Final Fantasy VIII was my first intense video game experience. I had only played fighting games or other games for a short amount of time, but this was the game that started my passion for games and love of RPGs. I played it as an unhappy middle-schooler.

One of my classes this semester is about stories in games. We had to present the narrative from a game, and, when someone else chose Okami, FFVIII seemed the natural choice. The only problem: I didn’t have the game. I had sold my PSone in high school after it had sat, abandoned, for three years. I sold the memory card with my final FFVIII save. It was all gone, but this would not stop me. I found the game and guide on Amazon.com for just over $25. I received it in the mail today and began a new game.

I did not have nearly enough time to play through the game again, but I wanted to at least get the feel for it again. I was overcome with wave after wave of nostalgia, but this did not make the game good for me the first time I played it. Why did I love this game so much? What makes a game so great that it can convert a normal girl into an RPG fanatic?

The graphic quality on FFVIII during gameplay is by no means great for today, but it was incredible for its time. Released in 1999, this game was years ahead of its predecessor, FFVII, in terms of its graphics. The cutscenes look great today, and it has been over seven years since the game was released. The pre-rendered backgrounds still look fantastic. The colors on the characters, especially those of the guardian forces, are beautifully colored. Much like the colors in FFX, the colors FFVIII have a wonderful way making the game feel like a beautiful, almost believable fantasy.

Also, the gameplay itself is incredibly refined. During battles, the player can interact by having a timed trigger for the main character’s weapon. The customization system is incredibly complex and returned to me almost immediately. Magic is not measured in points – there is a draw system where characters take spells from monsters and can then cast it or save it for later. I really love this system because it changes the way players manage magic and the way they cast it. They must think ahead to enemies they will encounter later and prepare by drawing the right spells.

Seeing these characters again made me feel like I was meeting old friends. As a reclusive middle-schooler, I spent a lot of time with this game. Part of the reason why I became so engrossed in this game was because it was an entire complex system. The characters had distinctive personalities – they were complex and conflicted. They used the right amount of stereotyping to seem believable but not flat. People betrayed each other and changed sides. As a quiet young girl, I could relate to the reclusive main character, but I also saw parts of myself in many of the other characters, such as spirited Selphie and the focused Rinoa. I got to play as (who I consider to be) the coolest villain in the game and she was on my side. There was a deep underliying mystery and the fate of the world was at stake.

If great graphics, a complex and dynamic battle system, an original and intuitive character customization system, vibrant characters, and a compelling story cannot make a good game, I don’t’ know what can. FFVIII really took me by surprise and created an unforgettable game experience for me that took my life in a new direction: that of the gamer.  

My first experience playing the PS3 was not with the acclaimed Resistance: Fall of Man. I had watched that intense game out of the corner of my eye while I was playing the more serene Okami. I had no real interest in playing Resistance, as I knew I would die in no fewer than two seconds and not really get to appreciate that game at all.

However, when I had the opportunity to play the PS3, I did not want to pass it up. I decided to play another game, Genji. It looked like something I might actually be able to play (an action game, not an FPS) and the boxed advertised a game about ancient Japan. It sounded interesting at least, so I began a game.

While I had expected a cutscene at the beginning of the game, I was unprepared for the horrible voice acting. The characters’ mouths moved and were poorly dubbed. As if the dubbing weren’t bad enough, the voice actors had accents from Australian to American to pseudo-Irish. I found it incredibly distracting from what would otherwise be a mediocre cutscene.

I do not hate cutscenes; in fact, I really enjoy them when used in moderation, which is the way I see them in many newer Final Fantasy games. One of the best aspects of the Final Fantasy cutscenes is that they rarely try to do voice acting with mouth movements. (This has changed in FFXII, but I have yet to form a real critical analysis due to the short amount of time I’ve played the game thus far.) Looking back to games such as FFVIII and FFX, the full-motion video (FMV) cutscenes were used mainly as showy pieces of drama – they did not burden them with dialogue. I really do not see the point in animating a FMV cutscene for one language only to have it poorly dubbed into another.

The cutscenes in Genji were poor not only because of dubbing but also because of their content and quality. As I implied before, a large amount of time was spent on a scene where two characters talked in what amounted to a poor substitute for a film scene.

Then there was the issue of the graphics. The whole game had a very red tone – much of the set, especially in the beginning with a fire, was very red. It was hard to look at it for any length of time. The graphic quality of the game was very high, but the characters and backgrounds didn’t blend well together. It looked like someone had done a poor job in Photoshop and forgotten to soften the outlines of the characters to look more natural. It seemed as if the quality of the PS3 detracted from the game rather than complimented it – the high quality console revealed all the flaws.

Aside from the tone and graphics, I really wanted to like this game. I had hoped to find a game I wanted to play on the PS3 that I could return to – something that rose to the challenge of developing for a new console. I understand that practically every game developer is having a terrible time working with the PS3, but this game just seemed to get worse the more I played.

I played first as a character who was a sword fighter. He moved with decent speed, but I found the controls to be somewhat counter-intuitive. I had a hard time going where I wanted to in the environment and understanding the fighting system. Later, I got to play another character, but he moved ridiculously sluggishly and swung around what amounted to a glorified stone column. While he was powerful, the stereotyped fighters – big = sluggish and smaller guy = more agile – has been done so many times it’s not even fun anymore.

I had held out hope for this game. I played it for nearly an hour, hoping that it would get better. Instead, I found graphics temporarily freezing up, cutscenes that revealed a plot I didn’t care about, and many of the same mistakes I’d seen in other games set in ancient Japan like Onimusha 4. I really hope the PS3 gets better soon and developers will make games I want to play.  

In my impatience to begin FFXII, I dove right in without following my usual routine. This pre-RPG ritual involves reading the game’s manual (cover to cover) and the overview in the strategy guide that comes before the walkthrough. This system has worked well for me in several RPGs, such as Chrono Cross, FFVIII, FFIX, FFX, and Kingdom Hearts.

After playing FFXII without the benefit of the additional reading, I had the constant feeling that I was missing something. I was afraid I would screw something up in the licensing (leveling) system and ruin the rest of my lengthy experience. I was purposely avoiding playing FFXII for about two weeks because of my constant dilemma: when I wanted to game, I didn’t want to read, but when I was able to sit down and read, I had to do so for class.

At the encouragement of my sister, I was finally shaken out of my paralysis and sat down to read FFXII material on an otherwise empty Friday night. Two hours later, I regained the confidence I so sorely lacked. I now had an intellectual understanding of the leveling process, key mechanics, and new Espers. I could now play, knowing that I would make informed choices.

By the time I finished reading, I had only a few hours to play. I was able to go through a couple missions: one for a sunstone and another through a castle underground.

The sunstone quest was structured traditionally, but with one key difference: I was by myself for the first half of the mission. While the “go here, talk to a certain person, go there, get an item” pattern was the basis of the quest, I couldn’t even get more information until I had battled several creatures of the desert by myself. Most of the monsters weren’t too difficult, but I was running low on potions by the time I got to the village. I had been following the maps in my guide to try and collect scattered items in treasure chests, but some chests appeared to have mysteriously vanished. (I found this issue earlier as well – are randomly spawning chests a new feature?)

Once in the village, I found a friend who would fight with me and make my life easier. I was rather confused when read in my guide that she had the Cure ability, but I couldn’t figure out how to make her use it. I don’t know if I stopped paying attention during an earlier tutorial, but I soon discovered that spells had to be purchased. I find this system to be rather redundant, since you earn points in battle that have to be spent to earn an ability such as Cure. Essentially, you have to buy the spell twice (once to get the license and again to get the spell itself). Although the magic regeneration is fairly rapid, I find the spell acquisition process to be cumbersome. I wish the game had made the acquisition of vital spells such as Cure more clear.

My second mission involved running around a castle’s underground waterways. I got to fight alongside some neat characters – a sky pirate and his partner in crime, a striking female warrior of another race. I had been getting used to the fighting system at this point, but there were still some issues for me to iron out. I was shocked after I set my main character to constantly heal everyone and then my female warrior got knocked out. I soon realized that my MP (“Mist Points” like magic points) had grown too low and I could no longer cast cure.

FFXII has been the butt of many jokes for being a game that could "practically play itself." However, from my reading and experiences with the automation system, I can see that that is quite an exaggeration of the truth. It still takes a great human mind to harness the A.I. behind the battle system and use it to its full advantage.  

Today was the last day of my WoW trial. However, I had some trouble connecting to the server. I started panicking: Was my trial already over? Did I overlook the release of the new expansion? Would I lose my last chance to play for free?

I stepped away from the computer and came back 20 minutes later. There were no more connection issues, and I guess I felt a little relieved that I could finish my full 10-day trial.

I finally did reach level 14, which felt like a milestone at the time. I was hoping that it would make my life easier, but it didn’t really make a huge difference. The monsters seemed to get more difficult as I got stronger, and I didn’t have the patience to level up by picking fights. I then chose to continue on my previous quests, starting to feel the monotony set in.

After finding one buzzbox for a maniacal gnome, I was assigned the task of finding another buzzbox. I spent about 15 minutes running down the beach and getting too close to some monsters that I shouldn’t have tried to fight at level 14. I resorted to looking for advice online, but the sketchy directions told me little more than the fact that I had been heading in the wrong direction. I promptly turned around and headed up to the next beach.

The buzzbox was much more difficult to find than I expected. My sources told me that it would be right where the sand meets the grass. I ran along this edge for another 10 minutes, and then realized that I must’ve missed it. I finally found it in the middle of the beach (near the shore) but not until after I had gotten attacked by several monsters that I was too apathetic to fight.

Unfortunately, my next quest in the area involved going near another dead sea monster. I thought I’d be nice and try to gather bones for a previous quest-giver, but I was hindered by a pack of those mini-rancor creatures. This time, they packed more of a punch. These scavengers had leveled up. One of them even was some sort of shaman that could heal himself. This added up to a recipe for doom. I think I died once or twice before high-tailing it out without any bones.

The assigned quest I then tried to complete involved exploring a sunken ship. This sounded cool to me, so I swam out to it. I soon discovered that managing my air would involve some planning if I wanted to get any treasure. While musing over such circumstances, I suddenly found myself being attacked by not one, but two of those awful gremlin rancors. Yes, the mini-rancors suddenly appeared out of the depths of the sea for the sole purpose of attacking yours truly. Needless to say, I died again, and my motivation died there too.

When I play a game for 10 days and at least as many hours, I hope to be struck by it and pulled into its world. I had procrastinated in picking up World of Warcraft for this long because I feared that it would take over my life. Fortunately, I faced that fear and discovered that it had little basis. While WoW certainly has many commendable features (the exquisite GUI design and hotkey customizations, for example), I am too much of an independent gamer to thrive in such a group-oriented game.

I also prefer my stories to tie together in a cohesive, highly-structured storyline that has become a standard in many RPGs. I found that WoW's structure rewarded players for quick completion of quests – not for the immersion in the story. I felt like a gratified errand girl and I would rather be a real hero in a game with people I can depend on. After all, computer-generated comrades in the one-player RPGs I love will always be there for me, and I can accomplish something that feels vastly more important than my real life.  

After working in groups to complete a few quests, I was starting to feel frustrated with the whole idea of an MMORPG. I didn’t want to have to depend on other people to create a good gameplay experience. Regardless, I still enjoyed the many other quests that could be completed independently and continued to play.
 

I’d always known that there were many different types of players in World of Warcraft. Just like Richard Bartle’s essay on player types in MUDs, this MMORPG allows many different types of players to find satisfaction. I don’t think it really sunk in until after I met a few of those who fall into other player types such as killer and socializer.

I hadn’t played a lot of WoW since my first group experience. I played briefly during a lunch break at work on Day 5, but then I ran out of time to play later. On Day 6, I had reached level 10, so I focused on completing quests relating to the acquisition of the druid’s bear form.

I focused on individual activities like shopping and simple quests for most of the day. I was a bit careless a couple of times, such as when I got killed in an instant by a mysterious character in charge of wind mounts on disputed land. I also underestimated the power of some annoying Harpys in the Oracle Glade and got myself killed twice.

By Day 7, I felt empowered again after completing some quests by myself. Then I made one of the stupidest newbie mistakes: I assumed that I could do anything alone if I set my mind to it. I thought that I could single-handedly sneak into the Gnarlpine Hold and kill a vicious Gnarlpine leader. I thought I could follow my tested technique of picking the gnarlpines off one by one, but it just doesn’t work when the gnarlpines are close together, as they were in the Hold. I died several times and finally decided to give up and go on another quest.

I went back to the Timberling area to complete a quest for the same guy who wanted the tumors. I had to kill a big monster, and there happened to be a group there already trying to kill it. They were several male night elves that didn’t seem to care about much except killing things. I helped one of them figure out where to find the tumors he needed (which were on the Timberlings). Then I got the whole group to come to the Gnarlpine Hold with me.

Most of the people in this group were of lower levels than I was (between 4 and 7). However, they seemed to want to kill practically any creature in the forest. I led the way (burned in my memory from all my trips to revive to my corpse). I led a successful attack into the hold and they helped me kill the nasty gnarlpine boss just before most of us died. (I ended up dying about five times just trying to get out of the Gnarlpine Hold and eventually got enough time to transport out.)

Even if I died multiple times, I was so happy to have had some help. I am no longer ignorant of the fact that some quests really do require other players in order to succeed. It was fun to fight with those guys because they seemed happy just to kill. Dying didn’t even create much of an obstacle for them. In World of Warcaft, dying won’t set you back – it’s more of an annoyance. I can take a lesson from my group today and not even get annoyed. After all, there is great pleasure to be had from simply killing.  

On Day 4 of my World of Warcraft trial I decided to return to my search for the Gnarlpines. I went back to the area with the Gnarlpine camps to complete another quest, and I was lucky enough to run into a level 11 human mage who invited me to be in her group of two. She was completing one of the same quests that I was doing, and she said that we could go find those Gnarlpine Ambushers, as they were on the way. I was thrilled.

After about 10 minutes, our group reconvened in town and set off on our quest. While it was odd to share experience and money gained from fighting monsters, battles were much more efficient. I no longer had to fear death if more than one monster attacked me at the same time.

We did have to make a stop for one of our group members to complete a quest with those nasty gnarlpines (not the ambushers), but it took just a few minutes with all of us fighting. Then we ran off on a quest for relics.

The cave that contained the relics happened to be off the road and past a bunch of Gnarlpine Ambushers. They were right off the road, but very much out of sight. There were a lot of them, so I was really glad that I had two people with me so I didn’t get trapped. The cave with the relics was also filled with Gnarlpines of all kinds. They were a bit of a challenge because of the sheer number of them, not to mention a fairly rapid re-spawn rate. I really couldn't have done it alone.

It was really nice to explore a cave with a group of people who helped me and waited for each person to get what they needed to complete quests. We all finished a couple of quests in that cave. Then it came time to look for an exit.

We ran around the maze-like cave, but those nasty gnarlpines kept slowing us down. We went the wrong way twice and then we lost the highest-level person in our group (the level 11 mage). At that point, the other group member and I fought together but got separated shortly afterwards. Then we both died.

At this point, I had little experience in revival, but I knew that I did not want to revive in a cave full of tough gnarlpines without my group. I decided to revive in the graveyard and accept the durability damage and ten-minute disabilities. My group member then informed me how you could find your corpse, revive, and transport back to your inn using the Hearthstone. I felt a little stupid then, but I learned a lot from that group.

Despite the fact that my group fell apart at the end, it was a great experience. I don’t know who those people were, but they were both very helpful and didn’t make fun of me for asking questions. In a game like World of Warcraft, half the conversations I see are people asking where to go and what to do. I like the fact that you can ask others for help, but I think I prefer strategy guides. I never know if I can trust someone (even those who mean well sometimes give bad directions) and I hate bothering people with stupid questions because I’m naïve.

Today’s experiences have opened my mind. I am cautious about joining groups, but I am willing to take a chance if there are people out there like those I met today. Perhaps MMORPGs are okay after all.  

After Day 1 of my World of Warcraft trial, I wasn’t that convinced that it was an epic, addictive masterpiece that had the potential to take over some peoples’ lives. On Day 2, I kept telling myself, "It’s not that fun. I don’t see why everyone’s so excited about it." Yet when I quit, I would keep thinking about it, and I found myself logging back in a couple of times throughout the day.

I ran to a different town in Day 2 for the first time. I had to consult a map online to make sure I wasn’t running into certain doom, but I was already headed in the right direction. I found more interesting tasks there such as filling phials at moonwells and killing more advanced monsters. There is something fun about running errands for people – tasks that ordinarily don’t receive much glory in RPGs are rewarded with the appreciation of NPCs, a higher local reputation, and often money and/or an item.

One such quest involved obtaining tumors from monsters called Timberlings. It was a lot of fun because the Timberlings were very close to the quest giver and it was no trouble at all to help out a man who was trying to save the environment. The themes of environmentalism were part of the reason why I chose to be a night elf. I enjoy nature and have respect for it – another reason why I enjoyed Okami. Several Timberlings later, I had reached level 7 and quit for the day.

By Day 3, I had accepted a quest to kill Gnarlpine Ambushers, some beastly humanoids who were making the road to Darnassus unsafe (according to a pretty night elf who rode on a tiger). I searched far and wide for these beasts, but I could not find them anywhere. I asked around but no one seemed to know where they were. I went on other quests, but, by the end of the day, I still had not found those Gnarlpine Ambushers.

I asked a friend from the real world about the Gnarlplines. I was frustrated because I kept getting slowed down by other monsters when I went looking for the Gnarlpines. I found a few camps where there were many other types of Gnarlpines (Shamans, Warriors, etc.) but never any ambushers. My friend suggested that I try to group with some other players to make the fights end faster. I ruled out that possibility because I like to play games by myself without having to depend on other people or do their bidding. (This is one reason why I have avoided MMORPGs for so long – I don’t like to leave others in control of my destiny when I don’t even know who they are.)

I reached level 8 when I quit playing WoW today (Day 3), but I was extremely frustrated about my inability to locate those Gnarlpines. If this is how the game is going to be, I didn’t know how much I want to play. Perhaps it won’t be as addicting as I had feared.