So I've been reading a lot on the new consoles coming out within the next year, and the future of video gaming as a whole. It's a bit disturbing to see the trend that two other power houses are going with over Nintendo. Don't get me wrong, I've owned both Sony and Microsoft products and generally enjoyed them (well when I can find a game that isn't a flat out gore fest or full of sexual content and zombies) but I'm a bit disheartened at the route they're taking.
The big issue that I think is on everyone's mind is "DMR" which is basically a form of anti-piracy that turns around to being like Big Brother, just lighter. Basically both of these consoles will require you to have a very active internet connection, or you can't play your games. While that's not an overly bad thing It's not a good thing either when you see that both of these consoles actively monitor you. Hence the big brother comment. Microsoft is taking it a bit further too with the whole "If you don't connect to the internet at least once a day, then your console can't play video games" Not to mention that they're going heavy with the "You can't play preowned, borrowed, or rented games on the system without buying a license for the game first. So basically you pay 40-50.00 for a preowned game, then you have to pay another fee to Microsoft to be able to even play the game you just bought. Lovely how that works isn't it?
Then you hit Sony who's doing a very similar thing. they're running the same DMR thing, and pushing hard for the online connection or no gaming at all. The only plus is they'll let you play rented/preowned/borrowed games w/o paying an extra fee to enjoy them. But on the downside to both of these consoles, neither one will have backwards compatibility and won't be able to play the previous generations games. So you'll have to have two different consoles out to enjoy your gaming. Or in the case of Sony, 3 (PS2, PS3, PS4). The PS4 is also having a major issue with 3rd party software developers too. The rumor has it that the company is forcing every game developer whose making games for the PS4 to make the games remote play for the PS-Vita, and that's going to make the PS-Vita a needed accessory to play games instead of an optional one. Great marketing guys.
And then we hit the old warhorse Nintendo. They've been doing everything right this console generation except for the premature launch of the Wii-U. The only issue that's being had with that console is the fact that it's going to be underpowered by mid next year. Other than that they've done everything to make the console appealing. Backwards compt. to the Wii? Check. Virtual Marketplace games being able to played on the game pad? Check. Constant stream of updates and new games? Check.
The basic solution if you don't want to buy or feel chained to a console is to basically drop them entirely and build a good gaming PC. It's going to run you about a grand to build a good one. But to constantly maintain it will be something like 200.00 every 3 or 4 years. VS 700.00 every few years for another console that can't play previous generations games. STEAM has made it very cost effective to be a pc gamer too. Constant influx of sales, great game content for cheap, big community for modding and other things and a huge variety of developers who are making games for both PC and console? Yeah it's time to leave the DMR behind and get on the pc gaming bandwagon I think. Though I still recommend keeping a Nintendo Console around for the Sonic, Mario, Zelda and Metroid games. You can't go wrong with the classics and those will never be on a console other than Nintendo anymore.
Just my two cents based on the information I've read over the past 2 months.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Customer Service and rage
So my review was delayed by a few weeks, (going to be 3 soon...) partly because the copy of FF13 I had was faulty. The first disk played great and had no issues, but the 2nd and 3rd disks look like someone played hockey with them. So I had to contact the people I bought it from and request an exchange. Sounds like a simple process right? Well it was far from that. I mailed it out 2 weeks ago on Monday, and they got it on Thursday. No email saying they got it, or any status updates of the like.
So I wait till Tuesday and still nothing, so I decide to contact customer support. They claim they didn't get my copy of the game. Despite me telling them that the postal service has documented proof that they got it. Then they say "Well if we did get it, it'll take 2-3 days to process through our receiving department, before it gets forwarded to Exchanges"... then she says they'll send me an email when that happens.
Week goes and Monday rolls around, and I check my email and nothing. Irate I contact customer support yet again to find out what's going on. Ten mins on hold I get the same person I've spoke to the past 2 times (when i had to return, and when they got it), lovely. She tells me there's nothing wrong with my copy of the game, and they can send it back to me at no charge. Why would I want the game that doesn't work back? I sent it to you to get it exchanged /rage. After arguing for 20 more minutes, I finally get them to send me a different copy.
tl;dr
I'll get back to the review as soon as my new copy of the game comes in (hopefully with a working disk 2 and 3).
So I wait till Tuesday and still nothing, so I decide to contact customer support. They claim they didn't get my copy of the game. Despite me telling them that the postal service has documented proof that they got it. Then they say "Well if we did get it, it'll take 2-3 days to process through our receiving department, before it gets forwarded to Exchanges"... then she says they'll send me an email when that happens.
Week goes and Monday rolls around, and I check my email and nothing. Irate I contact customer support yet again to find out what's going on. Ten mins on hold I get the same person I've spoke to the past 2 times (when i had to return, and when they got it), lovely. She tells me there's nothing wrong with my copy of the game, and they can send it back to me at no charge. Why would I want the game that doesn't work back? I sent it to you to get it exchanged /rage. After arguing for 20 more minutes, I finally get them to send me a different copy.
tl;dr
I'll get back to the review as soon as my new copy of the game comes in (hopefully with a working disk 2 and 3).
Monday, April 15, 2013
Final Fantasy XIII - Disk 1
Final Fantasy XIII - Disk 1 retrospective
Having just finished Disk 1 this weekend I've got to experience the brunt of this game. (Though I'm sure I'm going to experience a lot more in the second disk onward but for the most part I've got the basics I'm assuming.)
The combat system has been fully flushed out, adding the paradigm system and the stagger system.
Paradigm let's you change the role of your characters, for example: going from having a tank like character (sentinel) to a warrior type (commander) and a variety of mages (medic (white mage), ravager (black mage), saboture & synergist (support mages, pro, shell, debuffs, etc.) This sounds neat in practice, till you find it's tedious and a bit over complicated. You /can/ switch during battles, but it usually causes a lag to happen between your actions and when your new "roles" take place. So if you try to switch in a pinch, you most likely will end up getting a party member killed before the person you assign as a medic manages to get the ability to cast something, or you get to fire off an emergency potion. It leads to a lot of frustration in the long run. Otherwise it's basically the same repetitiveness as before the system was added. You basically just keep hitting "Auto" every turn till something is dead, healed, buffed, or debuffed. There's really not a lot of strategy involved in the combat system so far.
I did briefly mention "stagger" in the first part of my review, but I'll go a little deeper into here. When you're fighting a monster, you deal 100% of your damage (unless the monster has protect or a similar spell/effect up) as the battle goes on if you keep attacking the same monster a small bar will begin to fill up. The more you attack the monster in succession, the higher the % indicator on the bar, and the more damage you'll do. The bar however, will begin to drop if you take no action on the monster. Once the bar reaches the bottom, you have to start over again, but if you manage to attack before it does it resets back to it's highest point and climbs up slightly based on the damage/attack you did. When the bar gets full, you start doing 200% of your damage, (ie: double) and the damage modifier will continue to climb till the bar empties out. Some monsters while staggered have a terrorized effect and can't attack or cast spells, or some have lowered attack and speed to go with the fact you're doing more damage. It does add a bit of extra flair to fights, but most of the time the monsters you stagger don't live long enough for you to get full effect of it, or they've got so much hp that once you manage to fill the bar up and stagger them (outside of boss battles of course) they're already pretty much dead so there's no point.
One of the fun parts though, is when you manage to get the ability to use summons. The summons in this game, work really similar to Final Fantasy X. You hit the action to summon, the eidolon comes out, takes the place of your other party members except for the one who summoned, and basically goes on an auto-attack rampage. Doing anything from melee attacks or casting spells. You do have the option to do special attacks with the eidolon, but once you do (depending on the ability) the summon leaves till you can fill your ability bar again. This sounds really cool but most of the abilities that are series staples for being impressive, really aren't. Take Zantetsuken for instance. In every other Final Fantasy game, it's a 1 hit K.O. move on anything bar a boss. In this game, (at least from my experience) it's a very very lack luster attack that hits all enemies for mediocre damage. I'd of done more damage with the eidolon, by just keeping them out on auto attack.
Another rather challenging (more so annoying) thing, is getting the eidolons to join you in the first place. You have to do mini battles against them where you have to fill a certain objective in the fight to get them to join you. This will lead to lots of rage. Lots of rage in some cases. Trying to get Odin took me three tries because of the way he attacks and bad placement by my characters. (Yes lets all huddle really close together and get hit by area attacks and all of us die...) But once you manage to get them to accept defeat, you're greeted by one of the biggest slaps to the face I think this game does. It takes industry standards of Super Monsters, and turns them into mechanical monstrosities. You get "Shiva" but it's not actually Shiva, it's her sisters? I'm fine with that, but when they go all contoured and turn into a motorcycle I get a little pissed off. And Odin, considered one of the strongest Summons in the series, he turns into a horse. Yes, the great Norse god Odin, turns into a horse, just a regular four legged horse. It really shows you have serious they take the fans and how serious they've taken this game.
I was also introduced to the "level-up" system this disk as well. It's based similarly to the Sphere Grid of Final Fantasy X. Almost a direct copy, I say almost because it, like much of this game, is very.... linear. You have a circular pattern you must go to unlock new abilities for the different "roles" your characters have, and also going around this circle will give you permanent status boosts like extra HP, STR or MAG. But you really have control on this, you have to go the direction they show you and tell you to go. Of course you'll come across some branch points to get a certain ability, or a path with slightly higher values for things. But the path is a dead end in most cases, and you'll have to go the direction they want you to go in order to progress up in ranks and "levels". There's no free roam or character customization. Yeah, all your characters will be different from one another, but if you compare them to someone else (like me to you) our characters will be exactly the same. Where as the system from Final Fantasy X, you could make anyone do anything. I could give Lulu full blown physical attack attributes, and made Tidus a black mage. Yeah they make no sense to do that, but I could if I wanted to, because there was freedom involved. Not here. You're very restricted on what kind of customization you want to do.
I won't comment too much on the content of the story (trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible), but I'll give a general opinion of it, and our "cast". It's very bland. Plain and simple, it's trying to be a mixture of the older Final Fantasy archetype with a spin on it to make it seem fresh. It doesn't accomplish that at all. It does accomplish the feeling that it's repetitive as all hell and boring to boot. I'm having a hard time trying to get any type of connection or feel for the characters. There's too much going on that they're trying to feed at you at once. You've got the central story arc that isn't really explained all that much. Followed by all these other stories trying to be woven together. Tied together with frequent flash back cutscenes and general discussion between characters. You can't really get a feel for anyone, or get a feel for the story because they don't give you the opportunity to really grasp at anything. What they give you comes off as something like garbled fan fiction story telling, the kind that just assumes you know what's going on and you're going to understand everything right away. This would be good for a game that followed just one character, but the game insists on feeding you these 5 characters (soon to be 6 in disk 2 I'm sure). So it doesn't accomplish what I think it set out to do.
The massive influx of inconsistent information delivery, and the erratic behavior that it puts you in a role to have experience with the characters, makes it hard for you to get attached to them. I really have no feelings either way if Lightning is supposed to be our lead, or that Snow is in love with her sister Serah. I know that it's supposed to be information that's supposed to be a general "yeah that's how it is" but I couldn't care less. You could kill off any one of the five "mains" and I don't feel like it'd affect anything drastically. That's how little I care for these characters. I do find some of their interactions humorous though. Some of the scenes with Sazh and Vanille are funny on a certain level. And on the reverse, a lot of the scenes with Hope make you want to slap the little pissant with a 2x4 across his skull and say "Stop being a little bitch". So if that's what the game set out to do, then well mission accomplished.
Final thoughts for the end of Disk 1?
It's not an awful game, but it's not a good one either. A lot of the fights so far have been like I said, repetative, and very boring. The story isn't all that interesting, and there's plenty of "gods this is a pile of shit" moments so far. When you compare this game to the previous 11 single player entries you really get a scope of how far this series has fallen. The focus really changed from "lets make a good game" to "lets make this look as good as possible". That's the feeling I get and stand by when it comes to any final fantasy game after X-2. (That's a guilty pleasure of mine, I know it's a very flawed game, but hey it's still better than 12 and 13 lol.)
What good do I have to say about it? I still really dig the music of the game, the battle theme and zone themes are very catchy and don't get stale even after you sit through you're 12th or 13th fight in a row. I find myself enjoying some parts but over all there's really very little focus needed to do much of anything. I could probably play a game on my DS or PSP at the same time I'm playing this and be fine. It makes me wonder if this game was for a hand held console, if I'd have different feelings about it. It has that vibe to it, you have limited controls, and objectives are pretty straight forward for the most part it seems like it'd be a perfect fit for the PSP or a version made for the Playstation Vita. I just expect more from the company when it comes to a console game.
After word:
I know this seems really long and winded, but this covers pretty much the basics of the game so far. At the end of disk 2, I'll comment more on the story and characters rather than the gameplay unless a new mechanic is added for me to go over. You won't hear another peep about mechanics until I finish the game and get a full review up, I swear *scout's honor*
(In case you didn't gather from my comment about disks, I'm playing the Xbox 360 version of the game, it's spread across 3 disks instead of just one Bluray disk like the Playstation 3 version.)
Having just finished Disk 1 this weekend I've got to experience the brunt of this game. (Though I'm sure I'm going to experience a lot more in the second disk onward but for the most part I've got the basics I'm assuming.)
The combat system has been fully flushed out, adding the paradigm system and the stagger system.
Paradigm let's you change the role of your characters, for example: going from having a tank like character (sentinel) to a warrior type (commander) and a variety of mages (medic (white mage), ravager (black mage), saboture & synergist (support mages, pro, shell, debuffs, etc.) This sounds neat in practice, till you find it's tedious and a bit over complicated. You /can/ switch during battles, but it usually causes a lag to happen between your actions and when your new "roles" take place. So if you try to switch in a pinch, you most likely will end up getting a party member killed before the person you assign as a medic manages to get the ability to cast something, or you get to fire off an emergency potion. It leads to a lot of frustration in the long run. Otherwise it's basically the same repetitiveness as before the system was added. You basically just keep hitting "Auto" every turn till something is dead, healed, buffed, or debuffed. There's really not a lot of strategy involved in the combat system so far.
I did briefly mention "stagger" in the first part of my review, but I'll go a little deeper into here. When you're fighting a monster, you deal 100% of your damage (unless the monster has protect or a similar spell/effect up) as the battle goes on if you keep attacking the same monster a small bar will begin to fill up. The more you attack the monster in succession, the higher the % indicator on the bar, and the more damage you'll do. The bar however, will begin to drop if you take no action on the monster. Once the bar reaches the bottom, you have to start over again, but if you manage to attack before it does it resets back to it's highest point and climbs up slightly based on the damage/attack you did. When the bar gets full, you start doing 200% of your damage, (ie: double) and the damage modifier will continue to climb till the bar empties out. Some monsters while staggered have a terrorized effect and can't attack or cast spells, or some have lowered attack and speed to go with the fact you're doing more damage. It does add a bit of extra flair to fights, but most of the time the monsters you stagger don't live long enough for you to get full effect of it, or they've got so much hp that once you manage to fill the bar up and stagger them (outside of boss battles of course) they're already pretty much dead so there's no point.
One of the fun parts though, is when you manage to get the ability to use summons. The summons in this game, work really similar to Final Fantasy X. You hit the action to summon, the eidolon comes out, takes the place of your other party members except for the one who summoned, and basically goes on an auto-attack rampage. Doing anything from melee attacks or casting spells. You do have the option to do special attacks with the eidolon, but once you do (depending on the ability) the summon leaves till you can fill your ability bar again. This sounds really cool but most of the abilities that are series staples for being impressive, really aren't. Take Zantetsuken for instance. In every other Final Fantasy game, it's a 1 hit K.O. move on anything bar a boss. In this game, (at least from my experience) it's a very very lack luster attack that hits all enemies for mediocre damage. I'd of done more damage with the eidolon, by just keeping them out on auto attack.
Another rather challenging (more so annoying) thing, is getting the eidolons to join you in the first place. You have to do mini battles against them where you have to fill a certain objective in the fight to get them to join you. This will lead to lots of rage. Lots of rage in some cases. Trying to get Odin took me three tries because of the way he attacks and bad placement by my characters. (Yes lets all huddle really close together and get hit by area attacks and all of us die...) But once you manage to get them to accept defeat, you're greeted by one of the biggest slaps to the face I think this game does. It takes industry standards of Super Monsters, and turns them into mechanical monstrosities. You get "Shiva" but it's not actually Shiva, it's her sisters? I'm fine with that, but when they go all contoured and turn into a motorcycle I get a little pissed off. And Odin, considered one of the strongest Summons in the series, he turns into a horse. Yes, the great Norse god Odin, turns into a horse, just a regular four legged horse. It really shows you have serious they take the fans and how serious they've taken this game.
I was also introduced to the "level-up" system this disk as well. It's based similarly to the Sphere Grid of Final Fantasy X. Almost a direct copy, I say almost because it, like much of this game, is very.... linear. You have a circular pattern you must go to unlock new abilities for the different "roles" your characters have, and also going around this circle will give you permanent status boosts like extra HP, STR or MAG. But you really have control on this, you have to go the direction they show you and tell you to go. Of course you'll come across some branch points to get a certain ability, or a path with slightly higher values for things. But the path is a dead end in most cases, and you'll have to go the direction they want you to go in order to progress up in ranks and "levels". There's no free roam or character customization. Yeah, all your characters will be different from one another, but if you compare them to someone else (like me to you) our characters will be exactly the same. Where as the system from Final Fantasy X, you could make anyone do anything. I could give Lulu full blown physical attack attributes, and made Tidus a black mage. Yeah they make no sense to do that, but I could if I wanted to, because there was freedom involved. Not here. You're very restricted on what kind of customization you want to do.
I won't comment too much on the content of the story (trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible), but I'll give a general opinion of it, and our "cast". It's very bland. Plain and simple, it's trying to be a mixture of the older Final Fantasy archetype with a spin on it to make it seem fresh. It doesn't accomplish that at all. It does accomplish the feeling that it's repetitive as all hell and boring to boot. I'm having a hard time trying to get any type of connection or feel for the characters. There's too much going on that they're trying to feed at you at once. You've got the central story arc that isn't really explained all that much. Followed by all these other stories trying to be woven together. Tied together with frequent flash back cutscenes and general discussion between characters. You can't really get a feel for anyone, or get a feel for the story because they don't give you the opportunity to really grasp at anything. What they give you comes off as something like garbled fan fiction story telling, the kind that just assumes you know what's going on and you're going to understand everything right away. This would be good for a game that followed just one character, but the game insists on feeding you these 5 characters (soon to be 6 in disk 2 I'm sure). So it doesn't accomplish what I think it set out to do.
The massive influx of inconsistent information delivery, and the erratic behavior that it puts you in a role to have experience with the characters, makes it hard for you to get attached to them. I really have no feelings either way if Lightning is supposed to be our lead, or that Snow is in love with her sister Serah. I know that it's supposed to be information that's supposed to be a general "yeah that's how it is" but I couldn't care less. You could kill off any one of the five "mains" and I don't feel like it'd affect anything drastically. That's how little I care for these characters. I do find some of their interactions humorous though. Some of the scenes with Sazh and Vanille are funny on a certain level. And on the reverse, a lot of the scenes with Hope make you want to slap the little pissant with a 2x4 across his skull and say "Stop being a little bitch". So if that's what the game set out to do, then well mission accomplished.
Final thoughts for the end of Disk 1?
It's not an awful game, but it's not a good one either. A lot of the fights so far have been like I said, repetative, and very boring. The story isn't all that interesting, and there's plenty of "gods this is a pile of shit" moments so far. When you compare this game to the previous 11 single player entries you really get a scope of how far this series has fallen. The focus really changed from "lets make a good game" to "lets make this look as good as possible". That's the feeling I get and stand by when it comes to any final fantasy game after X-2. (That's a guilty pleasure of mine, I know it's a very flawed game, but hey it's still better than 12 and 13 lol.)
What good do I have to say about it? I still really dig the music of the game, the battle theme and zone themes are very catchy and don't get stale even after you sit through you're 12th or 13th fight in a row. I find myself enjoying some parts but over all there's really very little focus needed to do much of anything. I could probably play a game on my DS or PSP at the same time I'm playing this and be fine. It makes me wonder if this game was for a hand held console, if I'd have different feelings about it. It has that vibe to it, you have limited controls, and objectives are pretty straight forward for the most part it seems like it'd be a perfect fit for the PSP or a version made for the Playstation Vita. I just expect more from the company when it comes to a console game.
After word:
I know this seems really long and winded, but this covers pretty much the basics of the game so far. At the end of disk 2, I'll comment more on the story and characters rather than the gameplay unless a new mechanic is added for me to go over. You won't hear another peep about mechanics until I finish the game and get a full review up, I swear *scout's honor*
(In case you didn't gather from my comment about disks, I'm playing the Xbox 360 version of the game, it's spread across 3 disks instead of just one Bluray disk like the Playstation 3 version.)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)