Review The Last Game You Beat

[HappyKillmore]

Wolfenstein = 8/10

Great shooter which still keeps its old school style.

[Luvly KM]

persona 4 - 9/10

superb game in which you actually feel something for the characters involved; and considering i played this for 90hours and still felt like i didn't want to leave Inaba, then surely the game is doing somethig right

great ending and a great journey to the ending.

[Crimson Ryan]

Batman Arkham Asylum 9/10

+1

Amazing game just wish it was longer as it was over to soon.

Not really in my case, but I managed to pad the time by finding the riddles and Arkham chronicles. Still got challenge maps/trophies to get too.

[Riku Rose]

Portal 8/10

Fun little game and only takes 2-3 hours to beat. The women's voice in the game is very funny.

[Bluecast]

Portal 8/10

Fun little game and only takes 2-3 hours to beat. The women's voice in the game is very funny.

I love this game and the end song is awesome.

Also what many don't know is the end boss fight with Glados that was inspired by a drawing they did of a woman tied up hanging upside down.

Which makes more sense why Glados acted the way it did.

[Riku Rose]

'Come back we have cake'

[Ryo Hazukki]

Batman Returns on the SNES, on Mania difficulty, with only 3 rests. Fuck yeah.

[OL]

Um... are you going to rate it?

[Tomato Convenience Store]

he rated it "Fuck yeah/10"

[Crimson Ryan]

Finished Policenauts! One of Kojima's best games I reckon. Better than Snatcher for me because it feels more complete, one big plus was the animated FMV's propping up some major story points. There's only one instance that annoyed me where the point and click format makes the game move way too slowly when the answer is obviously right in front of you. (The train cart, not to spoil anything)

A solid 9/10. Now who wants to watch Lethal Weapon with me?

[Henry Spencer]

The emulator problems will hopefully be straightened out by the ePSXe team (it's a game specific issue only caused by the emulator). I simply cannot wait until they do the Saturn version (most complete in regards to gameplay; you can use a lightgun for the shootout sequences and it features a couple of new scenes) and PC98 version (which is the most complete in terms of story, a lot was supposedly cut out of the console versions, hopefully this version will answer some of my remaining questions regarding the plot)

Tell me Ryan:

What did you think of the bomb sequences and the massive amount of shootouts at the end? Hard or what!

[OL]

Final Fantasy XII

Kept hearing about how "shit" and "unfinished" this game is...
And being that initially I'd only played it for about nine hours, I couldn't say much to contest that, even though I highly doubted such criticisms.
Well, having invested over 70 hours on it now (more than I've ever spent on a single playthrough of an RPG before), I can firmly say:
This game is fucking amazing.
The battle system is excellent, the character-leveling process is deep, complex, and satisfying, and the presentation is, as per the usual for a Final Fantasy game, absolutely top-notch. One thing that stood out to me as I played it was how populated the game actually felt. I don't think I've ever played another RPG whose world felt as alive and breathing as this one. In that respect, the atmosphere is amazing. All honesty, Rabanastre felt much more alive than any GTA city I've ever played around in.
The graphics, on that same note, are absolutely beautiful, both from a technical and art design standpoint. I was actually quite in awe when I emerged from a cave and saw the Tomb of Raithwall for the first time. The thing is massive, and the atmosphere created by that sheer sense of scale was, well... epic. I try not to use that word often, but it seems appropriate here. At that particular part, I remember my brother walking in the room, looking at the screen, and asking if this was a PS2 game or a PS3 game. It looks that good. And the game locations, from that point on, only seem to get bigger and more beautiful.
The character leveling process is excellent as well. I don't know that I've ever been this satisfied while trying to attain new abilities and equipment in an RPG before. The only problem on this front is that the License Board, FFXII's system for gaining new abilities and equipment, isn't quite as big as it should be. I'd already gained most of the stat boosts the Board offers by about the halfway point in the game. After that, the only things holding me back development-wise were whether new equipment or spells were actually available for purchase.

Of course, I'm not so blind as to ignore the reasons why many people may have been disappointed by the game. The story is, at best, pretty average, though that's not to say it's bad. It starts out highly political and seemingly complex, but eventually devolves into a pretty average high-fantasy "stop the bad guy!" romp (though the bad guy in question is never particularly portrayed as being "evil"; everyone is pretty gray in this one). And the ending does, unfortunately, feel a bit rushed. It sneaks up on you a bit. That's not to say it just cuts off or anything. There's plenty of resolution and high-quality cutscenes at the end portion of the game. It just feels a bit like it should have had a bit more build-up to the final events.
The characters are mostly pretty mundane as well. Vaan is your average overeager adolescent protagonist, Ashe the two-dimensional noble princess archetype, Basch the stoic warrior, Penelo the know-it-all young girl, Fran the also stoic "as-one-with-nature" type.
Balthier is, admittedly, kind of a Han Solo knock-off. The smooth, self-centered sky pirate and all. But I gotta say... he's actually turned into one of my favorite Final Fantasy characters now. He's a bit more understated than the resident "cool guy" normally is in these kinds of stories, and his history is... well, I won't spoil it, but the job he had before becoming a sky pirate makes him seem even cooler.
Anyway, I can understand, to an extent, whatever backlash the game may have received upon it's release, mainly due to one thing:
It isn't like other Final Fantasy games.
Yes, the story is a bit average, but that isn't all there is to it; the general style of the game is a complete 180 from other FF's. Its world, characters, and style of action never feel quite as "out there" as other FF's. It feels a bit more grounded in a way.

I look at it like this: characters from Final Fantasy's 1-10 fit perfectly into something like Dissidia (the Final Fantasy fighting game recently released for PSP). In that game, the action is all off-the-wall, flying through the air, knocking eachother clear across the stage 1/4 mile away kind of action. Tidus, Squall, Cloud, Zidane, Cecil etc. all seem to fit just fine in a setting like that.
At the same time, I can't picture the characters from FFXII engaging in that kind of action
The game they come from is, as I said, a bit more grounded than other Final Fantasy's, the characters actions a bit more (dare I say it?) realistic. The characters wouldn't fit alongside other FF characters because they just aren't cut from quite the same cloth. And I think that describes the game (FFXII), itself, perfectly.
Why the backlash against the game?
Because it isn't like other Final Fantasy's. Simple as that.
People expect one thing when they get a new FF, and with FFXII they got something different. I think, wholeheartedly, if the game didn't have the name "Final Fantasy" across the front of the box, it would have received a much warmer reception. It's an amazing game, without a doubt one of the best on PS2. I think if people could try to look at it as something other than a Final Fantasy, they'd see just how excellent it is, because the name "Final Fantasy" brings with it a whole boatload of preconceptions and expectations, many of which FFXII just doesn't fit into.
Overall though?

9/10

Beautiful game. Excellent in almost every way.
Best thing about it?
As a fan of Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1, FFXII allowed me to actually explore the world of Ivalice on my own in a fully 3-dimensional game world, something FFTactics could never accomplish. And that was really the main thing I'd been looking forward to playing the game for.

[Crimson Ryan]

The emulator problems will hopefully be straightened out by the ePSXe team (it's a game specific issue only caused by the emulator). I simply cannot wait until they do the Saturn version (most complete in regards to gameplay; you can use a lightgun for the shootout sequences and it features a couple of new scenes) and PC98 version (which is the most complete in terms of story, a lot was supposedly cut out of the console versions, hopefully this version will answer some of my remaining questions regarding the plot)

Tell me Ryan:

What did you think of the bomb sequences and the massive amount of shootouts at the end? Hard or what!

The only emulator problem I had was when you have to switch discs or when I needed to minimise the game and check the manual jpeg at that part of the game, just got a black screen with the game still playing. Are they planning to translate the other 2 versions? I didn't know that, if they have new content I'd definately play those through. Since the game audio was in Japanese there was a few cases I didn't exactly 'click' with when the game revealed some big pieces of the story. The main one was the unveiling of a big character

That bomb was the hardest part of the game, I wasn't using an actual mouse, just my laptop trackpad, so sometimes when I dragged my finger it would jerk the cursor and the bomb explodes! I always play games on my laptop with my headphones in so you can imagine how much of a shock it was each time it happened. I also cut the blue wire, thinking back to what Redwood said: "Not all maniacs choose red" or something..

You must of played Snatcher before? That ending was chock full of shootouts so I figured Policenauts would be similar. The boss on the Moon Plant was a sneaky bastard, how he shot one more time before he went down, especially as I had low health! The Tokugawa raid was also pretty hard. First the amount of guards in the lobby, then Redwood playing hide and seek and fighting the EMPS before that. I was sweating bullets when I discovered you couldn't save inbetween all the shootouts. Kojimabastard!

[Ryo Hazukki]

Um... are you going to rate it?

I thought I'd at least beat it before I rated it. I misread the topic title because I pretty much have downs. ;) 8/10. Best Batman game ever made.

[Riku Rose]

^Then you need to play Arkham.