It seems Chris's impassioned plea for satirical letters yesterday was a smashing success. However, circumstances have kept our esteemed DA from his column today, so he's hoarding them all until Monday. The remaining letters have found their way to me, but unfortunately the chance to make fun of Chris doesn't seem to have left many "normal" letters for the column. But let's not think of DA today as short, but rather super-deformed in that classic, adorable style we all know and love!

Actually, if I had more forethought, I would have written a giant header to complete the image, but that's why I don't do this everyday.

What do you get when you cross a free and easy to use petition making system with an extended dead time in gaming news? A lot of useless petitions, and a lot of fluff stories covering them. I, for one, salute your brave stand. In fact, I think this is important enough to warrant some news coverage. Let's hope FGN is reading DA tonight.

To finally set this matter to rest: The GIA does not hate Xenogears. I queried our server several times about it and it reported that it was still trying to get to the top of Babel Tower. This may explain why the page has been loading up so slowly over the last week or so.

As for the staff, yes, there are a few who hate the game. Deeply. There are also some (this column's regular host among them) who love it. I think both sides recognize the game's many flaws -- and it does have its flaws. The anime may be great, but it's also horribly dubbed and all but disappears after the first few hours. The story itself may be great, but it suffers from awful pacing. No game is perfect, but whether its bad points overwhelm the good for you is a matter of personal preference.

I still think the game is worth playing to see for yourself, but if we started requiring staffers to play the game twice before allowing them to form an opinion we'd never get any work done around here.

Some of the staff were just discussing this point a few days ago. ZOE would have been as good, or arguably better, a game if the plot had simply been "Our space princess has been kidnapped, fight your way through the evil mechs and save her." ZOE's major problem is there's a major disjunction between the story and the gameplay. It's hard to get enthused about carefully avoiding property damage when blowing up buildings is one of the coolest things in the game.

All the melodrama and heavy-handed themes managed to work well in MGS because they made a good match with the stealthy gameplay. ZOE, on the other hand, is a straightforward action game and I think most players would have been happier with another 10-20 missions and a little less story.

Best. Ending. Ever. (ZOE spoilers)

Given all the bashing of Z.O.E.'s ending in the last column, I feel that I must respond. I found it to be one of the best game endings I've seen in quite some time. I don't know, maybe I'm just a sucker for the unusual, but playing a game from the standpoint of someone who's obviously not the main character in the plot arc was a great experience. Sure, Leo was an obnoxious little brat (though that seems to be standard for unreasonably gifted adolescent mecha pilots who have their homes destroyed), but that only made his marginalization in the ending that much more delicious. And it _was_ a marginalization. The last several events in the game do nothing if not show exactly how trivial the characters and events so far had been. We find out that this kid can wipe out a bunch of automated drone mecha and a few deranged covert ops types. (Did those battles remind anyone else so strongly of fights against Megaman bosses?) We even get some emotional tripe, why-do-I-exist, oh-it-must-be-to-protect-my-girl standard stuff, but then, after finally having Leo steel himself to do true battle with the enemy, we find out how totally outclassed he is against _sane_ pilots in comparable suits. Then, after a narrow escape the 'main character' finds out that Jehuty's true purpose is an impressive-sounding destruction of a major enemy's headquarters through suicide, but more importantly, finds out he's not going to play a role in it. Now that the good guy side has used Leo to get out of a sticky situation, they can thank him, have a sentimental moment, and then drop him off somewhere and move on to the _real_ battle. I've never played a game that got across the feeling of playing only a small part in an unknown larger conflict so well as ZOE's last section did. Up until Celvice got shot, I was as nauseated by the plot as everyone else who has submitted letters on the subject, but from there on out, things just got so refreshing. And seeing that brat Leo get put in his place was just fabulous. (Truth be told, the rest of the plot became much more bearable once I decided that I was role-playing ADA - now why couldn't that AI have been sardonic?) ~TheHunter, who cheered when his fears of Leo rescuing Viola at the last second went unrealized

That's an interesting take on what many thought was a immensely unsatisfying ending, but there's one small hitch. Presumably, there will be a ZOE sequel. Leo will grow to a central figure in the battle against, um, whoever and eventually will come back and kick Anubis' shiny metal ass. It's really no different from that first time you face the villain in most RPGs and the heroes get soundly beaten -- it just happens to come at the end in this instance.

All of this is implied in the game itself. As Chris was saying yesterday, the game only gives you the first bit of the character arc from zero to hero. ZOE may have done a wonderful job making you feel as though you were playing a small part in a larger conflict, but it accomplished it by cutting the story before it was complete.

It's not like we said Frogger 2 was better than Shenmue, or something

Zak Common sense tells me: don't argue with the wisdom of people who live in a geosynchronous satellite. Thus, in accordance with their respective reviews at the GIA, I have traded in my copy of ZOE for an apparently superior Pokemon Stadium 2. I suggest everyone else do likewise because it is quite evident from their complaints that Leo's character renders ZOE completely unplayable. Ryn

Comparing numerical scores on two games from vastly different genres is always going to lead to some bizarre conclusions. PokéSta 2 is a Pokémon battle arena and compendium of info on the series, while ZOE is an action game clumsily wedded to poorly written, badly acted, and truncated story. Is PokéSta 2 a better game? Yes, in the sense that it accomplishes what it's trying to do much more effectively. Is ZOE "rendered completely unplayable" by its faults? Far from it, and a score of 3 reflects that.

But, more importantly, are they at all comparable? Not really. If someone asked me if they should play ZOE and I told them, "It's average -- Go play PokéSta 2." They'd probably seek sane advice elsewhere.

But, say, Skies of Arcadia versus FF IX. Now there's an argument.

The secret connection between Metal Gear Solid and My Little Pony

You know, I went out and rented Grandia 2 the other day (and beat it, not that it was a short game! I just that I pumped it through my veins for 32 hours straight...) and I started thinking about the voice actors. I KNOW that was Leonardo's/MGS's Master Mitchell's voice, but there was someone else that sounded familiar... I scanned through the credits and saw the voice for Roan was none other then B. J. Ward. I couldn't believe it, and here's why! B. J. Ward did a stand-up comic opera routine where she'd poke fun at various operatic arias and what not. I saw this show, and during the aria from Carmen, she hopped down to the front row, and comically flirted with a few lucky guests. In other words, she hopped down on my lap, fluffed my hair and kissed my cheek, all while singing. She even tossed me the rose from the performance! Well, this is not digression, because the topic of my rant is how CRAZY the voice actor community is. You see, B. J. Ward here is also the voice of Betty Rubble, Roan, Scarlet from the GI Joe Cartoon, and TON'S more. In fact, the whole cast of Grandia 2 are voice actor whores! Look at the stats and see for yourself! That site btw, is a tool I found on my quest for inane trivial facts. Use it to drive yourself crazy, like I just did! Crazy, but hell, I was kissed by the mouth of Betty Rubble! Who's Crazy now? Huh? smart blue

Forget Betty Rubble -- you got to spend some quality time with the voice of Allura from Voltron! As quality voice acting becomes more common in games, I expect more of these odd coincidences to keep popping up. (Familiar voices, that is, not your 80s cartoon lap dance fantasy.) For example, Michael Bell, the actor for Raziel in Soul Reaver, is the voice behind everything from Grouchy Smurf to a half dozen characters in G.I. Joe.

This sort of resume isn't a rarity, either. With a fairly small pool of people and a short turnaround time of projects, the voice acting biz is full of people who have dozens of familiar roles to their credit. Hopefully, more games will start employing them. As Soul Reaver showed, Blowtorch can do a damn fine vampire.

And, yes, Psycho Mantis really did work on an episode of The New "My Little Pony" Tales.

Closing comments:

Chris will be back on Monday, but for the weekend we have, once again, the inevitable Drew Cosner for your letter writing pleasure. By way of a topic: With few announced RPGs for the PS2, GameCube and Xbox, it looks like most of our RPG fix for the foreseeable future will be coming from the last generation. Games like Tales of Eternia, Arc the Lad, Dragon Quest VII, and Hoshigami are still on their way -- but is there still a market for low-tech games an all but dead platform? Enix, Atlus, and others certainly think so -- tell Drew what you think.

- Zak McClendon, who always wondered why Starscream and Cobra Commander sounded the same