Blog / Games

Time for another retro review. This gushing praise of Final Fantasy XII was written on November 5, 2006.

I’m really overjoyed to be able to say that Final Fantasy XII is the best game I’ve played in a long time. Had I known exactly how good it was going to be before it came out I might have died from waiting. It is so good, in fact, that I can bear to forgive its unforgivable sins. Let me cover those first, since I prefer complaining before complimenting.

Continue reading »

What’s the point of Steam Machines? They’re part of Valve’s corporate strategy to not be reliant on Microsoft Windows. With the source to whatever Linux distribution they’re using Valve has complete control over the entire Steam experience. No worries about being locked out of another company’s App Store.

Polygon is very down on these devices and frankly I’m not sure how to argue with that point. Assuming you have a powerful Windows gaming PC, what’s the point of building or buying a Steam PC? I can see Valve’s angle that it pushes gaming PCs more to the mainstream, but to consumers it’s a head scratcher. I have an Xbox 360. Why would I buy an Xbox One? Because Forza 5 and Dead Rising 3 are only available on the Xbox One.

Exclusives. It’s all about exclusives.

Continue reading »

My favorite part of Final Fantasy XIII is near the beginning, when the entire group is gathered in the Pulse fal’cie Vestige. It’s a symphony of stupidity.

Continue reading »

What I miss most while playing Final Fantasy XII is high resolution output. Turns out the Super Nintendo and Playstation 2 are not that far apart in terms of horizontal and vertical screen resolution. While there were huge jumps in processor speed, memory, color, and data storage, you were still plugging a composite video cable into your cathode ray tube television.

Continue reading »

Fourteen years ago I spent New Year’s Eve 1999 playing Asheron’s Call. I wanted to see if I would stay online through the Y2K apocalypse. Turns out Dereth was immune to that particular disaster.

This New Year’s day I spent in Ivalice. Final Fantasy XII is my generation 6 desert island game, a 100-hour epic full of stuff to collect and unlock. I don’t like to think of myself as a completionist, but going very slowly and thoroughly in Assassin’s Creed IV has been awfully rewarding. Plus I have the strategy guide.

You remember strategy guides, right? It’s weird to go back to those older generations and find game features specifically designed to make you buy a $20 book from another company. Tell me the Zodiac Spear’s requirements don’t sound insane. It’s particularly noticeable when compared against the usability of the rest of the game. Final Fantasy XII’s inventory and equipment screens are models for the industry. Its map system often shows the user’s destination and handles multi-floor layouts as well as a 2D depiction can. The license board is easy to grasp and fun to unlock.

Continue reading »

My friend Kelesis is playing Mass Effect for the first time, so I thought I’d dig up my old review of the original game. I’m still a huge fan of the series even given its huge blunders in Mass Effect 2 and 3.

This review originally appeared on November 25, 2007.

I feel like I’ve waited my entire life to play Mass Effect. It’s not just a great RPG fused with a complex shooter, it’s a big kiss to all the sci-fi fans out there. Saying this game borrows elements from Halo, Star Trek and Star Wars is being simplistic. The settings and entire foundation of the plot come from a grab bag of excellent writers: a multitude of aliens and their long-lost Progenitor species from David Brin’s Uplift Saga; an external threat to civilization from Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe; a war against a hive mind insectoid race from Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (hope you’ve read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon); and the annoyance of politics from, oh, the first third of every Jack McDevitt story involving Priscilla Hutchins. I always wanted a video game set in one of those books, but what Bioware delivered is a game in all of them. I could not be more pleased.

Continue reading »

When autosaving was first introduced in gaming it was feared that, without manual saves, games could lock you into a cycle of death. Imagine getting a checkpoint in Halo just after a plasma grenade attaches to you. Boom! … forever.

Even with manual saves I’m stuck in my own cycle of death in Final Fantasy XIII. I made it to Gran Pulse at the save point just before the Esper Hecatoncheir. Because the game is so friggin’ boring I didn’t do enough grinding to be able to beat him. And due to a combination of my own skill slash stupidity I can’t go backwards and fight previous enemies to level up. There’s a robot with really wide arms blocking my passageway back into the crappy mines. I don’t know how I slipped by him before but I definitely can’t defeat him in combat now. So either I take two steps forward to my death or twenty steps backwards to my death. Or surrender twenty-five hours and restart. Delightful.

Continue reading »

Ratchet and Clank: Into the Nexus is the first Ratchet game I’ve ever played. Got it free from a friend and have been thoroughly enjoying myself. Platforming-wise I’ve always been a Nintendo boy and it’s interesting to see how Playstation thinks platformers should operate. Ratchet is so much bouncier than Mario. It seems like he runs with his whole body rather than being a steadicam on legs.

There’s also guns. I guess Ratchet having guns is kind of the differentiating factor of the entire series. I have a space pistol, space grenades, space shotgun and a space robot turret guy. The weapons are interesting in visual design and execution rather than a whole new method of killing. Haven’t discovered any Needlers, for instance.

Continue reading »

Why aren’t collector’s editions of games sold without the game?

Assassin’s Creed IV is a great example. The limited edition gets you a pirate flag, statue, art book and soundtrack CDs. A nice package for a nice game. It also comes with the game itself… which you haven’t played. Game publishers have aggressive advertising teams but the consumers buying these special editions don’t know if they like the game yet. Steve Rogers wonders about the punishment coming after the crime, and I wonder about the affinity coming after the encounter.

Continue reading »

Want to stop complaining about modern video games? Fire up an emulator and play some second-string Super Nintendo titles.

Last night I played Lagoon, a SNES RPG I vividly remember renting from Blockbuster about a thousand times. Here’s the entire plot, non-abridged: the world’s water is becoming muddy. You’re the son/disciple/whatever of some awesome magician guy. Find out what’s going on and fix it.

Continue reading »