Hey folks, not much time to discuss anything but here's an update:

* I went to Jamaica on July 15th with the family and some friends, got married on July 18th and enjoyed every minute of my trip!

* My birthday passed, it was July 20th. I had a pretty good time while still in Jamaica.

* I finished The World Ends With You and Too Human in the past 2 weeks. Too Human did exactly what everyone else said it would; it got exciting in the last 15 minutes, while the rest of the story wasn't very clearly told. The World Ends With You had a very deep and well told story and the gameplay was insane and difficult at times. There's quite a bit of replay value in this too, which doesn't help me move on to the next game!

* I bought the MadCatz SF4 controller and it feels great to play SSF2THDR on the Xbox! I will definitely pick up SF4 soon and I just might get MvC2 for Xbox, disregarding the fact that I have it and suitable controllers for Dreamcast.

That's about it. Please be sure to check out the Trigames.NET podcast, currently featuring a lengthy solo effort by Pete (aka Ryvvn). Submit questions to our mailbag (mailbag AT trigames DOT net) and we will entertain you with our lovely, possibly non-sequitur answers!

I'll preface this by explaining that Final Fantasy IV is the game that got me into jRPGs. When it comes to this particular game, I get the sweetest hangover that I don't wanna get over. With that said, I was psyched, stoked, amped, etc. when FF IV: The After Years was announced. I finally got some spare cash and purchased the first offering off the Wii Shop Channel last week. I knew in advance that it was a port of a mobile phone game and that the content was episodic in nature. I also found out before my purchase that the 9 episodes vary in price; the seven intermediary stories are 300 points while the bookenders are 800 each. This, of course, totals 3700 points, which is not a far cry from the price of a Square Enix DS game. I had a short conversation with MrCHUP0N about the game before buying it and was informed that it was panned in its Gamespot review.

I read the review about a week ago before I started the game and I just finished the first 3 chapters this evening. I also downloaded the first available tale featuring Rydia and played about 10 minutes of it. After doing all of this, I feel that there should be some perspective in reviewing this game and a better value judgment can be made based on what was yet to be released.

I understand that the complete content hasn't yet been released - 3 add-on "tales" are to be released July 6th and the first is already available - but keeping in mind the total value ($37 + tax) versus the sum of the game's elements (gameplay, plot development, total duration) should improve the review, even a little bit. To say that the game "is a hard pill to swallow for even the most dedicated of fans" without experiencing 100% of the content is personally disappointing. The factors given in that statement are "its flawed storytelling, shamelessly recycled plot, and frustrating encounter rate." What if the storytelling was done in such a way to set the player up for the various upcoming chapters? What if the "recycled plot" creates cohesion between the two overall games? What if the original Japanese FF IV had a frustrating encounter rate as well and what if some players actually don't mind that? These questions should be considered, instead of just generally stating that the gripes are bad for fans of the original.

I'm going to tackle the storytelling and plot first. Reminder #1: I'm a superfan of this game. Reminder #2: I JUST finished the introductory offering. I wasn't quite blown away by the story and everything was very familiar. Familiarity gives me goosebumps. When a game, song, movie, or other story-driven medium brings back elements of something that I saw previously and loved, I go nuts inside. The After Years did that to me at every turn. From the introductory sequence to the climactic, semi-cliffhanging ending, there's nothing but tribute to the original game. Yes, there's a big plot line recycled throughout these three chapters. In my opinion it's not a big deal because it's a stepping stone to something bigger and more expansive than what was borrowed from. It's also that dose of familiarity again. Any fan of Final Fantasy IV would be thirsty for more at the end of the third chapter. There are so many questions! "Why did xxx become xxxx and how does this relate to xxx?" "Why is xxx with xxx and what's gonna come out of the rendezvous in the xxxxxx?" "Will the people of xxxxx hate xxxx for xxxx?" "How come it was so easy for xxxx to xxxxxxxxxx from xxxx?" Some of these questions may not be answered, but I bet MOST of them will be answered in detail in the coming tales.

I don't have much to say about the encounter rate; you will either like/tolerate it, or you will hate it. I can't judge how individuals will deal with it. I dealt with it with no problems and I certainly didn't feel frustrated by it. It certainly was not near the level of Beyond the Beyond's ridiculousness. If you had no problems with the ports of the Japanese FFIV then you won't have any problems with this.

To end this mini-review/opinion piece, I feel that FF IV: The After Years will be well worth the sum of all its parts and that any fan of the original game will be begging for the story to flesh out after finishing the intro chapters. People new to the series really need to play the original first, either on DS or GBA. As a matter of fact, to keep things in perspective they should play the GBA version. Unfortunately, due to the current stigma surrounding more archaic video game features such as 16-bit graphics, turn-based battles and text-based plot progression, some people just won't get the true value of something like this. Square Enix: you can't please everyone, butyou sure did please me.

I've spent the past week playing The World Ends With You, an absolutely wonderful title for the Nintendo DS. If you don't have it, you MUST GET IT! Basically, it's an Action RPG that pretty much utilizes everything the DS has to offer at once. It also requires a lot out of the player who wants the ultimate challenge. For those who may not want to be so challenged, it has a scalable difficulty level and various levels of automation to create just the right amount of fun, enjoyment and challenge.

As of this writing, I'm on Day 7, which seems to be the last of the days in the game. I'm sure that there's more to this and I'll definitely post about this once I pass it; if this is the end of the game, it's a really short one. I've really gotten used to the gameplay, which involves controlling two characters (one on each DS screen) in two separate ways. The top character is controlled by the control pad or ABXY buttons, depending on your dexterity. The main character, Neku, is controlled with the stylus on the bottom screen. In essence, victory is obtained by simultaneously tapping, slashing or dragging the stylus and pressing directions (usually left, right and up) on the D-Pad to annihilate various types of enemies. The action can be quite hectic at times. The scaling level difficulty only seems to affect maximum HP, attack and defense values, but I haven't unlocked Hard mode yet. Easy mode certainly seems to show less action out of the enemies, so I'm guessing they attack more often in Hard mode. As you can imagine though, the game can be pretty tough. Good thing you can save anywhere.

The game was so tough initially that I had a game over on my first real battle! The game gives you infinite health during the training battles then warns you that you may/will die on the first real battle and suggests saving. Sure enough, I died hardcore. Boss battles are pretty rough too, as the bosses have much larger amounts of HP than the standard enemies. They also may require strategies that involve the top screen.

I really love the gameplay and wish there were more games that challenged my mind and dexterity like this one. The story is pretty interesting as well. For a game that doesn't look so, it's rather deep and even touching at times.

If there's anything to be said about MadWorld, it's got some entertaining voice acting and scripting. The commentary, especially during the boss fights, is colorful and snicker-inducing. I enjoy the color commentary, essentially the banter between the commentators about each other, such as which and how many guys have slept with one of their wives. Things like that also have continuity where in later stages they revisit the topic, making you feel like you're a part of the live audience in real time. The commentary even goes so far as to make fun of the developers during the ending credits. Exactly what they say would be spoilerific, but I loled a lot.

So yes, I finished MadWorld. Total game time was a bit over 3 hours, but I did spend much longer than that playing. Very few of the stages were difficult, and the final levels were certainly challenging. I will visit the game again for the Hard mode, and I bet it's gonna be a rough ride. I think I'll do that when I play Ninja Gaiden II and Chaos Legion. Next on the list is Okami for Wii, while finishing the last level of Too Human.

As a final note, the Black Baron is the best character in MadWorld, hands down.

Yesterday, I finally completed Xenogears. At 66 hours, it was quite a trip. The final boss battle was crazy hard for me as I did not expect a few things. With a bit of perseverance, I did prevail.

As a result of my poll, I believe I will be playing The World Ends With You on DS next. First, though, I did start Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword while playing Xenogears and would like to finish that real quick. Shouldn't be too hard to get through the normal mode and hop to the portable Square Enix RPG.

I'll hopefully finish MadWorld next week, but I haven't been playing my Wii at home. I've been taking it to work to play Smash Bros. and haven't gotten around to reconnecting it when I bring it back. After MadWorld, though, I will play Okami. In the mean time, I will be trying to finish the final level of Too Human.

Check back later for any updates! Don't forget to listen to the Trigames.NET podcast and our occasional Trilobytes!

As I come to the close of Xenogears and make my way through MadWorld, the thoughts about what other games to scratch off my backlog come to mind. I will have to choose a new console game and a new portable game as next-in-lines. Of the following, which do YOU feel I should play next? Keep in mind that I've been playing pretty much nothing but tough beat-em-up action games for the past 3 months. Also, I have been playing Xenogears on PSP forever, but I wouldn't mind tackling another portable RPG.

Console
Okami (Wii)
No More Heroes (Wii)
Bully (PS2)
Ratchet & Clank (PS2)
Fable (XBOX)
Last Remnant (360)
Infinite Undiscovery (360)
Beyond Good and Evil (Cube)
Baroque (Wii)
Zelda Twilight Princess (Wii)
Metroid Prime 3 (Wii)
Prince of Persia (360)

Portable
Ninja Gaiden DS
Etrian Odyssey II (DS)
The World Ends With You (DS)
Phantasy Star Portable (PSP)
Patapon 2 (PSP)
FF VIII (PS->PSP)
Dragon Quest IV (DS)

I have a feeling there may be more suggestions, but I'll leave it at this for now. Recommend away!

Today, I finished God Hand. A very poor performance, in my opinion, clocking in at 18 hours and 2 minutes for an 8-stage plus final boss encounter game. It was a really tough journey! As far as I remember, I continued over 200 times! Next game up is MadWorld, since it's pretty short. If I dedicate the remainder of this week to it, I should finish the normal game and change gears to something less... difficult, phew!

All this and more can be heard on my Trilobyte, which should be available some time this week. Check your iTunes/Zune podcast lists and RSS readers!

I just looked at a couple of gameplay videos from the JPN demo. I'm quite blasé about it. Part of that is related to just knowing I don't have time to play the game once it drops. Another part of that is due to being in the middle of FF's X and XII, while having a small desire to actually play through VIII. It looks wonderful, and I bet that some of the more extravagant battle features that will come later will blow minds... but I'm not hyped whatsoever from watching the demo!

What's your take?

Just finished Viewtiful Joe 2. Boy... Clover really put on the challenge at the end! I had to endure this one run before the final boss that, according to the game, took 12 minutes completely. I recorded just the major fights of this stage and that took approximately 22 minutes! You can check out highlights below - dying will take you back to one of the three rooms. Losing all lives at any point during this relentless assault will result in the entire part-stage to be done again, which includes a short manageable part that I didn't include in the video.

The final bosses were a bit tough, but just like all the rest take patience to defeat. It feels impossible at the start but ends up not being so bad. Even so, I dread thinking about repeating these challenges in the future. One day I may decide to torture myself with V-rated mode but as for now, I am victorious!

Now, to finish the latter half (maybe?) of God Hand in 8 days!

Got MadWorld this weekend. Played through the first stage early Sunday morning.

MadWorld is a really cool game. I really enjoy the music, as a first comment. The first stage background music was a hip-hop song featuring some really nice rhymes relating to the basic themes of MadWorld. I found myself bobbing my head and just really feeling the beat as I ripped my foes in two with my chainsaw, impaled them on spikes, threw them into trains, jet engines and toilets, snapped their necks and broke their spines... among other things. The variety of finishing moves in the game keeps things fresh so far. I notice that there are a lot of spiked things in this game, and that doesn't bother me one bit. You've got spike racks on walls and vehicles, spiked bats, spikes on the floors and you can even consider ripped signposts spikes. Jack's also a pretty awesome character in design, in my opinion.

The gameplay is pretty interactive. You've got a punch on A and a chainsaw when holding B and swinging the remote either vertically or horizontally. Simply swing the remote vertically and you uppercut, while a horizontal swing performs a backfist. You can grab thugs n' things by holding A and they're thrown by swinging the remote. Jumping is done with Z and backflips for evasion can be done by shaking the Nunchuk. Those basic functions combine to make some killer attacks. Punch a baddie a few times and you can stun him for a finisher. Hold A for a throw type finisher. Hold B for a more brutal, often bone crunching finishers. A flurry of punches, then an uppercut plug a finisher results in some aerial madness. These are just examples of things that can be done with Jack's bare hands. There are so many obstacles that can be interacted with in the environments that it's almost like being in an amusement park... for killing.

With all of the possibilities, it's great that the game gives you a lot of time to enjoy things. The first level gives you a time limit of 30 minutes to rack up 1.6 million points. As you build your point total, new challenges become available. Once you reach the target score, the boss encounter opens up. The boss encounter for the first stage was rather interesting, but simple; I won with relative ease, which was quite a different experience from what I've been going through.

I'm really looking forward to playing this game more, but I'm going to have to put the time into finishing Viewtiful Joe 2. I didn't play at all this weekend due to being out mostly. I'm also going to cut the Brawlers theme short due to possibly not being able to play games at all for a while. More news on that later. Check my Now Playing list for updates.

Why are the bosses so damn hard to figure out in this game!? The stages are no problem. The mid bosses (which so far mostly comprise of the same guy in different situations) are not much of a big deal. But the Act IV bosses? Holy jeebies! Other than having 4 or 5 energy bars, they are mostly impervious to damage until they show some type of stall or weak point.

Now I'm not truly complaining, because I eventually defeat the bosses. I suppose I'm just in a rush to win, as the boss levels seem to take just as much time to complete as the standard levels (8-11 mins).

I'm currently on Reel 3, Act III, and it seems that there are six bosses, just looking at the flybys in the opening video.

Ah, bliss. After 17+ hours I brought God of War II (on God mode difficulty) to completion. The storyline is progressing very well and having finished every GoW game in the series so far, in order, I'm now very excited about God of War III. I think I may get a PS3 for this particular game when it launches. Next on the "Brawlers" list: Viewtiful Joe... 2!

It's something about how much more gory Kratos makes everything.

The recession strikes. I need to "restructure" my personal finances, and this is the first step. After 4 (or more?) years of subscription, I made a decision to temporarily cancel my World of Warcraft account. I play very rarely these days, as my overnight job has made it impossible to keep up with the Joneses on my server. My main is still level 73, when everyone else has been raiding level 80 content for months. I was playing a Death Knight with edubuccaneer from time to time, but my console games were higher priority. At this time, I'll be focusing on the consoles and clearing out the backlog for a few months. I will return, eventually, and continue the Death Knight saga with Ed (don't level without me !). I do have the account until March 4, so I'll try to get some game time in over the weekend to say my goodbyes.

In other news, Virtua On Oratorio Tangram MSBS Ver. 5.66 was announced for Xbox Live Arcade! I'm PSYCHED about it, and am praying that it will see a NA release. It was such a coincidence that my godfather's brother and I, who are avid VOOT players - we own twin sticks and are known to link our Dreamcasts for some seriously authentic play, were discussing how cool it would be to have VOOT on XBLA while playing Virtua Fighter 5 only a week before this announcement. I sent him an Xbox message about it and he literally stopped playing Street Fighter 4 just to call me and hoot and holler about it!

While on the announcement tip, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is coming to Wii, according to an ESRB rating. AMPED! Final Fantasy IV was (and still is) my favorite of them all. I can't wait to see this sequel.

If you're interested in Metallica and hearing videos of their live show from January 29th that sound like massive farts, please visit my Guitar blog at http://xlm2k.blogspot.com and leave comments! I can't stress how much it would make my day to know that people visit my blog...

30 hours of total power-on time.

25 hours of total play time.

10 hours, 44 minutes of game clear time.

Rank: MASTER NINJA

As far as I recall, it's been years since I've last thrown so many dirty words at a game for such an extended play period. There are some games where I get upset from constantly dying, but I usually conquer the troublesome areas in a timely fashion. The last time I was this livid at a game's challenges might have been in Viewtiful Joe's heyday... 2002 maybe?

There are so many parts of this game that are brutally difficult. I'm a little sad to say, but sometimes it's because of the poor camera that boss fights often end in a Game Over many times over. When the camera isn't screwing me up, the bosses are generally unpredictable and do not clearly show weaknesses. I think of this as both a good and bad design decision. I believe that players should be assisted visually or aurally during boss fights, even if the aid lasts for a few frames of animation. Because there are no aids, the fight seems to be more realistic; that's a positive thing. My main issue with the realism is that there's no reliable weak spot in these bosses. What works one time may not work in the same circumstance a second time, because the boss state changes very, very quickly.

Other than that, my only other gripe is that at the end, you're really tested in your endurance and are not allowed any respite from the middle of Chapter 15 to the end (Chapter 16). You are allowed to restock on items at the start of Chapter 15, but with the amount of boss battles (six, to be exact) it's really tough to complete one-way. You could go back Muramasa after defeating the first three bosses, but as a consequence you'd have to repeat all the fights leading up to save point you're abandoning, possibly dying on the way down or back up the final tower. I chose to just stick it out and wound up facing the final boss with a single life bar. About 2 1/2 hours of attempts resulted in victory, which is just plain shameful; the final bout lasts about 5 minutes at most when played cautiously.

Next up is something a bit less difficult: God of War 2!

On my break, I traveled to a friend's house and played a lil' SF4. Boy, that game has a lot of personality, and it plays pretty well! My friend and I made it up to Seth but got rocked by him many many times. The facial expressions are amazing! I especially like the look of shock on a fighter's face when he's about to get PWNT by an ultra combo. The Xbox 360 D-Pad sucks as usual. I think I will have to invest in that Mad Catz gamepad if I get the game. I would certainly have to try it out before I buy it, as Mad Catz goods are of questionable quality at times.

I hope to snag this game (and a pad) before... April? It sucks to say so, but games are low priority, esp. at this point where I'm trying to focus on a certain genre of gaming.

Speaking of which, I finally unlocked the Unlabored Flawlessness in Ninja Gaiden Black and am very pleased with its performance. Taking out 98% of a boss's health in one ultimate tech is just plain pleasing. Dying right after executing such insane damage, though, not too pleasing! I will need to work on it a bit further! I'm on the Chapter 10 dual-worm boss as of this writing.

Back to work for me! Trilobyte coming later this week!

February is Bad A** Brawlers month, part 1! I just love that title.

Initially slated for a month's celebration, I have extended my appreciation for pugilists, swordsmen and ninja into the month of March. I'm currently playing (or replaying) Ninja Gaiden Black and will move on to Viewtiful Joe 2. Ending the first act will be God of War 2. My progress in Ninja Gaiden Black is Chapter 6 (restarted due to damaged save - was on Chapter 7 previously) and while the game is still tough as nails to me, I've gotten much more accustomed to it. I haven't gotten a rank lower than Greater Ninja (had some Master Ninja and mostly Head (lolpetergriffin) Ninja). I'm also trying to unlock the uber killing machine Unlabored Flawlessness, which has me concentrating on maximizing the essence I gather from my enemies. It's pro work using intermediate skill, but I believe I can achieve this.

My band's EP tracks are almost ready! I'm very pleased with the sound, and hope that I can help tweak the mix job so that it sounds even better than it already does. If you haven't seen the videos and images of us in the studio, please visit my guitar blog. Leave comments! I've also completely moved in and am loving my new apartment.

Be sure to listen to the Trigames.NET Trilobyte, dropping about 3 times this week. Episode 121 was just released. We've been mega busy this weekend, but shared some bits of what we've been playing.

I'm gonna be changing my living space, come this weekend. I hope to have some kind of update before then, but as of this writing, this will probably be the last blog post until sometime next week. Just a few notes:

* Almost done with Order of Ecclesia... Dracula's Castle is much larger than any other stage in the game and is quite a challenge!

* The band went into the studio last week and put down tracks for two of our songs. I have video and images that I will post at my Guitar and Games blog by Thursday.

* I'm going to see Metallica Thursday! I'm so amped!

* I'm also amped about GH: Metallica - I think this might be the first time in a while that I was amped about a game in general... I'm really looking forward to this game!

* I officially have insufficient HD space on my Xbox! I downloaded Ninja Gaiden Black again (to prepare for my self-proclaimed Bad A** Brawlers month - tell ya bout that later) and only have 211MB left. I want to download the RE5 demo and that's 400+MB. Pure suckage.

With great pleasure I can finally announce that I've completed Baten Kaitos. 70 hours of time invested summed up in a series of not-so-tough boss fights, a very "lucky" Final Straight Sunset combo (tough combo to get, 3x damage) that totalled in 11,000 damage to one of the end bosses (his max HP was 16,000), and an hour long ending.

Looking back on the game, I must compare it to a decent quality novel with sub-standard grammar and spelling. You can read through it with no problem, but some parts will just take a long time and are unnecessarily difficult to comprehend. In Baten Kaitos, the story is well put together. The gameplay, though, suffers at times from some design issues. Card battle games always have an element of luck, due to the draw and the shuffle. You never have complete control over your actions and when the odds are against you - bosses usually have two turns and some even have three - the battles can become frustrating. There's even one extremely annoying boss encounter that you have to experience three times over the course of the game; two of those times are consecutive, and without a break to save or change any cards! Granted, if you can beat the encounter the first time, you should on the second but with the luck of the draw, you never know.

The music is better than average, but nowhere near as superior as the works of some of the more revered composers in the industry. The battle tracks are very catchy and that's a great thing, because you'll be hearing them a lot. Some of the boss battles are very long if you're not equipped properly or if you haven't mastered the combination system. The backgrounds are vividly colored and the character models are moderately detailed. You can certainly tell, on progressive scan, the quality shift between the two. It doesn't really get in the way of gameplay, of course. The frame rates are constant.

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, I give you a 7.5.

Other news: I also finished Orcs & Elves II on my mobile phone before getting a new one! Pics below.

Good performance, eh?

Oh yeah. Any my Xbox has returned. Let the HD gaming begin!