Matt Hackmann

MattHackmann

The thoughts and goings-on of some programmer dude.

Eternal Sonata - An Eternal Wait

Must post. Must get awful picture off the front page!

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that I'm eagerly awaiting Eternal Sonata, the RPG making its way towards Xbox 360 sometime in September. Actually, it was a (if not the) primary reason I bought the console in the first place. Halo is good and all, but my heart lies with RPGs and other story type games (i.e. Pheonix Wright).

So, anyways, I'd heard from a fairly reliable source that the latest Xbox magazine had a demo disc with ES on it. Almost immediately I went out and purchased a copy (I wasn't the only one). But, with these thing rarely is the pot of gold so easily obtained. Nay, the bastard disc wouldn't load. Well, it would but it would only give me small nuggets of which I hungered for only to choke mere mintes (or less) into said meal. I was pissed.

Lucky for me I went back an reread the news post for the comic I referenced up above and it held a small morsel of hope. An obscure reference to something about boiling discs to resurrect them from DVD hell. I didn't really expect much but I needed to play this demo (and I didn't really want to be gypped out of $8.99). So I nuked some water in the microwave and slipped the disc in. Much to my surprise all problems were erased and I was one with the game... until the demo ended.

As for the game itself it is pure joy encapsulated inside a stream of binary ones and zeros. The artwork is fantastic, the gameplay is solid. I'm hoping that the same will be said for the story as there isn't much sampling of that but from what I've seem I think all will be well. It'll definitely be worth my sixty clams and will get me through the couple of weeks between when I move in and school starts.

Well, I think that was sufficient enough to get the evil off the front page. At least the initial load, that is. I would be careful about how far and how fast you scroll down the page.