Our Backlog is full of Awesome Sauce this week. Don’t believe me? Good. You shouldn’t.

But click the link anyway, please. We know when you don’t!

Yep, looks like Final Fantasy to me.

Nick:

There’s a lot I could talk about this week: I just broke past the 50% completion mark in Just Cause 2, a game that somehow still manages to feel fresh and exciting hours after its conclusion, and I’ve been dabbling in a little bit of Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty, Demon’s Souls and, of course, the Halo: Reach beta.

But the one game I’ve been the most hooked on in months (until I finally get a hold of Picross 3D, anyway) is Final Fantasy. Not Final Fantasy XIII — I haven’t touched it in more than a month, and for good reason — but the original, conveniently ported for the umpteenth time to the iPhone App Store. I realized that, despite how many different times I’ve played the original game, I’ve never actually finished it. Thankfully, this good old-fashioned grind-fest feels right at home on a phone. Thanks to a solid save system and the updated graphics, music and gameplay balancing from the PSP release, Final Fantasy looks and feels great on the iPhone. With modern roleplaying games largely focusing on big-budget presentation and overly complicated battle systems, Final Fantasy feels almost perfectly at home on a platform that’s tailor-made for five-minute play sessions.

"The Yetis Pat Faces" is what I mined from this assemblage of words. How about you?

Doug:

Beyond my two current gaming addictions — playing Words with Friends most anytime of the day (feel free to send a game challenge, my username is harperdc), and more PES 2010 than is probably healthy for a person — I’ve gotten just a little time this week to play something I will undoubtedly pour far more time into: Super Street Fighter IV.

Unlike Nick, I didn’t spend a ton of time on the first Street Fighter IV when it came out. I have put a lot of time into past SF games, including Super Street Fighter II HD Remix and the Marvel vs. Capcom games; I also count the arcade-perfect port of Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the Dreamcast is one of my all-time favorite games. While I’m not a Street Fighter pro by any stretch of the imagination, I know my way around a quarter-circle or two.

That said, from my scant few hours I can already tell that SSFIV is almost the ultimate evolution of the SF formula. The character selection and balance is superb; the graphic style, character animations, and arena backgrounds all improve on SFIV while also drawing from that slightly stereotypical sense of whimsy SF has made its own since Street Fighter II.

More importantly, the gameplay is tightened and balanced better compared with previous editions of the game. The addition of new supers and ultras for all characters, as well as more offensively-biased characters, changes the balance and tone of SFIV; it means more attacking, which is exactly how I like to play fighting games.

Shame I’m getting my ass handed to me on a regular basis by both the computer and online. Ugh. I think I’m going to have to track down Nick and beg for some sympathy to get my first online win.

My interpretation of Progressive Auto Insurance VII: Lamentations of the Claims Adjuster

Aaron:

I deleted my first few paragraphs of text in the middle of drafting this post. I really didn’t play much of anything this week, and I could tell I was just blathering on. We’ve already discussed Reach, and my hour-and-a-half session of zombie killing in Call of Duty: World at War leaves little to blog about. For the sake of transparency: I’ve focused most of my attention on an imbroglio that began this past Saturday, when I was involved in (but didn’t cause) a nasty collision/accident/case of unrelentingly stupid driver error. So instead of worrying about my pokemans or my effects massing, I’ve been playing a little game I’d like to call Progessive Auto Insurance VII: Lamentations of the Claims Adjuster.

IGN gave it a 12 out of 10, and Edge says it’s perhaps the most realistic game ever created. There’s no way to win; instead, the protagonist is repeatedly rammed up his claim hole with paperwork by an ever-unreachable, rapidly expanding mass of putrid, faceless mist that taught itself to take on a human-like shape at will. This antagonist, referred to in the oldest of tomes as The Adjusticator, does not heed the pleas of the hero character. In fact, The Adjustictor was “born” without hearing appendages of any sort. This makes it impossible for the hero to raise the valuation of his trusty steed, which was beaten to death by The Adjusticator’s BFF and client, Gilchrist Doushbahg. And if our stalwart hero tries to explain that his beast of burden was well-fed, preened and maintained, The Adjusticator will stop him mid-sentence, hold up its wispy hand, and then, speaking incantations from the most forbidden magics of Bureaucracy, begin its lamentations in earnest. The demon’s salty tears of bitchery will turn the greenest lowlands into mud while the snow-dusted mountain tops will watch the world drown in shocked horror as they also slowly disappear into the briny maelstrom. The Adjusticator really hates handing over money.

So I’m playing Rhythm Heaven, and it’s hard — annoying even. I think the game refuses to let me progress until I’ve completed a mini-game perfectly. It proves once again that just because I developed natural rhythm from playing the drums since I was a child, it doesn’t mean I’ll be any good at keeping rhythm in videogames.

Yeah, I’m looking at you, Rock Band. But The Beatles: Rock Band…you’re all right. Drink’s on me.

Iggy approves of the gratuitous display of raw power.

We are bringing the thunder this week; the appropriate background soundtrack for the Backlog this week can be found right here. Aaron is blowing stuff up in a variety of games; Doug is breaking free from the shackles of the standard Xbox 360 hardware; and Nick is breaking hearts and tiles with another great Scrabble lookalike.

So kick back, put on some real proper ass-kicking music, and prepare to have your mind BLOWN AWAY!

No, Russian.

Aaron

After the long-winded diatribe I offered earlier this week on the subjects of Pokémon and, to a greater extent, Just Cause 2, I find myself a bit winded as I sit here trying to explain what else I played this week. I did happen to finish Just Cause 2 last night, but I’m not sure if you can really call it “complete” when I’m only 28 percent done with what Panau has to offer. For those interested, 28 percent equals out to just a bit under 24 hours of game time played. Each person’s mileage may vary, but that’s how long it took me to do whatever I wanted in-between the seven main story missions — which are miniscule at best, by the way. I wouldn’t recommend buying or playing this game under the impression that the story campaign will last you a long time. What you get out of the game comes mostly from the free-spirited roaming (and destroying) of Panau. Blowing up things as you see fit does have a greater point other than twisted satisfaction: you’ll need to cause chaos through numerous side missions handed out by three separate Panauan militant groups to unlock the next tier of Agency missions, thereby advancing the plot.

There are also ninjas in Just Cause 2. Make note of that fact.

I haven’t dipped my toes into any other pools of gaming this week, aside from the kiddie pool that is Bad Company 2. I’m rank 27 now, which is just a bit under half of the way to the max rank of 50. A friend of mine purchased the PC version allowing us to bring another body into the war; now my three Bad Company 2-owning friends and I can fill an entire squad by ourselves. The thought is that with a full squad we will forever erase the possibility of having an unknown squad member hang back at the HQ where the tanks and helicopters spawn, and do nothing for an entire round but C4 the vehicles before his teammates can enter them. Our newly acquired “band of brothers” doesn’t mean the general teammate population won’t continue to engage in such methods of douchebaggery; it just won’t be under the command of our squad (unless we decide to do it ourselves, for laugh-out-loud purposes).

On a side note, it’s depressing to see so many of my other friends playing the game on Xbox 360 night after night. We’ll never be able to fight back hordes of enemy combatants together, separated for an eternity by a digital sea frothing and churning with incompatibility. I thought we were all supposed to play together one day (i.e. now), regardless of platform preference, in what would resemble the videogame version of a hive mind. I’m aware that mouse and keyboard controls are more accurate, but I’d think a slight bit of auto-aim on the consoles would assist with that perceived discrepancy. Whatever — that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Blue skies and wide open rolling countryside — eastern Oregon, or a metaphor for Doug's spacious new 250 gigabyte Xbox 360 hard drive?

Doug

After getting past the crippling effects of jet lag, I’ve been turning to gaming to grant me sweet release from my degenerate graduate student lifestyle (or, perhaps, to encourage it? I’m not 100 percent sure). Strangely, most of what I’ve been thinking about this week isn’t playing games on Xbox 360, but how to manage memory on my 360.

Please keep in mind that, unlike my comrade in arms Nick, I haven’t taken the opportunity to upgrade my 360′s hard drive capacity whatsoever. The problem with this lies with one game: Rock Band. Since so much of a bog-standard 20 gig hard drive is taken up by system files and management — only roughly 13 gigs is free for your saves and content — having an export of Rock Band 1′s song files and a decent collection of download packs quickly starts chomping into your hard drive’s available space. And since mandatory content packs, game demos, and Xbox Live Arcade games are getting bigger and bigger all the time…this causes problems.

For the past few months I’ve had roughly 500 mb of available space on my hard drive. I didn’t want to delete anything else; I’d been avoiding going through my Rock Band collection and thinning some tracks out for the time being because there are so many files to go through. Regardless, when I heard about the USB drive memory capabilities coming this week, I was giddy — I don’t know if anybody else has dealt with it before, but even if the USB drive capability was limited to moving gamertags around, it would be amazing. Neither overpaying for a memory card or recovering your gamertag via Xbox Live is a particularly quick and easy process, so being able to use a damn thumb drive is spectacular.

So that kicked off a nice hour or two worth of moving older, unused game saves and files from my hard drive to the thumb drive I received with my limited edition copy of Forza Motorsport 3 (it seemed the appropriate thumb drive to dedicate to this task). And this was a solution that worked…well enough. But I was hungry — I needed more.

Enter the 250 gig Xbox 360 hard drive. Because, in my typical American viewpoint of the world, if some is good, overkill is better.

I transferred over my 20 gig’s contents, as well as the thumb drive’s life boat supplies, and then decided to go batshit crazy with the downloads…because I still had 200 gigs of space to use. Lost Cause 2 demo? Sure. MLB 2k10? It’s probably janky, but what the hell! MotoGP 09/10? Why not! I also installed PES 2010 to the hard drive, and damn — I have been missing out. The difference between my jet-fan-sounding Xbox 360 DVD drive and running a game off the hard drive was incredible; I’m definitely going to have to take a couple hours to install other games I have.

I also got the chance to quickly play a couple rounds of Guitar Hero Arcade last night. A one-sentence review would be that it’s an arcade-focused version of Guitar Hero circa Guitar Hero 3 or Guitar Hero: World Tour, but with even looser note hit detection than the console versions of those games. The lag between when a note appeared and when you needed to strum it was, frankly, ridiculous. I’ve put just a little bit of time into some other games — including enough to go get Broken Sword for the iPhone after hearing a lot of good about it from Nick, and a challenge to Nick in Words with Friends — but mostly it’s just been basking in the real, raw power of 250 gigs. I love the smell of overkill in the morning.

Just Cause 2 allows you to, much like the Master Chief in Halo 3, take the fight directly to your enemies — in this case, helicopters.

Nick

I’m as big a proponent as any for games with emotional weight and social relevance — it’s a big part of why I want to start making them myself. But I think gaming enthusiasts often are quick to overlook the importance of just having fun in a game.

Just Cause 2 has no weighty morals or long-winded diatribes about the impact of United States military interests in developing nations. It’s only concerned with setting the player free in a massive, gorgeous world and letting the campy humor and visceral explosions do the talking. Simply put, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a game in a very long time, and I cannot stress enough just how much I loved every moment of it. Even if open-world games aren’t your thing, this is something that simply must be experienced. And with a free demo available on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam, you really don’t have much of an excuse.

Oh, and Aaron? I finished the game at 31.50% completion in 17 hours and 31 minutes. Consider the gauntlet thrown, son.

When not gallivanting around the beaches and jungles of Panau, I’ve been hopelessly sucked into an iPhone game. Words with Friends reminds me of the glory days of Facebook’s Scrabulous in that it’s a Scrabble knockoff that looks and plays better than the original. For a paltry $1.99 on iPhone or iPad (although that’s currently a sale price), you can play games of Scrabble with friends across a variety of platforms. You can play at your own pace, and once it’s your turn to play the game will send your phone a push notification. While I’m usually wary about enabling push notifications on my phone for most apps — I sure as hell don’t want to be woken up at 4 in the morning because We Rule wants to let me know that my turnips have finished growing — I look forward to each new opportunity to play a new word and turn the tables in my favor. Unfortunately I’m losing all four games I’m currently engaged in.

If Words with Friends sounds like fun, there’s also a free, ad-supported version of the game in the App Store. Give it a shot, and send a game invitation to Whymog — I could definitely use the practice.

I kinda got carried away with Photoshop this week. You see, Rico Rodriguez, the protagonist from the Just Cause games, is chaotically belly-flopping into a child’s sandbox, which serves a visual metaphor for the open-world adventures he stars in. Hence the headline.

With that out of the way, I can tell you this edition of our beloved (by some — maybe our mothers) Backlog pertains to Nick’s first aural experiencing of Axis: Bold as Love, Doug’s dusting off of the old Xbox after his adventures in Asia and my unbelieving satisfaction from playing a ton of Just Cause 2.

Imagine the sound of high-performance machines vying for 1st place while looking at this photo

Doug:

And I thought returning to classes after winter break was hard. Adjusting to being at home in the United States, versus being in various hotels around Asia, has taken some doing — never mind doing it while returning to graduate school classes AND trying to fight jet lag.

I’ve taken a bit of refuge in gaming to relieve stress, and because I hadn’t fired up my Xbox 360 in a month! I spent a little bit of time finding Pocari Sweat and JR East logos on the storefront for my cars in Forza 3, driving around Shinjuku and Shibuya in Project Gotham Racing 4 and worked on my second Mass Effect 2 playthrough for a short time as well.

What took more free time, though, was PES 2010 — I’m fully re-addicted to Konami’s soccer games, and it feels good. Along with that, I spent time on Tuesday playing a bit of Rock Band 2 for the first time in a while. Nick reminded me that a Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Axis: Bold as Love, was being released for the game last week; I haven’t been following RB2′s DLC schedule as much as I had in years past, and haven’t been as excited for new songs since the middle of last summer. It felt really good to hop on, get an invite from Nick to rock, and get some play time in. I’d been thinking about hosting a Rock Band 2 party at some point this spring; that’s definitely going to happen now. (Editor’s note: I’m totally going to be there!)

Artist's interpretation of Hendrix enjoying his music in Rock Band

Nick:

With Final Fantasy XIII and all its broken promises having been returned to the shelf, I’m back to actually having fun with the games I play — fancy that!

My love affair with Just Cause 2 (or, as my girlfriend derisively calls it, “Lost Cause”) continues to burn passionately. It’s just a big, stupid game with more than a few clever ideas and a heart of gold, and I can’t recommend it enough to anyone with an appetite for destruction and a flair for open-ended game mechanics.

In order to make up for the hours of excruciating voice acting and mindless violence that dominate my Just Cause 2 playtime, I’ve been spending a good amount of time playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii co-operatively. Now that we’ve finally beaten the game (which, by the way, featured the most difficult Bowser fight in any Mario game I can think of) we’ve begun the exhausting task of hunting down every single star coin in order to tackle the stages in World 9. It’s a real credit to Nintendo’s ingenuity that I’m still avidly playing a Mario game months after its release.

But the best surprise this week was the latest batch of Rock Band songs, including the entire Jimi Hendrix album Axis: Bold as Love. I’ll be honest — I never knew much about Jimi Hendrix’s music. Other than a handful of songs like “Fire,” “Hey Joe” and his cover of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” the closest I ever got to Hendrix was the time I broke the rules and touched his guitar on display at the Experience Music Project. (Please don’t sue me, Mr. Allen.) I’ve found that playing songs in Rock Band is often one of the best ways to gain an appreciation for an artist, and Axis didn’t disappoint. Doug and I both grabbed the album and played through the vast majority of it, and it hooked me immediately. It’s the rare song collection that speaks for itself, and it’s an infinitely replayable addition to any Rock Band collection — or MP3 library, for that matter. Definitely don’t pass this one up.

Rico does his best flying squirrel impression high above the waters of Panau

Aaron:

I’m a dabbler in the realm of videogames. I dabble. It’s good to keep things varied, in my humble opinion. For example, this week my gaming time has been split between four vastly different games: Final Fantasy XIII, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Pokémon HeartGold and Just Cause 2. The former two games have been discussed at length in previous Backlogs, so I’ll talk about the newcomers.

Pokémon means a lot to me, as far as games go. When Red and Blue first released here in the U.S. in 1998 I was 12, and highly impressionable. My friends and I watched the cartoon, played the games and collected the cards. With the onset of puberty we became a bit more reserved in our enjoyment of the merchandising, but the games continued to hold a lofty place — in my mind at least. The enjoyment of an extremely simple goal, to catch them all, has stayed with me throughout the years, and it’s forced me to buy almost all of the various new games in an attempt to recapture the mystique and newness experienced through the original games. From Gold and Silver to Diamond and Pearl, I’ve bought at least one of the subsequent games, and each time I slip back into the catch-crazed mindset I first felt 12 years ago. The recent release of HeartGold has brought those feelings to the surface again for a sixth time, but each time I arrive in the world of pocket monsters on a quest to defeat a new set of gym leaders, thwart the evil machinations of another group of criminals and capture one more unique cover-photo Pokémon, the thrill of it all diminishes a little bit more. Economics 101 wasn’t lying when it told me all about the law of diminishing returns, though it would probably be unhappy with how I’m using the concept as a metaphor for my wavering commitment to a child’s videogame series.

I love HeartGold (and I prefer Ho-Oh to Lugia [yes, I know their names still]), and though it may be a rehash of a game from 2000, it’s still a rehash of a great game from 2000. The new/old batch of poké-creatures are second only to the original 150 (or 151, depending on which kid in the GameStop you ask) in their design factor. Chikorita, I can assure you, is bad ass. If you fancy yourself even the most fair-weather of Pokémon fans, you should pick up HeartGold or SoulSilver. It’s still great fun, but I can’t help feeling less and less impressed with the formula as the years go by. Maybe it’s time to go all Pepsi on us and try something new, o’ great minds at the Pokémon Company.

Onto the topic of Just Cause 2. Are you readers prepared to read a heaping pile of praise? You should get ready to, right now. All set? Okay.

Just Cause 2 is, as of this writing, my new favorite game of 2010. Forget Mass Effect 2, disregard Final Fantasy XIII, ignore Bayonetta and scoff at God of War III — Just Cause 2 is my kind of game, and I’ll tell you why.

A lot of videogames work hard to fill-in the blanks of your imagination and answer the questions you might have by the time the credits slide down the screen. Developers don’t always intend to make gamers confused by ignoring this one iota of information here or that plot point there; sometimes it simply happens throughout the development process and gamers are left to figure things out themselves on fan fiction sites and hardcore forums in an effort to tie together all of the threads dangling in front of them. So while I’m enthralled by the history and culture of Mass Effect’s universe, and appreciate the great lengths BioWare has gone to cover all of their creation’s bases, I don’t necessarily want the story to be told for me. On occasion I enjoy imagining a narrative and plot structure by myself — personal motivations for my character to do whatever he or she is doing at that point in time.

Left 4 Dead and its sequel are good examples of that self-created narrative because the series’ mythos is so vaguely explained. You’re allowed to decide exactly what type of shady life Nick (the character, not the legal assistant) lead before he was dragged into the zombie apocalypse, or why Bill has what looks like stains of SpaghettiOs on his shirt. The gamer answers the questions of his own accord, and that design strategy pleases me greatly. Which brings me to Just Cause 2, and how it encourages my mind to run wild with imaginative motivations for blowing up helicopters, swimming to an island in the middle of the water and enjoying the beautifully rendered sunrise atop the highest peak in Panau.

Call me a dreamer — or some dude who thinks too hard about his games — but 90 percent of the fun I’ve had in Just Cause 2 has been in exploring the gorgeous landscape of Panau and putting myself into the game — doing what I’d do if I had that much freedom to romp across a series of island paradises as I pleased (and with no possible need for traveler’s checks). I’m not playing as the protagonist Rico on his quest to assassinate a despotic president; the main plot is paper-thin and far too easy to disregard. I’ve instead removed any of the preexisting narrative and simply traversed the 400 square miles of land, sea and air to seek out my own exciting preoccupations.

I wonder how long it would take to grappling-hook climb that mountain? Let’s test it out. Hey, maybe that desolate, unpaved road goes somewhere cool. Nice — I found an ancient native temple with weapon upgrade parts. There’s an entire digital country to explore, and everything I’ve seen in Panau during the past 20 hours (I work fast: I just got it on Wednesday) has kept me wanting to see more. And in all that time, I’ve only completed two of the main missions.

Now, all of this virtual wanderlust wouldn’t be enjoyable if the core mechanics failed to work right, but thankfully Avalanche Studios has made a top-tier game that controls, sounds, looks and performs far above average. Just Cause 2 is exactly why I play games: to explore new and different worlds on my own terms. I of course enjoy the story-heavy linear experience when it’s well done (i.e., BioShock 2, Prince of Persia and Batman: Arkham Asylum), but ever since I played Grand Theft Auto III, and EverQuest shortly thereafter, in 2001, the games that taste sweetest to me are of the sandbox variety. Let me do what I want, and I’ll have a great time.

If Rockstar can hurry up with Red Dead Redemption, 2010 will become one highlight of a year for my sort of games.

All things must end eventually, but the saga continues. Doug just touched down in Portland after a whirlwind tour of Asia over the last month. Aaron, on the other hand, broke down and purchased a new Xbox to replace his very dead one. And I’ve finally decided to pull the plug on a game I’d been looking forward to for years — a game that left me frustrated, confused, and bored out of my mind.

These are bittersweet times for the Silicon Sasquatch crew. Now hit that jump link so I can get back to weeping into my beer while I continue this Gilmore Girls marathon. It’s all I have left.

Doug:

Doug snapped this photo while driving a forklift in search of some sailors

After nearly a month in Asia — split mostly between Tokyo, Japan and China, with a brief stop in Seoul, South Korea — I’ve seen quite a bit. I’ve been to the Great Wall, the Meiji Shrine, one of the tallest buildings in China, and the DMZ…and along the way, yes, there’s been some video gaming involved.

What’s been easiest and best to play throughout the month has honestly been Plants vs. Zombies on the iPhone. Why? Well, when you’re stuck on a bus or airplane, and need something that can be played for five minutes or for well over an hour, accept no substitutes. I wasn’t the only person on my grad school trip playing it, too; one of my friends picked up the game on my recommendation and loved it, and surprisingly one of the girls from China was playing it too! Imagine my surprise when she busted that out on the airplane once.

I’m collecting ideas for a longer article on the subject, but yes, there are video games in Asia and, especially in Japan, the influence of games is fairly widespread. And, of course, there’s plenty of nerdy stuff around every corner. Without going too in-depth, a quick anecdote about that: I went into a bookstore near my hotel last night because one of my friends requested I pick up some women’s fashion magazines for her. Expecting something like Barnes and Noble, imagine my surprise when I saw they had games…and then imagine my absolute shock when I realized they had a lot of used video games, too. I spent almost an hour browsing through used games and letting my jaw just drop.

If I had more space in my bag, I’d be bringing home a used Super Famicom and a Chrono Trigger cartridge…for roughly $30. Instead, I settled for a used copy of Shenmue on Dreamcast for 500 yen (~$5).

Aaron:

I don't think I've encountered this scene, but I can guarantee that Lightning is being self-deprecating while Sazh mutters to himself. Later, a chocobo will fly around and chirp for comic relief. This will repeat for the next 25 hours.

Now that I finally have an Xbox 360 again, I put in some more quality time with Final Fantasy XIII. It’s much, much better than it deserves to be.

There are haters, just as there are lovers, of the game, but for my own tastes this particular fantasy has been an absolute joy from disc one. The pacing certainly suffered at the start, but now that I’m over 20 hours into the entirety of the experience I can’t exactly give a crap that the beginning was slow. Much more interesting things have happened in the game as far as the plot lines and character development are concerned, and they are among the primary reasons why the game is worth a purchase (the combat and graphics being the other points of interest).

Now sure, western-developed RPGs generally don’t adhere to the old school traditions like a Final Fantasy title will, but that doesn’t make those non-Japanese titles superior — not at all. If I prefer Mass Effect 2 it’s because that particular game has a depth, story and mythology that exists among other entries in the franchise (and no, I’m not just glossing over the inclusion of summons, Cids, chocobos and moogles in other Final Fantasy titles); it’s honestly sometimes hard to care about number eight, 13 or 789 in a series when the plots are entirely separate from one another.

Nick’s long and tireless campaign to champion the merits of the Just Cause games, specifically the recently released numero dos, has finally encouraged me — with a little help from the exquisite downloadable demo on Xbox Live — to see the genius of Avalanche Studios and fork over funds in the name of bad ass destruction. And, as a small aside, I have to say the draw distance technology used in Just Cause 2 is mind-blowing. Really. In fact it’s a tertiary reason for buying the game.

Doesn’t anyone else miss the days when they bought a game simply because its graphics and technology offered something previously unseen? Sure, games today advance in their fidelity and artistry each and every Tuesday retail release date, but I’m hardly taken aback by the same old tricks with the Unreal Engine anymore. However, Just Cause 2 looks, like, super good. And that’s special.

Wow. I purchased two Square-Enix games in the same month. I feel like it’s 2000 all over again.

It's not the ghost train. It's not a mako-powered train. It's just the pain train.

Nick:

Like Aaron said, it’s starting to feel an awful lot like the Summer of Adventure all over again. I’m counting down the days with bated breath until my copy of Just Cause 2 arrives in the mail. But compared to a year that saw classics like Vagrant Story, Legend of Mana and Chrono Cross, I just can’t fathom how a game as frustrating as Final Fantasy XIII could be released a full decade after some of Square’s greatest hits.

I’ve heard unanimous praise for the game once you arrive at around the 25-hour mark. Excuse me if I’m a little jaded, but why would I want to trudge through 25 hours of half-baked melodramatic clichés punctuated with a combat system that’s permanently running on training wheels? I don’t like to leave a Final Fantasy game unfinished, but that seems to be the norm for me lately. Final Fantasy XII was a stunning production in terms of broad design, its combat system and the high quality of its writing — something that Final Fantasy XIII stumbles over pitifully. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy XII was a victim of its own ambition, and once I’d hit the 60-hour mark without arriving anywhere near the game’s conclusion, I folded and set it aside.

The difference is that, with Final Fantasy XIII, I’ve only made it about twelve hours into the game and I’m ready to throw in the towel. You win, Square Enix. You’ve finally made a Final Fantasy game that just isn’t fun.

There’s not much to say this week. Doug and Aaron are both on trips of varying intensity and length, and I’m once again at the helm. But I’m not jealous! There’s a quiet dignity to be found in staying at home, you know. And it saves money. Really, it’s the only reasonable way to live in these uncertain times.

Yep.

I mean, what kind of person would really want to go on a whirlwind tour of Asia for a whole month? Doug. Doug’s the guy. And, wow, big deal — the first weekend with amazing weather in the Pacific Northwest. “Hey everybody, we need to go party at the coast now!” That’s definitely what Aaron said when he left to go party at the coast with his totally awesome and probably quite attractive friends.

But no. I’m fine. I’m fine! Just, you know, read this thing and leave me to my unbridled joy.

Aaron

Gross!

What a week! In the span of seven days I’ve managed to acquire three new games, one of which I finished last night and loved – in opposition to my formerly hesitant feelings toward it. That game was BioShock 2.

My final contribution to this week’s backlog is about this Eurogamer article comparing the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Final Fantasy XIII. While the technical and detail-rich write up hasn’t told me anything that I didn’t already expect from a three-DVD port of a Blu-ray title, it still frustrates me to think that Square Enix half-assed a version of their game for a console with a larger install base in the U.S (based on summer of 2009 sales numbers for both consoles). In Japan, the PlayStation 3 matters for RPGs — I get that. But here, the latest game in the series has the potential to sell extremely well on the Xbox given the popularity of the RPGs (though Western they may be, i.e. Mass Effect) already available for it. For all I know, the sales numbers for both of Final Fantasy XIII’s platforms could be very close. Oh well, I suppose. I’m still buying it for my 360, only because I don’t have a PS3, and I’m still not going to rectify that anytime soon.

Doug

Doug shot this photo of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ultraman-themed merchandise, which has been adopted as the unofficial national currency of Japan.

Editor’s Note: Doug was too busy having the time of his life traveling throughout Asia to contribute this week. In the meantime, enjoy this photo he shot.

Nick

Spider-Man ain't got nothin' on Rico Rodriguez.

I’ve got a soft spot for any game that has ambitions of enabling the player to pull off ridiculous stunts in open-world settings. I loved Saints Row 2′s unabashed emphasis on comedy and excess instead of story and realism. Mercenaries 2 won me over with its B-movie appeal. And Red Faction: Guerrilla? After two playthroughs, I’m still craving more  of its trademark destruction and hammer-swingin’ goodness.

So it’s no wonder that I’m currently having the time of my life with Just Cause. You remember Just Cause, right? It was a port of a sixth-generation open-world game that garnered mixed reviews when it came out nearly four years ago. It’s certainly far from perfect — imprecise controls, uneven design, abysmal acting and animation — but the game has a soul.

The grappling hook isn’t exactly a new concept to games — Bionic Commando is probably remembered as the first mainstream example of swinging based action — but when paired with a parachute, the possibilities explode. Instead of being a mere diversion, BASE jumping is the most reasonable way to travel. Why drive a car when you can hook onto one and parasail the highways of a war-torn Central American country?

But even for all the fun I’ve had with it, Just Cause 2 looks like it’s going to blow it away. The action is tighter, the music is better, and the landscapes are absolutely stunning from the air. And most importantly, the grapple/parachute combo has been reinvented. Grappling now works on any surface, meaning Rico can build up momentum and deploy his chute anywhere. And in a clever twist, the grappling gun can now be used to attach any two objects to each other — such as gas tanks and bad dudes.

Just Cause 2 looks to refine and update what made the original so fun while also cutting out the things that held it back from being a uniformly great game. The demo’s live on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, and I’d highly recommend you go check it out.

Finally, I also completed BioShock 2 and Heavy Rain. But after playing so many games about water, dads and crazy people, I think I need some time to decompress before I revisit those experiences.