Relaps

I gave the 360 a rest this week and played some good old PS2. Three games that I abandoned but would like to finish: Dirge of Cerberus, Odin Sphere, and Okami. Two of those, DoC and OS, I don't think I ever will finish mostly due to the frustration factor. DoC gets a bad rap. A lot of people would say that it sucks but I don't think that's fair. The problem is that it came out at the tail end of the platform's life but looks like a launch title. It's not a bad game, it's just that it's a Square game that isn't great. Expectations were high and it was unprepared to meet them. So now in October of 2009 when I play it I find myself wondering why I'm spending my time on it. My biggest beef with the game is the stupid-awkward control scheme. A shallow game like this should be easy to pick up. I shouldn't have to spend a couple hours re-internalizing the buttons. If you're unfamiliar with the game let me break it down for you: Left on the d-pad uses an item and Right on the d-pad cycles through your items. Enough said.

Odin Sphere is an entirely different situation. It's an excellent game made for (and I mean exclusively for) a particular subset of hardcore gamers. I can't imagine a casual player with this game, I have a feeling the meeting would be brief and unpleasant for all involved. Odin Sphere is a game in which every facet of your game play experience is a challenge. I have a feeling that if the designers could have made it harder for you to hit the power button on your console they would have. I think I'm working myself up for a full blown review/rant but that can wait for a future post.

Lets move on to Legend of Zelda.... I mean Okami. Zelda is a great way to describe the game. It's a bright colorful world where you run around, fight some things, solve some puzzles, repeat. Here I have something worth playing through to the end. It's designed well, it's moderately challenging, and there isn't anything tedious I have to spend an inordinate amount of time on. So yeah, I guess I'll be playing Okami this weekend.