The JRPG and me

As Tuesday the 9th approaches, fan anticipation (fanticipation?) for the latest instalment of the Final Fantasy franchise is reaching fever pitch. However, I am left rather nonplussed. You see, I never played Final Fantasy VII and I couldn’t pick Cloud from a line-up of generic JRPG characters if my life depended on it. I am hoping to play and review FFXIII from this perspective, but in the mean time, I thought it would be best to come clean and put my (lack of) JRPG credentials on the table.

For starters, why didn’t I play FFVII? It isn’t because I’m being a contrarian killjoy. Plenty of people I trust and respect love that game and I feel like maybe I missed out on something. I was an N64 gamer back in 1997, and without a PSX or high-spec PC to run it on, I was forced to go without. I was therefore never really exposed to Japanese Role-Playing Games like my peers. That was until 1998 gave my “Gameboy” (a huge brick-like “portable” gaming device with a green screen) an imported US copy of Pokemon Blue. I know “serious” Final Fantasy fans will be outraged that I honestly consider Pokemon to be an equivalent experience to their beloved series. But rest assured, I don’t think it’s Final Fantasy’s equal. No, for me Pokemon is the king of the JRPG.

I say that, of course, fully admitting that I don’t have the biggest frame of reference to draw from in that regard, but for me aged 13, Pokemon was the perfect combination of a childish love of collecting stuff with JRPG elements. Plus, I liked the cartoon and can still sing all the songs. But since those days, I have played every major instalment in the series and look forward to the next. Yet, I have never really played another JRPG. Why is that?

Well, that’s not completely true. I did quite enjoy Lost Odyssey (pictured above) on the 360 when that came out, until I went on holiday and never felt the urge to pick it up ever again upon returning. I was involved in the story and the atmosphere, which was all lost during my break from the game and was hard to re-capture. I also really wanted to play a little-known Dreamcast JRPG called Evolution, which I first saw on an Official Dreamcast Magazine demo disc which contained a video of the game way back in the launch issue (I’ve found it, albeit with an odd resolution, and posted it below!). I watched that video over and over again throughout 1999, in the hope of finally having a meaty JRPG of my own to dig into and make up for neglecting FFVII. But, as the date slipped back, and back some more, so my interest in the title waned. When it finally came into shops a year after the video that had excited me, I didn’t even bother to play it (in fairness it wasn't actually supposed to be any good anyway).


I think the main reason Pokemon has always worked for me whilst other JRPGs haven’t is due to the fact that I can’t really stand any game where you spend more time watching it than playing it (Metal Gear Solid 4 being the absolute worst game ever, in that regard). I am also not generally a fan of the super long boss battles or of grinding to “level-up”. Anyway, I promise to give the new Final Fantasy a fair crack of the whip, and as I'm reliably informed that no knowledge of previous Final Fantasy games is strictly necessary, either in terms of plot or gameplay, then I should be able to offer the non-fan's view on this "must-have new title" that will undoubtedly sweep the nation over the next week. Watch this space!

Final Fantasy XIII is out on Tuesday on PS3 and 360 (though I'm told the 360 version is "a bit rubbish"). Meanwhile, the classic Pokemon Silver and Gold games have been re-made for the DS and will be released in the UK on the 26th of March.

'Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing' review: Hazuki All-Star Racing!

I mentioned last week that I was due to review Heavy Rain and Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. Well, having met my commitment to the SONY title earlier in the week, I can now turn my attentions to this fun piece of SEGA fan service from Sumo Digital. Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing (with Banjo-Kazooie - on 360) is the latest in a long line of cartoony kart racing games inspired by the original 1992 game, Super Mario Kart. When I say Sonic & SEGA is “inspired” by Mario Kart, I mean it rips it off wholesale. The power-ups are more or less like for like, with red homing missiles instead of red homing shells, green boxing gloves instead of green shells and mines standing in for banana skins. It is unquestionably derivative and unoriginal, but it remains a lot of fun.

For a start a SEGA fan like me is treated to a range of playable characters from across SEGA history, with characters from every SEGA platform, as wide ranging as the Master System icon Alex Kidd and Opa-Opa (the star of the 1985 coin-op Fantasy Zone) to the Bananza Bros from the Mega Drive game of the same name and even including cult hero Ryo Hazuki, from the masterful Dreamcast game Shenmue. SEGA enthusiasts will also recognise much of the music used in Sonic & SEGA from games such as Sonic Adventure and Jet Set Radio Future. However, the game is less of a love letter to SEGA than Smash Brothers (the beat em' up which allows you to play as a range of Nintendo characters) is to Nintendo, as that title allows you to unlock far more (in terms of characters, stages and collectable items) than Sonic & SEGA does. It is disappointing that more time wasn’t spent adding unlockable character art (or something of that type) to the game, as once you’ve played Ryo Hazuki and gotten into his fork-lift truck, there aren’t really any more Shenmue references awaiting you as a hungry fan. A collectable model of an obscure Shenmue character (like Ine-San - pictured), in the way Smash Brothers does with Nintendo characters, would have provided that extra level of fan service the game needs to appeal to SEGA fans.

Indeed, Sonic & SEGA doesn’t try very hard to SEGAise every little detail in the same way Mario Kart and Smash Brothers do for Nintendo. Why are the power-ups red homing missiles and green boxing gloves? The shells and mushrooms in Mario Kart come from the Mario games. Whilst the Sonic & SEGA equivalent of the mushroom boost is a pair of Sonic’s speedy shoes, the other power-ups don’t seem to be SEGA-related at all, which is disappointing. How much effort would it have taken to turn the "confusion star" power-up into a picture of Mega Drive hero Ristar? A friend of mine at IQGamer told me that he thinks the game doesn’t have personality in the same way that Mario Kart does, and it’s hard to really disagree with that statement. There are some nice touches to be found, like the speech bubbles which indicate the objectives during mission mode, which are clearly stolen right out of SEGA’s OutRun arcade racing series, but they are few in number.

These gripes aside, I really enjoyed Sonic & SEGA as the Mario Kart rip-off it is. I played the 360 version, and it is great to have a colourful, fun game on that console in contrast to all the grim shooters. The courses look great, especially the Sonic-themed Ocean Ruin, which takes you through a translucent glass tube under the water. The slide mechanic, which again owes something to the slide and boost mechanism from the Mario Kart series (as well as SEGA’s own OutRun) works well and once you’re used to it you can naturally slide into the harshest bends and boost ahead of your rivals. The trick and boost mechanic is stolen wholesale from Mario Kart Wii to good effect, as performing a trick whilst airborne grants your an additional speed boost.

There is a pleasing variety to the games (60+) missions, a decent system for downloading pretty much anybody’s ghost on the time trials and the obligatory championship mode, with three difficulty settings (of course), is also pretty strong. Whilst I would have preferred there to have been more unlockables, there is still plenty to do in Sonic & SEGA. I’ve played it, across all the modes (including online and local multiplayer) for around seven hours now, and I still have half the missions to do, the majority of the time trials to attempt and I am yet to master the hardest difficulty in the cups. If you are looking for a fun racing game which offers 4-player split screen multiplayer (a rarity in this day and age) and an atmosphere of cartoony fun, then I would seriously recommend you play Sonic & SEGA.

Ultimately, how appealing Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is will depend on which system you own. If you own a Wii and don’t already have Mario Kart Wii, than I’d suggest going for Nintendo’s more polished title instead. Similarly, whilst the DS version is surprisingly pretty and plays quite well, DS owners can play the excellent Mario Kart DS, as well as a perfect port of the classic N64 Kart-clone Diddy Kong Racing, which for my money is the best option. Sonic & SEGA really shines as a 360/PS3 game, where the only other option is DreamWorks Madagascar Kartz. Without Mario Kart on these systems, Sonic’s pretender is as good as you are going to get (although ModNation Racers may best it on PS3 later this year) and aside from the aforementioned Diddy Kong Racing (which was basically a re-skinned Mario Kart 64 anyway), it is by far the best Mario Kart clone that I have ever played.



However, it is with a curious sense of survivor guilt that I enjoy this game. The great studios behind the original games referenced in Sonic & SEGA either no longer exist (Smilebit, Hitmaker, United Game Artists) or are a shell of their former glory (Sonic Team, AM2) and it strikes me as cynical that SEGA have no interest in making new entries in many of these series (Shenmue, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio) but are perfectly happy to pimp them for an easy buck here. What a slap in the face it must be to somebody like Yu Suzuki (creator of Afterburner, OutRun, Virtua Fighter) to hear that SEGA don’t want to conclude his Shenmue trilogy, but they would rather like to see Ryo racing Sonic on a motorbike! Gee, thanks SEGA. If you really want to please fans, this isn't going to be the way to do it. Sorry to end the review on that down note, but as much as I enjoyed Sonic & SEGA, I’d rather be playing a new entry in any of the classic series themselves rather than a derivative Kart-clone, however fun (and this game IS fun).

Check out footage from the German version running on a top-spec PC, below (thanks to the Fr3akDeluxe YouTube channel):




Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing is out now on PC/Wii/DS/PS3/360 (not PSP?) and is rated '7' by PEGI. It really is a lot of fun.

'Heavy Rain' review: It's not big and it's not clever

I know I am massively out of step with popular critical opinion here, but it is with a heavy heart that I must say, I didn’t like Heavy Rain, the PS3 exclusive title which has promised so much since it was announced at E3 2006. It gives me no pleasure at all to say that many fears people had about the game being nothing more than a series of QTE’s have proven correct. As I said in my last post, after a few hours of playing I had found the “drama” aspect fairly comical and heavy handed, and it didn’t improve from there, with multiple sequences that REALLY stretch all credibility, including a major plot twist that comes from nowhere, and is a far cry from being the game which would make you cry (see video below for Mega64's take on this!).

Admittedly, Heavy Rain does get you doing some novel things for a video game (brushing your teeth; applying mascara; changing a nappy) but none of them are fun or involving or emotional and all revolve around pressing the right control stick in various directions. Failure to get the prompt right usually just results in doing it again and the whole thing is completely pointless. If the intention is to make a drama which just happens to be a video game, then it completely fails on that level. If you play the game imagining it is a film then you are just left with the most hackneyed series of derivative thriller-movie sequences. The whole thing is also quite smug. It is almost insulting how clever Heavy Rain thinks it is whilst being nothing more than a boring Dragon’s Lair clone. I applaud the ambition, and think developer's should be encouraged to aim for the stars more often, but the opening credit sequence, with sad people standing in the rain, or the moment when a red balloon ascends into the sky, are super pretentious and laughable as a result.

Oh, and it is boring and then some. There were so many times when I wished I could run somewhere rather than slowly walk (however "cinematic" walking in the rain might be). There were so many times when I couldn’t care less about a conversation which was happening on screen. But where Heavy Rain really, truly fails is in an area so many ambitious games have failed to master before: that is in meeting actions with consequences, with the intended result of making choices difficult. There are apparently more than twenty possible outcomes, but these are mostly reflected in an end of game “news report”, similar to the bit at the end of Fallout 3 where a few sentences have been recorded for each variant and all get stuck together in the final speech to reflect your path. Most of the time Heavy Rain is asking you to choose whether you want to have orange juice or not... and this has no consequence whatsoever.

Indeed, there were many times I wanted to make a game changing choice (like shooting somebody you have pulled a gun on, rather than waiting for the obligatory bit where they hit it out of your hand and you have to scuffle about on the floor) only to find that there was no option. There was a (stupid) scene where a “bad cop” pulled a gun on my FBI agent during an interrogation of a suspect, and infuriatingly I couldn’t fight him, or tell anyone he’d done it, or turn on the video camera behind the two-way glass to show him beating the suspect... it was completely out of my control. I could go and make myself a coffee, but that would be POINTLESS!

I have nothing against pointless details if they add to an atmosphere (I’ll never forget standing at a bus stop on a cold Yokosuka morning in Shenmue, for example) but the lack of any choice in terms of where the characters go (I never knew why my characters were turning up at various locations for half the game) and generally not having any meaningful input in what will eventually happen (bar a few key moments) took me right out of the game and cut the atmosphere dead.



I don’t want to completely bash this game, however this reads. Heavy Rain is commendable for its ambition and for the fact that there isn’t another game quite like it (previous QTE games have generally used them for action and not tooth-brushing or French-kissing). The titular rain is really well realised and the motion capture work is superb. There were a couple of really entertaining moments, which usually involved running away from/after someone. I also quite liked using the FBI agent character, who has a pair of futuristic glasses that allow him to find forensic evidence quite easily. These bits felt the most like I was playing a game and not watching a generic Channel 5 thriller. I also liked the Kubrick-inspired art design in one key location, which I won't spoil here.

But most of the time the game is stupefyingly repetitive and bland. How many times must I check a bathroom medicine cabinet in a single video game? It felt like every other scene in Heavy Rain involved doing just that. Why is every fight sequence the same (people pick up objects and try to bash you with them or throw them at you, and when you fall to the floor you have to pummel ‘x’ to stand up again). The first time I had one of these fights, it was entertaining. But the novelty quickly wore off.

Basically, Heavy Rain is quite a stupid game with delusions of grandeur, aspiring clearly to win some sort of industry Oscars. If you want to watch a drama about a serial killer, then lord knows there are plenty of them and most of them are better than this one in more or less every way imaginable. Or if you want to see games as an art form than I would, again, direct you to Flower or Shadow of the Colossus. I would love to know someone who genuinely cried at some point during Heavy Rain. I am easily moved to tears, and yet I found myself laughing at every terribly acted “poignant” scene in the game. It takes a real effort to take the tragedy out of child murder, but hats off to the guys at developer Quantic Dream for making it happen.

In summary: top marks for trying... but please don’t try again. Also, the "sexy" female journalist character, Madison, looks unsettlingly like the 1980s Scotch tape skeleton.



Heavy Rain is out now and is rated '15' by the BBFC!