April 22, 2005

Catching Up: Part III

Seeing as how I just bought my first GameCube game in over two months, I figured today would be a good day to get caught up on GC purchases (and the one GBA game I've picked up since the DS came out). Sadly, I haven't touched any of these games for more than an hour at best, despite wanting to play all of them pretty badly. Just goes to show you how bad my backlog has become.

That's not to say I haven't been playing anything, though. I've been on a bit of an Ys binge lately, playing various Ys games on the PS2, PC Engine and PC, and then of course there's the DS, PSP and my keitai (cell phone), all of which get a decent amount of my playtime. I'm planning entries on both the Ys addiction and the keitai games very soon, so keep an eye out for those.

Now, on to the games...

New Game: Fire Emblem: Souen no Kiseki (JP)

Title: Fire Emblem: Souen no Kiseki
Platform: GameCube (JP)
Publisher: Nintendo

Where: Dreamland
When: April 18
How Much: 6,476 yen (6,800 yen w/tax)

(The subtitle translates to "Trail of the Blue Flame," for those of you who aren't familiar with the Japanese.)

The three Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem games are among the best GBA has to offer, IMO, so it wasn't a very difficult choice for me to run out and pick up the much-anticipated GameCube version of FE the moment it became available (or in my case, two days before it became available...tee-hee). The series turned 15 this past Wednesday, and to celebrate, the first shipment of Souen no Kiseki came with a free soundtrack CD (five tracks) and an awesome desk calendar featuring artwork from all nine games in the series.

I've only played through the first two chapters so far (blame my job, which has been keeping me up until dawn every night this week), but at this point, it seems like about what you'd expect from a GameCube version of Fire Emblem. The gameplay feels almost exactly the same as the GBA games, only in 3D, which is more than fine by me. Curiously, the game features some very un-Nintendo-like bits, such as a fully-voiced intro and FMV cutscenes interspersed throughout play, but at the same time, they seem to have skimped on the character portraits (apparently there's only one per character, no matter the emotion), and the graphics, while cohesive and adequate, don't exactly scream state-of-the-art. Nevertheless, it looks like it'll be another solid entry in the FE series, and I can't wait to dig into it some more.

New Game: Star Fox Assault (US)

Title: Star Fox Assault
Platform: GameCube (US)
Publisher: Nintendo

Where: GameStop
When: February 16
How Much: $49.99 ($52.99 w/tax)

I imported this from America fully expecting to blast through it in a matter of days, but I haven't even popped it in yet. Sad, I know. Especially since I was a huge fan of Star Fox 64 back in the day. From all that I've seen and heard, this is going to be a letdown (the on-foot stuff looks like total crap to me -- why they took a horrible idea from the multiplayer mode of SF64 and turned it into a core gameplay element of Assault is beyond me), but I'm still interested to play through it and judge it for myself.

New Game: Resident Evil 4 (US)

Title: Resident Evil 4
Platform: GameCube (US)
Publisher: Capcom

Where: Electronics Boutique
When: January 11
How Much: $49.99 ($54.30 w/tax)

I know, I know. I should've played through this long ago. Yes, I realize I am missing out on one of the best games this generation, but I promise you, I will get to it soon. It's at the top of my "to play ASAP" list, and as soon as work loosens up a bit, I'll be all over it. You have my word!

New Game: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (US)

Title: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Platform: GameCube (US)
Publisher: Nintendo

Where: Electronics Boutique
When: November 16
How Much: $49.99 ($54.30 w/tax)

This one, on the other hand, I'm not making any promises about. I mean, I still haven't finished the first Metroid Prime (sad, I know -- I got about 3/4 of the way through it over two years ago and then never went back), so who knows when I'll ever get around to playing this one. Do I want to? Yes. Is it a top priority? Not really.

New Game: Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls (US)

Title: Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls
Platform: Game Boy Advance (US)
Publisher: Nintendo

Where: Wal-Mart
When: December 23
How Much: $29.96 ($31.76 w/tax)

And finally, we have this little gem. I actually owned the Japanese version for a while and played a good chunk of the way through FFI and a little bit of FFII before selling it off and picking up the US version instead. I aim to play all the way through it someday, but I'm not in any real rush. The Final Fantasy I remake is simply fantastic, but no amount of upgrading, graphical or otherwise, could fix the broken, boring mess that is Final Fantasy II. At least now that it's in English, I may try to trudge through it for the story, but otherwise, I'm not really looking forward to playing it.

Anyway, that's all for today. See you again soon!

Posted by john tv at April 22, 2005 03:04 AM