Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core

I have to preface this by saying that I'm a /huge/ fan of Final Fantasy VII. This seems to affect other people's views on another's opinion for some reason. Now, I am not an FFVII "fanboy", but I do love the game. I loved it when it was released, I love it just as much now. I can, however, realize that the game has aged and not well. It is not the be-all-end-all of rpgs. But I think it IS a great game. One that I adore.

So that out of the way, on to FFVII:CC. It starts out with a scene that anybody who has played FFVII should be familiar with: A train rushing towards its destination, a man in blue clothing aboard. The direction of the game continues the over the top action that Advent Children began. Zack jumps off of a helicopter, lands lightly on his feet, and makes short work of some grunts that are shooting at him. When the train stops and Zack gets off, it sets up the major differences between Zack and Cloud. Where Cloud couldn't be bothered to say anything more than "I don't care." for the first 20 hours, Zack is talking on the phone when some enemies run up to him. He continues talking even when the soldiers show that they want to fight. He reluctantly hangs up his phone and pulls out his sword and you get your first glimpse of the combat of Crisis Core.

You get to move around in realtime with the D-pad or the Nub. Circle is attack, Square is dodge, Triangle is guard. You have 5 different slots for actions: Attack, 3 materia slots, and Item. You can not mash attack all willy-nilly. Actions seem to be timed, although it isn't very extreme: half a second at most between attacks. Magic has a little bit of charge, leaving you open to be hit by opponents. This WILL interrupt your casting, which I think is a nice touch for strategy. And enemies will move! Blizzard creates the typical block of ice that drops down on your opponent. The only problem is that it drops down on your opponent...and they move. In contrast, Fire and Thunder track the opponent. Maybe Blizzard will be better when I level it up. What I'm surprised by is how much skill that you can put into the battle. Enemies shoot a Fire spell, and if you're paying attention in between attacks you can easily dodge it. Fighting two big, slow, lumbering brutes I managed to defeat them with minimal damage due to smart attack management, guarding and well-timed rolls. I loves it.

The subsystem of this game is called "Digital Mind Wave" or DMW for short. This is the slot machine thing that's been seen in screenshots. It will randomly stop and give you a "Modulation Phase". If you get favorable faces lined up, three Sephiroths say, then Zack will unleash a special attack similar to limit breaks from FF7. Zack's skills make Cloud's omnislash look like a low level ability...and I've only got 4 hours. It's a weird system, though. It's completely random and seems to control everything from leveling to HP boosts. Not sure what I think of this yet.

The game is mission based. So far there isn't any type of world map. You can talk to people to progress the story or access optional missions. They show the assumed difficulty of the mission beforehand so you know what you're getting into. Since you can only access them from save points there's little risk to them except for the time you spend if you die. They net you items or materia, some of the summons are optional missions.

I'm shocked at how good this game seems to be so far. It looks amazing, topping MGS for the best looking portable game ever. The CG is advent children quality, the voices sound awesome. The music, most of it so far, is remixed FF7 tracks. Given the change in direction the kind of rock alternative really fits it. I love the new boss music.

If I have any complaints, it's that the camera isn't always the best. But I've yet to play a 3d fighter where the camera isn't a minor complaint.

Yuffie wins you.

My Super Puzzle Fighter Review

I dove in and bought Puzzle Fighter on XBL for 800 points. It's as good as it has ever been. Played it for about an hour online and had no hiccups or lag at all. It was just like the guy was right next to me. It has the same online setup as Street Fighter Hyper Fighting does, so you can create a room with up to 4 people and watch as your friends duke it out until your turn comes up.

After some firsthand experience with the new drop patterns...it feels much the same to me. I am not claiming to be some Puzzle Fighter god, however, so that is probably why. A few characters had a notable difference: I couldn't lay out break gems the same way as I always had. Chun Li definitely dropped a lot more gems than I ever remember her doing in previous versions. So the changes are definitely there, I'm just not good enough to notice the many nuances that the developers have implemented.

The two new (to some people) modes are not all that, though.

Y Mode

Y mode plays much like Columns did back in the day. The point here is to build stacks of 3 or more like colored gems. Unlike in the normal or Z modes (in a minute, I'm going alphabetically), once you have the requisite stacks they will break automatically. The problem here is that Puzzle Fighter's system was not built around gems breaking automatically. Many characters have drop patterns that will instantly result in many, many, many gems being shattered once the timer counts to zero. Meaning with little to no work on the opponent's end, the gems you drop will be sent right back to your side in short order. I managed to defeat a friend several times by simply waiting out the attacks he dropped on my side.

Unique to this mode is a type of "Super" meter. As you break gems the super meter fills up. Once it does you can press the Right Bumper (or Right Trigger, I'm playing on 360) to summon yourself a diamond. The diamond comes down a certain color, it will turn every gem of a certain color to the color of the diamond. So if you get a blue diamond, place it on a yellow, it will then turn every yellow on y our board into a blue gem. It's pretty cool and saved my ass more than once.

Z mode

This mode is reminiscent of Tetris Attack. Instead of gems falling like Chocolate Rain, they rise from the ground one row at a time. Your job is to rotate the gems two at a time in order to form the squares of power that you normally would with gems from above. Any attacks you send cause your opponent's screen to lift suddenly. It's a much slower paced game, but it works much better in this system than Y mode does. The goal in this mode is pretty much the same as X (default, normal) mode, it's just going about getting it done differently.

There are some things suspiciously missing. I seem to remember a challenge mode in the PSX version of this game that allowed you to unlock colors and things. The game features a remixed soundtrack that I'm not particularly fond of. When playing online you have to hold the left or right trigger in order to talk. I'm sure there's a reason behind this, but it was annoying to me. For 10 bucks there's plenty that you do get and online play is where it is at. This is one of the best puzzle games ever, so if you have a console that can play it (and it's been released on EVERYTHING, even gba), go grab it. Single or multi, this game is tons of fun.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo Remix (Test)

This week will see the release of (deep breath) Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix on the PSN and XBLA services. What I've heard of this (re-re-re) rerelase has me pretty excited. It sounds like the developers have put a lot of thought into rebalancing the game which should make it a lot more fun online. Previously, for competitive play, the only characters that could be played with any hope of winning were Donovan and Ken because of their strange and overpowered drop patterns. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore, but until we plebians get the game there is no knowing for sure. Color me optimistic. Whatever the case, for casual play there isn't a better Street Fighter puzzle game on the market and with the addition of online play and lobbies for up to 4 players, I foresee many hours spent dropping gems on my friends.

The Graphics have received an upgrade as well. More accurately the gems themselves and the backgrounds. The gems seem to be 3d and feature an awesome new animation when asploding them. The backgrounds have all been redrawn to fit fancy-shmancy HD televisions and they look super crisp from screenshots. There is at least one new background as well, which looks like Udon created it just for fanservice as several chibi Street Fighter characters can be seen involved in various recreational activities. Unfortunately the characters themselves have received no such treatment and as a result look blurry sitting next to these new and shiny gems and backgrounds. It's nothing that affects gameplay, but it is jarring at first and takes away from the overall presentation of the game.

The game comes out August 29th on XBLA for 800 points (10 bucks) and August 30th on PSN for 10 bucks (10 bucks). The staggered releasing is because of the respective networks own release schedule: XBLA games are released Wednesdays, PSN games Thursday.


Visit the official Capcom blog for this game here: http://blogs.capcomusa.com/blogs/digital.php