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.

I am a long time fan of the Final Fantasy series of videogames. I, like so many others, was introduced to the franchise through Squaresoft’s seminal Final Fantasy VII in 199…7? Ish. I think. However, I didn’t finish it until probably 4 years later. I thought it was too cliché, and the already rampant fanboyism about the game’s main villain was very offputting. In fact, the game that really dragged me into the series was Final Fantasy VIII which, in 1999 when I was just starting out at Lancaster University, was the game I spent many late nights playing to combat my initial shock at a complete change of location.

I can also credit FF8 as being the game that first inspired me to write. Sure, its storyline makes about as much sense as the guy who goes into a board meeting and introduces the Chocolate Teapot Deluxe as this century’s next big innovation. But the setting, style, and unique magic system hooked me, and after some research, I soon found my way into the various other worlds that the Final Fantasy games have invented. Some of them I’ve only played once. 1 and 2, for example, are now so old-fashioned and out-dated that even I struggle to revisit them. Others, like FF4 and FF6 are, in my opinion, triumphs of storytelling and game design, and I’ve played through each thrice (counting the Nintendo DS remake of FF4 in that tally).

To date, then, I have played every single numbered Final Fantasy title. (The ‘numbered’ is important, as there are several spinoff games and series I have never played, nor ever intend to. Sorry Crystal Bearers…you held much promise but your reviews were frankly terrible.)

But while I have indeed played them all, I am ashamed to admit that I cannot claim to have completed them all. In truth, this isn’t actually as bad as it sounds. I’m only missing a checkmark against one game: Final Fantasy XII.

Now, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with FF12. The soundtrack is awesome. The CGI is as impressive as ever. And the characters of Fran and Balthier are inspired pieces of character design. I really like the battle/gambits system, too, and the open-endedness of the License Board system. But, try as I might, I simply can’t get into it. The story itself just doesn’t inspire me at all, which is strange, as it isn’t actually that bad of a story either. It certainly isn’t any worse that FF7‘s.

With FF13 out this Tuesday, I decided today that I really should finish FF12, so I dug out the PS2 and — after borrowing my brother’s PS2 controller as mine seems to have gone walkies — cranked up the game. Immediately I found myself humming away to the music I know so well after listening to the soundtrack god knows how many time. But, after not having played for 6 months or whatever it has been since the last time I tried to finish it, I once again found myself at that “Now, what the hell was I supposed to be doing…” stage of the game.

It took me a good 10 minutes of running round, looking through menus, talking to NPCs, trying desperately to recall what I was up to, before I pulled up the world map with SELECT and discovered the helpful hint at the bottom of the screen reminding me what to do. D’oh.

So anyways, I got myself to the right location, even pulled out the official strategy guide I bought last time to try and at least finish it… and promptly played for maybe 45 minutes before my attention waned and I got bored, saved, and turned the console off.

This got me thinking. I have, of course, kept myself abreast of the incoming reviews for FF13, and one of the big beefs people seem to have is linearity in the game’s opening 30 hours of gameplay. Now, I’m 37 hours into FF12 according to the save screen, and I can’t help but wonder if I would have been more engaged, or less, if the opening 30 hours of FF12 had been more linear.

It has been said that Square-Enix have tried to make the opening sections of FF13 into an engaging, cinematic experience, like playing a movie, relating to characters, et cetera. It has also been said that ff13′s plot isn’t all that good, but I realised a long time ago that what the general public’s opinion of good storytelling in games is, and what mine is, are often completely different. (Though, as an addendum, I like to think I know a bit about good storytelling in general.)

Is linearity necessarily a bad thing these days? Mass Effect 2 is critically acclaimed, but its linearity is only thinly veiled. Games like Bioshock 2 and Dante’s Inferno are by their nature linear beasts. So why is FF13 being so heavily criticised for its opening being linear? I read one forum post today saying that a kid had played 16 hours into the game and given up because it is too linear. 16 hours. How did he not figure out he didn’t like it sooner? Did he not read the very internet site he had posted on about how the game opens up into more of the free world we are used to about 30 hours in?

Are people looking back at previous games with rose-tinted spectacles? It took an incredibly long time in most of the previous Final Fantasy games for the player to have free reign over where they went and how they got there. Hell, it wasn’t until the fourth of four discs in FF8 that players finally gained the ability to freely explore every nook and cranny of the world map. Maybe the linearity of those games was better hidden with sidequests, I don’t know. Nor do I know exactly how much FF13 has thrown out of the window either, so take everything I currently say with a grain of salt. Maybe by this time next week, I will have a very different blog written.

But back to my confession. I really really want to finish FF12. Not because I care about its plot or characters anymore, but simply so I can return to saying I’ve completed every numbered Final Fantasy game. I find this quite sad.

I got into MMO gaming through Final Fantasy XI. I still have an active account, even though I rarely log in anymore. The game is coming up to its 8 year aniversary this year, and I’ve been playing it for a good percentage of that. Or rather, I’ve had an active account for much of that. Either way, the game still has a special place in my heart, and thus even while I don’t play, I’m always interested in what direction SquareEnix is going to take the game next.

VanaFest 2010 is SE’s annual event for all FFXI-related announcements. Sure, they do quarterly game updates, but the VF announcements always tend to be bigger. So what did we get this year?

Well, for starters, SE is finally raising the level cap from 75 (as it has been for what, 6 years now?) to 99. An extra 24 levels. The release will be staggered, with the first increase coming in June, a second in September, and then finally the 99 maximum hit in December. From a marketing standpoint, this makes sense. FFXI has a very devoted fanbase, and SE wants to keep them paying and playing, even after FFXIV is released some time later this year.

It isn’t enough to get me back into the game though. Hitting 75 on my Dark Knight was a great achievement for me, but it took altogether far too much of my life to do it, and I’d rather not have to go through the tedium again.

New missions and new areas to explore come in the form of 3 mini-expansions throughout 2010. Priced at £7.99 each, these are again a nice way for SE to keep the revenue coming in. It’s a pretty much guaranteed extra £8 a quarter for them from its players, though how effective it will be in the face of the newer, shinier FFXIV is anybody’s guess at this point.

I admire the fact that the FFXI development team are still plodding away, however. They seem to have at least another 12 months of content already being worked on. I was a bit disappointed to see that Pandemonium, the server that my FFXI characters are on, has fallen on hard times and is now classed as a low population server. I would have considered playing FFXI a bit more while waiting for the FFXIV beta to start, but the news that Pandy is going to be merged into the Asura server really just cements the fact that my time with the game is at an end. I simply can’t imagine logging onto FFXI and seeing “World: Asura” instead of “World: Pandemonium”.

Good news, everyone!

But as surprised as I was by the FFXI news, this wasn’t what I was most interested in for VF2010. We all knew there was going to be some kind of announcement about Final Fantasy XIV at the even. Myself and Dr Jones were almost certain it would be about the closed beta start date, and we were correct. Although things seem to be moving faster than we had anticipated. Email invites to the beta will be going out tomorrow, and the closed beta itself will start on the 11th March (2 days after FFXIII is released over here in the EU).

Here is the news from the VF website:

With the eagerly anticipated FINAL FANTASY XIV drawing ever nearer its beta test phase, we are excited to announce that we will be conducting a closed alpha test—exclusive to our loyal FINAL FANTASY XI users!

Those who have been selected as beta testers can expect to receive further information starting from Monday, March 1.

* The tester website is scheduled to go live on Thursday, March 11.

Those who were not selected in this drawing, fear not, for there will be other opportunities to come. Be sure to stay tuned!

Now, this can be read a couple of ways. Firstly it mentions both an alpha and beta test. The beta testing site is opening on the 11th March. Beta-testing info is going out starting tomorrow. But what about this alpha testing stuff. Are the loyal FFXI players the ones who turned up to VanaFest (99% of whom were Japanese, it being in Japan and all)? It isn’t particularly clear. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it. *shrug*

Either way, it is an exciting time. As much love as I have for World of Warcraft, there is — in my mind — nothing comparable to FFXI’s job system, where you could really get attached to your character because you could change their roles over the course of the game’s lifetime without having to reroll a new character. FFXIV’s armory system seems to emulate the success of the job system. While I will undoubtedly make multiple characters there until I find one to settle on, it is the very fact that I can settle on one and play what I want when I want to that really appeals to me.

So, let’s hope I hear something in the e-mail soon! *happy*

Okay, I admit it: I picked this novel up after playing Mass Effect 2, simply because it was related. I had no idea what it was about, how it fitted into the mythology, or anything like that. I didn’t even expect it to be that good, considering how ninety percent of game/movie novel tie-ins are utter pap. But I underestimated BioWare and the author, Drew Karpyshyn.

You see, what it mentions on the front of the book is that Mr Karpyshyn isn’t just some random guy brought in to write a novelisation of the games. He’s the actual lead writer. A lead videogame writer who also writes books to tie in with the series.

It also says a “thrilling prequel” to the original Mass Effect. Unlike one of my good friends, I don’t have any issues with sequels, prequels, series or whatever. In fact, I like to invest heavily in things I enjoy. While the “thrilling” quote is subject to some debate, the fact that it is a prequel is definitely evident here.

So, some context. In the original Mass Effect, the player’s character gets the chance to become the first human SPECTRE (SPECial Tactics and REcon, if I recall correctly). We find out later in the game that Captain Anderson, the black guy in charge of Shepard’s first playable mission, was also in line as a candidate many years before, but for some reason, his candidacy was turned down. Hints are dropped that Saren, the antagonist of the game, was reponsible for this.

And Mass Effect: Revelation weaves the story of how. I was going to say “carefully” weaves the story, but in all honesty there is little in the way of subtle narrative or surprises in store here. This isn’t a criticism either. It is a fun story, tightly written, fast paced, with enough reference and thought evident throughout that those of us who have played both Mass Effect games will be drawn into finding out just why Anderson never got to be a SPECTRE, or how Saren found out about his ship, Sovereign, in the first place.

Saren in the game isn’t a particularly complex character until right towards the end where we get to watch him realise how far from grace he has fallen. But the Saren of ME:R is more nuanced. We find out a bit about why he hates humans so much. We see his thought processes as he carries out his assignments. We discover how ruthlessly efficient a SPECTRE has to be, and how the weight of protecting billions of lives can sometimes weigh heavy on their shoulders.

He’s not a perfectly written creation by any means. In many ways, the novel simply cannot hope to stand on its own. It really does rely on you at least having played Mass Effect to fully appreciate what is going on here. Nevertheless, there is enough sci-fi here to give fans of the genre a taster of a really well fleshed out universe.

If you’ve played Mass Effect 1: 9/10

If you haven’t: 8/10

Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance (hereafter, AC:R) is a novelisation of the second game in the Assassin’s Creed videogame trilogy. AC2 had the distinction of being the first PS3 game I purchased, as well as the first that I explored every nook and cranny of to 100% the platinum trophy on the PlayStation Network.

The game setup is simple: you play as a chap called Desmond Myles who, in 2012, discovers he is descended from a long line of Assassins, a secret order dedicated to protecting the world from the machinations of the equally secretive Templars. Initially working for Abstergo – soon revealed to be a Templar front – Myles is stuck into a machine called the Animus, and made to relieve parts of his genetic memory to discover the location of something called a Piece of Eden. By the end of game number 1, a somewhat poorly paced affair, the story begins to heat up, and little clues are left right at the end of the game that something even greater is going on.

One of the complaints about game number 1 was that it has you zipping in and out of the head of Desmond Myles (in the future), and his ancestor Altair (in the time of the Crusades) a little too often. So this was shook up for game number 2, with the player only starting and finishing the game as Desmond. The rest of the game is set firmly in the head, and heart, of Ezio Auditore de Firenze, the son of a Florentine banker of some repute.

The book telling of events follows the story of the game very closely, even going as far as to expand on the two chunks of missing memory block present in the game that were reserved for future (and now released) downloadable content. The writing is tight, fast-paced, and follows the twists and turns of the game’s story well. Interaction between the characters in the novel is given a much greater sense of detail and realism – simply through the benefits of not having to code and design several new animations to convey anything. I found myself really enjoying the story of this second instalment all over again.

However, it was not without its niggles. The book is set entirely in the head of Ezio, and thus the one thing that rankles me ever so slightly about the book is that is simply cannot do the end of the game justice. In the game, you know you’ve been playing as Desmond who has, in a sense, been playing as Ezio. And so at the end where Minerva speaks not to Ezio, but through Ezio to somebody else, we lose that sense of immersion somewhat. It works better as a meta-gaming revelation, because we know Minerva is passing on a message to Desmond and the Assassins in the future, not just doing something really weird to Ezio in the past as the novel suggests.

If I hadn’t played the game first, I imagine the ending would confuse me a bit, but I have to admire the gall of whatever editor said “Let’s keep this bit in!” when releasing a paperback to the mass market that may have never heard of the games, let alone played them.

This is a tiny niggle, though, in what is in my mind one of the better game-to-novel adaptions I’ve read (and yeah, I’ve read a fair few, and they don’t often fare this well).

(if you’ve played AC2): 9/10

(if you’ve never heard of AC2 and just picked it up because the cover looked cool): 7.5/10

Let’s clear something up to start with: I use the word ‘review’ tenuously at best any time I write a ‘review’ blog. I’ll at least try and keep this vaguely cohesive for a change!

By now you should already have read my post on the Dante’s Inferno: Death Edition special features DVD (and if not, why not?!) Since writing that, I’ve played through the game not once, but twice (thanks to the achievement whore in me wanting to explore the New Game + — or ‘Resurrection Mode’ as it is called — options and max out my Trophies).

Length and Replayability

The first time through, DI took me approximately 11-12 hours to complete, searching all the nooks and crannies I could find, on Zealot (normal) difficulty. This didn’t feel too short or too long, but just right for the type of game it is. For anybody who just wants a fire-and-forget game, then this may not be the best value for money you can buy, however. There are much longer games for a similar asking price.

The beauty of DI’s longevity, however, is in its combat and upgrades system. I’m relatively certain that you simply cannot upgrade everything on both Holy and Unholy sides of your customisation trees on your first playthrough. The Resurrection Mode enables you to take your character you finished playthrough one with and send it into Hell a second time, complete with all your upgraded abilities and the Relics that you have collected along the way. This doesn’t quite double the length of the game, though unless you’re using a walkthrough to find everything, it may actually take longer to play through the second time to collect the lot.

Gameplay

It’s God of War, but without Kratos. The controls are ever so slightly different, but not enough to adapt to within minutes. Anybody who has played GoW1/2 (or 3′s demo) will know what to expect here. And, contrary to a lot of the reviews floating around on the net, I can’t say it has an inferior combat system in any way. Animations were fluid and easy to control, the attacks were brutal and had serious weight behind them, and there were some lovely kill attacks.

My only criticisim in the gameplay variety is a criticism that a lot of games share: the bane that are Quick Time Events. QTEs aren’t as prolific in Dante’s Inferno as they have been in other games and, thankfully, they tend to have a preset pattern rather than be completely random in which button you have to press like GoW’s earlier versions do. I still think GoW3 has it right here, though: if you absolutely positively have to have QTEs, at least put the relevant icons on the side of the screen appropriate to the button press. Something that simple really cuts down on the frustration for those of us who can’t always remember which way round Circle and Square are on the controller.

Presentation and Sound

I had an issue with the darkness of the game — an issue I have with a lot of ‘atmospheric’ games: yeah, I’m lookin’ at you DOOM 3 — so I had to turn the Brightness setting up a notch, but on a whole I’m very impressed with DI. The creature design is generally excellent, the sound has the ecclesiastic bombastisism you’d expect from a game about religion and Hell, and the lighting effects and texture work are mostly top notch.

Special mention must be made about the four CGI movies in the game: they’re beautiful pieces of cinema, so well lit and rendered that at one point I actually thought they’d switched to live action for a couple of bits. The final movie especially has some absolutely stunning anatomy and texture referencing, and the lip syncing is spot on.

There is a mix of cutscene styles in the game: from pre-rendered footage using ingame engine, realtime footage using ingame engine, some stylised animated bits in a couple of very visceral styles, plus the CGI movies above. I can’t say I was let down by any of them, though the pre-rendered ingame stuff was occassionally witness to a few rendering artefacts, but nothing to pan the game for.

The music and voice acting is generally spot on. Dante himself doesn’t sound like an all-American action hero, which I thought was a nice touch. Admittedly, he doesn’t sound like a Tuscan either, but that’s a minor niggle I think a western audience won’t care a jot for.

Achievement/Gamerpoint/Trophy Whoring

I assume both XBOX360 and PS3 have the same achievements, but I haven’t looked at the 360′s list to check. Dante’s Inferno is nice in that it doesn’t have that annoying “And now play the game on the hardest difficulty” achievement that so many games have these days. Most of the Bronze and Silver trophies are obtainable on the first runthrough as 80% of them are related to the story, or killing a certain number of a specific monster that you’ll naturally fight over the course of the game. There’s also trophies for getting a 50 and 100 point combo (both very easy) as well as one for the unsurprisingly 666 point combo (which took a bit more work).

Add to this “collect all the unholy relics” and “collect all the holy relics”, maxing out either side and then both of the Holy/Unholy trees and Absolve/Punish all 27 shades of the Inferno, there’s quite a bit for you to find and work at (I admit, I used a walkthrough for this final bit, as there were a couple I simply couldn’t find, and with no “mission select” feature, if you miss something, you have to play it ALL again).

Of special mention is The Guide trophy, which I would have got on my first playthrough, if I’d realised that you have to keep on talking to Virgil until he disappears for it to register for the achievement. D’oh.

Final Thoughts

I like the God of War series. That style of game is the reason I own consoles in the first place (well, that and Final Fantasy XIII). So when a game that isn’t quite God of War comes out, its still worth a shot for me. If you have GoW up on a pedestal, and aren’t willing to challenge your preconceptions, then Dante’s Inferno is not really the game for you. If you’re like me, however, and have a thing for mythology and neat artistic design, then you could do a lot worse than give Dante’s Inferno a rent from your nearest store.

Just don’t buy the Death Edition. Seriously. Not value for money!

The Verdict

8/10 – Good

(Hey look, I managed the whole review without mentioning Lucifer’s fully rendered CGI peni….gah, ALMOST HAD ME!!)

Back when I was at university doing my degree in English Literature (with a heavy emphasis on medieval literature) I stumbled upon a translation of Dante Alighieri’s Comedy, known today as the Divine Comedy, an epic poem divided into three parts. Inferno, the first of the three, is the basis for Visceral Game’s Dante’s Inferno, an incredibly loose adaption of the poet’s descent into the nine circles of Hell. A lot of creative license is taken in the motivations of the main character, and he is fleshed out into a scythe-wielding badass for the game with no real apologies on the game designers’ parts. Nor should there be. This is not supposed to be taken as a direct adaption of one of the finest pieces of classical poetry, but rather an homage to it.

Now, I don’t actually wish to talk about the game itself in this post. I will offer some form of review or critique of it at a later date, but I haven’t actually finished the game yet. No, what I want to write about today is the Death Edition of the game, for which I paid an extra £15. Why the extra cost? Well, it is because of these special features listed:

• Making of the Game documentary (I always like to watch these and learn more about the design processes)
• Dante in History documentary (To see just how well the designers researched the source material)
• Full Game Soundtrack (You know me well enough by now… Though more on this in a moment)
• Scoring the Inferno documentary (Not only the music, but finding out how it was composed. Excellent!)
• Wayne Barlow Digital Artbook (Concept art is always something I like to look at and draw inspiration from)
• Scene from the animated Dante’s Inferno (Had no idea what this was about, but hey, I like animated stuff)
• Digital Reprint of the Full Poem (I don’t actually own a translation, so why the hell not!)

Quite a few special features. Easily persuasive enough to get me to put out a few extra English Pounds to own. Of course, this is the part where everything goes horribly wrong.

You see, as I’m in the car on the way home, I’m reading the small print on the back of the box. The first thing I notice is that for the Soundtrack there’s a little, obscure asterisk that states “Soundtrack can only be accessed through software included on the enclosed Bonus DVD and is not able to be transferred to any other media.” Hrmmm, I think. That sounds a bit dodgy. But it was in fact even worse than I expected.

You see, all of the above special features save for the digital poem reprint are on the DVD. And I can’t for the life of me get it to work in my DVD drive. Joy. So I fish out my old laptop just to see if it is a problem with my drive and yeah, it is. I should really replace the old thing at some point, but I don’t normally have much in the way of use for it anyways since I tend to buy games digitally these days, and most other DVDs work on it fine anyways.

But I digress, my issue here lies within the “enclosed software”. Because there isn’t any. This isn’t an “Install the Soundtrack on Your PC” type of operation. This is an “everything runs through your normal dvd-playing software” option. That is, quite frankly, abyssmal design. Especially as you have to click on every pair of songs to play them, rather than it running through the list. Sure, the sound quality is lovely, but that’s way too fiddly to be worth its while.

So I load up the “Wayne Barlow digital artbook” only to find that it, too, uses the same basic dvd-player software. No independent browser or anything. Every single thing on this DVD is designed to work in a DVD player. I mean sure, that’s great for people who are going to use their PS3 to experience the footage, but seriously, you advertise “digital artbook” and “soundtrack” and people are not going to think about playing it on their PS3 straight away.

Oh, and about 90 seconds into the digital artbook — which is actually a documentary, by the way — the whole thing crashes and locks up my laptop. I hard close my DVD software and sigh “One more try!” and load up the Digital Reprint of the Full Poem.

Which takes me to a static page with a web address and a password that I’m sure 99% of the people who bought this game will share online…

So let’s recap my disappointments.

1. Documentaries that crash a couple of minutes in both times I’ve tried them.
2. A soundtrack that I can only play using DVD/Media Playing software
3. A digital reprint of the poem that anyone can access on the web for free.

I haven’t tried accessing the other features yet. Still hoping to get my PC’s DVD drive to recognise the disc so i can at least watch the documentaries on a proper screen, but so far I am hugely disappointed.

As for the game itself, it’s okay. There are some irritating quick time events (QTEs) in places where you thought you were watching a cutscene, some instant death situations that are incredibly unfair, some jumping/swinging bits that I’ve had to replay several times because it isn’t always clear if you’re going to make the jump right or not and, most gravely, some little minigames which are fun in and of themselves, but don’t count as checkpoints so if you die straight after, you have to do them all over again.

BUT there are several positives too: the sound is great, the cinematics are very pretty, the monster and character designs have a lot of weight, and considering how it is adapted from the poem, it does a surprisingly good job. I think that, if I hadn’t just played Darksiders, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, I’d have much more praise for the game, but it does seem to fall a little flat after those.

Anyways, I still have three circles of Hell left to fight my way through and, if nothing else, there are some nice PS3 trophies to unlock on my way, so it is by no means a wasted purchase but, considering my issues with the bonus content above, I’m not currently feeling it was worth the asking price.

See, I got through my whole article without saying “God of War” onc—-aah crap!

While I have no problem with painting myself as “A GAMER” to most people – I feel the stigma attached to “gamers” is pretty unwarranted for the most part – I must quantify what I mean by this. I game, certainly. But when most people think of gamers these days, they fall into one or two camps, the camps that have the greatest mass market appeal or media hype.

1) The World of Warcraft player: I have no problem admitting I have played WoW since release, to varying degrees of involvement. I’ve made very good friends in the game, whom I talk to on a regular basis and – contrary to the popular belief that they are ‘just people on the internet’ – I’ve met several of them in person. I got into WoW because of the storyline that carried over from the Warcraft III and Frozen Throne RTS games, which themselves I only played because of the story. I am not very good at RTS games, apart from the original Settlers.

You’ll notice the key word here is story. As a writer, reader, and generally creative person, that’s what I’m into. WoW appeals to me because of The Lore – that huge wealth of background detail shared across an epic fantasy universe. Sure it goes a bit wonky in places, its retconned in places to allow for new ideas to be bought in, and some of it is beyond cliché, but there’s a lot of imagination gone into tying this universe together so that, thematically, it all gels in a fantasy/steam-punky way. (And, as an addendum, I am also quite fond of Blizzard’s art style and direction, so from an artistic point of view, WoW also has appeal.)

2) The FPS player. Considering the hype that the Call of Duty games get, it isn’t so surprising that when people think of gamers, they think of some teenage kid sat in his bedroom playing Modern Warfare 2, or some such stereotype. With mostly realistic graphics, albeit with some creative license taken, the MW2-type multiplayer game is often branded as the kind of game most likely to turn your child into a mass murderer by the press. Well, that and the Grand Theft Auto games which, having not played after GTA1, I’m not going into due to lack of knowledge on the subject (if only the media could do the same eh!)

Now even while I like both types of games, I wouldn’t say that either are my favourite genres. I can talk a lot about what kinds of games I don’t like: sports games (yawn), racing games (yawn), RTS games (because I suck at them), lightgun games (because I’ve never had one that works properly in a home environment)… you get the idea, and you can probably see the trend too. These games lack, for the most part, that one essential element that I play games for: story.

Thus bringing me to my point.

Mass Effect 2 is BioWare’s latest storydriven roleplaying game, and I shall be upfront in saying that I believe it to be one of the most rounded, well-paced storydriven games I’ve ever played. Considering my actual background in gaming comes from such titles as Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic, you might not be surprised at this. After all, these titles are pretty much all made by the same team: individuals who value story as much as they value action.

The premise of ME2 is very straightforwards. It is the second in a pre-planned trilogy. It is, much like The Empire Strikes Back, the dark middle section of that trilogy, and thus obvious comparisons to that film abound. I’m no stickler for dark games: the average survival horror game mostly bores me, and the gruesome gorefest of the SAW films just sickens me to the point that I’m paying to not enjoy myself.

The ‘dark’ elements of ME2 involve the idea that the series protagonist Commander Shepard, is assembling a team to go on what is likely to be a suicide mission, passing through the Omega Four Relay to territory unknown in an effort to stop The Collectors from abducting more human colonies from the fringe of galactic space. Not the most original setup, but what in science fiction is truly original these days. The crafting skill is shown with how BioWare deals with this setup.

If ‘assemble a team of loyal individuals and save the galaxy’ sounds familiar, it is because it is, in effect, the exact same basic premise for Mass Effect 1. The difference is in the execution. Where ME1 was ponderous, full of inventory issues, dodgy cover systems, and hundreds of menus, ME2 is pacy, cutting out most of the inventory entirely, with a more reactive cover system, and a streamlined menu system that lets you work with the essentials.

Changes to any formula in a series of games is always likely to cause outcry from fans. I know from first-hand experience that any time Blizzard change the way a character class works in WoW that thousands of crybabies descend on the forums like locusts to “QQ” about how Blizzard are ruining the game. ME2 was a comparable shakeup compared to the first, but anything more I can say on the issue is obviously pure personal opinion. At the end of the day, what it boils down to (for me) is this: did I enjoy ME2 more than ME1? And the simple answer is YES, A WHOLE LOT MORE.

Now there are reasons for this, and they boil down mostly to games systems rather than actual storytelling. ME1 had, in my opinion, a slightly better story, with better reveals, but was let down by its encumbering menu-driven inventory management. This isn’t to say that ME2′s story is bad. Far from it. It just feels ever-so-slightly samey because of the nature of the experience.

Basic plot structure aside, however, the sheer depth of characterisation in ME2 is stunning. Each of the ten characters you can pick up to join your squad is a fully-fleshed out individual, with motivations, background, flaws. They’re the kind of characters I try to write for myself because, as human beings, we can’t associate with those perfect characters you used to see on TV, in films or games.

Each of ME2′s characters has a unique visual identity too, from the hulking krogan Grunt, to the lithe and deadly Thane, to the overly buxom blue-skinned asari justicar, Samara. It is interesting to me how BioWare have really tried to give these alien races suitably alien personalities and motivations, yet keeping within them traits that to us seem distinctly human. And I suppose that is essential, since as I’ve already stated, if we can’t relate, we can’t engage; if we can’t engage with a character, we don’t take them with us for the ride, and everybody loses.

So what, for me, is the success of Mass Effect 2? It boils down to two things:

1) Characterisation and storytelling: simply the deepest interactive experience I’ve ever played.

2) Music and sound: voice acting is generally excellent (I’m looking at you, Generic Male Shepard voice actor for bringing the standard down), and the musical score is perfect and cinematic for the experience the game creates.

And I must point out that the game does indeed create an experience for you. It doesn’t drag you kicking and screaming in the direction it wants. Throughout the game there are many many paths that you can take, choices that you can decide, that alter the course of the narrative in (usually) subtle ways. And all of these come to a head in the last forty minutes or so of the game, where you finally head through the Omega Four Relay and take the fight to your enemy. The decisions, the tension, and the musical accompaniment all come together there into, for me, what is one of the best and most engaging endgames I’ve ever seen.

If somebody ever makes a film of my novels, this is the way I want my audience to feel once the climax is reached: a cast of characters that they care about and can engage with, despite the lack of humanity some of my characters (by their very nature) embody, sacrifices and decisions that the audience can relate to, and a musical score that gives you that tingly adrenaline-fuelled feeling in your chest that BIG THINGS™ are going on.

Yes, I liked Mass Effect 2. Can you tell?