Playing two big games this month. Got God of War 3 (PS3) and Final Fantasy XIII (PS3). They're as big as you can get, amirite? Btw, NO Spoilers, as usual.



So GoW3 arrived yesterday and I played around 4 hours of it on Normal. The game's graphics and audio is phenomenal so far. The scale is just epic and story is as over the top as usual. The 7.1 surround plus heavy use of my subwoofer makes this game an audio feast. Definitely a game worth checking out with a home theater setup. The visual upgrades are to be expected and everything is crisp and clear with no loading screens which is a technical feat. They did a great job hiding the loading stuff.

The gameplay is just as fun as the original and the bosses are amazing and fun. Really well designed boss battles and they made good use of Kratos' new powers. They implemented many old weapons and powers with a twist which is a nice callback to the previous games. Even the puzzles are easy to figure out and not frustrating. Loving the game so far. One MAJOR gripe I have with the game's controls is the double jump. It doesn't seem as responsive as the previous games from what I remember. I had some dumb fall deaths because of this. I mentioned this on Twitter and got a ton of responses that agreed with me. So hey, we're not crazy, the double jump is somewhat broken. Anyways, loving the game so far.



Another game I was playing before GoW3 was FFXIII. This is another beautiful game both technically and artistically. Whether you like the character designs or not, the world and creatures that inhabit the world are well designed and look great. Great color palette. The music is also excellent. I really love the dungeon music, each track is better than the next and never gets old or tired. Sadly, the English dub quality is inconsistent. The worst offender is the voice actress for Vanille. For the first 10 hours, she's unbearable with her fake hyper anime chick impressions. But thankfully, she calms down later and the quality of her dub is improved. It's a good thing Vanille's design is attractive or else I would vomit everytime she spoke. Everyone else's dub is good with Sazh and Fang being my fave. They're the most natural of the group, imo.

The writing is your typical anime-ish JRPG fare. The quality of the script ranges from average to cheesy/cliched. It seems after all this time, they couldn't improve the dialogue to make it more natural and less awkward. But the characters did grow on me and they have fairly good chemistry as the game goes on. The game's battle system is the real winner. The real-time battles are fun and exciting. The first 10 Chapters of the game was a cakewalk for me. I only died 3 times with one death/loss from a mandatory Doom timer which was lame. But Chapter 11 is where the game ramps up in difficulty so I find it fairly challenging now. I'm playing it like it's a RTS and it's working for me. My major gripe is the inability to save custom Paradigms when I change my Battle Teams. Everytime you switch out a member, it resets the Paradigms! Square-Enix, what the hell?

The game is extremely streamlined with no real overworld nor any actual sidequests of consequence. Some might like it but old school JRPG fans will be disappointed. Overall, FF fans and JRPG fans should check it out. Everyone else should be cautioned that this game ain't for everyone. If you never played any FF games, especially FFX (this developer's previous FF game), then maybe a rental is a better option. I'm enjoying it.

Btw, I was temp banned from NeoGAF for saying "sigh" in a thread. Pretty funny since the mod said I was trolling the Wii when I was being sarcastic. And he happened to ban me on the day I posted a pick-up for a Wii game. Good job mod, you got mad at me for one word that didn't mean anything, lol.

Also new pick-ups!

PAX East 3 Day Pass - Hope to meet cool people there.



Canon Digicam - So small!



GoW3 UE (PS3) + Fragile Dreams (Wii)+ Bonus OST



FFXIII Galore (PS3) - US version, LE Guide (still sealed cuz not needed so far), AUS LE + Bonus Lithos and Faceplate





Heavy Rain UK LE (PS3) - Gorgeous box and inner packaging.



Yakuza 3 (PS3) - KAZUMA~!!!



Bayonetta LE Guide



Miles Edgeworth DSi LE Cases x2