Oh god, I’m so excited to write, my recent gaming experiences have been wonderful and I’ve reminisced about some great ones in the past too. Let’s see here...

Persona 3 ----



I freaking love this game, or most of it at least. Beating up supernatural monsters by evoking imaginative friends who fight for you while simulating the school-life of Japanese peoples that in some cases resemble American Saturday morning cartoon characters , yes ! I’ve been playing it for the last two years though, mainly because I find it extremely repetitive and tedious to go dungeon crawling in the game, I like it the first 10-20 mins then it begins to feel like a chore, and the worst part is that I’m far too much of a coward and much to obsessive to just play the damn game as a dating-sim, what if I am to weak to face the next boss?

Anyways I’m 130 hours in and I’m finally beginning to reach the end, at least of the main scenario, there’s a extra one called the answer in the FES special edition, I wonder how long that one is? I’m loving the characters that at first seemed highly archetypical but later all evolved to something way more complicated, you know , just like in real life. Unlike real life Persona 3 gives me the opportunity to live the Japanese dream of being surrounded by robot women , helping little kids with parenting issues ( although thanks to podtoid I feel dirty for doing it now ) and fighting freaky monsters with a canine friend that cuts his opponents with a knife! WITH HIS JAWS! Now that’s what I call entertainment!

The game still looks good even today thanks to the amazing artstyle witch pervades every little detail of the game ,even the menus look sleek and stylish! One of my complaints is the sometimes unfair difficulty level where as sometimes if you dabble and the enemy get's the first strike you're basically finished. And if you're unlucky 30 minutes of grinding will be gone, and it has happened more than once for me throughout my play-trough. And add to it that your companions doesn't always carry themselves that well in combat, sure you can issue commands but that is quite the hassle and is generally only needed during harder fights and you got yourself a pretty annoying game at times, luckily it's the minority of the time. Sometimes I forget that they are only mere computer programs and I go screaming - Junpei you stupid bastard , use fire spells , THEY ARE WEAK AGAINST IT! It's your freaking specialty! Don't hit them with your stupid sword! *sigh* Anyways!

So in an effort to finally get trough things I've been just plowing trough the last parts as fast as I can, I've been going to the arcade every night, snoozing at school and neglecting all my monster-slaying even though my friends tell me that I probably should be training for what I think is the final battle, I could be wrong though since the game is made in Japan and it's been telling me that it's the last boss for quite some bosses now. I wonder if I'll make it?

I can’t mention Persona and not mention the catchy as hell soundtrack, almost all songs in the game are memorable ! I used to start up the game just so I could listen to the theme while eating break-feast. There is also this song, what’s with the French rambling in the middle of it all? I don’t have a clue but I’m loving it! The original intro song is pretty epic too! And the fight music almost never wears out it’s welcome! And considering that I’ve been fighting for at least 30 hours that’s a feat! The Tartarus theme also deserves some attention for it's funkiness!

Also Japanese Thor is marvelous! Why does he wear freaking v-shorts and tattoos on his thighs? I don’t know but I love it.




Some of this stuff is so out there, I mean just look at this incubus guy above to the right! But since the women get to be sexualized then I guess it’s only fair to do it to the men as well , I’m not complaining at all! And the PSP version let's you choose if you want to play as a girl or boy, I guess the persona team is a pretty aware bunch huh? I'm digging the out there "loosely based on mythology" art, most of them really look like the concept art they are based on. Also , I just managed to summon Satan, who's the man now dawg?

Forbidden Siren 2

I got this a while ago from one of those super cheap boxes in those - we sell everything stores , you’ve got them in the US right? I felt like I had to try it out because I adore PS2 era survival horror games and I’ve heard some moderately good things about it , I think Stevil might have said something good about them or something. I haven't played very much of it but this is what I think of it as of now!

The first thing I noticed was the creepy cutscenes, just look at these things! I think they superimposed real faces onto computer generated textures and sometimes it makes for some horrifyingly comical and at times just genuinely scary moments.

The game takes place on a cursed island of sorts and you get to control a bunch of people, most with unique abilities throughout a fixed time-frame constantly going back and forth between people and different places in time to find out what the hell is going on. It's like the TV series 24 but instead of going in a linear fashion from hour 1 to 24 ( or how it works) this game is scrambling the whole story.



The game seems like it had noble and ambitious intents but most of it’s execution is either hit or miss, the game controls very survival horror like , kind of like Silent Hill 4 : The room. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m playing it with a ps3 controller or what but the first person aiming sensitivity is insanely high, I was forced to spray two magazines on a zombie just to hit him to complete the tutorial. Then there’s the interesting mechanic that is called sight-jack ( not to be confused with the horrible mind-jack game ). It allows you to see trough the eyes of nearby enemies and makes for some tense moments but the white noise sound it makes when searching for an an enemies vision is kind pretty high pitched and overly annoying , high and annoying doesn’t make it scarier , just more painful to execute, which will eventually get to you as the game seems intent at using it pretty often.

I did however get to one interesting scenario where you got to control a guy with very bad eye-sigh, and to get around you sight jacked his dog that followed him around to see better. But when I later discovered that all of this sneaking and sight-jacking wasn’t really necessary because I could just outrun the zombies and sprint to the exit like some kind of suicidal bat it felt kind of unnecessary. I mean why bother putting effort into building this elaborate maze and emphasising on stealth when players can just sprint trough it? Didn’t they test this thing? I hope it get's better later on!

Another daunting thing is the overly complicated menus, I mean I’m all for the depth that comes with context sensitive moves and a plethora of maneuvers but here it’s pretty poorly executed so you’ll constantly be re-visiting the guides on how to use all of your abilities and what combination of buttons did what. It’s pretty strange really , it’s like it was intended for a keyboard and mouse setup with all of it’s functions and stuff. I do however enjoy the intent of more options and advanced techniques but not when I have to go back and read tutorials because they don’t make sense.

I will probably finish it just because it entertains me in the “ what is going on!? what the hell is that?! Why is that kid running around with baseball-bat that looks like a penis” kind of sense, and like I said , I’m a sucker for horror games. So keep that in mind if you happen to find this weird gem, but then again it will probably cost close to nothing so pick it up and enjoy it’s convoluted controls and strangeness!

Also -- Super Metroid for the genesis * orgasm *