I've got some new articles up over at Robot Geek. Sadly, my work there is hamstrung by proprietor Dan O'Connor's expectation that I provide actual commentary about games instead of just making things up, but nevertheless, please to enjoy:
The release is just a few days away, so I wanted to put in a good word for Just Cause 2. I downloaded the PS3 version of the demo, and it blew me away like nothing else has in years. The demo has a half-hour time limit in which you can run around a small portion of the game world, and I have played it at least eight times; that's how addicted to it I am. I'm incredibly cheap and usually have a decent-sized backlog of games to play through, so I rarely buy games as soon as they come out; Just Cause 2 is the first game released by a company not named Atlus that I've ever been excited enough about to actually preorder.
It's a third-person open world action game game where you roam around the fictional island nation of Panau, destroying facilities, assassinating enemy leaders, and doing missions for various factions to overthrow the tyrannical government of the island. In addition to the various weapons you can wield and vehicles you can commandeer, you have a grappling hook and reloadable parachute you can use to rapidly travel across the terrain, zip to advantageous positions to attack, escape from pursuing enemies, and destroy things in various creative ways. It's sort of like Mercenaries meets Red Faction: Guerrilla meets Bionic Commando meets gleefully over-the-top action movies like The Transporter.
Based on my experiences with the demo, I would enthusiastically recommend this game if you are interested in any of the following:
Zipping from building to building and vehicle to vehicle with a grappling hook while your enemies are in hot pursuit, sort of like Spider-Man if Spider-Man spent more time killing people in Third World countries.
Blowing lots of things up.
Advancing beyond mundane forms of transport acquisition like running up to vehicles and carjacking them at intersections, and having the option of alternative methods such as parachuting off a cliff that overlooks a busy road, landing on the roof of a moving car, forcing your way in through the window, and seizing the wheel, all while the car continues barreling down the highway at fifty miles an hour.
An open-world game where you run around kicking ass, wreaking havoc, and fleeing from the pursuing authorities with a main character who's not a sociopathic hooker-killing gangster.
Leaping off the roof of a four-story building, firing a grappling hook at an attacking enemy helicopter in mid-air, reeling yourself in, spraying submachine gun fire at the crew while hanging on to the outside of the cockpit, hauling the pilot out of his seat and hurling him to his doom, seizing control of the helicopter in mid air, and unleashing a torrent of rockets and gatling gun fire at the enemy troops gathered below.
If you own a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or PC, try out the demo if you haven't already. The full game is coming out on March 23rd. Amazon.com has a nice deal where you get $15 credit towards the next game you buy from them if you preorder Just Cause 2, so if you do any new game shopping there you can essentially get it for $45. I'm definitely looking forward to this one.
(Note: This ought to go without saying, but I receive no compensation from either Square Enix or Eidos for this post. Sadly, despite the boundless potential for niche marketing offered by the internet, the "video game fans who like jokes about particle physics and Oliver Cromwell" demographic is not large enough to make corrupting me worthwhile. I do get a small percentage through if anyone buys the game via the Amazon link in this post, but be assured that the emotional and spiritual satisfaction I would gain from the knowledge that I helped someone find a game they enjoyed would vastly overshadow any merely material gain that... Hell, I can't even type that sentence with a straight face.)
I don’t know Japanese, so the game’s official site is impenetrable to me. However, inside sources report that The Four Warriors of Light: A Final Fantasy Anecdote explores a heretofore neglected aspect of Final Fantasy, telling the epic saga of how the heroes of Final Fantasy VII became increasingly desperate for ways to kill time on their many long, tedious airship journeys across the world as they fought to save the planet from Sephiroth. As our heroes struggle to come up with some topic of discussion that hasn’t already been beaten to death in order to ward off boredom during yet another interminable 13-hour flight from the Chocobo Farm to the Gold Saucer, each of them tells the tale of some minor and usually pointless incident from their past.
Players will thrill to Cid Highwind’s seemingly endless stories of times he was an asshole for no reason, hear Tifa’s tragic tale of being bullied in 2nd grade because of her overbite-correcting orthodontic headgear, and get another chilling look into Cloud Strife’s troubled past as he reveals the time the ball return machine got jammed during league play while he was working at his part-time summer job at Nibelheim Lanes Bowling Alley and Children’s Fun Zone. In the stunning climax, Barrett shows everyone his old vacation slides of his trip to Costa del Sol and spends the entire length of an epic 20-minute cut scene ranting about his hotel’s shoddy room service and unreasonably expensive mini-bar.
Admittedly, it’s also possible that “anecdote” is just an awkward translation of “gaiden.” I still think this idea is better.
Square Enix’s Dragon Quest IX came out in Japan on July 11th and sold 2.3 million copies in its first week, dismembering its competition like so many hapless extras in a Lone Wolf and Cub movie. Dragon Quest sales were a staggering 23 times higher than the second-highest selling game of the week, Wii Sports Resort, making this the most appallingly one-sided contest Japan has seen since Toho Pictures’ poorly-received 1996 release Girl Scouts of Japan Troop 126 vs. Mechagodzilla.
