The Wrath of El Pato: Christmas time

Well it only took me a month. Welcome to another Edition of the Wrath of El Pato, the awesome column that gets delayed more than a Final Fantasy title.

There really isn’t anything per say recently I want to address, other than this one question:

HOW F**KING GOOD WAS IT TO BE A GAMER THIS MONTH?

The Holliday season is in full force with a gazillion titles coming out. You can expect the writers at [OC]ModShop to be attempting reviews on every single one. Today I don’t want to discuss news, rather, I just figured I’d bring up a few games fresh in my mind.

And yes, most of these are RPGs, I realized that when I finished this article.

Here: Go buy Fallout 3 (PC version here) and Left 4 Dead (PC version here). There, I’ve got the whole thing put together now.  

My favorite game of all time Chrono Trigger (check prices here) is out this week. For those of you who’ve never experienced the ‘Trigger, go and buy it. Like, right now! The game holds up extremely well, even today. It shows you that even if a game is severely clichéd (like CT) that it can still be good if you polish it and have great presentation (again, like CT). This game also shows you Japanese RPGs aren’t dead. Knowing Square and their overabundance of sequels, it boggles me why CT hasn’t been ran into the ground yet.

And no, Chrono Cross doesn’t count. That game is a bastard step-child to the Chrono name. That is what happens when only ONE person of the dream team is said “Do what you want with it and make sure it sells”. The best part of that whole Chrono Cross mess was that after, AFTER everyone lauded the game they came out and said it is a stand-alone game. That it should have nothing in common with CT. Don’t get me wrong, Cross wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t Chrono Trigger.

It’s old news so I am not even going to list all the story crap that it has involved with Trigger. It’s like saying that Metal Gear Solid 2 for the PS2 had nothing to do with the MGS series after everyone hated Raiden.

But anyways…       

So the Last Remnant (buy it here) is out. Gee, it’s been ages since Square-Enix has made an original game, free of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII, and uh, Kingdom Hearts.

And it sucks…face it, SE can’t make original games anymore. The days of Parasite Eve, Xenogears, Brave Fencer Musashi, hell, even Ehrgeiz (it was a bad game, but at least it was a GOOD bad game) are over. Now all we get are ports of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy every month with Dragon Quest thrown in as a special bonus. SE cannot make an original franchise, let alone a decent game. If FFXII is any indication, XIII may be the final game that says “We have gone the way of the Tomb Raider”.

I really hope it doesn’t lead to that, I really hope. 

Since my hiatus, I’ve been watching Little Big Planet’s (check prices here) hype go through the roof and sat and scratched my head. Why? Because I didn’t see casual gamers really getting into it. Hell, I think it’s an awesome idea, but even I don’t have the time to sink into the game (oh I’ll be buying it dudes, don’t you worry, expect a OCmodshop themed level soon). It’s too early to tell, initial sales are looking pretty good-but this isn’t going to sell PS3s. Sony’s seller was Metal Gear Solid 4 and if that didn’t increase PS3 buys, nothing will. LBP is a great game and worth the sales, but I don’t see the casual gaming crowd really jumping up and down for it. I’ve been wrong before. 

I had a chance to play Fable II (buy it here). A better effort than the first Fable, which really wasn’t that bad either. I never saw what everyone bitched about with the first one, and I don’t see what anyone can complain with in this game. It’s pretty damn fun and about as close to an MMO as you can get without it being an MMO. The fact it’s basically the “Oblivion for people who don’t like Oblivion” doesn’t hurt matters either. I predict this to win game of the year actually. Either that or Left for Dead. One of the two.  

I am going to try and sequence these things next week, but God knows how bad I am with doing weekly’s. In the meantime check out our Megaman-a-thon. Yours truly is doing the reviews. Later!

El Pato Outo.

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