I’m a pretty big Final Fantasy fan. I came into the series with VII and have played everything since besides the MMOs and the two sequels to the lackluster XIII. I’ve had conversations with friends about what the Final Fantasy musical RPG that never was would have looked like (I would totally play that—good or bad, it would be hilarious). Here at The Old School Game Vault, I’ve gone back and played and reviewed Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI. And last year, I finally picked up the PSP update of the cult classic tactical RPG Final Fantasy: War of the Lions. And then, thirty hours in I walked away to play another —and so far much better—PSP remake of a classic TRPG, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Here’s why I won’t be firing up my PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics ever again. In 2007, ten years after its...

A couple of years back, while visiting with family over Thanksgiving, my cousins and siblings and I started playing the card game we call King Peasant (though it’s also called a lot of other things around the world).              The premise is that the game models a political structure (it’s sometimes called President) where the people on top stay on top and the people on bottom stay on bottom because at the beginning of each round, the lowest people have to give their top 1-3 cards (depending on how low in the hierarchy they are) to the top people, ensuring that the top people have better hands. At this Thanksgiving I’d been on the bottom for nearly the whole game, so I decided to see if I could model another aspect of politics and start a revolution. I successfully got all the bottom people plus the middle, neutral, person to join my revolution...

“Gritty Action Movies.” “Suspenseful Morality Sci-Fi Movies from the 1930s.” “Whistleblower Steamy Psychological Animation Based on a Book Set in Biblical Times About Trucks, Trains, & Planes.” Genres can be weird, right?  Game genres can be as simple as “driving “(DriveClub) or “FPS” (Battlefield) or as elaborately specific as “first-person stealth action-adventure role-playing games” (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End). Genres can be really helpful: when I find a game I like, say Dishonored 2, identifying aspects that appeal to me, like stealth, helps me find other games I’ll probably enjoy (like the Metal Gear Solid series or the latest Thief reboot). But genres can stifle creativity if developers or publishers choose to make an easily marketable game rather than taking genre-blurring risks—or when thinking using conventional genres leads developers to not even see some of the other possibilities out there. Games that Skillfully Switch Up Genres and Viewing Perspectives Offer a Great...

When I saw the roller-coaster-like movie Gravity, I was surprised to realize that I occasionally felt like I was watching a video game on a giant screen. The film fluidly changed perspectives back and forth from third to first person, often framing the action as a game would, and the focus on challenging environments presenting life-and-death decisions almost constantly was also very game-like. The sheer effectiveness of Gravity and its resonance with game conventions brought up a question I find myself asking at least once a year: why hasn’t there been a great movie based on a video game? Mainstream movies based on video games have been around for twenty years now Since Super Mario Bros. in 1993 (though the first game-adapted movie was a 1986 Japanese Mario Bros. anime). There have been over thirty released internationally since then, including high-profile films like Mortal Kombat, Wing Commander, Tomb Raider, Pokémon, Resident Evil,...

One title. Three words. 16 sequels. Over 350 million units sold. “Grand Theft Auto” has risen from relative obscurity to earn a spot on the Mt. Olympus of great game franchises. 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of the year “Grand Theft Auto” was released. Believe it or not, back in 1997 there was no fanfare, no stampede to Circuit City or a Virgin Megastore or whatever now-defunct retailer sold the title. It was just a “cult” hit—but one that would go on to revolutionize video games. So here’s looking at the humble beginnings of this cultural landmark Through to its current success, and why it’s just as crucial to gaming now as it was then. Really, it’s no surprise that “Grand Theft Auto” was a slow burn. It was originally only released for MS-DOS before being ported to Windows and, eventually, the Sony PlayStation. The graphics were crude, and the sandbox level...

They drop in through the ceiling. They crawl in through tunnels. Furthermore, they send their enemies to the afterlife in a silent, noiseless maneuver. They charm beautiful men and women and travel the world, taking on incredible risks and pulse-pounding missions. They even have cool theme songs. Not only that, but they’re Jason Bourne. James Bond. They’re the people who call when everything else fails. You know who we’re talking about – spies. Secret agents. Every kid who’s grown up in the last few decades has had dreams about seducing beautiful women in a foreign country while they’re on a mission to steal the sheikh’s rubies (insert mission of choice here). Today, we’ll be looking at some of the best spies That have been featured in video games throughout the years. Cate Archer – No One Lives Forever Cate Archer is a certifiable badass. On the cover, she might look like...

Spoiler Alert: This post contains spoilers about The Wolf Among Us and Season Two of The Walking Dead by Telltale Games (and implied spoilers about Season One). In a previous post, I discuss why I think Season One of Telltale Games’s The Walking Dead is a brilliant achievement in episodic narrative gaming. In a follow-up, I discuss how Episode Five of Season Two of The Walking Dead achieves similar greatness. Here, though, I will address what went so wrong in between. Bigby Wolf and Clementine are both sympathetic player-character. Both Bigby and Clem are consistently forced to make difficult decisions. But here’s where the first core problem sets in that differentiates these games from The Walking Dead: Season One: their choices are rarely significant to the plot or emotionally meaningful enough to really drive investment in the characters or the game. In The Wolf Among Us A large percentage of Bigby’s choices have to do with...

Partway through XCOM: Enemy Within (the expanded version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown), I realized that its video game story would never work in a movie.  It wasn’t that the premise wouldn’t work – alien invasions are hardly confined to video games—it was the way the story was being told. There was absolutely no attention being paid to characters’ personal lives. What you learned about the main characters Central Officer Bradford (whose name I had to look up just now), Dr. Shen in Engineering, and Dr. Vahlen in Research—is confined to how they do their jobs. The tension in the narrative comes not from a love story, a personal trauma overcome, or a motley crew of misfits learning to work together despite all odds, but from the choices that the player makes as Commanding Officer. Will you prioritize the right research and engineering projects to keep from being overrun by the technologically superior alien...

1996 is the year that the little cuddly monsters called Pokémon first appeared on everyone’s favorite Game Boy. The title was a labor of love created and slaved over by famed designer Satoshi Tajiri, who, as legend has it, was inspired by his childhood hobby of collecting insects. This seed of an idea eventually grew into a premise involving the collection of monsters for combat purposes. For its part, Nintendo was ambivalent about releasing the title at first, only doing so initially in Japan. But after a strong response in that country, Nintendo took it to the states, and a global phenomenon was born. So why has Pokémon continued to dominate for so long while other would-be franchises (Bubsy the Bobcat, anyone?) died with a whimper? While opinions may run rampant on the subject, here are five cogent arguments that should help explain Pokémon’s global domination. Pokémon Games are the Swiss...

I played Thief the other day for the first time. Thief is not a great game. It’s mostly a pretty mediocre game, especially if you’ve played the far superior Dishonored. The story is dull, poorly paced, often incoherent, and not particularly well voice acted. The gameplay is only okay, and the design of certain areas and sequences is a poor match for it. But level 5 of the game—the asylum—is one of the scariest levels in gaming that I’ve ever played. It made the time I sunk into the rest of the game (20+ hours) worth it. It is truly a diamond in the rough—a brilliant moment in a morass of mediocrity. If you start playing Thief and feel the way I did about it, I recommend that you do what you need to do to get to chapter 5, then decide after that if you want to just turn the game...

I started playing Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones for GBA yesterday, and while on the Fire Emblem Wiki I glanced over the summary of the game’s reception, which went something like this: “This game isn’t different enough from the previous Fire Emblem game on the Game Boy Advance, but it’s still good overall because the first one was good.” This got me thinking about the weird task game developers have when making sequels. Because audiences for sequels largely want them to be different, yet the same, right? So, you know, that’s all you have to do, game developers – make it different but the same. Playing through The Sacred Stones, I can see exactly what they mean – I basically needed no refresher whatsoever after having played the previous game, Fire Emblem, last December – the combat system is pretty similar. There’s a World Map that gives you a little freedom...

I recently finished a play through of the amazing (if flawed) Grand Theft Auto V. It got me thinking about why my experience of it was so, so far away from my disappointment with Grand Theft Auto IV. This post is about why, despite my desire to like it, Grand Theft Auto IV finally drove me away. A follow-up post will explain why Grand Theft Auto V won me over as an amazing, if still sometimes maddening game. For Some Reason, I’ve never been a huge fan of Grand Theft Auto. I remember watching someone playing one of the early top-down entries years and years ago and thinking it looked alright, but not particularly exciting. Then I remember watching my 14-year-old cousin playing Grand Theft Auto III at my grandma’s house over Christmas of 2001. Within three minutes of my watching, he was showing me that open world’s most infamous allowance...

In another post, I argued that video games (like all expressive media) influence the world but that, cumulatively, their influence is more likely to be positive than negative because games can show us new.  Good ways of thinking and acting that we can then rally around, whereas the bad ways of thinking and acting depicted in video games are news to no one and so unlikely to spur mass adoption by naïve, impressionable gamers. Today, though, I want to consider the minor, individual negative effects that I’ve conceded games can have on players. Specifically, I want to consider the effects of sexist and racist stereotypes in game characters, plots, and mechanics. Video Games do more good than bad They have the potential to encourage negative stereotypes, and some games definitely do. Grand Theft Auto V called it a flawed masterpiece, the flaw being the dull, stupid sexism and cynicism weighing down the many, many things...

A lot of role-playing games (RPGs) new and old let you pick the sex of your character (male or female) before you start. Which is awesome. I’ve played Mass Effect with both Maleshep and Femshep characters and got two games’ worth of quality voice acting for the price of one.  (We could have a similar discussion about choice of race or species in RPGs, but that’s an article for another day.) But aside from just letting you have more options for what kind of character you want to create and role-play, So how does allowing both male and female protagonists affect story, gameplay…and meaning? You might be surprised at how far—and how subtly—the effects go beyond simply choice of romantic partners. Choosing the sex of your character goes back at least to Resident Evil 2, which gave you the choice not to create a character from scratch but to play as either Chris...

I remember a time in about 1991 playing one of my favorite childhood video game, Super Mario Bros 3. That I borrowed from a friend for a weekend. I wanted to beat it before I gave it back, but this being the relatively early days of console gaming. Super Mario Bros 3 had no save feature of any kind So in order to reach the end, I just left my Nintendo on overnight a couple nights in a row to maintain my progress until I could come back to the game. When I finally beat it on day three or so, there was an added sense of triumph – not only had I beaten the game, I had beaten the system by managing to finish it before I had to turn off my system and lose all my progress. As far as ten-year-old me was concerned, Raccoon Mario and I had...

Is there a revenge element to the plot?, so there aren’t any direct plot spoilers here. You only need to avoid reading the post if you don’t want to know whether a character or game’s situation is morally ambiguous or complicated. In the early days of games, when narrative wasn’t much of a concern for most games Plot structures were generally like Super Mario Bros or Doom – you play the good guy (usually male, then as now), the game points you at the bad guy, and off you go. No one plays Pokémon and wonders if they’re the bad guy.  As games and game narratives got more complex, we began to see some anti-heroes, player-character protagonists whose values and actions are morally problematic. Max Payne is after criminals for justified revenge but, in classic noir fashion, doesn’t concern himself too much with keeping his hands clean. Kratos in God of...

Are you wondering, what does “black label” mean in video games? You’re not alone. It gets confusing when one game is released under so many different labels. You’ll often see Gamecube Player's Choice vs black label or PS2 black label vs red label, among other variations. What do these different release labels of video games mean for the cost and content of the game? Technically, they don’t inherently mean anything. Or, rather, these relabeling campaigns mean something different for each console. Nor does each labeling campaign mean the same thing every time. Yes, we understand that this answer does not even slightly clarify the issue. That’s why we’ve written you this comprehensive guide. It compares the various labeling campaigns of several different consoles to give you a complete answer. Read on to learn all you need to know. PlayStation Black Label vs Green Label Avid gamers are well versed in these...

Ever since the advent of the VCR, it’s been a tradition for kids to pop in some horror flicks when Halloween night rolls around. But a new generation is here, one that grew up playing console video games, and one that saw the rise of the “survival horror” genre. So it makes you wonder what horror game character would make the best movie? As you can see, we've thought about that already It only makes sense, then, that Halloween tradition accommodate video games as much as movies. Who knows, with the rise of  technologies like VR, maybe gaming will become so immersive that one day soon it will render scary movies obsolete. In the meantime, here are some scary games perfect for Halloween night. First-person shooters, platformers, side-scrollers, shoot-em-ups—these are just a few of the many video game genres out there. Add all those sub-genres into the mix, and you have...

Making a good horror film is difficult. You have to engage your audience such that they accept unusual premises, and have emotional connections with the characters in the film. Then, once you’ve set everything up, you pull the rug out from under the audience, making them shriek and gasp as they’re watching pretty unpleasant stuff happen on screen. The tingle that you feel when you’ve just had the hair on the back of your neck stand up due to a jump scare in the movie – that’s the Holy Grail of horror movies. Being such a horror movie fan, especially during Halloween. (Which I have a good article about some of the best horror game characters). Anyhow, I thought it would be fun to write about which horror games could potentially become amazing movies. Without further ado, here they are. Outlast By any benchmark, Outlast was one of the scariest, most...

Survival Horror video games are filled with colorful, twisted and depraved characters. In a game that is meant to thrill and scare the player, these horror video game characters stand out because of their sheer imitativeness and their terrifying, bowel-loosening abilities. They can stand toe-to-toe with any major movie villain, and some of them make horror movie villains look pedestrian. Cheesy horror movies and Jason Voorhees, go hand in hand.  Have you ever wondered what scary video game characters can kick Jason Voorhees Ass? Without further ado, here are the Top 5 horror game characters that make Jason Voorhees look like a girl scout selling cookies. Nemesis – Resident Evil 3 Nemesis has a face that only a mother could love. Time after time, he pops up when you least expect him to and pummels you into oblivion. His T-Virus mutation powers make him an absolute juggernaut, nearly impossible to bring down. He’s...