61 Frames Per Second : final fantast vii

Final Fantasy VII and How Nostalgia Colors Opinions

Cole Stryker — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:00:00 GMT

A few days ago I rhapsodized about A Boy and His Blob, only to have Bob Mackey provide me with a reality check. The game had its flaws. He's right! This morning I read IGN's roundtable discussion on Final Fantasy VII, which set out to determine if the game is overrated.

I don't think FFVII could have possibly come at a better time in order to enjoy canonical status today. A huge portion of today's video game journalists were probably ten to fifteen when the game was released. I vividly remember seeing the game's trailers aired during ABC's TGIFriday. Even my parents were impressed.

FFVII did a lot of things right. Emotional impact, grand scale, excellent atmosphere. These are the things we are likely to remember about video games. Much moreso than the battle systems and core mechanics, areas in which many people feel the game fell short. My point is, thinking back to those days when you're a rugrat, dwarfed by you parents' 27" Sanyo, staring wide-eyed as the Jenova conspiracy unravels before your eyes, it's easy to overlook glaring flaws. Nostalgia has no place in games criticism, if we are going to be serious with each other. I think that all reviewers are a little guilty, to a degree. Just look at my anticipation of A Boy and His Blob. But when it comes to evaluating an existing game, I try to leave the nostalgia at the door.

Know Your Final Fantasy IV Trivia. It Could Save Your Life.

Cloud's Ghostly Face Says, "More Final Fantasy VII? Only I Know, Suckahs."

Raised On the Stuff: A Parental Thank You Letter in the Heart of August

John Constantine — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:00:00 GMT

My father turned sixty years-old today and, while he’s never been too into it, the man has been playing games from the beginning. It ain’t father’s day and it ain’t mother’s day but today seemed like an appropriate time to say thank you to every parent that has encouraged their child to pick up a controller. Happy birthday, pop.

Since their inception, videogames have been terrifying red-blooded American moms and dads. As What They Play found just recently, parents are more concerned about their kids playing videogames than they are about them drinking alcohol or watching porn. My parents? Not so much.

I am not positive when the system came into my home, but it was there before I was old enough to remember it being new. I still remember playing my very first game on my folks’ Atari 2600. I was four years old and my brother took it upon himself to teach me how to play Defender. I didn’t quite understand what I was doing other than moving up and moving down, but that was enough for me to be entertained. There were other games in the house. Pitfall and The Empire Strikes Back are the only two still fresh in my memory. My parents weren’t concerned by the fact that they’re children were playing games. They were simply happy to see one more thing interest us and spark our imaginations. We had an NES by 1987 and both my mother and father continued to foster our love of games all the way into adulthood.

To my mother, thank you for your constant and genuine interest in what fascinated your sons, for Sonic and Knuckles, and for letting your child go out in public dressed like Vincent Valentine.

To my father, thank you for the countless hours in Playland Arcade, for the many two-player sessions of Bad Dudes, and for that trip to Kiddie City Toys when you bought that copy of Mega Man 2 “for yourself”.

To any parents reading, well, you’re already gamers if you’re here. But to any who might not be, don’t be afraid of anything your child loves. Unless it’s knives. Or fire.

Related links:

Raised On the Stuff
The Ten Games That Should Have Been Controversial

The Internet is a Dangerous, Terrifying Place

John Constantine — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

We here at 61 Frames Per Second take games seriously but we also do not consider any creation a sacred cow. The rest of the internet, prone to madness as it is, is a different story altogether. The veritable ocean of faceless voices out there holds almost every single game ever made in a regard that borders on the religious. Someone, on some message board, will curse your name forever if you say something bad about Revolution X. This what the internet does: it makes people think games about shooting a dominatrix with compact discs in order to rescue Steven Tyler are a good thing.

Then there’s Final Fantasy VII.

As I said earlier this week, Final Fantasy VII makes people go crazy. Chances are, if you slander Final Fantasy VII’s name in any way, a cosplayer will hunt you down and do improbable things to your hair. Say Final Fantasy VII is overrated, and someone will poison your oatmeal and say they “did it for Jenova”.

This is what Final Fantasy VII does to people.

Thanks to NeoGAF user XiaNaphryz for sullying our eyes forever.

Related links:

Behold: The Internet's Effect on Erotica
Games to Film to Games to Film: Resident Evil Degeneration

Whatcha Playing: Fallout (Metaphorically Speaking)

John Constantine — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Truth to tell, I’ve never played a Fallout game. The vast majority of my gaming career has been spent in front of a television, not a monitor, my hands clutching a controller instead of hovering over a keyboard. It’s not a point of pride, let me tell you. Not gaming on a PC throughout the ‘90s meant you were perpetually on the outside of the cutting edge, waiting for advancements to come to Nintendo, Sony, or whoever else’s systems sometimes years later. Deus Ex, Half-Life, Diablo, even Sierra’s King’s Quest V, all games I’ve gotten to try my hand at, eventually, when they were ported to a console, shadows of their former selves. It’s even kept me from really experiencing whole genres; I’ve never played a real-time strategy game for more than a few minutes and my aging laptop could barely run World of Warcraft when I tried it out in 2005. Since that year, though, consoles have started gaining on PCs as the place where developers make their greatest strides. It’s not too surprising. Consoles have turned into high-end computers themselves.

Since finishing off Metal Gear Solid 4 a week and a half back, I haven’t played much of anything. I’ve spent spring 2008 devouring the cutting edge, playing Grand Theft Auto 4, Rock Band, Wii Fit, Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus, playing and replaying the games on Valve’s Orange Box, my morning commute spent with the best the PSP and DS have to offer with games like Crisis Core and The World Ends With You. As summer starts to kick into high gear, I’m finding myself grateful for the encroaching lull in the release schedule. I suppose it’s the fallout from too much of the present. Maybe this is why today’s reveal of Mega Man 9 has me so excited. Art, whatever shape it comes in, doesn’t always need to push at the future’s edges. Sometimes its greatest delights are slightly behind tomorrow.

Previous Whatcha Playings.

Related links:

Mega Man 9 Goes Back to Your Roots. Way Back.
Don't Call it Retro: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection
The 61FPS Review: Metal Gear Solid 4

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 3

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:45:00 GMT

Sonic the Hedgehog - Green Hill Zone

By the time the original Sonic the Hedgehog came out, Super Mario World had been out for six months in Japan. In almost every way, Mario had the edge on Sonic — more levels, more power-ups, more variety, more gaming. But there was one thing you couldn't take away from Sonic, and that was the sheer dazzle of starting up the game and entering Green Hill Zone. To this day, Green Hill Zone looks spectacular, with its sparkling ocean, lush vegetation and abstract geometry — not to mention Masato Nakamura's unforgettable music. Mario had a lot to offer, but in terms of pure physicality, most of Dinosaur Land seems awfully drab next to Green Hill Zone. (Plus, it was 1991 — "zones" were just cooler than "lands", for Chrissakes.) — PS

Shadow of the Colossus - Valus

Shadow of the Colossus’s opening moments are less mysterious, and therefore less grand, than the opening moments of Ico. As players, we are given exposition and context through narration (however vague it may be) and the game’s protagonist Wander states a clear goal while an evil god tells him how to achieve it. This is a far cry from the confounding and almost entirely silent internment of a horned boy in a decaying castle. But Shadow of the Colossus’ first level, toppling the colossus Valus, is a singular moment in gaming history. Valus stands at one end of an enclosed valley opposite you and, at first, it doesn’t seem that big. Then you run towards it, feeling the ground shake through your controller, the music swells, and you jump on its enormous leg, searching for a handhold. It is, in the truest sense of the word, epic. Even God of War 1 and 2’s opening battles against the hydra and the Colossus of Rhodes seem miniscule in comparison. — JC

Metroid Prime - Space Pirate Frigate

To fully appreciate the beginning of Metroid Prime, play through the beginning of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Both openings teach you how to play the game, but Twilight Princess teaches you like you're in the remedial class, instead of someone who (knowing Nintendo's fan base) probably has a doctorate in Zelda. It takes hours of cat-placating, monkey-placating and goat-herding to even get a sword. Prime takes it easy on you, but you never feel condescended to. Its tutorials are thoroughly skippable; expert players can finish the Space Pirate Frigate in five minutes flat. But beyond that, it's a beautiful, self-contained introduction to the game's spooky atmosphere. Every console Zelda after A Link to the Past has started you out in a village full of whiners you have to coddle before you get to adventure. Prime throws you into a dark, eerie spacecraft where something horrible has happened. Get in and get out before its orbit decays and you die. Chills. — PS

Half-Life 2 – City 17

“Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up, and smell the ashes.” As Gordon Freeman, your journey through the bleak streets of City 17 begins a mere sixty seconds after the game’s title has faded to black. The mundane environment tells you everything you need to know about how life works in a world where civilization has crumbled; tired and scared citizens mutter in the corners of a train terminal, Combine soldiers threaten and abuse, and rare familiar faces urge you to escape immediately. Half-Life’s greatest success has always been keeping the player in constant control of the action while still herding them along a set path. Half-Life 2’s opening level, Freeman’s arrival in City 17 and his flight from the Combine across the city’s rooftops, engages and informs in equal measure while providing an immediate thrill through play. It’s remarkable that a first-person shooter’s most memorable level is its first, a level where not a single shot is fired. — JC

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Previous Top Tens:
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels

The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 2

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:30:00 GMT

Metal Gear Solid 2 – The U.S.S. Discovery

The opening level of Metal Gear Solid 2 is the finest Metal Gear game ever made in-and-of itself. Forget Hideo Kojima’s cinematic pretensions for just a moment and think about the raw play available in this self-contained prologue scenario. The tools of MGS’ trade may not be available to Snake in their totality here, but every inch of the tanker acts as a playground for the series' most fundamental mechanics. You can sneak through without ever being seen or you can kill every Russian soldier you come across. There is an expertly paced boss fight. There is skin-mag related humor. It’s all here. Now layer Kojima’s cinematic pretensions back on top of all that considering they are at their best (read: most restrained) here and you have a beginning that is, arguably, superior to anything the follows or precedes it in the entire series. — JC

Mega Man X - Awakening Road

This is not your father's Mega Man, says the opening stage of Mega Man X. Or it would, if it had a voice — but instead, it's got a brutal snare roll leading into a heavy rock instrumental. It's got a crumbling highway, complete with fleeing commuters (the latter of which ground the action in a more inhabited world than the NES Mega Man games ever featured.) And it ends with X almost getting scrapped by a mech-riding Boba Fett ripoff. Whatever our love for the classic Mega Man series, it never had this kind of drama. — PS

Einhander – Imperial Capital

Shoot ‘em ups, both vertical and horizontal, are usually gradual experiences. Gradius set the standard: an opening level that acclimates you to both the game’s challenge and its setting, you are the aggressor, going into a place to reach its center where defenses will be strongest. Also, excluding rare exceptions like 1942, shmups are fairly fanciful in scenario. More often than not, you’re fighting aliens, robots, monsters, etc. Einhander doesn’t start slow. Your ship flies into the middle of a bustling metropolis, literally crashing through neon billboards before racing through its ruined foundation. It is a human place and you are fleeing it, your first enemies police in pursuit. There’s a lot about Einhander that’s memorable, from Kenichiro Fukui’s techno soundtrack to its genius weapons system. But nothing sticks with you like the Imperial Capital. — JC

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The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History, Part 1

John Constantine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:15:00 GMT

First impressions are important, in videogames as they are in life. The first moments you spend with any art can define your experience of it. They compel you to dig deeper, to more carefully consider the work or the hand that crafted it. Other times, they can be so startling that everything that follows is diminished. This week, 61 Frames Per Second looks at the ten greatest opening levels in gaming history. Stick with us past the first one though. They’re all great. — John Constantine

Prince of Persia 2 - Rooftop Chase

The original Prince of Persia was a unique and wonderful game, but it wasn't much for setting. Half the game takes place in a monochromatic dungeon, and the other in a monochromatic palace. 2 quickly makes up for it; about to be executed by the Vizier's goons, the Prince leaps through a window, and from there it's up to you to guide him across the palace rooftops, into the marketplace below, down a long pier, finally leaping into the hold of a departing merchant ship — all with those guards on your tail. The stage is a real nail-biter, and all the more memorable because the rest of the game is comparatively subdued. — Peter Smith

Strider – Saint Petersburg

I won’t lie. There was a time that I watched that glider fly low over terrible Slavic church spires to a brief fanfare of synthetic horns and I believed, for a moment, that I would never leave Eurasia alive. Then I realized that Strider Hiryu’s sword was practically the length of the screen and it could literally make people explode. Strider, as a game, has not aged well in the past twenty years; the control is wonky, you can’t really tell when you’re even hitting something, and there are times when stuff in its stages blows up for seemingly no reason. But that first level remains an incredible spectacle, coated in color and character, a place where robot tigers will scale towers and entire Russian parliaments will turn into hammer-and-sickle wielding robot dragons. Fighting robot apes and hordes of half-naked amazons a few levels later just seems pedestrian after that. — John Constantine

Final Fantasy VII - Assault on Mako Reactor #1

Presumably your retinas have just detached as a result of your vigorous eye-rolling. Re-attach those suckers and hear me out here: no matter how bloated, overrated and over-fanboyed Final Fantasy VII might be in retrospect, its opening is masterful. Up until that game, RPGs never started fast. You loaded up your neophyte warriors with whatever cloth armor and rusty dinner knives you could afford on your starting wage of ten gold pieces, and then you sent them out to the local forest to get their asses handed to them by killer squirrels until they could upgrade to some new silverware. Final Fantasy VI was a step in the right direction, with its haunting approach to a frozen, gloomy northern town. But VII's opening is still a dramatic highlight of the series, segueing from a lyrical vision of a flower girl in the streets, to a full view of a vast futuristic city, to a tense assault on a huge power reactor, all to the strains of the Blade Runner-esque suite that is Nobuo Uematsu's immortal "Opening/Bombing Mission." Put that jackass with the Sephiroth tattoo out of your mind, and take a minute to appreciate the scope and excitement of this sequence. — PS

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