08.01.07
There should be more fortean games
We’ve been playing Zelda on the Wii. It’s a nice game but I think the other half finds it irritating that Link re-sheaths his sword every time he goes out of one room, so that things can attack him and it takes a while for the ruddy sword to swing. I’ve taken to playing Lego Star Wars – Original Trilogy- on my DS (the battery life of which seems to get shorter every time I play) and found quite a few glitches. Great game, great fun and all, but it does annoy me that camera angle’s just plain bad. You can’t line your characters up always, so certain jumps have an element of your Lego character getting smashed to bits. It’s almost like playing on N64, as much as I liked that console. Still, 2player co-op play available, which is a good thing, seeing that not many games do that.
And we’ve also been playing that Futurama game on the PS2/3. That’s a fairly old game with fairly good reviews. Don’t listen to those reviews! It’s a fun game in so far as characterizations, graphics, storyline goes. But there’s plenty wrong with it too. I must say the game itself was infinitely stressful than anything (more so than fishing as Link, or going through Gnomeregan) I’ve done recently in the gaming world. In the end, even cheats couldn’t make us want to finish the game, so we cheated even more… unlocking all movies to see how the story went. I think the nail in this particular coffin was a timed race in the stages where Zoidberg makes his appearance. Apparently possible to complete on time, only if you don’t have one wrong step the entire way. Harmless looking roots could kill you on touch and the screen could on a few occasions be obscured by an overhanging branch or two (so inevitably you’d touch those roots). Nightmare! The game’s a great idea and all, but I couldn’t help thinking they’d not tested this properly.
FF Tactics A2(DS) will be making its way into stores across Japan on 25th October for approx. £25 (screenshots here). Mario Strikers Charged(Wii) is out 20th September for approx. £29. Smash Bros, by the way, has more news up about characters and items.
DQ IV, V, VI are all coming out on DS, starting from this winter. I suspect their official site will have further news available soon. DQ Swords meanwhile is already out in Japan… so give or take 6months for it to come here, you reckon? The review I read seems quite positive about the whole experience. Meanwhile, the Tales of… series has been announced to have four upcoming titles: Tales of Innocence (DS, end of 2007), Tales of Destiny – Director’s Cut- (PS2, start of 2008), Tales of Rebirth (PSP, start of 2008), and Tales of Symphonia – Knight of Ratatosk – (Wii, spring 2008).
Severely doubting 「ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 妖怪大運動会」 (pronounced: Ge-Ge-Ge no Kitaro: Youkai Dai Undoukai) would be released outside Japan, but so nostalgic! It’s from a fortean cartoon series by Shigeru Mizuki a few decades ago, about some ghosts, ghouls, and other folkloric creatures of Japan… this time having a sporting event. Screenshots look good though. (The boy is Kitaro, whose lineage is half ghost/half youkai (fortean creature), who has one eye his own. The other eye is his father, seen in the title shot.)