And if you haven’t played it yet, I highly recommend giving Dysnomia a try. It’s a high quality Aliens-esque shooter similar to Alien Breed. Well worth the $3.  And to be honest, I’ve enjoyed it much more than the official Alien Breed remake on XBLA that came out last year.

I picked up the XBox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII at midnight last night. It was my first time going to a midnight release and it wasn’t as creepy as I was expecting. Sure, there was one loudmouth in line who just kept going on and on about everything that popped into his head, but for the most part, it was just a few dozen 20-something year old men quietly waiting in the cold to pick up a videogame (a few women and a teenager or two rounded out the crowd). When I picked up my copy of the game, I saw that they had a lot more PS3 copies in stock. I expect the 360 version will end up selling more in the long run to the casual crowd, but I’m not surprised that more of the hardcore enthusiasts are picking up the PS3 version.

I played through the first chapter of the game before deciding that I’d better get some sleep since I had work the next day. Here are my first impressions on Final Fantasy XIII.

The 360 version looks awesome. There have been several reports on how the 360 version of FF13 is inferior to the PS3 version, but honestly, unless you’re really picky or are playing the two versions side by side, I have a hard time imagining anyone noticing.

The music in Final Fantasy XIII so far has been excellent. I can see why so many people have been importing the soundtrack.

The dialogue is still firmly in JRPG mode. It works, but you can tell it’s a translation. Voice acting seems decent.

Combat seems like it’ll be really fun, although it’s still pretty basic. Timing is important despite being a menu-based game – use an area attack at the right moment and you could hit everything whereas 1 sec earlier, the enemies might have been spread too far apart. Even though things are easy and simple so far, the fact that you get graded in each battle and higher grades result in better item drop rates encourages you to play your best at all times.

The maps are very linear so far, but they have still managed to hide some extra treasure chests here and there.

Anyway, Final Fantasy XIII has lived up to my expectation so far. I’m looking forward to playing it some more (when I’m not working on Breath of Death VII)

XBLIG have been pretty quiet as far as interesting games go of late. I guess it makes sense – if you had a game that was almost done, you probably wanted to release it before Christmas rather than right after.

Anyway, here are a few games released recently that I thought were worth checking out:

Tobe’s Vertical Adventure – Here’s a platformer where you descend into caves, grab the treasure and then have to hurry back out before the cave collapses. Fun with cute graphics.

Twin Blades – This sidescrolling action game where an anime nun runs around killing zombies with melee & gun attacks has some of the most gorgeous graphics I’ve seen on the service. Gameplay seemed a bit repetitive, but the developer has said that they plan on adding to the game so it might be worth keeping an eye on.

Pixel Whirled – It’s basically playing 2 games of Space Invaders at the same time. Kind of fun, but what really got me was the pitch perfect replication of the 8-bit NES era in the presentation (check out that box art!).

Arkedo Series 03 – Pixel! – Arkedo is the XBLIG developer to watch IMO. This 2D platformer has a unique minimalist look, a good sense of humor, and fun run & jump gameplay.

I’m not sure when it’ll go up, but Samurai vs. Zombies was quite the fun 3D brawler when I played it in playtesting. Hopefully, it’ll go up soon so that all can enjoy it.

Anyway, that it’s for tonight. In my next entry, I’ll be talking about my current game project. Stay tuned!

1 – Batman: Arkham Asylum (360) – This game reminds me a lot of Persona 4 in that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Persona 4 was a decent dungeon crawler combined with a decent anime life sim, but when you put the two together, you got one of the best games ever. Similarly, Batman: Arkham Asylum is a good brawler, good stealth game, good exploration game, and good Action/RPG, but put it all together and you get one of the best games I’ve ever played.

2 – Plants vs. Zombies (PC) – A unique take on the tower defense genre that also happens to be one of the funniest games of the year. I loved the game, even though I found it overly easy, but it quickly became my wife’s favorite game ever. For a game to thoroughly entertain both of us, despite our vastly different tastes in games, is no small feat.

3 – Defense Grid: The Awakening (XBLA) – Great graphics, excellent gameplay balance, and well designed levels all make this the tower defense game to beat for hardcore strategy.

4 – Splosion Man (XBLA) – Another hilarious game that also ends up being one of the most enjoyable fast-paced platformers ever. Forget New Super Mario Bros. Wii, this is the game you want for both single and multiplayer platforming action.

5 – Torchlight (PC) – Titan Quest has long been my reigning champion for Hack & Slash RPGs since it’s arrival in 2006. Torchlight doesn’t overthrow it, but it’s nearly as good and different enough to be worth playing.

6 – Devil Survivor (DS) – A great branching story combined with an unusual take on the Strategy/RPG genre made Devil Survivor my favorite DS game this year. In the end, I grew tired as the battles became more tedious than fun, but for the first 20 hours or so, I was completely captivated.

7 – Half-Minute Hero (PSP) – Best RPG parody I’ve ever played. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do a great mini-RPG since the start of XBox Live Indie Games and Half-Minute Hero finally showed me one way to do it. Take all the essence of a standard RPG, cut out the filler, and speed the whole thing up about 100 times and you’ve got one frantic game that’s a blast to play.

8 – Rock Band Unplugged (PSP) – When I first heard of this game, I thought it sounded like a waste of space. Then I tried it and was instantly hooked. Whereas Rock Band on the home consoles is a great multiplayer game, Rock Band Unplugged is a far better single player game. Having to control all 4 instruments throughout the course of a song makes for much more interesting gameplay and a good deal of immersion.

9 – LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival (PSP) – I never got into the first 2 LocoRoco games because they seemed far too slow and easy. LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival fixes all that by being one of the hardest games on the system. At first, the controls were confusing and unintuitive (couldn’t do wall jumps consistently) but after messing around a bit with the demo levels, everything clicked and I was hooked. If you’re the kind of person who liked Mirror’s Edge for its time trials & speed runs, this is the game for you.

10 – Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP) – At first I held off on this one. $40 for a game I’ve already played where most of the graphics are still the same? I’m glad I finally decided to get it. Despite the old graphics, this version of Persona has been drastically improved in many ways. The music is fantastic, the new cutscenes gorgeous, and the translation drastically improved, but what really got me was the increased speed. Load times on the PSN version are next to nothing and with the option to skip animation in combat, the whole game is a much faster and more enjoyable game. I’m really looking forward to trying out the restored content (Snow Queen Quest) once I finish with the main game.

Honorable Mentions – FF4: After Years, Droplitz.
Best Pre-2009 game that I finally got around to playing this year – Tales of Vesperia
Most Disappointing Game – Resident Evil 5 (Adding multiplayer really threw off the delicate mixture of excellence that RE4 had going for it. Still fun, but I expected more. Oh well, at least Mercenaries was better than ever)