I got to see Planet of the Apes here in Japan on Saturday. I guess that’s a week earlier than the states. Honestly, my personal opinion is you can skip it. It wasn’t even visually interesting like most Tim Burton movies are. He clearly tried but for some reason it just didn’t cut it. On top of which as usually his stories are kind of stale but then usually at least the visuals make them worth seeing. Well, not this time.
I also got to see Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi. The new Ghibli movie (Totoro, Kiki’s, Laputa, Nausicaa) and it kicked butt of course.
I hate to be a critic but there were a few issues. The girl is only 10 and when her parents get turned into pigs at the beginning of the movie she is suprisingly un-effected. Also later in the movie we are supposed to except that she’s in love with some guy enough to do anything for him which was hard to buy (a) because she’s 10 and (b) because there’s been no setup for it. Still, those are minor points and easily ignored in the context of the entire movie which was highly entertaining in my opinion.
Somebody tell me. Can I look forward to Scary Movie 2, The Fast and Furious, Kiss of the Dragon and/or Final Fantasy? They all look at least interesting.
Haven't seen Scary Movie 2 but this summer has been pretty bad as far as movies go. Last night we saw Made with Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn which was good. Worth seeing. Really funny but probably forgettable. JP3 (entertaining, but have low expectations going in), America's Sweetheart's (barely watchable, really bad), Final Fantasy (could've skipped it), Kiss of the Dragon (OK), Fast and the Furious (blah). The trailers looked bad to me, but I was still looking forward to Planet of the Apes this coming weekend… Damn.
Just wondering. Does Final Fantasy the movie have anything in common with Final Fantasy the game?
Scary Movie 2…skip it. My sister saw that and said it was horrible!
The Fast and the Furious,…only if you're bored and want to see something! It just blows my mind how they take a write a script that was based on an actual ariticle that was written about the Asian car scene in California and change it so the so-called villian is an Asian guy in the movie. Bah,…I'd better stop now!
I've heard a lot of people say they were pleased with Final Fantasy! My bro and dad saw Kiss of the Dragon and say they said it was ok. Seems like Jurassic Park scored big here this weekend! It opened last Wednesday and as of yesterday, it's already made $80 million! O_o
It's related to the game about as much as each FF game is related to another game in the series which is not at all except by name and by style.
FF the movie is *based* on FF the game, only really in that it set in a similar style world (magic, monsters, tech) and it's CG and since FF7 the games have been pushing CG to the limit it's nice to see them push it even further. Ebert said the story sucked but the fact that it was 100% CG and trying to be real people (unlike say Shrek or Toy Story) it sets some milestones and in that sense he found it interesting. I'll probaby see it expecting only to watch the CG.
By the way I've been playing FF X and it's pretty damn amazing. I should probably shut up about J&D but I still think it was a mistake to go for real vistas v.s. using all the power for near by graphics and faking the vistas and views like say Zelda does. FF X is pretty damn goregous and it's mostly real time 3D including the backgrounds etc. There are a few FMV sequences but most of the sequences are in real time, in the same scene you'll get to control your character and in the same scenes you'll battle.
The strangest thing is like FF 7, when you enter a battle it does a screen blur but then you stay in the exact scene you were just in. Kind of like they just did the blur to make you aware there's a battle in coming up although it could be to hide loading the enemies.
J&D seems to be suffering from not having enough texture ram compared to FF X and a few other games. Whether that's bad artists or a function of having to spread the textures over such a large area I'm not sure but side by side J&D doesn't seem in the same league graphically as the better PS2 games which is sad because ND's Crash series was arguably the prettiest PS1 game ever. Something they won't be able to say with J&D. Not that that really matters I suppose. I always argue graphics come second to gameplay and certainly that's worked for Nintendo.
Hmmm. Any characters in common? Any monsters in common?
I would think that there are some things that the J&D engine can do that can make the gameplay very unique. Things such as have some kind of force or vehicle sweep you off of a mountain top and take you down in to the valley far below. I don't know if they have stuff like this in there, but it would allow for a very unique perception of environment and adventure. Gameplay can be made less linear because going to and from different parts of the level is not limited for technical reasons. Like in Mario N64, where you can shoot yourself in a cannon all around the 3D level and also reach new places. That is so cool! In J&D I would expect something like this and the worlds will be really big too.
At the moment I'm thinking of buying a GameCube before anything else. I'm really interested in playing Pikmin.
FF the movie shares only the name. None of the FF games share characters. None of the FF game share monsters. I think they may all share the choccobo (ostrich sized chicken people ride as horses). Other than that they are all RPGs and they all involve saving the world and generally some kind of romance between the main character and another character. That's all they share. The movie, in the same vain, shares the only the name and the saving the world theme.
As for J&D, my arguement was I never felt the world was small in Zelda N64. I can stand on top of Death Mountain, look down, and see a *view* of the city below even though it's 3 levels away. I can even grab on to an owl and get flown all the way back down. Sure there's a break as it fades to the next level but the ability to look *forever* in J&D sacrifices TOO much. No projective texture mappng (ie, shadows), no real time lighting, the Game looks like an N64 game because textures have to be spread and used over such a large area (not large like large polys, large like 300×300 meters have to be covered with 4meg of textures vs say FF7 where 30by10 meters get to use the same amount of textures), 30% of your power is being sucked into drawing stuff too far in the distance instead of cool effects or cool IK or whatever. Things people expect in an PS2 game. Of course that's only my opinion. I'm sure it will sell fine regardless but then if that's the arguement then there's no point in even discussing it. It certainly isn't generating the kind of hype that MGS2 does. Of course Sony will advertize it to see that it sells but it would be cool if it could also sell itsself. I'm not going to say that seeing so far is the only reason or even the most important reason it's not as big a draw as MGS2 but I think it is arguably a big reason. Massivly impressing displays *could* be made except for that fact that with the rule that you can see forever too many of your resources are always being used up to do Massively impressive displays.
I'll skip talking about the virtues or shortcomings of Jak and Daxter, I could go on for quite some time. But I will throw in my 2 cents in on the movie stuff…
I didn't see Scary Movie 2 but it didn't seem to get the same hype that the first one got. I thought the Fast and the Furious was okay for what it was. I mean the plot was pretty awful, but overall it was entertaining. I thought Kiss of the Dragon was not good. Again the plot was awful, but I was not entertained by the fighting in between. Final Fantasy was also not very good. The story was actually slightly more cohesive than I had expected (but still far from acceptable) but the pacing was bad, there was no sense of urgency, the bad guy was terrible, and the list goes on.
This past weekend I did see 2 good movies though. One was Made (danny already commented on this one) and the other was Brother. That's the Takeshi Kitano American/Japanese gangster movie. It was actually pretty good. Kind of predictable, but still enjoyable. Sakura and I had also recently rented Kikujiro another one of Takeshi's movies that was slow paced (diliberately) but good and Sakura says her favorite is Hanabi. Have you seen it?
Instead of seeing a new movie this weekend it looks like I will see Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi again since it was cool and a friend want's to see it.
On J&D I just want to say that I don't want to suggest in anyway that J&D is bad. It may be the best game ever. I certainly hope it's fun because there isn't a whole lot else I'm waiting to play on my PS2.
My point is only that I feel there are other, possibly better, creative solutions to making the player feel they are in a big world. Both Zelda games do a great job of this. Using similar creative solutions would allow the game to both feel big and look as good as possible. Arguably, there's nothing stopping the J&D team from making small levels using that engine and therefore pumping up the details. Maybe they do that in some areas or maybe they will do more of that in J&D2.
Alright alright, blame me for introducing the topic of games in this discussion. It's not like we are always thinking about them are we?
On the movie front, I can't wait for Harry Potter. Having read the books and seen the trailers, I think it will be alot of fun.
On the FF front, isn't it really rare to have a game franchise that only is held together by its name and a general concept and then made in to a movie? Maybe this kind of thing is more common in Japan and less common in the US? Is this the first RPG to become a movie? I guess what's great about this is that stories can be fresh with new characters each time. But, how does the audience know they will like the characters or story of the next game/movie?
On the J&D front, I see that the new ND site is up now. It is very cool. I understand your points on having huge geometry per texture set and no load versus smaller geometry per texture set that is separated by loading. In the ideal game making process, the design would be known before anything is done. If it is important to dart around the level alot to get things done (like Black & White), then something like the J&D engine is required. If each puzzle is very isolated and doesn't require some kind of "god" control of the level, then other engines that focus more on texture detail can be made. I don't know the J&D game design yet, so I don't know if it matches up with the engine.
Cool, three topics. Will any of them survive? It's up to you…
Kiss of the Dragon was my favourite movie for a long time..