Just finished a bunch of games.
Tales of Symphonia GC - the worst story and characters I have seen in an RPG in a very long time. Gameplay is decent, I like the combat system and there's lots of other neat ideas in the game, but the story is so awful it drags the entire game down.
Killer 7 GC - terrific visual style, horrible on-rails gameplay. Glad I rented.
Star Fox Assault - oh what the hell happened here...Star Fox 64 was one of my favorite N64 games, but Nintendo had to go and loan out the franchise to Namco. When this was announced long ago I think the word was that the Ace Combat team was doing it. Sounded good, but then this abomination comes out. The Arwing segments are good...but you spend most of your time on foot or in the Landmaster, which is crap (especially the on foot parts). Again, glad I rented this instead of buying.
The Bouncer - yeah, feel free to laugh. I wanted to judge this one for myself and it was indeed a poor game. Terrific real-time cutscenes and a good engine overall considering when it came out, but terrible story and mediocre gameplay. I don't expect beat-em-ups to last hours and hours, but this one can be cleared in slightly over an hour, of which 80% is cutscenes rather than gameplay. Rental again.
Klonoa Lunatea's Veil - I thought I'd like this one more than I did since it reviewed highly. I played one of the GBA games a few years back and wasn't impressed. The PS2 game has similar gameplay. I normally like 2.5D platformers, and this one is certainly very pretty, but the gameplay is just boring. The worst thing is that Namco stuffed a story between every level that slows everything down tremendously. And the characters all talk in a chirping pseudo-language that you can't skip...
Yep, another rental.
Lot of clunkers for me lately. I really hope Final Fantasy XII turns out well. I haven't anticipated a game as much as that one in a long time.
