Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out today. Metal Gear is one of those gaming franchises that people buy systems just to keep up with like Halo, Zelda, Mario and Grand Theft Auto. When you think about it, it's quite insane. Fanatical devotion to one piece of entertainment so strong to be willing to spend $400+ to buy the equipment necessary to experience it. Yet this segment of the gaming community exists and has for some time. Sadly, I belong among this group. I'm a big fan of the series and plan to drop the cash for a PS3 and the game later today. Well I would be except for one factor:
I'm running out of room.
My game room has the following:
Two PS2 Guitar Hero controllers One Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controller One Xbox 360 Rock Band Guitar Donkey Kong Bongos Two metal DDR dance pads A Rock Band drum set PS2 Xbox Xbox 360 Wii Dreamcast Surround sound receiver + speakers 32 inch TV Overflowing video game/DVD rack
This is all in a 10 x 13 room. On top of that I'm pretty much out of inputs for my television which has a paltry two component inputs and a now-obsolete DVI port. I write all of this to say that now might be a good time to upgrade my setup and sell off my unused game stuff. Or possibly move into my own place to store this stuff. Or be institutionalized.
I regarded the announcement of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIIwith indifference. Final Fantasy spinoffs rarely manage to go above the level of a quick cash-in. See the abysmal Dirge of Cerebus. Or the overrated Final Fantasy X-2. But my interest piqued when good reviews for Crisis Core started rolling in. So I picked up the game and borrowed my roommate's PSP hoping for a good time. I should've saved my cash. Crisis Core, quite frankly, sucks.
For those that don't know (SPOILER ALERT!!), the game follows Zack, a minor character from the original Final Fantasy VII who befriended Cloud (the hero of FFVII) during his early years. In that game, a flashback reveals Zack suffered an untimely death at the hands of Sephiroth, which sets the tone for this new game. You control Zack the entire game, following his journey as high-level soldier. Which brings me to the first problem:
Zack is boring
As a character, Zack is completely and utterly uninspiring. His personality consists of being friendly, a little brash, and... that's about it. He's basically an older version of Sora. He has no sense of agency in the story and watches as his friends and mentors betray each other until it's his turn to face the music. It's like the characters in Cloverfield or War of the Worlds who have no idea what's going on, trying to find their own way as the world falls apart around them, only to die. That his spiky-haired design hasn't aged well doesn't help matters. Can't Square Enix give a main character a short haircut for once?
When Zack eventually meets Cloud, their friendship is weak and hollow. The two become friends because they're around each other quite a bit towards the end of the adventure, but Cloud has even less personality than Zack so it's difficult to see any sort of bond between the two. He's just some wimpy kid. But RPGs are more than stories and characters right? Battles are the real meat of the game. Unfortunately
The battle system isn't fun
The pseudo-real-time battle system doesn't work very well. To swing the sword you mash a button and then Zack runs over and attacks. There are slight delays between each subsequent swing, so consecutive attacks look awkward instead of fluid. Why not let us navigate Zack around ourselves and perform swings instantly?
The game slaps on top of this basic framework the Digital Mind Wave system. This poorly-explained system unleashes special attacks and status bonuses based on Zach's current emotions. Or something. It determines what happens based on a slot machine that runs constantly. The DMW can interrupt a battle, taking up the entire screen, flashing seemingly random pictures and videos at the player, until the slot machine stops. This can take upwards of 30 seconds and occur multiple times in a single fight. If it sounds confusing, it's because it is. I had to find a message board to explain what's happening (the manual and in-game tutorials were worthless) and even then it didn't make a lot of sense. The novelty of this wacky system wears down pretty quickly.
All the bells and whistles could pay off if the game put up a decent challenge that forced you to make the most of this system. It doesn't. I hacked my way through the majority of the battles, occasionally casting a spell to heal or mix things up. The only reasonable challenge is the final boss, who fell pretty quickly once I took an hour or so to grind. This leaves me with the most painful part of Crisis Core:
Genesis
The central villain of Crisis Core dragged the experience down with his endless recitations of lines from a play and horrible voice acting. The way these lines function as a metaphor for the game's storyline would be clever... if I were 12. And even then it'd be a stretch. When he isn't making Mariah Carey look like Meryl Streep, he tossing out crap like "We are all monsters", trying to sound dark and mysterious when he's really just an emo douche. He's no Sephiroth. He's not even a Seymour. Just watch this insufferable pissant, move to 2:00 to feel the pain:
