Psychomode

(Originally posted on GameSpot.com under the name stevenscott14. Appears here slightly edited due to my perfectionist state of mind.)

I'm sure everybody has heard of Starcraft - without a doubt one of the most influential PC games ever and one of the greatest examples of strategy-based gaming to this day. It's a game that has captivated thousands, maybe millions, since its release, so much that many people are still playing it today, whether over Blizzard's servers on Battle.net, or simply experimenting with their own offline custom games and making their own maps with the superb scenario editor.

And it deserves all the attention, to say the least. Starcraft shines in all areas, even the graphics can impress to this day. Maybe not in the technical aspect, but in the artistic stakes, and in the way that the visuals leak charisma and charm, Starcraft succeeds, almost nine years later. And, yes, even nine years later, the gameplay still obliterates the majority of strategy games being released today. Starcraft is, in my eyes, and in a lot of other people's eyes, a benchmark for the genre. The game presents you with three races to play as: the Terran marines, our digital human counterparts, who are an ideal place to start with their perfect balance between all of their units and characteristics; the Zerg alien race, who rely on mass quantities of cheaper, throwaway units, and whose structures and units all evolve from larvae; and the Protoss tribes, a technologically advanced species who employ smaller amounts of more expensive, enhanced units.

The balance between these three races is truly something to behold. Whereas in most games, intense competitions online may end in sore losers complaining that the opposition had a particular ability that put them at an advantage, in Starcraft, there is really no excuse for that sort of thing. Each race is almost perfectly balanced so that no single one of them outweighs any of the others.

Each race are equally charming, fun to use, and just all-around great fun - the Terran maintain a charismatic hardass attitude all the time, whether it's from the marines' sometimes suicidal outlook on the war ('you want a piece of me, boy' doesn't sound too good when a lone marine is faced with a Protoss carrier) from the Zerg's disgusting biological squelchings and alien gruntings ('kaablargh' must intimidate the other races somehow') or from the Protoss' kickass psychic abilities and robotic hummings and such.

More importantly, the core mechanics of the game are golden and almost perfect, again. The game revolves around your worker units harvesting minerals and Vespene gas in order for you to build structures, move through a technology tree, and implement more and more units in your forces as they become available. This stays true for all races, but there are slight alterations. For the Terrans, your SCV workers will gather minerals and they will also build the structures, and your units will enter battle from these structures, for instance a starport will construct Wraith fighters and Battlecruisers. For the Zerg, all structures are biological, as such the workers, (Drones) will actually mutate into your buildings and larvae will mutate into the Drones. It's slightly more complicated than the Terran, but when you get it sussed out it's an equally rewarding chain. The Protoss are possibly even more complicated than that, as all buildings seem to enter through warp rifts in hyperspace, and your workers (Probes) will open up these rifts. All buildings have to be powered by a structure called a Pylon, too.

Now I'm going into more of a walkthrough rather than a review, so I'll snap out of it. The point comes down to this - the concept of Starcraft really works, and almost every aspect of its execution is topnotch. There are a few annoying flaws, such as units randomly following enemy units, a few gaps in enemy AI, but they are just minor, as for the most part, Blizzard built a rock solid foundation for this game nine years ago and it still hasn't been shattered by a superior game as far as I know.

And the storyline and plot haven't been surpassed, either - the voice-overs in the game are almost perfect and the characters deliver the tale astonishingly well. Blizzard always implement great stories into their games, and Starcraft has possibly been blessed with their best work. It's sometimes surprising, sometimes emotionally charged, sometimes inspiring, and sometimes just plain epic, but it never fails to stray from an incredible core science fiction narrative.

The graphics, as I've said, fit the game like a glove, and reek charisma and personality from every single pore, and even nine years later they truly do shine; even if the game does look rather dated it really doesn't matter when the visuals have this much personality. The audio, however, is even better.

Blizzard have always been pioneers of game music in my eyes, and Starcraft is a true testament to that.

Some people may point out that the music is maybe a bit over the top or maybe a bit odd, but the diversity between the three race's music is obvious, and every single track will stick in your head like some sort of glue. The Terran have a sort of weird infectious poppy vibe everywhere, the Zerg get a rather spooky, ambient selection, and the Protoss music cannot really be explained with words. The voice-overs in the game that document the story are again completely and utterly at the top of their field. The assorted sound effects and responses from the units in the game really have a sense of personality, too, especially the Zerg squelchings and battle cries.

All in all, Starcraft is destined to be remembered as a piece of videogaming history, that is if it isn't already. Everybody has to play this game, and I shall be staggered if there is somebody out there who doesn't find anything to enjoy about this incredibly well designed game.

Starcraft truly is a spellbinding, glittering example of real time strategy gaming, and it should be experienced by absolutely everybody, whether it's to witness an almost perfect RTS, behold an unbelievable storyline, or see the topnotch balance between three of the finest races in videogaming history. It's just an amazing game. Simple as that.

(This review was originally posted on GameSpot.com under the name stevenscott14. It appears here ever-so-slightly edited in order for it to not look like an absolutely unforgivable wall of text)

The most creepy thing about my experience with F.E.A.R. wasn't even the silence, the atmosphere, or the spooky little girl that turns out to be much, much more than a Samara ripoff (The Ring, anyone?) The creepy thing was that I actually enjoyed the moments where there wasn't a thousand clones to shoot the hell out of; I relished these moments almost as much as the gratuitous fighting that splattered most areas of the game.

Don't get me wrong, though; that's not to say that F.E.A.R. seriously takes a beating when you're comparing to the most memorable set piece gun battles of, say, Half Life 2, or even Halo - F.E.A.R. doesn't need vehicles; hell, it doesn't even need crowbars. F.E.A.R. compensates for that by including slow motion into a game that is extraordinarily fast paced in nature. Using slow motion takes advantage of your character's superior reflexes to, for lack of a better description, kick the living crap out of any clone soldier that wanders into your path. This tool is quite useful in a couple of the game's larger scale battles, where there might be, say, a full squad of enemies positioned strategically ahead of you at different points. Not only will you be significantly quicker than them, enabling you to peek your head out of your hiding place and sneak in a few shots at a soldier who didn't have the luxury of returning fire quick enough to ensure his survival; but you'll also be able to dodge any slower-moving projectiles coming towards you, which comes in very handy when the game starts throwing heavily armored robots and such at you in the later stages of the campaign.

Slow motion isn't just fun to use, though - at some parts of the game it is positively essential to your survival. Put simply, the AI in F.E.A.R. is some of the best in any first person shooter I've ever played, and I've played a lot of first person shooters. When you hit enemies enough they will retreat back to their insertion point and they'll usually stay there, recuperating while they wait for you to make the first move. They'll also utilize cover far more effectively than in most games - at some points you'll see them duck behind a stack of boxes or something and they'll secretly move to another point of cover and surprise you from springing out from an unexpected place.

And that's not all - slow motion also holds a lot of amusement value. The game uses a brilliant physics engine AND has destructible environments, and these two elements, slowed down, just surmounts to some really beautiful-looking scenes. At many points in the game you'll get to witness flying shards of glass, bullets tearing holes out of walls, exploding bodies, decapitations, random paranormal effects such as swinging lights, hallucinations, and other such like, all in slow motion. I tell you, watching a soldier's body being buffeted with a close range machine gun spurt and then flying down a corridor with the impact is something you've got to experience at least once throughout the course of the game - especially since the game's rather limited arsenal of weapons manage to be extremely satisfying.

Despite all the above elements, its still the parts without all the overblown fight scenes that captivated me in F.E.A.R. The storyline and the few-and-far-between cinematic scenes, for one thing. At the beginning of the game you're just expecting a mildly convoluted psychological-themed ride through a relatively dark facility, much like transplanting Doom 3 with Half Life 2 and then throwing a Samara-esque little girl in there, too. Turns out that F.E.A.R.'s storyline is much more captivating than at first sight - it involves the little girl quite heavily, and the revelations over the course of the game, combined with many intriguingly gruesome hallucination scenes, all build up to an absolutely amazing ending; one of the best endings in gaming ever, in my opinion, and that alone is enough for me to justify buying its expansion Extraction Point, possibly soon.

The portions of the game without dozens of soldiers to shoot at are just as good. The game's atmosphere is literally perfect and for many people, F.E.A.R. will be a game that they will be reluctant to, and eventually refuse to play in the dark. Dimly lit corridors are soaked with silence and the ambient noises that permeate the quiet are usually enough to make you feel genuinely uneasy, and in the sections with no light you'll be telling yourself that you don't want to go down there, you're not going down there... this adds to the game's unpredictability, really. On almost every section where you expect something to happen, it doesn't, and you'll be left with a mingled feeling of relief, disappointment, and shock.

 On the contrary, many of the lighter sections greet you with a nicely unexpected hallucination, whose stark imagery and intriguing climaxes will have you writhing on your seat. But of course, there are moments that involve the two major creeps of the game - the little girl herself, and the psychic cannibal Paxton Fettel, who is linked to every single clone in the entire game. The little girl isn't just some cheap thrill, though - she ends up being more creepy than The Ring's star spook, and she's also got a fair bit of history behind her, and I won't ruin it, but she's also a very central part of the game's amazing ending. Many dark sequences of the game end up being shook up by a skull-crushing ringing sound (this sound precedes every major scare scene in the entire game, and it ends up becoming a telltale sound of complete utter inescapable dread) and then bang, right after that shock of white noise, the girl will appear... or the cannibal... or some innocent guy will be dragged through a ventilation shaft, or a TV will suddenly greet you with a live feed of an antagonist, and various other phenomena along those lines.

The silence and the ambience alone are enough to conjure the best atmosphere I've ever experienced in a video game. The graphics, too, are stunningly well realized - the slow motion is enough to justify that, as the assorted physics-related deaths, the special effects, the explosions... they're all wondrous to behold. The lighting is also used extremely effectively and it works in perfect pairing with the brilliantly freaky audio.

All in all, I think I've mentioned everything that makes F.E.A.R. memorable, and if you really read all the above review, you should be salivating and straight after recommending this, you'll be off to amazon or eBay to buy the game and then play it over the course of a weekend or so, and spend the entire two days shivering in despair and shock. It's difficult to sleep in the dark after playing this game in pitch black and with headphones equipped, I'll tell you that much - and if you're not in it for the psychological fright, then despite the fact that you're missing the point slightly, you won't be disappointed with the overblown firefights you'll trawl through over the game's rather short 9 or 10 hours. Definitely one of the most memorable FPS games of recent times.

It is agonizingly difficult for me to review a game such as this. Final Fantasy X simply defies easy summary, analysis, and categorization. Actually, scratch that: it nullifies the dictionary and invalidates the thesaurus. Honestly, a game like this needs to be experienced, no matter your stance on Square, turn based combat, or even role playing games in general. You can stop right there if you so desire, since chances are, I won't be able to convince you any further over the length of this self-indulgent review.

Sheesh. Where to begin? Final Fantasy X is a turn-based role playing game developed by Squaresoft for the PlayStation 2. Square have of course shaped a name for themselves as the connoisseurs of the role playing genre over the last couple of decades, and Final Fantasy X is a glittering textbook example of Square's craftmanship. Every element of excellence that defines the franchise is present here, from the memorable, emotionally charged storyline to the unfathomably impressive soundtrack; from the ostentatious art direction to the immaculate turn-based battle system.

Final Fantasy X tells the story of Tidus, a youthful, energetic soul dressed in utterly bizarre clothing, and his troupe of companions, including Auron, a stony-faced, mysterious sword fighter, Yuna, a fragile, beautiful summoner, Wakka, a friendly yet somewhat irritating blitzball player, Lulu, a controlled, businesslike magic user, Rikku, an overly hyperactive and almost intolerable teenager, and the completely emotionless Kimahri, who has little useful role in both the storyline and the overall gameplay. The characters are obviously very distinctive, and although the latter two are reasonably annoying for their own reasons, Final Fantasy X definitely features one of the finest character casts in video game history.

These seven adventurers are the individuals that you will become acquainted with over the course of the game's rather expansive 40-hour quest, and by the end of the game, you'll probably have a certain attachment to at least three of them. The game is set in the troubled world of Spira, and follows a rather traditional basic plotline of "only these seven people can save the world from devastation". However, the game's storyline features several brilliant twists and turns, interesting one-liners, and character development, resulting in a largely amazing work of fiction that is clearly head and shoulders above what you will find in almost every other video game. The game's conclusion is poignant and unforgettable, simultaneously providing a large sense of closure and an amazing amount of emotional climax. I daresay that regardless of how sensitive you are, there is a high chance that you will cry at the end of this game. I know I did.

The world of Spira is fairly varied and expansive, cleverly disguising the fact that Final Fantasy X is actually surprisingly linear. There is not much backtracking at all to be done in this game, and not much backtracking is even possible until things get slightly less claustrophobic near the end of the game. Nevertheless the game is so compelling that you'll never feel the urge to backtrack; a more common craving is to continue on, just to the next cutscene, or the next boss battle, anything to discover more about the storyline.

The battles in this game are of course turn-based, and the battle system is fine-tuned to a point where there's hard to find fault with any element of it. As per usual, your three characters will stand in a line facing a line of enemies, and you'll simply attack each other in a variety of ways until you win or lose. Of course, there are interesting factors thrown in for an extra level of intensity and strategy; magic, overdrives (an incredibly powerful special attack that is hard to come by) and aeons, which are basically best described as giant Pokemon that Yuna summon during battle. The series probably has the greatest turn-based battle systems in the world of video games, and if I'm not mistaken, Final Fantasy X is a perfect example of that.

There are no glaring flaws in this game; however, there are several small elements of the game that I feel the need to address. Just to nitpick, you know? First off, Final Fantasy X has an excruciatingly slow and confusing beginning, which initially put me off. Thankfully I gained enough motivation to continue forward through the treacle of the opening and into the wide expanse of brilliance that dominates the other 37 hours of the game, although I'm betting a few players will have just abandoned this game right there.

Another personal infuriation of mine was the sometimes gruelling difficulty of the game. It's not horrendously challenging, but sometimes I felt the game was being plain unfair. Maybe it's because I'm not a hardcore RPG player, but I find it extremely annoying when three extremely fast enemies Ambush me (so that they all attack first) and make my entire party confused, resulting in my party killing each other before I even get a turn of play. The boss battles in the game, however, are pleasantly challenging when you figure out a solid strategy, and beating each successive boss fills you with such a sense of euphoria and accomplishment that it's hard to believe you were ever angry at them in the first place.

The puzzle elements in the game aren't quite as fulfilling as I would have liked them to be, either. Yuna's pilgrimage through Spira requires her to visit a series of temples, each with their own puzzle inside. These puzzles are quite redundant and irritating, since they all revolve around putting spheres into corresponding holes, which is personally not my idea of fun. The first time around it might have been quite enjoyable, but in the end it just seems somewhat uninspired and trite. I'm fairly sure the brains at Square could have done better in this department.

Although, yes, I'm just nitpicking.

Anyway, Square do an exceptional job on the visual and aural side of things. Final Fantasy showcases some of the most inspired art direction I have ever seen in a video game. Spira is genuinely beautiful, even on the PlayStation 2 in 2008. The environments have a certain magical elegance about them that few other developers know how to bring to life. On top of that, the characters are extremely distinguished, and although their fashion sense is probably questionable, they are still undeniably some of the coolest heroes I've ever laid eyes on. The cutscenes in the game, too, are absolutely jaw-dropping. They are few and far between, but when the CGI cutscenes come around, they are really something special, particularly towards the end of the game.

And, inevitably, Nobuo Uematsu and friends deliver on the soundtrack. Nobuo's renown and prestige within the videogaming world in regard to audio and music is incontestible, and Final Fantasy X is a shining beacon of his brilliance. The game is absolutely bursting with some of the most consistently creative tunes I have ever heard, not just in the gaming world, but in absolutely any entertainment medium. I'm sure that years from now I will look back on this soundtrack and receive such a fragrant scent of nostalgia that I'll simply have to play this game again, just because of the merits of its music. The theme song of the game has one of the most beautiful melodies I have ever heard, and there are countless other infectious original pieces peppering the game. Even the battle theme, which grates in almost every single role playing game (since you hear it about a thousand times) doesn't seem to get old; a feat that not even Pokemon can boast of.

The voice overs in the game seem to be a cause for concern for many people, but not for me. I found the voice overs to really fit the character designs, and although there were several instances of bad dialogue, that's mainly because of the script and the translation from Japanese, not because of the voice actors themselves. There's plenty of talent in the acting here.

And with that... I guess I have overcome the agonizing difficulty of reviewing a game such as this, although I am not sure if I have even came close to doing this game justice. This game is, bluntly, a work of art. It's a masterwork. It's absolutely miles above 95% of every other game I've ever played in terms of storytelling, art direction, and musical score, and that in itself makes for an unbelievably compelling experience, despite the fact that the game occasionally stumbles in other areas. I wholeheartedly recommend this transcendental masterpiece of a game, if only so you can sit there on your bed at 3am, controller abandoned on the floor, tears flowing freely down your face, credits rolling, with the realization that you have just finished one of the greatest experiences videogaming has to offer.