robio said:

Very disappointed at how White Knight Chronicles turned out. It's getting bad to mediocre reviews from all the big sites that have reviewed it so far, and I'm sure more negative ones will appear over the course of the next week.  

Very surprised that Level 5 would put something like that out. Over the past few years they've become one of my favorite developers. I guess this may lend some credibility to those who've said that they work much better when they have a big publisher standing behind them and watching them work like Sony or Square-Enix.

i'm not really surprised to see these reviews.  even previews which always focus on the positive points were saying this was very standard fare and run-of-the-mill jrpg.

Played 2 hrs of Endless Ocean 2.

Awesome so far. There is so much stuff to do over the first game. This time it's not an artful experience, it's more of a "game" type game. You are always doing something, using tools, searching for items, exploring and you are driven on by the story which is a hell of a lot better than the first, with multiple characters and tons of dialogue, lots of cutscenes, even action moments.

For instance this fricking lengendary Great White shark called Thanotos guarded the entrance to this underwater castle and you had to use the pulsar gun to fight him off.

The GG character is hilarious too. He cracks me up whenever he appears.

Everything is pretty elegantly refined too, for instance now you can move whilst having the map on screen and it elegantly fades whilst you are moving and goes solid when you stop so you can see exactly where you are going when looking for a marker. This is a feature a lot of games could and should use.

You can also pan and zoom into focus points. You can't zoom when just clicking on a fish in normal gameplay but by using food you get the same effect as they swarm about you. Very cool.

The camera works as it ever did and you can easily move the photos over to SD card which moves files like Windows explorer, deleting the data from the wii hard drive and moving it to sd card in one go.

One thing that has bothered me is that there is a distinct lack of music. In the first game you get a new tune in each dive spot and then you can choose which track to listen to, which plays in a loop.

So far in this game its all the in game compositions which play for a little while then leave you in gurgling silence.

I did just have to stop a section where a proper operatic tune was playing and it was just as good as the Westernra from the first game.

Oh yeah the loading is really fast compared to the first game.

Anyhow this game is different from the first, I would say that its good because now both games compliment the other. If you want the artistic zen like experience of chilling and appreciating the beauty of the ocean, that's in the first game. For people out there who wanted a more structured "game like" approach with tasks, objectives, cutscenes, achievements, items etc, then this is that game.

But, if you want to diverge from the story you can still chill and explore, but the temptation to use your cool new toys to scan the ocean bed for salvagable items, or shoot fish with a pulsar gun, might prove too strong.

bugsonglass said:

Thanatos means Death in greek.  what an awesome name for a shark

I'm looking forward to super speed dolphin swimming.

Darksiders Sequel Announced 1.2 Million Copies Shipped in First 4 Weeks

LOL WTF at that analyst saying it was some sort of failure.

Archangel3371 said:

Woah. I didn't know there was a Monster Hunter on the 360. Me want.

It's a port of the PC MMO. Looks pretty average compared to Tri.

gamingeek said:

aspro said:

Silent Hill composer joining Grasshopper.  Niiiiice.  Tells me Grasshopper is making some green that they can lure away that kind of talent.

I'm not that excited as they have awesome composers already, the soundtrack for Killer 7 and NMH is great.

Agreed with GG.   I love Masafumi Takada, he did both of those soundtracks.  As well as Contact, God Hand, Fatal Frame IV, Umbrella Chronicles, Infinite Space and 4 pieces for Smash Bros Brawl

edit:  hmm, i just read the article.  i hadn't realised Masafumi Takada was not in charge of music on NMH2.  i had just assumed that was the case as he had previously done all (certainly the latest few) of suda's games

That's a great story about Ubisoft and their neglect of NMH2.  Goes along with what I've been saying (and most other reasonable people too).  

On a related subject I just bought the domain and built the logo for my new marketing company.  Going to be a busy February for me.

gamingeek said:

MEH?

Took the words right out of my mouth.

I'd rather play White Knight Chronicles!