For the Final Fantasy 7 fan, there is no question about whether or not they should purchase Crisis Core. Even if the game was a hastily assembled, inferior mess, it would still be have to be added to the collection.

Luckily, it isn’t that bad. It isn’t great, but it’s not bad. Yes, it does suffer from a few problems, problems that have become endemic to Square Enix, and all their current titles. Specifically, an over reliance on extended and unskippable cut-scenes that do not always advance the plot, and a battle system that requires little more than hitting X repeatedly, and occasionally remembering to cure. You have more options than this, but enemy intelligence is lacking, and the fights themselves so easy, that you don’t need to avail yourself of any of the more advanced combat options. In addition to that, most of the more powerful options (limit breaks, summons etc) are controlled by the DMV, essentially a slot machine. The result is wasting powerful moves on weak enemies, or at the end of battles. This random element is very frustrating and removes any sense of strategy. It’s also somewhat jarring to keep having control pulled away from you without warning.

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Last week I told you why I loved graphics. Juicy polygons, full of shine, make me happy. But, I have to say, there is one other thing that makes me fall in love with a game.

Just to review, we covered the little details that make a game great - such as the GTA IV cellphone. We covered the plot, which in some cases can make a game instantly a classic, and in other cases can destroy it entirely. And we covered the graphics, the spit and polish of a game.

I’m going to finish up this series with what I think is personally the most important part of a video-game - assuming that I can play it halfway intuitively and it isn’t broken.

The most important part of making a video game great is the characters. Those would be Link. Sephiroth. Mario. Knuckles. Dante. Leon. Master Chief. Samus. Lara Croft. Sonic the Hedgehog. Solid Snake. Iconic, classic, and with that certain something that makes fangirls and boys everywhere go weak at the knees.

Quite what it is that makes gamers so attached to the characters they play I’m not quite sure. Maybe it’s because there’s a little piece of us in them. Maybe it’s because they are hot. Maybe it’s because they can defeat three thousand enemies single-handedly.
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Okay, listen. I know that graphics aren’t the be-all and end-all of games. I know that it isn’t just about polygone count and realistic physics simulation. I agree, it’s a pain in the ass when a new game comes out and you can’t play it because your six-month old computer just can’t hack it. I do realise that stories were just as gripping, characters just as appealing (maybe even more so) back in the six-bit pixel-era. I was there. I played them. I get it.

But you know what? I fucking love graphics.

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I’ve said, quite a few times actually, that it’s not the characters themselves that make for compelling stories, but character relationships. This month’s Round Table asks you to explore a relationship within a game that you found compelling or memorable.

Characters. We love ‘em, or we hate ‘em. Final Fantasy 8 was forever ruined for me, thanks to Squall’s petty and pointless teenage bad mood. Some people feel the same about Cloud. Some people love Princess Peach, adore her in fact. Others despise her.

What defines a character is the way they relate to those around them. For me, a huge part of the attraction in playing through a game is to witness the redemption and change of a character. Heroes tend not to be redeemed. Even if they give up, become dispirited, we all know that they will return to save the day. But a character like Linebeck, he begins the game by taking people for what he can get. He finishes by taking up a sword and trying to face down Bellum. Okay, he fails to do much damage. But he tries.

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Is plot important to a video game? Tetris managed without it, Sim City is hardly the stuff of novels, and Sonic revolved around a blue hedgehog and an egg-man. Plot was often consigned to the manuals for earlier games, whilst fighting games, racing games and shooters needed only the thinnest of excuses to send you into the fray.

The first games that featured imaginative story were the text-based adventure games. The first adventure game I ever played was an Atari game called Lords of Time. Featuring excessive amounts of time travel and the collection of several ’symbolic items’, the puzzles were horrendously difficult, but the story implanted in me a love of puzzle games that has never faded - although the genre itself sadly did.
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Don’t you just love the cell phone in GTA IV? I’ve only played about an hour of the game, but I’m already in love with that feature. It is, of course, just one aspect of many. A small thing. But then it is the attention to detail, the sheer loving polish on a game, that elevates it above the crowd. You can find driving games, shooting games, and gangster games anywhere. You can’t find one with a cell phone that works as well as that though. I haven’t accessed the GTA IV internet yet, but I’ve heard it’s hot stuff - and another incredibly detailed piece of work.

When we think about the great games - the games that we replay long after the graphics are dated and the game play is old hat - it is usually some small thing that we remember. For example, take my favorite game of all time. Final Fantasy 7 had a lot to recommend it, but the thing that stood out to me was the fact that every character had an individual walk. Tifa had a bit of a mince, that belied her martial arts expertise, whilst Cid had a macho stride that made him look rather stupid when he ran. Vincent was acrobatic as hell, whilst Yuffie was a lanky teenager. The walk bled over into everything, their gestures when talking, their victory dance, and it even helped show Cloud’s change of character post-OMG-I’m-not-Zack.

For a sprite, that was some pretty incredible acting.
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