FFVI - Far more annoying and snobbish than the FFVII fans, even though the game is far more infantile and shallow both in gameplay and story than VII.
1. It's the most interactive rpg of the era. Over 35 different interactive set pieces. Games are about interacting. In FF1-6 you wander towns and dungeons, get in battles, and watch story segments, that's it. FFVII was revolutionary in filling the story with interactivity at every turn. The gold saucer area should have become a requirement for every main final fantasy title.
2. The setting. Modern, sci-fi, cyberpunk > Medieval fantasy nonsense. Each location was interesting stylistically. From wutai, rocket town, midgar, cosmo canyon, chocobo farm, junon. You could go into space and underwater as well as multiple land vehicles. There was a level of depth not seen before or since in the series. With FFVIII they started to use FMVs as a crutch rather than a flourish. Since then they slowly cut out minigames, the world map, towns, puzzles, exploration and all non-battle interactivity all together. Pre-rendered backdrops mean FFVII-IX have arguably aged the best of all ps1 games, and certainly far better than the ms paint based FF1-6. The entire planet was a microcosm of Earth culturally. The urban sprawn (midgar), the spanish resort (costa del sol), traditional eastern (wutai), military port (junon), farm, etc. Most prior games had generic castles and villages that weren't very memorable.
3. Everything else was superbly well done. Music fantastic. Plot was very memorable with lots of twists, lots of learning interesting backstories. Not so much religious magical crystal nonsense makes the world a lot more relatable and believable. Most interesting themes in the series like terrorism and nature, etc. Sephiroth, Shinra, Hojo and the turks all have their own different believable motivations and are meaningful enemies. Kefka is just a clown. Every antagonist since is a nonsense convoluted godlike being. The characters are memorable and though they're not as well developed as the ones since voice acting was introduced, that's maybe a good thing.
Half-life - I like the series, but it's entirely too wanked over when you consider that there's not much content in it after 13 years, and it was never very well developed storywise anyway.
Sotc/Ico - pretentious garbage with interesting gameplay gimmicks hoisted upon what are nothing more than empty sterile tech demos. People love ambiguous atmospheric games for some reason. It's not an intentional artistic decision to make the game have no dialogue and almost no plot, it's just laziness or lack of talent.
Bad Company - Fans backlash against the call of duty series and feel all superior about it. Both series are actually just as garbage as each other, and battlefield is arguably more casualised than call of duty. Let's go around blowing crap up in tanks and helicopters in horribly designed maps with a stupid class system. Explodable buildings are a gimmick that leads to horrible level design in every game I have seen it implemented. The buildings in BC2 or red faction are all empty and bland. Map design is the most important thing in a multiplayer game, and call of duty is far superior. Each map is fastidiously balanced and filled with interesting places to go. Battlefields are too big to have that higher level of strategy.
Gears of War - Horrible guns and gameplay, horrible characters, horrible plot, horrible level design, horrible driving sequence, horrible art design, horrible multiplayer infrastructure. That this game is more popular than MGS4 despite being worse in every conceivable way (especially multiplayer), is symptomatic of how game development has been corrupted and turned into an exploitable business rather than striving to advance entertainment potential.
Do you really think it's that bad looking? [http://i.imgur.com/sCGd1.jpg]
1. It's the most interactive rpg of the era. Over 35 different interactive set pieces. Games are about interacting. In FF1-6 you wander towns and dungeons, get in battles, and watch story segments, that's it. FFVII was revolutionary in filling the story with interactivity at every turn. The gold saucer area should have become a requirement for every main final fantasy title.
2. The setting. Modern, sci-fi, cyberpunk > Medieval fantasy nonsense. Each location was interesting stylistically. From wutai, rocket town, midgar, cosmo canyon, chocobo farm, junon. You could go into space and underwater as well as multiple land vehicles. There was a level of depth not seen before or since in the series. With FFVIII they started to use FMVs as a crutch rather than a flourish. Since then they slowly cut out minigames, the world map, towns, puzzles, exploration and all non-battle interactivity all together. Pre-rendered backdrops mean FFVII-IX have arguably aged the best of all ps1 games, and certainly far better than the ms paint based FF1-6. The entire planet was a microcosm of Earth culturally. The urban sprawn (midgar), the spanish resort (costa del sol), traditional eastern (wutai), military port (junon), farm, etc. Most prior games had generic castles and villages that weren't very memorable.
3. Everything else was superbly well done. Music fantastic. Plot was very memorable with lots of twists, lots of learning interesting backstories. Not so much religious magical crystal nonsense makes the world a lot more relatable and believable. Most interesting themes in the series like terrorism and nature, etc. Sephiroth, Shinra, Hojo and the turks all have their own different believable motivations and are meaningful enemies. Kefka is just a clown. Every antagonist since is a nonsense convoluted godlike being. The characters are memorable and though they're not as well developed as the ones since voice acting was introduced, that's maybe a good thing.
Half-life - I like the series, but it's entirely too wanked over when you consider that there's not much content in it after 13 years, and it was never very well developed storywise anyway.
Sotc/Ico - pretentious garbage with interesting gameplay gimmicks hoisted upon what are nothing more than empty sterile tech demos. People love ambiguous atmospheric games for some reason. It's not an intentional artistic decision to make the game have no dialogue and almost no plot, it's just laziness or lack of talent.
Bad Company - Fans backlash against the call of duty series and feel all superior about it. Both series are actually just as garbage as each other, and battlefield is arguably more casualised than call of duty. Let's go around blowing crap up in tanks and helicopters in horribly designed maps with a stupid class system. Explodable buildings are a gimmick that leads to horrible level design in every game I have seen it implemented. The buildings in BC2 or red faction are all empty and bland. Map design is the most important thing in a multiplayer game, and call of duty is far superior. Each map is fastidiously balanced and filled with interesting places to go. Battlefields are too big to have that higher level of strategy.
Gears of War - Horrible guns and gameplay, horrible characters, horrible plot, horrible level design, horrible driving sequence, horrible art design, horrible multiplayer infrastructure. That this game is more popular than MGS4 despite being worse in every conceivable way (especially multiplayer), is symptomatic of how game development has been corrupted and turned into an exploitable business rather than striving to advance entertainment potential.
