Crackdown

Played on Xbox360

Well, that didn’t take long. I finished Crackdown (links: GameSpy, GameSpot, GameFly) before I was even able to add it to my “Now Playing” list. Which you think would have me fuming about value or something. But I’m not. I actually had a blast playing Crackdown. I’d recommend you rent it, not buy it, but it’s definitely a really fun game that’s just different enough from the other games out there to feel fresh.

Crackdown takes place in a big open city where you can wander as you please, much like the Grand Theft Auto series. But Crackdown has much less of an emphasis on driving. As the game progresses you level up skills that make you increasingly superhuman. The value of driving around is quickly eclipsed by your ability to leap from rooftop to rooftop (or even from ground floor to rooftop). The superhuman agility and strength that you achieve gives the game a little bit of a Matrix-like feel. You can even pick up vehicles and use them as weapons (kinda like Jet Li in The One). A lot of the gameplay actually feels a bit like our very own Science & Industry, with the spawning, superhuman enhancements, and weapon capture elements. Just rebrand the game to include more of a corporate theme (instead of gang warfare) and include more high-tech weapons and you’re good to go.

The game revolves around you seeking out and assassinating a series of gang bosses. Which is definitely fun, but unfortunately is the only primary goal of Crackdown. There are car and foot races to do on the side, which are kinda fun but mostly function as achievement point syncs. The core gameplay of Crackdown is great (leaping around never gets old), but it is a bit disappointing that there wasn’t more content. Still, it’s a great way to spend a weekend.

Final Fantasy III

Played on Nintendo DS

I’m happy to say that after some difficulty I finally finished Final Fantasy III for the DS (Links: GameSpy, GameSpot, GameFly). And I’m having some trouble deciding exactly how I feel about it.

There have been a lot of ports of the old Final Fantasy games to the GBA. This one is distinct in that they did an extensive graphical upgrade from the original 8-bit 2D graphics to completely new fully-3D models. And they were very successful in that. The characters, monsters, and environments all look great. It gave this 17 year old game the look of something completely modern… which is kind of dangerous. Because everything else about this game is still 17 years old.

Most of the reviews for this game described it as being difficult by modern standards. I wouldn’t say that. Difficulty implies that it demands a high amount of skill and engagement from the player. That’s not really the case. FFIII doesn’t demand skill, it demands a tolerance for mind numbing level grinding (which I guess could be a skill…). You don’t have to learn intricate strategies - you just have to level up enough so that you have enough hit points to survive the attacks of the bosses. Grinding is pretty standard in the RPG genre, so it’s hard to criticize FFIII too much for it, but I felt like this game demanded more than most.

Final Fantasy III is the first game in the series to introduce the job system. Unlike future evolutions, this game only allows you to leverage the abilities of one job at a time, making it more of a big “I changed my mind” switch than an adaptive strategy. This is further exacerbated by the fact that you don’t unlock jobs by performing well in the ones you have; you only have to proceed through the story to get the more powerful jobs. So there’s no carry-over value of your early advancement. For example, you can completely ignore the less powerful Evoker and still unlock the ultimate Summoner job. Given that the number of enemies was reduced to accommodate the new 3D graphics, multi-targeting caster jobs are far less useful than melee jobs. And since you’re already going to be grinding a ton to level up, for your own sanity you’re probably going to forced into a party of simple fighters because melee attacks take less time than big fancy summons.

But I’m being a bit too harsh. For its time, this job system was revolutionary. And if I was playing the game in its original 8-bit incarnation, I probably wouldn’t be so critical. But the game looks so darn pretty that I have a hard time reminding my brain to lay off.

FFIII provided me with an interesting trip through the RPG gaming archives, but what I really hope comes out of this is a nice 3D RPG DS platform for some new adventures. Final Fantasy Tactics DS, por favor?

Hollywoodland

I watched Hollywoodland the other night. And I was left feeling more than a little unsatisfied. It was no fault of the actors, they all had fine performances. And the colors and aesthetics of the movie made it quite pleasing on the eye. But it just didn’t go anywhere. It was pretty much the most anticlimactic movie I’ve ever seen. I guess there kinda was a partial climax, but it was smack dab in the middle of the movie, not closer to the end. Which left me with the feeling that I was still waiting for the real climax… and then the credits rolled.

I understand that it’s a historical movie, and the George Reeves mystery is unsolved. I’m comfortable with that. I can deal with a lot of grey in my movies. But while storytellers should feel free to mess with my head as much as they please, they really shouldn’t mess with the pacing.

In music, pretty much everything fits in to one of a couple standard time signatures. That provides the frame, and then the musician can paint whatever they want inside that. Breaking outside of the standard timing can sometimes be interesting, but usually just results in something you can’t tap your foot to. Movies are the same way: they should follow the standard narrative structure. I’m not saying that every movie should have a happy ending. I’m saying that they should have, you know… an ending.

If I can feel mysteriously satisfied at the end of the hugely unresolved Fellowship of the Ring, you can manage to make an unsolved murder satisfying. You can flip pretty much every other standard on its head (case and point: Memento). In fact, please do. But that whole notion of “building up to something” - keep that.

Final Fantasty III - Beware of Port

GameFAQs’s list of top FAQs is generally a really good indicator of what games people are playing right now. And it’s quite telling that Final Fantasy III (the DS port of the Japan-only NES original) is still hanging out on that list after 5 months. Because old school RPGs are fucking brutal. I’m glad to see that many of my fellow gamers are still working on this one. My commute gives me near infinite time to grind through any game. Unfortunately, RPGs demand just that: infinite time.

Last week I was so psyched to be close to the end of the game. I was in the last dungeon of the game, decently leveled (with one of my jobs at level 99), and had all the best gear. I’m in the final stretch. I pass the point of no return (no more opportunities to save), and prepare for the final boss battle. 2 hours and 4 bosses later, I’m actually at the final boss. I’m getting a little nervous at this point - because if I die at this point I’ve lost 2 hours of work (or roughly 2.4 bus commutes). Thank god for the quicksave feature (non existent in the original game), otherwise I would have had to do that all in one sitting. But I’m feeling good, because the mini bosses leading up to the final one were pretty manageable. Then I get thoroughly owned by the Cloud of Darkness.

Fast forward to this week. My commutes are spent grinding my character’s levels up so that I can make my second attempt. And now that I know just how long that attempt is going to take, I’m sure as hell making sure I’m ready. Because I’m a stubborn son of a bitch, and I will beat this game.

We forget in the modern gaming world just how unreasonable games were back in the day. I’m sitting there, post-smackdown, thinking all sorts of nasty thoughts about FFIII’s game design. But then I step back a bit, and remember that I had to do almost exactly the same thing when I played through Final Fantasy I (you have a rematch with all the four elemental bosses, and then the final showdown with Chaos, who will most likely r0x0r j00r b0x0rz). I guess I just had a lot more patience when I was 8.

F.E.A.R.

Played on Xbox360

I really wanted to like F.E.A.R. (despite it’s really lame sub-title “First Encounter Assault Recon”). The reviews made it sound like it was going to be good (GameSpy, GameSpot). Kinda like Eternal Darkness meets FPS. But it wasn’t. Not even close. This is my first review of a game that I started playing after I had already started this blog. So my thoughts are pretty well catalogued. I even went so far as to even take notes while playing :O. And looking back on them just backs up what my gut was telling me 10 minutes in: this game kinda sucks.

I’ll try to start out positive. We’ll see how long I last.

The game features a bullet time effect that you can flip on at will (with a cooldown). While in that mode explosions and whatnot look pretty darn cool. Unfortunately as the game goes on you realize that it’s actually not that useful, as that with everything slowed down all it does is give a little more reaction time - it’s not likely you also get Neo-like super speed. Which has the end of effect of making what should be a pants-soiling firefight into a Valium-paced game of whack-a-mole.

In general the weapon selection bored me to tears. But towards the end of the game, it did improve a bit. You eventually get this plasma railgun thing that is meltingly satisfying. But for 90% of the game I was either using Generic Shotgun or Generic Machinegun. And I never really ran out of bullets so there wasn’t much motivation to change it up.

Graphically F.E.A.R. is quite capable, but completely uninspired. The environments in F.E.A.R. are booooooring. Really, this game sets an all time new low. The entire game takes place in a nondescript industrial complex, followed nondescript office building, and towards the end you upgrade to a nondescript research facility. That is, if you kept playing long enough to give a shit. I work in an office. Wandering through one during my after hours game time just isn’t fun. Especially when they’re absurd maze-like complexes that no employee could ever ever navigate. And what brilliant plot tool do they use to transition you from destination to destination? Your helicopter gets shot down. Three times. That’s too bad, because I was really looking forward to the nondescript alleyways that connected the locations.

One of the things that I was the most excited about with F.E.A.R. was that it was supposed to be this whole paranormal, dim-the-lights, scary action adventure. It’s not. Office buildings are not scary, even if you flash black haired demon girls on the screen now and then. The story sucks, and what little there is ends up being so anti-climatic in the end that you feel really cheated. But what gets me is that the protagonist, connected as he is to headquarters or whatever via comlink, never mentions that he’s having these freaky visions. He just stupidly wanders through random building after random building, hoping the law of a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters will guide him to the villain. Who you just headshot when you find him - no fight necessary (that wasn’t a spoiler, that was me saving you hours of your life). Even Doom gave me more motivation to keep trudging on that F.E.A.R..

On top of sub par environments and sub par story, the entire game is littered with in-game ads for Dell XPS game systems. Almost every computer and every monitor is brandishing the Dell logo, putting you on the express route out of disbelief suspension land. If only they had used that ad money to actually build a game worth my time.

I finished F.E.A.R. not because I enjoyed the story and had to see the ending. Nor because I enjoyed the gameplay and just couldn’t get enough. I finished F.E.A.R. so that I could guiltlessly write a nasty blog post about it and so that I could get some achievement points (which they totally gypped me on).