Final Fantasy VII

The Short


Pros
- Solid JRPG gameplay elements with the materia system
- Limit Breaks drastically change battle strategies
- Long adventure that spans three discs
- In-battle graphics look quite good
- Music is excellent, as usual
- Has some genuinely memorable story moments (leaving Midgar, Golden Chocobo, etc.)
- Lots of side-stuff to do before the end of the game
- Barret is a massive stereotype but is still awesome

Cons
- Everything aside from the battle graphics looks hideous
- Dialogue between characters is stilted and very poor
- Story starts off strong and quickly devolves into a convoluted, meaningless mess
- Materia system is clever, but there isn't much differentiating the characters save Limit Breaks
- Sephiroth is a lame villain. There, I said it.
- Square-Enix used this as an excuse to make a bajillion crappy spin-off games

Still love the simple title screen

The Long


There is no doubt in anyone's mind the impact Final Fantasy VII had on the industry, in multiple facets. First off, it came out on the Sony Playstation, a new contender to the console market that opted to use CD-ROMs over the usual cartridges, and people were seriously wondering if it could contend with the highly advertised Nintendo 64. Second, the JRPG market hadn't exactly been nonexistent in the US, but it certainly wasn't pushing copies as much as it does now. Lastly, it ushered in a new era of something we now are trying to ween out of our games: the cutscene.

Final Fantasy VII's achievements cannot be understated. For many, this was their first introduction to a JRPG (or an RPG altogether), their first time seeing a full-3D video game on a console, and their first exposure to a game with a long, epic storyline. I'm certain it is for this reason that people look back on this game with extreme fondness, and why Square-Enix is more than willing to capitalize on that fondness by releasing a billion spin-off games to rake in the cash, as well as a movie and who knows what else they currently have in store.

In a world fresh off pixel art, this certainly turned heads

But this isn't a review of the game in 1997. It's 2012, and the Final Fantasy series has doubled in its entries (more so if you count X-2 and XIII-2). After all these years, has this game really stood the test of time? Does the Soldier from Midgar still have the same emotional resonance as he did nearly fifteen years ago?

Well....yes and no. Let's take a look. 

And kill the first scorpion boss...guy. 

The story starts off with a bang. Cloud and Barret are part of a rebel group called AVALANCHE (yes, all caps, Barret must have had Caps Lock on when he typed up the name) who are convinced the Shinra corporation are using Mako reactors to suck up energy from the planet, essentially killing it. And when I say this I actually mean only Barret cares, because Cloud seems just along for the ride. An Ex-Soldier, an elite military force of Shinra, Cloud essentially has defected but for unknown reasons. He just sort of showed up at the mixer, I guess, and got roped into blowing up a reactor. It's a long while before you really understand what's going on, but whatever; mystery or something.

Anyway, probably because their attempt at environmentalism involves essentially being douchebag terrorists, eventually AVALANCHE gets worked up good and they find out their real enemy is Sephiroth, a trench-coat wearing crazy with a sword almost as absurdly large as Cloud's. It seems Shinra, along with killing the planet, also did a bunch of wild experiments with Jenova (which looks oddly like "Jehovah," which I'm certain isn't a coincidence), some alien thing that has magic, essentially. Sephiroth was made from Jenovah's cells...or something? Anyway he's pissed and now he wants to blow up the planet (ironic, considering you were blowing stuff up to save the planet at the beginning. Or at least I think that's ironic. I don't know.), so naturally you have to stop him. Cloud also has some sort of relationship with Sephiroth (no, not like that) that he can't remember fully, which he also has to come to terms with over the course of the game.

This is how the game actually looks. The sharper screenshots are up-rezed emulator versions. 

While the story certainly has quite a few twists and turns, it seems to play fast and loose with nearly every aspect involved. Cloud's backstory is intentionally long and convoluted, but the game doesn't really know how to present information in the correct order for you to completely understand it. The same goes for Sephiroth and Jenova; there seems to be a lot here, but the story seems to like to drip with ambiguity so much that when it finally starts making reveals, it feels too little, too late. Yes, I know fans could easily chew me out because they know every aspect of this story in detail, and it's worth noting I've played this game no less than four times, watched the movie, played awful Dirge of Cerberous, and read wikis trying to better explain it. I get it now, but my first run there was no way I fully understood it. The story is a convoluted mess, one that revels in its confusion all the way up to the weird, goofy-looking final boss fight.

Compared to the tight stories of Final Fantasy VI, and even Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VII's "convoluted by design" approach just comes off as bad storytelling. It keeps you in the dark about the important things for so long, often I'd watch entire cutscenes thinking "Wait, I'm supposed to be understanding this, right? Yes? How is Sephiroth in that orb thing when I'm pretty sure he just killed Aeris? Wait, is that a clone? So Cloud is a clone? How does that make sense? How will Sephiroth destroying the earth bring Jenova back? And isn't she already back; I fought her like five times and she has her own battle theme!"

Barret actually sums up Final Fantasy VII's story pretty well during a cutscene late in the game. "I've been here since the beginning, and I still don't know what the hell's going on!"

Cloud needed a lobotomy to piece the finer details of this story together. 

This isn't helped by the fact the translation is piss-poor overall. While I appreciate the characterization of certain people (Barret, despite being a stereotype, certainly has a unique flavor of dialect, as does Cid), most of it just muddles about for text box after text box. Again, the story is playing fast and loose, getting right of tight, cognitive narrative for a more melodramatic and wordy approach. People often point to this as the radical shift in the Final Fantasy formula, and I'd have to agree. There's less "Fantasy" here, and the lightheartedness of the previous games is completely abandoned. Instead we have moping characters, long bouts of expository and melodramatic dialogue (including a whole flashback after you leave Midgar that's something like a 30-45 minute infodump flashback that later turns out to be an inaccurate memory. Gee, thanks for wasting my time), and a plodding, plodding plot. I'm not saying these games didn't have melodrama before; Final Fantasy IV was full of it, and even Final Fantasy VI had its share, but this was when Square started loving it's melodrama more than it loved creating concise, realistic characters. And again, paired with that translation, the whole thing reads like a bloated mess written by children.

And before I get hatemail, seriously consider this game's story, all its "finer points" and all. You probably are glazing over massive chunks of text you just skip through now to get to the "good parts." Having recently replayed this game, I can tell you it's really wordy, and not in a good way. And somehow, despite all these words, they still don't nail anything down solid until the third disc at least. It's poor writing, people. I'm sorry to ruin your memories.

Pictured: Fifteen year old spoiler. 

While I'm killing sacred cows and burning all my bridges, I'd like to address one thing that's bugged me for years: the reaction people had to Aeris' (or "Aerith," if you are a Japanese purist) death. Whenever anybody makes a list of the most "shocking twists" or "scenes that would make you cry," this always seems to cap out as #1 for some inexplicable reason. People have said hundreds of times before this isn't the first JRPG where a prominent character dies (Final Fantasy VI and IV off 'em like no tomorrow), but since this was a lot of people's first JRPG (and first story-driven gaming experience), I guess it had an impact.

I do not get it.

I played Final Fantasy VII after IX, so maybe I'm jut tainted, but I had literally no reaction when Aeris was killed. This is probably because as a charater she's stupidly bland. The love triangle in this game is something recent young adult novels are doing in spades (just swap the genders around), and anime has been doing forever. Both Tifa and Aeris are massive character archetypes, with Tifa being the "childhood friend" you obviously inevitably go for, and Aeris is the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" with a touch of that "Virgin Innocence" everybody seems to get off on. Both these characters have no depth to their characters, but Aeris is especially annoying. She never takes anything seriously, is constantly flirty but never deliberate enough to know if she actually is taking this relationship seriously, and because of that she comes off as annoying. When she died I was actually glad, because now at last Cloud would finally realize that Tifa was the girl for him (even though her personality was just as wooden, at least she wasn't an naive idiot about it all). 

So yes, it was shocking because it came out of nowhere, but I had no emotional character resonance. If you want a death to be impactful, there has to be some like for a character's personality rather than having her cater to the lowest common denominator (which Aeris does perfectly, being that anime dream girl fitting the Manic Pixie Dream Girl stereotype so popular amongst us lonely nerdy folk). Aeris was playing you, guys. Playing your lonely selves back in 1997. Most of you are now married or at least have experienced a serious relationship, and if you go back and play this game, really paying attention, you'll realize Aeris is nothing more than fluffy pandering. She isn't the type of girl you'd want a serious relationship with. I was being pandered to, and so her death was never impactful for me. 

That was a long tangent. Let's talk about something else. 

So the story isn't fantastic but it works enough to progress the game forward, so what about the game itself? It's your standard JRPG fare at it's core: you wait for your active time meter to fill up, pick an option from a menu, and watch as your character executes it. We are down to three party members at a time now (down from four in FFVI and five in FFIV), meaning it's simpler, but they do throw a few key changes into the mix.

The first is Limit Breaks. Technically Final Fantasy VI had these, but they only happened when you were at critical health and popped out randomly, and since that game wasn't particularly difficult you probably didn't see any of them. In Final Fantasy VII, every time you are hit your "Limit" gauge rises, eventually filling up. When it does Attack is replaced with LIMIT (in rainbow colors!) and you can execute a special power move. The more you use Limits the more you unlock, getting to higher tiers (which means the gauge takes longer to fill but the attacks are much better) until you finally get an ultimate one that just murders everything dead instantly. Awesome.

The Limit Breaks change things up because technically you can save them. While you can't "Attack," you can use magic or any other abilities (and as you can see from the screenshot above, you can have a lot equipped), so if you get one just before a boss you can save it rather than waste it on weaklings. It's a minor tactical change, but a cool one. They also look really awesome when you execute them, so that's a bonus. 

Battles are fast paced like Final Fantasy VI, which is appreciated considering how much the series slowed down in games that followed. 

But the big pull is obviously the Materia system, which is now pretty much famous in its application. Rather than learn magic spells or abilities (or having them inherent to certain characters or classes like all previous Final Fantasy games), Final Fantasy VII says "Screw it, make your own character classes" and gives you all the parts to do so. Want to make a battle-mage? You can. Want all your characters to double as healers (a good tactic, FYI)? You can do that too. 

Essentially every weapon and accessory you equip (and that's all you equip; gone are the long lists of armor, relics, and accessories from Final Fantasy VI) has a set number of "slots." In these you can equip Materia like "Fire" or "Heal" or "Steal," giving your character these abilities. A neat trick is that some Materia slots are linked, meaning if you put a Heal and All together you can cast healing spells on your whole party (rather then just having the option normally with a Cure spell). It's too bad they didn't go nuts with this (and make it so if you mixed "Fire" and "Ice" you could cast a duel spell or something), but like the streamlined item system they were clearly trying to keep it simpler for a wider audience, which is fine. 

AP: It's like XP, but for your magic rocks. 

It's a cool system in one respect, but in others it is lacking. Materia levels up when its equipped, which is how you learn new spells, but it does it very slowly. If you don't realize this is going on and swap out a materia for an "identical" one, you'll be basically starting over with your leveling, which means you should be buying all the materia up at the beginning and then never buying any ever again or else you'll have to start the leveling process over with each new piece. It would have been nice if all materia's XP/Level was shared across all types (ex: if you had a Lv 2 Heal, all Heal materia you bought from then on out would be level 2), but that might have made the game easier than it already is so...whatever. 

The other problem is it removes all character uniqueness. In the other Final Fantasy games (especially IV and VI), each character felt unique and personalized because they had their own unique move (or set of moves in IV's case) that only they could use. This helped build characterization in the battles, because you knew Edgar was the machine guy because he had a move called "Machines" that nobody else did, and Locke was the thief because he had "Steal." In Final Fantasy VII, there is no character uniqueness. You can swap your heavy attacker to a mage with just a few materia swaps. You can give somebody all your Command materia so they have the biggest battle menu in the history of the world (again, that one screenshot). Your options are increased, but at the cost of that subtle characterization. And while there are a few stat differences between characters early on, they are so small there's no reason to just pick whomever you want to do whatever regardless of what the game wants. Characters are no longer unique in battle (except Limit Breaks), which I feel is a weakness of this system.

I think that's an appropriately named Limit Break based on the character. 

The game also has a dodgy difficulty curve, and by that I mean it's really easy until it isn't. The game requires a rather hearty amount of grinding, which it will gladly give you due to its insane random encounter rate. Bosses can be difficult but rarely require any strategy, with the whole "Don't attack when they are in counter mode!" usually being the only level of "depth" to them. It's just mash away until you win, which feels tedious (or turns into you waiting for a Limit Break). I breezed through most of the game, but I'd get weirdly stuck in some places. I wish I could remember them off the top of my head, but just know the difficulty spikes up and down, and during the rest of the time this game is a cakewalk. Again, it's really easy until it isn't. 

Battles are fast, thank goodness, with minimal loading (I really have to give Square props for that. They did well optimizing the load times on their first disc-based release) and nothing too flashy except the stupidly-long summons (another thing Final Fantasy VII "pioneered" for the series). The 3D allows for dramatic camera pans, which is fantastic, and adds a lot to the battle presentation. Again, nothing too awful, but it does fall into the "oh boy, another battle where I mash X" curse of JRPGS. 

Not going to lie: this game looks pretty awful. 

Graphically this game looks pretty damn hideous. Character's proportions are way wonky when you are running around,with massive hands and the weird skinny joints (I'm guessing because it made them easier to animate that way?), and their faces and legs look also wonky (I like Cloud's purple clown pants, though). They animate decently, but the lack of any facial expressions (something that did so very well in Final Fantasy VI) makes them seem stiff and unemotive, especially with the new free camera angle able to zoom in for close shots. Backgrounds are all pre-rendered and looked ok back in the day, but now their insanely low resolution really shows, with pixelation and blurryness the name of the game.

Battle graphics do much better, though they are still very blocky. However, after thirty hours of watching puppet Cloud with his clown pants prancing about the world with his skinny arms and noseless and mouthless face, I'll take those battle graphics anyday. Pity they couldn't put those in the main game. It's hard to take your story seriously when all the melodrama is being delivered by what looks like Chinese bootlegged action figures. 

The cutscenes were a big deal in 1997, and one of the big pushing points of the game. They look ok now, which is a testament to Square's graphic designers, but when they start moving things look bad. The animations are stiff and janky, with only select parts of bodies moving, and again: put in contrast with both the battle graphics and the much worse world sprites, there's a massive disconnect. I think this disconnect really hurts the narrative, but that might just be me. 

Uematsu does well this time around, though not as good as previous iterations. 

The music is reasonably solid throughout, with a few standout tracks (like the one above) using piano and music box to have emotional resonance. The game certainly has a "feel" to it that makes it so you can recognize any song from the game after only having heard a few, which does good in unifying things. The main melody also tends to pop up in other tracks (it does in Anxious Heart above; can you catch it?) which is a clever unifying touch as well. 

It isn't orchestrated, which considering the CD capabilities of the Playstation is a bit of a shame. I also think whatever midi mixer Uematsu used for this game isn't as good as the one on the SNES, but that's personal preference. I liked a lot of the songs in Final Fantasy VII, I just don't like the majority of them. That's contrasted to Final Fantasy IV, where I loved most of the songs, and Final Fantasy VI, where I challenge you to find a single bad one. So it does well and is still a memorable sound, but it isn't the best. 

You knew I'd talk about this. Time to burn more bridges. 

I'd also like to point out that I am so damn sick of One-Winged Angel I want to claw at my ears every time I hear it. Look, I get it. The fact it had vocals totally blew you away. You didn't see that coming because you were used to the SNES's chipset that didn't allow for that kind of thing. I understand. It surprised me too. But come on; the music aside from the vocals isn't particularly enthralling (I like the previous song, Birth of a God much better in terms of a battle song, and even Jenova Absolute is more tension building) and we've used it to death by this point. Dancing Mad blows this thing completely out of the water in terms of sheer epicness anyway. 

I'm not saying it's a bad song. It freaked me out when I was fighting Sephiroth for the last time too. It's just...old. But Sephiroth does have that totally bonkers summon at the end that destroys the solar system, so I guess all my complaints are moot. 

Skip to 3:00 for some insane fun. 

As it stands, Final Fantasy VII is a fine game, it just isn't a particularly great one. Yes, I know it has a legacy and yes, I know it was many people's first JRPG experience and it totally blew your minds. But I was a rather entrenched fan for a while (and I still really enjoy the game), but after re-playing it recently I came to realize that this game is seriously flawed, and these issues are even more noticeable fifteen years later. It will still hold a special place in my heart and I will still recommend fans of JRPGs play it, if only to know their roots, but as for being the "best game ever" (or even the best Final Fantasy game), I'd say it's a long shot away from it. 

Still, it's only $10 on the Playstation Store now, which is a pretty sweet deal. It also doesn't have anything that makes it unplayable or overly frustrating (like most old games tend to do), so it still plays fine from a modern standpoint. Just don't expect an earth-shattering revelation if this is your first time digging in, because it's an old game, and it shows. 

A relic from history, which now earns itself three out of five stars. 

Assassin's Creed

The Short


Pros
- Interesting mix of lots of genres, but particularly parkour, open world, and stealth
- Graphics look great, and locals of the middle east are architecturally gorgeous
- Animations for climbing and fighting look extremely fluid. Very well done.
- Voice acting is good throughout
- Music is good
- Playing as Altiar just feels cool, with the hand blade and the assassinations and all that jazz

Cons
- Excruciatingly repetitive
- Stealth elements are poorly executed and the open world feels stilted
- When you mess up a sneaky assassination, you might as well start over. Almost impossible to get a "redo" by hiding out for a while
- Ways you can hide are contrived and make guards look like morons
- On the flip side, if you knock one beggar over near the end, expect 100 overpowered guards to hunt you until you die
- Swordplay/combat is weak; you'll essentially just counter everything to death
- Graphics for faces/animations for faces are awful
- Again, repetition with the mundane tasks kills this game

It's time to be a badass. 

The Long

Assassin's Creed and I have a jaded relationship. It's more one-sided, actually. I really, really want to love it. It's made by the crew that did Prince of Persia, after all, and it looks fantastic and the idea of playing in a middle-ages middle east during the Crusades (an untapped era of time for games) is just awesome. But for everything I give, Assassin's Creed won't give back. It lead to me playing the first sequence and then putting the game down for nine months (pissing off my friend I was borrowing it from) until finally giving in and finishing it. Unfortunately, beating the game didn't make me feel any better about it; if anything it made it worse.

Assassin's Creed is a game that has lots of great ideas but ruins them with some of the worst design choices I've ever seen. Remember my Saints Row: The Third review, where I said that game does everything in its power to streamline its elements so that the game is just a pure, fun experience? Take that, do the opposite, and you have Assassin's Creed. 

One of the many engrossing side missions: sitting and pointing the camera at someone as they talk. 

Assassin's Creed threw everybody off because it wasn't what it initially sells itself as. You actually aren't Altiar, you are his whatever generation later grandson Desmond. Desmond has been captured by some future super-scientist group and forced to sit in a big tanning bed called the Animus which lets him relive his memories because they are like coded into his DNA or something...I dunno, it's total bullcrap but I'm willing to believe it for a few neck-stabs. 

So you are Altiar, an assassin during the crusades, and those douchbag Knights Templar are getting all up in your business. After a lengthy opening sequence you are sent off to a city to find dudes and then kill said dudes, and the story gets...weird at the end with like the Apple of Eden being a mind controlling device or something? I dunno, everything that isn't stabbing dudes in the neck or related to the immediate story is kind of contrived and extremely underdeveloped, so you'd be best to just ignore it. Because it gets super pretentious in Assassin's Creed 2, so save it for that! 

Climbing is really fun and the graphics on the buildings looks fantastic

Assassin's Creed wants to be a lot of things. It wants to be a parkour game like Prince of Persia. It wants to be a stealth assassination game like Thief or a weird variation of Metal Gear Solid. It wants to be a sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto, and it wants to be a swordfighting game like...a game with swords in it. It also wants to have side missions where you spy on people or bribe people or pickpocket people (I enjoyed pickpocketing for whatever weird reason) and have you climb up really high things and then swan dive off into hay and come out undamaged.

All these things are good things, and set to a middle eastern backdrop this game has potential to be just awesome. Unfortunately, it doesn't do any of these things well, and that's only the start of Assassin's Creed's problems.

They can't find me now!

The core element of Assassin's Creed is simple: kill dudes. Specifically, kill one particular dude who is a massive jerk and you need to put down for...plot reasons. So you are briefed back at Assassin HQ (which is what it should have been called), then grab a horse and ride the long distance to whatever city you need to be to. See, that's the open world part. Different cities and stuff. 

Once you get to the city you are given another open world...thingy. You have to climb to the top of tall towers to reveal the map, which is actually a pretty cool mechanic because the climbing is really fun. It can be a pain to figure out what you can and can't climb up, but unlike Crackdown where you'll mash A to try and find out of one window ledge is a handhold while another is not, Altiar just figures it out himself and shimmies up just about everything. It's fast and looks awesome, and it a natural extension of the Prince of Persia formula, though it simplifies things a bit. 

I can see my house from up here!

Now that you have your map updated, your new job is to research your target before killing him. Researching is required, and this is where the game starts to show it's running out of ideas already. The activities you have are limited and not particularly enthralling. You can pickpocket, sit down and listen, interrogate a guy by beating him up, and a few others. Once you've gotten your information you can go assassinate your guy (which is the best part in the game), flee from the guards after killing him, and call it good.

Repeat this, over and over, seven times. There's Assassin's Creed. 

You did so much right, Assassin's Creed. Why do you fail on the fundamentals?

There's a few other bits, like setting up strongholds or safehouses in cities (which is just doing more side missions that I mentioned above) and earning new weapon upgrades, but as a whole this is the game. It ups the number of crappy side jobs (from the incredibly small pool) you have to do for each assassination, and the guards become more and more aggressive further along. No joke: I was stuck on the second to last assassination for an extremely long time because so much as breathing loudly sent twenty guards in my direction. It was frustrating and annoying and was just straight up not fun.

This might have been remedied if the combat was better, but unfortunately it falls flat here as well. 

Good thing the chase music is good, because you're gonna hear it a lot. 

Swordfighting isn't fun. There's just no rhyme or reason to it until you learn the counter move, then you murder everything with one quick tap. Stealth kills are great (sneak up on person and press a single button and you'll kill them silently) but you don't really feel as an agile, empowered warrior like you did in the later Prince of Persia games. It's like he forgets all his agility when he fights, which is too bad because you should be able to do some totally crazy stuff with his acrobatics. 

You'll do a lot of swordfighting on your way to doing another pointless side task you've done a dozen time. The initial rush of a kill, thrill of a climb, and gasp at the beauty of the cities is quickly whisked away to repetition, frustration, and boredom. I didn't think a game about being a badass assassin would get boring, but congrats Ubisoft: you pulled it off. The last several hours of this game were some of the worst I've ever played, and the only reason I finished it was because I felt it was a waste of my time investment if I didn't seal the deal. I was also hoping the ending would make the game worth it. It didn't. 

It's too bad the game is tedious, because the climbing is just so cool. 

I could try and blame it on aging, but it isn't that. Despite being an old game, Assassin's Creed LOOKS really good and the climbing has been basically unchanged through its multiple sequels. It's that its fundamental core is boring and poorly designed. And no matter how good a game looks, if it is a massive, tedious bore to play it's a bad game. Sorry, Assassin's Creed. It isn't me, it's you.

Plus the horses are pretty much useless since they attract guards like ants to a picnic. 

If you really are intent about this game, I will say that the first several assassinations are really fun. The game is still somewhat fresh, the ideas not grinded down yet, and you feel like a totally cool assassin guy. But after that the tedium sets in really fast, to the point where you'll be like me and not want to endure it any more, even to finish the game. 

The sequels did it a bit better (though I don't think the series hit its stride until Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood), but as it stands this game is pretty much a failed experiment. If you are looking to get into this series, you can start up the second game without missing much in terms of plot. Hey, that's what wikipedia is for anyway.

Two out of five stars. 

No matter how many dudes you let me stab, Altiar, your game will still suck. 

Heavy Rain

The Short


Pros
- Offers a unique and new attempt to evolve the adventure game genre
- Claims to be a game focusing on its story, which in theory I'm all for
- Quick time event based scenes, while sounding bad on paper, actually work pretty well
- Decisions/mistakes you make a permanent, and shape the story accordingly
- Several of the setpieces are thrilling and look great

Cons
- Story is unbelievably awful, filled with plot holes, bad writing, inconsistent characters, and just shoddy work overall
- Blatantly misogynistic
- Final "twist" makes no sense, betrays the player, and is poorly foreshadowed and executed
- The motion captured actors are stiff and unnatural, and hit the uncanny valley head on in levels of horrifying
- Voice acting is atrocious across both main and side characters
- Characters walk like tanks, ramming into poles and looking like idiots because you can't control them properly
- Creator David Cage is probably the single most pretentious douchebag in the industry
- Somehow convinced people this was moving interactive storytelling ahead, which makes me think this medium will never actually get any better

Get ready for some "interactive drama."

The Long

I can get behind what Heavy Rain says it wants to do. Quantic Dream has always been one to try new things, first with Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) and now Heavy Rain. It was one of the first games shown for the PS3, back when they made full CG trailers and said they were actually in-engine. Touted as "interactive storytelling," Heavy Rain promised a deep and complex crime drama that would tug at our heartstrings and prove, once and for all, that games can have good stories, dammit! This was further brought to the point when its pretentious creator, David Cage, went on and on about how it was the best and most important game ever made before the game even came out. Man, I can't wait! This is gonna change the whole world! I'll finally get an engaging, well-written story out of a video game (never mind the fact I got that from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time several years before)! It's like...everything I ever hoped for!

Then it came out. And I played it. 

Pictured: Interactive drama, or just David Cage getting off on his own characters. 

Heavy Rain is one of the worst written stories I've encountered across any medium, not just video games. It's poorly paced, filled with enough plot holes to make it swiss cheese, has unrealistic and inconsistent characters, introduces questions and doesn't answer them, is packed with more red herrings than a breeding pool filled with the things, and has probably the worst written twist ever. Seriously, it makes M. Night Shyamalan look like a literary genius. I couldn't believe my eyes (or my ears...those voice actors, urgh) as I barreled through this trainwreck, shaking my head and actually getting upset. "This is what people think will push the industry forward?" I raged at my television, disgusted and horrified. "This is what people are giving perfect scores to, saying it's the best story in video games? Are you kidding me?"

Needless to say, I was not pleased.

But since deconstructing this horrendous mess of a story will both be long, arduous, and filled with spoilers, let me focus first on the gameplay. Because in that regard, there's actually a lot here that is clever and original. 

Hold R1, L1, R2, L2, and mash X to not die. It's harder than it looks!

The game is sort of a simplified adventure game that focuses heavily on onscreen button prompts. Like the quick time events in Ninja Blade, except somehow there are more of them. When looking at previews of this game, I was convinced this was going to be the worst aspect of the game, so imagine my surprise when they actually worked (most of the time). Holding lots of buttons down while having to mash another to get through a tight situation is stressful, and combined with crazy stuff going down on screen (and the controller vibrating to attempt to thwart you) is legitimately difficult. There are also several scenes where I had to do things I didn't want to because plot demanded it, and the horrifying and morbid actions that I was forcing on screen made it hard to go through with it. Yes, the whole game is essentially walking places and doing a bunch of quick time events (items rarely play into this "adventure game," it's mostly just knowing what to say to particular people), but it works well to combine a "game" aspect when the highlight is clearly the story.

I'd love to see this system implemented well in another, better told story. Telltale tried it with Jurassic Park and pretty much failed hard, but I could see this working great for other movie or TV licences where the source material is very story-centric. Or if somebody would just actually write a good story in the games industry (not holding my breath here), they could use this system to help actually push the medium forward. There's a thought! 

So it's a good idea. Too bad the story it relies so heavily upon is complete and utter garbage. 

Pictured: Interactive Orange-Juice Drinking Drama

NOTE: MASSIVE SPOILERS INCOMING, BUT THE GAME IS SO AWFUL YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T CARE.

So the story of Heavy Rain is one of mystery. The Origami killer (or "Ora-gaa-me" or "O-ree-gar-me," depending on which horrible voice actor is trying to pronounce it) is out killin' kids, usually drowning them somehow and leaving a little Origami Crane on their bodies. The horror! 

You play four different characters, each with a part and perspective in this INTERACTIVE DRAMA. You have Ethan Mars, the "protagonist" I guess whose kid is taken and he has to get him back. You have Madison Paige, the only female and a reporter covering the story or...something. I never really figured out why she got so involved. Norman Jayden, a cop with magic future sunglasses that is trying to find the killer, and lastly Scott Shelby, a big fat PI hired but somebody we don't ever know or see to try and find out about this killer. So you have a diverse cast of characters, all of which are shallow, unbelievable, badly voiced and inconstant. But hey, let's run down 'em really quick. There are so many plot holes I can't possibly hope to cover all of them here, but I'll just hit my "favorites."

Pictured: Interactive beard growing interrogation drama

So Ethan is the father of Jason, whom Ethan can't keep an eye on at all even though his kid is right next to him 90% of the time. Jason runs off because he's a complete idiot (keep in mind this is the second time. You think he'd have bought a leash) and runs out in front of a car and dies, even though in the scene we clearly see Ethan grabbing Jason and turning him away from the car, while Ethan somehow comes out unscathed. Ok?

Since every woman in this game is either a whore or a total bitch, Ethan's wife divorces him for being the Worst Father Ever 2010 and he has to live in a crappy shack with his less-loved son, Shawn. That is, until Shawn is kidnapped because Ethan looks away from his child again on a playground long enough for the Oh-rah-gaaa-mee killer to grab him. Maybe Ethan is actually mentally handicapped? For being so bent out of shape because he let Jason die, he sure didn't seem to learn anything.

Anyway, Ethan starts randomly waking up from random blackouts with an origami crane in his hand, DUN DUN DUN! Except, wait, this is never explained. At all. David Cage even admitted it's never explained, saying something idiotic like "that's how Hitchcock did it." No, that isn't how he did it you pretentious prick, you are just an awful writer. 

So Ethan gets contacted by the killer saying he has to do all these dangerous, life-threatening things to prove he loves his son. Which honestly makes sense: Ethan is the Worst Father Ever 2010, so I'm all for this killer making him actually try to not suck. This involves making him do stuff that would fit better in a Saw movie, like crawling through broken glass and an electric power plant, or cutting a finger off with a hacksaw (which is disgusting). Added bonus that he has to shoot a drug dealer who lives in a normal house and apparently has gone clean, and the police never bother trying to hunt him down for this crime and Ethan has no emotional response (other than having sex with Madison two seconds after, but we'll get to that later).

Ethan is bland, flat, has tons of plot holes in his story, is a horrible father, is an idiot, and is pretty much an unlikable protagonist. The only character sympathy we get is because we want his creepy uncanny-valley son to survive, but as it stands I hate Ethan and his arc is both tasteless and stupid. Next. 

Pictured: Interactive drama via cop abuse. 

Let's do Jayden, the FBI or cop or whatever he is next. Jayden is a moron. He's addicting to some sort of drug, and despite having magic, unrealistic cop glasses that do nothing but make the boring "CSI" elements of the game more user friendly, he's also a total moron. There's a lot I could go off of here (like the fact he seems to kill everybody he runs into), but let's do what I think is the worst scene in the game, the one pictured above.

So you have a douchebag partner who would have been kicked out and arrested after two seconds in the real force (this game makes all cops look like pigs and idiots. Way to be realistic and also totally not offensive, Heavy Rain!), and you suspect this one guy might be the Origami Killer. So you go to his apartment and he isn't home. Now, legally you can't go inside, though you could wait. Nope, you kick down the door, without a warrant or anything and proceed to ransack his entire apartment. Don't worry, it gets better.

So this guy really likes Jesus, which is fine, whatever, but that makes Jayden and his partner decide he's a loony freak and must be the killer despite having no evidence that this guy isn't anything other than a religious nut. Anyway, the best part is he comes back when you are in there and is like "What the hell, guys?" He is completely non-confrontational with regard to being violent (he just sort of freaks out because, I dunno, the cops busted into his house without a warrent?), which makes it all the more shocking when Jayden and his partner pull a gun on him. Keep in mind they just dug through his house and found no evidence that he is the Origami Killer, after breaking in without a warrant and not even probable cause. 

Then they shoot him. Dead. In his own house that they broke into. And there are no problems with this. Nobody gets in trouble. You continue with the case, business as usual.

I'd focus more on other things, but this scene was so completely stupid and absurd (not to mention painted cops in an horrible, unfair light) I can't remember anything else about his arc. I think this isn't the only time this happens, either (he kills a lot of people for stupid reasons), but this one particularly stood out as bad writing. 

Oh, his voice actor is awful too, so tally this one up.

Pictured: Interactive drama of the only main female character fighting rapists in her underwear in her first scene of the game

Then we have Madison. Madison, on dear. This might go long. 

Madison is the only girl in the game, and remember how Heavy Rain really pushed itself as "adult storytelling?" Well, they weren't lying: the first scene with our only female character has her stripping completely naked for a full-frontal nudity shower scene. This is after having a shower scene with Ethan where we saw little more than his butt, but for Madison the camera pans around her bare boobs and has her "shake down" with the towel in the most voyeuristic thing I've ever seen. "Adult drama," huh? But we still can't get over the "woman as objects" thing?

Well, since he likes to hang out in her apartment in just a tank-top and panties, of course rapists show up, and she fights them. So let's recap. The only girl character has been naked, poses over the window in her underwear, and now is about to get raped. Real positive statements, here. "Adult." 

She wins, obviously, and then shouts "That's what I call kicking butt! You go, girl!" to prove David Cage was not using this as some sort of low-rent porno for himself and clearly Madison is a liberated woman. By shouting awful, horrid dialogue. Great. 

Madison does next to nothing for the rest of the game, except always running into Ethan randomly after he gets messed up by doing his little Saw traps. Oh, and she has sex with him after he kills a man after only knowing him for maybe ten minutes of screentime. Yeah, progressive views of women, here. And yes, you see her boobs again, and get to virtually unhook her bra! I can see all the nerds getting hot and heavy over this, spouting out "Game of the Year!" while they huff their asthma medication.

That was an unfair portrayal of nerds, I apologize. But I think I got my point across. 

Madison also finds out the identity of the killer before anybody else (though it doesn't tell you, the player, until later) and as her eyes open wide in shock we realize she actually has never met this person, even though we (the player) has, which is just straight up bad writing. And this isn't the first time she's reacted as how Heavy Rain imagines the player would, when she's never met the person mentioned. Way to not understand how viewpoint, the most fundamental aspect of writing multiple characters, works. 

Oh, she also "Sexies herself up" when trying to get into a druglord's room by unzipping to expose her cleavage, tearing her skirt, and putting on makeup. There's a great preview of a french designer (I think David Cage) playing this section, and you can hear his mouthbreathing as he "unzips her" and is drooling over it. It's horrifying, though it perfectly expresses how much care was put into creating this balanced, realistic portrayal of a modern woman. 

I'd also like to point out that there are only three prominent women in this game: a whore that Shelby works with, Ethan's cold bitch wife, and Madison who stripping or sexing is her answer to every situation (with help from the sweaty-palmed player, of course). "Adult" drama my ass, this was written by a horny 13-year-old. 

Added bonus she really doesn't add much to the narrative. I killed her in a burning house and the ending didn't change much. She serves literally no point except maybe as an info dump from time to time. Oh, and stripping for a kinky druglord. And sexing Ethan. And taking showers. Gah, I'm starting to get angry now, time to move on. 

Pictured: Interactive fatass. 

WARNING: I WASN'T KIDDING ABOUT SPOILERS. I RUIN THE END OF HEAVY RAIN IN THIS SECTION.

So then we have Shelby, the PI. Now would be a good time for me to remind you we are in the character's heads when we are controlling them, hearing their thoughts and seeing them float around their heads when you make decisions. That's actually kind of clever, to be honest. Then they ruin it with Shelby.

So Shelby is trying to find the killer, hired by an unknown source. He's softspoken, kind, and generally a good guy. You know he's good because when he breaks into a person's house (which he does), rather than shoot them for no reason he takes care of their baby for them! That's not creepy at all! Yes, this actually happens in the game, and I'm not exaggerating; if anything I'm understating it!

But then you have the worst twist in any story ever: Shelby is the killer. 

Yes. The guy who has been searching for the killer, whose thoughts you've been hearing, and who has risked death multiple times in an attempt to find information about the killer, is actually the killer. Because you didn't see that coming! Holy cow, Heavy Rain, you blew my mind! I haven't read a book in my life and don't understand how foreshadowing is supposed to work, so I love your twist. Best game ever! Interactive drama! Adult story! Madison's boobs! Game of the Year!

I shouldn't have to point out this massive viewpoint error, but I will because apparently no professional game reviewers (including the ones I respect, like Brad from GiantBomb) know anything about how this works. When you are in a character's viewpoint, you are in their head, and they have to talk and think like the character would. If they think in contrivances that aren't realistic, that's bad veiwpoint. If they say or think something they wouldn't for the sake of the story, that's breaking viewpoint. And if they go for hours as a serial killer, spending time around people who are also looking for the serial killer, and never once think "gee, I wonder how my traps for Ethan are going?" your viewpoint is wrong. 

As a bonus, Shelby actually thinks the words "The killer must have..." when he is the killer. This is in his head, not spoken aloud. Why is he thinking of himself in the third person? Because Heavy Rain makes Twilight look like a literary masterpiece is why. I isn't a Red Herring if it's just wrong. This is not how writing works, David Cage. You freaking suck at writing.

I actually thought Shelby was ok (minus his random housebreaking and the fact he seems immune to death even though I tried everything to kill him) until that twist, probably the only character that was at least a little realistic. But yeah, this "twist" makes no sense. How did he set up all those traps when he was clearly "searching for the killer?" He's a big guy; how did he fit in the tight spaces to put glass where Ethan crawls? How did he pull any of this off? Not to mention there's a part where a guy is shot off camera by "the killer" but you are in Shelby's viewpoint; the camera just pans away for a second and you lose control. Then Shelby is like, totally shocked and doesn't know who killed this guy, when Shelby killed him and you are in his head right then and were in it before urrrrrr this story is an abomination. 

Pictured: Uncanny Valley Drama

I don't want to talk about this game anymore so I'll be brief. The graphics do look decent, but the animations are really stiff and janky (unlike games like Uncharted, which look good) and the uncanny valley creepyness factor is so incredibly high here it's almost unplayable. Getting close in freaks me out because people don't move the way people should, especially their mouths. It's all sorts of horrifying, and goes to show that just because you can do something graphically doesn't mean you should. 

Voice acting is horrible throughout, and when paired with this awful script and story just turns this into a mess. I'd be more lenient (since it is a video game, and they usually don't' have great stories), but this game's whole push was its pretentious story garbage. Which it fails utterly on. Completely fails.

Pictured: You know what? I'm done. I hate this game. 

I like the gameplay concepts here, and again I'm all for video games trying new things with their stories. But when people lift up Heavy Rain next to other mediums and are like "Look! We have great writing as well! We aren't just blood and boobs and violence!" I cringe and hang my head. Heavy Rain is a step back for us, if anything, a convoluted, poorly written mess of a game that shouldn't be held up proudly for anything it does. If anything, it shows how gullible video gamers are, as we'll buy into anything if we market it heavily enough and keep telling people it's supposed to be something great. Trust me: if this hadn't been pushed as the big PS3 exclusive and the "new step forward in interactive storytelling," we'd have given it bad scores and forgotten it existed. As it stands, people bought the hype, and now we have this to look forward to as the "gold standard."

Don't encourage this sort of behavior. Maybe someday someone will make a good game with the ideas presented here, but I doubt it. David Cage gets to keep making his pretentious garbage, games keep having awful stories, and we once again squander the resources our unique medium gives us.

Sigh.

One out of five stars. 

Soulless-eyes Ethan does not approve of this review. 

Week in Review for 3/11/2012 - Overrated Games Week

We celebrated this week by reviewing a batch of my favorite games, and got through a decent amount of them with some atrociously long-winded reviews. I also caught up on my two longest-standing requests, so hooray for that.

10 reviews this week, with us crossing 100 to hit 102 total! Nice! For a month and a half of doing this, that ain't that bad. I hope you all have enjoyed reading my reviews as much as I've enjoyed writing them.

We are killing sacred cows this upcoming week, with the theme being Overrated Games week. Keep in mind: just because I say these games are overrated doesn't mean I hate them. It's just games I feel get way too much appreciation when they really are just average or above-average games. From the header picture you can probably guess who will be the star this week, but don't worry...I'm going to rip up some more favorites than you even know. I'm actually pretty excited about one of them.

Again, this is my blog, so keep in mind all my views are subjective. You've probably figured out my taste in games by this point (especially based on this last week being a lot of my favorite games, though I didn't get to the Portal games or Enslaved or Katamari Damacy or Resident Evil 4) so if you have a problem with a review please think it over before bashing me via email or in the comments. I'm more than willing to discuss views on games in a rational manner: I get that some games just don't click with me like they do with others. But we can at least be civil. No more hate mail, guys.

Now that I'm done complaining, let's give a rundown of this week's massive review-a-thon.

Nier - 5 / 5 Stars
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - 5 / 5 Stars
Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars - 5 / 5 Stars
Braid - 5 / 5 Stars
The Incredible Machine 2 - 5 / 5 Stars
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos - 4 / 5 Stars
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne - 5 / 5 Stars
Final Fantasy VI - 5 / 5 Stars (Review #100!)
Super Mario Bros 2 - 5 / 5 Stars
Saints Row: The Third - 5 / 5 Stars

See all you cats this week!

Saints Row: The Third

The Short


Pros
- Zany, stupid story that never takes itself seriously
- Massive open world to screw around in, with "screw around" being the key word
- Dozens of side missions and things to do, all of which are original and really fun
- Buying shops and earning income means you are never completely without money
- Leveling system ("Respect") tiers unlocks until you are an invincible gunslinger
- Vast amounts of character and vehicle customization
- Everything in this game is streamlined and done correctly, cutting out the mundane and only leaving the enjoyable
- Great licensed tracks
- Voice acting is excellent throughout, especially the main female voice
- One of the silliest, most "pure" sandbox games I've ever played


Cons
- Due to your stupid companion AI, some of the side missions are incredibly obnoxious
- Its attempt at crass humor works well most of the time, but it does fall into "tasteless" territory frequently
- Cussing is a bit much; they like their f-bombs
- Absurd amount of collectables mean you'll never 100% it. You'll be finished with the game at around 30 hours.
- City is big but seems underpopulated, with people and cars being sparse in several areas
- One of the endings is great, the other is depressing and doesn't fit with the theme of the game
- Needs more tracks on the radio; you get tired of them quick
- No one man should have all that power

Welcome to Steelport. And yes, you do drive a tiger around in a side mission. 

The Long

Saints Row: The Third is totally bananas. There's just no other way of describing it. It's a game where one of the first things you unlock is an arial guided missile. Like, as a weapon you can just use anytime. That's one of the first things you get after the handgun. It's a game where the second mission involves jumping from a jumbo jet without a chute, then after you get the chute you abandon it as another jumbo jet tries to ram you, and you kick through the front window, momentum carrying you through the whole jet while you blow it up from the inside and then fly out the other side, just in time to catch your dropped chute and float to safety. It's a game where you hijack a military plane, and when things go bad you drive a tank out of the cargo bay, free-falling in a tank while shooting down other planes and people mid-air. 

Not to mention driving tigers around, getting a hoverbike with mounted machine gun, base-jumping from hundreds of feet in the air, and ramming planes with your plane. Yeah, this game is nuts.

Hoverbikes are always useful. 

I think now would be a good time to say I usually don't enjoy modern, city-based sandbox games. I never really was partial to the Grand Theft Auto series (I found it boring), and the only modern, city-sandbox game I really liked was Prototype, and that was because it took all the traversal stuff and streamlined it. Even Crackdown, where I was supposed to be a super cop, was bogged down by some game interface choices and the awful climbing.

But I LOVE Saints Row: The Third. It's an insane blast from start to finish, and I really think just about everybody should at least check it out. Seriously. It's nuts.

Wanna run around buck-naked and shoot mascots? You can do that too. 

The story is just as idiotic. After Saints Row 2 (which I have not played; this is my first entry into the Saints Row games), the Saints Row Saints (imaginative name, guys) are so amazingly popular and famous they've basically sold out. Oh yeah, they still rob banks, but as they do the tellers ask for their autographs before opening up the vault. You know things are goofy if you rob a bank wearing giant masks that look like the head of the Saints Row Leader, who is with you during the mission and wearing a giant head that is a picture of his own head. Yeah, what? So weird.

Anyway, it seems since you are now corporate whores who sold out, a bunch of other gangs are getting in on your space. So what do you do? You burn 'em out. The three gangs are all goofy: The Morning Stars, which appear to be basically just...I dunno, whores? Something like that. The Luchadores, who are exactly what you think (including masks), and the Deckers, a nerd/rave/video game themed gang that seems to love anime and ninjas and just generally being massive geeks. They are all trying to get in on the Saints' space, so your job is to get them out! Then when the military gets involved things only escalate further until the whole thing becomes a stupid cluster-freak of idiocy.

Yeah. You get tanks, too. 

But who cares about the main story? This is a sandbox game, so most of your time will be spent messing around. And this is where Saints Row: The Third really shines: this game wants you to have fun being stupid. It isn't like Grand Theft Auto, where it's trying to be super serious all the time, and it isn't like Crackdown where it pretends you have freedom but is really super restraining. Saints Row: The Third is perfectly tailored to you, as a player, and the game plays as such. Need a car? If you ever take one to a garage you own you can unlock it by visiting any other garage in the game, free of charge, and it will even save all your upgrades. Or you could just call somebody on your phone and they'll drop it off in a second. Need a hoverjet? They'll drop that off too, just a call. Need to hijack a car? Your character will jump through a windshield and be behind the wheel in under a second.

Everything that I hated about open world modern sandboxes: clunky pacing, attempts at realism that hinder freedom, all of that...it's gone, streamlined away. Guns have tons of ammo and have excellent aim (and no cover system) and can be upgraded to absurd levels. Money is easy to get: like Fable 2 you can buy properties and then after every ~15-30 minutes of gameplay you'll receive a hefty deposit to spend on what you want. It's so perfectly made you can't ever get frustrated at the systems at play, as they offer no restrictions. It's a true "sandbox."

The character creator is accessible at any time, allowing you to switch everything at any time, including gender. 

The customization is pretty nuts too. Clothing and plastic surgery stores are all over Steelport (which actually results in a pretty hilarious joke about it as part of the story missions), which let you change anything at any time. Changing your physical appearance is cheap, and clothes can be customized and bought and then accessed at any time from any store via your wardrobe. You can save outfits to be swapped out later as well. Basically, you can do almost anything, within reason. It isn't as nuts as, say, Soul Calibur's character creator, but it gets pretty close. 

But all this doesn't matter if the core game underneath isn't fun to play. And, luckily, Saints Row: The Third does that right, too.

Don't forget to pose for the fans. 

Aside from buying shops, driving around, and just acting like an idiot, Saints Row: The Third has tons of side "challenges" to do while you are just messing around. Things like driving into oncoming traffic, doing wheelies, power sliding, throwing people great distances, falling from really far, base jumping, car hijacking, getting your photo taken by fans, finding collectables, surfing on the top of cars, blowing up stuff, and more all add to a persistant challenge system, and all progress earns you "Respect." Respect is basically just experience, and when you rank up you unlock more abilities you can buy. The abilities rangs from summoning people to assist you, to taking less damage, to doing more damage, and so on. When you hit max level and buy the final upgrades you are invincible to everything (including fall and bullet damage), have unlimited ammo on all weapons, never have to reload, and have a bunch of jets and cars and other weird stuff. It kind of takes the challenge out at that point, but whatever; it's funny and kind of stupid.

Point being, everything you do earns both cash and respect, so expect to be rewarded for doing crazy, stupid stuff (there's even a challenge for "windshield launcher," where it saves the total distance you've ever gone after crashing a car and flying through the windshield). Brilliant.

There's just so much stuff to do. 

When you aren't just dicking around, there's loads of actual side stuff to do. This ranges from getting in a tank and trying to do as much property damage as possible (with dollar signs popping up everytime you blow stuff up) to driving around with a tiger where you have to drive fast to keep it sated but not hit anything or else it'll get pissed and attack you. There's helicopter escorts, races with an "explosive" twist, and my personal favorite: insurance fraud. For that one you run into oncoming traffic and ragdoll, trying to get hit by as many cars as possible to rake in the insurance money. It's delightfully stupid, and there are dozens of these missions ranging in difficulties (oh yes, and the awful Japanese Game Show parody which is just so stupid I can't help but laugh at it) so you'll never get bored between missions.

Everything controls great. Guns are snappy and aim well, and while some of the controls are unconventional you'll get used to them quickly. It's easy to switch between weapons and to get out what you want, hijacking cars is a cinch, and basically everything flows together really well. I honestly can't think of a game that beats this one out in the pure "fun" factor, with it all coming together into an incredible package that is stupidly entertaining. With "stupid" being a key word there. 

Wanna dress like a hooker and just blow stuff up? You can do that too. And earn Respect doing it. 

Graphically, Saints Row: The Third look great. It isn't gorgeous or anything, but the bright visuals and massive city you are put into all looks excellent. There is some bad popin when you are flying, with buildings in the distance sort of "appearing" as you draw close, and large portions of the city look kind of...boring. And underpopulated. There's an ok amount of cars, but a surprising lack of pedestrians. Then again, considering the frequency at which they are run over, I'd stay indoors too. Explosions look fantastic and, as a whole, it isn't going to graphically turn heads but it works. 

Sound design is fantastic, especially the voice acting. I recommend playing through as a girl and using the first female voice, if only because it's the same voice actor as Kaine from Nier (who was also Rise in Persona 4, oddly enough) and she is really good. The script fits its stupid/funny theme throughout, never getting too dumb or crass (except maybe one or two instances) while the voice actors know full well they aren't meant to take this seriously. It works at pulling off that 12-year-old humor, much like Shadows of the Damned and unlike Duke Nukem Forever, while still being compelling. Excellent work. My only complaint would be the gratuitous use of the f-bomb. Again, I'm fine with swearing in my games when it serves a purpose (either for humor or drama, don't care), but Saints Row: The Third throws it around so much it loses all its meaning. They do use the cursing right from time to time, but if your ears aren't prone to such vulgarities you might want to turn the volume down or something. 

There are also loads of Tron references for the Deckers gang. Including what might be the best mission ever. 

As it stands, Saints Row: The Third is a video game, and it knows it. It doesn't pretend to have a vast narrative or provide some sort of life-altering experience. It gives you a bunch of playthings, a big city to play with them, and says "Go nuts!" while being certain the systems in place don't hinder your fun. It's a superbly made game, one that shows that you can empower a player well while still making an exciting and challenging game behind it. It lasts a long time, too; I beat every side-mission, bought every shop, and completed the main story and all the assassination missions in under 30 hours. After that I had the carjackings and challenges left (and the collectables, ugh), but that stuff was tedious work and I didn't want to taint my overall experience, so I called it done. I'm not sad at all; those were some wild 30 hours. 

If you think your modern-day open world games are getting too serious or pretentious, you should absolutely check out this game. If you loved Crackdown, this game will be a godsend in comparison. If you thought Grand Theft Auto is getting a little too big for its britches, try out Saints Row: The Third. Seriously, if you are a video gamer you should at least rent this game. It's just...so pure. Such a pure, excellent game. So, to quote the GiantBomb team's oft repeated statement: "You really should go and play Saints Row: The Third."

Five out of five stars. Really. Go check it out. Funnest game I've played in recent memory, no joke.

Plus, that garage/crib song is just kickin'. 

Super Mario Bros 2

The Short

Pros
- Lots of levels with new abilities that changed up the Mario formula
- Play as four distinctly different characters, including Peach!
- Graphics dramatically better than original Super Mario Bros
- Great music
- Better difficulty balance than the first Super Mario Bros
- Can run left

Cons
- Ripoff of Doki Doki Panic
- People hate it for some unexplained reason
- No save system for such a long game

Watch some Mario 2 IN ACTION!

MARIO MADNESS

The Long

Ok, look. I know Super Mario Bros 2 is an American reskin of Doki Doki Panic, ok? I know the "real" Super Mario Bros 2 was the now "Lost Levels" collection you get on the Super Mario Allstars pack. I know this wasn't originally a Mario game, ok? I'll even post a Doki Doki Panic screenshot to prove it.

There you go. Happy?

The point is this doesn't matter. Super Mario Bros 2 might have been some other game before, but it's a legit Mario game now. But before I go off on that pre-determined rant, let's actually review the game in brief. 

Super Mario Bros 2 (or Mario 2, for the sake of my poor typing hand) is a unique game in that it takes all the elements first introduced in Super Mario Bros and completely switches them up. While at its core it is still a platformer about jumping and shooting, that and the Mario characters are the only real similarities between it and Mario 1. Rather than jumping on enemies to kill them, now you pull veggies from the ground to lob in their general direction. There are no blocks to hit with your head; stars are picked up to gather cherries, and coins are used for a slot machine at the end to get more lives. There are doors into a different dimension (essentially the first instance of a "Dark World" in a Mario game) where you can pick up mushrooms, but rather than make you big (which they do), you start big and these give you more lives. 

The levels are essentially linear but with much more freedom, aka you can go back finally. While many have a straight route through, others are a little more challenging. You have to find the right passageways, use the right keys, avoid that awful head...eye...face...mask thing, and it just added a lot more freedom and exploration that wasn't common for these types of games. The "uprooting veggies" mechanic also moved to digging, making some really interesting sand levels, and the bosses weren't incredible but certainly a step up from "jump over Bowser" from the first game. 

DIG YOU FOOL DIG

The game also added a bunch of characters, including the first time you played as a (now named, also for the first time) Princess Peach. Each of the characters played completely differently. Mario was your standard, all around kind of guy: he ran quick, jumped high, and picked up stuff decently. Luigi was the random one, with the wonkiest leg-wiggling jump ever that made him the best jumper but also the most difficult to control. Toad picked stuff up lightning fast and hauled, but was a mediocre jumper. And Peach (aka the one everybody played) could float for some reason, but was awful at everything else.

You could swap characters between levels and after deaths, so if you think your chosen character (Peach) was inadequate, you could try somebody else. I have fond memories playing this at a friend's, where I'd always pick Peach and he'd swear by the insane Luigi. The crazy part was he had mastered the green guy, pulling off some insane stuff with that zany air jump of his. Good times.

As it stands, Mario 2 is an excellent sequel. It doesn't take a whole lot from the original, but to be honest the original was just sort of...there. It's big deal was the fact it was a platformer that felt good to play, without it being clunky or unfair. Mario 2's jumping is excellent (and actually adds variety with multiple characters) and the rest of the game is unique and really, really fun. It's one of my favorite Mario games.

And then people had to go out and hate on it. 

Note: If you like Mario 2, you can skip this rant. Or read it and feel smug. 

Mario 2 gets a lot of flack for not being a "real" Mario game, because it was a skin for us stupid Americans back in the 80s. We got this game instead of Mario: Lost Levels (the "real" Mario 2), and for some reason lots of people think that means this game is somehow dumbed down or worse, or not really Mario. Well guess what: you are all wrong, and here is why.

First off, show of hands: have any of you actually played Doki Doki Panic? Oh, hardly any of you? Ok, how about not on an emulator? Oh, nobody? That's what I thought. I've actually played it on a Japanese NES in some backwash game store, and guess what? Who cares. Mario 2 is better. Yep, I said it.

Second question, how many of you played Lost Levels on Super Mario Allstars? A fair amount, especially considering the straight Wii port that came out a while back. How many beat it? None? A few? How many thought it was unfair, or perhaps the platforming wasn't as tight or well designed as Mario 1? I see your hands timidly raising, knowing exactly where I'm going with this but unable to lie to me. Lost Levels is kind of total garbage. It has no graphical improvements. It only has a handful more levels, and some have jumps that are broken, meaning if you don't get speed before you hit them and then stop (and since you can't go left to regain speed) your only choice is to die. This isn't challenge. It's bad game design. Lost Levels is a bad Mario game.

Oh, I'm not done. 

So perhaps Mario 2 is better than Lost Levels, so what? "It doesn't follow the formula of a Mario game!" People argue. "It isn't a real Mario game because it doesn't have Mario elements!"

Ok, how many of you actually played these games when they came out on the NES? BEFORE Mario 3 came out? Because if you remember, the only game behind this one was Mario. He hadn't built up his pedigree as a box-smashing, powerup grabbing guy by this point. We only had the first game to go off of and from what I see, Mario 2 is a worthy sequel because it took elements of Mario 1 and made them better. Running left. Diverse levels. More enemies. Better jumping. Multiple characters. These are all improvements that still follow the first Mario game. We didn't know this game wasn't "legit" until years later after several more Mario games came out and we started getting the internet to tell us this game was a reskin of another game. And that is when you decided it wasn't a Mario game.

Plant Rocket is the best

"But Mario games now all ignore Mario 2 because it's the red-headed stepchild of the series!" You cry. "If they loved it so much, why did they abandon it?"

First off, I'm a red-head, so I take offense at that. Not really, but I take offense when people say the above regarding Mario 2, because they aren't thinking. Here's a list of things introduced in Mario 2 that have since been introduced in later Mario games.

- Shy guys

- Multiple players/charaters (Super Mario Bros Wii)

- Life bars (Mario 64)

- Birdo

- Luigi playing different than Mario (Super Smash Bros)

- Going left (Mario 3)

- Those spiky plant guys

- Bosses other than Bowser

- Themed worlds

- Lots of other crap I'm sure you can think of.

These are fundamental parts of Mario now, so don't go tellin' me they don't matter. In fact, this game was ahead of its time, so much so that some elements weren't used again (yet). Having multiple characters that can tackle the same levels? Super Meat Boy did that and you all loved it so much, but Nintendo apparently listened to its "fans" and never put that stuff back in. This game was ripe with awesome features, and it pushed the Mario games forward. Yes, it wasn't the same game in Japan, but who cares? It's more than solidified itself as a Mario game, and not only that, as one of the best Mario games because it's unique. Which is something Mario has been bad at recently. 

Bring this back, Nintendo. Seriously. 

RANT OVER

So anyway, Mario 2 is the bomb. I love it. It's a great game and you should all go play it because it's awesome and is especially fun if you have a friend and can switch off between deaths (and switch characters). It's better designed, better paced, and just better overall. So stop your hatin' and get with the LOVE, because Mario 2 has a lot to give. 

A classic. Five out of five. 

Plus, who could hate this music? NOBODY.