Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy, you can't hate the whole series unless you just detest RPG games on a whole. Final Fantasy games may share the same series and title, but don't be fooled. Each Final Fantasy game is it's own self-contained universe with common factors... Like Gil (the money in the game) and a Cid character somewhere. Nothing quite proves this rule like the difference between Final Fantasy XII to Final Fantasy XIII. Quite simply, one isn't much good, the other is. Guess which ones.

Yes, you guessed right. Final Fantasy XIII is the much superior product. Gone are these shoddy online RPG style gameplay mechanics offline and in it's place a stylish turn-based battle system. In a nutshell, the game allows a player to queue up a number of attacks over the "Wait" bar which charges up. When the bar passes an icon queued up over the Wait bar, that attack can be executed while removing the progress made in the Wait bar under the icon. Of course, if you have more attacks queued up over the amount the Wait bar has charged, the moves will not be executed. Stronger attacks like the super-charged Firaga can take up lots of space on the Wait bar (which in the demo is three attack spaces, not sure if this can be increased in the actual game by levelling up), giving even more power to a single attack at a cost of precious time. Each action has a number to the right of it which shows how many places are taken up on the queue by each move.

The overworld; the little map you traverse to get places outside of battles, is amazingly detailed. The demo shows a section from the start of the game; "Hanged Edge" in the "Restricted Area" and "Resistance Front". Both are utterly amazing looking. The "Restricted Area" section of the game is played by the main female lead; Lightning and the sidekick afrodude himself; Sazz. Lightning is a quick character who uses a combination of close-range weapon-based attacks (a sword, actually) and mid-range magic attacks. Sazz on the other hand is quite a slow character who uses ranged weapon attacks. The combination of the two characters is a bit underwhelming, with Lightning dealing the main grunt of the damage. On the "Resistance Front" area, you command a slightly larger team with Snow Villers, who is a fairly slow yet very strong close-range character, the other two characters were like Sazz; long-range support characters doing as minimal damage as possible.

You enter battles here through touching enemies on the overworld. If you get close to an enemy a icon is show over their head and they chase you. Enemies near the enemy you touch on the overworld are dragged into the same battle. Transition from overworld to battle aren't quite as seemless as we were lead to believe, with a little transition screenwhipe occurring, however there's very little loading time, with no "Now loading" screen appearing in-between. (Are you watching, The Last Remnant?) Battles are also ranked in stars out of 5 and are given on battle duration, damage taken and attack 'breaks', stopping enemy attacks by pre-emptively attacking them. Both main characters here have a combo in the demo, able to throw enemies up into the air, leaving them helpless. Lightning has an attack to hit the enemy mid-air as well.

Visuals in the game are, as you normally expect from Square Enix games: amazing. There's a few rough edges, like a bird-like enemy flying over head at one point only to fly into the distance and then just randomly stop and disappear, things which will be fixed for the retail product. But you know what, the lighting, the character models and animations, the textures... Everything about the game looks amazing. The CGI is just as impressive. The HUD is also nice a big for those not fortunate enough to have the latest 1080p high definition TV, however while the HUD is bulky it's not distracting. It's there when you want it and transparent when you don't. It's a great piece of design.

Music and audio, well... I loved it. The orchestrated music was fitting and powerful in the context of the game's scenario. Battle music is undoubtedly my favourite of the audio, it's the same track which was featured in the original announcement trailer and the E3 2008 trailer. I could easily pause the game on a battle and listen to that track all day. Voices are what you expect, Lightning does have some rather generic sounding lines and Sazz is a bit whiny, but I think they're more character problems than voice-work. But who cares anyway, when the game's dubbed into English the voice-work will be awful, let's be honest. Previous Square Enix games have shown just how bad it can get, some examples if you really require them; Kingdom Hearts 2, Final Fantasy XII, Star Ocean 4... The Last Remnant's voice acting wasn't that bad, however. So, please... Square Enix. Get whoever casted for that game, pay him lots of money and get decent voice actors in.

Overall then; Final Fantasy XIII as it currently stands is an amazing title. It has quality seeping out of it, it's fun to play, good to look at and fantastic to listen to. How much of the quality visuals and amazing lighting will translate over to the Xbox 360 version of the game is unclear. Here's hoping that the game will translate over very well. If you love RPG games, you're best to keep your eye on this one and would whole heartedly introduce other gamers to this game, RPG fans or not. Let's hope the rest of the game is just as amazing as this taster.