With Final Fantasy XV out tomorrow and my excitement for it at an extreme level, I’ve decided that I’m going to devote the next month on my other site MoeGamerto an in-depth exploration of the series as a whole.
Final Fantasy as a whole may be a little outside my usual mission with MoeGamer — it is neither underappreciated nor overlooked — but it’s worth discussing nonetheless, particularly with regard to those installments along the way that are regarded less favourably.
It’s also worth discussing as it’s a series with a long, interesting history, and can quite rightly be described as genre-defining alongside its longtime rival Dragon Quest.
Mostly I want to talk about it because it’s been important to me for a long time now. Nearly 20 years, in fact, which is a scary prospect, as my first encounter with the series is still absolutely fresh in my mind, as if I’d just experienced it yesterday.
I first heard of Final Fantasy VII, my first point of contact with the series, through my brother. I had a PlayStation at the time (well, more accurately, I had a hand-me-down Japanese PlayStation that my brother left behind) but, what with it being a Japanese model, I hadn’t really explored the games available for it beyond the three I already had: Ridge Racer, Tekken and Raiden Project.
Hearing my brother describe Final Fantasy VII made me want to try it, though. I’d already had experience with story-heavy games thanks to our family’s mutual love of point-and-click adventure titles from Sierra and LucasArts, but this sounded like something different; something more. Specifically, the thing that got me interested in it was the promise of a scene partway through the game where pretty much everyone who had played it ended up crying. (Said scene is now one of the most famous scenes in all of gaming, but back in ’97, it was easier to remain unspoiled.)
So, reading up on the old “disc swap” trick that allowed you to play different region games on a PlayStation, I propped my PlayStation’s lid open with a biro lid and a bit of Blu-Tack and inserted the first of the three discs of my shiny new copy of Final Fantasy VII, not sure what to expect.
I was immediately blown away by the spectacular video intro sequence that moved almost seamlessly into in-game action, with polygonal characters moving perfectly in sync with the prerendered background camera angles. (I was then slightly distracted by the rather primitive field screen character models Final Fantasy VII is now somewhat notorious for, but I quickly became accustomed to them.)
The music drew me in. The action started right away. It was like being part of a movie. Then I got into my first battle and, having never really played an RPG before, was initially baffled. Once again, though, it didn’t take me long to become accustomed, and there was no turning back from that point: the game had me well and truly in its clutches.
I enthused about the game to my friends at school. They were initially skeptical, but it didn’t take a lot of convincing to get them to give it a try. And before long, they were as obsessed with this spectacular new game as I was. We played it through together, discussing things we’d found and things we’d achieved; we’d complete it, and start over again, eager to enjoy the story all over again. We devoured guidebooks and online FAQs about the game, keen to see everything it was possible to see. And, on one particularly memorable occasion fueled by tequila and various other intoxicants, we played for 36 hours straight, my friend Woody passing out midway through the G-Bike sequence, having some very peculiar dreams and suddenly waking up demanding to know “what’s an X-Walker?” (To this day, we have no idea. X-Potions? Sure. X-Walker? No clue.)
The impact Final Fantasy VII had on me drew me to explore the rest of the series. While at the time I found the NES original a little hard to appreciate — it was just a bit too clunky in comparison to the later games — from IV onwards (or II as it was known back then thanks to the fact Final Fantasy II, III and Vdidn’t see Western releases until many years after their NES and SNES original versions) in particular I found them to be just as compelling despite their more primitive visuals and sounds.
These were games that told stories that resonated with me. Stories about people who rose up from humble beginnings, gathering a group of close companions and achieving something incredible. This sort of thing is seen as cliched as all hell these days, but there’s a reason the standard JRPG tropes have been a thing for as long as they have: even before video games, this story structure is proven to be an effective way of telling a heroic epic.
Even in those early days, though, I could tell that the Final Fantasy series wasn’t one to rest on its laurels. While I had a fairly Western RPG feel to it with its completely mute, characterless party, II introduced the series convention of having a party of predefined characters with actual personalities. III brought us the Job system for the first time. IV gave us an incredibly detailed story full of emotion. V refined the Job system further. VI turned the narrative conventions of the series on its head by not really having a “main” character, instead allowing us the opportunity to spend time with an enormous ensemble cast. And so on, and so on.
I’ll talk about this in detail once I start writing the MoeGamer pieces, but Final Fantasy is a series that has constantly reinvented itself over and over again. Even in those installments that seem superficially similar (I-III, IV-VI, VII-IX) there are enough unique components to each title to make them distinct from one another, and from X onwards the series has enjoyed even more drastic, dramatic reinventions with each installment. And this isn’t even getting into the myriad spin-off titles, many of which are even more fondly regarded than the mainline titles in the series.
As you can tell, I’ll have plenty to write about. And I’m afraid you’re almost certainly going to have to put up with a lot of enthusing about XV on this here site from tomorrow onwards, too. I make no apologies for my excitement in this regard.
Now, just a good night’s sleep and a day of work between me and my first adventures in the lands of Eos. Can’t wait.
It will probably come as no surprise to you, dear reader, to learn that I enjoy the Dead or Alive Xtreme series — perhaps even more so than the fighting game series that they are a spin off of. Dead or Alive has always been the one fighting game series that I’ve actually felt like I sort of almost understood, though I’ve never been able to play it at anything approaching competitive level; however, the fact that I’ve always enjoyed it has, at least, meant that I know a lot of the characters reasonably well, and am a particular fan of several of them.
So when the original Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball came out on the original Xbox, of course I was all over it, but not only for the prospect of seeing Kasumi’s delicious curves in a swimsuit. No, the concept of the game actually sounded rather interesting to me; bear in mind that in the original Xbox generation, getting our hands on some of Japan’s quirkier games — particularly those that weren’t RPGs or fighting games — was a bit of a rarity, especially in Europe, and I had always been fascinated by the idea of non-violent games about relationships. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, despite the name, is more a game about relationships than it is about volleyball — and this is a pattern that continued throughout subsequent installments.
Let’s back up a moment for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the Dead or Alive Xtreme series. The concept is simple and rather silly: Zack, a character from Dead or Alive who is noteworthy for having some of the more outlandish costumes among the male cast, lures a bevy of beauties to his own private island under the pretext that he’s holding a new round of the titular fighting tournament that forms the ultimately irrelevant backdrop to the plot of all the main installments in the series. When the girls arrive, they are momentarily shocked to discover that Zack lied to them, and instead has simply lured them to his island so they can take some time off from kicking each other in the tits and so he can enjoy the view. No-one involved appears to have a problem with any of this, and thus begins a virtual vacation in the extremely pleasant surroundings of Zack Island. Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is based on the exact same concept, and almost certainly Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 will be too.
The gameplay involves you taking on the role of one of the girls and doing whatever you feel like on the island for two virtual weeks. On each day, you have the opportunity to hang out with characters, buy swimsuits and items, play volleyball, roll around in the sand provocatively, play a pool-hopping game and, in Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, go jetskiing and watersliding. It initially seems like a rather shallow, silly game — and it is — but there’s actually more going on than meets the eye.
Essentially, at its core, Dead or Alive Xtreme is a game about collecting things. There’s not really a set way to “beat” the game, but most players would probably agree that this is achieved when you’ve successfully filled every character’s inventory with every single possible swimsuit and every single collectible item. This takes a very long time indeed, since it’s not a simple case of just grinding out enough money to buy all the items; many of the swimsuits in particular can only be put in a girl’s inventory by successfully giving them to her as a gift — and in order for her to accept them as a gift, she has to like both you and the gift itself, and in order for that to happen, you have to hang out with her, partner up with her, play volleyball with her and all manner of other things. Manipulating the relationship system in order to further your collection is the main point of the game once you get into it.
There’s another reason I like Dead or Alive Xtreme, though, besides the relationship gameplay and the boobs. It’s the fact that each game in the series is, without question, one of the most unashamedly happy, cheerful and genuinely summery-feeling games I’ve ever played. This is achieved through a combination of brightly coloured, highly saturated visuals, beautiful character models and animations, an airy, lightweight tone to everything that happens, and some simply wonderful soundtracks that feature some of the most horrendously cheesy summer pop hits you’ll ever hear. We’re talking Baha Men, B*witched, Hilary Duff and all manner of other goodness. It’s quite something, and even if you don’t particularly like listening to the songs on the soundtrack in isolation, it’s hard not to have a broad grin on your face when they’re used in context in the game to add to the overall atmosphere.
In short, it saddens me that there’s so much negativity surrounding Dead or Alive Xtreme, largely from people who have never played it, because it’s a wonderfully positive, happy, uplifting and enjoyable series of games in which you can just switch off your brain and enjoy a virtual holiday alongside beautiful people. And, in a world increasingly filled with cynicism, bitterness and snark, something so unabashedly honest about its intentions — to make the player happy — is refreshing and enjoyable.
So yes. I will be importing Dead or Alive Xtreme 3‘s Asian English version when it releases. And I’m far from the only one; import specialist PlayAsia has had so many preorders following the announcement that it would not be officially localised that they’ve even dropped the price today.
So much for people not wanting this game on Western shores, huh.
I’m coming up on the Platinum trophy for Hyperdevotion Noire on Vita, and I’ve asked myself more than once why I was doing it, given that it’s completely unnecessary to fully appreciate the game, and has extended what would probably be a 40-50 hour game well over the 100 hour mark.
Despite questioning my motivation a few times, I’ve never found myself resenting the game, somehow — this is partly because I undertook the most grindy of grinds for the Platinum trophy while watching several seasons of Community on Netflix (#teamhandheld) and consequently wasn’t just staring at a screen repeating the same actions over and over again, which is essentially what I was required to do to get 20+ of the trophies in the list.
Now I’m approaching the end of that epic grind, I’m glad that I’ve done it. It hasn’t been difficult in the sense of the game being difficult to complete — on the contrary, once all the characters are level 99 you can steamroller pretty much everything in the game with a few exceptions — but it has been challenging from the perspective of committing to the long-term goal and seeing it through to its conclusion.
This raises an interesting point about the nature of “challenge”. When we talk about “challenge” in games we’re normally referring to something along the lines of Dark Souls, which requires you to understand its systems thoroughly, otherwise it will punish you until you mend your ways and play better. But “challenge” can exist in other ways, too. It can refer to subject matter that makes you uncomfortable — not generally a problem with the Neptunia series, though mk2 does some interesting things with the squick factor and some people still won’t check the series out because of assumptions about fanservice. It can also refer to the challenge of making it through something lengthy and weighty, or holding out in a test of endurance, such as I’ve been doing with Hyperdevotion Noire.
And that, I think, is why I’ve been doing the Platinum grind. The challenge factor. Overcoming challenges is satisfying, even if they’re more endurance than skill. Endurance and patience are worthwhile traits, and I’ve noted on a number of past occasions that I feel my experiences with role-playing games over the years — and my willingness to see them through to the end, even if they have a three- or four-digit hour count — have helped me train these particular abilities in myself. And these abilities are something that transfers across to life at large; it can be difficult to wait for things, or hold out against something that is proving to be an obstacle, but with patience and endurance in spades, you can usually overcome most challenges.
Anyway. After all that, I will say that I will be glad to finally see that Platinum trophy pop in Hyperdevotion Noire, because it means I’ll finally be able to put that game to bed and move on to something else without feeling like I need to try and get anything else out of it. And, as I’ve noted before, it feels good to know that trophies are used as metrics by developers and publishers — unlikely though it might be, someone might see my Platinum trophy in the game and recognise that it is something only achieved by people who have truly engaged with it and want to see everything it has to offer.
Also I can’t break my streak of Platinum trophies on Neptunia games now, can I?
I was chatting with my friends earlier this evening about the matter of achievements and trophies in games. As long-term readers will know, my opinions on these metagame awards that were introduced with the last generation of games consoles have gone back and forth somewhat, but on the whole I feel I’m starting to come down on the side of liking them.
The reason for this is simple: after nearly 10 years of them being A Thing in gaming, a lot of developers are getting the hang of how to use them effectively — and the reasons for using them.
There are, in fact, several reasons for the existence of achievements. From a developer perspective, they provide feedback on just how much people are playing games and what they’re doing. This is why so many games have a “started the game” achievement — look at the rarity statistics on PSN and you’ll see that there are a surprising number of people who have booted a game up for long enough to add the trophy list to their profile, but not actually started to play it. I couldn’t even begin to contemplate what the reasons for doing this might be, but it happens; as an example, the wonderful shoot ’em up Astebreed gives you a trophy for completing the interactive prologue sequence — something you have to do before you can even access the game’s main menu — and yet only 91% of players have accomplished this, suggesting either that 9% of players simply turned the game off for some reason or other during the prologue, or were unable to complete it. And I’m not sure that last option is even possible.
From a player perspective, a well-designed trophy list provides a metagame to layer on top of the existing game structure. They can provide challenges for players to complete and encourage them to explore a game in full rather than simply making a beeline for the credits — and, again, those rarity statistics suggest that relatively few people who pick up any game, regardless of length and quality, make it to the end, which is kind of sad — or suggest new ways to play.
A good example from recent memory that I’m still engaged with is Compile Heart’s PS4 RPG Omega Quintet. I have gone for the Platinum trophy in most of Compile Heart’s games to date (largely the Neptunia games) because I have a keen awareness of how the developers probably use them for statistics, as mentioned above. I see attaining a Platinum trophy — which for those unfamiliar with PSN is the trophy you acquire when you have achieved all of the other trophies in a game — as a mark of support for the developer; a sign that someone out there cared enough about a game to play it to absolute death. (Omega Quintet’s Platinum trophy, incidentally, has a 1.1% rarity rating, which is not altogether surprising as going by my own experiences it’s something of a beast to attain.)
And in Omega Quintet’s case, that Platinum trophy really is a sign that you have explored everything the game has to offer, because it’s a good trophy list that runs the gamut from “deal 1 million points of damage in a single combination attack” (something that gets significantly easier the further in the game you go) via “complete all the quests” (something which you can miss in a single playthrough if you’re not fastidious about cleaning up quests before advancing the story) and “see the True Ending on Advanced difficulty” (having figured out the conditions to do so, of course — hint: get Aria and Otoha’s affection levels to 4 to guarantee this) to “defeat Double X” (a superboss who sits at the bottom level of the optional Training Facility dungeon and provides one of the stiffest challenges the entire game has to offer)
The interesting thing about Omega Quintet’s trophy list is that by the time I finished my second playthrough (during which I achieved the True Ending on Advanced difficulty) I had only accomplished about 50% of the available trophies. Deciding early on that I wanted to go for the Platinum, I jumped into the post-game (the ability to keep playing the game after you’ve beaten the final boss and seen the end of the story) to explore what these additional challenges might be.
Nearly 50 hours of gameplay later, I’m still playing, though the end is finally in sight. In those 50 hours, I’ve beaten the 13-floor Training Facility dungeon, pretty much mastered the game’s combat system — the extreme difficulty of the Training Facility encounters, including Double X, demands that you know what you are doing, otherwise you will get your ass kicked, even if you grind all the way up to the level cap of 999 — maxed out the affection values for all my party members, mastered all the weapon proficiencies with Kyouka and have come pretty close with a couple of the others, completed all the sidequests and recovered all the hidden archives. This latter one is particularly interesting, as the archives reveal an absolute ton of story context that isn’t made explicit in the main narrative, largely because it’s not directly relevant to the main cast’s personal stories, but instead provides some interesting background lore and worldbuilding context. You stumble across some of these as you simply explore the main game, but quite a few of them are hidden in post-game content.
In other words, without the trophies to give me a nudge in the direction of this additional content, I might not have gone looking for it. One might argue that the game not necessarily signposting this sort of thing is a problem, but if the trophy system is there — and it’s compulsory to use on both Xbox and PlayStation — it may as well be used to push people on to explore things further. Combine that with PSN’s “rarity” feature and there’s a really nice sense of… well, achievement when you know that you’re one of the 1.1% who has seen everything Omega Quintet has to offer.
(Just two more trophies left to go: kill 10,000 enemies and get 1 billion approval rating points. I sense that the challenging DLC dungeons and bosses — including the fearsome Banana Demon pictured above — will be my main means of achieving this!)
I remember first seeing Sound Shapes at a Gamescom I was covering for GamePro back when GamePro was still a thing. I found it immediately intriguing — partly because it was a game on the then-new-and-shiny Vita, but also because it looked to have some interesting ideas. Now, some several years later, thanks to a significant PlayStation Plus discounted price, I’ve finally played it. And I’ve been quite surprised by what I found.
Sound Shapes, if you’re unfamiliar, is ostensibly a platform game, but with a few peculiar twists, the first of which being that you don’t play as a “character” as such, instead this weird sort of ball thing that can switch between “sticky” and “non-sticky” states at will. When in its default sticky state, it can stick to certain walls and even ceilings; when in its non-sticky state, it moves faster and can jump further. These are the only controls you use in Sound Shapes; where the game gets interesting is in the sheer variety of ways it uses these very simple mechanics.
The “sound” part of the title comes from the fact that the game is heavily music-based. Elements of each screen you visit — no scrolling here; only old-school 8-bit style flick screens — move in time with the music, and the collectible objects in each level are “notes” that affect the soundtrack once you’ve picked them up. Indeed, when you make use of the level editor, you’re not only putting together some fiendish platforming puzzles, you’re also composing a piece of music.
And there’s a surprising amount of variety, too. Shipping with a number of different “albums” and providing plenty more to explore online, Sound Shapes sees you exploring a number of different environments according to special guest musicians and artists. The first “world”‘s art is done by Capy, for example, while the second is a collaboration between Jim Guthrie on music and Superbrothers on art. The two contrast hugely; Capy’s world is very organic and smooth, looking like it’s been drawn in flat-shaded vector graphics. Guthrie and Superbrothers’ world, meanwhile, looks very much like their well-known game Sworcery, but appears to be some sort of introspective reflection on the futility of modern everyday office life.
What I like about Sound Shapes is that it’s arty without being pretentious about it. You can treat it as a straightforward platformer if you like, or you can treat the stages as works of interactive art, where the overall multimedia experience has been crafted to put a particular image in your mind, or make you feel a particular way. Some are more successful than others, but all are satisfying and fun to play.
I’ve been really surprised at quite how good Sound Shapes is. It’s a shame I didn’t pick it up sooner, really, but I’m having fun with it now, at least; I can recommend it if you’re in the mood for some straightforward, pick-up-and-play platforming with a very distinctive, striking audio-visual aesthetic.
When I’ve not been playing Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy II, my game of choice has been Final Fant– no, wait, Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed. I talked a little about this game a few days ago and, after a few more hours with it, I can confirm that I really, really like it a lot.
It’s a very peculiar game by modern standards. Not quite RPG, not quite adventure, not quite dating sim, not quite open-world sandbox game, Akiba’s Trip is a thoroughly interesting experience that seems to get more rewarding the longer I continue playing it.
One thing that sprang to mind while I was playing it the other day is something I also felt when playing games that are spiritually somewhat similar: Shenmue and Yakuza being the two that I think of immediately. The thing I thought about was how nice it is to have a game world that is small, but dense. Akiba’s Trip unfolds in a single district of Tokyo, split (in the Vita version, anyway) into maybe ten or so different areas, all of which are interlinked in various ways. Yakuza was the same, unfolding in a single district, and Shenmue saw you progressing through just a few different areas of a town. (Shenmue II got a little more ambitious, but still split its story into several distinct “chapters”, each of which unfolded in a relatively small geographic area.)
If you take this approach and do it well, it gives an extremely strong sense of place to the setting. The setting almost becomes a character in its own right, as you start to recognise distinctive landmarks in each area, and know that if you want [x] you need to go to [y]. It also encourages the player to wander round, explore and drink in the atmosphere: although Akiba’s Trip features a fast-travel system, for example, I’ve found myself deliberately walking from one end of the map to the other just so I can get a stronger feel of this lovingly modelled setting.
Okay, Akiba’s Trip in particular has some technical limitations holding it back — the poor old Vita can’t cope with all that many people wandering down the streets at the same time as you, for example, and the shops that you can go “in” tend to amount to a simple buy/sell menu rather than a further environment you can explore — but the combination of visuals, sound and personality that the game boasts makes it an experience where it’s fun to just wander around and see what you can see — particularly when unexpected things happen.
This isn’t even getting into the meat of the game, though: there’s a strong and interesting story surrounding the man-made vampire-like “Synthister” creatures; there’s plenty of mystery surrounding several of the central characters; there’s an entertaining series of sidequests involving the main character and his hikikomori (shut-in) little sister; and even the non-plot-related sidequests help to flesh out the world by bringing you into contact with a diverse and fun array of incidental, supporting characters.
Plus, why on Earth wouldn’t you want to play a game where you defeat enemies by pulling off their trousers? 🙂
I’ve had a copy of Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed loitering in my backlog pretty much ever since it released over here, but I’ve never gotten around to playing it until recently. I’m not sure what convinced me to give it a go, but I decided that it was time, so I booted it up the other day.
Akiba’s Trip is a game that proved to be notorious for two reasons: one, that supposedly, it was a game about beating up girls and pulling their clothes off; and two, it features the transphobic slur “trap” used for its intended purpose, i.e. to insult a transgender person.
Both of these things are accurate; however, as is usually the case with this sort of thing, the fact that they were focused on by loudmouthed critics almost to the exclusion of everything else about the game obscured the fact that the other 99% of Akiba’s Trip is a very interesting, ambitious experience indeed, and a game very much worth playing. Not to mention the fact that both of the heavily criticised elements can be fully justified through the game’s narrative context.
In Akiba’s Trip, you play you, assuming you’re a floppy-haired male anime protagonist. (After clearing the game once, you unlock the ability to play as other character models, so from that point onwards you can play as a lady if you so desire; canonically, however, the hero is male.) After answering a seriously sketchy-sounding job ad about taking part in a drug test in exchange for as many rare anime figures and other merchandise as you can handle, you find yourself turned into a Synthister, a man-made vampire with superhuman strength and the ability to absorb “life energy” from people around you. While Synthisters aren’t vulnerable to crosses and garlic like “real” vampires, they are still extremely sensitive to sunlight, however, with something of a propensity for exploding into a cloud of dust if too much of their bare skin is exposed to the elements.
I’m sure you see where this is going.
In short order, you’re rescued from your precarious situation by another Synthister called Shizuku, and you make your way back to your group of plucky gamer buddies who hang out in a cool bar run by an old dude everyone calls “Pops”. From here, you’re tasked with investigating the Synthister threat as well as helping out the locals of Akihabara, primarily by either finding things in the district or by beating up people until you can pull their trousers off: the game’s combat system is primarily about damaging clothing until it’s in a state where you can whip it off, rather than whittling down a more conventional health bar. In order to defeat most enemies, you need to remove their headgear along with their top and bottom clothing. Interestingly, in contrast to something like Senran Kagura, a game which also has a heavy emphasis on clothing damage, the “strip” mechanic in Akiba’s Trip is unsexualised; it’s simply part of combat, and is, frankly, hilarious. (Not only that, but you’ll find yourself stripping men as well as women; I believe my session earlier is the first time ever in gaming that I have defeated a man in full motorcycle leathers by diving head-first into his crotch, grabbing his helmet and flinging it away, then whipping his trousers off and tearing his jacket from his chest.)
Stripping aside, the big hook in Akiba’s Trip is that it features a lovingly detailed rendition of the real-world Akihabara district of Tokyo in Japan — a Mecca for otaku of all descriptions for sure. Featuring recreations of real-life shops, some excellently authentic-sounding ambient sound and a pleasingly diverse array of random people wandering the streets, it’s an enormously atmospheric game that it’s a pleasure to just wander around and explore — particularly when you start to notice interesting things happening without any intervention from you.
I was searching for some street thugs with Shizuku at one point, for example, and I decided to try and ask a suspicious-looking man in the street for directions. He responded that he “wasn’t into dudes” and refused to talk to me. As I pondered what to do next, he then started to hit on Shizuku, who stood there patiently while he said his piece and then, marvellously, wound up one hell of a punch and socked him right in the face, flattening him. He then ran away crying. It was a beautiful moment that just happened to occur due to me being in the right place at the right time.
If there’s one game that Akiba’s Trip reminds me of so far, it’s Yakuza. The lovingly crafted real-world environment; the blend of JRPG-style mechanics with action game brawling; the fact the game acknowledges the more unpleasant, seedier side of humanity without judgement. (The aforementioned “trap” comment, for example, comes in the context of a forum thread you read on your phone; said forum thread was clearly localised by someone who has spent a lot of time on real-world forums, since the text-based “dialogue” is some of the most convincing and realistic I’ve seen in an English localisation for a very long time — right down to the use, or lack thereof, of punctuation, and the way that anonymous people online are quite frequently complete shitheads to one another.) That and the endless stream of sidequests to complete that have nothing to do with the main story but provide a pleasing sense of “place” and “context” to the overall setting; the NPCs who are delighted to relieve you of your money through various scams; the strong characterisation.
I’ve only played a couple of hours so far, but already I like it a lot. I’m playing the Vita version, which has a few technological limitations, but is proving enjoyable regardless; I can imagine that the PlayStation 4 version would be a most enjoyable experience indeed, particularly with its additional features and enhancements.
It was Sony’s PlayStation Experience keynote presentation today. I haven’t yet caught up on all the bits of news that came out of it, but the snippets I have heard so far all confirm something that I’ve been thinking for quite a while now: in the new generation of gaming hardware (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U) Sony is going to be the one to beat. And the other two (well, one; we’ve established Nintendo likes doing its own thing and bugger what the other two are up to) are going to have their work cut out for them.
Sony’s got a pretty comprehensive-looking gaming package at present, and one that covers a number of different markets. Speaking as someone who has not yet jumped into the next generation of hardware wholeheartedly — though I do own a Wii U — the PlayStation 4 is an infinitely more enticing prospect than the Xbox One. It’s still not quite enough to make me want to rush out and buy one just yet — I’m still waiting for that absolute must-have game that I can’t get anywhere else, and bear in mind my definition of “must-have” is somewhat different from the mainstream — but I’m getting closer and closer with every new announcement that comes out of Sony.
Speaking more objectively, though, the PlayStation 4 has a solid lineup of titles. Many of them are available on Xbox One as well, of course, but the PS4 versions are, in most cases, technically superior, running at better resolutions in many cases. As for exclusives, Sony has this pretty much stitched up. The Xbox One lineup of exclusives is a moribund array of unimaginative titles that tend to fit into the neat triple-A pigeonholes of “killing things”, “driving things” or “doing sports with things” — there are a few exceptions, of course, such as SWERY’s intriguing new project — whereas the PS4’s lineup is vibrant, interesting and, importantly, worldwide, with Japanese developers rapidly jumping on board Sony’s train even as they continue to eye Microsoft warily after the Redmond giant’s two abject failures in the Far East.
The PS4 has the mainstream market pretty well stitched up, then, it seems — although with titles like Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II and its ilk coming to the platform, it looks set to follow in the PS3’s footsteps and provide a great home for more niche titles, too, not to mention the array of excellent independent titles that are making the jump from PC to PS4, too.
And then there’s the Vita. Sony still doesn’t make a big deal about the Vita at events like this, which annoys some people, but really, a big keynote speech isn’t the place to shout about how great the Vita is. The reason? Vita has carved out a rather wonderful little niche for itself as arguably the best place to go for… well, niche games. Highly creative indie titles? Check. Fanservicey Japanese games? Check. Non-fanservicey Japanese games? Check. Access to a staggering back catalogue of brilliant games from the PS1 and PSP eras? Check.
Developers and publishers alike are really starting to get a handle on what makes the Vita tick, and what those who own one like doing with their time. Rather than attempting to continue pushing the frankly dumb “triple-A in your pocket!” angle — the whole point of triple-A is that it’s spectacular, and consequently built for the big screen — Vita devs and publishers are now embracing the fact that Vita is a handheld device whose players like the freedom to play either for a short session over lunch, or for more protracted periods of free time. The best Vita games are built with this in mind: FuturLab’s Velocity 2X, for example, features lightning-fast, short levels that encourage you to replay for the best times and scores; even Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 which I’ve been playing recently is eminently handheld-friendly thanks to its short and snappy dungeons punctuated by clearly signposted event scenes that you move onto when you’re good and ready rather than when you least expect it.
And let’s not forget the PS3 in all this, still managing to remain relevant despite its successor having been on the market for a year now. Today we learned that Sega is bringing the much-requested Yakuza 5 to the West next year, and the new installment in the Persona series is coming to PS3 as well as PS4. On top of that, publishers like NIS America, Xseed Games, Aksys Games and their ilk are continuing to localise a wealth of interesting (and occasionally outlandish) Japanese titles for the Western market, so while those continue to flow in my PS3 won’t be getting put away any time soon.
All this may sound rather fanboyish and perhaps it is, but the fact is, Microsoft has consistently failed to make me want to pay any attention to the Xbox One whatsoever — the first thing that still springs to mind when I think of the Xbox One is the stupid “Snap” functionality, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever felt I wanted from a console — while Sony continually intrigues and excites me with each new announcement they make.
All it’ll take is one great game to get me to grab an Xbox One, though, but at the moment I see that happening on PS4 first, by quite a considerably margin.
Well, if it’s good enough for Sony — they are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their console, after all — it’s good enough for me.
Here are my top three original PlayStation games.
…Shit.
There are too many. There are way too many to choose from that I’ve played over the years. Some of them are incredibly obvious choices. Others are games that I have but a dim memory of playing, but which have stuck in my brain ever since. I can’t choose three. I can’t.
So I won’t. Instead, I’m going to present some fake awards for the games that have stuck in my mind ever since I first played them. In some cases, it may have been 15-20 years since I played them, but they still carry significant meaning to me for one reason or another. In many cases, they may not even be among the best games on the platform, but for whatever reason I have remembered them fondly ever since.
Here we go then. The first one is an obvious one, but I don’t think many people will argue against it.
The “wow, this is better than anything I’ve ever seen before” award
What other game could this go to than the original Ridge Racer?
The word “revolutionary” is thrown around far too much with regard to games these days, but Ridge Racer was genuinely revolutionary. It clearly demonstrated the vast difference in power between the 32-bit PlayStation and the 16-bit Super NES and Mega Drive that had come before.
Its slick 3D graphics and unapologetically arcadey handling — remember this was in the days when we were still using digital control pads rather than analogue sticks — made it an absolute joy to play. And despite a relative lack of content compared to modern games — there really weren’t very many tracks at all, and all of them were based in the exact same environment — it was a game that could keep you occupied for hours as you tried to beat the irritating yellow car and its even more irritating later counterpart, the black car: an adversary so cocky that it often parked on the side of the road in order to allow you to catch up a bit.
A not-particularly-interesting anecdote about Ridge Racer is that it also kind of introduced me to electronic music. Prior to that game, I’d dismissed a lot of electronic music as being just noise — at least partly due to my parents regarding it as such — but over time I came to appreciate the weird and wonderful accompaniments to the racing on the soundtrack, and was much more open to the idea of listening to electronic music outside of games as a result.
The “holy crap, this is on the same system?” award
It would be remiss of me to talk about Ridge Racer and not mention the much later Ridge Racer Type-4, a game which came out much later in the PlayStation’s lifespan but which still plays like a dream today.
Ridge Racer Type-4 was noteworthy not just for being a great game — and a great-looking game with what passed for “photo-realistic” visuals at the time of its release — but also for being beatifully designed, too. Take a look at the video above and tell me that those bright yellow animated menus aren’t immediately distinctive and memorable — and instantly recognisable as being from Ridge Racer Type-4.
Everything about Ridge Racer Type-4 fitted together perfectly. The hour-long Grand Prix campaign gave you several mini-stories to follow through as you challenged various races in various vehicles. The vehicles you unlocked ran the gamut from the relatively sensible to the ridiculous, such as the jet-propelled monstrosity you unlocked later that really, really didn’t like going around corners.
And the music. Oh, the music. At the time Ridge Racer Type-4 came out, my friends and I had discovered a genre of music known as acid jazz — a blend of jazz, funk and hip-hop typified by artists such as the Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai. We would listen to pretty much nothing other than this type of music, and so we were delighted to discover that Ridge Racer Type-4’s soundtrack consisted almost exclusively of music of this ilk — certainly a far cry from the early-’90s electronica of the first game — and even more delighted when we found that Namco had very much made this distinctive sound part of their in-house “style” for a while, as other games such as Anna Kournikova’s Smash Court Tennis (an honourable mention in this list) also had a rather jazz-funk flavour about them.
Racing games have come a long way, but few modern titles provide the same degree of satisfying arcade fun that Ridge Racer Type-4 still does. And now you can download and play it on PSP and Vita. And typing this, I’m very tempted to go and do that after I’m done here.
The “so I like RPGs now” award
Final Fantasy VII. I don’t think I really need to say anything else about this, so here’s the intro — still one of my favourite game openings of all time.
The “inexplicably burned into my memory” award
I played a lot of role-playing games on PlayStation — at least, after I discovered Final Fantasy VII and the genre as a whole — but I actually have a pretty good memory of most of them, and indeed enjoyed most of them, too, even those that were objectively lower-quality and lower-budget than other games available at the time.
One such game that has stuck in my mind for a long time is The Granstream Saga.
I remember only a few very specific details about The Granstream Saga: it had some lovely anime cutscenes; it had a great battle system that was somewhere between a traditional RPG and the real-time combat of games like Zelda; it featured two heroines called Arcia and Laramee (the latter of whom donates her name to my custom characters in games any time “Amarysse” is not available); and that none of the polygonal models had any faces.
I’m not sure why The Granstream Saga has burned itself into my memory quite as much as it has, but of all the RPGs I played on PlayStation, it’s one of the ones I remember most fondly. I’d be interested to replay it sometime and see how it holds up, graphics aside.
The “I like this more than Zelda” award
Yes, I like The Adventures of Alundra more than pretty much any Legend of Zelda game I’ve played to date. (Disclosure: I only played a couple of hours of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, and haven’t played Skyward Sword at all.)
Alundra surprised me, because it came along at a time where, so far as many teenage gamers were concerned — teenage gamers like my school friends and I, for example — it was 3D or nothing. 2D games were things of the past; it was all about the 3D now, and preferably games that came on more than one disc. (My friend Woody believed for many years that it was physically impossible for a game to be as good as FInal Fantasy VII, which came on three discs, if it only came on a single disc. This was despite me pointing out that the three discs of FInal Fantasy VII all included the exact same game data, and the only thing different between them was the prerendered cutscenes. I could never convince him.)
Alundra was staunchly 2D, though. It wasn’t even a little bit 3D — games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (which we’ll get onto in a moment) supplemented their beautiful 2D art with 3D backdrops and other scenery elements, whereas Alundra was a pixel-art labour of love, with hand-animated characters, a distinctive and consistent aesthetic and the feel that, aside from the screen resolution, it may well have been possible to recreate on the Super NES.
After I got over my initial culture shock at playing a 2D game, though, I discovered something wonderful: a beautifully designed Zelda-style action RPG with, to date, some of the best-designed puzzles I’ve ever solved without the aid of GameFAQs. Alundra’s puzzles were difficult — more difficult than that which Zelda typically offered — but never insurmountable, and consequently they gave a wonderful feeling of achievement when you successfully solved them.
The plot was pretty cool, too. In fact, it went on to inspire a story that I’ve had half-finished in my head and various word-processing documents ever since. One day I should probably finish that.
The “Hmm, 2D platform games are still relevant” award
2D platformers have had something of a resurgence in recent years thanks to the indie scene, but in the early years of the 32-bit era, developers and players alike were thoroughly enamoured with 3D, with everyone trying to recapture the magic of Super Mario 64.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night proved that 2D still had a place, however. And what a game it was.
The game was immediately striking thanks to its intro, seen in the video above. The beautiful pixel art, the incredible soundtrack — by gosh, I miss old-school Castlevania music — the cringeworthy but memorable voice acting and script… all of it combined to make the second-most badass intro sequence after Final Fantasy VII in my book.
What was perhaps most interesting about the Symphony of the Night intro, however, was the fact that it was actually the last level of the previous game. Only after you beat Dracula — in a fight that you couldn’t lose this time around — did the game proper begin, and then you were in to one of the earliest examples of the “Metroidvania” genre: a type of 2D platformer where you could freely explore a single, huge world split into distinct areas, some of which were blocked off by the requirement for you to unlock specific abilities first.
Symphony of the Night as a whole was so great because it was designed well, played well, treated the player fairly and didn’t outstay its welcome. It was over and done with in about 10 hours — including the “secret” second castle — and by that point you’d had an eminently satisfying experience filled with thrilling boss fights, challenging platforming and, of course, amazing music. It’s no surprise that this Castlevania above all others is the one that keeps getting re-released.
The “this game is broken as hell, but I still love it to pieces” award
Bust-a-Groove took up a considerable proportion of one of our summers. Why? Because it was brilliant.
Bust-a-Groove was one of the earliest examples of “rhythm action” games that I remember playing, and took the unusual approach of being somewhat like a fighting game — it had different characters, each of whom had their own iconic stage, and you worked your way through them to a non-playable final boss. The whole thing was over in the space of about 20 minutes or so — a single playthrough was, anyway — but it was the kind of thing we all enjoyed playing over and over again with different characters.
Why was it broken as hell? Because of its multiplayer mode, and because of the nature of its gameplay. By requiring the player to input specific button sequences in time with the music, it was possible to get a “perfect” score on a level, and if two evenly matched players squared off against one another, it almost always ended in a stalemate. The game’s answer to this was to provide a couple of special attacks that could be triggered in time with the music, but there was also a dodge button and a very obvious cue that these attacks were coming so, again, two evenly matched players would more than likely end in a draw, while two players of different skill levels would be a foregone conclusion.
As dumb as it was, the personality-packed characters, the detailed stages and the incredibly memorable soundtrack made this one of my favourite games of the PlayStation era.
The “I like this more than Zelda, too” award
Here in Europe, we got screwed over on the RPG front for a good few years, with many localised titles not making the hop across the pond from America. Fortunately, I had a modified PlayStation capable of playing imported games, so when I visited my brother in the States on one occasion, I took the opportunity to pick up a selection of games I couldn’t get back home, one of which was Squaresoft’s Brave Fencer Musashi.
Brave Fencer Musashi was a funny game. And I mean that in several senses. It was clearly Japanese through and through, but an excellent job on the localisation filled it with exaggerated Western stereotypes such as the valley girl princess (who calls the protagonist a “little turd” within two minutes of them meeting), the mystic who overdid it on the archaic English and the distinctly camp scribe named Shanky.
Structurally, it was peculiar, too. It had many of the trappings of an RPG — levelling up, HP, MP and the like — but the feel of a 3D platformer, with you exploring a world of gradually increasing size and getting into various setpiece scrapes against bosses and special events. I never got around to beating it, but it was a lot of fun, and I still have a copy on my shelf, so… hmm.
The… hmm.
I’ve gone on for over 2,000 words and I think I could probably continue if I tried. But I’m going to hold it there for now and perhaps revisit some more PS1 classics tomorrow.
The PlayStation is celebrating its 20th birthday in Europe today. What better way of celebrating than with a rather lovely picture of Hyperdimension Neptunia’s Noire, personification of the PlayStation brand and platform, dressed up to the nines and clearly in slightly awkward party spirit?
Hnng, I’m sure you will agree.
Lovely Noire aside, the PlayStation’s 20th anniversary feels like a suitable occasion to share some fond memories of my time with Sony’s platforms over the years, and what PlayStation has meant to me. I realise that by doing this I am, of course, falling into Sony’s cunning marketing trap, but since I’m not a professional games journalist any more I can say whatever the fuck I want, not to mention post pictures such as that seen above.
Anyway.
My first memory of PlayStation is much like my first memory of many consoles from the SNES and Mega Drive era onwards: a unit came home with my brother, courtesy of his work on games magazines, accompanied by a few games, and thus I had the opportunity to try it out well before any of my friends ever did — though I would find myself biting my lip and never being sure whether or not five minutes after the poor chap had arrived was too soon to go rifling through his bags in search of technology and game cases.
The first three games I ever played on PlayStation were Ridge Racer, a pre-release version of Tekken (which had a bug or two here and there) and Raiden Project. Ridge Racer was, of course, absolutely gobsmacking at the time (though I still find it amusing that it upstaged itself with its fourth installment coming bundled with a remake of the original that ran at twice the resolution and twice the framerate) and Tekken was one of the most “physical”-feeling fighting games I’d ever encountered. (That cracking sound Paul Phoenix makes when he throws someone still makes me wince.) Conversely, I was initially unimpressed by Raiden Project owing to the fact that its 2D sprite-based graphics looked like the sort of thing the SNES and Mega Drive had been offering us for years by this point. (I later realised that I was being somewhat blinded by the then-revolutionary 3D graphics of the former two games, and came to enjoy Raiden Project a whole lot.)
Ridge Racer and Tekken were both noteworthy for incorporating something that I haven’t really seen since: games to play while you waited for the main game to load. Ridge Racer offered Galaxian — and unlocked bonuses if you managed to complete it before the main game loaded — while Tekken offered Galaga. Both were impressive, arcade-perfect ports that ran flawlessly while the game loaded in the background, and I’m sad that this concept didn’t take off more, perhaps due to Namco remaining somewhat tight-fisted with the technology. These days the best we get is an interactive loading screen that lets us practice our moves or something, but these tend to only come up once the game has already loaded, not the moment you put the disc in.
Eventually, for some reason, I came into possession of that same (Japanese) PlayStation that had originally come home with my brother. I forget the exact circumstances — I imagine it was due to him getting an official local model — but I was certainly extremely grateful for it. Unfortunately, as still happens with many console games today, the PlayStation was region-locked, meaning that it would only run Japanese games straight out of the box; running European games required you to either install a mod chip (which also enabled piracy, since it effectively bypassed the console’s internal copy-and-region-protection systems) or make use of a somewhat questionable trick involving a piece of Blu-Tac, a pen lid, a Japanese game disc and the European game disc you were actually trying to play.
Oh yes, the disc swap trick: most PlayStation owners of the late ’90s at least tried it at one point or another. Essentially the trick involved allowing the console to read the copy protection and region info from a disc it would normally accept, then quickly swap this disc out for the game you were actually trying to run. It was a somewhat perilous process that required you leave the lid of the console open at all times (propped open by the pen lid, which was also pressing down the button that told the console the lid was closed) and then whip out the first disc the moment it stopped spinning quickly. It often took a few attempts to get right, but my gosh, the first time I got Final Fantasy VII running in this way was an exciting day indeed.
Ah, Final Fantasy VII. I’ve waxed lyrical about this game many times on this blog, so I won’t reiterate that here, but I will say that at the time it was hyped up to me as “a game that will actually make you cry” and it did not disappoint. It introduced me to the wonderful world of roleplaying games, and gave my friends and I many, many hours of entertainment, since we all finished it several times over. In retrospect, I have no idea how we had the time to do this, but I do know that to date, I have played Final Fantasy VII from start to finish at least ten times over.
Even in those early days, I was someone who enjoyed investigating interesting-looking and strange games, particularly those of Japanese origin. I recall spending a whole lot of time playing the wonderful dance-off game Bust-a-Groove as well as cracking RPGs such as Breath of Fire III, Star Ocean: The Second Story and, of course, subsequent installments in the Final Fantasy series. Visiting my brother over in the States also saw me picking up a number of games that, for whatever reason, never made it to the UK’s shores: titles like Brave Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve, Xenogears and Lunar: Silver Star Story.
Have another Noire to break things up a bit.
I was well into university by the time I joined the PlayStation 2 generation. I wasn’t an early adopter, but I was intrigued by this new console and the supposedly immense power it had. But once again when I picked one up, it was not to grab the latest and greatest new titles — the game I chose to purchase my console with was a little-known adventure by Konami known as Shadow of Memories, to date one of the most interesting narrative-based games I think I’ve ever played.
For the uninitiated, Shadow of Memories casts you in the role of Eike, a man who keeps getting murdered and then having the opportunity to go back in time and save himself. The solutions to the situations become increasingly convoluted as you progress through the story, occasionally involving travelling back hundreds of years in order to, say, prevent a tree from being planted and, by extension, removing the place your assailant was hiding. I’d encountered strong stories in games before — particularly through the aforementioned Final Fantasy VII and adventure games on PC — but Shadow of Memories was noteworthy for me in that it was a console game that had taken the bold step of having neither attack nor jump buttons — it was simply about exploring, enjoying the story and working your way to the truth. (To date, I still haven’t seen the game’s true ending; I should probably rectify that at some point.)
Shadow of Memories aside, it took me a while to come around to the PlayStation 2, largely due to the fact that for a little while, there didn’t seem to be that many role-playing games available for it. I later discovered that this was an inaccurate assessment, of course — and in fact am still discovering great RPGs on the platform today, two hardware generations later — but it took me a little while to warm up to it.
Outside of RPGs, though, the PlayStation 2 did play host to some wonderfully memorable games. The Timesplitters series provided some of the best local multiplayer shooting since GoldenEye — largely due to being developed by the same people — while many a drunken evening was spent with my friend Sam post-Poundstretcher (the regular “everything is really, really cheap” evening at the Student Union) playing various incarnations of the Grand Theft Auto series. And some strange things from that era have remained in our collective vernacular ever since; if we’d never played State of Emergency (not Rockstar’s finest hour, but actually a surprisingly fun game) we’d never have come across the phrase “[do something] for BOOOONUS SCOOOOORE!”, which is frequently still used among our friendship group whether we’re cooking, playing a video game or gathered around the tabletop for a board game.
Have some more Noire. And yes, that brooch is supposed to look like the old Sony Computer Entertainment logo.
I’ve had an interesting relationship with the PlayStation 3. Initially, I didn’t quite see the point of it — in fact, I vividly recall doing some podcasts with my friends Edd and Woody where we were fairly merciless about that big ol’ lump of black shiny plastic, but then we were all fairly obnoxious Xbox 360 fanboys at that point, too.
I forget what caused me to pick up one in the first place. I think it was simply a pretty good deal — the console and three games for an eminently reasonable price. The games were Ghostbusters, Fight Night and something else I’ve forgotten. I played about ten minutes of Ghostbusters, booted up Fight Night once and didn’t play it, then quickly found that downloadable games like Flower were much more interesting than many of the retail titles available at the time. My Xbox 360 still got considerably more use — primarily due to the fact that multiplatform titles were often better on 360, and that my friends would typically play multiplayer on 360 — but I always held on to the PS3.
These days, the situation is a complete reversal. I haven’t turned on my Xbox 360 for a very long time now — I don’t think it’s been a whole year, but it’s certainly been a good few months — whereas my PS3 still gets regular use, largely due to the fact that, as has been the PlayStation platform’s wont ever since its inception, it’s still the best place to go for Japanese role-playing games, including titles like the Neptunia series which have since become some of my favourite games of all time. (Yes, really.)
And this isn’t even getting into Sony’s portable platforms the PSP and the Vita, both of which are criminally underrated platforms full to absolute bursting with top-quality entertainment to cater to all tastes and play styles. My Vita is getting more use than any of the other gaming platforms I own right now thanks to games like Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, and there’s plenty more queued up beyond those two titles, on both PS3 and Vita.
As for the now year-old PlayStation 4? Well, I still don’t have one yet, but frankly, with new Neptunia and Senran Kagura games both on the horizon for the new platform, it’s clearly only a matter of time before I cave and grab one, isn’t it? It just remains to be seen how long I can hold out. I’ve been doing all right so far, but it only takes one game — perhaps something unexpected — that I really have to play right now for me to take that plunge. Soon. But perhaps not just yet.
Anyway. Happy birthday, PlayStation. You — and let’s not forget the myriad developers behind all the games I’ve talked about today and more — have brought my life great joy over the years, and you continue to fill my free time with fun and frolics even now, 20 years later. Long may it continue — for another 20 years and beyond, maybe?
