Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Responses...

Thank you, Sidious for your numerous posts as of late. Sorry if you've felt like a raving madman sitting out here musing to yourself, while the rest of us have been too busy with work/school to respond. I will take the onus of responding to all your debates though the rest of you can feel free to chime in...

Too Long ?
Perhaps FFXII is too long (moving into hour 70 on my end, still not sure how close I am to the ending), but there's a few things to say in its defense and the defense of long games in general. First, do you tend to involve yourself in the extra stuff (side quests, optional dungeons, ultimate weapons, etc.)? FFXII has these in spades and the hunts alone may be longer than the plot of the actual game itself. If you burn through the story alone without getting distracted by other things (as some gamers do) this one might be only 40-45 hours. Second, a game's length should be somewhat tailored to it's genre. RPGs are always going to be longer to give you that sense of accomplishment when you do something and also to see that gradual progression of your character. FPSs on the other hand should probably not be longer than 20 hours, there's just not that much you can do within a single FPS, and if you try to stretch it out too much if often comes off as feeling repetitive. Another thing to consider is that you add length because of a breadth of content you need/want to display not just so that you can have length to advertise about. There is a certain push from mainstream reviewers that longer=better, but somewhere along the way they forgot why: more content is better because there's more to see and do not just the same industrial hallway with the same bad guys jumping out and shooting at you over and over again. I mean the Matrix could be 10+ hours long but no one wants to see Trinity and Neo driving everywhere they want to see the lobby scene! Finally, I think you have to accept that there are different buying patterns out there. There are gamers that buy lots of different great games because they like having them, even if they know they probably won't get a chance to finish them (Sidious and myself for example). At the same time there are many gamers which buy only a few games a year and play them constantly. For them, they want a lot of time for their money so they can explore every nook and cranny and really get their money's worth out of the game. It really comes down to this: if at any point in a game you just want to finish it because you've put so much time into it, it's too long, and that is going to differ a lot from person to person depending on their spending and playing habits. For me that was Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, way too long and not enough happened, for you maybe it's FFXII or Doom 3...

Hybrid Games
Hybrid games can be cool, though I still don't understand your adoration of Final Lap Twin, but to each his own. A puzzle RPG would be cool and I'd like to hear more about it. Personally, (though I don't have a Wii) I'd like to see Super Nintendo titles like Soulblazer, Illusion of Gaia, or Actraiser on the Virtual Console, those games were sweet, though I suppose I could just emulate them...

Disclaimer: The writers of The Den and The Vampire Penguin do not condone or support the behavior of piracy in any way, shape, or form. Except for sky piracy...then it's cool.

Numbering in RPGs
Agreed, handheld games probably shouldn't qualify for numbers, neither should games that depart from the genre of the original. At that point they cease being part of a series and are considered spinoffs to that series: FF Tactics, DQ: Rocket Slime, etc. Does this mean we don't get a DQ IX outside of the DS? That's kind of lame, I mean DQ8 is a masterpiece and say what you will for the DS, it can't match that, it's just impossible to get to that level of polish on a handheld. Well, that bummed me out. Guess I'll have to go play more FFXII.

There that should fill my blog quota for a little while. Keep em comin!

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