I'm very nearly ashamed to admit it, but one of the reasons I worked so hard to fully exhaust Okami over the last few weeks was so I could move on to a small stack of $10 games. Talk about a sine wave.
Zatch Bell: Mamodo Fury (PS2)
Ten cent synopsis: Control both Zatch and Kiyo in a series of mamodo battles, following the storyline from the popular(?) anime and manga.
It's $10 because: It's old. This one came out in September '06 and they've probably done another half-dozen Zatch Bell games since then. Also - and I'm too lazy to look this up - I bet the Japanese release dates back to even older... this game looks and plays like early PS2 fare. That is to say, like ass.
What do you get for your tenner? A lot of misery. I mean, I like Zatch Bell. I wanted to like this game, so I would have overlooked quite a bit. But the combat controls are unreliable, targeting is a nightmare, and any battle with non-standard goals is just about impossible. For example, one battle in the first third of the game has you defending a building until time runs out... but the building has no health meter, so you never have any idea how close it is to getting asploded.
You also get a lot of use of the font Impact, the font with the worst question mark in the world.
Is it worth the ten smackers? Nope.
Genji: Dawn of the Samurai (PS2)
Ten cent synopsis: Enigmatic loner in feudal Japan takes down despotic warlords through use of magical orbs that slow down time.
It's $10 because: Again, old. The first Genji game came out long enough ago (Sept 05) that the sequel was a PS3 launch title.
What do you get for your tenner? A big ol' linear action adventure, with lots of the usual hamfisted RPG-style drama. The storyline is merely passable, with the saving grace of being told in pure Japanese audio with English subtitles.
Strangely, for a game all about combat, there's only two attack buttons. Even more bizarre, the main draw is the special energy meter that allows you to slow time so that you can execute cool-ass moves with only one button. It's cooler in practice than it sounds, and I would easily suggest this game for anybody looking for a cheap action game.
My chief complaint is that you have to save at every possible chance, or you'll end up re-doing largish portions... because the game likes to torture you with surprise ambushes by dudes that you didn't know that you weren't prepared for. My advice: stock up on healing herbs and save at every opportunity.
Is it worth the ten smackers? Yes, definitely. It looks really great for a PS2 title, too.
High Stakes on the Vegas Strip (PS3)
Ten cent synopsis: Somebody at PSN still thinks Texas Hold 'Em is cool. Let's not tell them, shall we?
It's $10 because: It's a downloadable PlayStation3 game. Just came out.
What do you get for your tenner? Texas Hold 'Em, in single-player offline and multiplayer online (with voice and video chat, if you want.) The offline mode lets you fast-forward through the computer's plays, which is cool but tends to distract me out of the game.
At this point, as long as your single-player AI is competent and the multiplayer actually works, you can't do much to screw up a poker game. It is certainly very sharp looking but it has a terrible who-cares avatar customization system. Everybody looks the same (no face modeling features), but with different shirts and hair color. And you have to play like a billion hands online in order to afford those shirt colors!
Figure this out: you can choose from a couple dozen pants and shoes that nobody ever sees, because you're sitting down... but you only have two eyebrow options, normal and bushy! Where's the Wii version with full Mii support?
Is it worth the ten smackers? I guess.
Man, you hung out with the guys we used to look at on Please Laugh and say, "The Mysterious, Legendary Chris Turner was pretty funny." Which is sad for all of us, because ECTV is involved.
I post this here, because your Shoutbox says my Mac IP Address is BLOCKED.
WTF?