XIII: The Flaw thread

[champagne supernova]

We all know FF's are linear in a metaphorical sense, but this is in a literal sense for a LOT of the game.

How are they linear in a metaphorical sense? I think the main game is perfectly linear with distractions (some of which are fun and enjoyable) attached to the side. Again, illusion of choice, and again, a game should firstly and mostly be judged by the main game and not the diversions. If you want a non-linear game, Bethesda and Bioware have you covered.

I am not arguing that FFXIII is not linear. It is. And I would have liked more parts of the game to be like Nautilus. To slow it all down, let the characters grow more organically. Maybe have some mini-games here and there. That would have been nice. But they needed to sacrifice it for technical reasons (and possibly because of the vision of the project), and that is a sacrifice which I think was worthwhile. The linearity doesn't hamper the game in my opinion. There's another game which was also fairly linear which I loved. Vagrant Story. And I just realised why XIII reminds me so much of it. Structurally it is actually quite similar. Probably why I might like it.

Wow, big deal. I can't run around everywhere in Metal Gear Solid 4 either. It must also be a bad game!

yes it was downright terrible actually.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (ps3) reviews at Metacritic.com

I like the green 94 sitting on the left of the green "Universal acclaim". I also liked doing some counting of the reviews. 31 100's, 18 others above 95, and 16 more above 90. Out of 82 reviews. Doing some quick maths: 37.8% of reviewers gave it 100, 59.76% gave it 95 or higher, and 79.27% gave it 90 or higher.

Clearly awful. And a little bit off the topic, did you play this one?

EDIT:

it's that its gameplay literally takes place as a 70-hour line with very, very few obstacles to make it interesting.

I did it in under 50 hours. Including when I left it on when I was cooking. And messing around on Pulse. After 70 hours, you must have been horrendously over-powered, possibly making the game seem very easy.

You can argue that every game is just a movement from cutscene to cutscene. MGS4 is one of them and judging by Metacritic, it is still a very good game. VII (or was it Resident Evil or something like that that VII took its inspiration from) created this sort of game: you solve a challenge, after which you progress to a cut-scene to advance the story. There are games that build the story in play (such as Bethesda and BioWares stuff), but most games do not.

@Vivi - I agree with you that MGS4 is a better game than XIII (I said it in there). And we are arguing the same point. The gameplay in MGS is more diverse and interesting than XIII. But it follows a very similar structure. Get through an area, watch a cut-scene. No real distractions. There are different ways to get through an area, but this is a stealth game, so you could argue that it is synonymous with different ways of fighting battles in XIII.