Hmmm, at least someone confirms why I don't play any Final Fantasy games.

I quit the final fantasy series as soon as moved to the playstation. Just like Peter Griffin's critique on the Godfather, the Playstation series insists on itself. Too many cut scenes, the game play piled on unnessary battle elements, the story lines and characters acted like clingy, needy, insecure relationships, that you knew weren't going anywere when you started them.

Most of all, I really liked the Jrpg's battles. There was an element of thought that was needed in order to be successful. It has since mutated into a very bland, almost mortal combat style of predictability.


Granted I have only played the first playstation FF, but having watched my friends play from time to time was enough to convince me that I will never enjoy another FF game.

>> ^handmethekeysyou:
Scala and Kolacny Brothers (Belgian girls choir) do an amazing version of Joga. Only YT vid I could find has it as the music to some Final Fantasy video, but well worth the listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj_gs0rarcQ


Wow.

Scala and Kolacny Brothers (Belgian girls choir) do an amazing version of Joga. Only YT vid I could find has it as the music to some Final Fantasy video, but well worth the listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj_gs0rarcQ

Whenever I said Blizzard or Final Fantasy have the best cinematics, I guess I have to take my word back.

It's really hard for me to decide which vidya has the best cinematics in the world: Final Fantasy or Warcraft series. I'd say Final Fantasy since FF13 just came out and the cinematics are mindblowing and a large amount at that, but then again give Blizzard a chance and they will produce something awesome!

Also, to those who say - wow, there is not such a big leap after W3. Well, obviously, because W3 cinematics pretty much achieved perfection. Only minor tweaks from there on, since almost everything looks perfectly.

Pretty much the same thing with Final Fantasy. A huge leap from FF7 to FF8, but then not that big difference starting from FFX-FF13.

Now it's not a matter of computer power, it's just a matter of manpower to produce a perfectly believable movie which would be 100% realistic!

Um, wow... yeah he pretty much summed up the 80s in videogames. Even some the good stuff was hard as nails and when you finally beat it after many hours of gameplay you wanted to celebrate even if the ending of the game blew chunks. You just didnt care because you beat the game. Stuff like Final Fantasy II was not only awesome, difficult, and lengthy but once you beat it you got treated to one of the best endings ever!

One of the only fantasy RPG conventions not included in Dragon Age is the thing about freedom--an open world to explore, where the main quest can get eclipsed by the much more interesting side quests. This was present in Oblivion, Morrowind, and the Baldur's Gate series, so I'm surprised no one's really commented on it. Dragon Age is incredibly focused on the main plot, which makes the few side quests totally out of place, such as helping an elf win over a girl he likes (while the horde of baddies just wiped out a neighboring town).

The physical area of the game seems tiny. There are less than 10 major areas to visit, and two of the towns I've seen so far have something like 10 buildings in them and 20 or so NPCs. It feels like I'm walking through Disney World. Within these small areas, you're always hemmed in to a single path much like the Final Fantasy series. While exploring a forest, you're stuck on the trails. What's so hard about making an open zone? Baldur's Gate 1 did it just fine.

The only way I can start to understand this game's appeal is by thinking back to Mass Effect, because I really enjoyed that game and the formula seems identical. I think the difference is originality and the script. Mass Effect was an original story (at least to me and most gamers) and the cutscenes were almost TV-worthy, whereas Dragon Age's story is familiar to just about everyone and is executed poorly.

Vote up your own submission, radx!!!
I promoted it from your discard pile, so let's give it another go. Also, I need it for my Theremin playlist.


In reply to this comment by radx:
Hm, *discard

Love this game, second best final fantasy game (after 6). How does it rate overall? I don't know, so hard to compare to half life, or braid.

The video game industry is basically at a low at the moment, because there truly isn't anything new coming out.

My problem is that they seem to have lost their creativity and imagination. In the past however many years, the "Big Name" companies have had one idea and milked the shit out of it to make a crapton of money that they're only spending a fraction of to make sequels of the same game wrapped in a new pretty box.

Halo, Gears of War, Prince of Persia, Metal Gear, Hell, even Final Fantasy is starting to go downhill.
All of these titles have at least 3 games already in the franchise, or are soon going to, and each one basically had a steady decline in how good it was.

Whoever previously mentioned that the companies don't want to take risks basically hit the nail on the head. Very few are releasing something new, and even fewer look like they'd be fun.
The way I've always thought about it, a video game is like a book, or movie, just interactive.

A perfect example of this is from the Bioware games, The KOTOR series and Mass Effect are fantastic in the way they play out, because it's the exact same as a story, there's progression, there's conversation, there's reason to do what you're doing.

Take a game like Halo: Combat evolved, look at it, it was fantastic because as the storyline progressed, you learned about what happened, you found out who the covenant was and what their purpose was for finding the halo, and you learned the secret of the ring itself, That's a good progression.

Then you look at the second one.. The only thing new about it was the fact that there were now giant gorillas that wanted to eat your face, everything else was the same, nothing real new in the way of story or gameplay except you got slightly more overpowered, and the third is basically the same thing. I can't blame Bungie for Halo 3, there was never supposed to BE a halo 3, but MS pulled their funds before they could finish the final level which was supposed to close off the series and they were forced to make it.

My solution to this is to actually find people who write, authors who are willing to at least pitch ideas for games, and a studio that's willing to listen. If there's a company out there that could do that, the independent market could be almost abolished because the companies are hiring them on for ideas.

However, the "Reverend" Is right on one point, until we stop buying these rehashed games with a new number on the end, there won't BE anything new to buy. The companies will go for more of the same because people keep buying it.

I didn't know this was going to (d)evolve into an E-Peen thread, but I love that game, so here goes:

My first gaming experiences were, of course, Atari-2600 related. I still have the console and ~80 carts in my closet.

My folks bought their first computer, an Atari 4800 (lol.) I have fond memories of hand-entering the BASIC code for games, debugging them manually, and saving them to cassette tapes. We also actually purchased a phenomenal game called Lode Runner that is still emulated today.

First official console: Sega Genesis. I was unhappy with the palette "warmth", so I traded it up for a SNES. I still have that console as well. My wife and I resolved many disputes with Doctor Mario and Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

After I got out of the military, I bought my first PC, a CompuAdd 486, with which I happily played Doom, Doom2, Duke Nukem, Interstate '76, Mechwarrior (1,2), Tie Fighter, X-Wing, Warcraft, Populous, the list goes on.

It wasn't long after that my wife and I invested in a Nintendo 64, which I wasn't very pleased with. The games that we enjoyed were great, but the variety wasn't so much. We got a lot of mileage out of Mario Kart 64, Mario 64, and of course Ocarina of Time.

Disappointed with the 64, we bought a Playstation. There were a few games that became marital aides, primarily Tekken 3 and Super Puzzle Fighter. However, the console's primary purpose quickly became Spyro. I think my wife may have had a thing for that little dragon. Syro's 1-3 are still near to our hearts (I'm glad that they were all released on the PSN.)

Subsequently, we purchased a Dreamcast, primarily because of how easy it was to boot-leg games for the system. Other than the Sonic games, only Jet Set Radio stands out as a mentionable Dreamcast game. Simply fantastic.

After that, we dove into the PS2. Gran Turismo 3, 4, Jak&Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Final Fantasy XII, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus were the highlights. Oh yeah, also Odin Sphere, great game. Ew, and Shin Megami Tensei 3, that too.

Back to the PC, I had purchased a beefed up system in 2006, primarily for Half-Life 2, but also fell back in love with Team Fortress and Counter Strike. That's also when I began my on-again off-again love affair with MMO games. Final Fantasy XI, the first I'd tried, was a bitch-lover, more a 2nd job than a "fun game". Since, I've played City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Lineage2, EVE, and (most recently) Lord of the Rings Online. In between multi-player gaming, I've spent solo-time on Oblivion, Overlord, Sims3, Bioshock, and the fantastic Fallout 3.

On the mobile front, what started out as travel-toys for my son have turned into nice gaming distractions as well. We have Nintendo DS's, and a PSP. I've put a shameful amount of time into Pokemon Pearl (played through twice fully, on third play now.) On the PSP, Patapon was a nice distraction, as was Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology.

Year before last we bought a PS3. Stand-outs are: Little Big Planet, all of the PixelJunk games, Flower, and Infamous.

That's it for my gamer's resume. Hope I get the job.

>> ^Shpydir:
>> ^Shepppard:
I don't like the concept of "Project D"
My generation is basically one of the last to realize the gap between where we've come from, and where we're going. Being born in 89, I grew up with PSX, N64, genesis, ect. but we all knew about the previous consoles, and knew about where it came from.
Kid, I don't mean to sound like a cranky old fart and I kinda see what you're saying, but if you missed the 80's, you don't even know. There were these places called Ar-cades that we used to go to. They were just these whole rooms full of games. You put a token in and then you got to play the game for a bit.
It was nuts.


Well, to be fair, the arcade scene persisted very much into the 90's. Street Fighter 2 was not released until 1991, for instance. In Japan video arcades are still popular. But if you were born in 1989 in the US then you definitely missed a big part of gaming history. I was born in 1981 and I still too young to experience the real start of a gaming culture. I don't know when exactly that was, but Pac Man was released in 1980. Pong was back in 1972 so some old farts could claim that to understand the history of gaming you would need to be alive back then, but I'm skeptical of that.

I played the Atari but I never really liked it. It wasn't until the Nintendo with games like Final Fantasy (1990) that I was drawn into gaming. PC games like King's Quest, Hero's Quest, Sim City (1990), Civilization (1991), and Doom (1993) played just as big a role.

Having spent a fair amount of time hanging out in arcades, I can safely say that I don't miss it at all. I find the idea kind of sleazy, actually -- make children give up their money as fast and reliably as possible, in an environment with minimal parental supervision. PC or console games are so much better because they're not trying to quickly kill you so that you need to put in another quarter. They also have persistence, so you can build your character over many sessions. I've seen some clever Japanese arcade games that accomplish this by synergizing with RFID enabled collectible card games, though.

I've always been a PC gamer too, but I've played a lot less since I started sifting. Go figure. I thoroughly enjoy the Half-Life series including Portal, but in my heart I'll always be a point-and-click adventure gamer. I've played most of what LucasArts published back when they were good, such as Full Throttle, The Dig and every Monkey Island game. I'm excited about the new Monkey Island game that's coming up, and the remake of the first game. And Grim Fandango is obviously a huge favourite, as you can tell from my avatar.

The last decade has been a sad period for the adventure genre, but Telltale Games has some good stuff going now, i.e. with the new Sam&Max episodes. I also loved The Longest Journey and its sequel Dreamfall, and am eagerly awaiting a new sequel. (Do you hear that, Funcom?) I'm a sucker for good storytelling, so I might expand my horizon to Mass Effect, which I've heard good stuff about.

Another good adventure game that I think has been overlooked is the Bladerunner game from 1997. It captures the mood from the movie brilliantly, and was very replayable due to the non-linear storyline.

A few years ago I bought a PS2 solely to be able to play Guitar Hero, and I got to be rather good at it. But I haven't played it since GH3 now, and I am a bit rusty. After I bought the console my flatmate pressured me into trying Final Fantasy 10, and I enjoyed it for a while until the grinding part became too pronounced. I might continue it some day though. I also bought Bioshock when it came out, but I haven't gotten very far, as I found the character building stuff annoying. I have promised myself to play through it, though.

Other highlights from my gaming career: Diablo 2 and the expansion, the single player campaign of Starcraft and the expansion, Jedi Knight (aka Dark Forces II) and its sequels, Tie Fighter, Carmageddon, Interstate '76, and Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven.

Crapsticks. my15minutes and I re-played D2 not too long ago.. wish I'd known about this!

There are a bunch of games I re-visit. Dozens in MAME alone, but others like Phantasy Star, Final Fantasy, SMB, Zelda, Metroid. Is anyone else on the sift a speedrun voyuer? I mean I don't do speedruns myself but I love watching them (tool-assisted or not -- both types are interesting).

♥ I LOVE VIDEOGAMES! ♥