Unfinished Business Been trying to finish off my pile of games, pocket reviews follow.
- Dragon Quest 8 - the classic Level 5 RPG, I played this game an insane number of hours over the years, most of it in the first few months of buying a copy, and then trickling in over the years. It's the classic syndrome: "JRPG Last Boss Anxiety", where you get to find out whether all your grinding has put you at an adequate level such that the final boss encounter isn't a 30 minute affair of depressing inadequacy. I finally summoned the gumption to take a swing at him a month or two ago and discovered that I was vastly over qualified for the fight, beating him the first time round. My guess is the battle took 12 minutes or so, hard to judge accurately when the adrenaline is going. The amusing thing about finishing DQ9 is that the post-final boss sequence is like another 30 minutes of gameplay while you go through the resolution of all the characters and plot. Anyway, highly recommended if you grew up loving JRPGs, or want something your kids can watch. My daughter almost cried she was so sad that I finally beat the game, so I juarezed a copy of the OST and burned her some CDs to keep her company.
- Super Paper Mario - the Wii incarnation of the Mario RPG "franchise", this is just a weird game. Really odd stuff. The conceit, that you're 2D characters but can flip into a 3D world, and various other gimmicks built around depth/layer tricks witih sprites, is sometimes done with astounding cleverness. The graphic design is almost always interesting, bounding between garish and sublime. The humor can actually be... funny, although sometimes it's simply belabored. As to the game itself... well it's a crapshoot, not much complex going on here, sometimes its repetitive, but most of all its just... forgettable. In fact the entire game's story and what not is so cock-a-mamie that I couldn't even tell you what the hell is going on after having played 2/3 of it. Every time I pick it back up it's an exercise in trying to remember where I am, where I'm supposed to be going, re-learning the various little powers each pixie gives you, etc. In the final analysis, probably yet another game I'd rather watch someone play than play myself. Probably won't finish.
- Star Wars: The Force Unleased - Occasionally you lust after something for its pure aesthetics, only to find it vacuous and empty. Unfortunately The Force Unleased falls under this rubric. The rendering is very pretty, frequently gorgeous, and the combat is initially highly satisfying in the sense of empowerment that it gives you, the variety of force abilities, etc. However after a couple of hours you find yourself alternately bored and frustrated. The enemies seem to fall at either end of the difficulty pole, trivial to destroy, or immune to a variety of force powers as an attempt to force some combat variety. Unfortunately there are rarely useful cues on what to do so it becomes a spastic flailing of jumping, force powers, saber slashing, etc. You can muddle through it all but it just feels like work. Finished this but in hindsight it wasn't worth the effort.
- Mirrors's Edge - Sigh. A game with perhaps the most exciting premise in some time, a magnitude matched only by how deeply unsatisfying the actual gameplay experience turned out to be. Much has been written about this game and the bad decisions that were made of intermixing traditional gunplay and combat into what should be a pure running game, and it all bears out in the playing. One could forgive the overly touchy controls, especially with respect to wall running, if the fluidity of the movement experience wasn't being constantly interrupted by the need to punch guys in the nuts--either to get by them, or to get them to stop shooting you so you can engage in the game's primary mechanical loop of climbing, running, rolling. One could also forgive the cutscenes as well, and the hackeneyed, cliched dystopian corporations-are-bad storyline. But all together the poor controls, combat, and cutscenes are a trifecta which robs this game of its chance at being good, much less great. I'm a little over halfway through and doubt I'll bother finishing it.
- Dead Space - As someone who doesn't find horror interesting, and who has never undestood the appeal of Resident Evil, I wasn't expecting much from this. But I actually really, really enjoyed it. The production is super slick, the story is fine, and the voice acting is actually quite good. The pace of combat is well measured, there's a nice customization feedback loop with buying and upgrading items, etc. The sequences in vacuum are a little tedious but not overly so (at least so far), and while some abilities seem beside the point to me (I only use stasis when required, and have never used kinesis--I suspect these were added late as a nod to Bioshock), they haven't interfered with the main game experience. Ah, but then my dreamy enjoyment was smashed as I trundled into an.. arcade sequence? Seriously, someone grafted a really poor Missile Command clone into the game--protect the ship from asteroids, etc. It's completely orthogonal, no similarities in mechanics, controls, etc. It makes no sense whatsoever. And to top it off, it's really difficult and incredibly frustrating. Normally I'd pin this on my anemic skills but after looking it up on the web it appears that this sequence is rage inducing for everyone. Good show EA, you managed to ruin the first game of yours I've enjoyed in many years with a sequence that any kleenex testing should have revealed as unnecessary. I'll probably get around to pushing past this at some point but the game will be going into hibernation for a few weeks until I'm less irritated at it.
- Resistance: Fall of Man - a capable shooter, completely forgettable storyline but some decent AI that keeps things interesting with cover utilization. I can't actually tell you why I keep playing every couple of weeks, but for some reason I'm really determined to complete this before I start in on the single player campaign of the sequel. I suppose it's that the game is decent and I'm a sucker for any shooter that doesn't stray too far from the basic mechanics of the genre. That said it does have some frustratingly cheap moments with enemies that can shoot through walls, but slowly but surely I'm creeping through it all.
I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday-Morrissey-Beethoven Was Deaf   
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