Recently I’ve started to seriously try and lose weight. (lost 2.5lb’s in my first week baby!) My plan was to hit the gym today but I had to wait at home for the people from the garage to pick up my car. So I picked the next best alternative (If you’re only option is at home) Wii Fit.

The game asked me to register some personal information. Height, age and National Insurance Number. Then using the the magic that is the balance board they worked out my weight and BMI. Ok, I’m far from the thinnest guy in the world, I have myself quite the belly but I would never consider myself obese. According to the BMI scale I am obese with a score of 32. It’s a stereotypical excuse but I am quite big boned in nature. I’m overweight, but obese? That’s pushing it, if I don’t say so. To be fair, it’s not like they can use any other method to what is little more than a fancy weighing machine.

The board itself is a nice shape, though it’s a little of the small side in terms of length. They say the board was made for the average American male. That’s nice, but if you are anything over a size 9 (UK) it’s too small. If you are going to design something you need to look at both sides of the average, not just the average and below, technically you are missing at a huge portion of your market there. You need to at least work out the standard deviation to find out the general lengths people fall into, this is simple statistics! I wouldn’t say my feet are huge being a size 10/11, but my feet only just slightly overhang if I’m keeping them straight. Which is a little uncomfortable and makes it slightly harder to keep my balance since I can’t keep myself 100% flat on the board.

Throughout the beginning of my experience I had a nice friendly talking balance board to keep me company and get me through the basics. How he can talk in he first place is beyond me. The slit down the middle looks like an arse crack. So he is literally talking out of his arse. Later he decided he was no longer needed and stated that he could no longer talk to me because I will be standing on him for now on. Isn’t he funny. Ha, well the joke is on him. I’ve been standing on him the whole time. Take that Arse Face!

To start off I tried out some of the Aerobics excerises, namely the Super Hula Hoop, now that one just requires you to move you hibs in a big circle motion and try and catch the extra hoops. It took me a while to get the hang on it, now I hula like a pro. I took my hand at that stepping game, rhythm punching and jogging. While jogging I noticed a bunch of school kids making their way to the field for P.E. “What suckers” I thought. They will be running around outside while I can do it from he comfort of my living room. That quickly changed when I noticed that they may be able to see me jogging around on the spot like an idiot with a Wiimote in my pocket. Then came the dilemma. Do I stop and wait for them to pass or carry on and get a high score. I was torn I just stared outside the window just hoping they don’t see me. Nothing feels worse than having 14 year old brats laughing at you, it’s humiliating. Thankfully they never noticed, they were probably too busy talking about the latest shitty techno metal oprea bands.

The Board itself is rather impressive, it picks up your movements pretty well and is quite accurate. It finds my centre of gravity easily and can tell what type of body movement I am making, well to the best a balance board can get. For the first few go’s I didn’t realise the board was the wrong way round and that was the reason why I was messing up so badly. You would think it would notice I was doing everything the wrong way round.

After over an hour of in-game exercising I was done. Current opinions? It’s a decent fitness program, there are certain levels of fun can be had with it. I did end up sweating more than expected but it’s nothing compared to actually going to the gym. It’s a nice extra program to use in conjunction with your current fitness plan. Can’t say I want to use it as an alternative to the gym. My target is to loose 1 and a half stone in 2 weeks….Wish me luck.

Current Weight change: 0 (It’s only been 1 day)

So, who here remembers E3? Hands down; it was rhetorical. How could any one possibly forget Microsoft publicly announcing they’re greedy bastards, Sony’s own Kevin Butler’s grand monologue that many gamers will use to try out for their Drama classes, or Nintendo claiming their souls back from the casual audience better than Mario could ever reclaim his dear princess? I’m sure Will definitely hasn’t yet due to still swimming in loads of content from the event. Now, what does any of that have to do with the average headline above? Not much. In fact, the E3 event itself has nothing to do with any of this. What does though is the hype.

Back in May, every single gaming site (except us because we’re either hardcore or just incredibly lazy) were doing their part to hype up E3 through various previews, humor videos, editorials, predictions, etc. However, what caught my eye was a hype poll that IGN put up titled ‘Who needs to do well at E3 this year or will cease to exist?’ with choices being for the big three and all the major publishers. My first reaction to this poll was a chuckle because, quite frankly, the chances of any company going anywhere in the next few years are low. Still, I decided to play along and I voted for Sony. The reason? They’ve never had an OMGWOW press conference like Microsoft did in 2007/2008 or Nintendo in 2010. But, I digress. After voting, I got to see the current results, and, to be quite honest, I was shocked and appalled to see that the majority of people put aside their inner Console War 2010 soldier and voted SEGA. I was at least hoping that they would give rightful hate to Activision (it’s as I type these words, I realize I will never get a review copy from them… I’m cool with this).

I think people are misaiming their hatred because I will fully agree with them that Sonic and Sonic Team as a whole have fallen from grace, but SEGA as a whole? That’s saying a bit much. Yes, they do publish trash like the Iron Man games, but every publisher has their low moments. Heck, I’m still looking for an explanation from Bethesda for WET. Instead of focusing on their sellout titles and shovelware, I think people need to stop and give SEGA credit for the incredible publishing work and many fan-services they have done this gen. In fact, it seems when SEGA is trying, all they are doing is listening to the fans. Don’t take my word for it, just look at their accomplishments from over these past five years: 1. Employing PlatinumGames (formerly known as MUTHA-FUKIN’ Clover… give or take a few syllables) who have given us Bayonetta, MadWorld, Infinite Space, and Vanquish (which looks awwwesome). 2. They re-birthed once great franchises such as NiGHTS, Samba De Amigo, House of the Dead and After Burner. Most of which did well critically and the other (who shall remain nameless) was a fun game for the casual audience that used the essence of a once famed peripheral game 3. They developed Valkyria Chronicles which went down in the Guinness Books as the best strategic RPG of all time. 4. They worked with great developers like Tri-Ace and Monolith to bring us Resonance of Fate and Condemned respectively. 5. Unlike other companies, they do many fan-services such as bringing Dreamcast games into the land of glorious HD on the XBLA and PSN, bringing Yakuza 3 to the states, putting Mario and Sonic in, what is now, three games together (two of which are casual party games), listening to the fans of Sonic and returning him to a 2D side-scroller where he and speed are the only stars of the show, and many more. Instead of continuing this list, I’m going to cut this short because this article is already a tad wordy. Thus, conclusion time!

Every day while browsing the hundreds of gaming sites out there, I always seem to find one face-palm worthy slam to SEGA like the press still holds a grudge. If that is the case, I say they all need to grow up and look at what the house that Sonic built has been up to. Heck, even the now hated mascot still manages to give us good titles through the Sonic Rush games, Sonic 4 (we hope), Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing is actually a fun kart racing title for those who can’t get their hands on Super Mario Kart, and even Sonic Colors looks like it could turn out to be a pretty fun title if Sonic Team can keep their heads together. If anything, SEGA is one of the few third party developers that remembers what the hardcore gamer actually likes to play. I, for one, am thankful for this attention and can’t wait to get my hands on Vanquish. Till then, I’ll be playing more Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Note: I may (or may not) add pictures to accentuate this editorial at a later date. – pjs.

With Final Fantasy XIII finally hitting the Western world, early criticisms from numerous video game websites all point toward a clear and concise outcome. While the reception of the Japanese release had already foreshadowed the following to be true this past holiday season, now that the rest of the world has seen and spoken their thoughts about the game, I feel it is now appropriate to dissect Square-Enix’s debut Final Fantasy title of the HD generation.

In the words of Christian Nutt, it is clear that Final Fantasy XIII is one of the most polarizing games of 2010. To fully understand this statement, we must first unpack several important questions. Why Final Fantasy XIII? Or possibly more important: Why Final Fantasy? Trends have shown that while the game received mixed reception both within its home soil as well as international soil, the biggest polarization of the game’s reception comes between Japan and North America. For those who may already be clueing in to part of where I’m getting at, the rest may sound like self-indulgent rhetoric, but Square-Enix–who has been struggling for almost a decade to create the universal RPG–must know that their most essential design choices for Final Fantasy XIII, and how those choices were received by the masses, have hit (if not blindly unaware of it) the core of the problem regarding true international success. A polarization so significant, more than any title that came before it, has to have made Square-Enix aware that they’ve inadvertently experimented with an infrastructure (unforeseen or not) that has greatly defined the success of their video games.

________What Final Fantasy XIII Is

While one can praise Final Fantasy XIII for its awe-inspiring graphics or its fast-paced battle system, at the end of the day, it is obvious that Final Fantasy XIII is fundamentally shaped and defined by its characters. While many other RPGs try to divide the player’s investments across many aspects of the game design, Final Fantasy XIII facilitates a very pronounced, character-driven experience by not only increasing the frequency in which cutscenes occur, but also removing secondary distractions such as party customization and extensive gameplay mechanics for a very large portion of the game. Parties are regularly being changed and altered as you are shifted from one cast member to another, leaving absolutely no freedom to customize character setups beyond the Crystarium until much later in the narrative (more on this later).

Another major design choice Square-Enix chose to compliment this character-driven experience is in the way they handled maps and navigation. Play Magazine described the environments as being no more than “wallpaper thrown over a tunnel that players walk through”, and GamePro summarizes the gameplay as “a long hallway toward an orange target symbol on your mini-map that triggers a cutscene, a boss fight, or both”. Persuasive rhetoric aside, it is true that Final Fantasy XIII’s exploration maps invite very few opportunities to stray off of the high road, and even if you do, the convenience of orange exclamation points allow you to backtrack onto the main path if you do happen to get lost. This in itself is not a flaw, in my opinion, but it does place pressure on players to stay anchored on traversing only the ‘relevant’ parts of the map–chests are not even marked on the maps until after you’ve opened them.

So while the inclusion of Gran Pulse and its accompanying plethora of end-game content does reintroduce the elements of player agency like party customization and world exploration into the mix, for many, having to wait until the last 2-3 chapters of the game to gain access to these features leaves the entire affair feeling like more of an after-thought than a fully integrated system within the game design.

So in light of these polarizing results, the biggest question has still got to be simply: Why? The magnitude in which these design choices were implemented is not small, meaning that Square-Enix had to have thoroughly considered their options before finally coming to a decision as to what vision they wanted to take with Final Fantasy XIII. So what sort of factors might have influenced them to take such a route with their debut HD Final Fantasy title? The scope of this question is vast and buried beneath many layers of complexity, but realistically we can examine this inquiry in two major ways. First is by mapping the history of the video game industry, and the second is by deconstructing the JRPG and the WRPG, and how cultural thought processes influence how each one is developed.

________Looking at the History of the Business

First and foremost, Final Fantasy has been around for a very long time. Prior to the turn of the 21st century, and more importantly, prior to the entry of this new generation of HD gaming, Final Fantasy had always set the benchmark for console RPGs; sometimes, Final Fantasy was the only RPG brand to play. This was definitely true for consoles throughout the 1980s and 1990s when an RPG was defined as something that ‘only came out of Japan’. Consequently, irregardless of where you lived in the world when you became interested in console RPGs during the industry’s infancy, Japanese RPGs–most notably Final Fantasy–were the only available games out there that you could be exposed to.

Broadening this topic for a moment, it should be noted that while the console sector was founded by companies like the Magnavox and Atari throughout the early 1970s, after suffering two massive industry crashes leading up to 1983–by which time, all North American console projects had been discontinued–companies like Nintendo and Sega soon came to dominate and dictate what became of the industry, both in what was made and what sort of games came to be considered entertainment. In other words, by the dawn of the 1980s, Japanese-developed video games and video game consoles popularized what would eventually become what people came to identify as the video game industry.

With Squaresoft having made themselves exclusive third-party developers for the Nintendo brand, the success of the NES and SNES–both of which were the best-selling consoles of their generation–allowed Final Fantasy to systematically define the console RPG genre with each new reiteration over the next twenty years. This continued to be the case even after the introduction of the Playstation in 1995 and the Playstation 2 in 2000 when Squaresoft changed their exclusivity from Nintendo to Sony (also a Japanese company). At the turn of the millennium, however, the industry would soon see a significant change.

A Shift in the Industry
When Microsoft launched their original XBOX console in 2001, the video game industry would never be the same again. Besides being the first successful North American-based video game company to introduce a console into the market since the video game crash of 1983, Microsoft’s greatest achievement was the popularization of the First Person Shooter genre for the consoles. Older relics like Doom, and more particularly Counter-Strike may have already popularized the genre for the masses, but it was not until the release of Halo: Combat Evolved that people began to view the FPS genre as something that made sense for the consoles. Despite the fact that the Playstation 2 still prevailed as the best-selling console of its generation, Halo: Combat Evolved managed to sell one million copies within the first five months of release–something no other video game at the time managed to do, and by April of the following year, it became clear that the FPS was a winning formula in the Western world.

Fast-forwarding to 2005-2006, the dawn of our current generation of HD gaming, we see even bigger development among Western developers. Be it a confidence boost from Halo’s commercial success or otherwise, it is only during this generation that we see a large expansion of video game development by Western developers across numerous genres including the Action/Adventure and of course, the Role-Playing genre. Franchises like Gears of War, Fable, Killzone and Fallout are only a few examples of these efforts.

With North America now once again an influential force in the industry, developers like Square-Enix who continue to aim for international success with their video games can no longer ignore this emerging trend. In hindsight, it now becomes clear why during one of his last interviews, Kitase Yoshinori describes Final Fantasy XIII’s pacing as being closer to a First Person Shooter campaign than as a traditional JRPG. At first it seems like a very bizarre comparison, but upon dissection of Final Fantasy XIII’s design, these similarities are more readily seen.

The campaigns of First Person Shooters, at their core, are fairly simple. Usually comprised of fast-paced scenarios where players are made to travel from point A to point B, there is no back-tracking after each level is completed, and once you complete your objective, you are almost immediately thrust into a completely new scenario and the process begins anew. This perpetuation of a high-intensity experience gives the First Person Shooters its charm, and clearly has been something Square-Enix tried to emulate in Final Fantasy XIII. All the areas you travel through during the first 10 chapters or so are no longer visitable after you leave for the next area, and the constant change of party members depending on where you are in the plot is a facilitation of this ‘scenario’ experience. Towns and cities are non-existent save for the plot-relevant ones, but the paradigm of town-stop-overs to rest at the Inn and upgrade party gear is remarkably absent. Instead, you are relentlessly pushed through the game’s narrative with generous amounts of save points that take care of all your upgrading needs. In this sense, it can be said that a majority of the adventure in Final Fantasy XIII is a simulation of objectives that are thrust on the player one after the other.

________Some Cultural Context
Individualism vs Collectivism

Western colonial history is a big part of what eventually defines this prevailing individualistic ideology, but to discuss colonialism and how it has shaped North America culture leading up to today would be far too arduous a task in its entirety. But for the purposes of this editorial, what is important to understand is the way in which colonial discourse has consequently bred our society to 1) value our autonomy as unique individuals in a world where we relate and evaluate ourselves and others through modes of difference, and 2) normalize these cognitive frameworks as being relevant across all walks of life; ‘our way’ is the way it ‘should be’, and/or ‘always has been’.

Individualism pervades many aspects of human living here in North America. From a very young age, children are taught to express themselves creatively, value their uniqueness, and above all, do these things confidently and without reservation. Schoolwork is designed with ideas of self-reliance in mind, and there is a particular emphasis placed on analytical models of problem solving, using one’s own knowledge to examine, evaluate and complete tasks of adversity. While group-oriented work and cooperation among group members are still major parts of almost all curriculum programs, successful and cohesive group productivity is often achieved through the collective efforts of people with individual expertise, and we see this when Sally, who is good at arts and crafts, is chosen to make the bristle board for her group’s history presentation, and Jim, who is good at writing, is chosen to summarize and type up the group’s presentation notes. Teamwork, then, is just as much of an individual expression of production as it is a collective one.

This Western ideology of individualism has not only been a relentlessly instilled concept in North American thought, but also normalized to the point of invisibility; we are systematically posed to see these cognitive frameworks as being natural and especially self-evident. Byproducts of this naturalized outcome can be seen across many institutional realms–the political, social, religious and sexual realms of human experience just to name a few. Monogamy, democracy, heterosexuality; Western colonial history has developed these institutions for us and have engrained it in our culture in such a way that we sometimes forget to appropriately objectify these ideas. Our individualistic identities push us so far into believing and placing ourselves at the centers of our own lives that we sometimes mistake our ideologies as being the ‘way things should be’, and fail to consider our methodologies as being one of many in an ultimately perspective world.

Collectivism is a prevailing ideology of many Eastern nations, but for our purposes we consider specifically the ways in which this is relevant to Japan. History, much like colonialism was for Western expansion, has had an undeniably significant role in this country’s adoption of a collectivistic way of life. The postulates that make up collectivism are so distanced from our individualistic experiences that it is no wonder that beyond our amicably named ‘moon language’ of Japanese written word, many find themselves simply ‘not getting’ Japanese culture.

Conversely, collectivism places value on communal harmony among populations, and emphasizes a structure of interdependence between individuals. Simply put, it is more important to consider the needs of the group over the needs of any one person. This philosophy is applied in many different areas of Japanese society. In many schools, dress code is much stricter than anything in the West with things like hair color, piercings and sometimes even fingernail length being monitored. Students are not particularly encouraged to speak up and question the opinions of their instructors. Conformity, something that in the West is often discussed in a more pejorative light, is a much widely more practiced–if not accepted–way to deal with disparity. To be accepted by one’s peers and to fit in with the rest of the community is seen as much more important than to be uniquely expressive. For individualist cultures, this philosophy is collectivism’s greatest criticism. However, this is not to say it is without its own advantages. Because of its holistic nature, people of collectivist cultures are much more sensitive of others around them, and are more aware of conflicts that are present in their surroundings. Empathy is a much more tangible concept in collectivistic thought, allowing them to better understand the perspectives of others much more than individualists.

We can find collectivistic thought all throughout Japanese history, including poetry and even within the wealth of Japanese fables and mythology. The philosophical view that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ is a common theme in literature, and even more so among pieces which depict families–a very pivotal part of Japanese living. In a short story written in the late 1660s, entitled Nippon eitaigura, a son of a wealthy merchant sets out to find his own fame and fortune with nothing but the clothes on his back. During his travels, he considers options like ‘picking up empty shells which people scatter over the town, burn them at Reigan-jima, and sell the ashes as lime’, or ‘shred edible seaweed or shave dried bonito into ‘flower-strips’ and sell them by the plateful’. This son, named Shinroku, eventually purchases a roll of cotton and cuts them into sequentially and sells them as hand towels. Slow at first, he finishes making his fortune over the next ten years.

The above summarization of an old rags-to-riches tale is one such story that many Japanese businesses still mimic to this day. The idea of maximizing volumes, and making profits by small margins over long periods of time is reflective of their understanding of an ideally functioning society. Individually, one sale is insignificant. But when many of these sales group together, the impact is much more meaningful. It goes without saying that this is just one symbolic representation of collectivistic thought, and its presence and pervasiveness in Japanese culture.

________Tying it all together

Final Fantasy XIII has certainly made some substantial changes from previous instalments of the franchise, but despite Square-Enix’s genuine attempt to create a game that would appeal across the seas, they have instead created the most polarizing Final Fantasy title of all time. I had already mentioned earlier in this editorial that this polarization had to be a signifier that Square-Enix had struck the core of their problems regarding international success, and now that the foundations for the historical and cultural contexts have been laid, we can finally start to pull some strings together to explore what has caused this polarization.

JRPG vs WRPG: A Fundamental Shift in Preference
To reiterate, console RPGs up until this generation have been primarily dominated by Japanese developers. While not inexistent by any means, Western-developed RPGs that were well-received stayed primarily on the PC and went relatively unnoticed by a large portion of the gaming demographic. This changed when Western developers finally started investing more budgets on console RPGs, producing titles such as the Mass Effect series, Fallout 3, the Fable series and so forth. Not only did these RPGs do exceptionally in sales and win a multitude of yearly awards, but it also marked the beginning of a continuing slew of criticisms regarding JRPGs. It may have been the first time we even needed to make the distinction of JRPG. We have all heard the arguments. Statements such as “JRPGs are outdated”, “JRPGs are boring”, “JRPGs need to reinvent themselves” continually flooded message boards and video comment boxes throughout the internet and sadly enough, even made their way onto published magazines and out of the lips of ‘distinguished’ experts on television programs. How did the industry standard for RPGs suddenly become out of date within such a short period of time?

When comparing Japanese developed RPGs with Western developed RPGs, one fundamental difference stands out the most: linear vs nonlinear storytelling. Critically-acclaimed titles like Fallout 3 and the Fable and Mass Effect series all share in common in a nonlinear approach to storytelling. In all three games, players are able to crucially shape both the direction of the story and the development of the main character. In Fallout 3, players are given a chance to nuke an entire city which greatly affects the story (how would it not?). In Fable, you can choose your character’s gender and subsequent choices you make throughout the game can slowly change the way your character looks. In Mass Effect, you can additionally adjust a variety of facial features and piece together a preset backstory before even starting the game. Such considerable character control is nonexistent in JRPGs, which stick primarily to linear structures with characters and storylines which players cannot create, edit or make decisions for.

If we were to apply what we know of individualist culture, it is easy to see why so many North American RPG fans have switched loyalties to the WRPG brand. In a society where valuing uniqueness and expressing individuality is a well regarded philosophy, being able to choose how we look and what decisions we make in our video games is truly, a very fulfilling experience. Such a structure caters to our desire to be who we want to be, and always be at the center of our own experiences as we play through our RPGs. As individualists, we are more ready to attach ourselves to the paths we have created with our own hands, and invest ourselves into stories that we know we were responsible for making.

For collectivist cultures like Japan, a linear storyline is much easier to digest than individualists who are more inclined to be unsatisfied with the lack of control. Because the collectivist’s capacity for empathy is so much bigger than the former, they are more ready to invest themselves in the predetermined storyline that is unfolding before them, even if they have no control over what comes next. Even if the characters they follow throughout the game are out of their hands to manipulate–in both how their personalities change and the choices they make–their holistic innateness in seeing ‘the bigger picture’ may make it easier to relate and understand where the characters are coming from, allowing them to feel just as important to the story (if not more) as the characters they are following.

These kinds of frameworks greatly shape development choices that studios make when creating RPGs, and it is no surprise that Western developers were as well-received as they were by North Americans when their RPGs finally hit the market. North Americans know best what North Americans want because they understand each other and are looking at games with the same eyes.

So when we consider the recent trend of JRPGs failing to please Western audiences, I attribute this to a fundamental preference shift that happened in Western audiences when they became exposed to nonlinear RPGs, rather than simply: JRPGs are outdated. The preceding criticism, along with others such as “The Japanese market is failing” are but context-specific demonstrations of how our colonial history has continued to normalize our culture as being globally self-evident and self-relevant. While this has been the case for JRPGs over the past couple of years, Final Fantasy XIII is but a most recent example of this effect.

The Problem of Agency
Gamasutra’s Christian Nutt was on to something big when he explored the significance of player agency back in January in his own Final Fantasy XIII analysis editorial. It cannot be understated how important this concept is to the experience of RPGs, and consequently the enjoyment of RPGs. Final Fantasy XIII is probably the best example of this since perhaps more so than the argument of linear vs nonlinear storytelling, Final Fantasy XIII’s greatest criticism of all is its incredibly skewed negotiation of the ‘structure vs agency’ dilemma.

Developers of RPGs (both Western and Eastern) are faced with the task of having to balance the player’s experience of the RPG through structure such as the pacing of the story, party customization, accessibility to towns and world maps, and agency–that is to say, the degree of freedom in which the player is able to control and experience these structural elements of the game design. When the thought of Final Fantasy XIII being ‘too linear’ surfaced among reviews of the gaming community, many people interpreted this as being an empty–and virtually irrelevant–piece of advice because Final Fantasy titles have always been ‘linear’. It is important for us to understand that this criticism was not aimed at the argument regarding linear vs nonlinear storytelling, but at this conceptual spectrum of structure vs agency.

All RPGs, regardless of their storytelling approach, grapple with this dilemma. When we talk about cutscene direction–when, where and how often they happen–we are dealing with structure. When we talk about the ways in which players can initiate these cutscenes (for example, players can choose to view cutscenes A through D in any order they like), we are dealing with agency. When we talk about what sort of skills and abilities specific characters can learn throughout the game, we are dealing with structure. When we talk about to what degree we can specialize these characters in battle, through equipment, naturally learned abilities or otherwise, we are dealing with agency. A very popular application of agency in JRPGs–considered by some to be quintessential–is the aspect of backtracking maps, exploring towns and villages, and progressively consolidating party setups as the game goes on. As you might have already concluded, all three of these (though one might argue only two) are missing from Final Fantasy XIII’s formula. This is the kind of agency (or lack thereof) that has garnered the phrase ‘too linear’ among critics. With the removal of towns and villages, along with the ability to steadily improve and consolidate your party and backtrack previously explored maps, people feel that the world they are experiencing, and the choices they can make, are inconsequential and ultimately meaningless. Truly, if one believes these parameters to be an essential part of their RPG experience, then its absence from the game’s structure is a glaring flaw, if not an indicator of failure as an RPG.

When it comes to Square-Enix’s resolution of this ‘structure vs agency’ dilemma, the resulting polarization of the fanbase in regards to Final Fantasy XIII is but a signal that Square-Enix has sourly misunderstood what sort of demographic makes up their fanbase. Yoshinori Kitase had already affirmed that while the company does recognize how well nonlinear approaches to storytelling work for Western audiences, it will still continue to produce linear games, justifying this conscious decision as being ‘the best’ way to deliver their visions. This in itself is not the problem as all previous instalments of Final Fantasy retained this linearity without a notably polarized result. Rather, it shows that within the Final Fantasy fanbase, two types of players exist. As you can guess, this division is greatly determined by structure and agency. The first of the two is what I’ll amicably call the obsessive-compulsive-level-grinders. These are the gamers who look forward to the battle systems the most when they hear news about the newest Final Fantasy title coming out. They’re always the first to optimize gear setups and develop thoroughly complex (but effective) strategies against post-endgame bosses. They’re the ones who refuse to take on the final boss of the game until they’re at the absolute final level with everyone’s final weapons and gear. They’re the ones who actually liked Final Fantasy XII (I’ll allow myself this one instance of self-indulgence). The second of these two types in the fanbase are the story-and-character-driven players. They’re the ones that care the least about the battle systems and care the most about the cast and the mythology. They’re the ones who look up character profiles on official websites to find out mundane things such as a character’s height, age, and weight. They’re the ones who define a RPG’s success by the believability of its plot and consistency of its characters. Character development is an absolute must to receive any good rating.

It should be said that this division is not black and white, as there are many who lie at the middle of this scale, but because of Final Fantasy XIII’s game design–one that Kitase has stated to be a story-centric RPG–the game’s polarizing reception is a good indicator that these two types not only exist, but have greatly affected players and their experiences of the game. As a result, you have one side of the fanbase (the level-grinders) who are upset about the game’s ‘too linear’ approach, and the other (the story/character-driven) who describe Final Fantasy XIII as a fantastic experience. Square-Enix might have thought that people who continued to buy their RPGs in spite of the new Western trends in storytelling simply preferred linear ones (which may be true to an extent), but they may also have overestimated what exactly it is about linear JRPGs that players enjoy so much. To say the least, they should have a much better idea now.

________A Personal Perspective

For the record, I fall under the second type of gamer. Interesting and believable characters have always been at the top of my list when I investigate RPGs, followed by story, music, graphics, then finally gameplay. When I first got word of how Final Fantasy XIII was receiving mixed reception in Japan back in December, I began to dig deep to discover where exactly this was coming from. While intangible at the time, I found out about some of the design choices Square-Enix made about Final Fantasy XIII, but could not quite pinpoint what exactly it was I was grappling with in my mind. Christian Nutt’s January article on Final Fantasy XIII was like an epiphany, and pretty much put all the pieces together.

There is no denying that Final Fantasy XIII is a highly perspective game, one that caters to a very specific kind of RPG player–fortunately enough for me, I happen to be that specific kind of player. But while this means that there are many who won’t enjoy the game as much as I probably have, this does not make Final Fantasy XIII a bad game, contrary to how some reviewers have talked about it. Square-Enix had a certain vision for the game, like all developers do for their RPGs. These visions affect the direction a game takes, and is it only fair that we judge these RPGs along the parameters in which they have followed. I feel many reviewing sites fail to do this. Because Final Fantasy XIII has been designed with a story-centric focus in mind, we must judge its credibility as a RPG in how well they execute this kind of framework, instead of judging it based on what [i]we[/i] feel makes a good RPG, and on what we want to see (colonial discourse echo?).

To start, a story-centric game requires that above all else, the story and its characters must always be at the forefront, and must always be the driving force of the entire game. To do this, Square-Enix had to make some very bold design choices in order to accomplish this, and the most significant of these is the moderation of agency. Yoshinori Kitase continually advertised Final Fantasy XIII as being a cinematic, story-centric RPG, one that would focus on the emotions of its characters above anything else. To produce a game with this direction in mind, agency is certainly an obstacle. In order to fully control how a player experiences the characters and experiences the story of the game, a developer must take care to avoid any kinds of distractions interfering with the player’s attention. Agency is one such distraction as it directly affects the pacing of the game, something that is most effective for cinematic experiences if it can be controlled by the developer.

Agency also creates what I like to call ‘story-telling-downtime’. This occurs whenever you find yourself doing something that works outside of the plot and doesn’t push the narrative forward. Side-questing, or the long hours spent in the menus reorganizing ability setups, upgrading weapons and armour, or getting lost in villages wondering where the save point is or where the next objective is; these are all examples of such ‘story-telling-downtime’. From a story-centric standpoint, these instances are detrimental to the gaming experience because it–for however long the activity lasts–disjoints the player from the story and disconnects them from the players. Pacing is important because if any particular section of the game drags on too long, players begin to lose interest and sometimes even forget what it was they were meant to do. By removing obstacles such as towns and villages to explore, Final Fantasy XIII can eliminate this potential source of downtime and concentrate on keeping the player engaged in events that matter. Additionally, being unable to intricately customize your party due to constant party swaps allows players to not be distracted by the notion of ‘creating the perfect setup’. Instead, by reducing the need for players to enter their menus and make adjustments, they can focus more exclusively on the characters, and perceive the narrative unfolding before them as being more relevant to the gaming experience.

It should be addressed that Final Fantasy XIII actually does have level-grinding, side-quests, map backtracking and party customization aspects in it, however, players do not get access to these freedoms until at least the third last chapter of the game. So in a sense, these criticisms of being ‘too linear’ can be argued to be untrue since–in my opinion–everything a level grinder would want is present in the game ‘at some point’. I punctuate ‘at some point’ because it is this statement that seems to illuminate the point of contention regarding this issue. A ‘level-grinder’ friend of mine told me recently that “[he] would never replay the game again because [the game] takes too long to allow [him] to do anything”. So while he acknowledges that agency does exist in the game, the time in which it takes to arrive to that point is far too long. In essence, this is the true criticism behind the ‘too linear’ claim.

As a story and character driven player, I can understand why Square-Enix made this decision. If anything, I believe Square-Enix always wanted to have these end-game/post-game elements in Final Fantasy XIII and had no intention of ever leaving them out. They problem was how to insert them into the game design without affecting their story-centric approach. Choosing to throw in all these elements at the end of the game may seem sloppy on the surface, but from a story-centric framework, placing this in and around Chapter 11 was a well-thought out choice.

Not to divulge any spoilers, I’ll keep it simple by saying that for the first 10 chapters of the game, the main cast of Final Fantasy XIII were all grappling with their own realities and coming to terms with the events–however dire–befalling them. By constantly pushing forward the narrative with very little downtime, not only was the overall story of Final Fantasy XIII longer than anything that came before it, but it also allowed for Square-Enix to more gradually flesh out each and every character in the cast. By the end of Chapter 10, the cast of characters whom for the longest time thought only of themselves and cared little about the others, finally came together and consolidated themselves as allies and as fellow kin; humans battling the same fate. This consolidation of the cast as a united front coincided directly with the introduction of Gran Pulse and its accompanying ‘level-grinding’ elements. I suspect that this decision was because Square-Enix felt comfortable in granting more agency to players only after they witnessed the final transformations in the characters’ lives. This decision also proves to be somewhat synergetic as the introduction of Gran Pulse and its vast array of opportunities for level-grinding, party customizing and weapon/gear upgrading becoming available to us only after the cast comes to terms with both their individual and collective realities engrains in us a sense of accomplishment, both in the narrative and in ourselves.

________Wrapping it up

While this was meant to be a cross-sectional analysis of Final Fantasy XIII (which I still intend it to be even now), there are just a few final thoughts that I wish to leave you all with. First and foremost, it is important for us to understand how our North American culture has been institutionalized, as well as the way it normalizes our own opinions and experiences to a point of being self-evident. It is also important that we understand that when we read and watch video reviews about JRPGs from sources such as IGN and Gametrailers, we are listening to critics who many times fail to remember that they are evaluating a game with foreign eyes, and using individualistic attitudes to determine a JRPG to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It is unfortunate that these reputable gaming websites, to this day, continue to slay JRPGs with culturally biased criteria that simply cannot win when dissected on a Westernized petri dish. Be aware of these inconsistencies and consider carefully your own tastes and preferences, so that you can truly be an informed gamer when you seek out secondary opinions on a video game, JRPG or otherwise.

Final Fantasy XIII, unfortunately for Square-Enix, is still a JRPG at the end of the day, with cultural undertones continuing to peg its story and characters as “unbelievable” (GameTrailers) by many Western sources. This is a perfectly valid opinion, but one that quickly becomes a problem when we start to treat this singular expression as being the end-all-be-all of the game’s evaluation without any context to base it on. It would be ideal if gamers could afford to be more objective and examine all the angles with the appropriate information before giving the final word on what consummates a great video game, but if there is any way to begin a shifting of this paradigm (pun intended) of industry thought, the starting point lies with the experts and video game journalists.

Some food for thought.
Contrary to the belief that the Japanese market is dwindling based on the decline in JRPG reception here in the West, consider the fact that not only have JRPG sales (particularly Final Fantasy) remained generally the same since the days of Playstation 1, but they have, and still continue to sell better internationally than WRPGs do in Japan. Looking at some JRPG sales numbers in North America for 2008 onward, we see that Infinite Undiscovery sold about 280,000 copies since its release on September 2, 2008 (note that this is a XBOX 360 exclusive, so there are no PS3 sales to consider here even though it is the stronger console in Japan). Star Ocean 4 International, which released just at the beginning of this month, has already sold about 70,000 copies in North America alone. Final Fantasy XIII has sold over 1 million copies in North America in 5 days. Now to look at some WRPG sales in Japan, Fallout 3 was released on December 4, 2008 and to this day, has sold collectively around 160,000 copies on both PS3 and 360 in Japan. Fable 2 was released that previous October and to this day as amassed about 110,000 copies in sales in Japan. Mass Effect 1 and 2 did not even make it overseas.

The above is yet another example of how our culture is naturalized to place itself at a point of self-evidence and self-relevance. If Japanese video games aren’t doing well here in North America, they must not be doing well at all!

September 17th, CTA Digital released the first ever Wii Bowling Ball. Fashioned after an authentic bowling ball, it feels just like a regular bowling ball but only weighs a little over one-pound. The ball is easy to use with an innovative inner system that allows you to easily access all of the buttons from outside the ball.  The Wii remote sits inside of the device, and there is even room for a Wii Motion Plus adapter! Also included are six removable finger plugs that allow you to choose the size of the finger holes! Now, personally, I think that this would be a great accessory if it weren’t for the simple fact that its only use is with bowling games. To me, this seems kinda obvious because I simply wouldn’t want to spend thirty dollars on a device that’s only good for a handful of games that are nearly the same.

When I first saw the announcement for the Wii Bowling Ball, I went back to look at some of the other accessories for the Wii as well as their prices.  First, we have the Wii sports accessories.  Often found in packs, this includes a golf club, a baseball bat, and a tennis racket.  Having bought many of the accessories when they first came out, I have had personal experience with alot of them and, after considering many things such as the price, number of games they are compatible with, and overall feel of handling them, I can say with confidence that I regret the purchases.

I was all psyched up when I bought Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen for Wii a while back.  I assumed that, since it was pretty much a shooter game, that I would be able to use the Nerf Wii Gun for something other than duck hunt.  Imagine my disappointment when I got home and found out that it is impossible to use the controls on top of the gun (except for the A button) while it is inside the device.  After doing alot of research, I found out that most shooting games require the remote’s direction pad among other things for targeting, moving, strafing, etc.

All in all, I simply wouldn’t suggest many of the Wii Accessories to my readers.  While most of them are functional for what they were intended (I mean seriously, the Bowling Ball worked great), I just don’t see myself or many others buying a ton of bowling ball games.  Likewise, with most Wii games costing around fifty dollars, it’s simply not practical to spend another thirty on an accessory for a single game.  Keep in mind that this is all my opinion, so feel free to leave comments.  In fact, I encourage it.

It has never been better to be a RPG fan. Not only are Bioware, considered by many to be the best in the business, looking to deliver on their Baldur’s Gate ‘spiritual successor,’ Dragon Age: Origins. We are pleased by the announcement and cannot wait to find out more details on the game.

So what do we already know? Well, it has the unimaginative title of Mass Effect 2; a QA man at Bioware indicates that Mass Effect saves will have a purpose; and the game might reach the PS3. Finally we have the proclamation from Bioware’s CEO, Ray Muzyka that Mass Effect 2 will:

“have consequences that are emotionally compelled; choices have to have consequences that are emotionally impactful [...] it’s part of the emotional investment.”

Good one Ray, tell us another.

Call us sceptical, but we have played far too many games where the player is promised that everything they do will have an effect. In reality, it is blindingly obvious when the ‘choice-moment’ occurs. It usually involves killing someone or letting them live. The Witcher is the only modern RPG that has genuinely delivered on that old chestnut. There used to be a time where RPG’s were about an enriching story, logical character development and believable setting. That was done without the need of HD-graphics or self absorbent marketing pap like “300 different endings,” or “a spider web of possibility.”

Half Life 2 (and Episode 2 in particular) did not need to boast about its emotional involvement. Valve created the game and it became apparent by playing it. We do not remember anyone coming to us during Baldur’s Gate II’s build up and preparing us to ‘feel.’ The characters and writing did it without intentionally searching for emotion.

Video games will always struggle to connect to our emotional needs. After all, they are about enjoyment and lack the same depth / intention that literature / cinema possesses. Mass Effect 2 may shock us with a twist or two (which is usually the only ‘emotion’ that developers can tap into), but it will not cause us to cry or rethink our lives.

The PR department would be better off telling us how they are improving the vehicle sections or introducing unseen gameplay elements rather than dictating to us how our brains should work.

Gyuri’s diary

February 1st, 2009.
I’ve been on the run for a while. Those zombies are not as dumb as they look. Well, they are still pretty slow so it’s not like I’m in big trouble. As long as I don’t run into any large groups I should be fine. I took shelter in a house close to the police station and it’s actually a lot like the one I was staying in before. Maybe I’m just looking at the rooms from wrong angles. Still the resemblance is uncanny.
Why not the police station? Anyone who’s played Resident Evil 2 knows that’s a dumb idea. Every survivor will try to go there hoping to find weapons but this also means that if one if them turns out to be infected, then the whole group is at a risk as he could easily infect the others. This also means that if such an event were to occur, then the station would be anything but safe for people like me.

February 2nd, 2009.
It looks like my laptop and mobile internet are working fine. I’ll write the second part of my article while I have the chance.

Hello readers and welcome to part two of MonsterVine’s Resident Evil Retrospective. We left off with Resident Evil last time so now it’s time to talk a bit about Resident Evil 2.

Resident Evil 2′s development began in 1996, shortly after the release of the first game. The game was supposed to be released in March 1997, but the developers were unsatisfied with the product. Apparently, they felt it was too similar to the first game. The team decided to take a risk and completely redo the game – thus, Resident Evil 2 became known as Resident Evil 1.5 and was abandoned near completion. Sources generally state it was 60-80% complete.

One of the worst things about not being a game developer is probably that you can never know a game’s entire development story. Many games go through changes as they are developed – some ideas are added, some are abandoned, and the gamer can’t do anything about it – but Resident Evil 1.5 is one of those rare cases where the game is abandoned near it’s completion. When people see beta footage of games they generally become a bit disappointed as they see things that they would’ve liked to see in the finished game, but 1.5 is a special case as it had many, many things that were cut out of the finished product.

So what made Resident Evil 1.5 so similar to Resident Evil? We don’t really know. A lot of promotional media was released of the game which are all over the internet nowadays, generally consisting of low-quality screenshots and videos. From them we can see that in reality 1.5 seems a lot different from the original and the final version of Resident Evil 2. While I can’t say much about the atmosphere or the storytelling, the environments are very different from the first game and according to various screenshots, interviews and articles the game had a lot of functions that never made it into Resident Evil 2. Examples include characters holding their handgun the way Chris does in Resident Evil Remake, various safety vests that would protect the player from damage similar to the body armor of Resident Evil 4 and hand grenades which would also appear in Resident Evil 4. Clothes could get damaged and bloody if a zombie is taken out too close. There were new enemies, some of which never made it into a Resident Evil title, like the gorilla-like monsters (Resident Evil Zero’s monkeys could have been based off of these) the spider-human hybrid monsters which seemed like an upgraded version of the original’s Chimeras. I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories, but it kind of looks like the developers were actually saving their ideas for later games.

The storyline (what we know of it that is) differed drastically from the finished product as well. Some minor characters had bigger roles: Robert Kendo and Marvin Branagh were both seen helping the main characters for example. Ada originally seemed to be a researcher, Brian Irons was apparently not corrupt, William Birkin might have made an appearance in human form and there was a character called DJ who never made it into the final game. The RPD was a lot more modern and featured locations that were actually like a police stations: while no art rooms were seen, the game had a shooting range, a more realistic jail with zombies reaching out from behind the bars, locker rooms and many offices. One of the more significant differences was Claire Redfield’s absence. Originally Elza Walker, a blonde motorcyclist was set to be the female protagonist, however she became Claire in the final version. Their basic storylines were supposedly similar, the key difference being that Claire was connected to Chris Redfield from Resident Evil.

As you can see 1.5 was very different from Resident Evil 2 and to this day remains the beta version that most fans want to play. It will not be the last time a Resident Evil game has an interesting beta version, however it is probably the most interesting and well known one. Looking at it now, if the internet and video game journalism were as wide spread back then as they are now, Resident Evil 2 might have met a little more criticism, though not too much. Ironically – despite 1.5 looking as good as it did and despite that various functions were omitted from the finished version – Resident Evil 2 became a large hit and remains the most popular Resident Evil game and most fans’ favorite game of the series, the game that is frequently evoked by gamers when talking about the series.

Let’s fast forward to September 1997, one and a half year after the original release. The Resident Evil Team wasn’t stupid – they had no sequel and they knew they had to do something. The decision was made to release an updated version of Resident Evil – Resident Evil Director’s Cut, which came bundled with a demo of Resident Evil 2.

Once players went through the demo and actually put the Director’s Cut disc in, they were greeted with a few new options. An Advanced game mode was available along with the original game. The original game was basically the same as the original release. Advanced mode featured quite a few new things: the camera angles were all different, there were new costumes, the number of enemies increased and their placement was changed, new scenes were added and many items were placed in different locations, offering Resident Evil veterans to feel as if the Director’s Cut edition was a brand new game. Only a few of these changes made it into subsequent releases of the game – for example starting with Director’s Cut, every version of Resident Evil had Forest Speyer turn into a zombie – while most remained Director’s Cut exclusive, even ones which were improvements upon the original, such as Wesker shooting giant spiders instead of bees in the guardhouse. Soon after the release of Director’s Cut, Capcom released another updated edition in Japan and North America titled Resident Evil Director’s Cut Dual Shock Edition. The title already showed the main difference between the two versions, Dual Shock Edition had vibration support allowing owners of the Playstation’s new Dual Shock controller to immerse themselves even more into the game.

Time to move onto Resident Evil 2. Initially released in 1998 for the Playstation, the game was later ported to the PC, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, GameCube and a weaker version was also released on the relatively unknown Tiger game.com. Resident Evil 2 is known for being the Resident Evil game that is available on the most consoles.

Resident Evil 2 is set two months after Resident Evil, in September 1998. STARS have made it back to the town and prevented the T-virus from spreading further, however their attempts to bring Umbrella to justice are proving to be futile. Chris Redfield hasn’t got in touch with his sister Claire for a while and she is worried about him. She sets off to Raccoon City and arrives on September 29th only to find the town infested with zombies. Claire is saved by Leon Scott Kennedy, a rookie cop who arrived in Raccoon just a few minutes before Claire and was supposed to start working at the RPD that very day. The two enter a police car and head for the police station. They introduce themselves and Claire finds herself a gun, only to have a zombie attack them from the backseat. Leon loses control of the car and they crash, but they are unhurt. As they breath a sigh of relief, a zombified truck driver is heading toward them. Leon and Claire barely manage to jump out of the car as the truck crashes and creates a massive explosion, separating the two. Leon tells Claire to head to the police station as it should be a lot safer. Separated by the flames, the two take their separate routes to the police station, searching for Claire’s brother, answers and a way out of town.

Resident Evil 2 – as I gave it away earlier – is not very different from Resident Evil. In fact it’s basically the same gameplay wise. This is really not a bad thing and supports what I tend to say nowadays: “You don’t need to be innovative to be very fun.” Anyway, the point is Resident Evil 2 plays very much like Resident Evil, but easily makes up for that by introducing new environments, settings and generally improving everything that was good about the first game. You see this time you are not stuck in an abandoned mansion with your teammates, this time you’re stuck in a city and you hardly have anyone to rely on. The setting is just as scary as the first one, but is also original enough to feel new and this is a trademark ability of the survival horror genre: regardless of how good you are at one game, you can’t be prepared for the sequel, because of the new areas and enemies. Yes, you grasped the idea of saving ammo, but that still doesn’t help you to actually find ammo in the new, unfamiliar area. Yes, you know how to fight zombies, but that still doesn’t help you when you are cornered by four of them with no means of escape. Yes, you know the magnum works well against bosses, but you still don’t know when the bosses of the sequel will show up.

As I said before, Resident Evil 2 was an improvement in roughly every aspect. The graphics were much better, the character models looked very good compared to the original. The soundtrack was much better as well, very atmospheric. Other than that, the feeling of the game remained the same but also improved due to the graphics, sound and better harnessed power of the consoles. More enemies were on screen, the character health could be guessed by their body language: the more they held their stomach and the slower they moved the worse their condition was. The item boxes were more convenient to use and were placed in more locations allowing better players to visit it fewer times – the better players generally found an item box just as their inventory became full. Also the difficulty level was just perfect. The game was hard, but not unreasonably so and although it was much harder to find ammo than in Resident Evil – due to the fact that most weren’t visible on screen, all ammunition packs were hidden behind tables or in lockers etc. – a player who took his time to look around (as they were meant to be doing) had a significantly easier time than those who didn’t. Also it increased the tension: let’s face it, although ammo was scarce in Resident Evil, they were generally easy to find, most of them were in plain sight on tables or on dead bodies or under objects that were obviously movable due to the era’s graphics etc. In Resident Evil 2, the player was required to search everything inside the rooms to find ammo.

As you can see Resident Evil 2 was great. But it wasn’t without flaws. The game was a lot more controlled this time: it only had four endings and which one you got depended on simply which game you played. You see, Leon and Claire had separate games: although similar, they were quite different, more so than Chris and Jill’s games in Resident Evil. They met different characters and took different routes to get around the place and also had different starting equipment: Leon had a lighter while Claire had a lockpick. They even received different weapons throughout the game, with only their knife being the same. Also initially, when the player started a new game, the game he played was known as the “A” Scenario. Both characters had an A and B scenario, with the B games being unlocked after the other character’s A game was completed. It’s a simple yet effective method to increase the replay value and logical too – if you start with Claire A, she ends up on the left side of the wreckage and if you finish the game you get to play Leon B and see what he does on the right side. If you start with Leon A, then it’s the other way around. Only by playing all four scenarios can the player get everything out of the game. On the other hand the players actions didn’t really make a difference in the game nor between the A and B scenarios. Some actions taken in A affected B but these were few and not yielded anything important.

The game also included unlockables like it’s predecessor. There were a total of three unlockable weapons and three minigames. The 4th Survivor starred Umbrella agent Hunk as he retrieved a virus sample from the sewers while relying on very limited equipment; the other starred Tofu, a piece of tofu and was a harder version of Hunk’s game. With the exception of the standard Playstation and Nintendo 64 version, all releases included a minigame titled Extreme Battle, where the player controlled either Leon, Claire, Ada or Chris from Resident Evil 1 and went through all of the game’s areas searching for four bombs. The PC and Dreamcast versions had unlockable artworks as well, while the Nintendo 64 version had various special options. All games included two secret costumes for Leon and one for Claire, although she got an exclusive Colt Single Action Army with the special clothes. Leon would aim with one hand when the special outfits were equipped.

As you can see, back in the day, Capcom (and other developers too) had a habit that I never understood and always bugged me – and it still does since it seems to be coming back. What I’m talking about is offering different content in different versions. As it stands right now you need to own at least two versions of Resident Evil 2 to get the most out of it. Let’s go over each version.

First, there’s the standard Playstation Resident Evil 2. It’s the most basic version, offering the main game and two minigames: The 4th Survivor and it’s harder version The Tofu Survivor. The Dual Shock version which wasn’t released in PAL territories offers the same plus vibration support and the Extreme Battle minigame. The Nintendo 64 version is quite different from the rest as it has different costumes, special files called EX Files and the option to change the blood color and randomize item placement, all of which are exclusive to this version. The Dreamcast and PC versions offer everything the Playstation version does and also an artwork gallery and an unlockable Hard difficulty setting. The Gamecube version released much later is sadly equal to the Dual Shock version with the added ability to skip ingame cutscenes.

Now that I’m done with that it’s time to go into the story. Get ready folks, I’m about to retell the story of the game. I’ll be following the Claire A – Leon B route because I prefer that one and also there’s some evidence from Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles pointing to that scenario being canonical or at least parts of it, such as Sherry getting infected. Although the canon scenario could easily be a blend of all four scenarios. Also there are discrepancies in all scenarios that exist due to gameplay reasons, for example Claire never encounters Mr. X despite the fact that it lands soon after the helicopter crashes in Leon’s B scenario (an event that happens just before Claire arrives at the station) and Claire never sees the destruction it causes. Another example would be Claire being unable to enter the jail in the A scenario even though she contacts Leon after he clears the path to the jail. In any case, let’s begin.

Claire’s story

Standing between two cars, Leon tries to get back inside by climbing up to the top of the train. As he does this, G reforms once again and smashes into Claire’s cabin. She tells Sherry to hide, who opens a vent to the cockpit and crawls through, promising Claire that she’ll stop the train. Leon notices G’s tentacles behind him and Claire climbs down a hatch and hangs onto the bottom of the train while it’s moving. Meanwhile, Sherry is still searching for a way to stop the train, when Leon opens an escape hatch on top of the cockpit and immediately notices the emergency stop button. Sherry pushes it and the train brakes, showering Claire with yellow sparks as it is slowing down. Once it is stopped, the three are reunited and run out of the tunnel. G notices the countdown in the cockpit and realizes he’s got two seconds to live. The train explodes just as the trio make their way out of the tunnel, into the daylight. On September 30th, they escape Raccoon City, with Leon telling them it’s up to them to take out Umbrella.

And so the story ends. Soon after the events Claire goes off to look for his brother and Leon and Sherry stay together while Leon’s wound is being properly treated. What happens after that is still a mystery….

But what about the G-Virus? Are there no samples left? Or did Umbrella manage to retrieve it? Yes, they did.

One survivor from the USS Alpha Team, specifically, it’s leader, Hunk awakens at the sewer entrance at an unspecified time after the massacre of his unit. Wearing military equipment and a gas mask, he calls someone on the radio and tells him he accomplished the mission. He is told to go to the rendezvous point which is the roof of the RPD building, the helipad. Hunk battles his way out of the station and is airlifted out – along with a G-Virus sample.

That’s it for today folks. Sorry for the delay, but I had a lot of technical difficulties recently and this part turned out to take longer than I expected. I’ll make sure the next one will be out as soon as possible. I’ll be covering Resident Evil 3 and perhaps Code Veronica as well…stay tuned.

Gyuri’s diary
February 14th, 2009.
Had a bunch of problems with the laptop, but managed to fix it. Zombies are also starting to stir things up nearby. Better leave this place.

Gyuri’s diary

January 22th, 2009.
Less than seven weeks till the release of Resident Evil 5. I haven’t been out of this building for a week. I don’t think I’ll be able to get that game anymore. Something has gone horribly wrong. The entire city appears to be overrun by these monsters…these zombies. There’s also something else out there…Something much larger than any of those zombies. I don’t know what it is, but I saw it. I’m unsure of what to do. I wanted to finish this article, but I don’t think I will be able to.

January 27th, 2009.
I’m going to finish this if it’s the last thing I do. Those monsters may be everywhere, they may have my apartment building surrounded, but I’m going to finish my RE retrospective no matter what. I don’t like leaving things unfinished. I should have enough food to survive and the barricade is holding up well. I still have time.

Welcome readers to part one of MonsterVine’s Resident Evil Retrospective. I’m Gyuri, your guide into the realm of Resident Evil or as it is known in Japan, Biohazard. A note before we begin: I will only be covering the main series. Maybe after RE5 is released I will cover the side stories and spin-offs, but for now the main series is the priority.

Resident Evil is – as many of you know – considered the father of the survival horror genre. It wasn’t the first game of it’s kind, however it was the game that managed to do everything in a way it appealed to a lot of people. It popularized the genre, while also giving it the name “survival horror”.

The first game in the series, Resident Evil, came out in 1996 for the Playstation, and was ported to the Sega Saturn and the PC about a year later. The original game is known for being the Resident Evil game that has received the highest number of enhanced versions following the game’s original release. The original Playstation and PC versions only contained the basic game, with only minimal differences between them. The Saturn version featured an exclusive battle mode, new costumes and new monsters that can only be encountered in that version. Later a Director’s Cut version was released for the Playstation featuring the original game and an “Arranged” mode, a mode that was significantly harder and featured many changes compared to the original. In 2006, an enhanced port was released for the Nintendo DS, titled Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, which also had two gameplay modes, “Classic” and “Rebirth”. The most prominent release of Resident Evil however had to be the 2002 GameCube remake, where everything was updated and the plot was extended. I will talk more about the last three versions later on.

Resident Evil’s basic plot was similar to a horror movie. Strange murders have been occurring in the Arklay Mountains, located in the outskirt of the mid-western town, Raccoon City. The local police force mobilizes their special forces unit, STARS (Special Tactics And Rescue Service), sending out the unit’s Bravo Team to investigate the murders on July 23rd, 1998. The members of Bravo Team – Richard Aiken, Forest Speyer, Kenneth Sullivan, pilot Edward Dewey, rookie medical officer Rebecca Chambers and team leader Enrico Marini – however don’t report back and soon all contact is lost with the team’s members. Thus, the Raccoon Police Department on July 24th calls the Alpha Team into action, consisting of Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Joseph Frost, helicopter pilot Brad “Chickenheart” Vickers, and their leader, Albert Wesker. Their mission is to search for their missing compatriots.

Their mission does not go well however. As soon as they land, they find the wreckage of Bravo Team’s helicopter, along with a severed hand in it. Shortly after, the team is attacked by zombie dogs and Joseph is killed in the encounter. The remaining members retreat to a nearby mansion, hoping it is safe from dangers. Little do they know they’ve made the biggest mistake of their lives, as the mansion turns out to be infested with zombies and mutant creatures. Soon, Alpha Team’s goal becomes survival and they begin exploring the mansion looking for a way out.

When Capcom released Resident Evil in 1996, it was met with both praise and criticism from gamers. The game was different from what people were used to. It wasn’t like shooters nor like platform games, if anything, it bore the most resemblance toward point and click games, only difference being that it had more action and the player actually controlled the character. The game focused on exploration and prompted the player to avoid fighting – something that was very rarely encountered in action games. Despite there being many enemies, ammunition and health recovery items were scarce, making the player think twice before engaging an enemy in combat. There was always the option of using the knife if the player ran out of ammo, but that was about as effective against the zombies as throwing a pencil at them. These features gave a new experience to gamers, however not everyone liked it. Resident Evil was a game for only a certain demographic. Granted, it was famous for being new, different and being one of the only scary games on the market, but most people didn’t enjoy it due to the difficulty or because they found it too troublesome. Still, these didn’t stop critics from praising the game and survival horror became a fully accepted genre, known for mixing the elements of action games with the puzzles of point and click games. The bag was full of good ideas and although it had a few small holes here and there the contents made up for it greatly. Sure the voice acting and the live-action intro were terrible, the game was hard and it could become tedious for some people, but it still managed to pull off one of the best concepts in gaming history that would inspire many developers. The atmosphere, the ability to be in an interactive horror situation where your decisions shape the game’s ending, the gameplay and many other smaller factor sold the game for critics and gamers.

What makes Resident Evil unique till this day, is that it is one of the few horror series that use a scientific plot and environments, often seeming almost realistic. It didn’t have cults or demons in it, all it had was a virus that turned people into zombies. It was a game that felt real, as if you really were in there. The environments were all creepy, dark and full of traps and puzzles, but in a way that the player could still find it realistic. It was similar to how the real world would be like if it was suddenly infested with monsters – creepy and empty, but still normal, no weird torture devices or anything. Umbrella, the faceless corporation behind the virus seemed like a normal company, with normal people, only they made a virus and did some morally questionable deeds. They didn’t seem crazy, you could easily imagine them leading normal lives outside of work. All these added to the feeling of realism, there weren’t any villains or madmen to fight, the player was just trying to survive somehow, avoiding the monsters created by accident.

Despite being cops, the main characters also felt realistic. They had limitations: they couldn’t jump or duck or strafe or break open doors…but it worked. Having limited options increased the fear factor. Making a 100% realistic game would have only made this worse. Yes, we can jump in real life and we could just break open most doors, but the game needed this to feal scary. You needed to feel like a vulnerable person, not like Superman. A horror game can only be scary two ways: one, if the atmosphere is scare and two, if the player has limited options and is not in control of the situation. Resident Evil – while trying to do both – ultimately succeeded with the second option, because while the atmosphere was creepy, it’s level of scariness could only be compared to walking home alone at night, while hearing someones footsteps behind you.

Indeed, Resident Evil succeeded by pushing the player into a situation that was behind his control. The game relied on uncertainty to make the player scared and to raise his adrenaline. If you never played the game let me tell you what it is like.

You are armed with a lousy knife and a handgun with only 15 bullets, with each zombie taking about 7-9 bullets on average.
You are alone and separated from your team.
You don’t know when or where you’ll encounter an enemy or even worse, a boss.
You don’t know when or where you’ll find ammo or healing items.
You can only take six or eight items with you depending on who you play as, thus you were never prepared for every situation, you could even encounter a boss while having no weapons with you.
You can only save at typewrites, at the expense of using an ink ribbon, which were just as rare as other items, around 30 were available in total.
If you die, you’ll have to restart from the last time you saved.
You don’t know which paths are safe and which are not, and you don’t know where you can find the key needed to move on to other areas.
You don’t know where you can find weapons to protect yourself from stronger enemies.
You don’t know who to battle, and who to not battle, for all you know there might be more, unavoidable enemies right behind the next door and who knows when you’ll get more ammo.
You really don’t know anything helpful.

Your only hope is to use your brain as much as possible and avoid enemies as much as you can. It’s up to you to find the best routes, and it’s up to you to decide what to do and where to go. Resident Evil is all about being a little bit tactical and experimenting in order to make your life easier. If you can’t seem to make it through a path, you can turn back and try another. Choosing the best methods to overcome various obstacles were key to survival in Resident Evil. Starting to see why it was scary and adrenaline pumping don’t you? Yes, Resident Evil was specifically made to scare people and creating fear and tension were the developers’ top priority – so much that the initial idea of making the game an FPS was abandoned early on as the developers considered it not scary enough. Kind of ironic when you look at the direction the series took with Resident Evil 4, but that’s a story for another time.

Resident Evil was awfully cinematic. There was nothing on the screen except your character and the environment around him. No hud, no life bar, nothing. The only way you could check how much ammo and health you had left was to access the menu. The 3D characters were moving on a pre-rendered 2D background that looked very realistic at the time and the camera angles were fixed, allowing the use of cinematic camera angles, which also made it harder to find enemies and greatly increased the fear factor. After all, hearing footsteps in front of himself, but not seeing the zombie directly tempted the player to move forward, however for all he knew, the enemy may have been close enough to grab him once the camera angle changed.

So, how did this story of viruses and monsters unfold? Let’s take a look.

First off the player chose a character, either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine. Their games were similar, having some significant differences. Chris was stronger and faster, while Jill could carry more items, had the handgun from the start (Chris only had the knife) and got one extra weapon. Chris’ support character was Rebecca Chambers, who would heal Chris during certain times if the player requested her and was controllable for small portions of the game, depending on the player’s actions. Jill’s support characters was Barry Burton, who sometimes brought her ammo and saved her life if Jill was in trouble. The two games were pretty balanced, but Chris’ game was generally thought to be harder. Officially, the canon story involves Chris and Jill working together and meeting both Barry and Rebecca, a scenario that is a mix of both storylines and has never been playable. Because of this, the story you’re about to read is not necessarily 100%, canon as we don’t know what exact roles Chris, Jill, Rebecca and Barry play in the canon storyline. However I put the story together in a way that’s exciting, makes sense and doesn’t contradict the games canon.

After entering the mansion, Chris and Jill are ordered by Albert Wesker to investigate a gunshot the team heard. Soon find their teammate Kenneth Sullivan eaten by a zombie past the dining room. They return to tell Wesker what happened, but he has disappeared. They decide to look for their teammates and find a way out. On their way they find most of the other team’s members dead – Forest Speyer is pecked to death by crows, Edward Dewey is nowhere to be found and Richard Aiken passes away after an encounter with a giant snake. Richard gives his radio to Chris before dying, however they can’t contact anyone from inside the mansion. Chris and Jill tell Rebecca – who has been trying to treat Richard’s wound – to keep her guard up as they look for a way out. They find a way out of the mansion and also manage to hook up with Barry along the way and also encounter the snake that caused Richard’s death, but fail to kill it.

The battle does not go very well. While the combined efforts of the four do manage to keep the Tyrant back and confuse it enough to have a hard time deciding who to hit, their bullets just don’t seem to hurt it. As they are running out of bullets, Brad gathers up his courage and goes close enough to throw a rocket launcher down to the group. With only about a minute left before the entire building explodes, Chris makes his way to the weapon while his teammates distract the monster. Upon reaching it, he shoots a rocket straight at the Tyrant – utterly destroying it. Brad quickly picks the up the four survivors and fly off into the rising sun as the team rest in the helicopter, too tired to think or to say anything to each other. They enjoy the moment of peace as the Arklay Laboratory goes up in flames behind them. However, little do they know that their battle is far from over…

That concludes part one of the retrospective, join me next week when I’ll be taking a look at Resident Evil Director’s Cut and Resident Evil 2.

Hope you had fun reading this,
Gyuri

Gyuri’s diary
January 28th, 2009.
Part one is done and uploaded but…the zombies are getting in. I have to escape. Time to abandon this building and look for a safer place.

So F.E.A.R 2, the first real Sequel to the F.E.A.R stories kind of destroys nearly everything that’s happened in any expansion or side games that have come out.  The F.E.A.R experience has slowly begun to die as the seperate games lived nowhere near up to the original. The only actual good throw-in was the expansion pack that played as an “Alternate” ending being the best way to put it.

When I downloaded the demo from the PSN, I was mixed with excitement and caution for how this game was going to work out and all I can say is that the demo did nothing but leave me shaking and anticipating the full game’s release.

The first thing to start out with is the graphics, the first FEAR was known to be one of the best looking games for 2005 and was truly high demanding for the PC, however considering how much detail was in that game it was no surprise. FEAR2 does not dissapoint there, the entire game has pretty much come to life and feels revamped from the previous game.   Little glasses shattering into tiny pieces, sparks shooting out from electronic equipment, bullet recoils to much more. This game brings back the chaotic feeling of destructable objects the first one had and extends it by just adding those little extra details.

The second to bring out in this short hands-on demo is the gameplay.  Most people see a shooter it’s going to be the same thing, it just depends on how sharp the creators make it to make it different. In terms of FEAR 2 the combat has become way more intense then before, and the mechanics have improved.  The enemy’s A.I made an improvement from the first game, not major improvements but definitely one to keep the fight on. You can be stuck in a one-on-one gunfight for a good 40 seconds if your health was low enough.  The enemies continue using flanks, covers and decoys to keep you busy causing you to think strategically with each of your moves especially when you want to conserve your ammo which brings me to the next upgrade to the series, cover.

Cover has always been something major in most shooters but Monolith has brought it to the next level. With the push of the action button (Depending on your console) you can flip tables, pull down shelves and use them as your new cover while you’re engaging the enemy. They even got as far as to allow you to forcefully open car doors as cover and then close them again when you’re done.  This is very helpful considering the enemies you’ll be going up against, not only that though but increases the intensity online multiplayer will be having.  Another newly added feature is the ability to control Mechs, in the demo you are given a chance to pilot one of these mechs. However it’s really required to have one for this (Unlike games that let you use them to just tear down enemies with ease) as they’ll be sending you against multiple opponents with missle launchers and even those mechs you found enjoyable in FEAR and it’s expansion pack.

The last thing to add into this Demo Hands-on will be the F.E.A.R Factor of this game. When I started up the level, I felt rather dissapointed, the game seemed to have begone following the normal horror games instead of the japanese horror the original went for. However as I progressed further and further into the game.  I began wasting half my ammo on stuff that wern’t even there. This game brings back the feeling of horror the original went for and intensifies it by casting shadows where you just came from. Having short montages of Alma popping up in the least expected spots. Haivng you get a taste of hell in FEAR for short moments. I don’t want to spoil any of those moments, in fact I’m trying to do this hands-on without spoiling too much of the demo itself so it’s coming out a bit rough. Either way, if you’re a fan of horror games or a fan of intense shooters, FEAR is the game for you.

WarDragon989 writes:

Wonderful? Maybe.

The idea of what an achievement, is an accomplishment for completing a certain task which could have a ranging difficulty curve. Before Xbox released a viewable portal to the concept, these rare “game achievements” were only viewable on youtube or similar video sites and of course the good old gaming forums where people recited their moments to whoever would listen.

The Xbox System

In 2005, Microsoft and their brand new system, the Xbox 360, announced an in-built system know as “Achievements”. These achievements had “gamerscore” attached and when totaled up gave number differences, which raised a number of gaming egos in the process. It was a welcomed addition to the console market though some showed concern about them mentioning an unsettling addiction with acquiring them or that they “needed” to get the 1000/1000.

The policy that Microsoft imposed was simple; a game released on retail had to have 1000/1000 gamerscore with it, and the number of achievements can range from 4 to 99. A game released as an arcade can have 200/200 with 12 achievements being a normal static amount. Their policy has changed over the years with the inclusion of DLC, such as expansions. Retail can now have an added 250 points, totaling 1250 and the arcade added 50 more totaling 250. These of course are only available to people who have the new content. Halo 3 recently set 1750 achievement points, this would mean that any game can have a number of expansions added, but of course i believe there is a hidden cost.

Achievements are a nice addition if they are in the right hands, over the two years that Microsoft has had the achievements system, many game developers have retained a sense of ranging achievements from completing a game on different difficulties, to a boss battle, to killing 3 people in 5 seconds. In the later years, Halo 3 let people acquire new armour for getting a certain achievements and it recently updated to include many community based achievements.

Notable achievements are mainly ones which require time, effort, skill and the inability to cheat but this has caused many to believe that the “prestigious” achievements are more of a burden and struggle especially when they have acquired them;

* 5/7 day survivor (Dead Rising)
* Mile High Club (COD4)
* Seriously… (Gears of war) and their notable spin offs, No Seriously (The Club) and Beans Bullets Bandages (Battlefield: Bad Company)

Of course these game developers are the ones who have a good range of achievements so it doesn’t feel like a waste just to get one. Other developers are using the addictiveness of achievements as a secret latch for their games; for example The Simpsons and Avatar which both have very easy achievements and game concept. But due to the actual achievements selling the game and not the game selling itself, has the meaning of achievements been lost along the way?

Xbox achievement have a sense of addiction which a number of companies have taken advantage of and even the ability to “cheat” the system has caused a mass of players to claim a number of points without really trying, it became a major concern and Xbox HAD to do something about in 2008.

Overall, Xbox started an idea, which had a great concept and so far it has been very successful, but I believe they have made people forget what an “achievement” really is, and what it really means to get one.

Steam Achievements/PC

On the momentum of Xbox’s, now successful, achievement system Valve, a PC based company incorporated Achievements for a number of its games into their new Steam system, so far only a hand full of games support achievements, mainly their own games and a number of arcade type games.

The rules about them seem much more relaxed then Xbox’s version, with no gamer score, and the amount of achievements removed. Valve, using there own game Team Fortress 2 uses achievements to give the players new weapons with milestones, constantly updatedthe achievement list with new class and map packs making the achievements list almost endless with no restrictions.

Recently, World of Warcraft a popular PC game, adopted the achievement idea; which covers all aspects of the game. They have used the achievements points system, rating each one with points and give in-game bonuses for collecting a number of achievements.

Overall the PC version has gone in the right direction with achievements partially, Valve, who try to remind people that it isn’t about points, its about what you do and getting rewards for it.

Playstation 3 Trophies

Xbox’s competitive console rival, Sony, saw the impact achievements had on Xbox sales, and on the console itself, and believed a system would be needed for the PS3 system, they created Trophies.

Trophies are split into 4 different areas; Bronze (simple tasks), Silver (medium tasks), Gold (hard tasks) and Platinum (which you get when you have every other trophy). Instead of showing off the score, each trophy has a hidden score which is then added to a total bar. This bar increases in level and get harder to level up each time.

The difference between trophies and achievements is that a number of games require a sense of commitment to the game such as Warhawk, Wipeout HD and Socom. All mentioned require skill and time for you just to get one trophy and is not a simple one night play which some Xbox achievements are.

Trophies are a fairly new concept and are now in 2009 mandatory for future games, a number of old games including Metal Gear Solid 4, Heavenly Sword and others have yet to be patched and Sony is more relaxed on not forcing them to do so, which has angered a number of the community.

Overall, Sony has taken the Xbox idea of achievements and shook it down to its foundation and Trophies are that. Sony is much less restrictive on how many and what is needed to complete, and it is more to the developer.

The meaning of an achievement

Overall, Achievements/trophies are great to have as they add “more” replay value of a game.

The achievement idea is great in theory, but the meaning is lost. Xbox generally though it was better to reward people for almost everything in a game, while attaching a score for the ego inside us. PC generally though achievements where as Xbox’s was for any action and not attaching a score. And Playstation is between the two, while not have a score they have a total bar, that all the trophies add up to.

An achievement is an accomplishment for completing a certain task that has ranging difficulty attached. While most achievements and trophies hold true to this idea. When you look back at the “true” achievements and stories of people who do these cool and unique things, you wonder why they don’t have an achievement for that. It’s a shame that achievements are now game seller reasons and from the makers point of view you don’t want a customer to be frustrated with the game.

Achievements are dubbed down view of what “true” achievements are, this means that instead of doing days upon days of training; anyone can get an achievement which makes the achievements meaningless. While we have seen unique achievements for games, few have show commitment. The ones that do are normally pushed aside and labeled as “too” hard and “too” much commitment. A number of PS3 trophies require you to be committed to the game (hours upon hours) this is what it should be, achievements should not be a walk in the park; it should be a walk on the side of mountain-side trail.

Also there should be more community based achievements, for example Bungie are very in tune with their community and now have “Vidmaster Challenge” achievements or Wipeout HD, where you have to beat a staff members race time, almost giving a meaning behind it.

So in the end, i believe the Xbox 360 version lost the plot, with its restrictions and its score, while PC and PS3 versions showed us what committed meant, no score, no restrictions and playing the game then getting an achievements for it, not the other way round.

While comments are allowed below, please feel free to discuss this article in the original thread found here.

I happen to be one of those gamers, and I personally don’t care what kind of a game I play–I could be playing an epic RPG one minute and a few rounds of Zuma or Wii Sports the next. To me, all that matters is that a game is fun, no matter who it is marketed for–and that, to me, is something Nintendo has always done.

Another reason I still love Nintendo is their lineup of all star characters. Mario, Link, Pikachu, Kirby, Fox–I have made many wonderful memories with all of them. Furthermore, if it weren’t for Mario and the NES, gaming would be dead–something I feel is in danger of being forgotten in the core vs. casual fray.

But most of all are the imaginative worlds these characters populate–the team at Nintendo do a great job making such places as the Mushroom Kingdom, Hyrule, and Kanto seem like real places, so that we feel like we have traveled a long way, all without having to leave our living rooms and bedrooms.

Mind you, I am not blindly making the fangirlish claim that Nintendo is great, and Sony and MS are not–I have also had wonderful experiences on Sony consoles too–but I take care to never forget my roots as a gamer–and it all began thanks to Nintendo.