This will be my last entry on KH2. Don't get too excited. I'm nowhere close to finishing it. Well. That's not true. I'm at the very last save point, so I could go on and finish the game, but my conscience tells me to finish his journal. I'm only level 56, so I have quite the loooooooooooooong time before I finish, as there is only so long I can play just for the purpose of leveling up and harvesting items for synthesis. I have pretty much decided to not complete all of the mini-games. Gaming is supposed to be fun, not make me pull my hair out, and a few of the games in Twilight Town make me want to do just that. Life is too short, and I have a ton of other games to play. I disagree with anyone who says that those mini-games prove I'm not a gamer. They prove that I have little patience, something entirely different altogether.

Jak & Daxter
Last weekend I visited Rin, who introduced me to the franchises of Jak & Daxter and Rachet & Clank. I didn't get to play Rachet & Clank, but it definitely seems like a game I would enjoy. I did put in a few hours into Jak & Daxter, and I have a feeling I'll be adding that franchise to my library. It's been awhile since I played just a silly, fun game. My only complaint is that it doesn't teach you how to play when you start. I don't want to use the instruction manual when I pick up a game. I want to pop in the disc, and have a warm-up level with a little instruction. It borders a little bit on too much platforming for me, but I haven't seen anything too reminiscent of MegaMan or Super Mario Bros. yet. Shawn had bought me Daxter for my PSP to play on the plane for that weekend, so he had some nice timing. Daxter so far doesn't seem to have a real purpose for anything. Jak is in jail, and Daxter is working for an exterminator, finding bugs in the crappiest of crapholes in the world. No wonder these people have bug problems. It's a fun little game, perfect for airplanes.

PlayStation 3
I finally found time to play my first PS3 game, Heavenly Sword. Shawn bought this game for me as a little present while I was going insane and studying for my first chem test. Penny Arcade did not give this game a glowing review, but that's never stopped me from giving a game a chance, especially when I see the chance for hack n' slash goodness. I wasn't able to give the game a fair chance since my controller's batteries died (grrrrrrrrrrrrr), but the fifteen minutes I had were breathtaking. I had a bit of trouble with the last part I played as it focused on something I'm not good at: first person shooter aiming. There's always been a reason I've played games like Kingdom Hearts and X-Men Legends and not Ghost Recon or Call of Duty. The FPS shooter sequences use the SIXAXIS controls, something that died first when my controller starting coughing for water. So I could say that I'll get better at that part with a fully charged controller, but I doubt it. It's something that has never come easy to me, but I'm eager to stumble through it just so I can at least play a full hour of the game. If PA is right, I'll be 1/5 of the way through it. Hopefully that's not true. That's a damn waste of such a beautiful system, not to mention $60.

I have my first test on Tuesday, so my games are collecting dust this week.

Tune in next week when I tell tales of my gaming experiences with the emofanatic.

Getting close to the point of no return in KH2. If my hand didn't start throbbing, I probably would have reached that point. But that isn't the point for this entry.

It feels to me that the Keyblade really isn't so special or even picky, for that matter, as it seemed to be with the first couple of games. The first game made it seem like there was only one Keyblade, and it chose Sora for God knows what reason. Of course, at the end of the game, you see King Mickey with a Keyblade, which leaves you confused. I thought the Keyblade chose Sora. Maybe it was just this Keyblade that chose Sora? Does that mean that there is a world of Keyblades that go around picking people to wield them? This theory doesn't sound as crazy when Sora receives his second Keyblade and then Riku just hands Kairi a Keyblade (where he was storing that, I don't want to know). So I guess that Sora isn't as special as was once thought (my friend Rin would agree with me there) or the Keyblades breed like bunnies and anyone can pick them up. Which would, I guess, affirm the former statement anyway.

It doesn't take away from the game, but just leaves me with more questions that probably won't be answered. Maybe in the fourth game we'll stumble upon the Keyblade breeding ground.

Biggest gripe about KH2
No, I'm not going to bitch about the journal, even though that really does suck. As much as I love playing KH2, and thank God that it is fun to play, I really hate that the road to getting the super-secret-double-probation ending is NOT conducive at all to the story. That is the biggest area that the first game blows this one out of the water. The first game doesn't have very many areas, but this one is huge. If you're going to force people to perform every little limit, complete every little tournament, obtain every item for item synthesis, then have the story follow along. Add some side quests, or stretch out the story at the very least.



One reason why the tournaments worked so well in the first game is that they had a purpose towards the main story. How hard would it be to incorporate that idea? The setup now seems like a complete waste of time and a cheap cop-out to prolonging game play.

Of course I'd be happy with ditching all of the mini-games that have nothing to do with the story *coughcoughskateboardingcoughcough* but it looks like if I really want to see what happens next and gain that feeling of "accomplishment" (yes, I'm being facetious) I'll have to endure the poor game planning.

(comic compliments of Brian Clevinger's 8-bit Theater)

Due to Labor Day weekend, Sunday's journal entry has been moved to Monday because I was lazy and I had a Labor Day party to attend.

I was a gaming slacker this week as this was the first week that I had a full week of class and lab and 40 hours of work. Some days I crashed before 9:30 like a six-year-old... or a sixty-year-old, take your pick. So today, before I had a chance to play some KH2, I questioned Shawn about his games for the PS3.

This week I did download for him the demo for Tiger Woods 08 on the PS3. Today was his first chance to play with it, and he really wasn't that impressed. He said it wasn't all that different from the Tiger Woods game he has on the PS2, and he'd rather play that or TW 07 for the Wii, where it really simulates playing golf. From what the demo shows (three holes) the game does not incorporate the SIXAXIS capabilities.

As it didn't, I asked Shawn if Rainbox Six: Vegas used the motion sensor controls. He suddenly looked sheepish and said that he deactivated them because they drove him crazy. He said that the SIXAXIS was for looking around, and it drove him crazy that if he shifted the controller a little bit, the camera would swing around in that direction. He prefers to use the traditional analog sticks to move the camera. I asked him if that was why he hadn't really touched Call of Duty 3 for the Wii, and he said no. The PS3 controller is pretty much a carbon copy of the PS2 controller, so he already has a preference for how to hold  and use it. He didn't want to retrain his muscles to use it in a different way. With the Wii-mote, he had to learn something completely different that wasn't similar to anything he had used before, so the motion sensing controls were a part of that learning process. He hadn't really played with CoD3 because he was distracted with Excite Truck, not because the controls drove him crazy.

After he got pissed off at Rainbow Six: Vegas (temper, temper), I picked up KH2 for a couple of hours and like an idiot, went into the final world. And saved. I hope I can go back and finish up a lot of things I've left behind, like the 100 Acre Wood, a few Underdrome tournaments, and of course, completing Jiminy's blasted journal. It wouldn't hurt if I actually leveled up as well and worked on my drives some more. I'm over 30 hours in and I feel like I have at least 30 hours more to go. Well, I will if I'm able to leave this final world and wrap other things up. I have a little bit of studying to do, and then I'll go back to it and see if I'm totally screwed or not.

Oh by the way, if you want to add me as a PS3 friend (yep, shameless egotistical plug going here), my online ID is tea_abuser. Not that surprising, is it?