Empty pursuits!
I was looking at some DS games, and I'm on the fence about buying them: Advance Wars DS 2, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, and Final Fantasy IV. I had a lot of fun with the predecessors, but I got to thinking. I'm a sort of person who likes to do everything there is to do in a game. I have 100% completion on all the DS Castlevanias and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. But for a lot of games now, getting all the unlockables is the game. The game you think you bought isn't that great, and once you've done everything, you put it on the shelf and never think about it again (or just never finish it). When I play a game like that, I'm just passing time. Time is the most valuable commodity we have, and I don't want to sit and watch it pass. This is why I got off World of Warcraft. I was all into grinding and doing stuff, once I got to 60, but then I realized that I wasn't really doing anything at all. It was a complete waste of time.
I want to learn something when I do anything. You can learn from watching a movie or listening to a song or playing a video game. You learn about how it works, if nothing else. (If you want to write, read!) It's good to play a lot of different game types if you're interested in designing games, as I am. But I wonder if those games had anything to contribute at all, or if I would just spend 40 or so hours going through them, and come out missing 40 hours of my life, with nothing to show for it.
Advance Wars, I think, peaked with 2. Certainly it was the one that got the most praise and created the most talk. AWDS had a lot of mis-steps, and AWDS2 sounds like it just throws everything out. The COs all play close to the same and look like generic anime characters. Probably not worth getting. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was fun, but I think it was the 'gotta catch 'em all' empty pursuit type of fun. Probably can pass on this one.
Final Fantasy IV (remake!) is a tougher choice. I really enjoyed the original, and the Playstation version is pretty slow, so I don't have a great copy of it. The remake has semi-acceptable polygonal art (about N64 level graphics, I think), and rotten character designs. (Yay, let's make the men look like girls in everything! And all the spikes and crap on everything! I swear, Japan is in it's Image period. I think Rob Liefeld's little sister does most of the Square designs. Who the hell thought Goofy would look cool with zippers on his hat?!) Anyways, aside from a big step back in design and blah graphics -- you know, this is sounding less and less appealing as I go -- it has a revised game design, making it more difficult. I think one of Final Fantasy IV's virtues was that it really wasn't very hard. Making a Japanese RPG hard is sort of like having a raging river with an easy bridge twenty feet from where you are standing: you can always just level up and do it anyways, and leveling up is not fun, really. Making people level up just pads the game out. How many hours of most modern RPGs are just grinding or travel and how many are what real meat? I read an interview where the designer for Final Fantasy IV says he had to throw out a huge amount of the story to fit the game on an SNES cartridge, but he felt it made the game better, because all the filler was gone and all that remained was the important stuff. I think this is what I like about the game. He did promise not to put much extra stuff in that had been excised before, so I don't have to worry about that.
I'm going to have to write my long-promised essay on why I feel Final Fantasy IV's pacing was so excellent. But for now, I leave you!
I want to learn something when I do anything. You can learn from watching a movie or listening to a song or playing a video game. You learn about how it works, if nothing else. (If you want to write, read!) It's good to play a lot of different game types if you're interested in designing games, as I am. But I wonder if those games had anything to contribute at all, or if I would just spend 40 or so hours going through them, and come out missing 40 hours of my life, with nothing to show for it.
Advance Wars, I think, peaked with 2. Certainly it was the one that got the most praise and created the most talk. AWDS had a lot of mis-steps, and AWDS2 sounds like it just throws everything out. The COs all play close to the same and look like generic anime characters. Probably not worth getting. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was fun, but I think it was the 'gotta catch 'em all' empty pursuit type of fun. Probably can pass on this one.
Final Fantasy IV (remake!) is a tougher choice. I really enjoyed the original, and the Playstation version is pretty slow, so I don't have a great copy of it. The remake has semi-acceptable polygonal art (about N64 level graphics, I think), and rotten character designs. (Yay, let's make the men look like girls in everything! And all the spikes and crap on everything! I swear, Japan is in it's Image period. I think Rob Liefeld's little sister does most of the Square designs. Who the hell thought Goofy would look cool with zippers on his hat?!) Anyways, aside from a big step back in design and blah graphics -- you know, this is sounding less and less appealing as I go -- it has a revised game design, making it more difficult. I think one of Final Fantasy IV's virtues was that it really wasn't very hard. Making a Japanese RPG hard is sort of like having a raging river with an easy bridge twenty feet from where you are standing: you can always just level up and do it anyways, and leveling up is not fun, really. Making people level up just pads the game out. How many hours of most modern RPGs are just grinding or travel and how many are what real meat? I read an interview where the designer for Final Fantasy IV says he had to throw out a huge amount of the story to fit the game on an SNES cartridge, but he felt it made the game better, because all the filler was gone and all that remained was the important stuff. I think this is what I like about the game. He did promise not to put much extra stuff in that had been excised before, so I don't have to worry about that.
I'm going to have to write my long-promised essay on why I feel Final Fantasy IV's pacing was so excellent. But for now, I leave you!