On Web Comics

Here's the thing about most web comics. It seems they have one of two things going for them. Either the artwork is really good or the story is. You either have a good artist who has no idea how to tell a story, or a storyteller who can't draw. Now me, I can forgive an ugly picture if the story is compelling. But it doesn't matter how beautiful the art if there is no substance behind it. With some of the web comics that I've listed on this blog you'll notice this. The Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew is drawn in stick figure style. As he goes on with the strip the style gets a little more refined, but it's still stick figures. The story takes a few strips to take off but in the long run it's a great ride. Goblins by Tarol Hunt and Danielle Stephens has the same issue.



I have gone through tons of other web comics that look amazing but they fall flat. This issue spans into other forms of media. Video games is one. You'll find games with amazing technical achievements but are nevertheless unplayable. The same goes for movies. I'm not sure what my point is in all of this. I guess just chalk it up to some of my blathering.

Not the Greatest Video Games of All Time: Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy VIII

Games in this category will contain my iconoclastic views of the video games that others consider great. We're not talking about games that are bad. We're talking about games that people think are great when really their not. Some might be bad games, most will be average games that are overrated. To the people who mistakenly think these games are good, hopefully by reading this they'll realize how wrong they are. I going to start with a game that is personally (and I wish there was a stronger word) irritating.

Final Fantasy VIII

"I'll be here..."
"Why...?"
"I'll be 'waiting'... here..."
"For what?"
"I'll be waiting... for you... so... If you come here... You'll find me. I promise."

I hate this game.

Perhaps it's not so much that there's a lot wrong with FF8 as it is the fact that it was such a let down after FF7.

-SPOILER ALERT-

In my ignorance and innocence I thought FF8 was going to be a sequel to FF7. FF7 was the first final fantasy that I played. So I was unaware that while each Final Fantasy was part of the series they each have they're own individual story. They aren't connected from game to game. When I learned that it was a crushing blow. (To think that I might never know what became of Cloud and Tifa. That I might never find out what Cloud's cryptic statement at the end of the game meant. (And then they made a movie and I sorta wished they hadn't. But I digress.)) Even knowing that the two games were connected in name only I still vainly hoped that somehow, someway the story and characters from FF7 would continue in FF8.

It didn't.

Next I thought that surely the materia system would return. Such a innovative and intuitive combat mechanic wouldn't be abandoned.

It was.

Not only abandoned but replaced with a flawed, cumbersome, unappealing, clunky, and difficult Junction/Draw system. To this day I still can't make heads or tails out of it.

The Junctions system was also linked to summoning. In FF7 one of the seven different types of magic you could use was summoning. You would acquire a summon materia which would allow you to summon a monster or creature to attack your foes in battle. The FF7 summons were fun and nifty. But they only occupied a portion of the rich cornucopia of FF7's game play. They were like icing on the cake.

FF8 over emphasized summoning. It was like the company that made these games said, "Huh, people liked the summons in FF7. Let's base our next game's entire combat system on them. And let's make them more integral to the story."
The cake had been replaced with a complete concoction of icing.

Next the main character is completely unlikable. Squall, what an ugly name. I read a reviewer who said that in FF8 Squall starts of as being aloof and unapproachable but he warms up. I played the whole seventy hour game and Squall remained a tight lipped, standoffish jerk the entire time. In the game one of the main characters is talking to him, opening up. She's even trying to tell him that she thinks that she is in love with him. He just stands there like brick wall. "How long are you going to keep me here? I'm only staying to listen to you because your my superior and you ordered me to." That's his attitude, not just to this woman in the game but to those playing the game as well.

Now you can have dispassionate loner characters in stories but you can't allow their disconnect with their fictional world to translate over as a disconnect with the audience. You'll end up with a character that now one cares about. It's easy for this to happen when a story is about someone who doesn't care about anyone or anything. This exact principal is why I can't stand the tv show House anymore. I used to love House. House was a jerk and a brilliant doctor. He isolated himself from people and the world and was an all around dirtbag. But there were hints of his humanity. That he really cared, and his harshness was just a defence mechanism of a man who had be hurt emotionally and physically. Then a few seasons into the show they took that sliver of humanity away and said "No deep down House is just a jerk." And I couldn't watch the show after that. The same thing is going on with Squall in FF8, except he never even has a glimmer of humanity.

The awkwardness continues at a dance where a girl named Rinoa forces Squall to dance. At first he's all like "I can't dance, oops I steeped on your foot, I can't dance. Oh your going to force me fine I'll dance." And then he dances perfectly. Turns out dancing is part of his spy training and he's really good. He was just being a jerk and not wanting to dance with a hot girl.

And then the whole spy/assassin thing. There's all these high school aged kids, literally hundreds, across the world training to by SeeD, or spy/assassins. They train at institutions known as Gardens, get it? SeeD, Gardens, seeds and gardens. Clever right? No, I didn't think so, but apparently the Japanese did.

The garden you start out in is run by this old guy named Cid. He sends you out on a mission to help Rinoa fight a witch named Edea. (Get it? Edea - Idea. Clever right?)
Well it turns out Cid is actually married to Edea. The two of them started the whole Garden idea. So your thinking they must have had a falling out and are now fighting. Well not entirely. Edea is a witch, but she's being controlled by a witch in the future. Makes sense right? The future witch is named Ultimecia, and she pronounces all her C's as K's. I'm didn't really think that was important but
the game makers seemed to think it was. Ultimecia is trying to compress time, wait I mean she's trying to "kompress" time. So that everything in history is all happening at once. This will somehow give her complete control of everything. Clever right? Our hero's figure out that the only way to stop Ultimecia is to let her compress time. Makes sense, makes a lot of sense. They want to let her compress time so that they can fight her, kill her, and then hopefully everything will go back to normal.

So time gets compressed, Ultimecia becomes all powerful and then you go kill her. I don't get it, if she was all powerful how could she be stopped? Oh well, so you kill her. Squall gets flung around in time and winds up briefly in his own past. He meets Edea back when she and Cid were all lovely dovey. They were running an orphanage in which he was an orphan along with most of the other main characters. While there he makes a few off hand remarks about SeeDs and Gardens to Edea. She thinks "Wow what a good idea." And that's how she and her husband get this bizarre idea to change their orphanage into a spy/assassin training academy. I mean you can't make this stuff up.

So Squall gets back to his time. Alls well that ends well. Now if you still think that this game sounds like a good game keep in mind I left out the following:

-Mind traveling back in time into Laguna's head. One main character wasn't enough for this game, no. We had to have two.
-The epic stinky fish chase.
-Fixing the worlds tv sets so that you can broadcast your declaration of war.
-Laguna becoming president of the country he fought against.
-Another witch named Adel who is important for some reason.
-Memory loss due to summoning junction system. As in the characters themselves suffered from amnesia.
-The under use of Seifer. He would have made a great villain, he would have made a even more interesting good guy. Either way they benched one of the few good characters they had for most of the game.
"Someday I'll tell you about my romantic dream." -Seifer
-Monsters on the Moon!
-The most asinine card minigame I've ever come across.

A reviewer from Edge found some of the story's plot twists "not ... suitably manipulated and prepared", leaving it "hard not to greet such... moments with anything but indifference". I couldn't agree more. And I couldn't say enough negative things about FF8.

The Greatest Video Games of All Time: Xenogears

Xenogears

"Stand tall and shake the heavens."

Growing up I was spoiled by great games. I played Final Fantasy VII and then shortly thereafter I had the good fortune to play Xenogears. (Note: This is Xenogears, not Xenosaga. Xenosaga sucked, Xenogears ruled. Try not to mix them up.)
Playing these great games, as well as a few others I'll get to eventually, have made it nearly impossible to be content with the mediocre sludge being released nowadays.

Xenogears is one of the most involving and complex works of storytelling I've ever come across. It could quite possibly have taken my number one spot on The Greatest Video Games of All Time, but I played FF7 first. By virtue of precedence FF7 comes out ahead of Xenogears. That is not to say that Xenogears is better, their both great games. The only difference is FF7 came first for me. There's just something special about being first. Like your first love.

Xenogears is a close second to FF7. Hereafter I stop numbering the games. There is a first and a second. After that all the rest of the games I'll discuss are simply great games.

As I mentioned the story of Xenogears is very complex. So much so I will not try and sum it up here, for I cannot do it justice. I'll just say that it's got giant mech bots, a guy with green skin, and more philosophical/theological references than you can shake an angry fist at(or game controller.) Throw in some sand pirates with eye patches and you've got Xenogears.

It's a PSone game so it's a little dated. And the color seems washed out even for it's time, but that's part of it's charm and it's style.

The thing I love the most about this game is when it comes to the big battles. You can try to play conservatively; meaning you try to manage your attacks so they don't use up to much of your resources, but if you do you'll lose. Every boss fight I had to throw caution to the wind and go all out. Whenever I tried to hold back I got beaten to a bloody pulp. I fought like there was no tomorrow, and I flew by the seat of my pants. It was exhilarating. After each boss fight I felt like I had just barely survived being chewed up by a grind stone.

In order for a game to be great it is crucial that it have a fantastic story. Well if anything Xenogears has a overabundance of story. But that's not a bad thing in my opinion. This game is not without it's faults. Although the biggest fault for me seems to be that once you get about 75% of the way through it feels like the designers ran out of time and had to quickly sum up the games final events. This flaw, however, is easily overlooked because the do actually give the game a proper ending, even if it feels rushed. I'd much rather they do that then cut the game off short and say "Tune in next time." or "To be continued."

Once you finish the experience, and it truly is an experience, you'll appreciate the closure the game offers. With it's rich story and involving gameplay Xenogears stands very near to the top of the Hallowed Hall of Video Games.

The Greatest Video Games of All Time: Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII

Thee Greatest game of all time. Just the fact that video games to this day are still compared this this adventure speaks volumes. It didn't just set a new high, it became the measuring stick by which all other games our measured by. With it's memorable characters, breathtaking storyline, and innovative yet intuitive game mechanics it stands paramount in the Hallowed Hall of Video Games.

At least that's my opinion, but I'm right.

It's the game that defined my video game experience. It was the game that meant the most to me at one of the darkest times of my life. Fry from Futurama explained why he liked Star Trek and his reason is the same as mine for why I like FF VII. It made me feel like I had friends, even when I didn't.

There may be SPOILERS ahead so if you haven't played the game yet (and you really should.) you may not want to read on. (It's a very good game. I can't stress that enough. Go play it. It's on the PS One so the graphics are dated, and it was originally made in Japan so the translation has some problems from time to time but it's faults are easily eclipsed by it's virtues.) The characters of the game are a treat to watch. The story is deep and involving with intriguing plot twists. The story is a tragic treat. The names of Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, Barret, Yuffie, Cid, Red XIII, Caith Sith, Vincent, and Sephiroth are game legend.

One of the games many shinning highlights is the Materia system. The game is an RPG (Role Playing Game.) and the Materia system allows the player to cast magic. But the cool part of the system is that it allows the player to pair different types of spells and effects together. This makes for a fun amount of customization in the game.

This game cast it's magic on me and I was enchanted. To illustrate how deeply this game touched me I share an experience. I knew that Aeris died. I could figure that from the game's commercials. What I didn't expect was for Aeris to die halfway through the game. I thought she would be killed in some grand sacrificial gesture at the end of the game. Her death caught me off guard. It hit me hard. I couldn't believe it. I thought there was something I could do to bring her back. Or I thought that there was something I could have done to prevent her death. There wasn't. Aeris was dead and there was nothing I could do. I felt helpless. This character, this "lifeless" video game sprite was suddenly gone. I went into mourning over her. I felt depressed. I couldn't play the game for a good month because of how profoundly hurt I was. I missed her. I wanted her back.

In time I came to terms with her death. My friends and family recall this period. They remember how sad I was. Later when I told them why they were surprised to learn that I had gotten so worked up about a video game. They even laugh and chuckle that I was affected so deeply. And I know there may be those of you out there who are thinking the same thing. Some of you reading may be thinking, "Who is this nerd?" "Can you believe this geek, doesn't he have a life." To those who say such things I ask you is it so pathetic to be moved so by a video game? What about to be struck by a poignant movie? Or to have your emotion strings plucked by music? To have your heart stirred by a book? If none of these things touch you can you still call yourself a human?

And in the ultimately that is the beauty of Final Fantasy VII. It's a story that pulls at the very things which make us what we are. A group of people opened up their hearts and poured them into a video game. It reached out to the world asking for so very little. It reached out to me when others only offered me fists and tearing words.

The game was very successful which makes me think that I am not alone. To think that out there in the big dark world there are people wanting to connect to something greater than themselves, and that is a comforting thought to me. Final Fantasy offered people that chance. Even if it was only for sixty some odd hours. Even if it cost thirty some odd dollars. It has stayed with me for my whole life as something beautiful and pure.

Go play Final Fantasy VII. I can't say enough good things about it.