There hasn’t been a post in a week or so because of a kidney stone.  It’s stone No. 3 for me, and it’s still inside moving around and causing pain and discomfort.  The pain medicine is really screwing with me too.  My apologies for lack of updates.

So, unless you’re.. um.. dead, you probably know that Halo 3 comes out today.

I’ve recently played through the original Katamari Damacy for the PS2, played some Kengo for the Xbox 360 and blazed my way through the retro Final Lap Twin for the TurboGrafx-16.

Katamari was fun, and I rolled up some huge balls of junk.  My familiarity with the game prior extended to its awesome soundtrack and playing through the Beautiful Katamari (X360) demo.  At times the controls were a tad annoying, but overall it was a fantastic game.  I’m not sure how sequels play though as I can’t think of anything to add/remove to change the game dynamic.

Kengo was bad.  Let’s move on.

Final Lap 2, as it was called in arcades, was a Namco release, later ported to the TG16 as Final Lap Twin.  It sports Pole Position styled racing.  The real draw of FLT is the new Quest, or RPG, mode.  The plot is simple: Your dad has given you a car (go-cart?) for you to race with to become the world champion racer.  Travel across the continent and race others in random encounters to gain cash to upgrade your car.

I remember this game taking a good chunk of time to complete, but I was able to play through it this weekend in around three hours.  Disappointing, but the game was just as fun as I remember it being.  Random encounters consist of one-lap races that last about 30 seconds to a minute.  After each race, collect the prize money (seriously, what are kids doing with $2,400 or so in their pockets???  And why are there race tracks EVERYWHERE on this continent?) then go to a local city to purchase new parts for your car to max out its stats.

It’s a fun game as I stated, and it would be nice to see a new racing RPG in the same style as FLT.