Recent reviews by Dug

Controls are near perfect for an arcade racer. Tracks may start to look the same, but the variety is actually in their layouts rather than their looks.

Silly good fun. The physics definitely make the fights interesting and unique each time. The slow mo is great to watch too!

Update: Changing my review to positive! In just over a week, the developer heard what had made a small number of people (including me) upset, and set up a permanent branch of the game prior to the controversial changes, so we can keep the game the way it was when we bought it :) I didn't expect this, as the dissenting voices were far in the minority, so to have the developer still find a way to cater to us is fantastic.

The games great by the way.

Original review:

I loved this game for over a year, but there is a practise happening in recent times that this game has fallen foul of, and therefore I can not support it.

That is the practise of radically changing a game after you've bought it. I can understand this for multiplayer games, where the key to the game maintaning life is by keeping players interested. But in a single-player game, it's unneeded.

The issue is that the game I paid money for no longer exists. It puts us in a precaurious position where the 2 hours we get to 'review' a game, in order to get a refund, can be nullified if the game is changed radically after 100 hours.

This is especially painful when the developer himself has said, "You should only buy the game if you want it in its current state". He meant well, trying to ward of buyers from expecting things in the game that may never be developed, but it needs to work both ways as well. I bought the game in the state it was in, because I wanted that state, and now it's been changed to something else. I don't want a refund, I just want the game I bought back.

As a purely single player gamer, this series was one of my favs. Kept coming back to replay them. Each time with different mods.

Now that's ruined, due to Take Two's horrendous understanding of what makes GTA great. They banned mods.

Farewell, old friend.

EDIT: Reversing my review to a positive now that they've reversed their mod ban.

-Heard this installment had local splitscreen
-Bought it
-Got friends round
-Found out PC version is limited to only 2 players
-Uninstalled
-Played 4-player Unreal Tournament 3 instead

0/10

I first played the original PC version of FF7, and then later the PlayStation version.

After purchasing and replaying the Steam version, I can wholly recommend it as the definitive version of Final Fantasy VII to play. I'll start off with some quick points about this version in comparison to previous versions. The actual game will be discussed in more detail below.

Vs Playstation:
+Smoother look on the characters
+No disc swapping
+English translation has been tidied up and the plot is more coherent (No one seems to talk about this, but it's major in my eyes)
-Swearwords have been replaced with !@#$ style characters.

Vs original PC release:
+Hassle-free, in my experience (40+ hours) <-- This is the key thing for me.
+PSX music added, as opposed to the awful original PC music. Huge plus! The song "One Winged Angel" now has vocals like it should do :)
+Rendered characters are now synced perfectly when walking over a pre-rendered video.
+Videos look smoother and match the PSX version, which is very nice in comparison to original release.
-Default keyboard controls need two hands. Original PC release had default keys all on the Numpad. Meaning you can scratch your chin or drink coffee while playing. Easily resolved anyway :)
-Yet another thing you have to create an account for. This time for Square Enix. Once you've done so, you can pretty much forget about it.

I have an Xbox controller, but never tried it admittedly, so can't comment on that! I found the game plays perfectly with keyboard.

It's surprising how well Final Fantasy VII has aged. I hadn't played the game for nearly 7 years now, and was expecting it to be incredibly ugly. Don't get me wrong, it IS incredibly ugly, albeit in a charming way now. Rather than a good looking game being badly ported, this is a bad looking game that's been ported just right. You can't change your resolution (to my knowledge), but there's absolutely no need to. The game makes use of pre-rendered backgrounds and the resolution they chose for the 3D characters was a good compromise between smoothness and not sticking out too much from the backgrounds. It does look much better than the PSX version, and a bit better than the original PC release.

I am also happy that they stuck with the original PC version's English translation. If you've only ever played FF7 on one platform before, you may not know that the PC version had a much neater, tidier translation. I'm not talking about a complete overhaul like some of the other Final Fantasy remakes. This is still the original story told in what the original PSX translation was trying to do. Any line that was fine before, is unchanged. They simply removed some (admittedly funny) spelling mistakes, and only changed lines that really did not make any sense at all. It makes the game feel more natural and therefore I highly recommend a replay if you've only played on the PSX before. The one noticeable, and unfortunate, change is that the swearing has been replaced with !@#£ style symbols. You can still tell they're swearing and what word they were going to say, but this unnecessary censorship felt a bit out of place. Still, it doesn't make or break the game. And just to be clear, this isn't new to the Steam version as it was present on the original PC release.

Also, as I might as well say it now: The story IS really good. As FF7 is one of the most popular entries in the franchise, it sometimes gets a lot of flak from people who seem to only want to dislike popular things. These are personal games, which you should play for yourself, and FF7 offers a deceptively complex story, with a fantastic combination of twists. 'Twist' is a harsh word, because it implies a sudden and unexpected change in the story's direction. This is not the case. The 'twists' are completely natural and only serve to make everything before fit into place better. The combination I mentioned earlier is in reference to twists which you will definitely understand on your first time through, and some which may only make sense with a bit of thinking or a replay. The latter are not essential to understand, but you'll feel a satisfying sense of revelation if you do. All in all, this is a well-thought out constructed tale. It may not be as fast-paced as you'd like, but the end result is very satisfactory.

The gameplay itself is surprisingly fast for a 90s JRPG. You can get through battles pretty quickly, and most of the attack animations are short enough to not be too annoying. With the exception of summons; huge magical attacks shown in a lengthy animation of a monster being summoned and inflicting damage on your enemies.

The Materia system is still great and offers lots of customisation for your characters, although it's not as complex nowadays as it used to be. To be clear, Materia are 'gems' which you attach to characters to give them extra abilities or magic. As a Materia is used, it gains its own experience and gets progressively more powerful. The only complexity comes from managing who has what materia, and this is the one area of the game where the age really shows. You can only quick swap between character's Materia screens for the three characters in your party, rather than every available character. Therefore you are forced to constantly swap characters in and out to get the best setup. [EDIT: A number of comments have corrected me and pointed me to the Exchange option, which negates this complaint of mine!]

Is it worth £10? Admittedly, this port probably generated no where near the amount of work needed to justify the price, but the quality of the game does. Therefore it's a tough question to answer. I suppose if you look at what you're getting, then yes, it is worth the price. Your first time through the game can literally take 60-70 hours. My replay was 40 hours long, and I know the game extremely well.

This is now my favorite way to play Final Fantasy VII. And that is probably the one thing you needed to know.

EDIT: Voted this game for "Villain most in need of a hug" award ;)