Final Fantasy XIII is the latest installment in the increasingly inaccurately titled Final Fantasy series and chronicals the adventures of annoying and boring characters down a linear corridor who stop and pause every now and then to motivate each other. If you think this sounds dull and would like a bit more story the game thoughtfully provides you with a small encyclopedias worth of text to bring you up to speed on the backstory, the current story, the best local cafes, whether or not the characters are into BDSM, etc. So in other words the story is untidy and disjointed. It would be a little like if you were watching a soccer game and every 5-10 mins having the game interrupted by an elderly man reading a few pages of a novel. Except imagine that the soccer game is about 50 hours long.
But maybe your playing the game for the mechanics? Makes sense really seeing as video games are an interactive medium. But then again the fans of the series have always praised the games for their rich storytelling, so maybe that's wishful thinking. But funnily enough the combat is actually good...really good...kind of. My problem is that although the combat system and character developement system is great it takes way, WAY too long to reach it's full potential. In fact you don't have full access to the characters best moves until after you've finished the fucking game, which is stupid design if ever I've seen it. Surely the point of a game is to have all the exciting bits fairly early on or to build it up gradually before reaching a cresendo of orgasmic delight. But in FFXIII the fun is kept to a minimum for most of the storyline. In fact I only really started having proper fun in the post game stuff when the world became vaste and open and my developement tree was completely unlocked.
Many people have asked me in the past how they can make so many Final Fantasy games not realising that for the most part they have nothing in common. The story, characters and settings are almost always completely different. The only things that seem to tie the games together are a few recurring enemies and weapons. So what exactly makes a Final Fantasy game? I have no idea but as I play more of them I've started to think that maybe the only thing that makes a Final Fantasy game a Final Fantasy game is Square-Enix's desire to make money out of it.
So that's Final Fantasy XIII for you. Not too much to say really except that if you DO in fact buy it make sure you have a trained monkey or a passive, friendless nerd to play through the story for you so you can skip straight to the good bits.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
A Post Apocalypse Double: The Road and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
You know I'm actually starting to get pretty sick of the apocalypse. I mean after all the movies, books, tv series, video games and nerds huffing and weezing about it it's going to be so fucking hyped up that whatever actually causes the apocalypse in the end is probably going to feel rather embarrased about it. "Sorry guys, but this is it...hope you enjoy it" is something like what I imagine this entity saying. I mean I get that people like to use the post apocalyptic setting to explore things like hope, the darker side of mankind and the perseverence of humanity but it's gotten too far out of hand people. I mean honestly, exactly what do some of these film directors think makes their take on a grubby guy who's family perished long ago any different to the last one? "Oh my gosh! He's having a flashback to a happier pre apocalypse time!" "Oh wow! I loved their completely different take on how fucked we are!" So anyway, sarcasm aside, today I actually managed to watch 2 completely different post apocalyptic films. One was a beatifully directed masterpiece that told story about the destructive powers of war and disharmony with nature. The other was about a grizzled survivalist and his son going to the beach for some reason.
The Road is a pretty typical post apocalypse movie. It's shot on a camera that manages to capture the world in crisp, clear, HD quality black and white and hopes that it can get the edge on the multitute of other movies doing exactly the same thing by being even grittier than the last one. You can sum up almost the whole movie by describing this one scene at the start in which the father is showing is son how to commit suicide with a handgun. Yeah that's right, says the movie, I'm fucking edgy. There are two types of people who inhabit this world. The hectic, pack-hunting rapists/canibals who somehow ended up with all the guns, trucks, houses and whatever else you'd care to name. Everyone else is a starving, dirty hobo pushing their trolly of supplies about the landscape robbing each other and wishing they were dead. I did have to hand it to this movie, it had me on edge the whole way through as I wondered just what would happen to this grubby father and son combo. But on the other hand the way it achieved most of this was pretty cheap. A good apocalypse movie could be set on a pornographic theme park made out of candy and rainbows and still have me on the edge of my seat and The Road could not have done this. It relies too much on gloomy settings and discomforting gore to get the job done. But there was one very crucial factor that made me realise that this movie wasn't good. I thought I was near the end of it, it felt like it had been running for ages and had made all it's social and psychological points and then it turned out it had only been going for 30 minutes. There was still over an hour to go. Upon this discovery I felt unhappy at the thought of sitting through the rest. So there you have it, if a movie feels way longer than it is and you become depressed at the thought of sitting through another extremely slow hour then chances are this movie is not good. Oh yeah, one more thing. If you don't like the idea of slogging it through 100 mins with a character who keeps saying "papa" in an increasingly whiney and blubbering tone then I suggest staying well away from this one.
Contrast what you read above with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds, which manages to convey hoplessness and desolation despite being animated and colourful. The thing about this movie is that I was so engrossed in the world and the characters that I failed to realise that it was a post apocalyptic movie. I suppose this movie is almost 30 years old now and pre dates the whole apocalypse fad we're currently going through and as a result manages to sidestep pretty much all of the stereotypes. NotVotW is also beautifully paced and thoughtful with it's story telling. It slowly presents the harshness of the world piece by piece. The funny thing is that this movie is actually longer than The Road but because it is so cleverly executed it feels considerably shorter. NotVotW also seems to have a much clearer idea about what it's trying to say and how best to say it. People are better of living in harmony with nature and each other. Killing each other isn't good. This may not sound like much but if you think really hard about it that's basically what all post apocalypse films are trying to say, the only reason you might not have noticed is that they don't do a very good job at it. They spend so much time making everything as grim and fucked up as possible that they forget about the point they're trying to make and that's ultimately the biggest flaw in most modern apocalypse films. NotVotW may not have been as bleak and depressing, but it was certainly more engaging, emotionally involved and moving. I realise I haven't actually revealed anywhere near as much about NotVotW as The Road but that should be taken as a good thing. A truely excellent movie hardly needs any explaining or critiqueing, it should just be recommended and held up as a shining example of cinematic brilliance It's like marking an essay at school. There's no need to go on and on about how good the A+ essay was because it's already achieved great marks. But the slow kid who handed in the C- essay needs a lot of feedback so that they can hopefully understand where they went wrong and do better next time. Or at the very least they can see which kid they should try and copy for their next class quiz.
The Road is a pretty typical post apocalypse movie. It's shot on a camera that manages to capture the world in crisp, clear, HD quality black and white and hopes that it can get the edge on the multitute of other movies doing exactly the same thing by being even grittier than the last one. You can sum up almost the whole movie by describing this one scene at the start in which the father is showing is son how to commit suicide with a handgun. Yeah that's right, says the movie, I'm fucking edgy. There are two types of people who inhabit this world. The hectic, pack-hunting rapists/canibals who somehow ended up with all the guns, trucks, houses and whatever else you'd care to name. Everyone else is a starving, dirty hobo pushing their trolly of supplies about the landscape robbing each other and wishing they were dead. I did have to hand it to this movie, it had me on edge the whole way through as I wondered just what would happen to this grubby father and son combo. But on the other hand the way it achieved most of this was pretty cheap. A good apocalypse movie could be set on a pornographic theme park made out of candy and rainbows and still have me on the edge of my seat and The Road could not have done this. It relies too much on gloomy settings and discomforting gore to get the job done. But there was one very crucial factor that made me realise that this movie wasn't good. I thought I was near the end of it, it felt like it had been running for ages and had made all it's social and psychological points and then it turned out it had only been going for 30 minutes. There was still over an hour to go. Upon this discovery I felt unhappy at the thought of sitting through the rest. So there you have it, if a movie feels way longer than it is and you become depressed at the thought of sitting through another extremely slow hour then chances are this movie is not good. Oh yeah, one more thing. If you don't like the idea of slogging it through 100 mins with a character who keeps saying "papa" in an increasingly whiney and blubbering tone then I suggest staying well away from this one.
Contrast what you read above with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds, which manages to convey hoplessness and desolation despite being animated and colourful. The thing about this movie is that I was so engrossed in the world and the characters that I failed to realise that it was a post apocalyptic movie. I suppose this movie is almost 30 years old now and pre dates the whole apocalypse fad we're currently going through and as a result manages to sidestep pretty much all of the stereotypes. NotVotW is also beautifully paced and thoughtful with it's story telling. It slowly presents the harshness of the world piece by piece. The funny thing is that this movie is actually longer than The Road but because it is so cleverly executed it feels considerably shorter. NotVotW also seems to have a much clearer idea about what it's trying to say and how best to say it. People are better of living in harmony with nature and each other. Killing each other isn't good. This may not sound like much but if you think really hard about it that's basically what all post apocalypse films are trying to say, the only reason you might not have noticed is that they don't do a very good job at it. They spend so much time making everything as grim and fucked up as possible that they forget about the point they're trying to make and that's ultimately the biggest flaw in most modern apocalypse films. NotVotW may not have been as bleak and depressing, but it was certainly more engaging, emotionally involved and moving. I realise I haven't actually revealed anywhere near as much about NotVotW as The Road but that should be taken as a good thing. A truely excellent movie hardly needs any explaining or critiqueing, it should just be recommended and held up as a shining example of cinematic brilliance It's like marking an essay at school. There's no need to go on and on about how good the A+ essay was because it's already achieved great marks. But the slow kid who handed in the C- essay needs a lot of feedback so that they can hopefully understand where they went wrong and do better next time. Or at the very least they can see which kid they should try and copy for their next class quiz.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Spider Man Movie Trilogy
Woah! Over a month since my last post, gosh I need to shape up. Anyway, first up I'd just like to point out that I was never that big on Spider Man. I never read a comic, I very rarely watched any of the multiple animated series and to be quite honest I never gave a shit. I don't really see the appeal to be honest. The only good thing about Spider Man is the occassionally decent game in which you can swing around the city, getting as high up as you can before flinging yourself towards to ground in an exhillerating, I-have-a-sinking-feeling-in-my-stomach act of catharsis. So now that you know roughly how I stand on the whole Spider Man franchise it's time for me to give you my highly opinionated rundown on the Spider Man Trilogy and how it sunk from mediocrity into a cloying casm of darkness and shit.
Spider Man
The movie that started it all. I was in my early to mid teens when this movie first hit the big screen and I think I recall actually liking it a fair bit at the time. Granted, this was before I had any taste or clear understanding of what makes a movie good in any way, so I think it's a fairly safe bet I liked it because it looked good and the story had internal consistency. Looking back the movie was really just above average and did nothing new and exciting with the Spider Man formula. You know the drill, Peter Parker is a weedy little nerd with glasses whose parents, now deceased, apparently didn't have a lot of money for vowels and consonants to give him a cool person name. The movie sets Peter up as the loser for a while, he has a hopeless crush on a girl out of his league, he is forever running alongside his school bus and the jocks shove him about. I guess it's pretty important that all the Spider Man fans can inject themselves into this universe. Anyway, to cut a long and often painfully scripted story short this movie is about how Spider Man came to be, what motivates him and why.
Spider Man 2
The second movie is a very similar formula to the first one. I can really only fault it in one new way over the original and that's this. They fucking explore the same shit. There is no character developement, which isn't normally a problem because Spider Man has already been developed as a character. But instead of exploring other characters they just retread the "what motivates Spider Man" ground. Oh and Spider Man's love interest is a mopey, unlikable moody bitch who I have no interest in seeing Spider Man get involved with unless it involves consuming her in web, feeding on her and laying eggs in her. However it is this movie in which my favourite Spider Man character ever is introduced. No, not Dr. Octopus you nerdy fuck. The character I'm refering to is the semi-attractive, plain Jane character who is the daughter of Peter Parkers landlord. I like her because she is the only character in the movie who feels real and genuine; as well as that she happily makes Peter a cake to cheer him up, juxtaposing her nicely against that other hormonal tramp. In fact what has always pissed me off about that movie is that Peter Parker should have clearly ended up with the cake lady. She was lovely, she was a dear, she would've had a cake ready for Spidey at the end of a long day of fighting freaks. But despite this I can't really say that this movie was any worse than the first, not in any significant way. But then along came...
Spider Man 3
What a ballsack of a movie. Once again they decide to explore the personal life of Spider Man only this time Peter Parker lets the fame get to his head and he turns into a douchebag. I don't know why this pisses his girlfriend off so much, seeing as how she's a complete bitch too, seems like they're made for each other. Also I'm not exactly sure why the years of being famous have only just now gotten to Peter's head as opposed to say TWO FREAKIN' MOVIES AGO! But I digress. Also the bad guys have the shitest motivations yet. Sandman's excuse for shooting an old man unnescessarily after stealing his car was simply "my daughter is sick." The other guy wants to kill Peter as revenge for revealing that his photo's he was selling to the paper were photoshopped and stealing his girlfriend. He actually goes into a church and preys for Peter's death. Oh yeah, did I mention that of all these unsubtle movies this one is about as subtle as having your scrotum pulled back through your legs and stapled over your sphincter. The fact is that the story is just a clumsier version of the older stories with characters who are all unlikable with the exception of cake girl, who Peter Parker is a complete jerk to. The really stupid part is that half the movie is actually not about superheroes or supervillians, it's just about people you don't like ruining relationships you don't care about. I remember when this came out the Angry Video Game Nerd did a review defending this movie against the swarms of disgust it stirred in people and actually claimed it was the best of the trilogy and wrapped everything up nicely. To that I say, are you fucking kidding me? That movie was pointless, did nothing for the franchise and will forever be known as "The Shit Spider Man Movie." What isn't completely awful is utterly bland.
To conclude I'd just like to say that Spider Man is actually pretty shit. He's a lame super hero with uninteresting motivations and all his supervillain counterparts are stupid. In fact,I can't think of a single decent Marvel Comic franchise. They're all shit. Spider Man is probably the best one. I mean DC has Batman and The Watchmen, which are simply a lot better in terms of quality.So there you have it, I have scientifically proven that DC is superior to Marvel. Fuck you nerds!
Spider Man
The movie that started it all. I was in my early to mid teens when this movie first hit the big screen and I think I recall actually liking it a fair bit at the time. Granted, this was before I had any taste or clear understanding of what makes a movie good in any way, so I think it's a fairly safe bet I liked it because it looked good and the story had internal consistency. Looking back the movie was really just above average and did nothing new and exciting with the Spider Man formula. You know the drill, Peter Parker is a weedy little nerd with glasses whose parents, now deceased, apparently didn't have a lot of money for vowels and consonants to give him a cool person name. The movie sets Peter up as the loser for a while, he has a hopeless crush on a girl out of his league, he is forever running alongside his school bus and the jocks shove him about. I guess it's pretty important that all the Spider Man fans can inject themselves into this universe. Anyway, to cut a long and often painfully scripted story short this movie is about how Spider Man came to be, what motivates him and why.
Spider Man 2
The second movie is a very similar formula to the first one. I can really only fault it in one new way over the original and that's this. They fucking explore the same shit. There is no character developement, which isn't normally a problem because Spider Man has already been developed as a character. But instead of exploring other characters they just retread the "what motivates Spider Man" ground. Oh and Spider Man's love interest is a mopey, unlikable moody bitch who I have no interest in seeing Spider Man get involved with unless it involves consuming her in web, feeding on her and laying eggs in her. However it is this movie in which my favourite Spider Man character ever is introduced. No, not Dr. Octopus you nerdy fuck. The character I'm refering to is the semi-attractive, plain Jane character who is the daughter of Peter Parkers landlord. I like her because she is the only character in the movie who feels real and genuine; as well as that she happily makes Peter a cake to cheer him up, juxtaposing her nicely against that other hormonal tramp. In fact what has always pissed me off about that movie is that Peter Parker should have clearly ended up with the cake lady. She was lovely, she was a dear, she would've had a cake ready for Spidey at the end of a long day of fighting freaks. But despite this I can't really say that this movie was any worse than the first, not in any significant way. But then along came...
Spider Man 3
What a ballsack of a movie. Once again they decide to explore the personal life of Spider Man only this time Peter Parker lets the fame get to his head and he turns into a douchebag. I don't know why this pisses his girlfriend off so much, seeing as how she's a complete bitch too, seems like they're made for each other. Also I'm not exactly sure why the years of being famous have only just now gotten to Peter's head as opposed to say TWO FREAKIN' MOVIES AGO! But I digress. Also the bad guys have the shitest motivations yet. Sandman's excuse for shooting an old man unnescessarily after stealing his car was simply "my daughter is sick." The other guy wants to kill Peter as revenge for revealing that his photo's he was selling to the paper were photoshopped and stealing his girlfriend. He actually goes into a church and preys for Peter's death. Oh yeah, did I mention that of all these unsubtle movies this one is about as subtle as having your scrotum pulled back through your legs and stapled over your sphincter. The fact is that the story is just a clumsier version of the older stories with characters who are all unlikable with the exception of cake girl, who Peter Parker is a complete jerk to. The really stupid part is that half the movie is actually not about superheroes or supervillians, it's just about people you don't like ruining relationships you don't care about. I remember when this came out the Angry Video Game Nerd did a review defending this movie against the swarms of disgust it stirred in people and actually claimed it was the best of the trilogy and wrapped everything up nicely. To that I say, are you fucking kidding me? That movie was pointless, did nothing for the franchise and will forever be known as "The Shit Spider Man Movie." What isn't completely awful is utterly bland.
To conclude I'd just like to say that Spider Man is actually pretty shit. He's a lame super hero with uninteresting motivations and all his supervillain counterparts are stupid. In fact,I can't think of a single decent Marvel Comic franchise. They're all shit. Spider Man is probably the best one. I mean DC has Batman and The Watchmen, which are simply a lot better in terms of quality.So there you have it, I have scientifically proven that DC is superior to Marvel. Fuck you nerds!
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