The Video Game Revue

Guitar Hero

Ah, where to start... well...

I'm going on vacation, so there won't be any activity here next week. No big deal there; this blog is generally pretty quiet anyway. As for the week after that, well, I'll have my Wii by then, so that'll be interesting (and hopefully fun.)

I'm about 16 hours into FF XII and loving every minute of it. My enthusiasm for the game has calmed a little, which has provided other games a chance to get a word in edge-wise (unfortunately, Disgaea 2 and Valkyrie Profile 2 weren't among them.) My plan from here out is to play FF XII at a steady pace of five to ten hours per week until I'm done with it, and I probably won't be "done" for a long time. I'm really impressed by the fact that FF XII has been able to keep me away from World of WarCraft, although after a couple of months of relatively steady play, I think that a bit of a break is in order. My Undead Priest is still only level 37, though.

I uncorked Trauma Center: Under the Knife for a scant 90 minutes or so and am highly amused with that game. Although it's very much like Pheonix Wright in style (obviously), it's far more of an action/puzzle game that makes novel use of the DS stylus interface. I'm pretty sure that it also has about as much semblence with factual medicine as Pheonix Wright has with factual law--which is to say, very little. Both games are pretty much anime/manga fanfare, although I think it's possible to like them without liking anime/manga. From what I've seen so far, Trauma Center is the stronger of the two, although I like the characters and stories that I've seen from Phoenix Wright better. The difference is that while Pheonix Wright allows you to explore compelling tales and gives you riddles to stew over, Trauma Center really thrusts you into the center of the action. Both games are highly dramatic and suspenseful, but the levels of panic and triumph that I've experienced so far in what little I've played of Trauma Center have been superior to what I got out of my half-finished Pheonix Wright game, even though I'm more attached to the characters and plot of the Pheonix Wright universe.

As the title of this post suggest, my primary distraction from FF XII has been Guitar Hero. To make this perfectly clear, it is not Guitar Hero II--which I'm planning to acquire in a few weeks. I have been playing the original, and I had not played it before a few days ago. That there is one fucking incredible game. I do have something of a predisposition towards musical rhythm/beat genre games (eg. Parappa the Rapper, Dance Dance Revolution), but this one definitely takes the cake in terms of raw appeal. The relatively (attention: relatively) badass theme of the game helps a lot, but there's certainly a lot there in terms of polish and good design work too. What really blows me away is the awesome learning curve; I mean, DDR has a great learning curve too, but Guitar Hero was unbelievably easy to get into. It's a highly addictive experience with a lot of emotional appeal, and it's easily one of those games that one makes a routine out of.

In the realm of PC gaming, I've been taking a break from both Company of Heroes and World of WarCraft, and instead focusing on two other great (but less great) games: Dawn of War and Battlefield 2142. For DoW, I just wanted to polish off the single-player campaign, and I managed to accomplish that. The story is nifty, but not nifty enough to force yourself through the campaign for; I really only played it because I like ordering Space Marine squads around. As I've ranted about before, DoW is an excellent RTS, and I personally find the Warhammer 40k theme appealing. I will probably also play through the Winter Assault campaigns and continue to play Dark Crusade as well, but overall Company of Heroes is a much better game, I'd have to say. That's probably not a fair comparison to make given that CoH is so much newer--I'm just pointing it out to be clear that CoH didn't get pushed aside for DoW because there's anything wrong with CoH.

As for Battlefield 2142, I like it, but I don't like it nearly as much as I liked Battlefield 2. Honestly, I don't think that the Battlefield series will ever top two high points in my experience with it: the first being the weeks following the release of Battlefield 1942, which forever changed my outlook on FPS games, and the second being the weekend following the release of Battlefield 2, when I played 20 hours over the course of a Friday evening, full day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. The getting was good back then; both of those games were not only novel experiences, but very well executed. Battlefield 2142 does not, in my opinion, bring shame to the Battlefield series--it is a solid title with a lot to offer in terms of innovations and novel experiences, but I'm not myself a particularly dedicated Battlefield fan (although I've found myself roped into buying and playing every major release so far), and Battlefield 2142 feels to me like a lot more of what I've already seen out of the series. I play it largely because of a friend of mine who's into the Battlefield series and encourages me to play it during lunch hours at work, but I don't think that BF2142 has the mettle to keep up with games like Company of Heroes, Final Fantasy XII, Guitar Hero, or, of course, World of WarCraft. Even within its genre, I'd rather be playing Day of Defeat or F.E.A.R. than BF2142.

While I'm on vacation, I'll have a limited opportunity to play some DS and GBA games. Slated for the most attention are Trauma Center, Phoenix Wright, Final Fantasy IV Advance, and maybe Children of Mana. I'm also tempted to try and polish off Resident Evil DS; I started a game as Jill and nearly finished it, and it would be nice to do a play-through as Chris too. I've also been craving Tales of Phantasia, but there just hasn't been room for it--I'm saving that one for later. Of course, I've also been "saving" the Phantasy Star Collection for GBA for a long time now. Bah.

It may be hard to believe, but I do have other hobbies like reading, listening to music, and getting some occasional exercise. When the gaming gets this heavy, though, it's hard to think about anything besides work and games. :)

The last time I played Tetris DS, only a few days ago, I was on a bit of a slide. Late last week my rating hit an all-time high of 6790 and I squandered a great opportunity to easily surpass that by at least another 100 pts, but instead I went on a deep losing streak and my rating sunk to 6200. I fought back to 6400 the next day, and then sank lower, to around 5950. Eventually I got some mojo back and was able to get back to 6600. My current rating is 6627 having played 179 battles with 71 first place and 52 second place finishes. Those are all Standard 4-Player games. I'm not planning to play and Tetris DS for at least a week and a half, so we'll see how my skills hold up when I get back into it after the break.

Oh, Sunny has been on a little gaming bout of her own, with The Sims 2. She finally installed it on our new hardware and has been enjoying the drastic improvement in graphical quality. She hasn't started on FF XII yet, but that suits me fairly well since I'm tying up the PS2 quite a bit between FF XII and Guitar Hero.

Well, that covers most of what's been up lately. It would have been a lot smoother if I'd written little bits as I went along rather than building all of this up and spouting it all off at once, but I've been pretty busy lately and simply haven't had a lot of energy for writing. In any case, the next time you hear from me here, I'll likely have played Twilight Princess on the Wii. We'll see how _that_ fits into this crazy scheme of rampant gaming.

posted by Parappa @ 10:15 PM