Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions. While some games don't withstand the test of time, others, like the commonly praised Final Fantasy Tactics, exist in a state of pristine stasis: never changing, yet standing proud at the head of the class, and rarely bested by legions of pretenders to the throne. In other words, you won't need the rose-hued goggles of nostalgia to appreciate Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, since it's a great game even by modern standards. If you're new to Tactics, you'll find a strategy role-playing game with plenty of deep gameplay and one of the finest stories in a Final Fantasy game to date. If you've already experienced the 1998 PlayStation original, you'll enjoy some nifty additions in this enhanced port, including terrific cutscenes, new character classes, and new playable characters. There are some noticeable issues in the presentation, and some lurking frustrations in the gameplay remain. In the context of such satisfying gameplay, though, the annoyances are easy to forgive--especially considering you can squeeze 60 or 70 hours of quality entertainment out of it.

One of the original's many strengths was its complex, moving story. Almost 10 years later, Tactics expresses more excitement and romance in a single moment than many modern games can manage in their entirety. It helps tremendously that the awkward localization of the original has been replaced with realistic dialogue devoid of grammatical errors (well, except for a few famous ones). There's also another major storytelling enhancement: beautiful, fully acted cutscenes that provide an even greater sense of atmosphere. Calling these scenes cel-shaded wouldn't do them justice, though, since they have a grainy texture to them that resemble a painting more than a cartoon. Suffice it to say, it won't take you long to get caught up in the internal struggles of Ivalice's House of Beoulve, the binding ties of friendship, and the social stigmas of the lower classes.
But if the story ropes you in, it will be the gameplay that keeps you coming back for more. A word of warning to new players, however: War of the Lions throws you into the fire, expecting you to figure out the convoluted class and character systems on your own. As a result, you may find yourself getting your butt handed to you until you get used to the mechanics. Once you do, however, you'll find an engaging character development scheme that will keep you constantly reevaluating the makeup of your adventuring party. Every party member begins as either a squire or a chemist, but can ultimately evolve into a monk, mage, assassin, oracle, and more. But you also have a secondary job slot to equip, as well as other ability slots that can be lifted from other classes.
As you gain experience in battle, not only do your characters level up, but so do your job classes. In turn, you are then able to purchase new abilities within those classes. It's a terrific system, for while it gives you the freedom to customize characters in endless ways, your party members still retain the core strengths that lend them to certain roles. There are two new classes to play around with, too: Onion Knight and Dark Knight. Experienced players will probably get more use from the Onion Knight than new players will, since its jack-of-all-trades nature requires some patience. Dark Knights, on the other hand, are deadly from the start, though you have to master multiple classes before you gain access to this profession.
Battles are generally intense, though the downside of the class system's flexibility is that the level of difficulty can vary wildly, depending on how you set up your parties. You may find some early battles almost impossible to get through without a bit of grinding first, while you will absolutely breeze through others. Still, most battles are quite challenging, requiring you to closely examine each move before committing to it. It's perfectly plausible (and if you aren't careful, downright common) to waste a spell because you don't have enough mana, or damage party members in addition to enemies. In light of this, it's too bad you can't take back your move orders once committed, as you can't always tell if a square will put your enemy in attack range until you occupy it.
The Final Fantasy I & II Anniversary Editions released earlier this year featured more striking visual upgrades than does War of the Lions. Yet the graphics hold up remarkably well, using familiar (and charmingly noseless) 2D sprites on 3D maps. The presentation has been enhanced to take advantage of the PSP's widescreen resolution, yet there are some awkward moments during scenes in the game engine where the map is cut off to the right or left, since it wasn't created to fill the wider screen. Some spells and attacks have new effects to go along with them, though the slowdown that accompanied some attacks in the original is still present in War of the Lions--as is the lack of synchronization of certain sounds that accompany them. The soundtrack is slightly enhanced, yet even without the tweaking, it remains one of the finest Final Fantasy scores to date, featuring tracks by both Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata.

War of the Lions adds both cooperative and competitive ad-hoc multiplayer options, accessible from taverns within the game. One-on-one matches are fine provided you have a buddy with characters of approximately the same level, though we don't recommend exploring the inherent frustration of imbalanced battles between a weak party and a strong one. Co-op play fares better, but even then, a player with a less experienced party may not enjoy the relatively strong monsters that spawn in, thanks to the other player's higher level. Two players on equal footing, however, should have a blast, especially because there is new equipment up for grabs.
There are other small annoyances that the new version retains, such as its camera, which can be rotated and tilted, but may not always give you the most helpful view. But by and large, Final Fantasy Tactics remains a great game even by modern standards, thanks to its finely tuned character development system and challenging battles that will have you using every trick in your arsenal. Whether you are a newcomer to Final Fantasy Tactics or an experienced fan, you will lose countless hours falling to War of the Lions' insistence that you take just...one...more...turn.

By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpot

Sega Rally Revo

Sega Rally Revo for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 brought the years-old Sega Rally franchise into the current generation of consoles, crafting a fun, though sometimes overly challenging arcade rally racer around the series' trademark powerslide-happy gameplay. Revo was also released for the PSP, and it attempts to do the same thing as the console games, albeit with far less enjoyable results. In a sense, Revo on the PSP suffers from opposite issues of its console counterparts. Whereas the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions featured overly tough computer opponents that you couldn't bump off their racing lines to save your life, in the PSP game the opponents are total pushovers. There is next to no challenge in this game, and what little there is has more to do with the off-kilter controls than anything else.

Your first impression of Sega Rally Revo is likely to be the one you'll keep all throughout your time with the game because for as much as things change in the game, they ultimately stay the same. The second you get on a track, you'll know that this is pure arcade driving. Cars are incapable of going off track, with invisible barriers causing vehicles to bounce off everything from trees to minor shrubs. Powerslides are the name of the game, no matter the surface on which you might be driving. And there is a wide variety of surfaces on display. From mud-bogged jungles and sandy beaches to the icy, snowy mountains, you'll encounter all manner of terrain as you drive.
Maintaining tight, accurate powerslides on the PSP, however, is something of an exercise in futility. Whether you try to use the D pad or the analog stick, cars have an innate tendency to slide out and spin you too far in whatever direction you're turning. The amount of precision needed to make accurate powerslides just isn't there with this control setup, and you'll find yourself sliding every which way far more than you'd prefer. It's not impossible to keep a handle on the controls, but it requires more babysitting than it should to do so.
Granted, no matter how much you slide around like butter on a skillet, you'll probably still end up winning most of your races. The opponent drivers in Sega Rally Revo don't have much interest in keeping you from victory. Oh, sure, they'll try to cut you off when you steer around them, but that's not much of an issue because you can just bowl right into them and send their cars flying. All the cars in this game feel like tin cans on plastic wheels. A simple rear bumper tap will send the bumped car flying into the air for a second, and most times, the rear section of an opponent's car will fall down on your car. Simple taps from the side will send cars spinning like crazy. Granted, such wrecks will often lead to you losing some control of your car as well, but usually, you can get by without any other cars sneaking up and passing you.
Sega Rally Revo offers a few different modes of play. Apart from the standard quick race mode, there is a time trial mode, as well as a championship mode. There are three championship tiers, each tied to the three car classes in the game. You start out with the premier league, which consists of standard rally rides, such as the Subaru WRX STi and Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX. Then you move on to the modified league, with such cars as the VW Golf GTI and Grande Punto Rally. Then finally, you hit the masters league and drive rally classics, such as the Lancia Super Delta HF Integrale and Lancia Stratos. Each league also has several unlockable cars, many of which are often much faster than the default rides (though at the same time, often more challenging to handle). With such a limited number of tracks, you end up repeating a lot of them again and again as you progress through each championship, though with the differences in speed between car classes, each step upward often results in a race that feels somewhat different.
Finally, there is multiplayer. Up to four players can play wirelessly via both ad hoc and infrastructure. The online play is functional, though we hardly ever found anyone playing. There is also a game sharing option, though only two cars and three tracks are available.

Graphically, Sega Rally Revo looks pretty solid, though it is a bit on the grainy side. This version of the game does have the dynamic track deformation that the console versions did, though not to quite the same degree. You do tear up the tracks as you go, but it doesn't really seem to have any effect on how you drive one way or the other, so it's more of just a visual trinket in this version--and not all that great of one either. Car models look great, and as each race goes on, you can cake them up with dirt or mud pretty nicely. In terms of performance, the frame rate holds steady, though the load times are pretty lengthy.
There are elements of Sega Rally Revo that provide some enjoyable moments, but too many irritations and issues get in the way of those moments. It might look good, as well as offer up a number of ways to play, but the suspect controls and relative ease of the gameplay prevent this from being a particularly captivating racer. When you factor in how many better and more interesting driving games there are on the PSP, you're ultimately better off skipping this one.

By Alex Navarro, GameSpot