Altered Perception

Let’s take gaming. I love my Playstation 3. My altered perception might dictate that I’d find Playstation’s Final Fantasy XIII much more enjoyable to play than, say, Xbox’s Mass Effect 2, or Wii’s New Super Mario Bros. Simply because it’s Playstation.

Gotta love altered perception.

True gamers might say that the choice of game selection on Xbox far surpasses that of Playstation. Others might point out that anytime a game title needs to add a new roman numeral above ten after it can’t be all that good, or original.

To that I ask: have they ever played Final Fantasy XIII?

First off, the series began in 1987 on the Nintendo platform. It was only in 1997 that the PlayStation console saw the release of its Final Fantasy games, starting with Final Fantasy VII. In a landmark move, Final Fantasy VII moved away from the boring two-dimensional graphics used in the first six Nintendo games, offering up eye-poppin’ three-dimensional computer graphics.b That’s right: polygonal characters on pre-rendered backgrounds in the house, yo. As well, settings were modernized, and for the first time, those crazy Europeans got a chance to play these games.

Moving up to the eighth installment (which was published in 1999), it was the first in the series to use realistically-proportioned characters, as well as featuring vocals as backgroung theme music. Talk about innovative.

Finally, for anyone doubting Final Fantasy’s freshness. These are the same cats that’ll spend hours playing Super Mario Bros? SUPER MARIO BROS., for God’s sake? For your information, the Final Fantasy installments feature INDEPENDENT stories with DIFFERENT settings and main characters. The only thing they have in common are plot themes (i.e. a group of heroes goin’ toe to toe with a great evil), some character names and maybe some game mechanics.

Quite simply, Final Fantasy is THE game to play when it comes to tactical role-playing and action role-playing.

Don’t have to me little old me. It’s the best-selling video game in Square Enix’s portfolio (over 85 million units sold!), and was awarded a star on the Walk Of Game in 2006. It currently holds SEVEN Guinness World Records in the 2008 Gamer’s Edition. Final Fanstasy continues to be a driving force in the industry, and has single-handedly introduced many features that you can now find in console RPGs.

What groundbreaking feats did Mario and Luigi ever do, ‘cept race crazily through the Mushroom Kingdom to save Princess Toadstool. Princess Toadstool? The Mushroom Kingdom? What is this – the Smurfs?

Give me my altered perception and Playstation 3 console any day of the week.