What I’m Playing At The Moment

With my copy of FES (short for Festival) arriving in the mail any day now, I’ve  had the urge to pick up Persona 3 (PS2) again for some angsty teen drama/RPG/Dating sim action. If you haven’t already purchased what could possibily be the best RPG for the aging system (don’t worry, the gal still has life in her) make it your mission to do so in October (when the expansion/enhanced re-release comes out in PAL regions).

Also getting a fair bit of play time is Echochrome (PSP), which came out a few weeks ago here in UMD and downloadable format (the downloadable format is the best way to go, only $10 compared to the $50 for the pysical edition). It’s an excellent casual puzzler where you must guide the mysteryous “Walker” through MC-Escher inspired mazes to collect echos by manipulating the laws of perception (for instance, an obsticle that cannot be seen does not exist in the game’s eyes). It’s one of those “easy to learn, difficult to master” type of games. Add to that the amazing violin/chello centric soundtrack and the abilty to produce your own puzzles (sadly the PSP version only features ad-hoc sharing while the PS3 gets access to a archive of the developers pick of the best) and you have an insant pick-up-and-go classic (at least at $10 it is).

And finally there’s Daigasso! Band Brothers DX (DS), the odd one out. Rythm/Import junkies may remember the beatmaniaese DS launch title Band Brothers, which strangely was left in Japan. It’s pretty much more of the same: press the buttons in time with the music, though the experience and interface has been greatly overhauled: you can now download 100 songs (from a current pool of 1500+), there’s a karakoke mode (wank alert!) and you can now strum a few chords on the guitar. And of course you can still compose your own MIDI tracks to play. Of course there’s the language barrier but after awhile you’ll barely notice. Be sure to look out for several camp song choices thanks to Nintendo. Locomotion anyone?

If you wanna tell me what you’re playing, feel free to leave a comment below. You may even get mentioned in the show!