Wi-Philes

No, not really. That's like impossible. I'll keep getting older and older until I'm all crippled and in a coffin. In reality, games had started to become old to me. I mean, by myself I wouldn't play anymore and from time to time play some Mario Kart or some Naruto on Wii with my friends. But by myself? No way. I didn't even play on my Nintendo DS. I just wasn't that interested anymore.

Then came my birthday. Somewhat, somehow, my grandma was in town, and in the past never had assisted to one of my birthdays in the past 24 years. Except the actual "birth" day that is. But moving on. She gave me a lot of cash to buy myself a car to replace the piece of (censored) that I was driving for several years. I did eventually buy a car, but I had a lot of leftover cash.

Then came my decision. PS3 or XBox 360 or none of the above? My ex-roomate used to own an Xbox 360. It crapped out on him twice. red ringed. He gave up on it and eventually sold it. And I had not a good experience with it. Boring boring boring. But that might have been because of the bad taste of games of my roomate too. Another friend of mine did own a PS3 and I played with him among other friends at least once a week. Be it LittleBigPlanet, Soul Calibur IV, Resistance and others. Great experience. So ultimatly I decided to pick up the PS3 even though I was worried that I either wouldn't play that much and be a big waste, or that gamers around the globe keep saying the PS3 has had big droughts in games.

Worried no more. I picked up the LittleBigPlanet PS3 pack (over the Killzone2 Pack, my girlfriend would have killed me). And I never looked back. Resident Evil 5 came out. I played the living hell out of it. Never played a Resident Evil game as much as this one. Soon after that inFamous came out. Then I eventually picked up the gem called Flower on the Playstation Store. And then miraculously I got a beta code for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. What a pleasant surprise. The game rocked so much. I almost cried to sleep when the Beta ended a few weeks later. So eventually I did get the original Uncharted so that it would kill time until the sequel hits stores worldwide (Or at least in Europe for me). Then came Valkyria Chronicles which I mentioned in my previous blog. Brand new copy for 30€.

I don't understand all the hate. It's a system with a ton of good and exclusive games. And let's face it, it brought one European gamer back into games.

Ever since the game came out last year, it was one of the few Playstation 3 games that caught my attention at a time I did not own the console. It was beautiful, artistic, and the gameplay reminded me of Advance Wars for GBA and DS. When I eventually did get my PS3, that game was gone from my memories, that is until Valkyria Chronicles anime came out. As I watched more and more the episodes, it made me want to play the game once again. So I decided to snoop around shops and see if copies were still available. No such luck except that one shop that sold the game used for 50€. No way am I going to pay that much for a used game that came out more then 8 month ago. I did eventually stumble on a new copy on Amazon for 30€. I took the jump and I made the correct choice! What a blast this game is!

The story is extremely well done in a game that takes place in an alternate world Second World War. Two big empires are at it to take control of ragnite and land. Ragnite is the lively hood of everyone, a stone capable of creating vast amount of energy. A bit like our petroleum. A small nation, known for being mostly neutral throughout history is invaded by the evil empire because of it's vast amount of ragnite. The game tells the story of a young man and the squad he leads to fight the invading enemies.

The game is a turn-based RPG mixed with strategy and action. What that means is that in between mission, you will have to upgrade your troops, your weapons, your tanks. Also choose your squad units for missions with different classes (Scout, Lancer, Sniper, Engineer, and Shock-trooper). After that, when you begin your mission, it'll be turned based. Meaning you will start and move your units around the map in a 3rd person view point and try to eliminate the enemy. But be careful, if you're in the line of sight of the enemy, they will shoot you. You'll have to think hard with your movements too. Scouts can go very far but aren't very powerful and can get heavy damage very quickly, while Lancers and Snipers are the slowest class in the game.

The game is extremely fun with some very good video sequences to move on in the story between missions. Some very good sequences but can be extremely long. Sometimes you'll have to spend 20 minutes between sequences to play the following missions. Thankfully you also can play older missions if you want to. You'll still get points and money from those missions, but if one of your troops die on one of them, they'll still be dead when you get back to the story.

When playing this game, I really couldn't wait until a sequel would come out on PS3. Sadly for me, and happily for PSP owners, the sequel is on the PSP. Kind of a weird decision artistically. But seriously, can't wait for a sequel with some sort of online capability. This game is so much fun. I definitely recommend the game to PS3 owners that loved Advance Wars and like Strategy games.