Anachronox:
A game recently released for the PC by Ion Storm. Anachronox is the closest thing the PC has to Final Fantasy VII. (Except, that is, for the port of Final Fantasies VII and VIII to PC.)
Ion have had a dodgy record: one great game (Deus Ex) and one terrible one (Daikatana). Anachronox brings it to Good Two, Terrible One.
You play Sly Boots, a down-at-heels private detective. Well, he's the main character. You also play Grumpos Matavastros, a miserable old man who defeats his enemies by boring them to death, PAL-18, a three-foot-tall android who talks inexplicably like Eric Cartman, Dr. Rho Bowman, a scientist with attitude, Democratus, a planet shrunk down to the size of a human, Stiletto Anyway, the game's token sexy female assassin, and Paco 'el puno' Estrella, a retired superhero. Yep, just like in the FF games, you get a truly surreal cast of characters, and not a stuffed teddy with a weird cat thing riding it in sight.
I could compare Anachronox to FFVII for the whole of this writeup, but that wouldn't really do it justice. The fight scenes, though they hold a lot more potential with the ability to move around and use items of scenery, somehow don't have quite the kick, and there are some bugs in the game that appear to have crept in. On the other hand, Anachronox's first-person view kicks the pre-rendered FF universe into a cocked hat, and the sub-tasks are much more diverse, ranging from photographing four Brebulians to finding a suffocating alien's lost pills.
See also: