Final Fantasy XII is the immediate successor to Final Fantasy IX, the last Final Fantasy title for the PlayStation, Final Fantasy X, the first Final Fantasy game for the PlayStation 2 and Final Fantasy XI, the premier Square Enix game that’s played online over at PlayOnline. At around the time of the development of FFXII, Final Fantasy X-2 was released as a sequel to Final Fantasy X. What gave the team a push-up motivation was the success that Final Fantasy XI obtained. The group of developers that was working over Final Fantasy Tactics got together to pitch in into FFXII, because FFX and XI were being sharpened, thus introducing a third FF console and Games for Windows team.

The FFXII development team comprises of Hiroaki Kato, the project manager, Taka Murata, the project supervisor, Takashi Katano, main system programmer, Akihiko Yoshida, main character design, Jun Akiyama, event director, Kazuhiro Kataoka, lead map system designer, Yoshinori Tsuchida, real-time rendering programmer, Hiroyuki Itoh, director of game design, and Hiroshi Minagawa, visual design director. These developers have developed action/real-time-based battle systems, which certainly bridges the gap between fields and battles. The previous games in the franchise used a random encounter-based battle system.

In my opinion, FFXII had great potential of being a better title than Final Fantasy X, but then again, there’s just something big that’s missing in XII that Final Fantasy X had. The integration of the action/real-time-based battling system seems to have magnified the difficulty in developing the game. It seems like every individual working over this integration had a distinct speculation of the franchise, which resulted in something very unpredictable, when they should have created prototype for testing to determine what could have faltered in the new system. Now, everyone knows that the FF franchise is a big one, and if they’re going to have a new project enlisted, fans and contemporary developers will obviously have expectations, which indirectly put a lot of pressure on the core development team, be it the field of audio, or system graphics. Square Enix has got some of the most advanced minds in the industry, but then again, chaos and confusion had to pop up since too many cooks always spoil the broth. The slightest error while distributing such a massive project to generic teams would have certainly added to the dilemma. In spite of the fact that the team working on FFXII was absolutely fresh and capable of producing something very new, the perspective of using too many contributive ideas ruined things.

The very basic tools that have been used while synthesizing the game include top notch industry brand names like Autodesk, OPTPiX and Softimage, with products including but not limited to Maya & MotionBuilder, iMageStudio and XSI. SE also used a lot of tools they had built themselves, which helped the team when it came to the hit-and-trial method for pre-visualizing the graphics for real-time previews using the rendering engine, but that wasn’t enough. The whole build deal took longer than expected, and the hit-and-trial error assessment program had to be side-stalled within a timeframe. A time restriction always limits the ability to try something new, and it also imposed a no-option situation for the creation of another error. There was a time when Hiroyuki Itoh had to ditch parts of the game which felt like they would stress out the team if they were to be worked upon any more.

Another crisis that was faced happened when the game went in for quality assurance. The game is mammoth & complex and the debugging process for a game from such an important franchise within time restrictions could have been another limiting factor. The game was bound to attract many gamers, out of which a major number plays just for fun. The difficulty level was supposed to be set in an orderly way, and here’s where the time factor comes in. By the release date deadline, there was just way too much debugging to go through, and all of it couldn’t be attended to, and the game seems to have missed out there too.

In spite of all odds, the game eventually succeeded. The development team tried there best to overcome all the hurdles they had in their way and shipped out a title that was welcomed. In spite of the various drawbacks within the game that didn’t please everyone, many aspects of the game-play mechanics became a pioneer in game development and set a benchmark for future titles in the genre. You have to give it up to the team developing Final Fantasy XIII for taking their time. This assures we won’t come across the kind of situation we faced while playing FFXII. This goes out to everyone who has been cussing at Square Enix for extending FFXIII to late 2009 or early 2010. The time that would be taken to develop the title for the X360 gives time to the PS3 QA Testers to give out their best. This will help the core development team to debug and minimize every last possibly visible glitch within the game, giving the PS3 version an upper hand.

With all the downloadable content planned for Xbox Live including mini arcade games as spin-offs to FFXIII and everything, plus everything exclusive that PSN and PlayStation Home is going to get, this doesn’t get any better than this. Patience pays, so sit tight until Final Fantasy XIII hits the shelves; it would be totally worth the wait and bigger than what any one can imagine.

Are you still reading this? OK, so now that I have your attention, here’s the real deal.

The time machine has not yet been invented ( I bet I had gotten all your hopes up for time traveling to the Mesozoic era and playing Turok first hand, but sorry people, maybe in the next century). What this article is really about is .. well .. ACTION FIGURES!!

Yes you read that right.

What do you understand when i say the word “Action figure”? According to our wonderful Wikipedia -”An action figure is a poseable character figurine, often made of plastic and other materials, and often based upon movie, comic book or video game characters.”

Now that you have a basic idea of what it is, allow me to elaborate in my own words what I think an action figure is, first of all and quite simply it is a magnificent piece of art amongst other things. It is also a faithful replica of your favorite game, comic or movie protagonist which you can keep in your room, on your desk, in your display shelf and many other possible places to basically appreciate the work of the hard working creators and designers who made the character for that movie or game in the first place.

Now if you are going to say that these things are for kids then my friend let me tell you how hugely mistaken you are. Action figures are a big deal in this time and to support that claim here is a little fact for you guys - Today Action figures are a 1.5 billion dollar business and one of the few segments of the toy industry that actually grew in the last few years. The majority of people that buy these are in their twenties and their thirties and are really not kids anymore. Let’s look at an example shall we - If I buy and wear a t-shirt that says ‘Metallica Rocks’ then it’s cool, and I am just expressing my love for their music? But if I buy an action figure of James Hetfield and keep it on my desk then that’s kiddish, eh?? Oh pleassse … and you say I need to grow up. These days there are companies solely devoted to making action figures and nothing else like Mcfarlane, NECA, Mezco, SOTA along with many others.

It’s less about play action for the collectors than it is about getting it right. The overall look and feel of a figure by which i mean the sculpt, the paint job, articulation and capturing the intricate details (like say the mandibles of a predator or the chains of Kratos) has to be awesome.

Nowadays with every new blockbuster movie or a great game there are licensing deals for making action figures and collectibles of the characters.It started with Star Wars and became a rage from then onwards. May that be movies, sports, games, comics even music bands there are action figures of almost everything. And it is a great way of immortalizing that particular moment or the character in 3D and it is also a way of just showing your likes and dislikes, like “Hey, I like God of war and that’s why I have a 12 inch Kratos standing on top of my desktop monitor.”

I am an action figure collector myself and have been one since as long as I can remember. Sadly in our great country India, this hobby is almost non-existent, but I wish to change that and I hope this post will work as a catalyst for the same. Here’s a link bunch for some fantastic action figures from my very own collection. Keep a look out for more on action figures right here!

Command and Conquer; if we say it out loud, it instantly brings to memory the fast paced tank rushes and full motion video sequences that made the series so intriguing. Somewhat around 2002, a new game hit the stands by the name Command and Conquer:Renegade. Any C&C fan would not leave out a game launched freshly that was obvious, so the game sold over a million copies in the very first month of its launch. What gamers were delighted to see, was that it wasn’t an RTS game. It was a First Person Shooter! How did this happen? A franchise doing so well, that their last game at that time, Red Alert 2 was still selling like hot cakes; changed genres? Quite unnatural, yes, but not an attempt in futility, simply because Renegade was an amazing game. The battle over Tiberium between GDI and NOD was just begging to be made into an FPS. Many gamers fantasized seeing all the action up-close and with Renegade, it was delivered so well.

Killzone on the Play Station 2 was a big let down. It was a good shooter, no doubt but could have been a lot better. When Killzone was announced for the PSP, gamers couldn’t help but sigh out loud, as no one expected it to be anything but an FPS with bad graphics and horrible gameplay, as FPS titles on the PSP don’t really sound as if they would go a long way. Lost Boys (now known as Guerrilla) did a fantastic job by making Killzone: Liberation an over the top , third person shooter, which won the hearts of gamers all over and took portable multiplayer action to a new level.

Same can be said for the Warcraft franchise. World of Warcraft needs no introduction. 12 million users online are proof enough. Starcraft, Star Wars, Quake , Mario, Sonic etc. are some other franchises that changed genres for the better. Sadly, this doesn’t always work. Commandos was a great franchise literally torn to shreds by the horrible execution of its FPS version called Commandos: Strike Force. Its all about hits and misses actually. You cannot expect raging success every time. Nonetheless, it is very creative to change genres and bring a lot of excitment to the table. Lets just hope we see Halo Wars soon!

A look at Microsoft E3 Conference will give you a better idea why exactly I am writing this down here. People are too satisfied with what was made 6-7 years ago. I am being specific about the gaming condition in India which is seriously a big let down. Why is CS: Source the most popular game here when games like GRAW and Fallout Tactics are superior in every way? Or is it bad marketing? No. The answer to this ridiculous behavior in all Game Cafes is the simple fact that everyone thinks buying anything above an nVidia GeForce 6200GS would make them bankrupt. This is far from the reality I must say.

A decent 8600 GT can be purchased in less than Rs 5000 and the 8800 GT for Rs 9000. They still won’t put any cards simply because there is no demand. And why there is no demand? Because 70% of the gamers in India have no idea that games like Fallout Tactics or MGS 4 or Killzone 2 even exists. For them, NFS Underground, Cricket 2007, CS: Source and Warcraft 3 is the crème ‘la crème of the gaming realm. Being a hardcore fan and player of Warcraft 3, I must say, it is a great game but, it is not a reason for never trying out Command and Conquer 3 or Supreme Commander or Dawn of War!

I did say I am a realist and will stick to it forever. Therefore I accept that most of the time, Internet gaming for Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Gears of War PC are difficult. But it isn’t difficult on LAN! Who on earth stopped Game Cafes from installing these games instead of the 7 year old crap that we are served? I say MGS 4 multiplayer kicks Godzilla ass. Who thinks otherwise? Not because people agree with me. It is because no one has a damn opinion in the fist place. I can go and rant about how I scored 50 Takedowns in Burnout Paradise and people just nod saying “uh huh”. I never got an “Oh really? Wait till I have something to say about that!”

Although the newer games are given very high attention in USA and Europe, in India, the competition is just absent! It may exist on an individual level in a sporadic pattern, but it is not yet a trend which is very sad. The fact that people just shut their eyes and ears whenever something new turns up saying “I am happy with the retro!” is truly annoying. An average Indian would buy a stock PC for Rs 25,000. I agree it doesn’t come with a high end card but such a commodity can be purchased without any trouble and the falling prices only add to the ease of purchase. Too costly you say? No, that’s not the case.

You could get a console. Yes, Consoles provide tremendous gaming potential, if purchased at the right time. I said this just so that some fool doesn’t go buy a PS2 tomorrow and say “What the hell there are no new games on it!” Only a dumb and desperate gamer would go for a PS2 at this time. Although sadly, this is the time when most PS2 consoles are being sold in India because of the convenient price of Rs 6990/- and even as low as 5000 bucks in the grey market. Why exactly do people frown at the PS3 just because it is priced at 20 to 25 K is beyond me. People, this is your wake up call. THIS is the time to get a next-gen console. When a console is launched, it is ridiculously over-priced. The Xbox 360 was priced at Rs 30,000 and PS3 at Rs 40,000 at the time of their launch. Even the games were too expensive. Only after a year, do the prices become reasonable. The X360 is available for about 15,550 bucks and the PS3 for around 25000 bucks. What are you waiting for? This is the best time and price combo you will get. Anything below this would be too late and the console would be obsolete. By “below” I mean next year. There are some great games scheduled for launch on both Platforms. So go and treat yourselves to a shiny console soon.

After saying all this, HOW on earth will I forgive myself for not mentioning the Nintendo Wii? I didn’t mention it because,

1) Getting an original Wii is difficult. You must order it from EBay etc and pay the shipping charges which are quiet high.

2) Poor collection of games in India. Why on earth will someone buy Cricket 2007 and NBA 2008 on Wii? Ever heard of a Low End PC with 256 MB of Ram and a CRT screen? That will run these games. No need to buy a Wii for that. As far as great games on Nintendo are concerned, they are not available here easily. You need to get to EBay again.

3) The English version of the Wii costs double the Japanese version. Why on earth is this rule implied, I have no clue. Even in the grey market! Why would I buy a Wii for 22,550 Rupees when I can get a PS3 for that amount? Clearly the both PS3 and X360 have superior GPUs and faster processors. Unless there is a solid price gap, the future of Nintendo’s new console is pretty slim and mediocre in India.

Allow me to conclude. Unless there is an astonishingly fast change of gaming attitude, the current lineup of games will be poorly accepted or not accepted at all in India. Cybercafés need to start upgrading their game Engines in order to enable gamers to play games like Command and Conquer 3 and Unreal Tournament III. People, graphic cards are not costly. So get a hold of one. Consoles must be bought at the right time to enjoy their great potential. Nintendo hates India and we want Wii (If that was unintentionally funny, please forgive me).

One thing Blizzard glorified was individual triumph. In most RTS titles, we mass armies and lay waste on the enemy base. Warcraft III changed the way we look at RTS titles with the excellent and highly developed hero system which involved making a hero (obviously) and small strike teams and micro managing them, which commanded much more skill and precision. In other words Blizzard is all about innovation. Big news hit the air on 30th June 2008 that the next game of Blizzard has been declared and fans cheered and campaigns popped as we had in our hands screen shots and videos from the next game in line, Diablo III.

Diablo III looks very promising. The moment Blizzard revealed the game play and interface screen shots; fans were in shock that blizzard had stuck to the interface as in Diablo I and Diablo II. This shows that these guys are smart enough to not let a tactic that worked, go waste, three cheers for that. However just putting in HDR and Bloom Effect and a million particles in one effect will not compete with games of today (for example, Crysis). Unless the game has substantial game play to back up the graphical power, it is an utter waste.

That is exactly the doubt fans had, “with all this graphical glory, will Blizzard maintain Diablo III true to the wonderful game play of Diablo II?” Looks like they heard our plea and released a game play video the very next day which showed II classes of characters -The Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. As the names itself suggest, the barbarian is a brutal bad ass who eats demon scum for breakfast. With overwhelming powers and amazingly brutal attacks, he looks like the Blizzard version of Kratos from the God of War fame. The Witch doctor is more of a defensive character with tactics that distract and kill off enemies when they are in clusters or when they are off-guard.

The sorceress in Diablo II could raise a wall of fire. We have also seen walls of rock, ice and bones in Diablo II. Ever seen a wall of Zombies? Some of the spells shown in the game play and the effect they have on the environment are unbelievably amazing. We have the freedom to knock down walls over approaching enemies. In Diablo II, substantial time was consumed in shuffling through the inventory for health potions. Diablo III will have a unique system as every enemy killed will drop small health orbs which increase health by small amount. Nothing huge and earth shattering but as we all know and have seen, simplicity is what drove Diablo II to the place where it is.

While games like Bethesda Game Studios‘ Oblivion and Bioware’s Never Winter Nights have too much loitering around, Diablo has always been an in-your-face-combat RPG. You either fight or you die. Right from the start we all knew Diablo III will be a bad ass gory and fun RPG which will give the player less time to make decisions and be involved in combat most of the time. Laying waste on 10 Million + demons sounds cool but it demands a strong story, since Diablo II almost shut down the plot with the death of Baal in Lord of Destruction. It will be interesting to see what causes Diablo to rise from the eternal death he was confined to. Coming to the graphical section, the game literally shines in this department. The video currently out shows some really nice effects caused from the attacks of both Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. Especially the Bash attack which demolished a door and the particles hit and knocked back the monsters behind it. Better start saving for that graphics card. I would recommend at least an 8800 GT to even try this game.

The reason is that if a game like Diablo isn’t played the way Blizzard intends it to be, and then you will not, I repeat, you will not enjoy it. It is supposed to be played with high frame rates and a good resolution. People, do justice to this requirement. The game deserves it. Also, if you don’t posses a hard core 5.I speaker set or some nice headphones, its time to shell out that extra booty you had been saving for your other half’s birthday gift. About the character classes, I just hope the old ones make a comeback. What is sad though that the Witch doctor will probably replace the Necromancer? I for one do not like this change. The Barbarian has been made very brilliantly and there are male and female versions of each class (they were absent in D2) which is really admirable. One thing which caught my attention was a video playback which was basically a cut scene in the game.

The video had the barbarian talking to his party member and he was wearing the same armor in the video as he was in real time! I mean the armor was totally random as he just got it from killing a demon! And it showed in the video which wasn’t even in game graphics! How Blizzard managed to pull off something like that astounds me. Sadly the game will be out somewhere in the 3rd quarter or 2009. So it’s a long wait. I just hope it doesn’t go the way of Starcraft Ghost!

For more Diablo 3 screenshots, artwork, trailers, news and information, keep watch at the Official Diablo III website.

]]> http://skywardfire.net/14/the-diablo-iii-preview/feed/ http://skywardfire.net/13/trafficviolatorscom-a-review/ http://skywardfire.net/13/trafficviolatorscom-a-review/#comments Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:09:36 +0000 skywardfire http://skywardfire.net/?p=13

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In a country like India where there are numerous people, and humongous traffic, you cannot really expect everyone to stick to the rules. The Indian traffic mentality and machinery is totally different from the rest of the world because of the condition of the roads, the local climatic factor, the drivers’ mentality and the number of vehicles hitting the street every day, it is an impossible task for the unevenly numbered cops to manage and enforce various street laws that are supposed to keep the various traffic facades in check. So then, there arises a need for a unified national citizenship initiative, by the people for the people, a tool that actually might just be a revolutionary step towards ensuring a peaceful and time-saving journey for you, your friends, your family, and everyone else.

TrafficViolators.Com is one such non-profit independent endeavour by Abhishek Kant that seems really serious about what it says it’s out there for. With a neat but feature-rich interface and  a simple objective, it is an open platform for you to act like that really responsible citizen you ought to be. Although just in it’s initial phase, the site currently covers the major cities of the nation, but new cities are constantly being added. It’s here because the only way we can get rid of all road hazards and ensuring road safety is self-regulation, and self-conciousness. No one can really enforce anything upon you, you are your best judge. TrafficViolators is the perfect media that allows you to judge yourself, gives you an oppurtunity to inform and warn fellow drivers of maniac traffic violators, and at the same time, it gives you a chance to apologize to the community on a whole. What the site does is really very simple. You report a violation, and it goes up on the site’s Shame Board almost instantly. The information you ought to mention while filing a violation report include the vehicle’s registration number & the city where the violation took place. Yes, that’s really it. You might also include other details like the vehicle make, the violation type, and the really fun-to-use VirtualEarth integration for mentioning the Geolocation of the violation. Once the details are filled up, all you got to do is hit ‘Report’. Simple, ainnit?

Wish to report a violation while you’re on the move without an internet connection? That’s not a problem at all, TrafficViolators has everything figured out for you. All you need is a Twitter account, with the SMS feature enabled. You have to submit the violation report in the form of a 140 letter-count-bound tweet, and voila! Job’s done. More information on how to submit a violation report via Twitter can be found here. And if that doesn’t helps, there are some very comprehensive video tutorials which you can watch here. Now, you know everything about posting a report. So go ahead and give it a go. There are some very interesting features that the site offers, and I probably should have mentioned it sooner. The site is Windows Live ID enabled! Yes, you’re probably thinking that makes it all really easy to register yourselves with the website, enabling a huge number of users to sign up at ease. You can also share the photos and videos of a violation you took or shot while you were on the street. You know you’ll be making a stern point about what are really willing to say. The RSS available for all the reported violators and violations makes it really easy for you to follow if you’ve ever been reported or not. The site offers an API, making it possible to make feature-rich widgets and applications one could use to report traffic violations, and you’re very much encouraged to do so. Then again if you’re an avid Facebook user, the site has it’s very own application on Facebook here.

One thing I love about this site is the ease at which you get the job done. I can never get tired of stating that fact. You aren’t being asked of much. Come be a part of the change. Until then, drive safe, and stay safe. I’ll see you at TrafficViolators.Com

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