>It’s been a while; sorry about that. Not exactly sure who I’m apologizing to, but I’m putting it out there anyway.
Most of the last week or so has been spent slogging through Too Human and Star Wars: Force Unleashed. I was surprised as anybody to make it all the way through to the 4th area of Too Human; I was even more surprised to be thoroughly turned off by SW:FU by the end of the 2nd boss.
The reviews of Too Human have been more negative than positive, and I certainly have to agree; that said, there’s definitely a great game in there somewhere, and if they can fix what needs to be fixed for the sequel, I’ll definitely sign up. Those fixes are pretty simple to identify:
- Right stick controls camera; this is not negotiable
- Better inventory management; for a game with this much loot, it’s not negotiable
- Faster loading in/out of menus
- If dying in the game absolutely necessitates having a Valkyrie descend from Valhalla, then at least make the process 3 seconds long instead of 30
I can deal with the repetitive combat and even some of the glitches, if those 4 things are taken care of.
As for Star Wars: Force Unleashed, well, I’m not really sure what can be said for it. It’s certainly very pretty, but it’s also hellishly glitchy, the checkpoint save system sucks, the boss fights are either stupid or cheap, and the rhythm of the gameplay, at least for the little that I played, was all over the place. My expectations for this game weren’t necessarily sky-high, but I was certainly hoping to like it more than I did.
I traded in Mercs 2 (ugh) and Tales of Vesperia (meh) yesterday and thus I only had to shell out $5 for Pure, which is exactly what it should be: dumb fun. It’s also fucking gorgeous. For whatever reason, I’m a sucker for a good ATV game, and Pure is scratching that particular itch quite effectively.
Finished a PGA Tour season in Tiger Woods 09, which I’d sorta forgotten I owned; will probably finish the Tiger Challenge and then call it a day with that one. And I’m still aiming to do all the police missions in GTA4, and I’ll hopefully get to that in the next few weeks, before all the super good stuff shows up in stores.
Shouts From The Couch 
>I think Pure is a bit more than dumb fun. For me, it's the closest thing to filling the massive, SSX-shaped hole in this console generation. Granted, the SSX games weren't the deepest games out there, but what they set out to do, they did extremely well. Snowboards>>>>>>ATVs, but Pure will do in a pinch.