Love for GAMING - w some Metroid and Final Fantasy help

[madd74]

I love video games, I really do. What do I love most? That is a good question, a good question indeed. It depends on the video game in question.

One thing that attracts me most to a video game, oddly, is music. There are a few times when I would otherwise not have touched a video game, and just listening to downloaded music, ended up playing the game. FFVIII was a very good example of this. I got sick of what Square was doing with the FF series, and even though I bought VIII when it came out, it was just sitting in a corner. I had downloaded some of the music, and listened, over and over, to the fight music (it was orchastrated), and eventually I played the game... over and over and over and over, haha!! I just was not able to stop! While I started because of the music, there were a few other things that did keep my attention. However, FFVIII (and FFIX, FFX, etc) did show something that I had not liked in a video game.

There is absolutely no relation from one FF game to the next. From the first NES game, where you picked a party of 4 people, to the last movie-based PS2 game, there is not one common element. The name is just used, something I think is totally wrong. Even the music has ended up changing. I think only one song is common between all ten games.

Games do not really require much plot either, I find. Games such as Tetris help provide tons of fun for year and years, and there is certainly no plot there. Also, an old RPG I use to play called Mordor had very little plot either. Mordor worked with another principle that attracts me to video games: items, and millions of them. The spells all basically did the same, heal or harm, even though they had different names, however, there are thousands of items to use, and also everything is totally random, minus the map itself, and monster spots. Going back to the FF games, FFIV had tons of different weapons and the like while FFVII had very few weapon and armor selection. They relied more on "magic crystals". Even FFVI did not have that large a weapon selection.

Square could take note from Nintendo's Metroid series. Metroid starts off the same music (always changed and enhanced however we all know and love that Metroid intro). It deals with Samus, who after the first game we all figured out was female, and she ALWAYS had her classic items from the original. The morph ball, morph ball bombs, freeze beam, and missles. As she grew (going from 8bit with low memory all the way to CD with a fast processor), she aquired many different items. Even the fact that she went from 2D to 3D Nintendo was able to incorperate all her classic things, as well as some new school. The best part about Prime, is that we even get a way to take on Ridley, our enemy from the very start. For us music lovers, we can even hear some of the old Metroid music thrown in here and there. Because of this, Nintendo can bet I will be getting all the Metroid games until they turn the way of Square Soft and just use a lable to totally sell the product. Unfortunately, humans are stupid enough to buy that crap also.

And to this day, depsite my love for multiplayer gaming, Metroid has been powerful enough to be one of the all time greatest single player games EVER. Even though... a 1st person Metroid multiplayer could always be a possibility...

So I say, be true to the music you bring into our gaming world, gaming companies. Even Nintendo has messed up in that area (Zelda, another platform that has gone to crap and is more a lable pushing a game). Give us plenty of items to choose from, and if you are going to make a sequal... make it really a sequal, or give it a different name.