Hey Phil, Whatcha Playin’?

Currently Playing:

PS2

• Persona 3 FES – I’ve completed a regular playthrough of “The Journey,” and am probably 30-40% of the way through an All Social Links Maxed playthrough as well. (Power-leveling allies in Monad due to my superpowerful protagonist is, well, awesome.) After that, I need to do a playthrough of “The Answer.”
• Persona 4 – I’m about 90% of the way through – seriously, I’m just sitting in Mandala Inaba. I need to grind some more levels out, work on the 1 or 2 social links it’ll let me get, and continue to the end. Will probably do an All Social Links Maxed playthrough of this game, too. (I’ve also already seen the Bad Ending and the Even Worse Ending, so now it’s on to the True Ending.)
• Dokapon Kingdom – This is a game that only gets played when my girlfriend is around, because we’re doing a two-person story mode. I think we’re pretty near the end, but we haven’t seen half the secret stuff in this game – unfortunately, most of said secret stuff is astoundingly stupid to get, and I doubt we’ll put in the effort to do so.
• Shadow of the Colossus – This game is hella fun. The controls are my only complaint – well, that and the camera – both are really, really awkward at times. And while the stamina meter is a neat idea – it does keep me from just stabbing a colossus ad infinitum, but at the same time it’s really annoying to have to stand still for a while and pray the colossus doesn’t decide to shake me off before I can get enough stamina to avoid the next shakeoff.

PS3

• Army of Two – started playing this in co-op and realized very, very quickly that we need a second copy for Will. Attention developers: side-by-side splitscreen, please. Top-and-bottom splitscreen might have been great when standard definition TVs were the, uh, standard; nowadays, it just feels cramped and shitty.

PSP

• Brave Story: New Traveler – Could this get any more JPRGy? It makes for fine portable gameplay, though.

Wii

• Wii Fit – a never ending journey, my friends.
• Final Fantasy IV: The After Years – old school Nintendo Hard nostalgia RPG at its best. Brings back all those memories of FFIV almost right away. I’m a little worried I’m going to get boned on the cost, since it’s episodic, but oh is it worth it.

DS

• Flower, Sun, and Rain – a lot of people don’t like this game. I, for one, love it. It is absolutely cracked out, and everything about it screams Suda 51.
• My Japanese Coach – like Wii Fit, this isn’t a standard game per se, so much as a constant learning experience.
• Mega Man Star Force 3: Black Ace – this has improved on a lot of the stuff from Mega Man Star Force, which was the last entry in the series – I skipped the second one. It’s still kind of a mindless fun, though – I shut my brain off and I sink a few hours into it.
• Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – and when I play this, I turn my brain back on. The puzzles seem to have gotten more difficult a lot earlier than in Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Or maybe I just forgot how puzzles work.

PC

• Final Fantasy XI Online – I managed to link up with a group of like-minded FFXI veterans who are mostly waiting for FFXIV and seeing what we haven’t seen yet in FFXI while we wait. It’s pretty much the definition of casual.

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On the Shelf:

PS1

• Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
• Xenogears
• Final Fantasy VIII
• Final Fantasy IX

PS2

• Xenosaga I and Xenosaga II (I need to find Xenosaga III, to be honest, but it never seems to be in stock anywhere at all)
• Monster Rancher 4
• Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga and Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
• Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
• God of War
• GrimGrimoire
• Odin Sphere
• Yakuza (and, someday once I find a copy, Yakuza 2)
• BeatDown: Fists of Vengeance
• Viewtiful Joe 2
• killer7
• Okami
• Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia
• Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis

PS3

• Valkyria Chronicles

PSP

• Unbound Saga
• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona

Wii

• Nothing pending.

DS

• Contra 4
• Suikoden Tierkreis
• Advance Wars: Dual Strike and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
• Jump Ultimate Stars
• Hotel Dusk: Room 215
• Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime
• Trauma Center: Under the Knife
• Megaman ZX and Megaman ZX Advent
• The Legendary Starfy (which I am actually playing in Japanese)
• Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV
• The World Ends With You
• Super Robot Taisen W (also being played in Japanese)
• Retro Game Challenge
• Custom Robo Arena
• Dementium: The Ward
• Final Fantasy Tactics A2
• Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
• Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier

PC

• Nothing pending.

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Finished!

PS3

• King of Fighters XII – there’s no story mode whatsoever, so basically this game is just popped out whenever I feel like playing something online. And well, since the online component sucks, this one will probably be going back to the store soonish.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 2 – it still gets played sometimes.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 – fun, but way, way, way too short. If there’s any DLC anytime soon, maybe it’ll breath some new life into it. Until then…
• BlazBlue -  Got most of the way through the story modes and just completely lost interest in figuring out the rest of it. Soundtrack’s still rockin’, though.

PSP

• Final Fantasy VII – Consider it relived. I got to do a lot of stuff I don’t remember doing the first time around.
• Monster Hunter Freedom Unite – I lied – I still really don’t like Monster Hunter. But at least I finished it.

DS

• Treasure Planet – yeah, this was an amusing diversion, but I’m not going out of my way to ping wifi spots with my DS. Apparently my completionist tendencies don’t run as deeply as I thought.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner – not bad! Two playthroughs down, and the endings were both pretty different. I don’t really feel like resorting to a guide to figure out further endings, but I did enjoy the two I got (for those playing along at home, that would be the “Messiah Ending” and “Yuzu Ending.” One of these days I’ll go through and get the Demon King Ending).

PC

• Cities XL Open Beta – to say I was unimpressed would be to invoke comic understatement. It’s like a crappily-optimized HD version of SimCity.
• Champions Online Open Beta – Once Cryptic realized that eight bajillion people were trying to access their game and updated accordingly, I had a lot of fun with this game. If you’ve played City of Heroes or City of Villains, this should feel really familiar – it’s more or less CoH II. It’s faster, better, and stronger – and prettier!
• Half-Life 2 – yes, finally.
• Painkiller – mindless stupid FPS fun.
• Braid – again, yes, finally. (It was $5, too – can’t beat that.)