Game Review: Final Fantasy VII Returns on Steam

By Grease Coakes

Lots of people remember the old Atari game systems with the old games combat and space invaders with very primitive graphics. A little later the Nintendo entertainment system stormed across the world with Super Mario bros and classics like Metroid and Zelda.

Fast forward about ten years or so and the First Playstation became the popular gaming system of the time. Squaresoft a gaming company from Japan well known for its Final Fantasy RPG game series came out with the seventh game in the series. Back in 1997 when it was released it had state of the art graphics not with the characters but with realistic looking environments. By today’s standards the blocky avatar you controlled as Cloud was a graphical joke. However the environments made a solid attempt of looking realistic especially in Midgar where you start the game. Considering this was back in 1997 before the year flipped to 2000 and beyond, Final Fantasy VII was a major feat.

In combat however the avatars are better looking 3-d models as your characters do battle with bad guys that you encounter to gain experience Gil and so on. In fact one of the main features of FF VII is the active combat system. Instead of turn based combat like in a dragon quest game where you can take your time deciding what to do your team will be attacked as you tell your characters what to do.

So yes if you do nothing and step away for a bathroom break or your roommate badgers you to death about taking out the trash when you get back your game may be over as the pixel Cloud and his buddies were told to do nothing.

The story itself starts in Midgar as you control a blond spiky man named Cloud who was an Ex-Solider. Caring for nothing but himself, Cloud was hired by Avalanche, a resistance group against the powerful corporation Shinra. Barret the group leader doesn’t trust Cloud’s arrogant attitude, but lets him help in the mission anyway.

Barret and Cloud sabotage a mako reactor as Barret explains it’s unethical for Shinra to drain energy from the earth to power homes etc. Cloud could care less as he just wants his payment of Gil. The game from then on starts as possibly one of the greatest role playing games in the history of video games.

The game play is simple where you command Cloud and your team to attack cast magic or use an item like a potion during combat. However each character can only cast magic if he or she has Materia equipped to their weapon and or armor. Having a Restore Materia equipped to Cloud lets him cast cure to heal hit points on himself or others. Fire Materia allows a character like Barret or Tifa to cast fire attack spells. Materia is created as condensed life energy and allows magical abilities. Most materia very slightly reduces physical attributes while very slightly increasing your magical power. Over a long period of time you gain AP or attribute points to make your material level up to give you stronger healing or lightning abilities. You could just constantly fight enemies early on to beat the system and level up your materia to fire and cure 2, but it would take a very long time to do so.

Another addition to combat is the limit break where a bar fills up a little or a lot depending how much damage your character takes. When the bar fills up instead of attacking your character can do a Limit break instead. Aeris a weak physical character her limit break heals everyone on your team. Cloud does a Braver, which is a super physical attack with his large sword. As you level up your characters gain new limit breaks along with higher hit points and magic points.

The game from years ago is still the same from 1997 with a slight brush up of the graphics along with the same music and sound effects. When I talked to a dog I heard a good attempt of recreating a dog’s woof. It missed by a mile or so, but I enjoyed the sound effect anyway. The movies in between scenes were graphically good though for the time. Pixar or another computer animation company could easily blow those scenes away in one of their movies today though. However Squareenix left the old school movies as is and only improved upon them cleaning them up. Cloud’s sword twirl at the end of each battle and Tifa’s stretching are still there. In fact when I loaded up the game for the first time there were the charging chocobos with the Squaresoft logo very much if I started up the game 16 years ago.

Another feature that I liked playing with was the color change feature to change the color of the background behind the menus and dialogue and combat. There’s a screen with four corners and you can change the color of each corner to customize your very own color scheme as you helped Cloud and his friends fight Shinra and whatever other baddies came your way. I remember changing the color scheme every so often.

There’s something shocking that happens later in the game, but if you never played FF7 I don’t want to give it away. If you really must know ask a friend or use the web. But if you want to find out for yourself and you tell your friends “No! Don’t tell me! I want to find out for myself!” More power to you I won’t give away what happens.

When I played Final Fantasy 7 for a little bit before I wrote this article, I greatly enjoyed playing through the game as I played on my computer years ago when I didn’t have a playstation. I’ll savor the game by playing a little bit now and again and not rush through the game as I barely got anywhere in the game anyway so far. Final Fantasy 7 is a classic game that even if you hate video games and RPG/s you can at least give a try, or you could be reading this article and you beat the game 100 times before and you want to beat the game 101th time on steam on your computer.

It’s available for download on steam at www.steam.com for a low price of $11.99. Swing Cloud’s big sword or shoot Barret’s hand gun (no really his hand is a gun) for the first time or you’re a hardened vet of the game. This game is a smart buy.

Grease Coakes

Game Review: Herzog Zwei and Airmech

When gamers think of good real time strategy games computer games like StarCraft or Warcraft 2 or perhaps other various games come to mind. Many people think of Dune 2 as one of the first strategy games, but there’s another game that’s vague but still an excellent first game for a strategy game against your friend or a computer AI.

 

When Sega Genesis came out, everyone thought of arcade games like Altered Beast and Golden Axe. One of the lesser known games is Herzog Zwei created by Technosoft. My brother and I in real life played this game like crazy and we had the saying “Look at your base power”! It plays like a strategy game where you manage resources to buy and build units to destroy the opposing player. What makes Herzog Zwei different though is that you control a plane that picks up your units like tanks and stationary cannons. Also this plane can blast enemy units and the other player with a gun in air or on the ground. You’re not invincible though take enough hits and you die to respawn at your main base after a short period of time. The main goal of Herzog Zwei is to destroy not the opposing player’s plane/robot. But instead to destroy the player’s main base through your units attacking it.

 

To gain resources you gain to buy units come from what me and brother called “mini bases”. You capture a mini base by sending four infantry with a command “Capture mini base”. Infantry have lousy hit points so it’s best to deliver the infantry yourself to the mini base. You can see how many infantry are in the mini base by dots shown on the mini base. When it reaches four in your color you gain control of the base. The two colors are an orange and dark blue. Don’t get lazy though just because you gain control of a mini base doesn’t mean the other player can’t capture it.

 

Your main base and mini bases allow you to build and pick up units recharge your plane’s ammo and fuel and hit points. The same goes for units if you are carrying one of your tanks they get recharged too. Mini bases also give you more resources to buy units. When you order a unit it takes a set amount of time for it to be built. You’ll see a signal when it’s ready.

 

You also assign commands to your troops. One was called the dizzy command where your unit went in a circle. The other commands were capture mini base or attack main base. When you think you have enough firepower start sending your tanks, motorcycles etc. to attack the other’s player’s main base. Commands for your units cost resources too.

 

Once you destroy the enemy’s main base you win! The focus of the game is balancing capturing and keeping control of mini bases and attacking the other player’s main base. No mini bases means you barely get any resources to fund your army. So get control of those ASAP.

 

Airmech made by Carbon Games follows the same game style you control the same jetplane and order units. However there are enough differences from the original that Airmech is a whole new game by itself.For example you can pick different planes like a flying saucer that allows you to gain control of enemy units when you float over them. Eventually they change to your color and it’s yours as if you built it in the first place. Also a cargo plane can heal your own units. Many actions during the game give you experience. Each level you gain gives you a skill point that you can use to give yourself more firepower or higher armor, each plane is different.

 

Also in Herzog Zwei you could only order and build one unit at a time. In Airmech you have a build list and can order up to five at once. If the units are small enough infantry for example you can carry three at a time. Instead of being stuck with the same units from Herzog Zwei, players have the option to customize your army from tanks to HUGE tanks to probes that are very fast that can capture mini bases or cannons or as my brother and I called them “grims” From Herzog Zwei when the cannons had a skull on top.

 

The game is original and addicting. Gameplay is rewarded with experience and kudos and using kudos you can buy the right to use certain units and pilots. The flying saucer I bought with kudos wanting to brainwash enemy units and let them go their merry way on their command against the enemy.

 

How do you play Airmech? It’s pretty easy get an email account from Google and go to the game store and "buy" Airmech. It’s free to play. It’s possible to play against human players in Airmech but beware it tends to lag. There’s a tutorial to get you used to the game play. So even if you never played a strategy game or Herzog Zwei, you’ll get used to it.

 

When you feel like trying out something new and you’re not in the mood for Second Life upload Airmech and give it a shot. You might even yell out “Look at your base power!”

 

Grease Coakes