.hack//FF>ME (Part 3)

    .hack is far from perfect but that’s where some of it’s charm comes from. To play a game that’s quite flawed but still draws you in is something that happens less and less nowadays. Many gamers choose what to spend their limited time playing based on reviews. Games that scored low or didn’t have enough money or time put into their marketing often slip through the cracks. It’s hard to say whether the .hack series had enough time or money, but there’s no doubt it was made with lots of love.

    When I first began writing about .hack I wanted to talk about how it was one of the first games to succeed with a multidisc story arc. Mass Effect is definitely the pinnacle of multidisc story arcs, but it certainly wasn’t the first.

If you own any of these, you're automatically a collector.

    Looking back, one of the many problems the .hack series faced was that each installment of the game played out more like an episode of a show. By the end of a .hack game, one of the reasons you wanted to play the next one so badly was because there was little conclusion. After finishing .hack Part 1 and Part 2, I didn’t feel as if anything was really resolved yet. I’ll compare it to an episode of Lost. Every episode of that show ended on a cliffhanger. I may be exaggerating there, but I think it’s understood what I’m trying to say. Hopefully by the end of Part 4, I’ll feel as if the .hack story wraps up.

Imagine watching Season 3 first. Now imagine playing Mutation first. Same thing.

    In Mass Effect, you never felt compelled to finish subsequent releases in order to complete the story arc. After finishing the original Mass Effect, I wanted to play Mass Effect 2 in order to get more out of the characters and the world. I didn’t need to play Mass Effect 2. The original Mass Effect story reached a rewarding conclusion. I’ve even heard that people playing the Mass Effect series out of order still enjoy it. People playing .hack for the first time that picked it up out of order would probably be disappointed. I imagine they might be taken aback by the mystery of the world, but certainly to enjoy it they would have to track down previous games and play them first.

I wish .hack would have a compilation.

    Rather than comparing the .hack series to Mass Effect, I think it’s more appropriate to compare it to the Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy became one of the first multidisc story arc games. The difference being that you got all the discs at the same time. After finishing disc 1 of Final Fantasy VII you would certainly need to play the next 2 discs in order to reach any resolution. There was no conclusion before changing discs. Final Fantasy simply needed many discs because the game was too big for just one cd-rom.

I own this game on PSN. If only .hack was available there too.

    I don’t know if the .hack series released the way it did because of storage limitations, but it might have been a better game, and better received, if all the parts were originally released as one. If they couldn’t do that, it would have been nice if the separate games would have finished with stronger conclusions. As the series stands, sometimes it feels like they made the entire game, then just decided to ship parts of it every 6 months. Again, I don’t see anything wrong with this, but none of the games felt like seasons. They all felt like episodes. You absolutely needed the next installment to make sense of the first one and vice versa.

    I wanted to applaud .hack as being one of the first games that carries over saved data. I wanted to compare it to Mass Effect, but thematically, it just doesn’t compare. .hack is more comparable to a Final Fantasy game that chose to release and sell their games separately. It’s still a very rewarding experience, but certainly not an easy one to have.

    In the next article of this 4 part series I’ll be looking at the future of the franchise. Stay tuned for next Friday!

- lvl 99

Game Goals For 2013

    When the Playstation Vita first came out it was way too expensive. There was absolutely no way I could justify spending $300 on a portable machine. Sure, it was a nice piece of hardware, but we all know hardware’s not what makes a successful console. Even if it would have launched with a killer app it still wouldn’t have been a good idea. It was just too much of a gamble.

    Now, in 2013 the PS Vita is knocking on my door once again, and this time, I plan on answering. One of my gaming goals of 2013, is indeed, to finally purchase a PS Vita and here’s why:

It’s Cheaper

    I’m hopeful that the PS Vita will receive a much needed official price drop by E3 at the latest. Even if it doesn’t, a refurbished Vita can easily be bought at your local Gamestop for about $190. By using that number, I’m confident that I can barter my way into getting one for $150 on Craigslist.

Final Fantasy VII

    Need I say more? Sony finally added the ability for the Playstation Vita to play Playstation 1 games. I own Final Fantasy VII through the Playstation Store and it’s still on my backlog. I’d love to play this game on the go or in my bed. There’s also the promise of Final Fantasy X coming to PS Vita, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Playstation Plus Instant Library

    This was a great idea. In December, the Playstation Plus games available to download for free as a subscriber included Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Wipeout 2048, and Gravity Rush among others. These are all games I would want to play if I bought a Vita, but I wouldn’t be able to afford them all. I’d have to pick one. I’d easily pick Gravity Rush, but now that they’ve given me free games to play once I purchase a Vita, I no longer have to make that easy decision.

Cross Buy

    This sounded promising when it was first announced but I wasn’t sure if I’d ever use it. I now own Sound Shapes which is a beautiful game on PS3. The idea that I can also play it on my PS Vita at no extra cost sounds awesome to me. I’d love to take it on the go. I also plan on purchasing Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time which is Cross Buy as well.

Persona 4: Golden

    Didn’t I say how games make the system somewhere in this article? Well, here’s a game that I would buy a PS Vita exclusively for. I know it’s also on the Playstation 2, but from what I’ve heard this is the definitive version. It’s also the type of game you play for hours and when I say hours I mean 300+. I bought a DS for the sole purpose of playing Pokemon and anything else I played on the system was icing on the cake. I feel Persona 4: Golden will be this game for me. It has the potential to solely justify owning the system.

    Well there you have it folks. Purchasing a PS Vita is one of my many Gaming Goals for 2013. I’ll be writing about other Gaming Goals I have over the course of January and February. Wish me luck in tackling not only my goals, but my never ending backlog! Cheers!

- lvl 99