If you haven't seen MC Chris' remarks on Kingdom Hearts 2, go watch them now. Otherwise you don't understand what the fuck I'm talking about here. You can't watch Final Fantasy XII for more than a few minutes before being completely reminded of this rant. Everything I've seen of the game has been (cut-scene and gameplay alike) filled with slowness. The pacing is like molasses, and even though they masked the load times fairly well, transitions between scenes still grind everything to a halt.
     Now I'll admit that I'm not playing the game at all... I'm occasionally watching Kurt play. I'm not exactly a fan of Final Fantasy games. One thing I've been hating with XII, though, is that the names are completely asinine. Most of them are manglings of real names, places, or words ... and that really gets my goad. It strikes me as a poor fix for the problem of too little imagination and originality.
     I'll say this for it though... it at least looks a good deal better than Motor Storm. Seriously. I played Motor Storm today on a PS3 kiosk and it looked and played like shit. Low-res textures and repetitive environments combined with whopping 15 frame-per-second gameplay make it a huge disappointment ... especially since they kept promising that it would look just like the E3 pre-render. FFXII looks spectacular, though, despite all the PS2's flaws and weaknesses. It basically just goes to show that smart design coupled with attention to detail can go a very long way towards making a game beautiful.