Robert Culp died at age 79 today. He's a celebrity who was in a number of TV shows, but I and most gamers probably know him best for his role as Dr. Wallace Breen, the main antagonist in Half-Life 2. Dr. Breen was an excellent villain, and that's largely due to Culp's voice acting. He sounded calm and friendly, and yet at the same time you could detect a layer of coldness underneath. He really was one of the most memorable villains in the past decade.
RIP Mr. Culp, and thank you for giving voice to an excellent character.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
FF13
So.... FF13. Where to start with this one?
I'm currently in Chapter 6. It's different from most FFs, which doesn't say much since like all FFs have been different from most FFs since FF6, but this one's really different, to the point where it doesn't feel much like a FF. No towns, no talking to people, no revisiting old areas...
The combat system is a refreshing change, bringing back the ATB gauge from FFs of yore. But you can only control your leader, and if that person goes down at all, you lose. The game starts out slow (real slow, as in your options in battle are "attack" or "use potion"). This lasts for the first two chapters and is, quite frankly, BORING. You're really just button mashing. And you don't even get any EXP, so fights are practically pointless.
In chapter 3, you finally start to get into the meat of the game. You get spells, CP (which is basically EXP in this game) and roles.
Roles are hilarious. It's like they looked at FFXI, decided players broke all 20 jobs into 4-5 specific roles, and decided just to make similar roles for this game. In FF13 you've got the tank, healer, buffer, debuffer, and two DDs (one focused on magic, one on melee). Sure they have different, names, but that's essentially what they break down to. You can use CP to improve these roles much like the sphere grid from X, only the game puts a cap on how far you can advance at one time.
You're expected to kill one mob at a time, building a chain gauge that increases your damage the more you hit a specific mob.
There are AoE attacks in this game, but they suck. Why? Because you have no control over the placement of your characters, and they dance around at random during the fight. This means whether more than one person gets hit (or hits) with an AoE attack is a matter of luck.
The characters are.... okay. Nobody really stands out, but at least there's nobody detestful, either. Even the ones I didn't like initially get better as time goes on. Plus Lightning's version of the gunblade is much more palatable than Squalls. At least it IS a gun and a blade this time.
Two things bug me about the characters, though:
#1: Vanille, and why there always has to be a character like her in FFs. Selphie, Rikku, Lisilette, Prishe, Aphmau, Cordelia ... arguably even Rydia. They've all got the same personality. I blame Japan.
#2: "The Old Man". Don't get me wrong, I like Sazh a lot. He's probably my favorite character, but the way he and the rest of the cast (by which I mean Vanille) refer to him as "The Old Man" really irks me. He's like 30-something.
Again, I blame Japan. In that country, men are "old" past 24, and women's lives are effectively over after high school.
The story is.... adequate. it's different, not the usual "Oh no, the Evil Empire is attacking our good kingdom of goodliness and they sent their best general to lead an attack on my peaceful country village". But the fact that it's different doesn't make it particularly appealing. Might help if there was anything more to the plot besides "We have to do something, but we don't know what."
Eidolons are done pretty well, I think. When you summon them, you have a time limit that goes down when they take damage or, well, over time, and the summoner (who's always your leader, apparently) fights with them to build up a different gauge. Then you can activate it's stupi.... erm, SECOND mode where it turns into a horse or a vehicle or something and your character gets on/in. Then you can do the Eidolon's signiture attacks. While I think the vehicle thing is pretty dumb, the mechanics work pretty well.
However, actually obtaining Eidolons sucks balls. They're not like normal fights. You beat an Eidolon by filling up a gauge, which only goes up when you do a specific action. You also have a Doom Counter, which basically gives you 3 minutes to figure out what that action is, or you lose.
This would be fine IF these battles were optional. And maybe later, they are. But right now, they've all been required. it's basically the game designers saying "Fuck you, you can't play our game anymore until you jump through our hoops."
...
So how does it compare? That's the question. It's nowhere near the level of FF6 or 7, but it's way the hell better than the dregs, FF8 and 12. Actually, I'm tempted to say it's the best Final Fantasy has been since FF7 (and excluding FF11). It's not perfect or even a really great game, but its definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully FF15 will bring this series back to what it once was. Finally.
I'm currently in Chapter 6. It's different from most FFs, which doesn't say much since like all FFs have been different from most FFs since FF6, but this one's really different, to the point where it doesn't feel much like a FF. No towns, no talking to people, no revisiting old areas...
The combat system is a refreshing change, bringing back the ATB gauge from FFs of yore. But you can only control your leader, and if that person goes down at all, you lose. The game starts out slow (real slow, as in your options in battle are "attack" or "use potion"). This lasts for the first two chapters and is, quite frankly, BORING. You're really just button mashing. And you don't even get any EXP, so fights are practically pointless.
In chapter 3, you finally start to get into the meat of the game. You get spells, CP (which is basically EXP in this game) and roles.
Roles are hilarious. It's like they looked at FFXI, decided players broke all 20 jobs into 4-5 specific roles, and decided just to make similar roles for this game. In FF13 you've got the tank, healer, buffer, debuffer, and two DDs (one focused on magic, one on melee). Sure they have different, names, but that's essentially what they break down to. You can use CP to improve these roles much like the sphere grid from X, only the game puts a cap on how far you can advance at one time.
You're expected to kill one mob at a time, building a chain gauge that increases your damage the more you hit a specific mob.
There are AoE attacks in this game, but they suck. Why? Because you have no control over the placement of your characters, and they dance around at random during the fight. This means whether more than one person gets hit (or hits) with an AoE attack is a matter of luck.
The characters are.... okay. Nobody really stands out, but at least there's nobody detestful, either. Even the ones I didn't like initially get better as time goes on. Plus Lightning's version of the gunblade is much more palatable than Squalls. At least it IS a gun and a blade this time.
Two things bug me about the characters, though:
#1: Vanille, and why there always has to be a character like her in FFs. Selphie, Rikku, Lisilette, Prishe, Aphmau, Cordelia ... arguably even Rydia. They've all got the same personality. I blame Japan.
#2: "The Old Man". Don't get me wrong, I like Sazh a lot. He's probably my favorite character, but the way he and the rest of the cast (by which I mean Vanille) refer to him as "The Old Man" really irks me. He's like 30-something.
Again, I blame Japan. In that country, men are "old" past 24, and women's lives are effectively over after high school.
The story is.... adequate. it's different, not the usual "Oh no, the Evil Empire is attacking our good kingdom of goodliness and they sent their best general to lead an attack on my peaceful country village". But the fact that it's different doesn't make it particularly appealing. Might help if there was anything more to the plot besides "We have to do something, but we don't know what."
Eidolons are done pretty well, I think. When you summon them, you have a time limit that goes down when they take damage or, well, over time, and the summoner (who's always your leader, apparently) fights with them to build up a different gauge. Then you can activate it's stupi.... erm, SECOND mode where it turns into a horse or a vehicle or something and your character gets on/in. Then you can do the Eidolon's signiture attacks. While I think the vehicle thing is pretty dumb, the mechanics work pretty well.
However, actually obtaining Eidolons sucks balls. They're not like normal fights. You beat an Eidolon by filling up a gauge, which only goes up when you do a specific action. You also have a Doom Counter, which basically gives you 3 minutes to figure out what that action is, or you lose.
This would be fine IF these battles were optional. And maybe later, they are. But right now, they've all been required. it's basically the game designers saying "Fuck you, you can't play our game anymore until you jump through our hoops."
...
So how does it compare? That's the question. It's nowhere near the level of FF6 or 7, but it's way the hell better than the dregs, FF8 and 12. Actually, I'm tempted to say it's the best Final Fantasy has been since FF7 (and excluding FF11). It's not perfect or even a really great game, but its definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully FF15 will bring this series back to what it once was. Finally.
Monday, March 1, 2010
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