So I’m feeling like I’d like to do something with this blog space again… it’s been 2 1/2 years, and it seems a pity to waste the perfectly good space.  I’m going to talk to Matt #2 and see if there’s any interest on his end, but if there’s not I may still do some writing in my spare time.  I don’t know what form exactly that will take, but it’ll be something to do with video games.  See anyone who still reads this after I get a plan.

Tonight, in fact.

Homework sucks.

And, now that the new review is finally up, I’d like to apologize for being pretty much the reason there was close to a two-week break in the content. Post-Thanksgiving food comas and homework have kept me out of commission, and for that I apologize. It won’t happen again, at least, not until the next time.

Dear readers, the picture you see on the page today is not lying to you: the Game Freaks are reviewing Pokemon. We know what you’re probably thinking: “They’re reviewing the video game from that crappy cartoon? Have they lost their mind?” Well, yes, we have lost our minds, but for reasons unrelated to this game. The problem, as we see it, is that for most people, this game is irrevocably linked to the merchandising blitz that accompanied it. We decided that someone should give this game a fair shake, and since we’re the only game reviewers we know, we decided to take it on. Are the negative connotations fair, or does this game transcend its marketing? Read on to find out!

Matt #1

Play Control: 9
You know, for what Pokemon GS does, it does it great. It’s maybe not as polished as an entry in the Final Fantasy series, and a couple of the things you do feel like kludges, but over all it’s a solid control system. The menu-based controls, while certainly not new to any RPG console gamer, should be comfortably familiar to even a novice. The menus themselves are certainly easy to navigate: to quote popular webcomic Questionable Content, “FIGHT, ITEM, OR RUN! DECIDE!”

Graphics: 6
You know, the sprites for the Pokemon are really awesome, super detailed. They have great color and the most powerful Pokemon are simply gorgeous. Special attacks are well animated (although the regular attack animations do suck), and the style of the game matches up with the graphics very well. It’s just too bad that everything that isn’t a Pokemon is really kind of butt ugly.

Difficulty: 4
I don’t know what to do next! Maybe I should just walk in a straight line, talking to everyone I see, and they will tell me! Nah, that’ll never work. In all seriousness, if you can’t play this game passably well at a first sit-down, you have some kind of vitamin deficiency or something. Really. It’s pretty simple. Cross-typing element vs. element can occasionally get difficult with the more obscure element interactions, but for the most part the game is almost too easy even for its target audience of sixth and seventh grade students. The fun is in the play, not the challenge, here. Let’s make that clear.

Replay Value: 7
OK, so in some ways this is kind of like a Zelda game: once you’ve figured out all the tricks and secrets a great deal of fun goes out of the game. But the new ways to innovate with party-building and the opportunities to make “bad” Pokemon into front-line fighters keeps the game interesting. I still want to see someone rock the house with a full party of Caterpie. Go, String Shot, go!

Overall Rating: 6.5
It’s worth noting that the design team for Pokemon is named “Game Freaks.” Yeah, thought you might like that.

Matt #2

Play Control: 8

Well, one thing for sure: this game will not test your reflexes. It’s an RPG, folks, so you shouldn’t be expecting tons of button-mashing action. Overall, the menu system is well thought out, and works very well. My main complaint may seem kind of silly, but it’s true: the main menu you use in the game has too many options. It’s not the end of the world, but it can be really annoying to have to switch back and forth between related menus instead of having fewer menus with more options.

Graphics: 7
This game is a bit tough to rate in this category. The in-battle animations are very well done, with lots of detail for the many, many characters that fight in this game, although the fact that they just slightly move the sprite to represent an attack is really pretty lame. They would have been better off just not animating the attacks, letting the player’s imagination picked up the slack. Seriously, I have a pretty good idea of what an attack called “Tackle” looks like, Pokemon. I don’t need help imagining that.

In contrast to the character sprites, the main map is ugly and overly repetitive. I don’t expect some beautiful, realistically rendered world on my big grey box (yes, my Game Boy is that old), but I’d appreciate a little bit of variety in the scenery.

Difficulty: 6
This is really the only area where the game is obviously made keeping children in mind: the game is simply too easy. It’s very simple to waltz through the main plot of the game, barely paying attention to which Pokemon you use. The battles are just not all that difficult, especially considering that each gym has a specific theme. Oh, I’m going into the gym where everyone uses fire Pokemon? Boy, what kind of Pokemon should I use…I’ve got it! Every ice Pokemon I own! That was a really hard decision!

Replay Value: 8
This is the part of the game where they pick up for the difficulty slack. Getting through the plot isn’t that difficult; getting every Pokemon, however, is a long, involved process that’ll give you hours of fun game play. This is truly one of the better RPGs for replay value, if only because replaying the game after you’ve played through the plot once doesn’t necessarily entail playing through the plot again. Which is probably a good thing, considering how hackneyed the plot is.

Overall Rating: 7.25
Don’t let anyone make fun of you for playing this game; taken on its own, it’s a lot of fun. However, if you find yourself watching the cartoon or purchasing any other related merchandise, you deserve any punishment you get.

(Props to the folks over at the Nuklear Power Forums, which is where I originally saw this.)

Apparently, MTV recently held some sort of poll to determine the 10 best and worst games of all times. The voting was done at Game Trailers. I’m sorry the information I have is so sketchy, but MTV’s website is damn near impossible to navigate. I found a link that supposedly went to the link, but it actually didn’t. So, no link to MTV’s website. Take that, giant media conglomerate!

Anyway, onto the list. I have lots of disagreements with this list. Let’s begin, shall we?

Ten Worst Games

10. Bad Boys: Miami Takedown – I’ve never played, but it’s a licenced game, so it’s probably terrible. But here’s my question: as far as I can tell, the only reason this is on the list is because it’s a recent licenced game that was bad. It seems to me that in the history of gaming, there were probably worse examples.

9. Barbie Horse Adventures – OK, you guys read Penny Arcade. Haha, very funny. Now, all of you who voted for this: raise your hands if you actually played this game. Yeah, 3 of you. That’s what I thought.

8. Bubsy 3D – This game is pretty bad, but I’ve only heard of it in one context prior to this list: Seanbaby’s list of the worst games of all time. And apparently, Seanbaby was on the show where this list aired, so it wouldn’t be surprising if this were only on here because people had previously heard jokes about it.

7. Zero Wing – Another game, another internet meme. I’m sensing a pattern, here, buddy.

6. Pac-Man (the Atari port) – Finally, a game that was available in decent numbers, and is truly terrible. This one deserves its spot.

5. The Legend of Zelda: Wand of Gamelon (CDi game) – OK, I’m fairly certain that, at most, 8 people owned anything that would’ve been capable of playing this game. Just to clarify, I’m not saying that these picks are necessarily unfounded – it just bother me that list seems to be “Top Ten Games that Gamers have heard are the Worst Game of all time ad infinitum” rather than gamers legitimately voting on games that they have played and found truly horrible.

4. Shaq-Fu – Hey, no argument here. Now might be a decent time to point you to the greatest Shaq-Fu site on the Internet.

3. Custer’s Revenge – Again, there were enough people who played a porn game for the Atari to believe that it was the 3rd worst game of all time? I guess I never expected “Atari Pornography Fans” to be such a huge demographic.

2. E.T.
1. Superman 64
-These two, I have no complaint about. Superman 64 was (unfortunately) widely available, and it is one of the most horrible things I’ve ever experienced. E.T. is probably on here more because of the copies buried in the desert than the game itself, but the game is terrible, too.

Now, onto the “10 Greatest Games of All Time”

10. Resident Evil 4 – I think it’s a little early to be claiming this. Not that I’m necessarily against recent games being on such list, but it is always a bit dangerous – will people still think about this game so fondly in, say, 5 years? Look at how well the original RE has aged, and you’ll get an idea why I’m saying this. The jury’s still out here, but this spot might be justified.
9. Halo – OK. I’m going to try really hard not to let my biases show through here. I am TERRIBLE at Halo. Pretty much at all FPS games, to be honest (with the insane exception of the Unreal Tournament games – go figure). My complaint is not that a game I’m no good at is on this list; That’s my problem, not the list’s. My argument here is that the importance of Halo, in my estimation is being vastly overestimated. It was the main launch title for the X-Box – of course it was popular. Having played it more than I really ever wanted to, I can tell you that it doesn’t really innovate in all that many ways. If they wanted to represent the FPS genre with this choice, they should have went with Doom or Goldeneye, no question.
8. Metal Gear Solid – No argument here. Innovative game, still fun to play today. Solid choice.
7. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – Errr, I don’t think so. GTA III was the innovator, and GTA:VC shipped with way fewer bugs than San Andreas did. What else did SA have going for it? It has a really big map? So do MMORPGs, and I don’t see those on here.
6. Final Fantasy VII – I’m not really fully equipped to talk about this (my moment of heresy for this article: I’m only about 10 hours into the game – Sorry, I didn’t have a Playstation when this came out), but the general impression that I get is that this game deserves its spot.
5. Tecmo Super Bowl – I want to ask a little mental exercise, of you, the reader: Go and play Tecmo Super Bowl. Dig it out of your closet, and play it, and then tell me, without a sense of nostalgia, that this is the 5th greatest game of ALL TIME. Fond memories of a game are all well and good, but when making lists like this you have to take in the complete gamut of gaming history, not just really old games you liked when you were a kid. This is not me saying that this game doesn’t deserve its spot because the modern Madden games look better or are more complex; that’s not something I would even try to argue. I’m just saying, I have a hard time buying that a decent-to-good NES football game is really the 5th greatest game of all time.
4. Super Mario 64 / Super Mario World – I don’t know how they got away with this hybrid entry, but it makes it kind of hard to argue against. I didn’t really care for SM64, but it certainly was innovative, and I have no quarrel with SMW. I think lumping two games from one series in as a single entry is kind of unfair, but I’ll let it slide.
3. Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting – HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..wait, what? No. No way in hell this game should be on this list. Maybe you could argue Mortal Kombat because it was innovative, but this is a much tougher sell. I loved the Street Fighter games, but they don’t deserve to come anywhere near “Greatest Games” lists that don’t also include the word “Fighting” in them.
2. Tetris – How crazy do you think I am? Of course this game should be here!
1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – Well, I can see…HEY! For a second I thought that said “Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past”, a game that one could actually argue is the greatest game of all time. But “Ocarina of Time”? Really? Maybe this is a personal thing; I have to concede that this game is pretty much at the top of my list for “Most Overrated Games”, but this kind of helps my point. The plot is nothing new; it’s the same plot we’ve seen in every Zelda game prior and (almost) every Zelda game since. The controls are actually pretty clumsy, which everybody seems to forget. I generally minimize my complaints about sound, but for a game that essentially strong-armed you into actually playing with the sound on, they sure did put in a lot of obnoxious yapping from that fairy. “HEY! LISTEN!” Yeah, I already heard you! Shut up! And also, this game is really too easy. Oh, it takes a long time, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s difficult. I’m sorry, but this is another case of nostalgia clouding people’s judgement.

So, yeah, I was a little bit unhappy with this list. You got a problem with that? Leave a comment and we’ll duke it out.

-Matt #2

Greetings. This week’s Game Freaks will be a foray into the 32-bit realm, and also into the realm of Ivalice. In recognition of the surpassing excellence of Final Fantasy XII, recently released for the PS2, the Matts have opted to review Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, a not-so-old-school game still well deserving of the title “classic.” Released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance stands on the shoulders of its predecessor, Playstation title Final Fantasy Tactics. A large part of the enjoyment of this game is dependent, then, on the player’s enjoyment of Tactics, as well as on a general appreciation for turn-based strategy games. This will all probably bear out in the review.

Matt #1

Play Control: 9
The control in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is intuitive, simple, and easy to learn. The systems in place for changing Jobs and learning new Abilities make sense, and I have always been a fan of learning Abilities off of Equipment as a play feature anyway. The Jobs themselves are varied and interesting, although there does tend to be a lot of repeat functionality between the Jobs that the five Races of Ivalice have control over. The Human Fighter, Bangaa Gladiator, and Moogle Mog Knight, for example, all have a similar set of core Abilities – although not all of them are the same, making each of the Jobs advantageous under slightly different circumstances. The Laws are also an interesting function in the game: prohibiting your characters from using parts of their Ability sets can be devastating, or extremely helpful if you set it up so that the enemy party is affected by the Law more than you are. Generally, the controls and features of the game lead you to easily pick up the turn-based strategy style, and also make the play interesting within that somewhat formulaic genre.

Graphics: 8
Really, on the whole, the graphics in GBA games are outstanding. Tactics Advance is no different, although it is not perhaps the most stellar example of the graphical power of the system. Each Job’s sprite is unique and easily identifiable, the textures of the landscapes are great, and the enemies are classic Final Fantasy style baddies. However, the game tries to pack a lot of detail into the small screen of the GBA, which, at times, leads to a reductionism in the graphics that prevent them from being as compelling as they could be – characters tend to be somewhat SD (super-deformed style, a method of Japanese animation) and there is really no difference in appearance between, say, one Human Archer and another Human Archer – it might have been nice to at least be able to see the difference between a male and female human. Doesn’t that get awkward after a while? “Hey Fred… oh… sorry Becky.”

Difficulty: 7
The game suffers here because, frankly, it’s too easy. There’s not nearly as much challenge to Tactics Advance as there was to its predecessor, which, although it could be sort of mean at times, did give you the chance to fail. Tactics Advance certainly isn’t mind-numbingly simplistic, but there are a lot of cases where you think “hmm… that could have been more challenging than it was” as you clean out all of the enemies in a significant battle after just one round or two. And, in the really tough fights, there’s almost always one opponent that you can take down to end the entire instance, which seems like kind of a wuss-out when there are clearly seven other guys standing around. You kill their leader and they just… leave you alone? “No, it’s OK, you wiped out our leader and friend, who we care about deeply, but we’ll just let you go. Have a nice day. There’s a great Chinese restaurant down the block if you want some food. I mean, you know. Take it easy. Gosh, the boss sure does know how to bleed.”

Replay Value: 10
Both Tactics titles are masterworks in this department. Aside from the fact that a highly complete play-through of the game will take you upwards of fifty hours, there’s always mixing and matching of Jobs and Abilities to keep you coming back to play the game over again. Even as I’m playing through my copy right now, there are things that I think “man, if I played this through again, I’d totally change…” The game also has very open-ended solutions to almost every battle, meaning that there are theoretically a very high number of possible methods to defeat every monster, win every encounter, and so forth. If I was better with the maths, I’d get all Mr. Spock on you and give you some precise mathematical equation by which you could figure out the blah blah blah hypotenuse radian mean something something. Man, I don’t know how Biedermann does this math major shit. Just thinking about it makes me stupid.

Overall Rating: 8.5
A must-buy, certainly. There’s no arguing with a game this fun that is conveniently divided up into five- to ten-minute chunks. On your lunch break? Fight a strategic battle! Food is for pansies.

Matt #2

Play Control: 7
OK, I’m not trying to say that FFTA is really “difficult to control” with this rating. The entire game is made of menus, so there are no reflexes involved. It’s not like I have trouble pressing up or down and then the A button, seriously. No, my complaint lies with what they decided to do with said menus. The whole appeal of the “Tactics” genre is micromanaging your characters, which is inherently going to create a little bit of clutter, menu-wise. But the way FFTA is set-up makes switching between various menus very tedious and overly complicated. This is particularly noticeable when purchasing equipment. In Final Fantasy Tactics, you could “try on” equipment from the store menu, allowing you to see how it would change your character’s attributes. Here, however, you have to figure out what each character is wearing, then find its statistics in the equipment menu, then go back to the shopping menu, find equipment that’s an improvement, buy it, and then go back to the character menu to equip it. It’s unnecessary complication, which sometimes makes the micromanaging aspect of the game overly frustrating and boring, when it’s supposed to be the appeal of the game.

Graphics: 9
Stylistically similar to its predecessor, FFTA features lots of colorful sprites, with many variations for each race and job. The battlefields are also impressively rendered, and the bosses look supremely tough and awesome. This game definitely features some of the best artwork done on the Game Boy Advance. The character design choices are a little odd sometimes, though: who decided it would be a good idea for the main character to have a haircut that would probably best described as the “reverse Alfalfa”?

Difficulty: 7
I concede, before I write this section, that I have not played FFTA to completion. However, I am a good chunk of the way through the game, and I have to say, this game is generally too easy. This could be because of the way I play the game; I obsessively do any of the side missions before I do the “story” missions, meaning my characters tend to be over-leveled for the story missions, but even the side missions are set up in such a way as to be biased heavily in your favor. It doesn’t even seem to matter what jobs any of your characters are using; you can wander into a battle with a bunch of Flans using only warriors, and you’ll still win the fight. Although it will probably take a couple hours, since you’ll be dealing 1 or 2 damage with every attack.

Replay Value: 8
This game has so many missions, so many jobs to master, and so much equipment to gather that it has extremely high replay value. However, like with many RPGs, once you play through the whole story once, it will probably be a while before you want to play through it again. But if you’re obsessive about full completion in your video games, this game is going to keep you busy for a long time.

Overall: 7.75
Am I a bad person because I laugh when the people I don’t let into my party leave crying? Jeez, man, don’t take it so personally, I just don’t need another N’Mou, OK? You guys only have 3 starting jobs anyway.

Greetings, Faithful Readers, and welcome once again to Game Freaks. This week we’re delving into the realm of puzzle gaming with a gem for the SNES: Tetris Attack. We think that you’ll find this game a real treat, but, as LeVar Burton used to say on Reading Rainbow (shit, anyone else remember that show?) “Don’t take my word for it.”

Matt #1

Play Control: 10

It’s hard not to give this game a ten in play control, seeing as how painfully basic and intuitive its control scheme is. A heavily sedated chimpanzee may have trouble playing this game, or a college freshman on a night of heavy drinking, but since you, Faithful Reader, are presumably neither (at this time), you should have no trouble navigating the game controls. I quickly picked them up and was fairly successful for a novice playing with a Sidewinder and an emula… we don’t do that, really. The cursor flips the blocks, the shoulder buttons raise and lower the rows, which can be helpful or damning, and the whole thing is so simple that Yoshi has no problem explaining to you… and he’s a dinosaur.

Graphics: 7

I have a hard time giving the game a good or bad review here, as the graphics do somewhat offend my sensibilities. The cutesy nature of the board is well-executed, but seems largely to be a huge plug for the SNES game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, which was released at about the same time. While I suppose that Nintendo can advertise for their own products in their own products, it seems a bit contrived compared to the sleeker, stripped down graphics of the NES era Tetris games. Tetris 2, for example, was very artistic within the bounds of the technology, but was also spare and sleek, letting the puzzle and the play make the game great, rather than the pasting in of popular characters. So, while the graphics themselves are very well done, and the colors are excellent, I have to argue with the game’s graphics on a more aesthetic, elitist-asshole level, I guess.

Difficulty: 10

The game is balanced like a scale. With the various modes of play, the smoothly-scaling speed and difficulty common to all the Tetris games, and the ability to control your own starting difficulty, Tetris Attack is essentially a game that meets you at your level of skill and challenges you there. This is the Holy Grail of video game difficulty, and few games achieve it. Especially not if those games are produced by Rare, God help them.

Replay Value: 10

The game’s essentially an unlimited replay fest. You always want to beat your own record, get to that next speed level, clear that stage that much faster. It’s addicting, it’ll suck you in, and the variety of the different modes of play leaves you with a lot to come back for. It’s like a huge, digital candy store, and you’re the snot-nosed, greasy-haired kid who keeps licking his fingers before he sticks them in the jar with the chocolates. I saw that! Get out of my store, you damn kids!

Overall Rating: 9.25

Just shy of glittering, glorious perfection. Definitely a must-buy.

Matt #2

Play Control: 9

This game probably has one of the easiest control schemes ever devised. You have a cursor that covers two blocks. If you press A, the blocks switch places. See, that wasn’t so hard now, was it? It’s executed very well, and the addition of being able to add a row of blocks by pressing L or R really helps make the early levels of the game much more interesting. On extremely high levels of the game, however, it can sometimes be nearly impossible to get from one side of the screen to the other without losing in the meantime. While this can be remedied somewhat through practice, on the highest levels of the game it is practically impossible to overcome, leading to frustrating losses.

Graphics: 8

Say what you will about all of the random, overly-cutesy Yoshi and Friends graphics, but this game looks really, really good. Lots of varied backgrounds, great use of color, and the blocks are very well differentiated from one another. That last point is pretty important: I mean, it’d suck if all the blocks kind of looked the same. The game would be really hard at that point.

Difficulty: 10

This game is phenomenally well-balanced for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are 5 different modes of play, each of which plays to a different style of gamer, which allows you to play some modes casually while having to really work to get through others. However, the game never dips into territory where it becomes too difficult. It’s certainly challenging at times, but it never gives you a feeling of being impossible.

Replay Value: 8

Like most puzzle games, Tetris Attack has a pretty high amount of replay value. However, most of the one player modes can be a bit repetitive to play more than once. The 2 player mode helps this game get some replay value, but good luck getting any of your friends to stop playing Halo or World of Warcraft to play Tetris Attack with you. It’s just not going to happen, man. They’re lost! Don’t waste your time.

Overall Rating: 8.75

Definitely a worthy successor to the Tetris name. Although I, for one, think they should have stayed with the Russian imagery theme from the first Tetris. I’d much rather have Mikhail Gorbachev as the main character instead of Yoshi. Seriously, how sweet would that be?

OK, I’ve played about twelve and a half hours of Final Fantasy XII at this point, and I have to say, I’m impressed. There was a lot of criticism leading up to this game, as, I suppose, there always is before the newest release in a major franchise series, but Final Fantasy XII is a real tour de force of the series, and not to be missed. I’ll comment on the game in some general areas to try to give you the sense that I’ve gotten of it so far.

Graphics
This game is graphically stunning. The Playstation 2 is officially at the top of its graphical performance here, and there’s no denying the quality. The world is, even more than Final Fantasy X, an immersive one. You genuinely believe in the things you see on the screen. Bangaa, Viera, Moogles, all have become distinct possibilities. They inhabit a realm of the “almost real” due to the progress the graphics have made. This is further reflected in the streamlining of all the GUI in the game — your interfaces are beautiful, stripped to their bare essentials, and intuitively functional. From a graphical standpoint, the game is otherworldly. I am excited to see the graphics on the PS3 knowing that the PS2 can do this.

Story and World
Final Fantasy XII is the best of both Ivalices. What I mean by this is that the game combines the best elements of the worlds represented as Ivalice in Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. XII has the political intrigue and massive total wars between nations that made the Final Fanatsy Tactics plot so interesting (and, with its hack translation, so hard to follow), but it also has the character-driven stories and fantastical elements (Bangaa, Viera, Moogles, some more canonical FF monsters) that made Tactics Advance so enjoyable. The story itself is too complicated to begin to explain here, but includes some of the following elements: an evil twin, a powerful hegemony, sky pirates, two people who have been mistaken for dead, a complicated family of villains, and, last but not least, the despotic Judges, who are the law enforcement, judge, jury, and all too frequently executioner for those who have committed “crimes” against the Archadian Empire. There is a subtle political commentary that underlies the entire game — I don’t think it’s commenting on any one government or historical event in particular as it is on the things that happen any time one country takes control of another by force. All of this, of course, is on the backdrop of Ivalice, a classically “Final Fantasy” world with as many natural and magical threats as human ones.

The Hunts
This is something that I think Final Fantasy XII does very well. The developers of the game knew that, if XII was to be set in Ivalice, they needed to maintain some of the Tactics Advance elements of the world. In addition to the ruthless Judges (who make a somewhat less intimidating appearance in TA), XII also kept the Clans, specifically YOUR clan from Tactics Advance, which is called Clan Centurio in XII. Run by Montblanc (another familiar Tactics Advance hero, heroically rendered in the XII’s 3D graphics), Clan Centurio is a group of “hunters,” who take commissions to go kill “marks,” powerful monsters that threaten the lives of the people of Ivalice. The entire hunt system hearkens back (intentionally) to the Missions of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Montblanc presides over your performance on these Hunts, rewarding you (amply) for your time and efforts from the Clan Headquarters in Rabanastre, the game’s main city. The marks are interesting, difficult monsters that are a lot of fun to track down, and also to fight. Kudos to Square-Enix for finding a very effective and fun way to incorporate the clans into FFXII.

Nonlinearity
Whereas Final Fantasy X was fiercely linear, to the point of railroading the player into a specific course of action, Final Fantasy XII is much less so. The game allows you to divert from your main mission frequently in order to participate in Hunts and other sidequests, and, in fact, seems to encourage such detours for the purpose of leveling your characters and gaining the often more-than-useful rewards from these sidequests. This is really a nice feature, and one which I have already taken the time to explore — more than once I have used the game’s orange teleport crystals to “skip out” on my current goal in the main mission and go do some monster hunting and sidequesting. It’s a welcome change from X’s rigidity, and I think it’s a major selling point in the game.

Difficulty
Another way that XII dramatically differs from its immediate predecessors, X and X-2, is its difficulty. This game is MUCH harder, and requires you to spend a lot more time in character development, than either of the previous games did. If you are not deliberately spending time gaining experience and License Points (more on Licensing in a minute), you will get your ass handed to you. Guaranteed. The game is still very fun, but it seems to have abandoned the idea that Final Fantasy has to be simple or easy to be fun.

Licenses
My cousin referred to Licensing as “the sphere grid, perfected,” and I have to agree with him. The License Board is your characters’ method of learning new abilities and skills throughout the game, in addition to the Experience Points you gain, which increase your statistics, HP, and so forth. Licensing is a really innovative idea, as it essentially allows you to make a completely customized character, even more so than X’s Sphere Grid, which tended to force characters into assigned roles for most of the game unless you were willing to do something totally bizarre to break the mold. The trouble with Licensing, as I see it, is that you have to have the license to perform the spell (Magick) or battle skill (Technick), but then you must also PURCHASE the Magick or Technick in question from a store. This results in a lot of time between the learning of the ability and the doing of the ability, since Gil is somewhat hard to come by in this game (man is it EVER). So while the License Board itself is well done, some of the execution with the whole buying thing could be smoother.

Combat and Gambits
So I know you’ve all been waiting for this. Does the Gambit System suck?

No. It does not. Take it from someone who has beaten seven Final Fantasy games. What the Gambit system does is prevent the mashing of the confirm button that is common if not expected in every other Final Fantasy game. Essentially, it automates the parts of combat that you would want automated: attacking unless there’s something more important to do, Phoenix Downs for dead characters, Cure magick and Potions on the wounded, etc. etc. You can interrupt the Gambit on any character at any time and command them to do something else — your commands automatically override the Gambits you’ve placed on a character (a fact which really helped in my fight against the game’s first real powerhouse, the intimidating Judge Ghis). I would say, additionally, that while having Gambits on your party leader (Vaan, usually) is optional, having Gambits on your support characters is definitely not. Combat is very fast-paced in XII due to the real-time nature of it, and if you had to micromanage all of your characters in every combat, you would most certainly get killed. So the Gambit system gets my approval. I can’t see a reason not to use it, and I am actually pretty sure that it’s saved my ass a few times in the game. A tip, however: Don’t assume that setting up a Cure magick Gambit ALONE will keep your party in HP. I have learned from experience that it is a VERY good idea to reinforce that with a Potion Gambit in the next lowest priority slot. That way, you don’t die when your party runs out of MP.

So those are my general impressions so far. I’ll keep putting up things as they occur to me — hence why this is labeled with two headers, so I can keep posting more “Final Fantasy XII Journal” articles. I would Strongly Recommend buying this game, to parrot Matt #2’s Random Reviews… but good luck finding a copy if you didn’t preorder.

Yours in Ivalice,

Matt #1

This week the Matts take on a Sega classic by the name of Gunstar Heroes.  The game is usually classified as a “run-and-gun” game, and on this promise it delivers in spades: this game certainly has plenty of running AND gunning.  Sometimes you get to do them both at once! What more could one ask for? On to the review!

Matt #1

Play Control: 8

Well, I have a hard time deciding about the play control in this game, because I can’t tell if it’s that the controls are finicky, or that my Sidewinder is finicky. I mean, wait, what?  I never play games on an emulator.  Ever.  And you never heard me even suggest such a thing.  I gave it an eight because I’m not sure, and over all I think the control system is smooth, especially for the run-and-gun style game that this is.  I think I’d probably have enjoyed the experience more on the actual system, let’s just put it that way.  I mean wait, what?  The level of customization in the game is really cool, though – I love the fact that it just GIVES you the heat-seeker gun free at the beginning of the game.  I love seeker ammo.

Graphics: 9

I actually have to differ with Matt about his regular, tedious complaint about the enemy sprites.  Yes, OK, so the stage enemy sprites look about the same as each other, with very few variations.  Look at the bosses, dude.  Between them, the weapon and character animations, and the backgrounds, this is quite easily one of the better games graphically that I’ve seen.  There’s a real level of detail here, despite the cartoony feel, that I’m very hesitant to overlook.  It’s a solid scorer in this department, as far as I’m concerned.

Difficulty: 7

This may have something to do with the fact that I’m just not good at this kind of game, but seriously, damn you die a lot.  You get unlimited free continues, which really helps the curve (unlike Contra, where you just get raped three times and then it’s Game Over kids), and the health bars are a big help, but I can’t shake the feeling that the game has it in for me, which isn’t the kind of feeling I cherish as a gamer, understandably.

Replay Value: 9

I can see playing this game a lot.  It’s a little difficult, the controls take a little getting used to, but it’s FUN, dammit.  That’s not something that I’m always able to say at the end of a review, and I think, after reviewing games like Boy and His Blob and Demon’s Crest, that I have come to appreciate fun games much more than I may have once upon a time.  I think that Gunstar Heroes is definitely worth coming back to.

Overall: 8.25

This one’s a keeper, folks.  If you’ve got it, play it, and enjoy a game in the style of Contra that isn’t obnoxiously suckawful.  Yeah, suckawful’s a word.  I just made it up, and the voices in my head tell me that that makes it a word.  So there.

Matt #2

Play Control: 9

This is where the game really excels. You can choose from 2 different control schemes, one of which allows you to shoot while running and the other which stops your character when shooting, allowing you to control where you are shooting. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on the way the style of gameplay the player likes.

You also have the ability to combine weapon power-ups to create different guns, which lends a strategic element to the game. Between these two elements, this game is a rewarding experience for every type of gamer. Well, except for gamers who like text-based RPGs. There’s really no support for text-based gameplay in Gunstar Heroes, text-based RPG fans. Sorry.

Graphics: 7

The game has a fun cartoon feel to it, and there’s a lot of variation in the backgrounds of the game. However, and I know I seem to complain about this every week, but the enemies are really repetitive. I don’t know if that’s a conscious decision, like the designers wanted you to feel like you were beating the crap out of the same dude over and over again, or if it was just laziness, but either way it detracts from the visuals of the game.

Difficulty: 9

This game is remarkably well balanced difficulty-wise. It’s challenging, but the game’s unlimited continues allows you to play all the way through the game without too much difficulty. If anything, it’s actually a little bit on the easy side, hence the lost point. But you know what? I’ll take a game that’s too easy over a game that’s too hard any day. It saves me the money I would spend to replace broken hardware.

Replay Value: 8

The simplicity of the gameplay in Gunstar Heroes makes it easy to pick the game up and play when you have a free minute. And while it’s true that playing the game is pretty much the same every time, it’s still remains a really fun thing to do. The ability to mix and match weapons and to choose your control scheme also helps the game gain replay value: after you beat it one way, you can beat it a totally different way, and it will be a different experience.

Overall: 8.25

After all the positive things I’ve said about the game, I need to gripe about one thing: the dice level. Whoever thought it would be cute to put a board game in a video game needs to have it explained to them that if I wanted to play a board game, I would’ve pulled Monopoly out of my closet. They need to have it explained to them WITH MY FIST.

Yeah, that’s right, as of about 1:30pm yesterday, I own Final Fantasy XII. Now I just need to have it sent to me so I can play it…

See, I put my copy of the game on preorder this summer, at the Game Crazy location in my hometown. Which is 90 miles from Eau Claire, so that tends to throw a monkey wrench in the works of me walking in and picking up the game on release day. But, never fear, Matt #1 had a cunning plan.

OK, so it wasn’t that cunning. I just called the store from here, paid off the rest of the preorder (and bought the strategy guide, woo shopping on the phone), and had my mother’s name put on it so that she could pick it up after work. A quick phone call, and voila!, the game is mine. Or… will be, when my mom ships it to me. See? It wasn’t that cunning.

Well, I’ll post more information/reviews/previews once I actually give the disc a spin. Why do I have the feeling that productivity in most other areas of my life is soon to drop to zero? Hmm… good thing the weekend’s coming.

Yours in Ivalice,

Matt #1