Not long ago I found myself in a situation I'm in quite a lot being a reclusive gamer - at home by myself with a free run of both mine and my flatmate's console and game selection. Being an avid fan of all sorts of games from as far back as Alex Kidd I happily rifled through my flatmate's collection of PS1 games looking for something to play. That was when I stumbled on the game that is pretty much central to this ramble - Final Fantasy VIII.

I can already hear the fan boys clamouring over the horizon with their opinions on how good/bad this game is and let me just say "Shut up, this is a my rant," although I would have to agree with some of them. Having played every Final Fantasy game except Final Fantasy XI for moral reasons, I remember my first play through of Final Fantasy VIII very well - All in all I was slightly disappointed with the game. Yes the graphics were good, if not amazing considering this is a PS1 game from 1999 (The FMV movies in particular being, in my opinion, the best on the console), the Junction and Draw System was excellently implemented and a worthy follow on from Final Fantasy VII's Materia System, and the overall setting was another hit on Squaresoft's part (Yes I know it's Square-Enix now, but let's not split hairs).
My main problem was with the storyline of the game - Ultimecia was hardly a compelling antagonist for the party considering she follows on from Sephiroth, the most overrated villain ever, and Kefka, the true greatest villain ever. There were some major plot holes in the story, like how the whole party suddenly remember they grew up together about halfway through disc 2, and seem completely oblivious to this up until that point. But overall it was the love story that got to me; It was so sappy and emotional, a massive juxtaposition for me considering at the time the only Final Fantasy games I'd played were Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII, wherein the main bulk of the story of one is the impending doom of the planet, and the other the actual destruction of the planet (have a guess at which one is which, then you'll see why Kefka rules). To suddenly have rose-coloured scenes like that moment on the Ragnarok (you know what I'm talking about) making up the bulk of the story left me, a 13 year old naive adolescent at the time, half bored to tears but still playing mainly for the name of the franchise, a feeling that was quite recently repeated with the balls up we'll call Final Fantasy XII.

Anyhow fast forward 9 years and I'm sat firing up the game again, pushing aside these memories of the story in favour of the sheer number of side quests and extra things to do in this game. Off the top of my head I can name the Obol Lake Mystery, Pupu, the Shumi Village, the Deep Sea Research Facility and Omega Weapon - Arguably the hardest boss fight in video game history. I play, I bop along to the jolly music while playing Triple Triad, I feel the same tingle down my spine as The Landing kicks in at Dollet, and amazingly I see the original gripes I had with the story in a new light. Maybe it's the tiny amount of growing up I did before playing through the game again, but now the characters seem much more three dimensional, with more of an agenda and actual feelings and soul than characters of earlier games. I realised that the reason I hated these characters originally, Squall's continuous inner monologues, Irvine's generic ladies-man **** Selphie's childish actions and animations, were the things I should have been applauding. Sure, as I played the game to it's completion I found myself hammering X to get through some of the more cringe worthy scenes, and I found that 'Eyes on Me' offers the average gamer plenty of time to make a sandwich, a cup of tea and a joint, but the game was much more enjoyable this second time round. One thing that consistently surprised me however was the fact that I was seeing this game in a new light, and relating to the characters even though they are all mute, their words and emotions conveyed through a fast dying former staple of RPGs and many games, the humble text box (see how I dragged this train wreck back on topic there?).

If by now you're still reading you must be thinking "god this guy goes on a bit" and yes I do, but it's only because I feel the scene needs to be set. Above you are a review and re-review of a game, with my opinion on it at two different points in my life. I feel that Final Fantasy VIII is an excellent RPG now, fully worthy of a place among the best of the series (although Final Fantasy VI takes that crown with nary a moments thought) and possibly the final truly good Final Fantasy game. Unlike everyone in the entire world I didn't think Final Fantasy IX was that bad. Sure it had its flaws, and was the start of the decline, but in my opinion it was Final Fantasy X that started the trend of bad Final Fantasy games (say all you like, but Tidus is a **** However I'm once again off topic. My main argument here is that voice acting, among other things, is killing video games.

Think back over the past few years, to the amount of games that have voice acting in them. That would be pretty much all of them, yes? Now think about how many of them actually had good voice acting in them. Apart from maybe the GTA and Half Life series and the odd stadalone gem like the genius of GLADoS in Portal, the list runs very thin. My problem with voice acting is manifold: Whenever you watch a cut scene with characters talking, especially in a fantasy setting, the dialogue is so laughable that I actually wonder how much they must pay the poor saps in the studio to spout it 'in character,' which is seriously stretching the term. More often than not if I play a game with voice acting I turn the language to Japanese for two reasons:

1. To stop myself laughing at the dodgy American actors.
2. Because considering the types of games I like to play, the lip synching actually fits (which incidentally is another thing I hate about voice acting in games - dubbing).

It seems nowadays that games must follow a checklist to be considered worthy of mainstream release: "Have we covered every graphical error with heaps of bloom lighting?" Check. "Have we recorded every line of the script with sub standard voice actors?" Check. "Have we ironed out every trace of innovative game mechanic in favour of something we know works because Bungie did it three times in a row?" Check and check.

I would love to see a game come out now with graphics toned down to say, the level of a high end PS2/Xbox game (And that's still pretty good considering games like Escape from Butcher Bay, Shadow of the Colossus and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory), and not a trace of voice acting but a return to the days when characters talked in different coloured text. Think about it in terms of disc space; If a game isn't marred down with thousands of lines of dialogue, how much space would that leave to polish or extend the game in other areas? One of the things I loved about Final Fantasy VIII and indeed many older games, was the amount of 'game' you actually got. Most games nowadays are like extended movies, able to be finished in less than three sittings. Even Shadow of the Colossus, a game I tout as being one of the best games from the last five years, can be finished in little over six hours, whereas games of yesteryear could have you playing for up to and over a month, even if you play every day (I remember Chrono Trigger took me nearly a year to get the 'true ending'). My main question is why is dialogue becoming such an important part of games? Would a game of chess be any better if after each move the pieces all had a 5 minute cut scene in which we discover the past of the rook, albeit with appalling acting ("I sure hope this isn't Bishop's blood!")?

Am I strange for thinking that as the technology and capacity for games increased, so too would their length, detail and actual gameplay? I haven't played a truly memorable game in a long while because of all the frills they add to it which hamper the main experience: To be a **** game and provide a bit of entertainment. Why is it that the entire plot of Halo 3, something Bungie apparently put so much effort into expanding and developing, can pass me by as mediocre and dull, whereas the insults and comebacks in The Secret of Monkey Island still make me smile to this day? And still do when I play it after turning off the latest offering/faecal waterslide from EA?

Until games decide to stop taking themselves so seriously, I'll be back here shouting "How appropriate, you fight like a cow." Although it'll be in text and my mouth will just go through a looped animation.

*Sits back and waits for games to stop being interactive movies and start being fun again.*