Blue Dragon

This is going to be one of those "first impressions" posts, and yes, I know that Blue Dragon has been out for a while now. I was dragging my feet on buying it because I played the Demo on Live and wasn't very impressed with it. Fresh off of finishing a console RPG for a change (Enchanted Arms), I had sixty bucks burning a hole in my pocket. I went for it.

The noticeable thing about Blue Dragon is that it feels more like Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy XII does. I'd qualify that as a good thing. I'm not super fond of the character styling. I enjoy the music. It's got that FF vibe to it. None of this should come as a surprise, really. When the man behind the FF series goes off and creates a RPG, what kind of RPG can you expect?

It's interesting to me that Blue Dragon came and went without a lot of noise. If you slapped the name Final Fantasy on this game, I imagine that the reaction would've been much different. I'd be bold enough to say that the words "Instant Classic" might've been used. To be fair, I'm not terribly far into the game. Around ten hours, but I can see potential here despite my disagreement with the character style (note that I'm ok with the rest of the game's art direction). There's a number of people that clamored for FF on the Xbox, and when they got a taste of it, they didn't seem to like it. It could be that it's simply my enjoyment of (most things) FF, but I dig Blue Dragon, it does things right.

For starters there are no more random encounters, at least in the traditional RPG sense. I can't explain how happy this makes me. Of my favorite RPGs over the past few years all of them have done away with random battles. It's a legacy system that pads game time. It's also outlived its purpose. Games can be shortened these days, there's no reason to tout your game as an eighty hour game when half that time is spent step, step, FIGHT, step, step, FIGHT.

Shadow classes certainly seem like a well thought out concept, and allow you to customize a character (although there still seems to be the danger of homogenous characters since everyone can be everything) well enough. I enjoy the combat, with there being at least a tiny bit of thinking involved (hopefully the turn based strategy aspects will increase as I get further in). I'm not sold on the story, but then again the last game to really hook me with its story was Xenosaga. Every game since I've played for the sake of playing, which is probably why I've played so few RPGs over the past couple of years. Without a story to hook into, the combat has to be exceptional (at least on par with WoW's in terms of keeping me interested).

The reviews on the web have been all over the place about Blue Dragon. I haven't read any of them, of course, I checked Game Rankings to get the general feel. Most reviews seem to place Blue Dragon below average, which I find interesting. As I eluded earlier, if this game had the Final Fantasy tag on it, it would've had greater fanfare attached to it. Whether it's deserving of that fanfare is something I'm hoping to find out.

Fire It Up

There was some talk about reviving old Gamer's Logik, but I think that like an old dog, sometimes you have to let things die. There is some history to that place, for those of us who care to remember. GL was on the brink, and with the way game journalism has changed in the past couple of years, it's entirely possible that GL could've gone on to big things. GL was in a perfect position to capitalize on the blog explosion. Instead it's going to fade into obscurity except for those few of us that remember what might of been.

I don't often think on the past, unless it's something dramatic. I try to learn my lessons and move forward with my life. I tend to think about GL off and on. I know I played my part, both in GL getting to the brink, and it slowly fading away. It'd be foolish of me to take all the blame, I think anyone who was on staff during that time that sat by and let things deteriorate is to blame. I digress, however.

The main purpose of this post is to let the few people that still read this know that some of us are picking up and moving shop. Code's got a fire under his ass and wants to get a new site up and running. So behold, Hit-points! I have no idea how the site's going to end up looking in the end, but for those that are wondering if this thing is actually going to happen, the answer is yes. All I need is a design, and I can start building this bad boy. You'll notice that we're using WordPress to power the site. It's an interesting challenge from a technical perspective. I'm going to have to hack WordPress a bit to get everything we want done, and I'm still wondering how to handle having forums and WordPress comments integrate together, but with the advent of RSS feeds and using software like WordPress, hopefully the long draughts of content like GL had won't occur.

This site may fail, and it may fail miserably. This time, I hope it won't be because the people in charge of things vanish.

Enchanted Arms > FFXII

A statement that's most likely to get me marked as a heretic, but I've never been afraid to buck the general trends this way (I still feel that FF8 was the best of the PS FFs. Two statements like that in one post!). Anyways, I was talking with CodyG when I reached this assessment. Stay with me on this one, because I think there's truth here.

When I first heard about FFXII and the new combat system, I heard everyone compare it to MMORPG style of combat. People moaned about the end of days at this. I thought it could be cool. FFXI had some exceptional concepts in its combat system, of course they depended on playing with other people. Executing them in a single player game might be an issue, but they were still fun and interesting. WoW's combat is busy enough (if you're not healing) that you're never really bored. As I heard people lament this change I scratched my head. MMORPG combat can be very entertaining. Upon playing FFXII it became clear that none of these people have actually played MMORPGs, because the combat in FFXII is an aberration that never should have occurred. Like some spawn of Satan, it ruined one of the steadiest franchises in the RPG universe.

It's enough, I think, that most RPGs these days already remove interaction with the story for the most part (especially SE RPGs), but removing the vast majority of interaction with the combat was a huge mistake. I'm sure I've said that before, but it needs to be said again. That brings me back to the title of the post. I've recently been playing Enchanted Arms, and it's the first console game outside of Fire Emblem and Xenosaga to hold my attention. Yea, its story is below the level of what you'd find in the bargain bin of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section of a book store, and the voice acting is so awesome that I skip it every chance I get, but at least the combat is entertaining. The grid could be bigger, but at least there's depth there that you can control. Unlike FFXII's completely awesome AI scripting for dummies system. I can't speak too much to how the stories compare, because I never got far enough in FFXII for the story to even hook me (and I'm around 15 hours or so into FFXII). If I give you 15 hours, and you can't keep me playing your game then either your story sucks, your game is too long, or your game is horrible. In this case I can safely say that FFXII is a horrible game.

It must be that I've been out of the loop on what's rocking in this great series of tubes, because I haven't heard this opinion very much. Seems like everyone is fawning over SE's scraps. I guess what I read a few year's back is true. SE could put shit in a box and people would buy it by the millions and then ask for more.

PAX

Let me start out with this. I had an incredible time at PAX. Hanging out with my best friend for the first time in nearly two years was part of it, the other was the general excitement of the event itselt. I will say that I was a bit disappointed with the Exhibit Hall. I made the rounds and saw just about everything in the hour and a half or so that I had on Friday (my friend's Thursday flight was canceled, so we ended up picking him up in Seattle, where his flight was delayed, making our arrival time to Seattle around 3:00, instead of noon if he had arrived on Thursday night). Saturday was largely spent examining specific booths in particular. There were some neat looking table top games there (that weren't Wizards of the Coast). One was a pirate based game where you gathered gold and attacked other ships. I didn't drop any money on it, but it still looked pretty cool.

I got to play Fury, an entirely pvp based MMORPG. I'm not sure how much more of the game there really is, but we were stuck in one big free for all arena. I didn't enjoy that too much, it felt like a FPS only slower and without the need to aim. The appeal of MMOs for me is the cooperative aspects, both in pve and pvp. The game looked nice, and the skills seemed interested enough. I snagged a demo, or beta, I still haven't gone through the swag that I picked up yet. Hopefully I'll be able to check this out more.

I passed on the chance to play Warhammer Online, it looked way too much like a WoW clone. I realize that Blizzard took from Warhammer first, but if I wanted to play a game like WoW, I might as well play WoW. The one neat thing I overheard was that you can get experience by killing people in pvp. I watched for a bit, but didn't get to play Pirates of the Burning Sea. Here's a game that could be interesting. You pilot a ship for a large part of the game, and then you can land in port and walk around like other MMOs. At least that's the gist I got from it. Pirates! was one of my favorite games back in the day. A MMO version of it seems like it'd be worth a shot.

NCSoft had a large presence there. They were pimping Guild Wars and Tabula Rasa. If you go way back in the archives you'll find some talk about how Tabula Rasa was a game that I was looking forward to. I picked up a beta key while I was there and I'll be giving it a whirl. What little I played of it at the convention wasn't super impressive. The interface isn't quite as intuitive as WoW's, but the gameplay seemed solid.

On the console side I gave Dynasty Warriors: Gundam a go. There was nothing new to the gameplay that I saw. It's probably going to be Dynasty Warriors with a new skin. That's not a bad thing, either. I also played some PS3 game where you fly a dragon and went and killed things. Was not impressed in the slightest. I enjoyed Ace Combat 6, but the conclusion my friend and I came to was that it's one of those games you rent for a weekend and enjoy the hell out of but that you don't die. I watched the Mass Effect demo. I'm almost sold on it. I wish I would've paid more attention to see if it's combat is in the same vein as FFXII's. If it is, then I'll probably end up passing on it.

There were two moments of the show that stood out more than any others. On Saturday, while we were killing time waiting for the Future of MMOs panel, we sat down in the PC free play area and fired up some Demolition Derby game that I can't remember the name of. We played a ton of matches and were only torn away when the time for the panel was near. I'd love to find out what the name of this game was, it was insanely fun and one of those games that you can play for hours at a time without getting sick of it. It's not a game that you can do that repeatedly with, but maybe a couple times of month.

The other moment was after the MMOs panel, we went up to the front to ask the panel members the question "How do you plan to handle people getting to max level and then having nothing to do but raid?" This is, in my friend Brandon's opinion, a monster flaw in WoW. He wants a game that he can log on into and have his time occupied 100% with character progression. For me, WoW is the perfect game for the very fact that you can have the option to only log in and raid. I digress though, as that's a post for another time.

We stepped up to the front of the room to ask our question, but the panel members were all busy with other conversation. Instead off to the side I saw this guy in a Red 5 Studios shirt answering a question about graphics engines. So I walked up to him and asked the question. We spent the next 45 minutes to an hour talk with Dave Williams about a variety of MMO topics. I think the coolest part of the whole experience was being able to talk with someone who loves the genre as much as I do and who's actually working to create something different.

The most important thing he touched on, I felt, was how all these MMOs that are coming are going to try and duplicate WoW's success and how they're going about it all wrong. I agreed completely. In order to duplicate WoW's success, it's not going to be enough to simply copy their ideas and try and add some of your own. WoW is such a huge success because of the very fact that they did a lot of things right that other companies only did half of. The quest system, the ease of soloing, and most important of all, they created a fun game. In order to duplicate WoW's massive success, The Next Big Thing is going to have to take a whole new approach on how things are done. From talking with Dave, it seemed like they were at least going to try a new approach. While it's easy to say such things before your game has been announced, I hope they are actually able to pull it off, as some of the stuff he talked about had me nodding in emphatic agreement.

T-Minus

It's less than a day till PAX 2007, and I'll be in attendance this year. As an added bonus, a good friend is flying in tonight, and along with the Mrs, we'll all be heading up to Seattle to view what has become the E3 replacement. I'm excited to get a chance to check out what the event is all about. I've seen the pics, read PA's post about it, but being there will be an entirely different experience.

This comes with perfect timing as I'm working on learning XNA. There's tons of panels at PAX surrounding game development, and I'm going to hit up most of them. I'm really interested in the Future of MMOs panel. I theorize that the Future of MMOs is going to go one of two ways; either we're going to see the next few years of MMOs trying to be WoW-killers with little to no success, or publishers and developers will realize that creating niche games where a small number of subscribers can be sustain them is the way to go. I'm not sold that there will be a WoW-killer anytime soon, unless the game collapses under its own weight and/or Blizzard makes incredibly poor design choices. Personally, I'm having a ton of fun in WoW right now, most of that is due to the fact that I'm finally in a guild that's progressing through 25 man content. I actually stand a chance of seeing Hyjal and Black Temple, something I never got with AQ40 and Naxx. Granted part of that is my own fault by leaving Eternal.

The other panel I'm very interested in is the one covering episodic gaming. This is a concept that I think can have great success, especially if it's done correctly. My visions for this are to release content on either a weekly or monthly schedule that people can consume regularly. Obviously this would have to be planned out in advance by the developers, and could turn games into something like TV shows, where there's a ton of crap out there and few good games, but that's certainly not any different than how things are done today. The difference is that as a gamer I have to front the cost for a horrible game at the start, instead of trying out the first few episodes. In fact, episodic gaming could generate a ton of revenue since the episodes themselves could have a lower price point but deliver the same content broken apart. For example, FFXII could've been broken into 5 episodes (I didn't actually finish the game, so I'm guessing here) and then sold at 15 bucks a piece, which would've netted more money than the game's retail price of 49.99.

Of course this involves buy in from all parties of the industry, but imagine how awesome it would be to get a monthly chapter of content for Fire Emblem, or a weekly episode of the latest Final Fantasy game (ok, possible bad example!). The whole idea gets me tingling in all the right places.

It's that time of the month again

It's the last Monday of the month, and here at work that means it's implementation day. Unlike some of my early implementations, I'm not dreading this one in the slightest. In fact, I'm writing this blog post because of the fact that I was able to get everything staged by Friday afternoon. It's a goal that I've strived for over the past couple of implementations that has worked extremely well. Gone are the days of crunch time and excess stress. I think that shows a bit of a maturity as a developer.

First was the ability to tell my project manager "No." It seems like such a simple word, but as a programmer it's hard at times to refuse people when they ask for something by a deadline. Second was my own personal time table for what goes into an implementation. If things aren't into QA the week before the implementation is scheduled, then they aren't making it. That's different then the first couple of implementations I was here for, where we worked right up to the 3 pm deadline for an implementation.

In other development news, I've decided to give XNA a try. I've got a concept for a game that I'd like to work on, and I'm going to go after it. Right now it's going to be a grid based strategy game of some kind. The first iteration will be simple. Most likely two units and some terrain features. As I get better and better with XNA (and possibly find some people to do sprite based artwork), I'll expand the scope of the game into something bigger, hopefully. Details to come!

FFXII Impressions

I've been trying to play FFXII lately. The key word there is try. The game has a few things going for it. It's gorgeous, for starters. The licensing system is nice, if a bit menial for some functions. There's no random battles (this ultimately killed Dragon Quest for me). I still can't seem to play it for more than a couple of hours at a time.

Tantamount to the game's problem is the battle system. As I've written in the past, the battle system in an RPG often makes or breaks the game. In this case, the lack of consistent interaction with your characters totally detracts from the game for me. Gambits are nice, they at least allow you a modicum of control over your allies, but the rest of the combat simply doesn't hold up. I think we have all know for years that we weren't completely playing RPGs any more. At least not in a true role playing game sense. We controlled characters in an interactive cinematic experience. If the story was good, then the game could at least be regarded as decent. If the combat was good then we moved the game up another notch. If the character development was good, again the game's (perceived) quality rose. I think lost in FFXII is the joining of a character's combat prowess to our development and awareness of them. If you ask anyone (in the know) who T.G. Cid is and why he was awesome it's usually not because of the lines that his character spoke, it's because he was a complete and total badass in combat. Once Square Enix let the AI take over the party and put the game into this horrible mockery of MMO combat they lost the connection between the player and the characters that they're supposed to be playing. It's that subtle difference that makes all the world. We're already playing a genre that is on rails, to put the combat on rails is a huge mistake.

My other major problem with the game is the lack of archetypes and development paths for those archetypes. Arch types are an important aspect to any RPG. They don't need to be traditional archetypes, but each character should have a clear cut path of progression. Square Enix has generally stuck to this trend. The licensing system seems to blow this concept up in an attempt to create homogeneous characters with a free form path of progression. The problem with this approach is that since every character can pick up every skill, there's no discerning difference between them outside of the way they look.

It's these two flaws that ultimately cause me to put the game down time and again, which is a first for a Final Fantasy game. Not even the story keeps me interested. It is entirely possible that I'm not far enough for the story to be completely gripping, but isn't that another flaw? I was actually interested in the first moments of FFXII until the whole story shifted to Vaan and company. It's not because of any problem with Vaan's character (though there are problems), it's because the entire hook of the first sequence of the game is removed. I realize it's a setup for later events in the game, but it's such a harsh contrast in pacing and tension that it's a letdown. The story then has to start building itself back up, and with the other problems in the game it's hard to play through to see more of the story.

In a way, FFXII accurately portrays Square Enix since they merged. Promise and potential, with a failure to deliver.