"God, I miss pants."

I took Sunday to sit down and finish Jak II. It was fun, funny, a good story, and just the right kind of challenge/frustration. I must say that even though I had a great time with this game, I preferred the first game in the series. Perhaps it was the GTA-inspired mission system, but something just felt a little off after having so much fun with the original. D'ah well, now I have to decide what to play next on my PS2. Shall I continue the series and dive into Jak 3, or finally get around to finishing Ico? What about God Of War? Yakuza? Okami?

Oh yeah, I broke-down and bought Yakuza and Okami :) Yakuza has been great fun so far; it's a story-driven brawler with a very Shenmue-like presentation (same character design team, apparently); I understand it's a spiritual successor to SEGA's SpikeOut. Okami is just beautiful. Think Nintendo 64 Zelda gameplay, but done entirely in a style of cel-shading that is made to resemble Japanese painting on papyrus; yeah, the game pretty much paints itself right before your eyes as you play it, and some of your attacks and puzzle-solving techniques entail painting on the screen yourself!

I also happened across cheap copies of Gunstar Super Heroes (GBA), and Metal Slug 3 (XBOX; my favourite game in the series, it'll be a nice present for someone).

And before I go, I should mention that I got back into playing Stranger's Wrath. I had left it alone a while back because I was finding this one part, about two thirds in, to be extremely frustrating. I remember wishing there was a checkpoint or something so that I didn't have to repeat so much work just to die again and again... Well, today, I realized that the game has a quicksave feature, and that I could've made a checkpoint of sorts anywhere I wanted. Gah. Such a great game, and I've seen it for $13 CDN brand new at Best Buy!