Bioshock

I've restarted Bioshock on hard with Vita-Chambers turned off so that I can get the last three achievements. The achievement system has definitely affected the way I play games - sometimes I'll stick to something far more stubbornly on the 360 than I would on other systems just because I want those points...but I must admit, not even an hour into my second run-through of Bioshock I remembered exactly how much fun that game is. I'm still gunning for those points, but it's taken a back seat to wanting to play through the entire game again. That's a nice change.

I'm playing Magical Starsign on the handheld front. It's an interesting title mostly because while the character portrait art sucks horribly and the writing is incredibly corny, the game play and general mechanics are highly entertaining. It's a bit on the easy side - I think it's meant to be an RPG for a younger crowd - but that hasn't hurt it much in my opinion. If anything I'm just glad there's another RPG on the DS that uses the stylus exclusively for everything. The remake of Final Fantasy III uses the same concept and it makes both games a joy to play.

Boring

It's always bad for blogging when I get truly stuck on playing a single game. It certainly limits what's on my mind or what I've got to talk about. This time it's Etrian Odyssey II: Heros of Laagard on the DS. It's an excellent first-person dungeon crawler that hearkens all the way back to Wizardry. The touch screen is used exclusively to draw the floor map yourself. You can't get any geekier than that, so naturally it's right up my alley. I enjoyed the first one as well, but it wasn't balanced quite as well and it was very easy to run out of money in the beginning, making it very hard to level grind and recuperate at the inn with any frequency.

There are a ton of classes to choose from, each with their own skill sets that have to be purchased with points you get from leveling. The artwork is beautiful, the quests are challenging, and pretty much every aspect of the game play works perfectly for the kind of game it is. I am still playing a couple of other games, but they're ones I've already talked about - like Picross. Still, there are a couple of 360 games coming out soon that I'm looking forward to trying out so I'll probably have more to talk about soon.

Waiting

Sometimes I wonder why I pay attention to release calendars. I almost NEVER buy games new; I think I've purchased a total of 10 new 360 games out of a total of 32. Three of them I bought with the system, and two were purchased new because weirdly enough they happened to end up in the discount bin way ahead of the used price fall-off. The remaining five I bought new specifically to give the developers money for a fantastic product so that they could make more. Given that, why bother to read release calendars? There's no way I'll have the game on that anticipated day. I suppose there's the thought in the back of my mind that someone will buy it, beat it, and then get rid of it quickly, but even when that happens I generally put it off until it drops a bit. My sweet spot is around $30 - a very nice price for a 360 game - and it can take a little time for them to drop to that point. I guess it comes down to wanting it to be available just in case I end up buying it ahead of my normal schedule.

Anyway, skimming the calendar regularly can yield some funny tidbits. The current 360 release list on IGN has an entry waaaaaaaaay down at the bottom - Mass Effect 3, TBD 2011. While it's nice to know they're planning a third entry in the series, it's probably jumping the gun just a bit to announce a sequel to a sequel that's at least a year off in of itself. Still, cool. There's also an entry for Blue Dragon 2, which is a nice discovery. A friend and I both hoped there would be another one, we just can't get enough of strictly turn-based JRPGs...unfortunately a rapidly disappearing genre.

Tony Hawk, Funky DS games, and Stupid People

Last night I "beat" Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, which is to say I have accomplished the minimum number of goals to reach the final task in the list of events that loosely represents a story. I would love to be able to say that I'm just getting started on knocking more goals out, but I'm really not that sure about that this time. Proving Ground is a lot of fun and follows the perfect control and story scheme laid down by Project 8, but damn it's harder. I'll definitely run through more events in general, but I don't know how much further I'll get overall.

Check this out whether you own a DS or not because it's damn impressive either way. It's an upcoming FPS named "Moon," and the 3D engine is absolutely incredible for a hand-held system with two low-power ARM processors. The DS definitely had a weak launch with a lot of skepticism concerning the touch screen, but now that it has established itself there are some companies constantly pushing the system much further than anyone originally thought possible. I mean, BioWare is bringing Mass-freaking-Effect to the DS. There are no details as to what kind of game it will be or how it will look, but I trust BioWare to do something stupendous. They're thinking of using the DS game to keep interest in the franchise high, and you have to step up to the plate to meet a goal like that. Read the comments at the bottom if you have time - I find it absolutely hysterical that some people actually think BioWare is going to try porting the original game.

A Small Change in Plans

I've decided to do something slightly different with this review blog. Lately I've had so much on my plate that I simply haven't been able to muster up the time, energy, or concentration to write reviews of either bad OR good games. The infrequent posting schedule makes having a separate column for both good and bad games outright laughable. The one-sentence reviews were an easy out, but I can't do that more than once or twice in a blue moon without making the entire concept of a review blog pretty pointless.

I have decided therefore to orient this particular one to regular posts as well as reviews. I'll be posting my informal thoughts on video games I'm playing or news I've read, a task much more likely to be completed on a regular basis. I do after all have a journal but feel posts of that nature don't really belong there, so I'll kill two birds with one stone and put them here.