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Fail Fantasy XIII, why God why?

I usually support Square Enix even when they don't exactly make the best decisions, but recently I've had some trouble. A series like Final Fantasy is something that needs to be given respect, unfortunately Square Enix don't seem to be able to do it. Final Fantasy XII was a good game, even if it was a departure from Final Fantasy traditions. It had more side quests than any FF game to date, and fair enough they were all "Go here, kill x# of these things/deliver my package/break up my sons gay wedding" but they disguised the level grinding thats inevitable with any JRPG as something worthwhile. Now I can grind, BOY can I grind, on FF VIII I never had less than ninety of any given type of magic, I ground the hell out of that world to the point where the final boss (famously one of the hardest) was a walk in the park. I like the grinding, I like spending ten minutes navigating a world map to get somewhere, I like the illusion that it's a real world with real places. Even XII had the astness of its locations in its favour. We wont talk about FFX, every series has a slight slump and X wasn't really bad, just ever so slightly linear for ever so slightly to long but even so, you got an airship and got some side quests, they were THERE. Anyway here's my outline for a Final Fantasy as it should be. Introduce characters, make it blatantly obvious who's going to end up shacking up with who at the end of the game, fight something, main character + love interest meet in interesting circumstances. Go for a walk, arrive at another town. Plot. Go for a walk, arrive at another town. Plot. Add some sort of transportations, become exploration game. Travel. Plot. Sidequests. Plot. Fight big guy. TWIST. Plot. Kill big bad guy. Love. Kiss. PLOT. CREDITS. Right, it's not hard. Final Fantasy XIII goes a bit like this. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. Walk. EXPLORE HUGE AREA. Walk. Walk. Fight. Credits. Seriously, NO side Quests, NO backtracking, NO, world map. Did you ever play Lord Of The Rings on PS2? You know the official game of that movie series that did ok a few years ago. It was everything we expected from a movie game. All flash and no bang. It was just a case of walk, slash, walk, slash. It was awful but we expected that. It took about two weeks to develop and sold thousands of copies to people so starstruck by the film they'd buy pretty much any merchandise that bore the logo. Ok I bought it.... anyway. Moving on, this is what we expect from film tie ins, NOT multi million selling, decade spanning series like Final Fantasy. I don't want to say it's bad, I'd be betraying everything I believe about Square Enix, they make good games. It's just, it feels more like a spin off that a numbered game, it feels unfinished and badly thought out. Linearity isn't a bad thing in games, unless they're RPG's, and I can't call Final Fantasy XIII an RPG, I can call it an action adventure with RPG elemnts, much like Dirge of Cerberus was or I can call it a turn based beat em up, but I can't hand on heart call it an RPG. I'm not saying don't buy it, if we keep Square Enix in business they might follow the promising trend in todays game scene and go back to the roots of the series. what I am saying is if you're looking for an RPG for a next gen console that feels like an oldschool RPG there are many better alternatives. Tales Of Vesperia, The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery all deliver in droves what Final Fantasy XIII fails to provide. Joking aside, I am bitterly dissapointed and saddened. I've looked forward to XIII for years and to have my hopes dashed is a bitter pill to swallow. To put it in perspective I had two teeth pulled last week, and to transform FF XIII into the game it SHOULD have been, I'd let the bloodthristy South African yank two more. What? My dentist is from South Africa, he's a good guy, that's beside the point. I do have one thing to say thats positive, I'm playing to PS3 version, and for the most part the framerate doesn't fall over and cry. It's a small thing but it counts for a lot. To conclude this post I just want to say that I'm not going to abandon Square Enix, just let them be for a while.

Heavy Rain

The title isn't a pun, it doesn't need to be. I'm a person who seldom plays a game through in a single sitting, I'll buy one, play about a third of it then pick it up a while later. Heavy Rain is an exception and I cannot praise it enough. I really would like to say something critical about it, I would. The thing is, I can't! Heavy Rain is so different, so unusual and so unique that it is, in a word, perfect. Compelling isn't the word, I really did want to know who the Origami Killer was, and not in the curious way that you want to know the twist in Halo, a real thirst for the knowledge. I could talk about control schemes, I could talk about graphics, both are incredible and wonderfully thought out, but you know, I don't want to. All I can say about Heavy Rain is that it rocked me to my core, it's a terrifying, thrilling and emotional ride through a harrowing time in the lives of four outstandingly well acted characters. If this is the shape of things to come from Quantic Dream, then they are a company to watch. So I'll finish this post without a joke, no quip about a brown colour palette (which Heavy Rain doesn't have) or shot at bad acting. I say this because, in the midst of the worst glut of terrible games I've ever seen, somebody out there is doing it right, and that gives me hope.

All The Colours of The Brownbow

You know, I honestly didn't know there were so many shades of brown. Brown it seems, is a versatile colour, especially if you're making, say a gritty first person shooter. Lets pick three examples, Gears of War, Killzone and Resistance. Now before I get a buttload of fanboy rage, I loved all three, well Gears Of War not so much but it deserves it's popularity. Anyway, this is a rant not a review. In resistance, a large chunk of the game takes place in Cheddar Gorge in the south of England. Now I'm an English chap, god save the queen, rule Britannia etc and do you know, it turns out that our green and pleasant land is actually brown, brown rocks, brown grass, brown sky, brown buildings, brown cars, brown aliens in brown ships with brown guns. Gears of War and Killzone are just as bad but at least Killzone provides the believable excuse that the planet Helghan is just a shithole with a dust clogged atmosphere. I guess I'm being cruel to Killzone actually, the later levels in Visari's palace do have a rich colour palette. Still, lets compare these games to Modern Warfare 2, this is a game that presents the horror of war in a very visual way, and the thing that really hits you is, the way everyday locations are turned into places of horror because when you're walking nonchalantly through a Russian airport slaughtering countless civilians the horror is brough home by the depiction of the environment as one you may walk through every day without fear. The reason for this is that my hindbrain knows, that any modern airport is fairly light on the brown and therefore the enriched palette makes the entire experience even more absorbing. Suspension of disbelief anybody? No? Resistance, Gears of War and Killzone are almost perfect, but ADD SOME GODDAMN COLOUR.

It's Snowing, Let's Talk About Icewind Dale.

I have a friend who has a little brother. This little brother claims to be an "expert" on RPG's because he completed Dragon Age AND Oblivion. Naturally I decided to question his knowledge by asking him about Black Isle studios. Now, this kid is eighteen, relatively intelligent and somewhat tastful in his choice of literature. I was of course, not surprised by the blank look the words "Black Isle Studios" was met by. Black Isle's name evaporated in 2003 when he was 11 and the beloved franchises were snapped up by Atari who proceeded to give them a half decent outing with Neverwinter Nights. Anyway I convinced him to give Icewind Dale a try. Now Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 for me were the two finest Dungeons and Dragons based CRPG's out there, (thats COMPUTER Role Playing Games, not CONSOLE Role Playing Games btw, I get sick of people getting that wrong). ANYWAY He comes back to me a week later and gives it back. "I didn't like it," he tells me. I reel my jaw back in from where it hit the floor as asked him why. The reply made me feel like slapping him. "Crap graphics." Now I'm not one to tell people what they should and shouldn't like. I might tell them what i THINK they should like but that's different. I am aware that Icewind Dale and it's fellow Infinity Engine games are starting to look a little dated in terms of graphics although I'm sure they still have their uses *cough*iPad*cough* but does that really matter? Gone With the Wind isn't considered a bad film because it's black and white, it's two hours of boredom that finishes with a famous quote that every sitcom has to rip off at some point but the key thing is, nobody care's it isn't in colour. But then this brings another key point to the fore, what are good graphics? Let's compare Icewind Dale with say, Neverwinter Nights. Every single screen of Icewind Dale is hand crafted and entirely unique, every dungeon it's own little world filled with small artistic details and little nuances of style. Neverwinter Nights does not have this style, the dungeons are all made of cookie cutter sections and the interiors of buildings are expressed as being vast labyrinths of corridors that have gaping wasted spaces in between rooms. Now I'm no architect, but I know somebody who is and after in depth consultation and much reasearch he and I managed to establish that wasted space in a building is BAD and therefore if you want to create suspension of disbelief in a game you have to at least fool a basic sense like spatial awareness. I am sick of cookie cutter dungeons and badly proportioned buildings. Here's a list of recent offenders, Oblivion, Dragonage, Titan Quest, World of Warcraft, Red Faction 3, Mass Effect, Borderlands and Two Worlds, all good games but extremely repetetive in terms of environments. Therefore, what are good graphics? Are they bump maps? High poly counts? No they're not. Come on guys, make the effort.

A Thought Occurs,

Whilst reading Lord Of The Rings in the bath.

Now if you read the papers or watch the news no doubt you've heard that kids nowadays are murdering, thieving lying and decietful. Most media will tell you that the state of the children in this country is the fault of the government and these evil video games that teach children how to strip and clean a Glock 9mm before they learn not to dip their hand into their nappy and recycle their food. The non gaming general public have only the media as a source and therefore generally believe most of what they're told by it. Now if you're one of approximately 85% of these people and you've stumbled across this blog whilst looking for a lawyer to sue the kid down the street because he stole your kids scooter after playing GTA IV consider one thing. The paper you read this information in A) Has tits on page 3, B)Has a letters column that plays like a transcript from the Jeremy Kyle show C) Owns one of the many online bingo sites that are RIGHT NOW teaching your 14 year old daughter that gambling is the key to BIG money and D) ADVERTISES these games EVERYWHERE. There was a full page Ad for COD4 in this particular tabloid rag opposite a story about some poor sod who stepped on a mine in Afghanistan. Thats hardly tactful is it? Anyway lets make this relevant. There is a trend among the non gaming portions of society to have many preconceptions about people who play games more than just casually. The assumption seems to be that we're uncouth, uncultured and unread. Well let's scan my bookshelf shall we? Terry Pratchett OBE, National treasure, and a hardcore World of Warcraft fan I might add. P.G Wodehouse, master of satire. Alexandre Dumas, Dante, Dickens, Plato, Machiavelli, Marx and Engels (actually that one might not do me any favours in this argument) J.R.R Tolkien, Robert E Howard, Edgar Allen Poe and C.S Lewis. Right now look me in the eyes and call me unread. My class and I had The Hobbit read to us by our primary school teacher whilst aged six to seven. We sat and we listened enraptured by the story and how vivdly it leapt from the pages. There was not one person in that class unchanged by it and now at age 24 I can't count the amount of times I've read it and vowed that one day I'll read it to my children. Anyway good stories teach good morals, nowadays kids are stuck with books that are "politically correct" I mean, hell Ladybird Books are gone from our shcools. That's a travesty and it's because kids nowadays are forced to grow up in a stifling society without real beauty that they lose hope. After a hard day at school of not playing conkers in case they get killed by shrapnel and not playing tag or british bulldog in case they lose a limb and the school gets sued, followed by an afternoon of reading the utter drek the national curriculum thrusts upon unsuspecting children everywhere these poor kids go home and their parents use video games as a nanny. OF COURSE young children will copy games, and if they're not taught right from wrong older children will copy games and it only takes one kid to shoot up a school and blame it on Halo and all of a sudden we're back to gamers are evil, gamers are the devil, my daughter was raped by a man who practised on hookers in GTA IV! Do you see where I'm coming from, most four year olds can't read, the school teaches them because their parents won't or can't. I went to school aged 4 with the ability to read and write because back then people took responsibility. To make matters worse kids books nowadays teach children that its fine to be a whiney emotional wreck because somebody somewhere will basically do everything for you. Marriage doesn't matter anymore because mummy and daddy still love you after a divorce, ok they probably do but a child growing up without the idea that being in love matters is more than likely to have a few kids with multiple partners get twisted up in the CSA have no money to support them, neglect them and plant them in front of a second hand PS2 to kill some bad guys and the whole damn thing starts off again. I know this may not seem relevant in a video game blog but it is, because games are not the disease and they aren't the cure, but bloody hell do they make a damn fine scapegoat.

Warning, post incompatible.

I am, at heart a PC gamer. My first computer was a Commodore 64 (which is almost a cliche nowadays) and since then I've been through every iteration of windows. I've always held consoles in high regard for ease of access, standardised hardware makes development and testing easier and therefore quality games can be created faster for a lower price, which is good for everyone. PC gaming nowadays is like a kids playground. The mainboard just wants to be friends but it won't share its RAM with the Nvidia twins which leaves the Soundcard all alone with nobody to teach it to use it's microphone port. If they all played together like good children they could have some real fun but it takes a lot of coaxing and occasionally threats and bribery (seriously, I once bought a RAM stick for my old PC that it didn't need because I had tried EVERYTHING else to get it to read a DVD I had bought. If you've ever bought a present for an inanimate object then proceeded to attempt to bribe it, you've touched a deep and terrifying kind of madness) I also respect the fact that all console makers realise that a quality device should be affordable and therefore sell the consoles at a loss because they know the profit will come from licensed games. Nvidia think that charging more for a graphics card than an XBOX360 costs new is a good idea. My latest PC cost £2750 and, because its a PC, flat refuses to do ANYTHING I tell it to. I've always taken bad compatibility as simply the price of PC gaming which is usually a graphically superior experience and therefore a little extra effort doesn't bother me. Recently though I've noticed a disturbing trend with the two big hitters in the console market. Here's my example, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. This was a game that I really did expect to be more graphics than gameplay but I was proven wrong, however this isn't a review. The first version I played was the XBOX360 version. I borrowed it from a friend, played it through, was satisfied with the experience and then gave it back. About six months later I got a hankering to play it after hearing rumours of a sequel. I grabbed a bargain bin copy from my local game shop, the PS3 version and took it home. It took me about five minutes to think, "What the **** is up with the framerate? Is my PS3 damaged, is the game a bad copy?" Anyway, I'm extremely anal about crap like this, if I think I'm right I'll go to extraordinary lengths to prove it. So I borrowed my friends 360 version and by flicking back and forward between inputs on my amplifier I was indeed able to confirm, the PS3 version looks like cheap stop motion when stacked against the 360. Since then I've noticed that this trend is true with most cross platform titles. PS3 exclusives run like silk, Killzone 2 blew me away, it just looks so perfect. Assasin's Creed drops frames and chugs. It's the same with Sacred 2, Brothers in Arms, Overlord and Mercanaries 2. My rule now is, if its PS3 exclusive, I buy it on PS3, if it's cross platform, it's 360 every time. I'm told the slimline PS3 is a lot smoother but I have one of the old shiny, fat, Spiderman font encrusted plastic leviathans and I'm sticking with it. If you have both consoles, save your eyes and go 360 for choice. Anyway Sony need to redesign the controllers, the XBOX ones are more comfortable and no, adding accelerometers and making it wireless is NOT a redesign it's an upgrade. While we're on the subject actually, Sony, listen to me, sit down and listen. Did your mum ever tell you that you'd go square eyed if you sat close to the TV? Well my question to you is, seeing as how most people store consoles under the TV, and most people don't want to stop playing to recharge a controller.... WHY IS THE SUPPLIED PLAY AND CHARGE CABLE ONE ****ING METRE LONG?