While struggling into town with a bad cold to buy medicine, tissues, and food earlier I stopped at Blockbuster to raid their bargain bin for second hand video games. Something to help us through the weekend while feeling like crap.
I left the store with “Futurama”, and “SSX on Tour” for the Playstation 2. This is where I admit that I get the choice of pretty much all of the used games, because I have all of the last generation consoles.
Tip for everybody here. For the price you might pay for one next generation game on the Playstation 3, XBox 360 or Nintendo Wii, I can wander into Blockbuster, Gamestation, or Game in the UK, and pick up perhaps four, or eight old games. I’m not talking about rubbish either - I’m talking about the likes of Gran Turismo, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Final Fantasy, and so on.
The laughable thing here is that people are buying the “next generation” games machines, and yet the games so far available are nothing of the sort. They are the same driving, fighting and shooting games released twenty times before, only a bit more shiny. Nintendo are the only company trying to be original at all.
We have only played “SSX on Tour” so far, but from what I have seen, it’s fan-bloody-tastic. Coming to this game about 18 months after everybody else, it looks great, plays wonderfully, and sounds amazing. The artwork throughout the game reminds me of the old shorts inbetween MTV videos years ago - sticky tape and magic markers rule the look and feel of the menus. The music is much more rock oriented than previous releases, and this is a good thing - although it would probably do your head in if you had a headache.
SSX is the closest I will ever get to real snowboarding - I dislocated my knee a couple of years ago which basically counts me out of ice skating, snowboarding, skiing, or anything else like that for the rest of my life. I’m not that bitter though - how many snowboarders can do somersaults over the top of thousands of spectators in real life anyway (while dressed as chewbacca) ?