Pre-owned Games

This is a topic which is getting talked about more and more recently; the morality of buying and trading in used games. As you may have noticed from previous reviews, I like really cheap old games, so I have an opinion to share.

I’m not going to make out that pre-owned games don’t hurt developers, because they do. When you buy a used game, literally none of that money goes to the people who made it, and there’s less impetus for the game store to order a brand new copy if they know that people are going to end up trading their games in again. But here’s the twist: I’m all for buying games second hand, but I’m also against trading them in. I know right? It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

I own a fair few games, most of which I could trade in at a moment’s notice, or sell on Amazon or whatever. And in the past, I have traded in games. There are a couple which I regret, but mostly, they were games that I did not, or no longer felt I wanted. I have not done this for a few years however, because basically, I like games. I like having them all on the shelf, even the bad ones. I routinely switch the covers of the ones I really like with the one’s I don’t like so much so that they look nicer. Plus, I’m really indecisive, and prone to shifting tastes in genre, so I need a lot of choice around me. What’s more, I’ve acquired a few games that didn’t do anything for me when they first came out (PS1 games in particular, such as Soul Reaver and Metal Gear Solid), and found that I enjoy them immensely. Now, even if I bought these games in mint condition, still factory sealed, the companies who made them would still get no money, since they aren’t making new copies of those games, and the store can’t re-order.

Recently, however, game companies have been putting in little things to stop people from buying their game pre-owned. Batman Arkham City activated it’s Catwoman levels (arguably, a major selling point of that game) with a single use DLC code. You do have to download the Catwoman content, but that’s largely beside the point.

Classic games get re-releases fairly routinely. If I want to play Final Fantasy VI, I can get the PS1 version, the GBA, or download the PS1 or SNES versions onto consoles. And that makes sense for the developers to do; they still make money, and people who weren’t around to get it the first time for one reason or another can play through a pretty good RPG. But then there’s all these Cult Classics. Eternal Darkness was only released on the Gamecube, and silicon knights seem keen to distance themselves from the few good games they’ve ever made (ooh, burn). Beyond Good and Evil sold so poorly that they were given away with boxes of cheesestrings. And Grandia II, despite being the most popular thing on this blog, has not been available to buy since about 2003. And let’s not forget that ridiculously popular games, like the PS1 final fantasies, did not get any sort of re-release until about 2009. For 12 years, the only way to play FFVII was to buy the original PS1 version. Well, technically you COULD play the PC version, but you COULD also rub glass in your urethra, that doesn’t make it an enjoyable experience.

I’m starting to ramble, so I’ll make my point clear. In five years time, Batman Arkham City (there are other games that do this, and even worse, but they’re shooter-things so I don’t give a fuck) will probably no longer be in production. I doubt that the DLC servers will still be active. That means that eventually, people won’t be able to play through the entirety of that game. Now, I would tend to argue that games are art, at least in as much as any other entertainment media. I can go out, pick up a copy of, let’s say, The World Ends With You, and play it, from start to finish, with every little bit of the experience intact, even the weird tin-pin epilogue where the plot get’s explained in more depth. And the odds are, that game will be pre-owned. If in five years, I buy a copy of Arkham City, then it won’t have the Catwoman levels. Yes, they are largely optional, and yes, they’re not integral to the plot, but that’s not the point. If any part of the game experience requires online activation, then that part is going to be lost forever. And sometimes, it’s the stupid extras that make a good game great. Imagine FFVII with no Vincent or Yuffie. New Super Mario Bros. without worlds 4 and 7. Pokémon Silver without the Kanto region, or the other version mascot. None of these things matter for the story to work. All of these things are entirely optional. But in the world of tomorrow, you are denied them, and you will know that they were there, but now are not.

Haiku Reviews

The Legend of Zelda

Aimless Wanderings

Dangerous to Go Alone

Sword: True Companion

Super Mario Bros.

Jump on Strange Fungus

Say “It’s a Me, Mario!”

Repeat Forever

 

Metroid (Take heed Other M)

Use the Freezing Beam

Don’t Think with your ovaries

Never Say a word

Fire Emblem

Sword beats Axe beats Lance

Death leads to great sense of loss

Reset and Repeat

Final Fantasy

Garland stole the girl

Travel back a Thousand Years

Go Mediaeval

Castlevania

Vampire Killer Whip

Bathed in a Rondo of Blood

Eat hearts for more stuff

Mother

Don’t Speak Japanese?

Too bad. Make do with Sequel.

Except for Europe.

A Piece of the World is Missing

Pokémon

Gotta Catch ‘em All

I know it’s my Destiny...

Bugger. Missingno.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Fast. Faster. Fastest.

Golden Rings Festoon the Spikes.

Out of Extra Lives...

Kid Icarus

Fuck, this game is hard.

No wonder there hasn’t been

A proper Sequel.

Final Fantasy IV (US SNES, Wonderswan Color, PSX, GBA, DS, VC, PSP)

I don’t think I like it.

The Final Fantasy series is fairly well liked, though the last three games in the main series have been met with both harsh criticism and high accolades depending on who you ask, with the exception of XIV which came out half finished. Square-Enix gets a lot of criticism for releasing the same game over and over, both in terms of recycled gameplay and actually releasing the same game over and over. To date, I have bought the PSX, GBA, DS and now PSP releases of Final Fantasy IV, widely believed to be the first Final Fantasy with a character driven narrative. The recent PSP release aims to be the definitive version, being bundled with its previously episodic sequel, The After Years.

Unsurprisingly, I’m going to start with the cover. This is something that a lot of people don’t give much thought to where games are concerned, but as a man who routinely switches the cases of his favourite games with those of less well-liked and less scuffed cases, I’d beg to differ.

Like the legacy edition of Dissidia 012, it has a cardboard sleeve, which may or may not be the true cover art. They’ve eschewed the traditional “logo on a white background” in favour of some full colour artwork of the main cast of The After Years by long time promotional; artist Yoshitaka Amano. It’s nice enough, but I’m not sure it’ll suck in people unfamiliar with the original.

I’m focussing the review on the Final Fantasy IV part of the game, since that’s all of managed to play so far. You might think this’d be the sensible option, but the majority of the manual is focussed on The After Years, and all the information for that game is before any mention of the original.

Since this game is only a few months younger than me, I’m not going to bother regurgitating the story. Suffice it to say that it’s surprisingly complex for a game that was originally in development for the NES. The majority of gameplay features seem to be based on the GBA version, though there seem to be a few tiny differences to keep it fresh. The massive difficulty spikes the game suffered from starting at the Tower of Zot seem to have been ironed out, though this could be due in part due to the erratic encounter rate. You could go through a map once without a single battle, and then go through the same map and have a back attack encounter every time you take a step. The bosses all require keen observation to take on effectively, particularly the Eidolons. This is the first time I’ve managed to actually complete the game, and the final dungeon is incredibly arduous if you lack cottages and dry ethers to restore MP.

When I got to the final boss, I was wiped out easily at first. After grinding up a bit, I went back to confront him, only this time, I discovered a shocking secret. Now, this being the future and all, I binged for a strategy to beat him, and as far as I’m aware, nobody else seems to have discovered what I have. Zeromus is so challenging because he can unleash to devastating attacks in quick succession. Except he’s vulnerable to slow. I’ll say that again; the FINAL BOSS is vulnerable to a STATUS AILMENT.

Obligatory Text-Box shot

The graphics have really been tarted up. Shading’s a LOT smoother, and everything looks all shiny. They’ve also FINALLY made Cecil’s sprite resemble how he’s supposed to look...except in battle he goes from having long flowing hair to short spiky hair as in every other version.  And sprite flipping is still used for walking left, meaning that character’s with asymmetrical hair cuts have their partings mysteriously flip to the other side when walking left. This was originally done to save space, but considering they found room for flashy new spell and summon animations (which ARE awesome), this smacks of laziness.

Briefly talking about The After Years, I’d say it’s better than the WiiWare version.  For a start, it’s cheaper, and comes all in one bundle, plus the enemy formations don’t look so oddly spaced (the WiiWare version was adapted from mobile phones, and used the low resolution sprites from the GBA).

I’m having trouble telling if I’m being overly negative in this review, and that about sums up my feelings for FFIV. It’s definitely not my favourite, but I don’t hate it. Hell, I spent the last week playing it pretty much non-stop, so that has to count for something. As a port, it’s pretty amazing. While the other PSP final fantasy ports suffered from immense slowdown (I know for a fact that the UMD version of FFII had actual LOADING SCREENS before random encounters), FFIV Complete Collection has a data install feature, although there isn’t much noticeable lag if you don’t use it, plus it comes with art cards (which...take up space?), a PSP screen cloth with Cecil on it (alas, too little too late for mine) and a costume for Cecil in Dissidia 012 based on his sprite art, PLUS the After Years PLUS an interlude section, PLUS the fact that both GAME and Gamestation had it on sale for £20, it’s not a bad buy.

If you like that sort of thing.

Which I might.

Dissidia 012 [duodecim]: Final Fantasy: The Revenge of Oppenheimer: Episode V: Part 2-A New Hope (PSP)

“Who’s the bigger badass; Sephiroth or Kefka?” This question that has plagued many fans of Final Fantasy for decades, and now, we Finally have an answer. Of course, we’ve had the answer for some time now; neither. Kuja destroyed a planet, and then destroyed everything that could possibly exist, but even for the homophobic, the answer came last year, in the form of Dissidia: Final Fantasy. This is the sequel. 

Except it’s a prequel.

And a sequel. A bit.

And the exact same game.

With a long title.

Or possibly the 12^th in the series. I don’t know.

Confused? You will be! 

The premise for the Dissidia games (and I’ll mostly be talking as though this were the only one, since it’s essentially a replacement) is deceptively simple. The goddess of Harmony is engaged in unending war with the God of Discord (Cosmos and Chaos respectively). To facilitate this, they summon up warriors from the world’s past. Or worlds’ pasts. Or possibly the future. And they may not actually be the same people, but copies. Deceptive. From a more meta viewpoint, it’s a fighter/RPG with Final Fantasy characters. The original Dissidia had one hero and one villain from each game, and Duodecim adds about eight new fighters; Lightning, Vaan, Prishe, Yuna, Laguna, Tifa, Gilgamesh and Kain. The first half of the game focuses on the “12^th cycle of Battle” (bare with me), which takes place before the events in Dissidia. It focuses almost entirely on six of the new characters, with most of the returning characters getting cameos at best. After that, the game starts to be a rewrite of the original, allowing for the new story points and features.

And now, about those features. In Dissidia, outside of battle, the gameplay was that you’d move your character around on a sort of chessboard, interacting with “battle pieces” to start fights. Now, you move around a world map (similar to Final Fantasy I’s), and enter into dungeons, where it starts to look a lot like the original game-board thing, but with a little bit more interactivity. 

Now for the fights themselves. Your characters need to be equipped, level up, learn and set abilities like in an RPG, although there is an arcade mode with preset characters. In battle, you have two sets of numbers to keep your eye on; brave and HP. Your Brave can be boosted by attacking with the circle button, which in turn reduces your opponents brave. When you think you’re brave is high enough, use the square button to attack there HP. As you might expect, the goal is to reduce their HP to zero as fast as possible. By collecting EX cores (wingéd bells), you can enter EX mode, and by performing an HP attack, trigger an EX burst, this game’s limit breaks. New to 012 are Assist characters; by filling up a separate Assist gauge, one can summon another character to perform an attack and depart.

The Graphics are pretty nice, although unlike the recent Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, you cannot increase the colour depth from 16-bit to 32 (this means that there’s a weird cross-hatching thing going on with the graphics, and characters with bright coloured models (e.g. Cloud’s hair) have weird halos in some scenes. You’ll also want to do a data install before you start playing, since the load times are long and frequent otherwise.

If you’ve already played the original Dissidia, you can import your save data. A nifty feature of this is that you can opt to not import character levels and abilities; you can start with everything you’ve already unlocked (in my case, this was 42% of 012’s  PP catalog), without having characters ridiculously over levelled, particularly since some of them have been given lot’s of new shiny moves.

Speaking of the unlockables, in the original, most of the unlockable outfits were disappointing palette swaps. Now, the majority of characters have at least one drastically different outfit, often designed to resemble the ingame appearance, since the default outfits are mostly based on concept art. We have a Warrior of Light with Red spiky hair, Exdeath out of his armour, Kefka in a Turban, President Laguna, and Marriage of Convenience Yuna (beard not included) to name but a few. There’s also DLC costumes and music. A few of these can only be obtained by buying certain square-enix products (the legacy edition of duodecim for instance), however they’ve been really smart here; there is a helmetless Warrior of Light costume for free on PSN right now (at least, I ASSUME it’s still there), which looks pretty badass, but it’s located right next to the other DLC for the game. If a new player goes to get there free DLC, they’ll notice the fairly cheap other items, and end up buying them as well. It’s the same reason why newsagents keep the mints and stuff at the counter.

The soundtrack is just awesome. It’s a mix of new arrangements of familiar battle themes, and a few unaltered tracks thrown in for good measure. I love it, but then I love them anyway. More will be available as DLC packs. Or not. It’s hard to tell right now. For all we know, the PSN was downed by Skynet, and all our days are numbered. I hear tell judgement day just passed again recently.

In summation (which sounds damned professional), if you’ve not played the original Dissidia, but this instead; there won’t be massive gaps in your understanding of the plot because of it. If you have played the original Dissidia, this one’s just better. If you have already bought it, but didn’t know there was DLC, then make a PSN account and check them out posthaste. If by some fluke you cannot get on PSN, then there’s something wrong with you, and you are right to feel ashamed. 

You are right to feel ashamed.

Grandia II (PS2, PC)

Imagine a PS2 game, set in a world of fantasy, ruled over by a sometimes oppressive religion, the people kept in constant fear of events taking place a millennium ago. One day, an outsider comes, and meets with one of this faith’s devout. Though he seems a poor match at first, gradually, a love forms between the two. Together, they set out on a journey, with several like minded individuals, including a halberd wielding beastman. Together, they discover that their temple is based on years of deception, and the world is finally thrust into a new age of enlightenment after facing almost certain destruction. 

Okay, so I’m definitely not saying that Grandia II is a rip off of Final Fantasy X (particularly since it was released first). But there is a similar set of themes. So, basically, if you liked FFX, chances are you should give this a try.

The first Grandia has achieved a level of infamy right up there with Resident Evil. Personally, I think this is unfair, there’s only one truly atrocious performance, and he doesn’t get credited. But that’s enough on that. Grandia II has a superb voice cast, with names you’ll probably be able to recognise from virtually any anime or video game.

The gameplay is essentially turn based, although rather than stand in neat lines, the characters run around the battlefield constantly, so many spells have an area of effect that is crucial to the flow of battle. It’s way too complicated to explain here. So I won’t. Also, no random encounters. I don’t mind random encounters, but some people take umbrage, so make of that what you will.

Now, the juicy bit; the story. You play as Ryudo, a “geohound”, which is a kind of mercenary thingummy. It’s never really explained what a geohound is, and at first it seems like it’s a race rather than a job title. I guess the idea is that there people who will do any job, for the right price. As a result, most people hate and fear them. The plot starts when you are hired to escort a Songstress of Granas (the major religion in the world) to a nearby tower to perform an ancient ritual. Yeah, I think that will go as well as a particularly clumsy octopus performing open heart surgery on a conscious and irate wolverine. The songstress (Elena), ends up getting possessed by the “Wings” of Valmar (Satan), which take the form of a succubus who calls herself “Millenia”. So, obviously, you take her to the Not-Vatican to get Not-Exorcised by the Not-Spanish Inquisition (Weren’t expecting THAT now, were you?).

...And that’s about all I can really say. It's actually quite frustrating, since the best parts of the story are all earth shattering spoilers. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's Dad. Young Anakin goes over to the dark side. Leia is Luke’s Sister. Soylent Green Is People. The Princess is in another castle. Jean Grey isn’t as dead as we were led to believe. Summoners don’t NEED luggage. All your base may not be in your possesion. Once you know these things, your view of the entire story is changed. I have quite a lot to say about this story, and may one day revisit it. But for now, I leave you with this; Grandia isn’t as bad as people say. Grandia II has possibly the deepest plot of any game I have ever played. Hell, I could write an ESSAY on the themes and symbolism on this thing. Plus, it has probably the best battle system of any turn based RPG. It couldn’t have sold very well, since subsequent Grandias never saw a PAL release, but it is definitely worth a shot.

Also, there’s robots. Did I not mention the robots?