I came in to the Final Fantasy series rather late. I started delving in to the series when I heard about the almost universal gamer love for FF7, so I decided to see what the fuss was about. I first played 10. That was a weird game, which I didn't particularly love. 10-2 was even weirder and I lasted perhaps an hour before I gave it up. I didn't play 12, although I hear it's pretty good and I've also heard it's getting a HD remake for the PS4 so I might delve in to that when it comes out in 2017.
Then came the big pile of steaming poop that was the 13 series. The characters were unlikable and I could not relate to them. It was a pile of hallways and boring combat. But I persisted and finished the game. Shitty story. I then played 13-2. Even worse story, which I did not complete. Perhaps I got a quarter of the way through. It was awful. I even played 13: Lightning Returns. Lasted an hour at most. Fuck that game.
Needless to say I came in to 15 with a fair amount of trepidation. Just to start off I'll give a quick summary of the plot of the beginning of the game. You play as Noctis, son of the King of Lucis, setting off on a roadtrip with his three best friends: Gladio, Ignis and Prompto. The four of them are headed to get Noctis married off to his betrothed Lunafreya The Oracle. And that's the start of the game. Off you go. Those who have seen the FF15 movie Kingsglaive will know what occurs within the first chapter of the game, but I hadn't seen the movie. I'm more interested in seeing it now and not just because I love the sound of Sean Bean's voice.
Ok so let's get in to the negatives first, because there are a lot of them. The small stuff first which is the bugs and graphical glitches. They're there and boy are they there. It's locked to 30fps on the PS4 and still there a frame rate drops. The controls are often unresponsive, so the phrase "but I hit the button" or "c'mon you bastard I'm hitting the damn button" were uttered more frequently that I would normally use them.
Also, I like to refer to this type of game as "open world" with the hand motions. It's not really an open world. Yeah it's a pretty big space, but the amount of invisible walls drives me crazy. The map isn't exactly clear either, showing possible paths that just don't exist in the game world. Even the driving is restrictive and so very very boring. I just make Ignis drive.
And oh god the most infuriating thing in the game is the combat, especially in tight spaces, wooded areas and dungeons. Trying to lock on the a particular enemy or body part is next to impossible when the camera whizzes around Noctis, constantly changing targets or putting trees in between the camera and the action, making it so very difficult to coordinate attacks effectively causing hair pulling, controller throwing, foot stomping acts of rage. My poor cats think I am mad at them as I suddenly rage whilst they are curled up next to me on the couch. Poor dears. I might have started to overfeed them just as an apology.
The crux of my experience with Final Fantasy 15 is this: I fucking love it. It looks beautiful, the music is amazing, the story is very anime but I was fully invested, the combat at it's best is a joy, and it's the best Final Fantasy experience I've had in my short history with the franchise. Running around the wilds on a chocobo, searching every possible corner of the world for new treasures and monsters to fight is great. I really love the fishing, which is not something I have enjoyed in other games. Pulling in a monster catch after spending 10 minutes winding it in on so very satisfying.
The story is, well, crazy. I am keeping this spoiler free, though I might writer a blog later about exactly how crazy it is later on, so all I can say right now is that it is very difficult to follow. I hadn't seen the Brotherhood anime nor the Kingsglaive movie so I missed a lot of the references made in the game. A lot of characters are introduced, given names and such, but don't last very long in the story, possibly only a scene or two. That being said, I felt invested in the story of the 4 friends. I may have teared up a few times during the game. Just a few, mind you.
This game is not for everyone. It is oh so flawed and yet I love it. There is no perfect game. If there is, I haven't played it. Of course a game can be perfect in your eye and mind and can do no wrong. Fan boys and girls world over will rage if you say anything negative about their favourite game. I am not that guy, I see flaws in all my favourite things and am willing to discuss them.
I don't know how to end this post. I am on a new medication and am feeling a little wonky myself so I'm just gonna shut up and go play Samuari Warriors 4 which is also a wonky, crazy, fun as hell game. Doesn't really have a narrative to write home about, but I do get to decimate thousands of enemies per map so...that certainly is a thing.
Showing posts with label narrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label narrative. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Monday, October 10, 2016
Why I play games: Something about story I think?
When I was 11 years old, my parents took my sister and I out of school for 3 months to travel around Europe before moving to live in England for a year. There was quite a bit of downtime during these travels and we didn't have much in the way of games to play.
I did, however, have a pack of cards and I played a lot of solitaire.
But solitaire on it's own, played over and over, can be a boring experience. So I created a meta game for it. It became a game of cricket.
Each round of solitaire represented a batsman's inning where the amount of cards in the top piles would determine their score. I cannot recall all the rules but I do remember creating a scorecard for each inning, writing it all down in a journal I had. There were penalties to the card deck for batsmen further down the batting order to represent their lesser batting skill, and I even had created a way to determine how the batsmen got out and to whom.
If I just wanted a time waster I could have just played solitaire on it's own. But I wanted more. I needed more. I needed to give the simple game of solitaire a narrative.
My earliest introduction to games was much earlier. My Dad was in to Dungeons and Dragons and would occasionally have his friends over to play. I would watch them creating stories about warriors, wizards and rogues, crawling through lost temples and dungeons, fighting evil monsters and loot galore. I do not remember specifics, but the whole concept of it fascinated me, and still does to this day.
My Dad also introduced me to video games. He played a game called "Tales of the Unknown, Volume 1: The Bard's Tale", a fantasy RPG created by Interplay and released in 1985. It wouldn't have been until about '88/'89 that I would have been aware of it but it fascinated me. I loved the party character creation, the dungeon crawling, the need to map everything by hand.
It was a love that I carried over for the first game my Dad ever bought me, which was "Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum", designed, developed and self published by Jon Van Caneghem in 1987. I recall the MS-DOS version of M&M1 came with a notepad for mapping the dungeons. I still hum the theme song to myself occasionally, something I'm doing right now as I write this.
I am losing track of the point I was trying to make. Thanks a lot, nostalgia.
I play games for narrative. There have been great strides in the way story is conveyed in video games. Games that come to mind are RPGs like The Witcher and Dragon Age series , traditional adventure games such as Life is Strange and Telltale's series of games, and so-called "Walking Simulators" like Gone Home and Firewatch. A game I played recently called Emily is Away, a short free-to-play game on Steam, which caught my attention with the way it delivered it's story through a simulated chat interface.
This doesn't mean that I necessarily play for the story created by the developer, I might just play to create my own narrative. I don't recall the stories of The Bard's Tale or M&M1, but I do recall the narratives I created for my dungeon crawlers. A good example of created narrative would be the Sid Meier's Civilization series. According to Steam I have put in over 2400 hours into Civ 5. That's 100 days of creating new narratives and histories for building my civilizations.
My two favourite board games at the moment are Betrayal at House on the Hill and Gloom. Both create new stories every time you play. I will go in to more depth with both at some stage in the future. However I will say that if you have a group of friends who enjoy playing board games and telling stories, those two games are well worth playing.
Don't get me wrong, there are video games out there where the best way to enjoy them is to switch off the brain and just play. I am currently playing Doom which is great just to jump in and smash a bunch of demons with ludicrous weapons. But I will always crave the next Witcher, the next Dragon Age, the next Civilization (not long for that bad boy).
Honestly I'm still waiting on Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic 3.
Please, Bioware, just do it.
I did, however, have a pack of cards and I played a lot of solitaire.
But solitaire on it's own, played over and over, can be a boring experience. So I created a meta game for it. It became a game of cricket.
Each round of solitaire represented a batsman's inning where the amount of cards in the top piles would determine their score. I cannot recall all the rules but I do remember creating a scorecard for each inning, writing it all down in a journal I had. There were penalties to the card deck for batsmen further down the batting order to represent their lesser batting skill, and I even had created a way to determine how the batsmen got out and to whom.
If I just wanted a time waster I could have just played solitaire on it's own. But I wanted more. I needed more. I needed to give the simple game of solitaire a narrative.
My earliest introduction to games was much earlier. My Dad was in to Dungeons and Dragons and would occasionally have his friends over to play. I would watch them creating stories about warriors, wizards and rogues, crawling through lost temples and dungeons, fighting evil monsters and loot galore. I do not remember specifics, but the whole concept of it fascinated me, and still does to this day.
My Dad also introduced me to video games. He played a game called "Tales of the Unknown, Volume 1: The Bard's Tale", a fantasy RPG created by Interplay and released in 1985. It wouldn't have been until about '88/'89 that I would have been aware of it but it fascinated me. I loved the party character creation, the dungeon crawling, the need to map everything by hand.
It was a love that I carried over for the first game my Dad ever bought me, which was "Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum", designed, developed and self published by Jon Van Caneghem in 1987. I recall the MS-DOS version of M&M1 came with a notepad for mapping the dungeons. I still hum the theme song to myself occasionally, something I'm doing right now as I write this.
I am losing track of the point I was trying to make. Thanks a lot, nostalgia.
I play games for narrative. There have been great strides in the way story is conveyed in video games. Games that come to mind are RPGs like The Witcher and Dragon Age series , traditional adventure games such as Life is Strange and Telltale's series of games, and so-called "Walking Simulators" like Gone Home and Firewatch. A game I played recently called Emily is Away, a short free-to-play game on Steam, which caught my attention with the way it delivered it's story through a simulated chat interface.
This doesn't mean that I necessarily play for the story created by the developer, I might just play to create my own narrative. I don't recall the stories of The Bard's Tale or M&M1, but I do recall the narratives I created for my dungeon crawlers. A good example of created narrative would be the Sid Meier's Civilization series. According to Steam I have put in over 2400 hours into Civ 5. That's 100 days of creating new narratives and histories for building my civilizations.
My two favourite board games at the moment are Betrayal at House on the Hill and Gloom. Both create new stories every time you play. I will go in to more depth with both at some stage in the future. However I will say that if you have a group of friends who enjoy playing board games and telling stories, those two games are well worth playing.
Don't get me wrong, there are video games out there where the best way to enjoy them is to switch off the brain and just play. I am currently playing Doom which is great just to jump in and smash a bunch of demons with ludicrous weapons. But I will always crave the next Witcher, the next Dragon Age, the next Civilization (not long for that bad boy).
Honestly I'm still waiting on Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic 3.
Please, Bioware, just do it.
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