Loaded Console

This review was written for Evil Controllers.

Bungie’s last Halo is out, offering everything we’ve come to expect from a Halo game. Full-fledged multiplayer, added and upgraded game types, as well as a solid campaign. Bungie hasn’t been sitting idle in a vacuum of their own ideas, they’ve obviously been taking notes to improve the game we love, Halo, but is Halo: Reach the best?

While the conclusion of Halo: Reach is known before hand, it doesn’t mean the game is incapable of packing a wallop. If you’re familiar with the Halo universe then you should already know what happens on Reach, the humans fail to defend it. The Covenant’s invasion of Reach is successful. The narrative backdrop keeps the game consuming, the future grim, and the battles constant.

Since the outcome is known, Bungie had to focus on the delivery and making it compelling despite that. In Halo: Reach you play as Nobel Six, the sixth member of Nobel Team. Nobel Team is a group of Spartans that work to defend Reach in unison with the larger army. The game makes that clear in the campaign’s opening when your squad leader welcomes you. “Were glad to have your skill set, but we’re a team. That lone wolf stuff, stays behind.” It’s an odd meta moment referencing previous Halo games that haven’t occurred in the time line of Reach, but it sets a pace that’s felt throughout the campaign. You always feel apart of something bigger. You’re no longer Master Chief, the one man army.

The campaign sets you in a variety of gameplay scenarios, attacking Covenant installments, pushing back Covenant advancements, and vehicle segments that feel like breathers from the rest of the action. War skirmishes also look and feel more intense then they have in the past. Halo encounters have always had a particular style, they occur in large open areas giving you the option of taking down enemies in the order and manner in which you please. Halo: Reach maintains that, but has modified the games aesthetic to match the intensity of the doomed climate. The grunts no longer look as cartoony as they have in the past while the brutes look significantly tougher and more intimidating. The pacing has a slow start, but quickly ramps up as the rest of Nobel Team become familiar comrades, and Reach’s demise becomes evident.

Reach’s Multiplayer is really where most fans of the series will spend the bulk of their time and it definitely offers everything you’d expect from a Halo game, but not without improvements. Halo: Reach has added custom loadouts to multiplayer that can be selected before the match and after every death. This allows players to make slight alterations to their strategy depending on their specific circumstance. The loadouts are specific skills like: sprint, jetpack, or the ability to drop a shield. Your loadout also determines your starting weapons. Nothing game changing, but rather helpful in accomplishing specific objectives. This definitely reinforces creativity and makes those painful massacres a little more bearable.

Matchmaking is now available not only in multiplayer, but for the campaign as well as for cooperative game modes like Firefight. Bungie is definitely predicting that Halo 3 fans will migrate over to Halo: Reach’s multiplayer and with good reason. Halo’s multiplayer has never offered as many game types and specific game mode alterations as Halo: Reach. The system allows extremely customizable game types. If you want everyone to have jetpacks and use Rocket launchers, no problem. If you love the new game, but dislike the new loadouts, turn them off in the menu. You can then share your game types and playlists with other people on Xbox Live. Not only keeping players happy, but encouraging players to play around with all of the options by give them the resources to share their ideas.

The game isn’t perfect, the frame rate drops every now and then and the game’s campaign suffers from a slow start, but the ultimate package is solid. With all of the features offered through multiplayer, the bar is set ridiculously high for future shooters. The number of hours one could spend with this title is practically limitless and rewarded with in game currency. While the currency is used to unlock only audio and cosmetic changes to your specific character, it definitely makes playing another round a little more justifiable. The one negative thing Halo has been known for is an obnoxious online community, but even for that, Bungie created a solution. The “Psych Profile” feature promises to keep like minded gamers playing together. If you’ve never liked the Halo games, this one won’t change your mind, but if you’ve been a fan of any of them, there isn’t a reason to avoid this one.

Definitely a Must Buy

If you’re still on the fence about picking up Final Fantasy XIII, maybe this will help.

Review: Final Fantasy XIII (360)

It’s easy to complain about XIII’s linearity, but harder to overlook the game’s unique timing based combat. Where players can literally air juggle their opponents.

One of the first things I noticed about Final Fantasy XIII was that opponent’s had a lot of health. I did a lot of damage and their health bar never lowered all that much from my attacks. While games like Dead Space may have expertly removed the HUD (Head-Up Display) by placing key information on the player’s avatar, Final Fantasy XIII’s combat revels in the sheer amount of data it can display at one time.

Combat in Final Fantasy XIII is rooted in what fans have come to love. Job classes,enemy specific strategies, and character customization, but adds a level of alertness that previous entries can’t really match. Battles are limited to 3 characters, only one of which is directly controllable. This is reminiscent of the decisive system used in the previous entry. While Final Fantasy XII introduced gambits, prioritizing the decisions your allies would make and allowing you to customize them, XIII eliminates that extra layer of complexity by making sure your allies always take the best course of action.

Don’t be concerned by the lack of control. While you’re controlling that one character, there is a lot to keep track of. In combat there are three spots your eyes will learn to watch very carefully, your character’s health bar, your opponent’s health bar, and your opponent’s chain gauge which tells you how close your opponent is to being staggered. Once staggered your opponent may be susceptible to de-buffs and air juggling, while receiving significantly more damage from all of your attacks.

Since XIII’s enemies act differently once staggered it’s important to be able to change strategy on the fly. This is where Paradigms and Roles come into play. Roles are a new and fitting name for job classes. Once an AI controlled ally has been changed to a new role (job class) they’ll do what you’d expect from them. If they become the medic role they keep the player well healed, if they’ve converted to Commando, they focus on attacking and so on. A paradigm is simply a delegation of roles on to your party members. For example, an enemy with high defense may require you to have all three characters focusing on filling the monster’s chain gauge, once staggered, those characters may want to focus on dealing damage or de-buffing. At that point, the player can switch paradigms, which reassigns the roles their party members currently have, to roles that can fulfill those specific tasks.

In the main menu players can control and alter their available paradigms.

Timing comes into play fairly often. You may want to switch your medic to a spell caster for example, but may consider it unwise until all your party members are healed. Since a character’s active time bar must be filled before they can perform their abilities you’ll often find yourself hovering your finger over the paradigm shift button until those green health numbers are visible, then quickly shifting paradigms to deal damage. This keeps the player alert and engaged to combat. Making even basic encounters more enjoyable then hitting confirm over the “Fight” option over and over again.

Combat is fun, quick, and at times puzzling when your entire party gets wiped from a new enemy requiring a new strategy. However, the game never gets frustrating because you can simply hit retry at the game over screen (with no consequence.) As a side effect, basic encounters can become more difficult then what you’d expect from a Final Fantasy. Which is a pleasant surprise.

While linearity may be a big issue to a lot of gamers, the real issue with XIII is the game’s pacing. Since combat’s HUD can appear so overwhelming to new players and observers I’m not too surprised that combat mechanics were introduced little by little, but denying the player from a full party for roughly half the game was a bit much. It leaves one feeling frustrated and almost insulted.

Fans of the series have always regarded the Final Fantasy games as having intricate character and combat customization options, but that’s only ever been half the equation.

While XIII’s universe is interesting and pans out well enough over the course of the entire adventure. You’re never quite invited in. The game is littered with gorgeous cinemas, occasionally bombarding you with over the top action, but the game never takes advantage of it’s story segments to organically explain concepts of Cocoon, Pulse or even your own party members. Within the game’s main menu, is an encyclopedia that fills you in on the ins-and-outs of the universe. Getting regularly updated on your adventure you’ll have to stop the flow of the game to catch up on some interesting information, but it’s never essential.

Typically, cut-scenes are used to focus on important parts of a game’s narrative or a moment that the game’s been building up towards, but that’s not the case in XIII. More often then not you’ll have the characters responding to some threat or deciding what course of action they’ll be taking next. The characterization is equally thin. You won’t find attachment to any of the protagonists. A consequence from the game removing all towns and plot related side quests.

Final Fantasy XIII is a solid experience that simply cut out too much. With a high development cost and a guinea pig to Square’s Crystal Tool engine, XIII’s vision ends up too specific. Half of the dungeons are narrow path ways leading the player from one encounter to the next, towns are non-existent and the side quests nothing more then rare monster hunting. All of this would be a bigger problem if the combat wasn’t as much fun as it is. Plus those hunts are addictive.

The Crystarium - Not as interesting as other level up systems, but it does it's job.

Since the first half of the game keeps such a tight leash on all of your actions, including limiting your growth on the Crystarium, The Crystarium being XIII’s version of X’s Sphere Grid. The large open area of Gran Pulse in the 2nd half of the game is exciting to explore. You’ll see enemies that look and act like what you’d expect from a universe with it’s own ecosystem. Monsters that will dwarf you like any creature seen in Shadow of the Colossus. Not to mention new areas that open up as you complete monster hunts, making the whole area addictive to explore. Sadly indulging in any of this is optional. The game’s narrative forces you onward.

At least there’s no stress about one-hundred percenting the game when you get there. The game is extremely forgiving through and through. While other role-playing games this generation may require you to beat them 2 or 3 times to unlock secret items or ultimate weapons, nothing in XIII will force you to restart. While some things may be done more efficiently in certain ways, XIII lets you take on any additional objectives at any point. No items, at least towards Achievements, Trophies, or side quests are skip-able.

While Final Fantasy XIII is a linear experience with a slow burn. The combat does become more engaging the further you progress. For those that love exploring towns, worlds, and completing optional sidequests, XIII may not seem like it has a lot to offer. But when you start exploring the larger world halfway though, the itch you’ve been wanting scratched is there. Combat is fun and air juggling foes is as crazy/neat as it sounds. Stick with it long enough and before you know it you’ve completed a 50 hour quest that leaves you anxious for more.