JHF's Video Game Reviews

In an attempt to get this section going again, I'm going to review games I have, and review games I get, so that I can introduce YOU to some new games! SO, these are the ones I've already done:

Name | Platform(s) the Game is On | Date Reviewed | Post Link

Infamous: Festival of Blood | PlayStation 3 (Market Exclusive) | 2/1/12 | Review Here
Final Fantasy X | Playstation 2| 2/15/12 | Review Here

The games I plan on reviewing are:

Portal 2 | PS3, Xbox 360, PC | n/a | n/a
WWE '12 | PS3, Xbox 360, Wii | n/a | n/a
Final Fantasy X-2 | Playstation 2 | n/a | n/a
Final Fantasy X HD | Playstation 3, PlayStation Vita | n/a | n/a (Game has yet to be released)

Those ones I've done we're done on another site and will be posted here soon.

This is my first game review, so leave a comment on this, tell me what you think, if I should change the format to make it look better, talk more about a certain thing and less about another, etc., just tell me. These reviews are to introduce YOU to games, not for me to fill in some personal time.

The first game I'm reviewing is Infamous: Festival of Blood

First off, although I've never played and other Infamous games, I know the gist of what happens in the first one, and saw UberHaxorNova's playthrough of Infamous 2 on YouTube, so I decided that I should get Festival of Blood.

The Story:

The story takes place in New Marais (Mah-Ray), a Las Vegas-like town. The events seem to take place during the events of Infamous 2, but its not known exactly. At the beginning of the game, Zeke, the main character's best friend, is telling the story of how a comic book helped him save Cole MacGrath's life. Zeke's story starts out with Cole in the catacombs, where the vampires live. He is going through the catacombs, looking for injured citizens and healing them, when he gets encountered and knocked out. He wakes up to find that he is on the corpse of Vampire #1, Bloody Mary. The vampires cut into Cole's skin, and drip his Conduit blood onto the corpse. The more of Cole's blood that Mary takes in, the younger, and prettier, she becomes. Bloody Mary then bites Cole's neck, turning him into a vampire. Now Cole has just until the end of the night to kill Bloody Mary, before he ends up being her slave. Thing is, these events happen to take place on a night called Pyre Night, where hundreds of years ago on that night, Bloody Mary was defeated. All the citizens of New Marais walk the streets, with vampires on the loose. Not only does Cole have to kill Mary, but he has to pretct each and every citizen of the town.

The Graphics:

They're what you'd expect out of Sucker Punch, great graphics only topped by the gameplay. The game seems so real, but not too real that you think it'll actually happen. If your a graphics guy, get this game!

The Gameplay:

You're a Conduit, the "Demon of Empire City" (where the events of Infamous 1 took place), Electric Man! You can shoot electrisity out of the palm of your hand, throw electric grenades and toss electric rockets! You can slide on Power rails, jumps off the highest building and not be hurt, but with the addition of Vampire Skills, you can sense Bloodt Mary's teachings, Blood Jars, vampires in disguise, and you can turn into a swarm of bats and fly anywhere! But that is limited. You have a blood meter, and when the blood runs out, no more flying... ! But, THREE easy fixes! 1. Bite a citizen of New Marais, this completely refills your blood. 2. Stake a vampire, this refills a certain amount of blood. 3. Find a Blood Jar, this refills your blood completely (But there are a certain amount scattered around the city). This is a fun game to just play and have fun with it, as its an open town, you can do whatever and do the missions when YOU want!

The Review:

This game is a must-buy for anyone who likes Action RPGs, great graphics, a great story, or just wants to have fun with a game! The game comes with a story designer as well, so you can make your own missions (once the main story is complete). Personally, I love this game, and would give it a 9.5/10!

Here it goes, the review I've been waiting to do, FINAL FANTASY X! Some love it, some hate, it, its my favorite game of all time. This revolutionized games for me and turned me into a gamer. Here we go...

The Story:

The first few scenes take place in a vrey high tech city, called Zanarkand. The main character, Tidus (said as either Tide-us or Teed-us) is the star blitzball player for the Zanarkand Abes. Blitzball is a cross between soccer, football and water polo, seing as you score goals like soccer, but you pass with your hands like football, and then its played for 5 minutes at a time underwater. The game starts out with the blitzball championships of the Jecht Memorial Cup tournament, and the main character is the son of Jecht. During the game, a mysterious whale-like creature, known as Sin, comes and starts destryoing Zanarkand! Tidus falls and awakens among the rubble of the blitzball stadium, where he finds Auron (R-ren), his long-time guardian of sorts. They fight through waves of sinscale to take on the big player, the sinspawn that Sin dropped. After thats defeated, it seems as though Sin takes Auron and Tidus 1000 years into the future, but not really (you learn of that tid-bit later on in the game, and if you don't have the game or don't understand, PM me). Tidus awakens to find himself in the middle of nowhere, and he figts many fiends, finding a temple to rest in. As he fights a fiend, a pack of Al Bheds come in and help him out (only one helps), and after the battle, you're taken to their ship. Sin attacks the ship and Tidus falls off, awakining on a small island known as Besaid. There, the first thing he sees is a blitzball team, which he eventually joins. Tidues learns the ways of Spira through the game, and becomes a guardian to summoner Yuna, but the once sacred Final Summoning is found false, so they destroy the only means of killing Sin (When Sin is killed, a Calm starts until Sin is reborn). The gang consisting of Tidus, Wakka (leader of the Besaid Auroch blitzball team), Lulu (Black Mage), Yuna (Summoner), Kimahri (Ronso, basically a big blue cat), and later on Auron and Rikku (The Al Bhed who helps earlier) find a new way to kill Sin, but doing this could mean they never see one of them ever again... play and find out...

The Graphics:

Its been said that this game took the PS2 to its absolute limits graphics wise, and I can't argue, the graphics are superb, better than any Final Fantasy game before it. I love this games graphics, and the FMV's inhance the graphics for certain scenes, the most important ones. This game has wonderful graphics.

The Gameplay:

This game's battle engine is one-of-a-kind in the most recent FF games. The game goes from real-time battle to a Conditional Turn Based System, where you actually have time to THINK about your move, and you can plan ahead with the turn bar in the top right corner. The battle system also revolutionized the Summons in Final Fantasy games. Summons are known as Aeons (A-ahns), and instead of clearing the field, attacking, then leaving, the aeons actually clear the field and act as a single character that you control (With 2 exceptions, only being optional aeons). You can cuztomize their stats and abilitys. This game also has a one-of-a-kind level system, known as the Sphere Grid. You get nodes on a grid of intertwined nodes, and each node has either a stat, ability or magic (Black or White). You activate these nodes with spheres. But, the game doesn't just stop you from leveling when your done with the character's grid. All 7 characters each have a section of the grid, and when the character is done with their grid, they can move around another character's grid. So when Lulu is done with her Black Magic Grid, you can move her along Auron's and Wakka's grids to become the ultimate offensive machine, and you can move Auron across Wakka's and Tidus's grids to make him the physical powerhouse he was born to be! I'm not even going to go into Celestial Weapons, so you can look them up on the Final Fantasy wiki, along with the International Sphere Grid, a.k.a. the Expert Grid.

The Characters:

The Goodies

-Tidus: The main reason so many people like or dislike this game is because of Tidus. He is found annoying by some, but others see him as a breath of fresh air in the Final Fantasy series of Main characters (The top 5 most popular FF games are 7, 8, 10, 10-2 and 13) In 7, Cloud is depressed all the time, same with Squall in 8, and Lightning in 13, only 10 and 10-2 have upbeat main characters, but Yuna is the main character of 10-2. so she was already found upbeat in 10. Basically, you love him or you hate him, and he makes this game what it is.

-Yuna: The love intrest of Tidus (though I find Rikku much hotter), she is the summoner, she is the one who is supposed to defeat Sin! The journey basically revolves around her, because if she wasn't making her journey, no one would be. She either beats Sin, or is killed doing so (though she could be killed either way, again, play the game or PM me).

-Auron: The powerhouse, and as said in Tidus, most FF main characters are depressed. There are 2 (or 3, depends) in this game, Auron and Lulu (or Kimahri as third) (though Lulu eventually perks up). Auron is the guy that EVERYONE who has played this game loves, for the simple fact that he's just Auron. He starts as the most powerful character on the game, and he stays that way unless you make others more powerful.

-Wakka: "Coach and captain of the Besaid Aurochs brudda!" Wakka is tough but soft, and kindhearted but can kill anything. He is the most unique in battle, when you think about it. Tidus has a sword, Auron has a Katana, Lulu uses Black Magic, Yuna summons and uses White Magic, Kimahiri has a lance, Rikku is a thief, but what about Wakka? He throws a blitzball at things. And the funny thing is, he's the second most powerful character in the game, with Tidus ranking in at a close third. People love Wakka, plain and simple.

-Lulu: She is the Black Mage, using the mot famous spells in Final Fantasy. The elements are fire, water, ice and thunder. She uses these, and most fiends are vulberable to Black Magic, most commonly the flans and the elements. Lulu is detached, but perks up where as Auron has a reason to be detached, becaue he literaly is (Play the Game or PM me). Lulu is a character that some people like, and some don't.

-Kimahri: He spends the first couple hours of gameplay not even talking to you. He's like a child that way, he doesn't know you, so he doesn't talk. At first he has no hesitation attacking you. He brough Yuna to Besaid after her father defeated Sin. He has been there for Yuna the longest. Kimahri is a member of the ronso clan (look up ronsos on the wiki), but he isn't as tall as most of them and his horn was broken off by 2 mischevious ronsos. He also starts dead center in the sphere grid, and you can move him to any player's grid from there, except Aurons, making him the effective Blue Mage of the game, also making him a Blue Mage is Lancet, where he learns fiend's abilitys, making them his overdrive (FFX version of Limit Break from 7).

-Rikku: The perky Al Bhed girl who most love. Her personality matches that of Tidus, which is why I think they'd be perfect together. Rikku isn't afraid to get into battle, but she is deathyl afraid of lightning because her brother (Named Brother, creative, right?) hit her with a lightning spell accidentally when a fiend attacked her. Rikku is my favorite character, and in X-2, she looks way hotter, mainly because of the way she dresses. Play this game and see her for yourself.

The Baddies:

-Seymour: While your trying to get all the aeons and fight Sin, Seymour is a constant thorn in your side. A maester (master) of Yevon (the dominate religion), he would be thought to be a pretty good guy. But how did he get to that spot? He killed his father (One of the many names of his theme is 'I Killed My Father'). You fight him 4 times, killing him at Macalania, but he comes back, forces a marriage with Yuna, and you kill him at Bevelle (Yevon's center, Yuna's hometown), then again at Mt. Gagazet, then a fourth time at a place I won't specify. Seymour seems to be obsessed with death, wanting to somehow become Sin and kill all fo Spira to save it. Weird, right?

-Jecht: Jecht isn't so much bad as he is good, but I put him here for one big reason, which you find out even before Kimahri starts speaking to you. You have to play the game to find out. There is a secondary reason he's here. Tidus hates him.

The Rating:

Simple, 10/10. Best game ever in my honest opinion, and I HIGHLY reccomend this game to ALL, even those who don't like RPG games, cause this game started it all for me.