Mini Rant: Time Limits

Playing Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has recently reintroduced me to one of my most hated things in gaming, time limits. I can now officially say that they are the biggest piles of crap to ever be introduced into a video game (along with needing to eat food and degrading weaponry and armour) and are guaranteed to stand as a brick wall between you and “fun” (you know, that thing games are meant to be) and instead encourage minor insanity and frustration. What makes it worse time-limits can spoil you enjoying a really good game and I have reached the conclusion that they should never be included in anything ever except possibly puzzle games.

The Future of JRPG’s ?

The fact is lately JRPG’s don’t seem to have been hitting as hard as they used too. Back in the glory days of Final Fantasy people would want a PS1 just to get hold of the seventh installment but gradually wstern increase in JRPG’s have been decreasing and judging by several reports out of Japan this is gradually happening there to some degree. Now in my opinion to truly succeed and bring JRPG’s into the “next-gen” as it were they need to be different. Lets face it, Blue Dragon was bad at worst and extremely average at best. The PS2 is still the place to be for RPG’s and the new consoles are slogging away while Persona III manages to better anything they can produce. So where do I feel the JRPG genre has gotten a little lost? And how can it bring itself into the next gen?

Two Worlds First Impressions

Two Worlds was very much savaged by the media come it’s release last year, and that largely influenced my choice to not purchase it until it was in the bargin bin. Four months later and it’s price has dropped like an anvil over the side of a skyscraper and I now have a copy to play. Two hours into the game now and while it isn’t the biggest RPG turd I have come across, technically this Oblivion wannabe is equivalent to a minor nuclear disaster. Remember game developers:- to make a game to rival Oblivion it helps to actually know about making games that y’know.. work.

Mass Effect Review

Well around 30 hours, plenty of sidequests, one epic ending and plenty of hurling abusive unladylike swearwords at the Mako here is the review to Bioware’s sci-fi epic.

Knights Of The Nine

A guest review/rant this time as the lovely Maaya handles “Knights Of The Nine” the first Oblivion expansion…

Review Oblivion

I actually finished the PC version of Oblivion well over a year ago and throughly enjoyed it. Recently the GOTY edition has been on my playlist and while I haven’t touched on Knights Of The Nine or Shivering Isles yet (expect reviews of them in the future) I realized I’d never actually reviewed the main game before anyway. So here is my review of Oblivion…

Mass Effect Further Impressions

After around 15 hours into Mass Effect I have some further impressions on the game:- In 15 hours I haven’t really touched the main plot yet and have done sidequests almost exclusively. For a bit of a break though I am now taking on Noveria one of the first plot planets, so now you have an idea where I am in the game here are the pro’s and con’s of what I have played so far..

Mass Effect First Impressions

I’ll readily admit that I’m a screaming Bioware fangirl who has loved every title she has played that they have created and the sequels other companies have created for their original games too. After playing four hours into Mass Effect, here are my first impressions and what can I say but Bioware I am hooked once more…

Phantom Hourglass First Impressions

O.K so its debatable if Zelda games are action adventure games over RPG’s, however I have always viewed Zelda as a RPG style game and frankly this game is so awesome I’m going to write about it regardless.

Yep thats right on first impressions Phantom Hourglass is completely amazing.

Merry Christmas To All

Just a quick post to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas, Happy Holidays and a great new year. Stay tuned for some initial impressions of all I recieve for Christmas to fuel my RPG addiction along with my top five games of the past 12 months.