final fantasy 13

2012 Game of the Year Awards - Day One

Game of the Year

Announcing the 2012 Game of the Year Awards from First Hour!

Day One features First Hour, Worst Hour, False Hour, Most Hours of the Year Awards!

Final Fantasy XIII

Final Fantasy 13 ps3 CoverI’ve played every single numbered Final Fantasy game up through XII, so playing the thirteenth entry was inevitable. But from the guy who bought Final Fantasy VIII, IX, XI, and XII on release days, finally getting around to XIII two years after release is a bit odd. But from a combination of some bad press and plenty of other games to play, I didn’t mind.

But here we are with the first hour of Final Fantasy XIII. I’ve also reviewed VII and VIII’s first hour previously, and had mixed success, though I can solidly point to the opening of Final Fantasy VII’s to be one of the highlights in the JRPG genre. Whether we can agree or not on the rest of game is irrelevant, but it sure does kick off with a bang.

And as you’ll see, Final Fantasy XIII also kicks off with a bang, but can it keep that momentum? Or is there something deeper required for a successful first hour? We’re about to find out.

Trophy Unlocked: PlayStation 3 obtained

Heavy Rain CoverFive years after its release, I finally own a PlayStation 3. This feels like a significant length of time, especially as the only console I purchased after a comparable amount of time was the Dreamcast, which had already been "dead" for years at that point. But the PlayStation 3 is far from dead, and through a combination of a down economy and systems that are still "good enough", neither Microsoft or Sony seem to be in any kind of rush to release their next console iteration. This is beneficial to consumers like me, who are greatly rewarded for waiting with lots of great, exclusive games at cheap prices.

There is definitely an embarassment of riches to be had jumping into a five year old, successful console like the PlayStation 3, emphasized by my recent Christmas extravaganza. My wife ordered me the system over Black Friday, triggering a chain reaction of purchases from siblings and in-laws, hey, I can't complain. Here's my haul:

2010 Prediction Results

god of war 3 CoverOn the first of the year, the writers here presented their predictions for 2010 in the video game industry. It was our first attempt at anything like this, and since we're primarily gamers first, writers second, and industry experts in a distant last, this was definitely more of an exercise in fun forecasting than put-your-money-down-now predictions.

Well, we can't let bad predictions go forgotten and made fun of, so here we are again. We'll quickly cover what went randomly right and what went horribly wrong, but then we'll be back again on Friday for our fourth annual Game of the Year Awards.

The First Hour Podcast - Episode 5

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Here it is, the fifth episode of The First Hour Podcast! In this episode, Paul and Greg discuss their views on the 3DS announcement, another writer (also named Paul) drops in to talk about the latest Pokemon games, and Mike returns to give his opinion of Final Fantasy XIII. And that's not all!

2010 Predictions

Final Fantasy 13/final Fantasy 13 Cover

Going to try something new this year, we're going to make some completely wild predictions that may have little base in reality. I think they're pretty self-explanatory, and hopefully at the end of the year I'll remember we did this and we can have a good laugh at how wrong we were (or be shocked at how right).

So while these are guaranteed to be wrong, they are my current feelings about the industry from hopefully a non-biased gamer's point of view. Well, non-biased until it comes to BioWare games that is.

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