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Final Fantasy XIII Impressions, Part 1

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Image by Gord McLeod via FlickrI'm impressed with Final Fantasy XIII.
No, I'm VERY impressed.
FFXIII has a very different feel than I've come to expect from the franchise, which is pretty appropriate. When Final Fantasy first came to the Playstation with FF7, it changed dramatically from what came before with the introduction of 3D graphics to the series. When it appeared on the PS2 with FF10, it changed again, taking 3D graphics to new heights and adding voice work for the first time. Now FF13 streamlines the play experience in huge ways, which feel oddly subtle while totally changing the game.
For starters, there are a lot of cutscenes in this game, but while that's not unusual for the series, their length is. These are mostly pretty short scenes, and they come at you frequently.
Next, there are save points everywhere. I have played through several hours worth now, and I don't believe I have yet come up on a stretch where I went more than 15 minutes without hitting a new save spot.
Take these two features together and you've totally sold me. The rest almost doesn't even matter.
One of the big things that always drove me crazy about JRPGs, and Square's JRPGs in particular, was the insane lengths of time you could go without the ability to save. Not too long ago I gave up on Star Ocean: The Last Hope on the 360 because the console's instability  resulted in one too many crashes between far-spaced save points. I eventually ended up trading it in for the International version on the PS3, which seems much more stable and I may be able to finish it.
But it's still not high on my list of gaming priorities. It's a wonderful game, I love it and will finish it, but those 2 hour gaps where you can't save are horrific. Even without the risk of crashing, it's hard to rearrange my schedule around the game. If I'm playing at night and I hit a save point at 11:00, do I risk continuing? What if it's 1am before I find another place to save? What if I continue and find myself in a cut scene that's 20 minutes long, or 30? What if that cut scene can't be paused or skipped?
Square games have always been gorgeous and fun and moving, but there's always been an element of inconvenience. Final Fantasy 13's biggest change is the complete removal of that inconvenience.
I've barely scratched the surface of this game, but I already know I'll be finishing this one fairly fast. Star Ocean? Even Final Fantasy 12? I'll finish those as well, but when that will happen, I couldn't say.
More impressions to come as I progress...
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Mass Effect 2 Impressions

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Image by Gord McLeod via Flickr

When I finished the original Mass Effect not so very long ago, I was in awe of how grand and cinematic the game felt. Knowing then that a sequel was right around the corner, I worried how it could possibly live up to what Bioware accomplished with the first one. I shouldn't have.

Mass Effect 2 takes almost all of the fun that existed in the first game and amplifies it, while eliminating the tedium. In the process, they made quite a few interesting design choices.

The most obvious improvement is with the visuals. It actually looks like they use quite a few of the same models they used in the original game, especially for Shepard, who looks EXACTLY the way you'll remember her (or him) if you played the first. The shaders used to enhance those models are vastly improved, though; I actually gasped when I saw how good the game looks.

Mass Effect 2 plays very much like a shooter. In fact it may actually be more accurate to call it a shooter than a roleplaying game at this point. But don't let that put you off; as good as the shooter part is, they have managed to improve the cinematic quality of the dialogue even further in this installment.

The characters so far (disclosure: I haven't finished playing yet) are extremely well developed, with each getting a considerable amount of "screen time" to be fleshed out beyond generic recruits for your grand mission. Much of this screen time is optional though, a good choice on Bioware's part as not everyone will care about getting to know these people. This is their loss, as they're well worth getting to know.

I do have two complaints about the game. One of my favorite elements of Mass Effect was driving around planet surfaces. The rover you controlled was tricky to learn, but a lot of fun once mastered. It is sadly missing from Mass Effect 2, though my guess as to why is that it eliminates potential frustration at having to drive around a large area searching for minerals and other discoverables.

In Mass Effect 2, you locate minerals by scanning planet surfaces. This is a fine approach and would work well if you spaced it out between missions. I, naturally, failed to do this. COMPLETELY my own fault, and something I regret, as I now need quite a few minerals to complete various upgrade and research projects the game gives you. Unfortunately the process does get very dull when you do a lot of it at once.

Still, these are really minor quibbles with a game that in my book is an early contender for 2010's best.

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Bayonetta Micro-Impression

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I recently had the chance to pick up Sega's  Bayonetta and give it a run on the PS3. From the little I've played so far though, it seems like a fantastically polished, fast, furious and fun game. It's exactly the kind of quick combat oriented game I can throw in the machine and have some fun with for a short time, without worrying too much about how much progress I make.
From a design perspective, one feature in particular caught my eye. During load times you retain control of your character in a way that reminds me a little bit of Assassin's Creed's Matrix-like loading feature. Bayonetta takes that concept and makes it even more useful. You can practice your combos while waiting for things to load. This is very handy for a gamer like myself; I gravitate more towards role-playing games and shooters than combo-fests. When I picked the game up, I assumed I'd have to get through it with a little luck and a lot of button mashing, but this practice feature gives me some hope that I might be capable of actually learning a few of the cooler moves at some point. It also makes the load times much easier to bear, though the update that allowed the game to be partially installed to the system's hard drive results in load times that are pretty easy to handle anyway.
This post is my first experiment at shifting my game impressions from my blog to Google Buzz. Let's see how this works out!
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Review: Fantastic Contraption

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Fantastic Contraption is many things. Part physics toy, part puzzle game, part sandbox, all wonderful and frustrating and delightful combined. The idea is not a new one; you have a set level with an object that must be moved, terrain it must be moved over or through, and a goal space it must reach. To accomplish the moving bit, you have some pre-set components you can use to build various contraptions