Six Games That Won't Be Worth The Hype

Today's hyperbole, tomorrow's 7/10? Kikizo runs a cynical eye over some of the biggest upcoming console releases.

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Final Fantasy XIII
PS3, Xbox 360

What they've said about it:

"Different games aim to have some sort of "key element" that will differentiate them from other games on the market. For FF, we feel that the key element is that we constantly try to reach the highest potential, the highest quality standards in that particular generation." - Shinji Hashimoto, Square Enix Corporate Director (Kikizo interview)

"These hi-tech neon looking world doesnt appeal to me. Im sorry but it just doesn't" - QuezcatoL, Kikizo forum member

Final Fantasy XIII's "defection" to the Xbox 360 in North America and Europe was the cause of much tune-changing at last year's E3. PS3 loyalists who had been lauding the game to the heavens suddenly "realised" that it was going to be pure bird droppings on toast, while formerly disdainful Xbox 360 devotees swiftly reappraised it as the best thing since Halo 3. The truth, inevitably, will lie somewhere between the two.

So what have we got against this latest entrant in the never-less-than-superlative Japanese role-playing series? The combat system, for one. Square has washed its hands of the MMO-inspired battling which graced Final Fantasy XII, reverting to a nipped/tucked version of Final Fantasy VII's Active Time Battle system. We weren't overwhelmed by the FFXII approach, but we thought its mix of programmable partner AI and free-roaming bitch-slappery had a lot of potential. Shame then that the developer has gone back to the old "good guys on one side, bad guys on the other" routine.

Most of all, though, we miss the twelfth game's relatively - note, relatively - down-to-earth characters and plot; the thirteenth is smeared with the kind of caffeinated exaggeratedness otherwise seen in soft drink commercials. Take key protagonist "Lightning", one of those pallid, exquisitely vulnerable-looking yet murderously acrobatic slip-of-a-girls, usually greeted in one of two ways by franchise disciples: (1) "Awww bless her little heart, ain't she the pretty one? C'mere, sweetie, give us a peck on the - good heavens, you just shoved a ten-foot crystalline boomerang through my nipple," and (2) "Who's this pasty muppet with the toilet-brush haircut? You're ruining the look of my battle line - gracious me, you just summoned a fifty-foot-tall goat-demon out of thin air."

Lightning's got charisma, all right - what Final Fantasy character doesn't? - but do we really, as a culture, need to play another pouting cutie who vents her profound personal issues by mince-meating the odd battalion of Stormtrooper rip-offs? What happened to the chin-stroking politics, sturdy English characterisations (we love you, Basch!) and soberly real-world-ish architecture of the previous iteration?

Some aspects of the game feel like they belong in Godhand. One of Lightning's comrades has a bird living in his afro, for Bahumut's sake. Another chap rides around on a motorbike made - get this - made out of ice goddesses. Lightning herself owns a sword best summarized as a giant spastic Swiss Army knife. We know it's meant to be fantasy, Square, but do tone the eccentricity down a bit.

At least the random battles haven't made a comeback.

Probable appalling reviewer's quip: "Thirteen times unlucky"

Likely score: Seven Mega-Elixirs out of 10.

Look out for more coverage of all six titles (assuming the publishers in question haven't torn up our press invites, folded them into little origami effigies and burned them in retaliation) in the near future.

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