Julian Kluk of Clever Noob has found some interesting patterns with Square Enix’s marketing of next week’s Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. Square Enix has a spent a lot of time marketing the game’s tie-ins with older Final Fantasy titles through DLC attire for Lightning and including a number of FF7 Easter eggs in LR:FF13. Could this all be a sign of Square Enix getting people ready for a Final Fantasy VII remake?
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Critics Corner: Murdered: Soul Suspect
If you follow me on Twitter (@TheSteveMurray), you probably saw me mention that I wasn’t disappointed that I was turned down for a review copy of a recent release. The game came out to pretty poor reviews by big release standards so not spending 10 hours of my life playing and a couple more writing and editing a review was probably to my benefit. Instead, I’ll spend a couple of hours reading and condensing reviews of Murdered: Soul Suspect for a Critics Corner post.
Murdered: Soul Suspect sounds like a fairly intriguing concept at first but it sounds like the execution was a little lacking. Just about everyone found some aspect of the game a bit “meh” but most found more than one aspect to be lacking in polish.
So enough of my little preamble. What did the critics think of Murdered: Soul Suspect?
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Sony Sells Its Square Enix Shares
The collaboration that brought us some of the greatest video games of all-time has officially come to an end. In need of cash and apparently no longer seeing any tangible benefit to the arrangement, Sony has sold off its 9.5 million shares of Japanese game publisher Square Enix for a reported $150 million.
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Lara Croft and the Knight in Shining Armor
I’m a little behind the rest of the world but I finally finished the reboot of Tomb Raider this weekend. The delay in completing it wasn’t because it was a bad game. If I was to give it a rating, I would probably give it an 8.0 or an 8.5. There was just something about the game that meant I put it down after a few hours last year.
Playing it through over the last couple of weeks made me conscious of what I disliked about Tomb Raider. It wasn’t the gameplay or the plot but the portrayal of Lara Croft throughout the game that I found odd and off-putting.
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Critics Corner: Thief
The only thing more dangerous for a game developer and publisher than a sequel to a recent hit is a sequel or reboot of a classic game from yesteryear. It is a guarantee that not everyone will be happy with the results. Whether you’re making the next edition of an annual franchise, the second part of an uber popular trilogy or rebooting a classic from over a decade ago, you’re going to piss someone off. It’s just a matter of how many people are happy.
And that bring me to this week’s release of Thief. Some critics really liked it despite its flaws. One critic already gave it a spot on his top 10 games of 2014 list. Many considered it sort of “meh” while a few absolutely hated it. We’re used to opinions running the gambit with the truth lying somewhere in the middle. I’m not sure that applies to a 60-point spread in review scores.
So here’s what the critics thought of the rebooted Thief.
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Critics Corner: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
The saga of Lightning and Final Fantasy XIII comes together in the third installment of the FF13 trilogy. Square Enix billed it as a story that needed three games to be told in its entirety. When I dropped $70 on the first Final Fantasy XIII back in 2010, it seemed so dull and generic with combat that only required you to hold down X until the battle was over that I made about an hour before I put it at the bottom of a drawer and haven’t touched it for the last four years. I spent hundreds of hours playing the FFX games. I even loved X-2 and I’m pretty sure that everyone hates that game and the J-pop therein.
Somehow, the game managed to get a franchise-record two sequels. If the critics scores are to be believed, the games have been getting worse as the FFXIII trilogy has gone along with Lightning Returns hitting the bottom. Oddly enough, that’s how I feel about the franchise now too. I’ll be quite happy to get back into the series with Final Fantasy XV but, for now, good riddance to FF13.
Anyway, enough of what I think. Here’s what the critics think about Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.
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Final Fantasy XIII Goes 16-Bit For Lightning Returns Story Trailer
I’ll make an admission up-front before I run this trailer: I made it about an hour into Final Fantasy XIII before I was so bored to tears that I stopped. I saw my sister playing it too and that did nothing to pique my interest. Neither of us could be bothered to buy FFXIII-2 either. It’s a shame because I was a huge Final Fantasy fan in the PS1 and PS2 era (but who wasn’t).
So when I got the press release for the latest Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, I thought it was just another generic story trailer to fill you in on the last two games. Instead, Square Enix broke the mold and retold the first two Final Fantasy XIII games in 16-bit graphics and audio. It looks amazing and harkens back to the epic Final Fantasy VI (or FF3 in America).
I don’t like running trailers and doing everyone else’s PR work on the blog but the uniqueness of this trailer is worth a second look. By the way, the trailer contains many, many spoilers.
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Square Enix Launches Collective Game Funding Platform
Back in October, Square Enix announced their new Collective program that was a combination of Steam Greenlight and crowdfunding into one platform. Proposed indie games are presented to users, they vote on which they’d like to see made (similar to Greenlight) and those selected by the community go to crowdfunding to get money to make it.
This week, Square Enix officially launched Collective and unveiled the first three games to be put the community for approval.
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The Many Faces of Lara Croft (Infographic)
The graphic quality of games has come a long way over the last eighteen years. Perhaps the best illustration of the changes in graphic and art design since 1996 is the progression of Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider games. Lara has come a long way from a 540 polygon character best known for her chest size to the high-def character in the Tomb Raider reboot.
To examine the change in the character’s look, we have a handy infographic for your perusal.
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Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition Will Run at 60 FPS on PS4, Twice Xbox One Framerate
While Sony and Microsoft’s new consoles have been out for a couple of months and are in a quiet period before the next big wave of next-gen games come in March, the upcoming Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition could reignite the battle between fans of the two biggest players in the home console market.
Recent reports indicate that TR:DE will run close to 60 frames per second for the majority of the game on PlayStation 4, the Xbox One version of the game will be floating between 30 and 45 FPS.
et geekera 