December 21, 2005

Too Many Games

It's that time of year again, when there's a million games to play and not nearly enough time to play them all. I decided to lift my "one game at a time" rule for November and December, as it's simply impossible to focus on just one game when there's so much coming through the pipeline. Here's what I've been up to in the past few weeks:

Xbox 360

I can't stop playing the 360. I've only got two games so far (PGR3 and Ridge Racer 6), but I've still probably sunk at least 60 hours into the system since it came out. Every night when I get home from work, the first thing I do is turn on the 360, look for new demos or Xbox Live Arcade games, and then knock off a few rounds of Ridge Racer and maybe a game or two of Geometry Wars or Robotron: 2084 before I even think about doing anything else. I haven't touched my PS2 in weeks because of this thing; I may have been on the fence with Xbox last generation, but this time around, I am definitely a believer. It's about damn time we got a game system that was designed with serious gamers in mind.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

I was a huge fan of the original Animal Crossing games on the N64 and GC, but after putting a couple of weeks into the DS version, I gave up and sold it. If you've never played AC before, chances are you'll enjoy it quite a bit (like my girlfriend, who's been playing it every day since it came out here in November). But if you spent a lot of time with the Cube version, as many of us did, I can't see how you'd be anything but disappointed with the DS game. It hasn't really evolved at all, aside from going handheld and offering an incredibly limited wi-fi mode that really shows off Nintendo's lack of experience in online gaming. In many ways, Wild World is actually inferior to the GC game, which begs the question -- what the hell have they been doing these past four years? Not enough to hold my interest, unfortunately.

Mario Kart DS

Now here's a game Nintendo got right -- mostly. The single player game is surprisingly solid (I'm working my way through the 150cc cups at the moment), and the eight-player local wi-fi mode is amazingly fun. We've already sunk several hours into it and it hasn't gotten old at all, even if it is just the same eight tracks over and over again. The true online mode doesn't really appeal to me, as A) it's only four players, B) many of the solo courses aren't really suited for online races, and C) players can drop out of a race without any penalty if they're losing, which can be unbelievably frustrating if you have any skill and find yourself in the lead often. But still, overall I'm pretty satisfied. It's definitely a much bigger draw for me than Double Dash was.

Topping things off, my copy of Final Fantasy IV Advance showed up today, which means it's going to be at least a few more weeks before I finish Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, as FFIV is definitely getting top priority in my GB Micro.

In other news, Kingdom Hearts II is out this week, as I've been reminded at least 17 times per day the past few weeks by AV, the world's biggest KH fan. I never really got into the original, as I'm not much of a fan of either Disney or Tetsuya Nomura, but all this excitement over KHII has me almost considering giving the first game a second chance. Should I bother? Or was I right to shelve it in the first place? Let me know what you think.

Posted by john tv at December 21, 2005 01:17 AM