PSX Final Fantasy 7

Whether I get any backlash over this or not all depends upon the irate fan base that seems to worship this game above and beyond all games as, and I quote "It's da bestest game evar!" You can add your own childish voice to that line however you wish. While I'm open to admit that it's a game, it is ground breaking in its own ways and certainly seemed to open up the Japanese RPG genre to a lot of people around the world. It is by no means a game that should be held in such high regard as the "OMG #1 GAME!!11!!" as often touted by many idiots that rightly deserve to be shown some 8 bit classics or just need to get out a little more often and talk with real people.

Final Fantasy 7; even I have to admit to having a huge interest in the game when I first saw it advertised with the 3D models showing combat in based around turn/time based ordering, menu based attack systems and realising that it alone would require strategy rather than most games at the time having the need to hammer a button, repeatedly, to beat boss x, y and z before getting a credits screen.

The plot is enormous for the time. First runs often taking 60+ hours to get through (assuming you have the patience) which pales into some games today having over 120 hours of game play (padded by HUGE expanses of sitting around doing sweet fuck all...). You assume the role of "Cloud" a spiky headed hairdo of a caucasian with an improbably big sword compensating for a lack of trouser filling. You get to follow cloud through futuristic/fantasy setting from being a terrorist (you tell me blowing up stuff and killing innocents doesn't make you one and I'll point to 2 former towers) to leading a renegade terrorist group into overthrowing a company executive that runs most of the planet, escaping said capital city into an open world filled with towns, villages, ports, all with their own issues and difficulties while following one silver haired man with a big sword (more trouser department issues) and stopping him from destroying the planet because he believes himself to be descended from higher beings and being told he was an experiment set off the emo trip of destruction. Sadly they all look like dolls in shop and any attempt to express emotion is met with the same gormless facial expression.

In a nut shell; There's a lot more going on than just this with motor bike races, double crosses, killing off main characters (not a first in any game nor any Final Fantasy game for that matter either...) developing character and plot (except around Cloud who remains as confused and sword stabby as always just with a little more purpose and a better understanding of his history, that nobody really bothered to tell us about and we just wish he'd tone down the hair-gel!) Racing and breeding of large birds, submarines, Command & Conquer strategy moments, huge monsters, big fights, large annoying bosses and level grinding like a bastard.

Can't beat that boss on level 10? Run around like a retard for 20 minutes, fighting every little random (yes it's random encounter time or as I like to phrase it "computer says fuck you" time) encounter until you come back and can kill the boss just by waving your hairstyle at it or staring really hard.

I could go into every little intricacy of plot but the line "Guy joins terrorists and then realises greater threat, has to save the world" does it perfectly, maybe adding "p.s. Flashy effects ahead"

Cloud isn't alone, at any time he will have up to 2 other people directly with him and will be fighting alongside him which will be intermittently determined by the game when someone plot focused is forced into the view and you HAVE to take along the one character you didn't level up and play with because they looked/sounded/were shit or you'd already invested 20 hours in someone else and now forced to play with another character is just a waste of your time and preferences. Each of these chars will join, take over the story, and then take a back seat while you pick the 2 chars you really want with you the whole time based on usually just "I like the look".

You've the big angry black guy stereo type that swears a lot, the big titted love interest with the world's strongest lower back, the dainty intelligent girl that is better with spells than anything else and gets killed for being dull and to remove the pointlessly forced love triangle bullshit, an old guy with a hatred for most things thanks to losing his dreams, a talking cat stuffed toy comic relief character with just as comical special moves, a talking lion/dog/tiger thing that acts mysterious and speaks in an aloof fashion to make it seem he is more interesting than he really is. Completing the ensemble are the bonus characters of a mopey man with even more of a depressing story to his grief than the main characters and a token young girl ninja with more leg on show than KFC at peak hours who is playing the ditzy-but-determined clueless kid.

It's all much of a similarity that you can't find in your usual anime shows and about as complex in narrative as you'd expect.

The story ambles along at the rate at which you play and succeed. Pointless back stories and histories can even involve their own fights which pads the time you're spending and making absolutely zero progress. Getting into a fight in a back-story is one of the most ridiculous wastes of time I've seen, even if to show off one character that will be the last boss. WE KNOW he's meant to be tough, just do a flashy FMV of it instead. Back stories have the characters being forced to run around locations and talk to characters or go to locations until the right ones are done in the right order to progress plot and get the fuck on with the main story.

My gripe aside however...

Foreshadowing is used in varying degrees where some new char might show up, then be fought moments later, while the bigger opponents are given more time to be evil then offed in over the top battles. Sometimes a boss comes out of nowhere and it's a case of "yep... lets fight it" including the ones that talk to you about what's going on. Plot points can be entirely over looked at times and knowing where to go next simply becomes the point of just looking at the map and seeing which location you've not been to lately or haven't been to at all.

Combat is the usual affair for the game making up the majority of the game's structure when it's not reading text, missing some Japanese cultural jokes and watching long videos of nothing happening. It's the usual turn based system picking to fight, cast magic, summon attacks, use items, run off or other extra commands based around whichever coloured ball you pick up and put in your characters inventory.

Magic and extra functions are determined by small coloured balls you assign to a weapon or armour item. Green ones being magical spells, blue ones boost green effects from elemental inclusion to attack lots/multiple times, yellow ones give bonus commands like morphing and power attacks, red ones summon powerful creatures capable of high damage until you reach the later stages of the game when your standard attack out classes them (except for ONE summon... that takes far too long to cast), and purple balls that change stats like health and magic/mana or permit things like countering, more passive abilities.

There's a fairly complex mechanic behind this system where you can pair up some balls to get attacks that drain health from the enemy at the same time, or attack when you die which can resurrect the dead character, counter attacking with summons or spells or boosting the power of various attacks and defences. You slowly get drawn into it with the few spells like cure and lightning attacks, the more you use them, the more exp they gain and the more power spells become opened to you. Bonus points for getting maxed out EXP on the coloured balls and getting the master ones that give you everything, which you already HAVE! Another redundant reward.

The game has a plethora of items and weapons to throw at you with various effects, each char has their own weapon types, various armours and bangles are worn by all or specific to gender/race. Combined with the colour ball mechanic allows for pairing balls, multiplied exp growth for the balls and such. (Yes it's called materia, I'm using balls). Where you can put your most powerful balls together to get different effects, ball pairing was never so calculatingly fun (...no). By the end of the game you'll have so many that you'll be longing for an Optimal function and at one point your carefully collected and planned ball set will be taken away and mixed up and you're left feeling the game has fucked with you once again and you'll never get the combination back that you had before. All of your hard, progressive work, undone again.

Doesn't help that the under aged ninja kid steals all your balls in a side-quest that involves a guy you had to cross-dress for earlier in the game and if done right, lusts for Cloud more than BiggyTits and DeadByDisc1Girl.

Though despite this, it's possible to get through the game with the basic spells and attacks with a few items to help out. The only challenges that could present are the creatures that require a specific tactic (i.e. they nullify all attacks, or need potions to unlock their vulnerable sides... like that ever made sense) in order to progress further. With enough grinding of levels and stats, most bosses and enemies will fall after hitting them enough times.

There's some lengthy side quests you have to undertake if you want the more powerful "I AM GOD" abilities and spells that take up more time to cast them just to show off something before the bigger numbers land on the screen indicating strength and damage. But really the battles and the plot are two different games and the jumps from one to another all serve as a distraction from the alternative. When you're fighting you want progression, when you're progressing plot, you'd rather be fighting.

The biggest grievance though is the "finding yourself" segment of the plot, it can take over 45minutes of walking around and trying to activate the objects in the room just to unlock more videos and more text showing something that could have been fixed very quickly in just one scene without the unnecessary egg hunt for the trigger to move the game onwards.

For the hardcore, there's bonus bosses to fight, breeding racing birds and seeking the elite one to get the ultimate unlocks, bonus characters with their own storylines or the self imposed runs of "items only" for the truly depraved and self-depreciating individual. Though the game is already long enough as it is. As such it suffers the "rush it at the end" approach where the final parts of the game are just a long slog through the last dungeon filled with the toughest things so far that still die too quickly for your army-slaughtering, over-powered, warriors, to then kill the last few bosses and get the credit sequence. You just want it over by then but the game is forcing you to play it out a bit longer.

Dying in the game is the end and you'll have to go back to the last save point. If you've not saved in a while and you're surprised by a bonus enemy or secret boss without warning, you're going to be doing a LOT of backtracking to get there for round 2, or just quit the game and look it up online.

Graphically the game switches in and out of super cute deformed characters when in the over world, to pseudo anime style in battles while the FMVs switch up from one to the other with the more detailed and higher polygon graphics turning up towards the end of the game. Compare the first videos with the very basic looking models in FMVs to the last video of Cloud before the final fight and see the huge difference in styles. The lack of consistency makes me wonder just how many changes were made throughout the game. The fights themselves take the opportunity to showcase just how overboard they can go with the engine with 3D shifts and pan shots of the combatants, close-ups and zooms for attacks and power moves like they're going out of fashion in a pre-graduates media project, though you can appreciate that given the time, they likely felt that HAD to over sell it from the sprite based combat they'd had previously.

Music and sounds are rather lacklustre until the more epic pieces kick in, sound effects often sound muted and grainy and lack the impact of better quality audio that was available at the time and thankfully, no voice actors means I can imagine the large angry black man having a high pitched squeaky voice while the cute big titted girl sounds like an 80-a-day chain-smoker. I like having the choice to perceive the annoying how I choose and thankfully not with some overly cute, childish voice that fits an 8 year old kid. Having to imagine her say "I love you" while wheezing and hacking up carcinogenic lumps of her lungs, was far more entertaining them most of this game.

Nostalgia however is the biggest problem. Too many people are putting this game up as a 'wonder of gaming' all the world over and while it does have its charm and appeal, the flaws in the game are becoming more and more apparent as time goes on. No it's not because the graphics have changed, the same story is still there but it's done and done better before and since this game.

Going on a date with the only other guy in the party is still funny though.

There's a lot more going on beneath the surface but you'll need some very in depth guides and FAQs to get to them and in ways that most people will never find nor bother to find. Only once did I manage to get Cloud to go on a date with someone other than Aeris and while it wasn't intentional, certainly was amusing, though I was called out for being a liar at school until years later when it was discovered not only that it could be done but HOW to do it too. It's all about choices, I just happened to make the right ones.

Replay factor... likely most people will play this once or twice, once to just experience the game and generic story and a second time (if they didn't do this already), to get all the things they missed like the super powerful summons and spells, easily missed items by accidentally completing a dungeon too soon and so on. Or the really odd items you can miss by not having character X with the team at time Y armed with item Z for a one-off chance to find something. That "fair" way of missing something you'd never have had otherwise nor would know to look, or even care, without a guide.

Of course having a character that has a special attack called Game Over, is always fun. As it does exactly that. Game Over, no recovery, no escape. What fun THAT is after 3 hours without saving... I seriously would love to be in on that meeting "Let's put in a move that either kills the opponent flawlessly or if they fuck up the timing, kills the players" and gob-smacking every bastard who said "YES" to that proposal.

To give it credit, the game did usher in and make more accessible the Japanese style RPGs to a new generation of console and open up the genre to even more people than the hardcore RPG players, but it could have it done it in a much better and more enjoyable way.

Now it's time for me to gel my hair up and grab a sword, I've a giant chicken to rescue. And yes, Cait-Sith dying was more touching for me than Aeris.

PSX: Silent Hill

Killed your wife? Taking a drive down a long country out-back American road at night? Adopted someone a few years back? On the run with a father who won’t tell you why you’re running? Moved into an apartment stalked by a creepy kid? Come back from wars to a family with dubious history and a dead brother? Get yourself put in prison to avenge the death of your son?

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” then you’re a prime candidate for my favourite holiday vacation spot. Silent Hill.

Yes I am unbalanced.  Yes I probably deserve to spend eternity there, yes I’ll enjoy it.

For every fan of Silent Hill, they will have their own favourite game, their one game they prefer over the others and likely will use it as beacon of might against the comments, praises and criticism of other games and their own. Using it to bat away reason and logic with the fan attitude of “it’s good so shut up you’re dumb” and we’re once again sat back in the playground fighting over which console will kick which other console’s ass, despite them being inanimate objects. But oh well.

Silent Hill, is my preferred game of the series. I’m already hearing some people saying “no... it’s (insert game here)” but then this is all about preference and while I do prefer this game I’m going to be fair to this game and harsh. However, given the number of times I’ve played it, the times I’ve seen each ending, the times I’ve looked in every nook and cranny, I could write a thesis on the plot of the game alone before I even touch upon the rest of the series.

Which is why this game is so good.

Silent Hill, follows a simple premise initially. You’re a father character, driving along the road at night in the outback of Someplace, USA, with your daughter asleep in the car. A cop over takes you while you’re driving along, a little while further you see the cop’s bike with no rider, then you see someone on the road and you crash your car avoiding them.  You awaken a short time later, step out of the car and see your kid running off through the fog and mist of the local town. Following her and shouting, she runs off and leads you down an alleyway, you start to see gurney’s, wheelchairs still spinning their wheels and then something attacks you, running back the route is blocked and you’re butchered by things with claws (and depending on your nationality, it may or may not have a head).

Waking up in a cafe with the cop that over took you earlier, you set out to be attacked by more monsters, find the series eponymous radio that shouts static whenever monsters are near (as if the grunting and footsteps didn’t give it away while signalling to monsters that walking food is near) and go looking for your daughter lost in the town.

Play it long enough and you’ll find a cult trying to bring about the birth of a God/Demon, references to various religious mythologies of angels and demons, a behind the scenes battle between a mother and daughter using otherworldly powers and trinkets, other inhabitants fighting the effects of the Silent Hill as it switches from various states of being from dark to light and back to normal, leaving the player to guess as to who is controlling what, why the town has separate states of being. Whose side is who really on and how best to for the main char to bumble their way through the game.  Eventually you can work out the metaphysical chess game going on between two of the main characters, the player character being a random (seemingly) element in all this for the moment.

You will be hand fed some snippets of the game through the scripted CGI scenes (admittedly from a time where CGI always looked better than the main game and people pondered “I wonder if games will look as good as these scenes”, incidentally, games look BETTER nowadays), you’ll find the underlying plot, vague references of why you should to co-ordinate (X, Y) and on the way hopefully grab the guns you need to blow away the baddies, solve the puzzles (and some are real mind benders) and save the day or condemn it. Yep, it’s multiple ending time and in this game, it depends all on what you actually do and with what. Finding an obscure item and using it on a boss will determine the + or – of either the good or bad ending, the finding of a character, saving them and solving THEIR mission will determine the overall good or bad ending.

Most people will get the bad ending on their first run through. I did, and that encouraged me into the next game to do better and see more.

What makes this game so enjoyable though, is not the acting of the characters, while are decidedly B-Movie in delivery but it does add to the atmosphere. It is not the awkward sidestep controls or the poor aiming (deliberate given that the main char is NOT an accurate sharpshooter, and most people in THIS kind of circumstance would be, admittedly, shit), it’s the overall atmosphere and discovery the player makes that is beyond the main character. Seeing and understanding are two different things, logically working out the tumblers behind the plot and rationalising it is a step beyond and the most rewarding for any player.

The game is not without faults however, while today’s games are above and beyond what Silent Hill can do graphically, it can be fired up a little with various emulators that boost the original graphics (and interestingly lets you seem them more clearly than the original game permitted), the layouts of various “dungeons” and “mazes” can be frustrating when you have to check EVERY door of a place, and every room to find the one item you might need to progress and you know that if you miss a door, you’re screwed and WILL have to go back. On top of that, failing to find the maps can be worthy of a restart, especially if you somehow miss the hospital map. Though town maps (the later and last area of the town especially) can be missed and yet you can still progress, barely. It does add a new sensation to actually be running blindly through a town with no clue where you’re headed.

Puzzles, like in a lot of games of this genre, can be frustrating when first encountered and though they’re not always use Item A on Thingy B to get Item C, some have cryptic clues with cryptic answers such as the silent piano puzzle with the clue about black and white birds, requiring a knowledge of birds and their predominant physical appearances (missing a chance to use the “common shag” and “great tit” while we’re at it). Solving the puzzles like this are highly rewarding but once it’s done, it’s over. Solving the puzzle of “get the 3 keys” is a fetch quest and no more a puzzle than finding jam, butter and bread and resulting in a sandwich. Tasty, but not rewarding, unless you’re hungry.

The game itself doesn’t go for the later editions use of jump scares (except that one with the cat... in the locker... in the dark world... have fun!) but uses audio and a distinct lack of what you can see to build suspense before delivery, usually hearing a monster LONG before you can see it and then the camera shifts slightly as it gets closer before gradually materialising out of the darkness/fog/snow/poor-render-distance and becoming the threat it always was to you. New fights and monsters are usually introduced with some very atmospheric ambient music akin to thrash music comprising of sound effects rather than actual instruments used in a conventional sense (see the track “die” for one of the more pulse inducing ones) though more sombre moments are brought with a slow accompaniment and actual instrumental scoring for the track “Not Tomorrow” used to bring a truly depressing moment into outright despair.

Admittedly, entering one large room that was difficult to see within, with a loud ambient music in the background, caused me to turn around and just go “nope”, forcing me to explore the map twice just in case I’d missed something before going back into that room to find there was NOTHING in there. No enemies, no monsters, no items. Just a room with a few set pieces of obstruction and another doorway leading out. I’d been played for an idiot and loved every second of it.

As I said though, it’s the subtle things that work best. Going into the hospital in the light version of the town, going to the lift and seeing the 3 buttons and checking each floor and the door leading out to find them all locked is nothing compared to getting back in and seeing a 4^th floor button somehow just “there”. No magic noise, no dinging in the background to signal to you “HEY WE DID SOMETHING!” it’s just there and looks like it always has been to the point that you wonder if you actually did miss seeing that there in the first place. THAT is the subtlety involved and once going to that 4^th floor and stepping out, realising you’re now outside the map, becomes a dreaded exploration before you realise you’re being drawn over into the dark version of the town and the fun is going to begin again.

In closing, I love this game as one of the few games that genuinely scared the shit out of me and left me thinking I was hearing voices in the darkness of my bedroom. I long for the days a game will do that again to me.