Getting there. SLOWLY.

Yep, it’s another WIP update. Going pretty slowly due to that annoying saturation error that pops up when moving files between Photoshop and Painter a lot. Had to redo a couple of sections. Still very much unfinished, but starting to shape up.

Lovers - work in progress #5

Lovers - work in progress #4

Lovers -  work in progress #3

Lovers – work in progress #1

I always make new year resolutions. I think it gives me focus, a target to work towards. I know I am not an individual possessed of huge amounts of willpower, and thus I try and set myself these targets to guide me.

Unfortunately, it is now June and I have broken one of my two big resolutions — and am likely to have broken the second by the end of July.

1) Complete a piece of artwork every month.

I did so well with this last year, I assumed I could keep it up. Sadly April was an icky month. I got a lot of teaching work, and I got a fair chunk of writing done, but I just couldn’t get inspired to paint.

I think I went through 3 actual paintings, none of which I finished, none of which I even really liked. I hope to get back into it with June’s painting, but I’ve left it a bit late and I’ve only just started.

2) Complete draft 1 of Chains of Time by the end of July

This is a self-imposed deadline, but its a deadline none the less. 150,000 words, roughly, in seven months shouldn’t have been that hard, but again I’ve got a lot of teaching days under my belt this year so I’m only really 55,000 words into this.

90,000 words in 5 weeks seems…unlikely…especially as the teaching will continue.

Summer holiday is coming up, but who knows how well I’ll be able to concentrate in the heat. Its already playing havoc with me.

When it boils down to it, I have no real excuse for breaking these two resolutions. I know work — actual paying work — has kept me busy, but I know authors and painters who manage to juggle both. I guess I blame my weakness for computer games. Again.

Anyway, I am aware of my faults in this, as in many other aspects of my life, so i will perservere in getting both of these back up to speed over the coming months. Hopefully I’ll have at least 12 paintings and a completed first draft by the end of the year…

*crosses fingers*

The Black and Whites

Here we have the B&W artworks from April, May and June. Colour version for June is in progress. April and May were started but abandoned. Will get back to them. Hopefully.

April – Demajen : Final Fantasy XIV version of my FFXI character, Demajen.

May – Rowan : Actually drawn in January, this is a style reference/concept for Rowan in Chains of Time

June – Lovers : two efreeti from Chains of War

While Easter weekend itself has come and gone, it’s still smack bang in the middle of the school Easter holidays, so I have at least another week of dossing about, trying to get some writing done, playing games, and salivating over the latest Final Fantasy XIV alpha details to be leaked by a community whose idea of a Non-Disclosure Agreement is “It only matters if we get caught.”

So let’s break this down into logical chunks in advance, so I don’t end up rambling and confused halfway through!

Writing

Chopping and changing. Thats how I’d sum up novel progress currently. Part 1 of Chains of Memory is still a mess, in my opinion. I’m trying to cut out as much world-building exposition as I can without confusing the reader, and it Just. Isn’t. Working.™ So I’ve decided to take a lot of the flashback material from chapters 1 through 5 and turn it into a proper Prologue. It won’t have QUITE the immediacy of my main character sneaking into a cave full of yetis and almost getting his ass kicked, but there’s another kind of urgency in the Prologue that I can play on. Plus, once we get to the actiony stuff, then it really can ramp up constantly without these odd little world-building flashbacks breaking the pace.

Dunno why I didn’t think of this before, actually. Or maybe I did and somebody said PROLOGUE? NO! HATE! Or something. *shrug*

This means I’m up to Draft Six. And to keep everything vaguely organised, I’ve actually started writing new bits in separate documents to go back and slot in later. It keeps synching my netbook and pc a lot simpler too, for when I decide to do a bit of writing on my lunchbreak at work.

Also, Chains of Time and Chains of War are progressing steadily as well, the third book especially now I have the skeletal plot laid out. Pieces begin to fall into place, which is an excellent feeling as a writer and creator.

Art

I must admit, I haven’t even started April’s art yet. I have some ideas about what I’d like to do, but my free time has mostly been wasted so far on the two topics below. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something down on paper this coming week, as then its back to work and that always scuppers any artistic endeavours.

Games

I have been playing a fair few games over the last couple of weeks. After I finished God of War III on Normal difficulty, I ordered the God of War Collection on the PS3, and have been steadily making my way through God of War II. I played the first one a bit too, but in comparison to GoWII ’tis a clunky beast. Still great games though, and it is particularly impressive to see them running in HD with updated textures.

I also finally got my hands on a copy of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger and discovered just why I couldn’t ever find one in shops — it didn’t get an EU release till this last week. Duh! For those of you who don’t know, BB is a 2D fighting game vaguely reminiscent of the Street Fighter series, but based much more in the crazy Japanese world of Guilty Gear – no surprise as its made by the same people.

I’ve played the Guilty Gear games before, and I like them for 2 reasons. 1) The character designs are outlandish, crazy, and their individual fighting styles are always impressive. 2) The music. Guilty Gear games have always had outstanding J-Rock soundtracks. Calamity Trigger, as a kind of spiritual successor, does not disappoint in either of these areas.

Although GOD KNOWS what the plot is about….

Final Fantasy XIV

And finally, the FFXIValpha began yesterday, and a huge wad of new media has surface on the web via people ignoring the NDA entirely. Sadly I have not yet got into Alpha or Beta testing (Give me the alpha/beta key, Square! … please?) so I had to make do with this leaked information and what I could glean from it. My anticipation for the game was already quite high, but having seen poorly-streamed or recorded video of it in action, I’d very much like to get a go and do some testing of my own.

Now I’ve seen what it looks like, I’m very happy with the quality. Now I’ve heard some of the music, I’m happy that that is going to be awesome too. Now I want to get hands on experience, see what works, what doesn’t work, use knowledge and experience garnered from alpha/betas of previously released MMOs to truly turn FFXIV into a game that could finally sever the ties I have to its online predecessor, as well as drag me away from that thrice-bedamned World of Warcraft.

Guess I’ll just have to wait until Square-Enix feels fit to provide me with access to the testing client. Patience is a virtue, after all.

Of course, this assumes I’m very virtuous…..

19th March 2010 was one of those dates for which I purchased a Playstation 3. In my lowly opinion, consoles are best suited to certain types of game, and the God of War-style action game is one of those ‘genres’. Having played God of War and God of War 2 on the PS2, I was very excited for the finale to the Kratos Trilogy. However, I tried to go in with an open mind and a healthy degree of scepticism. After all, I knew what would happen if I got my hopes up…

Unfortunately, it seems that even with lowered expectations, God of War 3 could not fully live up to the standards I would have it set.

Length and Replayability

Now, this is certainly not to say that GoW3 is a bad game. It isn’t. But neither is it (currently) particularly good value for money. I completed the game in about 9 ½ hours.  Add to that an extra hour of going back to previous saves to collect stuff for trophies, and a couple of hours to do the challenge mode, and you can round it up to about a 15-hour long experience. For £40.

If you remember my previous Value4Money model — take the price of a game, halve it, convert the figure into hours — you’ll see that GoW3 comes up at least 5 or so hours short of being a V4M experience. In fact, the only reason it will end up being V4M is because I’ve completed all but one of the trophies — and that last trophy requires me to finish the game on the Titan difficulty. Even so, this is an artificial lengthening of the experience, so I only barely count it, no matter how much fun the game is.

In terms of replayability, GoW3 is a fairly mixed bag. Going through the game you can find Godly Possessions, which can be used in a new playthrough to unlock special powers such as collecting 10x red orbs or shaving a third off the damage you take. These would be cool if you could then blast through the hard difficulties as a reward for seeking these things out, but sadly you can only use them on a difficulty setting you’ve already played through, and activating even one of them locks you out of collecting trophies for the entirety of that playthrough.

Nor is there a New Game + option where you can carry over maxed out weapons or the like.

In short, pretty disappointing.

Gameplay

God of War 3 is still fun. Very bloody, very slick, with just the right mix of puzzle solving and visceral combat. Weapon switching on the fly is a nice improvement, as is tying magic to a particular weapon, but I often found the controls a bit poorly laid out at times. Maybe it is just the way I hold the controller, but trying to parry attacks and then launch into a Triangle + L2 blast from Helios’ Head was tricky to pull off.

Also, Kratos once and for all proves that white men (covered in ash) cannot jump. I died maybe 30 times in my playthrough on Normal mode, and at least half of those deaths were to do with the atrocious jumping mechanic. Its so bad that I wonder why they even had a normal jump move in there at all. There isn’t a single gap in the game that you can hop over with a normal jump. Even the tiniest of distances require you to double tap X for the gliding jump, otherwise you’ll fall to your doom for another instant death Restart from Last Checkpoint screen.

The way Items have their own separate meter to use up (which recharges fast) is a welcome addition to the game: it meant I could quite happily spam fiery arrows from Apollo’s Bow when I wanted to, or blind enemies with Helios’ Head. I can’t say I got as much use out of Hermes’ Sandals as I’d like, though I did use the air dodge a fair bit in the challenge mode to lure charging minotaurs off the edge of the arena platform…

In short, God of War 3 plays just like you would expect, albeit for a shorter experience than my previously-reviewed Dante’s Inferno.

Presentation and Sound

God of War 3 is a very pretty game. It runs at 720p with nary a hint of slowdown. The lighting effects are top notch, and there’s little in the way of blockiness or sheared polygons. The use of colour is injected nicely into aspects of the game — I particularly like the purple glow of Hades’ Claws — and the texture work is incredibly good. I still prefer Final Fantasy XIII, however, for sheer graphical power. The only place GoW3 has that beat is, in my opinion, the opening section of the game where you ride on the back of the titan, Gaia, as she scales Mount Olympus. The sense of scale and sheer massiveness of the locale, rendered in real time, is ludicrously impressive, and something that FFXIII hasn’t beaten.

The sound in GoW3 is impressive enough. The voice-acting is solid, though nothing special. I have to admit I found the music barely noticable until I hit the end credits and was able to sit back and actually enjoy it. Then I was really impressed with the pieces played. I don’t yet have a copy of the OST that came with the Ultimate Edition of the game, but once I manage to get my hands on one, I may add an addendum to this Thoughts post. For the most part I can say that the sound design did exactly what it needed to in order to accompany the action.

Trophy-Whoring

Okay, so I’ve already mentioned that without Trophies this game would have a very short lifespan indeed. I found most of the trophies really easy to get on my first playthrough, but I’m the kind of player who explores those hidden nooks and crannies, scans every surface for secrets, and likes to upgrade his arsenal as early and quickly as possible. I got all the Gorgon Eyes, Minotaur Horns and Phoenix Feathers well before the final section of the game. I also maxed out all my weapons and had about 10,000 red orbs spare. I also managed (possibly through sheer luck) to find all the Godly Possessions on my first playthrough. In some ways I’m quite disappointed I didn’t have to use a guide and a second playthrough to find all this stuff. In this area, Dante’s Inferno actually has GoW3 beaten hands down — especially as DI has a New Game + mode.

There were literally about 5 or 6 trophies that I didn’t have from just a normal playthrough: Set 100 enemies on fire, Blind 100 enemies, Complete the Labyrinth without dying, Complete Challenge Mode, Complete the game on Titan difficulty. That was it. The first three took me about half an hour total to get, thanks to having a save point near the infinitely respawning hellhounds bit, and another save at the start of the Labyrinth. Challenge mode was not so much challenging as just pissy and frustrating thanks to the — at times — dodgy controls. So I’m now left with the Titan Mode ‘challenge’ to round out the experience and get my Platinum. I’m sure I’ll get it done, but there are a couple of pissy fights in the game that, to be honest, I’m not sure I can even be bothered with. The side-scroller one with Zeus near the end springs to mind.

Even so, for anybody not as thorough or naturally inclined to seek out secrets as I am, the trophies should easily all be unlocked on a couple of plays through.

Final Thoughts

Pretty much every gaming site that’s reviewed GoW3 has given it a score greater than they’ve given FFXIII, and to be honest I simply don’t think that is the case. FFXIII is just as pretty, much longer, has a better soundtrack and a better-woven story. Hell, even its battle system is almost as good and fast-paced as GoW3‘s.

This isn’t to say GoW3 is a disappointment, though. Far from it. It was a good, solid game with a really exceptional sense of scale that, sadly, is let down by some pretty dodgy storytelling, some unecessarily frustrating controls, and an overall sense that its just not very long.

It has, however, inspired me to pick up the God of War Collection, which has 1 & 2 in the series re-rendered at high def to play through. At that point, I’ll write a comparison between the PS2 originals and the PS3 successor, and I’m fairly certain God of War 2 will come out on top. We shall see.

The Verdict

So in the end, I’m going to have to give God of War 3 an 8/10. Its fun, but its no more fun than Dante’s Inferno is.

Let me make one thing apparent from the start: Final Fantasy XIII rocked my socks in many good ways. But I have not yet ‘finished’ it. While I have completed the main storyline, a whole host of post-credits play options are enabled in FF13 that will take many more hours to complete. I shall mostly be keeping this thoughts post free of spoilers.

Here’s how I play a typical FF game. I go through the initial motions, exploring the areas the game tells me to go to for the story, perhaps getting sidetracked by side missions, until at some point the game gives you an airship or something that lets you travel around the world map more freely. At this point, I forget the story for a bit and go all out power levelly, farming in huge amounts of XP, or farming AP for weapons, or mastering the Junction system, or working my way around the Sphere Grid, or unlocking everything on the License Board or…well, you get the picture. The reason I did this for FF12 was truly because you had to. The game kept jumping unevenly in difficulty throughout, and this in fact contributed to the main drawback of my of these games. It gets to the point where I massively overlevelled the content and, unless the game had secret bosses to complete, I mostly ended up hitting the end boss with a fully powered up party, and whupping their ass into oblivion. While the end sequences in any FF game are almost always epic, this trivialisation of the final fight often dampens the worth of the achievement.

Enter FF13, who — as I’m sure you may have read — is an entirely linear beast until a good chunk of the way through the game. This features is being criticised left, right, and centre. Here are some of the more common criticism of the game, in fact:–

1) It’s too linear. The maps are all just corridors you run down and fight enemies.

2) You only get to control one party member. The other two fight on their own AI.

3) You can’t change your party leader until much later in the game.

4) You can’t assemble your own party until much later in the game.

5) The battle system doesn’t have depth.

6) The game just doesn’t look as good as other modern titles.

I’ll stop there. Let me address some of these points.

Yes, the game is linear. I won’t lie here. Up until the 29 hour mark I spent almost the entire game running down very very pretty corridors, watching a story unfold, swapping between the points of view of various characters, seeing everything come together, learning the intricacies of the Paradigm system, and expanding my abilities along the Crystarium, 13‘s version of the Sphere Grid.

Character progression is blocked by certain story points, to prevent completely overlevelling content and blasting through the later stages of the game with no challenge. In my mind, this is a good thing, but FF traditionalists will undoubtedly say this makes it not worthy of the FF name.

All shopping is done at save stations. There are no shops to visit, no real towns to explore. Again, people have criticised this and said ‘It’s not real FF if it doesn’t have a gazillion sidequests in these stupid little hidden towns everywhere’. Most of these people haven’t reached Chapter 11 where the Ci’eth Marks (similar to FF12′s mark hunting) comes into play, the world opens up drastically, and you get much more freedom before you get funnelled into the final areas of the game.

I’ve read of people complaining about linearity and giving up 5 hours into the game. Five hours into FF8, which I shall use as an example simply because I got it on the PSP the other day and played a bit of it before FF13 was released, and I’m still in the starting section of the game. I’m doing my first SeeD mission, in Dollet. I’ve just fought Elvoret at the top of the tower and had silly conversation with Biggs and Wedge. There’s almost nothing you can do in the game 5 hours in, so to give up on a FF game after such a short time is daft.

Sure, fifteen, even twenty hours in, you could justify this position, but hopefully you’ll have been swept away in the story by this point.

And what a story it is. I can honestly say that it has one of the better FF storylines. The world has a lovely deep mythology, and because I spent so much time being forced to experience everything from different characters’ points of view, I had a better understanding of the world, and cared a great deal more for its characters. Sure I spent the last twenty hours of the storyline with my main trio of Lightning, Fang and Hope, but I had a lot of fun with Sazh and Vanille too. Snow’s a dick. A well-intentioned dick, but still a dick. Sorry Snow fans.

Most of the points in the above list are addressed by about halfway through the storyline. About twenty to twenty five hours in I could change and make up my party however I want, in preference to my playstyle. I could also experiment with the Paradigm system to make plenty of combinations of classes to switch to on the fly. FF13‘s battle system does not lack depth. It requires forethought, planning, and a fair chunk of strategy. I admit, it can get a little repetetive, and a good couple of the major boss fights stretch on for a little too long, but then I remember spending 30 minutes fighting Sephiroth because he kept repeating his Limit Break move thing and the animation too 4 minutes to play out. Or I had quad-Knights of the Round, which you couldn’t skip the animation for either.

One criticism I will make of FF13 is the Eidolons. Each character has its own specific ‘summon’, and these are woefully underused in the game. I think I actually summoned Odin three times in the entire game. This isn’t going to stop me changing my party leader in post-credits play to see what all the others are like in action, though, as while they may not be as useful as Rydia’s summons in FF4, they’re damned impressive Transformer-like things. Also, one of the later CGI cutscenes in the game features all the characters and their Eidolons and its simply gorgeous. I actually made sure I had a unique save point for that, as I will be going back to watch that one again and again.

And on the subject of graphics. I read not half an hour ago a review saying that FF13 simply cannot compare to other current next gen titles. I have two words for that. Bull and shit. Uncharted 2 is an absolutely gorgeous game, of this I have no doubt. God of War 3‘s demo from 6+ months ago was also visually stunning, so I look forwards to seeing what it is like when it is released end of next week. But FF13 is right up there with them. There’s not a trace of slowdown in FF13, even when everybody is tossing off Thundaga and Firaga spells in the centre of a mass melee. In fact, the spell effects are utterly spectacular in FF13. Brilliant purple lightning crackles across your weapons after casting Enthunder. Loose shards of ice slide across the floor and melt after Hope unleashes a Blizzaga spell. Bodies disintagrate into black specs after devastating the area with a Firaga explosion. I found myself thinking several times that if FFXIV had these kind of spell graphics, then I would be an extremely happy MMOer. Of course, reality would dictate that this is unlikely to be possible in an MMO, but I can dream.

So now what? Well, I’m looking at the Trophies list for FF13, and it seems I have a long way to go before unlocking that Platinum. I’m not even sure I will. I estimate it’s going to take somewhere in the region of 40+ hours of post-storyline play to complete all the missions, unlock all the upgraded weapons and accessories, visit all the unexplored areas, figure out how to ride chocobos, and master all the characters. One of the silver trophies requires that you max out all six classes for all six characters. That’s somewhere in the region of 20+ million CP I need to get. And then I’ll almost certainly have to check out a guide for the weapons and accessory upgrading…

I have a fairly simple system for assessing whether a game is value for money. I take the price of a game in pounds, then halve it, and that is the number of hours I find just about acceptable for it to play out. Mass Effect 2 was excellent value for money. I paid £40. I’ve got (so far) 60 hours of gameplay out of it. Dante’s Inferno I paid £45 for and got 20 hours out of, so not so good. Final Fantasy XIII I paid £60 for the collector’s edition of (and I really need to find somewhere to stick my l’Cie decals) and have got 46 hours worth of gameplay out of so far. Was it worth it?

Hell yes.