Individual Eleven – The World's Cyberbrain

There were a lot of fans from all over the country to see this performance, and some cosplayers too! Seeing Sephiroth at The Royal Albert Hall was quite strange at first. There were also other fans dressed as SeeD from Final Fantasy VIII amongst other characters. I cannot tell you how excited I was about this concert; I bought the tickets in January this year and they were sold out in weeks. Ten months later the day finally arrives!




It’s all about the music

After an introduction to the composer Nobuo Uematsu and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the night kicks off with Liberi Fatali. Final Fantasy VIII is one of my favourites in the series and hearing it live for the first time was simply amazing. The strong choral sections were performed by London Voices which penetrated every part of the hall. Each instrument and note was heard with crystal clarity even though I was sitting in the Grand Tier section of the hall which is fairly high. When the piece finished, I just knew we were going to be in for something very special indeed.

During each piece, a video montage is displayed on two gigantic screens to give you a full multimedia experience. The great thing was seeing actual game footage being played out which synchronised with the orchestra absolutely perfectly. An example of this was the opening sequence and Bombing Mission song from Final Fantasy VII. You know the one; the camera zooms to Aerith walking out onto the streets of Midgar. The camera zooms out and pans onto the train where your character Cloud starts off and then straight into the bombing mission itself. The graphics back then was thought to be groundbreaking at the time, of course now they look very dated but I lost part of my youth in that game and I never stopped loving it. Seeing it there before me made me want to play it all over again.

Fond memories

If you think VII was dated, we have much older ones. The concert’s aim was to play at least one piece of music from every Final Fantasy game ever made to date. Everyone will know the Prelude song, a solo harp plays with London Voices completing the piece. My favourites from the bygone era include Terra’s Theme from VI and Theme of Love from IV. To be brutally honest, it is very very difficult to pick any favourites at all, I loved each and every one of them. Nobuo Uematsu is a musical genius.

Fast forward to some of the more recent titles, and we have Zanarkand from X; everyone loves Yuna. Some of the theme songs were also performed such as Eyes On Me from VIII and Kiss Me Goodbye from XII. Both were performed so beautifully by singer Susan Calloway, flown all the way from America to perform for us. The open space of the Royal Albert Hall was no match for her voice, and I would not be surprised if it could be heard all the way into Kensington. There was some fun to be had with a Chocobo Medley, which was put together in 2010. The screens displayed some of the best Chocobo highlights from all the games.

Some of the staff at Squeenix also attended the performance; I was two sections away from them!







Wishing it would never end

The entire performance was finished in about two hours including the interval. I could have sat there all night listening but the night drew to a close, with scrolling credits of everyone that made Final Fantasy happen. Many worthy mentions include Uematsu of course and Yoshitaka Amano, who drew many Final Fantasy illustrations for the games and were displayed on the screens for some of the pieces. Of course a big big thank you also goes to Arnie Roth who conducted all the pieces and is the music director for the Distant Worlds concert tour. He apologised for taking so long to get to the UK, but he and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra more than made up for it by bringing us one of the most spectacular concerts I have ever witnessed.

However, the night did not end until the ultimate encore, One-Winged Angel – Sephiroth’s Theme. Oh My God. If you think it sounds amazing at home you have no idea the magnitude of amazingness when you hear this with a live orchestra. A truly fitting way to end. Coupled with the choral London Voices singing in perfect unison, this piece is something else. And yes, I did watch Final Fantasy: Advent Children as soon as I got home.

Mark in your calendar!!

The next Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds concert will be back at the Royal Albert Hall on 17th November 2012. In December of that year, it will be the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy so we can expect a very special performance this time around. Tickets will go live around December this year, visit http://ffdistantworlds.com/ to keep up to date on tour dates. I for one will definitely be there next year, if the world doesn’t go boom that is. If you cannot be there yourself, then I highly recommend the Distant Worlds CD One and CD Two.


“My last night here for you. Same old songs just once more…”

The great thing about Portal 2 is the co-op levels. It truly is a work of genius; not a single level can be completed without your trusted partner in crime and they get devilishly more difficult… especially once you pass the halfway mark. I actually think the co-op is better than the single player part of the game, and we had endless fun with it as we both try to solve more and more complex puzzles. Admittedly, we did get each other killed inadvertently a few times, such is the hazard of testing.

I created a montage video of some of the later co-op levels. I must warn you that it will give away solutions to some of them. Enjoy!

Everyone got an Angry Bird slingshot plushie toy which is very cool, it even squawks loudly as it fires and makes contact. I managed to get one myself as I went to the after party at LeStudio52. A lot of fun to be had there, we had a DJ with Julien from LeStudio52 taking over halfway through. I left the party too late and missed my train home; after some nightmareish wandering around Tottenham Court Road trying to get transport, I managed to head back to the party again to crash there. The night didn’t properly finish till around 4am, we even went out for bagels which stays open 24/7! It ended up being quite a night with some rather interesting dance moves.

I hope there will be another event next year!

P.S: Tequilla is nasty stuff, I can think of better things to consume if you want to get drunk quickly.

Tonight focused on this and also web gaming in general. The one thing that HTML5 relies on is Javascript. Remember the days of C++ and BGE (Borland Graphics Engine)? Well this is what HTML5 reminds me of. HTML5 with Canvas for the graphics, and JS for the backend functionality. I’m all for open source. With the games being demoed tonight, I felt like I had stepped back in time to Commodore 64 days. Having said that, it isn’t such a bad thing. I think HTML5 is definitely a step in the right direction; it opens up opportunities for practically anybody to develop on such an open platform.

Of course Quake was mentioned a few times; if you haven’t played the web version then you must. It is a joy to behold with full graphics running in your humble web browser. That is the future of gaming. Mozilla were quite generous with the booze, I’ve never seen the beer they were serving before but it goes down pretty well! I adorned my bag with FireFox goodness, I couldn’t resist.

Some pictures as always, and it was great to see some regulars. I look forward to my bed when my train takes me home tonight.

The best highlights were the Magic the Gathering stand, where I got to meet the guys afterwards at the hotel. Ultimately it led to a big MTG session with them and other people that wandered in and joined us. Going to bed at 3am afterwards was probably not the best idea, but they were kind enough to give me some freebie decks! Also of worthy note was Manga Entertainment, blu-ray boxset of Ghost in the Shell 2.0 and Innocence for £5, no arguments from me. Tecmo/Koei had a lot of games on show; I absolutely loved Fist of the North Star. We went back there twice to play on the consoles.

I also got voice actor autograph signings from Michael Sinterniklaas (‘Satoshi Osugi’ in Eden Of The East, also in Bleach, Naruto) and Stephanie Sheh (‘Orihime Inoue’ in Bleach, also in Eureka Seven, Vampire Knight, Naruto… the list is massive). Totally awesome to meet them and get their autographs and aahhh Eden of the East people! EPIC ANIME! By chance, I also bumped into Eddie McClintock from Warehouse 13. We were all playing Magic the Gathering at the hotel lobby and he just strolls in. I shook his hand and had my pic taken with him, a very cool guy. The entire 3 day event rounds off with the European Cosplay finals which came out with spectacular cosplays. Overall a fantastic event and quite possibly the best one I have ever been to so far.

Pictures speak louder than words, so enjoy the gallery!

• Cloth map of Eorzea
• Traveller’s tumbler mug
• Security token, similiar to Blizzard’s Battle.Net tokens
• Leather hardcover traveller’s journal
• Bonus game item “Onion Helm”
• Behind the Scenes DVD
• And of course the game itself

The items that stand out for me is the map and the journal, although the tumbler is very swish as well since that is also wrapped in stitched leather. The Onion Helm will come in handy in the game; from what I have read it reduces the penalty inflicted from dying after you have resurrected. What I love about the journal is not only does it contain concept art not seen before, but also there is room on each page to write your adventures to act as a proper journal. When I read about the map, I thought it would just be a paper one but was surprised to find it is a cloth map. Much nicer.

I have played the open beta that ended on Sunday; despite some negative reviews having played it myself I quite enjoyed it. It is very engaging, and I feel a bit more free in the game world. Most MMOs like to hand hold you on what you need to do, what to do next. But in this, you have to explore and discover for yourself. Granted this may not suit some players, and no it’s not like World of Warcraft. If you think it is, then you are in for a very big surprise. It won’t be easy but that’s part of the challenge. If you want to read up on my thoughts on the open beta, then head on over to Girlygeekdom where I also blog.