All this dampness is damp

Originally posted on the now defunct latetotheparty.com.

In September 2007 I posted my thoughts on Final Fantasy's twelfth instalment, back when Late to the Party was my less than regular reviews column. And by less than regular I mean I did two of them. Which officially makes it a column I'll have you know. 

Two and a half years later I've just completed Final Fantasy XIII and my have things changed. For all the things I hated about Final Fantasy XII (and I hated most of it), the one thing I truly loved was the incredible landscapes, the rolling vistas and the truly massive environments to explore. For a game I didn't like very much, I played over eighty hours for this reason alone. The world was just so incredibly rich and deep it made up for all the other insecurities and faults. 

It's a crying shame then, that Final Fantasy XIII throws all this into the trash like a microwave dinner gone bad. The game is as linear as a modern first person shooter. This shouldn't be that surprising considering it comes from the team that brought us FFX, which if you ever looked at the world map was a literal straight line from the bottom to the top. FFX was able to hide this issue however, with interesting and complex locations along the way, something XIII is having none of.

From the begging to end, your goal is always straight ahead. There are no alternate roots, no optional passages, no back alleys to explorer. There is always you and the path ahead. It makes you wonder why they even bothered to give you a map as it's impossible to get lost. 

There is no exploration. No towns, no shops, no people to talk too. The game is one single roller coaster ride made up of cut scene, move forward, fight, move forward, fight, cut scene, rinse and repeat. With all this apparent "baggage" shed what you're left with is an RPG that focuses entirely on it's combat.

Which is where I forgive the game, because the battle system is second to none. Once you have your entire party and you can choose who is in your team, it all becomes about strategy. You have two computer controlled party members and an auto battle option for the playable character, so you're probably wondering if the game expects you to do anything except twiddle your thumbs. The answer is paradigms. 

Your main role is to guide the flow of the battle. Prior to the fight you setup paradigms, which are basically battle configurations where you choose the roles each of your party members can take. In it's simplest form you can have one paradigm where you have a fighter and two magic casters and another where you have a fighter, a caster and a medic. You start the battle with the first paradigm, and when your party starts to take a lot of damage you give up one of your attackers for someone that can heal you by switching paradigms. This is a very simple description of what becomes a very deep, complex system, but what I want to get across is the idea that it's no longer your job to select attack five times to win a random battle. There is no recharge period for swhiching paradigms, and you can do it as many times as you want. Every fight in XIII is fun, and that's what makes this system so unique. It also has possibly the best battle music of any RPG. 

The caveat to all this is that Square believes the battle system to be so complex that you simply can't be trusted with it until you've gone through ten hours of tutorial. No joke, for the first ten hours of the game the battle system is simply awful as you are drip fed features one at a time. This is why you will hear about so many gamers that were bored to tears with XIII, and it's a damn shame because if you can get through those dreadfull growing pains, the rest of the game is simply outstanding.

The game consists of thirteen chapters (thirteen, get it?…), ten of which can be completed in about twenty hours. Chapter eleven is where the game truly opens itself up, giving you a single optional side quest of hunting missions to complete and the feeling of a more free environment. This chapter alone can take another twenty hours to complete. The truth is the game never becomes less linear at this point, but for a single chapter it pulls the FFX card in it's ability to charade that dark secret in beautiful landscapes, and the game becomes much better because of it.

So there you have it. Final Fantasy XIII is a game of two halves. The first ten hours isshit. The next ten bearable, and the next twenty some of the best you will play this year.

You can give the game a pass for it's broken economy and weapon upgrade system. You can even ignore a lot of the linearity because the combat is just that good. What you can't forgive is the fact you have to play nearly half the game before it gets good.

And that really does suck...

Oh, and it has Leona Lewis.

Well I can't say I'm totally shocked. You'll bonk anything

Originally posted on the now defunct latetotheparty.com.

Me and Final Fantasy IV go way, way back. And by that I mean I hate the guys guts. It's not a personal thing, we just really don't get along. Final Fantasy IV has possibly one of the most depressing plot lines of the entire series, involving characters who commit suicide for comically poor reasons every five minutes only to be miraculously alive by the final showdown, crushing any deep emotional resonance these selfless acts were supposed to give you. Despite the games general craptacular tale I somehow finished it, an action that leads me to believe there must have been something inherently enjoyable about the game that I have long since forgotten.

Jump forward to the release of "The After Years", a direct sequel to the first SNES outing in the series, now available on WiiWare. For those worried about the horrific voice acting in the DS remake there is nothing to fear, as the game was ported directly from Japanese cellphones and has the 2D graphics to prove it. Unfortunately while the locations and sprites are directly ripped from the SNES game, blown up on a thirty-two inch display they look remarkably blurred and dated, lacking the definition or sharpness I would have preferred from a game released in 2009. It's also disappointing to see that Square stuck so stringently to the code they had written for cellphones. It would have been nice to see them use some of the power the Wii has behind it, much like Nintendo did with Zelda: Four Swords when they added Wind Waker 3D effects and shading on top of Link to the Past 2D graphics. I almost feel the game should have been released on DSiWare just so they could have an excuse for charging for what effectively could have been sold as a Virtual Console game for a third of the price.

One of the more interesting things about IV-2 is how it's distributed. The game is available initially on WiiWare for 800 points, and for your hard earned cash you get the prologue and first chapter. After that you can purchase future chapters for 300 points a pop, each centering around a different character in the story. The final chapter (another 800 points) then takes all the character progression and leveling you did in the previous segments and brings everything together to conclude the tale. The total cost of the game will be about £25, expensive for a WiiWare title but still worth it if you enjoy your retro RPGs. The first chapter took me just over five hours to complete and is a good way to try the game without committing to the full price if you decide it isn't doing anything for you. 

Having completed the first chocolate orange slice I'm incredibly conflicted with how I feel about the game. The story of VI-2 is unquestionable a joke. It relies entirely on your memorialisation of the characters and locations (there are no recaps or reminders here folks) and is practically a rehash of the original in a different order. It even has some of the same boss battles in the same locations, making you wonder if the person who wrote the script was even trying. The game is also incredibly disjointed as it jumps around from character to character, making it very difficult to follow and understand what exactly is going on.

This thrown together experience also extends to the battles. While the developers have added some really nice touches to the original system, including moon phases that affect your fighting style by making physical attacks weak and magic strong when there is a full moon for example, it is completely broken by having the linear plot provide you with characters that work terribly together. The balancing in IV-2 is equally terrible, with characters leveling up every other battle and random encounters able to demolish your team before you've thrown a hit. 

I could continue to go on about my laundry list of problems with IV-2, but I won't. About three hours into the experience I was ready to give up just after one of my characters had fallen of the side of the cliff and I was left with one party member to climb down and save him. During my climb I entered a random battle against two foes who should have been easily defeatable with just a couple of strikes. Unfortunately the game allowed the enemy to go first, making me watch as they took my character from full health to zero in a matter of seconds. This kind of experience where the game is relying on pure luck than an actual skill or ability had me wanting to throw the controller across the room, but instead I simply turned the game off and took a break.

The next day I played through to the completion of the first chapter and after watching the credit roll I realised I'd actually enjoyed it. FFIV-2 is still decent a retro RPG despite all its failings, and while the plot should be largely ignored, the game can still be remarkably fun, for reasons I'm still not quite sure.

I will almost certainly feel dirty paying for more, but I know I'm going to. I suppose my enjoyment could have something to do with the fact that my characters have yet to jump from the side of an airship to their deaths just because the local supermarket is doing a two for one deal.

...yet.

Duffman gives the people what they want!

Originally posted on the now defunct latetotheparty.com.

As the week comes to a close we shut the door on Electronic Three 2009 (or E3 as the kids like to call it). The last year and a recession (you mean the “economic downturn” right?) has certainly taken its toll on the industry, and while we returned to all the glamour, glitz and big breasted booth babes, the sour undertone of the show is a feeling that gamers didn’t vote with their wallets to support new IPs like Mirrors Edge and Dead Space. Instead this year’s announcements and reveals were a conga line of less risky sequels that tread well-known grounds. 

I say this because I know we are all part of the problem. I thought the two Metal Gear games, two Halo games and three Mario games looked great and will almost certainly buy them all. That’s not to say I don’t wish for more innovation in gaming, but as long as sequels are well produced and provide something new, I’m more than happy to hand over my (cough) hard earned cash.

In my opinion Sony had their best E3 conferences in years, showing of some hard hitters like God of War 3, Uncharted 2, White Knight Chronicles, Heavy Rain and The Last Guardian. I was equally impressed by their large lineup of PSP titles such as Dissidia, echochrono, PixelJunk Monsters, Peace Walker, MotorStorm and Fat Princess, which along with the announcement that they would finally sort their shit out and release decent PSone games for download (Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid included!) has me hyped for PSP for the first time in years. While I’m certainly not going to buy their atrociously priced “PSP Go” for $250 (you can buy an Xbox for less than that), it did make me buy a larger memory stick from Amazon (those things are pretty cheap now ya know?) to enjoy the new digital era.

What has me less excited is everyone’s desire to jump on the motion control bandwagon, driving with no hands as they barrel down the street. Microsoft’s “Project Natal” may have blown away some, but except for “Mr Fables’” Milo which is almost certainly a pedophiles wet dream, most of what they showed was a lot of shiny marketing talk with no true real world application. You all laughed when Nintendo announced the WiiWheel a few years ago? Why does anyone think holding your hands and pretending to drive with an invisible wheel is going to be an improvement? Equally, everyone is going to find controlling the dashboard in classic Minority Report fashion entertaining for five seconds before they realize the controller is just far easier. I would even consider Sony’s disastrous tech demo presentation involving coloured wands and N64 animations a better proof of concept than Microsoft’s, as at least they showed us some real application for the control input which looked much closer to what people wanted the Wii to be when it was first announced. 

The issue with both these projects however is with neither the concept nor the implementation; it’s convincing people to buy an add on that doesn’t come with the system. Microsoft will no doubt be pissing off everyone who brought a Vision camera in good faith, while Sony will have to sell people both an overpriced EyeToy and a Wiimote knockoff. 

Fortunately its more than possible to ignore these announcements and dribble open mouthed at the spiffy graphics in Modern Warfare II, Crackdown II, Halo 3: ODST and Alan Wake. Yes, I’m the problem. But if the future is having to make small talk with my Xbox during the loading screens, then I’m more than happy to stay it. 

I’m sure the irony of announcing a camera where YOU ARE THE CONTROLLER, and demoing a “virtual” skateboarding game was not lost on Tony Hawk who revealed his rather less-virtual skateboard controller just moments earlier either.

Don't forget to kill Philip!

Originally posted on the now defunct latetotheparty.com.

In the current gaming climate I feel that PopCap Games isn't being given the recognition they deserve. Sure, they invented Bejeweled and Zuma, two sins of the multiverse they should never be forgiven for, but they also brought Peggle into the world, and had the shrewd business sense to release the phenomenon on every single platform under the sun. I admit they whore their newborn child out like a McDonalds happy meal, but it’s the sort of prostitution I can really get behind. 

Peggle could have been considered a one hit wonder from a company whose other big titles include “Bookworm” and “Big Money”, however the recent release of Plants vs. Zombies has changed all that, cementing PopCap in my mind alongside other great game developers. When you first hear about PvZ the idea of yet another tower defense game doesn’t sound immediately appealing, especially when you consider the plethora of perfectly good flash games available for free. Where PvZ immediately grabs you is with its delightful style and charisma and from the moment crazy Dave comes on screen he will have you locked into such an addictive game that you wont realize that hours have just passed you by. The rules of battle are simple; the zombie horde is creeping across your front garden in desperate need of your brains and the only way you can protect yourself is to lay down plants that will protect you to the death. 

The sheer amount of plant variations in this game are incredible, forcing you to think long and hard about which ones you take with you into battle. From the plants that shoot peas at the ever advancing horde, to the spuds that block their path until the zombies devour them, to the exploding cherry bombs and the seaweed that drag their prey underwater, the fight to save your precious brain cells is won or lost on the way you play the field. 

Your opposition is equally as diverse, including your run of the mill zombies, grandpa zombies that get angry when you destroy their newspaper, pole-vaulting zombies who jump your defenses and the dreaded zomboni, who tries to mow down your plants with an apocalyptic ice machine. With a whole host of level variations and some great mini-games that include zombie bowling with spuds, PvZ is simply worth ever penny PopCap is asking for.

Plants vs. Zombies is available for both Mac and PC, and has a sixty-minute demo that is free to download. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Everybody's dead, Dave

Originally posted on the now defunct latetotheparty.com.

A little known fact about me is that I don’t complete many games. In fact, I can buy multiple copies of the same game and still not see those pearly white credits roll on by. It’s not that I couldn’t fathom how to open the boxes shrink-wrap and it’s certainly not for a lack of trying. The problem, as I see it, boils down to a fundamental issue of money vs. attention span. Back in the good old days I didn’t have a lot of this currency thing, so I replayed games. A lot. Hell, I’ve beaten Tombi for the PlayStation at least seven times and I don’t even consider that a particularly great game. Although now that I look back at it, its depiction of evil magic pigs trying to take over the world has an eerie sense of foreboding prophecy about it when you consider the current swine flu pandemic that will turn us all into pork scratchings before the year is over.   Getting back to the topic at hand, issues with my gaming habit started to arise back at college when people started giving mefree money. Obviously this cash could, logically, only be spent on one thing, and it bloody well wasn’t going to be a haircut. It’s like giving a thousand pounds to a meth addict. Do you really think they are going to spend a “reasonable” amount of that cash on meth and save the rest for a rainy day? Fuck no. You clearly send word to the little old lady down the street who sells drugs out of her front garage that you’re coming down and you clean her place out. It’s the same with games, but without the questionable legality of buying products from an unlicensed retailer.  For this reason Fallout 3 may just be my game of the year for 2009. I’ve been playing Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic mega RPG on and off since Christmas day last year, which for those of you who failed first grade math class, is five months or one hundred and fifty days ago. During that time I’ve managed to clock a pretty reasonable forty five hours with the game and I’ve yet to be distracted enough by the next shiny thing to give up on it. 

I’ve heard people remark that they couldn’t get into Fallout like they did Oblivion because of its dreary and depressing atmosphere, however this may just be why I keep going back to it. As wonderful as the mystical fantasy genre is, sometimes its good to take a step back from it and Fallout 3 is truly a rush of fresh air. From the very first time you step out of Vault 101 into the capital wasteland you are simply blown away by the sheer scale and detail of the world around you. 

Sure it’s barren, it’s dead and you’re all alone, but that’s what makes it such a unique title. I’m not saying the games perfect by any means, but the sheer thrill of the adventure you have in this incredible world more than makes up for the little problems it has. Every corner of the wastes has its surprises and every quest has multiple ways to be approached. Just discussing the game with other players can completely take you by surprise, as everyone’s experience will be slightly unique to them, be it from the moral choices they made, to the order they did things or where they went first. I don’t claim to be a gaming connoisseur who has tried the best of everything, but I’m sure I can’t be wrong in saying there isn’t anything quite like this in any other modern generation game.

The game starts with quite a steep learning curve about an hour in where you must quickly get to grips with exactly what items you need to carry and what should be sold or left behind. If there is one thing this game has taught me, its when scavenging a nuclear wasteland, bring a bigger bag. 

Also, a single shot in the face makes peoples heads explode. Did I mention this game is hilariously gory for no good reason?

What's so incredible about my time with Fallout 3 is that as I slowly ponder through the ninety plus hour game they provided, they keep making it longer. In the past five months Bethesda has released three downloadable packs which each ads a significant amount of new game play, weapons and skills to the game, the most recent of which even went to the lengths of rewriting the ending. With two more packs due, I can see myself still playing Fallout 3 for a long time to come. 

Of course, that won’t stop me buying a third copy of Peggle for no good reason. I gotta spend that drug money onsomething…

Oh, I wish I wish I hadn't killed that fish...

A long time ago, in a world that still had such delights such as lolcats and the Cheeky Girls to come, a little game known as Chrono Trigger was conceived inside the little grey cells of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. This was a time before the drink abuse and five AM hallucinations convinced him to create a $137 million box office face palm, in which Sakaguchi even succeeded in securing Yuuji Horii and Akira Toriyama of rival Dragon Quest fame to create a world destroying dream team in desperate need of a rock guitar theme song. Being the JRPG nerd that I am then, it will probably surprise you then that I have never played the bastard love-child of the two most popular Japanese series' of all time.

It's rather curious that the classic Square-Enix formula of jazzing up the graphics for games past their sell by date was not used on the love-child, something I can presume was the result of a miscommunication between Square head office and the riverside sweatshop from which ports and remakes are sent out on a rolling conveyer belt. Despite how many lost sells Chrono Trigger DS may have received from not looking as "hip" and "with it" as Imagine Babies, I'm personally delighted that Square took the hit so that Europe could receive the game in its original 2D glory. Besides, they can always remake it again with Chrono voiced by an Australian surfer next year. 

Chrono is an interesting character by the virtue of being mind blowingly boring. Silent protagonists were all the rage back before Sega showed us how incredible FMV games could really be, but Chrono does an impressive job at not only being a mute, but by also being utterly removed from the world around him. So far in the couple hours of Chrono Trigger that I have played, our cast of merry men have traveled back in time, saved a princess from the claws of an evil foe, returned home only to be sentenced to death, successfully avoided that unscathed and made their houdini escape by traveling into the future. Through this entire experience Chrono has yet to bat an eyelid, and while the other cast members may occasionally address him, they are never really looking for his input, but instead are simply checking to see if he's still conscious out of common decency. All this made me wonder who the hell Chrono even is. This guy has the ladies hanging from his arms, wields a mean sword, has spiffing hair and the ability to travel in time and he still lives with his mother? Really Sakaguchi?

By this point the whole narrative of the game comes into discontent. While I have clearly only seen just a small part of the whole pie, I can already see where it is going. One of the things that really strikes me about Chrono Triggers story is how incredibly light hearted it really is. Our merry crew find themselves in an apocalypse future in which the surviving inhabitants are starving to death and their first reaction seems to be to giggle and laugh. Even when Chrono is sentenced to death by a malicious middle management type, the follow scene proceeds not to show us signs of lost hope or misery, but an escape plan MacGyver would be proud of in which the whole "execution" thing can just be shrugged off. Looking back at what Squaresoft would later produce; it's surprisingly what a difference a couple years can make.

Reading this you probably get the impression that I absolutely hate Chrono Trigger. Following such hype and fanfare the cynic in me actually wanted to dislike the game just to prove the world wrong, and yet I simply can't. Despite it's questionable hero, story and tone, the raw classic JRPG game play is so pristinely perfect that I've become hooked to it like a baby to breasts. The musical score composed by Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu is just incredible despite the DS's craptastic speakers and the 2D presentation of a world that allows you to span history itself is just gorgeous. 

While the tale Chrono Trigger has to tell has yet to truly hook me, the game play is more than I could have ever asked for. I will return to report how my feelings have changed when I have made more progress, but for now, why not let me know what you think?