Something about enhanced collections of old games really gets me excited.
I mentioned how I didn’t really care about the Metroid Prime series before the trilogy collection, and now that the God of War collection has been announced I find myself very excited. This is bizarre considering I gave the first one a fair shake and pretty much hated it. But with the announcement that the first two PS2 games are going to be re-released with smoother graphics, better frame-rate, trophies, and output at 720p on a Blu-Ray for $40 (in the states, anyway), I find myself drooling.
Maybe it’s just the trophies.
Well I know what I’m looking forward to this holiday season. I love GoWII, but the jaggies are a constant scourge on my LCD TV. Problem solved, thankyou Sony!
Now if I could only make SE remaster FFX for me …
Funny! I was just thinking about that with FFXII!
But we already know where we both stand with X/XII
Yeah, I’m actually thinking of starting a new game of FFXII (I’ve just been hunting marks), though that’s silly considering my backlog …
See, that sounds exactly like me.
“Oh, I have a new PS3 and a backlog of about 10 Xbox games? Time to put on FFXII!”
It is great for podcasts though, and very easy to just turn off my brain and play on auto-pilot.
Except for the cut-scenes! So well directed! I know the content is crap, but the voice-acting and animation is top-notch!
BONER
Bonus feature better be the psp game re-visited
I’m suddenly fealing the same way. I played about 3 hours of GoW1, and I didn’t hate it, but it never gave me any reason to go back and finish it. Maybe the collector’s edition will be that reason, who knows.
Re FFX/FFXII – I’d love to see a FFX/FFX-2 remastered edition with the FFX International content added in. I was helping my sister through one of the Sin boss fights this weekend, and that game still looks frakkin’ gorgeous (although I’ll disagree about the voice acting. I found it an afront to my senses most of the time).
Sorry, I was talking about FFXII, Darth. I think the scenes are terrible in FFX, and the voice acting mostly atrocious.
Ahhhh, ok, I can get behind that. The VA in XII was MUCH better. I really did enjoy the cutscenes in FFX, though. I didn’t get into video games until somewhere between IX and X, so that was the first game I was completely “on the hypewagon” for, so to speak. Gotta say, it didn’t disappoint at all. Still my second favorite FF.
I was HUGE on the hype wagon for it too.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually quite like the game, I just think the cutscenes disguise a great story. Opposite for FFXII when amazing cutscenes hide a terribly boring story.
FFX’s cutscenes were amazing, FFXII’s cutscenes were non existant.
Seriously. What game were you playing, SN?
FFX. What did you think of FFX-2’s cutscenes?
I meant with FFXII! The cut-scenes were definitely not non-existent.
I thought FFX-2’s cutscenes were an improvement. The content was ridiculous, but they had a better handle on direction and voice-acting. Yuna was worlds better.
I think FFX-2’s cutscenes disguised a great story, as Ethos put it. Once you got past, well, pretty much the entire beginning and most of the scenes with the main characters, the underlying plot I actually liked (or maybe it just didn’t dispise it as much as when the characters were talking). The battle system in X-2 was so good, though, I still finished the game (I love the job systems, what can I say?).
FFXII’s cut scene count was probably less than Parasite Eve’s, and that game can be finished in 6 hours at a casual pace.
@Andogo: I’ve never played PE, so I can’t really attest to your comparison, but I thought FFXII has plenty of cutscenes, I just usually found myself not caring about what was happening in them (with a few notable exceptions)
I’m going to have to half disagree with you there, the voice direction was much better, but as for the rest of it I think FFX has it over it’s sequel. There were so many amazing sequences which IMO made better use of the mise en scene, such as the Mihen Highroad at sunset or the Lake Macalania scene. Just amazing, I’m willing to forgive FFX it’s VA gaffs.
As for FFXII’s cutscenes there weren’t many of them at any significant length outside of the first ten hours and the last hour. It felt narratively dessolate.
*@Ethos*
FFX-2’s plot was riddled with deus ex machina’s.
@SN: The Lake Macelania scene is still fantastic even today. Probably my favorite cutscene of any game I’ve played.
Now I want to go play FFX again X_X
@Darth – I don’t know who DIDN’T love the FFX-2 battle system.
@Andogo – You’re supposed to be on MY side!!
It’s not that FFXII doesn’t have cutscenes I guess, It’s just that the game is bookended with them, with nothing in the middle.
@Ethos: I bribed Andoga away with promises of bacon-covered hookers. They’re impossible to resist.
I do have a weakness for bacon, that is true. But I will also never pass up a chance to speak in favour of Parasite Eve.
To go on a complete tangent though, the article has made me realize I actually don’t like any game enough that I could play it over and over again without being sick of it, with the exception of games like IIDX. There aren’t really any games I like enough that I would beg for an HD remake. Certainly, if FFVII or FFVIII were remade, that would be good thing, if only because FFVII had really inconsistent graphics and both had environments that would benefit from the higher resolution.
What might be interesting is if SE redid Vagrant Story. I never really got into it, but it would be a quick and easy patch job, especially considering it’s a PSX game and the environment was all 3D and most of the rooms were just boxes and you would be halfway there just with high res textures. But it probably won’t ever happen, unless they had some kind of “Ivalice Compilation” somewhere down the road.
Parasite Eve II was pretty much a third-person shooter waiting to happen, and the existence of The 3rd Birthday means that SE has realized this as well. I’m fairly confident that the PE series will see a PS3 release if T3B sells well.
What would be hilarious and non-canon and pre-order-upon-announcement worthy would be Infamous: Midgar. I think that the cities in Final Fantasy games tend to be a lot more interesting than the events that take place within them and given the proper scale, could stand out on their own. Hell, you could adapt Spira into a pretty damn good Uncharted game. You could toss Wander and his horse into the area outside the Miriam Stilshrine or toss Altair into Rabanastre and Ezio into Alexandria. Or have a FF track pack for Gran Turismo, with tracks in places like Besaid, Esto Gaza, Esthar, and Costa del Sol.
Wow, I should not be allowed to have internet access past 2am.
A Shadow of the Colossus/Ico enhanced BD is a distinct possibility before the Last Gurdian comes out.
@Andoga: I never thought about it before, but you’re right, an open-world game set in Midgar could be amazing. I’d definitely pick that up day one.
@SN: I know a lot of people who could benefit from a SotC/Ico compilation. I hope that ends up happening.
I think an open world game set in Midgar would be perfectly horrid. Haven’t people realised yet that SE attempting to splice FF with Western game genres will always yeild abominations?
When Andogo goes wild! You should ALWAYS have post 2am internet access.
@SN – That would be incredible. An ICO/SotC Blu-Ray. But even if it’s a distinct possibility, it’s still a terrifying sight to let me get my hopes up about it…
@SN: I haven’t played Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus, the work that SE did with PE2 is enough to convince me that they ARE capable, they just need a couple of iterations to get it right. It’s like saying they shouldn’t have done any more FFI/II ports after FF:Origins on the PSX or they should have stopped making games after releasing The Bouncer. Then again, it’s probably because I haven’t played DoC that I’m so optimistic about the idea.
@Ethos: Since ICO was on a CD-ROM, there’s a possibility that they could even do a re-release of it on PSN, with a bundle release with SoTC later on, but it’s all gonna depend on TLG sales, I’m assuming.
Oh man. The Bouncer.
Believe you-me Riddlethosians…there will be a The Bouncer Week…
Yeah, for open world Midgar to be done well, I think it would have to be SE published, but developed by somebody else. It seems like anything SE develops that can be described as “third-person action something” is doomed to be mediocre at best, and horrible at worst. I played about 2 hours of DoC recently, and yeah, it’s reputation’s pretty much spot on (but I still want to finish it for the cutscenes).
Only possible exception to this seems to be Crisis Core, which I thought was a spectacular game, but I wouldn’t really say it’s a third-person action game, more an action RPG. And even there, the “action” was the low point of the game, I thought.
@Ethos: That would mean either you or Riddles (or both) would have to play The Bouncer that week.
@Darth – It means no such thing. I’ve already played more of The Bouncer than I’d like to admit. There’s definitely enough to say without subjecting ourselves to the purest of tortures.
@DG- Yeah Crisis Core doesn’t count, SE has been making Action rpgs for years. I’m talking about them borrowing elements from western games such as third person shooters and RTS. Also as far as I can recall PE2 wasn’t exactly met with rave reviews, wasn’t it supposed to be a huge step back for PE1?
I hope to never see a sandbox Midgar.
@SN: The problem with PE2 is kind of like the problem with Futurama. People were expecting more of the same (which, with Futurama, was like Simpsons… IN SPACE, I mean, the future), and it wasn’t. I was really turned off by PE2’s combat system at first, but when I went back to it (mainly to test out ePSXe) it was surprisingly fun, albeit not quite as fun as PE1. But it was a much more ambitious project than PE1, boasting more environments, enemy types, a deeper inventory system, more PE abilities, and different endings. The main problem, as with a lot of SE games, was the writing and the pacing. By the time the PE2 plot picks up, the game’s already 2/3s over and most people have stopped caring or stopped playing.
PE2 could actually be turned into a third person shooter, but it would require a lot more dodging a la Resistance 1, rather than shooting from cover as with Gears of War or Uncharted. The combat system would have to be much more streamlined, and it’ll probably resemble the KH interface, where you’ll have to set up spells and items before combat.
I suggested Infamous: Midgar as a joke; to be honest, the city would lend itself better to a Ryu ga Gotoku or a Shen Mue than Infamous, because it’s people’s homes and businesses that’s most interesting about the city. Considering the size and structure of Midgar, it was rather surprising that the closest thing it had to the mafia was Don Corneo. I don’t know, the short time that you spend in Wall Market and in the Shinra tower really sold the reality of the game world to me. And then you leave Midgar, and it’s like “oh, everyone’s still living in the 1950’s”. If I were Cloud I would have said “F— the planet, I’m heading back where they’ve got takoyaki vending machines and heated toilet seats, peace!”
As someone who appreciates cactuar, I can understand where you’re coming from. But sandbox Midgar would be some kind of awesome. Yes, they could drench it with buckets of fail like they did the Bouncer (honestly, people including myself have paid full price for at least 2 Dynasty Warriors games, button-mashing games are like crack, how does one commit such a royal pooch screw as they did with that?), but hopefully they’ve hemorrhaged enough money with FF:TSW (I can’t even refer to its full name, it’s so shameful) to learn that cool ideas require good execution to do well in the market.
Oh wow, I totally just jizzed myself a little. And it’s because the comment script automatically does smart quotes and double/triple hyphen to en/em-dash conversion.
I need to get out more. Typography should not be this sexy.
I was under the impression that PE2 was just trying to be the poor man’s Resident Evil, a position made redundant with the realese of RE5.
SE should only make traditional JRPGs, under no circumstances should they ever think sandbox. They are no good outside of their feild of expertise, which is one of the reasons they’ve been failing so hard in recent years.
PE2 is superficially similar to RE. Unlike RE, PE2 did have a lot of player stats (and thus, a reason to get into battles), and had a fair bit of weapon modification, though not as much as the first game. It did use the tank-style control scheme of RE, but aside from that, the two have little in common (aside from the “evil corporations creating zombies” basis). If anything, the similarity is between Aya Brea and Alice from the RE movies.
It may be an old game, but Einhander’s a good example of Square doing something other than JRPGs and being good at it.
As for SE suffering in recent times, the stuff they’ve been publishing is hit and miss, the stuff they’ve developed themselves is of good quality but released too far apart.
I know I’ll need a flame shield for this, but I’ve been really unimpressed by the JRPGs I’ve picked up in… not-so-recent-times. One was Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, another was Tales of Legendia, both of which I put down and walked away from after about 3 hours. I finished Tales of Symphonia because I was still a good little grindy JRPG trooper back in the day, but I did barely any of the sidequests. Oh, I also got through five minutes of Blue Dragon before I deleted the demo off my 360.
Can’t really explain why I don’t enjoy most JRPGs. I know I’ll probably have a gay ol’ time with FFXIII, and it’s probably because FF storylines tend to take a backseat to the visuals and the combat system. And I invite you to disagree. But my impression of FF games is that you have X hours of gameplay, and your reward is a cutscene and it’s bookended by dialogue with other members of your party and some NPCs. Most other JRPGs make all that dialogue part of the gameplay, and all the text reads like the writer and translator were both paid by the page. That’s not saying I don’t enjoy fleshed-out characters and NPCs who have more than one line of dialogue, but don’t make those conversations a mandatory part of completing a quest.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you’re a girl with blue hair and big watery anime eyes, exposition is not something you should get into. If you’re a bubbly blond girl who’s someone’s little sister, you need to just go away and leave the savng of the world to people who can go two seconds without talking about how fun it is to be on an adventure with all of your friends. The best video game women are the ones that are quiet, stern, and have breasts that threaten to jump out and wave hello every time they inhale. Quistis = fail, Lulu = win. Edea = milf win. Adel = do not want, because she’s actually a man.
OK, seriously, I need to just turn off my router after 2am. Why are you friends with me, Ethos? Why would you ever do that to yourself?
I agree with you about Star Ocean III and Blue Dragon, haven’t played the other games you mentioned. I would however totally disagree with your contention that the story in FF games takes a backseat to graphics and gameplay (unless of course you’re playing FFXII).
Bah-ha ha ha ha, Andogo wins the rant award. I’m with SN about FF and story, but damn those comments are entertaining.
Yeah, if anything I think Andogo should take up at 2AM to post rants every night. Very entertaining stuff :D.
RE: Blue Dragon/Star Ocean:TTEoT – I haven’t played Blue Dragon, but from what I’ve heard your reaction wasn’t all that uncommon. It probably helps if you’re a fan of Dragon Quest games (at least that’s the impression I’m under), which I’m not, so I never bothered with it. I did play quite a bit of SOIII, though. I think I was pretty much knocking on the door of the final dungeon (after the plot goes all Matrix 2/3), but I just put it down one day and decided I didn’t care enough to finish it. Not sure why, I just realized I didn’t care about any of the characters really, you know? But yeah, you might just need to play better JRPGs :F.
RE: FF Stories – I think one of the reasons FF succeeds is that it does such a good job of balancing character exposition with really flashy cinemas. The example that jumps to mind if Crisis Core. It seemed like every time I was starting to get bored of talky cutscenes, they’d find some excuse for Sephiroth to cut a building in 1/2.
RE: Video Game Women – Well, sir, it looks like we have very different types indeed :F.
Yeah, Blue Dragon is fun enough. Nothing spectacular by any means.