A rundown of some of the more notable games hitting the streets this week.

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This Week's Games

(Week of September 25, 2006)

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria

The sequel to the PSOne (and recently, PSP) RPG, telling the tragic tales of Norse gods and goddesses. While some of the elements that made the original so cool have been drastically downsized (the soul collecting, for one), the battle system has been immensely improved. It also ranks up with Okami as one of the best looking games on the PS2 - if it weren’t for the jaggies, Valkyrie Profile 2 would look better than most 360 games.

Just Cause

It’s pretty much just Mercenaries in South America. (And Mercenaries was just an action-oriented GTA in Korea.) It’s not exactly original, but it has style, especially the cool parachuting sequences and the upbeat music. Still, the controls are a bit off, and the word on the street is that it’s full of glitches. Still, the Xbox 360 version looks gorgeous - there’s a demo on the Marketplace to try out.

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Spectral Souls

Spectral Souls is one of those SRPGs that has tons of installments over in Japan but never saw light in America. Nippon Ichi is bringing over one of them, finally, although there doesn’t seem to have been much fanfare. Spectral Souls is actually made by Idea Factory, who also

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created the less-than-impressive Generations of Chaos - although that was more like Dragon Force, this one here is a little bit closer to Final Fantasy Tactics.

Baten Kaitos Origins

The original Baten Kaitos felt like the spiritual successor to Chrono Cross, at least visually. This is one meant to be a prequel, which means, for the most part, a whole new cast. Although Namco skipped on localizing this one, Nintendo picked up right up. The battle system has been improved drastically, although it’s still card-based, if that scares you off. This is one of the last Gamecube titles, so people still holding on to the little purple box might want to grab this just to support it.

Mario vs Donkey Kong 2

My brief time playing this seems to suggest that it was a lot like Lemmings, which is a big stretch from the original Mario vs Donkey Kong. You tap the stylus to move and remove obstacles, as an army of robotic Marios march forward. However, you can interact with the little plumbers more than you could in Lemmings, so at least it’s not a complete clone.

Dance Dance Revolution Supernova

It’s another DDR - what can I say? It’s definitely preferable to Pump It Up or In the Groove, and it’s nice to see Konami is still supporting fans with the home versions (Ultramix 4 is also due for the Xbox around November.) Plus, the arcade version had Jerk It Out by Caesars, which should hopefully make it here.

Kurt Kalata

(September 25, 2006)