This is going to be a pretty quick Month-In-Review because there are only two posts to cover. Due to illness, moving to a new house and more games than one man can play the amount of posts dropped dramatically from the rest of the year.

NOVEMBER 17, 2011
I finally got feeling good enough and had enough time to fill you guys in on where the heck I went. I unfortunately had to announce Now Loading In-Depth going on hiatus. It still looks like it will return in January 2012. I also gave quick impressions of the three games that forced me to do such a thing to NLID: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Saints Row: The Third.

NOVEMBER 24, 2011
I quick wrote a weekly update and talked about the few issues that I had with Saints Row 3. Speaking of that game I plan to write up a finished article for it soon.

There you have it, November 2011 in a nut-shell. I'll have that SR3 finished article as soon as I can and then it is time to think about my year end super special: the 2011 Wrap Ups! I am going to try to have a few more articles this year and I think I am going to change the schedule for my GotY awards this year. I think that about does it I will talk to you soon. Here's to a great December! Loading Complete!

Hey guys, I promised weekly updates, so here is your weekly update. It'll probably be pretty short but I do have a few things to say about Saints Row: The Third and then I will close out.

A Bit on Saints Row 3
Ah, Saints Row: The Third... you lucky bastard. I was about to relegate you to the short-list of most disappointing games of 2011. But after that final Decker mission and the hilarious atari pixel tank that shoots exploding pixels out of its cannon, you won me back enough that I might not do it... but don't cross me again or it's right back to that list for you. There are four major problems and one leser one that nearly ruin Saints Row 3 for me.

1. Notoriety System. I talked about this last time, it's too extreme for a game where screwing around is half the fun.

2. Noticeable lack of sequel improvements. Other than the Bo-Duke-en quick car jacking move, silly wrestling sprinting melee moves and finally adding damage direction indicators; I really feel there is nothing here you can't do in Saints Row 2 and do better.

3. A Lesser Experience. There are less activities, less clothes customizations, less good music tracks, less diversions and Steelport in general is a lesser experience compared to Saints Row 2's version of Stillwater.

4. The Upgrade System. This makes doing Activities a lesser experience... sure you unlock gang outfit customizations by completing activities, but who cares about dressing up the cannon-fodder? If you wanted "faster health regeneration" you had to earn it by completing activities in the first two games. To me this makes activities, one of the best features of the first two games only useful for getting rep or XP... oh, and most of them are super easy to complete, even the ones marked "Hard".

5. Constant ADD Help Messages. This is a less important thing, but, holy **** you'd think after playing the game for 30+ hours the game would stop reminding me that there are Car Theft and Assassination activities or that I am supposed to be taking over the city. In fact I have only 2 assassinations to go and it's still hounding me. Not everyone is dense or has ADD game, you can give it up.... and give me a freaking option to turn them off!

Otherwise I guess Saints Row 3 is a pretty fun game. It just does not seem to match up to the content filled Saints Row 2 and tries to rely solely on it's over the top humor to get by. Lastly, error correction, you can throw human shields, you just have to press the Y button.

Closing Out
That's about all from me as I mostly spent the week playing Saints Row: The Third. I will be back next week, though, I may do a SR3 finished article if I think I have more to talk about. I still have the remainder of Saints Row 3, nearly all of Skyrim and I want to spend more time with MW3 and Sonic Generations so I have tons to do gaming wise. I will talk to you soon. Loading Complete!

Hey guys. It's been awhile hasn't it? Sometimes things just don't go your way or there are things that take precedence over other things. I had a couple of those things happen to me over the last month. First I got sick on October 18th and that lasted basically until Halloween when I finally started to feel better. A couple of days later I got this annoying cough which didn't clear until November 8. On the other side of coin the whole time I was supposed to be packing up to move to a new house... I lost three weeks to that stupid illness and then real-life forced me to stop playing videogames for another week. I am not complaining, you've gotta do what you've gotta do, but I was on such a roll with keeping the blog updated this year, I'm angry that I lost all that time. Anyway I am pretty sure that I'm back to normal now, I am done moving and the cold is completely gone, so I am ready to start updating again. First I have some news, then I want to do some quick impressions of MW3, Skyrim and Saints Row: The Third.

News: NLID Going On Hiatus
It's coming back... let's getting that out of the way right off. I am not going to give up on the feature that pretty much saved the blog. It's just that I currently have MW3 (mutiplayer), Skyrim (100+ hours of gameplay), Saints Row 3 (just got it a few days ago) and Sonic Generations (played it a bit and then got that cough) to playthrough right now. There is just no time for any other games right now and it's not just because I am playing Final Fantasy 13 either, I couldn't even play a game that lasted 5 hours right now. I don't know when it will be back, but it will have to wait until I have fewer games to play. I don't want to really set a date, but, right now it's looking like Now Loading In-Depth (NLID) will not be back until 2012. Sorry if you enjoyed the series, but it really was just something to do when there weren't any new games to talk about on the blog and it did that job admirably. If anything changes I will be sure to let you all know.

Quick Impressions
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3:
While it was a pretty typical campaign with the usual get across invisible lines to advance the level. The ending of the game was pretty satisfying. Also 5-6 hours is a good length for the CoD games you wouldn't want them to last longer than that. As for the multiplayer, it has some improvements that I like, such as the weapon XP system and the new strike packages. Noob-tubes are reasonable now, to get a one-shot kill you pretty much have to land the grenade at their feet or hit them directly. Air-Support is also not quite as effective because the maps are crowded with buildings. Speaking of maps, they are pretty hit or miss. All of them are so cramped with objects that getting clear lines of sight is nearly impossible. These are also the most complicated CoD maps ever made so expect to have to play tons of matches before you figure out where to go. The there is the hit detection... say what you will about the explosion happy MW2 when you pointed your gun at someone they, a majority of the time, got hit. In MW3 sometimes your shots just won't register, normally I'd chalk it up to lag or latency issues, but while those still are an issue, I am pretty sure that most of the time the lack of hits is a game flaw. Overall: it's a Call of Duty game you already have your mind up at this point, I don't have to say anything else really.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
I haven't spent as much time with Skyrim as I probably should have but trying to balance two games that you want to play vs a 100 hour game is pretty tough. The other reason I haven't been playing Skyrim is because on Xbox 360 the game has a glitch that causes the game's textures not to load in properly. I am not a graphics hound, but it really takes away from the experience here, because even with the crappy textures you can tell the game is really beautiful and you feel like you are missing out. The combat is better and more visceral, even though most enemies still just topple over when they run out of HP. I have fought two dragons, the first was during the beginning of the main quest and the other time I got attacked in the wild and had to run away... because I wasn't prepared. Once you start activating dragons make sure you have either a long range magic spell or a bunch of arrows because depending on the terrain the dragons may not land. I have only played barely 10 hours so I can't really say much more because I have barely scratched the surface of Skyrim.

Saints Row: The Third
It's a new Saints Row game. Most everything that you loved about the first two games is here but the game has thrown out all the stops and borders on lunacy at times. The game plays a lot like Saints Row 2 except for two big changes. First you can't comically toss away a human shield and second the notoriety system is not lenient like in the first two games. This is the game's worst issue in my eyes; one of the best things about the Saints Row games is that you could screw around and unless a cop witnessed you doing bad things it would take five or more pedestrian kills before you'd even get a 1 star cop level and even then only nearby cops would come after you with their nightsticks. The only thing they changed for Saints Row 2 was the cops didn't like it when you smashed through chain-link fences when they were around. Saints Row 3 F's it all up... all you have to do is kill one or two pedestrians and the you'll have a one shield notoriety with the cops... and the cops in Steelport don't screw around they come out firing and they don't care who they hit. The other issue is what happens at the different levels of notoriety: at level 1 any local cops or gang members will attack on sight, at level 2 both will start sending new people in cars to your location... those two aren't much different than the first two games... level 3 is where things start getting annoying. At level 3, the cops send out the SWAT team which attack with riot shields, they also send in motorbike cops and even a military vehicle with a mounted turret. The gangs start sending out their own special units that take a billion hits and spray grenades and gun-fire... but the biggest annoyance is that they send in a helicopter with a sniper on board and if he hits you takes large chunks of your health away. That's level 3 out of 5... I'd hate to see what levels 4 and 5 are like... they probably just drop a nuke on you or something. I sort of understand wanting to make the higher levels of notoriety more challenging, for example in the first game you could survive easily as long as you wanted at cops level 5 as long as you had ammo to fight. But this seems extreme for a game where screwing around is half the fun. You also have to play through a bunch of story missions before you open up all the different activities. They also got rid of the taxi, ambulance, fire truck and tow truck diversions. I'll have to play more but I am kind of disappointed so far.

That about covers the last few weeks. I will try to post at least one update a week and get out finished articles for any games that I finish. It's good to be back and I will talk to you soon. Loading Complete!

What a weird month. I made quite a few posts but I don't think that I accomplished that much over the course of it all. I didn't get much done in terms of NLID and the last 2 weeks I have been fighting off a cold so I really couldn't do anything during that time. Stuff did happen though so let's get to recapping that at least.

OCTOBER 4, 2011
(NLID #42) I finally finish Resident Evil 4 for a only a second time in over 6 years. I really enjoyed it, tons of action providing a fair challenge and the game remains intense to this day. If you still haven't played this, you must.

OCTOBER 6, 2011
In the first update of October I discuss the tough time I had choosing the next game for NLID because I picked up Dark Souls, an in-depth and long game. I did actually make a choice and I am still not sure it was the right one.

OCTOBER 8, 2011
(NLID #43) That decision was to play Final Fantasy XIII. Back in 2010, I had only managed about 3 hours before I was completely bored and annoyed with Final Fantasy Corridors. This post was mainly about sharing my previous thoughts about the game so that I could start fresh with a brand new view.

OCTOBER 11, 2011
(NLID #44) I surpassed last year's (2010) post count with just one series with this update on Final Fantasy XIII. I still haven't found anything but Final Fantasy Corridors... though later the weapon upgrade system appeared so I updated on that and I also had to discuss the awful waste of disc space all these silly FMVs take up on the discs.

OCTOBER 14, 2011
I just fire off a quick update on Dark Souls where I couldn't get passed the Bell Gargoyles and I still haven't. That's it, that's all there was in this update.

OCTOBER 18, 2011
(NLID #45) I pretty much spend all of NLID #45 talking about Final Fantasy XIII's battle system as if I perfectly understand it. Still not impressed with Final Fantasy Corridors even after 8 hours of play.

OCTOBER 20, 2011
I give my impressions of Batman Arkham City. It's a really great game with a really crappy add-on posing as an Online Pass. Seriously, the Cat-Woman stuff is not worth worrying about, it's about an hour of gameplay out of a 12 hour game... personally, I would say it's not even worth downloading at all, save 200MB of bandwidth.

OCTOBER 28, 2011
After being sick for over a week I finally feel well enough to update you on my status and what I have been playing. Unfortunately, being sick for that long I lost a lot of time to play videogames and one of those games was Final Fantasy XIII... which I was hoping to finish before the end of October. I mentioned I have to make a decision on what to do with the 17GB behemoth so that when my last three anticipated games come out I will have room on the Hard Drive for them. Also I am not overly excited for MW3 it just happens to be the first of the three games to be released.

That's October 2011 in a nut-shell. As I said it was a busy month where nothing really happened. Now I have a decision to make. I have to decide if I am going to keep playing Final Fantasy XIII... The answer is: I am going to do my best and see what happens. It turns out I am going to be pretty busy this week and next with stuff and I am not sure I will have enough time to really make a dent in FF13... but I will try. For my sake and for the sake of not getting the wrath of NeonNinja. If it extra space is needed for other games then I will just have to play it by ear. So that does it from me for today, November will be a busy time with, MW3, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Saints Row: The Third coming out in the next couple of weeks. I will talk to you soon. Later. Here's to a great November! Loading Complete!

Hey everyone. It has now been a week since I last updated and I really have accomplished nothing during that time span. Why? Because I started getting sick (a cold) on the 18th, the day I picked up Batman: Arkham City... surely caused by the gratuitous use of Online Pass... and it hit full force by Friday. The last few days I have been getting better but today is first day I finally feel that it has passed and I have the energy to quickly write an update. Of course this means I have lost over a week of time to this ailment which means my hopes of completing Final Fantasy XII before the end of November have been ruined. In fact I am not sure what I am going to do about that game. It takes up so much space on my 360's hard-drive, around the same amount as 3 separate games that I want to make sure I have enough space when MW3, Skyrim and Saint's Row 3 come out within the span of a week (7 days). The other thing is I am going to want to be spending plenty of time with those three games, especially Skyrim.

I have 3 solutions: 1. I spend the next 10 days playing the crap out of FFXIII in very long sessions (6+ hours) and pick a new game with a less demanding play-length or 2. I play FF13 as much as I can but as soon as MW2 comes out on Nov 8th I put it and Now Loading In-Depth (NLID) on Hiatus until I can find the free time again, which could possibly be as long until January 2012. Lastly, 3rd, I can put FF13 on hiatus and pick a new game with a less demanding play-length that I can more easily play in between these new releases, keeping NLID going. I'm not asking you to decide for me, but if you'd like to make a suggestion I will take them in to consideration. I will make my decision in the next couple of days and I will tell you it at the end of Month-In-Review on the 31st.

I think that about covers everything that I wanted to say. I will talk to you on Monday with Month-In-Review. Later. Loading Complete!

I haven't done one of these impressions articles in awhile but I have a good game to talk about. Before I get to talking about the game I guess I should quickly go over all this uproar and outrage regarding the "online pass" to play the Catwoman content. Let me preface this by saying I am not qualifying the use of online pass in the way that WB games did with the following statements. I am simply saying this is not the doom's day scenario for gaming that some are making it out to be. First of all the Catwoman content is ACTUALLY DLC, it's not really an "online pass", it is over 200Mb in size and not one of those 100kb type unlock keys. Second: I have played over 8 hours of Batman AC and have only played as Catwoman for 30 minutes and I have 40% of the main story missions complete. Point is, while the method WB Games used to condone their "online pass" was a bit sketchy, from what I have played the Catwoman stuff is nothing to write home about. There are only 4 missions as her and you need her to get around 40 of the Riddler trophies you probably could do without her. I think the outrage for the Catwoman content has been blown out of proportion as it really is a VERY SMALL part of the game. As for the missing codes and things like that... that's just an error... it's not WB Games trying to screw you out of content. It sucks the risk is there though.

But enough of this **** let's talk about a really great game that I have been enjoying quite a bit. It plays like Arkham Asylum but it takes place in a more open world area. So if you liked the first one you'll easily get right in to the game. The combat system has been upgraded so that you can quickly attack using your gadgets and even counter multiple opponents by tapping the counter button for the amount of attackers. The great fluidity of the combat is still there too and Batman and Catwoman even use the environment around them to make attacks sometimes slamming opponents in to bridge railings or against nearby walls. The level design is pretty similar to the first game where you take on groups of unarmed / melee combatants head on and use high gargoyle statues to slowly takeout rooms of armed enemies. I am not a big fan of stealth games, but I really enjoy the parts against the guys with guns. As you slowly make use of the detective mode and your high perches and take them down one by one anyone left gets more and more frightened. You really feel like the Dark Knight putting fear in to the bad guys.

The Riddler trophies are back and more distracting than ever. There are over 400 Riddler secrets to find and solve this time around. Just like the first game you need pretty much all your gadgets to get most of the trophies so, as a tip to you, focus on the main missions for awhile. New to Arkham City are side-missions which have you chasing after other Batman villains and solving small mysteries. The only thing negative I have to say at this point is the fact this is one of those open-world type games where you have to rely on the game saving checkpoints... you cannot save at anytime. Meaning this is not a good game to play for short periods of time... though usually there are checkpoints in many interiors so if you head inside a building you should be fine.

That's it, my somewhat scattered thoughts on Batman Arkham City, I'll probably write a finished article when I complete the game and hopefully I will get back to Final Fantasy 13 and NLID in the next couple days as well. I will talk to you as soon as I can. Later. Loading Complete!

Welcome back to Now Loading In-Depth, this is the 45th edition and the 3rd covering Final Fantasy XIII. I would be lying if I said I wasn't fighting with this one a bit. Remember all those things I didn't like 3 hours in? They still aren't all that much fun 8+ hours in. Walking down corridors to yellow markers to activate a cut-scene or boss fight is not very interesting or exciting and each section takes an 30 minutes to an hour to get through depending on how many fights you avoid. That's all there is to FF13 long winding corridors with a few scattered enemy encounters. Award winning gameplay right there. This wouldn't be an issue if the game didn't tell it's story in tiny little bits during short 10 minute scenes after reaching the corridor's magic trigger points. I have been playing over 8 hours and all that has happened is they beat up a fal'cie, then all ended up l'cie, got all angsty about it, split into annoying small groups and are going their separate ways. Stories that separate the main party annoy me, sure it allows for more intimate and controlled character progression, I guess, but it forces you to use characters you don't like or when they have jobs (or roles as in FF13) you get groups of characters without decent talent.

In FF13 the issue is the game is designed around 3 character battle-lines and for almost all of the game I have played so far they only have two. I am forced to use a ravager / commando combo and drop to only one attacker when I need to heal or buff/debuff. Most standard battles boil down to the basic task of first buffing/debuffing, Commando/Ravaging to stagger the enemy and kill them as fast you can once you do that. The only other thing you need to worry about is switching in a healer if you need to heal and then switch back to get back to the commandoing and ravaging. As I said that is the basic idea, it's not always easy to accomplish that plan. You see each enemy has a stagger meter, ravagers, who cast magic raise it up the fastest, but the meter recovers just as fast, so you need a hard hitting commando to hit the enemy to slow the meter down so your ravagers can keep filling the meter to the top. Once the enemies stagger bag is full, the enemy is of course staggered and is susceptible to big damage as you continue to raise the stagger percentage.

Saboteurs and Synergists are your de-buffers and buffer respectively and you will probably want to start off each fight by buffing yourself up and de-buffing the enemies then switch to your Ravager/Commando combo. Medics cast cure... that's all they do, at least at this point, you switch them in when you need to heal up damage. The final role is that of the Sentinel, a purely defensive role where you aggro enemies to attack you while you protect your team. These four roles cannot attack the enemy so you will want to switch them out as soon as you are done with them. I keep saying "switch" all the time, let me explain. You can switch groups of character roles on the fly at anytime by hitting LB (L1) for what is called a Paradigm Shift. You then get a list, called the Paradigm Deck here you can pick the next group of roles the characters will take on. You will want your Commando/Ravager/Ravager paradigm for staggering foes and your Sentinel/Saboteur/Synergist paradigm for buffing/de-buffing. You can create custom paradigms and rename them to your liking as well as control the order of the deck itself.

As I said, you don't get the full experience of this in the part of the game that I am in as you only have two characters. I am pretty sure it's an issue caused by the story controlling gameplay... if the story didn't require the characters to go their separate ways this wouldn't even be an issue at all. I think that is all I want to talk about right now, because there certainly isn't any riveting gameplay to discuss here. If all that sounded concerning do not fret. I am not going to give up on the game and will do my best to see it to the end, I might even find that mythical "good part" of the game this and that many hours into the game. My patience is strong after Secret of Mana and BioShock and FF13 isn't nearly as bad as those two games. Before I forget I am just over 8 hours into the game and just started Chapter 5 which starts disc 2... speaking of discs, I have a question for you guys who have played this game to completion how frequent is the disc switching? For example, do I ever have to use disc 1 again now that I am on disc 2? If I don't, I wouldn't mind deleting the install for that disc to free up some hard-drive space for other games.

That covers all I wanted to talk about with Final Fantasy 13. I will have another update in a couple of days or so. Tomorrow I am picking up Batman: Arkham City and I will have my impressions of that probably on Wednesday. I will talk to you then. Later. Loading Complete!

I have a quick update for you guys. I had a pretty busy week and didn't get too much gaming in during my free time so NLID #45 is going to be delayed a few more days. I did play a bit of Dark Souls and came up against the Gargoyle protecting the Undead Parrish bell. It starts off alone and while it hits hard its attacks are long and slow, the problem is that once you get the first Gargoyle to half health or so another one comes in with half health and both of them start breathing fire. I came close with the help of the NPC phantom but while I have grabbed a few needed items (such as some magic) I haven't been able to get any humanity to transform to human. Since you can only recruit help of phantoms (either NPCs or actual other human players) when your character is in human state I will attempt the fight as soon as I get some. Point is though I kind of got stuck and haven't made much progress. I am still not sure what my say on Dark Souls is as I really don't think I have made all that much progress.

As for Final Fantasy 13 I have played about an hour or two in the last few days so progress has been slow. I'll save the details for NLID #45 but I am about 8 hours in to the game now. I think that NLID edition will hit around Monday depending on how much I play. On Tuesday I am going to be picking up Batman: Arkham City, I enjoyed the first game and the sequel is getting great reviews. I'll have impressions on that sometime next week. That about covers it. I will talk you again as soon as possible. Later. Loading Complete!

Welcome to NLID #44, the series has now surpassed the total post count of last year (2010) and things just keep on rolling for 2011! Today, I am here for a quick progress update for FF13 and by quick I mean quick, this post is not likely to exceed one paragraph. Why? Good question. Answer: In the nearly 6 hours I have played FF13 it has not changed my previous opinion yet. Snow is still an idiot (I loved the part where Lightning punches him in the face, he's all talk indeed.) and the game has not moved much beyond the follow corridors to yellow marker get boss fight or cut-scene. With that said I am not giving up as I am trusting you FF13 supporters and will soldier on until I find "the good part" of the game that you like to mention. I have a feeling it is just around the corner as I am someways in to chapter 4. I am looking forward to enhancing weapons / accessories and getting to Pulse part of the game. Hey, at least I made more than 3 hours this time so that is a good sign.

This paragraph doesn't count, so there. Anyway I will update again in a few days as I make progress in the game, hopefully by the next update I will have something new to talk about. I will talk to you then, later. Loading Complete!

UPDATE: 10/12/2011 at 12:10am PT
Just a quick update to this post... it figures just after I write this thing I would encounter the upgrade system and I forgot to mention an important thing that has to do with the X360 version of FF13. First the upgrade system, I am sure it will make sense later on maybe, considering I just unlocked it a little bit ago, but the way each component is used is strange. They all seem to have a set amount of XP value towards upgrading the weapon so the worth of adding an electrical component to a magic staff garners the same XP gain as adding it to a gun. That makes no sense to me, shouldn't adding the proper components to specific weapon types mean better XP. It looks like it could be neat though so I look forward to messing with more at later time.

Second thing: regarding the X360 version of the game, as you may know it comes on 3 discs and takes up a whopping 17GB. The thing is I really think that that could have been avoided. Many of the cut-scenes are FMV that use in game graphics... why are they movies? Japan needs to realize it isn't 1997 anymore. Blue Dragon and I believe Lost Odyssey also had this issue. I can understand if you want to use the fully rendered CGI cut-scenes for really special cut-scenes but all they are doing here is desperately try to fill a Blu-ray disc. I also have to mention the FMV quality on the 360 is grainy due to compression so another strike to wasting space with FMV that could have just been normal in-game cut-scenes.

I think that about covers it for now. I'll keep progressing with the goal of completing the game by the end of October. I will talk to you in a couple of days with more Final Fantasy XIII coverage. Loading Complete!

I'm gonna do something a bit different with this entry, I'm writing it and it I have yet to play the game it is about. I have the game installed on the 360 (all 18GB of it) and I will start playing it from a new game just as soon as I finish this entry. You might be thinking this is a strange way to start an update for a game but Final Fantasy XIII is different from most games that I have played here on NLID... it shares mixed feelings with Final Fantasy fans and fans of games in general. Before I can get started logging down a new set of thoughts with a fresh piece of mind I need to explain my feelings and opinions on the game's design so you know which side I was on before I press the reset button and start again.

My first FF13 game lasted 2.5 hours. That's it. That's all I could stand of "Final Fantasy Corridors" and of "we're the heroes, we can do this" Snow. The game did nothing to prove itself and all I kept hearing was "it gets better 20+ hours in"... how can I get 20+ hours in when this game is doing nothing for me? I let the game slide until I deleted it from the hard drive for space for other games and forgot about it until just a couple of months ago when I started seeing information about its sequel FFXIII-2.

The only thing that really needs to talked about is the game's linearity and I have some interesting thoughts about what is so bothersome about Final Fantasy Corridors. Personally I find the game's design to be a bit insulting both to a long time gamer and to a fan of JRPGs. I understand that JRPGs are linear as they are trying to tell a story and stories are linear in nature (beginning, middle, end) but my issue with FF13 is that it pushes this a bit too far in the early part of the game that most will experience. Western RPGs tend to gravitate towards open worlds, but when was the last time a Bethesda game was acclaimed for its main story? JRPGs focus on the story, as I said, and tend to use key trigger points (talking to specific NPC or crossing an invisible line) to activate the next piece of the storyline causing a linear string of these trigger points all the way to the end of the game. But here is the thing; previous JRPGs attempted to at the very least create the illusion of an explorable world with an over-world map, towns and caves that you'd have to reach by navigating there.

The reason, I think, Final Fantasy 13 bugs so many people is that it boils down a favorite genre to the bare bones and exposes it for what it is really worth; not to mention following an almost straight corridor from marker to marker isn't that exciting in the first place. When I was thinking about writing this, I thought about past Final Fantasy games like FF4 and FF6 or the PS1 era FF games and thought about how they could all be over-simplified down to corridors to simply focus on telling their stories and while I didn't get super nerdy enough to actually design these I'm sure you can imagine how that would go down if you've played those games. Trying to focus on your story is a fine endeavor but not in the name of sacrificing gameplay, or in the case of JRPGs apparently what little gameplay you did have between the battles and the story-telling.

With all that said I've gotten that off my chest and it is time to give Final Fantasy 13 a fair shot by forgetting the past and judging it on its own merits. I've cleaned the slate, starting fresh, turning a new page or whatever cleche you prefer or that I didn't already use in this article. I hope you enjoy joining me on the ride through Final Fantasy XIII! I will have the first real progress and thoughts update on Monday sometime so look forward to that. How hard can it be to play more than 2.5 hours? Don't answer that! Loading Complete!