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| GameFanisms | ||||||
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“OK Square, you don’t like me, I don’t like you. Ever since that little accident a few years back you’ve been (nearly) nothing but bad news and disappointment time and again—Tactics was amazing but everyone’s entitled to one good game. Sure, Eggo thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas and all that hooey but this is the same guy that listens to Poison every day and thinks End of Days is cinema du art—not exactly one that’s gifted with what even a generous person would term ‘taste.’ So now we’re once again staring each other down, and it doesn’t look pretty, so let’s just get this over with and we can both move on with our lives...” He then goes on to describe how Vagrant Story might actually be a cool game and continues: “What kills me about the post-16-bit Square: The only games by them that I even remotely enjoy are the three that I’m never likely to ever see sequels to: Einhander, Tobal 2 and the earth-shattering Final Fantasy Tactics (the best PlayStation game ever). [Mr. Armageddon’s note: Square Enix has since produced a Tactics sequel for the Game Boy Advance.]... “First, Dream Factory goes off and creates Ehrgeiz as the successor to Tobal (I don’t think Kodomo will ever get over that), then the team behind Einhander simply disapears (not surprising considering the fragile state of the shooter scene), and to top it all off, I catch wind that the Tactics team is not working on a sequel to their opus but a whole new game that melds the best aspects of Metal Gear Solid with Parasite Eve—two of my favorite games from the last 2 years, *super shudder* [he’s being sarcastic]. To say I wasn’t expecting much of Vagrant Story would be saying too much. “And now, here I am, two and a half years since I first laid hands on a very early, very busted (translation-wise) copy of FF Tactics only to have the latest from the same team arrive on my desk with little more than a few muttered phrases from Eggo about it getting “all 10’s in Famitsu” (the closest thing to a gaming bible the Japanese possess). Oh, and the painful knowledge that it was probably going to be some Frankenstein’s monster of Parasite Eve and MGS—of course I meant that in the nicest possible way... right.” “One of the saddest parts of a job that admittedly isn’t all that difficult is in fielding questions from droves of readers, like, ‘Why is it that we see annual updates of Tomb Raider without fail, yet we don’t get legendary games like Tobal 2 in the U.S.?” I, of course, then feel compelled to rant ad nauseum that, ‘If only more people bought games that are niche titles (i.e., Tales of the Sun, Tobal No. 1, Grandia, etc.), publishers would be elated to give us more.’ Heck, back in the day, Working Designs built its rep on giving gamers what they wanted, regardless of platform or politics (sadly, those days are gone).”
“...a game that, by my calculation, ten people bought, played, and loved to death...” “It’s been said before, but today’s gamer isn’t cut from the same cloth as those of yesteryear—then again, I suppose it would have helped if you’d started playing games prior to PlayStation, right? Yep, back when a gamer was a gamer and the only thing he had to look forward to on a Friday night was a date with Mario, a bag of Doritos and a six-pack of Mountain Dew—oh, and some of that Skinemax stuff. Nope today’s ‘gamers’ are a watered down, shrinky-dink version of the old school player. The one that spent his formative years lurking in dank cesspools (err, arcades), rental stores, and the mall, all on a Ryu-like quest to prove that he was the best of the best. Hell, some of us are still doing it...” “Nothing galls me more than so-called pro magazines (web and print) that bash a game that’s nary 15% complete. Case in point: A fellow print pub that shall remain nameless (though I hear it’s the choice of the next generation...oops), recently ‘awarded’ And Now’s latest 3D platformer Mort the Chicken with the worst game of E3 ‘honors.’ Now it may just be me, but the last time it was ever OK to rail a game based on a barely alpha build was, lemme see... oh that’s right, NEVER. There’s a cardinal rule (or there should be) that states that no one should be able to gut anything short of a final, shipped product—at that point, if it’s still really mangled, you can break out the ball peen hammer, steel tongs, and can of Crisco for all I care. “But looking for sport to a name to a ‘worst of E3’ list is inane what with legion upon legion of unfinished, incomplete and barely playable games littering the show floor. Then again, I guess it’s easier to pick on the little guys... after all, they’re not gonna affect your ability to get ads, right? This from the same magazine that proclaimed Metal Gear Solid 2 “Game of the Show” when it was nothing more than a demo reel that even Hideo Kojima admits isn’t representative of what we can expect of the finished product—that’s what I call class. And before you even think it, we don’t enjoy playing (as Fury puts it) ‘Big Brother’ to the rest of our brethren, but good God, I swear that sometimes they need to be chided like a five year old spoiled brat... I truly weep for their readers.” “Final Fantasy VIII—a now legendary game, critically acclaimed by nearly all American media (except us), which ended up selling by the truckload, lending further credence to the notion that the very name “Final Fantasy” was enough to sell over a million copies. But despite the massive sales figures, something was amiss. Gamers in Japan were returning the game en masse because it wasn’t what they wanted. Where were the fantasy themes and settings which made this series popular to begin with? Where were the airships and dragons... the swords and sorcery? The days of black and white magic appeared to have given way to the anachronistic guns and ballroom dancing. And what was Square thinking when it took the classic system and junctioned it to a tedious magic scheme which drew all the fun out of the game? It was a time of trouble...” “It’s not very often anymore that I get truly lathered up over a game. Oh sure, I can get into a frothing, saliva-spewing, hyperbolic rant when the need arises: the much-maligned (outside of GameFan) Strider 2, for example, benefited from such a spastic state. However, it’s a rare thing indeed when I’m truly taken aback by a new title. And while it’s probably getting really old and really tired, it no doubt has a lot to do with the fact that games have evolved along a much different path than I would like to have seen: eschewing the tried and true 2D format of yesteryear for the shiny new frontier of 3D, something developers are just now finally coming to grips with... sort of... And yes, there have been some remarkably well-done title that have made successful and fruitful trips to the z-axis... and in some cases even faithful sojourns (especially in the case of games like Sonic Adventure and Zelda: OOT). Sometimes, though, I just wish developers would leave well enough alone, and concentrate their efforts on a fully evolutionary step instead of the revolutionary stampede into 3D; instead crafting a glorious homage to 2D on the newer hardware formats, showing that there is yet teeming, untamable life in the wilds of what was assumed to have been a dead-end... evolutionary (and publicly) speaking of course.” “...to say that the staff of GameFan is excited about the announcement of the Nintendo Game Cube might just be the understatement of the year: We were bouncing off the walls at the announcement. A pure game machine without any pretensions of being a ‘household entertainment center’? Sign us up for palette right now!.... “...it’s already clear that this will be a must-buy console for every GameFan reader, much as the Dreamcast has been for the past year—and this doesn’t even take into account whatever original shockers Nintendo cobbles together. Shouldn’t we see the games before making such a judgement? Have you ever played a Nintendo game? Do I even need to answer this, except to say that where the Big N’s concerned, I’m willing to take this one on faith alone. Blind loyalty? Call it impending reality...July (the import launch month) can’t come fast enough—start saving your pennies and counting the days now.” “Hidey-ho, Final Fantasy fans, tis I, ECM, the most reviled of the Final Fantasy VIII haters the world had ever seen. Sure, I laid into it like a drunk into an oh-so-sweet bottle of SoCo, but it had it coming. After all, the game’s called Final FANTASY not Final Beverly Hills 90210. Yep, not only was the angst-ridden story beyond painful; not only was the game insipidly written; not only was the combat system completely flawed (the draw system and junctioning—great ideas... ahahahahahaha, right) and as for the intelligent gamers that labeled this the best RPG of all time, how do those words sit in light of an RPG that is 10x the game the previous chapter was. Guess that automatically makes FFIX the ‘best RPG of all time.’ Frankly, FFIX is a good, solid FF game which harkens back to classic FF a la chapters II and III (IV and VI for those of you that pretend you know Japanese). The story makes snese; it’s fun to read; the characters are, *gasp*, endearing; and hey, there’s actually something akin to emotional attachment this time around. The fact is, FFVIII was an aberration—something the Japanese fans also noticed. In fact, I might go as far as to say this is the 3rd best FF of all time...” “...only a sausage plays DVDs on a game console, but the hardcore play games on a DVD player... “From Tobal came Tobal 2, and the single best PlayStation game of all time. You can keep your cries for Final Fantasy (any of the last three will suffice [pay attention to when this was written]) and Metal Gear Solid, because they are not games. They are experiences. Yes, for the most part, they are exquisitely done, but, after you’ve gone through from start to end one time, you’re left with a 60-dollar experience. An interactive movie that you watch a few times, play even less, then put on the shelf.” |
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