Final Fantasy 7 on iPhone: What's the Fucking Point?

So recently I was killing some time and decided to browse around the app store on my shitty iPhone.  Before downloading some anime game about girls running races with each other I noticed that Final Fantasy 7 had been made available for download.  As I was swiping through the screen shots I found this.

Since I live in Japan the information came up in Japanese but I'll tell you what it says.  It says that on this version of the game you can turn off the encounters and raise your stats to maximum in order to make it easy to "play".  Now I'm also pretty sure this feature is available on the Steam PC version too and I may have ranted about it then but I don't remember so I'm going to go off on one again just to make sure.

Why is this even a feature?  What the fuck is even the point of playing a game if you are going to strive to take out all the "game" aspect of it.  Part of the reason FF7 is so good was because combat was fun and levelling up your characters and materia was a satisfying experience.  Sure, the story was cool as well but it wasn't JUST the story that made it a PS1 classic, it was the whole damn package.  If you're just going to cut a huge part of the games content just because you're lazy/shit then what's the fucking point?

See, we are playing fucking video GAMES here.  That means that there is some element of skill involved weather its platforming, solving puzzles, precise movements or accuracy or in this case, managing a team of adventurers so that they are able to cope with the challenges that the story presents them. 

Imagine if I was playing Mario and I could opt to turn off all the pits and enemies and just run to the end of the game for the "experience" of playing it?  It would be the most boring, retarded bullshit and anyone who actually cares about games would laugh you out of the fucking room.  If you are so stubbornly unwilling to get good at the GAME aspect of the video GAME then maybe you should just fuck off.

But wait, I hear an idiot somewhere on the internet cry "what if I just want to experience the story! I should be allowed to!"  To which I say go and fuck yourself up the ass with a spiky baseball bat.  These are games and if you aren't willing to put in the time or effort to gather enough skill in order to play it through then you shouldn't be playing at all.  If you want to experience a story go and read a book or watch a fucking movie, you aren't entitled to see the ending to FF7 just because it's a popular game that you haven't beaten due to being shit.

If a game wants to include an easy mode so that the less skilled members of the gaming community can play through their game and feel good about it, that's cool.  Even on an easy setting there is still the fact that you have to play the fucking game and get at least somewhat good in order to make progress but this is just retarded.  Doing shit like this just dumbs down the medium but that is another post for another time.

If you want to play Final Fantasy 7, play fucking Final Fantasy 7 and spend the 10 minutes required to learn how materia works in order to beat the game.  It's a fucking easy game, even someone COMPLETELY new to gaming could see the ending.  If you want to experience a story in a game, go and google some good visual novels I'm sure picking from a list of A, B or C choices won't be too taxing for you.  Then again, if you're the kind of person who needs to max stats and turn off combat then I'm not even sure that you could find the button to progress the text.

Geometry Dash

Geometry Dash is a game that came out on Steam a little while ago and as far as I understand it the thing is a port of a phone game.  That said, it is actually pretty good if not stupidly frustrating,

The idea of the game is very simple, the little block slides automatically across the level and you have to time your jumps in order to get to the end.  Sometimes you go through a ring and it will change into a little flying thing or take some other form where the game play might vary ever so slightly but all you're really doing is pressing A to not die.

That probably makes the game sound shit but trust me it's not.  The game sells and presents itself as a sort of rhythm game.  The idea is that it has a bunch of cool techno sounding songs and each level sort of matches the music so the more intense the track then the more intense the obstacles.  It's pretty fun and it's one of those games you can pick up, play for about 10 minutes and then put down again.

The game also features a level editor where you can put up your own stages and have other people download them.  Some of the stuff people make is actually pretty cool and given that the levels that come packaged with the game are sort of limited then this is a very welcome addition.

If the game sold itself as a platform game with a techno soundtrack I'd probably be a lot happier with it but when I bought it I was kind of expecting a rhythm game.  Despite the fact the obstacles loosely match up with what you're hearing the game is still very trail and error.  For example, I can go play Sound Voltex Booth and play a high level song I've never heard before and still manage because I'm good at the game.  With Geometry Dash you never know what the fucks coming until its already too late so you have to start the whole level over.

It's not a bad game by any stretch but it is VERY challenging so unless you're willing to burn a few hours learning the levels then don't bother.  Then again, for gaming masochists like me it's pretty damn good.

The World Ends With You for iPhone and iPad

So if you are into anything like video games, movies, comic books and stuff like that, chances are you are a jaded, bitter, angry individual because all companies seem to want to do is take stuff that you love and take a massive steaming shit all over it.  This is what has happened with the new The World Ends With You announcement.

Now I tend not to pay too much attention to hype trains, I like to play a game with a clear head and form my own opinion on it, but about a week ago I was linked to this website

www.square-enix.co.jp/subaseka  

All this website was the time I first viewed it was a countdown timer and some remixed songs from the original World Ends With You soundtrack.  I got pretty excited for what was going to come at the end of this countdown, I was under the impression that if you hype something with a timer, then the thing at the end of the timer is going to be good, right?

FUCKING! WRONG!

All we got was this piece of shit, a fucking port for iPhone and iPad.  First of all, the iPhone is not a good system for gaming, it just isn't.  Sure, shit like Angry Birds works really well on this system, but big meaty RPGs like this aren't going to attract your average iPhone gamer.  Most importantly however, the thing that made TWEWY such a good, interesting game on the DS was it's amazing battle system that utilised both screens.  So way to go and fucking ruin that with your piece of shit one screen combat.  The idea of having combat on one screen just basically ruins some of the interesting and challenging battles as a few of the fights would revolve around the dual screen mechanics (E.g. Taboo Noise, for those that know what that is)

It also fucks the game right up from a story perspective too.  The reason the combat was on 2 screens story wise was that despite the 2 characters being linked, they had to fight the big nasties alone.  If they killed the enemy, it would die for their partner too, but if they took damage, the partner would suffer as well.  It was a cool concept that made the idea of combat slightly frightening from a story perspective, but now all that has been thrown out the window since they can just fight together now on one fucking screen.

There are lots of other things I could talk about that make the game seem shit, but I have to remember that despite all my ranting and raving, I haven't played it yet, so my opinion is generally not worth shit on this matter, but it just seems like a bit of a betrayal here.  It might be pretty good, but I won't know for a long time because if square thinks I'm dropping 20 bucks on a fucking shitty iPhone port of a 2008 DS game, they have another thing coming.

Here is the trailer, people panned this shit so hard they removed comments and ratings.