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.