inFamous

You know what game I really used to like? Spiderman 2. C'mon, anyone who's played the game will probably agree they had fun just swinging around New York, and being acrobatic, and stuff. Too bad almost everything else about the game was pretty mediocre.

And then inFamous came along. Another openworld superhero game starring a rather lithe average joe who suddenly finds himself with super powers. The power to manipulate electricity, that is. I was overjoyed, and pre-ordered it immediately. Was it the experience I had been hoping for? Well, Yes and No. inFamous is a great game, though it's not so much like Spiderman 2. Conceptually, perhaps, but in practice? Not especially.

inFamous has a pretty small cast of characters, but all of them are important pieces to the story. Central to this tale is Cole McGrath, a bike courier. There's nothing particularly special about Cole at first glance. He's got a best bud named Zeke, who's fat and a little ambitious, but a nice guy at heart. And he's got a girlfriend named Trish, a med student who seems a bit on the strict side, but always means well. Cole himself is quite the urban explorer. He knows Empire City like the back of his hand, and isn't above climbing up buildings or using a sewer route to cut time.

The game begins with Cole doing his usual thing. He's been tasked with delivering a special parcel. Everything goes fine..until the package, revealed to be a bomb of some type, explodes, wiping out a large part of the city. With the authority in shambles, and a plague suddenly springing up as well, the entire area is quarantined. Nobody gets in, nobody gets out. Crime rates spike to new heights as gangs suddenly finding themselves imbued with powers take over the streets. As Cole puts it, it's "society committing suicide". Miraculously, Cole survives the blast, being nursed back to health by Trish. He soon discovers that the blast has affected him as well; he has mysteriously gained the ability to manipulate electricity.

The game follows Cole as he not only learns to deal with and better control his powers, but as he also slowly learns about their origin, and the nature of the bomb plot. It's a deep web of sadness, lies, and death.

As you play through the game, you can choose how Cole overall decides to use his newfound abilities. Playing the good guy means giving mercy to your foes, and doing the right thing, even when it hurts (and it WILL hurt). It means keeping the city as a whole in mind, not just yourself. An enemy gives you trouble? Nearly kills you on more than one occasion? You finally defeat him, but you need to restrain yourself from dealing the final blow. Instead, just restrain him. See a guy being strung up for stealing food, and about to be publicly executed? Do the righteous thing, cut him down. See a wounded person on the ground? Take a moment of your time to stop and lend a hand. Of course, these are just minor things you'll always be doing as a Hero. More important "karma" decisions will be thrown at you left and right. Not only does being one side or another unlock different powers (and power ups), but it also alters the storyline. It also changes how the people view you. Once your karma meter has maxed out to good, the people will literally love you. Stop and stand around for a bit, and a crowd will begin to form around you. People will compliment you, cheer you on, take pictures, and overall idolize you. Sometimes, the braver ones will even help you out in fights, throwing rocks at gang members from the sidelines.

Being a bad guy is arguably easier than being a good guy, since you only think about yourself. No need to restrain yourself, kill the bastard who gave you a hard time. Better yet, be sadistic; restrain him first, let him wiggle a bit, then execute him. That guy being strung up? Not your problem, just keep walking. He shouldn't have stolen food. See a wounded person on the streets? Who are you, Doctor Cole? Why bother? They'll probably just get themselves into another mess anyway. Maybe even throw in a kick while they're down. Beware traveling on the streets though. In fact, you should probably stick to the roof tops, because at full evil Karma, the citizens gang up and attack you if you stick around long enough. Of course, you could always just kill them. They're no match for you, right?

inFamous follows the standard openworld, mission based formula. There's side missions, and story missions. Each side mission you complete seals a portion of land within the city in which gang members will no longer lurk commonly (and if they do, they usually get beasted by the pedestrians..if you're a Hero, that is). Until you take an area, enemies will continue to respawn in mass proportions, making it easy to get sidetracked, and particularly dangerous to traverse the terrain, especially when you're new to that particular section of the city.

Empire city is split into three districts, each connected by a large bridge. Each district is controlled by a specific gang. The Neon District (where you start out), is controlled by the Reapers. The Reapers were previously just a bunch of harmless druggies, but the blast gave many of them (and their leader) powers. They also all seem to be infected with the plague, and slightly insane, as they commonly take a moment to pause and belch out black tar before resuming their attempts to riddle you with bullets. Reapers come in four varieties. The most common type are the simple grunts, who wield machine guns (and occasionally grenades). They are basically everywhere, but are most common in alleyways and on rooftops. Next up are the slightly more powerful types that wield rocket launchers. I never encountered them too often outside of missions. Furthermore, there's the suicide bombers, dudes characterized by an [almost] bloodcurdling scream. They light two sticks of dynamite and run straight at you, hoping to die and take you with him. Most powerful are the Conduits, dudes with actual powers. These guys are pretty tough take on when there's more than two of them. They wield machine guns like the grunts, but also have teleportation abilities, and an earthquake move that homes in on you for pretty serious damage. The Reapers are headed by a crazy woman named Sasha, who is probably the source of the plague. The bomb explosion gave her the ability to generate wierd black tar. Once the tar gets into your system, she can control your mind. This is how she's been "recruiting" Reapers.

Next up is the Warren, probably the poorest of the three districts. The Warren was known to be a pretty shabby place even before the blast, so it's certainly not any better now. The Warren is patrolled by the Dust Men, a group of homeless people who saw their chance to take a stand and siezed it. The Dust Men are characterized by their interesting use of trash. Believe it or not, the cloaks you see many of the grunts wearing are actually trash bags. They take junk and build mildly useful things with it. The Dust Men have the same ranks as the Reapers, with a few additions. The Conduits come in two flavors; a rocket launching type that also spawns little spider drones that attack you in swarms, and a grunt type with immense telekinetic powers, enabling him to pilot a mech golem constructed entirely out of thrown away materials and held together by mental power alone. Both are forces to be reckoned with, especially the latter. The Dust Men are led by Alden, an old man with incredible telekinetic powers. He loathes Kessler, the leader of the First Sons in the Historic District, and has been building a huge tower in the Warren out of garbage, for unkown reasons.

Finally, there's the Historic District, which is where the blast took place (and where the tutorial takes place; you can revisit that huge crater that Cole wakes up in). The Historic District is truly destroyed. It's tallest building looks like the Leaning Tower of Piza. There's a freaking huge crater where the blast took place. Many of the buildings are missing parts. In the Historic District you'll find the First Sons, not so much a gang, but more an organization (and one that's been around for quite a long while, at that). The First Sons have the same ranks as the Reapers, but again, their Conduits are different. The First Son Conduits' powers involve projecting themselves to look significantly larger than they actually are. While pretending to be larger, their main form of attack is a destructive ground pound. Their second Conduit isn't that special once they get the jump on you once or twice. They cloak themselves and sneak up on you, and once close enough reveal themselves just long enough to loose off a shotgun blast before running away. It's really irritating to get ambushed by these guys. The First Sons also use drones, which have cloaking capabilities and fire grenades.

Cole has a large multitude of powers with which he can battle these baddies. The standard form of attack is the basic electric shock, but if you want to get fancy, there's more you can do. Jump off a building and hit Square, and you'll perform a Thunder Drop; basically an electrified ground pound. The more air time you get before you hit the ground, the power the blast will have. Need to knock enemies around a bit? Try the Shockwave. It's not especially damaging, but useful for knocking enemies back (and making them vulnerable for attacks that ARE damaging). A direct and close up hit from from a shockwave sends most enemies flying quite a distance. These are just a couple of the powers to come, such as the Shock Grenade, Arc Lightning, and Megawatt Hammer. My personal favorite is the Polarity Wall, a personal shield that you can use on the go to block most standard attacks (and, with a little upgrading, even convert blocked attacks to energy for yourself). It's a life saver.

However Cole can only manipulate electricity; not generate it. While some very basic powers don't consume energy, just about everything else does. Energy doesn't recharge by itself, so when you're running low, you need to find something running on electricity and drain it to juice up on more power. This could be a car, a generator, a lamp post, anything that seems like it would sensibly have electricity flowing through it. Like most FPS games, there is no health bar; the screen loses color as your health goes down. Cole will eventually regenerate naturally, but if you want to speed to process up, draining things also restores health.

When you first start out, much of the city will be completely blacked out and lacking power. To restore power, you'll need to venture into the sewers and recharge the substations. It's not like you don't benefit from doing this, as each time you restore power to an area, you learn a new power. Also, since the power is restored, the rails and cables also go live, allowing you to grind across them for faster traveling. Furthermore, more things available for draining pop up. During black outs, things to drain for power are few and far between, making combat a risky affair. With power restored, many more things get powered up, so you can drain them.

inFamous is also presented very well. For an open world game, it looks and runs remarkably well. The game did freeze just once throughout my entire playthrough, and that was while wreaking absolute havoc on a street. Cars were exploding, people were dying, electricity and sparks were flying everywhere. Sure, the graphics aren't what you're gonna see from, say, Killzone 2 or Uncharted, but they're still great, and it's a testament to Sucker Punch's ability to really polish a game that glitches are quite minimal in this game. I did sometimes see people get "stuck" in place, and Cole once inexplicably fell through a platform, but otherwise the engine held together quite well.

I do have some gripes, though. First, the side missions are pretty repetitive. There's a decent variety of them, but most of the specialized ones disappear quickly, leaving only the regular ones that you've already done many times before. I especially dislike the Satellite Uplink and Counter-Surveillance missions..moreso the latter. Furthermore, Cole's tendency to "stick" to surfaces when climbing can be aggravating sometimes. It's like he's literally attracted, like a magnet, to surfaces he can climb onto (which is just about everything you'd think a person would be able to latch onto), so it can be difficult to maneuver him in small spaces. Also, I kinda wish there were more really tall buildings. There's two in the Warren, one in the Historic district, and none that I know of in the Neon district. While I'm nitpicking, I'd like to say that, while the story was amazing, there were also a lot of loose ends, which Cole himself comments on at the end of the game. Maybe this is indicative of an eventual sequel (or DLC), but I'd like to see the story continued or expanded to have more closure.

This was a really long post, but there's a lot to talk about. inFamous is a surprisingly interesting and deep game that will keep many hooked until the very end (and then they'll want to play through again to get the alternate ending). Replay value is a mixed bag; there's hundreds of Blast Shards to collect, and a couple dozen story expanding Dead Drops to listen to, but once you've done all that and gotten all the trophies, I wonder if this game will still continue to draw me. An 8.5/10.

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (Rumbling Hearts)

Usually when I watch anime, I'm juggling 3-4 active series at once; a mecha show, a comedy/romance show, and a SERIOUS BUSINESS drama show.  I like series that have a lot of drama and psychology, because they always feel engaging.  Not unlike most shows of its genre Kimi ga Nozomu Eien draws you in with a sweet and gentle romance, one that could easily have been drawn out into a simple series in itself but is instead settled within a couple episodes, and then punches you square in the gut with sudden emotional dilemmas, relationship problems, and the like.

The series begins with a small circle of friends.  There's Takayuki, the male lead, who's a bit of a slacker, and his buddy Shinji, a decent guy who gets good grades.  There's also Mitsuki, an energetic girl on the swim team (who has an extremely faint but still budding crush on Takayuki), and her friend Haruka, a sweet but timid girl who has a huge crush on Takayuki.  Mitsuki and Shinji help get Takayuki and Haruka together, and their relationship, while rocky at first, quickly flourishes.  Haruka reveals to Takayuki her love for picture books, and that she has a dream of one day becoming a picture book author herself.  She seeks a rare picture book called Mayauru's Gift, and, as a present, Takayuki finds it for her.

Takayuki is on his way to meet Haruka when he runs across Mitsuki, who shyly reminds him that it's her birthday.  He takes a bit of time to buy her a ring for the occasion, which makes him late, allowing tragedy to strike.  Takayuki arrives at the place he was supposed to meet Haruka, only to find a huge scene and yellow tape everywhere; Haruka has been hit by a car, and is now in a coma.

Fast forward three years later.  Haruka is still in a coma, and everyone is in shambles (except for Shinji, who left for college during the timeskip, though he pops in and out of the story sometimes).  Takayuki fell apart completely, blaming himself for the accident.  Mitsuki nurses him back to prominence over the years, and in the process falls in love with him.  The two form an uncertain relationship that is constantly clouded by guilt over Haruka.

Things only become even more complicated..when Haruka wakes up.  She does not know that three years have passed;  to her, the car accident might have been just the other day.  The doctors make everyone promise to keep this fact a secret from her, as revealing it may be too much for her to handle.  Thus the characters continue to live life, somewhat miserably.

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien isn't actually exceptionally unique in terms of plot material.  It actually has a very standard feel to it.  But it's the way the characters portray emotion that made this show so interesting--and yet so difficult-- to watch.  Yes, middle parts of the series were actually difficult to watch for me, because it was gut wrenching watching these characters' suffer such emotional stress, and not seem to know any way how to help themselves.  Amazingly, however, you actually come away from it feeling pretty good.

Sonic Unleashed

As most should know, I am a huge Sonic fan.  I like to pride myself in having a fairly vast knowledge of him and his games (though I admit I've become a bit rusty over the months).  When I first read about Sonic Unleashed, I was overjoyed.  I remember reading in article in Play magazine, and the screenshots were quite amazing.  Could this be Sonic's revival?

Then I was introduced to Sonic the Werehog.  Really Sega (or rather, Sonic Team), what compels you to stick to gimmicks when it comes to Sonic games.  The reviews have said already;  this would have been an excellent game without the Werehog.

But anyway, I wanted to play this game anyway, for the daytime levels.  Indeed, it's truly a mixed bag.

Sonic Unleashed opens with Eggman having a good laugh as his huge space fleet soars over the earth.  A far off explosion draws his attention, and..why, it's none other than the blue blur himself!  After Sonic proves he's more than a match for any number of Eggman's grunt robots, the mad scientist goes out to fight in his mech.  He succeeds in capturing Sonic, only for the little guy to go Super and destroy his ride.  He makes a break for it, pursued closely by Super Sonic, running out to a floating structure on the outskirts of his fleet.  Seeming defeated, Eggman feigns remorse, and succeeds in fooling Super Sonic into fueling his Chaos Cannon.  The cannon rips the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic's body and corrupts them, and its beam pierces the Earth below, splitting it into pieces, prematurely releasing Dark Gaia from the planet's core.  These happenings apparently corrupt Sonic as well, as he develops lycanthropy, causing him to turn into a burly werehog at night.

Eggman ejects Sonic the Werehog into space, and he crash lands with a hard thud, apparently right on top of another little guy, later named Chip.  Chip has lost his memory (apparently because Sonic fell on him), and doesn't seem to have anything better to do at the moment, so he accompanies Sonic, with the hope that he'll regain his memory.  Thus the two set out to restore the Chaos Emeralds, and in turn restore the planet to its original state.

As its slogan "The difference is night and day" might imply, Sonic Unleashed is split into two types of stages:  daytime and nighttime stages.  During the day you'll play as Sonic, zipping through stages at lightning speed and bashing aside Eggman's robots.  During the night, he transforms into Sonic the Werehog, and the stages become much more combat-heavy, and focused on platforming gameplay.  To progress through the story, you'll need to visit the temple of each locale and restore its associated Chaos Emerald, which will then push that continent back into place.  This is done by defeating the boss guarding that area; it's either a Dark Gaia beast that you'll take on as Sonic the Werehog, or a huge Eggman robot you'll fight as Sonic the Hedgehog.  Stages are unlocked by gathering Sun or Moon medals to level up your respective Sun or Moon level.  For example, to access a level 4 Daytime stage, you'll need to have collected enough Sun medals to reach Sun level 4.  The same goes for Nighttime stages and Moon medals.  Generally, there are significantly more Sun medals in Nighttime stages, and many more Moon medals in Daytime stages, often forcing you to replay Nighttime stages to unlock more Dayttime stages, and vice versa.

I'll start with the Daytime stages, obviously the better part of the package here.  Anyone who's played any regular Sonic game will know what to do in a Daytime stage;  just reach the end (or the goal) as quickly as possible, and preferrably with as much style as possible.  The key to getting an S rank in a daytime stage is simply to finish the stage as fast as possible.  Really, there's not a lot to be explained.  There are some elements tossed in that make things interesting though.  You have a couple abilities at your disposal, and more to be unlocked.  Most noticeable is the Sonic Boost, which you will be familiar with if you've played Sonic Rush.  Collecting rings boosts your Ring Energy meter.  As long as there's juice in that meter, at any time you can press square to blast forward at top speed, and hold it down for as long as you like.  While boosting, any enemies you hit will be instantly rammed forward and destroyed, provided they aren't protected by a barrier or something.  With Sonic Boost you can instantly get to top speed from a stationary position.  You also have the Quick Step, which let's you instantly side step any objects or walls that are coming up too fast to manually evade.  Another starting ability is Drift, which I've found to be very difficult to master.  By either using L2 or R2 or holding circle while trying to make a turn, Sonic will attempt to drift around it, with little to no sacrifice in speed.  Depending on how fast you are going, how early you start drifting, and how sharp the turn, you will either glide fantastically around the turn and keep going, or go sliding right off the edge or into a wall, which often proves fatal.  Fortunately, I haven't encountered too many areas that make any use of the drift function.  At any time while running you can also hold circle to slide under low clearance barriers with very little loss in speed.  Boost panels and springs are also present, and occasionally you'll hit a scripted jump which slows down time and presents you with a random button combination to press.  Complete it in time, and Sonic will do a trick and get extra lift, possibly flying through a hidden item or making it onto a shortcut (of which there are usually quite a few).  As Sonic Team promised, the game switches seamlessly (and commonly) between side scrolling and 3rd person view.  It works wonderfully, and the camera never posed a problem.

Sonic also gains a number of abilities during this adventure.  Wall jump of course gives him the ability to wall jump like Mario.  Air Boosts unlocks the ability to use Sonic Boost in mid air, allowing you jump to faraway places.  Lightspeed dash (You will be familiar with this if you've played Sonic adventure 2) let's you use a path of rings to travel at lightspeed, reaching otherwise unreachable areas.  Those are just some of them.

The graphics during the daytime and CG sequences are also phenomenal.  Despite all the activity often going on, the framerate hardly ever dips even slightly.  The Hedgehog engine performs incredibly well, especially during the hub town stages, which are delightfully sunny and cheerful.  The character models are also superb.

Next are the Nighttime stages.  Now, I haven't played such high profile hack and slash games as God of War, but I know a tacked on concept when I see one, and the Werehog concept is most definitely tacked on.  Don't get me wrong;  Sonic the Werehog isn't such a terrible fellow.  He's just completely unnecessary, and feels totally out of place.  Sonic's speed is the reason he's so popular today.  Back in the 2d era, it was the sense of exhilaration that his side-scrollers provided compared to Mario's slow platforming that excited people.  Sonic the Werehog is exactly the kind of slow paced gameplay that showed how cool in comparison Sonic the Hedgehog's fast and zippy gameplay was.

As I mentioned before, Nighttime stages consist basically of two things: combat and platforming.  When you're not mindlessly beating up fragments of Dark Gaia GoW style, you are swinging from poles, traversing precarious ledges, and jumping from platform to platform.  Smashing up enemies and environmental objects nets you energy that you can use to charge your Unleashed bar.  When filled sufficiently, you'll be able to press R1 to become temporarily invincible and do significantly more damage.  None of this is a horrible experience, and might have made for a decent standalone game.  The combat is mildly fun, with some satisfying combos here and there, and some of the platforming is actually pretty fun.  But it just doesn't feel right in a Sonic game, and I ultimately can't help feeling repulsed by it, to be frank.

The other thing is, for some reason the Hedgehog Engine sorta falls apart during the Nighttime stages.  The framerate dips noticeably on a frequent basis, Sonic will commonly go through walls in the middle of a combo, and it just looks like the game is having trouble keeping up with your actions (strange, since it has no trouble keeping up with Sonic the Hedgehog).  Indeed, during the night, the planet might not be the only broken thing here.  Graphical quality also takes a huge dip too, with effects looking not unlike the sort of stuff I used to see in the original Unreal Tournament that came out in 1999.  Okay, maybe not that bad, but it's bad in comparison to the Daytime stages.

Each enemy you defeat in either the Daytime or Nighttime stages will drop EXP you can pick up.  EXP can then be used to further various parameters of either regular Sonic or the Werehog.  Sonic the Hedgehog has only two parameters;  Speed and Ring Energy.  Neither of them are especially useful in my opinion, though it is handy to have extra Ring Energy for certain boss battles.  Sonic the Werehog has several parameters, though.  Among them, there's Combat (unlocks new combos and abilities), Life (increases your life bar), Strength (improves how much damage you do), and Unleash (increases your Unleashed bar).

One final improved aspect of Sonic Unleashed is the music.  The series has (for the time being, at least) finally abandoned rock music and instead uses a very pleasant orchestral score.  Actually, I think most of the music is very catchy, especially the BGM for the opening scene.

Overall, the slogan is pretty much spot on, I guess.  On one hand, you have an excellent experience waiting for you in the daytime stages, but only if you're ready to slog through the nighttime stages as well.  It's easy to see that Sega made a genuine effort here, but it unfortunately fell short of the mark.  A 7.5/10.

--Another Take--

I beat the game today, and I have a couple more things to say.  First, what the hell.  Eggmanland is brutally difficult compared to the rest of the game.  Beware of the Eggmanland level guys, it's no joke.  You'll play as both the Hedgehog and the Werehog in it.  It might also not be a bad idea to take a moment to meditate before you start, to get that extra mental fortitude.  Because this level is LONG.  It's longer than any Werehog level.  About 15-20 minutes in you'll be wondering when the hell you'll reach the end.  Also, I suggest you rid yourself of that "LET'S GOGOGO FASTER" mentality you'll likely have developed playing as Sonic the Hedgehog.  You'll likely die if you use Sonic Boost at all here.  Unless you have superhuman reflexes.

Seriously, this level is a step above all others.  In the Hedgehog parts, there are numerous paths and forks, paths that lead to more forks, which lead to another fork.  I'm sure they all lead to the same destination, but it can be overwhelming.  In the Werehog levels, enemy robots will swarm you (not that they didn't before;  but powerups and rings are more scarce), and it gets really annoying.  Basically, all the challenges of the other levels are here and multiplied.  There's even a bobsledding part like in Holoska, except this time there's spikes, laser beams, and many more chasms to fall into.  And guess what?  Hate to spoil it, but you need to know.  At the end of the level, you get to face 3 club toting bosses (remember that big dude you first fought in Apatos to save Tails?).  First one's easy, than you run into the next chamber and bam!  Two of them clambering around.  Yeah, you fight two of them.  This wouldn't be such a big deal if there weren't also healing mages around that immediately respawn if you kill them.  A high Strength stat is gonna be helpful here (as well as high Life and Shield, and even Unleashed), so you can deal enough damage to finish them with a QTE before the mages can help out.  And a tip: learn to block.  If you get knocked down by a shockwave, it's likely you'll be down for quite a while, as these guys spam the heck out of that move.

Go in to Eggmanland with no less than 20 lives.  You'll do that and the final boss back to back, so the extra endurance will come in handy.

Also, it wasn't until, bored out of my mind watching the credits, that I experimented with the XMB and found out that this game supports custom soundtracks.  The ingame soundtrack is good, like I already said, but do keep in mind that this DOES support custom soundtracks, so if you've got music on your Ps3, you can listen to it while playing this.

Games I'm Looking Forward to #1

So, I just kinda felt like writing this.  There's a lot of games coming this year that I have to say, look really promising.

Playstation 3:

-Quantum Theory:  If this game is anything like Gears of War 2, I'll be happy to buy it.  Tecmo's been very quiet about it since they first announced it though.

-Tales of Vesperia:  I suppose I shouldn't jump the gun in assuming the Ps3 port will make it stateside, but I sure hope so.  The Ps3 version will have more content, including new mystic artes, more cutscenes, and even a new character.

-White Knight Chronicles: I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this being an awesome game.  It'll have online coop, which is interesting for an RPG, so I've been keeping a close eye on it.

-Final Fantasy Versus XIII:  Like they always tend to be, Square-Enix is being very tight lipped about their new Final Fantasy games, and Versus is an excellent example of this.  Since they announced it, there has been only the occasional teaser.  Very little about the game is known, but it will supposedly feature a battle system based off the ones present in Kingdom Hearts 2 and Final Fantasy Dissidia, which both have exciting battles.  That's more than enough info to already have my interested in buying.

-Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time:  The Ratchet and Clank series has been surprisingly plot based as of late.  This new game will probably further expand on information about the Lombax's, especially Ratchet's father.  Dr. Nefarious will return, and I'm guessing his new motive is to manipulate time.

-Dead Rising 2:  I haven't played the original Dead Rising, but it seemed like a fun concept.  This one can only be better, right?

-Fat Princess:  Its a hilarious concept-  Your princess has been captured, and its up to you take her back!  But to complicate things, her captors have force fed her a lot of sweets and yummy things, turning her into a rather obese princess, making it more difficult to carry her back to base.  This is essentially Capture the Flag, but with a unique twist.  It's sporting a cute and bright (yet delightly gory and bloody) graphic style.

-Uncharted 2: Among Thieves:  I enjoyed the first one, and this sequel looks like it'll be oh so much better.  I certainly can't wait to play it.

-Assassin's Creed 2:  I haven't played the first one, but it seemed like a cool idea, and I hope they expand on it in this sequel.

-Fuel:  The possibilities for this game are interesting.  Its an open-ended offroad racing game set in a huge back country area.  The developers claim the game world will be over 5,000 square miles in size, and there will be absolutely no loading times.  That sounds lovely.

-Army of Two: The 40th Day:  I love a good co-op game, and it looks like this will expand on the already good co-op offered by the original Army of Two, so you can certainly count me in.

-End of Eternity:  I like tri-Ace, so I'm generally interested in the games they have in development.  End of Eternity is one such game.

Wii

-Tales of Graces: What can I say?  I love the Tales series.

-Red Steel 2:  Not much being said about this one, but it is supposedly in development, and will likely use the Motion+ accessory.  Maybe with that we'll finally get that awesome sword dueling action that immediately came to mind when we first heard of Red Steel?

-[Hopeful] Kirby:  Surely another Kirby game will be made at some point or another?  I loved Kirby 64, and since then his excursions have been exclusive to the GBA and DS.  Have another go at a 3D Kirby platformer, Nintendo!

-[Hopeful] Starfox: Hardly any mention at all on this, but I sure would love to see another Starfox game.  I can see a lot of possible ways to expand on Assault and/or 64, such as maybe a strategy element?  Maybe the ability to customize your Arwing or Landmaster?  The branching paths in 64 was nice, I hope that returns.

-[Hopeful] Another Zelda game: As of late, Zelda has been a victim of Nintendo's new casual approach to videogames, with the series having temporarily migrated to the DS.  That's fine, I guess, but it shouldn't mean that the console series should have to grind to a halt.

-Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles:  I always like a good shoot 'em up.

Nintendo DS:

-Kingdom Hearts: 352/8 Days:  I saw this game in action, and it looks surprisingly good.  The graphics are rather well done for a DS game, and this will have co-op multiplayer, which is awesome.

PC:

-Guild Wars 2:  I have no idea when this will be released, but I like Guild Wars, so I'm naturally interested in its oncoming sequel.

-Starcraft 2:  I heard this will split into 3 parts.  Meh, whatever.  Right now I think the Terran disc interests me most.

-Diablo 3: I havent actually played any of the Diablo games, but they seem like they'd be right up my ally, so I think I will check out Diablo 3 when it comes out.

Those are all that come to mind.

Folklore

Action adventure (or Action RPG) games come in many, many different flavors and varieties, and Folklore is yet another example of this.  Though it does feel kind of like Okami or a Zelda game, I can't say I've played a game that's quite like it.

Folklore also has an intriguing story, which begins with the two characters Keats and Ellen.  Keats is an editor for a supernatural magazine, and recieves an anonymous phone call asking him to come to the rural village of Doolin.  Though he is inclined to consider it a prank call, Keats goes to investigate anyway, and runs into Ellen, who was also drawn to the village by a letter from her mother, who she thought was dead.   The two notice a cloaked figure on a nearby clifftop, which Ellen thinks might be her mother.  The figure falls over (and off the cliff), however, revealing that it was either a doll of some sort of a corpse.  However, it is not found on the beach below the cliff, having mysteriously disappeared.  Ellen, distraught with worry, faints.  Keats suggests calling it a day, and the two take up lodging in the village.  Ellen wakes up to strange voices, which invite her to the local pub.  She arrives there, and is enticed by possible information regarding her mother.  Following one of the strange characters she meets in the pub to a nearby henge, she is endowed with mysterious powers and allowed to visit the Netherworld.  The same happens to Keats, and thus the two set out to unravel a supernatural mystery that is nearly two decades old.  "What happened to Ellen's mother 17 years ago?",  "What's with this village?" "Who called Keats?", and "What is the Netherworld?" are all questions that you'll likely have in mind as you play through the game.

The story is told through a combination of CG cutscenes and comic book-style scenes.  It's also split into two pieces.  One part of the story is told through Ellen's perspective, and the other is told through Keats'.  The two are separately playable, and their campaigns, though they frequently cross and meet, run independent of each other.  That is, you could play through Ellen's campaign and not bother with Keats, or vice versa.  Though you'll only get half the plot if you do that.

The gameplay in Folklore is fun, but to get the entire story by alternating between Ellen and Keats' campaigns, you will have to essentially do each level twice.  Though there are occasionally  some minor differences, the two play almost exactly the same, and go to mostly the same places.  So, you'll play through Ellen's version of chapter 2, for example, then, if you so choose, you can then switch over and play Keats' version of it.  The fact that you're getting the whole story is the only driving force to doing this.  Ellen and Keats fight the same bosses, and visit the same levels, so there's a huge issue of repetitiveness brought up by giving each character their own campaign.

Folklore's battle system is kind of like..Pokemon and Okami meshed together.  Though it is true Keats takes a slightly more physical approach to his attacks, neither of them really battle by themselves.  They fight and assimilate Folks.  By defeating a Folk, you can get it to reveal its soul, which you can grab and snatch with a quick flick of the Sixaxis controller (which works great, by the way).  Now you can summon that Folk to your aid to fight for you (Or in Keat's case, just lend a hand).  For example, say you encounter a Folk wielding a machine gun.  You want that Folk, first you have to defeat it.  Then you can snatch its soul and summon it.  Folks have a variety of abilities and elements.  For example, theres the simple hack and slash types, and there's the long/mid range types, and there's even some that simply charge into enemies, or fly above, dropping sticky goo.  There're also defensive Folks that can be used to block attacks.  Even boss Folks can be absorbed, though the Folklords (Folks so powerful they rule over their own realm) can't be (or maybe they can;  I can't remember).  Some Folks (especially bosses) are immune or highly resilient to certain types of attacks, encouraging you to constantly be on the look out for unique new Folks to capture and try.  Aiding you in the discovery of particularly difficult foes' weaknesses are picture book pages, which provide humorous drawings that convey the best methods of downing some of the tougher enemies.

I didn't play much of Folklore (I will return to it though), but the soundtrack, while nice, was somewhat forgettable.  Though many of the worlds are colorful and interesting, the game overall has a very mellow tone to it, not unlike Persona 3, another game dealing in the supernatural.  The game performed well for the most part, but there is an annoying load time that occurs every time you exit the Folk select menu, and the game occasionally drops slightly (but noticeably) in frame rate.  The CG scenes also froze often, but I wonder if that might have been the disc.

Overall, I like Folklore.  Its an interesting and unique game.  I'd give it an 8.5/10