The Game to Make All Others Boring

I've been sitting here for a good while trying to figure out if it's possible to write something about Saints Row: The Third without massively spoiling the good moments (which is all of them) while also avoiding coming off as being obscenely boring. It's like I've reverted back to my six year-old self, who's just seen Jurassic Park for the first time. I want to tell everyone everything about it because ohmygodohmygodohmygodsocoooool, but at the same time I know if I do that I'll be ruining the best moments for them in some way.

However, like my six year-old self, I'm just going to say nuts to it and spoil away. At least here you get a warning.

Aren't I just the nicest?

Before The Third, Saints Row was a very weird series for me. I started at the second game and worked backwards, so imagine my surprise when the first game was honestly pretty dang bland. It was this bizarre parody/not-parody/maybe-parody-again take on urban gang warfare, and the gameplay could be summed up as Grand Theft Auto Except With.... No, Wait, I Got Nothin'. Though with Grand Theft Auto IV still being constantly delayed to the horizon and back, Saints Row filled the gap very nicely, and that's all I have to say about that because I can't remember anything else about the game except that Gat was awesome.

I bought Saints Row 2 shortly after release at the recommendation of a friend, who had the same general opinion as I on Grand Theft Auto IV, which'd come out earlier that year. GTAIV was a very atmospheric game, but it had basically sacrificed fun over the metaphorical pyre to try and gain the favour of the pretentious-gods. It had an Important Message (which was kind of at ends with the gameplay) and most of the game was spent doing not very fun things in the name of either realism or Rockstar trying to show how DEEP and MATURE they've become since the, in my opinion, vastly superior San Andreas.

While I enjoyed Niko Bellic's Angsty Adventures With His Fat Cousin more than my friend (even if did take some time to warm up to it), we both agreed that we thought Saints Row 2 was the vastly superior game. SR2 let you create basically any character you wanted and set you loose in a massive city full of wonderful toys to either break or break other things with. The fact that the story was surprisingly engaging and enjoyable too was just a nice bonus on the maniacal fun. In the three years since Saints Row 2 was released I think I've played it through somewhere around nine times now. Eight of those being co-op.

So, yeah, big fan. While everyone else was anticipating their Skyrims or Modern Warfares or Zeldas, I was almost beside myself in anticipation for Saints Row: The Third. "Oh, what fun we shall have", I thought as I scrolled through the images of jetbikes and explosions and explosions inside other explosions which in themselves were exploding.

So, is Saints Row: The Third any good?

Well, go re-read the first paragraph, silly.

Or have a picture of a VTOL jet fighter shooting a flamethrowerlaser to make something explode.

Return to Eorzea

Oh, Final Fantasy XIV. What a pretty, pretty mess you were.

There's an unwritten, but unfortunately very well known rule of MMORPGs which states that a newly released game cannot be deemed enjoyable until at least either six months or over a handful of patches have passed behind it on the road to hopefully not imploding on itself and being discontinued. Final Fantasy XIV took this principle and ran it right into the ground, being such a complete train-wreck on launch that practically everyone who touched the poor thing, including reviewers, said they thought it would be canceled within a month. If not less.

Before we hold hands and skip merrily down the road to answering if XIV is finally fixed or not, some backstory is needed behind the game's very dubious development history; and much like the series it spawned from, this history is very convoluted and long-winded. Okay? Okay. Let's go!

Development of the wacky Final Fantasy that is XIV reportedly started significant development when the Chains of Promathia expansion pack to Square-Enix's previous MMO, Final Fantasy XI, was just about wrapping up during the 2004-2005 period. The game was originally given the codename Project Rapture, and a quick tech-demo was showcased at E3 in 2005. XIV, like XI, was directed by Hiromichi Tanaka (who also worked on titles like Final Fantasy III, Chrono Cross, ect) which made a lot of fans very nervous, even back then. The biggest concern was what was going to happen to Final Fantasy XI, as it was going really quite strong at the time. The second was that, well, Mr. Tanaka was quite infamous among the community for green-lighting very... quality-ambiguous gameplay mechanics.

Specifically, Tanaka seemed to enjoy the prospect that players would have to earn or wait significantly in order get to what many would call the 'fun' aspects of the game. If this was a good direction or not would be, and still is, constantly debated among the players of XI and XIV. The more important point here is that Tanaka would basically be controlling two games at once, which might partially explain what happens below.

At E3 in 2009, Square-Enix revealed that Project Rapture would, of course, be Final Fantasy XIV.  Like with every game ever created in the series, this news split the gigantic fanbase apart and created roughly several hundred million threads on forums, with people going on about either how awesome this was going to be, or how it would devour babies and slap everyone's mother before defecating on the carpet. Shortly after its announcement, we started getting juicy gameplay details, like how "growth is not based on EXP", it would be released on the PC and PS3 worldwide simultaneously, and all sorts of other neat stuff.

Stuff that never actually came true.

On April 2010, Final Fantasy XIV entered its Alpha testing stage. The lack of information about the game up to and including this phase of development startled quite a few potential fans, but anyone who was familiar with FFXI and Tanaka's involvement there just shrugged it off as business as usual. We got some very pretty screenshots and a quick trailer here and there, which was keeping most people nice and happy. Overall, the game was still highly anticipated by many, myself included. What started to make the internal alarms of the ol' noggin' blare, however, was that the Beta period was going to start in mid-June. Which wouldn't have been a problem if the game wasn't just announced to be released in late September.

In short, XIV's beta was only going to be three months long; which is a far-cry off the original estimate, and MMO genre average, of six months. Unless XIV was somehow mysteriously already polished to a shine (and therefor eliminating the need for a Beta in the first place) the proper testing phase of the game was going to be way, way, way too short for any feedback from the testers to make it back into the product to any significant degree. With MMOs, and any game worth its salt, a well-made product needs to be constantly tested in every regard over a significant period of time. Solutions to problems need to be implemented, then those solutions need to be tested to make sure they don't cock anything else up. Then when that inevitably happens, you need to test everything again anyway. It's long, hard work, and Final Fantasy XIV seemed like it was going to try and barrel right through this as quickly as it could.

To say this would come back to bite them in arse is a gross underestimate of the derriere-chomping that would follow.

The Beta phases came and went as quickly as expected. We were only given the city of Limsa Lominsa and a small chunk of the outlying fields to explore. The game definitely showed a lot of potential, and actually delivered pretty well on a fair few of its concepts. The biggest problem here was the game very obviously wasn't finished, what with it being a Beta and all, but a majority of the feedback players were giving seemed to fall of deaf ears. There most likely wasn't anywhere near enough time for the developers to read through all the feedback, and Tanaka and his crew never gave any real indication that they were even reading them in the first place, outside of a few tiny, tiny things that could be fixed while the Beta flew by.

In a wonderful case of 'open mouth, insert foot', I wrote a very long and mostly pretty-praising article about XIV, believing that the developers would fix all the known issues amongst the playerbase before launch, just a day before the Open Beta really got underway and the big bomb was dropped on everyone. XIV's Open Beta, which was just the closed Beta in content but with more areas, was going to be the entirety of the game at launch. The game barely had any proper content (including no definable way to consistantly level and just a few cutscenes for missions here and there), the launcher was glitchy (you couldn't even alt-tab out of the game without it crashing), it was hideously optimized for the PC and... well, felt like a damned Beta. But here we were with Square-Enix and Tanaka basically kicking its arse out the door and screaming "It's done~!"

The backlash from this is what you'd expect.

Final Fantasy XIV absolutely tanked upon release. Square-Enix tried to hide the game's shoddy state from the general public by placing an embargo on mainstream game reviewers until a couple of weeks had passed, but word was already spreading across the Internet from the players themselves. The game was nowhere near ready, and it was considered by many a downright insult for Square to expect people to pay for this. When the reviews did come out, hoo-boy. Let's just say they were about as forgiving as the players were.

Less than a month later, we received this lovely little gem from the developers.

Since the official launch of service on September 30, 2010, we have received a wealth of constructive feedback from the FINAL FANTASY XIV community, and the development and management teams would like to take this opportunity to express their sincerest gratitude. For those who purchased the collector’s edition and began to play one week before official service began, the month-long free play period is drawing to a close. Considering the nature of much of the feedback we received, however, and the current state of the game, we have decided to extend the free trial period for all users. Please continue reading for further details.

Dissidia 012 Review of Reviewness

As a fair warning, there may or may not be vague spoilers for 012's storyline within, if you care for that sort of thing.

I may as well start off this set of ramblings I'm going to call a review just for the sheer sake of it with two somewhat controversial opinions. Firstly, I'm not the largest fan of the pre-PSX Final Fantasy titles. V was pretty rockin' and VI is an all-time great, but IV and downwards are completely unremarkable to me. I appreciate what they did for the series, especially IV, but I can't get through them without copious amounts of patience and drinking.

Secondly, I vastly prefer the secondary characters in the series to the main protagonists. For all of Squall's time traveling and angst adventures, it was the silly and surprisingly interesting antics of Laguna and friends that kept me interested. If VII had been all about Cid 'Sit Down and Drink Your Goddamn TEA' Highwind as he traveled to the store for cigarettes, which somehow turned into a 40+ hour journey to save the world, I would probably still be playing it. And if I had my way, Sazh and Fang would be the ones kicking asses and striking poses in Dissidia 012, instead of Lightning. Alas, you just can't have everything.

All that being said, Dissidia 012 [duodecim]: Final Fantasy immediately gets on my good side (and certainly not because of the frickin' title) for having 70% of it's new cast inclusions be sidekicks from the various later Final Fantasy titles. Hooray! For those curious, the newcomers are Lightning, Kain, Laguna, Tifa, Yuna, Vaan, Prishe and Gilgamesh. Vaan is practically a side-kick to his own game anyway, so we'll let him slide. Still want my goddamn Fang and Sazh though, guys!

No, seriously. What's the deal?

If for some reason you're somehow reading this textual vomit and don't know what Dissidia is, here's the haps, yo. It's a video game series on the PSP which has Final Fantasy characters come together under some pretty dubious terms just so they can wallop the ever-loving shit out of each other, while what the game laughingly calls a plot happens in the background to the excitement of absolutely nobody.

I.. really didn't care for the first game. The battle system itself was good fun, but I honestly got so bored of the  story mode that I never finished it proper, just downloaded a 100% save file and spent my days in Free Battle and watching the cutscenes in Theatre Mode. I spent a lot of time in Free Battle, but that's not the point here. I just couldn't find myself caring for the plot or the characters in the slightest. Even watching the cutscenes without the boggish checkerboard-based gameplay didn't help my enthusiasm.

So how does Dissidia 012 [duodecim Donkey Kong Country]: Final Fantasy fare?

Raging Blast 2 Review of... Reviewness.

It's late into the year, so here comes the annual Dragon Ball fighting game!

As I've mentioned pretty much every single time I bring this series up, I enjoyed the flawed first outing for Spike's quasi-new-except-not venture into the Dragon Ball franchise. The online was a lot of fun, ran surprisingly smoothly, and despite the world's wost camera and that terrible Star ranking system for the story mode, it was good fun. Does the sequel manage to fix the issues and deliver something great?

Well, yes and no.

Mo' liek Gran DULLse

/witz

It's 3:00am here. I'm waiting for Alien Swarm to download off Steam (it's within my budget range). I have two days left on my four-day weekend thingy. I'm looking for something to kill the time!

I my usual traversing of the Interbutts, I found an interesting interview regarding Square-Enix's goals over the past year. Not much of it is really worth noting here, except this little blurb about Final Fantasy XIII.

"Now that Final Fantasy XIII has launched globally, in the end were you satisfied with its performance and the audience reaction to the title?

YW: Looking at the numbers alone, it is pretty good, because we were able to release the latest Final Fantasy in all three markets of Japan, United States, and Europe in a very short period of time, and we were able to reach 5 million units rapidly -- and I think this product will grow further. But when it comes to the customers' reaction to the quality of the game, some value it highly and some are not very happy with it.

What do you think about how the game turned out?

YW: I think this is a product that was able to meet the expectations for those who know Final Fantasy. There are all kinds of games around in the market today. Should Final Fantasy become a new type of the game or should Final Fantasy not become a new type of game? The customers have different opinions. It's very difficult to determine which way it should go."



I find this sort of thing intriguing, since I'm one of.. two/three people I know that actually liked Final Fantasy XIII. And probably the only one that loved almost everything about it. This journal is usually a place for me to rant angrilly about games I dislike, but I always like writing about games that I have an upopular opinion of. Especially if my opinion is, shockingly, the more positive one.

Which is to say the correct one!

Well, not really.

I should probably clarify. When I mean 'unpopular', at least in the case of XIII, I don't mean in sales or anything like that. As the interview states, Final Fantasy XIII has done pretty darn well for itself. It's nearing 6 million sales now, and is the fastest selling title in the franchise. By 'unpopular' I mean the general opinion I've seen from both the Internet and people I know. So if you're surrounded by people who loves them some XIII (and why wouldn't they?) then this post won't make a terrible lot of sense.

Not that any of my posts ever do to someone who isn't myself.

BLURrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh

Thankfully, not my thoughts on the game!

That's right, cats and kittens, it's time for another incredibly dubious review!

What game, you ask?

You.. You're asking that?

What are you, stupid?

Oh.. Oh, right then.

The game's Blur.

No, not that Blur(r), moron!

~ Love ~

Power-Ups.
May as well get it out of the way. Yes, Blur has power-ups. Mario Kart also has power ups. COINCIDENCE?!

Well, I guess.

After having almost an entire generation's worth of stupid, overly-realistic racing games that wouldn't DARE amuse the notion of speed boosts or anything it's so damn refreshing to have to option to fire giant energy balls of death at your opponents. Better yet, the power-ups are actually balanced.

*gasp*

Every offensive power-up can be countered/dodged in multiple ways and the one power up that targets the leading player doesn't actually hit them so much as it places a few slow-down fields in their path. Everyone can be hit by them. When you are hit by a power-up (which will be very often online) you're never crippled or majorly hindered. The entire point of the powers in Blur is to level out the playing field, not let a few choice players dominate.


Track Variety.
There's about 30-ish courses in Blur, not counting the arena-like courses in Motor Mash. It's a pretty impressive amount, especially given how common split/alternate routes can be. They run the whole spread of racing game tracks (Not that Tracks, idiot!). Night, day, city, country, flat, hills-a-plenty. The works.


Online.
Online in Blur is the most bloody fun I've had with a racing game since Burnout 3: Takedown. The variety of modes and sheer levels of chaos that can, and will, errupt is very impressive. Seeing other players flip, spin, explode, crash into the seventh floor of a nearby office tower because someone hit them with a mine just as they were about to leap off a ramp, ect as you scream around track at absurd speeds can.. well.. get very addictive.

Very, very addictive.

Matchmaking is very streamlined and has never failed to find me a game in under a minute. The lobby system is equally as spiffy, and lag has never been an issue for me, even when racing people from the other side of the planet. The only thing that really does pop up is that power-ups can take a few seconds to kick in after you've apparently hit someone with one. Almost as if their car has just gone, "Oh shit, right, I was meant to explode, wasn't I? *BLAM*"

It doesn't hinder the match at all, it's just an amusing observation.

Progession in Single Player and Multiplayer are exclusive, so you can gain all the MP cars and play-types you want from multiplayer, and all the Single Player stuff in Single Player. Sounds a bit obvious, but after the strange "You have to unlock shit in Single Player for Multiplayer, bitches!" thing that Split/Second pulled, it's nice to see that isn't the case in Blur.

Also of note are the Abilities you can unlock/choose from. They're simple little things like, "Have the Shield power-up last longer and absorb one more hit" or, "Gain extra Fans (EXP) after a race." Simple, fun, and since you can only select a few to take with you into a race it creates a little bit of strategic thinking. Do you want the power-up that lets you absorb and use any power that hits your active Shield or do you want that extra bit of speed when you use a Boost? Oh, decisions!

~ Hate ~

"Huh."
That's about all you can say about Blur's Single Player. It's certainly not horrible by any means, but it's just... there. It's rather tame and formulatic, in comparison to the unpredictable and chaotic Multiplayer.

You're given races, you win them, you go on to fight in a One-on-One battle against another racers, you get their car, repeat about 10 times, The End. It's fun, and breaks you into the mechanics of the game really well, but there's just nothing special about it. If you've played any Need for Speed game in the past decade you know what to expect here.

Also there's no Quick Play option. What the hell?


Online is Fun, Bu-*GAME FREEZES*.
You can expect that to happen annoyingly often online. At least once every 1-2 hours, if not sooner.

It is, to me, the biggest problem in this game. You'll be racing down the road at several hundred miles an hour, or just about to boot up a match and then BAM! Console freezes and you're forced to reboot. Aside from being unhealthy for your console, it's also quite a huge buzz-kill.

Laaaaame!


Ghost Town.
For all the disturbingly high number of game-types (for a non-Halo game) its kinda counteracted by there being almost nobody online. 500-2,000 for the PS3 and 800-3,000 for the 360. They're not horrible numbers, and getting a game is still no problem, but it is a bit disheartening and worrisome. A game's that's heavily focused on multiplayer having no major playerbase is.. well.. bad.

Split/Second isn't doing much better either. Is this the start of some rather disturbing trend where Arcade Racers just can't exist in today's multiplayer environment, or is there some third racing game that's stealing all spotlight?

This is why Ridge Racer 7 is still such a good game online. If absolutely nothing else, you know the Japanese are going to be all over it. They absolutely adore it. Hell, there's still a very strong JPN community on Ridge (NOT THAT RIDGE, DIPSHIT) Racer 6.

Blur and Split/Second don't have that, sadly. And this, children, is why multi-console matchmaking should be frigging put in! Splitting one playerbase over two consoles for online is an incredibly stupid idea. You can make an argument why not for FPS gaming that includes the PC platform, but for consoles (especially racers)? There's no reason not to. Players host (NOT THAT HOST, RET-wait, what?) the game, not Microsoft/Sony, so they can't raise a huge stink over it.

And it's not like multi-platform gaming hasn't been done before. Just look at Final Fantasy XI or Phantasy Star Universe. Okay, maybe not so much as PSU, as it'll burn your eyes and brain, but my point remains valid!

The PS3/360 controllers aren't terribly different, so.. well, get the hell on it, developers!


Online Freezing.
Did I mention the game likes to freeze a lo-