Thursday, July 31, 2008

Final Fantasy IV Review (DS)

Final Fantasy IV is a game I'd been looking forward to reviewing, and not just because it'd give me an excuse to dust off my DS after a year, but mostly because of my history with the series. Final Fantasy IV (or II if you're an American) was the first RPG that I ever beat, and I have wistful memories of being holed up in my bedroom in the summer of 1992 with virtually no experience playing RPGs (let alone JRPGs, but that's all there were back then anyway), trying to bludgeon my way through this game when all my previous experiences at video games had involved shooting things. It was the first game I'd played that had depth, an engaging storyline, and also managed to make me a bit misty-eyed at a few key points.

This brings me to a crossroads, because there are inevitably people who have played the original version, and people who haven't. Let's start with the people who have. If you've already played and beaten the original, and have a taste for nostalgia, you won't be doing yourself a disservice by buying this game. It's the same Final Fantasy IV with a new 3d engine which adds to the experience rather than detracts, and some occasional voice acting thrown in to boot. The graphics are pretty, but not earth-shattering, and rate of Nintendo 64 quality (It's a DS - what do you expect?). The voice acting is good - it's not MGS4 quality, but it's a touch above what you'd find on Saturday morning cartoons, and these days that gets a gold star. And then there's the music. All the old tracks are in there, slightly touched up and polished, but still the originals. You won't find any remixes here, which is a good thing.

The DS controls are tastefully done, with the developers not bending over backwards to make some silly and superfluous use of the second screen and touch controls. Instead, they've used it almost entirely as a map system which definitely makes life easier, and provides a few extra goals to strive for. If you successfully explore every last nook and cranny of a dungeon, you'll be rewarded with an item or two to make your life a little easier. I found myself trying to do this unconsciously, though the game can be a little finicky about what "exploring" means. There's still a dungeon or two that I have to go back to if I want to complete this bonus quest because of some random pixel somewhere that the game refuses to register as having been explored, but overall it's a nice addition.

The storyline is exactly the same, but with slightly better translations, though a few old holdouts still remain (spoony bard, anyone?). Overall, it's a more accurate experience as a few aspects of the plot that were taken out of the original American release are put back in, and as Nintendo's old censorship policy no longer applies, things are referred to by their proper names. In the original release, anything referring to prayer or religion was omitted, and here it's back in full force, which is to say hardly at all (thank you, Nintendo). The original American release was also slightly dumbed down because apparently Nintendo of America didn't think that SNES gamers had the cognitive ability or patience to play slightly complex games, so a few character abilities were removed and some of the difficulty was nerfed. All of the removed abilities have been restored in this release, though not having played the original Japanese version of Final Fantasy IV, I can't speak on any changes to the difficulty.

I've had a longstanding history with the Final Fantasy series, and FF IV remains my favorite of the bunch to this day. When Final Fantasy VII came out I was excited, but that was mainly because it gave me an RPG to put into my brand-spanking new PlayStation. The story was good, but I couldn't help feeling that the series may be shifting into an unhealthy new direction, and lo and behold I was right. That was the last Final Fantasy game I ever played, as each new version added more over-the-top plots, settings, and increasingly androgynous, pubescent characters that I was supposed to give two shits about but just couldn't, or what I call the "animization" of the series. Final Fantasy IV is a game that's deep enough to keep you engaged, but simple enough to avoid being overburdened with message and pretension. Beyond that, it's pretty enough to be easy on the eyes and pleasing to look at, but the graphics are still primitive enough that the game can't use them as an excuse for shoddy gameplay. Not to say there aren't a few hints of what's to come for the series in Final Fantasy IV, but the characters have nuance to them that sets them apart. For example, Cecil is still a wishy-washy pussy, while Edward is just a pussy.

Being a fan of the original version I realize that I'm biased in this review. If you're already a fan of the original game, you owe it to yourself to pick up this well-done remake. If you've never played it, then you'll find an above average JRPG that's worth your time if you're into that sort of thing. Of course, if you're not into that sort of thing, I can hardly blame you.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Pandemic II Review (PC)

Sometimes the people around me show a smattering of concern regarding the degree that I seem to hate my fellow man. While I'll be the first to admit that I can be less Buddhist than I'd like at times, my disdain for humanity is more of a cheap hobby rather than anything that could manifest into a scenario where I justify concerns by taking to a clock tower with a sniper rifle. That said, more often than not that disdain remains, so Pandemic II was game which cheered me up immensely.

The goal of Pandemic II is to create and evolve a biological contagion with the ultimate task being the utter elimination of the human race. Your first decision is what type of contagion you want to create, with your choices being a virus, bacteria, or parasite. This is important because some contagions evolve faster than others, and thus gain new abilities and symptoms at a faster rate which ties into the eventual goal of the extinction of mankind. To balance this, the faster your disease evolves, the easier it is to be detected by those pesky medical plebs.

I created a bacterial cocktail of death that I named "The Black Shakes," and set it loose on Cuba where it would soon overcome the masses and give them something to think about besides poor relations with the United States. Spreading your disease is obviously a priority, and as the game progresses in real time you gain evolution points that you can spread out among a host of symptoms and attributes. Some symptoms cause your disease to spread faster, such as vomiting, but make it easier to detect by the medical community. You can also boost your contagion's resistances to environmental factors, such as heat, cold, moisture, etc., which makes it easier to spread to certain regions of the globe. You can also increase its resistance to antibiotics and medical treatment, which becomes important later.

Evolution points can also be used to allow your virus to be transmitted in different ways, such as through the air, insects, rats, and water. All of these elements come together in a truly pleasing way that gives the player a lot of options for how to destroy civilization. It's a delicate balancing act between evolving symptoms and transmission methods that spread your disease effectively, and yet not going over the top until the very end in order to avoid early detection. Eventually though, despite your best efforts, some fuckwit in a laboratory somewhere will make a connection between your existence and the sudden increase in slow, boil-related agonizing deaths across the world, and mankind will band together in order to create a vaccine. You can slow this progress down by evolving a high resistance to drugs, and if you've spread far and wide enough, most of the hospitals and labs will close, causing further delays in its production and implementation.

Pandemic II is also a hard game. While it's pretty easy to wipe out major continents, the difficulty comes from small holdout island nations with relatively little travel such as Greenland. Obviously the more commercial airliners and ships are traveling from place to place, the faster your contagion will spread. And let me tell you, if a biological epidemic ever does break out, I'm packing my bags and moving to Madagascar, if I can even get in, because I'm convinced that Madagascar is fucking impenetrable. I'll admit I'm not the best hand at geography, but I'm pretty sure that Madagascar, while perhaps not as well traveled as Aruba, does in fact have an airport and that ships visit its port more than once a decade. For all I know the developers got it right and Madagascar really is a walled off dictatorial state with its inhabitants forbidden from having contact with the outside world in some Orwellian, North Korean act of social control, but it just feels like the developers are having a little giggle at my expense.

Nit-picking aside, Pandemic II is a fantastic strategy game with a novel concept that offers hours of "dicking around" time in front of your computer. It's not so difficult as to be a stumbling block for people who've never touched a strategy game before, but there's enough nuance and depth to challenge you and really make you think about what your game plan is. Madagascar still chafes me, but I suppose I can pretend that they represent the last holdout of humanity, and then I can swagger over there on an epic and selfless mission to repopulate the planet.

Pandemic II is a creation of Crazy Monkey Games and can be played for free at their site.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Metal Gear Solid 4 Review (PS3)

Metal Gear Solid 4 is an interesting game to review because there really isn't anything quite like the Metal Gear series in the gaming world. It's a series with a rabid following and with moments of true brilliance and gameplay nirvana sprinkled throughout its history starting back in 1998. Over the past several years the titles have veered off into wildly different directions with varying results - some good, some lacking. While the first game in the series was groundbreaking, the second was lackluster on several fronts. The third game was one of the best examples of gameplay mixed with storytelling in video game history and is by far the best in the series, and this brings me to my point: Metal Gear Solid 4 is a bad game.

It's impossible to give a brief summation of the backstory which is incredibly complex and spans two decades, so I'll assume you're already somewhat familiar with the plot of the series. If you're not and you give a damn, feel free to wikipedia the franchise's history (prepare for three hours of reading followed by a migraine). For the uninitiated MGS4 is essentially a third-person stealth shooter starring an ill-fated hero by the name of Solid Snake. The series has a major emphasis on plot development and cinematic cutscenes. The controls are adequate and reasonably responsive, and though still somewhat cluttered are an overall improvement on previous installments.

Before I begin tearing MGS4 to shreds, I have to say that it is a very pretty game, but like most very pretty people I've met in life, it's severely lacking in other important areas, and the Achilles Heel of the MGS series has always been the writing, and with eight hours of voice acting and cutscenes this is the one aspect of the game you would hope they'd get right. MS4 is a game absolutely dripping with pretension and "message," yet the messages are delivered with such absurd dialogue, redundant exposition, and ridiculous metaphor that it makes you want to take a large-bore drill to your skull. Our tough and grizzled hero seems to have some sort of verbal disability that forces him to repeat whatever phrase was last uttered in front of him, half the characters are impossible to care about and yet are treated as if the balance of the universe hangs on them resolving personal problems in the middle of a battleground, and some character motivations are inconsistent at best and completely schizophrenic at worst.

Let's talk about one example of bad storytelling: In the game Snake encounters a team of four bosses he must defeat, each suffering from their own set of psychological problems brought about by a traumatic childhood where they were forced to both do and suffer inhuman acts of war. This is powerful storytelling the first time you encounter one of said psychotics and have to listen to her life story which takes ten agonizing minutes after you end her pain. By the fourth fucking time you have to suffer through this you start to feel traumatized and just cease to care about how this person was anally raped by chimpanzees and forced to drown midget babies or whatever when she was a toddler, and thus became some sort of frenzied psychopathic war machine. Why not counseling?

This is the biggest problem with MS4 - it's far too cluttered and tries to do too much, thus reducing the impact of the game as a whole. You just stop giving a shit after the 6th hour of cutscenes. The game also loads you out with far more firearms than you'd ever possibly need (who needs a dozen different pistols to get the job done??), one-trick-pony boss fights that remove all replay value, and a level of fan-service that detracts from the overall effectiveness of the storyline. And let me tell you, these cutscenes I keep bitching about? They drag on, and on, and on. I was warned about their length before playing, so at one point I actually timed how long it took to go from Act II to Act III: 49 fucking minutes. Some scenes are so long Konami actually provides save points in the middle of them.

The worst part is it could have been a brilliant game. When I finished playing it I was left with the same uneasy feeling I had when watching the new Star Wars movies. With some severe editing and substantive rewrites it could have been succinct, lucid, and powerful with a razor-sharp plot, leaving the player with that rare euphoric feeling one gets after experiencing a masterpiece of fiction. So much needless dialogue could have been cut, redundant exposition could have been removed, and those 8+ hours of cutscenes could have been reduced to 3 which would still provide an cinematic experience lengthier than a feature film and yet not have outstayed its welcome. But enough about the cutscenes. The gameplay itself is a mixed bag. Apart from the aforementioned control issues, the sneaking aspect is fun but wholely unnecessary as it's usually quite possible (and sometimes easier) to kill or subdue everything in sight, or simply run past enemies who engage and attack you with all the fervor of a geriatric who's overdosed on kolonapin. In fact, MGS4 is a very easy game, which only serves to throw the entire stealth mechanic out the window.

This isn't to say that there aren't moments of pure bliss in MGS4. A few of the vehicle sequences are absolute gold, and the final boss fight is a work of genius that blends cinematic sequences with hands-on player interaction flawlessly. The voice acting is incredible, but you can't help but lament the fact that all of this vocal talent was handed a script that an 8th grader could have produced. I suppose the reason I'm being so critical of MGS4 is due to the history of the series and the anticipation and hype raised by it. It also puts me in an awkward position because of the perplexing consensus by the professional reviewing community that MGS4 is the game that will finally liberate us from our tired, tragic little lives and lead us away to the promised land. Here's a taste from Metacritic:


Metascore: 94/100

Playstation Official Magazine US/UK: 100
Gamepro: 100
Game Informer: 100
IGN: 100
Gameplayer: 100
GameSpot: 100
G4 TV: 100
Giant Bomb (for shame): 100

I haven't seen that many zeros since my last college senate meeting. I'd be less harsh if this was an underground game without 200 developers and a PR campaign behind it of size and scope that rivals Germany circa 1933.

To wrap up, if you're a fan, then you'll either love it, or convince yourself that you love it despite a sense of doubt that gnaws at your heart while you try and tell your friends with a straight face why MGS4 is the best work of philosophy since Descartes. For those of you who are contemplating buying it, remember that playing a Metal Gear game is akin to making a deal with series creator Kojima where he so aptly states, "I'll give you a game, but in return you have to watch and listen to all my bullshit."

Another Game Site?

Yeah. Lame. I know. That said, here's a bit about who I am and why I'm doing this. I'm a twenty-something male in the United States who enjoys playing, talking, and writing about video games. While I do keep other blogs, I figured it'd be easier to just create a new one dedicated to this hobby rather than to wedge it into a more generic "this is my life" blog. It may not be professional work, but hopefully someone out there will enjoy it.

So what systems will I cover? Well, I own all three current-gen systems, but honestly only my 360 gets constant use as the Wii is full of shovelware and the PS3 is essentially a really expensive 360 with a shitty online system and Blu-Ray. There might also be the odd PC review down the pike and I have a DS kicking around here somewhere that I haven't used in months. Before the Nintendo and Sony fanboys all start crucifying me let me make one thing clear: I don't hate your consoles - instead I hate their current status, selection, and implementation.

When it comes to reviews, I don't give games scores as I'm confident that it's impossible to distill a game's experience and appeal into a numerical format. You'll just have to live with only having words to base your decisions on.