Discovering Infinite Undiscovery

I made two New Year’s resolutions as midnight came on Hogmanay this year. One was to learn to drive. I haven’t even looked up a driving instructor and it’s already almost half way through the year. My other resolution was to dedicate more time to my favourite game genre of RPGs. This is no small undertaking. With most RPGs coming in at hefty sizes upwards of 40 hours of play, a games journalist could find herself out of touch with the scene as she trawled endless dungeons and rearranged inventories. I’d made a promise to myself though and stupidly mentioned it on the internet meaning I no longer just had to answer to myself but to my entire friends list. It was actually a pretty clever move going public with my RPGing ambitions. I have our own writer, Shaz, to thank for getting me to pick back up Eternal Sonata after letting it slide for a while. A few Xbox Live goading messages later and I was up to my armpits in slathering monsters in the depths of optional dungeons. (For those who don’t play RPGs ‘optional’ is another word for ‘stupidly hard’)

Between Eternal Sonata, Mass Effect and now Lost Odyssey it’s been a very good year for me and my RPGs. I’ve got my gaming mojo back after years in the FPS wilderness. The only problem with Lost Odyssey is that it’s threatening to bring about the very thing I fear. After putting over 100 hours into it I’m not even nearly finished since I’ve just downloaded a new ‘optional’ dungeon from Xbox Live marketplace. Slowly but surely I’m getting out of touch with what’s going on in the rest of the gaming world.

I was seriously considering going cold turkey and wrenching myself off these games altogether when I saw the trailer for Infinite Undiscovery. It looks like… like… EVERY RPG I EVER LOVED ALL ROLLED INTO ONE!!! It’s Tales of Symphonia, it’s Star Ocean, it’s Dungeon Quest, Shadow Hearts, Final Fantasy, Suikoden, Dark Chronicle and Rogue Galaxy. It looks superb. So I’ve changed my mind. Instead of weaning myself off RPGs I’ve decided to go completely mental and just play them all and to hell with the rest of the world.

[flv width=”500″ height=”281″]http://ready-up.net/blogassets/kirsten/infinite_trailer.flv[/flv]