What I’m Playing

Oh man, so much…

I both love and hate this time of year. I was kind of relieved last year when it was a lackluster season.

Phew, here we go:

Games I’m Playing Now:

• • Zelda – Phantom Hourglass

Yes, I’m still working on it. I’m gonna finish it because I finish ALL Zelda games, but really this one is near the bottom of my list of favorite Zelda Games. I think I’ve written about it before, but I REALLY don’t agree with a number of decisions they made in this game. Especially the retraversal of the sea temple. I’ve done that fucking thing like 5 times now, I REALLY don’t need to do it again. I really agree with Zero Punctuation on this one.

• • Zack and Wiki

This game is on hiatus for the moment. I played through the tutorial and, I’m not kidding, it LITERALLY almost drove me insane. There’s just so much noise and so many things popping up.

Everything is loud and Japanese and on fire!

After playing the tutorial for 30 minutes, I saved the game and popped in METROID PRIME to calm down. That’s a good indicator for you. I’ll tell you more about what I thought of it once I can calm down enough to put it back in my Wii.

• • Metroid Prime: Echoes

I like Metroid Prime: Echoes so far. It’s just not grabbing me. I’ve never really been a fan of the 3D Metroid games. The real problem is that the visor gameplay INFURIATES me. I hate going into a room that’s empty and saying “Oh well, I guess the designers wanted me to use the visor now.” It’s just lock-and-key bullshit, that doesn’t really do it for me at all. That being said, I LOVE the shooting mechanic. I think they did it REALLY well. It’ll be a model for future shooters on the console — and a needed one at that.

• • Super Mario Galaxy

I like this one. It’s definitely better than Mario Sunshine… holy shit that one was a bad game. Fuck! I’m one of those assholes who didn’t like Mario 64. Of course, that was because I didn’t play it until 5 or 6 years after it came out. It was kind of like watching Alien or reading The Lord of the Rings after generations of seeing cheap knockoffs.

Mario Galaxy continues in the same vein of “collect hundreds of knicknacks” which I fucking HATE. However, they moderated the collectathon a little bit by adding in a cool co-op feature where the second player can collect stuff with their Wiimote for you (which my wife LOVES). Their 3D platforming is also pretty compelling, though frustrating at times. I think they did a much better job of spherical worlds than we did in Ratchet and Clank (not counting the cube level in RCF).

• • Call of Duty 4

I like this much better than the previous Call of Duty (heh, I said Doodie) games, since it’s not about WW2. However, it still suffers from all the same problems (are you hearing a theme here?) as the previous installations in the series.

All your enemies look just like your allies and it’s so goddamn dark that you can’t tell the difference. Given that you lose the game if you shoot an ally, this means the game is REALLY frustrating at times

It’s also really cool at times, though, so I have a love-hate relationship with this one.

• • Guitar Hero III

The songs are really good. The timings feel different, though, and not in a good way — except for the hammer-on and pull-off timings. They feel AWESOME. The more I play this, the better I feel about it.

Yet to purchase:

• Assassin’s Creed
• Mass Effect
• Rock Band

Urgh. Expensive season is upon us.

Tis the season to be shelling out cash, after all.