Video Game Appetizers No Longer Served (but please enjoy our many entrees...)

It has been sometime since we've had them, but no longer are they served. The menu has changed. Akin to a magazine, or rereading the same chapter of a book over and over, demo discs were for gamers what cassette tapes were to people in the 80's, short, limited selections that you were likely going to repeat. Repeat and enjoy. So let's all take a moment to remember something that hasn't been with us for some time now, but we probably haven't missed...yet.
Especially if you were a young adolescent in the late 90's-early 2000's, you had no income, and therefore little likelihood of any new games, Demo Discs were a treasure trove of possibility and gameplay. And we've lost something, I think, now that these samplers are an artifact of gaming's past. We play our games differently, both what we play and how, and I wonder if we've made it harder for smaller studios to get their games noticed when in this last generation of consoles, even my collection, is marked by a dearth of 2nd and 3rd party developers and case after case is marked by the title of some mega-conglomerate's flagship series. Have we really lost that much?

The Fantasy Finalized?: Part 1 (i.e. Brand Mark's Top 5 Final Fantasys)

*My original intent upon writing this post was a rather hopeless rant for one of my favorite video game series, yet now with the favorable reviews flying around about A Realm Reborn I can't help but have a bit more hope about Final Fantasy. However, I unfortunately have no way of playing FF XIV right now, in either the time or money department. Further, this is an online game and, my opinions of MMOs aside, I feel it isn't a true Final Fantasy. So my reasons to bitch stand, and I only wait with lukewarm hope for FF XV...

So I want to talk about Final Fantasy. OK?

I've been a fan of it for a while now, maybe not as long as those pretentious asses that are all "ohh VI is the best and I played it when it was originally on the snes, not enough people have played it, wah wah," but I've liked it pretty good since about '99 or 2000. And by pretty good I mean, hard, probably to the point of obsessive at different times; this would probably be no surprise for a skinny, pimply adolescent not satisfied with high school where they don't teach you swords in gym class. So suffice it to say, I have been fairly troubled about my growing indifference to the series of late. So let's sit down and bitch about this shall we? There's nary a casual fan of this series so if you've read this far-well I know you're listening.

Why does it suck anymore?

So many people disagree about which in the series was the best, which heroes/villains were the coolest, which battle system should come back, or which had the best ending, but no one can seem to deny the series' waning quality. I haven't met a person who can (reasonably) give XIII any kind of fond accolade, and, to me, I find it odd how few people appreciate XII, quite possibly (but hopefully not) the swan song of quality in the series. I could reasonably go into the politics of Squenix (how many more sequels do we really need to XIII?), the departure of key people, their seeming inability to connect to their audience (at least their western audience maybe?), or to innovate in a way that reflects what gamers want, but I want to take a look at the games themselves; it's the finished pieces I want to analyze, and to take the good from the past, what I really liked in what I played, and yell at the current developers over at Squenix about what we need them to get back to or change. But I also want to maybe offer a few ideas of some new ideas (well new for Square) they could throw into their next titles. Shi' this is  just going to turn into Brand Mark's Top 5 Final Fantasy's...