Final Fantasy 7
I know it is old. But man is this a great game!
My reawakened love for this game comes on the crest of Sony’s downloadable games wave. I have owned a PSP since I went to Bahrain in 2007 on board the USS Enterprise. The PSP’s video and game capabilities were perfect when I was on cruise and had nothing to do to entertain myself. However, when I returned to the States I put the good ol’ boy in a box and had not touched it since. Recently though, I got a job as a security guard and I find myself with a few hours a night to kill when I have to sit at my desk. I work third shift so there is not much for me to do except the occasional patrol. As luck would have it, just as I started looking for something to do at work, Sony sends me an email ad about Final Fantasy 7 coming to the PSP. Suddenly flashes of my past came barreling to my memory and I was transported back to a simpler time, a time without work and financial worries. Luckily for me it has been so long since I played FF7, that I barely remembered anything about it. So I downloaded the game to my PSP using the free MediaGo program from Sony which acts as a media management system making it easy to transfer movies, mp3’s, pictures and yes even games to the PSP system. When I finished downloading it, I loaded it from my memory card and smiled as the familiar opening theme began to play and the elegant title screen slowly appeared. My first few hours in the game were spent fondly remembering the past. Emotions I had as a child came back to me and I was reminded of what powerful storytelling really looks like. I began to worry that I was simply enjoying the game now because I was remembering what it felt like to play it back then. But, as Sector 7 came tumbling down, and as the complex relationship between Cloud, Tifa and Aeris began to develop, I knew that I was here for the story. It is so rare these days, that I find myself so deeply enthralled by a story as I do with Final Fantasy 7. You are thrown into this universe with no back story or any concept of who you are. Slowly your past is revealed through character interactions and flashbacks, as the sinister Shinra Corporation seeks to corrupt the world and suck it dry for profit. I find myself amazed by what they can do with the simple animations they had available back then. I have been working on a sprite based game myself, and I find myself taking notes often. The graphics are obviously PS One era, but somehow that does not take away from my enjoyment of the game. The backgrounds they use are especially impressive to me, I will follow this post with some screen shots to illustrate my point. The length of this game is also amazing. Originally when this game came out in 1997 it was on three or four discs. I am already 6 hours into the game and still on the first disc. One thing I forgot to mention, the game is all stored on your memory unit, it takes up 712mb. It artificially tricks the game into being able to read your “memory cards” and “game discs” which are simply your memory card anyway. It is pretty clever how they did it all. This game is awesome and if you were a fan back in 1997 then you will still love it now. I know that I am seeing a lot of things I did not notice when I was a kid. I also noticed that this game was not made for kids, it is mature and uses language you may not want your kid to use. Most of the bad words are symbols, but a few damns and hells sneak in there, all from Barret’s loud mouth. I love this game still, maybe I even love it more now that I see that great story telling can get this game over the graphics mark. If more games had half as much story and content as this one does, we would all be very happy and most likely severely overweight couch potatoes. Perhaps for our health it is better that most games fail to rope us in. In closing, if you have a PSP and have not played this game before, I would highly recommend using the USB cable to download it now from the Playstation Store. It also can be played remotely from your PS3 on your TV but since I do not have a PS3 (lower your price SONY!) I do not know much about that feature.
