Final Fantasy XIII & Alice in wonderland

Games of the Week: Final Fantasy XIII and Alice in Wonderland

Final Fantasy XIII

Xbox 360, PS3; £50. Age 12

Forget the inherent contradiction in the title (the preceding 12 editions have clearly lacked finality): the series that popularised Japanese fantasy role-playing games is back. The good news is that this is the most accessible chapter yet. Unlike previous instalments, Final Fantasy XIII has a more streamlined structure and a proper plot, where you play as a band of heroes who must save their sci-fi utopia by exploring ancient ruins, slaying monsters and collecting loot. It’s undeniably spectacular, featuring lavish cities and dazzling fantasy worlds more akin to the film Avatar than to typical console games. The problem is, it’s not very engaging to play. In a quest for greater simplicity, the old combat system has been pared to the point that it takes a good eight hours to do anything genuinely satisfying. Worse, though, is that your path through the game practically drags you from one big fight to the next, with little freedom to explore. Some characters are irritating, and the storytelling is often spoilt by hideously mawkish passages. Once it cranks into gear, this is a compelling fantasy saga, but also far from the last word in adventure.

Alice in Wonderland

Wii, DS; £30. Age 12 and 7 respectively

Venture down a rabbit hole with the spin-off game of the new Tim Burton film. It loosely follows the same plot: Alice has returned to Wonderland to find it under the rule of the Red Queen — and now called Underland. This darker world is full of monsters, traps and puzzles that you must negotiate to overthrow the Queen. What’s unusual in this third-person adventure is that you don’t control Alice but rather her helpers. You meet the White Rabbit and Dormouse at the start, with the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat and, of course, the Mad Hatter, coming later. The way you harness each character’s special skills, often in combination, is at the heart of the game: for example, you can freeze a henchman with the rabbit’s time-bending wristwatch then remove his armour using the hare’s telekinesis, before unleashing the swordsmanship of Dormouse. Switching between characters is simple, yet making progress can be fiddly as you must waggle a controller to invoke their abilities while moving a cursor over targets. Nevertheless, there’s much to love in this tie-in. It looks great (for a Wii game), and all those magical doors and size-altering potions add to the oddball charm. A shame, then, that it’s shorter than Tweedledee.