This is the game that never starts.

So I've put in about fifteen hours of play into a little game called Final Fantasy XIII.

It has yet to start.

Like, the story, the combat, it has yet to give me that "Okay here's everything you need to know, have at it."

Penny Arcade said it best in their Purgatory comic, and they make a very good point. I did not put 15 hours into Uncharted 2, more like 10(and I did beat it), and in that time I lived a fucking action epic and did more things than I can say in a single paragraph with really, really terse words.

What have I done in FF13? Uhm... I killed some stuff. Oh! I killed that robot condor thing twice! Yeah! And... got branded with magical crystal brand magic thing... I get to use magic now... Which is cool I guess

Oh, and it's REALLY hard to play a game where you hate half the playable characters with a zealous passion that borders on insanity. Serious, Hope and Vanille are the most fucking annoying characters and contribute absolutely nothing to the story. We already have an emotional cripple in Lightning who blames everyone else for their predicament, why the hell is Hope in there? And what kind of name for a dude is Hope? Don't even get me started on Snow.

And Vanille. What the crap is with the Japanese and throwing an overly chipper piece of jailbait into every damned storyline? She hangs out with Hope all the time and says things to the effect of "Oh don't worry about your mom just dying! Let's DO STUFF! Sex? Oh, no, not that, silly! I mean hang out with these guys who are being attacked by whole armies. Sex, haha, you are SILLY!"

It's times like this I wish I had a time machine so I can go back a few years, slap around Motomu Toriyama (writer/director of the game) and scream in his face "ENGLISH SPEAKING AUDIENCES HATE THAT SHIT! I dunno about Japanese audiences but I'm pretty sure, from the forums I read, that a few of them are kind of done with it as well ANYWAY KNOCK IT OFF STOP THROWING 15 YEAR OLDS INTO A MATURE STORYLINE UNLESS THEY ARE GOING TO BE KILLED EARLY ON TO FORWARD THE STORY, IT REALLY PISSES ME OFF!"

Even the characters I LIKE I kinda don't like. Lightning is cool and everything, but she's a real bitch who alienates everyone. Not like Squall in FFVIII who just went "Wah, everyone abandons me so I'm going to cry and push people away," but along the lines of "Why are you touching me? Die in a fire. Go. Go away. Stop. I hate you. You're pathetic and not worthy enough to lick the shit from my boots." And then she shoves the table and the cake you spent all weekend making falls on the floor and she doesn't even acknowledge it as she storms out.

And Sazh is... kinda odd. He's all sententious and acts like the wizened black dude and then he falls on his face and a bird pops out of his saucer fro. I can't take a character seriously who houses an organism larger than bacteria in his hair.

Lastly, there's Snow. I need say no more. The name is enough. (Hint: Snow is male)

Anyway, a game that takes 30 hours to find it's pace is like a Stephen King novel that doesn't really find it's pace until two third through the book, and by then you're only reading it because it's a Stephen King book, not because you're enjoying it.

-McK