Jecht Shot rules
Watching Cinematech as they go over the opening movies for various video games. Final Fantasy X still looks pretty cool. There's about a 1 in 3 chance that you'll like the minigame included in any FF game. I was indifferent to the card battles in 8 and 9, but I really liked Blitzball. Other people, not so much.
Perhaps I should pick up that game again, as there is no hockey season. And so far most of the games we've been getting from GameFly have not been keepers. Burnout 3 was fun for about five minutes, marred by annoying voiceovers, monotonous gameplay, and exceedingly long loadtimes. I liked Samurai Jack, which felt true to the cartoon but didn't offer much in the way of gameply to keep me playing it past the first sequence. Plus, it started to exhibit jumpingpuzzlitis, which is what game developers do to pad out their game when they're running out of ideas. (The only jumping puzzles I can tolerate for some reason are those in Ratchet and Clank. Insomniac's come a long way since the days of Spyro the Dragon.)
Next up on the list is Super Army War, which sounds a whole lot like Rescue Raiders. That was a damn fine game on the Apple ][. Developed by Sir-Tech, the same folks who did Wizardry, your job was to battle terrorists through time by flying your helicopter and developing convoys of troops powerful enough to break through the defenses of your enemies. You could build tanks, anti-air missile launchers, demolition vans, paratroopers, and engineers.
The framework of the game was a mish-mash of time travel and battling through key fights of WW II, only this time with futuristic weapons like napalm and explosives. It didn't really need that framing to be a fun game, really. I suspect one of the developers was trying to insert some wargaming hobby into his project. Even today, when I hear the name "Cherbourg," I think of that mission in Rescue Raiders.
Finally finished Fables 5: The Mean Seasons. I really wish these trades came out more often, but I am happy that in this market of X-23 and Tomb Raider/Witchblade/Bondage Fairy crossovers, an intelligent title does manage to sell some issues now and again.
