Final Fantasy XIII at First Glance
…. Damn. She is my favorite.
Anyways, Immediate first thoughts. I want to assure everyone that these thoughts aren’t on the game as, for I have only reached the end of chapter three. I do believe, however, I have seen enough to give a general impression.
First thought? Thank God this isn’t XII all over again. They brought back turn based encounters while remaining with visible enemies before encounters. So fear not those who thought the fighting in XII was trash, for the quick paced, exciting and super neato fighting system Square Enix attempted to create in XII has been thoroughly thought through this time around (Awesome alliteration for the win!).
This fighting system includes simple, yet necessary roles and strategies which require quick thinking on the part of the player, or in my case, pure awesome. Leveling up is similar to X though it gets rid of those items used to assist your leveling and focuses more on a variation of Exp rather than movement points. The grid system is basically still in place, though this time you are not able to grind your way to fill it seeing as how Square Enix has put a level cap on each chapter. Whether or not that was a good idea is debatable, but honestly I have had no problems with enemies yet… Then again, I’m awesome.
Some other noted, the voice acting is not bad, it’s actually kind of good. Dialogue is cleverly written, especially with Sazh Katzroy being a hilarious comic relief who, as a matter of fact, has a Chocobo living in his Afro.
The only problem that I can see right away is the lack of background story, they all talk as if you know whats going on.
Luckily for me, that’s not a problem seeing as how they put in the datalog this time around. Not only does the datalog inform you al about the past, present and future, it is also able to recap you on all the events which you have taken a part of. That is nice for me when I pick this game up two years from now and forgot what the hell I was doing. I assume I won’t have to restart my save AGAIN like I do with every other Final Fantasy.
Anyways, I am enjoying it greatly. It is a change from the precedent, but it is a good change and remains tied to its roots….
Except the bastards got rid of the traditional victory song.
Bastards,
-Travis
Let Me Rethink This…
In a weird turn of events, I ended up watching Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete as part of a movie night. I was unaware of it but there was 26 minutes worth of new footage that had been added into the complete version. Most of it was not exactly completely necessary but it did help to flesh out the movie a bit more instead of leaving it so minimalistic.
For some reason this time around, I really enjoyed the film. I don’t know why. The new parts do help to make the story flow better, but I also think that’s because I had a previous experience with the film and was able to truly notice the differences. The extra footage did help to add weight on the story side instead of too much time spent on the visual nostalgia fest side. Or it’s also possible I’m enjoying the film because of my surprise. I didn’t realize they were added. Fifteen minutes into the film, I began thinking to myself, “Wait, has it been that long, I don’t remember these parts.” The shock of not having to sit through the same film over again was indeed very welcomed last night.
This is an important key to point out. I’ll be honest. I’ve never finished Final Fantasy VII. I’ve always had a little bit of a bias against it and find it easy to dismiss as an overrated game. Final Fantasy VI is a game that is more cemented in my heart. It’s my opinion that the story line is much more sane and that Final Fantasy VII’s popularity was boosted by the advancement in graphical technology, the adoption of the Playstation, and video games beginning to spread into mainstream America. In the case of Final Fantasy VII, there were an overwhelming number of people first venturing into the Japanese RPG and in my opinon, that is why it remains so highly remembered not because of it’s actual substance but more because of it’s timing. Also it is my opinion that many got hung up on the trivial parts of Final Fantasy VII. For example, the bad guy with the large sword. The hot chick with the large bust. The death of a main character and the tear evoking theme that followed.
I feel that if you just look at these parts, then you’re missing the point of why VII truly was a genre changing game.
To be continued,
David
Steam coming to MAC?
So news hit recently that valve is about ready to release Steam/Source, and something called Steam Play, to the MAC. The latter being a utility which allows the player to seemingly switch between MAC and PC versions of the game if you own both types of computers (Portal 2 will be the first game getting a simultaneous PC/MAC release).
Fancy stuff, for sure, but honestly I’m not entirely convinced that this is a viable use of resources. Especially since Valves development for the PS3 has been woefully ignored in comparison to other platforms.
Valve/PC development and the xbox 360 are, of course, a perfect fit…at least in terms of development for similar architectures. But is the Macintosh really such a viable gaming platform that it’s development precludes that of the PS3? Is the Macintosh install market for gaming really that huge? And considering the dire truth that PC gaming in general has been waining over the years I’m not so sure that gamers should take these current announcements with any type of real levity.
We cannot doubt that MAC usage has grown recently. Quanticast, a web analytics firm, as recently released numbers showing 10.9 percent of online users in North America signed on using MAC OS X ( a 30% increase over the past year). But I’m not completely convinced that the majority of these users are not signing on at a coffee shop to read the newest NPR news and are, instead, booting up World of Warcraft.
The only thing I can think of here is that Valve see’s the MAC as some possibly fertile land that can be tilled. They might have seen the World of Warcraft MAC users number and want a piece of that pie. Personally, I don’t see it happening. PC gaming is a slowly dying adventure and MAC gaming hardly ever existed in the first place. As consoles become more and more popular, and the PS3 install base grows thanks to the pre-holiday price cut, Valve is going to have to seriously look at giving more love to the console market.
Missions 1 Valve: Work with XBLA, and eventually PSN, to deliver to the console market the handiwork of the robust modding community that gave so much more life to your games in the first place.
-Joseph-
Slice of mind: Fallout, murder and cartoons.
This little snippet might seem a couple of days overdue to some of you, but it’s been sitting in one of my tabs in Firefox until now that I’ve decided to quit being lazy.
Gaming site Hellforge posted an image by the artist responsible for the design of the “Vault Boy” character from the old Fallout games.
Despite being particularly disturbing, and somewhat pro-choice, it could have been a whole lot worse, considering the message it’s supposed to convey.
Read more
