Ah my beloved Fallout, finally back where it belong; back East in Nevada and Mojave Desert, but not, of course in its original isometric style. But that’s the old school fan in me talking. So what do we have to look forward in this latest standalone incarnation in this post-apocalyptic series?
In this incarnation you don’t start playing as a Vault Dweller, but are instead identified as ‘The Courier’ carrying important information to the New California Republic, a faction that old fans will recognise from Fallout 2 who has now come to dominate the whole of California and is spreading beyond.
Back at Gamescom last year I remember looking at some of the press conferences and thinking that there will be some good games on the horizon. What did take me by surprise though was Peter Molyneux’s appearance and the announcement of Fable III. While I was pretty damn excited about this announcements, I couldn’t help but here alarm bells going off in my head. I was still happily playing through Fable II. Granted it might have been my 3rd time through the story line, but I was still playing it to death. So to have its sequel announced this early after the release of Fable II. I thought they must be doing something wrong here, was this next game going to ba a half arsed rush job?
Well I can tell you now that after reading up on Fable III recently, the game has promise and it’s very far from just another rush game job.
The wind picked up, the blue light became a blue sky only punctuated by cloud. The feeling of falling is both terrifying and incredible. Fear of the moment, wonder at the experience of force and…relief in knowing that death will be painful but brief. I looked down. There was tower of immense size and structure sticking out of the ground like it was giving the world a great defiant middle finger. Babel had nothing on this construction of iron and steel. I had felt like this before in my dreams but this…
…cause its awesome and relevant. AND I almost counted it as a vote, but it wouldn’t of made a difference as you’ll soon notice.
HERE IT IS!
EBAY/KEEP/(EBAY LATERS)
Gamespot: 1/2/1
IGN:2/4/2
GiantBomb:8/13/5
1UP:2/1/0
Twitter/FB:1/1/0
PlusXP:0/2/3
TOTAL:14/23/11
KEEP WINS!
-These votes were shared across my Gamespot, IGN, Giantbomb and 1UP blogs along with votes from social networks and the site I contribute to PlusXP.-
Now there were ALOT of people whom didnt give a straight answer; something along the lines of- if you like it, keep it, if not sell it. Therefore I couldn’t count it as a vote, despite how much sense it makes. But thanks anyhoot.
Now onto the results themeselves. I am pretty damn surprised! Considering the general online consensus, I thought it was gonna be a landslide for ‘EBAY’. BUT of course theres the fact that it is signed by important dudes, which has become the main factor behind peoples votes.
As you can see theres also another category here ‘Ebay Laters’, which was recognised under the popular suggestion of waiting for it to gain value over time. And a damn good point too. I can’t help but wander that if I had that as an original category along side the others, would it have gotten more votes…
So yup thats that. I’m keeping FF13.
I have to say thanks for your votes guys, I was REALLY indecisive about it. Like literally today there were moments where I was hoping that the votes would be ‘KEEP’ and then an hour later I was wishing it would be ‘EBAY’. So yeah, I is indecided on stuffs. In terms of whether or not am I going to play it still? well I guess seeing as I’m keeping it, thats a no brainer. Here’s looking forward to that 30 hr cross over point into awesomes ville =D
Yup here it is. My signed collectors edition of Fantasy 13. I got it at the end of a fantastic game launch which I covered. My friends whom weren’t in the queue actually bought me the game and then handed it down to me so I could get it signed. Not only this but out of this years releases Fantasy 13 has been one of my most anticipated games to look forward to along with Alan Wake and Dead Rising 2.
And yet I want to sell it. Why?
YOU GUESSED IT! Cause it kinda sucks.
If your on the internet for longer then 15 minutes youve probably already heard about what the gameplay consists of – walk down a narrow pathway, battle sequence, press A (X), Walk down narrow pathway, cutscene, REPEAT.
And its true.
Screw this 30 hrs it gets better crap, I dont really wana go through that to get to the supposed good stuff.
Or do I? See Im kinda tempted to see if it REALLY does magically get better. Hence one of the reasons im in this dilemma. Plus theres the fact that ITS SIGNED by the producer and writer/director (not sure), which is a pretty cool thing to have. My first actual signed game I believe.
So in comes you guys, my fellow gamers. GAMERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! I reach across to you, across the highway of the interwebz for your input. Across four gaming blogs. leave a comment and VOTE!
I have a…love hate relationship with RPGs. When I love them I will withdraw for days and never let go of them. If I hate them, I will try my hardest to beat them out of a twisted sense of spite. Then I sell it or give it away and try to forget it. The final fantasy series is perhaps teh best example of this: I Loved FFVII, I hated VIII, I Loved FFIX (the only one I completed), I hated X, I LOATHED X-2, but I will beat it! I Loved XII, despite the poor story. XIII…I just…didn’t care about. At all. I saw the trailers, read the previews and…I wasn’t sold. The character archetypes were old and tired and I’d become somewhat Jaded by the whole on again off again FF experience. I may pick it up at some point but not anytime soon. No, I want to talk about something more obscure perhaps a successor to Final Fantasy that I’m hoping to get my hands on later this month. Resonance of Fate or End of Eternity (yeah real subtle, using a thesaurus with Final Fantasy) in Japan.
This first came to my attention when checking the Spoonyone’s blog saying that he DIDN’T want to kill his characters out of annoyance. For a JRPG that’s high praise, the characters often end up pissing you off to no end with bad voice acting or stupid motivations within the story. So I went to have a gander at this RPG. The signs were…mixed.
On the plus hand it looks gorgeous; your players all use guns and fight in matrix style combat unloading clips into the energy in various back flips, cartwheels, handstands and other acrobatic moves.
On the meh side, they do look like archetypes from your typical JRPG and the voice acting for the English Dub seems a tad spotty.
The game utilises a turn based real time battle system allowing you to pull a Neo one step at a time. You get to run around and do a single attack in your turn time. A system I look forward to testing.
But what’s most interesting is the story, a mix of Final Fantasy and Fallout. A future earth where in order to combat a rise in toxins in the air a massive tower named Basil *cough* Babel!*cough*but now the air purifier has started to…malfunction.
You play as four character and hopefully 4 only. Two guys and gals: a manly ex-soldier called Vashyron, who appears to be doing a Vash the Stampede/Sepiroth look; the other is ‘the kid’ Zehpr who looks like that kid from Kingdom Hearts. The girls are Leanne, a cute but capable lass under Vash’s charge and subject 20, who I’m guessing is going to be integral to the plot and will probably end up dead in the end.
So while it may not reinvent the JRPG formula, it does seem to be moving in a better direction.
First off, if you haven’t read it already – check out my earlier 16th hour opinion article if you want to read a little more detail into the game’s battle system. I’ll cover it to an extent here – but no sense repeating myself entirely!
A huge FF fan, I’ve played most of them and completed many – each game offering a whole new world to explore with its own cast of characters – naturally things have progressed as time has passed, the natural evolution and growth of games allowing for bigger and better things. Final Fantasies VI – XII in particular standing out to me in terms of scale and plot. Although many people have personal favourites, and each game has had strengths and weaknesses, each has offered an immersive experience that has captured my attention in its own way. So naturally, I didn’t think twice about buying XIII – it was just a matter of waiting for its eventual release.
The game focuses on the world of Cocoon, a world within a sphere containing its own eco-system and history. Cocoon is governed by deity-like beings called Fal’Cie that regulate its life and elements, and the people live within it, happy except for one main fear – a constant worry of an invasion from “Pulse”, the uncharted world outside of Cocoon believed to be some kind of hell; legends of an ancient war between Cocoon and Pulse striking fear into peoples’ hearts. The story revolves around Lightning and co., six people brought together and given a choice - complete a task given to them by a Pulse Fal’Cie, the enemy of Cocoon - or be doomed to become monsters. Branded outcasts from their home and given an impossible choice, the plot revolves around their quest to understand their fates and take control of them.
It all sounds alright, the concept definitely plausible as a decent Final Fantasy plot, but I’m afraid this is as far as I get without having to be negative. Yes, I’m afraid that I must admit that I don’t enjoy FFXIII.
Why’s that? Well – the main problem is the gameplay – or lack of, I should say. Anyone who is used to the sprawling worlds of FF, the range of side quests and exploration will be sorely disappointed. The game is extremely linear, offering more or less a single route for the majority of the game, and with little opportunity for any backtracking or optional tasks aside from opening a chest here and there. There are also no towns to explore, so the basic structure of the game is: move forward, fight battles, fight a boss, cut scene, rinse and repeat. That’s it. I did keep playing in hope of it ever improving, but that really is more or less it. The game is pretty much 25% cut scenes and 70% battles. Which brings me to my next point.
The battle system is loosely based on the traditional ATB system, but mostly just because you have to wait for your meter to charge between attacks. Somewhat like Final Fantasy XII, you only control one character in battle and your teammates are controlled by AI. This wouldn’t necessarily be an awful thing, except for two main points: Firstly, the AI is worse than that of XII; and secondly – XII didn’t offer sod all to do outside of its combat.
Whereas XII allowed you to set very specific behaviour “gambits” to control your teammates, XIII utilises the “Paradigm” system, which essentially allows you to switch your team between different setups of Jobs/Classes depending on the situation. This allows you to change each character’s available moves, but always leaving the actual decision-making to the AI. Not too bad at first – but when you want your teammate to cast a specific spell (i.e. Protect) and they sit there casting all the other spells that they have (i.e. Shell, Veil, Vigilance), it’s a little bit frustrating. Not to mention the animation for switching between Paradigms gets incredibly tedious after a while, especially since you are supposed to change them constantly depending on the battle’s flow. The battle commands allow you to chain up moves to be performed in one combo, but aside from a tiny bit of tactical value, it’s little more than the normal selection of Attack, Magic etc that can be seen in all other FF titles. Oh – and the bosses are extremely boring, long fights which generally require little more than patience – one boss in particular must be fought multiple times, each time as boring as the last. I found myself groaning at the sight of it each time just knowing it’d be a good 10-15 minutes until I’d be past it.
As you can see, I’ve been a little disappointed with the game. Yes, it looks great – the graphics are fantastic, the odd area looking impressive, but it feels like such wasted potential – where the older titles had fantastic cities like Alexandria, Luca, Rabanastre, Midgar - all of which would look amazing on the PS3 – the graphics simply provide pretty cut scenes and backdrops to generic areas for battles. The lack of “civilised” areas such as cities really drain the game of any real life or personality, and it’s all too clear that you are simply being pushed down a route letting the story progress and reach its inevitable end with little to do along the way. Even shops have been reduced to nothing but a menu on the save screen – Final Fantasy I had more impressive design in that department.
Spoilers
My hopes were a little renewed upon reaching Chapter 11 - well over 20-30 hours in – when you reach a more open area, something akin to the “Calm Lands” of Final Fantasy X – an open grassland type region which allows for a little more exploration. My hopes were quelled, however, upon realising that again it was nothing more than an open area for little more than battles, and missions – which always revolve around Hunts – yes, that would be more battles.
Spoilers End
I hate to complain - especially about one of my most loved series, but anywhere in the game I can find a positive I can find a whole load of negatives. Some people have enjoyed the game – maybe it’s denial, or they find something they can enjoy from it, but I personally have been totally disappointed. Where the game excels graphically, it suffers in gameplay and lack of variety, and although the story was initially interesting it quickly becomes repetitive and just seems to repeat itself, re-stating the same few points over and over again. Although I initially liked the majority of the characters, they offered little in the way of storyline twists and I never really felt any connection with them, nor cared for their eventual fates.
I’ve been told that my expectations were too high – apparently wanting Square-Enix to produce something with all the standard features of the previous titles – exploration, cities, side-quests, enjoyable battle system - is too much to expect, regardless of them having done it multiple times before on a console of lower power. The real answer is simply that gameplay has been sacrificed in place of graphical design, the efforts in the game’s production clearly shifted from the importance of gameplay and depth in place of the need to meet the technical, graphical standards of today’s markets.
When the game was first announced in 2006, the trailer showed battles that were incredibly dynamic, with Lightning running around the arena in cinematic battles – this was nothing more than hype building, as I promise you the battles are nowhere near as good as they looked then. Skip the video to 0:23 to see what I mean.
In the end, XIII has a battle system that I find incredibly tedious and unimpressive – and outside of that the game is merely an aesthetically pleasing shell that simply pushes you along a path to progress the story. And the story isn’t that great. It’s been said the game gets a lot better at the very end – now, this may be true but I doubt anything extremely different will become available; but when you are sick to tears of a game before you get that far, it’s a bad game regardless. I’m well toward the end of the game, but I could lie to myself no longer – 57 hours in, and I just wasn’t enjoying it in the slightest.
I really hate to write such a negative review for a Final Fantasy title, but sadly I only offer my truthful opinion - so much potential but so little delivered. The graphics mask a very dull, shallow game and even the positive aspects of the game are minor compared to the sheer blandness of the whole product. If it wasn’t an official Final Fantasy title that was part of a large collection, I’d have already traded it in.
I only hope that Versus XIII turns out differently – I’d be very sad to see this as the end of my Final Fantasy days.
As FPS games go I have had my fair slice of Deus Ex. The first installment I plated on the PC and invisible war I played on the original X Box. I loved invisible war, most gamers out there didn’t take a shine to it as much as I did but I thought it was a well put together game that could keep me entertained for a fair old while.
Now seven years later. The third installment in the Deus Ex franchise has been unleashed, with news now making its way across in internet. Deus Ex Human Revolution will again see us playing from the first person perspective and will have the role-playing elements we are used to from the franchises first outing back in 2000. With weapon and player customisation promised, this will be a game that holds true variety. It has also been said that the game will also have a multi solution approach to its obstacles, meaning, whatever your gaming style is, You will find an enjoyable way of playing Human Revolution.
The beauty about this game is that it is a prequel to Deus Ex 1. Meaning new comers to the franchise will not be left out or thinking ‘what the hell is going on here?’ the game starts a whole 25 years before the first game, but what I do appreciate here is that it won’t leave Deus Ex fans in the dark either, as familiar characters from the previous games will be popping up every now and again. It has also been said that the end of the game will flow pretty much perfectly into Deus Ex 1, which I think is a nice touch also.
If you played any Deus Ex titles you know that the gameplay is very open-ended. For example, if for instance you wanted to go and murder a main character, you could do so, they may be too powerful for you to kill, but hey you can still try. Human Revolution brings that style of open-ended game play back, quite literally giving you the freedom to do pretty much anything you want gameplay and story wise. Mind you some RPG dialogues have to be mandatory to keep the game together but other than that it is up to you, this in turn gives the game some pretty epic replay value, which will have any Deus EX fan salivating.
I am personally looking forward too how the game’s story line deals with Argumented people this time round. In previous titles there have been people in the Deus Ex world who have been argument, which means they have manipulated their body and changed their genetics for the better, weather is getting a reinforced bone structure or the ability of using a sniper rifle without the need of a scope there are people in the dues ex universe who want to make themselves better (and before you say OMG! BIOSHOCK! Deus Ex used the idea first.). There are also the non-argumented humans who think this is absolutely wrong and people shouldn’t ‘play god’ This in turn makes for some interesting political views within the game’s story line. That said, we know that arguments will be making a return in Deus Ex so it will be interesting to see how it will play a part in this story line.
Not much else is known about Deus Ex: Human Revolution as yet, I forgot to mention that this will strictly be a single player game, No multi-player for this title. Which is good really, gives me a chance to max out the achievements.
More will be revealed at this years E3 expo. Stay tuned to Plus XP for more info as we get it.
Back in December 2008, Japan got a new RPG title called The White Knight Chronicles. A new Role Playing Game developed by Japan Studio and Level-5 (the same guys who brought us such titles as Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy) and published by the good old people at Sony Entertainment.
Almost two years has passed since the release in Japan, then finally in north america on February 2nd 2020, the game decides to show up on game store shelves, then on February 19th, us people on europe finally get the taste of the action. Now I know release dates have a bit of a gap between japan and america, but two years? seriously!?
So what has this title got to offer a quite frankly crowded genre that is the Japanese RPG? Well the story revolves around a party of characters who’s shindig was crashed by an evil organisation. This organisation has gone and stolen a princess and your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to go and save her. Along your way you stumble across a huge mechanoid suit of white armour which you can then morph into when you com across the games bigger and more challenging battles. Yes that’s right, we are looking at your classic medieval fantasy based game with a robot suit of armour.
Fans of Final Fantasy XII will be a little at home here, as the battle system for the smaller battles is set in realtime. Much like FF XII you will be running at enemies brandishing a sword over your head, so if you want to do a battle cry as you do so then feel free too. During battle you hack and slash your way through enemies in real-time, the more you attack the more action chips you will obtain so you can unleash some more powerful attacks and spells. Or you can save up your chips to morph into you 50 foot mechanoid and deal some hefty damage. This is cool and all but I can imagine it being a tad overkill if you were to morph into this night if you are against some basic enemies. Thinking about it though, morphing into a huge robot so you can kick butt sounds a bit Power Rangers to me, but hey, whatever is effective in battle right?
One of the games more interesting features is character customisation, this is a different road for a JRPG to take as most of the games in this genre you play, only go as far as to let you change the name of the main protagonist. At the start of the game you are given a nice selection of sliders to change your character, and get them looking like yourself, or if your not comfortable with that you can probably try to make them look like Squall from Final Fantasy VIII, It’s a free country.
Having a fully customisable character comes at a price though, from what I have heard the game centers more around the other characters in your party, making you the mute 3rd wheel who has a creepy vacant stare in the background. But if the story and game play are good then this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
White Knight Chronicles looks like an interesting title, Your classic JRPG mixed with character customisation and a huge mechanoid knight. All you gamers with a PS3 out there should probably pick it up, as it’s out now. I suggest you grab is quick before your soul gets taken over by Final Fantasy XIII in March.
The PSP has a few odd games amongst it’s minature versions of Playstation home console titles and ports of older games – Half-Minute Hero being one of them, produced by Rising Star games. A demo is available on the PlayStation Network, and I urge you to try it yourself. But to give you an idea of what it entails, read my half-minute review instead.
The game is a sort of tongue-in-cheek mini take on the classic RPG, such as the original Final Fantasy, with a graphical style to match. The story – you are a wandering hero, and the evil bad-guy is casting a spell of destruction upon the world… the catch: the spell only takes 30 seconds to cast. So you must do everything to defeat him with only 30 seconds to do so.
It sounds strange, and it is – but once you get the hang of it, it’s more of a time-management game relying on your use of strategy and forward thinking to do everything in time. Like a classic Final Fantasy game, there are random battles with which you gain experience and level up, but these battles are performed automatically – with both sides running head-on to each other with the stronger emerging victorious in a couple of seconds. Obviously you level up to match the speed of the game, so you can easily reach level 15 or so by the end of the time limit.
Along the way there are traditional RPG things you can/must do, such as buying new weapons and armour, recruiting allies (to join the 2 second headbutting contests), and doing quests for civilians. By doing so, you can become strong enough to progress, meet the bad guy at his castle and take him down to end the stage. Although it’s said the levels take 30 seconds, that’s not entirely true – in some cases time freezes while you are inside towns (which are simple one-screen areas with people to talk to), and you can also pay a high price at towns to pay the Time Goddess to reset the timer and give you a fresh 30 seconds. Most levels really take about 2-3 minutes, average for a simple puzzle game.
It’s really quite hard to explain without actually playing it, but it really does work – sort of like each level is a super-condensed mini-RPG with automatic battles and an aim on time management. The demo consists of two levels, the first being the simpler of the two, sort of showing you how the game works. The second of the two levels available in the demo took me a couple of attempts – the first one going awry when the Time Goddess gave me a ‘loan’ on a time-reversal since I couldn’t afford it, then chose to appear and take all my equipment when I was being attacked by a huge monster to settle the debt. Nice of her…
It doesn’t take itself seriously, though – the whole game is done in a cheeky way, starting with lines such as “Oh noes! The world will be destroyed on a whim!”, with generic bad guys titled “Evil Lords” and the pixellated characters being the epitomy of in-jokes.
It’s really quite a charming little game, and is quite challenging as more of a puzzle game than an actual RPG. Although it purposely looks dated, there are some nice little touches, like the Hero’s weapon and armour changing his appearance respectively. The music sounded also like a sped up remix of typical old FF world-map music, which was a nice little bit of homage (assuming that was intentional!). I must say I hadn’t played anything quite like it before, and once I got used to the concept it was quite addictive.
The full game apparently includes three other modes where you play as different characters in different styles of gameplay – just utilising the similar 2D style and 30 second time-frame.
Half-Minute Hero is perhaps mostly aimed at older gamers who have played the old NES RPG’s and such, but even without the style its a fun little puzzle game, perfect for quick games if you only have a few minutes. If you have access to a PSP and PSN, give the demo a shot – it’s really the best way to understand it. But if you like a little bit of thinking, simple puzzles, some cute graphics and a little bit of RPG nostalgia, this game could be perfect for you.
