For starters, let me just say this: If you have a PS2 and you haven't hooked up a harddrive to that sumbitch yet, you're missing out. I just did, and even though I've already have a game not work with it (Neo Geo Battle Coliseum, which I've beaten several times any-damn-way), it's so much better now. And it saves my laser, meaning I don't have to replace it and worry about being out another modded system should it fuck up.
I've also starting playing some older games on my PSP courtesy of PicoDrive, namely Snatcher and Sonic CD. I'm also plugging through Panic! again, but it's a bitch when they map the "load state" function to the shoulder button and you accidentally hit it when you're 85% of the way through the game. Autosave has spoiled me, truely.
While I'm on the subject of classics, there's yet another Kojima classic out- There's now an english patch for Policenauts, which I've already downloaded. Looking forward to playing it after Snatcher. I never thought I'd play adventure games again, but it's something you have to grab on to when it comes around.
Most of my time has been spent with actual current gen gaming- that is, PS3. I bolted through Killzone 2 pretty quick, and while I enjoyed it, I'm hesitant to pick it up again just yet. Hell, I haven't even done the online yet, but hopefully the community's still there. I'm actually GLAD I put off Ghostbusters until now, since they just patched the PS3 version to a proper res and fixed some glitches. But I didn't jump back into that yet, either.
Instead, I went to my old standby: the fighting game. In this case, BlazBlue. I finished off the story mode in quick order. It's a decent execution, and the story does actually go somewhere. Plus, there's some great comedy to be found, including a mecha tribute featuring Iron Tager. I'm assuming said tribute is parodying GaoGaiGar, but either way, it's hilarious. The only downside is how one reaches 100%, by requiring the gamer go into fights and lose. Hard? No, but it's a hell of a time sink. At least it doesn't give you a "A winner is you!" screen in many of the cases.
I worry about the storyline precisely because of who's behind the wheel. Daisuke Ishiwatari's previous work in Guilty Gear shows us that we will get a hell of a good fighting game with great music, but we're also going to get revision after revision and a storyline that has a wonderfully intriguing foundation with a bizarre, nonsensical structure resting on top of it, made even stranger by the fact that it was never finished properly. And I'd be wary of traipsing into "but what about Guilty Gear 2" nonsense, as there are plenty who would love to take the bad taste that game left in their mouth and transform it into pure vitriol before shooting it out of their mouths at you.
Guilty Gear's main crime for those who, like me, actually wanted the storyline to mean something, is that you never get anywhere near a fight with THAT MAN (the not-so-great name of the main "antagonist"), instead having to fight everybody but him while he spends most games punching himself in the dick over the mess he's made of the world. In other words, it's all the fun you ever had playing Ghosts 'N Goblins, except no matter how many times you go through the game, you never get the real ending, no matter how hard you've stomped I-No's witch ass into the ground.
Is BlazBlue going the same direction? Well, it could- it's already in pretty convoluted territory, and this is coming from somebody who LOVED MGS2. The story isn't very well fleshed out just yet, made worse by the fact that you play through everybody's story and then- and only then- you get to play the "true end" version. Which I'm sure IS the true ending, but it doesn't tell much of a story. However, we have already had our first encounter with the main bad guy, and though it wasn't in a fight, it at least gave me the idea that this jackoff isn't going to be allowed to merely watch from afar. Indeed, he has already gotten involved and thus should be ready throw down eventually.
I realize in the grand scheme of things, fighting games need a story like NES games need 5.1 Surround Sound, but it's not like this hasn't been done in a coherent fashion with other entries. For instance, before King of Fighters fell into the bizarre, pointless world of the NESTS saga, the Orochi saga managed to not only set the story up remarkably well but actually end it well with the final battle against the eponymous demon himself. Let's hope BlazBlue can get this way and not take 4-5 revisions to get there.
-Trakdown
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