Final Fantasy XIII, Second Look

As I write this, I have just been brutally murdered by a large plant like thing somewhere on Disc 2 of Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360.

But having gotten this far, I feel the game needs more said about it.

Primarily, that the term "game" should not be applied to it. At least not in the traditional sense.

Way back in the day (Summer 2008) I was but an 18 year old college freshman. Now I'm a 20 year old college freshman. Really moving up in the world. Where was I? Oh yes, taking a class titled Introduction to Game Design and Development. The teacher, Kamal, was a man with experience in the industry, and roughly three halves of the class consisted of all of us talking about video games with him.

He made a distinction I remember to this day. Yeah, I know it's not all that long ago, shut up.

Citing Metal Gear Solid 4 as his example, Kamal noted the difference between a game and an interactive movie.

There is assuredly a market for both, but they have to be considered different things, and reviewed in different manners.

With a game, gameplay absolutely has to come first. No matter what. Unsatisfactory gameplay can not be salvaged by story, graphics, sound, or anything. Even if every other aspect of the game is absolutely stellar, if it's not FUN TO PLAY, it's a flop.

When dealing with an interactive movie, the most important aspect is the story. Graphics and sound have drastically inflated roles as well. Gameplay gets pushed way down in comparison to the other parts of the media. An interactive movie with poor gameplay is forgivable. If the controls are absolutely abysmal, that will obviously hurt the game, I mean interactive movie, some, but something like over simplifying the controls could actually work in favor of the work.

Final Fantasy XIII is, without the slightest doubt, an interactive movie, and not a game. And when I mentioned over simplified controls, I wasn't just making a random example. The controls for Final Fantasy XIII frequently seem to boil down to "Press A to win the game" or for those of you playing on a PlayStation3, "Press X to win the game."

There are of course other things you have to do. Sometimes you have to press Left Bumper or L1 before you resume mashing A/X until you win. Sometimes you have to just sit back and watch the beautiful cutscenes. Sometimes you have to wonder what Lightning's thighs would feel like. And sometimes you have to hope that your girlfriend doesn't read your blog.

Final Fantasy XIII, First Thoughts

Some people have a favorite developer or something. A series which they must own every single installment of. Well, I have been known myself to buy a game for no reason other than the words "Final Fantasy" on the cover. This differs somewhat from the traditional "Oh I like that series, I'll buy the next sequel" mentality on account of each Final Fantasy game having absolutely no fucking connection to the ones before it at all.

I had seen only limited previews of Final Fantasy XIII, so to be completely honest, before I went in a plunked down a cool sixty United States Dollars on it, I knew the main character had sexy legs and that's actually about it.

Now, my first impressions when I opened the case went a little something like this:

"OMGWTFBBQ THREE DISCS!?"

Yes, that's right. THREE DISCS. And I thought Mass Effect 2 was crazy big with its two discs. (Review of Mass Effect 2 is overdue, I know.)

So then I popped the game in to my Xbox 360 and got to playing.

The opening cutscene is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in a video game. It looked better than Advent Children, and the fact that there was a shootout on a train brought to mind fond memories of the second episode of Firefly.

Then the game started, and what do you know? It looks the same. The whole game looks like a cutscene. A beautiful cutscene.

I was shortly plunged into a battle against one of the ever classic Final Fantasy giant mecha things, revealing that the incredibly awkward and slightly retarded battle system of Final Fantasy XII had been thrown to the wayside, leaving in its place a shiny new polished version of the Active Time Battle system that most of us grew up with.

The new ATB system, however, has multiple bars for each character, and different special abilities use different numbers of bars. Starting off, the main character has two bars. Her standard attack uses one, so she can chain together two of those at a time, or she can use her special attack "Blitz," which uses two.

Now so far, I'm not very far in, but I have met one ally, a cheerful man with an afro and a baby chocobo for a companion.

And by the way, that baby chocobo is one of the most adorable things I have ever seen, ever.

I'll post up some more review when I get some more playtime in.