Games

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Well, it’s taken me the best part of two months, but I finally fancy writing my review for Final Fantasy XIII.  The only reason that it’s taken this long is that I don’t usually like to cast judgement on a game I’m not finished with — but I think that after spending 60 hours with FFXIII I’ve probably learned everything I’m going to need.  And yes, I am still playing it… which makes a welcome change from the last two eight-hour games I got for the same price.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past twenty years, FFXIII is the thirteenth instalment in the popular J-RPG franchise from Square-Enix.  As with most J-RPGs, the storyline is pretty cliche; the story sees a seemingly workaday group of people get swept up in an evil plot, granted magical powers and eventually fight to save their planet from destruction.  The details are different, sure, but there’s nothing ground-breaking in story-telling terms.  In fact, I’d probably even go so far as to say that the plot and its characters are not as memorable as those from previous Final Fantasy games.  The lone possible exception to this rule is the game’s protagonist — Lightning — who is pretty striking (if you’ll excuse the pun).

A quick run-down of those things that make FFXIII different, then:

• Restriction
  One of the best things (in my opinion) about J-RPGs is the freedom; at some point in the game, usually about half way through, you find yourself an airship and gain the ability to revisit all of the towns and locales you’ve passed through before.  This freedom is unfortunately missing from most of FFXIII. Of the game’s six characters, only three of them can take part in battles at any given time.  Of those three, you can only control one — who you are stuck with until the battle is finished.  Each “Chapter” of the game comes with a level cap, presumably to discourage you from grinding, and it’s impossible to max out your characters until you’ve defeated the final boss.  There are no towns or villages to speak of, no real NPC interaction, your hand is held tightly as the game drags you down a set path… I could go on.

• Battle System
  First FFXII, now FFXIII — it seems that Square-Enix is more than happy to kill the original turn-based battle systems that worked so well in previous games.  That isn’t to say that FFXIII‘s battle system is bad, necessarily, but it does take some time getting used to.  At the beginning of the game, your characters are confined to three “paradigm roles” each, which limits your selection of battle strategies considerably.  Thankfully, this restriction is limited after about 30 hours.  Unfortunately, up until this point, the best tactic seems too often to be: hammer away on the “Auto-Battle” command until whatever you’re fighting falls over.

• Weapon / Accessories Upgrades
  FFXIII has one of the most in-depth upgrade systems I’ve ever seen.  Almost every item that you find on your travels has an amount of EXP associated with it, which can be used to upgrade accessories and/or weapons; a ring providing +15% Earth Resistance may, eventually, evolve into a completely different ring providing +40% Earth Resistance, for example.  This system is the only way to gain stronger weapons (including each character’s Ultimate Weapon), so its use is essential.

The tone of this review has been surprisingly negative so far — surprising because I’m still playing the game.  A large chunk of it lacks in freedom, as I’ve said, but everything changes rather suddenly in Chapter 11 (of 13).  You find yourself thrown from the planet where the rest of the storyline took place to a world called Pulse (which serves as FFXIII‘s World Map) and just told to get on with it.  The change was too sudden for me; having been left to my own devices, I promptly got lost and died.  Several times.  But eventually I figured out where I was going, how to work the teleporters and how to accept missions; the difficulty had been ramped up considerably and things were starting to get interesting.

There are 64 optional bounty-hunter style missions to undertake on Pulse, which is the reason I’m still grinding away.  These sorts of missions might not be to everybody’s tastes, but I found them a pleasant distraction.  Attempting them in order seems the most sensible idea, and gives you a handy method of levelling up; in addition to counting towards an achievement/trophy, each mission offers useful rewards and experience that help prepare you for the next.

So, what am I trying to say?  Probably that Final Fantasy XIII disappoints in a few places, but that it’s still brilliant.  The characters may not be that memorable, the dialogue may be filled with nonsense and the game may feel very cramped and restricted for the first 30 hours, but the hours that follow; the exploration of Pulse; the high-definition FMVs; and the musical score easily make up for all of the game’s faults.

It’s made me even hungrier for a high-definition remake of Final Fantasy VII, to boot.  What?  A man can dream…

The long-awaited spiritual sequel to Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, has finally arrived.  Whether or not it was worth the wait seems to be a matter of opinion, but I am sitting quite comfortably on the “Of course, are you out of your mind?” side of the fence.  For anybody hearing about Quantic Dream’s masterpiece for the first time, a quick recap…

Heavy Rain is being marketed less as a game and more as an “interactive drama”.  The story follows four characters, each chasing a serial killer known as ‘The Origami Killer’ for his or her own reasons; Ethan Mars, a father whose son has been kidnapped; Scott Shelby, a private investigator who has been hired by the families of the killer’s victims; Norman Jayden, an FBI agent working alongside the police to crack the case; and Madison Paige, a photographer-cum-journalist doing some investigative reporting.  The gameplay consists almost entirely of quick-time events, ranging from mundane tasks like pouring juice and cooking eggs to edge-of-your-seat fight scenes.

Sound fun?  Well, it isn’t — but that’s not a criticism.  It’s not much fun to watch when you’re not playing it, either — but that’s not a criticism.  Like its predeccessor, Heavy Rain is completely unlike most other games; rather than playing it for the satisfaction of seeing somebody’s head explode or handing somebody’s ass to them online, you play it because you are engaged in the storyline.  You play it because the mundane tasks you perform make you feel like the character is real — because you feel empathy for them.  I admit, it’s tempting to see Heavy Rain as a work of art, and most of what I’ve said is already plastered all over every review site and gaming magazine known to man.

But fear not, skeptics — I’ll be the first to admit that Heavy Rain does have some faults:

• Inconsistent Voice Acting
  Owing almost entirely to the fact that you are in direct control of what your character says, what they think and how they react to certain situations, some of the voice acting comes across as entirely wrong and broken.  Early in the game, when your son goes missing, you can press “X” to call his name.  Being caught up in the game as I was, I pressed the button regularly and was disappointed to hear Ethan’s cries cycle through the same three variations of “Jason!”.  Entirely my fault, granted, but giving the player the ability to ruin the mood of the scene was a bad move.

• Pretty Short
  I can’t give an accurate time (since the game doesn’t provide one), but the game has taken me less than two days of play to complete.  This may not be too big a deal, if it proves to be as replayable as I hope, but otherwise I feel a little cheated.  I wasn’t expecting a 40-hour epic, but I could have sworn Fahrenheit was longer… And that cost me less than £10.

• Major Technical Bugs
  In my short time with Heavy Rain, I have experienced the following faults (in no particular order): temporary loss of all sound, speech delays that wouldn’t look out of place in a badly-dubbed kung-fu film, video freezes, children walking directly through my character and seemingly random interruptions to internal monologues.  At one point, Jayden’s ARI glasses flew off his face, folded themselves in mid-air and placed themselves neatly in his coat pocket — pretty hard to ignore.

That said, ignoring most of the above is exactly what I’m going to decide to do. Why?  Because the storyline is brilliant, full of twists and its conclusion depends entirely on how you play the game; because it deals with some very mature themes and proves conclusively that games are not “just for kids”; because it’s going to be a game that everybody talks about for years to come; and because the installation process includes an origami how-to for the bird on the box.  Heavy Rain is a work of sheer genius, and should not be missed.