The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV, part 10
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
After a brief stop at the Dwarven Castle to drop things off with the fattest possible chocobo, it’s time to head to the Feymarch! To do that, I’m sure we’ll have to penetrate a cunning illusion that hides this mystical land, surely secreted away from mortal voyagers, kept behind a veil of – oh, we just fly due west for a couple of minutes and then land on an island.
I suppose this at least answers the question of how Rydia got underground to save the party before, although how she crossed all of that lava is a different question. Maybe she’s a really good jumper.
The Passage of the Eidolons looks a lot like the Sylph Cave but with its colors swapped; to its credit, that actually feels very different and ominous. Lots of hard-hitting enemies in here, but that’s to be expected, since we’re not supposed to actually be here until later in the game. (Probably. Sidequests, you know how they go.) At least we no longer have to deal with Malboros and constant Sleep effects, although the Confusion that can be tossed around is pretty annoying.
Hard Project: Hellboy
Actually Ron Perlman.
I have given up on explaining certain franchises to people without them sounding really weird. This doesn’t bother me, exactly, but it’s in the back of my mind, so these days I think I wind up actively looking for stuff that sounds either impossible to parse, bizarre, or just plain stupid when described in the abstract. Like Hellboy, which is about a friendly demon who punches secret Nazis and folklore horror figures in the face with the key to ending the world.
Okay, all right, the 90s were a different time for all of us, especially when it comes to comics. And despite his decade of origin and those scant details, the eponymous Hellboy is not a snarling antihero, having a demeanor closer to Detective Lenny Briscoe of Law & Order – wearied, a bit gruff, but mostly concerned with doing the right thing and helping people. Yet for all the fun of the very concept, for some reason the dude’s only got two games, both of which were horrible. Why’d that happen?
Demo Driver 8: DreadOut
Places to run away from really fast, part one of like a million.
I’ve long had massive reservations regarding the whole concept behind Steam’s Greenlight service, but another one popped into my head as I played this game. I’ve seen plenty of games flooded with negative user reviews over trivial technical issues or the usual impotent gamer publisher rage (Ubisoft, EA, Activision, pick your villain of the week), but pretty much any greenlighted game is filled with positive reviews. Because of course it is, because there’s a built-in pile of players who wanted to play the game and now they can. Regardless of whether it’s very good or not.
DreadOut is not actively a bad game from the demo, at least, but neither is it a tremendously good one. It’s got visual character for miles, and it’s the sort of thing that draws you in quickly, but actually playing the game falls victim to all of the tired tropes of survival horror without adding anything of interest besides. Or to put it a bit more bluntly, it’s the sort of game that’s only going to appeal to fans who will buy almost anything that has a horror tag attached to it.
Challenge Accepted: What makes a good challenge?
It’s not the fault of the level, it’s the fault of my own choices.
Good challenges are a little like pornography: when you see them, you know it.
Glib though that may be, the fact is that there’s no single formula that leads to a fair and enjoyable challenge every time. Heck, not too long ago I was talking specifically about challenges that work fine in one place but don’t work at all in another game or setting. So let’s be real and say that at best, you can put together the elements that should make for a good challenge whilst accepting that it might all fall apart under scrutiny.
Still, there are elements that point in the right direction. Perhaps it would be more fair to say that simply putting these things together won’t create a good challenge, but a good challenge will assemble all of these in a way that makes sense. Which brings us back to the same fundamental question in need of an answer. What makes for a good challenge?
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV, part 9
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
Here we are, back at the tower again, assaulting it in the hopes of accomplishing… something. I’m not entirely clear on what the heroes plan to actually do here. On one level, we’re sort of chasing Rubicante, or Edge certainly is; on another level, it’s one of those situations wherein the plot has stepped back to allow the player to keep moving forward based solely on what’s available to access. Since the Tower of Babil features rather prominently in Golbez’s plan, I suppose anything that involves us screwing with it is probably a good thing.
It is neat that you see this tower from two sides, though, with this run starting closer to the top while the previous one started at the bottom. Edge helpfully ninja-moves us into the tower proper, and the group can start heading toward… wherever Rubicante is now. Hey, maybe he he still has the crystals! That would be a good thing. Let’s go with that as our motivation, then.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 