So I just recently read some great stuff on White Knight Story (Shirokishi Monogatari) coming out on PlayStation 3. With the recent flop of Blue Dragon's X360 release, the Next-Gen Japanese RPG scene is looking very bleak. Eternal Sonata looks like it might be a saving grace for RPGs in the new age, but from what I have read of the game, it fails in some key areas (like story and scope.) Lost Odyssey looks like it is shaping up to be a gorgeous game, but the precision combat really doesn't sell me on the title. This leaves me turning to the PS3, White Knight, and Final Fantasy XIII.

The scope of FF and WKS' visuals bring a lot to the table, but there has been almost no talk of either game's actual gameplay. I am hoping that they both will turn out well, given their lineage. Level 5' Rogue Galaxy didn't get the attention it deserves, but it was still an amazing game, and Dragon Quest VIII still haunts me with its amazingly gripping graphics, story, characters, and gameplay. As for Final Fantasy XIII's predecessors, do I really need to bring them up?

Really, Sony is gripping for my wallet here, where once I stood steadfast in my resolve not to buy a PlayStation 3 or PSP, now I am starting to waver back and forth. The PS3 is taunting me with White Knight and FF XIII, and PSP just dropped the FFT remake and is going to release Crisis Core eventually. I think Sony finally has obtained a good line up, but I will wait and see how White Knight Story and FF XIII turn out before making any serious decisions.

So I picked up Transformers: The Game on the 360 yesterday. And by "picked up" I mean I rented it at Hollywood, I'm not that stupid. I knew the game would be pretty terrible, as is the case in all games made off of movies. But, honestly, I could not have predicted how terrible it would actually be.

I really only rented it because it offered to let me play as Optimus Prime, and who doesn't want to be Mr. Prime? I figured that I would get about four or five hours of fun and maybe get some Achievement Points while I'm at it. In truth the game was just so frustratingly bad that I couldn't enjoy the thirty minutes that I put into it. In that short amount of time I failed a mission because there was a fence in my way, transformed under a bridge and got lost in its glorious geometry, and watched at least ten cutscenes that butchered the movie's already unimpressive script.

If companies are going to make games off of movies, they should never follow the actual movie. I mean yeah, it would be fun to play that last battle in the movie where the Autobots and Decepticons are all fighting in the city and **** going haywire, but really I would much rather they had done a spin off story, so that I don't have to watch as Bumblebee - who was tragically frozen in a rather touching scene while Sam had to watch, unable to help - is instead shot at with a net gun from a helicopter and then carried around in circles while I have to chase him as Optimus Prime only to have the helicopter fly away. Whoever designed that level needs to be fired...from a cannon, into the sun.

There are more original ideas out there than just stupid rehashes of movies. You can make a movie-based game good, I know you can, because the movies are amazing and playing them should be also. And if you make it based off of the movie, but go with a different story (side-story, prequel, sequel?) you will still have the movie's name slapped on your game and make the extra bit of cash that you are hoping for, only maybe this time it won't be a worthless heap of crap!