KEY POINTS:
I can't understand why the American gaming press have been so harsh on Microsoft's new Blue Dragon game for Xbox 360.
Is it that the Americans just don't get more complex Japanese games that go beyond the happy likes of Pokemon and Mario characters?
Are the reviewers too overwhelmed by car racing and war games that feature American heroes that save the planet as only Americans can?
I'm not anti-American but I can only think the critics must have turned anti-Japanese as Blue Dragon is a game I really enjoyed on all counts.
Maybe it's just that the critics can't handle something demanding a long attention span as they attacked the game for how long it takes to get anywhere.
Yes - and haven't any of these reviewers waded through a typical 32-episode box set of a complex Japanese anime series where it takes 'til around episode four to get the hang of what the plot is all about?
This RPG comes from game producer Hironobu Sakaguchi of Mistwalker fame, has character design by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball Z and music by Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy.
So you'd have to be nuts to suggest these people can't produce a winner.
It's an epic role-playing game spread over three DVDs and is about a village destroyed by a land shark, a typical sounding Japanese role playing story.
Especially impressive are the graphics - the games coming through now really shine for the Xbox 360's potential - and the combat system - often a let-down in these games- demonstrates new ways of doing old things.
To enter combat is either done by a radius of accessible enemies, or by just bounding into one.
You can select to fight each monster or all at once and the turn based attack system allows magic to build up depending on what you set it to.
Monsters can prey upon themselves and the Shadows - controllable creatures of magic have customisable and upgradable skill levels. There is more here to entertain than simply upgrading your parties clothes.
So those American critics who gave it at the most 'half-marks' complain it takes til disc three to get to the dragons, say the turn-based combat is the same old tired-as thing and it's too slow.
Sorry folks but there are some brilliant Japanese games - including some Final Fantasy types on PS2- that do absorb you for hours and that's their magic.
This is one of them.
MadGamer's rating: 7.5 / 10
Other recent Xbox 360 games:
Vampire Rain (Microsoft), rated R16, has been billed as a Splinter Cell involving Vampires.
If only it was good as that sounds.
As much as one tries to look for good things in games, this is the best example this year of how things can go horribly wrong in a game.
A cool idea that quickly turns bad.
You find it too hard to play and frustrating as.
Like Splinter Cell, you creep through dark places, climb up things and slide down things using your mini map to avoid - in this case- vampires.
As happens in vampire games, they grow and grow in strength getting tougher to kill.
The problem rises from the fact that you start powerless against these horrible creatures. You basically have no weapon.
You can use stealth but continually dying is no fun against such devils.
It takes ages to get anything decent to use to try to ward off the undead. What else is wrong?
The environment looks open-ended like Splinter Cell but there seems no way to escape.. Graphics are not what you expect for Xbox 360 and the audio is amateurish.
There have been some good vampire games. One of my favourites is Vampire: The Masquerade and that game made your computer and skin crawl and was awesome.
It's good to extend yourself and be challenged in a game. But this one is just too hard and too badly thought through.
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Project Sylpheed (Microsoft) goes way back to the classic retro era.
It's based on a mid-80s spaceshooter franchise called Sylpheed. Sega fans may remember this.
It's been updated and delivered to Xbox 360.
This mission-based shooter has some flashback to the popular Wing Commander game series or X-wing but to be fair, this is not in the same league..
You - a "Terran" named Katana fighting on behalf of Earth, control a fighter and fly around in space battling the bad guys. It's fun having the usual dogfights and launching missiles hoping to wipe out ships but there's not a lot of strategy involved just a barrage of blasting.
You're up against humans from other planets who are fighting against the earth government.
There are some impressive parts but overall it is substandard. It does have a retro feel. Gameplay is not great and it seems too complex for its own good. It's also short and lacks multiplayer. Controls aren't clever and it feels rather formulaic.
What have you been playing lately?
