A while ago I acquired 2 free games. I had gotten 2 $10 gift cards to Target at work for winning a Jeopardy thing and in a safety raffle. When I saw that the Simpsons game was discounted to $12.49, I knew I had to get it. The other game I got was Culdcept Saga, which was the 3rd game in a buy 2, get one free deal at GameStop.

The Simpsons Game was awesome, though I have already beat it, which is a testament to how short it is. I still have a bunch of collectibles to find, and these seem to be the frustrating part of the game that the reviewers bashed- the camera gets in the way when a lot of fancy platforming is involved. However, the writing is some of the best I have seen and had me in stitches during the cut scenes. And the mass of awesome quotes from the populace never gets old as you wander around town. This is definitely the best Simpsons game ever. I also own Hit & Run, which had almost as good writing, but the gameplay was much more annoying due to the fact that the driving sucked in that game, and driving was about 90% of the game (akin to GTA series).

Culdcept Saga looked like a game I would love. I was addicted to Magic: The Gathering back in the day, and this looked similar. And it is similar. The only problem is that it is incredibly.... sloooooooooowwwwwwwww......

Playing a single match against a single player takes upwards of an hour. Playing a match against multiple players takes two to three hours. You can't even skip a battle that you are not involved in! The worst is when you are playing the campaign and you have a match against multiple players. And you don't win, so you have to repeat the whole thing. ARGGGGGG! Talk about being as bad as horrible checkpoints.

And the rules are incredibly deep, even for a guy like me who prefers thinking, slow games to skill/twitch games. I had to play the first battle 4 times before I won (since there are so many little spots in the rules that don't make sense and a lot of things that aren't explained at all).

To cap it off, Culdcept is incredibly stingy with Gamerscore. I've played many hours already and have unlocked a total of 4 achievements for 20 points. Ugh! And a lot of the achievements are for multiplayer games that will be almost impossible to finish- what 4 people are going to have 4 hours for a match? Of which only 1 will win and get the achievement?

Anyway, the art is great (with plenty of almost-nudity), the story is uber-Japanese and forgettable. And after playing it I would have chosen a different game for my freebie.

(note: In looking for tasteful yet sexy images for Culcept Saga on Google images, my own Gamespot blog site came up! Is that cool or what?)