Report from hell

I'm thinking of starting a new thing on here to help with the lack of meaningful content. In addition to the weekly outlook posts on Mondays, I'm considering a weekly wrap-up listing the not-interesting-enough-to-get-their-own-post news items. It will largely depend on how interested I am in cluttering up this space with throw-away PR reposts from mainstream news sites. If I can manage to scrape enough content to pad out a post every week, I'll try to make it a regular fixture. As an aside, I originally planned to put this up yesterday, Friday, so we're already off to a great start.

First, we have a handful of screenshots and a trailer for Virtual On Force. I liked the first VO, didn't care for Oratario Tangram at all, but this one seems interesting. I felt OT was a very boring looking and playing game compared to the original. This one looks a lot more interesting already. Four robots in a stage at the same time takes care of the tedium of dashing back and forth shooting lasers at the other guy, and the colorful imaginative new robot designs (girl with wings, crab legs, transformations, etc.) make up for the drab environments. No release date though, means that hype levels are pretty low at present.

Then we have screenshots and a trailer for Ys VS Sora no Kiseki. As I've mentioned before, my interest in both series has completely evaporated, therefore putting the two of them together in a non-canonical, four player spin-off "fighting game" on the PSP does nothing for me. After watching that trailer, it does look pretty decent, though. Bright colorful graphics, fast action, probably massive fan service for the kids crazy enough to still be Falcom fans. Just in case all that didn't do it for you, Ys VS Sora no Kiseki Alternative Saga will be the playable debut of Sora no Kiseki sequel, Zero no Kiseki's protagonists. Those kids. I can't be bothered to look up their names. If you care, you now them already. The only reason I keep bringing up Falcom on here is because they're old-school, and not dead yet. An impressive achievement in iteself.

Konami is pretty old-school too, and they're still around. Although they're not making games of their own anymore, just publishing other people's crap. Like Ninety-Nine Nights II, or N3-2, which is actually called "Ninety-Nine Nights II" in Japan, and is still a Xbox 360 exclusive. I'd be shocked if this one makes it to 10,000 units sold. There is also a demo on XLA which even if it wasn't locked for Silver members, I probably still wouldn't have downloaded it. I only cared about the first one because it was Microsoft's Great White Hope in Japan. Now that they don't need it, I don't care. I'm pretty sure the girl from the cover of the first one is dead anyway, so she won't feature in this installment, which seems to have a few returning characters. The music might be nice. I might download the OST for $9.99 like I did the first one.

Similarly to Konami, Namoco doesn't make games anymore either. Other than an occasional Tales Of game I don't remember buying anything with their logo on the box since Ridge Racer 7. So it's a nice surprise that they're publishing what looks like the most interesting looking game since Shadow Of the Colossus. Not surprisingly, the two look like they share a lot in common. Majin looks more grounded in reality, though, featuring a playable character that receives help from a large, magical, golem-thing to defeat enemies and overcome obstacles in a low-tech, fantasy setting. I'll tell you this much, I can't remember the last time I played a straight up adventure game in that mold. Alundra maybe? This is by far the most genuinely interesting of the things I'm including in this "rejects" post. I'm only uncertain of the developer's track record, since I've never played a Games Republic game before. Therefore, my interest is two-fold. It feels kind of nice to be anticipating a game release for a change.

At the bottom of the barrel we have Mega Man X3 being ported to cellphones. I hope this, and the just-announced Mega Man Online, featuring the X designs, helps revitalize the X franchise enough so that it can receive a final hurrah via a new-old WiiWare sequel like the vanilla Mega Man series got with Mega Man 9 and 10. I wonder, though, if there is anyone left at Capcom that remembers what made Mega Man great, (hint: it's the levels stupid) after the abortions that were X5, and X6. (Entries in the series beyond this point are non-existent to me.)

This is the best Japan could come up with last week. Not really surprising considering that the thing that got people out of their houses and lined up in the rain outside a store for a pre-order ticket was the Love Plus + DSi LL Limited Edition. Burn in hell Japan.