Final Fantasy Final Impressions

Now that I am further into the game I can safely say, Final Fantasy XIII intrigues me. The game is trying to stick to its FF roots by having stupid hard bosses that can one hit KO a party without even blinking an eye. Yet since the game has a pseudo real-time aspect to the combat makes it so that you can actually power through a lot of such battles if you really strategise on what you are doing.

The one thing that is starting to get on my nerves now is the constant switching of player characters. While I sure there is a deep story impact emotionally, I find this mechanic really annoying. I just find myself thinking, “Come on, I just got used to playing as so and so.” After having played 20 some hours I have now gotten used to all the characters, whether I wanted to or not; and there are character that I wish I did not have to play. I preferred it when the AI was doing the healing, and not me.


As far as the story is concerned, I think anybody else would know better than me as I still don’t quite understand (nor have I really been paying attention, but I am trying to speed through the game so I will probably pay more attention through the second playthough) what had happened (or why), but now that the world ending monster has been determined the PC are getting ready to kill it. And there is a lady who is wearing cleavage conforming clothing and she carries a whip, so you can tell she is ‘Evil’.


I did get to meet the last player character that I was missing.
FANG as I like to call her (yes, for some reason every time I utter her name I have to raise my voice) seems to be a foreigner. Why? Well, she speaks with an Australian accent. She seems to have been in bed when all this happened and has not had a chance since to comb her hair or run her fingers through it to make it settle down. She seems to be wearing a Saree in such an atrocious fashion that would make an Indian blush with embarrassment; the game ‘teases’ you with possible upskirt shots (up saree?) of her at many an occasion. Her shoes seem to be stolen from Roman legionaries. She fills the ‘tough guy’ role of the party when Snow is not around.

The combat system is one of the shining moments of this game. With the last post I was not further enough into the game to say this, but once you hit the point with the paradigms, strategy becomes important; Especially if you are looking for something over 1 star at the end of battle. Choosing roles correctly at the times in boss battle can really turn the tide in your favour. But most of the lower level enemy battles consists of mashing the A button to auto ability kill the enemies.


One thing of note: English voice acting with Japanese cinematic direction does not mesh well. While the voice actors in FF XIII did a great job (especially Sazh), the gestures and head shakes make the dialogue look awkward, even cheesy, at times. But again, probably since this is such a massive release there was lot of attention paid to the voice acting, so there is actual acting there. Although Lightening was probably the easiest; look and sound sullen, and when there is an emotional scene sound even more sullen. Sazh seemed to have the most character growth (with Hope trailing behind him) and the voice acting for him is top notch. But, for once I would like there to be a situation like the one he ends up in where the character responds logically, not emotionally. It is just a dream of mine.


This part I don’t understand. So eight hours into it and the game asked me to switch disks. Now I am 20+ hours into it and I am still on the second disc. Why was the first disc so short?


Over all, I like the look and the feel of the game. Probably because it does not play anything like a FF game that I have previously tried. Once I am done with this playthrough, I will probably be going back to collect the rest of the stuff I miss.


On another note, Resonance of Fate comes out tomorrow. It is by the same company that made Infinite Undiscovery. Is anyone else looking forward to it?

Army of Tutu

Continuing the trend of sequels, I just recently discovered Army of Two: Two or Army of Two: The 40^th Day.

Before I start, I must mention some things about the first game. The first game, or Army of Two: One, is a third person shooter, where you can control one of two characters: Tyson Rios, or Eliot Salem. Both of them, initially as Army Rangers and later as part of a Private Military Corp (PMC), were sent into situations that required skills, deadly force, and a lot of team work. There was an underlying story about corruption, scandals, back-stabbing, and friendship and bro-love. The gameplay consisted of a lot of running around and hiding behind obstacles, shooting at enemies, drawing fire so your partner could shoot at enemies. There was one part which was called back-to-back, where you and your partner would stand back-to-back and everything would slow down so you could pick off a lot of enemies in a circular fashion. You could reward your fellow player with bro-love when they did something you liked or with bro-hate when they did something you disliked (or if you just wanted to be a dick).

An overall fun game, unless you were playing the game in single player mode. The AI was notoriously dumb; Or spiteful. The AI tended to get itself killed (more often than not) regardless of what order you gave it. Every order pretty much translates into ‘run up and stand in the middle of enemy fire and die’.
This game was fun as I pointed out earlier, but you had to have another person playing with you. This is one of those games that are tailor-made for co-op multiplayer. But then again I wish that a lot of the other games out there right now would be co-op multiplayer as well.

The characters themselves, Rios and Salem, were your typical characters. Rios was big and burly and partly the conscience of the team. Salem was smart-aleck of the group with witty quips and jabs, who generally saw things as a means to an end. But, overall both characters looked and sounded human.

Army of Two: The 40^th Day gives them an “upgrade”. While the graphics of the game have gotten a lot shinier, it seems that Rios seemed gone on a steroid binge, now with muscles rivaling Chris from Resident Evil 5, on top of this he sounds like he had been hit on the head with a hammer a few times. Salem now sounds like an Italian gigolo from New York and unfortunately looks the part as well.

Does this detract from gameplay? Only if you played the first game for the characters. Fortunately this is a minor negative for the game. Gameplay has remained practically the same. There is still an agro-meter. You still hide under cover and pop out to shoot. There are still team actions. But on top of this the nifty thing (that I liked) was the “Morality Choices”. During missions you will be presented with the option to do something evil or good which leads into a comic book style montage of how your choice affected the feature. Cool thing about this is that either of the players can make the choice when it comes up on screen and the other one has to live with it. There is also a camaraderie mechanic so Rios and Salem can end up as best friends or not. What the impact on the game is beyond achievements, I don’t know. Another addition is the mock surrender mechanic. Wherein one player can surrender and the other one can sneak around to pick off enemies.

Overall the game is still fun. Single player not so much, but the multiplayer holds hours of entertainment. There is more replay value in this game (compared to the first one) mostly because of the “Morality choice” movies and plus there is always the collectors dream of unlocking all the weapons.

While the single player mode of this game may be lacking, I would recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a game to play with a friend.

Final Fantasy XIII First Impressions

I got my hands on Final Fantasy XIII on release day. Like everybody else. First thing I did, probably like everybody else, was to pop it in the 360 and start playing.

Now I have only had a chance to play the first hour or of the game so I can’t really say if I like the game or not just yet. I mean, I don’t even know what’s going on. There are people in fancy dresses and then there are these other people in fancy armours. There is a lot of fighting and exploding between the two and then a giant robot comes out and starts ordering the people in fancy dresses around, and I still don’t have an idea of what’s going on other than the fact that I am rooting for the people in the fancy dresses; and killing the people in the fancy armours and their dogs too. There is also a Pulse fal’Cie going around, but I don’t really know what that’s about either.

So far I have run into seven of the characters that have been in the party. At the start of the game you take control of:

Lightening: The ‘main’ character of the game and the first female lead (as I understand, other than X-2) who seems be a character based of the Cloud Strife (of FF VII and Advent Children) with breasts glued on and about as much personality. Maybe as the game progresses more is revealed. On the plus side, she does not run like Yuna. She uses a sword as her main weapon.

Sazh: Tagging along with our lovely heroine is this fellow; your run-of-the-mill black comic relief that uses guns. I can’t really think of much else to say here, because this character is very stereotypical of what you would see in a buddy action movie (if one character was white and the other black).

A dramatic escape and showdown later, we switch to:

Snow: The hero, as he is referred to quite a few times. Out to do justice and good and protect the other helpless civilians. Has the personality of any other hero type so not much to be said here. He seems to like punching people.

Gadot: Tagging along with Snow, he is a mirror image of Snow (expect he is the lackey type). Uses guns. Don’t think anyone is waiting for him though.

Lebreau: She is the Lingerie model turned action heroine of the group. She was probably at a photo shoot when she was arrested and shoved onto the train out of city, and had to grab whatever she could to cover herself up. She uses guns as well.

Another dramatic sequence and showdown later we switch to:

Hope: A young kid orphaned in this strife (his mother dies). He is still figuring things out while trying to seem put together. He has a facial expression that is stuck on ‘who me?’ or maybe ‘Whoa! Boobs!’, but I haven’t quite figured out which one it is. He uses a Boomerang? Where he pulled it out of is anybody’s guess.

Vanile: Provider of the above mentioned boobs and over-all general perkiness. She is seems to be the requisite air-headed pop diva ‘look at me, I am pretty’ type character, which makes the fact that she provides the narration (in certain scenes) really strange to me; Probably more going on there than meets the eyes.

Hour and some minutes into the game and most of it has been gameplay (which in most other JRPGs I have spent the majority of this time watching cut scenes)? It was quite a nice experience. But, I still have no clue as to what the characters are aiming to do (other than head to the huge robot building). So colour me intrigued. I’ll at least keep playing till the reveal about what is going on.

I do have to say though, I like the battle system.

· You control one character, the other are computer controlled.

· You either go the easy route and just pick ‘Auto battle’ which lets the AI decide what actions would be best in the given situation or you can pick abilities to pick and choose what actions to take during the allotted time.

· All playable characters start with an area effect attack. This may not seem like a huge plus but this is one of my gripes with a lot of RPGs that you don’t really get an AOE to start out. You generally have to work up to it.

· Potions heal the entire party! On top of that, using a potion does not use an action! That’s two for two. Though I wish that potion usage was a button press rather than menu navigation, but that is very minor gripe (maybe it is, I zoomed through the tutorials so I didn’t really read anything).

The only thing I can say about the graphics is, ‘Wow! Pretty!’ The FF team really made an effort for the game to look High-Def in, well, High Def. There is no marked difference between the cut scene graphics and actual gameplay graphics, which is very impressive. Characters and surrounding are well rendered, that I found myself stopping on ledges to admire the scenery. I have never done that on a console game so kudos to the FF team. Job well done.

All of this said the final point I would like to make is that as far as I have gotten in the game it does not seem much like a fantasy game as the title ‘Final Fantasy’ suggests. It is more of a ‘Final Technology’. But, maybe they are saving the ‘Fantasy’ part for later. I will have to wait and see.