Right now, I'm knee deep into chapter 2 and really enjoying the game. The pacing is pretty stellar and the story is interesting. The combo system is a lot better than DMC to me. Definitely glad I started it. The only complaint so far is when I shut it off last night in the middle of chapter 1 it didn't save at the checkpoint so I had to go through all of chapter 1 again. I really hate backtracking so this was a pretty sizable annoyance to me. However, I learned my lesson and won't be doing that again.
The other game I've been sinking my time into lately is Lost Odyssey. I spent a decent amount of time researching Xbox 360 RPG's online, looking for one to really tempt my taste buds. After reading about Lost Odyssey it sounded like it was exactly what I was looking for. Story by famed Final Fantasy guru Hironobi Sakaguch? Check. Music by Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Oematsu? Check. Old school gameplay with new school graphics? Check. I bit the bullet and picked it up for $20 hoping it would be everything I was looking for and more. Turns out it was an excellent decision. Lost Odyssey is probably the closest thing I've seen to an old school RPG on a current-gen platform. You actually get to control the actions of all of your characters! This is unheard of! Menu driven combat, random encounters, ridiculous story involving amnesia...It's perfect.
I'm 20+ hours in and on disc 3 of 4. I will say the combat gets a little tedious at times. Even the basic fights require concentration and the experience system is set up to prevent the player from grinding for levels. Once you hit a certain level in an area the monsters start giving 1 XP per fight making it nearly impossible to level up until you can just waltz through an area.
Coming in the mail from blockbuster next is Resonance of Fate, another RPG I've been chomping at the bit to play. I've heard great things about it and I'll be sure to write up something here as I'm going along.
I've also got Call of Duty: Black Ops, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and Kinectimals coming. It's going to be a busy week.
I also received Aliens Vs. Predator last week. It's a bit of a stinker. I've only played a handful of missions in the human campaign but I'm finding it hard to want to play more. I'm going to have to check out the Alien and Predator campaigns a bit before I send it back but I don't expect I'll enjoy them too much. It isn't a particularly bad game it just doesn't really suit me. The pacing is slow and repetitive. I'm hoping playing as the aliens or predators might inject some life into it. I'll let you guys know when I force myself to play more.
Oh yeah, speaking of "force" I checked out Star Wars: Force Unleashed 2 from the library last week. I was pretty excited to play it since I did really like the first one. That being said, I was pretty disappointed by the sequel. I put some decent time into it but didn't finish it before I had to return it. It really was a direct sequel to the first one almost to a fault. After 5 minutes I felt like I had deja-vu, and by hour 3 or 4 I was completely bored. It just didn't bring anything new to the table. It wasn't a step backwards like some sequels are *AHEM*(crackdown 2) but it wasn't a step forward either. I just didn't feel compelled to keep playing it.
That's it for this entry. To sum things up, Bayonetta(Good), Lost Odyssey(Great), AvP(Bleh), Force Unleashed 2(Mediocre)
Tune in next time which could be any time since I have no schedule to update this. Might be later today with more Bayonetta impressions, might be a few years with impressions on Bayonetta 5: Bayonetta Boogaloo. Who knows?
