Final Fantasy XIII: Key Facts Review

Final Fantasy XIII is like a supermodel; astoundingly beautiful but with little substance.

Gameplay: The intention of Square Enix with Final Fantasy XIII was to strip away much of the complexity in order for the game to appeal to a new, younger audience. In a sense you could say they were successful. You now only control one character in battle, and the game does much of the actual "strategy" for you using what is called the "Paradigm" system. This controls the abilities available to other characters, similar to how the class system worked on Final Fantasy 5. For me the nail in the coffin, and in a sense what also appears to be the whole direction of the game, is the "Auto-Battle" menu item for your main character. Apart from the occasional time you need to micro-manage, you don't even need to think about strategy besides the paradigm anymore! The simplification is also reflected in the "exploration" of the world environment. By exploration I mean, of course, a linear path going from A to B via C (the odd enemy) with your reward being D (usually a cut-scene). Lather, rinse, repeat. Maybe this really is bringing the game to the barebones of what actually makes an RPG game fun, but for me I didn't feel grounded in a real world inhabited by people effected by real events. And as if to make more of a mockery of previous games and their fans, a huge explorable area is tacked on in the last quarter of the game, which bears little relation to the rest of the story or it's world. When in a conversation it came up that the game gets better towards the end, I don't consider playing 40+ hours to get to the best bits a plus points. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting the interactivity or freedom of Skyrim in a Japanese RPG. Indeed, in a JRPG what I look for is a more linear story with a non-customisable but completely relatable main character, as part of a wider world and storyline with a clear beginning, middle and end. But this isn't so much a game as an interactive movie. And I feel like I'm playing for 40 hours before I can finally get to a "World Map" for the first time.

Graphics: Hands down, this is the best part. The graphics are simply stunning, especially for a multi-platform game. Square Enix aimed to create a game that looked as good at the recent Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and it definitely doesn't disappoint. Character animation is fluid; the environments are highly detailed and with very decent effects. I also have not seen a graphical glitch through the entire game. Graphically, the game does everything it can to draw you into the world.

Sound: Besides the title screen music and the battle theme, the soundtrack for this game feels uninspired. This is pretty disappointing for a series which prided itself for the quality of its music. Tunes don't really feel like they are going anywhere; they are slow, and have a real anti-climatic feel to them. An even bigger knee in the bollocks (and yet more representative of the "populist" direction of the series) is the fact the main theme of the game was changed in English additions to some crap from a Leona Lewis album. Advertising for the game apparently point to her being a huge fan of it. She seems almost as in awe of the graphics as I was, so it must be legit! I can't understate enough how much something like switching a theme song for "localised" markets can have on the affect of the game. It damages the (in this game somewhat limited) build up of the game's soundtrack. Voice acting is also disappointing- they seemed to forgotten the lessons learnt from Final Fantasy XII and it's amazing voice talent to go back a step with miserable-sounding actors. And if I have to hear Vanille one more time, I swear it will mean the end to my TV.

Overall: If you can get it for £5, and you are a serious, serious fan of the old games and just have to buy this, then get it. For every other fan of the series, the experience will probably be too depressing. You'd be better off getting Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within on Blu Ray while downloading the free game Progress Quest, a far superior RPG that requires no user input at all! Almost like FFXIII.

Grand Theft Auto 4: Key Facts Review

GTA4 is a Modern Classic; still as playable and fun as when it was first released.

Gameplay: This is one of the few games that is easy to pick up and play at any time, whether you want to be drawn into storyline and missions/side missions or whether you want to just fire it up and go on a murdering spree. The controls are responsive, with an innovative aiming system (where auto-aim locks onto the middle of an enemy's body, leaving it to you to aim for their head, legs, groin etc) and fun driving. The cars handle more realistically than the arcade controls of the previous games, which initially leaves you feeling like you're driving a bus. Stick with it though and you'll very quickly be able to weave flawlessly in and out of traffic.

Graphics: For a game towards the end of the honeymoon period of the PS3, this is absolutely gorgeous. The amount of detail in the environment, cars and inhabitants is pretty amazing. Unlike previous games, your vehicle now reacts directly to collisions, rather than showing the same damage model regardless of where the car was hit. Graphical glitches are very, very few and far between, and don't detract from the overall feel of the game.

Sound: Although the GTA series has many strongpoints, by far its strongest ally has always been the sound and music. Real DJs offer up music you would most likely have listened to in 2008, on a variety of different radio stations. The scripts of the call-in and debate shows are truly hilarious, poking fun at just about every section of American Culture, from liberal to conservative and everything in between. This is particularly ironic considering this is a game developed by Rockstar North in Scotland!

Multiplayer: For the first time in a Rockstar North-developed GTA, online multiplayer is available. This covers all the basics with deathmatch and team deathmatch, along with fantastic themed games such as "Cops and Robbers", where Robbers need to escape the city whilst cops need to kill the criminals. Another interesting mode is free mode, where you and a bunch of people can just go around the city causing havoc or generally doing what you want. It is often fun to enter this mode when you're just messing about in the game, as it gives that social element to digital anarchy.

Overall: If you don't own this game, then where on the planet have you been hiding? This is exceptionally well made and one of the first truly "blockbuster" games. For many hours of fun for the rest of your life, this is an amazing investment.

Get it now!

What on Earth has happened to Life with Playstation?

Life with Playstation ended in the first week of November

I have a bunch of downloads waiting to complete; so I do the good thing as I usually do and switch on Life with Playstation as I go to bed. The PS3 needs to be on and guzzling power to complete the downloads anyway, so I may as well do the world's research into diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer. I was quite surprised, therefore, to have a message come up and tell me the Life with Playstation project had come to an end. A few clicks on a search engine later confirmed the project had reached it's conclusion.

Life with Playstation was an application that did software simulations on protein folding, and runs the FAH ("folding@home") software. The ways proteins fold (or rather, misfold) have been linked to all kinds of nasty diseases. Work is distributed across the millions of people with the software, which runs in the background on installed on PCs and Macs in order to test many different permeations and confirm each others results are correct. The PS3 version was slightly different in that it couldn't run as a background app, but had to be opened by the user for it to do it's calculations. Although this meant it didn't do work automatically, I did find it useful when I had background downloads and I needed to leave the system on anyway.

So what exactly happened? Some have reported that the folding@home project is coming to an end with the impression that the ending support and use of the application is the logical conclusion. The PS3 project is certainly over now (making it a self-fulfilling prophecy?), but recent posts on the folding@home blog stating they have a lot going on in pushing the envelope into new technologies and that they are really excited to see what the next 5 years bring don't seem to add up with this story. Additionally, work units are still coming up on my Mac application.

Maybe it was becoming too much work for Stanford University (hosts of the project) to support the Cell processor, and they were no longer getting as much in terms of computing power from the world's PS3s compared to the world's computers. Or maybe Sony became fed up of supporting software that didn't fit with it's ethos of instant entertainment. Either way I'm getting more and more frustrated with the applications and features dropped from the PS3 since launch. I'm also surprised Sony wouldn't want to support many of the other distributed computing projects in the world, such as those run on BOINC, an alternative to FAH that provides a common application for organisations to create distributed computing projects and users to join any of those organisations.

Anyway, I've fired off e-mails to the respective companies, and will update this blog with their answers.