Planet MadDog - Because TV Told Me To

I had most of this news post typed up but then Holly Valance went and crashed my computer. *shakes fist at Holly Valance* I think its God's way of punishing me for listning to Holly Valance, so I hereby repent and endevour to belt it all out again.

Now that I've got a little bit of spare time to myself to chill out in front of the tube and get my game on, I've been confronted with deciding between a plethora of great games in muy position lately. Normally I like to focus on one game at a time, but lately I've found myself happily interchanging between three great games.

Super Mario Sunshine (Gamecube) I only bought this one two days ago, but already it has a very familiar comfort to it; the same comfort you get when you're just lazing about at home and you pull on your favorite jumper. It doesn't have the best graphics I've seen but it certainly has some very nice effects, especially the wicked water effects. Wicked in the way that I'm actually looking at the mug of coffee in my hand and thinking "Nice water effect, but its no Mario Sunshine". But technical wizardry isn't the reason I got this game. I was actually tossing up between this Star Fox Adventure, also on the GameCube, and although Star Fox is way better in terms of graphical beauty but I know that when it comes down to it, Mario's got the fun-per-dollar value just right.
Kingdom Hearts (PS2) Square and Disney, together at last. This is one great game, mixing the characters from Final Fantasy and Disney into not an RPG but an action/adventure game with RPG element. Think Zelda64 with a level up/attributes system. It sounds odd, but it works well. Another thing that works well is the mix of Disney and Square. It freaks you out, but in a good way. For example, you start off in Wonderland, trying to save Alice, then you move on and meet Hades from Hercules, played excellently by James Woods, play with Pooh and Tigger, before going off to help Aladdin do battle against Jafar. It's quite a buzz. And they've spared little expense to get all (or most) of the orginal actors to do the voices (theyre all official in some way or another), and even getting some celebrities to voice the rest of the Squaresoft characters, including Haley Joel Osment, Billy Zane, David Boreanaz, Mandy Moore, and Lance Bass from NSync to name but a few. The 3D camera has pissed me off a couple of times, but to be honest, most of the time, I'm having too much fun* to notice.
Time Splitters 2 (Xbox) Now I'll be the first person to say that I really don't like first person shooters on game consoles. The controllers can never live up to playing them with a mouse and keyboard. In fact the only FPS I enjoyed on a console was Goldeneye on the N64. That is, until now, and I think it may have something to do with the fact that Time Splitters 2 was created by ex-Rare employees that worked on both Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. The controls are pretty familiar, the missions aren't too long (so I can just have a quick game in between the top two games), there isn't much of a plot to speak of (its good not to have to try and remember what I was up to in the storyline), and the graphics and animation are pretty good too. A great little package to fill in the gaps.