopath Next Door instead of putting an extra $12 towards my student loans payment, anyway.

Someday, if I become the next JK Rowling, I will have this book to thank for helping me write the most compelling sociopath imaginable. After all, Dr. Stout herself states that:

Conventional wisdom has it that dangerous people are attractive, and when we are drawn to sociopaths, we tend to prove out this cliché.

That being said, I very much doubt that any realistic fictional sociopath would be all that popular, at least not if they're realistic in the way this book describes. Not just because the chances of me becoming the next JK Rowling are astronomically low, but because Dr. Martha Stout writes about real people with Antisocial Personality Disorder, not the idealized Hannibal Lecters of the fictional world.