Final Fantasy XIV

This is going to seem delayed, considering, but if we've learned anything it's that a) I am a slacker and in general b) time means absolutely nothing to me. Perhaps I was simply waiting for my opinion to be justified, but it's more likely that I simply tried to block the experience out to the best of my ability. Because honestly, playing it was a lot like witnessing a horrible crime.

With the news recently that worlds (servers) are being forcibly merged due to population deficiency, I felt it was about due. Maybe because my harsh review seemed more justified now than it did before? I don't know. Anyway...

I'll preface this by saying, I could only stomach the game for roughly a week during beta. Mind you it was the final build in beta, only several days prior to retail launch so Square should've had their shit together. I presumed they would take what they had with FFXI and build/improve from there. That is not however what they did at all. It seems that for some reason or another they decided instead to start from scratch, rush, and then leave everything half-assed.

Let's begin with character creation. First things first -- this shit's weird. The arrow keys will filter through your menu options and do nothing to control the camera. For that you need to awkwardly use J, K, L, and I. Why? I don't have any flipping idea. But there you go. You're welcome. I probably just saved you a good three minutes of, "wtf???"

You have five races to choose from in FFXIV: Hyur (human), Miqo'te (cat-girl), Lalafell (elf-gnome-thing), Elzen (elves), and Roegaydn (man-beast). Each of those has two additional clan options with slight variances such skintone and starting attributes, but ultimately it doesn't seem to particularly matter a whole lot. Also some clans don't allow you to be certain genders so the whole thing feels a little last minute to me and I can't be assed to get into it in any amount of detail.

Selecting individual features is pretty lackluster, with no color wheels or true sliders to speak of. At the time in which I played there were, for example: five height options, three voice options, anywhere between seven and sixteen skin tones, between six and nine hair styles, and an impressive thrty-two hair color options -- though most are nearly identical to each other honestly, so you could probably half that. You can further customize your hair by selecting a highlight color on top of the base color, but honestly the lightning makes this process moot much of the time.

For faces you can choose the basic shape of the face and then further refine it by selectine eyebrows, eye color, nose size/shape, and so forth. Unfortunately for some reason your face shape is directly connected to your bust size if you're a woman, so you may choose the soft innocent looking face only to get in game and realize for some reason you now have a D-cup. The individual options aren't magnificent, but at least they're there.

There are four starting classes referred to as Disciples of War, Disciples of Magic, Disciples of The Land and Disciples of The Hand. Which probably means squat to you if you don't know wtf that crap means.

Disiciples of War are fighters who can choose between Pugilist, who fight with their fists and knuckle weapons; Gladiator, who specializes in sword and shield; Marauder, who wields giant two-handed axes; Archer, who clearly uses bows and arrows; and Lancer, who makes use of a lance.

Disciples of Magic are mages who can choose between Conjurer, who wields elemental magic; and the Thaumaturge, who wields spiritual magic.

Disciples of The Land are gatherers who can choose between Miner, Botanist, and Fisher. What those three classes do should be really quite obvious.

Disciples of The Hand are crafters who can choose between Alchemist, Armorer, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Culinarian, Goldsmith, Leatherworker, and Weaver. All of which should also be really quite obvious as to what they do in the scheme of things.

Incidentally, you can change what you are at any given time by purchasing a new weapon, so none of these choices seem to carry any significant weight behind them, cheapening your need to even make a decision.

After you've done all of this you can choose your character's birthday and patron deity. I still have very little idea what precisely these options did, as they had no discernible effect on my questing or storyline. But you can choose them, so I'd assume they intended to do something with the system.

After all of this, you choose your starting location, of which there are three, which I'm to understand is the key factor in deciding what storyline your character progresses through. Despite being able to travel freely, you can only witness the storyline of the city you started in, so I guess this is truly the only real option you've been given that matters. So I guess if you're really intent on hammering your way through this game, means you should choose wisely.

On to the rest of the game, then. The game is quite pretty, as expected of a Final Fantasy game these days, however from what I saw the story is sorely lacking (also kind of expected these days I guess?). The quests I did were very run-of-the-mill and left me feeling bored, even when faced with impending doom. Go kill obscene amounts of ______. Go collect absurd numbers of ______. And so on. The music left a lot to be desired, particularly for a Square title, and left me feeling outside of the world rather than a part of it.

The lag was a frightening experience itself, which strangely added more excitement to the game than anything in the actual game on purpose. To clarify, the issue was with the game servers themselves, not my internet. I'm fully aware of the difference.

Monsters were never where they showed up in the world, and since most were aggressive, this meant while slowly trudging along from one great distance to another, you'd get attacked by something you didn't even realize was actually in your path. Sometimes, the monster model wouldn't even show up, leaving you standing there trying to fight something invisible. Targeting was a nightmare and it had more to do with the targeting box-size (tiny) compared to the creature you were targeting (huge) than anything else. Though the choice to rely on software mouse rather than hardware mouse certainly did not help matters.

In fact, without a third-party modification for that game to enable hardware mouse, the game was effectively unplayable due to the effect lag has on software mouse. The fact that Square so adamantly refused to include hardware mouse as an option, forcing some random nobody to create the mod on their own speaks volumes as to what's wrong with FFXIV. Which, I suppose is a good place to end the review since just thinking about the game just disappoints me all over again.

P.S. I know it's Square Enix, and many of you would like very much to blame the last half of that equation for the woes here, but honestly old Square could've put more polish on a turd and sold it, with half the time. I mean, they know it's bad. Which implies they knew it was bad! They've sent at least two official apologies to fans, recognizing the poor quality of the product.

Edit: It should be noted at the very least, in an effort to make up for the extreme failure, FFXIV is free-to-play and there are numerous patches in development meant to correct many of the glaring flaws that have existed to this date. I would say, however, that these efforts are simply not enough and the release of this game no where near completion is the rock-bottom to the recent decline of the Square empire. At least there's no where to go but up from here?

Skies of Arcadia

Computer and internet troubles have plagued me since my return, no biggie, I'll have them sorted out in no time. In the meanwhile I have Skies of Arcadia to keep me busy.

I get to be a sky pirate. Yes, you read that right and it's exactly what it sounds like. Only cooler. Which beats what I was doing before hooking up the Gamecube:

Having a rather intense staring contest with my cat. I win by default because he always falls asleep.

The game plays a lot like your typical JRPG, but you have an airship. Also, maybe I just haven't played a JRPG in a long while, but this seems like more fun than what I'm used to in a JPRG. Less predictability, if that makes sense. Normally in this sort of game I've figured out the good guys, the bad guys, and how it's all going to end within the first hour of gameplay. Not so here.

Spore

For the uninformed, the genius minds behind greats such as The Sims, SimCity, SimAnt, etc. have been working on an entirely new game. Spore. In Spore you begin as a single celled organism and over the course of your play time, your creature evolves to the point where it comes out of the water onto the land. Eventually your creature even begins socializing with other creatures forming alliances, or if it's more your style you can just kill the other packs/herds of creatures.

You'll go from controlling a single creature to a whole society of your creatures, all 100% customized by you along the way at each various stage of evolution. Where is this intriguing game you ask? It's not out yet. But! That doesn't mean you can't have a little fun in the mean time. I got my hands on the Spore Creature Creator a few days early, a little demo that takes you through the basics of creating a creature and lets you give it a test run and see all the little animations your new life form can do. All totally unique to however you design your beast.

I downloaded this at... 2:00am and here it is going on 4:30am and I'm still playing with it. You can't even do much else besides be creative and play around, but it doesn't even matter. It's still fun. I can only imagine how entertaining the complete game will be. So what did I do with my time? I created just a couple creatures to test out. Most notably: Mintoad. As if watching Mintoad hop around and dance wasn't cute enough I discovered a magical button that spawns baby versions of your creature... and they imitate anything they see mommy (or daddy) do.

If you're interested in Spore at all, you should definitely go snag the Creature Creator when it becomes available for public download.

Age of Conan

AoC is an exciting game to play and is the cause of my absence lately.

Smoothest game (MMORPG) launch I have ever been apart of, despite a couple of issues, and I have been there at just about every launch in the last decade. No crashes, no lag, no roll backs. So now the pros and cons!

Pros:
The game has lovely graphics.
The sound is remarkable. Music, ambiance, voice acting, all of it.
The game mechanics are innovative and intuitive.
Combat isn't a complete snore fest.
There is no auto attack.
Instancing alleviates zone lag and crashing.
Quests are group-friendly.
The lore is superb based on the works of Howard.
The game's plot is grade A.
The emotes are amusing and smooth.
Crafting is complex and the rewards are great.
The economy seems heavily player based.
Mounted combat.
The dance system is very unique and fun.

Cons:
Despite the game's lovely graphics, customization is lacking.
The game mechanics make combos slow and occasionally useless in PVP.
Due to no auto attack I actually have to pay attention all of the time.
Instancing can cause some initial confusion amongst groupmates and guildies.
Also instancing means less people to talk to/kill per area.
There are no custom emotes (currently).
You cannot craft until level 40.
Money is very hard to come by.
There are some glaring class imbalances that have yet to be worked on (most bug-induced).
Dancing isn't friendly to all races/genders. Some people look downright ridiculous.

All in all it's a great game that could use some polish. Even with the current state of the game I'd recommend it, it's fun.

Edit: The game has gotten progressively worse in the months following launch. So much so that the game now has a free-to-play option (with limited classes and races available unless you pay-to-play, even if you had them maximum level previously).

Final Fantasy: Crisis Core

I got my hands on a copy of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core a few days early and haven’t put it down except to sleep and bathe.

I know many people had reservations about a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, but I have to say not only was this game done remarkably well, but I think it really does enhance the story and characters in Final Fantasy VII. In other words, it’s not just a money cow for Square-enix to suckle dry. They actually put effort and time into the game, and it’s good.

How good? Really good.

First of all you play as the obscure Zack, Cloud’s mysterious friend from the Shinra Mansion in Final Fantasy VII.

The story is engaging right from the get go. I know some Final Fantasy games can have pretty slow "tutorial-feeling" starts, but this really isn’t the case in Crisis Core. From the moment I hit New Game I felt compelled to continue playing.

The story is not only engaging, but it’s also deep, intricate, complex... all the reasons people loved the plot in Final Fantasy VII. Character’s have pasts, involving pasts. You may mistake them for real people if it weren’t for magic, summons, and the fact that they’re living in a world controlled by a power mongering electric company.

When you run into well known main characters from Final Fantasy VII, it doesn’t feel like a cheap thrill. You actually interact with them and with their help parts of Final Fantasy VII which left you wondering "wtf?" become clear. I for one thought figure heads like Sephiroth for example would just be quick glimpses to keep you playing, but that really isn’t the case at all.

The voice acting is actually top notch. On par with Heavenly Sword, dare I say it. Also the musical score introduces not only many new immersing pieces but also higher quality remakes of some Final Fantasy VII favorites -- but I won’t spoil them for you. You’ll hear them.

Combat isn’t traditional RPG, which I thought was going to bother me. It’s something like Final Fantasy XII but better. Like they finally worked out all th kinks that made you not want to deal with a new battle system. It’s also real time, which makes fights pretty exciting.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given up my professional unbiased demeanor! The game has it’s flaws, there just aren’t many.

The combat system, while fun can be a little tiring at times. I play on a fat PSP with my girly woman-hands so sometimes the fast paced battles can leave my hands sore. This would probably be less of an issue if I played on a PSP Slim, so take that how you will.

The combat involves a neat slots type system which randomly grants you bonuses and benefits during a fight, such as no MP cost (all spells are free to cast), or invincibility (immune to damage, obviously). Problem is, as I mentioned it’s random. So you may continuously wind up with useless bonuses, or totally over powered ones depending on the type of things you’re fighting against.

Also there seems to be little rhyme or reason to leveling up. If you get a 777 in the slots, you level up. If you don’t get a 777 in the slots, you don’t. This means sometimes I might level twice or more in a fight then go an hour or more at the same level despite fighting nonstop. Which can be a little annoying if you’d like to level up and breeze through a mission or something.

On the same note, I guess it prevents power levels such as myself from exploiting the system and leveling to 99 before getting to the second boss.

There’s supposedly over 100 hours worth of game play and I’m only 10 hours in.

Mass Effect

So we're some of the first to get our hands on Mass Effect for the 360. Mass Effect is a TPS/RPG hybrid. If I had to think of a simple way to compare it to other games it'd be something like: Mass Effect is like Knights of The Old Republic has a lovechild with Star Trek with very unique outcomes.

I know a lot of people have short attention spans so I'll sum up everything I'm about to say right now: Buy Mass Effect.

While Mass Effect is not my usual cup of tea, being cross genre, it a wonderful game that combines superb graphics with an innovative combat system, great voice acting, fun gameplay, a convincing musical score, a well told and well thought out plot, and  best of all it stays true to Bioware's style of letting you choose whether to be a good guy, neutral, or a total dickhead.

My only real complaint is that I'd rather not cross genres when it comes to my RPGs. If I want to play an RPG, I'll play an RPG. If I want to play a shooter, I'll play a shooter. But I digress.

The hero of the game is Shepherd, a completely customizable character that can be either male or female. Your options are also fairly impressive, with sliders letting you change build, facial features, and hair rather than pre-set options.

Much to my dismay the game suffers a bit from "next gen" syndrome -- being too short. But! Don't let that deter you. Though the main story of Mass Effect can be completed in around 17 hours that does not include side quests, hidden content, or varying scenarios, all of which you will definitely want to uncover.

Uncharted

So Uncharted for the PS3 is here and it's something of an AA game and something of a TPS. If I had to think of a simple way to describe it, it'd be something along the lines of: Uncharted is like Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones got into a blender and made a videogame smoothie.

I know a lot of people have short attention spans so I'll sum up everything I'm about to say right now: at least rent Uncharted.

Uncharted has got some of the best environmental effects I have seen ever. If you jump into a lake your clothing becomes visibly wet. If you pull out your pistol and shoot at a toucan it will squawk and fly off in a panic. The gameplay is fun, which is all you can really ask for.

The game's NPC intelligence is top notch, unlike many games where your targets are basically running the same A.I. as the ducks in Duck Hunt. Enemies will duck and cover in reaction to your offenses making it a real challenge to take them out. The voice acting is good as are the ambient effects around you. My only real complaint is that the game is much more muscle than mind. As fun as slaughtering can be, sometimes a challenging puzzle is equally fulfilling.

Much to my dismay I find the game much too short. But! It does have a lot of replay value through unlockables.