F is for....

Fantasia

Megadrive

My god this game was frustrating. I’ve played some hard games and in all honesty the harder the game is the more likely I will enjoy it but never have I played a game that can be hard but can also be very frustrating to the point of not wanting to play it again.

You start the game with seven small spells and one large spell which are your weapons to kill enemies with. One small problem is that the smallest enemies take two small spells to kill and trust me when I say that there are a lot of enemies throughout the level, a lot more than seven spells will kill. Nine spells if you include the fact that you can collect two books on the first section but even then that’s still not nearly enough.

On the second level you get to a point where you need to jump over a chest which depending on what you do has different consequences. If you clear it you carry on progressing through the level. If you don’t clear it properly you end up going back to the start of the level. If you fall into the water you end up having to attempt to clear a water level where for some reason, and correct me if I’m doing something wrong, you cannot actually swim. Despite pressing every single button on the pad I always ended up sinking to the floor, very frustrating.

Within the 15 minutes: Was on level/section 2.

Will I play it again? After much debate I don’t think so, it’s just too frustrating.

Final Fantasy: Chrystal Chronicles

GameCube

I’ll be completely honest here and admit that in all of my years of playing games apart from about an hour on Final Fantasy III on the DS I have never ever played a Final Fantasy game. I own III, XIII and this one for the Cube, though strictly speaking this isn’t an actual Final Fantasy game but a spin-off series for Nintendo Consoles.

The first thing that strikes me is the fact that you cannot skip the opening credits that seem to last an age. I’m really not a fan of not being able to skip, especially if you want to play the game more than once. It’s than onto a tutorial which you can actually skip but as seen as I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game before I thought I would go through it. It was a useful and handy tutorial which was good.

Onto the game and of what I played it wasn’t that great. I know it was early doors but it seemed to be very similar to Evil Dead in that all I did was wander around killing enemies and collecting stuff though there was also a small puzzle to lower a bridge thrown in. Also even though you can walk all around the screen for some reason you are walking around with a huge circle underneath your feet which I have no idea. Hopefully there is a good reason.

Within the 15 minutes: Had just started wandering after completing the tutorial.

Will I play it again? Some point in the future but might go with III and XIII first.

Fire and Forget 2

Master System

What a rather apt title as I’d like to set fire to this game and then forget all about ever playing it and that’s not being harsh.

The major problem with what I played of this game was that both levels bar an extra enemy were exactly the same. Same back ground, same enemies, same hold finger on fire button and do nothing else, same boss sighted and then waiting another five minutes to actually get to it.

Honestly the second level is exactly the same as the first level except they added one new enemy to shake things up a bit. The premise of the game is that you control a car and shoot things in front of you while a counter counts down the distance until the boss. As mentioned previously though you get to zero and a message comes up saying that the boss has been sighted and you then spend more time waiting for it to appear before finally killing it. Very repetitive and not good at all.

Within the 15 minutes: End of level 2.

Will I play it again? Afraid not.

Fireblade

GameCube

Fireblade is pretty much an updated version of Desert Strike which is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if like me you like Desert Strike and its sequels.

Starting off with tutorial which is effectively half of the first mission you quickly learn how to use your three weapons which range from your standard auto cannon to very powerful missiles. The weapons like most games have varying numbers of bullets/missiles with the top weapon only having eight which obviously mean that you need to use them sparingly, though more ammo can be collected on quite a regular basis from destroyed enemies. You also learn that you can go into stealth mode which does change the colour of your helicopter and also changes your weapons to an EMP and a sniper weapon to take out human enemies.

The second half of the first mission was to destroy enemy tanks, trucks etc who are attacking your base and then to fly off and meet your commander. The second mission then gives you a different task of having to destroy three bridges to stop enemies advancing. It’s a nice change from the first mission and for the moment puts aside any feeling of the game being repetitive which unfortunately is the biggest worry.

Within the 15 minutes: Had completed the first mission.

Will I play it again? Yes, hopefully it won’t get too repetitive.

F-Zero GX

GameCube

I own the SNES, N64 and this version of F-Zero but for some reason have never got round to playing the Cube version.

The first thing that you notice is the difficulty which as far as I can remember has been ramped up a bit from the N64 version. I’m not going to complain because as mentioned previously I like a game to be as difficult as possible and some of these races were hard and I’ll admit that on one of them I did fly of the course a couple of times, especially when flying around at the speeds that I did.

There are thirty racers per track and on the first lap you can tend to find yourself at around the 25-30 mark but as soon as the boosters come into play on the second lap you find yourself shooting up the ranks but you have to be very careful on when and where to use the boosters as one tiny mistake can see you moving back down the ranks or worse shooting off the edge on some tracks. If you like hard racers then definitely give F-Zero GX a go.

Within the 15 minutes: Trying to complete the Ruby Cup.

Will I play it again? Yes, seems to be a fast and hard game.