Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, 2010)

Graphics: STUNNING. If you have an HD and a current-gen console, find a way to at least play *some* of it. Look at that screenshot! The blur between game-engine cutscenes and pre-renders is unnoticeable to me, unless I'm really looking for it.

Gameplay: I'm 8 hours in, and it turns out there is real merit to the apoplexy from the "OMG this isn't Final Fantasy" crowd. The game does, in fact, lead off with what's essentially an extended movie/tutorial with some gameplay in it. You have no choice but to see the story the way the developers want you to see it, from cutscene to straight-line run through an area with some fighting to the next cutscene. No map, no towns, no control over who's in your party (or even which one of the party you control), and no leveling up beyond a certain point - the game's enemies are visible when walking, and finite; plus, the game locks your more powerful abilities away until you beat the next boss.

What's weird is they'll tell you how to do something, then guide you through doing it, and it's tough to even know if you're going to need to remember it again. Quick example: kid jumps into a huge robot, Anakin-style, so he can go stomping all over the guys you've been fighting like a Colossus. A tutorial pops up saying, "OK, here's how you go about stomping and punching these guys." (Plus some other ridiculous thing about how the robot only has enough energy for three mega-punches, but the player can find energy for more punches by...knocking over a fence to proceed to the next area. What? I mean, why even place a limit on the number of punches? Or, why not have the robot regain energy by, I don't know, RECHARGING somewhere? Does running into a fence give it some kind of Kool-Aid Man, "OHHH YEEEAH!" adrenaline rush?)

So anyway, yeah. The player guides the kid in the robot down a line, at the end of which the robot trips over a step in the path and breaks. Well. I just read a two-minute tutorial for three minutes of gameplay. Is the kid going to Anakin it up in more robots later, or was that it? Is this more or less important than the how-to-fight-Eidolons tutorial, which was just as long?

(Also, Hope just said that word aloud. "Eye-DOH-luhns"? Seriously? In my head it was always "EYE-duh-lawns." I like my pronunciation more.)

Not to knock the Eidolon fights. They're some of the only moments of challenge in this whole introduction section. It's pretty cool to finally figure out how not to die in the first fifteen seconds of a fight. And - to find a positive to the JRPG-on-rails approach - it's precisely because the game isn't letting me grind my way past a boss that forces me to learn, and derive satisfaction from, strategy rather than just dogged persistence.

Characters: a bunch of 21-year-olds acting like they're 40 and carrying the weight of the world. Reminds me of FFX where i read in some bio that Auron, the grizzled Badass Longcoat, was the ripe old age of 35. The series knows what it's about, at least.

Speaking of TV Tropes, 8 hours in, I'm trying to decide if Hope is a Jerkass Woobie or a Break the Cutie.

They all look stupendously fabulous. Lightning is female Cloud, but more badass -- i.e., more belts and buckles. She also walks around on what appear to be femurs with a layer of skin wrapped around them. Vanille *really* needs a sandwich. Sazh isn't as "jive" as i was afraid he would be -- and I just found out his English voice actor was in Crank, which is totally sweet.

Story: Too early to tell if it's good. In true Scooby-Doo fashion they split the gang up and have you follow multiple plot threads, and they commit the cardinal sin of dropping you in medias res into a completely alien world with byzantine politics, conflicts, and weird made-up words. L'Cie? Fal'Cie? Cocoon? Pulse? To quote Rory, "The who and the what now?"

I think it's straight-up wrong to have to depend on the Star Wars title crawls that scroll while the game boots up to tell me what's going on. The developers relegated all the backstory that would allow you to make sense of those first 3 hours to the "datalog" in the menu, which is just a cheap and easy way to avoid weaving exposition into the action proper skillfully. This is why stories will have someone with no clue what's going on somewhere nearby, so they can have stuff explained to them (and the audience) without it being, like, the genius detective alone in his office talking out the thought process behind his amazing deductions.

Despite all my whining, you can tell loads of people put their heart and soul into this thing, and it's so pretty I can't just dismiss it out of hand. But I'm still waiting for it to, like, let me play it; in the meantime I'm just along for the ride.

More thoughts to come, or not.