Going out and buying all three Etrian Odyssey games... and a DS to play them on. Why? Who the fuck knows. I barely knew they existed until an hour ago when I read this. That led to a visit to the games' websites. Which led to me wanting them. I don't necessarily like this kind of long winded, sadistically difficult JRPG, but I like the idea of them. I want to like them. I may have spoken before about my attraction to Atlus games. The two most recent for me were Disgaea and Odin Sphere. They are two phenomenal games but they are deep-fat-fried in the 'ol grind aesthetic and Odin Sphere has that punishing difficulty that is so typical of Atlus. The bottom line is, I just don't have enough days in my life to dedicate to these pursuits. Perhaps if I were sickly and could not leave my bed.
I finished Shadow Complex yesterday in what I think was a five hour stretch. Lack of sleep had me in a fog so memory of the event is blurry, but I have the achievements so I know it happened. If I were to review this game I would use a single word: Metroid. Or if I used two words: Super Metroid. You can tell these guys have played that game before and you can tell it's been on their minds quite a bit since. There are sections of the map that are almost direct translations. As a fan of SM myself Shadow Complex grew on me more every time I was reminded of it. If we had never made 3D games, if sidescrollers were still king and continued to progress graphically this kind of thing would have sold millions. A part of me wants to live in that world.
Lord of the Rings Online is now free to play and that has spurred me to play it just as it did a year ago. There is still money involved to be sure, but it's involved via micro transactions. This idea I really like. While I haven't spent any money on the game yet, I feel I'm much more likely to spend a few dollars for some extra content than I am on a subscription fee. It just never made sense to me to pay over and over again for the same game. When you don't know how much you are going to be able to play in a given time period, you don't really have a clear idea of what you are paying for. But if some super-special armor costs one dollar American then I know exactly what getting and what it's costing me. I really hope this business model works out for Turbine and other developers because it sure works out for the consumer. I also want to point out how cool it is to play in Middle Earth. LOTRO as a game hasn't shown me any real stand-out moments yet, but the ability to explore all the locations from the books is very cool. Game enthusiasts are always talking about immersion. LOTRO doesn't make me float out of my chair or anything, but it makes it easier to imagine myself a traveler in Tolkien's world.
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