Video Games

I picked up Final Fantasy XIII at midnight on Monday, March 8, and now, after 50 hours of wonderful gameplay, I am watching the credits role. I figured that I would throw my thoughts on the game here while their fresh in my mind.

First off, this game is beautiful. There has been no other game that even comes close to this level of graphical detail, and the long wait for the game was definetley worth it. As I said, I spent 50 hours on the game, and that was just the main story, I have yet to touch the side quests (I’m going to work on that next). From everything that I’ve read, the side quests make up an additional 60+ hours of gameplay, and they are supposed to be just as interesting, albeit without the rich storyline of the main game.

Speaking of the storyline, lets go there for a moment. Most games today have simple stories with very few players,  but FFXIII shines here, and more than lives up to the title of Final Fantasy. The crystals are there, which any long-time fan of the series will tell you is endearing, as not every entry into the series has used this major theme. The characters are well developed, but at no time does the story feel like it drags on. There’s no 30 minute cut-scenes like some games (::cough:: MGS4 ::cough::), and the times when there are cut-scenes, you don’t care because they are breathtaking. They equal if not exceed the quality of CG movies today.

The gameplay: The game plays like a dream. The battle system is insanely intricate and complex by the end of the game, but yet it comes easily to the player. SquareEnix did a wonderful job in designing the game just by never forcing the player to feel like a stumbling fool. The paradigm system is intuitive, allowing the player to easily shift between attacking, healing, buffing, and just about any other combination of abilities. The actual paradigm classes themselves work much the same way that job classes worked in some of the past games. Healers heal, Sentinels take the brunt of the damage, Ravagers are magic users, Commandos are physical attackers, Synnergists give helpful buffs to the party, Saboteurs give harmful buffs to the enemies…

Now, as I said, I haven’t really touched the side quests at all, but I’m sure I’ll post something else when I finish that. It could be a while though, I’m going for the platinum trophy on this game, and that could require a couple hundred hours of gameplay, lol. At least it is not time wasted on a shitty game.

So, until next time.

The game that I have been waiting for what seems like forever (five years) for, is finally almost here. For those of you who aren’t in touch with the wonderful world of gaming, Final Fantasy XIII, possibly the most anticipated video game of all time, is just around the corner. In just over two weeks we will finally arrive at March 9, 2010, and I will finally be able to play this wonderful game. I guess there is a good side to getting disqualified from the Air Force after all!

Anyway, with the game getting so close, I figured that I would share some of the beauty of this game with all of you. I have altered the wallpapers available on SquarEnix’s offical FFXIII website so that they will fit widescreen (why they didn’t have them formatted that way by default, I have no idea). Those are the images that you’ll find below. I’m also going to include a trailer for the game, if only because it is so damned pretty!!!

So, without further ado, here you go.