Our dark work now complete, we can return to our previous task - managing unwieldy, crisis-prone cores.

It's really the classic problem with Crisis Core, and not from a game perspective but from a comic writing perspective - outside of a few curious missteps, it is a very even, engaging piece of software. Occasionally it launches skyward, unfolding into a lavish visual torrents with the gleam of molten platinum. That sentence would be patently ridiculous if it were not for the Square pedigree. It may still be somewhat ridiculous. Even so, when this game wants to get your attention, it can and it will.

Here's the "classic problem": it's just a good Goddamned game. It's hard to find a hook in there, because when we approach the material for consideration all we really want to do is whack out a couple storyline independent missions to prepare for the epic challenges ahead. From time to time, some barb will extend - something not tamped down by good sense - but it's never enough to argue against the entire product. There was a completely mystifying "Stealth Section" that also managed to involved calisthenics for some reason. We're not sure exactly why this was here. What we do know is that we're not going to throw out the biomechanical zombie god baby with the sometimes less than stellar minigame bathwater.

Gabriel grabbed the new PSP around the time of Jeanne D'Arc, and it's hooked up perpetually to the television via component. From time to time the power button on it is nudged for some reason, science does not know why, but then it's on and we have to play it. Hours are lost in this way, hours we don't actually have to lose. We don't have time to discover each creamy, each zesty, each delicious new Materia by randomly combining them with each other and with things that we found laying around the house. This doesn't stop us from doing so, however.

I'm not certain any earthly force could.

(CW)TB out.

the hero we all wish we could be

We've judged thousands of these today, our eyes are bone dry, and there's still many more to be judged. It's clear that we have bitten off more than we can chew, or you have provided too substantial a feast, or some kind of food analogy that deals with having too much of something and we can't chew it.

We'll keep working on it. I hope and pray that we will finish it this week.

(CW)TB