Final Fantasy XIII Fabula Nova Crystallis

Name:  Final Fantasy XIII

Developer: Square Enix

Year: 2010

Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation3

Genre: Role Playing Game

Time Spent: 40-50 Hours main Game, 80+ for every content + trophies

Intro: Like I said I would, I was going to go into Fabula Nova Crystallis, the story that revolves around Final Fantasy, XIII-1/2, Type-0 and Versus XIII. Since we should probably start with what we have lets begin with XIII-1. The first game released for this story. Although it doesn't tell much about the story of Fabula Nova Crystallis it is a great game to kick off. 

Story: The Story begins somewhat abrubt. After a scene where 1 woman kicks ass and doesn't chew bubblegum you are thrown into battle. It seems the character you control is someone named Lightning, and aloth with that, Sazh, the guy with the afro hair with a chocobo chick in it. Along in this area you get to know Snow, the leader of the rebellion called Nora. Vanille, a very optimistic girl, seeing the situation they are in. And Hope, a child that can't take all this violance anymore and whines quite a lot.

After some playtime with all of them you meet Serah, Lightning's sister and apparently the fiancée of Snow. She turns to Crystal just when you meet though. Turns out there are Semi Gods in this world called Fall Cie.

They have the power to turn human's into L'cie. Fullfill your task and you turn to Crystal forever. Fail? You are turned into a horrible monster called a Cieth'. Needless to say, if you are branded you are out of luck, and as it turns out every partymember gets branded as a L'Cie by a Fal Cie of an opposing planet called Pulse. Now branded traitors by the government you have to save yourself and try to break this cursed system of the Fall Cie on the planet Pulse and your own planet called Cocoon.

Gameplay: This game uses the familiar ATB bar again just like in older Final Fantasies like 8 and 12. However, it has segments this time. You start up with 2 segment but you can end up with a total of 6. You can fill every segments with an action such as attack or fire or cure. Stronger attack's such as blitz, Blizzaga and Haste fill up more bars because they are stronger. This way you can fill the gauge with a combination of attacks to defeat your enemy. 

However, you mainly use auto attack in this game. If you scan your opponent trough the use of libra or a librascope you learn the weaknesses of your enemy yourself. Auto batlle automatically chooses the right option for you. Due to the low amount of skills you sttart out with you are sadly beginning the first 1/4 of the game only pressing X/A to auto battle which might be quite boring.

You control only 1 Character in game. To at least have some control over battle this game introduces paradigm shift. Every character isn't stuck to 1 roll although they usually excell in something. You have Commander(physical attack), Ravanger (magic), Medic (heals), Saboteur (debuff), Synergist (buffs), Sentinel (defense). In a paradigm deck you can make 6 combinations of these. You can make medic medic medic for quick heals, Commander Ravanger Ravanger for fast damage. Every time you shift in battle you switch to a deck that you need at the moment, instead of choosing what actions you make, instead you are mainly choosing what roles you need at a certain point in battle, making it really fast paced.

Outside of battle is a bit boring I have to say. The main problem with this game is that it is VERY linear. Chapter 11/12 is the first one where you can explore, the rest of the game you are spent following a certain path. Combined with the easy early auto battle this game starts of slowly.

Audio/Visual: With this game being the first on the next gen console the graphics really jump out of your screen. The opening video takes you away and the good part is. IT DOESN'T END. The graphics stay the same, in battle or viewing a scene, it doesn't matter at all. Even the texture of the clothes the people are wearing is made in great detail. Every area you visit has some remarkable contents. Varying from a dark dump to a vast green field with lots of animals flying or walking around. Graphics wise this game set a new tone for a Final Fantasy Game.

The soundtrack this time isn't made by Nobuo Uematsu, and you can notice it. This game has lots of orchestral music, even in the battle theme. There are also lots of soundtrack's with vocal's this time, even during gameplay. Luckily they don't have the overtone so there is quite a balance between gameplay, graphics and music here.  Too bad I can't forgive them for not having the classical victory tune though. 

Verdict: I really enjoyed this game, even though it was quite linear. I like going to places I shouldn't be and getting stronger items before fighting the main boss. Being stuck with sucky characters sometimes made it even harder but the story, the music and graphics all made it good for me. To be honest I even replayed it once more.

Gameplay:

Story:

Audio/Visuals:

Fun Facts: Final Fantasy XIII...

...'s character Lightning was supposed to be a man? They changed it late into the process

... is the first game not to have a victory fanfare or a prelude.

... is the first part in Fabula Nova Crystallis? More on this later

... was supposed to have DLC but they skipped this. Also more on this later.

... Nora, the resistance group, is also the name of Hope's mom who died in the beginning of the game

... Mom's are though.

Stab into the past. Assassin's Creed

Name:  Assassin's Creed

Developer: Ubisoft

Year: 2007

Platform: Xbox360, Playstation 3, Pc.

Genre: Action Adventure

My year started real busy... and also really broke. So no new game for me yet. Instead, a collegue and a friend of mine who attended my new years party brought me a nice package I could borrow. Assassin's Creed 1,2 and Brotherhood. Since I was also kind of a Prince of Persia fan I thought I would like this, thus I started with 1.

Assassin's Creed is a game that takes place in 2 timelines. The first one you get to know about is the timeline of Desmond. This guy is part of some assassin's family and has been captured by a research facility. It seems our main character has dna which has the memories of his ancestors who were all Assassin's. One of his ancestors apparently has something they need and you need to play trough all the memories of your ancestor to find what they need. In order to acces that memory they use machine called the Animus.

Once you go into the Animus you play trough a specific memory in order to learn what happened during your ancestor's time and to get closer to the memory our doctors need. Once you control your ancestor, called Altair, you are an assassin with all it's skills and weaponry. With those tools you need to assassinate several people, in order of the Brotherhood. This Brotherhood says they do this in the name of peace. However, as you progress the game you discover a dark secret.

Once you are logged in into the animus you can see a few things on the screen. On the bottom left you see a small square with some symbols, these correspond to directions on the D-Pad. Up selects the Hidden Blade, a small weapon used for stealth assassinations. Right selects the sword, your strongest weapon during combat. Down selects fists if you need to beat someone up but not kill them yet. Left selects the short blade, a small weapon which is quick in combat but not quite as strong. Also, if you are not in combat, you can thrown small throwing knives to end a life from a distance. 

Next to this you also see a bar at the top right. This is your synchronization bar and shows how well Desmond is in synch with Altair. If he takes too much damage you lose your synchro and thus need to start from the last (auto) savepoint. Your health goes up if you do more missions and side missions. In short, it is just your health bar.

Finally left from the synchro bar you can see the Abstergo logo. When it is white, you are anonymous and can practically do whatever you want. However, the logo changes colour in different situations. When you are being chased or noticed by the guards, it is red. When Hiding it is blue and so on. 

Finally the bottom right displays the minimap where you can see all missions and sidemissions.

Graphic wise I think this is a great game. It takes place in the middle east and thus you don't see lot's of colours in this game. However, every person/ building/ environment has been made in great detail, almost showing no flaws in designs.

This game doesn't have any music. Instead ou mostly hear the murmering of every citizen of the 4 places you visit. At first it is interesting what every citizen has to say but it gets real repetitive after a while. Almost everyone has the same line and after 2 or 3 hours in game you know every line of what a citizen is going to say.

Overall this game is a nice way to spend your time. But if you are a completionist like me you are going to have a hard time. Not because it becomes impossibly hard to do all side missions but because everything is exactly the same. Only your normal missions include something new or important to the storyline. Next to that, there is no real reward in doing all side missions except for some lousy achievements on the Xbox version.

And last but not least, although it isn't hard to complete all side missions, you are annoyed to death by every drunk /beggar that walk around town that seem to only target their annoyance to you instead of every other frigging citizen. It just really ruins the overall feeling of this game

Fun Facts: Assassin's Creed...

... has some similarities with Prince of Persia, which isn't strange since it is made by the same team.

... takes place around 2010 and 1190 respectively.

... has main characters who are based on real people from around that time. Only a couple of people 

    are imaginary.

... has some hints about the apocaliptic year 2012. It seems the Templars will do something to us in 

    that year.

... beggar's should DIE!