LogFAQs > #898676896

I_Abibde posted...

People really do have a love-or-hate relationship with Final Fantasy VIII, even almost twenty years later, it seems. I'm on the love side; it's still one of my favorite games in the series.

I loathe it like I loathe no other game in the history of video games.

The only other game to ever engender such a seething hatred within me was Morrowind, which was mostly prompted by its shittastic controller scheme - but which never really carved as deep a furrow into my soul because I sold it back to GameStop like less than a week after I bought it (for a single dollar, and I still felt like I got the better of the deal).

The only reason I kept and continued playing (and ultimately finished) FFVIII was more because I already had years/multiple games worth of nostalgia and good feelings built up from the earlier history of the franchise. Yet even then I sort of had to resist the urge to fling the disc full-force at the wall after I finished playing. And the act of forcing myself to play it in spite of hating pretty much every single thing about it just made my hate for it worse.

I'd be hard-pressed to name a single aspect of the game that I like at all.

(Actually, I DO sort of like Quistis, except her role in the story and her pining after Squall sort of ruins any potential she has, so she winds up being a zero-sum character as well.)

And my girlfriend used to self-identify herself as Selphie, but that's less because she likes the character (she's never played the game) as much as because she used to have a similar sort of hyperactive personality, and because she has a huge crush on Irvine as a concept (again, she's never played the game, so he's more "archetypal cowboy + anime" to her than he is an actual character). She basically super-obsessed over the very short period of time when I played a modern-day cowboy sort of character in a Werewolf: the Apocalypse game forever and a day ago (which I ironically also hated, because I kind of hate Werewolf).



shadowsword87 posted...

I mean, a game with multiplayer where you're not intimately aware that it's a videogame is at least a step up.

The problem is, no one in the history of the human race has yet invented a video game immersive enough to prevent me from being intimately aware that it's a video game. Even at my RPiest in browser games (or actual RP), there's always the disconnect between me as the player and the medium of play.

An ARG like Majestic probably comes close, but even that still has multiple layers of reality kicking you in the face while playing.

That being said, I've never considered total immersion a prerequisite for enjoyment in any game, even RPGs (arguably especially RPGs, since I rarely "play as myself" anyway).



Zeus posted...

...art is entertainment.

Art CAN be entertainment, and entertainment can be art, but the two are not mutually linked, nor do they share the same intent or obligations.



Zeus posted...

And Ebert was a stodgy product of his times

He was also completely correct at the point in time he made the statement.

He's arguably still correct now for the vast majority of games.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family