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A while ago I opened up my 'Final Fantasy games on the Playstation' review thread. This was always something I had en eye to continuing, and indeed in due course I shall be able to review FFX, man of the moment as I am.

But it seemed quite fun being able to ***** about things I don't like about games, and the reviews seemed reasonably well received, so I am now opneing the field to all of videogaming! FF gaming was a bit of a curiosity to me, after all. I am primarily a PC gamer, though Nintendo has recently won me over.

A relayed forum post in my magazine of choice, PC Gamer, had a comment from a gamer that said "After two decades gaming, my tastes have become so specific that I don't actually like anything any more." This struck a chord with me. When you play games for a long time, in my experience, you see a heck of a lot more that you don't like than you do, and you start seeing things you don't like in just about everything you play, with no game being able to live up to the impossible combination of all the best things you saw in your head that you WANT in a game. Bad for enjoyment, but great for criticism, and this is in a genre where solid criticism has actually helped improve things over time. Therefore, I take the view that me reviewing negatively is a public service. Woo!

I'm not a professional game designer, but that's because I think it is a mistake to make your hobby your job. There is no real course in good game design, it's really down to talent and practice. I actually like to think I am fairly good in this area, and I certainly have some twenty years of practice and experience in hobbyist game design and implementation. Feel free to think my game design views are crap, but I stand by them and would be willing to put some of my designs forward as proof of how some things could be done bettter. If you want a character referece, ask my RP crowd. Note this is entirely about rules concept and execution. I know bugger all about game programming.

I'll comment about games, leave a mark out of ten (with seven being the reasonable mark for enkoying a game), leave a closing summary, and will also list any cardinal sins the game has. Cardinal sins are othewrwise trivial problems with games (i.e. not being down to bugs or massive gameplay mistakes) that nonetheless cause great and continuous irritation. The best example of this would be Unskippable Cutscenes, one of the greatest gaming sins in the book.

KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC


I’m kicking off with KOTOR because it has a bit of a god-like reputation in some quarters and my opposition to certain aspects of this has occasionally been of issue in the Star Wars and Role-playing areas. Here’s a chance to state my views on the whole thing definitively.

Let’s get something out of the way first. I liked KOTOR. It was a worthwhile gaming experience. My issue is not that it is a bad game, it is that it does not deserve deification.

For those of you who do not know, Knights of the Old Republic is a Star Wars game set thousands of years before the films, in the days when there were lots of Sith as well as lots of Jedi. This kind of fuzzy past is an area where George Lucas’ views and those of the Expanded Universe (those parts of Star Wars fiction not in any way created by GL, like the third party books) somewhat clash. To be sure, KOTOR is an EU influenced game more than a George Lucas one. Not necessarily a bad thing because it gives you a much more open playing field to build your game in, but unfortunately it includes some mistakes of mentality that I shall cover later.

KOTOR is a team-based computer role-play. You play an amnesiac force user who comes to on a ship under fire in the middle of a war; you must escape the ship onto the planet below, then work your way getting off the planet, and then go to various places in the Galaxy developing your force skills as a Jedi, finding out who the hell you are and why you were there at the start, maintaining your group of buddies and deciding between the Light and Dark Side. By the end of the game your power is more or less that of the Gods and you are in a position to affect the fate of the Galaxy etc.

KOTOR’s backdrop is in a Sith War led by the mysterious Darth Revan and his apprentice, Darth Malak (the use of the titles ‘Darth’ causing a small continuity war amongst the EU crowd). One of the central mysteries is the disappearance of Darth Revan, the war being led by Malak in the meantime. The Republic seems very much pressed in the game, the Jedi rather disorganised, partly as a result of the recent Mandalorian war which a lot of Jedi took part in even though officially they were meant to stay out.

KOTOR is made by the same people that brought you Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, and likewise uses the D20 system. You get powers and feats and level up in ways that will be very familiar to any players of their games. KOTOR runs on a 3-d engine that was a more sophisticated version of the Neverwinter Nights one. You control three characters at a time; Final Fantasy style you pick the three you want whenever venturing out somewhere, returning to your ship to change when you feel it is appropriate.

KOTOR was a long time in the making and there is a great attention to detail in it which shows this. On its release, it was highly regarded by many, and its popularity since- including engagement with the backstory I mention above- has won it a lot of diehard fans. Your interactions with the other characters are many and varied and change according to your gender, in-game decisions and your moral outlook, as determined by your Light/Dark Side position. Many, many choices in game affect your position on the Light/Dark scale. This was also very popular. The game is well-constructed, easily playable and rarely frustrating in a gameplay sense. So, RPing with open motives in a Star Wars environment not fettered by the films, anyone like Jar-Jar and as many Sith as you can imagine? What’s not to like, hmm?

Let’s knock some of these things over, then.

1. Stylistic errors. Star Wars has a style all of its own. Obviously not everyone likes it, but a lot of Star Wars stuff becomes innately cooler and more enjoyable simply because it IS Star Wars. Games that go with this vibe do well, and KOTOR has done so in a lot of ways. But in several critical ways it has not- in many places it feels distinctly UN Star Wars. A good example of this is people using metal swords against Lightsabre users. Huh? The in-game explanation is fairly feeble- the metal swords are weaved with cortosis, a material that resists sabres. Cortosis in turn is a feeble EU invention created by unimaginative authors themselves going against the Star Wars style, but even they never let it be used in weaponry. And WHY go to the bother of putting in such melee weapons and so having to bother explaining them? When, in the films, ever, do things like metal swords get used in lightsabre fights? It’s completely against the vibe. And on a more practical level, game rule wise, aren’t Lightsabres going to be better weapons anyway? Well… yes. They are. The swords are magnificently pointless. You are going to use sabres or you are going to use guns. It’s only the vagueries of role-playing- wherein when you get shot you just take abstract damage rather than… well, dying- that makes metal swords possible, because in the films the use of Lightsabres is justified by their ability to reflect incoming fire alone allowing you to get close. Now… admittedly this is a small thing. But KOTOR is littered with such things and it really starts to make you think of this as far future D&D rather than Star Wars.

2. Massive, overblown EU-like approach. My problem with the EU approach is that much EU is exemplified by sloppy and unimaginative thinking. Death Star can destroy a planet? Well, this book has a weapon that destroys a solar system! And so on and so forth, always trumping itself in very juvenile ways. KOTOR falls directly into this trap. A central plot point is the power Battle Meditation, via which a certain Jedi can affect the results of entire battles by concentrating on it. Uh-huh. Even if this were not a silly and overblown thing, it’s simply really boring, plot-wise. But the most (General?) grievous errors are in the force powers. The EU has often taken the piss out of these things; in the films the most powerful of the most powerful have, on occasion, flung lightning as a moment of sheer drama. In all other places the force is relatively subtle; just in these small, dramatic moments do the most powerful of all push the limit, and even then only to limited effect. The EU tends to take such things as the starting point and build up from there, rather than building TO it, and this approach has infected the computer games. Now, ok, in your First Person Shooters and what-not this is more forgivable on the grounds of them being arcade games. But KOTOR is an RP, and it is banking on re-creating the Star Wars experience. It should get it right. Instead, at a fairly early level you can fling around enough Lightning to de-populate most planets, and that is just a start. With the Force you can paralyse, stun, create shields, drain hitpoints… and what in the name of Yoda is ‘Force Destroy Droid’ meant to be? The power of the Force to… err… magically destroy droids? And ‘magic’ is the key word here, because very quickly you notice that this is simply a converted D&D magic system with Force names mapped on. No great attempt has been made to really create a system that makes you feel like the Jedi you have seen in the films and want to re-create. Lazy, adolescent stuff.

3. And talking of D&D… the system is bust. KOTOR uses the D20 system. There is a tabletop Star Wars RP that uses D20, hence the license working out. A lot of the class and force power names have been taken from this, but curiously the rules are almost entirely D&D. Star Wars d20 has large differences in areas like armour and hit points that the makers of KOTOR have ignored, using the old D&D system instead where magic Full Plate is the only way to go. This causes all sorts of weird anomalies where they have to create Jedi Robes that act like suits of armour, else all the Jedi will just die from being too easy to hit (in D20, armour affects how hard you are to hit, not what damage you can take. Star Wars d20 sensibly changed this as it did not suit Star Wars… clearly KOTOR should have stuck with this). Still, that’s small fry really because the problem is more fundamental than that. D20 is a poor system. The skill system is appalling, it is designed really for miniature work (being almost a war game than an RP), it involves too much dice rolling and it is too slow. Oddly, some of these aspects are improved by translation to computer- all that damn rolling gets done for you- but it still doubles up the problem. D20 isn’t very good, the doubling is that tabletop systems do not work properly on the computer. They depend on adaptation and implementation by a Games Master controlling the game, who does not exist in a computer game. They are also designed for an environment of discussion, and choice with dice rolling, which also does not exist on a computer game. On computer, the system is slow and clunky and flows badly, with a lot of pausing and a lot of issues in the movement (real-time computer game movement is utterly different to tabletop miniatures movement and the two do not meet well) and worst of all the way that something important only happens every six seconds- the length of a round. Great in role-playing, TERRIBLE in a computer game. Worse still, because there is no arbitration, the system is terribly abusable. All RP games have abusable rules, but GMs stack rules, enemies and the acquisition of abusable powers to make sure it doesn’t get too bad (good ones do, anyway). It’s because there is a certain way in which RP games work which means power-orientated players find gaps in the system. There is no arbitrator in KOTOR, and basically the game is ridiculously easy. Stack up a Jedi with the power flurry and watch all enemies die when you click the attack button. Pretty much just like that, from halfway through the game onwards. It’s really a bad idea to simply adapt a tabletop system. Final Fantasy games work MUCH better than this because they are designed, from the ground up, for computers. Ditto other major RP franchises. KOTOR fails here on so many levels and the stark comparison of how bad it is compared to purpose built games is breathtaking. And as a final addendum to that… D20 combats can be likened to two cavemen with clubs taking turns to hit each other until one falls over (again, off-line, you can find ways to make this exciting. Not in a computer game). I just wanted to add- this style makes for the dullest lightsabre duels imagainable. One of the best bits of Star Wars… ruined.

4. The plot is NOT all that. KOTOR’s plot seems to get a lot of kudos from people and I cannot imagine why. It’s a fair plot. I am glad they put the effort in, and I have played much worse. But it’s only ok. It’s been done a ton of times before and basically people only like it because of the twist, other than that it is all flim-flam and background. What about important elements of plot, like characterisation and development? The people all develop in such boring ways- again, Final Fantasy presents FAR more interesting characters with plotlines for those characters that draw you in so much more. Even FFVIII was making the effort with the characters, much as its main plot was shite. But yes, KOTOR’s plot is affable B-Movie stuff. Quite frankly, role-playing wise, I have written and run much, much better plots. One other comment requires spoilers: The big twist is that you yourself are Darth Revan, recovering from injury/force induced memory loss. You get to choose between becoming Revan anew or being a new Light Side… guy. One VERY streange thing here- which I think reveals a faulty mentality behind a lot of the people that like the KOTOR plot- is how hugely popular Darth Revan is as a character. How is that possible? All you get is a lot of people saying Revan is hard. Other than that, all you ever see Revan do is… well, stuff that you yourself do, becauwe you are playing him. It’s not even like Final Fantasy where you play people like Cloud or Squall or Tidus and love or hate them according to how they act. You are in complete control; your character has no personality and performs no actions other than those you give him. So to say Darth Revan is, as some do, the best SW character ever… is to say that YOU are the best SW character ever, because that’s all he is. It is a strange new form of narcissism. It’s the EU mentality again- adolescents being attracted to huge, overblown and pointless power trips, rather than anything interesting..

5. Finally, my big issue with KOTOR is its showpiece good/evil Light/Dark system. I will quote here from an earlier post on this subject I made:

SERIOUS issues there. This whole 'start neutral and change by your actions', first used in Jedi Knight, does not work right.

Well, first of all, to make it work, they had to start both games with your character as an amnesiac. Lazy.

Secondly, the decisions are banal. Turning to the Dark Side seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the issues of gravity and destiny and fear that the movies have it as. Light Side seems to be about not accepting money for missions, and Dark Side seems to be about stealing money and maybe going on a spontaneous kill rampage for no explained reason. It's trivial, it is an utterly surface treatment of what should be a deep issue and it is not appropriate for what is meant to be a deep RP game.

Thirdly, the benefits are mis-judged. It actually gives BONUSES for reaching the maximum of either end of the spectrum. What the hell is that? For the Light Side, especially, there should be NO reward for getting anywhere. Being good IS the reward, and yeah, that might well suck if you are obsessed with seeing your character development in terms of how many +s to hit you get. Suddenly, people are not trying to do good or evil because it is part of a reflected personality, No, they are being bribed into it by power. Yay! I topped the Light Side, so I get loads of cool bonuses! Honestly, what kind of Jedi is that?

Fourthly, it is deeply and fundamentally backwards. It assumes what you do makes you what you are. No! What you ARE causes what you DO. This is especially important in Star Wars. A true Dark Sider could do every single nice thing in the game, if the whim took him, but it wouldn't make him any less of an evil bastard. Yet the game would score him up the Light Side for doing that.

It's really not an opposed spectrum that counts up good deeds and evil deeds and produces a balance sheet. That reads Light and Dark side all wrong.

In my opinion, sophistication to make Light and Dark work is probably still beyond a computer based RP. They should do intertwining plotlines choosing Light or Dark from the start. There, they could do REALLY well. Then they could explore what kind of Light/Dark Sider you are, which would make things work much better.


This kind of issue permeates KOTOR- the writers have not paid attention to the source material. Their treatment of Love in the game is almost a slap in the face to what George Lucas specifically says about it. This kind of thing really irritates me- if you don’t like a fictional background, then fine, but don’t work with it. Make one of your own, even. When you are making work set inside SOMEONE ELSE’s fictional background, you should have some damn respect for it, and make the effort to keep to it.

So, that is Knights of the Old Republic. Well put together, detailed, fun to play. But based on a flawed system, far too easy to exploit and beat with no challenge, and not living up to the promise it had in really allowing you to live the Jedi experience,. Instead, you are living an experience of their own making, that belongs in another setting, not Star Wars.



Cardinal Sins: I can’t remember that well, but the loading times were offensively long on anything other than super-powered (for the time) computers.

Rating: 7/10

Summary: Good. But only good, nothing close to spectacular.

Nice review. very detailed. I can tell you're a star wars fan and honestly trying not to bash the game.

Thanks muchly.

You may note that in my 'earlier post' quote I do above I refer to 'both' games.

This is because the issue applies just as much to the sequel. having mentioned that, I'll do a quick review there.


KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II- THE SITH LORDS

KOTOR II is very similar to the original, to the point where it should have been a data disc. Indeed, such things were released for both Baldur's Gater and Neverwinter Nights, and it is galling to see that this got a full price release.

You play a different character in KOTOR II, set a while after KOTOR with the main character from that game having gone missing. A few of the companions from KOTOR turn up either as cameos or, in the case of your droid, as a party member once more.

By this point in the plot, although the Revan wars are over, various other Sith Lords have virtually exterminated the Jedi and are poised to take over. I must say, the KOTOR writers have a VERY low opinion of the Jedi, who are constantly outmatched, both as warriors and, apprently, morally. They look like feeble imbeciles, really. Creatively I take objection to that- Jedi should look like a force to be reckoned with. Again, I think EU mentality is seeping in here.

But you are basically doing the same thing as in KOTOR- go around, fnd out about yourself (you are fairly clueless about the issues in your past again), level up, go Light or Dark, and have companions following your moral lead in the same manner, until the end where you have the power, pretty much, of a God and can affect the destiny of the Galaxy... err... getting the slightly repetitive picture?

KOTOR II has famously received a lot of flak for being unfinished. The game ends so abruptly that you feel you forgot to install a disc. The issues are more fundamental than that- many of the areas are lifeless and boring, with poor textures and no detail and not much plot. empty spaces seem to be the theme, with even Nar Shadda, a famous EU world meant to be a vast (and famously deep) city, a bustling amoral metropolis wheree everything can be brought and sold, is reduced to a few dark empty screens of vectory buildings with the occasional person wondering around. Criminal, really. It feels sterile and lifeless throughout.

It is indeed true that KOTOR II was rushed and came out before it was really done, although to be fair the detail of character interaction is even more in-depth than the original (their development and plot interest is still very low, though). Various people have tried to re-create the original intended experience, having found data files relevant to entire sections of the game cut out, and that made sense of apparently pointless things that happen near the end (they were simply left in unfinished).

Unfortunately this has given rise to the myth that KOTOR II would have been the best game ever if it had been properly finished. No. It could hardly have failed to help it, of course, but KOTOR II's problems are far more fundamental than that. It is simply NOT, in any way, an improvement on the original. All my above criticisms apply (if anything, it is even easier to rule abuse and hence have no challenge), and added to that are the criticisms of overpricedness, lack of imagination in trying to advance the franchiose... and it basically being sheer repetition. If the plot had been 100% finished, all these issues would still apply.

And so again, because many parts of the basic game design flow well and can be enjoyable, you are not going to gnaw your own hands off in sheer despair playing this game. But it's not good enough, and wehreas I can fondly remember KOTOR as a good game with flaws, KOTOR II is a botched opportunity, simple cash fleecing with no advance. Boo.

Rating: 6/10

Summary: Just as KOTOR. Loses a mark for being rushed and for repetition

Hey, Ush? Can other members post reviews? I'd quite enjoy that.

It might look a bit weird in my "I seem to hate all games" thread, unless you really dig my style. I guess there is nothing to stop you opening a thread of your own, though if it became crowded it would need its own section.

Lana should handle this one, of course. It's her section.

I quit KOTOR2 a quarter through because it was so boring.

Aaaaaaaaaaand I can certainly vouch for Ush's skill and talent in both game design and writing very good plots

And now I'm just wondering what game will be torn into next. Hehe.

And on the reviews thing (that's a lot of ands in a row), I think there actually was a game review thread at some point in time but I'm too lazy to look for it at the moment. So while I'd rather the forum not get too cluttered with review threads, I also can't be bothered to dig out the original. Meaning, I'll decide later what to do.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
It might look a bit weird in my "I seem to hate all games" thread, unless you really dig my style. I guess there is nothing to stop you opening a thread of your own, though if it became crowded it would need its own section.

Lana should handle this one, of course. It's her section.

I like your style but it certainly isn't my own. I'll just wait for Lana's word on this one...

Originally posted by §P0oONY
I like your style but it certainly isn't my own. I'll just wait for Lana's word on this one...
ditto

Ush, curious what games, if any, you'd give 10 out of 10, or 9 out of 10.

They'll come!

Doh, the suspense, and so on.

bugga!
suspence always kills me..

Can't wait to see what Ush will say about FPS.

Interesting, have you ever reviewed Star Wars, LOTR or Matrix movies, Ush? And I would like to see your review of Baldur`s Gate 2 or Fallout.

And are new RPG`s worth upgrading my computer to play them?

I'll be honest, I've not seen a "get a new computer" value RP for a while.

I've never done in-depth movie reviews, no.

RED STEEL

I can relate very much to the UK ign review here. When I heard and read about Red Steel- Nintendo’s flagship shooter for the new Wii console- I was not at all impressed or excited. It struck me as an unambitious shooter built entirely around the new control system which would probably be novel but inferior to the good ol’ mouse and keyboard.

I bought it anyway. Funnily enough I got exactly what I predicted, plus a few bugs. But I don’t regret the purchase.

The plot of an FPS is unlikely to have the detail of the plot of an RP, of course, so that can be dealt with quickly. You play a bodyguard, Scott, who is about to meet his fiancee’s father. Your girl obviously hasn’t given away that much- say, that her father is a major Yakuza boss in LA. You find it out the hard way when a rival faction gatecrashes the big meet, starts shooting everyone in sight and kidnaps your girl. After getting a little battered, you pick up a gun and go looking for her, getting drawn into various Yakuza plots in LA and Tokyo, and learning the ways of the noble Samurai on the way as you try to become a warrior worthy of respect. Apparently. Anyway, you know the deal even without seeing anything of the game. Lots and lots of bad guys to kill for between 10 and 12 hours (not counting bits you have to re-do when you die) until you have put the world to rights. Also a lot of appalling voice acting, though the Japanese sounds better than the English. But heck, I am enjoying Final Fantasy X and I think that takes a few prizes for bad voice acting too, so let’s not hold that against it. It’s not what you would buy the game for, anyway.

Let’s get to the heart of things. The two points of Red Steel are a. the whole movement and shooting thing is done using the remote/nunchuk combo, using your off-hand to move yourself about/open doors/scenery interact/reload with the nunchuk, and your on-hand to point and shoot with the remote… and b. the fact that every so often you have a swordfight, using your on-hand for your attacking blade and off-hand for your shorter, defensive blade, both controlled with the motion sensor and a button pressed used only for dodging rather than parrying with the off-hand. Red Steel is totally unremarkable in every other way, so these two areas are where the game lives and dies, so I’ll deal with them primarily.

The control system is absolutely fine. Obviously it takes a good amount of time and effort to get used to. But I remember mouse and keyboard being a long adjustment for me as well. Maybe others took to it more naturally, but I suspect that people who complain about having to adjust to controls might have a fuzzy memory about how long it took them to get good with what they are used to. Aiming seems totally impossible at first until the zoom function is introduced, by physically pushing your arm forwards and backwards whilst holding down the aim button. This push/pull zoom mechanic is actually the most awkward part of the system but it is bearable. As time goes by you find yourself getting better and better at firing without the zoom too, but it’s still very handy for some situations. Once you are used to it, shooting and moving are instinctive and work fine, but there is a very predictable and inevitable problem. Your aiming point is independent of your facing- a plus point over mouse and keyboard, where your gun is only ever pointing where your nose is. But the analogue stick’s left/right function is for sidestepping; the only way to turn is to aim far to the left or right (or up or down) and drag the screen with you. It’s adequate but totally useless for fast reaction situations to the point where you feel your capacities are severely diminished compared to what you remember from, say, Half-Life. This control mechanism is becoming the default for Wii fps. Hmm. I hear rumour it is less bad elsewhere, but I am waiting for someone to come up with a better approach somehow.

The swordfighting takes place at pre-determined points,. You cannot (effectively) sword gun-using enemies (not that you would want to), or shoot sword-wielding ones. Meet a swordsman, and you auto-draw your swords and move forwards to join him in the fighting arena for it- effectively a swordfighting mini-game. From a game design point of view, my opinion is that this is absolutely the right way to do it. A free-form design might sound superficially attractive but the moment I first saw a Jedi Outcast deathmatch I knew that approach was doomed. Dramatic swordfights need some choreography to be good, and this provides the means to do that. Star Wars games on the Wii, take note!

Some have complained that the swordfighting feels wrong because your movements are not directly translated on-screen; instead, an upwards sort of motion will translate into the fixed up-slash move on screen, likewise all the other directions. An odd complaint. When I saw the Wii Remote and its advertised possibilities for the first time, I knew at once those dreaming of ‘true’ lightsabre duels were doing just that- dreaming. There are far too many subtleties of foot movement and hand position for that ever to be even vaguely possible. Just think, an idle twitch on your right hand, and literal movement should, by rights, cut your own head off. And how would the game know when I am twisting my body from side to side or back or forwards in time with my sword strokes? No, the literal approach would be rubbish- I am sure it was probably playtested and found wanting. Instead, the swordfighting is actually a system perfectly feasible using a standard controller- up, down, left, right, buttons to do things… but translated for use with the Remote, where upon it feels MUCH better.

And I must say, I felt very good swordfighting. Strike right, block left- it is mostly to do with timing. Early fights with enemies tend to favour the “just wave around like a maniac” approach, but then you start to read them and the moves they do and it feels great to judge your reaction and countermoves just right. Possibly it’s a little too easy, but I won’t fault it for that. You have a tactical choice of either trying to cut down your foe or break his weapon (I preferred to think of the weapon-break as a disarm instead; it certainly would have looked cooler if it was); different foes favour different approaches.

There are various special moves available but they work less well. This is for two reasons- first, they tend to require certain combinations with the rather sensitive system makes very hard even in practice (because what you think is a clear left or right movement very easily becomes a diagonal instead and ruins your move), let alone mid-fight. Second problem is- most of them simply aren’t necessary to win any fights. I stuck to a rigid weapon-break strategy every time and won out.

So, what else is there to say? Well, the controls seem to have satisfied me, but on the whole the game is pretty dull. Mid-game it tries to liven things up by having selectable missions, but the approach is not used well. It has training sessions between missions at that point also, including a firing range, but it’s all actually rather pointless. Contrast Perfect Dark, where learning about weapons you found was great fun. Not so here, and there is also an unreasonable amount of time involved in moving between the sword and gun training locations. At no point does the game give you a sense of shock or wonder at events, and nearly all levels are pretty dull and standard stuff, the best being the ‘Tetsuo’s Games’ chapter where you have to win over a boss by playing through his lethal hunting game. These levels are done with a great sense of humour, colour and sound, and good use of light and darkness too, with Tetsuo’s commentary emerging from deranged toy rabbit models scattered around. Over all too quickly, alas. The music, incidentally, is pretty good throughout. The visuals, less so. Red Steel is a purpose built Wii-title but clearly from the Gamecube era. We’ve yet to see how well the Wii can try and push its graphics- not its priority, of course- but it will have to be better than this, especially with the texturing. One fears the lack of anti-aliasing may be a permanent issue. One area that works not badly is you only being able to carry two guns, forcing tactical choice. Countering this is the awkwardness of changing weapons, and also that a game which allows you to carry a pistol sideways if you want (by twisting the remote) doesn't follow through this action film logic and allow you to wield dual pistols. Ah well.

Later in the game you get a time freeze option whereupon you fill a gauge for rapid kills and can expend it to freeze time and mark enemies for subsequent quick kills when time resumes again, Cool enough, if mostly taken from Max Payne. You can also, if they are visible, shoot weapons out of bad guy's hands and beckon to them to surrender afterwards. Causing a leader to surrender also makes his cronies give up in an Italian army style mass capitulation, complete with almost comical rattle of weapons being dropped to the floor. You score Respect points for such non-lethal takedowns- an option also available to you every time you win a swordfight, choosing to strike down or do a stylish sword twirl and let your defeated opponent live. Fair enough, but Respect points, in of themselves, don't seem to get you much. What would have been great was if the game offered tangible differences, either in game plot or hidden options, between those who spared and those who slaughtered.

There's a mutiplayer option- deathmatch only, but if you have four players there the the great option of having secret instructions to you 'phoned in' via the speaker on your remote. But I haven't had a chance to try any of this to tell you how well it works. I can only guess that control is much more awkward when you only have a quarter of the screen to point the remote at.

Overhanging all of this is one gloomy spectre- Red Steel is bugged, the only noticeably bugged game I have played thus far on the Wii. There are many small glitches of graphics and sound and weird enemy behaviour, either in AI or breaking physics. Sometimes the physics break for you as well, getting you totally stuck and forcing a re-load. Once or twice the game actively crashed on me. The biggest bug of all is one nicknamed the ‘rubber band’ bug, a bug wherein your aiming point keeps bouncing back to the centre of the screen when near the horizontal axis. This makes Red Steel the only game thus far where the Remote does not work at full function, and in a game requiring precise aiming, anything that throws it off is somewhat of a disaster. The bug defies much rational analysis, occurring at almost random moments in random degrees of severity. Strangely, turning off the sound from the remote (which otherwise makes nice weapon reloading noises) seems to defeat the bug. No-one can explain why, and even there I cannot offer a guarantee because although it completely cured it on my profile, when my brother started playing with a new save, the remote sound was off but the bug kept happening again. Don’t ask me, it’s weird but most irritating of all is Ubisoft’s apparent refusal to acknowledge the bug exists, despite an increasing mass of evidence that it does and the easy elimination of all secondary factors (people have replaced their remotes, copy of the game, sensor bar and, indeed, their Wiis, played the game at different locations with different light and sensitivity levels and the bug occurs with 100% regularity).

So. Hmm. Well, I enjoyed playing Red Steel. It wasn’t a waste of my money, and it’s also the game I could play casually on my Wii when I wanted some no-thought mindless violence. Objectively, though, it is only partly successful as a project, it’s too short… and the bugs really take the gloss off.

CARDINAL SINS: Unskippable cutscenes! Game breaking bugs!

Rating: 6/10

Summary: Enjoyable, though shallow, action blaster with a new and partially successful approach. Drops a mark due to bug issues that seem to have no prospect of being solved.

I agree with your last review 100%. clap

Ta. Just added in a bit on the freeze time/respect points part.

I like your reviews, very interesting and unbiased, also very much true.

Bravo, Ush. Your thoughts on Red Steel are pretty much mine.

And there's nothing quite like a casino filled with demented rabbits, burly men in schoolgirl outfits, explosives, and a whole team of wanna-be Zyurangers. That was my favorite level as well.

...wow, that alone would make me want to play it...

It would, wouldn't it?

Bunnies and explosives is a combo that can only really end up in hilarity, unless you're blowing up the rabbits.

But yeah, that sounds REALLY amusing and we all know how I like bizarre and funny things

Originally posted by Lana
Bunnies and explosives is a combo that can only really end up in hilarity, unless you're blowing up the rabbits.

I dunno, there's something about cute and fuzzy things getting asploded that makes me chuckle

Anywho, nice work on the reviews Ush; haven't played RS yet, but I find myself agreeing with you more often than not on the KoToR stuff. I look forward to seeing more of your reviews.

Have to agree with Ush about his Red Steel review, although he has seen a lot more bugs then me, the only bugs I got were annoying, and not game breaking. I only had the "aim jumping to middle" bug and at times the Voice acting disappeared but the subtitle remained.

Originally posted by Lana
I quit KOTOR2 a quarter through because it was so boring.

Heh, me too, and I finished KOTOR half a dozen times over. KOTOR 2 is just waaaaay too same old, same old, and just seems to go so damn slow and bored me.

Just a little busy with RP stuff right now to write reviews, but will pick up again soon.

Intending to do a load of Classic game reviews too, so you can get my feelings about things past. My loose definition of classic is anything from the last century

Currently on the 'to be reviewed' list!

Modern games:


Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (but I never review a game unless I have finished it, and I am taking this slowly)

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (for which I will be crucified)

Medieval 2: Total War

Neverwinter Nights II

Civilization IV

Half-Life II


Classic games

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (looking forward to me tearing this one apart, eh? well, tough, I loved it)

Wing Commander III

Rocket Ranger

Lords of Midnight

Alpha Centauri

Midwinter I/II

Blade Runner

Hey Ush, did you ever finish up FFX?

I get the distinct impression I'm gonna love your Oblivion review, Ush.

Nah, still playing, BF. Balancing between it and Zelda and taking it slow on both so it's all going to last me!

FFX goes in on the to-do list as well. And in case I like it too much to tear it apoart, I have FFX-2 ready to do afterwards.

And yay! I can please GK.

Cant wait to see your Zelda reviews, especially TP since you loved Ocarina.

Yeah, you'll definitely tear apart FFX-2. Even I've torn that game to shreds and I liked it a lot.

And hey, didn't get crucified over the KOTOR reviews, and people like to hold those games up on golden pedestals, hehe. Oblivion review should be amusing though...

HALF-LIFE 2

The legend that is Half-Life kinda snuck up on the outside- it’s actually quite difficult to remember the days before the sensation that it was.

These were days when, basically, the Quake franchise was the biggest FPS kid on the block. People were still desperately awaiting Doom III. Myself, I had always preferred Heretic to Doom (and in fact was one of the very, very few people in the UK to own a copy of Heretic on its first release; I filled in the form that came with the Shareware release and sent it off, which seemed to surprise the UK branch of id software/ Raven so much that they phoned me to check if I meant it. You will occasionally hear, when looking at FPS histories, that Heretic did not get a commercial release until after its sequel came out. These things lie; I am direct witness to the contrary), and so had followed the Heretic line through Hexen, Hexen II and the eventual Heretic II. People preferred guns to swords and sorcery, which I guess is fair enough, so Doom and Duke Nukem got all the credit, but Heretic was the first FPS to have the up and down look and an inventory system, Hexen was the first to have character classes, and each one was in some way much more innovative, certainly to my mind, than the mainstream FPS games. (Incidentally, my cds copy of that Heretic release is long lost, much to my unhappiness, but I still have the data, lovingly copied from computer to computer every time I changed PC. I recommend that you get a copy of the WADs of Heretic and Hexen and play through them using this software: http://www.doomsdayhq.com/).

So, being the lover of more canny FPSs, then surely I was greatly anticipating Half-Life’s release, yeah? Nah. Actually I had barely heard of it; it seemed to be just one of a crowd of new copycat FPS shooters that were coming. I was waiting for Sin- it had a great buzz and they released a great demo for it. My judgment could hardly have been worse in retrospect, because Sin only had the one great level- the first- and the rest was an unimaginative, and also incredibly buggy, mess. In a nice piece of irony, some ten years later the sequel to Sin has become available via Steam, the on-line delivery system basically made possible by Half-Life. Apparently it’s also quite good. But I digress. Eventually a friend got me to play Half-Life and it didn’t take long to get incredibly hooked. I may do a full review on HL some time, but to quickly summarise, what made it great was… well, many factions. Its integration of plot into gameplay without having to break into cutscenes, yet still maintaining their dramatic impact. Excellent characterisation. A decent plot (for an FPS, that is). Weapons that ‘felt’ right- an almost indefinable quality that is make or break for so many games (Goldeneye had great feeling weapons as well, though the very original great feeling weapon was Doom’s shotgun). Decent (for the time) AI and comments made by in-game characters. Decent level design (how can you live without that?), and a decent background setting to it all, all contained in chunks that loaded as you moved around, rather than independent levels, giving the whole experience much more continuity. And immaculate presentation, that carried through into the mini-game demos and the interweaving plots of the bonus material seen in Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Probably the most impressive thing is that it managed to be this bloody excellent despite having pretty much none of those extra features I had seemed to like in an FPS. In fact, at base, it was so much like Doom it was almost plagiarism. Just goes to show that approach is often more important than originality. As it is, Half-Life was original in lots of other ways, even if the core of it was the same thing FPS fans had been doing for years.

Of course, when you get such godlike success you are in for serious ‘second album’ syndrome. How can you make something so good again? One challenge is impossible- Half-Life 2 could never have the same impact. Why? Because this time it was so damn famous from the off. The original Half-Life muscled its way into being famous by being so damn good. You can never recreate that again. This is not a matter of hype, just the situation in which your game is released. So… I’ll leave that aside, and try and judge it by its own merits.

One thing that you certainly could not accuse Valve of is being too quick. It’s surprising to confront the fact that HL2 is actually quite old now, because they certainly took their damn time in making it, and that long period of time people spent waiting for it seemed pretty darn significant back during those years. Now it’s all gone and I’m pushing 30. Boo. Of course, the long delay only pushed the excitement about it to fever pitch. They stoked this by making much of two factors, not actually central to whether it was going to be an excellent FPS or not. The first thing they pushed heavily was the new physics system- in these days of (possibly pointless) Physics accelerators we take that kind of thing for granted now, but not long ago spending quite so much effort on physics was such an unusual thing that the otherwise totally crap FPS(ish) ‘Trespasser’ got kudos simply for its decent physics alone. The second thing that was pushed hard was the new on-line content delivery system, Steam.

Just to get this out the way, I hated Steam then and now. It caused complications and problems (especially when changing computers) and downloading big games like that, especially at the time, was a real nightmare for some- not to mention those without internet access (not THAT small an amount, doubly so for kids using computers where only their parent’s computers were hooked up) who found themselves unable to play even if they bought a shop copy. Just to aggravate more, Valve have ‘propagandised’ Steam horribly since its launch, taking every damn opportunity to talk about things they did which would nit have been possible without Steam, which is basically hogwash. I am sure it makes their life easier, but that’s not the point, we are the ones playing. The totality of my experience says to me that Steam is a barrier between me and decent gaming, not a tool of accessibility. But I won’t judge HL2 on it, I will simply note that Valve are asses for inflicting it on us.

So, finally, onto the game itself. You again play Gordon Freeman, one-time scientist from the shadow Black Mesa institute in the first game. Gordon got unwittingly caught up in the ‘Incident’ at Black Mesa. Luckily he was in a full hazard suit at the time, which meant he was protected from some of the weird effects, and he had been trained with a sort of ‘crisis contingency’, which meant he was pretty fit and tough and able to go around picking up guns and fighting back against aliens and marines and what-not. At the end of Half-Life, Gordon- with not much practical choice of the matter- accepted a deal to work with the mysterious G-Man, a suited government type with a strange voice who was spotted all over the place during the game, occasionally helping Gordon out. Gordon seemed to have driven off much of the alien invasion by this point, taking out their leader, but he was still none the wiser as to how the hell humanity got in contact with that alien world in the first place, what was MEANT to happen, and what the circumstances behind the accident were. Many more questions than answers- always good sequel ecology. Gordon is put ‘on hold’ awaiting future use. Black Mesa itself, as detailed in Opposing Force, is destroyed by nuclear weaponry in a self-destruct by the authorities.

Gordon is none the wiser when he comes to again, after a mysterious speech by the G-Man. Gordon finds himself on an incoming train to City 17. Half-Life itself was entirely routed in the modern day, albeit in a secret research facility. This world is totally unfamiliar to Gordon, and it soon becomes apparent that he is significantly (though not greatly) in the future from the time he remembers. The City has a highly oppressive look to it- Eastern European in style, drab, uncomfortable, and full of surveillance bots and big speeches from large vision screens. Plenty of George Orwell influences, and what-not, The early sight of one of the alien bad guy types from the first game apparently doing janitorial work adds to the mystery. Immigration control in the city seems rather strict and as a mysterious arrival you are soon pulled in- only to be rescued by someone working undercover in the military there- Gordon’s pal Barney. ‘Barney’ was the nickname for the blue suited security guards in Black Mesa who died in… great numbers. In Blue Shift, where you actually played one such guard, he was given the name ‘Barney’ officially. Almost uniquely, Barney escaped Black Mesa at the end of Blue Shift, which is how he comes to still be around to help Gordon in the sequel.

From here, Gordon learns a little more about his environment- there seems to have been a big war involving the Half-Life aliens and it has not gone too well. A collaborating Government seems to be ruling Humans with an iron fist on behalf of the aliens, led by the Administrator of the original Black Mesa complex (in Half-Life itself, it was rather assumed the mentioned Administrator was the G-Man, but this changes things). Creating Human/alien hybrids is part of this process, and they make up some nasty bad guys, Gordon gets involved with a resistance movement involving Barney, some of the aliens, some Black Mesa Scientists, and most significantly Alyx, daughter of one of those scientists who is Gordon’s major companion in the game. And so Gordon goes around doing all kinds of anti-bad guy stuff involving vehicles, a gravity gun (making use of the new physics stuff), leading squads of friends around, fights with big alien machines, and a final confrontation with the Administrator. And… that’s it, really!

Even Half-Life, a plotted game, is only an FPS and there’s not much to say about what happens. 90% of it is shooting stuff, and I can only expand on that so much. In fact, it looks like I might spend more time in context here than I do in actual critical appraisal!

Well, let’s try and get to the heart of things. The shooting is great. Just as fun as ever. The weapons are… well, definitely good enough, they didn’t wow me, but they had a solid feel. The AI is reasonable, the battle sequences exciting. The storyline- such as it is, because they made a deliberate decision to be sparse about things like plot- is still well integrated and they still have a touch for decent game moments, one notable one I remember being the point where you think you see the G-Man beneath you in the darkness, and it turns out to be a tv screen. Hard to describe, good to play through.

The operative word there was ‘still’. I think this is an issue we cannot ignore. Everything we see here is all stuff from the first game, updated and improved. Great! But that’s still a slight limitation of vision. You see, although it was in almost imperceptible ways, Half-Life was an entirely new approach to FPS gaming, which is why it was as good as it was. HL2 is all that but better. Good sequel stuff. But in context, just not the leap Half-Life was. I don’t think that’s an unfair comment. Games can be sequels, still thematically tied, and still be major advances. Ocarina of Time? Mario 64? Even FFVII was a commendable shift, because even if you prefer VI, that game had taken the old approach as far as it could go. It’s all there in gaming history. I am not saying HL2 should have been that kind of thing or tried to be so different, not at all- you can ruin yourself trying to do that- but, ultimately, we have to accept that this is a development of a startling phenomenon rather than a whole new startling phenomenon. Therefore, it can never hit as high, objectively speaking.

There are those who disagree with me. A recent letter to PC gamer UK commented on how the gravity gun felt like a gimmick rather than anything major. PC Gamer retorted that they thought it was part of a revolutionary new approach. I cannot even vaguely imagine what they mean… I have to agree with the letter writer. It’s a neat feature, a fun thing, but it’s not changing the fundamentals of the game at all. Those are still the same ones Half-Life had, which are in turn the same ones Doom had. ‘Gimmick’ does not have to be a bad word. Gimmicks can be great! But you shouldn’t make more of them than they are. Half-Life’s advances weren’t gimmicks, they were far more fundamental changes to the approach to FPS gaming.

Ultimately, despite it being a game with the extra polish and quality you would expect from decent programmers trying to improve their old product, I should also mention I did not enjoy HL2 as much as the original. The plot and setting did not grab me as much. City 17 is a well realised setting, inside a rather developed world which they deliberately give very little about away. Actually, I have mixed feelings about that. HL was played in a setting you could relate too, exploring a mystery yourself much as Gordon was. In HL2 the setting is entirely alien and the lack of context, ironically, alienates you as a player rather than intriguing you. They also fill the game full of tricks that are somewhat ahead of what the gaming medium can do. The rusted swings and playgrounds are part of a hint that there are no children around., But there is no payoff- if you are ever told there are no children around, you don’t think “OMG< I am such an idiot for not noticing that, what with all the clues… how can there be a city with no children?” Instead you think “Well… yeah. It’s a computer game. Of course there were no children. A real city would be full of thousands of people around each corner but computers aren’t powerful enough to show that yet.” Only when computers create much more realistic urban environments can tricks like that work.

Beyond that, The City simply does not grab me as a setting like Black Mesa did. Black Mesa was great, with all its locations and subtlties and different parts and experiments and environments., In fact, the alien world at the end of HL was much less interesting than Black Mesa itself. The same complex had its bits explored three times, in the main game and the extras, and it was rather tragic that they blew it up. The City is not as engaging. Ultimately… it’s just a city. A city with a strange environment, but it simply does not quite have that great touch Black Mesa did.

Also, the context of Freeman’s silence is rather silly this time around. No-one knew what the hell was going on anyway in the original, and Gordon’s taciturn nature was fair enough. But this time you have nothing BUT questions and him staying silent beggars belief. When you meet Barney, it should be “Barney! Help! What’s going on? Where am I? What is all this? Last thing I remember I was fighting the head alien attacking Black Mesa, and now I am here… I don’t know anything about this world! Aaaahhhhhhhhh!” But no… he just takes it in his stride. Frustrating.

At the end of HL2 there is a touch of sadness. It looks like Gordon will never have a free life again, merely being someone else’s pawn. It’s a nice story touch away from the common triumphalism at the end of games. But I was a little sad myself as well, because although I had just played a very good game, part of me wanted it to do more than that, and I guess it was never really trying to do what I wanted.



Cardinal Sins: In-game cutscenes are hard to skip. Generally though, like the original, this was a very accessible and sinless game. Must be why it was better than Sin…

Rating: 8/10

Summary: An excellent FPS. But that’s ‘all’ it is. It won’t change your view of gaming.

liked your red steel review mate...summed it up in a nutshell...
cant wait for the zelda, TP one ..

Excellent review of HL2, Ush. Once again, I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything. Scary. I usually argue with everyone. ermm

Except me!

I've never played Half-Life, actually. Maybe I should do that at some point?

And didn't we play Heretic over the summer?

^ same...never played HL..

Yes, but Doomsday has improved since then

Haha, I remember Heretic. That game was neat, I really enjoyed it. Like you, Ush, I had the little shareware demo version, never got the full game but I remember playing the demo shareware version quite a bit.

And yes, Lana. You should definitely play Half-Life. It changed the FPS genre forever, and is still a damn fun game, even now almost a decade later.

Hmmmm, I must say that FPSs tend to not hold my attention for very long and they bore me fast, which is generally because of the lack of plot (say what you will about an FPS having a great plot, it's still not going to be terribly involved or a large part of the game, and that's just because of the nature of the genre), and it's plot that usually keeps me with a game.

Half Life has a very strong plot, and the way it's told is very natural and organic. It enjoys a happy medium between plot, action and cerebral gameplay. Seeing as the game is so cheap now, you really don't have much to lose, even if you don't like it.

It's not really about the plot, more about how the developers told the story that makes it damn good.

I have to disagree about some of the things that Ush has said. More of personal preference really. I loved HL2 setting because it was more unique throughout the whole game and each level was pretty spetacular on its self. In HL1, near the end, I got the feeling of seeing the same things over again, and Xen is gotta to be one of the worst levels out there. It felt like Valve put it in there just to have something different.

What I really like about HL2 is all the small details in the world that brings it to life. Posters, sounds of distant battles, strider's over in the horizon, NPC's that bring life to the game rather than take away the experience like so many other NPC's in games.

Too me, there isnt any weaknesses that Half Life 2 had while it was better in terms of presentation. Its only problem is that its the sequel to one of the best games ever made. You cant fault Valve for that. You have to admit, it wasnt an disappointment and it lived up to the original.

Err... (looks at my review)... frankly... no. I CAN fault Valve for it because they deliberately chose to take a less ambitious approach compared to what HL had been in development. As I said in my review, it is perfectly fair comment to point out that its vision was limited compared to HL's- and that other games have shown that it is perfectly possible for this to not be the case when making a sequel. I believe it would be objectively weak to score it the same, this being so. Half-Life advanced the very concept of the FPS genre; HL2 tried nothing but to tinker with what HL did. HL simply must be seen as the better achievement in that light, and indeed history holds it to be so. Hence I would entirely dispute your comment that it lived up to the original. Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time- here were sequels that lived up to the true impact of earlier works. They were much more fundamental and ambitious achievements than HL2 was. Not only did they improve all the presentational aspects of the original just as Half-Life 2 did, they also continued to fundamentally improve the genre, and I'll be damned if I rate HL2 on the same level on that when it did nothing even close.

All those things you mention about the background being nice- again, these were developments of things that Half-Life had already started, just done better. And part of the point is that lots of FPSs were doing that sort of thing by then, because they were also desperately copying Half-Life by then. In fact, there is an argument- with which I hold some sympathy- that Half-Life may have actually started a negative trend of FPSs looking to do flashy one-off set pieces at the expense of general gameplay; some of the Call of Duty style games were used as examples.

I also do not think I am alone in not liking the setting as much. I will admit finding it very hard to understand a point of view that puts HL2 on a higher pedestal as a gaming achievement than HL.

Game scoring is not something that can be seen as an absolute scale based on the same qualities, else I would have to score everything now out of 5 because the marks 6 to 10 would have to be saved for all the better games coming in future. If HL2 had come out at the same time as HL, if you can twist your head around that logic, then it would get the better score, sure. But it didn't, it came out later at a point where expectations had changed and certain things had already been experienced and already been done. My reviews, certainly, take this kind of thing into account- and with changed expectations comes changed enjoyment. HL2 did not do anything to make me enjoy it, or more precisely to engage me, quite as much as Half-Life did. And I am always going to rate a game based around the quality of gaming experience it provides relative to its situation because, frankly, that is the only important factor. A measure of pure technical achievement would be of little value and would discount the true value of earlier works.

It is simply not the gaming achievement the original was. Therefore it does not score as much. Simple as that. Frankly, it is irrelevant whether it is a sequel or not. It could be a totally different game with the same gameplay and I would score it the same. I'm a tough marker and I already gave it an 8; it should be damn happy with that.

Well, I got something completly different from you in terms of HL2.

Well, I got something competely different than you did in terms of HL2.

I dont really care what you give it as a score, or really didnt find it enjoyable as much as HL. All I'm saying is that I found HL2 more enjoyable, better to play and thats the reason I like it more than the original.

Is it as original as the first, no, but when has an FPS came out that has changed the way the genre is being played, but I dont take in account how much the game is original, all I care about is how fun it is. The last one FPS to be different has been the System Shock series/Dues Ex and Battlfield series in terms of MP.

Well, I certainly think it is a big mistake to ignore the impact a game has on the medium of gaming itself, and not award kudos to a game for that. I think it is a very laudable thing for a game to do that, and games that do it deserve recognition for that. As the two Half-Life games were similar in all other ways, that HL2 lacks that particular kudos is the deciding factor in the original, objectively speaking, deserving a higher mark.

It's not about being original, it is about extending vision. Some games do it and some don't. Games that do it get the credit for it.

You damn well should have found it better to play. Companies that make sequels that are actively worse to play- especially after so much time- deserve bankruptcy. But that's par for the course. Like I say, take that line and I can't give any game a high score now because games might be more enjoyable in future. It's a ridiculous way to rate games. The bare minimum I would expect of a sequel like HL2 is that it has enhanced graphics and gameplay.

But it's all relative to time going by. For its time, Half-Life was a much better achievement than Half-Life 2 was for its time. It also achieved much, much more. People should want more games to be like the first than the second, because without such innovation gaming will die. You can't just keep refining.

So yeah, I find a mark down for that absolutely and 100% justified.

Keep in mind also that games review for a console to a PC will be different. It's like saying KOTOR is an average RPG for the PC but for a console is slighty better. Not saying console is better than PC. But ports from a console to a PC have been known to have differences.

Dont you find to a point that its harder and harder to innovate in the genre FPS than before. What really innovating ideas has companies produced in the FPS genre since the original Half Life?

I think in this month, Valve is going to release info about a new game than are publishing from Arcane Studio's about a game called The Crossing? It's suppose to be the new idea to come into the FPS genre in a long time.

Then good luck to them!

And if it is genuinely impossible to have done something novel along the lines of HL, then they have my sympathy and as I said in the review, I'm not even saying they SHOULD have done something new because it might have been crap.

I am simply saying that I cannot avoid the fact that Half-Life was a greater achievement in that way, whatever the circumstances of that being true are.

I know.

Lightning doesn't hit the same place twice unless it's Zelda. <_<;

I'll get onto Zelda soon...

Take your time, it'll get a better review.

How far along are you, anyway?

Err, not very far. I've actually been going through Raving Rabbids lately; I didn't feel like any game that would make me have to think.

Damnit I want that game.

I take it then you're not very far on FFX either? Hehe...

Hmmm, what do you think... Modern or Classic review next?

I say modern.

Modern.

anata wa wakarimasu ka.....

Classic, I want Ocarina.

Classic.

My comments as far as HL2 are concerned are this I was never a large fan of the original. It got all the hype and I personally thought it was too linear and predictable. It had a decent storyline but then, so did the 2nd. I liked both of the games and I don't really have a preference, neither game held me that well... I quit playing both and didn't finish them until about a year later.


Deus Ex > Half-Life
Half-Life > Deus Ex: Invisible War

Originally posted by AstroFan
Classic, I want Ocarina.

I agree with this comment!

Or maybe do Perfect Dark...

Originally posted by Lana
I agree with this comment!

Or maybe do Perfect Dark...
I can see Perfect Dark as quite a predictable review... But then again, I assume OoT will be too.

I liked Dues Ex alot, but one thing I have to say about that game, it didnt age very well. Im not talking from an graphics standpoint, I'm talking about the horrible combat it had.

Great game, but not even close to Half Life.

Oh egad yeah, Deus Ex was flawed in that department. Also they hadn't done their homework about the political philosophy; it's wrong right from the intro sequence.

I think my major obstacle to a Deus Ex review, though, is that I don't quite remember the details of it well enough. I remember what irritated me about it, though, was the way I would sneak up on someone, smash them full strength over the head with the baton, only to have them twirl around and shoot me. Compare Thief, where a decent sneaking gave you a guaranteed knockdown. It really just encouraged an all-guns approach. The learning curve was also broken- because you felt almost paraplegic at first, but acquired new skills quickly, the game was actually hardest at the start and easiest at the end. Don't get me wrong though, it was more good than bad. Not 100% my sort of game though, which is also why I start off with a bad attitude to Oblivion, just as with Morrowind before it.

Someone was working on a co-op conversion for DE. Never finished- shame, would have been great! System Shock II did it right in that department.

Originally posted by Smasandian
I liked Dues Ex alot, but one thing I have to say about that game, it didnt age very well. Im not talking from an graphics standpoint, I'm talking about the horrible combat it had.

Great game, but not even close to Half Life. How was the combat flawed?

It's by far my favourite FPS though. Storyline was amazing and it was far less linear than titles like Half Life... And I've never really noticed that a covert approach doesn't work.... But that's because I never use one. Probably why Thief just pissed me off, especially on levels where you can't kill anyone.

Well, I lost interest in the Thief franchise. I'm just not sure why Deus Ex bothered with that approach if it was going to disempower it.

Also that way that a tranq shot to the head was more effective than a bullet, early on. Hmm.

Yeah, I noticed the tranq dart thing..... Head shots should have been a one shot kill with pretty much any gun. I don't generally take the melee approach at all in the game, so the stealth aspect worked for me.

Yeah, headshoots are brutal in Deus Ex. I just recently played it and I would hit the guy in the head with an sniper bullet, and he would turn around run around in different directions.

Also, the combat is boring. The AI is brutal to a point where you just kill a guy and they start running around and then stop, and just sit there for a couple of minutes.

Deus Ex is considered a great game because of its exploration, depth of gameplay in terms of how you can accomplish missions, and overall good storyline. What makes an good game, but not great, and never considered to be HL equal is the horrible AI, and awful combat, both in melee and weapons. Those two catergories are huge to an FPS.

I was never able to get into Deus Ex or it's sequel.

I tried many times, but never succeeded.

Probably has something to do with the game being a ****ing system hog when it first came out, and not being able to run well on my computer at the time.

Originally posted by Smasandian
Yeah, headshoots are brutal in Deus Ex. I just recently played it and I would hit the guy in the head with an sniper bullet, and he would turn around run around in different directions.

Also, the combat is boring. The AI is brutal to a point where you just kill a guy and they start running around and then stop, and just sit there for a couple of minutes.

Deus Ex is considered a great game because of its exploration, depth of gameplay in terms of how you can accomplish missions, and overall good storyline. What makes an good game, but not great, and never considered to be HL equal is the horrible AI, and awful combat, both in melee and weapons. Those two catergories are huge to an FPS.

Yeah, I see where you're going from now.... The game held me, I enjoy it to this day, so I still prefer it to HL. It had an awesome Mass_Spawn cheat as well.

Dont get me wrong, it's still a good game.

I just wish it had better combat, maybe in a few years from now, they do another sequel but with much better combat, or stealth.

On the Twilight Princess front, a decision has been made/Lana imposed that I hshuld finish FFX first. That's fair- after all, this thread rgew out of my FF review thread.

Which reminds me, add FFT to the Classics list.

Oh yeah, put it all on me.

Though admittedly I have been pestering you to play FFX for a few years now. Hehe.

Your pretty brilliant Ush. Dont worry Lana, i have secretly been waiting for the ffx review also.

CLASSIC REVIEW- FINAL FANTASY TACTICS (1997)

I actually played through this game a year ago at the tail end of my Final Fantasy review thread. I shall try my best to remember things as much as possible.

I came across this game more or less by mistake. No-one had told me it existed, and when I found out that it did and asked others about it, their main connection with the franchise was the GBA ‘sequel’, generally considered to be a much inferior game, so it was hard to get much feedback.

Well, let’s put any remaining ignorance to rest. Final Fantasy Tactics is a Final Fantasy game roughly contemporary with Final Fantasy VII. In many ways, it is a full on FF game, with all the epic plotting and what-not you would expect from one, and stuff like a party group and chocobos and what-not. It is also full of RPing elements and the equipment list familiar to players of FFs IV-VI and, for that matter, IX. So why is this not a ‘full’ Final Fantasy game, with numbers and what not?

It is because the battle sequences are squad-level tactical fights complete with grid-based character movement- in many ways a mini-wargame. It will be a vibe familiar to any players of the X-COM (UFO in America) games, or the ancient game Laser Squad… or even board games like Space Hulk…

The other difference is presentational. Whilst there are CGI intros and outros, FFT is far more similar in presentation to a SNES game than anything else (although the map are presented an a quasi 3-d perspective rather than top down), with no sweeping film-style connecting CGI sequences, all fitting on one CD where VII had to be squeezed into three (and indeed, the size of VII being the primary reason why Square jumped ship from Nintendo to Sony). Actually, there is quite a nice retro vibe in seeing the old sprite-based FF animations, similar to the entertainment gotten from seeing more ‘old-fashioned’ style games on handheld systems.

So, what to make of this Final Fantasy spin-off? Well, in short, I was mostly highly impressed.

The plot… actually, all FF plots have their complexities, but this one is really bad to remember after a year away from playing. But something should be made clear- the complexity of this plot is the complexity of a well-realised world with rather well defined political and religious motivations, not the complexity of simple innane babble like FFVIII.. The world is that of Ivalice, created for FFT but more recently seen again in FFXII, a game that I am not going to play for a long time! I don’t know how much it had changed in the latest FF, but here, although there are the inevitable touches of Magic and summonable beings and what-not, what we see is a medieval world (with the traditional FF hint of technology) which is essentially similar to Medieval Europe- rival countries, orders of Knights, Kings, rebels, many wars, and the overarching power of the church, a subject that the game has much to say about.

Difficult to talk about a ‘you’ in this game, as it is a much more party orientated game- you can hire new hands for your group in any town, and train them up as time goes by. Your favourite characters can easily have nothing to do with the plot, and many people that are essential to the plot are not really controlled by you at all, though they help you out in battle. But there is a central character, whose name is Ramza, who is the youngest son of a great and noble (and unfortunately by the start of the game very dead) Knight, starting off the game as a Squire determined to prove himself and emerge from the shadow of his elder brothers, who are already caught up in the deep political complexities we see in the game. Assigned to guard duties as part of his training, he spends the early part of the game twinned up with a much more arrogant trainee Knight who he becomes kind of friends with. He ends up having to fight the Rebels but is soon asking questions about whose side he should be on, leading in the end to a split with his best friend, and having to draw arms against the arrogant Knight who had been his other companion. Small wars become great wars become greater still... and it is difficult to remember the details but the conflict eventually becomes about the church and certain factors involving ‘demons’ and what-not. That’s not important though; the important bit is the emotional maturity of the plot which absolutely does not take sides- this is not a matter of “Knight realises he is fighting for the wrong side and joins the Rebels” because it soon becomes clear that the Rebels aren’t exactly good guys either. Nor are any of the other countries, or the Church, and it seems not even Ramza’s brothers. Ramza- and, presumably, his party- alone are trying to live up to the noble ideals of his father, but even this is presented as almost silly idealism in a world where only the practical succeed and good intentions alone won’t keep a populace safe.

This is pretty impressive stuff for Final Fantasy. I must say. It’s not that Final Fantasy has ever been short on plot detail, but it is normally ‘high’ drama, sweeping epics of amazing powers in vast godly backdrops… a similar kind of style to Star Wars. By comparison, FFT is exceptionally gritty and down to Earth. Much is made of Aeris’ death in FFVII, and very fairly for it was done with great drama. In FFT, the trick is to try and find anyone who is still alive by the end! Indeed, the set-up for the game is that it is a re-discovery of history, a person many centuries later on discovering the role Ramza played in the war of those times, and how the credit had been taken by someone else. As a final kicker in the game, the one person who does actually know the truth at the end of the game, and whose diaries form the basis for this centuries later re-discovery is, according to the game’s coda, put to death by the Church after the game because, basically, he knows too much. This is where most FF games end with enormous triumphant celebrations.

It’s not that all games have to be harsh and evil, because that can very quickly become tiresomely adolescent. But every approach has its place and the right and wrong way to do it, and it seems as if when making this game the makers thought “Can we get away with taking Final Fantasy in a different direction than we are used to?” And because this was a spin-off they had the freedom to do that, and to my mind they did it very well. Perhaps it is best that I cannot remember too much of the plot, because I would encourage any of you to give it a go and play through it yourself. It’s worth the effort.

Ok, so, I like the background and the style and the story- what of the game?

Well, the job system will be familiar to many. Basically, there are many different jobs with their own conditions of what equipment people in them can use. The more you stay in a job, the more ‘job points; you get, which an then be spent on learning skills related to that job. In FFT, you get job points for performing just about any action, which is nice. You do also get experience points, and hence levels, for winning battles. Instead of sticking to one job, the idea is that you pick up skills from lots of jobs. In a fight, as well as moving and fighting, you get one set of abilities related to your job (say, White Magic for a White mage) and one set of abilities that you can choose based on any other skill the character has mastered from a different job. The idea is to make for very flexible and customisable characters and for the most part I think it works very well.

However. The reason this will be familiar to many of you is because the job system is taken, and adapted. From FFV, which in turn developed the one from FFIII. FFV has recently been re-released on GBA, and FIII entirely re-made for the DS, not that it has come out in Europe yet. I mention this because one of the big changes for FFIII was the re-design of the job system which was otherwise badly unbalanced. The one we see in FFT… is still badly unbalanced. There is no getting around it- some classes are just plain better than others and no-one in their right mind would use the crappy jobs. The ‘ultimate’ job, the Mime, manages to be twice as useless in FFT as FFV because of the different fight system- it mimics the movement as well of the actions of the person it is copying, and try and think about that on a grid based system… basically it goes absolutely nowhere useful! Spends all its time slashing at mid-air. A shame.

Most of your non-descript characters have a base ‘Squire’ class that they start from. Ramza’s Squire class is very powerful, and he will certainly end up going back to it. The various character personalities who join your party over time have a unique class instead of Squire. Here the bad imbalance strikes again- some of these classes are utterly useless, whereas one- the Holy Swordsman- is so powerful that many guides note that he himself can complete the game for you solo. Weird that this slipped by play testing.

The grid-based combat section is fair enough. A character can move and ‘Act’ each turn (be that act attacking, spell casting, using an item, or whatever) and this will burn up a certain amount of time for that character. That character will act again later depending on how much time got used up. And so good and bad guys move around at their various times. Now, a grid based system works great on a board game, but often looks odd on a computer, as you mess around trying to get to the flanks or rear of a foe. It’s certainly much harder to get into than normal FF battles, and rather clunky in some areas. But it lives up to the name, because this is indeed a game of Tactics, of trying to maximise force in the right place rather than just hit as fast and hard as possible, as is the case in all FF games. When it comes down to it, the combat formula is still very simple and rather attritional, but it does require more thought than mainstream FF and that is all very well and exactly what they wanted.

Irritatingly, the AI is not up to much and they counter-balance this by simply outnumbering you. That is a real pain because, out of your main party of 12 (or maybe 16, I cannot remember), you can only pick five to go into each battle, which means more than half your ground hang around off-screen doing nothing whilst the AI happily gets to play with two or three times your numbers- always a lazy way to provide challenge, especially, when the tactics portion of the game is certainly not so flexible as to allow you to reasonably fight against so many without a. trusting to luck or b. simply re-loading a fight so often that you know it all backwards, which is also a shame.

Not all fights are scripted. You spend much of the time moving place to place on a simple map- it is a similar basic set-up to most FF games, simply stripped down to its bare essentials. Some fans may find this a bit sparse, but I found it fine, and even the random encounters were not THAT annoying. Ok, still a bit annoying though.

Definite irritations with the game system, then, but- especially with some perseverance- I can honestly say that I ultimately found the combat in this game the most deep and interesting of any FF game I have ever played. Maybe not as much fun as the sheer insanity of your typical late-gamer FF fight, but with definite qualities that put it above and beyond in many ways.

Fertile ground, I thought when playing it, for a sequel that irons out many of these troubles Sadly, as I relate above, the sequel, when it came, actually was worse, gameplay wise, and perhaps a bigger sin than that, had a kiddy-style juvenile plot. Treachery! I hear rumour the DS may get another sequel… we shall see.

One definite plus for the game is its comprehensive reference system, which will give you full details of all plot events, histories and character biographies., heck, the mainstream FF games should have this! I would have made it a big criticism of this game that it is very easy to totally lose track of the plot and what you are doing- the reference library removes this criticism. Twinned with this are a series of references to other FF games which are not intrusive on the main plot and just prominent enough to tickle the long-term fans. You get many opportunities to send sections of your party on off-screen quests to explore places or find certain items (basically, you just need to pick the right people; you do not control such quests yourself). The places and items they find are all places in one of the first six Final Fantasy games, with its history and relevance all kept inside the reference library for you.

The reference to FFVII is rather more direct- Cloud can be found as a character in the game (washed up on this world by error after he jumps into the lifestream halfway through VII), complete with Aeris-a-like flower girl he is after. Complete a sub quest and Cloud will actually join your party; find his sword and he will start to pull off all his Limit Breaks. A nice touch for an optional extra, and so only a shame that they mysteriously make him level 1 and hence entirely useless to you.

I think that might sum up a lot about FFT- brilliant ideas, just somewhat let down by execution in several areas. I think the biggest sin is definitely messing up the chance of a sequel to put that right. As it is, FFT’s qualities as a game are enough for me to forgive its sins. If you don’t mind the old-school presentation, can handle some strategy, and want to see what happens when Final Fantasy moves to a rather more noir style of plot… definitely see if you can find a way to check this game out.

Cardinal Sins: Serious gameplay inbalances

Rating: 8/10

Comments: Flawed, but forgivably so because the ultimate experience is worth it. Final Fantasy as you have never seen it before.

Is that suppose to be out of 20, or 10?

Oops! Corrected via my modliness.

I love Tactics, too bad I was never able to complete it.

I got to the same spot about 4 times, and each time my save file would get corrupted, really pissed me off.

I hear they're remaking it for the DS or something, can't wait.

I have Final Fantasy Tactics for the Game Boy Advance. I got it some years ago. (Whenever it came out.)

It was ok with it..............for a second.

I disliked it with a passion.

So recently, as in the last year or so I gave it another chance and actually got into it some more and it wasn't as bad as I had previously thought.

It didn't completely draw me in, but it was ok and playable for a while until I just got bored and I haven't played it in a while.

I may end up picking it up again some day though. Just not ahora mismo.

anata wa wakarimasu ka.....

Originally posted by Lana
Oh yeah, put it all on me.

Though admittedly I have been pestering you to play FFX for a few years now. Hehe.
Why? It's not a great FF game...

Originally posted by Lana
I agree with this comment!

Or maybe do Perfect Dark...
or goldeneye???

Originally posted by InnerRise
I have Final Fantasy Tactics for the Game Boy Advance. I got it some years ago. (Whenever it came out.)

It was ok with it..............for a second.

I disliked it with a passion.

So recently, as in the last year or so I gave it another chance and actually got into it some more and it wasn't as bad as I had previously thought.

It didn't completely draw me in, but it was ok and playable for a while until I just got bored and I haven't played it in a while.

I may end up picking it up again some day though. Just not ahora mismo.

anata wa wakarimasu ka.....

The Tactics for GBA is not nearly as good as the original.

Yes, as I think my review made clear, do not mistake the GBA game for this one.

Originally posted by §P0oONY
Why? It's not a great FF game...

Uhh, yes it is. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best of the series. And considering what I know about what Ush likes and doesn't about FF games, I'm fairly certain that he'll like it a lot.

Originally posted by MadMel
or goldeneye???

Hmm, is there really much to say about Goldeneye?

Originally posted by Lana
Uhh, yes it is. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best of the series. And considering what I know about what Ush likes and doesn't about FF games, I'm fairly certain that he'll like it a lot.
I'd say it's my 5th favourite in the series... Wasn't really my cup of tea.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Hmm, is there really much to say about Goldeneye?
Controls are unresponsive as hell now... Then again my N64 controllers may just be screwed from too much Mario Party. hmm

Totally Pawn-3D some of my friends though.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Hmm, is there really much to say about Goldeneye? just a couple of numbers and a /..
in other words 9.5/10

The controls in Goldeneye ARE slow. But the good thing was that the single-player game seemed built around that- it wasn't at the breakneck pace of other FPS games (including Red Steel, so the slow turning hurts more there), and that loss of speed seemed to not hurt the gameplay at all. It really was well designed.

In multiplayer the slow turning was more annoying but at least everyone was in the same boat.

i liked the multi in red steel..
only because noone else could get used to the controls in time for me to shoot them..wasnt exactly fair..

Oh man, I tried that on New Year's Eve, and it seemed like it SHOULD be fun, but the levels were too b ig and the damn phones wouldn't stop runing.

"Kill the Mystery Player"... just SHUT UP about the damn mystery player already!

Originally posted by Ushgarak
The controls in Goldeneye ARE slow. But the good thing was that the single-player game seemed built around that- it wasn't at the breakneck pace of other FPS games (including Red Steel, so the slow turning hurts more there), and that loss of speed seemed to not hurt the gameplay at all. It really was well designed.

In multiplayer the slow turning was more annoying but at least everyone was in the same boat.
Yeah, what I meant is it seems much slower now then it did. I believe the game's game play has dated over the years. It's still a marvelous game but I'd not rate it as highly as I would have in the past. It's probably one of those things that should have stayed as a memory, rather than being dug out.

hmm...
hope youve played conkers BFD ush...god id love to see a review on that

I loved Conkers Bad Fur Day... It was such a bad-ass platformer, the game play was shoddy but I used to feel like a man playing it. It was like Banjo Kazooie on drugs...

gotta love the multiplayer...i was always greg the grimreaper ...i owned with the throwing knives

Really, you thought the gameplay was crap for Conkers?

I thought it was excellent, a terrific platformer.

I would like to get a review on "Indigo Prophecy."

I don't know exactly how it did in sales, but it was a very good game in my opinion.

Very original and unlike any other game I've played.

It was short though.

The game was made in mind to be similar to a movie experience and it kind of was.

He's making another game, but it's totally separate from "Indigo Prophecy" but it's suppose to be similar in gameplay in some way.

It's going to be for the PS3.

anata wa wakarimasu ka.....

Gahh, stop throwing old console games at me... it's far more unlikely I ever played them...

Excuse Me. mhm

anata wa wakarimasu ka.....

Originally posted by Smasandian
Really, you thought the gameplay was crap for Conkers?

I thought it was excellent, a terrific platformer.
and funny as ****

Yeah it was pretty funny.

what theres a funnier game??
GIMME!!@

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Gahh, stop throwing old console games at me... it's far more unlikely I ever played them...

Do a next-gen game already like Twilight Princess, Gears of War, or Resistance: Fall of Man. (notice I used Wii, 360, and PS3 from my favorite to least favorite)

I think Ush only has a Wii.




Originally posted by MadMel
what theres a funnier game??
GIMME!!@


The Mario and Luigi games, they may not be potty humor, but I find them funnier.

I'll tell you what I forgot to add for Tactics- the control system is awful.

Would be much better with a mouse- or stylus, hint hint...

But it;s not just that, it's just needlessly awkward in many ways. I dunno if the Advance version changed that.

Coming this weekend- my long overdue FFX review!

I was going to start pestering you about that...

It's this weekend, where's the review, Ushy?

Weekend is almost over, for that matter...

Ooh ooh, do Oblivion!!! It would suck if you gave it less than 9/10 thought =D That game had me literrally eat in front of the computer, while I was addicted to it. The twists, the storylines, the whole world, it's just so complex...

Originally posted by Lana
I was going to start pestering you about that...

Hypocrite Harriet.

Every time me or VVD asked for your post in the albums thread, you put it off for about a decade!

-AC

Originally posted by Alpha Centauri
Hypocrite Harriet.

Every time me or VVD asked for your post in the albums thread, you put it off for about a decade!

-AC

Hyperbole, she hasn't even been registered for a decade.

You're better than that.

Originally posted by Alpha Centauri
Hypocrite Harriet.

Every time me or VVD asked for your post in the albums thread, you put it off for about a decade!

-AC

But I got it done, didn't I? My putting it off was more due to indecisiveness than anything

FINAL FANTASY X

Well, here we are!

It was been nearly 14 months since I reviewed Final Fantasy IX and vowed to go onto Final Fantasy X as soon as possible. Now various barriers in my way of doing that- mostly technology related - have passed, I stumped up the cash to buy X (and its sequel, more on that another time) and recently finished a rather exhaustive play through the whole thing, and I can now deliver on my promise. Warning- mucho spoilers ahead!

Few games split fandom more than Final Fantasy games. With Zelda, there is not normally much debate from the fans on whether the games are any good, the arguments are all about which one is the best game of all time. Final Fantasy Fans (Final Fans?) are rather more hardcore- the debate is about which games are crap and which ones are Leonardo-equivalent masterpieces. Even discounting the spin-off games, it is impossible to find any consensus about which are good and which are rubbish. There is a slight bias towards FFVIII being not so good, but even that is not universal. Asking around, I have been told that each of VII ,VIII, IX and X are both best and worst; with older games, throw in IV, V and VI as well.

This is good, because I can wade in and review and know that no matter what opinion I express it will be cherished by some and have me excommunicated by others. If it’s going to be equally bad no matter how I do it, there need be no fear of bias. Not that that kind of thing ever normally stops me from risking the wrath of many when I review things, but I would hate for people to think I did that just for the sake of it. Here, I couldn’t avoid it if I tried.

Ok, let’s get to grip with things. You do, of course, know what FF is. Still, let’s cater for those whose acquaintance may only be casual. It’s an RP game- in theory not dissimilar to KOTOR that I review at the start of this thread. Big difference is that you never play a blank cipher; all the characters have pre-defined personalities. In some FFs you focus on one and you feel you are ‘playing’ that character but also commanding a supporting cast. In others there is no real focus on one and it is a true ensemble piece. But just the same as in most computer RP games, you go around collecting stuff, doing things, going up levels, becoming more powerful and what-not. I often fancy myself as a more cerebral (to many, read: dull) games player, and in the forums for my on-line game of choice, Myst Online, I heard FF kind of games described as follows:

“You go around hitting things with a stick, as a reward for which you get a bigger stick to hit bigger monsters with, until you use the biggest stick to hit the biggest monster and it all ends.”

Which is fair, but the sentiment behind the statement isn’t. After all, in Half-Life you just shoot things and in Civilisation you just shuffle resources around to get the highest number. Fact is, strip down most games and you will find a very basic and repetitive formula. Few games leave that unclothed (Tetris is the best example of one that does not), and half the point of games these days is how well presented and engaging they make such an experience. This area of presentation is something that Final Fantasy and Zelda alike have always been very, very good at.

Also, as RPs go, whilst FF games have levels (or some equivalent) and stats and hit points or what-not, the amount of control you have over the storyline is almost nil- there are normally some token things to affect, or one or two bonus endings to unlock, but generally you are playing through a script, beating things up along the way. There is nothing like the level of complicated and changeable character interaction as in KOTOR (and, to be more similar to FF, the more recent Neverwinter Nights 2) or any of the major plot changes possible in such games. This puts the title ‘role-playing’ into some dispute. Computer RPs have always used that term hazily compared to pen and paper games; Final Fantasy has stretched the definition to breaking point as you barely play a role at all. I think more than anything else, Final Fantasy games these days- since VII, really- are better off being known as interactive stories. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is well to know what you are getting, if you want one, and there are lots of people that dislike FF for being all style and no substance.

Enough of FF in general. Very few FF games have any similarity in plot or setting except for a few token creature types and names for characters and spells. The theme is the thing; a setting is completely re-invented for each game and then generally disposed of by the end, which if nothing else allows for the most sweeping plot changes, though I think VI went the furthest, pretty much destroying the world midway through. Of the last few games I reviewed, VII’s plot was solid, with a decent bad guy, but rather preachy. VIII started well but then lost focus and later became almost entirely nonsensical and incomprehensible; unfinished, even, and with almost no identifiable bad guy at all. IX kept forgetting earlier details but was a reasonable Disney-style plot. X’s plot… I think has to be called the most ambitious yet. I think they tripped over themselves a few times, but I’ll say right from the start, it is MUCH better than VIIIs.

This is a single-character focussed game; only for one tiny portion of the game are you without the first introduced character and indeed, the game revolves around it being ‘his’ story, a line spoken many times. The man in question is named Tidus, and much as there is a vast setting around him, the game is about a bunch of stuff that happens to him and his friends he makes during the game.

Tidus lives in a city called Zanarkand, a modern industrial job. One of the slight plot flaws I shall come onto later involves Zanarkand being a city with no context- we don’t know what world Tidus (thinks he) is from, or even, really, what manner of world it is. Tidus is the star player of the Zanarkand Abes, a Blitzball team, Blitzball being a cross between football and water polo that there is a fair amount of game focus on. Whilst a star player, Tidus has long struggled to get out of the shadow of his more famous father, also once a famed player, but who mysteriously disappeared ten years ago. As befits a star mentality, Tidus is brash, arrogant, a little spoiled, and permanently feeling the need to prove himself. That last quality is going to be needed soon, as in the middle of a blitzball game the entire city is attacked by a vast creature that rises out of the waves and proceeds to lay waste to the whole place. Tidus is helped out of the disaster by a man named Auron, a man who has been helping to raise Tidus since his father disappeared. Auron is hacking his way out of the many creatures attacking the city with a big sword; he gives one to Tidus too, and very early in the game we are into fights as the two try to escape the calamity.

Auron is your bang-on-the-money cool stylish man of mystery, with deadpan voice, many secrets, cool dress and scars, and killer sword. But he’s not in the start of the game long, for when the large creature-0 which Auron identifies as ‘Sin’- sucks large parts of the city up, Auron actually propels Tidus into the sucking-effect, and the next thing Tidus knows he comes to in an abandoned old building he has never seen before, under attack by more monsters. You cannot fault the plot for being too slow off the ground, as soon Tidus is rescued/enslaved by a bunch of salvage operators on a boat who don’t speak English except for their female leader and who put him to work helping them find stuff under the water. No rest for Tidus there either; when the big sin creature attacks again, Tidus is swept overboard and comes to on a beach on a rather pretty island. The island is named Besaid and here things finally settle down so that Tidus can take stock of things. On the beach, Tidus is soon befriended by a blitzball player named Wakka, who has no idea who Tidus is but is an open and trusting guy and assumed Tidus has memory problems due to being near Sin, as is apparently an issue.

At Besaid, much of the plot comes into place. The female on the boat- named Rikku- explained some things to Tidus but there is a lot of exposition to give out here, a lot for players to take in. it is evident that Tidus is not in the world he remembers; there IS a Zanarkand but it was destroyed 1000 years ago, though blitzball is still played; Sin is well known in the world as a great evil and even mentioning he is from Zanarkand is heresy against the religion that the world is run by.

Half the plot is about Tidus trying to work out what happened- this is a good way to introduce a new setting to the player of the game, of course, and a better use than the old fashioned “you have amnesia” plot (KOTOR- guilty). The other half is about the struggle to defeat Sin, who keeps totalling people and things, even entire towns. Sin is combated by Summoners, people who can summon mighty beings known as Aeons (Espers or Guardian Forces, to earlier FF players). They gain their Aeons on their pilgrimage around the world, praying at Temples and gaining an Aeon from each. The pilgrimage is highly dangerous and so each Summoner is protected by several Guardians. If a Summoner is truly successful, he or she will end the pilgrimage at the ruins of Zanarkand, where they can obtain the ‘final Aeon’ which will defeat Sin- though only for about ten years, a period of time called ‘The Calm’. Although not fully revealed until later in the game, it is often hinted that the Summoner dies in the process, hence all the rights they get whilst on a pilgrimage.

As well as having a certain tragic gravitas for the plot, this set up is rather neat in that it gives the game a decent excuse to move all around the game world. Whilst Wakka is a blitzball player, and keeps Tidus around because he thinks Tidus can help his ailing team, Wakka is also a part-time Guardian and plans to go back to doing it full time soon. Hence, Tidus starts to interact with a young Summoner named Yuna- the love interest for the game- and her Guardians, offensive mage and all-around cynic Lulu and big blue strong troll-type thing (called a Ronso) Kimhari. Later in the game, Wakka returns to being a full guardian for Yuna, Tidus is invited to join in too, Rikku turns up again and joins up, and even Auron comes along.

Obviously, Auron being there is a major deal for Tidus who is completely alone and isolated and bewildered. Turns out Auron is rather famous, having been a Guardian to the successful summoner Lord Braska, Yuna’s father, who died defeating Sin ten years ago. Tidus is all rather shocked to find out that Braska’s other Guardian was Jecht; Tidus’ father. Auron isn’t saying much though, though his patronage of Tidus gives Tidus some credibility amongst sceptical friends (everyone rather worships Auron).

Although the game is about Tidus, there is strong plotting for just about everyone. Young Yuna gets a major share of plot time as she falls for Tidus, wants to believe his story and struggles to balance her duty as a Summoner against what the world of Spira really needs. Wakka is a strong devotee of the religion of Yevon, a faith challenged during the game. Wakka is also trying to get over the death of his brother, killed by Sin, and is desperately clinging to the hope that maybe Tidus really is from Zanarkand 1000 years ago, that somehow Sin connects then and now and that his brother is alive and well back then. Lulu was effectively Chappu’s fiancée and so has her own issues, especially with Wakka, and acts as the gloomy counterpoint to the world. Rikku is part of a ethnic group known as the Al Bhed (with their own language) who are often discriminated against due to their acceptance of technology (generally referred to as ‘machina’); the Al Bhed are desperately trying to stop the Pilgrimages which they see as a heartless sacrifice of summoners just so other people can live on in peace as others die for them. Probably the least developed is Kimhari, who is silent and unsympathetic for much of the game and whose plot mostly revolves around having left his people. Auron, of course, is a man with secrets to hide, and it is clear he has purpose with rejoining a new pilgrimage.

All in all, the characters are well developed and whilst Yuna is wimpy and Tidus a bit whiny, he is ten times more likeable than Squall in VIII, as far as whinies go, and some of his baffled cluelessness is genuinely endearing. Auron is probably the favourite of most, doing the whole ‘cool’ thing, especially for guys, whilst girls will probably favour either playful Rikku or practical Lulu (Yuna is just a mite too soft to be a role model). As well as good plotting these characters were well rendered graphically, especially with some high detail close-up shots, which execute this concept in a way that VIII tried to but could not due to technological limitations, IX had gone back the other way and gone cartoony, now X has done what they wanted before; realistic models throughout. That said, the CGI has not moved on much from VIII’s, and it’s just not quite so impressive any more. Also, Tidus looks disturbingly androgynous in the cgi for some reason.

Actually, there are several ways in which the game appears to be trying to do a similar thing to VIII, but much better. VIII had a character-based backstory that was rather clumsily played through. X has much to say about the story ten years ago of Braska, Auron and Jecht, but this is well-revealed through the use of discovered recordings, flashback sequences, and a phenomenon in the game where people’s memories become embodied, allowing Auron’s memories of his first time through to become present at various times. You do feel like you are piecing together a big story- but weirdly, many of the ‘spheres’ (like camera records) that give context to the plot cannot be discovered until late in the game, backtracking through earlier areas. They would have worked better being discovered first time though, I feel.

FF games tend to follow a similar pattern- explore a small area, explore a large area, and then via the means of some aerial vehicle have free reign to explore everywhere. FFX kinda stuffs the first two together. Tidus and co basically perform a world tour of everywhere, and then right near the end can re-visit the earlier locations via airship to open up lots more stuff. However, X has stripped this process down far more than earlier games. There is no world map, as you are used to in FF, moving between locations. All locations are linked simply by other locations forming natural ‘corridors’. The airship simply consists of selecting where you want to go via a menu. Some people really hate this, and I understand why. However, this harkens back to my point I made near the start, about dressing up simple things. Fact is, this is just the same as it always was in FF. In the early parts of FF games, wondering around the map might have seemed open ended, but you were still really doing the same thing- going from A to B to C, and if there was a secret between B and C, that’s still there in FFX, just inside a locations somewhere, not on a map. Likewise, airship portions in earlier FF games had you flying back to places on the map you had been to before, or maybe flying on to a final confrontation. They