JRPG Musings and My Final Fantasy Marathon

March 14th, 2009

final-fantasy-origins

When it comes to 3D games, my preferred genre of choice is action/adventure, and for 2D games, it’d have to be the platformer. Platformer is a little too broad a definition as the games within this genre often encompass action, puzzle and role playing elements – it’s more or less the 8/16bit equivalent of the action adventure. Super Mario Bros, Shinobi, Castlevania are all justified examples of games straddling between genre conventions. On the whole, I guess you could say that I’m an enthusiast of the action/adventure genre of any make up.

I’ve always been interested in RPGs, but less conventionally so than the typical RPG player. My brother is a good example of that type of player, so my tastes are roughly derived of titles that occasionally interest me from his side of the collection. This makes for a seemingly diverse, perhaps sporadic interest in the genre, with my favourite games including Lufia 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem and Golden Sun.

On second thoughts, are these titles honestly less conventional? Maybe it’s just due to our natural assertion of the typical RPG being a JRPG, where the titles listed -although Japanese made- are less traditional in that sense. Lufia is less well known/niche-y, FF:Tactics and Fire Emblem are Strategy RPGs with a European thematic, and Golden Sun is a more modern distillation of the genre with a strong adventuring influence.

This conclusion may suggest that I’m less interested in the JRPG in itself, which is probably a fair assumption. JRPGs are very iterative, with only modest modifications between each installment, or so it can be argued. I’m no doubt interested in this genre from an observer’s point of view, but am hardly a player with a rich JRPG history. I love Metal Gear not Final Fantasy dammit!

I will admit that on several occasions I unsuccessfully tried to break into the conventional JRPG mold with attempts given at Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX (twice on the latter actually), unfortunately my interested ensued rather quickly. Maybe I should’ve tried the real JRPG touchstones of the day like Phantasy Star and Dragon Quest, I’m not sure.

Whatever the case, I have finally rebooted my foray into the traditional JRPG genre, beginning with Final Fantasy Origins on the PSone (it contains the first two games). In fact, if you’ve been following me on Twitter (and please don’t, the service is clearly works only for pretentious fags*) then you’ll know that I’ve completed Final Fantasy and am already a good portion through the Final Fantasy II adventure. Yay for steadfast progress.

Although there isn’t much benefit in playing the games sequentially, I’ve decided to play them this way in a kind of marathon format. It seems only trendy nowadays for people to diminish their old-game-shame list with a hasty marathon, it’s only fitting for a blog as trendy as this one. Zing! With the progress I’m making, I can probably catch up on the complete series before the next 20 second chunk of video for Final Fantasy XIII is released.

As expected I’ll be writing up my thoughts for consumption soon. I usually have a steady string of new posts, sitting on the side lines waiting to be uploaded to DanielPrimed, but I haven’t been in the writing mood the past few days and am left more or less high and dry. Obviously I want to write about this marathon which I’ve been on for the past 2-3 weeks, I’ve finally finished reading the Metal Gear Solid novel too and will be sharing my thoughts as well as a dot point comparison of nuances between book, game and lore. I’m probably going to can my Syphon Filter: LS writing and instead wrap a few great ideas into a deeply personal critique of the series in relation to early 90s action cinema and my childhood. I do want to analyze the Aussie bloke; Dane Bishop in Logan’s Shadow though as he’s a particularly interesting character. That’s a bit of a teaser, I guess. Been prepping a lot of Chinese articles for my Chinese blog lately, including a 2000 character gaming manifesto which I’m very proud of. Look forward to hitting my groove again while I pray some of this university homework would disappear.

Getting back on track, if you have any advice for tackling the series, or any of the games in particular then please make me aware via the comments.

*Been pondering a way to prove this through the linguistic make-up of the service and spin it into an interesting article. Still thinking…

Microtransactions: In-game iPods and Vagrant Story PSP

February 9th, 2009

vagrant-story-psp

Something that I’ve discovered over my time writing about games is that sometimes I think of some really neat ideas that unfortunately don’t hold enough weight to substantiate a single article. I quite lazily just let these ideas slip in favour of something a bit more fully fledged. On the other hand, when it comes to some bigger ideas I’ve perhaps written too extensively about them (*dodges tomatoes while writing another Metal Gear article*). So in order to strike a balance, I figured that maybe I could package these smaller ideas into a single, re-occurring post, add a 95 cent price tag and hence I called it Micro-Transactions. You’ll get the gist.

More iPod in Games

Metal Gear Solid 4 – oh wait, I thought I wasn’t going to do that – introduced the idea of equipping and listening to an in-game iPod while playing. It’s a neat little idea that has many benefits like the pre-installed and later downloadable podcasts offered by the development team, which is similar to optional voice commentary for DVDs. Littering music tracks around the levels also provides an interesting alternative to rewarding players for exploration.

I wonder when we’ll see this idea more widely adopted. I personally loved the idea of scouting out songs to play on the go. If such a service was available through the console interface itself (and activated within game), then this would be an excellent platform for bridging the original soundtrack, director commentary and your own music collection stored on the internal hard drive. I have a PS3, so I think that the interface on pressing the PS button could serve well to accommodate such a feature. Furthermore, what about games which offered free music tracks as rewards. I mean some of us complain about how game music should be free to take, because we own the game. Why not just include DRM-free MP3s as unlockables within the game, providing the option to download them to disc.

The developer podcasts could act as free downloadable content (incentives for both developers who get to voice their feelings and publishers whose game receives added attention for the new content). Then there could be sponsored advertising channels/radio stations/regulated news casts. So many interesting possibilities.

Vagrant Story PSP

It honestly frustrates me to think of all this talk of the PSP being on its way out. Just like the excuses that the PSP was a flop, this holds no weight (case in point, Sony have dug 30 million plus consoles into a previously Nintendo only market). The console has plenty of life left in it and while it is true; the past few months have been notably quiet, the PSP seems to be getting another shot in the arm this year, thanks largely to Square Enix.

Much like they did with the DS, S-E are saturating the console with a series of exclusives and ports with games like Final Fantasy Dissidia, Third Birthday, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Star Ocean: Second Evolution. Many of their other PSP titles have included updated ports like Final Fantasy I + II, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth and Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.

With all this said, it would be great if S-E ported over their other PSone game set in Ivalice – the first being FF Tactics – Vagrant Story. Unlike the other few ports, Vagrant Story is much more technological intensive game and would only require a few small alterations to retrofit it to the PSP’s widescreen technology. Also the (needlessly) complex item crafting system could be made easier with online trading of items. Again, just pondering.

Stepping Up

January 26th, 2009

Just a small buzz to all of you who play games online; I registered for a Playstation Network and Xbox/GFW Live ID last week. I never play games online and I expect that even with these two screen names in hand that’ll probably not change much. Actually I don’t even have an Xbox 360 – I was forced to create a handler for a friend’s Rock Band – so that will make chances even slimmer.

Since I don’t have (and don’t intend on buying) an Xbox 360, the Playstation Network ID is the only address worth sharing. I have Call of Duty 4, Resistance: Fall of Man and Metal Gear Online which all have multiplayer online componenets, as well as Home and whatever other features come built in. To be honest I don’t even know if I will even bother playing these games online, I will give it a shot no doubt but perhaps just to see what it’s like. I honestly don’t have the time, nor commitment to any one game to be an active participant in the online community. Hell, I rarely ever leave comments at other people’s blogs.

In ancase, if you’re online and want to add me; DanielPrimed is the screen name for both services. I have a head set too and would love to play/talk games with you.

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