Archive for April, 2009

Final Fantasy XII – “Braving New Skies”

If anything, Matsuno's greatest failing in "Final Fantasy XII" is that he was not able to completely cut away Sakaguchi's legacy. At times, the game does feel contrived and bounded by certain classic "Final Fantasy" precepts, and whether that is due to Matsuno's premature departure from the project (for health reasons), or for the known friction between the staff's different teams, is unknown. Despite the fact, what we're left with is an a new adventure that revolutionizes what the name "Final Fantasy" stands for. Matsuno took a huge risk to brave new skies, challenging the genre's preconceptions, and venturing where few had dared to. And that is Final fantasy's true spirit: to lead the RPG genre into new horizons. It just took Matsuno-san to break away from the past and actually do it[ READ MORE ]

The Path – “Do Not Stray from the Path”

There’s a growing consensus that traditional video-game forms aren’t permeable to an adult, artistic interpretation of interactivity. Games’ design matrix, with its its schemata of objectives, rewards and penalties, and its consistent orientation towards dexterity skills, tend to transform players into a pair of highly reflexive hands, directly wired to their senses. Art, on the [ READ MORE ]

Siren Blood Curse – “A Lighter Shade of Siren”

It's hard not to have a love-hate relationship with the "Siren" series. Its stealth meets survival horror game-design never made any sense, and its increasingly watered-down versions in both "Forbidden Siren 2" and "Blood Curse", while more pleasing, are still far from providing a good basis of interaction for the aesthetic and narrative dimensions. But on the other hand, you have to hand it down to Toyama for maintaining the survival horror spirit intact, foregoing the action non-sense that is all the rage nowadays. "Blood Curse" is a real survival horror game, and considering the genre's current landscape, that's the greatest compliment any survival horror game can receive[ READ MORE ]

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