Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is finally out!  Looks like I have something new to play while riding the train to work.  I’ll report back in a couple of days and let everyone know how it is.

Other then my time playing Space Invaders Extreme, I haven’t been gaming all that much.  While I have played to much I have picked up a couple of games on Steam.  With all the news of Beyond Good and Evil 2 from Ubidays I decided I should probably go back and finish the first one.  Since, I lost my copy for Xbox long ago Steam was the obvious place to get it.  Of course, I haven’t made it past the point Jade recieves the mission to take pictures yet.

I also picked up a copy of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One.  The longest video game name that I can think of is a pretty decent game.  It is a point and click adventure role playing game.  Which almost makes me wish there was a version on the DS as well, since I would love to play on the train.  I’m actually a bit glad I’m not just playing through in one sitting since, it seems to have fallen into the “kill x number of y” game play mechanic pretty early in the game - Steam reports that I’ve played for about 1.3 hours.  I have faith that it will break free of that as the time goes on - I hope.

Other games I’ve played for more then ten minutes include: Metal Gear Soild (ePSXe), Resident Evil 4 (Wii) and Shadow of the Colossus (PS2).

I keep finding excuses to get myself out of the house - maybe it’s because the weather is starting to get a bit nicer.  My play time has really suffered because of it.  It’s OK though, it really is - I have managed to squeeze in a bit of gaming time…

Rock Band (Xbox 360)

Mike and I finally sat down this past Friday (or was it Thursday?) and played through a bunch of Rock Band.  We hadn’t really played since St. Patrick’s day and I’m not sure you can really call that playing.  We had to start a new band because Mike, the drummer extraordinaire, managed to break one of the drum sticks.  We still have quite a way to go before finishing the Band World Tour so who knows if we’ll actually do it.  Don’t tell anyone from Activision but, Guitar Hero is terrible in comparison to Rock Band.  Especially, if Harmonix and MTV come through with the in-game music store.

Company of Heroes (PC)

I finally reinstalled CoH and started inching my way through the rest of the campaign mode.  Hopefully, by the time I finish it Opposing Fronts will be less then $29.95.  It’s a bit of a pain - only playing a few minutes at a time.  Although, I’m ending up with a ton of save games so if something goes wrong I’ve got a bunch of fall back points.

Prey (PC)

It was on sale for $4.95 through Steam last weekend and so far it’s a decent game.  The portals and gravity effects are pretty cool.  Nothing too special besides that though.

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (NDS)

Dragon Sword is without a doubt my favorite DS game ever!  The graphics are fantastic, the controls are perfect and the story is spot on.  I’m about four and a half hours into it and hopefully will get around to finishing it some time soon.  I pretty sure that beating it unlocks hard difficulties which, for once, I’m looking forward to.

Persona (PS1)

I haven’t made it nearly as far as I wanted to but, I have been playing a little bit here and there.

If you saw my PS2 pile of shame list you saw that one of the top titles is Persona 3: FES. It made the list because I’ve heard from so many people that it’s a great game. I have never played any of the Persona titles - actually, I’ve never played any of the Shin Megami Tensei titles. I’m not sure why, it’s just that these games just never crossed my path when they came out but I’m going to do what I can to make up for this. As with all Atlus games the Persona titles are going require a small investment if your getting them from eBay. I got extremely lucky with my copies and managed to actually hunt down both Persona: Revelations and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment and stay under $20. As always the cheapest way to pickup older games is yard sales or thrift stores, although finding exactly what your looking for right when your looking for it is a

At this point I’m only around two hours into Persona: Revelations so I can’t really say too much about it yet. I can however talk about why I decided not to play it on my PSOne. That’s right I decided to begin playing using the ePSXe emulator. Why would I do this? Well, I’ve got some trips to NYC coming up in the near future so that means time on the Metro North Railroad. So, I’ll be playing on my PSP as well since, the save games between the PC emulator and PopStation are compatible.

Also, it looks like I’m going to pick up a copy of Persona 2: Innocent Sin from eBay. Innocent Sin was never released here in the states but, a few days ago Siliconera posted a link to a blog about a fan translation project.

*Note* The last screen shot is from the released version of Persona not from the fan traslation.

Last week at this time Racketboy had a post about using shader plugins for the PS1 emulator ePSXe to improve graphics quality. I’ve know about the plug-ins for a while now but, never had the desire to check them out. Well, after looking at the Final Fantasy IX screen shot I decided to give it a go. I have to admit I never played Final Fantasy IX so, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to finally get that out of the way.  Actually, Final Fantasy I, II and VII are the only titles in the series that I’ve played through to completion.

After some searching around I was able to borrow a copy from a co-worker. Over the week I have been able to squeeze in about 16 hours worth of playing - and so far I’m really digging the game. I’m told the game runs around 40 hours or so total. Hell, maybe when I’m done with this one I’ll tackle Final Fantasy VIII, if I can’t borrow one I’ll probably turn to Ebay. The only real downside of the experience is my video card doesn’t like the shader plug-in, so I can’t use it with top settings.  I guess it’s time to upgrade.  Well, I better get back to the game - I need to see how it ends.

• Final Fantasy IX on Ebay
• Final Fantasy VIII on Ebay