Final Fantasy XIII-2

 Above: Caius and some lady who's barely in the game.

I reviewed Final Fantasy XIII-2 for Paste. I didn't like it too much, but then again I'm the guy who did like Final Fantasy XIII quite a bit, so make of that what you will. Because the review necessarily had to cover a lot of ground, I wasn't able to mention my single biggest gripe with the game, which would have required a laser-like focus on a seemingly minor point, and a mind-numbing amount of explanation.

Minds, prepare to be numbed.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 has a random battle system, but with a real-time element. Whenever enemies spawn, a timer appears and a big circle is drawn around your character. If you can run up to a foe and whack him with your sword in the first few seconds, you get the first strike, which casts haste on your party, and fills up your opponents' stagger meter. If not, most of the time you'll begin the fight on equal footing. You can also try to run away, which is usually successful, and in which case the enemies vanish.

Now, if you fail to run away, or if the clock otherwise ticks to zero, nothing bad happens unless you lose the fight. Usually, losing a fight gives you the option to "retry," in this case meaning that you end up right back where you were, no worse for wear. But if you lose a fight after the clock runs down, you don't have the retry option. You'll have to start all the way back at your last save.

It's not the most punitive punishment in the world, but it is a sufficient incentive not to let the clock run down. Almost every time enemies appear, it makes sense to try to get the drop on them. But the controls aren't very good, not compared to a good action game, and so you usually end up running around in circles trying to make contact. As a segue into a fight, this is still not a huge problem.

The problem comes when the fight ends. As a remedy to complaints about the last game, FFXIII-2 features big, open levels with no clear path to your objective. It's also fully 3D, of course, with a free-floating camera that you can control at will. When you are returned to the world map after your fight, the camera is no longer showing the same perspective. Your character is no longer facing the same direction. The only indication of which way you were going comes from a dotted line on your mini-map, which shows your most recent steps, and is not at all helpful.

And so, every single time a fight ends, it takes a couple of seconds to re-establish your sense of the game. There is a moment of complete disorientation, in which you spin the camera around and squint at the mini-map, trying to remember which way you were going. By the time you figure it out, quite often another random battle has triggered, starting the whole process over again.

It reaches a crescendo of shittiness in the Academia 400 AF level, wherein you are attacked within seconds of each new encounter by flying enemies that you cannot reliably run away from. Many other levels have an option to ride this Chocobo in order to avoid random battles, but not this one. I spent a solid two hours on an otherwise lovely Saturday morning feeling like K. in The Castle, knowing exactly what I needed to do but being stymied at every turn.

It isn't the biggest annoyance in the world; it's a small annoyance that happens thousands of times. It's not like a bad escort mission that you need to push through to be done with it. From the moment the game begins, it's there, throbbing like a toothache. It keeps you off-kilter and uncomfortable the entire time you're playing. And it makes it harder to focus on what the game is doing well.

It's not just Final Fantasy games that have these issues, but it does seem like RPGs especially can be so invested in their Big Ideas that they overlook the importance of giving users a smooth and responsive experience minute by minute. From Fallout's bugginess to Mass Effect's inscrutable interface, this stuff matters. At least, it should.

Rejected endings to Fallout: New Vegas

Above: The Courier contemplates his next move.

The Courier emerged from a shallow grave and became a contradictory, unpredictable force for good in the Wasteland. He always helped people when he could, even though sometimes he stole stuff when it was convenient for him. He also murdered about a half-dozen people for no reason, which he swears was by accident, such as when he meant to click through a closing line of dialogue without realizing that his hunting rifle was already swinging back up into view, and he shot old Alice McLafferty in the face. We tend to believe him, because this was the guy who scoured the desert for hours looking for a little girl's teddy bear. He never found it.

*****

Not the brightest bulb, our Courier. Oh sure, he was eager, almost desperate for work, and he sought out and accepted new assignments with vigor. The follow-through, that's what he had trouble with. We lost track of how many times the Courier appeared unbidden at our door, begged for a job, and then vanished for weeks. At first, we worried. Eventually, we just assumed that some other damned shiny object had caught his attention out there in the wasteland. And we were usually correct.

He'd show up again, months later, babbling about some crazy-ass vault he'd found, or some loony ghouls he'd befriended, and then he'd stare at us blankly when we asked: But what about our chems? Did you bring our chems? He had not. We are still waiting for our stimpaks. Our people are dying here!

F-, would not order from this Courier again.

*****

The Brotherhood of Steel had accepted the Courier into their private realm, and trusted him as they had never before trusted an outsider. They granted him weapons and armor, including their finest Power Armor, in exchange for nothing more than a few errands. When the Brotherhood looked at the Courier, they saw one of their own. Here was the man to bring science, technology, and learning into the new human age. The Courier repaid their trust by murdering them all when a talking computer told him to. Like, he didn't even think about it.

What a fucking psychopath.

*****

Talk about your faux pas! Guess who showed up at Camp McCarran in his best Brotherhood duds -- again? That's right, it was the Courier, or as we like to call him, The Zero of the Tastes. (Come on, it works.)

For the third time in a month, the Courier appeared at the gates of McCarran in a run-down suit of T-51b Power Armor, with, get this, a T-45d helmet! He could have worn brown shoes with a tuxedo and not looked half as ridiculous. We certainly can't blame the NCR for opening fire immediately. We can blame them for their lousy aim, though. Fellas, what happened?

*****

The Courier never found 50 of the Sunset Sarsparilla Star Caps. He tried. Really, he tried. He tried harder than any man should on a task so mindless. God, why did we even give him a quest like that? It was so stupid! What a goddamn waste of time! Arrgghhghgkhgdkjhdgsjhdsg

*****

When he arrived at Jacobstown, the Courier could not escape one single, insistent thought: "Is that Lieutenant Worf's voice?"

Indeed, actor Michael Dorn did provide the voice of the wise Super Mutant Marcus, a fact that the Courier quickly confirmed on the Fallout wiki. Throughout his travels, the Courier had a habit of vanishing for minutes at a time during conversations, leaving the other party standing mutely, with a blank expression, as the Courier chased down another tidbit of casting information on the Internet. He was right more often than he was wrong, instantly identifying actors such as Matthew Perry, Michael Hogan, and Dave Foley.

The Courier did once go awry. After spending several hours with Boone, he could have sworn the sniper was voiced by Nolan North. I mean, who makes a video game these days and doesn't cast Nolan North? Boone sounds just like him. But no, according to the credits it was some guy named "Jason Marsden." Although he would never admit it, the Courier privately believes that this is a pseudonym for Nolan North. But he was always sure that the guy who did the voice of Marcus had also played Lieutenant Worf. It was obvious.

Because Worf... Worf never changes.

The loneliness of the support gunner

My sniper and I are crouched in the tall grass in a field overlooking an antenna site. We have an excellent vantage point from which to observe the comings and goings of troops in enemy-controlled territory. The sniper is an expert. Slowly, methodically, he picks off one Russian soldier after another. It is a beautiful sight. I feel blessed to be here, in this moment, in the sun-dappled splendor of these Central Asian hills. I am moved. It is not enough to witness this moment -- I must become a part of it.

Here's your ammo! I cry, hurling a crate of ammo next to my sniper.

He has stood up and is running away. The dull metal crate sits in the grass, unloved, never to know the warm touch of a restocking sniper.

I sprint after him. Wait! Wait! Got your ammo!

My energy is flagging and he is disappearing over a rise. I wonder: Had he even known I was there? Had I imagined our moment of shared transcendence?

And I wonder: Will no one take my ammo?

*****

We are riding in an LAV through the streets of Paris. Through a small window, I see little but gray stone buildings passing by, sometimes only feet away. Judging by the thump-thump-thump of our machine gun above my head, we are eliminating hostiles with precision and efficiency. Our driver deftly navigates the narrow streets, as though he is driving a sports car rather than a truck loaded down with infantry and armor.

I am holding an ammo crate in my lap, drumming my fingers to the rhythm of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction."

We have captured an overpass that command has assured us is of utmost strategic importance. We have faced little resistance. We are moving on. There is a city square up ahead. Our leaders tell us that the fate of the entire battle may hinge on control of this square. Our gunner keeps firing. Our driver keeps rolling.

Soon, I am sure, we will stop, and someone will need ammo.

Someone must need ammo.

*****

Before the war, this marketplace must have been the place to be in Tehran. I can picture families strolling through the bazaar, politely shrugging off entreaties from enthusiastic salesmen. I imagine young men buying fancy baubles for their dates. I can almost smell the roasting lamb from a nearby kebab stand. You could spend a whole day here and not see it all.

No longer. This is nothing more than a meat grinder into which dozens of young men are being thrown with a terrifying fervor. No sooner has a squadmate been been cut down than another arrives to take his place. You stop even trying to tell them apart after awhile.

I am lying prone in an alleyway, sweeping the optical sight of my M249 across the narrow opening to a nearby plaza. Behind me I hear a more lusty firefight, but I have chosen to defend our rear flank, which, to my mind, is pitifully exposed.

Now and then an enemy straggler stumbles into my line of fire. I let loose a volley of suppressing fire. They are not killed. Nor do they return.

I toss a bountiful ammo crate into the empty alley next to me. No one is there to reap its fruits.

*****

Our company is huddled in the concourse of a Metro station, beset on four sides by encroaching enemy fighters. This is, at last, war at its most senseless. What possible strategic importance could this subway stop have for us? This isn't a battle -- it's mass murder. I can hardly hear myself screaming over the gunfire and the grenade blasts. But scream I do.

Got your ammo!

My comrades receive my ammo as manna. I have barely turned back to the fighting than the box is stripped and its contents depleted. It is no concern. I am prepared.

Ammo here!

Again they throw themselves onto my supply crate, gorging like starving men who have discovered a freshly killed boar. Again they turn toward our enemies, weapons laden with deadly cargo, and relieve themselves of their payload without sense or reason. Again their triggers click dry, and again they return to me. Again am ready.

Shoot! Shoot, my brothers, shoot! Empty your weapons and feast upon my ammo! May the fighting never end!

Best of 2011

Above: Kazuma Kiryu will beat your ass if you complain about how this list fails.

Do you want to read another top 10 list with Skyrim on it? Then you'd better look elsewhere. My list of the top games of 2011 is up now at thephoenix.com, and it is entirely dragon-free.

Bitching about year-end lists is a tradition as old as making year-end lists, so I won't indulge here, except to say that I think it's more fun to see an individual's list than a group list, because the former is bound to be more idiosyncratic. The drawback, of course, is that one person can't have played everything in a given year, so -- gasp! -- the list won't be "objective."

Maybe Skyrim would have been my favorite game of the year if I'd played it, or at least a contender, but I honestly have to wonder: who cares what I think? It's sold millions of copies. It's a critical smash. It's picking up awards left and right. Nobody needs my validation. But if my list can convince someone to give Yakuza 4 a whirl, or Jetpack Joyride, or Shadows of the Damned, or Outland, then I think I've fulfilled a more important duty.

Oh right, I said I wouldn't bitch.

But if you do you come here for the bitching, you could also check out my review of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which went up a couple of weeks ago. I promptly forgot about it, because this game has already taken up more of my mental energy than it deserves. Plus it's Christmastime. Why beat a dead horse?

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year. And, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading.

Get to the point!

Above: Link actually gets to do something.

The first two hours of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword are just plain bad. You spend a lot of time reading endless boring dialogue; you receive lessons in the most banal gameplay mechanics, such as how to jump over a gap (you run toward the gap); you are leered at by grotesque circus freaks that represent some twisted Nintendo designer's idea of whimsy. You get a lot of minor quest objectives like, "Go talk to Pipit!" and "Hey, why not talk to Pipit again?" It's not a tutorial for people who have never played Skyward Sword, it is a tutorial for people who have never played a video game before, and it is excruciating.

When I complained about the slow start on Twitter, Kotaku's Stephen Totilo assured me that Skyward Sword becomes spectacular about 6-10 hours in. For a game that I've read is at least 50 hours long, that's perhaps a reasonable introductory period. In absolute terms, it's ridiculous. Only in a video game are you expected to log a work day slogging through nonsense just to get to the good part.

Every medium has its point of no return. If a book hasn't grabbed me by 100 pages, I'm likely to drop it. If a movie hasn't made its case within 45 minutes or so, I have no problem turning it off. In neither case does that seem like I haven't given the work a fair shot. In a video game, though, if I put 6 hours into something and don't enjoy it, people will still be counseling patience, telling me that it will all pay off eventually.*

Sure, some games have slow starts. All I ask is that it keep me interested during that period. One of my favorite games of the past few years, Far Cry 2, took a good 4-6 hours before it got completely up to speed, but it was good enough to start with that I was willing to make the investment. You do have to wonder: how good can a game become in order to justify a bad start? Isn't the beginning a part of the experience, too?

As usual, where you land on this argument depends on what you think the purpose of a video game is. Totilo made the analogy to learning to play a musical instrument: in Skyward Sword, he said, the game "is a piano and all you're doing right now is playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." But I think it's an imperfect comparison, because I already know how to play this metaphorical piano, and having to start with the simplest possible tune is, yes, a waste of my time. Where Skyward Sword deviates from the standard is by giving me 1:1 motion controls for the sword. So why not start there? Why not assume that I know how to jump across a gap without making some elfin freak explain it to me in numbing detail?

Besides which, I may have a more active role in playing a game than I would in listening to a song, but I'm still the consumer and not the artist. To use a different analogy, if Skyward Sword were a book, then the implicit agreement, when I crack the cover, is that I already know how to read. I don't need to be taken through the alphabet first.

I'm not trying to be cynical. I sincerely hope that the next time I talk about Skyward Sword, it's to say how good it's become. But no matter how good it ends up being, I can't imagine that it ever justifies such a slow start. There are only so many hours in the day.

*This was taken to extremes with Final Fantasy XIII, you may recall, when people talked about it getting good about 20 hours in. They weren't wrong, necessarily, but I thought the game was plenty fun from the beginning, thank you very much.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Above: Nathan Drake searches for something interesting to say.

My review of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is up at thephoenix.com. I was a little disappointed by it. Maybe it's just a case of expectations: the stuff that was good was not really better or different than what I expected, and the stuff that wasn't good seemed like a regression from Uncharted 2.

Even though Drake's Deception hit a lot of the same notes that I praised so much in Among Thieves, here it felt more obligatory. There were slow parts where you walked through city scenes, and puzzles, and some decent platforming, and a whole bunch of awful interminable shootouts. Worse still, I found myself less drawn to Nathan Drake as a character this time around. He still has some great lines (and some great line deliveries, thanks to Mr. North), but I just wasn't buying what Naughty Dog was selling. And I wasn't really sure why.

At any rate, it's still a decent enough game, but I do hope that if there's a fourth Uncharted, that it brings with it a few more surprises.

Quiz: The Year in Swooning

Match each of these games with the breathless quotation from its review.

1. LittleBigPlanet 2
2. Dead Space 2
3. Portal 2
4. L.A. Noire
5. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
6. Gears of War 3
7. Rage
8. Batman: Arkham City
9. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
10. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

A. "The sequel is five times bigger and about a billion times better. You do the math."

B. "...every bit as charming and ingenious as its predecessor and, what's even more impressive, it raises the bar for what people should expect from the gaming industry as a whole."
 
C. "...capable of satisfying both fans and newcomers to the genre thanks to great gameplay and an involving story. A strong contender to the title of best game of the year and of the entire generation."

D. "...not only one of the best stories you ever went through, but one of the best and most addictive multiplayer experiences ever to hit consoles."

E. "From the art direction to the genre-bending gameplay... a landmark in game design that is sure to be referenced in the years to come. Buy it without hesitation."

F. "...jumps from one extraordinary set piece to the next, pushing the way a videogame narrative can be presented. Equal parts exhilarating and emotional, I can't say I have ever played a more perfectly paced game."

G. "...much more than just the best FPS experience I've had in 2011; it is a pivotal and redefining moment for the future of game design that will push your console further than anyone though it could go."

H. "The fantastic story, excellent pacing, interesting and engaging puzzles and other incredible facets to the game make it one that people should experience at any cost."

I. "...a ludicrously intense, graphically gorgeous, thoroughly atmospheric game that takes everything the first title did and ramps up the absurdity to dangerous levels."

J. "In the end it is something that will go down in history as one of the most innovative games of our time, and for good reason. You are simply supposed to have this game in your collection, if you consider yourself a gamer by any definition of the word."

ANSWERS:

1. B (MEGamers)
2. I (Destructoid)
3. H (Game Focus)
4. J (Team Xbox)
5. E (Worth Playing)
6. D (Xbox Addict)
7. G (Game Chronicles)
8. A (Games Radar)
9. F (Destructoid)
10. C (Mondo Xbox)

BONUS SECTION:

Which the best game Seth Schiesel has ever played this time?

1. LittleBigPlanet 2
2. Child of Eden
3. Shadow Cities
4. Batman: Arkham City
5. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

A. "It may actually be the most interesting, innovative, provocative and far-reaching video game in the world right now, on any system. That’s a strong, perhaps outrageous, statement. "

B. "...Sony’s stunning new entertainment ecosystem for the PlayStation 3. Entertainment ecosystem? That may sound like hype..."

C. "the finest, most exciting action-adventure video game in years."

D. "In its ambition, scope and sheer love for its decades of lore... the finest comic book video game ever to slip into spandex."

E. "...one of the most inspirational exhibits of artistry to be found in interactive entertainment today."

1. B (link)
2. E (link)
3. A (link)
4. D (link)
5. C (link)

As always, compiled with the help of Metacritic.