Editorial: On second thought maybe I wasn’t harsh enough…

When I wrote my review for Wild Arms Alter code:F I thought I had adequately portrayed the disappointment I had with the product being an accurate recreation of one of my all-time favorite games. While nothing in that respect has changed in the last few days with the additional hours I’ve tacked onto my file that time leads me to believe I was too easy on the game. Granted, one doesn’t want to appear to be foaming at the mouth in a review for the sake of the reader, but I feel like a mad dog in that I honestly don’t want to waste anymore time in playing such a stale facsimile. Honestly, how one is supposed to level up Jack’s last two Fast Draws without going completely insane? Finding high level enemies near a rest point is impossible (bosses are the only enemies that really exceed 40~50) and why does everything in this game have to feel like a chore? If I want to do chores I’ll do chores, not play this overbearing excuse for a video game.

As I said previously, I’m done making excuses for Media Vision’s various failures. The time for such a decree is long overdue but the problem is that every game after Wild Arms 2 is a failure. Most know that Alter code:F is merely a dressed up version of Wild Arms 3 so it goes without saying it's plagued by almost all the same short comings. With those two games down for the count, Wild Arms 4 tried everything humanly possible to reinvent itself amidst the battle where the changing tides signified console RPG’s weren’t as relevant as they once were. Hell, even the series tenth anniversary wasn’t enough to save the fifth installment from itself, which more than proved to me it was over even though it was an improvement over the last game.

It’s over. Is there any other group of words with that kind of stopping power? Still, there’s the old saying that every ending is a new beginning. As sad as it was in general, I couldn’t have been happier with Capcom’s decision to put Mega Man on the shelf and quit making games. Why? No further erosion of the Mega Man brand, something they’ve have been more than efficient at doing over the last few years. The same really goes for Wild Arms which outlived it’s usefulness by a console generation. That said, I can’t recommend the first two games on the original PlayStation enough, a place where limitless imagination gave us Metal Demons and encroaching parallel universes – concepts that remain unmatched by their 128-bit brethren. Anyway, do I really morn the loss of Wild Arms? Not really, it was lost a long time ago before they stopped making the games. Yet such thought doesn’t stop one from thinking about all the missed opportunities, Alter code: F being one that should have been a no-brainer.