Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders

Crystal Defenders is one of the worst tower defence games ever made and should not be played by anyone.

If you're not familiar with tower defence games, they go a little something like this: monsters troop across the screen following a fixed path, and you as the player have to erect towers to shoot them down before they reach the exit.

Crystal Defenders replaces the towers with characters from the Final Fantasy Tactics games, and replaces the monsters with... well, monsters. It's a strictly by-the-numbers affair. If you've played a tower defence game before, you've played this one.

The catch is this: the very best tower defence titles are Flash games, and are completely free to play. Crystal Defenders costs money, it has graphics which would look awkward on a 16-bit console, and it's significantly simpler and shorter than even the most basic of its web-based competitors.

For your money, you get twelve maps (fully half of which are little more than palette swaps), six deployable units, no in-game help or tutorial system, no unlockables, no story or victory animations, and an endless loop of some of Final Fantasy's worst crimes against the musical world.

It's also blisteringly hard. With no kind of guidance or strategy advice, even tower defence veterans will have a tough time clearing 30 waves on each of the maps. The strengths and weaknesses of your units aren't completely clear. Working out which units deal physical damage requires luck, guesswork, and some knowledge of other Final Fantasy games. Debuffs on enemies aren't marked, making it tough to assess the effectiveness of indirect damage, and survival ultimately requires not just killing the enemy, but correctly calling where you'll kill them, in order to allow you to deploy money-gathering thieves. Luckily, the availability of the internet will allow you to completely trivialise the game by playing a perfect round straight off the bat.

Crystal Defenders is available on Live Arcade, Wiiware and iPhone, and I understand it's exactly the same kind of garbage on each platform. It's emblematic of Square-Enix's general contempt for the casual and downloadable market and I urge you to avoid it as though it were made out of babies.

Squeenix Hits Virtual Console

Hey Wii owners, it's a good week to be you. Not only did Madworld just drop into stores, but the Virtual Console is having something of a rennaissance.

Item the first: Sega, Taito and Nacmo are bringing some of their arcade hits to the service. The arcade versions, mind, not the dodgy console ports.

Item the second: Final Fantasy I through to VI are on their way to the Virtual Console in all their original non-enhanced glory. I assume that the ones that weren't originally released in the West (FF2, 3 and 5) are going to use the translations developed for the GBA / PS / DS adaptations.

Item the third: If you just can't get enough of Cecil The Death Knight from FF IV, you will be stoked by the appearance of FFIV sequel The After Years on Wiiware, alongside My Life As A Dark Lord, which is apparently a sequel to the poorly received My Life As A King.

Update

Please pardon the lack of posts; I've had a week or so where I just wasn't in the mood.

Gaming in brief:

- I finished the original Saints Row. It may unashamedly copy Grand Theft Auto lock, stock and barrel, but it's entirely excusable seeing as how it's exponentially better than any GTA up to and including San Andreas. (I haven't played GTA IV yet but I have a sneaking suspicion I'm still going to like Saints Row better.) The user interface is worlds beyond what GTA offers, the mission difficulty is set to "fair" rather than "infuriating", and - the biggest surprise - it has a fully fleshed out plot, complete with intelligent dialogue, characters you really care about, and subtle relationships you'll be thinking about long after you finish the game.

- Caught up some of the XBLA titles I've been meaning to try. The Maw is highly cute but so aggressively small-scale and challenge-less that it feels more like a demo or a toddler toy than a real product. Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders is one of the worst tower defence games I've ever played and it has the added insult of costing money to buy. Peggle is almost exactly the same game as the PC version, which is to say still totally awesome.

- I went back to Mirror's Edge to try to get more achievements, which is practically a first for me. In my house, once I put a single-player game back on the shelf, that's the last time I'll ever touch it, no matter what my intentions might be at the time. I'm speedrunning the story levels, and if the levels were thrilling the first time around they're even moreso when you play them this way. It feels like playing the game as intended; the only thing that stops it from being a perfect gaming experience is the punishingly high difficulty involved in getting a qualifying time at these things.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Trailer

This is the secret movie included at the end of Japan-only release Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix. It follows on from the Keyblade War teaser which appeared at the end of regular-style Kingdom Hearts 2.

Birth By Sleep is coming to the PSP only and is a prequel to the original games. My love for Kingdom Hearts as a franchise is at war with my dislike for the malformed little portable that I refer to as "the hand-mangler".

The World Ends With You - Dust Forms Words Game Of The Year 2008

The World Ends With You is the game that everyone should have played last year, and for what it's worth I'm giving it my Game of the Year.

I've already said a lot about TWEWY, so before I talk about why it gets the trophy, I'll say a little about why the other contenders don't.

Braid was a hell of a game. It was this year's undisputed poster-child for "games as art", and despite my unfortunate discovery of its misguided "alternate ending" it remains a very special and enduring experience. It excels musically, visually, narratively, and through its plethora of fascinating time-based mechanics. But it's limited in scope. Last year, when I described why I gave Mass Effect the thumbs up over Portal, I talked about ambition and how an "almost" on the grand scale could be greater than perfection in miniature. Without in any way criticising Braid, I'm passing it over simply because TWEWY does something bigger and more expansive.

Prince of Persia I haven't reviewed yet, but I have finished, and I am a huge fan. I love the punishment-free gameplay, I love the art style, I love the character interaction, and I love the controversial ending. This is how I want my games to be. And it's tempting to slam it for the epically misconceived coloured plate sections, which in the context of an otherwise perfect game are like drawing a penis on the Mona Lisa, but really I'm passing it over because it's not actually innovative. Everything in PoP is something we've seen before, and while there's an artistry in arranging the familiar to new and excellent effect, it's less an evolution of gaming than it is merely a refinement.

I loved Mirror's Edge, although the world seems to be against me on this, and I seriously considered it for Game of the Year. I think it's a deeper and more clever game than people have realised yet (although obviously not in its storytelling, which blows goats) and given time people are going to start coming back to this with new and more appreciative eyes. But, you know, it wasn't that good, and loud complaints about its combat, plotline, and uneven difficulty are not entirely without foundation.

Smash Bros Brawl and Rock Band were only 2008 releases because they took so damned long to get to Australia, and, while I enjoyed them both, neither was a revelation. Brawl was merely iterative upon the excellent Melee, and Rock Band let an uneven song selection and a host of peripheral and user interface issues stop it from being the definitive rhythmn game that it wanted to be.

No More Heroes got a golf clap and an A for effort. Keep doing what you're doing, Goichi Suda, I love that you're out there doing it, and feel free to wake me up when you get it right.

Left 4 Dead was a fantastic experience while it lasted but in the absence of more content it's not really in my Game of the Year contemplation.

You all apparently loved Fable 2; I hated it, as I do all Peter Molyneux's misbegotten works. Enough said on that topic.

Far Cry 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Saints Row 2, Dead Space, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet and Fallout 3 are all contenders that I just didn't get around to playing this year. I had a brief experience with Dead Space that satisfies me it was unlikely to take the crown, and while I look forward to enjoying Saints Row 2 I'm pretty sure that a game that so happily wallows in its own juvenilia was probably not going to be my pick for the year. Likewise, my past apathy towards user content suggests that LittleBigPlanet was probably not going to change my world.

Far Cry 2 and GTA 4 are more problematic; both showed promise of being the open-world game "all growed up". Although experiences with the PSP Grand Theft Auto games left me feeling weary about the entire genre, there's every chance that one or both of these titles would have won me back. I can only say that one person simply can't play every top-shelf title released during the year, and if I'm doing these titles a disservice then I can at least be comfortable that they certainly haven't been overlooked or under-recognised by the world at large.

Metal Gear Solid 4 and Fallout 3 are the two missed titles that trouble me most. They are both new and epic iterations of franchises that I love, made by developers that I trust. It is highly likely either game could have found a place on my list of the greatest games of all time. But again, it's simply impossible to play games as fast as they're released, and both games have been adequately covered in other venues.

So that brings me back to The World Ends With You, which is, I feel, a title as underappreciated as it is wholeheartedly excellent. On its face it is a full-length JRPG, a genre famous for its staidness and adherence to formula, and yet it innovates in every single game mechanic. It's hard to find any aspect of the TWEWY experience which has been done before.

The game difficulty is not only fully customisable along multiple axes, but is also seamlessly integrated into the overall gameplay. Equippable items tie into a "fashion" system, which is influenced by player activity and deliberately underlines and supports the key themes of the story. The entire game operates simultaneously on a literal level and several metaphorical levels, from the "noise" enemies through to the player being invisible to the teeming crowds around him. The game accurately and interestingly uses the real-world location of Shibuya as its backdrop, to non-trivial narrative effect, and when you finally finish the main plotline the game offers significant replayability that goes above and beyond the traditional "new game plus" option.

Any one of the points above would have made The World Ends With You a special and noteworthy release; finding them in combination is breathtaking. Add to that an art style which is unquestionably perfect for the subject matter and an urban-groove soundtrack that you can listen to all day long and you end up with a game that feels years ahead of its time.

There is more genius in The World Ends With You than in every other game I have played this year put together. I have no qualms about naming it the Dust Forms Words Game of the Year 2008, and if you haven't yet played it, grab your DS and find a copy immediately.

Currently Playing

Got a bunch of games in my queue right now, none of which I'm particularly near finishing, so I thought I'd do an "in-progress" kind of post.

Left 4 Dead (XBox 360): Awesome. Just... awesome. It makes my jaw drop roughly once a minute and I'm starting to get muscle fatigue around my mouth as a result. Some observations though: as you start to learn the levels the game becomes about speed-running, and I'm not yet sure whether that's an evolutionary step in the gameplay or the point at which ennui sets in. Also it's obviously focused solely on multi-player, and I can't say I've ever gotten more than ten hours out of a multi-player first person shooter before. This may be a first, I guess.

Rock Band (XBox 360): Finally out in Australia. Drumming is excellent and the handling of the vocals is several iterations better than the horrible Singstar franchise. Guitar is a bit lame though, due to an unappealing on-screen interface, a peripheral that pinches my fingers, and punishingly short timing windows. Playing with four friends is great, but the game feels poorly structured as far as progress and incentives are concerned. Luckily it's fun just playing, incentives or no incentives. Also it's clear the developers loved what they were making, which is something it shares with Harmonix's previous efforts Guitar Hero 1 and 2. Neversoft-developed GH3 didn't have that and it's that faceless-corporation direction the Guitar Hero franchise is going in that's really turning me off that brand.

Fable 2 (XBox 360): Not a fan. I can't get attached to the main character, who wanders mutely around the countryside expressing himself solely with corny poses while every NPC has rather excellent voice acting. I can't get attached to the NPCs, who will watch you kill their entire family in horror but then offer you gifts once you dance a saucy jig for a few minutes. The customisation system is shallow, and you end up picking clothes based on their stats rather than what they say about your character. The much-vaunted moral choices are poorly handled, especially compared to something like Mass Effect, and often boil down to "do what you're told, or be a petty jerk". Despite a lot of really well-implemented features, the whole package feels deeply artificial and I have serious doubts I can be bothered playing to the end.

Final Fantasy III (DS): I started this six months ago, I'm about three quarters of the way through and I can't bring myself to pick it up again. The graphical updates are nice, but the "job system" has been poorly grafted onto the original game, giving you little real incentive to play with the different jobs and in fact actively punishing you for changing class. The late game suddenly opens up the map but offers poor direction about where to go next and again can punish you for exploring with the sudden introduction of crushingly difficult encounters. The combat is painfully dull and considering that's most of the gameplay that dullness is a real problem. Despite my gripes it's still a great remake, especially considering the age of its roots, but not a real contender compared to some of the excellent modern RPGs on the market.

Age of Booty (XBox Live Arcade): Yar, me hearties! Age of Booty is real-time strategy dumbed down to its lowest level, where you control one ship and attempt to capture enemy ports with or without allies. It's effectively one-button control, ideal for casual players. It should be awful but it's a heap of fun and pretty much exactly right for the low, low asking price. Local multiplayer for up to four players, or you can take it online to battle the intertubes.

Overlord (XBox 360): Played the first level of this, loved it, borrowed it from a friend, and now it's just waiting until I'm done with Fable 2 or something so I can give it the time it deserves.

Travian (PC / Browser): Actually I've been playing this for a few months. A very hardcore real-time wargame that advertises itself as a casual-friendly city builder. One campaign lasts roughly a year of real-time. An excellent game providing you know what to expect; a very frustrating game for those looking for a casual experience who get eliminated by the cutthroat tactics of the real players. I'm loving it.

Secret of Mana on Virtual Console

In case you didn't read the title: SECRET OF MANA ON VIRTUAL CONSOLE!

Yes: it's available for download to your Wii. Yes: the three-player co-op is intact. Yes: Squeenix are finally releasing their SNES classic for your retro-gaming delight.

This is one of those games that's every bit as good today as it was when it was released. If you've (somehow) never played Secret of Mana this is a must-buy Virtual Console title. If you have played it, heck, it's still a must-buy.

So - who wants to help me complete this for, what, the fourth time now?

NOTE: I'm not entirely clear whether this is "out now" or "out come the next VC update, either this Friday or the Friday following". I'll check the VC store when I get home and let you know.

Parasite Eve - Good News / Bad News

Am I the only person in the world that thinks Parasite Eve 2 was an overlooked work of genius? Am I seriously the only Parasite Eve fanboi out there?

Specifically, why did no one mention to me Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday is on its way? This is the greatest news ever. We need a commemorative holiday.

This is the series that mixed classic Square-Enix roleplaying with a near future real-world setting and real-time gunplay. This is the series where the bad guys are your mitochondria. That's hard science.

Unfortunately, much like the upcoming Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, 3rd Birthday is for the PSP. So I guess now we all have to wait around until Squeenix sees fit to announce they're porting it to a real system.

FF XIII Coming To 360

News out of E3: Square-Enix flagship title Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the XBox 360, for simultaneous Western-market release with the PlayStation 3 version.

I'd like to point out that I TOTALLY CALLED IT. And not just in an "I own a 360 and not a PS3" kind of way, but with reason and logic. That muffled choking noise you can hear is a forum full of doubters and dissenters eating their collective hats. I hope they remember the bitter taste of headware next time they suggest that my industry analysis may be less than stunningly on-point.

Now, while you all recalibrate your internal calendars to deliver daily reminders that my prescience borders on the paranormal, I'll be quietly basking in the warming glow of my own self-satisfaction. Would anyone care to fetch me a refreshing cocktail?

Great Gaming Music #12: Hymn Of The Fayth

Final Fantasy X might be called the last great hurrah of the Final Fantasy franchise, before the disappointing outings of X-2, XI and XII. While it's a valid criticism that FFX had an overly linear first and second act, it successfully used that focused early-game experience to flesh out the moody, spiritual world of Spira.

Integral to that experience was Nobuo Uematsu's soundtrack. Featured here is his Hymn of the Fayth, a recurring musical theme throughout both this game and Final Fantasy X-2.

Great Gaming Music #4: One-Winged Angel

Final Fantasy VII was a generation-defining game which ended with an apocalyptic confrontation between the main characters and the game's arch-villain Sephiroth. Nobuo Uematsu's theme for that fight, One-Winged Angel, is one of the most thrilling and memorable songs in gaming history.

Uematsu is well known as the composer for a large number of Square-Enix and Mistwalker games, including Chrono Trigger, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon and all the Final Fantasy titles to date. He is also the creator of the excellent main theme from Super Smash Bros Brawl. His works have been featured in a number of live orchestral concerts and he tours as part of rock band The Black Mages.

The version of One-Winged Angel that appears above is as performed live by the Eminence Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Town Hall. Those who want to hear the song as it originally appeared on the PlayStation version of FF7 can click here, although they're warned that it doesn't have quite the sound quality they may remember.

Great Gaming Music #2: Sanctuary

Hikaru Utada's compositions for the Kingdom Hearts games are just one of the many reasons these titles became a runaway success story for Square-Enix. Featured here is Sanctuary, the English-language version of her theme to Kingdom Hearts 2. (The Japanese version, entitled Passion, is available here.)

Hikaru is massively popular in Japan and her album First Love became the highest selling album in Japanese history. In the West, she's signed under the DefJam record label, which leads me to wishful thinking about her contributing to forthcoming expansions of the DefJam fighting game franchise.

UPDATE: By the way, how awesome is this Hikaru Utada cover of Boulevard of Broken Dreams?

More on Chrono Trigger DS

To follow up on Wednesday's post, Square-Enix has now officially announced Chrono Trigger DS is in the works. The game will be a remake; apparently the graphics will remain the same but new features include dual screen presentation, touch screen functionality, wireless connectivity and a new dungeon.

That means it's probably going to look more like their re-releases of Final Fantasy IV and V than it is their massive redesign of FF3.

The image on the left was retrieved from DSFanboy, who apparently took it from GameKyo.com.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Not to bomb you with Square-Enix news, but have you noticed that they're working on a Final Fantasy themed game for the PSP called Dissidia: Final Fantasy? The gameplay sounds like a two-player fighting game but apparently it's got a script "double the length of Crisis Core".

This is actually last year's news but somehow I completely missed it, so it's not beyond possibility that you have too. The massive downside, of course, is that you'd have to fire up a PSP in order to play it, but I know some of you out there are masochistic enough to do that so presumably you'll be stoked when Dissidia hits stores.

Yes, Sephiroth is playable.

Chrono Trigger DS

Check it out - Square-Enix has a page up at http://na.square-enix.com/ctds/ showing a mysterious image of a clock, with the words "Nintendo DS" next to it.

Clock? A page entitled "CTDS"? It looks like Squeenix's cult hit Chrono Trigger is coming to a dual-screen portable near you! (It's worth noting that the clock's not a countdown - it's showing your local system time.)

I'm not sure which possibility I'm more excited about - the original game, a remake, or a brand new entry in the franchise. They're all filled with win.

All I ask is that they not commission any more art from Dragonball Z creator Akira Toriyama. His character designs make me cry bitter tears of frustration.

The World Ends With You

Plenty of good games come along, but it's only every now and then that you find something really special.

The World Ends With You, developed by Square-Enix for the Nintendo DS, is just that kind of special. This is a game that has been thought about, and carefully, and which makes going one-better its quiet religion. It's not as immediately visceral as Devil May Cry or as jaw-droppingly spectacular as Gears of War but it is a game with a masterful and brilliant plan which it executes flawlessly.

You play as Neku, a modern-day teenager with an attitude problem and some intimacy issues. The game begins with Neku waking up in the midst of Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district with no memories and a mysterious black pin. He soon finds that he's invisible to most people, and has been enlisted to fight in something called the Reaper's Game. Played over seven days, the Game offers miraculous rewards to those who win, but the losers are erased from existence.

The game is played in pairs; to complete the missions and fight the vicious "Noise" which stalk Shibuya's streets, competitors must form a "pact" with another player. That's no easy ask for Neku, what with his trust issues, and the dilemma of enforced teamwork is the thematic spine of the game.

The game takes place over the terrain of real-life Shibuya. The world is divided into a couple of dozen areas, each themed around a major Shibuya landmark, and you can walk back and forth across it more or less at will. The narrative of the game is divided into "days"; on any given day only certain portions of the Shibuya are accessible, but luckily after you beat the game you can revisit the days in any order at will.

The black pin that Neku receives at the start of the game gives him the power to "scan" areas, which firstly allows you to read the minds of nearby citizens for hints, backstory, and amusing anecdotes. Scanning also reveals the presence of the aforementioned "Noise", animal-themed monsters intent on erasing players from the Game.

Tapping on Noise initiates combat, which is handled by a separate screen. Noise have to be simultaneously defeated in two different "zones", which equate to the top and the bottom screens. Neku fights on the bottom screen, and attacks using "psyches" granted to him by pins that you collect throughout the game. Each psyche corresponds to a specific stylus gesture, such as drawing a line through an enemy, tapping empty space, or energetically rubbing the entire screen. Successfully activating a psyche can result in anything from meteors raining from the heavens through to a flurry of devastating melee attacks.

At the same time as Neku is scrapping on the bottom screen, your partner will be under attack on the top screen. You control your partner by means of the D-pad. Each directional press deals damage to an enemy, and by navigating through a "combo tree" using a series of these presses you can unleash a powerful finishing move.

Fighting on both screens at once can be initially confusing, but like most games it's a skill you can acquire over time and ends up being quite satisfying once you've mastered it. To help you out, the game by default will take control of your partner if you get distracted, and can in fact completely run the top screen to a fairly adequate standard. Also, on the default difficulty, battles are almost laughably easy, so pretty much any player should be able to make it through to the end.

Actually, the game's difficulty settings are an important part of the core gameplay. The basic settings make most fights a pushover, and give you full use of your abilities, but you can choose to deliberately up the difficulty and/or take a handicap to your health bar in order to make battles yield rarer and more valuable loot. I played through most of the game at the "hard" difficulty with about a 50% level handicap and found that to be pretty much ideal; your individual comfort zone may vary. You can adjust this difficulty at any time during combat, and if you do happen to lose a fight you can instantly retry the fight at either the same difficulty or with your characters made practically invincible.

The dual-screen combat is quite clever from a story perspective. Noise can only be fought in pairs; if you don't have a partner, you're completely helpless. Considering that the narrative thrust of the game is about Neku's relationship with other people, it's a stroke of genius.

A major part of the game is fashion; other than your pins, the only equippable items in the game are clothes, which must be purchased from one of a range of major fashion labels throughout Shibuya. Different clothes have different benefits; by and large one set of threads isn't better than another, only different, so the fashion system is more about customisation than it is about power-levelling. Each area of Shibuya keeps a table showing which brands are hot and which brands are not; simply by wearing a brand onto the streets you'll raise its cool-factor, which is important as psyche-pins from unfashionable brands are significantly gimped in combat.

Theoretically, any character can wear any clothing, and there's benefits to be gained from engaging in a little gender-bending when it comes to your equipment. However, every character has a "Bravery" stat, which is pretty slow to increase, and each piece of clothing has a minimum Bravery required before you can wear it. Female characters tend to start with more Bravery and women's clothing has a higher Bravery requirement.

All that dressing-up might put some people off, but don't be fooled - this isn't just an attempt to cash in on a new demographic. The whole fashion component weaves masterfully into the game's plot and theme. It's hard to say how without giving out spoilers, but the fashion system is one of the most brilliant examples of game mechanics supporting narrative ever to appear in a video game. It's absolutely inspired. The World Ends With You absolutely could not be the game it is without the fashion system, and it turns out to have something really worth saying on the subject.

The soundtrack to the game is phenomenal, consisting mostly of J-Pop, techno and Japanese hip-hop, and the DS speakers don't do it justice. You'll want to spend some time listening to the tunes over the headphones - they're that good.

Also noteworthy is the translation. This is the best translation of a Japanese game I have ever seen - it's a work of minor literary genius in itself. This was obviously going to be an issue for such a Tokyo-centric game, but the dialogue retains the flavour and culture of Shibuya perfectly, including a bunch of sly gaming references and satires of otaku culture. The end product is perfectly understandable and palatable to a Western audience, but still feels savvy and doesn't for a moment allow itself to be dumbed down.

The World Ends With You is great as a game. It's also an amazing piece of fantasy tourism; I defy you to play without wanting to visit the real Shibuya. But beyond all of that, it's an excellent story, with powerfully realised characters, and the whole thing's wrapped within layer after layer of stunningly insightful teen-angst metaphor.

There's a hundred hours of gameplay in this thing easily, and if you're like me the first couple of hours may not make the strongest impression on you. But stick with it, because this is easily the best game of the year so far, and may well be one of the best JRPGs ever developed.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales

You know how sometimes when you get a collection of really lame minigames it's almost as good as having a real game?

No, I don't either.

I picture the offices of Square-Enix as a place filled with candy and mogs, where the Chocobo Theme Music plays all day long and the vending machines accept "gil" as a currency. Into this magical land came a dark force, who schemed to bring misery and mayhem unto the innocent peoples, yea until the skies turned black and the children did weep. And from that ancient evil was born Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales.

The premise of Chocobo Tales is this: that you are a chocobo, one of the two-legged bird things from the Final Fantasy games. It is your sacred task to fight evil, or somesuch, which is convenient when a malevolent demon traps all your chocobo pals inside children's storybooks.

Gameplay consists of jumping into the storybooks, playing the lame minigames, and being rewarded with cards for a collectable card game. You use the cards to challenge bosses to card battles, and thereby progress towards more storybooks.

Now, the card battling bit is actually half decent. But seeing as there's only about eight people in the game who you can play cards against, the whole "gathering cards to fight bosses" thing feels a little pointless. You can take your deck online and play friends or strangers, providing said friends or strangers are unfortunate enough to possess a copy of Chocobo Tales.

The minigames themselves range from "offensively easy" through to "frustratingly stupid". Each storybook takes a traditional children's tale and re-skins it with Final Fantasy monsters. You'll see the race between the lazy Cactuar and the slow-but-steady Adamantoise, along with "The Ugly Chocobo" and "The Boy Who Cried Leviathan". Minigame objectives fall into the categories of "race to point X" or "collect item Y". Most games can be played in a trial mode, where you aim for a high score, or a battle mode, where you compete against computer controlled chocobos. Like the card battles, you can play these wirelessly against other people who own the game.

As this is a game for the DS, you'll be mostly playing with the stylus, and the game runs into more problems here. Two of the most common motions you'll be performing are a "flick" and a "double tap". First up, the software seems to only recognise these motions two out of every three tries, and secondly they're damn inconvenient, as you're also using the stylus to move and you can't do both at once.

At least the game looks reasonably nice. The storybooks and minigames are done in a kind of Paper Mario style, with the environment unfolding from the book like a pop-up. The "real world" has a bland but inoffensive polygonal aesthetic. The music is another matter; every last piece of music in the game - and I'm not exaggerating here - is a remix of the Chocobo Theme Tune. I got sick of that thing back in Final Fantasy VII and the years have only deepened my loathing for it.

Also, you can finish the game within six hours and the end boss is a game of air hockey.

So, in short, this is the reason that you should never, ever, ever buy a Final Fantasy spin off. Ever.

Ever.

Minigames: Worse Than Hitler?

I have just finished Final Fantasy: Chocobo Tales for the Nintendo DS. This is not a review of that game. Ths is a related, and yet independent, open letter.

Developers of games, if you are going to end your creation with a lame minigame that has nothing to do with the events up to that point:

(a) don't. Saying that you were just following orders will not fly at Nuremburg.

(b) minigames are not an appropriate way to divine the presence of witches in our midst. Creating a gameplay sequence that can only be completed with mastery of the Dark Arts is not, and never will be, For The Win.

(c) the Lord of All Evil should never be asked to compete at any of the following games: Air Hockey, Connect 4, any and all collectible card games, Dance Dance Revolution, and any game based around knowing the prime factors of anything.

(d) players will never use the phrase, "Man, that game sucked, but the unrelated minigame at the end totally makes up for it." Never. I'm not making that up.

These are all true facts. They should be canonised and memorised and recited in the morning like a powerful life-affirming mantra. Possibly carved into marble somewhere like a graven message from wise and inscrutable elder beings.

Anyway, just a thought. Throwing that out there. Thanks heaps.

Why Final Fantasy XIII Will Not Be A PS3 Exclusive

The latest entry in the Final Fantasy franchise is beginning to loom on the horizon, and Square-Enix are currently sticking to their story that it's going to be exclusive to the PlayStation 3.

I keep telling people it's not. That's not just wishful thinking; that's maths. Let's look at the numbers.

Final Fantasy is Square-Enix's flagship series. The regular and predictable success of Final Fantasy (along with Squeenix's other big hitter, Dragon Quest) is what enables them to occasionally work on side projects like Vagrant Story, Kingdom Hearts, and The World Ends With You.

Check out how the last few iterations of the franchise went down. All my stats are derived from VGChartz; if you have reason to doubt their data or my intepretation of their data let me know. The exception are console sales figures which come direct from Sony.

• First release date is the first date the game was available anywhere. Final Fantasy games are released first in Japan, where they sell the greatest amount of copies, and typically follow 6 to 12 months later in the US and Europe.
• Worldwide sales is measured in units; this is copies of the disc sold, not currency. Includes sales from Japan, America and Europe.
• Console userbase at launch represents the number of units of the relevant console which had been sold at the time of the game's launch; ie the total possible number of people who are capable of meaningfully consuming the game.
• Attach rate is the worldwide sales expressed as a percentage of the installed userbase; ie the percentage of console owners who bought the game.

Final Fantasy XI, being an MMO and therefore having a substantially different sales model, is not included here.

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Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation)
First Release Date: 31 January 1997
Worldwide Sales: 9.72 million
Console Userbase at Launch: 13.5 million
Attach Rate: 72%

Final Fantasy VIII (PlayStation)
First Release Date: 11 February 1999
Worldwide Sales: 7.86 million
Console Userbase at Launch: 54.4 million
Attach Rate: 14.4%

Final Fantasy IX (PlayStation)
First Release Date: 8 July 2000
Worldwide Sales: 5.3 million
Console Userbase at Launch: 75.92 million
Attach Rate: 6.9%

Final Fantasy X (PlayStation 2)
First Release Date: 20 July 2001
Worldwide Sales: 7.95 million
Console Userbase at Launch: 19.57 million
Attach Rate: 40.6%

Final Fantasy X-2 (PlayStation 2)
First Release Date: 12 March 2003
Worldwide Sales: 5.21 million
Console Userbase at Launch: 51.2 million
Attach Rate: 10.2%

Final Fantasy XII (PlayStation 2)
First Release Date: 16 March 2006
Worldwide Sales: 5.01 million
Console Userbase at Launch: 103.69 million
Attach Rate: 4.8%

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So, first of all, if you ever wanted to know why Final Fantasy VII is so venerated, and why Final Fantasy X got a sequel, you need look no further than the attach rates. Three in every four people who owned a PlayStation at FF7's launch bought a copy. That's just ridiculous numbers.

Secondly, just take a moment to look at that attach rate on Final Fantasy XII. With 103 million people in the marketplace Squeenix still couldn't move more than 5 million of these things out the door. Having played the damn thing this comes as no surprise to me. 5 million, it must be said, is still a very profitable game and a success that many developers would kill to be part of, but incredibly disappointing in the context of the franchise's history and the marketplace.

Anyway, the point is that as far as Final Fantasy XIII goes, Square-Enix have to be projecting sales of at least 5 million. Anything less is a massive step backwards for the franchise and is not a direction it can really afford to take after the relatively poor showing of 12. So that's the target. 5 million units sold.

The PS3 has sold, as of today, 11 million units and change. So to sell 5 million copies of the game Squeenix needs an attach rate of 45%. That's right - to do only as well as the worst-received modern entry in the franchise, it needs to sell a copy to roughly one in every two PS3 owners. And that's a rock bottom option. To meet FFX sales numbers it's a 72% attach rate (equalling the record set by FF7), and to reach the lofty heights of FF7's success it's 88% - they'd need to sell copies to almost 9 out of every 10 owners of the console.

Let's be generous and say that the new Final Fantasy launches in January next year, and over the rest of the year and the Xmas holiday Sony sells another 6.5 million consoles, which matches its sales over the same period last year. That puts the userbase at 17.5 million and makes the numbers 28% for the 5 million mark (making it the third highest attach modern entry), 45% for FFX, and 56% for FF7.

Those aren't good numbers. Those are just, however you look at it, unattractive numbers for someone in Sony's position with a product as intensely marketable as Final Fantasy XIII.

So let's take a look at what happens if they go cross-platform and release on PS3 and XBox 360.

Launch Today
Installed userbase (360 and PS3 combined): roughly 26 million
Attach rate for 5 million units sold: 19.2%
Attach rate for 7.95 million: 30%
Attach rate for 9.72 million: 37%

Launch End of January 2009
Projected userbase, based on previous sales: roughly 41 million
Attach rate for 5 million units sold: 12.2%
Attach rate for 7.95 million: 19.4%
Attach rate for 9.72 million: 23.7%

Looks much better already. Or, to put it another way, if Final Fantasy XIII is as well received at a January launch as VII was back in the day, and has the same attach rate, Squeenix are losing out on 16.9 million sales by remaining a PS3 exclusive - which is more units than any two entries in the franchise you care to name combined.

Sony just can't pay Squeenix enough to make a PS3 exclusive worthwhile. You just can't manipulate the numbers to make it work. So all you 360 owners can sit back in the firm knowledge that this game is going to make its way to your system in the fullness of time. All you need do is wait.

Plush Heartless

By the way, I saw this little fellow at Swancon 2007 but didn't have a usable photo until now. Unfortunately its talented creator could not be persuaded by love or money to make me one; I guess that's what I get for not being the chosen bearer of a keyblade. Dagnabbit.

Thanks to Julia for the photo.