#164 – Street Fighter IV (PS3)
The return of SF after the disappointment which was SFIII: 3rd Strike. I found the characters in SFIII to be extremely bland and very unappealing. SFIV did so much to improve over the 3rd. For one we now have decent storyline segments for each characters. The moves challenge also proved to be fun. But nothing beats a classic Ryu vs. Ken bout. HADOUKEN! SHOURYUUKEN! The one thing which irks me about SFIV is the way the characters are modeled. The blocky Dragon Ball Z like design just didn’t appeal to me. I would have preferred a polished anime model. But other than that playing against a friend is so much fun. Street Fighter is back to its glory days.
#163 – Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits Von Gut und Bose (PS2)
It’s a general consensus from Xenosaga fans that the series went through a bump in the road during the 2nd episode. I’m also one of the many who feel that way. Episode II is obviously a continuation of the first but it hardly plays like it. For one I thought the battle system was changed for the better. It requires a little time for getting used to but it pays off to be fun later on. However everything else just seemed inferior to Episode I. The voice acting was a huge let down but more importantly the unavailability of stores (that’s right no more weapons and armors) and the abysmal character customization system. Trust me as far as I can remember I hardly used any of those ether ‘skills’ because they just plain sucked. Using items to learn skills were alright if those weren’t exclusives (be careful of missables). Despite all that, Episode II still manages to retain that Xenosaga charm with its epic (although not as epic as the first) storyline and is a great game if you don’t compare it too much with the 1st and the 3rd.
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Rock n' Roll and Glam Metal... It never died