I have a Wii, and that makes me very happy. However, I feel guilty because my Wii has been neglected lately for the PS2 and my new DS. I thought I’d rent a Wii game to get me playing the Wii again. I chose to rent Elebits, a ridiculously cute-looking game about little creatures that basically are electricity.

My sister was very excited about this game, so I thought I would check it out to see if it was any good. I started with the tutorial, because I had no manual and I knew almost nothing about the game. I wasn’t in much of a hurry, but I found myself getting aggravated easily by the tutorial. It just kept going and going. I spent nearly half an hour on that thing and I had barely done anything. I still didn’t know what the objective of the game was by the time the tutorial was over.

I was wondering if it I was just impatient, but I had my sister play the tutorial as well. Even though there are options to skip the sections of the tutorial, it’s really hard to know what’s important and what’s not. My sister agreed with many of my frustrations, complaining, “it was just too long” and “you could figure out a lot of these things just by playing.”

After the unnecessarily long tutorial, playing a new game triggers an opening cutscene. It’s pretty much like watching a camera pan across drawings in a children’s book – something I’d expect to see on Reading Rainbow. Unfortunately, the voiceover is terrible and sounds nothing like a real child (unless he has severe allergies).

The game is structured a bit like Katamari Damacy, where you have a set time to pick up a bunch of objects in a room. Unlike Katamari, however, you are looking for a specific type of object (elebits) and your perspective does not change throughout the level. Your gun can gradually pick up bigger and bigger objects.

If I had to summarize the gameplay in one sentence, it would be “You tear apart a bunch of rooms in your house so you can scare out some little critters and pick them up with a big gun.” While it is amusing to virtually ransack a room, the fact that I’m not an 8-year child with a temper tantrum takes away some of the novelty. The game itself is very cute, especially as the elebits make some adorable squeaking and mewing sounds. However, the gameplay itself is not that compelling, so I felt like I had experienced most of the game in an hour.

While I do appreciate cute games with great themes and innovative design, I find that Elebits is one of those games that’s good to play – once. The idea of collecting creatures to power appliances is very fun. The gun that allows you to pick up objects is a neat tool, but some of the physics were a bit unrefined (like how it was difficult to pull open a door without it shutting again from your force). I’m glad I rented Elebits, but I think my time is better spent on other games.  

I had the privilege of going to the D.I.C.E. Summit this year. (It’s basically a video game conference and awards show hosted by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.) I helped out behind the scenes as an intern and got to see a lot of cool things. One of them was the game Elite Beat Agents, developed by iNiS.

I had never heard much about Elite Beat Agents or iNiS before D.I.C.E. What I did know was that there was a speaker from Japan. He had made a game I had heard of (Guitaroo Man) and this other game, Elite Beat Agents. I didn’t really know what Elite Beat Agents was about, but one of the other interns at D.I.C.E. had a DS and let me play their copy.

I wasn’t expecting much, but I really liked this game. It was a rhythm game, which is one of my favorite genres. Unlike tradition rhythm games, however, you got to touch the screen in the right place at the right time (instead of just hitting the right button at the right time). It was interactive in a new way, and had fun extras like spinning wheels and good stories.

I was really impressed by the stories, especially since each was very short and very simple. Regular problems, such as a lost puppy or putting kids to sleep, were shown in cute little manga-style sequences. The sounds were great and the scenes were short and sweet. There was a good bit of creativity involved as well, such as having animals or former enemies dancing with the protagonists of the stories. After talking again and again about cutscenes in my classes, I was very impressed by the concise stories in this game. They were simple, fun, and, most importantly, could be skipped easily (a great feature when replaying levels).

Fortunately, I was able to sit in on Keiichi Yano’s speech. He feels that music and games are naturally suited to each other. His presentation emphasized the idea that harmonies and dissonances in music can easily accompany tension and release in stories. He was a charismatic speak with simple but effective ideas. I really enjoyed his presentation.

After the session was over, I had the opportunity to talk to Keiichi Yano. I told him how much I enjoyed his game. I also explained how refreshing it was to play a game with such simple, effective stories. My fellow intern and fan of Elite Beat Agents got his copy of the game signed. Keiichi Yano seemed like a really neat person, and I was so grateful that I had been able to play Elite Beat Agents earlier. If not, I would have missed out on something really special.  

No matter how much I loved playing FFVIII, I physically did not have the time to get through the entire game before my presentation on the narrative was due. While playing the game for several hours did help me, I was barely able to get through the second sequence of cutscenes and I had little information on the story. I had hoped to piece together a presentation on the story by focusing on cutscenes, but that is difficult to do without cutscenes.

I set off to search the internet far and wide for FFVIII cutscenes from the game. I found them, but the streaming videos and low-quality versions could never hope to do justice to the fantastic animation. Fortunately, I had the foresight to record the ending scenes from the first disc as I began replaying the game as a teenager. I wasn’t sure if the video still existed, but my mother was kind enough to dig it out and send it to me.

I eagerly awaited the cutscene video. I had forgotten what was on it, and I didn’t know if it could somehow get ruined from being moved around multiple times. Luckily, it hadn’t gotten erased. I had recorded everything in the ending from the last few minutes of the final boss fight through the final movie after the credits. I had then gone through and re-played the whole first disc of the game, recording every little cutscene as I went. I was in luck.

I created a DVD of the cutscenes from the video I had. I was able to use this today as the basis for my presentation. My teacher is not particularly fond of cutscenes, but even he had to admit that they were incredible for their time and still look great today. However, his main concern was with how much story was conveyed through the cutscenes.

Looking at the beginning and the ending movies, there was relatively little story for their running time. They are rather showy and beautiful, but neither movie makes much sense without the knowledge of other story elements. In later movies, this trend is less apparent. Certain movies, such as the Edea parade sequence, seem to show some concepts very clearly. Unfortunately, non-FMV sequences (that look about the same as gameplay except you aren’t controlling the characters) are interspersed with the FMVs. This is often used to communicate lines through dialogue (all FMVs were non-dialogue, most likely to avoid sticky problems with dubbing that cheapen such art instantly). I found that the full effect of these dramatic cutscenes was diminished by the frequent interruptions. I understand that the game couldn’t afford to do the whole sequence in FMV, but I would have found it more effective if they kept it one way or the other for a longer period of time.

Although most of the story was not told through FMV cutscenes, they were quite compelling. People often talk about playing such lengthy RPGs “for the story,” but I found that I was playing for both the cutscenes and the story. While the story was certainly compelling, most of it was told through lines and lines of dialogue set to synthesized MIDI music. The music does not seem to do justice to this game. I really enjoyed re-visting the cutscenes, and, even if they did not tell the whole story, I found that they really motiveated me to continue playing the game.  

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.