Black Friday sales have become a thing in the UK, in spite of the fact that we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
A lot of retail outlets go a step further, and start their sales a week (or more) prior to the big day itself. That was when several shops started advertising they would be selling the PlayStation VR bundle with VR Worlds for £249.99 (around $334.00 at time of writing), with many including an option of either Skyrim VR or Gran Turismo Sport.
It’s now a month later, and I find myself looking back at the investment and wondering if I am happy with my purchase, so I thought it might be helpful to share my experiences.
The PlayStation VR bundle itself did not come with the PS Move controllers, but I still had a set from the days when motion control was the direction that the console manufacturers wanted to take their market. Though they have had the sole purpose of gathering dust for a few years.
I couldn’t really afford to buy it, but if I chose the Skyrim bundle, I would be getting a £49.99 game included in the purchase, so I justified the purchase by the fact that I would be saving around £150, as well as already owning a couple of VR titles thanks to the PlayStation Plus offerings of RIGS and Until Dawn : Rush Of Blood.
It’s now a month later, and I find myself looking back at the investment and wondering if I am happy with my purchase, so I thought it might be helpful to share my experiences.
What I have been the most surprised with is the interest from my friends and colleagues.
On the day I rushed to the store during my lunch break to grab the unit before they inevitably sold out, I had several people asking to have a look, and perhaps understandably, some not even understanding that you’d need to plug the system into the PS4. However, once I had explained all this, my manager told me I should leave the office early to go home, wire it all up, then tell him how great it was so that he could try and persuade his family it would be a great present for Christmas!
It didn’t take long for a few colleagues to invite themselves over an evening to try it out. At this point, I had only really tested the waters by playing through the Rogue One X-wing mission in Star Wars Battlefront (a free DLC content pack), which I guarantee will astound any Star Wars fan, although you can quickly establish if they have played any kind of flight game before by how fast they get confused by the controls.
One of my colleagues was a little older than me, and although she had a Wii, clearly hadn’t used a PlayStation controller before, as she was constantly confused by the buttons, but aside from that, was clearly blown away. When the next player put the kit on, I could hear comments such as “It’s a shame you can’t get this for the Wii”, as well as quietly discussing how much money would be required to invest whilst also having to order the PS4. Although I was not in the office the next day, I heard that she was so impressed she was telling everyone.
I’ve travelled to see friends over the holiday season, and having purchased a carry case to store the headset when it is not in use, I’ve taken it with me to let others try it out, and even the friends who were initially resistant at thought of stepping in to virtual reality have changed their mind and asked for go with the feigned reluctance of, “Oh, I suppose I’ll give it a try since you’ve set it all up…”.
I feel I should make it clear that I have not been showing off the VR as a demonstration to my friends as a kind of humble brag. It was purely because the price point means that the average potential buyer will not consider it, as it is too much of a risk if they don’t get on with it. I had had the luxury of trying it myself at a friend’s house before I bought my own.
But getting all my friends to try it is not the only use it has received. Far from it! I have had quite a lot of fun streaming games on twitch.tv. When using the PS4’s native broadcast mode, chat comments are displayed as pop-ups on the view screen inside the headset, rather than reducing your field of vision by having the chat bar along the side of the screen. Whilst this is very handy, it doesn’t display the message for long, and if you don’t have the chance to read it, you can’t exactly scroll through the chat to find it again. I guess it is also open to abuse if you had a lot of users in the chatroom spamming messages. You’d probably want to disable your comments at that point.
So far, there have been two elements of occasional frustration. The first is the tracking of the headset and the move controllers. There are plenty of videos on youtube that will help you reduce this by setting up the camera correctly and calibrating the headset for you. It does a pretty good job right out of the box, but some people have wider faces than others, and this can lead to the vision being a little off because the image is not directly in front of your eyes due to an average position being adopted. You can also suffer from your move controllers going out of the cone of vision of the camera, resulting in frozen hands in the game.
The second obstruction to blissful gaming is that some players will be more susceptible to nausea from movement in certain games. By far the worst offender for this is the game RIGS, which as the name suggests places you in charge of a mechanical rig, which turns its torso as you turn your head. Because the game is designed to be fast-paced, there are multiple “comfort settings” which need to be toggled until you find what works for you. I found it took a couple of days of playing in short bursts before I could tolerate more than 1 match before quitting.
When you have everything set up correctly though, you can find yourself totally immersed. You take for granted that other characters are a little cartoony, but even that feeling disappears as you forget you are sat in your living room (or whichever room you set it up in), because these characters are talking to you with the sort of volume you’d expect from someone being a foot to the right or 6 foot in front of you. I played Star Trek Bridge Crew for the first time yesterday, and found that I played for a straight sitting of 6 hours, as there is no in-game clock to tell you of the time in the real world.
Bizarrely, I still haven’t tried Skyrim, but I’ve watched it being streamed. The only reason I haven’t installed it myself yet is because I know that I will lose far more than 6 hours!
I should also point out, as some people may not be aware, that the PSVR will shortly be sold as a newer model. The PSVR model 2 will be largely similar, but will have some sockets in the headset casing to store the earbuds that come bundled with the system, as well as an upgraded processor box that will allow HDR passthrough. Currently, if you have a HDR-enabled tv you need to disconnect the box to enjoy the extra benefits over a standard tv. For me, that isn’t an issue as I currently don’t have a 4K / HDR television, but if you have upgraded it is definitely something to consider.
With the Playstation Experience showcase highlighting 80+ games in development for the hardware, I am confident that this is not going to be yet another case of Sony releasing a product and letting it slowly die by not supporting it. Games like Skyrim VR and Doom VFR being available, and hopefully Fallout 4 VR being migrated to the PS4 in 2018, there is a lot to feel confident about.
Ultimately, this reflective piece was intended to confirm if I think I wasted my money on the PlayStation VR, or if I feel that it will certain reward my investment.
As of right now, I am definitely happy to have bought it. The variety of games available means that there are experiences available for everyone, ranging from peaceful experiences such as Eagle Flight and Ocean Descent, to role-playing games, such as Star Trek and Skyrim, to scary games like Resident Evil 7 and Rush of Blood : Until Dawn, and not forgetting puzzle games like Tumble and Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes.
– Justin Smith has been a podcaster for over 6 years, and has been visiting the cinema regularly for 4 of them. When he’s not playing games with Star Wars themed miniatures, he spends time with video games.
Aquaman is the Embodiment of “Fine”
REVIEW | The Punisher Season 2
Sub Cultured Heads to PAX South 2019!
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Sub Cultured is Heading to DakuCon 2018!
“Gaming does not respect my personal time,” is a mantra I have been saying for weeks now. We truly live in the best time to game, and this may be among the greatest years of releases in the whole industry. That being said, I want to make a declaration:
I want to enjoy my other hobbies too, but The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Horizon Zero Dawn wont let me.
Jesting aside, it is not often that we are hammered with such a collection of releases in Q1. Sure as the years have gone by, big Q1 releases have become more and more commonplace. However, I don’t think I have ever seen it to this extreme. Let’s break 2017 down a bit.
The year started off with January’s smash success Resident Evil 7 as the big must see attraction. February boasted For Honor, and PlayStation’s two new exclusives, Nioh and Horizon Zero Dawn. If you think it stops there well buckle in for March’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the release of Nintendo’s newest console, the Nintendo Switch, Neir, and Mass Effect Andromeda. Oh, but you can’t stop planning for after that because April will see Persona 5, with Prey also coming out in May. Every single month has a can’t miss title that you…well…can’t miss!
Among all the listed titles above, two are going to battle it out in the same week, head to head, for our free time. Both games are large open worlds, with lots of inspirations from previous open world games like GTA, The Witcher 3, and Skyrim. They are also both an exclusive pillar in two different franchise lineups. That’s right, it’s time to break open the time seizing terrorists: Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Sony’s Horizon Zero Dawn.
Horizon Zero Dawn Open World
Horizon Zero Dawn will launch February 28th, and after the collective praise of every review copy of the game, it seems like it is one not to be missed. However, this title is going against a juggernaut of a franchise, the widely known Legend of Zelda.
The Legend of Zelda will be releasing with its new hardware on March 3, leaving just about 3 days in between the two huge releases. How does one even begin to choose what to put time into? This is a battle of old versus new, known versus unknown, and of course, Sony versus Nintendo.
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild Open World
The lifelong gamer in me is of course screaming for Legend of Zelda, as I know that it will be a nice nostalgic trip into a franchise I love, all the while showcasing that it has been paying attention to other games, and what would be best to take inspirations from. The other half of me who loves all things new is of course hollering for some Horizon playtime. A normal person would just choose one or the other, but in my constant battle with FOMO (fear of missing out) I have chosen to step up to the Tale of Two Open World’s challenge to tackle both simultaneously.
Now if you have a lick of sense about you, one game will suffice. Only occupying one world will guarantee an extra layer of immersion as you aren’t constantly unlearning mechanics from one game to relearn them in the other. I have high hopes after plenty of investigating that both will offer vastly different experiences despite being mechanically similar.
GAMEPLAY
Sure, two big titles from competing franchises that are both 3rd person adventure coming out with only a 3 day gap, an open world format, and each boasting a skilled archer as their hero doesn’t necessarily mean these titles are similar in every way.
Except both games will have a map unlock system via towers, not unlike Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry. Each game will have a crafting system, as well as a focus on hunting local fauna in as well. The Legend of Zelda and Horizon Zero Dawn are both sure to be north of 40 hour experiences, depending on how deep you explore all the content. In those hours you will notice that they both have a focus on combat and exploration, as the world unfolds around you.
STORYLINE
If the mechanics alone aren’t enough to convince you of the similarities, take a look at the plot; Zelda and Horizon both focus on immersive worlds that have suffered from some sort of calamity, a mystery that you are slowly uncovering in the story. In Horizon, the player occupies a world that was once theirs, taken by nature and guarded by a slew of animalistic robotic guardians who occupy the lands. In Zelda, the player occupies Hyrule, a world that has suffered a fall of civilization… where robotic guardians now live.
The Legend of Zelda’s Robot Enemies who Prowl the Land
Horizon Zero Dawn’s Robot Enemies who Prowl the Land….Also
I fear that playing Zelda and Horizon simultaneously would create a dance filled with much toe stepping. Obviously each game will be different, but they will feel similar in terms of moment to moment gameplay and mechanics. That is not a slight on either game, but more so just the realism of the situation. While they are similar, we don’t believe that one is a copy of the other, and at this point one is not lesser than the other. Their similarities are not a negative aspect. If anything, the immersive experience that both these titles offer showcase that the open world genre, a genre constantly being called “overwhelming, overused, and oversaturated,” is in fact healthy and still ripe with opportunity for churning out Game of the Year contenders.
BUT WHICH DO I CHOOSE?
Either title you pick will be its own experience, and a great one. Ultimately, it comes down to what is speaking to you more right now in this moment. The battle of old versus new is a tale as old as time, and in the end it will be your choice. The main question you will have to ask yourself is what type of experience you are looking for.
The Legend of Zelda has 30 years of cannon, references, characters, and locations to draw from. Zelda will surely rely on the old tried and true methods as it tugs on our strings of nostalgia, but don’t count out its innovations as well. With new mechanics such as weapon/armor drops, cooking, and horse breaking, the experience is sure to feel fresh, and unlike any Zelda you have ever played before. It will dance the line of new and familiar.
Zelda also has the novelty of launching with a new system to explore. You can always snag The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild on the Wii U, but the real attention is being shifted towards their new system, the Switch. It makes this release that much more special that we are getting this a Zelda with new hardware.
Horizon on the other hand is setting up an entirely new world and isn’t restrained by anything from the past. It is creating its own foundation for a potential new franchise, and that in itself is very exciting. Exploring a new world like Horizon has will be a main draw as you figure out the nuances of this storyline.
Horizon launches on the current PS4 as well as the PS4 Pro systems. If you have a PS4 Pro, this is the game that tests the true limits of that new hardware. Because of this, Horizon may be the best looking game on the market… in the history of ever. While Zelda players on the Switch may be distracted with new hardware, Horizon players will already be immersed in this new world.
Link Don’t Play Games
Robot Dino Hunting…Just like the Cavemen Used to Do
This will be a hard decision for some of you that are in the “either or” camp. Thankfully, I’m evading this eternal debate in turn for conjuring issues of my own based on that decision. See ya later free time and social life! For me, I will have two or three solid days with Horizon before the Switch launches that Friday. Come Saturday, what will end up sitting on the shelf, and what will end up getting my full attention? The overzealous gamer in me says, “You will beat Horizon before Zelda comes out,” but the adult in me says, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
What will you be choosing? Do you plan on playing both? Don’t forget to check out our Twitch channel, where we will be streaming both games!
Aquaman is the Embodiment of “Fine”
REVIEW | The Punisher Season 2
Sub Cultured Heads to PAX South 2019!
REVIEW | The Batman Who Laughs – #1
Sub Cultured is Heading to DakuCon 2018!
These trailers were some of the most talked about from E3 2015 (aside from Final Fantasy VII obviously), but some of the best parts the public never got to see! We’re here to give you the scoop on what you missed from The Last Guardian, Uncharted 4, and Horizon.
The Last Guardian
The trailer everyone saw started out with the boy and catbird, named Trico we found out, on a bridge navigating some precarious heights. The trailer press was treated to in Sony’s theater on the floor started out about ten minutes earlier. The boy is navigating some very old ruins when he comes across Trico. The creature isn’t hostile to him, so it’s not clear whether or not the boy and Trico are already friends or not, but even if they weren’t, a quick rub on his face and some reassuring words have the boy on catbird’s good side.
The boy then runs around Trico and climbs on him. By the way, the feathers on Trico are so spot on, it’s incredible. Remember when you first saw LA Noire and were like “Oh god, faces can be that good?” Same thing, but for feathers. The boy notices that catbird’s been really injured, two large spears are embedded in him. Trico’s clearly tried to get them out himself with how splintered they are, but they’re at a weird angle to where he can’t pull them out himself. The boy ends up pulling both of the spears out, with small yelps of pain from our creature friend.
It’s then time for Trico to get up and eat his preferred meal, small barrels of something. Who knows. But Trico’s jonesin’ for the stuff enough that he stands up on his hind legs so the boy can enter a part of the dungeon he can’t in order to retrieve the barrels he wants. It’s very indicative of the symbiotic, caring relationship between the two, and really builds a bond the player’s mind between boy and catbird. After the boy opens the gate, both of them proceed out to the bridge where the press conference trailer picked up.
Though this extended trailer bit wasn’t terribly important, it did a great job of building the bond between the two characters and making you feel for Trico. Considering everyone thought this title was dead a month ago, it’s looking pretty damn good.
Uncharted 4
When Sony’s E3 2015 press conference trailer of Uncharted 4 last left Drake, he was being dragged by a large truck into a pile of wood while hanging off a bridge.. The trailer/gameplay continues from there as Drake is being pulled over the lake, past a pedestrian boat, narrowly avoiding wooden pillars until he finally slams in to dry land as the bridge ends. But that’s not where Drake gives up, oh no. He maintains his grip and is then unceremoniously dragged through the mud behind the truck, trying to avoid hitting things while also trying to pull himself up to the truck WHILE ALSO SHOOTING DUDES. After finally making it up to the truck and punching the hell out of some poor sap, it’s time to crank it up even further, as is tradition with Uncharted. While we’re not clear on the details, the car Drake is on catches on fire. Of course it does. So he’s forced to jump on someone else’s bike, kick off the owner, and keep driving with the caravan to get up to his brother. After two more vehicle hoppings, Drake is in a truck pulling up next to his brother, followed by a ton of troops. They both want the other to get on their vehicle. As brothers do, they start arguing about who will get on who’s vehicle.
Then Drake gets hit by a god damn truck. OF COURSE he gets hit by a god damn truck.
So as he’s getting his bearings in the flipped over vehicle, realizing he isn’t dead (a shock to us too), the damn thing catches on fire. Of course it does. IT’S UNCHARTED. OF COURSE THEY TOOK A BAD THING AND MADE IT WORSE. A few armed thugs comment that there’s no way he could be alive until he bursts the driver side door open and kills them. “Never underestimate a Drake.” He never says that, but in our fan fiction, he totally did.
His brother picks him up on the motorcycle and the chase is back on as the huge military truck is still on their asses. Nate’s shooting behind him, his brother’s driving, death is looming. Finally, they slide the bike under a large block in the road, which the truck hits and explodes. For the first time, Nate, his brother, and the audience all breathe an audible sigh of relief. Even just watching someone play this was stressful, playing it must be intense.
And just as we were ready for the demo to be over, Drake, his brother, and Sully all make it back to their hotel room, confident that they’ve found the location of a hidden treasure. Their excitement is interrupted by Drake’s wife unexpectedly showing up in his hotel room. She asks how the Monaco job is going and why he’s so off course. You can hear how disappointed she is that Drake lied to her about not being a thief anymore. It’s heartbreaking. Then the trailer ends.
GOD WE NEED THIS GAME.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Admittedly, the amount of content differing between the trailer press go to see and what the public saw is minimal. The demo we saw is functionally the same, but with a few more things shown off with combat. Aloy still comes down, hides in the grass, kills a robodino before it sounds an alarm, then shoots some of the grazing robots to take whatever green goop they’re holding. This murderous human, understandable, upsets mama dinosaur as it turns around and starts a huge fight. So in the press conference demo, it wasn’t quite clear why or how they were doing what they were doing and how to win against this huge foe, but in the private theater, they talked through the strategies that went in to it.
First off, Aloy has many different types of ammo with her bow. There’s explosive, electric, and armor piercing, among others, and they all have their place. First, after rolling around and dodging attacks, you slow down time to get a good shot with the armor piercing arrows to one of the mounted guns on the side, knocking it off. Then that weapon is used to knock off more of the armor plating around the dino’s weak point, somewhere around its upper thigh. This process is repeated for the other size, then you shoot cables to tie the beast down to get in a good shot and hit the weak point with an explosive shot. Boom, creature’s down.
Though it may not have been radically different, it’s at least interesting to get a peek into how Horizon Zero Dawn’s combat will function after its intriguing world roped us all in.
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
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It’s 2006, and Square Enix has big plans. Big plans, I tells ya! After riding high on the wave of high grossing mediocrity that was Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, the development company decided to keep going with this series thing. They announced Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy, a fancy way of saying Three Kinda Related Final Fantasies. The idea was simple — three games taking place in distinct worlds, but sharing a common mythos of powerful crystals tied to deities. When it was originally announced, the three games to be in this series were Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and Final Fantasy Type-0.
Of the three, Final Fantasy Versus XIII held the most promise. It was headed by Tetsuya Nomura, the designer behind Final Fantasy VII and lead behind Kingdom Hearts, the gameplay team was to be the one that worked on Kingdom Hearts II, and the cinematics team was to be the one behind Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. It was like a super group of game development rock stars!
But as the years wore on, we got very few confirmations that the game was still in progress. Besides a few screen shots here and there, the project was all but slated as vaporware. But then in the summer of 2013, Square Enix showed off new footage of the game. It looked slick, the gameplay was unique from any other Final Fantasy, and the graphics were gorgeous. And at the end, the title Final Fantasy Versus XIII gave way to its new moniker Final Fantasy XV.
They then announced that Final Fantasy Type-0, the bloody, more mature entry in the Three Kinda Related Final Fantasies series was getting an HD remake on PS4. And if opening cut scenes of people actually dying (with actual blood) wasn’t enough to get you hyped, a preorder of the game included a demo of Final Fantasy XV called Final Fantasy XV Episode Duscae.
Not only was this a genius marketing move to try and garner more sales for Type-0 HD, but it ties back in to the Fabula Nova Crystallis series nicely and give the development team an insight in to what works and doesn’t work about this radical departure from the classic JRPG series.
I told you that story to tell you this story.
So far, what we know about Final Fantasy XV you play as a prince named Noctis who’s on a road trip with his friends Ignis, Prompto, and Gladiolus. I’m assuming the world is ending or something and they’re going to go save it, since that’s the plot of every Final Fantasy, but the other title of this game could be Four Buddies Take a Road Trip for as much as we know.
This demo is an example of how to do a demo right. We’ve been given a part of the game that has nothing to do with the story, featuring all the things we wanted to know about like combat, leveling, and quest systems, set in a humongous map. By my estimates, you can spend well over six hours just finding stuff to do, exploring new areas, or challenging monsters. I know full games that aren’t this detailed or extensive, and this came free with another game!
In this demo, we find out friendly foursome with a broken down car trying to find ways to earn the money to get it fixed so they can keep getting Slurpees and playing punch buggy. The first thing you’ll notice about this game is how Final Fantasy it both is and isn’t. The clothes and hair of the protagonists are a little out there, but not overly strange. They look like you could reasonably see one of them and think, “That guy’s dressing really flashy” instead of, “That guy loves LARPing.” This vibe carries over to their interactions with one another. They don’t yell things at each other like “WE’RE FRIENDS, SO THAT’S WHY I’M HERE TO PROTECT YOU!” or “WE’RE GOING TO SHOW THE EMPIRE WHAT WE’RE MADE OF!” They talk to each other like a group of adults, and that’s so terrifically refreshing for a series that’s notorious for its overacting. There’s very little over the top gestures or snarky one liners to nobody in particular. It actually feels as if Square Enix had some tact with this one. Either that, or their English voice cast is pulling a lot of weight. Trust me, it’s a lot better than the trailers.
And now we dive in to the big differences. The ways in which you’ll think “Did they really just make a Final Fantasy game with Kingdom Hearts gameplay?”
Yes. Yes they did. And here’s why that’s not bad.
A lot of people enjoy turn based RPGs. My most favorite games of all time are turn based RPGs. Hell, one of Square Enix’s bestselling RPGs in years, Bravely Default, was a turn based RPG. And of course you’d expect Final Fantasy to follow suit. But just like a favorite pair of underwear, that formula has worn too thin. Final Fantasy has almost been a joke the past eight or so years. The series that refused to push itself in to new areas. The company who found a formula that worked on NES and thought it’d keep working all the way to Playstation 3. Sure, combat systems had been updated a little here and there. Attempts were made to conceal its turn-based nature behind moving characters or MMO-esque battle systems. But at its core, Final Fantasy remained a game about a group of ragtag adventurers going up against impossible odds to do something (likely with crystals) to save the world by beating the crap out of enemies, waiting until they took a turn or two, then beating them up again.
Conversely, Final Fantasy XV is about motion and fluidity. The four face buttons are mapped to attack, special, jump, and warp. You can customize your attack patterns within a menu and your special is selectable on the fly during battle, allowing for change of strategy where needed. Noctis has a couple of special things about him. For whatever reason, he materializes different weapons to fight will at will. This ability means you can lead off your attack with a powerful greatsword attack to break their defense, follow it up with quick successive shots with a short sword to get in multiple hits, and then finish them off with a pike to push them away, all in the same combo. And the weapons seem tied to him somehow, so if he materializes a sword somewhere far away, he’ll warp to that sword. Using warp, you can quickly attack enemies that are far away, transport yourself out of battle quickly, or even use it to dodge. Holding L1 will keep Noctis dodging for as long as he has MP to spare, which is an invaluable tool if your teammates are healing up while you distract the enemy.
Speaking of your teammates, one of my favorite features is what happens when you’re KO’d. Once your health gets to 0, you can no longer attack and enter a kind of emergency mode. Your life bar fills red and if you continue taking damage until you’re at 0 again, you get a game over. However, in that time, your teammates can come by and rescue you, bringing your health back up and putting you back in the fight. And don’t worry, if they’re all incapacitated too, you’ll come back to life after enough time has passed anyway. It’s similar to Army of Two or Call of Duty in that you have to rely on your teammates to bail you out if you get overwhelmed and make a bad combat decision.
So what’s the common theme here? It’s all radically different from every other Final Fantasy. You can exit fights without entering in commands, you can dodge if you’re fast enough, your attacks depend more on speed and reaction than planning, and you have to rely on AI to do the right thing because you’re too busy trying to stay live yourself. The common thread?
Engagement.
In games like Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy, or most other RPGs, you’re not acting dynamically. You’re telling your characters what to do and watching them do it. There’s no opportunity to change strategies in the middle of an execution because you’ve already written the script of how this is going to happen. And that’s a completely valid formula, one that’s worked for many years, and one that a lot of people enjoy. However, by doing a more dynamic combat system, you’re not telling characters to do things, you’re doing them. If in the middle of what you think is going to be a barrage and the boss does that one move that you hate, you can change your strategy simply by no longer pressing attack. If one of your teammates crits and knocks the boss in to a prone position or stops them when you weren’t expecting, you can let loose your techniques, attack as hard and fast as you can, then warp away when he realizes you’re the one who’s been stabbing his butt when he couldn’t fight back. At every point during combat, you’re engaged, and that’s not something Final Fantasy has seen in some time.
The demo takes place in a huge, continuous area that seems to maybe have other areas connected to it that you could access through certain points, but can’t because of the limits of the demo. Think Borderlands. You could easily spend upwards of six hours just exploring the whole map. There are main quests highlighted on the map and side quests that you can pick up by being in proximity to the quest start, incentivizing exploration by rewarding you with the chance to get more loot or experience.
You can camp overnight at any of the campgrounds around the map, get in a good dinner and replenish your health. Campsites also act as areas to use the levels you’ve gotten throughout the day to get different abilities or choose how your character will grow through their system. The meals you eat also give you slight buffs for the next day. All the meals I’ve eaten so far look like they came out of a restaurant, I’ve been getting some nice buffs. But you can imagine a situation in which the Friendly Foursome are in some desolate area eating bread and drinking water, so there aren’t any buffs, or maybe there are even debuffs.
As with all demos, there are some issues. At one point during a mission, I got on to a platform I shouldn’t have been able to get on and into an area I wasn’t meant to be in yet. The result meant that I actually had to die and redo the whole area before being able progress. I’ve also found issues running in to trees and not being able to get around them effectively, having my teammates ignore me when I was dying, or not facing the right way and attacking nothing because the camera was being weird. All these things can be improved by the time the game is released next year.
If you haven’t gotten your hands on Type-0 HD yet, hope you can get a Day One copy of it so you can get this demo. I didn’t think I could get more excited for this game, but after this, I’m actually confident in the next game. I don’t have to say things like “Well, let’s hope the next one is okay.” Because the next one is going to kick ass. So much ass.
If you don’t have a PS4, I’ll be streaming the game later on this week, so keep an eye on our social media pages for when that’ll be up. Trust me, you’re going to want to see this.
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PAX South was a surprisingly good con for local multiplayer games. Given how much consoles seem to be shrugging off local multiplayer, it was wonderful to see so many games designed to be played in a room while screaming at your friends. Here’s a collection of our favorite new games that are sure to drive a rift in your friendships.
Capsule Force
Platforms: PC, PS4
Release Date: Early 2015
Just Shapes and Beats
It’s just a game about shapes and beats, how intense could that be?
SUPER FREAKING INTENSE.
Essentially, you’re one of four shapes trying to avoid pink environmental hazards that show up to the beat of a song. You can play with one all the way up to four players, though trust me, it’s so much more fun with friends. The resulting panic and chaos of pink beams, explosions, and vibrato circles leaves you screaming for help from your teammates, all the while nodding your head to the songs. It’s hard to explain. Take a look at this:
Platforms: TBD
Release Date: TBD
Speedrunners
What is it with these games and their intenseness? It’s a theme!
Speedrunners is essentially a mix of 2D Mario Kart and Smash Brothers. You choose a character and make laps around a map filled with speed boosts, obstacles, and items. The way you win is by either touching the edge of the screen because you’re so far ahead of everyone, or everyone else behind you touches the other edge of the screen because they’re so far behind. The game quickly becomes one of skill and path optimization at its core, though that’s all thrown out the window with the right items. A quick claw arm grab or in the way box can provide a huge advantage, turning a one sided match into anyone’s game in a matter of seconds.
Platforms: PC, Xbox One
Release date: Out now for early access, full game early 2015
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By now I’m going to guess that you’ve heard about the monkeyshines and shenanigans that occurred at the recent PlayStation Experience event. But if not allow me to set the scene for you:
Our boy Shinji Hashimoto from Square-Enix comes out on stage to tell the audience something that many Final Fantasy fans have been clamoring for for almost 20 years –Final Fantasy VII, hailed by many RPG fans as one of the greatest games of all time, would be coming to the PlayStation 4.
If this is new to you then I know what you’re thinking kids – because I’m sure I was one of the many that did the same thing. you’re replaying a next-gen version of the Bahamut ZERO summon in your head, trying to picture what the Gold Saucer would even look like, creating mental images of Midgar and that awkward Wall Market scene with Beautiful Bro.
But then reality sets back in. Yes, Final Fantasy VII will be available for the PS4. No, it is not going to be awesome. It will be the same as the one released in 1997 – a port of the PC version of the game to be available in the spring of 2015.
We all got trolled. Again. And this time they did it to our faces in front of a huge hall full of people, getting them super excited then taking out their knees. Here’s some video from Kotaku’s Fahey showing the presentation.
Now those of you that know me know how I feel about remakes in general – a lot of times to me they’re a cheap cash-grab with no discernible advantage to the older version outside of convenience to pick up some additional revenue to a market they haven’t sold to yet. And in the process, while throwing away creativity and the opportunity to do something new for the fans, they repackage our childhoods and try to sell it back to us. It happens all the time.
So you may be curious then – why this article about this recent event is getting my attention given this opinion of mine I’ve just shared.
Here’s the thing. I’m not mad the remake isn’t happening.
I’m mad at how things have played out over the last decade or so in general, especially with this game company on remakes. It was easy to remake the titles from the NES and SNES era – there’s something like 5 versions of Final Fantasy IV running wild over a number of consoles among a few others. They’re decades old games remade with PSX graphics. VIII’s on Steam and I’m not sure who really cares about a IX remake – and these are two additional Final Fantasy titles also originally released on the first PlayStation.
(S-E remakes for Android devices also have an always-on requirement, which already irk my ire, so this on top of that really sticks in my craw. But that’s another story for another day.)
But for VII, they give fans hope. In addition to the original game, Square-Enix developed an entire universe around Midgar, with spinoff games and video titles like Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, Last Order, and topping them all off with the feature length Advent Children in 2005. But it didn’t stop there. In 2006 to show off graphical capabilities they released a technical demo for the PS3 engine (watch it here, it’s wonderful). This demo featured the intro to Final Fantasy VII redone using the PS3 engine. It was glorious. Midgar looked great, the train details down to the sparks on the tracks were sharp, what we saw of Aeris was lovely, and Cloud’s eventual entrance on the train platform was done with style.
AND THAT’S THE DIFFERENCE.
Square Enix showed us what one of the most revered games in modern history could look like, while having no intention of ever delivering. We saw what could be, and the fact that they used that property for the demo sparked many rumors that a remake was in the works. Since then, the game has been released in its original form on PSX, a 4-disc PC edition, a download on Steam, and playable on the PS3 through the PlayStation store. Someone could have paid for 4 copies of the same game, with not much more than the addition of trophies and achievements added to their total gameplay experience.
Well I guess there is some sort of charm about huge pixels on TV’s sized like they are these days.
Still though. Colossal who cares.
But we’ll never get delivery on the vision of the future Square-Enix had shown us with that demo. They’ll continue to make money on every copy of this that was sold on multiple platforms from 1997 to today. The game has still been wildly supported by its fanbase, some of who will buy every version of it out of loyalty and let’s be honest, to some extent mania. Fans will keep assuming it’ll happen because Square-Enix keeps supporting the product and dropping hints unofficially while officially denying it. For the same reason, Square-Enix will keep selling it. And this dance will go on for a good long time. And to think, this all would have never happened if only the PS3 was back-compatible.
Bottom line – if you’re waiting for a next-gen Final Fantasy VII remake, I wouldn’t hold my breath longer than a Knights of the Round summon.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene
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