Two games have been occupying my (preciously sparse) spare time of late.

First, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on the Gameboy Advance. I’m not a huge RPG fan – I found all that levelling up stuff incomprehensible and boring – and with the Final Fantasy series, I’m especially not a fan of the battles – I found that they tended towards being tedious, unnecessary, unpredictable and broke up the story. Which does beg the question as to why I find FFTA quite so absorbing, being as it is a series of RPG style turn-based battles combined with incredibly deep and complex character-building sections. But I love it. It’s stunning. And because it’s turn based, it’s perfect for playing whilst at work because I can complete a few turns during compiles 🙂 Along with Advance Wars, this game is absolutely perfect for the GBA, and like Advance Wars, it’s far more fun than it has a right to be 🙂

Secondly, Call Of Duty. Medal of Honour: Allied Assault was very nearly responsible for a fatal slippage in one of our previous titles – the LAN multiplayer captured our office’s attention in a way not seen since Unreal Tournament broke onto the scene, and the single player missions were works of genius. Expectations were therefore naturally high for Call of Duty, seeing as how it’s one of three “sequels” to MoH:AA – and the one for which expectations are highest (the ‘official’ sequel by EA, using none of the original MoH:AA team, Men of Valor by 2015, creators of MoH:AA minus half the team, and Call of Duty, by Infinity Ward, a new studio set up by most of the original MoH:AA team after they left 2015). Thankfully, it doesn’t disappoint – basically, it’s more of the same, and that’s far from being a bad thing. The single player missions are more squad-based than MoH:AA, but still have the intense battlefield feeling that were the hallmark of the original title. The multiplayer side of things is equally brilliant, and we’ve already put in more hours in our office than we probably should have given that we’re due to ship product very soon. Great stuff.

In other news, rumours suggest that the remainder of the Edge staff have followed the editor and sub-editor’s lead and quit. I’ve been pondering an Edge retrospective post for a while, and if this latest rumour is true, expect one to appear some time soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2003 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.