Is This Really the Greatest Final Fantasy Game Released?

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to complete Final Fantasy VII (FFVII) and to mark this achievement I have decided to write up my views on this game. I should also point out that this blog will contain spoilers from the game, so you have been warned.

If you have been reading my blog over the last year you would know that while I was growing up I did everything that I could to stay away from anything that could be classed as popular or well talked about and this is true for the Final Fantasy series. I did while I was growing up play a bit of Final Fantasy VI/III on the SNES but I never fully completed it back then but when I look back on it now I can see that I wasn’t too far from the finishing the game, but with the hype around Final Fantasy VII onwards I just stayed away from the series.

Now back in February I decided that I would start playing Final Fantasy VII and didn’t finish it till the end of April, it has now taken me till now to write up this blog due to that fact that every time I ended up writing about FFVII my opinion ended up changing. The reason for this was the fact that the more I wanted to how good this game was the more I discovered that I just couldn’t didn’t like it.

Yes this may come as a shocker to all those that love FFVII and those that like all types of RPG’s (Role-Playing Game (like myself)) but every time I through I liked something and then tried to explain why I liked it I discovered that I just didn’t. You could say that it was because I was over analysing the game or looking for away to dislike the game but that wasn’t the case because while I was playing the game I made sure that I had my Laptop with me writing everything that had happened at each point of the game, from characters to story.

After I completing the game I discovered that I had more questions than answers when it came to the story and the only way that I could get those answers was to spend a few days after completing the game looking for those answers on the Internet. While reading up on the story I discovered that some of my questions could have been answered if I went and completed some of the side quest that I didn’t find or know about while I was playing.

An example of this was when it came to how Tifa was able to get out of her home town of Nibelheim after Sephiroth attacked and destroyed the town. You only find out the answers to this questions when you go back to Nibelheim and start examine Tifa old house, while examine you will discover a note that has been placed on her Piano which examples how she got from Nibelhiem to Midgar. I understand that an RPG needs to be open so that everyone can play it in their own way but I just found that a lot of the questions that I had were to do with the story and it would have be nice if at some point in the game it actual mentioned this side quest a bit better.

If there was on thing that really put me off the game was the main character Cloud, the problem that I had with him was the fact that he had no interest what so ever with what was going on around him until he hears the name Sephiroth. I am aware that Cloud makes it very clear in the first hour of the game that he will only do jobs as a long as the money is good but when you are given a choice and his top answer is him not wanting to help why would give me the chose. The best example that I could give would be when Cloud has to save a young woman called Percilla by perform CPR on her but Cloud makes it very clear that he doesn’t want to help her but the game will only allow you to continue if you do choice to help her. I know that RPG’s are all about giving the player a choice but why made me play as character that doesn’t want to do anything.

There are other problems that I have with the game, which start with the story and go all the way down to the some of the controls. What I mean when it comes to the story is the way in which it is told to us, an Example of this would be that Cloud has a problem with Sephiroth but it doesn’t explain why Cloud has this problem with Sephiroth till much later in the game but when you do learn the truth you also discovers that everyone that did survive the events at Nibelhiem were then experimented on or killed which then leads to how did Tifa get away and why does everyone believe that Cloud is a clone and so one. There are so many twist and turns within this game that you just get lost as to what is true and not and a lot of what needs to be explained isn’t explained in the main quest or side quests.

Yes there was a lot wrong with this game but there were some stand out points that I really enjoyed. Some of the best bits came from the other characters that are within your party, good examples of this would be some of the other characters had believable past which made you relate to the characters more and you could see why they were upset or why they wanted to help. Examples of this would be Tifa, Barret and Cid and the reason for this was because you could see how much they had been thought to get where they are now.

Another part of the game that I did enjoy was the music, in some parts of the game the music fitted the mood perfectly but there were one or two tracks that to me I just didn’t like but that is normal for most games.

I wanted to believe that this game was as great as everyone had made it out to be but deep down I didn’t like it and the reason for that is because I have played better JRPG that have been done better in every way from the characters to the story. This game may have allowed a lot of people to get into JRPG’s and this could be the reason that this game is praised so highly but for me this game just didn’t know where it was going and made you control a character that just didn’t care about anything else than revenge. I will admit that revenge can be a very powerful way to push a story forward but if your story is all over the place and the main character doesn’t want to get involved in what is going on you just feel disconnection from the game and its characters.

I have always classed RPG’s as a way in which we can escape our world and feel like we are doing some good in another world but when it comes to FFVII I just felt like I wasn’t doing any good and that I had to fight the wishes of the main character himself. Should this game be classed as the best JRPG and used as a template for all RPG’s in the future? My answer would be no and my reasoning behind this is that there are far better JRPG’s and WRPG’s out there now that have better story than this game.

I know that a lot of fans of this game will say that I am wrong but I ask you to go back and play this game again as if you have never played it before and then tell me what you think of it, don’t allow your nostalgia of this game cloud you.

Until Next Time

Are there any standout titles when it comes to Zombies?

If you are like me you might have noticed that over the last five or more years there has been an increase in the amount of content across all forms of media when it comes to Zombies. This is fine with me even though I am not a massive fan of the genre but there has been one stand out piece that everyone has been talking about for the last three years and that is The Walking Dead.

Today I will be looking at the point and click adventure of The Walking Dead the video game that was released last year by Telltale Games but before we get into the game itself let me mention that The Walking Dead started off as a graphic novel that was created by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard back in 2003. Then in 2010 AMC then released a television adoption of the comic book which from what I have read and hear has been met with very high praises.

With all this praise it was only going to be a matter of time before someone decided to make a video game out of it and nine times out of ten that video game is going to be nothing like the show that it was created from but lucky for us Telltale Games decided that they would make a game based on The Walking Dead but as a point and click adventure.

Now I have never seen or read anything to do with The Walking Dead but from all the praise that the show and the game have received I knew that I would have to have a look at it at some point, lucky for me all five chapters went on sale back in March so I decide then that I would pick it up but have only just finished playing the game.

I should point out that from this point onwards there could be a chance of spoilers, so you have been warned.

Now as I said moments ago I went into the game completely blind and I had no knowledge of what I was getting myself into but that didn’t really matter because the game starts just as the Zombie outbreak happens. This to me was a good way to start the story because it allows for those that are new to the series to understand what is going on and enables you to experience what the characters are experiences as they learn something new about their surroundings.

Now without giving too much away for those that haven’t played the game yet, this is a story about a group of characters trying to survive the aftermath of the Zombie apocalypse, at the same time you will be playing as Lee Everett and making choice that will effect the group and Clementine who you find at the start of the game and have taken it upon yourself to protect.

As I have just mentioned this game allows you to make choice that can be carried over from one episode of the game to the next. Now if you have read any of my Mass Effect blogs that I released back in March you will know that I enjoy playing games and watching Television shows that show you the consequences of your actions. In this game these choice you make may not appear till later in the game which is good because you will never know on your first play through when these choice will come back to haunt you.

The way in which the game plays also is very good for a game that is based on a point and click adventure, what I mean by this is the fact the game makes you feel like you are in the games world looks for items that will enable you to survive.

The last part of the game that I enjoy was the way in which the characters develop throughout the game, as the game goes fewer on it throws in events were you have to make hard decision and because of these decision you as a character and those around you change as the story goes on.

So with a game that has been praised so much what were the problems that I had with this game, well one of biggest problems that I encountered was with the conversation options. The reason for the problem was the fact that it would give you up to four options when you are having a conversation with someone along with a time limit in which to give one of the four responses to them. Now I will admit that I am not one of the fastest readers and because of this I sometimes didn’t get the time to read all the options that where present to me and because of this sometimes I didn’t chose anything which just left my character saying nothing.

The next two problems I had with the game was to do with the story itself, I am not saying that the story was bad because to me it was very good but there were parts were I knew what was going to happen before it happened and that wasn’t because I had read up what was going to happen. Examples of this would be when you leave the motel in episode 3 and arrive at the train that is blocking the road, another one for me was also at the end of the fourth episode where you see Clementine’s hat next to a dumpster.

This also leads me into the final problem with the story, you are given the choice to go it alone to save Clementine which was what I decided but before I could go I had to have a chat with everyone were they would tell me if they are coming with me or not and even then when the final chapter gets started you end up coming back to the group that you left in chapter four to find Clementine.

Apart from very long conversation sections of the game and the small grips with the story the game as a whole was brilliant and because of that I now have an interested in The Walking Dead. If you are a fan of the show and haven’t played the game yet I would recommend you do so and if you are a gamer that likes a good story or a good game in general then I would recommend that you go and play this game right now.

Until Next Time.

What games interest me this E3

For me E3 has always been about what games are going to be coming out within the next year or two, yes there is the odd year or two were we see a new console but without the games a console would never be sold.

Before I get into what games I am looking forward to this year there is one thing that I just couldn’t quite understand and that was why Sony decided to show of Assassins Creed 4 in their main press conference when Ubisoft showed it off a few hours ago. I know that Microsoft did the same thing with Battlefield 4 but one of the biggest differences there was the fact that in the EA press conference they went into more detail about the game. I should also point out that I don’t play modern shooters

Enough about that lets get into what games I am looking forward to. I should mention that these games do not come in any order but these are games that have sparked my interested and will a one point picking them up.

First up we have Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, I have been a massive fan of the Plants Vs Zombies games ever since I discovered the original game in my local Apple store. From what I have seen from the EA’s press conferences about this game and the information that has been released since then has made me believe that this is going to comical game that is going to poke fun at modern day shooters plus it just looks different to everything else that has been released so far.

All thought not much information has been sent out about Quantum Break from what I have seen thus far and what from what I have read it sounds like something the Fringe writes created. For those that don’t know Fringe was a television show that was created by JJ Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. If this game turns out to be like Fringe then they could be the possibility that I may pick this game up.

For most of the Sony’s press conference there wasn’t anything that I really wanted to play until I saw the trailer for The Order: 1866. The main reason that this game caught my attention was the fact that it was going to be set in an alternate 1800 London and that it was going to be set in the Steampunk genre. Now I have only just gotten into Steampunk and from what I have seen from this genre so far I have really liked and if The Order: 1866 can live up to what I have seen thus far of Steampunk genre then this game alone could be the reason that I buy a PS4.

When it comes to talking about the next few games which come from Nintendo you might think that I am going to contradict what I said in last week’s blog but I still stand by the fact that Nintendo did play it way to save when it came to talking about games this year but that still doesn’t mean that they don’t have some good games coming out this year. The first game up is Mario Kart 8, to me the trailer that was on Nintendo Direct didn’t really show anything new apart from the anti-gravity sections of track which looks like it was borrow from the F-Zero franchise. I can only hope that with the news that F-Zero may not be coming to a Nintendo console for some time, Mario Kart 8 can bring some of the best parts from the F-Zero franchise over to Mario Kart.

The next game from Nintendo that I the look of is Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, in my last blog I talked about how much the game looks like the last Donkey Kong Country game that Retro Studios had created but after spending the rest of last week looking at the game more closely I can see that Retro Studios have done more than just release the same game. They have spoken about the return of Dixie Kong and the inclusion of one more character that has yet to be revealed. The big differences between this Donkey Kong Country games and the last one is the fact that they have done more with the camera so that let looks like you are going round a 3D world instead of just going left to right and it also now has water levels that were missing from the last Donkey Kong Country game.

The last game that spiked my interest was Project Spark for the Xbox One, the main reason for this is because it will allow you to do whatever you want when you want with your friends also helping you or hindering you. It’s like Scribblenauts but without the writing.

That brings me to the end of this week’s blog, if you were following E3 like myself let me know what games you are looking forward to.

Until Next Time.

E3 2013 Press events so far

As the title of this blog says I will be having a look at the press events that have been shown so far from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. As a side note, I am aware that Nintendo do have other events planned throughout the rest of this week but I am so far only talking about what has been show thus far as of Nintendo Direct 11/06/13 3pm.

If we look at Microsoft there was one thing that they did very well and that was showing us the exclusive and new IP’s titles that they have coming to their new console which is good because it shows that they are going to do something different, plus if you saw their reveal event you know that they had to do something to get those that play games interested in there console. Yes the biggest question that everyone came away with when the conference end was the price of the item which yes is a bit pricey but then again I have never been someone that buys a console at launch due to the lack of games at the start.

When it came to Sony’s press conference there was one question that I had by the end of the show and that was why was your conference make up with 90% of multi-platform games, yes you may have exclusive content for some of those game but where are your own games that I can only get on your console that will get me to by your console when it is released (yes that is also aimed at Microsoft but they didn’t have as many as Sony). If there was one thing that Sony did give everyone by the time you left was the fact that Sony was going to do everything you want it to without all the Microsoft ball shit, which is good because it brings back the whole console wars like the good old of Nintendo and Sega ads.

As for Nintendo they did everything that I believe was wrong with this year’s E3 and what I mean by this was the fact that they were playing it safe. This isn’t always a bad think but it seems to be the tread most years with each conference from each company having more of what we had the last time. There was once a time when Nintendo E3 Conference always had something new and interesting to look forward to but this year they gave us reincarnation of games that we have already played. Examples of what I mean are as followed Halo from Microsoft, Infamous from Sony and Mario Kart 8 from Nintendo.

At the end of this round of press conferences each one did everything that they were told to do by us, Microsoft showed us the games we wanted to see, Sony should us the box and what it is going to do differently to Microsoft and Nintendo showed us the games we want to see on Wii U and 3DS.

This comment may come across as something that a fan boy might say but when it comes to games Nintendo and Sony could have learned something from Microsoft conferences this year in showing us some new IP’s that could get us interest in their console. A great example that I would like to us is the fact that Retro Studios has been working on Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze for three years. Now this may come across as me having a little bit of a rant but three years on a game that looks almost like the last one with some miner chances has really pisses me off, I was hoping that within the three years they could have come up with a game that looks like this and something completely different but instead we get a rehash of a game that has already been released.

I know that the chance of Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony reading this blog is very slim but as a person that has been playing games from such an earlier age I have only got one request for this next generation of console and game to be released. Stop creating games that are the same as the last instalment with minor chances and create something new and better from what has already been created before.

Until Next Time.

Can’t believe it has changed so much

For those that have been following or reading my blog’s on a weekly basic I would like to apologise for the lack of blog’s that I created last month, I original had five blog’s planed for the month but in the end I was only able to create three of which one of them was crap in my opinion. So to start this week’s blog I am going to give you a bit of a history lesson which will lead up to my views on how this May’s London Comic Con went for me.

I have been going to the London Comic Con since all the way back in 2004 when I first discovered this exhibition with a friend of mine, back then exhibition was completely different to how it is today due to the fact that back then it mainly stuck to film, television and comic book and because of this the show didn’t really get any bigger. If anything the number of people that where attending the show was starting to decreasing up until 2005 when the show began to include parts of Japanese culture like Anime and Manga and each year since this inclusion the show has gotten bigger and better.

With the show getting bigger and better the number of people that were attending the show was also going up and by the last time that I went which was back in 2010 you could see that this show was something that people wanted to go to.

Now after being away from the exhibition for over three years I was surprised to see how much the exhibition had increased in size, a good example of this would be back in 2010 there was at least a handful of illustrators but this year there was some were in the region of about forty, which just goes to show how much bigger the exhibition has become over the past three years.

There were two things that caught me off guard while I was at this year’s exhibition and one of those was just how busy the show had gotten, a good example of this would be the fact that there were places in the show room on the Saturday were we were packed in like sardines. I am not saying this is a bad think at all it because if anything it just showed how many more people were interested in the show than the last time I was here.

The other part that caught me off guard was now much the Anime and Manga scene had changed over the last three years. When I look back at 2010 we had not long lost ADV films but we still had Beez Entertainment along with Revelations films and the two biggest Anime distributors in the UK, Manga entertainment and MVM. It wasn’t until I got the exhibition and had spend the best part of Saturday trying to find where Beez Entrainment and Revelations films had gone. When I couldn’t find them and after I had gone home that night I began to do a bit of research to find out what had happened to them. It wasn’t long until I discovered that both companies had ever gone under or had handed their licensers over to another company.

If this weekend had taught me anything, it was the fact how much a hobby like this can change so much when you haven’t been following it for some time.

If there was one question that needed to be answered after this year’s May’s MCM London Comic Con it would be did I enjoy myself at the exhibition? The answer to that question is yes I did and I look forward to what October’s Comic Con has in store for me along with what this year’s London Film and Comic Con is going to be like July.

Until Next Time.