I just finished Clock Tower and replayed Ocarina of Time, the one on the bonus disc for preordering Wind Waker. I've had the bonus disk forever (I guess two year since WW came out around two years ago?) but this is the first time I've played it. A few years back I sold almost my entire N64 collection, which I kind of regret now. One of the games I sold was OoT, so I'm glad I have this disc to still play the game. Even after seven years OoT is still one of the greatest ever. I enjoyed the hell out of it all over again, finishing it over a period of about four days. The emulation is interesting, with high-res and component output on my Gamecube, the game looked much better than I remember from the N64. There were some sound hiccups though when going into the menu. I've heard there were more emulation problems with Majora's Mask on the collector's disc. I have that too, but I'm kind of burned out on Zelda so I'll play it later. Still, the emulation is good and will probably be even better on Revolution since it has more memory and a faster CPU (plus time to tweak the emulator) so I am very much looking forward to the Virtual Console service just so I can play some N64 games again. I never should have sold Starfox 64, F-Zero X, or Super Mario 64 since the sequels on Gamecube weren't nearly as good.
Yesterday I started playing Baten Kaitos. It's pretty good so far. The graphics are really well done, the game uses prerendered backgrounds with polygon models on top like FF7-9. The 2D art used for character portraits and such is also beautiful, it definitely has an anime look to it so you know it's Japanese, but not the bug-eyed ultra cute look which I don't particularly care for. The music is also good, but the voice acting...isn't. Normally, I'm not one to complain about English dubbing since I think a lot of Japanese dubbing is either annoying or not any better than English voices, but the dubbing in Baten Kaitos is really, really flat. Everyone sounds like they're just reading their lines, and there's also a weird hollow echo effect to the voices. I'm not sure why the developers chose that effect, but at least you can disable it by switching to surround sound. All the combat is card-based, which could be cool, but so far it doesn't seem very complex as far as deck-building strategy, which is kind of disappointing. The story is lame and cliched, but I'm only ten hours in so maybe it picks up later. I hope it doesn't turn out like Tales of Symphonia, a game I played for over thirty hours before finally deciding I couldn't stand it.
Lastly, I played Half-Life 2 a few days ago. I used to be crazy about FPS in the Doom to Quake days, but haven't been into one in a long time. The graphics are remarkable, and I was engrossed for a solid night when I first started playing, but then I just suddenly lost interest and haven't touched it since.
