To kick off our weekly columns, my good friend Alex offered to put together a review for us; FFXIII’s been a game Jenny & I have been intending to play since release, but never found the time. Agree or disagree, I hope you’ll join the discussion in the comments section. Take it away, Al!

~ Rob

As a self-confessed JRPG fanboy I eagerly anticipated the first foray of Square Enix’s flagship franchise into the 7th generation of game consoles. With Final Fantasy XII having taken several diversions from the mechanical canon of the series – with varying degrees of success – I was intrigued, and not a little wary, to see where Square Enix would take the series next.

Final Fantasy XIII is set in the high tech world of Cocoon, a floating sphere above the wild, untamed and much feared surface world of Gran Pulse, both governed by the mysterious fal’Cie, something akin to the deities of the Roman and Greek pantheon, each with a distinct role & responsibility within their worlds. The large, machine-like fal’Cie rely on pawns to enact their will, and these l’Cie are branded with tattoo like sigils on their body, symbols of their role as instruments of the fal’Cie.

The story begins with Snow, the leader of a small rebel group, and Lightning, a female soldier with the elite Cocoon ‘Guardian Corps’, state sanctioned mercenaries. They’re forced into a fragile alliance when they witness atrocities committed by Cocoon’s military police, and are forced to go on the run to avoid retribution.

At this stage it’s worth noting that this detail and terminology of the world of Final Fantasy XIII are delivered at a blistering pace. Terms such as fal’Cie, l’Cie, Pulse, Cocoon etc are thrown away casually by the characters with little explanation, leaving the player baffled during the opening exchanges. Most RPG players are used to absorbing information about new worlds and characters but also to having these details subtly interwoven into the narrative,so this does make getting one’s head around the setting hard going. The attempt to compensate for this is equally confusing ‘Datalog’. Accessible from your main menu, the Datalog is an encyclopaedia of events, individuals and enemies encountered within the game. In theory this allows the player to read up on aspects of the world at will but proves a frustrating fix for an avoidable problem. (It’s worth noting this idea works when the world is fully realised and delivered through the plot, when the players want to delve further into the lore – see Mass Effect). However, this feature truly lost its function for me when I even found some character interactions being described before they occurred in the story. From that point the log remained firmly closed, tantalising ‘!’’s (indicating unread entries) well and truly ignored.

The plot follows the fugitives’ attempts to evade the various levels of Cocoon society that would see them dead. This starts a gradual, if predictable, series of character developments with tensions, soul searching and philosophical musing aplenty, but the depth of character development and personal story arcs were a little lacking throughout and failed to stir the emotion I would expect from better Final Fantasies.

These would be less problematic issues if the game led you through involving open field sections in between. Sadly, a significant chunk of the front end of the game serves as a lengthy tutorial for the revised battle and upgrade systems, to the point where story events are contrived specifically to engineer character combinations that demonstrate a certain ability. That’s not to say this hasn’t been overused elsewhere, but the extent of its implementation here did detract from the experience.

Another factor which really impacts on the game at this stage is the extent of its linearity. With the popular introduction of fully mini-mapped areas, with waypoints, highlighted friends, foes and other key features, the exploration is often limited to running from one dot on the map to another with little, if any, variation from the main path. Combined with the slow introduction of the more interesting features of the battle mechanics and confusing plot delivery, I can’t help but think the game must have lost a lot of players in the opening 5-10 hours.

However, for those determined to stick it out, the rewards are high. The battle system addresses many of the complaints that have been levelled at JRPGs and largely tackles them well. Despite the slow introduction, what’s revealed is a slick, fast paced and surprisingly player-guided experience. Each of the characters can assume a variety of classes, with varying abilities. Skills in each area are developed through spending points earned in battle on the Crystarium, not dissimilar to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid, rendered in stunning 3D branches for each character and class. The more skills a character has, the more adaptable they can be to different foes. This is particularly important as all but the designated lead character are auto controlled and the breadth of support they can offer will define many battles.

Once a certain point in the game is reached, the team can arrange their available classes into groups of three, each known as a Paradigm. Up to six Paradigms can be prepared for each combination of team members and these can then be switched in battle. This creates a great sense of pace and adaptability to different circumstances which simply is not possible with a traditional turn based approach. Though the support characters are controlled by AI, the player does have notional control over the main character, though this is rarely used other than for scanning the enemy and occasional overrides of the ‘Auto Battle’ option, which the pace of battle rarely allows for. Especially later in the game this creates a fantastic sense of action, quick reaction and thrill to the battles.

On the flip side this does mean battles can be won or lost on a couple of Paradigm Shifts. This is compounded by the frankly inexplicable decision to consider the battle lost if the lead character is knocked out. This will occur even if the team contains two other characters equipped with a Raise spell standing behind them, and is a blight on an otherwise good system. Upon losing, the player restarts from immediately before the battle. This could be seen as dumbing down and pandering to the ‘checkpoint’ era of gaming but that argument’s overshadowed by the fact that it’s less of a clever addition and more as a fix for the bizarre lose criteria.Despite these criticisms, once fully expanded the battle mechanics are one of the games best features and, if refined, would likely be the corner stone of any future the genre may have.

Weapon and accessory development are less intuitive and rely on collecting parts from defeated enemies which are then applied to a weapon or accessory to level it up. Eventually the item can be taken to a further level using transforming ores which change the item to a new form. The points value of the many upgrade components varies between items and therefore without assistance upgrading proves a time consuming and frustrating experience, in opposition to the intuitive and exciting battles from which the components are yielded.

Visually the game meets all the expectations Square Enix have established in the game’s prequels and push the technology to extraordinary heights. The game areas are beautifully designed and feel far larger and more immersive than the limited travel areas available. They are also varied, rarely giving the player the chance to feel fatigued by any one visual style. The transition to battles, though back to the set piece battlefield, is approached from a real encounter with an enemy model in the field and is deftly handled. The same can be said for the battles themselves which handle huge enemies and lavish spells and attacks with seeming ease. Later parts of the game push this ever further and feature some vast and beautiful field areas and genuinely surreal physics and aesthetics. There is some pop up in the most expansive areas, but this is a minor issue in a beautifully crafted visual spectacle. The artistic style is distinct again for this iteration of the series and feels cohesive and true to its internal canon throughout.

The look is supported by a strong and appropriately written score with the battle and boss themes in particular supporting the pace of the action superbly. The rather unexpected inclusion of the X-Factor’s Leona Lewis’ ‘My Hands’ is a little cynical in terms of appealing to a Western audience but the impact of this is otherwise minimal.

Assuming that the player is not put off by the early stages, the game offers good value for money with 50-60 hours reasonable for a first play through. The battles are often challenging and rewarding and would afford the game a good level of difficulty were it not for the linearity and clear demarcation of goals in the open field which largely patronise the game’s audience. Ironically, for all my concerns, this is one of the games in the series which I am excited to revisit. By the end the game is fun to play and there are a wealth of areas I’ve yet to master. As the pure gameplay aspects are fun and a joy to look at, the idea of going back to that world is one I savour.

Despite its issues, Final Fantasy XIII is by no means a failure. It looks and sounds fantastic and immersive, the battles are fast paced and challenging (if flawed in a few easily-corrected ways). However, at any RPGs core are the characters and plot. The series has set it’s own bar high, and though still better than many of its competitors it falls short here. As other games in other genres in this generation start to develop plots and characters of a standard previously only seen in RPGs, this aspect simply must be improved for the genre to survive. Though some key commentators have suggested the series should take time to re-evaluate its path, I think much can be taken from this game to allow the JRPG in some form to continue. It may be that to linger is to fail, and that either Square Enix or another developer should run with these ideas, tidy up some of the mistakes and release something amazing before the appetite for new Japanese games of this type is lost forever and with it a much loved string to gaming’s bow.

It’s dark inside Ceres Station.  The lonely bleep of untended computers echoes off bleak metal and scattered corpses.  With an intake of breath the door opens, and a bounty hunter appears, surveys the grisly scene from within her visored suit, and as it dawns on her what has been stolen she darts away in pursuit.

So begins Super Metroid, the pinnacle of 2D adventuring. Never since has a game provided so much freedom along with such depth of control, nor produced such a finely tuned tension, solitude and a sense of impending doom without resorting to cheap scares.  And somehow, it succeeds simultaneously as both a sequel and a reimagining of the original game.

A matter of minutes later, after your panicked flight from the collapsing ruins of Ceres Station you arrive on the surface of Zebes, the caves and passageways of which form your playground for the rest of the game.  With a heroic jingle you emerge into a hostile environment, desperately underequipped and uncertain of what to expect.  The obvious path lies silent and uninhabited, just as you left it all those years ago when you first escaped the firey destruction of the planet’s interior, your two-button NES pad gripped in triumph.  And as you delve a little deeper, you rediscover the shattered remnants of your final battle; Mother Brain’s glass tank, shattered and broken; your escape route, burned and decayed from a decade of disrepair.

Or as in my case, you miss all the relevance of this historical retread as you didn’t play the original, but even then the all-pervading silence and lifelessness – other than the tiny scavengers scurrying away at your approach – leaves you breathless.  I already knew I was in for an epic; that they included the complete map and strategy guide for free in the oversized box suggested that this was going to be no straight shooter.

What I didn’t expect was a masterclass in extraterrestrial potholing, mixing the old tradition of leaping from ledge to ledge with squeezing through the tiniest of cracks with the help of an ever-increasing arsenal of technical wizardry and high-payload weaponry, working ever deeper into the heart of the planet, down into the flooded environs of Maridia and the magma caverns of Norfair.  And with each rediscovered technology, you feel just a little more prepared for the incredible odds that await you round the next corner.

It’s not even that Super Metroid’s particularly hard – with a bit of careful exploration you rapidly become such a badass that only the most cackhanded playing will result in your untimely demise – but that even as a fully equipped power-suited badass you feel strangely vulnerable, trapped deep beneath millions of tons of rock, entirely alone.

Yet as the sirens wail and the unexplained planetary destruct mechanism ticks down, you know you’ll be back, stalking the corridors of Zebes, revelling in the solitude.

Of all the genres of gaming, the Japanese RPG often seems the most mired in tradition.  The genre staples of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have managed to go a decade or more without significant gameplay evolution, and while current generation stalwarts such as Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are technically impressive, they seem almost to have taken a step back in time with highly traditional, firmly entrenched turn-based rulesets.

At the same time, while JRPGs often have the most complex stories found in gaming, they too tend to rely on endless comfortable repetition of certain basic genre tropes, the band of young archetypal – often painfully emo – heroes pitted against the might of a military establishment with the fate of the world in the balance. Toss in a smattering of faux-mysticism, preferably a bunch of crystals or similar plot tokens to be fought over, then garnish with a frustratingly high occurrence of random encounters which can easily be surpassed by repeatedly hammering a single button.

And in many ways, Skies of Arcadia is a devoted follower of tradition.  Moon-crystals that hold the key to ruling the world – check. Team of archetypal young heroes – check. Military establishment bent on world domination – check. Bundles of forgettable random encounters – check.

So why is Skies of Arcadia one of those rare games I return to year after year? Where is the appeal amidst the cliches?

The setting has a great deal to do with my affection for the game. Airships may be a staple of JRPG technology, but rarely has the concept been realised so completely, as our heroes sail upon an ocean of sky between floating islands and continents, populated by flying fish and great arcwhales, pirates and explorers.  The story may be old hat, but it quickly becomes obvious that the plot, such that it is, is merely an excuse for an extended travelogue taking you to all four corners of the sky and beyond, and the world itself – while regularly appearing naive and a little idealised – is a pleasant enough reality that it genuinely is enjoyable just seeing what’s over the horizon.

It helps that the desire to see what’s over the horizon is the guiding philosophy behind the game.  The world map starts off restrictively small, but each time you set sail for the edges of the world, the map pulls back to reveal undiscovered lands just begging to be explored, and as your airships grow increasingly more technologically advanced more and more of the sky becomes your playground.

But it’s the company you keep while on your journey that proves to be the clincher. Vyse, the very archetype of the teenage hero, is immediately likeable by virtue of both his eternal optimism and assured self-confidence, a persona the player is encouraged to bond with by the game’s reputation system, rewarding heroic but realistic choices while punishing both cowardice and overconfidence in equal measure. There’s a wonderful dynamic between the other primary characters under your control, and somehow they succeed in remaining fun and upbeat throughout without becoming saccharine or grating, while the cast of colourful bit-players are a consistent delight, many showing a certain degree of depth not immediately apparently from the broad strokes they’re initially painted with.

I also feel the need to make particular note of how utterly refreshing it is to have a game where: a) the teenage characters don’t whine about how much their life sucks at every opportunity, and who don’t let life get them down even when things aren’t going their way, and b) the writers didn’t feel the requirement to overburden the plot with a romance/love triangle, but actively show that men and women can be trusted friends and colleagues without going all fluttery-eyed and trying to get into each others’ pants.

I could go on all night discussing the highlights of Vyse’s journey – the ‘worst-case scenario’ imaginings of what lurks in each new land, the rewarding conversion of a desolate rock into a fully-functioning secret base of operations, the incredible (if slow-paced) airship battles, topped off with one of the most stirring (and underappreciated) soundtracks gaming has yet to offer – but I wouldn’t want to spoil the delight of discovery which is such a part of this classic. Sure, it has its faults, but if you can look past the occasional frustration, Skies of Arcadia is a confident, uplifting, life-affirming journey into the blue sky.

In these dark times, Vyse and friends may be just what we’re looking for.

Skies of Arcadia Legends is fully compatible with the Wii, and can easily be found on Ebay (although you may have to fight for it). A sequel was rumoured back in early 2008, but we’ve been left holding our breath since then.

Back in 2001, a first-party Sony development team led by the little-known designer Fumito Ueda launched ICO upon an unsuspecting industry. This PS2 title quickly became both a critical success and a cult hit – although never quite garnering the corresponding commercial success that it deserved – with its beautifully minimalist art style and story. Yet ICO’s concept was seemingly built around the age-old gaming cliche of two mis-matched characters helping each other through a series of increasingly intricate environments.  What made it so different from the Banjo-Kazooies and Head Over Heels’ of gaming history?

Somehow, amidst the bloom lighting and the illegible subtitles, the shadow beasts and the desolate cliff-bound castle, ICO made you care. And Ueda and his team went back to work on crafting their next intricate masterpiece. The gaming world waited with bated breath to see whether Team ICO could do it again.

When Shadow of the Colossus opens, the damsel in distress is already dead and slung across the back of the hero’s horse, Agro.  Carrying over the minimalism of exposition which made ICO such an understated joy to play, the reasons for Mono’s death are never made fully clear, nor are Wander’s motivations for doing whatever it takes to bring her back.

Carrying his love – for that much is apparent – into the Forbidden Land, Wander encounters the disembodied spirit Dormin, whose essence has been sealed into sixteen great colossi across the land.  Destroy the colossi, and Dormin will return Mono to life.  Spurring Agro down the steps of the temple that dominates the centre of the land, Wander prepares to do what he must, no matter the cost.

It’s at this point, as you ride out into the barren wasteland, that you realise this is no ordinary game.  There are no grunts to bar your progress, no endless hack-and-slash on your way to your destination.  You ride through an empty desolation; the only sounds are the howl of the wind and the rhythmic thunder of Agro’s hooves.  Other than occasional trees and grass, the only living things are tiny lizards skittering out of the way and eagles soaring high above.

At first it feels like you’ve been thrown into a Zelda game with all the incidental content ripped out, and it’s a decidedly discomforting sensation.  The controls don’t help in those first five minutes of puzzlement; they seem overly complex – what other games need a button for ‘hold on for dear life’? – and counter-intuitive, and Agro fights your heavy-handed hold on the reins with every step.

Even though the world is so desolately beautiful, it shouldn’t work.  And it’s a miracle that just a few minutes later, it begins to soak through your preconceptions, and then at last it clicks.  Agro’s fighting you because you’re trying to drive him like a car, just like you have to in every other game.  He’s a horse; point him in roughly the right direction and give him his head.  He’ll take care of the little things like steering round obstacles and not leaping into chasms.  You need a ‘grab’ button because when the beam of light shining off your sword points towards an sheer cliff-face, and you have to leave your trusty – and newly appreciated – steed behind, you scramble from outcrop to outcrop, platform to platform up the cliff, relying on catching hold off ledges and vines, having complete control over your climbing ability.

And because once you encounter your first Colossus atop that cliff, you understand that this is not a game about hacking your way through hordes of faceless grunts.  This is a game about climbing and clambering, hanging upside-down from the armpit hair of a hundred-foot tall behemoth, and thrusting your sword frantically through hair and flesh as it swings its head from side to side, equally desperate to dislodge you before you bring a cruel and violent end to its ancient life.

Each colossus is a puzzle in its own right, an integral part of the landscape, each requiring you to master different aspects of your abilities. And yet, much like ICO before it, there are no new weapons, no new items to gather and utilise (at least until the game is over). As with any game of this type, there are a few colossi who could be considered to be filler, but on the whole each encounter is different enough to be memorable for a long time to come.

Beyond the basic premise set out at the beginning, Shadow of the Colossus keeps additional intrusive storytelling to a minimum for much of the game, preferring instead to allow the player’s developing relationship with Agro and the Colossi themselves to take centre stage.  And with that comes the sense of unease, of guilt, of you being the intruder in this place, disrupting the lives of the Colossi for your own misguided ends.  As you thunder across the land in search of your next victim, your perspective of the landscape shifts from barren wastes to peaceful sanctuary, and your role in the story changes accordingly.

Somehow, Ueda and his team have succeeded again in telling more a more effective story through subtle touches of gameplay than most games manage in hours of cutscenes.  And for once, such impeccable craftsmanship appears to have been rewarded, with sales of three-quarters of a million in North America alone – in part thanks to a considerable marketing campaign – and considerable critical acclaim including a number of awards.

But you know, none of that really matters while you’re in the Forbidden Land, with eagles flying high above, the sun reflecting off your sword guiding you towards your goal.  And that is Shadow of the Colossus’s true success.

Team ICO are currently working on an unnamed PS3 title. Fumito Ueda recently sat down with Nick Suttner at 1UP for a post-mortem interview on Shadow of the Colossus, which can be found here. I’d also highly recommend the 1UPFM Backlog discussion of the game, linked in the interview.

The original idea was that I was going to start writing the occasional mini-review of backward-compatible games from past generations of hardware. Then the PS3 removed PS2 backwards compatibility altogether, and I realised that most of the Xbox games I was thinking of covering were on the 360′s list of non-compatible games. So bollocks to it, I’ll review them anyway, and mention whether or not they’re available on the current generation at the end.

Considering how much of an escapist medium gaming is, it often surprises me how seldom games actually succeed in making me feel like an all-powerful badass.  Perhaps it’s an issue of balance, perhaps it’s simply the difficulty of finding ways to challenge an exceedingly powerful character.  Otogi is one of those few games that gets the balance just right, and the result – though unnecessarily flawed in certain aspects – is an exhilarating flurry of destruction.

Brought back from the dead by a disembodied female voice, Raikoh is your fairly standard undead-samurai-silent-protagonist, and beyond that the plot trails rapidly away into nonsense – which is rather a shame, because they hint at lots of intriguing depth but never go into enough detail to extrapolate a sensical story. So you hack and slash in the best traditions of third-person action games, you blast enemies with suitably pyrotechnic displays of magic, and then you slowly come to realise that with a little practice on the part of the player, Raikoh can fly.

It’s hard work, of course, combinations of attacks, mid-air dashes and careful timing, but if you couldn’t feel the pull of gravity so strongly, perhaps it wouldn’t feel quite such an achievement.  Especially the first time you swoop down upon a demon and blast him through the walls of a nearby mansion, crumbling masonry and burning candlesticks going everywhere.

As terrain deformation and destructible environments go, it’s a little crude by today’s standards, but even so it adds a tangible edge to the swathe Raikoh cuts through the world. It’s only a shame that the game fails in part to realise that the pleasure of the effect comes from the creation of chaos  in the midst of a previously pristine environment, instead forcing the player to replay levels and methodically destroy scenery piece by piece to earn bonus items and weaponry, thereby sucking some of the fun from the conceit in the long term.

Also worth highlighting is the battle against the Crimson King around the half-way point of the game, which is one of the greatest boss fights in gaming history. It succeeds by following all the rules of a good antagonist – the Crimson King is just a little stronger, faster and more skilled than Raikoh, with no instantly recognisable pattern to his actions – and then placing you in an expansive pristine bamboo grove, just waiting for trenches and craters to be torn by magic blasts, for the ice atop the frozen stream to be shattered and for the combat to continue amidst the rushing water. It’s spectacular.

Unfortunately, Otogi falls foul of the same sin as the original Halo, and much of the second half of the game is a retread of previous levels but with different enemy placement. It’s still fun, but decreasingly so as the developers artificially extend the experience to breaking point. It’s a minor flaw, but one which could have so easily been avoided.

While by no means a perfect game, Otogi does enough things very, very right that it’s an easy recommendation. It’s simply a crying shame that at the time of writing (and for the foreseeable future), neither Otogi nor its sequel are backwards compatible on the 360, which is a considerable barrier. We can only hope that From Software chooses to resurrect the franchise on the 360 sooner rather than later.