Review: Final Fantasy XV, Episode Duscae

Every so often in the gaming industry something happens that turns everyone's head, regardless of your interests, whether that be an announcement, game release or something else. It would be fair to say that you could probably put the lead up to Final Fantasy XV as such an event.

I can see why this was chosen as the loading screen.

The game itself isn't due to be released until sometime next year, but that hasn't stopped people talking especially since it has been in development since 2006. What's more, Square Enix have sent us a teaser bundled in the console port of Final Fantasy Type-0, that being Episode Duscae.

After downloading the demo, we are given an opening menu with a backdrop of the night's sky, with all of the traditional options including subtitles and Japanese voice acting.

Once the game begins we see a cutscene with 4 young men inside a tent. An alarm (which it has to be said is incredibly annoying), is going off and 3 of the company are awake, while the main character remains asleep. Eventually (and not soon enough with for that alarm), Prince Noctis wakes up and the tent opens up to reveal a gorgeous tundra and woodland with quite the skyline, that provides the setting for around the next 5 hours of your life.

First off we are given an introduction to the combat system, which is happily simple to understand though a fair challenge to master. Noctis has several different attacks which he can use with different weapons kept somewhere in the void of the Final Fantasy world. Attacks can be made at close range or by warping, a function which you can also use to get around the terrain by transporting yourself to steel pillars. There are also several other attacks which Noctis has at his disposal ranging from jump attacks through to a whirlwind strike.

Pretty vicious looking spear Noctis has got there.

The aim of the demo? Well the group are on a bit of journey. For what purpose isn't explained in all that much depth. However,  the car they have been using for said journey has broken down in this visual paradise and a fee needs to be paid for it's repair. Thankfully, there's a nasty monster that needs slaying and the rewards happens to just about cover the money the group need for their car. So, monster slaying it is. There are several side quests that you can go on while in the demo, with some pretty powerful swords to find as well, though none of this is essential for completing the main mission.

On the way to finding the behemoth, the group run into harmless herd like animals as well as some not so harmless wolves. Alongside them there are also some armour clad soldiers that seem to have something against the group (I'm guessing that might just have something to do with 'Prince' Noctis). Though these battles are good for testing out different attacks and tactics, they quickly become tiresome and more a chore than a challenge.

The group will meet the monster on at least two occasions, firstly the battle will prove too much for them and they will flee. Second time round, if you elect to go into the creepy cave at the top of the map, the battle becomes much easier, if only because you gain the ability to summon a god to kill everything and anything without fail- I can't say I'm entirely sure how well this will work throughout the whole game.

There are alternatives of course, sell the odd bits you gain from fallen enemies to the shop to gain enough money (trust me, this will take a long time) or gain enough experience to kill the beast without your new supernatural power (again, probably going to take a while).

With a bro heavy company there had to be a gal somewhere...

Once you have your money, you can go to the garage to find a somewhat typical FF girl who has fixed and suped up your car for your onward journey, which is, unfortunately, where the demo ends. You'll be able to go back and play from just before the end to finish any other quests and find more items.

To sum up? Well it's looking promising. The graphics are simply stunning, and by next year you can only imagine they will be even better and more varied. The combat is fluid and quick paced, though you become too powerful too quickly and battles become boring before you've really got used to them. It's a minor point though and with some work it definitely can be improved. All of that said, not only am I confident that, upon it's eventual release, Final Fantasy XV will live up to all expectations and maybe just exceed some of them as well.

News flash: Runescape releases 200th quest

You’ll struggle to meet a gamer that hasn’t at some point in some way experienced the MMORPG, Runescape. Now on its second incarnation, 14 years after it’s creation the biggest free MMO out there is still going strong, with the release of the 200^th quest, Dimension of Disaster.

By no means the most well known MMO (a title that surely, still, belongs to WoW), as such a large free-to-play game, it must surely have contributed to the start of many a gamer’s love of the RPG genre.

The accessibility of the game is one of its most notable features, with almost 18 million players completing the most popular quest Cook’s Assistant. The 200^th quest brings players back to their humble beginnings as they are transported to an alternate reality at level 1 with no equipment, with the aim being to play through the beginner quests again (albeit with a few twists!) to escape the altered world and return to reality.

Games that changed the industry #7 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Imagine yourself locked in a prison cell when, totally inexplicably, the emperor of your world appears before you looking for an escape route through your cell. Naturally you follow him with the hope of getting out only to see that he meets a nasty end at the hands of some assassins. Before he dies, he tells you to take a message out into the world. Okay you say, I could do that. After arriving outside in this world however, all of a sudden you get a desire to become a thief and forget all about the emperor and his lousy last wish.

Image credit: Gamefaqs

That is Oblivion. Or at least it’s one of many different ways that you could start it. Like GTA:San Andreas (which I looked at a few weeks back), Oblivion is a game that really showed off what gaming could be.

As one of the first games to be released on the 360/PS3 generation of consoles, Oblivion set the bar for graphics, voice acting and gameplay extremely high. It also took the RPG genre to a new level, encompassing a huge free roaming world, with more customisable traits than I have time to mention. TES IV blew everything before it away.

Image credit: Wikipedia

The most impressive aspect of this game however is a point that I mentioned before: the amount of choice you were given not just in customising your character, but also in how the game played out was truly impressive. If you wanted to do the main quest before touching the rest of the game, that was fine. Equally though, if you never wanted to do the main quest, you didn’t have to, and your experience of the game would have been at least as good.

Oblivion made the technical jump everyone was expecting for a new generation game, but what made it so special was the enormity of the world it put before you. And if that wasn’t enough, it made way for a pretty special follow up as well – a certain Skyrim, or something?

Controversial Endings: Mass Effect 3

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece based on how much I enjoyed Mass Effect 3 despite not actually having finished the game. As was also alluded to in that article, there was a concentrated effort on my part to finish the game so that I could have an opinion on what has caused much anguish among many fans of the series; that time has come and now you'll have another opinion.

Before really talking about what happens at the end (yes, there will be spoilers), it should be observed that any game that has to have an 'extended cut', primarily adding to the ending suggests that perhaps something wasn't quite right with the original, basic version. Indeed, if the original ending had been up to standards on release in the view of the developers, why did they need to add a chunk of extras in to improve it? Simply, people didn't like it, and for a series that has been so popular generally, but has in particular been critically acclaimed for its plot, that wasn't acceptable. Moreover, the promise was not to have just 3 endings, seriously- they said that would not happen, yet, that's what was given. Something had to be done.

That aside, this article is going to assess the above mentioned 'extended cut' and where it leaves the Mass Effect series with a new game teased and sure to be elaborate on at E3 later this year.

Source: gameinformer

Perhaps the first point that should now be looked at is the concept of past decisions affecting the finale. The notion suggested by some that the decisions made throughout the game have no affect on the ending is not unfounded but is heavily exaggerated. Furthermore, the series ends, somewhat appropriately, with a key decision that leads to any of four outcomes. These outcomes are not simply as some may say, a different coloured flash of light, though that is included, but a back drop to what must surely be the next game in a new series of Mass Effect games.

Let's speculate a little. It has been widely rumoured that the new game will not contain Commander Shepherd. Quite right too if you have played through many possibilities and seen Shepherd die making that final decision. For those who have delved slightly deeper, you will have seen that given the right circumstances there is a scenario where the Commander in fact survives after choosing the Destroy option. Now in previous games BioWare has allowed the player to move their character through from the previous game, but what if that wasn't a feature of the next game and we had to deal with the idealistic paragon that Shepherd would have been? Well of course it would have had a perfect Effective Galaxy Rating so we can assume he would survive, but, as the Catalyst pointed out, more problems are sure to arise at a later date. Does that not sound convenient to anyone else?

The ending then has clearly been improved, but now it has a direction, somewhere to take a new spin off or continuation, and most people will praise it for that more than anything else.