Role playing games have a few distinct appealing aspects that any person should look for before spending upwards of $40 to entertain yourself for 50 hours of game-play time. The best way to judge role-playing games is to look at the ones that have actually done well in the past and see what has made them so fun and successful.

Final Fantasy VII: This game is arguably one of the few video games that has transcended time with it’s story. It starts out simple enough: you’re a SOLDIER named Cloud on a mission. Joining a group of rebels and friends, you find out about who you really are and decide your destiny for yourself. The storyline itself was good enough to spawn a sequel movie and game, though the game, Final Fantasy VII 2: Dirge of Cerberus, didn’t have as much success as the original. It was missing the main elements that made the game timeless: a hero everyone looked up to, classic rpg strategy, and materia (an element in the game which allowed you to bond special stones with your armor to give you powers like summoning or healing).

World of Warcraft (II): As far as MMORPG’s (massive multi-player on-line role playing games) go, you can’t go wrong with spending money every month to throw yourself mindlessly into a fictional character. The leveling system is comprehensive and takes real time hours to create a character worthy of play. The story is simple enough though: it’s humans versus the orcs. Depending on which side you choose you will always fight the other, Alliance or Horde (respectively). The completely interactive game play allows you to meet people in strategic battle across a very VERY large map with terrains that vary from woodland to fiery molten lava caves. Expansive and personal; its like chocolate and coffee.

There are a few other games, but the recipe is simple: find a story line you enjoy combined with a game play you desire.

Thanks to technological advances in sound and graphics, today’s video games are looking more cinematic than they did in the simple and halcyon days of Pac-Man. Likewise, A lot of the computer games I’ve played in the last couple of years have caused me to consider the possibility of it also being a good movie.

Games such as the Final Fantasy series have massively epic plots, better than many Hollywood adventure movies and even Metal Gear Solid could have kept the action audiences happy but the trend for making films of computer games has produced a lot of bad movies and only a couple of worthy pieces.

I believe that laziness is confirmed from the start with a movie based on a computer game. There’s no need to create characters or scenarios because those who made the game have already written them. A loyal fan base already exists and much as they might pan the film, they have to go see it first so it is an almost guaranteed moneymaker.

Anybody making a film version of a computer game is also in a “damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t” scenario. Stray too far from the original concept and you’ll be flamed for making changes to what fans consider gospel yet if you change nothing, audiences will likely say “what was the point”.

Also, the fact that the audience already knows the scenarios and has expectations based upon this can work against the film. The movie version of Silent Hill, though intended to be a suspenseful thriller-cum-horror, was totally predictable, even down to the alleged twist at the end. Why? Because I’ve played the Silent Hill games and know what to expect.

Another kiss of death for any computer game is having it’s film version made by Uwe Boll.

It’s not all bad news though. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is an incredibly good movie, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was good also but I feel that the vast amount of bad films based on good games totally outweighs these fine examples of good films of good games.

Given that Hollywood isn’t showing any signs of stopping this trend, I’d advise them to try a little harder next time. Because I’d love to see a film based on Metal Gear Solid or Max Payne or Hitman or Splinter Cell, I just don’t want it to be as bad as Doom was.

If you want to train in the CD 1 here is the perfect guide for you. You can train everywhere in this CD, not only inside Midgar to start but also outside Midgar too. The goal of this guide is to show you how fast you can level if you follow my instructions.

The first place to train is right after you get out of the train when you get Barret. The enemies here are very easy and they give you a lot of EXP compared to how hard they are. When they are not a match anymore for you move to the next place. Right before the area where you fight the first boss the enemies here come in packs of three. They can be great not only to increase your EXP very quickly but also to count as killed enemies to get the second limit break.

If you are man enough to try it you can leave them hitting you until your limit bar fills up and then after using your first limit eight times you can learn the bottom one. To go to level two however you need to kill more than one hundred enemies and this is not the best place for it. Leave that for spots with five and six weak creatures when you have ALL attacks to kill them all with just one hit. Once you get Tifa the next place to train is in reactor number 5 exactly in the same place where you used to train in the previous reactor. The enemies here are tough, pretty tough, but not strong enough to kill you.

Never stop trying to find more enemies, the more you fight, the stronger you become. Having Tifa in your party will speed up the EXP gathering process but will slow down the Limit evolution process because she gets damage that should be to Barret and Cloud and she kills enemies as well. If you can afford: kill her! When you get Aeris there is one place with four and maybe five enemies, in the place where she says she wants to go with you to danger.

Don’t worry because you can finish them with Cloud alone, here you already have the All Materia. Train here until you get your limit level three. It might take up to two hours however. Once you advance in the game your limits will be the most important asset of all. They make you attack instantly and they deliver the greatest damage in the game. Clould for example with the first limit level three dives fifteen comets to all enemies dealing at least 30k of damage, enough to kill even Jenova Death with just one blow. Once you come to the very same spot with Barret and Tifa again, kill cloud and Tifa and keep Barret alive. Train with him until you reach the Ungermax limit.

It will take you some

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children: One of the best films ever.

I’m not sure how to start this article; but, let me say this: I’m amazed.

Advent Children comes from the company Square-Enix; which has been pumping out popular videos games like Final Fantasy, Bushido Blade and Parasite Eve for more than two decades now. (formerly under the name of Squaresoft)

Advent Children is the direct sequel to the video game Final Fantasy VII (released with much success on Sony Playstation in 1997), it picks up two years after VII left off.

In this world; our heroes have survived the events of meteor and holy; but a mysterious illness is taking the lives of children. When three strange men appear looking for “mother” and claiming there will be a “reunion” Cloud and friends must go back to battle once more.

Without putting in spoilers; I want to tell you that if you enjoyed VII you really will enjoy Advent Children. All your favorite characters return and with voice actors that make sense. The plot of Advent Children is not as complicated like VII was; but, still needs to be payed attention to.

The visual effects are amazing; but, those of you familiar with Square Enix wouldn’t expect less from them. The animation is the wave of the future.At some points you can’t help; but, looking at the scene and just smiling at the sheer crisp and amazingly detailed wisdom of the film.

The Soundtrack is far ahead of any movie soundtrack. Nobou Uemastu returns in his last Final Fantasy engagement to do the film. The film is filled with themes from VII along with some new and impressive sounds that’ll make any music fan grin ear to ear. The Black Mages (a Japanese rock group that does Final Fantasy Music in the rock genre) bring to life some old Final Fantasy VII tracks including: “J-E-N-O-V-A” and “One Winged Angel” and the new rock platform makes the viewer want to stand up and be apart of the action.

I have to say in all honesty it’s the editing of this film that gets to me. If you’re American and watch only American movies you’re going to be very confused by the editing of the film. It works so grand; the story is pushed along seamlessly with some amazing editing that really brings out the drama and emotion of the film.

All in all Advent Children is a Final Fantasy buff’s or Film Buff’s or just a creative persons dream come true.

I wouldn’t take the experience of Advent Children out of my mind for anything.

10/10

My top nine favorite games (hm? What’s that? You don’t like the weird number?) :

01.Metal Gear Solid (Playstation, PC) : A true gamer would never miss this masterpiece, as this was the revolution that achieved video games as the equivalent to a Hollywood Blockbuster. In terms of gameplay, it modernized and shaped what we know today as “stealth” genre.

02.Grand Theft Auto 3 (Playstation 2, Xbox, PC) : Forget the violence, its the gameplay that I meant. Half of the games out there wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for this one. The true game that developed “free-roam” system.

03.Final Fantasy VII (Playstation, PC) : The almighty god of RPG. Well, it was actually my first RPG game, kinda sad huh? Rumors I heard was that nobody actually knew what this game is, and how it came to life. Then I read on a certain game magazine that Squaresoft (former name, now Square Enix) had a huge amount of budget for the development of this game. Overall; gameplay:rocks, story:top-notch.

04.Resident Evil: Rebirth (GameCube) : Ah yes, the rebirth version rocks like hell! Jill Valentine has definitely become my digital dream girl in this game. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to understand why Capcom wasn’t able to make the pre-rendered CG’s look as good as the rendered ones, weird huh?

05.Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Genesis) : Yahoo! This was the very first game that I ever laid my fingers on. Wow those days just never passed by, without my blue furry friend. Hee.. Hee.. Well this was (probably) categorized as an action-adventure perhaps. The gameplay was nice, unfortunately back in those days they hadn’t yet been able to develop a Save Point, yikes! It was a bummer if you died.

06.Prince Of Persia (Playstation 2, Xbox) : Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the prince of platforming is back! This game is actually a nice addition to action-adventure games, as it eventually developed its own genre that is the called”platforming”. It reminds me of the days back when Prince Of Persia was in PC format, pretty gruesome. The developers seemed to have toned the violence down in the latest Prince games.

07.Devil May Cry 3 (Playstation 2) : Hack and Slash, that’s right people. Demon hunting Dante is one hell of a game. It actually originated from Sinji Mikami the original maker of Resident Evil series. Well, not much use of a brain in this game, but it was a hellish fun game!

08.Onimusha : Dawn of Dreams (Playstation 2) : The last installment of the Onimusha series, was actually the best one in my opinion. The game grew to such an extent that it could be called “Hack and Slash RPG”, neat. By the way, Jubei Yaagyu is a girl in this game.

09.The Legend of Zelda : A Link To The Past (Gameboy) : Well, this is another game that brings back memories. It actually took me four years upon the completion of this game, it happened when i started playing it again, and a friend tipped me on how to obtain a certain item. Never again will I be that dumn on video games.

End of Document (hope you enjoyed it!)