I've said it (too) many times, to pretty much everybody: I want/need to finish my Baldur's Gate 1 game. First step is of course reinstalling the beast.. I didn't even remember if it was a DOS or Win9x game! The six CDs (with the expansion) were still waiting for me in my PC games binder..

That installer is a blast, looking back at the specs needed.. It told me I needed more free hard disk space - that I only had 2 gigs left while I had was really at 71 gigs. Oops, such big disks didn't even exist at the time..

I decided to go for broke and choose the "huge" cache option: 240 megs! Then the hard question: is your CPU faster than 200MHz ?

After everything was copied I was treated to a Descent 3 movie - "optimized for internet modem play" ! I admit it was bleeding edge at the time.. BG and the ToSC expansion date back to 1998 and 1999. Ahhh memories!

The last time I tried reinstalling the game it was on a laptop, with a LCD screen.. 640x480 with a fixed pixel sizes makes for a tiiiiny image. At home I still use a CRT, and I was surprised to see the game looks ok across 19 inches. I'm guessing I'll still hurt for the 800x600 support of later versions of the engine, but I thought it'd be a lot worse so I'm pleased.

I found my archived savegames, and I can only hope it was on the same version or at least compatible with the patch version I installed.. Not much I can do but reroll if something gets messed up. I'm now at the hardest part of getting back to an old game on an old savegame: trying to remember. Remember where I was, what I was doing.. Who I was in fact, and what kind of stuff I could do..... I see I'm a Dwarf, Ftr6/Clr6 multiclassed. Recently I read a whole lot of AD&D 3.5 sourcebooks, so seeing THAC0 again is a bit dizzying :) I'll have to read the quest log to see if anything comes back to memory.. Or just explore everywhere again and see what's left to burn and destroy !

Not sure if I'll keep a detailled log, but there should be at least some impressions making their way here along the way.. I'm also starting a pen-and-paper Forgotten Realms campaign this next Saturday with a bunch of friends, so it'll be interesting to compare the same region told by different people (the game will be set 25 years after the game's timeline).

Edit: I just found this. Might be interesting if I hit a major bug and have to reroll, but I don't think I'll risk my game for now..

We moved recently, so we've been opening boxes, installing stuff and just plain old busy at home in the last few weeks... Same weekend as the move was my birthday! Yeah I guess I finally reached the age when I shouldn't be trusted.. oh well. Good thing is, I got a new heap of games! 3 DS titles, 2 for the PS2. The PS2 isn't totally hooked up yet, so I didn't even unwrap the games (GTA Vice City Stories and Rogue Galaxy) -- but I clocked in a lot of time on the DS in the last few weeks, both at home relaxing and during the comute to and from work. So here we go for comments:

Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney

I borrowed this from Maze some time ago, but only recently really got into it. I got stuck in my first session mostly because I didn't bother to RTFM. The game is a good mix between a graphical adventure and pick-your-own-adventure story telling. Some sequences will have you visiting places, talking to people and examining scenes to find evidence and items to progress along. Then you have the court drama. In the end it's a huge branching dialog, but you have to press people on for details and highlight holes in their stories.

Most of it is done via a menu interface, with easy access to the 'court records' (your inventory if you will) at pretty much all times. Originally it was a GBA title, but they added touch and dual screen features to the game with great success, and added a 5th case. That last case also has a more 'advanced' way to look at evidence, letting you turn and manipulate objects in your possession. The interface might be a turnoff for some.. It's basic, it's old school, but it works.

The reason I got stuck at the beginning was because I didn't know that almost all the time "pressing on" witnesses is both needed, and risk free.. The only time I used it at the beginning I managed to find one of the few places where the judge strikes you out for the attempt. Bummer. If you strike out 5 times in a section the verdict goes immediately against you and you have to start from the last save. Grumble. There's a almost-auto (it prompts you automatically) save between each major step, and you can suspend gameplay at anytime.

Phoenix Wright really shines in the writing. Rather important detail, since it's mostly dialogue you'll be looking at while playing. Characters are quirky and nicely fleshed out, and you can get into a love/hate thing with many of the people you'll come across. It's also frequently funny, getting lots of grins and a few genuine out loud laughs out of me. Getting to the end of this was like finishing a good book. Good length, satisfying. Recommended.

Elite Beat Agents

 One of my bday gifts. I had heard a lot about it, and the original japanese version, from Hotkey. Mix a kind of DDR-type-rhythm gameplay mechanic with manga and anime sequences and a cheering/cheerleading theme, and you've got EBA. Yup, it's weird :-)

You're part of a team helping people in distress.. A dog looking for the way home, fending off alien abductors, helping a family cope with the loss of a love one, anything goes. How do you help? The squad gets on site and... cheers! There's no pompoms, but they're not missed.

To make the cheer work you have to tape and drag your stylus on the touch screenon targets appearing corresponding to the beat. Of course it gets from easy to hellish depending on the song you pick and the difficulty setting.. I haven't finished it yet, still missing the last song.....at the easiest setting :( Having to tap the same spot multiple times isn't that easy in some songs, and maybe it's just me and the way I hold the stylus, but often I missed stuff because I had to get my hand out of the way to see new buttons that had appeared. A problem that doesn't exist in lets say DDR.. But not much of a choice using a touch screen.

As with any music-based game, the song choice is the main factor deciding if you'll like the game or not... Quite frankly, I would have liked maybe the option of playing the japanese songs.. I liked EBA, but as a friend pointed out, some of the songs must really be cheap to license since you always get them in music games. Enough of YMCA and Material Girl and Avril Lavigne! Pleeeease can we get better and more original stuff? Localization (at least on this title) can't be that expensive, maybe they should invest in the music selection instead..

So I like it, but I can't help but be a little frustrated at missed potential because of the tracks. The quirky japanese attitude of the storylines and animations just isn't matched by the retro/classic/cheesy american pop.. I'd recommend checking the list before buying it.

Super Princess Peach

Another gift, that came with an explanation of sorts: "I have it and it's really nice, but I thought maybe it wouldn't be something you'd buy for yourself". lol :) Sooo.. What's this one about?

Bowser manages to get the VIBE SCEPTER and capture Mario, Luigi, and a bunch of toads. Luckily Princess Peach was away at the time, and upon her return decide to take matters in her own hands and heads out to rescue everybody! That's about all there is story wise :) The game is straight up classic platformer with a 'feminine' twist / gimmick. Princess Peach can use different moods/emotions to her advantage. Joy will allow her to fly and create a little cyclone around her, rage will produce flames and make her stomp in frustration, crying will start the waterworks and make her run fast, and the last one restores your hit points. Your mood usage is limited by your 'vibe gauge'.. You can refill it by having Perry, your talking magical umbrella, absorb ennemies.

Yup! A talking magical umbrella. It also makes you float in the air after a jump and shoots little blasts after you buy the right upgrade from the store.

In classic Mario fashion you'll see many worlds each with its own theme (forest, desert, ice, ghost house, etc). There's 6 levels in each world, plus a boss stage. Each level has 3 toads you need to rescue. It's not really mentionned anywhere at first, but you need to find and free ALL of them to be able to access the last boss, which of course is Bowser. The level design is interesting enough, possibly light in puzzle/mood use elements in my opinion. It's light, you'll rarely feel like throwing the DS at the wall (just happened after too many 'just one more level' at wee hours of the night), and it's colorful and fun. Just try to ignore all the 'vibe scepter' stuff.. Someone must have had a good laugh translating this :)

Beating Bowser then opens up 3 new levels in each world.. With new toads to free, new puzzle pieces and music pieces to find. There's also minigames to unlock, but they kinda feel rushed to me.. It's just another way to spend the gold you find -- after unlocking a minigame you'll have to buy access to more levels for them. The store also sells a couple of new powers and hit point and gauge upgrades, which are a much better investment.

Good game, good length. Only pass if you're allergic to high levels of cuteness.

Puzzle Quest

I had read a bit about the buzz surrounding this one online.. Weird choice of the dev -- they had a PC demo of a game released on the PSP and DS *only*. There's a rumored PC version, but it sounds like they hadn't thought about it at first. Odd! Anyway. I tried this after Maze bought it (planning many sleepless hours looking over the little one I'm sure) and I simply got hooked.

Who would have thought that adding a RPG to a bejeweled-match-3-gems-type of puzzle game would work this good ?

You get the classic RPG setup. Pick a character class from the list of Warrior, Knight, Druid or Wizard and travel across the kingdom to fulfill quests and battle evil. The twist here is that battles take place over a puzzle grid. Matching colored gems will give you the corresponding type of mana while matching coins and stars will give you cash and experience, respectively. Matching skulls does direct dammage to the opponent.

Unlike a lot of puzzle games where you go against someone, like Puyo Pop or Super Puzzle Street Fighter Turbo, both characters use the same grid, playing in turns. If you match 4 or 5 gems instead of only 3, you get a free turn. Your class determines your list of spells and abilities -- with the mana you gather you can cast a spell instead of simply switching gems on the board!

You can also build your citadel, gain control of cities to collect taxes, capture monsters to use as mounts or research their abilities to add to your arsenal, collect runes to craft items, gain new companions... For a "puzzle" game the gameplay elements are surprisingly deep! Graphics are good, presentation is nice, I do like the cut scenes and quest intros.. Of course most quests fall into the usual cliches of 'go kill such and such' or 'take this to its destination' but it's not really an issue -- doesn't matter what the quest consists of, it will still be resolved by the same battle system. One small annoying thing is the music, which I turned off after only a couple of minutes. I read the PSP music and effects are better, but I don't think I'd trade the touch screen interface and the dual screen layout just for that.

Solid game, get it. It had been a while since a game kept me up til 2h30am ! I'm really hooked.

I guess I'll eventually get a PS3, but not anytime soon.. Let's say they at least need to cut the launch price in half before I consider it within reasonable reach.

The good thing about that is that THIS should be available as a Greatest Hits by the time I get to it!

In the meanwhile there's Super Paper Mario coming out for the Wii next week. I'm still looking for reasons not to get it and coming up short ;) Just wondering what's the deal with the red-and-blue glasses. It was gimmicky with Sly 3, don't think there's been many advances in the field of cereal box grade items......

In other news I'm almost done unpacking and installing everything in the new apt so I'm getting back into gaming! Woohoo! Almost done with Super Princess Peach on the DS so I guess I'll have to write about it soon.

Yikes!

I've been wanting to write something here for a while, but I've been down with a massive case of the flu.. I guess I had good timing to buy a PVR receiver box last month -- having stuff to watch is really handy when most of what you can do consists of lying on the couch hoping the dull, aching pain, fever and dizziness goes away. So far it doesn't look like I'll feel good enough to get back to work tomorrow, marking my 10th day with that darn Flu. Remind me to get a shot next year.

But it was still an excellent harvest season for goodies!

1. Video Games

Since the DS is still new it was an obvious choice.. I got three titles:

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. You play a slime.. You know, the weakest enemies from DQ? That blue dots you obliterate without giving them a second thought? Yup, those. You have an 'amazing' array of 4 abilities: you can jump, you can bump, you can stack and you can throw. Jump isn't even that useful, it just happens from time to time you have steps to go over.. nothing special. Bump is the most used function: you streeeetch your slime then let it go to create a slingshot effect and throw yourself at enemies and objects. Rinse and repeat, you can kill baddies this way. But it brings the next thing: stacking! When you bump into stuff, it flies into the air.. If you happen to be under an object when it's falling, it'll just stack on your head! You can carry around 3 items or monsters this way (forgot to mention: you have no usable inventory while exploring the outside world.. so you have to grab the surrounding items to help you out). You can switch their order around if you feel like it. It then brings the last move: throwing the stuff you have stacked. All of this together is how you interact with the world.

Storywise, the slime kingdom is attacked by a platypus mobster and his crew (I swear). Everyone but you is kidnapped, so of course you have no choice but to Save The World (tm). The slime kingdom was built by lazy but intelligent people (my kind of guys!) -- they knew they couldn't carry stuff very far without a lot of back and forth traveling, so they installed rails and carts _everywhere_. Whatever you throw on them (including yourself) gets carried back to the city. Neat! So when you save another slime, no need to escort them back home: just ship them! You also collect monsters (collecting 30 copies of a monster opens up something in the museum) and items used in tank battles this way.

Tank battles? Yeah most of the game is pretty much straightforward platforming and collecting, but at one point you uncover the lost weapon of the slime people -- a giant TANK. While it's pretty much the only tank the slimes have, tanks are common in the bad guys camp and you'll need to battle pretty often to free up your friends and finish the game. Tank battles work by having you inside the tank, feeding ammo to the cannons.. Ammo appears at several pipes in the different areas of the tank, which you or your team need to carry back to the main room to throw into the cannons.. You can shoot ammo in a straight line or an arc. Different items will have different effects and capabilities, so preparing your list of ammo is important before heading to the battlefield. You can also infiltrate the enemy tank and sabotage their installations. The baddies have the same capabilities and choices on their side. When you destroy the opposing tank's armor, you have to head over to the other side, get in the ending room, and destroy the core. You can also upgrade your tank to have more armor points... via an alchemy system you can fuse items into stronger one to use in battle..

I finished this in a bit over 12 hours I think, like it very much. Really the only bad things I could mention is the fact that you can only have 1 game going on at a time (no multiple save slots) so if I want to have a friend play this I would have to delete my own game, and that the nun slime speaks ever sooo sloooowly each time you want to save your game.. Rocket Slime is just plain fun. Get it if you own a DS.

Mario vs Donkey Kong 2: March Of The Minis. Haven't played a lot with it yet - I nicknamed it 'Nintendo Lemmings'. DK captured his old flame Paula (she was the girl at the top of the screen in the original DK game!) and you go after him.. To help you out you collect minis to build an army to fight the big ape.. I guess Mario is getting a bit lazy in his old age :) So you have 9 floors with 10 levels each: 9 to save/collect minis, and a boss level. Everything is done via touch commands to tell the minis to stop, walk, jump, to activate switches, etc. You have to get them to the exits while dodging traps and hopefully not die. When you have gone thru the 9 sections you take your army to the boss stage to battle DK.. If you didn't get enough minis you might run out of ammo... You can also build your own puzzle levels, and share them (or get new ones) via Nintendo Wifi.. fun title, more about it when I spend more time with it.

Clubhouse Games. This one is everything but the kitchen sink. Card games. Board games. Bowling. Darts. Billiards. It's a big bunch of nicely done, fun, great games collection. You can play vs the CPU, with friends locally via download or via Nintendo Wifi. Even got pictochat integrated in it.. nice.

2. DVDs

An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder. The man can talk. And talk. And taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalk. But I never get bored with him :-) Disc 1 is a Q&A in Toronto, Canada while the other one is in London, England. Haven't checked all the Easter Eggs yet.

Clerks II. Of course it can't be as fresh at the first Clerks showing at Sundance.. but as far as sequels go, this is nice and makes sense. Maybe not the best title to introduce someone to Kevin Smith's movies, but good nonetheless.

V For Vendetta: Special Edition. With movie ticket prices these days, I usually prefer to wait for a DVD rental. Just more bang for the buck. I saw this movie TWICE on the big screen. It's awesome. On the special ed you get Natalie Portman's SNL rap as an Easter Egg ;)

My bro also gave me a gift certificate for a DVD shop.. I'll probably go grab CSI Season 6 next week when I feel better...

3. Etc

There was also socks, boxer short, a shirt... and a 1000+ pieces Simpsons Photomosaic puzzle! We already completed two of them last year.. this time it's the one with Homer bowling... Ouch, that's a loooooooot of blue tones! Should be fun to do, but I'll wait until I feel less sick - just thinking about making a jigsaw puzzle right now gives me a headache :)

Right before Xmas I managed to get a Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ! I'm 10 hours in playing Zelda, and I also got Rayman and Madden 07, plus a couple of Virtual Console games.. very cool. I'll have to talk about it in a separate entry :) In the meanwhile, drop me a line if you see any extra nunchuck controllers on sale anywhere..!

I also managed to miss getting the holiday hat in Guild Wars for a second year in a row! *grumble*

Another 'catching up' gaming entry..

Guitar Hero 2. I finally got this one.. How could I resist? The first one was awesome and I wanted a second guitar to play multiplayer with sweetie. So I got a whole new kit, with the red guitar, we applied stickers all over and started rocking again.

A couple of weeks later, having done all songs on medium (think I might be missing only one star somewhere) here's the good the bad and the ugly.

Good. Hey it's more GH! Shouldn't need any more than that! New songs, new characters, new venues, new modes, new guitar. The hammer-on and pull-offs are easier to do for some reason (a bit less strict on timing?). The multiplayer mode is worth the buy pretty much by itself -- while in the first game you could only select a song and you would go back and forth playing parts of it with a friend, now you have different parts to play, either guitar/bass or lead/rhythm. Each player can select his own difficulty level, so there's no problem with a newbie jamming with a pro. Sweet.

The practice mode has been totally revamped for the better. In the first installment you could play the songs you wanted in the practice area but the only different was that you didn't haved the venue lights and animations and if I remember correctly you couldn't fail out of the song. Now you can select what parts of the song you want to play (so you don't have to repeat the intro and bridge sections if you only have trouble with the solo) and you can slow the song down to break it down even more into easier chunks to learn!

Since they give you options for training, they upped the difficulty a notch across the board, especially at hard and expert levels. You can now get 3-notes chords.. Most songs are also *longer* than the selections we had before.. Guess that's been a given ever since they announced YYZ and Freebird were part of the track list..!

The unlockable songs list is pretty neat. Something for everyone. Also finishing some goals (like clearing all songs, then clearing all songs with 5 stars) will make special guitars available in the store. All characters get an alternate costume/item available in the shop..

Bad. Longer songs don't mean all of it is interesting.. Yeah, I know, they're reproducing the real songs, but geesh, maybe they didn't need to opt for the ultra extended version each time they could.. Ending a song with a minute and half of repeating the same riff exactly is just plain boring... I read somewhere they wanted to add an 'endurance' aspect to the difficulty tweaks instead of only adding more/faster notes.

Track list.. This is of course the most highly subjective point. There's a lot of great names, for sure.. But after playing all the songs on medium, I personally can't help but muster a small 'meh'. There was too many times when after finishing I thought 'don't think I'll ever want to play that one again'. Some songs sounded boring even with interesting playing, others were songs I could listen too all day but got bored to tears playing them. At least there's enough tracks I really like to keep me busy for a long while... Hangar 18 and Trogdor will always be there :)

Ugly. It's more nitpicking than anything else here, but some details do bother me. First, seems the QA team missed some not so subtle things.. On at least three occasions we saw orange notes thrown in *MEDIUM*. While playing I had the impression that most of the attention was given to hard and expert modes, the medium difficulty level was so uneven across the different tracks. I also liked Death's character model better in the first game.. this time around he looks skinny and weak. On thing I'm still not sure about is the way they changed the money and store mechanics.. In GH1 you had unlocks per difficulty, while in GH2 unlocks are global across the levels for your band. Playing on Easy nets you no pay checks, while Medium doesn't give you enough to buy everything you want (more than enough to buy all extra tracks, no worries there). You have no choice but to get better and succeed at Hard then Expert if you want all guitars and skins.. Maybe I would have just liked to know about this before I started spending my cash. Thankfully I started with the songs, but I regret getting the 'behind the scenes' videos -- really not worth the several grands.

I still recommend it to everyone! Maybe my expectations were just a tiny bit high for the sequel.. 8.5 / 10.

Haven't blogged in a while, but I've still been busy! Let's get right down to it:

Nintendo Wii Status: Should be soon!

I didn't get out of the house early enough to snatch one on release day, but someone with a plug to an alternate source offered to hook me up.. sweet! I should be getting it this week.. In the meanwhile I managed to pickup Zelda, Rayman and an extra Wiimote (still no nunchuk sightings! nope, can't consider the one listed on amazon for 750$. sheesh). Also got Madden '07 coming in via the same channel as the console itself, for an astonishing low price... (no it's not illegal copies, it's just an industry insider plug.. good thing Montreal is becoming a nice place for gaming companies! :P)

A colleague did bring his to the office last week, and it's really a blast! Really looking forward to my own :)

Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow [DS]

While on the topic of hard to find items, I finally succeeded in getting this at an ok price (used, of course), from EBay. Like pretty much all 2D Castlevania titles this one is totally worth the hunt, and I wanted to finish it before Portrait Of Ruin comes out next year.. In all fairness, I must say that if previous GBA incarnations of the castle trek adventure left you with an impression of deja-vu, it's bound to happen again. In DoS (so it's really Castlevania:DS.. gee someone must have felt so clever thinking of that one) you play Soma, a descendant of the Dracula family but who wants nothing to do with the family business.. Of course other people feel different and want to use him to bring the Lord Of Darkness back yet again. Soma doesn't like the sound of this. Soma goes to the castle to hunt the creeps. Soma beats up tons of monsters of all types. Soma gains new abilities. Soma triumphs of course in the end, but if he saves the girl or not depends on a couple actions on your part...

So yeah it's the same formula, but again it's done so gooood. Since it had been a couple of years between the 3 GBA games and this one I was ready for another dose. The DS version isn't revolutionary (did I make that clear enough yet?) but a major advantage of having two screens at your disposal is that action happens on the bottom screen while you can switch between the castle automap and your stats on the other one! Keeps everything flowing because you don't need to pause everything to get your bearings because you want to find a save room... Speaking of saving, you can also insta-save anywhere, but that file gets deleted when you restore your game. Still it's perfect to quit your game clean when you have to get off the bus or when your lunch break is done.

The touch screen aspect is more gimmicky.. After you get one ability, you'll be able to destroy blocks of ice by touching them on the screen.. It allows you to access a new path, climb up in a room and get an extra item, but that's about it.. After each boss fight you also have to draw a magic seal (by connecting dots) to capture the monster for good.. If you mess up or take too long to do it, the boss gets healed a bit and you have to get it back to 0 and try again. You might want to practice making them with your finger directly because you really little time to grab the stylus..

Gameplay-wise the mechanics do the job.. You can acquire several weapons (from swords to hammers to guns) but I guess I miss the Belmonts' whip :) I used axes for most of the game since they're the most powerful in attack rating and their great range/arc makes up for the slow rate of attack. When a monster dies, there's a chance you'll be able to capture its soul, since you're in the Dark Lord lineage and all.. Souls can be equipped three different categories: they're the source of secondary weaponry (so don't look for any candles to drop boomerangs knives and holy water), they can grant abilities, make summons available, and boost your stats. Good, versatile system to customize to your likings and gameplay style.  Souls are also needed to upgrade your weapons, but beware: doing so _spends_ the soul -- you'll have to reacquire another one if you want the equip effect it had again available. You can get 9 copies of each soul, but some are insanely rare (about a 4% drop rate according to different FAQs) meaning be prepared to grind a bit if you're a completist.....

It kept me busy for 18 hours, with a 97.8% completion rate (66% of souls) and Soma made it to level 67. I haven't touched the boss rush mode (not really planning to). I'm plenty satisfied with the game, and I'll be looking forward to the next chapter! Thumbs up, definitely recommended if you manage to find a copy. 8.6 / 10.

Spyro: a Hero's Tail [GC]

I loved the first Spyro games on the PS1, but everything went south when the license transferred hands.. This one does the job: not stellar, but worth a look in the clearance bin. I read most people think it's better than Enter The Dragonfly that preceded it, but I have no firsthand experience.

Once again you play Spyro.. Once again things go wrong in a terrible way. Once again you have to run, jump and fire breathe your way thru the levels, collecting trinkets and whatnot, beat bosses and Save The World (tm). Many aspects of the design is platformer-by-number. It's brought to both bad and good effect.. Bad: sometimes you'll know what's ahead with the only reason being that you've played the same sequence of events or type of enemies many times before in other games. Good: they made an effort to be funny by breaking the 'fourth wall'. Sometimes it falls flat and you just wince it out, other times it can be genuinely funny:

Spyro turns a corner and meets with a Mammoth blocking the path with instructions from the evil dude not to let Spyro pass.. You see the cutscene start and think 'here comes the cheesy speech and the boss battle.. oh well.'

Mammoth: You may not pass.

Spyro: Ok. Whatever. Let's do this.. We know you'll just go on and on about how I can't kill you, while I just run around until I figure out your weak spot.. Then all I need to do is hit it three times and..

*SPLAT - Mammoth stomps on Spyro* *fade to black*

The little firefly following you around (and glowing with a color corresponding to your health status) goes around and finds a friend of Spyro to ask for help.. The hunter replies:

"Don't worry little guy! If Spyro was really dead, you would have been brought back automatically to your last save point, right?"

Anyway.. I thought it was a least a bit funny :) Too bad every scene didn't click as much for me. Oh well. I mentioned the hunter cat, there's also other 'friends' you meet with that always get their own levels.. The hunter has a bow and can snipe from a distance, the penguin sergeant flies around with his jetpack to find items and bomb opponents, sparkx the firefly has a straight up shooting stage, and there's a newcomer mole that goes underground.. Each time you meet up with them you can do their stage twice, to get different items.. By the end I just didn't bother (especially hated the flying levels, since they had a frustrating time limit) with all those extra stages and focused solely on Spyro.

There's a lot less stuff to collect. There used to be a fixed amount of gems in each level, now while some items won't respawn after the first time you destroy them, the monsters will always give you more money for killing them. The shop sells key to open chests, a keyring upgrade, a horns upgrade for the drop/charge attack, and more slots to stash secondary weapon charges... You really have no use for the gem after maybe the first half of the game..! Getting all the lost dragon eggs will unlock minigames, extra character models and concept art in the main menu.. Getting more light gems will let you access some not-so-secret areas (a door with "you need 95 gems to access this secret area" kinda spills the beans no?). I got to visit 2 of them, and really they only looked like the rest of the level.. I read getting ALL eggs and gems before beating the last boss will give you an extra video at the end, but I just couldn't stomach the frustration of the side level minigames just for that..

In all, an ok platformer, just don't get it full price, please! Graphics could have been better (they kept the style of the series, but it started on the PS1!! can we get a decent upgrade please?) and some NPC characters look oddly out of place: they really look like they were lifted directly from a Disney cartoon..! A dozen or so hours for around 90% completion rate. 7.6 / 10.

If you've played Guild Wars before, have a looksee at this screenie:

What's wrong here? I've created a small party with myself and Alesia, and headed to the desert.. But where is she? She's not with me.. she's not running in the monsters.. She's not off the radar, since that would gray her name out...

Look more closely at the radar/compass.. There's new buttons! I clicked the first one (which is for all henchies/heroes) and selected a spot on the map.. Alesia ran to it ! AND STAYED THERE !

Ladies and gents, henchies control finally makes its entrance in Guild Wars!

Another screenie, showing Alesia running toward the flag:

I think I'm gonna cry :-)

The other buttons are labelled 1 to 3 to assign spots for your Heroes, which is something new with Nightfall.. You can have heroes with selectable skills, upgrable inventories, and that go up in level with you! Looks really cool and it seems they really kick ass in combat. You can also set them to agressive fighting, defensive fighting, or tell them not to do a darn thing.

Heroes I'm betting will be only for people with access to the Nightfall content.. I don't think by themselves they would justify a buy. (But the whole kit looks nice - I love the new areas from what I could preview this weekend, and the Dervish class is fun to play so far). What I'm really wondering about is if the henchies buttons will be available to people who don't have NF.. I certainly hope so!! People have been asking for this for so long!

Even better would be if they left the hench control in the game after the preview weekend... Crossing my fingers! NF comes out next month, October 27th. I'm not nearly done with Factions, but they sure know how to make it tempting to get quickly anyway...

In other gaming 'news'...

I got a DS! A friend was selling his DS-'fat' made semi obsolete by his new DS-Lite, so I snatched it along his unwanted copy of Meteos.. mmmmm portable gaming. Working my way thru New Super Mario Bros - it will make going back to work a bit more fun. It gives me about an hour of play time on the bus and subway..

  With publishers slowly gearing up for the next holiday season, there's really some titles I'm looking forward to getting my hands on:

• Sept 12th: Lego Star Wars II [GC, PS2]
• Sept 19th: Okami [PS2]
• Sept 25th: Baten Kaitos Origins [GC]
• October 9th: Super Paper Mario [GC]
• Nov 7th: Guitar Hero II [PS2]

Others I'm curious about:

Yakuza: is it a GTA ripoff? Looks neat, but I'll have to try it... EyeToy: Play 3: I'm still trying to find Play 2 at an affordable price, without the camera since I got one.. I might snag 3 just to make sure it doesn't happen again. .hack//GU Vol 1: I would really need to finish the first series before thinking about this one. Snoopy vs The Red Baron: it's Snoopy! But it could be crappy.. rental.

Of course there's the BIG IF... As in IFFFFFF I get a WII :)

• Zelda
• Rayman
• Trauma Center

All supposed to be launch titles... Of there's the supply issue. And the final pricing. And the final dates.. It's all so tempting! So much potential, best wishes for Nintedo's success.

But one thing is for sure, no interest here in the PS3. I could buy a whole library of games for the PS2 with that kind of money! I'll pass. Get back to me when you have more than (instead of just more) polygons to show.

EDIT: Reading back my entry 10 mins I noticed there wasn't a peep about PC games.. Well, I just had a looksee and... meh. There's one major thing I'd like - NeverWinter Nights 2 (a game that will probably transform my favorite GM into an hermit for a while) - but I can't find anything related to specs.. I'm having serious doubts the game will be comfortable on my machine. sigh. Guess I'll reinstall the first one and get some modules I never found time for yet ;)