Final Fantasy VIII

The Good
There are lots of original concepts to be found. It gets rid of a lot of RPG cliches such as gathering gold, armors and weapons. Armor is virtually nonexistent, your starting weapon is the standard 1 for your character throughout the whole game. You get paid regualrly so gold is no longer a big reason for killing random enemies. The graphics on the Guardian Forces are impressive the first couple of times you see them, but they get very repetitive.

The Bad
You can't skip the animations on the Guardian Force attacks. The grphics are sub par, they're left in the original playstation resolution which makes them low-res on todays PC's. A lot of the original concepts are poorly implimented.The sounds sound tinny and distant.

The Bottom Line
If you're a Final fantasy fanatic is the only way i can recomend this game. A console port that squaresoft put no effort into. They didn't take advantage of the computers superior performance.

The Good
Greaaat graphics. As far as eye candy goes, Square pulled everything they could get from the psx. The characters and enviroments now sport great textures, and great animations, not to mention amazingly-blended fmv sequences, which even nowadays hold their own against most other competitors.

Well..... There are some nice gameplay gimmicks like the draw system and whatnot....and...er...There are also great graphics!!! And uhmm.... did I mention the graphics? Oh yeah, the intro is pretty cool (but for those of you that claim it's the best one ever I encourage you to check the SPECTACULAR Privateer 2 intro).

The Bad
It comes with an officially licensed Pop Song and starts with a music video. That pretty much says it all. If you are one of those that get all misty-eyed with a bunch of "epic" images and a thumping classical song then congratulations, FF8 is gonna be for you. If you on the other hand are among the ones with gray matter in the skull then welcome to hell.

To sum it up FF8 is a tough nut to swallow. Why? Crap Gameplay, Crap Story. Historically these have been the two saving graces of videogames, if you can have both you have a golden hit, if you don't, then you just concentrate on having one (Doom, console rpgs, etc.) but FF8 blows on BOTH accounts. Let me explain, as far as gameplay goes: it is a console rpg, so that means that right from the start it's seriously impaired, I'm talking super-linear structure, simple game mechanics, etc... but FF8 introduces a series of features that make things even worse. Let's see, since everyone liked those flashy summon animations on FF7 then the game will be much more entertaining if we concentrate it all on that feature, right? Wrong. The developers decided to focuss the entire fighting gameplay on these summons (now called GFs) by making all enemies extremely powerful and hardwiring fighting skills to these GFs (which you must "junction" to yourself in order to say, cast magic) which point out another problem, you'll find out that your main focuss is to upgrade the GFs, nevermind the characters themselves. Of course, the deductive player will soon find out that due to the over-the-top nature of fights, summoning GFs is the only viable way to win, and here is when we get to the heart of the problem: you have to cast and watch these (lavishly done admitedly) animations oooover and ooover and oooover again. These animations run 3-5 mins each and turn fights into 40 min affairs, add to that that they are straightforward simple fights devoid of any strategic angle and you have a borefest in your hands. You are only required to sit there between animations and select which one to play until the monster you are trying to defeat is dead. To quote an ex-girlfriend of mine: "Are you actually playing this or what?"... I didn't know what to answer her.

Ok, so the gameplay is crap, what about the storyline? Lots of games have been saved from oblivion by the legions of pseudo-intellectual freaks that are content with having nothing more than "interactive books"... well this isn't one of them. For what I dare say is the first time ever, Square has blown it in what regards to the storyline/creative content. For starters there is a major turn to melodrama instead of epic-ness in the story, "hooray!!" says you "no more stereotyped super-heroes that save the world, right?" Wrong again. The move just focuses the stereotypes even more, since the game puts character development and relationships in the front seat. A tricky feat to accomplish right, since you have to have VERY well designed characters. Characters with dark shadowy pasts are usually popular, because they keep everything in shrouds and your imagination fills in those blanks, it's not the most original aproach, but it allows you to easily connect with your character because you essentially turn him into what you want and you don't pay attention to the cliches and stereotypes going on around you. Square had this down to a formula but they decided to forgo it in order to tell the stories between the characters here and now. Bold move, but suddenly we are disconnected from that sense of involvement that we had before and we are told to sit back and watch as the story unfolds by itself. Of course, when we do that we can't help but watch everything we have missed out before. Such as the stupid stereotyping taken to the extreme with the "dark and misterious character" "the anmesia solution to complicated plots", the stupidly incidental plot (you never drive the action, stuff in the game just "happens" around you) the plot holes, etc. Understandably enough, the main plot gets weaker as the characters become more prominent in the spotlight, but the whole thing just comes appart because it doesn't have any good characters to deal with. Every one in the game is supposedly "for real" but in reality they are the lowest forms of the sterotypes that have plaged videogames from the beggining with the added bonuses that they are super-heroes / part-time 20-something models / fashionably cool / and even Rock Stars!! (yeah, I'm not kidding you here).

You have the usual sidekick-like characters that offer comedy relief at the expense of plot integrity and general ambience (hey dude, we are in the middle of a war but let's have a rock concert yay!!!); the baddass antagonist to the main character; the mentor-like mother figure; the hero; and of course, the main love interest.

These last two deserve a whole chapter on their own, for starters every female character in this game is responsible for a regression of epic proportions that would make Virgina Wolfe rattle in her grave (anyone notice how all the female characters wear skirts or short thights? :D This game would be a perfect ad for Gap!), but Riona alone has taken female characters back 10 years at least, especially since she is supposed to be the "strong-willed and modern" chick. Bullshit. Riona spends the whole game acting as a damsel in distress barely capable of producing an adult tought. She starts out as a rebel leader of sorts but by the second quarter of the game the developers apparently forget about that and have her act like a ditzy (free-spirited for the politically correct) bimbo.

As for the main character Squall has got to be the most stupid character ever to grace a computer game, you see, in the culturally inept elite circles image is associated with attitude, so for instance if you wear leather you are a badass (see Britney Spears => I love Rock & Roll), if you have tattoos you are a badass, if you speak "l33t" you are hacker, if you have body piercings you are baaad, etc, Get it? Well, the idea behind Squall is that he is "real" and that of course means acting like an asshole and being an obnoxious bitch (because in the simplified world of Square character design flawed equals "real") and since FF8 is a "really real" game and not like "those other fantasy games", Squall gets to act like an asshole a lot. And I do mean a LOT. One of the reasons it is so hard to connect with Squall is because he is just an asshole! Early in the game you see his best buddy (dunno how the hell he can put up with Squall) aproach and extend his hand to congratulate him. His reaction? Ignoring him and looking somwhere else... Is that supposed to be "real"?? If I were Zell I would have broken the motherfucker's nose... and that's just the beggining. Through the course of the game you'll see him bitch and moan and crawl into fetal possitions and storm out of rooms like a histerical bitch (no, I'm not making this up). Of course, Squall by himself is nothing but an annoying bitch (much like Episode 2's Anakin), the problem arises when he is shoehorned into the game just because he's the lead character. You'll scratch your head in disbelief as everyone treats him nicely just because he's the main character, you'll have a brain stroke trying to figure out how they can name an asshole like him the leader of humanity's last stand or how Rinoa falls madly in lover for him....

And of course, the icing on the cake comes in the form of a mushy-feely coat of cheap sensibility aplied to the game, if you look at it closely the game's whole point is to mix the right amount of mushy strings to make the emotionally challenged among us go "ahhhh" with a sad misunderstood guy and a harsh cold unfriendly world and then just when you think it's all so mean and nothin's fair... Whammo! Love conquers all!! yay!!!!! Most people will end this game tear-stained thinking they have actually tought something when in reality they have lost precious time and swallowed four discs of pure teenie-booper crap....Either that or the rules of the universe just switched and a sequence where the lead and the female interest find themselves acting like schoolgirls and cuddling and speaking about their feelings while the officially licensed Touchy-Feely Pop Song (tm) plays in the background are actually meaningfull and touching moments.

The Bottom Line
To sum it all up: Am I an nutcase? Everyone loves this game! Why am I the only one to point out these things? Well, you see, we videogamers need to be less forgiving about the content of our products if we are to be taken seriously by the world. This game is a perfect example because it is pure unadultered CRAP. And, because it made it's translation to another art-form. No, really. FF8 is in spirit the same as FF: The Spirits Within, it changes some characters and doesn't have chocobos, but at it's soul is the goddamned story of Squall's inept existance, it even has a crappy touchy-feely sequence in space!!!

So what happens??? FF8 is praised by everyone in the videogame community, and the game sells millions, while FF:TSW is regarded as nothing but a flashy and hollow overpretentious crap by the motion picture community.... Are we surprised then when the masses regard computer games as kiddie stuff? Of course, I'd like to point out that while the psx version of the game was a success, the PC version bombed terribly, which makes me particularly proud of being primarily a PC-gamer :)).... There is a lesson to be learned in here kids, maybe I'm not as nutz as you think :)

The Good
Squaresoft heard its fans after the success of its previous offering, Final Fantasy VII. "More!" they cried. And more they received. What we have in Final Fantasy VIII is every ounce of graphical glory the programmers could force out of the PlayStation, improving upon the powerful combination of pre-rendered graphics and full-motion video that made #7 so popular. Gone are the blocky characters, replaced with more realistic figures who really do stand at full height, with fully textured clothing, too. Unfortunately, it seems many gamers are unable to see past the superficiality of this game. I'll get to that in a bit.

There is, gladly enough, one really good saving factor to this game that I think might even be more fun than the actual game -- and that's Triple Triad, the card-collecting sub-game that permeates the game world. You collect monster cards, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and then you challenge townspeople and extras standing around to play with you, and if you win you could win their cards (and if you lose, say goodbye to your own). There's so much strategy involved, and just when you think you've got it figured out the game tosses in another rule. Just collecting these cards, playing people to track down the rare cards, and the richness of gameplay this affords could very easily keep you from actually playing the game for hours.

The Bad
Unfortunately, Squaresoft bowed too much to peer pressure -- or fan pressure, as the case may be. Final Fantasy VIII is about twenty steps too far in the wrong direction, striving to be a bigger and badder version of Final Fantasy VII with more technology (both in programming and in the game environment) but lacking, unfortunately, in story and gameplay. We'll take a look at what Squaresoft thought they could do with #8 from what they learned in #7, and what went wrong.

Let's start with the Guardian Force/Junction system, which is how characters gain skills and abilities. See, in Final Fantasy VII, characters could equip summon spells that allows them to summon monsters in battle to do massive amounts of crucial damage. That, and give them some truly amazing animated visuals, and those summons easily became one of the major selling points of the game, gracing all sorts of marketing devices and magazine previews everywhere. So in Final Fantasy VIII Squaresoft figured these summoned monsters, now given the name "Guardian Force," could become the basis of the skill system, and characters would now be forced to depend upon the GF's for most of their attack power. In #7, summoning was limited to a maximum of five times per battle. In #8, you summoned as many times as you liked.

The result of this catastrophic decision was that every difficult monster had to be given huge gob-loads of hit points, since it was very easy to up your GF's attack power to a maximum of 9999 damage per hit (and sometimes they would even perform multiple hits). To prevent every monster from dying immediately at the hands of the powerful GF's Squaresoft had to make some regular monsters have as much as 100,000 to 150,000 hit points! But that's not all -- GF animations became even more over-the-top, increasing not only its "coolness factor" but also the length of time it took to play out, which made even regular battles a gigantic half-hour borefest of watching your powerful GF do the exact same thing fifty times in a row. This is not my idea of fun.

There are, as well, plenty of minor gripes to make: The characters, themselves, are largely identical in ability -- Final Fantasy used to be about specialization of characters (some of them forced) but here, you could use the same three characters for the entire game, just change the GF's around depending on which ability you'd like to use, and you'll never even have to look at the other characters if you don't want to ever again. There's a lack of equipment -- you only choose weapons, and even those are limited to four choices throughout the entire game, kind of like a simplified Equipment for Dummies, which further focuses your character's development on GFs alone. Then there's the Limit system -- a way for each character to perform superpowerful attacks when they're near death -- while it's well-meaning, you could still trick the game into letting you have a nearly unlimited amount of Limits just be never healing yourself, which again forces monsters to have insane amounts of HP just to stay alive. And one must also ask the question, why does a world so technologically advanced only have about three major cities in it?

Not to mention that halfway into the game there's an improbable plot twist -- I won't give it away here -- that can only be explained by tossing in the copout "Oh, GF's have a side effect of causing memory loss." Durrr....

Granted, Final Fantasy VIII could easily stand on its own and be a great game, but the point is, it's can't. See the words "Final Fantasy" in the title? There are years of prequels to live up to and by that comparison Final Fantasy VIII has failed. Unfortunately, this is a case when Squaresoft tried to give too much of what the fans wanted, and ignored all sorts of game design sensibilities altogether. While it's great that they made the effort, I'm afraid I can't really respect the end product.

The Bottom Line
If all you want in a game is that it "looks cool," then Final Fantasy VIII is for you. Otherwise, try games seven or nine for the PlayStation instead. Although they're more cartoony, they're also more fun, better balanced, and represent what Final Fantasy is really all about.