The games I’m playing currently, Pokemon White and Nier, are ones that I think I’ll be sticking with for quite a while yet, so I think today I’d like to talk about a couple that I finished: Splatterhouse and Demon’s Souls.  Let’s get Splatterhouse out of the way first, because I’ve got a lot to say about the other one.

Splatterhouse isn’t exactly what I’d call a “good” game, but it isn’t a bad one, either.  Really, the title says it all… or at least, it does until about the last level.  I picked this game up on the cheap from Amazon, despite the protestations of my friends, because I really just wanted a game where I could more-or-less mindlessly rip the guts out of things and watch them explode.  Splatterhouse definitely delivers on that front; it pretty much revels in its over-the-top gore, which is exactly what you’d expect, and what I imagine most people who have any real desire to play the game are looking for anyway.  Oh, and your “side-mission” is to collect shreds of naked pictures of your girlfriend — she’s apparently left them lying around so that you can follow them and find her.  No joke.  That’s how they justify it.

Where I started having problems with Splatterhouse was when they left the house.  Um… has anyone checked the title of the game recently?  I have NO interest in a back-story.  If I want a story, I’ll play an RPG.  I just want to watch monsters go *squish,* and the only story I need for that goes something like this: 1. Bad guy took your girlfriend into this house!  2. There are monsters in the house!  3. Kill the monsters and save your girlfriend!  4. ???  5. Profit!  I don’t care why the bad guy took my girlfriend, or why there are monsters — that’s far too complicated for a game that has an achievement called “Barrels of Blood.”  I suppose some people might quibble over lack of a story (such as it is), though, and it’s really a minor gripe for me, so I can forgive it.

Also, there is Cthulhu.

The biggest gaming surprise I’ve had in a while came to me this month in the form of Demon’s Souls.  I was actually scared to start this game.  It’s been on my shelf forever, but I’d heard such terrifying tales of its brutal difficulty that I never quite got up the courage to begin.  I think what it came down to was that I doubted that I had the patience or the skill to get through it; I *should* like Demon’s Souls, right?  After all, even if Atlus didn’t develop it, they put their name on it, and that’s usually a pretty good guarantee as far as I’m concerned.  What really threw me, though, was that the other thing I’d heard, almost universally, was how good the game was.  If it was just a really hard game with no redeeming qualities, I could safely skip it and not feel bad about it in the slightest.  But that wasn’t the case; it showed up on Game of the Year lists for 2009 left and right, and the people I knew personally who had played it had given it glowing reviews (even if they personally hadn’t gotten very far).  If I didn’t — or worse yet, couldn’t — like Demon’s Souls, what would that say about me as a gamer?

What finally kicked me over the edge was peer pressure.  I’m easily swayed.  A friend basically bullied me into starting the game, and you know what?  It’s all true.  Yes, the game is brutally, unforgivingly difficult.  The other side of that, though, is that if you mess up and die, it’s because YOU messed up and died, not because the game arbitrarily killed you for some imagined transgression.  It’s a rare game that can require this kind of skill and still make me want to keep playing, because despite my initial misgivings, every death (and there were a great many of them) made me say to myself not “oh, that’s some bullshit,” but rather “oh, I know what I did wrong… I can fix that!”  …and then immediately rush back in to do better.  It’s not impossible, it just requires patience, attention, and a lot of pattern recognition.  Frankly, I can’t believe I made it all the way through.

Please note: I am not in any way suggesting that if you don’t like Demon’s Souls, or have no desire to play it due to its difficulty or to anything else about it, that it reflects on your ability as a gamer.  What I am saying is that if it appeals to you, don’t shy away from it for the same reasons I did.  It’s beautiful, and demanding, and I can’t remember the last time I felt as great a sense of accomplishment in completing a game as I did when I finally killed the last boss in Demon’s Souls.  I only hope that when Dark Souls comes out later this year, it will offer the same amazing experience as its sibling.

In progress: Nier (PS3); Pokemon White (DS); Phantasy Star Portable (PSP)

Completed: Dead Space 2 (360); Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack In Time (PS3); Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS); Demon’s Souls (PS3); Splatterhouse (360)

New: Brutal Legend (360); Radiant Historia (DS); Knights Contract (360); Pokemon White (DS); Okamiden (DS)

I knew I wanted to play through Extraction between Dead Space 1 and 2; it just so happened that I purchased a new TV in between these games, though, so it was kind of difficult to push through.  This wasn’t because Extraction is a bad game–quite the contrary.  I really enjoyed it, and even though some might disparage it for being “only” a rail shooter, I thought it served as a perfect example of how the Wii’s waggle controls can be implemented without feeling shoehorned-in.  Since movement is taken care of for you, the basic mechanic is more or less a light gun game (and in fact, I did use the Perfect Shot, which I’ll talk about in a minute).  Of course, since it’s Dead Space, you do have a few other options beyond shooting, such as grabbing things with your telekinesis and slowing enemies with stasis (which becomes an almost automatic action fairly quickly, even given that I barely used stasis at all in combat through the first game).  I think that what impressed me the most about this game was its fidelity to the series; the developers could easily have set events in a completely different area and kept it relatively unconnected so that continuity wasn’t an issue beyond broad, sweeping strokes, but instead, you spend a great amount of time in the Ishimura–and it IS the Ishimura.  Sure, it doesn’t look quite as pretty on the Wii as it did on the 360, but you will definitely recognize specific locations from Dead Space; I might not have noticed this in as much detail if I hadn’t played the original game so soon before, but I kind of wonder if the developers used the actual map here, because it matched up from what I remembered quite well.

Extraction isn’t perfect, of course.  I don’t know whether it was a function of my own slow reflexes or an honest problem with the gameplay (I tend to think a bit of both), but I was occasionally really frustrated by being able to see a pickup for only a second before it whizzed by, with no way for me to turn back and snag it.  Telekinesis is fairly forgiving in this regard (you don’t have to be pointing directly at something to grab it), but even still, I missed a lot of stuff, which wasn’t a huge issue most of the time, but if I’m in the middle of a big fight and about to die, would I really not even turn my head to grab the health pack I just left in the dust?  In a similar vein, there was one section where I died a couple of times to an enemy just out of my field of vision because a glitch blocked it from moving with a section of pipe, and I couldn’t move on until I killed it (impossible, because I couldn’t hit it) or it killed me (which apparently WAS possible).  Thankfully, this seemed only to be an issue in that one spot.

Coming off the high that was Extraction, I decided that I wanted to get as much of the Dead Space experience as I possibly could, and since I’d already seen the animated Dead Space:  Downfall (and Aftermath isn’t available on Netflix Instant Watch yet), that left Dead Space: Ignition, which I downloaded from XBLA and played in about an hour.  I kind of wish I hadn’t.  Ignition is presented as a motion comic within which are interspersed three different “hacking” minigames that, playing as a repair engineer on the ship, you must solve to keep the plot moving along.  As I mentioned, the whole thing is quite short, although you do have the option of replaying the missions to go along different paths, and it’s inexpensive, priced at 400 MS spacebucks, so I guess I don’t feel totally cheated, but I really could have done without this little side venture.  One of the minigames was insanely frustrating, one could be completely solved by the exact same method every time, and the third… well, the third was okay.  In comparison, at least.  There wasn’t even a great deal of story to be had, except for the connecting factor of your main character, whose name I have already forgotten, but who turns out to be the guy whose face falls off in the beginning of Dead Space 2.

Did I mention a dude’s FACE falls off at the beginning of Dead Space 2?  IT TOTALLY DOES!

Dead Space 2 is very scary.  It’s different than the way in which the first Dead Space was scary, though.  Dead Space 1 got into your head; there was no shortage of jump-scares, but they were laced through with a slowly growing sense of dread and paranoia that kept you inching around corners and shooting at dead bodies to make sure they weren’t getting back up.  In Dead Space 2, there are hordes of zombie children and raptors.  ZOMBIE RAPTORS.  It’s as horrifying as it sounds.  My first ten minutes of Dead Space 2 went something like this: after watching a dude’s face fall off a few inches from my own, I was let loose in a straitjacket with no weapon and the prompt that right bumper=RUN.  Then a bunch of necromorphs started trying to rip out my entrails.  By force of habit, I clicked my right thumbstick to find out which WAY I should run, only to find that there was no navigation beacon available yet.  I think this might have been the most terrifying thing of all.  This left me directionless in the creature-filled dark, with no arms.  I tried to run the way that seemed most logical, only to find myself in a corner with the nasties RIGHT BEHIND ME.  Well, I thought (as I watched Isaac’s limbs being sundered from his still-screaming torso), maybe I wasn’t supposed to survive that.  Could it have been a dream?  Nope.  I respawned in the same place as before, and again told to run.  I die a LOT more in Dead Space 2 than I did in 1.  It’s simply more in-your-face, and although I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it does require a different mindset; some might say that it’s not even a horror game anymore, but simply a straight action-shooter.  I don’t agree; I definitely think the horror elements are there, they’re just implemented differently, and I am still terrified.  We’ll see if this continues.

In progress: Dead Space 2 (360); Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS)

Completed: Trinity Universe (PS3); Dead Space: Extraction (Wii); Dead Space: Ignition (XBLA)

New: Hyperdimension Neptunia (PS3)

With that particular free-time-sucker taken care of, I actually made leaps and bounds of progress in other games this time around.  Who knew you could actually get things done when you’re not obsessively playing 70-hour JRPGs?  I certainly didn’t.

My first order of post-P3P play was getting back into Metroid Prime 2, a game that I had ostensibly been playing this entire time, but that in reality, I hadn’t touched since getting my ass back into Tartarus.  Going back to a game like this after a break tends to be a bit difficult for me; not only do I have to remember where I was and what I was doing, I also have to make sure that I don’t mess up the (to me, at least) freakishly complicated control scheme and end up shooting myself in the foot (so to speak).  I was, after all, coming from a game where pressing X was about the most complicated thing you ever had to do, so this was a bit of a leap.  Thankfully, the strategy guide that I kept glued to my lap throughout the course of the game made the whole navigation thing much easier, so all I really had to acclimate to was the controls, and after an embarrassing twenty minutes or so, that wasn’t so bad either.  I mentioned, when I was playing this before, that I didn’t particularly care for the whole light world/dark world mechanic, and while I never really got to like it, it does become less of an annoyance as the game goes on and you obtain more options that allow you to disregard the more annoying bits (like health-sapping).  If I hadn’t had the strategy guide for this game, I honestly think I would have lost patience with the portal-hopping that becomes more and more important and less and less intuitive as you get closer to the end; I’m sure Metroid purists would tell me that that’s just part of the exploration phase, but I’m just too impatient.  I don’t want to throw a controller, I just want to get the damn visor.  So I guess I’m a cheater.  Meh.

The next game I started after Metroid came to a close was Dead Space (yes, the original).  I picked up the collector’s edition of Dead Space 2 shortly after it came out, largely because I simply got hooked by the hype train (predictably), but I never actually finished the first game; in fact, I didn’t put much time into it at all.  So, in order to abide by my own rules, I started up a save from scratch and started scouring the Ishimura.  I love survival horror games when they’re done well, and Dead Space certainly is; however, I am also a giant baby when I play them.  I scream and drop controllers a lot, because I am extremely easily startled, and Dead Space does a lot of startling.  I got progressively more and more paranoid as I played, both in the game and out of it; while Isaac spent a lot of time shooting dead bodies before they could get up and staring unblinkingly at vents, I had a positively horrifying trip to my dark, cold storage unit where a falling box nearly gave me a heart attack.  It didn’t help that the lights in the hall were flickering, either.

Even though I don’t really “do” shooters, I’ve had one thing mercilessly programmed into me by both those I have played and by years of zombie movies: you gotta shoot ‘em in the head.  Unfortunately, abiding by that maxim in Dead Space will get you very dead very fast, and as bad as I am at shooting things in the head, limbs are worse.  Don’t get me wrong; I really like the mechanic, but it’s definitely more difficult to line up a shot that will take off a leg when it’s flailing around and (usually) running directly at you.  The sights on the plasma cutter helped with this, which is probably why I exclusively ended up using that and the Ripper in my travels.  With inventory management being a bit of an issue, I found that deciding on a minimal number of weapons and sticking with those eliminated the need to have a bunch of ammo for different things taking up space.  That, and I just like to cut things up with giant flying saw blades.

I think my favorite thing about Dead Space, though, is the fact that it takes pity on the directionally-challenged, like me, and actually implements a navigation system that WORKS.  Rather than simply putting a blip on your radar and expecting you to figure out what exactly is going on, you can, at any time, call up a beam of light that will run directly towards your next objective.  It even adjusts itself as you follow along, so it’s not leading you directly into walls or anything like that.  I really appreciated this; it might have felt too linear to some, but I get lost really easily, and this felt like an unobtrusive way to get that under control.

I believe I’m going to play Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii before I get into Dead Space 2, but before I do that, I decided I need a break, so I started up Trinity Universe for the PS3, a game about which I actually knew precious little, save that it’s a JRPG that has bright, flashy Japanese artwork on the box.  That’s usually enough for me.  Now… knowing my predilection towards Persona and others of that ilk, you should take me very seriously when I say that, as of now, I think I am prepared to name this the most Japanese game I have ever played.  I know, right?  Watch this trailer and tell me I’m wrong.  As far as I can tell, my current mission is to knock floating objects out of orbit by traversing the dungeons inside them and destroying their gravity cores; if I don’t, the protagonist (the Demon Dog/God King) has to be turned into a gem in order to protect the town.  There is a second storyline featuring a Valkyrie who has some as-of-now nebulous connection to my current character, but I don’t really know what her deal is yet.  The gameplay is pretty standard JRPG fare; it’s turn-based, with some additions such as the ability to execute attack chains and special moves depending on how you set up your basic attacks.  Dungeons are, for the most part, short and sweet, which I like; you do end up going back to the same places time after time, but the areas are small enough that it doesn’t feel tedious.  There are a bunch of features that I haven’t messed with yet (and may not at all), such as a monster colosseum and a crafting system that I’ve only given cursory attention to; really, there’s an almost overwhelming amount of stuff here, and my biggest problem with this game so far has been that I’m not really sure how to tell what’s important or significant and what’s not.  It’s definitely…. interesting, though.  If you play with the sound off.  Otherwise it’s a little annoying.

In progress: Trinity Universe (PS3); Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS)

Completed: Persona 3 Portable (PSP); Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Wii); Dead Space (360)

New: Dead Space 2 (360); Lord of Arcana (PSP); Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (DS)

*sniff*

Even with the obsessive love of all things Atlus that I have been carefully cultivating over the last several years, I really didn’t think that I was going to get quite as into Persona 3 Portable as I have.  I was, of course, deluding myself, but most people have been kind enough to not point that out to me.  Anyway, aside from maybe an hour or two of playtime split between Metroid Prime 2 and Golden Sun, it’s literally all I’ve played since the last time I updated this column.  I haven’t even touched WoW, which should tell you a bit about how devoted I’ve been.  Now, after sinking 80-90 hours into the PS2 version of Persona 3 (120-ish if you include the FES content in that total), you might wonder why I have taken it upon myself to rack up another playthrough of that length, particularly when I have so many other worthy titles currently collecting dust on my shelves.  All I can tell you is that P3P is NOT the same game as P3.  It’s better.  A lot better.  Well, maybe that’s not ALL I can tell you…

1. The female main character is more than just a skin. Putting a female main character option in P3P seemed like a pretty cool idea, and it was one of the reasons (read as: justifications) I was really interested in giving the reboot a shot even though I had already sunk so much time into the console version.  All too often, though, this option is little more than a cosmetic change.  The graphics are different, and maybe you’ll get a few altered dialogue options, but things basically follow the same path.  In P3P, however, huge chunks of the game change depending on whether you choose the female or the male main character; this is most notable in the social links.  You would expect the obvious change to be that the romance options are different, and this is certainly the case, but that’s not where it ends; some social links are changed, some are absent, and some are completely new.  My current favorite is the Strength link, which was the sports team manager in P3, and is now Koromaru (quite possibly my favorite team member, because HE DOESN’T TALK).

2. You can use fast travel. Remember how you used to have to haul ass all the way across town every time you wanted to go from place to place?  Remember how it was a lot easier to just hit the damn square button in P4?  Well, now you can do that here as well.  This is balanced a bit by the fact that you don’t actually walk around in any given location (aside, of course, from the dungeons themselves); rather, people and things of interest have icons on them that you must click on to interact.  Sometimes this is nice, because you can kind of take in everything at once and see, for instance, if there are any social link folks in the area who might be down for some hanging out, but it admittedly takes a bit away from the overall experience (they also took away the animated cutscenes).  Given the size of the game, I suppose there had to be a few cutbacks, so while this is a bit of a downer, I’m okay with it overall.

3. You can control your party directly. This is the biggie.  Anyone who has spent a large amount of time playing Persona 3 has had at least one moment when he or she has screamed outright at a party member who has done something mind-blowingly stupid, because you do not directly tell them what to do, only what general battle tactics to use.  This was the biggest improvement P4 made over P3; the ability to give direct commands took away the need to sit, fingers crossed, through a major battle, hoping that Mitsuru would remember that people need to be HEALED a bit more than enemies need to be CHARMED.  Not that that ever happened to me, you understand.  Anyway, P3P takes a cue from P4 and adds this option to your tactics.  I think this change alone would have been enough to get me to play again, honestly.  You can also equip your party members without actually having to talk to them, which is not only handy when shopping for stuff, but also a lot less annoying.  Dear Yukari: just take the goddamn bow and SHUT UP.  And heal me.  Bitch.

4. Dungeons are a lot more streamlined. I often feel that the fighting part of Persona games is just something I have to do in order to have more time to social link.  It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that social links tend to be more addictive.  It’s like pausing your game of Sims to go play Pokemon for an hour or so; they’re both great, it’s just a major gear-switch.  That’s why I’m really pleased by the way the dungeons have been made more convenient for serial social-linkers like myself in P3P.  I recall, in P3, that I would dungeon-crawl in smaller chunks than I do in P3P; a set amount of floors in Tartarus open up at a time, but long before you could hit that wall on your first foray into newly-available territory in P3, you were basically forced to stop, because you would run out of precious SP, or your party members would become fatigued and whiny.  In P3P, though, my play style has changed drastically; although Fuuka and your party members will still bitch about being exhausted, they never seem to actually get the “Tired” status that affects their combat, and the SP problem is solved by allowing you to pay for healing at the save point in the lobby (not as expensive as Fox, but also…. no Fox, which is very very sad).  The removal of these limitations usually means that when a new block of floors opens up in Tartarus, I go straight through in one visit, warping out periodically to save and heal.  I usually return once or twice to rescue the people who somehow get lost there (another new feature contrived, I expect, to keep you coming back to the dungeon now that your actual progress is faster) or to fulfill Theo’s requests (Theo is Margaret’s brother; apparently you can choose either of them, so obviously I went with the dude).  This way, I probably spend about the same amount of time in Tartarus as I did before, but it’s all condensed into much fewer visits, leaving me more nights to stat-boost or social link.  I’m a fan.

5. You can personalize your Personas. Yes, you will still spend a large amount of time re-rolling your fusions to get the skills you want.  However, you now have the added benefit of skill cards, which can be given to you by other characters as rewards, purchased from the antique store, or even gained from your existing Personas when they reach a given level.  This means that, with some limitations, you can give your Personas pretty much any ability you want, as long as you have the card to do so.  I’m sure this could be used/exploited way more than I have done, but I’m actually perfectly content with the benefit I’ve discovered, which is giving Invigorate 3 to pretty much every Persona I can (and then making sure it’s passed on via fusion).  I never run out of SP, and it’s awesome.

I guess this sort of turned into a Five Things, didn’t it?  SNEAK ATTACK!  Well, since it’s the only thing I’ve played, I feel like it’s justified, but I…. okay, I was going to say that I promise I’ll talk about other things next time, but I probably can’t do that.  I promise I’ll try?  That sounds good.

In progress: Persona 3 Portable (PSP), and technically Metroid Prime 2 (Wii) and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS), I GUESS.

Completed: none

New: Kingdom Hearts: ReCoded (DS)

I don’t do well writing straight-up reviews, not because I necessarily have trouble with the form or the content, but more because I just don’t play things in a timely fashion 99% of the time.  Could I post a review of Metroid Prime?  Sure, but who would really care?  I mean…. Elaine might, but only so she could monitor me for any negative terminology and soundly beat me if any showed up.  (I….kid?  I think?)  However, since I do have a project–a resolution, if you will–in progress, I’m resurrecting the ol’ journal-style update system so that I have something pushing me along besides my list and you have something to read and scoff at when I start lagging behind… or just get stuck on Persona forever, which is what pretty much happened this week.  Surprise!

I’ve actually already completed two games this year, putting me pretty much on track for my “game-a-week” goal…which is good, because I’m pretty sure the ones I’m playing now are going to take a while to complete, so I’m going to get a bit behind already.  Oh well.  I started playing Little Big Planet on New Year’s Day, because I figured that since the second one is due out this month, I should probably get on the bus and at least give it a go.  What I found is that LBP is a completionist’s dream…and nightmare.  Each pre-loaded level comes packed with a ton of stuff to gather: new fabrics, costumes, props, and scenery abound.  You can use these assets to customize your Sackcreature as you like (in my case, with pigtails, a halo, fairy wings, and nasty sharp pointy teeth), and also to trick out your “pod,” which is where you go when you’re not out traversing the galaxy.  These things, however, comprise only a tiny, tiny part of what makes LBP special; the pre-loaded levels are absolutely insignificant compared to the number of user-created ones you can obtain from PSN.  I didn’t even touch this feature, because I suspected that if I did, I wouldn’t stop.  I’d keep roaming forever, becoming furious when I encountered levels that lacked quality, but allowing that fury to fuel my ever-intensifying search for the diamonds glittering among the coal.  It’s extremely cool that this kind of play exists, and it’ll be interesting to see how LBP2 refines it, but honestly…it’s just not *for* me.  So, I played the pre-mades and moved on.  On its own merits, this is a fun (if not particularly challenging) little platformer; it’s not put together as well as some, perhaps, but its other features are its true focus anyway, so I can forgive a few quirks.

If you follow me on Twitter (and if not, WHY NOT?), you may remember the sad tale of my silver Ratchet and Clank-era PSP, which died a tragic death a short while ago after three lovely years.  I replaced it with the new God of War-bundled 3000 model, which, aside from being pretty damn sexy, also comes with God of War: Ghost of Sparta, a game that I would have purchased anyway, given my enjoyment of the PSP’s first installment, Chains of Olympus.  Having recently played God of War 3, I wanted to go through this as well while it was fresh in my mind, and you know what?  Ghost of Sparta is better.  GoW3 is, no doubt, an amazing game, and gorgeous to boot, but where it would sometimes frustrate me and feel like it was running itself in circles, Ghost of Sparta…. didn’t.  I don’t think this was a function of difficulty, but rather of how the games differ in their setup.  GoW3 felt like I just got stuck a lot, and I don’t mean stuck as in “I don’t know what to do,” but rather stuck as in you spend a whole lot of time mucking around the same area before you can move on to somewhere else.  Ghost of Sparta felt like I was moving through my environment and making progress, whereas GoW3 felt like I was being shuttled between set pieces.  Beautiful, meticulously-constructed set pieces, mind you, but set pieces nonetheless.  My only real complaint with Ghost of Sparta was that the magic felt clunky and tacked-on; this wasn’t a major thing for me, given that I really only used it when they made me, but there you go.  Otherwise, I was very impressed, and glad this was the game I used to break in my new system.

I never made it through the first two Metroid Prime games when they were released on the GameCube; this wasn’t necessarily because I didn’t want to, but more because I tried and just never got the hang of what seemed to me to be a completely impenetrable control scheme.  Two things changed between then and now: one, I’ve been playing a lot more shooters recently and have gotten more practice handling button configurations beyond the “just press X” style that a confirmed JRPGer is most comfortable with, and two, the Metroid Prime Trilogy was released on the Wii, with re-vamped controls that seemed to make a bit more sense to me.  I did play Prime 3 when it first came out, and I had markedly less trouble with the controls than I seemed to remember from my first round of Prime excursions, so I wanted to give the other two a shot before I dove into Other M.  As of now, I’ve finished Prime and am working my way through Prime 2.  There’s still a lot to keep track of, control-wise, so there is a bit of a learning curve, particularly if, as I am, you’re a bit slow on the shooty-shooty front.  However, sticking it out this time is proving to be pretty rewarding; I’m not so sure I like Prime 2 as much as I liked the first, but this is largely because of the whole “light world/dark world” thing that’s central to the storyline.  Basically, you (as Samus) are tasked with returning power to the light side of a planet by traveling to its dark counterpart and stealing it back.  The trouble is that when you’re on the dark side, energy is constantly leached from you if you stand in the toxic atmosphere for too long.  For a game that prides itself on puzzle-solving and such, having to constantly worry about whether you’re standing in a light bubble that’s consistent or one that’s going to collapse if you pause for too long just seems like a gimmicky hassle.  I recently gained the Dark Suit, which slows down the rate at which the atmosphere will damage you, so I’m hoping this makes things less annoying.  Avoidance of hazards is one thing, but there’s no way you CAN avoid the dark miasma all the time; sometimes you just have to grin and get slowly digested alive by it, which is why, I think, I have a problem.  Otherwise, the basic structure matches up with that of the first Prime, so aside from pushing through the “dark world” sections, I’m enjoying myself so far.

I never played the original Golden Sun games for the GBA, I think because I had it in my mind that they were SRPGs…. and you know how I feel about those.  (Hint: Not good.)  I might have to track them down, though (I mean, if I ever get a GBA again…), because I’m really loving the new one, Dark Dawn, so far.  It almost plays like a cross between Final Fantasy and Pokemon; you’re on a quest to save the world, blah blah, blah… but on the way, you collect these awesome little critters called Djinni that you can equip to your party members, allowing them to perform special attacks in battle and then summon even bigger monsters who will crush your opponents with even bigger special attacks.  Oh, and you also have magic powers of your own.  You know, just as an aside.  I’m about two hours into the game at this point, so, you know… still kind of in tutorial mode.  I suspect I will have more to say about this next time.

I am also playing Persona 3 Portable.  I don’t think I can talk about that yet.

In progress: Metroid Prime 2 (Wii); Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS); Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable (PSP)

Completed: Little Big Planet (PS3); God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PSP)

New: Lost In Shadow (Wii)

 With so many new shiny games staring me in the face right about now, you’d think that I would sit down with one of them.  Instead, I decided to power through Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I’ve been ignoring for far too long.  I picked it up right after it was released on the strength of the demo, but then it sort of got pushed aside until now.  I know a lot of people really got into the challenges and solving all of the Riddler’s clues, but the only ones I really did were the ones that I found along the path of the main story.  Arkham is a very cool setting, but I just didn’t find it compelling enough to wander around with all of the bad guys gone.  Without going much out of my way, I finished the game at around 65% completion, meaning that there’s plenty more to do for anyone who finds themself wanting to continue, but at 8-10 hours, I felt like I got what I wanted out of it.  I really enjoyed thrashing ridiculous numbers of enemies at once, although a few of the “armed dude” rooms were a bit frustrating (I’ll never get tired of stringing up baddies from gargoyles, though).  My one real complaint with the game was the points, particularly near the end of the game, where the travel seemed to be artificially lengthening the gameplay.  I understand that in some parts, it’s necessary to the storyline to have you travel through the same areas more than once, but I think the addition of some kind of (even limited) quick travel routes would have been nice.  Overall, I had a really good time with this, however, and I’d recommend it without hesitation, particularly if you’re a Batman fan to begin with (or if you watched the 90’s cartoon, from which several of the voice actors are used). 

In a second sitting, and with the help of my trusty comrades Elaine and Dan, plus Chris “Lefty” Brown of The Married Gamers,  I finished ODST this week as well.  On Heroic!  I have achievements and everything!  As you can tell, this is sort of a big deal for me, having only experienced my Haloz on the easiest setting thus far.  I’m still not very good at shooters, but that’s why co-op gaming is so great; I get to play with my friends, and I don’t have to be very good at the game, just good enough that I don’t get everyone killed (and maybe shoot some manz myself every once in a while).  With SOME PEOPLE setting OTHER PERFECTLY INNOCENT PEOPLE on fire with flamethrowers, I don’t think I was the most dangerous player on the field anyway.  In a sort of related vein, I started playing Borderlands last night with another group of friends, and even though things were moving a bit fast for me due to the fact that they’d all played before, I still had a lot of fun.  Honestly, I’m not so sure I’d like Borderlands if I tried it single-player, but co-op is making it ridiculously awesome. 

Yet another game that I finished this week (I know, right??) is Uncharted; let me get this out of the way and say that yes, I did think that the “twist” I’ve heard so much about is pretty fucking dumb.  If I wanted to be playing Resident Evil, I would be playing Resident Evil.  I didn’t hate it so much that it ruined the game for me, but I really would have had a more favorable impression overall if the gameplay had stayed more consistent and not gone off to Crazytown just when I’d finally gotten the hang of things.  As soon as I can pry the second installment away from one of my friends, I’ll be playing it, and if what I’ve heard is true and it really is better than the first, I really can’t wait.  I know it sounds trite to say that it’s like playing a movie, but that’s really what it was; the story is fantastic, the characters are relatable, and the whole thing is beautiful to watch.  I’m glad I let myself be badgered into this one.

When frustration finally drove me to put down Scribblenauts (probably for good), I picked up Professor Layton and the Sack of Oranges…. er, sorry, the Diabolical Box… instead.  It’s…. well, it’s more Professor Layton.  Different setting, different puzzles, same annoying little fucker of a sidekick that I sort of want to punt over the side of the train.  Anyway, my addiction to the first round of Layton’s adventures is pretty well documented, and even though I’ve only put about two hours into this one so far, I can already feel the sickness seeping back in.  I welcome it, actually.

Current backlog total: 100

Now playing: Borderlands (360); Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (DS); Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP)

New games added: Borderlands (360); Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time (PS3); Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop (DS); Nostalgia (DS); A Witch’s Tale (DS)

Games completed: Halo 3: ODST (360); Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3); Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3)

As I’m sure probably 99% of its purchasers did, I spent a good hour when I first began playing Scribblenauts simply sitting on the title screen summoning up various critters and making them fight each other to the death.  One thing that this game has in its favor is that the included vocabulary is truly impressive, even if things don’t always work quite the way you thought they would.  Once I got into the actual levels, however, things weren’t quite as fun.  They’re split into two sections: puzzle levels, wherein you must call up objects to fulfill certain conditions, and action levels, which require you to make your way through a level to obtain the star at the end.  I’ve found that I really enjoy the former, while the latter tend to be frustrating and clumsy.  I’m still trying to get through all of them, because the currency (”ollars”) that you earn is how you pay to unlock further levels, and I do want to get all of those opened up.  Once that’s done, I may defect to exclusively playing puzzle levels.  We’ll see.  Oh, and protip: when in a jam, most things can be solved by a jetpack and Cthulhu.  And although using chloroform is perfectly okay, the engine will not recognize any alcoholic beverage.  I tried to summon up a glass of wine and was soundly rebuked.

It’s been rather difficult to go to work or have a conversation with any PS3 owner in the past week or so without hearing a lengthy diatribe on how great Uncharted 2 is.  On one hand, I think this is fantastic, because the PS3 really needs the boost for their software now that they have that whole console thing sorted out properly, but on the other hand, it’s a little annoying to me personally because I haven’t played the first Uncharted and therefore am not particularly likely to start messing with the second.  That’s why I decided to play Uncharted (1): Drake’s Fortune.  So far, I’m enjoying the game quite a bit; the aiming can get a little clumsy, but I’m proving to be surprisingly adept at headshots (who knew?), and the fact that your health comes back as long as you can hide long enough for it to do so means that I don’t tend to get too frustrated.  The platforming bits only occasionally splatter me all over the rocks, but the checkpoints are frequent enough that it doesn’t really become an issue, and the hint system is well-timed so that they are offered generally just as I’m deciding that I’m lost.  The visuals are gorgeous, and the story is engaging; it’s nice to have a female non-lead who is fully capable of taking care of herself, as well.  I hear that it only gets better from here, so I’m looking forward to both the rest of this game and the entirety of the second once I’m done.  Fuck grenades, though.  I only tried that once.  Damn you, Sixaxis.  Damn you straight to hell.

Elaine and Dan took pity on me this week and decided to shepherd me through the ODST campaign; I’m actually pretty proud of myself for holding my own on Heroic, but I am definitely glad that I have help, because I’d get splattered if I tried this on my own (not to mention horribly, horribly lost).  Bungie tried something a little off-the-wall with the storytelling in this one, and for a story in a shooter, it isn’t bad; in fact, I think it’s pretty neat.  I think we’ll have it done in one more sitting, though, so hopefully my escorts can put up with a) me squealing every time I do something good and b) hearing “guys?  …I think I lost you again….” long enough for that to happen.  I’m not *that* bad, right?  (<3 you guys….)

Current backlog total: 101

Now playing: Scribblenauts (DS); Halo 3: ODST (360); Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3); Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP)

New games added: Half-Minute Hero (PSP)

Games completed: none

I probably would have finished Katamari Forever much more quickly than I did if it hadn’t been for the moon.  Yeah, that’s right.  The moon.  The moon has to be of a certain size before the King (well, in this case, it’s actually the Robot King) will allow it to take its proper place in the cosmos, of course, and I had some serious issues getting it big enough (that’s what she said).  Twice in a row, I went through the entire 15-ish minute level only to be thwarted at the last second by not being able to get the last 10 meters or so, which was incredibly frustrating.  I eventually emerged victorious, though, and completed the game not long after.  The penultimate level, by the way, is really kind of disturbing; having returned to his former fabulous self, the true King commands you to roll up the body of the Robot King, bit by bit, until you can roll up his heart (technically his reactor core, but it’s pretty much the same for a robot).  See, this is what I love about the Katamari series.  It’s SO adorable, but under that adorable, there’s a layer of fucked-up that they can get away with because of all the bright shiny colors.  Did anyone else notice that people scream when they get rolled up?  What about the massive property damage caused when everything gets lumped together?  And exactly what happens when stars and planets get sucked into that ball?  Massive destruction has never been so cute.

I continued to love Mario and Luigi as well, although towards the end of the game, there are a few parts that grate a bit.  The one that sticks out the most is the fact that the final boss fight took me TWO HOURS to complete.  That’s longer than the final boss fight in Persona 3 took (although granted, this one was a lot less perilous than that one).  I don’t know whether I was just lower level than I was supposed to be or what, but this really seemed excessive and out of keeping with the rest of the game.  Like any other fight in the game, all you really have to do is get the pattern down and then follow along until the enemy falls.  This is one of the instances where Mario and Luigi have to work together with Bowser, so of course there’s a different pattern for each battle scene, and after one false start where I died within the first few rounds, I didn’t have a problem with that.  I could have continued the fight indefinitely, and that’s what it felt like I was doing.  I even consulted an online faq at one point just to make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong because it was taking so long.  The only explanation I can really come up with is simply that I wasn’t doing enough damage, but given that I wasn’t having any trouble surviving and that I made it a point to fight as many random battles as possible during the game itself, I don’t think that should have been the case…. but what else could it be?  Anyway, I did finish the battle and the game, and that fight aside, I was very impressed overall.  I hope it isn’t another four years until the next!  (Probably will be, though…)

I briefly began Persona PSP this week as well, playing just long enough to get through the intro movies and get a quick look at the battle system and setup.  I’m not sure what I think just yet; it doesn’t feel quite the same, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and as I said, it was a short amount of playtime, so I’m hesitant to give impressions just yet.  I’m not a big fan of the first-person wandering, though.  The battles aren’t difficult to grasp, but they really do just dump you into the middle without any sort of tutorials or anything.  Normally I wouldn’t complain about this, and it’s not a huge complaint now, but with things like demon negotiations, it would have been nice to at least have the option to hear what exactly I’m supposed to be doing there.  I guess I’ll just have to mess with it some more and see what happens.

Current backlog total: 108

Now playing: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP); Wet (360)

New games added: Demon’s Souls (PS3); Halo 3: ODST (360); Wet (360); Dead Space: Extraction (Wii)

Games completed: Katamari Forever (PS3); Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS)

I think the thing that has surprised me the most about the game at this point is that you actually spend a great deal more time than I was expecting playing as Bowser rather than the plumbers.  This isn’t a bad thing, and it doesn’t mean that you *don’t* play as Mario and Luigi– some of the best fights are the ones in which you actually play as both (usually accomplished by having Bowser inhale something smaller and then having the boys beat it down once it’s in his body).  I was just a little surprised that they chose to put so much focus on Bowser when the series has traditionally focus mostly on the 0thers.  The basic mechanics of the battles stay mostly the same, though; rather than having jumps and hammers, Bowser fights with punches and flames, but it’s essentially the same idea.  Where the game really draws a distinction for itself is in the mini-games it utilizes to activate certain features of Bowser’s body from within to solve puzzles or add extra power to get through tough spots.  These, so far, have ranged from pumping up his muscles by batting electrical impulses into them (this one recurs, with minor changes, throughout the game), to fording a river of adrenaline to get him out from under a fallen castle, to stylus-based speedy digestion of a giant carrot in his stomach.  These side-activities offer an interesting break from the normal turn-based battles, keeping things interesting and showing just how creative the folks at AlphaDream can really be.  At this point, I’ve played about seven hours of the game, and I’m still completely enthralled with it.  That’s part of the reason I haven’t really put much time into other stuff this week…

I didn’t really finish Dissidia so much as I hit a giant brick wall.  I’m not a hundred percent sure how far you’re *supposed* to be able to get before you have to go level your character, but I made it to somewhere towards the end of Shade Impulse 3 (I assume there are five total, but I don’t really know).  I didn’t want to level; I just wanted to fight.  So, for my purposes, I’m finished… and this way I got to stop while it was still fun.  I think that’s fair.

I’m also still playing Katamari Forever, and I have one complaint (it’s not even a big one, because how can you really have big complaints about Katamari?).  I play these games because I want to roll things up into a giant ball.  It’s very simple.  It’s very silly.  I don’t have to think about it too hard.  This is why my least favorite levels have traditionally been the ones that have some sort of trick or gimmick to them: make the brightest-lit Katamari possible, for example, or roll up a cow or bear (but not just ANY cow or bear….).  The remastered levels that appear from the older games, by and large, seem to be of this latter type.  This isn’t universally true, but they do seem to appear with greater frequency than the simple “roll things until the Katamari is THIS big” type, which are what I prefer.  I guess the tricky levels are more unique, and so make more sense to be remade, but they can occasionally be frustrating to me, and Katamari should NEVER be frustrating.  As I said, a minor complaint, but there it is.  

Current backlog total: 106

Now playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS); Katamari Forever (PS3); Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP)

New games added: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS)

Games completed: Dissidia Final Fantasy (PSP)

So, as you might surmise, I have been hitting the Katamari pretty hard.  Really, why wouldn’t I?  It’s bright and shiny, the music is as infectiously adorable as ever, and the King of All Cosmos retains his creepy awesomeness.  Even more so now, actually, because now there’s a robot version of him as well…

Katamari Forever has two basic sections: there are the new levels, which were created specifcally for this game, and the recreated old levels, which are prettied-up versions of those featured in previous Katamari titles.  This might sound like a cheap bid to get more play out of stuff that’s already been done, but it really isn’t.  The levels look gorgeous, even on my crappy non-HD screen, and they fit into the (admittedly weird) story perfectly; you’re rolling around in the King’s head trying to “wake up” his memories (i.e. the old levels), which start out in black and white and gradually turn colorful the more you roll.  There isn’t exactly anything particularly groundbreaking in this iteration, but as far as I’m concerned, there didn’t need to be.  All I really want to do is wad stuff up into my life, damn it.  Success!

I’ve crossed the twenty-hour mark in Dissidia, which is much more content than I was anticipating getting out of the title, and I’m still having a lot of fun with it.  I’ve gotten through the storylines of the initial ten characters, and I’ve unlocked all of the bad guys as well.  I haven’t really messed with the arcade mode, but I think I’m going to go for that when I’m done with the rest of the story mode (which is where everyone comes back together to defeat the ultimate evil and blah blah blah…).  Like I’ve said before, the actual story isn’t all that important to me here; it’s stereotypical JRPG stuff slopped into a fighting frame.  Whatever.  The great part is that the stages and the bravery system make this different from a standard fighter, which is (I think) why I like it so much.  Some of the characters are more difficult to use than others; there definitely seem to be a few balance issues from what I’ve played.  However, I even grew into those that I had the most trouble with (FUCK Terra, for example) by the time I’d spent five boards with them.  In the end levels, you can choose your character, and I’m going with Cloud for the time being (don’t look at me that way, he was higher level than Squall).  I confess to taking a peek at the strategy guide to see if anything else unlocked, and it looks like there’s yet more after I finish the bit I’m in now, so we’ll see how long I can keep this up.

I haven’t quit Pokemon Platinum, but I have shelved it for the time being, because I really, really wanted to play Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.  I’m glad I did, because the game meets and surpasses the expectations that I had from playing the previous titles in the series (which rank among my favorite handheld titles to date).  It’s been nearly four years since the last M&L (Partners in Time), but I fell right back into the mechanics as though I’d never left.  There’s a new facet to the gameplay now, as you control not only the titular plumbers, but also Bowser himself, who contains essentially the rest of the cast in his tummy (and other bits).  There’s some neat interplay between the two scenarios, and I’m interested to see how that continues to develop (I’m only about two hours in at this point).  Overall, I’d say this is a must-get, particularly if you enjoyed any of the previous games in the series, including the Paper Marios (essentially its sister series).

Continuing on the track of games-I-should-have-played-many-years-ago-but-didn’t-because-shooters-scared-me, I recently borrowed The Orange Box from Elaine specifically so that I could play Portal.  I was a bit apprehensive about doing so, because even though every person I’ve ever talked to has sung the game’s praises, I get nervous about these types of puzzle games.  I know this makes me sound like a big baby, but I was afraid I’d get too frustrated trying to figure things out, and the fact that it’s a sort-of shooter (which is, as we know, NOT my usual genre of choice) would only make it worse.  I’m very glad that I was wrong.  Rather than getting frustrated, I actually found myself getting excited when the insight hit and I figured out how to get through a particularly troublesome area.  The writing is hilarious, the puzzles are creative, and the game is just the right length at around three hours (for me, anyway).  If you haven’t played Portal…. well, I think I was the only one left who hadn’t.  But, you know, do it.

Current backlog total: 106

Now playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS); Dissidia Final Fantasy (PSP); Katamari Forever (PS3)

New games added: Katamari Forever (PS3); Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP)

Games completed: Portal (360)