I’ve finally gotten around to delving into Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. I haven’t touched FFVII in a while, haven’t even looked at it since Justin started playing it for the first time last year, so I was wondering how well I would take to the nostalgia factor. I only question my enthusiasm because of my diminishing appetite for traditional JRPGs as of late. After putting a combined eleventy-billion hours into Final Fantasies V though X I haven’t completed an FF since.
Merely an hour or two in I feel a strange fondness for the FFVII world, a fondness that is compelling me to play what begins as an intensely simple and boring button masher. Several sources have attempted to allay my fears over the battle system and I wholly believe the experience will get better. So fear not, I’m not dismissing the game and walking away. In fact, this may be the first PSP game I finish (humans weren’t meant to finish Wipeout games).
There are some glaring flaws to be sure–stale voice acting, moderately uninteresting dialogue, reusing FFVII music and archetypal characters–but I’m getting the feeling the glowing, warm nostalgia will propel me through the flaws. Although I wish there were a better way of the game getting me to the more interesting stuff first. Why must I plow through the early levels without any interesting enemies or cool materia systems? Why do I have to earn those after 4 hours of gameplay?
Some games don’t hold back the cool stuff. Actually, the games I’ve enjoyed most recently seem to be shorter and drop the goods in your lap early in the game: Portal, N+, Sins of a Solar Empire (to be fair there is no forced tutorial, you only get the meat of the game).
Those games each have a basis in another game’s skill set. Portal uses standard FPS controls, N+ is like every platformer ever made, and Sins controls like a standard RTS. It’s how the games use those base skills as a jumping off point for more interesting gameplay.
In N+ the game assumes you know that A makes you jump and the stick makes you move in a direction. The game only slowly adds the features that you wouldn’t know from looking at a video–using ramps to go higher, the timing of wall jumps. Why don’t other games use this same mindset?
Don’t teach me that A makes me jump and force me to go through training missions to get good at standard platforming. I’ve played more platforms than I care to mention in my short time on this earth and I don’t need to practice the basics of timing jumps to make it over gaps. Every other profession and art makes constant use of those who have come before. When will gaming do the same?
”If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” – Isaac Newton
