First off, thank you all for the great letters about today’s strip. My mail is working again which means there is no way on God’s green earth I could ever respond to all these. I want you all to know though that I did read them all and your kind words are very much appreciated. I agree with many of you that the new style is a perfect fit for Gabe’s fantasy world. Anyway thanks a bunch, you guys rock.
Well we picked up Panzer Dragoon Orta this afternoon and I’ve put a few hours into it. It’s just as good if not better than I had hoped. The visuals are superb, the controls are spot on and the story is engaging. You can’t really ask for much more. They have seriously jacked up the difficulty compared to the demo that came out a few months ago. You will really need to master the art of switching back and forth between forms quickly. The game is actually very reminiscent of Ikaruga in that way. Each form is better in different situations. If the screen is full of swarming missiles the seeking lasers on the light mode are where it’s at. Gotta beat the shit out of a huge worm? Then you want the powerful lock on beam that comes standard with the heavy form. Bosses will have you switching constantly between forms in an effort to maximize the damage you deal.
I can’t really speak to the replay value as I have only put a few hours into it. You are graded on your performance in each level so there is the incentive to go back and get a better score. Many levels also have multiple routes that you can take and after you beat a level it will tell you which of the routs you took and which ones remain unexplored. Not to shabby for what is essentially a shooter.
I think that the news about Soul Calibur 2 having different characters for different machines is really interesting. I know for me the choice is obvious. I mean if you have all three systems you will need to pick one version. First of all you are going to want it to look good, so that rules out the PS2. Second, Spawn is retarded so that rules out the Xbox. Third, Link rocks so that means you need the GC version.
I honestly can’t understand how they came up with Spawn for the Xbox. I mean. SPAWN? Of all the other characters you could put into a fighting game they chose Spawn? I guess Tycho told me that Todd McFarlane designed one of the characters in Soul Calibur 2. So I guess there is a connection however tenuous. They could have stayed with comic book characters and used He-Man or a transformer or fucking Liono. Yeah now Liono would have been bad ass! THUNDER CATS HO!
-Gabe out
