Final Fantasy Type-0 SD: Shouldering the Weight of the PSP’s Failure

Some call me a contrarian. I am often easily swayed by an impulse to eschew popular opinion in favour of obscure alternatives. Take the PSP for instance: I was quite fond of it, and would have gladly purchased several million units of it if I could. That way, the other three people here in North America who purchased the handheld wouldn’t have had to shoulder the unnerving burden of each representing 25% of their chosen market. 

But I digress. For a while, I held onto the belief that Final Fantasy Type-0 would come out here in the West. Whenever I ate food, I imagined that my body was being replenished to live to see the day that Type-0 was packed with English vowels and, if I may be brave enough to say, the occasional meme-worthy scenewhich would cause the internet to grossly exaggerate the comedic value of re-interpreting often culturally specific Japanese ideologies into suitable Americanized banter.

Again, I am digressing. The point of this post is to move beyond petty sarcasm. Several weeks back, I heard that Final Fantasy Type-0 was finally coming out herein the West. However, imagine my (contrarian) surprise when I heard that the game would be released in HD for the PS4 and XBOX One, but not the PS Vita. See, when I purchased a PS Vita several years back, I imagined my PSP’s soul being reborn into its successor. My rational understanding to play portable games on a portable system has since been met with the unfortunate decision by Square Enix to not release Type-0 on the Vita.

So I’ve done the only sensible thing that I could imagine doing when faced with such news: I purchased a PS4 and XBOX One. No, I didn’t. What I really did was pick up a copy of Type-0 for the PSP, and downloaded a patch to play the game in English.  

I haven’t actually put more than a few hours into the game itself yet, but plan on discussing the game in more detail in the coming weeks. Until then, I have a PSP and Vita that require my love and support; I wouldn’t want them to turn into maladjusted adults with faltering self-esteem issues.

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An HD Coat of Paint‏

Last week, I talked about the new Oddworld remake that just came out. Of course, this is a PS1 remake, so the developer—Just Add Water—waited long enough and really re-made the game: new graphics, animations and voiceovers.

Last generation, we experienced a similar thing, where PS2 games were remastered for the PS3. Upscaled graphics, and more importantly, an HD, 16:9 presentation made the purchase worth it. Games like Kingdom Hearts were actually built almost from the ground-up, and many seemed to have included a couple of games all in one package (Jak & Daxter, God of War, Final Fantasy X/X-2). The value is there for me since going from 4:3 to widescreen looked great, especially with new or upscaled graphics. Seriously, try playing your PS2 games now: they really don’t look that great anymore.

A nice article on Kotaku made me think: are we going to see the same trend on PS4? The Last of Us got a remastered edition. The PS4 edition was thoroughly improved with updates such as higher resolution and better framerates. But in the end, is it worth it? Maybe so, for someone who has not yet played the game. I myself wouldn’t mind returning to the game as it was easily my favorite game of 2013. With that in mind, the game was barely made 1 year ago. Moreover, I don’t think jumping from 720p to 1080p is much greater than the move from 480p to 720p. Maybe it would be if I had a 50”+ television, but the original PS3 game looked great on my 40” 1080p screen.

Anyway, I digress. My real point is: will The Last of Us open the floodgates for remastered last-gen games? I feel like it will, and I’m very indifferent about it. On one hand, some games may play much better given the better hardware; but on the other hand, I bet some developers will put a half-assed effort into re-releasing games that are barely 1 year old.

GTA V

Naughty Dog has clearly put a lot of effort into remastering The Last of Us for the new architecture, but in the end, consumers don’t really care and just assume it was easy to just port a game. Regardless, I feel that successful franchises should make use of the beefier hardware and port older games to acclimatize themselves to the new consoles’ architectures. It’d be a great learning tool and a better chance at making their following games better and faster.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if The Last of Us: Remastered and GTA V are big successes just like they were last year.

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Oddworld: Something New 'n' Tasty‏

A game I’ve always taken for granted was Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. Released in 1997, I was weirded out by the cover art and ignored it like the rest of my friends (back then I had to judge games by their covers since I never checked reviews). What really piqued my interest in the game recently was YouTube user Caddicarus and his video on this game.

Basically, I loved his passion for the series, so I decided to check it out. Oh yeah, it was free on PlayStation Plus, which was a plus. Since it was free.

In total, I only played a couple of hours, but wow was it great. What I loved was its great visuals and creativity. It’s a 2D platformer, with static, pre-rendered backgrounds. Pre-rendered graphics aren’t anything new, but the cutscenes were really well done and I didn’t feel like it had shown much age. I loved the voice acting since it had its funny moments despite feeling a bit grim overall.

It set a darker tone in many ways, which makes me feel that this game was mature for its time (no wonder I was weirded out as a kid). The developer really wanted to stand out from the rest, starting with developing Abe as a character. Abe might be the weirdest-looking protagonist in any game I’ve played, but he has multiple redeeming qualities, like his charm and innocence. He’s kind of dumb, but you can’t help but feel bad for him.

What really set this game apart from the rest was “GameSpeak”. Basically, Abe is a Mudokon who is trying to rescue other Mudokons from their oppressors the Glukkons, who use the Mudokons for slave labor.

You rescue Mudokons by guiding them using GameSpeak: a set of commands allowing you to tell other Mudokons what to do, similar to Lemmings. This system is pretty intelligent and complicated. For its time I imagine it really wasn’t that complex, but seeing as how we’ve been babied so much nowadays, GameSpeak can become a pain if you forget which button does what or if you don’t time your commands properly. There’s even a GameSpeak option in the main menu, which I would assume serves as practice.

Unfortunately, I never went back to the game, but my few hours with the game were memorable. More importantly, Abe’s Oddysee is getting an HD remake titled Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty! and I feel like this is the perfect opportunity for me to properly re-acquaint myself with the series, and give it the love I think it deserves.

At the time of writing this post I haven’t yet played the HD remake, so I’m not sure if it will have the same qualities as the original, but I can safely say that the charm of Abe and the creative gameplay will remain and shine through.

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