by James Shimoda

Created on: May 31, 2009   Last Updated: June 12, 2009

Games cannot be judged on graphics alone. If that was the case, many legendary games would be excluded because they don't look spectacular. In truth, truly amazing graphics cannot compensate for a game's story, controls, creativity, and other factors. For example, if you had to choose between a beautiful woman who had a demanding, stupid, annoying, or needy personality or a rather okay looking woman who had a personality that fit with you, the odds are that you would choose the okay looking woman. Remember, you can't polish a turd to make it a diamond.

Now it's probably not a good or fair analogy (forgive me females of the world), but the point is that one good quality cannot make up for many shortcomings. The gameplay of a game is important because it's what makes the game interesting. If the game doesn't have great gameplay controls, then you lose interest because it gets frustrating to work with controls that are difficult to use. Would you really want to play a game where it's difficult to execute commands because the makers were so focused on making the game look good?

I wouldn't waste my time in that area. If we look at Final Fantasy 7, it's easy to say that it doesn't look nice. Before I'm criticized, I do understand that those were the state of the art graphics at the time, but work with me on this one. One of the things that made the game great was the battle system. It was a traditional battle system with basic commands such as attack, defend, item, etc. It had an active time battle bar, so the flow of the game was a little faster because the quicker your gauges filled, the faster you could attack and kill creatures.

First off, they created a new option called limit breaks. Essentially, when your character had taken damage, there would be a bar that gradually fills up. Once it was full, the character had the opportunity to unleash this huge and devastating attack on the creature(s). Something totally different and amazing to watch. Since there were 8 characters, each had their own special limit breaks and it was worth it to build up their limit breaks to level 8. The magic system was different in the fact that everybody had the opportunity to learn any spells. What made it better was you could make spell combinations that would give you huge advantages in battle. Some range as attack and steal at the same time to automatic revival of the party once everyone dies.

The reason why many people want a ff7 remake is just to see how good it would look graphically enhanced. They also want it so they don't have to pay ridiculous prices on eBay but anyway, none of the fans want a change in the gameplay because it was perfect. Besides beauty is fleeting. It probably won't be too long before something else comes out that look graphically better. So what we think is great now is probably going to be trumped by another graphic enhancement in the near future. Beauty pleases the eye, but it can't entertain the mind.

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