I beat Batallion Wars today. Decent game. It's nothing spectacular, and certainly nothing that's worth $50 (heck, or even $20). It definitely has its problems. But I still enjoyed it for what it was. Pretty fun all around, even though I have little desire to go back and unlock the last two bonus missions. In any case, it was worth the $0 I payed for it. And it was worth my time. Here's hoping Kuju saw the problems with it and are fixing it for BWii. And no, I'm not talking about multiplayer. I want better AI, more incentive to actually command rather than doing everything yourself, and a better way to order your soldiers around. Actually, the Wii might be very helpful for that last part.

1Up had some info on Super Paper Mario awhile back that they then had to take down. Fortunately, I read it before it disappeared. Unfortunately, it contained two facts that made me sad. 1) No run button. 2) Game is about 27 hours long. Boo! It appears that we are dealing with the type of platformer we've been stuck with since the 16bit days, rather than harkening back to the awesomness of the NES era. I guess I'm not really surprised. And this doesn't necessarily mean the game will be worthless or anything. It's still the most interesting game that's coming to the Wii in this half of the year. But alas, it appears I will have to wait even longer for a true 2D platformer.

My Twilight Princess review is nearing completion. Yay! Looks like it'll end up being about 18 +/- 2 kb, so probably slightly longer than my OoT one. But definitely shorter than WW. It'll still be an insomnia cure though... In any case, I think I did a decent enough job of getting my point across, and hopefully it flows well with all of its rapidly shifting praise and criticism. Oh well, it was fun to write anyway. Kinda sad that this will likely be my last Zelda review (although I may still rewrite my MM one). So long Zelda; it was nice knowing you.

I'll probably do Batallion Wars next. It should be a reasonably short and standard review. It'd be cool if I could finish it before the end of March too. Whoa, two reviews in one month. Can it be possible?

I'm starting to realize that I'm running out of GC games. Oh sure, there's plenty of semi-interesting games out there. But I don't think there's any "must have" games I've yet to (at the very least) play. Maybe Fire Emblem, but I'm not an RPG person. I really ought to try Monkey Ball 2 one of these days to see if it's as bad as I fear. And I liked Pikmin, so I should probable buy it sometime. But what else? Could my collection be nearing an end? Is it time to put my favorite console to rest?

In a word, no, because I'm certainly not willing to buy a Wii yet. Maybe next year. But not yet, that's for sure.

But hey, speaking of the Wii, anyone else notice all the wildly varying reviews among professional sites for the traditional games with new controls (Excite Truck, Sonic, SSX, etc)? Seems no one's able to really get a handle on it, and some really like the controls while others hate them. So who's in these two crowds? Is it the crazy Nintendo faithful vs the unbiased folks who can see that they're terrible, or is it the schmucks who can't accept something new vs people who are open-minded enough to recognize a superior control scheme when they see it? Or is it not that simple? It sure makes it hard to judge these games though. And it makes you wonder whether or not you can trust these "professional" reviewers with their views, as you never know if its an honest opinion or if they're close minded. Then again, I never saw the need for professional reviewers in the first place...

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	Genj - March 04, 2007 (07:27 PM) If we didn't have professional reviewers, then we wouldn't have riots on GameFAQs over Zeldas getting lower than a 9.0. Could you really live without that?
	honestgamer - March 04, 2007 (09:51 PM) There will eventually be more Zelda games beyond Twilight Princess. Phantom Hourglass is coming for the DS, for example. Are you done playing the series? That's a pretty big deal, if you are. With the Wii, I've found that a lot of the people most excited about the Wii are actually those who haven't played a lot of Nintendo's games for the past few years. The people who have been playing all along don't see as huge a jump. IGN's Cube channel, for example, is rougher on the games than those who have mostly been going with Sony stuff and are newly converted to the Wii. Me, I think the Wii is a good system but not astonishing. It's certainly better than people who haven't played it would have you believe, but playing it also doesn't make it the greatest system of all time. It's merely fun, in about the way Nintendo's games have been fun for 20 years now. It's distinctly Nintendo, a whole lot of fun, and nothing more. Really, it feels to me about like when Nintendo introduced the Nintendo 64. Games felt different and it was the start of something big. I think the same thing may be happening again, only this time Nintendo may make more money out of it...
	bluberry - March 04, 2007 (10:20 PM) I'm looking forward to your TP review, mariner. at the very least it should be a few assloads better than mine.
	honestgamer - March 05, 2007 (08:10 AM) Prediction: bluberry's review x 2.4 assloads = mariner's review
	mariner - March 05, 2007 (11:31 AM) Eh, I make no promises. It's kind of a rambling review, and tends to focus on stuff other people might see as minor (heck, I don't even mention Midna at all, and I think I mentioned the wolf form only once in passing). I haven't a clue if people will like it or not. Then again, I didn't think people would care so much about my other Zelda reviews, but they seem to be fairly popular. So who knows? And it's not necessarily that I won't play any more Zelda games, but it's more along the lines of me losing faith in the series. There were six games made between 1985-2000. There were six games made between 2001-2006. And of those final six, only Twilight Princess comes anywhere close to the quality of the original six (maybe even surpassing Link's Awakening). That's pretty freaking sad. OK, so admittedly I haven't played Minish Cap yet, but I have no reason to believe it'd be any different. Nintendo has run this franchise into the ground, and their one serious attempt at fixing it only made it halfway there. So why should I expect Phantom Hourglass or the next Wii game to be different?