Everything I have bought has been second-hand – and for a quarter of a price, many have given me four times as much enjoyment as some critically acclaimed games. I have only once paid more than $10 for an FMV game, and that was for “the FEAR” while visiting Japan. I think the main reason for the hatred of FMV games is their price in relation to the quantity and quality of the product (by virtue of using video they’re fairly short with little replay value), especially compared to titles released in the same year: “Why pay $50 for a one-hour Sega CD game, when I could buy a 40-hour SNES RPG for the same price?”
I mean, aren’t games on some level meant to entertain you? I could talk about the mechanics of shmup dynamics, or controlling space in a fighting game, or the depth found in some RPG battle systems, but in the end I can still enjoy something as basic as an FMV title. Yes they’re flawed and restrictive, but if you like cheesy horror, sci-fi or kung-fu B-movies, like Tremors, original Godzilla or Jackie Chan’s early stuff, then you should love FMV games. I can’t change the world’s thinking, but I’ll carry the banner for this unfairly maligned genre. Browsing reviews, both old and new, for FMV games presents not just criticism but barely contained rage in the written form. FMV games are finally dead everyone always cries, and cretins in the development world pour scorn on their colleagues from former years for making them, while they go on to make yet another space marine FPS. Articulating this isn’t easy, since it would seem the entire world, and all of my friends/colleagues who write about games, hate the genre (actually, fellow HG101 blogger CJ Iwakura once mentioned on the HG101 forums that he liked them. Not in the so-bad-it’s-good way (though this is sometimes the case), but sincerely, in the same way I enjoy Valkyria Chronicles or a really good club sandwich. My review of Hysteria Project will be in part 3 (coming later), while the above photo is explained within. I wrote so much, I’m posting this in 3 parts. With the semi-recent release of FMV horror game Hysteria Project on PSN, plus various Laserdisc games turning up on the Wii over the past year, I thought I should talk about my love for FMV games.
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