I'm Looking Forward to Playing...

Its that time once again to throw out lists of what games I'd like to play in the coming months. I've poured through a lot of games on my list in the last three months since I purchased my Xbox 360, which is a good thing. I've found some great games that I would have missed out on otherwise (Mass Effect and Fable 2 being a couple).

Update (2/22/2009): Since I made this post, I've decided to make it a list (and be as comprehensive as possible) of games I want to play or finish and the systems I want to play them on. Some of these games, perhaps, I may have played before and just want to play them on a different system (examples: Prince of Persia, Oblivion) and some of these games I might have started but never finished (Persona 4, Mirror's Edge). Needless to say, its going to hopefully be an exhaustive list of the version of these games I want to play.

I'm probably looking at playing or finishing these games in the near future:

- Star Ocean: The Last Hope (360)
- Tales of Vesperia (360)
- The Last Remnant (360)
- X-Blades (360)
- Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad (360)
- Halo Wars (360)
- Mirror's Edge (360)
- Fallout 3 (360)
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (360)
- Burnout Paradise (360)
- Prince of Persia (360)
- Braid (360 XBLA)
- Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)
- Flower (PS3 PSN)
- Persona 4 (PS2)
- Ar Tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica (PS2)
- Star Ocean: First Departure (PSP)
- Star Ocean: Second Evolution (PSP)
- Chrono Trigger (DS)
- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DS)
- My Japanese Coach (if you can really consider that a "game" - DS)

And the List Grows Larger...

I have an ever-increasing list of games I'd like to pick up for the 360 that I used to have, currently have or have played for the PS3. Most of them come rather cheap these days, as well.

- Burnout Paradise
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Game of the Year Edition
- Assassin's Creed
- Prince of Persia
- Midnight Club: Los Angeles

I went and traded in my PS3 copy of Oblivion because, if I get the urge to play it again (which is likely), I'll want the 360 version so I can get all the downloadable content. I currently have Burnout Paradise, and I love the game, but its been a while since I played it, so I'm considering starting over on the 360 version if I can find it cheap. I used to have Assassin's Creed, as well, and I'd eventually like to finish it. Its been a while since I played it so I'll probably just start over on the 360 version when I get around to it.

But, right now I have three games to finish up (Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, Infinite Undiscovery) and Star Ocean: The Last Hope coming out next month!

Posts of the Day: 1.7.2009

As you noticed, I put up the first one of these posts yesterday. I decided to go with a "Post of the Day" format partly for my benefit, and partly for anyone who might read this blog. First off, I do a lot more blog reading than I do writing. I have a cool 50 gaming-related blogs on my Google Reader as of this post (see the "Gaming Reads" sidebar on the right) and every day there's about, oh, a handful of posts that really catch my attention and even fewer that stick in my mind. Secondly, it'll get me to post at least once on days that I don't have anything more lengthy written. :)

You'll see the same big news hitting over half of these blogs, but that's not really the posts I'm looking for. I'll usually put up here articles or posts that I find informative, thoughtful and/or unique and that, at the time of my post, really haven't gotten much exposure (although, something like today's Fable 2 news will likely spread like wildfire over the next day or two). This isn't to say you won't see a link to a heavily covered piece of news here, but for the most part, that's not what I'm looking for.

On to today's posts!

First off, I found this analysis of Prince of Persia very enlightening and I couldn't agree with the author more.

Secondly, apparently the DLC and bug fix patch for Fable 2 (its about time!) is coming very soon.

Everyone Else is Doing It

Ok, so I really am not into posting my own "best games of 2008" list, mostly because my best games are never anyone else's best games. Its all subjective, you know. I rarely am enthralled by any AAA games like the rest of the world. GTA4, MGS4, Fallout 3 - they don't do it for me. (There are exceptions, one of which I'll discuss in a bit.)

My favorite game experiences this year came, not on current generation systems, but on the PS2. Of course, I'm talking about the latest Persona games, most recently Persona 4. That is Japanese RPGs at its best right there, regardless of the console its on, that's the best of the best. Play Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 or you will never forgive yourself and will likely rot in gamer hell when you die.

That being said, my second favorite game of the year actually goes to one of those AAA titles that I spoke about earlier - Fable 2. Luckily I was able to get a 360 last month and I tore through Fable 2 - I couldn't put down the controller while playing through it (there's still a few things I want to do in the game, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming DLC, as well). Its unusual that a Western RPG takes one of the top spots in my mind for my favorite games of the year, but this year one does.

A few runners up that I feel the need to throw out here are the very much underrated Valkyria Chronicles, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and Prince of Persia. I would have to say Valkyria Chronicles joins the highly regarded ranks of games such as Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and The World Ends with You as some of the best games that no one knows about. Its unfortunate that the AAA games of the holiday season of 2008 drowned out the awesomeness that is Valkyria Chronicles.

Crisis Core makes my list for a completely different reason. While I'm not as opposed to it as some game critics were, it makes my list of favorite games of the year for purely nostalgic purposes. Playing that game brought back memories of playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time all those years ago on a borrowed PlayStation console.

Prince of Persia makes my list because it is an action/platformer and that's not usually one of my favorite genres. Contrary to what many other reviewers stated, I actually liked the ease of play and the "no death" mechanics they had going on there. It allowed me to concentrate a lot more on the story, the dialog and the gorgeous visual presentation the game had to offer.

So, there you have it, the run-down of my favorite games of the year - all five of them. ;) Granted, there were other decent games I played throughout the year, but none struck a chord with me as much as these five games.

Mini-Review: Prince of Persia

It might not have anything to do with a prince or the region of Persia, but its still a great game!

Pros:

• Incredible visuals and lush, engaging environments
• Simple, fluid movement for both our main characters
• Any and all game play mechanics revolving around Elika
• The bond that's developed between our hero, Elika and the player through cut scenes and other story elements
• Very forgiving game play mechanics

Cons:

• Sometimes the controls are a bit unresponsive (very rarely, but its still there)
• Its sometimes hard to maneuver around pillars and even Elika herself
• Very forgiving game play mechanics

I might touch briefly on the "forgiving game play mechanics" I mentioned above. Many people complained about the incredibly easy difficulty of this game simply because its really hard to die. Elika is always there to catch you if you take a wrong step or jump the wrong way. I listed it on both pros and cons above because I can understand where those critics are coming from. However, I do feel it is more important to actually allow the player to progress through the game and experience the visuals and the story without worrying about difficulty roadblocks that are put in just for the sake of having something hard to do in the game. I'm glad they went the way they did in that regard.

Overall, a very fun platformer-slash-action title. I was quite surprised that I enjoyed it a lot, considering that genre really isn't my thing.

Persona 4 and Prince of Persia Impressions

Two games have come out over the last couple weeks that I'm interested in - Prince of Persia and Persona 4. I have them both right now, one in from GameFly and, the latter, I picked up at GameStop yesterday.

Monday I got quite a bit of play time in with Prince of Persia. I wasn't quite sure about this game because, as I've said before, I'm not really an action game fan. But, this seems like more than just an action game, in fact there's a moderately low level of actual fighting involved. Through the first four "levels" so far, the majority of time has been spent going to and from various story locations. At each of those locations you would fight a boss, and then be done with it. One time I ran into a single enemy outside of a boss fight.

I like this. I'd much prefer focusing on the running, jumping, wall climbing and swinging that is the platforming part of the game as opposed to the beat-em-up part. Also, its not as difficult figuring out what to do and where to go, let alone performing actions, as a first person title like, say, Mirror's Edge (sorry, had to take that shot).

I'll touch on this briefly now and possibly more in depth in my actual review - a lot of people are complaining about the ease of play. There's one difficulty and that difficulty level seems awfully easy. Its nearly impossible to get a "Game Over" screen. Every time you miss a jump or fail to grab hold of something you should have, your ever-faithful traveling companion Elika is there to save you. On the one hand, this saves you from repeatedly having to go through a "restart from last checkpoint" mechanic. On the other hand, it lessens the consequences of performing badly. In my opinion, the former is more important than the latter. Also, in my opinion, the story and game mechanics are more important than some insane difficulty roadblocks that the developers could have decided to throw in.

Last, but not least, the graphics are absolutely beautiful.

Persona 4, how I love thee. Let's backtrack a bit. Persona 3 came out and I pretty much ignored it, given the fact that I had a lot of other games to play at the time. Persona 3 FES came out and I got it, figuring it was high time I did so. Played it, loved it, best RPG I had played in a long while. Fast forward to yesterday - Persona 4 finally hit store shelves here in North America. Picked it up (I had it pre-ordered) and played it for several hours last night. I got engrossed in it as quickly as I did in the previous game. I'm sure I'll review it, as well, in the coming days, so I'll hold off most of my thoughts until then. Needless to say, this game might actually be better than its predecessor, if that's even possible. My PS2 will definitely be working overtime in the coming weeks.

Prince of Persia Releases This Week

Prince of Persia is an action game, I'm not big into action games. I don't like GTA4 and couldn't get into MGS4 or Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Yet, for some reason, I'm actually looking forward to trying out Prince of Persia. Why? A couple reasons.

First off, the reviews are outstanding. Secondly, I love that art style. Too often do games (here's looking at you in the over-saturated FPS genre) stick to realistic graphics to "show off" what a system can do. I say its starting to get boring. Change things up a bit. Look at the reviews for Valkyria Chronicles and see just how much the art style affected the game. Finally, I hear it has a very easy difficulty curve, which I need, because I'm not a big action game player. I think the last action game I played all the way through was Heavenly Sword, and it was great. That's something I could actually get into.

Here's hoping Prince of Persia will be another game in the action genre that I can really get into.