AHEM.
I’m back, from outer space, ready to drop on ya the top three games of the last year.
But first, because I feel like getting my editing chops in and cherrypicking interesting
footage, a recap!
And so, without further ado…
What do G.O.B.
Bluth, Dana Scully, and Major Charles Emerson Winchester III have in common?
They’ve all also lent their voices to characters in Studio Ghibli films.
That’s the kind of water this studio draws, built up by years and years of making particularly
wonderful films.
Finally, they’ve turned their pens and brushes to the world of video games with Ni no Kuni:
Wrath of the White Witch.
As wonderful as this game is, though, there’s a certain chunk of the population, myself
included, who can call it for what it is: a carbon copy of Dragon Quest VIII.
That said, pretty much everyone capable of making that determination is delighted by
the prospect of more Dragon Quest VIII, now featuring perhaps the only style of character
design more ubiquitous than that of Akira Toriyama.
A slice of mid-20th-century Americana gets blended with a wild fantasy world, where everyone
sounds British, magic is yours to command, and puzzles like this corpus callosum-splitting
two-stick affair are no big whoop.
There are familiar item-crafting mechanics and plenty of sidequests and missions to undertake,
but rather than the staid lineup of RPG combats, Ni no Kuni keeps things fresh by utilizing
a real-time battle system populated by collectible monsters.
And speaking of collectible monsters….
Yep, the goalposts have moved again.
It’s now 718 and counting.
Seven hundred and eighteen.
Pokémon X and Y seem to be named fittingly, as generations X and Y start to encourage
their kids to be the very best like they never were.
The dogmatic tone of only having new Pokémon available until you’ve cleared the Elite
Four has been left by the side of the road, in favor of a rich blend of old and new, including
a new type for the first time since Gold and Silver.
Enhanced online features like random ad-hoc trades, ever-present access to the Global
Trade System, and plenty of coffee make this 6th generation of the Pokémon series the
most complete to date… but then again, they all are.
The real innovation comes in more out-of-the-way places, like filling in the last few unused
type combinations like ghost/grass or an attack that is both Flying and Fighting types or
held items that allow your Pokémon to evolve mid-battle.
The breeding mechanics have been overhauled as well, which has helped combat the rising
tide of hacked, stat-perfect Pokémon that had been assembling in the shadows.
These X and Y versions didn’t just keep the base happy, they helped reach out to lapsed
players and newbies alike with a more complete experience, even if the accents in the “THIS
IS FRANCE HONEST” Kalos region might not make sense all the time.
And speaking of not making sense…
If you’d told me three years ago that I’d honestly be calling Final Fantasy XIV my game
of the year, I’d have laughed you off the street.
“That train wreck?”
I’d say.
“It’ll never happen.”
And then, following the complete destruction of the world and a nine-month hiatus, it happened.
A new team led by Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida rebuilt the mechanics, the difficulty curve,
the payouts, the plot, and turned what was a punch-line of a game into an unquestionable
success.
The last time FFXIV happened, they had to give away free subscription time because the
game was horrible and they wanted to apologize.
This time, it was because they had people knocking down their doors, throngs of adventurers
far beyond what Square-Enix expected, and they wanted to stay.
Stay to experience probably the best Final Fantasy plot since XII, which I’ll remind
you was seven years ago.
Stay to get their hands dirty crafting or harvesting, as a welcome respite from beating
down hordes of monsters.
Stay because, with its most recent update, the dev team are establishing a breakneck
pace for new content, by adding a PvP arena, guild housing (even if no one can afford it
yet), extreme versions of existing fights just to keep the endgame on its toes… hell,
they even ganked the entire final dungeon of Final Fantasy III and dropped it in with
some slight modifications.
For rising like a phoenix from the depths of utter mediocrity to something not just
respectable, but damn fun (especially if you dig Shaft references), Final Fantasy XIV is
my game of the year.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s... something I’ve gotta do.