Week 7 - READING WEEK!

So I have no game design blog for this week since its reading week, haven’t been doing any homework since I completed it prior. Instead of giving a board game write up, I’m simply going to review a couple of games that I’ve been playing over the break. First would be Twisted Metal and second would be Final Fantasy XIII-2. Two very different games, since most of my friends are on vacation I can’t really do much else :P.

I’ll start with Final Fantasy. The original Final Fantasy XIII took a huge hit in terms of reviews and critiques, because it was a game that people felt like the typical RPG aspects. A lot of long-time fans of the series believed the original game to be much too linear. Many claimed that it was like they were watching a movie while mashing the X button on their controller (from a PS3 perspective) to battle. The game was missing classic features such as towns, mini-games, and super fun and challenging side quests. The story was also very confusing for most people, unlike the previous Final Fantasy games, the story took a very long time for people to understand, and this made it difficult to recommend the game to someone who’s new to the series. One situation I ran into during the summer was lending that game to a friend who had received surgery. I figured this person would want to play something movie-like in order to kill time and get through a simple story. This was a huge fail however. I however really enjoyed the game and played it to the max by completing it 100%.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 however, made a huge improvement in my opinion. I actually did not get bored at all playing this game and I believe it was everything that Final Fantasy XIII should have been. There were more than enough town-like scenarios, A LOT of side quests, optional bosses, and hidden monsters, weapons that you would have to grind opponents for and a more complex levelling system. One cool thing they added to this game was the fact that you could capture monsters that you fought and get them to fight alongside you (POKEMON!) you could even level them up and combine their abilities with others. The game has already released a couple of downloadable contents. The first one being a boss battle between the original games main protagonist, Lightning. This character was used throughout the games entire marketing lifespan, but was not even playable in the game. This was the one thing that I did miss about this game, the fact that I could not play as some of my favorite characters from the original.  

I’m currently still working towards 100% completion of this game. The game has stunning visuals as always. It still played like a movie, but it added a feature during battle cut scenes where you would have to press buttons during the scene to complete it. Conversations with certain people also gave me the option to select different things to say, a standard feature in even the most simple RPGs. Overall I am really enjoying this game, although I completed the main storyline, I’m still working on it. Both games did have a phenomenal soundtrack as usual. Final Fantasy as a series has some of the best music in any video game or movie.

Twisted Metal was a very popular game back on the original Playstation. I was introduced to this game series by a neighbour who got me hooked on it. It’s simply a game where you drive around in different vehicles and kill others with various types of weapons. When I was a kid, I found the game really cool because of all the different characters and maps that they had. There were four instalments in the series originally.

There was another title on the Playstation 2 called Twisted Metal Black, I never actually played this one, but I heard it was really good…PLUS it’s included as a free download in the new one.

The main mascot for this game is a deranged psychotic Ice Cream truck driver called Sweet Tooth. It is somewhat shocking that I enjoy this game because I am TERRIFIED of clowns. As a child I never really thought much of the games story, but this new 2012 reincarnation of the game actually kinda scares the hell outta me. The game goes through the story of three main characters: Sweet Tooth, Mr. Grimm and Dollface which are all familiar Twisted Metal characters. The gameplay is based off the same format as the older ones, with new features of course.

My favourite thing about this game is that it has a cooperative story mode. This alone provides a huge challenge if played on the harder difficulties. I did in fact finish the game with a friend, and the story was also really cool. It was done in a very dark setting and did not hold back with the gruesome details. The cinematic were done using real actors and costumes. A lot of visual effects were added in to give it more of a fictional setting but it was well done. The language and the voice overs did not hold back on the cursing.

Some of the cool things about this game would be the weapons, primarily the special weapons of the characters. One car uses a flamethrower, another uses a machine gun. One of the vehicles known as Axel simply consists of a driver made of two wheels like the picture. This character’s special ability was pretty cool because he could combine to make one big wheel and spikes would appear. This way, whenever the player rammed into another player they would do serious damage to them. The game also has a helicopter vehicle that is pretty cool, I like using it in the story mode to help my partner out from above. This is somewhat cheap though :P. 

The soundtrack for this game was actually really good, it brought back some of the old classic songs from the original Twisted Metal games such as Dragula by Rob Zombie. As well as adding some new Rock, Heavy Metal and even Hardcore Rap songs into the mix. The game also allows you to add your own music off the Playstation into the game. 

Here’s a trailer for both games: