When the highlight of a launch party is the awful free pizza and a good portion of the audience leaves before the giveaway of the product you're launching because they don't care to stick around that long, there is a problem.

Going to the Final Fantasy XIII launch party last night, I saw East meet West in a battle of apathy and bored gluttony. The crazy, unnaturally blonde spiked hair of the otaku crowd met the great western nerded neck-beard at the IMAX in Darling Harbour. No photos are available because Ubisoft representatives nicely confiscated phones and cameras as we entered. Ubisoft is distributing the 360 version in these territories with Sony handling the distribution of the Playstation version.

Ubi kicked off the party by playing the UK launch trailer for the game which has been available for a few days. As someone who has not followed this game at all, I can honestly say I was somewhat intrigued. As the launch trailer was abruptly paused at the Final Fantasy XIII logo, the crowd remained silent. A taken-aback Ubi rep then proceeded to regale us with a brief history of the franchise that is (and this was news to me) "the premier RPG franchise in the world". I think Dungeons and Dragons might have something to say about that, but then I'm a pedant.

The gameplay demo began with another Ubisoft rep playing various portions of the game. The opening sequence reminded me of Final Fantasy VII with the heroes arriving via train in a huge futuristic city (I'm sure that was intentional). As the gameplay demo wore on I was quickly cured of any interest I had in the title. The maps consist of running in a straight line, with the occasional right-angle turn, from one end of the map to the other. Occasionally there is a detour, which is a short walk off the main path, sometimes with an ambush, where you can get an extra treasure chest. There were brief scenes showing what seemed to be a world map in the trailer, but I never saw anything like that in the gameplay demo or my brief time hands on later in the evening.

During battle, the player only controls the "lead" character. There is a "paradigm shift" thing that does something that wasn't very well explained, but it seemed like you could shift from offense to defence in the middle of a battle for strategic reasons. The Eidolon battle demonstrated this. Eidelons are the "summons" for Final Fantasy XIII. Shiva appears as sisters who then wrap their legs around each other and turn in to a motorcycle. Odin is a giant robot man who turns in to a horse and then gallops on the air making hoofbeat sounds (despite the fact he's not actually walking on anything). I laughed out loud at that bit during the demonstration, but I don't think I was supposed to. Anyway, the Eidelon battle mostly consisted of the player blocking a whole bunch (real exciting and strategic) and occasionally switching "paradigms" to attack. Then the battle abruptly ended and the player got a five star ranking, which gets you extra items at the end of the battle. Then the woman from Farscape captured the (at the time) main character named Snow and I wondered why I was wasting my life like this.

When I actually played the game, I found myself wondering if "this was it". Apparently it is. You walk in a straight line and get in to fights which can be avoided if you simply don't run in to enemies on the map. A bonus as far as I'm concerned. Random battles annoy me. After the fight, which consists of pressing the A button enough times once your meter fills up, you get a ranking and some items and move forward. Then a cut scene plays. There was no audio, so I couldn't hear the characters, and there were no subtitles, so I didn't know what was happening, so I just skipped the cut scenes. I realise that the entire point of this game is the cut-scenes, but I like to play my games, not watch them. You can press start to pause the cut scene any time and press back to skip it. That is an awesome feature but it shouldn't be a feature at all. It should be standard for all games. That's the best thing I have to say about this game, yes even better than the incestuous lesbian motorcycle robot ice goddesses.

I asked an Ubisoft lady if the Xbox 360 version is any different from the Playstation version. She said that it wasn't, except that it comes on multiple DVDs instead of one Blu Ray disc. So that is that.

The free pizza was Dominos, so don't get excited about that part. I ate it because I was hungry, and then I ate it because I was bored. Then I realised I didn't care if I won the game or the 360 that came with it. If you're interested it's the same deal going for Modern Warfare 2 and Mass Effect 2 - A special edition console with a 250GB HDD and two wireless controllers. I collected my mobile phone from the lady who's facial expression seemed to want to apologise for the whole evening and then I dropped my raffle ticket by the exit as I left. I took a free bottle of water as I went because I thought I might be thirsty on the way home but I wasn't.