Jan 06 2009
My Biggest Gaming Disappointment of 2008
Yes, I’m still yammering on about 2008. But no new RPGs have come out yet, so I don’t have that much new stuff to talk to about. I’ll talk about the old RPGs (in the case of Final Fantasy 7, the very old) I’m playing at another time.
But on to my biggest disappointment.
Yes, it was Infinite Undiscovery.
When Square Enix made their rather shocking announcement at E3 last year that they would release a few exclusives for the Xbox, I had high hopes for the first release. The trailers showed beautiful graphics and hack n’ slash gameplay that reminded me a bit of Kingdom Hearts. Of course I was in.
After fifteen hours of gathering an insurmountable number of characters for my party, continually forgetting to unsheath my sword to start battle (and then forgetting to sheath it again to save), getting annoyed at having to connect with partymembers for their abilities, and begging anyone, for the love of God ANYONE to heal me, I shelved the disc, deleted my save information, and put the game up on Amazon.com. I had gotten to the point where I no longer cared what whiney Cappell did, if his little band destroyed all the chains, or what the little dog would say if I connected with the boy twin and had him talk to the dog for me. I liked playing Cappell’s flute, but that was it.
I’m not sure I’ve been so disappointed since I saw the first episode of Star Wars in college (not the original, Phantom Menace). And like Phantom Menace, I really, really wanted to like it, which made it all the more disappointing.
I’m not sure if Square Enix was trying to change the typical JRPG (which story-wise, it didn’t), but it felt like they took every new idea spouted at a brainstorm meeting and tried to stuff it into one game. The end result was a bit overwhelming for gameplay, and from what I read across the net, a deep story and lengthy gameplay were sacrificed in the process. I suppose they assumed players would be more interested in spending time vainly trying to discover the infinite facets than spending time playing the story.
I started Last Remnant, and so far it seems to be a bit better, but I don’t have my hopes nearly as high. However, if Final Fantasy XIII is as bad as Infinite Undiscovery, I may have to sharpen my pitchfork and find a good torch.
