Month: November 2006

I’ve still got way too many PS2 games to get through before even thinking about the PS3…

Radiata Stories (PS2) – A traditional Japanese RPG in many ways. I kept thinking to myself that it was a bit too cutesy and simplistic for my tastes, and yet I couldn’t stop playing it for a while. Its main feature is that there are well over 100 different NPCs you can recruit, each one a little sidequest in itself, and I guess that triggers the obsessive-compulsive in me.

There’s a branching storyline, so you have to play through it twice to get the whole story, but once you’ve beaten it once you can carry over a lot of your skills, equipment, and friend list to the second game, so it goes much quicker. Thank goodness, because I’m already approaching the 50 hour mark on my first time through…

Super Monkey Ball Deluxe (PS2) – After playing Marble Blast Ultra on the 360, a search for similar games led me to this series, where the single-player game has the same basic premise: lead yourself (in this case a, uh, monkey in a ball) through an obstacle course to the goal line within the time limit. The SMBD courses tend to be a lot shorter, with only a one minute clock versus MBU’s multi-minute courses, but there’s a lot more of them and a greater variety of obstacles. There are also a bunch of minigames that are fun to fool around with for a bit, but you really need multiple players to get the most fun out of them.

Its only major flaw is that the graphics are a bit disappointing in the PS2 version. Even though the courses have fairly simple geometry and detail, the jagged edges and swimming textures can make it a bit difficult to tell what’s coming up in the distance. I probably should have gotten the Xbox version instead, but it seems to be harder to find.

Midnight Club III DUB Edition Remix (PS2) – A solid enough arcade-ish racing game, with plenty of competition, lots of city to see, and no cheesy storyline that gets annoying fast like nearly every other racing game nowadays. I probably won’t put much time into it though, just because there are so many other, newer racing games coming.

Tiger Woods ’07 (X360) – I hadn’t played a golf game in a very long time (since, um, Links 386 sometime in the early ’90s?), so I figured it was about time I caught up. I passed on the ’06 version due to bad word-of-mouth — it sounded like a rush job to hit the launch date of the 360 and had very few courses — but the ’07 version seems to be caught up again.

I don’t really know what the state-of-the-art in golf games is right now so I don’t really have anything to compare it to, but I’m still enjoying it a lot. Besides the regular tournaments, there are a lot of training exercises, minigames, and head-to-head challenges to mix things up. The currently-controversial advertisements and purchasable cheats aren’t too intrusive either, compared to other games, but that’s a whole other article…

The only slightly awkward thing is that since you build up a character’s golfing skills, it’s often not clear whether you screwed up a shot because you didn’t wiggle the stick properly, or if you just happened to ‘roll a critical miss’.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent (X360) – I hadn’t played a good stealth game since the Thief series, and I’d heard good things about previous entries in this series. I was torn between either getting it for the Xbox 360 or waiting for the PC version, but wound up getting it for the 360. Usually I prefer to play games with shooter elements on the PC, for the mouse/keyboard control combo, but since this is primarily a stealth game it’s not as important here. Plus, my PC is four years old now and would likely run it fairly slowly and/or at lower graphic detail levels.

I’m not too far into it yet, but it’s enjoyable so far. I prefer the ‘feel’ of the Thief setting and the tools that were available there, but you have some nifty special moves in this one, too.

Tomb Raider: Legend (X360) – And I hadn’t played a Tomb Raider game since the original (are you sensing a theme yet), so I picked up this latest installment. Well, that’s not entirely true, I did get Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness as part of some video card bundle, but I played it for all of five minutes before giving up due to horrible controls. Fortunately the controls are much improved in this version, and there were only a few spots where I died or failed to make a jump because the controls didn’t seem to respond properly.

It has all of the climb-jump-n-swing platforming you’d expect from a Tomb Raider game, with a few driving sequences and ‘traps’ where you have to push the displayed buttons in time to avoid failing. Those traps were a bit annoying since you’re often not expecting them and fail them the first time, but then they’re no problem on the second attempt. The story’s a bit cliche, but not horrible, and the scenery is very nice in spots.

It’s short though, and only took me a little over nine hours to complete. It was only $20 though, so it was still well worth it. Going back and getting the rest of the trophies, doing the time attack runs, and getting the other achievements would take longer, but I’ve got too many other games still waiting to be played.