Final Fantasy XIII-2 Demo Inbound

I'm looking forward to this demo.  Coming 10 January to US PS3 owners and 11 January to Xbox360 players, SquarEnix has announced a fully-playable demo.  The SquarEnix Blog had a small post about it here.

I was rather excited about this game.  The directors went to pains in multiple interviews to say that fan issues from FFXIII had been heard and everything was fixed.  There has been the addition of towns, shops, more side-quests and less linear-hallways to run down.  That sounds good.

Where, for me, it started to go south was when gameplay was really shown.  It looks to be a shorter game, with an emphasis on New Game + stuff.  While that may be fine, the core mechanic of capturing monsters caught me off guard.  I'm not sure if I want a Poke-Fantasy game, but that may surprise me.  The other downer has been the music.  Normally, I love the music in any Final Fantasy game, but some of these tracks...well....

The chocobo theme (a boss encounter)

At any rate, check out the trailer below.  I'm going to get the demo next week and see if this game floats my boat.

New Year, Old Game

Welcome to 2012!  We're only 3 years away from this!  And, strangely, one of the games I'm most excited about is a redesigned game from the 1990s.

Syndicate is a fast-paced, violent-as-hell remake of an old PC isometric strategy game.  I know some fans of the original are crying "FOUL!" because the game isn't at all the same, but it has the same name.  This, they argue, leads to confusion for both fans and new-comers.  Old fans will not enjoy the FPS action while those brought in may find the original Syndicate dull/boring/lame.

And to this I say, "So?"  I'm super excited about this game.  21 February cannot get here soon enough!  I'll be posting a few of the trailers over the next few weeks to keep the hype strong.  First off, enjoy the announcement trailer!