New year, New attempt

I suppose a new year is a good a reason as any to try posting regularly again. Games are what I speak of the most right now, so lets run with that.

* Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma (PS3)

Picked this one up on a whim. The online multiplayer is a nice option but not sure I'll ever get the chance to try it. I'd never played any of the current generation Ninja Gaiden games, so was curious about the insane difficulty that these games supposedly have. Well, after playing this game for about an hour, I'm going to say that it's not necessary hard, it's just frustrating, and on purpose. The control of your character is stiff and clumsy at times, and that seems like the major cause of any issues you might have. It seems either very difficult or impossible to dodge or move while you are attacking an enemy, and so I frequently find myself being stabbed in the back while I'm trying to kill someone. Had the controls allowed for a little more fluid transition between attacking, dodging, and defending, I think the game would still be very difficult, but in the sense of being challenging, not unfair.

* Borderlands (PS3)

Purchased at the insistence of my older brother and completely worth the investment. This is the first game that he and I have been able to play online cooperatively (mainly because he got a PS3 while I got an Xbox 360 intially).

Essentially Diablo 2 as a FPS, this game is a good deal of fun, and it does a good job of remaining challenging and enjoyable when played as either single player or multiplayer. My only major complaint is the final boss and the ending, which seemed to have absolutely no connection to the story or even to the setting of the game. No explanation or reasoning is given for it either before or afterwards, and that really bothered me. Others may not enjoy that the only replay value is either playing through again on higher difficulty or as a different character, but for someone that enjoyed playing through Diablo 2 (and other similar games) numerous times, I don't mind it.

* Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Xbox 360)

Ugh. I purchased this game way back in April or May of 2009 because I really wanted to play an RPG on the Xbox. A recent release, it seemed like a decent game based on initial impressions and some stuff I'd read. I had never really been that impressed with the Star Ocean series, but that was mainly due to an attempt to play one of the older PS1 versions several years ago. I figured it deserved another attempt. The later purchase of more coveted games later caused me to ignore this game for a long time until I at last picked it back up around November.

The biggest issues are the voice acting and the story. I don't mind English voice actors, but often times I prefer the Japanese simply because they're better at it and actually put effort into it. Sadly, this game was English voice only, and oh god, are they ever bad. The voices match the characters reasonably well, but the talent is lacking, and the cutscenes suffer for it. The lousy character animations don't help the cutscenes either. Movements are stiff and often comical.

The story is just rather blah, and the worst part is the main character is so utterly disinteresting that it's painful to watch. A typical young hero, typical sudden shove into a commanding role, typical heroic breakdown, and then his path/reasoning for getting out of that breakdown is so completely ridiculous that it just ruins it. I feel like if I had played previous Star Oceans that it would be more interesting because certain story elements obviously reference stuff from previous games, but overall the story is just poorly written and executed.

The battle system takes a good bit of getting used to, and honestly it's not that bad. A few minor changes is really all it would have needed to remove some of the minor frustrations. Other annoyances are the usual collecting/crafting/finding side quests and systems that nearly every game feels the need to include these days. Developing recipes for crafting seems very random, and actually crafting something often uses items that either require pointless grinding, or just aren't available until very very late in the game.

And final nail in the coffin? Late in the game on Disc 3, you have the ability to return to previous areas/planets to finish quests, find items, whatever. However, counter to all logic and precedence, going to a previous planet requires inserting Disc 1 or Disc 2. Yea, there's no chance in hell I'm going to start disc-swapping over and over just to finish a little bit of content. So that's the end of that.

* For the Future

* Re-visit games I haven't touched in several months for varying reasons. Mass Effect, BioShock, and Valkyria Chronicles are the major ones.
* May pick up Zelda: Spirit Tracks and Assassin's Creed 2.
* And hopefully I'll be able to get into the beta for Final Fantasy XIV. No idea when that starts, but my application is in, so we'll see.