Instead of talking about Final Fantasy VII, I’m going to talk about some of it’s minigames. I typically don’t care for minigames. I think they suck. I don’t enjoy being thrown into random situations at the drop of a hat and then being expected to accomplish a specific task while having almost no idea of what’s going on. True, some are optional but most aren’t.
Train Graveyard: This isn’t so much a minigame as it is a puzzle. It’s this big junkyard full of defunct trains and various types of twisted metal and debris. All 
of this garbage forms a really bizarre and circuitous path through the yard. The problem is that the path is so weird and devoid of any form that you can’t tell what you can walk on, climb up, go under, go in between, go behind, go in, or jump off of. Sometimes it takes several minutes to just figure out where you can actually go and when you do figure it out it just seems to be a completely random and irrelevant path. The overhead view of the camera compresses everything into 2-D making it even harder. There’s one part where you drive a couple of trains into each other to make a path. After I did this it still took me a while to figure out what the point was. Their roofs lined up so I could probably walk across them but how do I get on top of it? The difficulty of a game shouldn’t stem from it’s indistinct graphics and horrible camera angles.
Squats: I seriously can’t believe you have to do this. So you need to get a wig for reasons that I’m not going to go into. Where do you get a wig..? Duh, from the local gym. Isn’t that where all cross-dressers go to get their accoutrements? The gym is full of musclemen that want the wig and so one challenges you to squats. Yeah squats. You know squats..? That sissy warm-up exorcise that you don’t do because it makes you look like a moron? Anyway, you have to do more than him before 30 seconds are up. There are three buttons you press in order and you have to do it in rhythm. If you get off beat you stall for a couple of seconds. I beat this weirdo on the first try despite a bad start. Then I made off with the coveted wig… whoop-dee-freekin-do.
Motorcycle Battle: The pretext for this is that you’re escaping the Shinra Building and you’re on a motorcycle while your friends are on a truck. Everyone has a lifebar too. You’re speeding down the freeway with motorcycle troops in hot pursuit. You’re supposed to race around beating them up to protect yourself and the group. This would probably be really cool with some kind of analog controller but no, you’re stuck with directional buttons making movement rather awkward. And it doesn’t help that we’re going about three times the speed limit and the camera seems to practically spin around me. Since I’m playing this on PC with keyboard everything is just a little more challenging. Just trying to find all the control buttons on the keyboard is frustrating. When I started the game, the default controls were literally all on the number pad. What, do they expect me to play this game using just my right hand? Who’s stupid idea was this? Have you ever played a videogame with one hand? Have you ever seen a one-handed controller? No, that’s retarded. Anyway, I was able to find the button for attacking on my right but not the one for my left. It didn’t really seem to matter though because ramming into other motorcycles was a lot more effective than using my sword.
Reactor Hill: It’s this big hill with a reactor on the top that you are supposed to protect from an encroaching army. Your enemies slowly advance up the side of the hill, (emphasis on slowly.) The way you defend the reactor is by placing soldiers and various armaments on the hill. It’s kind of like a Fire Emblem or 
Advance Wars type strategy game, only it’s not really fun or necessary to strategize at all. Every impediment you put in the enemies’ way costs a lot of money and it doesn’t really do much to them except slow them down, as if they needed to go any slower. When they get past your soldiers, your last line of defense is you. You get to fight them in a typical RPG menu battle. Well if you can just do that, then what’s the point of wasting tons of money on something that wastes your time and barely does anything? Just start the battle with no soldiers and beat the crap out of them yourself. Oh and the guy that you’re helping conduct this war is always asking you for money to contribute to the war budget. If you decide to donate, a box comes up with various amounts of money for you to chose. After you choose, he says thank you and then the money box comes back up again. What the hell, moocher? If a stranger gave you a thousand dollars would you say, “Hey thanks. Give me more now?” He’s lucky I’m helping him at all. My advice is to give him 0 Gil and don‘t hire any soldiers. It’s the cheapest, quickest, easiest solution to an overly-complex minigame.
Formation Marching: In this part you dress up like a Shinra soldier to infiltrate their base. Then you get roped into this stupid parade for the president and have to do a couple of simon says marching things. Honestly, this formation marching shit just makes me wanna kill myself. It’s not fun at all. It’s the opposite of fun.
CPR: You save this little girl from a monster on the beach but she gets knocked out in the water or something and you have to perform artificial respiration. Actually this old man runs down to the beach and tells you how to do it. Now if he already knows CPR why doesn’t *he* just do it? Does this really seem like an opportune moment to be trying to teach it to some random bystander? I’d report him to EMS for failing to respond. So actually doing CPR is really easy, you just press the “switch” button. Switch button? What the hell is that? Why did they give all of the buttons code names? It doesn’t make it any easier to locate. They might as well have named it the “purple orgasmatron” button. I spent like five minutes mashing every button on the keyboard and cursing at myself for not changing the controls. I finally found it, it was the decimal button.
Dolphin jump: You swim around in the water below some kind of Iron scaffolding. When you think you’re in the right location to make it up, you whistle for the dolphin, (AKA “Mr. Dolphin”), to come and jump you up on top of it. This is literally how it went: *What the hell am I supposed to be aiming at? The I-beam? Is it the I-beam? The dolphin doesn’t even jump high enough. He keeps going under it. How much closer do you want than that? Screw this.* I pretty much got it as soon as I stopped trying and started just repeatedly tapping the button without thought.
Grab the treasure: In this one you’re walking along this roller coaster track trestle. I think it’s actually supposed to be a mine car track because it has a
drawbridge and it’s in a rural location but if it is a mine car track then why does the track go up and down so wildly? So as you’re walking, the track will break sometimes and you will fall. When you fall a box comes up that says to use the directional buttons to grab the treasure. There are two treasure bags, one on either side of you. Whether you’re supposed to grab them while falling or while climbing back up, I’m totally clueless because the directional buttons don’t seem to do anything. Needless to say, I didn’t get any treasure.
The Gold Saucer: The Gold Saucer is an entire theme park with several different themed lands. It has dozens of minigames and thank God I was thrown in prison before I could try a single one.
Chocobo Race: You have to win this race if you want to get out of prison. There
are like seven chocobo riders and you have to be the first one to make a lap around the track. Your impromptu and unnecessary racing agent gets you a different chocobo every time you lose. Each one handles a little different. The game itself is OK but the race track is a sickeningly fanciful acid trip. I’m not sure how much skill is actually involved in it either. It seems a lot more dependent on what chocobo you get stuck with. I beat it the third try with an ill-tempered chocobo.
Bastard Chase: I don’t know what to call this one so I used my creative license. This game is pretty simple in objective. You have to catch this midget wizard thing to get his key. There are 14 cave openings that he goes in and out of on the side of a cliff and you basically have to be going in the one that he’s coming out of. It’s not in real time though. You pick a door and then he picks a door. You’re never on the screen at the same time. The instructions for this minigame tell you to memorize the pattern of the openings he goes in and then catch him knowing where he’s going to come out. As far as I could tell, there was either no pattern or it was just a really long pattern. Although I admit I really wasn’t paying attention because I didn’t give a rat’s ass, even though catching him was mandatory. When *I* go through an opening, I come out of another opening at total random. How can *he* have a pattern? I just walked around and went in whatever openings I felt like, again not really paying any attention. Eventually I got bored of that and just went back inside whatever opening I happened to come out of, mostly because all I had to do was press the up arrow. Pretty soon after, I caught him. I’m pretty sure that just going back in every opening you come out of is a lot faster and more thrilling than actually trying to play the game.
Snowboarding: When I first saw the snowboarding screen come up my first reaction was “Whoa! This is gonna kick ass!” Twenty seconds later it was “Oh, never mind. My mistake.” The course is nice and long with jumps and obstacles. But just like the motorcycle game the controls make it suck. This time the 
directional keys are too unresponsive. You can’t make the turns because it basically wont let you turn. Well actually you have two ways of turning: one for barely turning at all and one for turning wildly out of control. You have to break almost to a stop to avoid hitting the edges of the course. Any time you touch anything, unless you’re breaking, you fall. Some parts have moving obstacles, randomly appearing obstacles, or just so many damn obstacles that falling down several times in a row is inevitable. Getting through without falling would be from luck with not much merit of your own. There are multicolored balloons on the ground and in the air that you can collect and as far as I know they do absolutely nothing. The best thing about this game I guess would be how fast you can go, (albeit for only two seconds before you hit something.) and the fact that you can do a few tricks like a grab and backflip.
Iceberg Hopping: In this game you have to cross some ice water by finding a path over some little icebergs in a matrix formation. For whatever reason each time you move, different ones sink and rise. You never know if the one you step on is going to be underwater after you step on it. It’s just a simple trial and error game but the annoying thing is that you have to do it again coming back. When I came back I expected them to all be in a row but no. Do it again.
Escape The Gas Chamber: Mash the four command buttons until you escape the restraint chair. Rather mindless.
Cat Fight: This is the best minigame ever! All you do is repeatedly press the OK button to slap that bitch Scarlet around. It’s epic! Although it is tarnished a little because I know Tifa can ball a fist and yet she doesn’t. *sigh*
Chocobo Breeding: No thanks.
Drive the Train: You’re supposed to stop this train from getting away. The whole premise of the train getting away is faulty. It’s running on the same track as “Grab the treasure.” Yeah remember… the track that you put a bunch of holes in, making it completely impossible to be used for moving anything? The train wouldn’t make it a quarter mile without crashing into the ravine. Anyway, when you jump on the train and get to the engine you have a time limit and have to pull some levers around…? You know I don’t really know how to explain this one. The instructions it gives you involve pressing two sets of buttons simultaneously and alternating between them or something. I had less than two minutes to do this and they gave me the most horribly incoherent functions to perform. I found the four buttons and just pressed them all a bunch. I guess I did it right because it worked.
Submarine: Son of a Whore! Could the controls be any worse?! This game is actually pretty easy but it’s practically unplayable. You’re supposed to pilot this submarine through a bunch of mines in a canyon and follow/sink another sub. The mines appear and disappear somehow and only hurt you when visible. Why and how would you ever make a disappearing underwater mine that doesn’t work when it’s invisible? While piloting the sub you can accelerate and decelerate. The rest of the time it just seems to go any random speed. You practically have to have a mile of clearance and five minutes to turn around. I realize it’s a sub and it doesn’t turn on a dime but is this really necessary? The ability to go up and down only accomplishes one thing, disorienting you. The graphics look terrible and there are like half a dozen pointless gages and dials blocking your view of the environment.
Bonous Material
How much of a dork do you have to be
to get a kick out of that?
Here's a good out-of-context
one that I thought I should share.
