Well, for those who doesn't know which game I'm talking about, it's LucasArt's "Republic Commando". I played it in about two evenings through, so it is not a terrible difficult game. But it was very entertaining and fun to play. I loved the chats between the Deltas, they were quite amusing, and I often thought they're bit nuts like in some war-kind movies.

The gameplay was very fluent, I jumped from one infight in the next. "RC" is in my conceit a well-done straight shooter without any puzzles, just run-and-gun. The downside is, the game was short. Another thing which has slowed down the gameflow was sluggish squad-commands. In a heavy firefight to press and hold the A-button almost 3 secs for a simple "save objectives/field" or "regroup"-command, that takes too long. But another feature I'd really enjoyed like a little brat was the melee attack. There is nothing better against a group of droids, slavers or light mercernaries then running into them and stab them down. Especially those with jetpacks... ^_^!!!

RC was in my experience a solid well done shooter with good sound and musictracks, a bit short but intensive. One thing I wish for the successor is a cooperative-splitscreen modus. I'm waiting for that!

Well, well I finished Fable today, and I must admit that it had left a quite good impression. Graphic, Sound and Story matched very well together. The gameplay with the Quest-elements kept me continue to play. But I would like to have more Sidequests for the next game, which are connected to the background of several NPC's, towns or item, weapons.

Due to the very strong spell (Slow Down, Multiple Strike and Enflame) Fable isn't difficult to play through. And I rarely used the different expressions to communicate with the other characters because it didn't affected my gameplay. One small thing which confused me often during a heat of fight was the setup of the spells. I often tapped on the wrong button, so I casted Heal instead of Enflame. But this is really the only thing.

Fable is in my point of view a good RPG, especially for beginners. Another good RPG I can recommend is Kotor 1.

Today I beated with a buddy together this game whithin 4 hours. It was quite funny, although we sniped and camped at the most time. In some scenario it was a bit strange; often we lost the game at the first time, but on at the next try we changed just a bit our strategy and then we won the battle. The introduction of different soldier classes was a good idea, of course some of them like the Grenadier or Jetpacks we've never used. They have good skills but both were too lame at close fights and hadn't enough punch just to defense themselves. In my point of view they were a bit unbalanced.

Two other "negative" points were the squad commands and the overivew. We often tried to setup a organised combined attack but just to notice that only 2 or 3 AI-controlled soldiers followed us. And by the way AI, sometimes they were really dumb on both side. We often saw how a whole squads of 6-10 soldiers running into a Droideka and gunned at him. Within 5 secs they were all chopped up. They don't know to find cover or any "Fire and manoever" tactics. They even ran into our line of fire. Or the AI always tried to man a turret and we sniped him one after the other.

The thing about the overview was I couldn't see on the map were my buddy was. Sometimes we even hadn't seen us when we were next together. It was somehow difficult to coordinate a attack.

But the most important thing the fun factor and gameplay was high, although it was a bit short with about 10 levels. The story and the sound was logically very good (we both are Star Wars Fan) and in the whole we enjoyed this game. It's not that complicated to steer it and the difficulty was also not hairy. For me it is pretty a very good, easy accessible game to play once a while, especially with friends who don't know much about shooters or aren't that skilled in gaming.

So it has been a month since I wrote my first journal. In that time I finished Xenosaga 1. The game is not bad but it has not captivated me like Xenogears. The were two major weak points in the gameplay. First the Tech-attacks in all aspect. I spent a hell of a lot of time with beating up enemies to get these Tech-points. And the upgrading is not cheap, for the caracters itselfs and the techs. To be honest after about 25 hours Tech-points-hunting I gave up and threw my cheat-CD in. Sorry, but it was too much. I mean the whole xenogears/xenosaga serie was famous for its deep story and that was I wanted really to enjoy.

An other thing concering the Tech was, I'm just allowed to set 2 HIGH-SPEED Tech at the meantime. Which means I had to rearrange the Battle formation or/and Techs if the were differents enemies. Quite annoying and time consuming. If they (Monolith Inc.) didn't set this 2-tech limitation or they allowed to switch caracters during a fight (like FF X), the gameplay would be much smoother.

The second main point I had my difficulties was the formation, the Far/rear range respectively. First I taught if you have a far attack, you can also hit the enemies in the rear and v.v. But you can't. It was a similar problem if you had set up a caracter in the rear formation. He/She couldn't do anything than just in the best case using same weak ether-spells. Especially in Jr. case the gunner was a bit silly.

Also the menu-scrolling and setting was confusing. Especially when I was in the A.G.W.S. Shop, I alway had to switch over and over to find out, if the bought weapon really improves my Gear or not.

Well, to be honest there weren't much positive points in this game. The story was the aspect I enjoyed the most. It is well implemented and these connections and plots between the U-TIC, Vector Ind., and the Federation drives my appetite for more.

"Xenosaga: Der Wille zur Macht" was for myself from the aspect of gameplay...disappointing. I don't like to say that for a game which a so damn god predecessor "Xenogears". I'm now waiting for the second part of this trilogy and I really hope that the designers managed somehow to improve the gameplay.

Well, since a while I wanted to play through that old'school game Quackshot for Genesis, but I had never found the opportunity to do it. Today I finally took my time and saw the ending after 1 1/2 hours. YESS, finally one game less on my list! The next would be FF Chronicles, the last time I touched that game was over 4 month ago...