Kingdom Hearts? Meh...

Sappy? Crappy? Just a little bit too fluffy and lavendar? Pass me the sick bucket...

There have been scant 'good days' during 2009 for me so far, but one that would definitely class as a GREAT day, was the day I gave up on Kingdom Hearts forever!

I'll explain... during the summer, I cleared loads of old crap out of the house. Whilst sorting through all the rooms, I cobbled together a nice little set up for my newly replenished bedroom. It consists of a fairly big TV, a video, and a Ps2 (and therefore DVD), all of which were given to me for free at one time or another. I bought a digi-box for £20 and lo and behold I've got me a little "entertainment centre", state of the art for 2001... lol!

Mrs. K loves it too, and I can now escape to the PS2 in my bedroom, whilst Ted commands the 360 in the main living room and Martin continues his love affair with the PS3 in his festering pit. So, I found myself in my room more and more as the summer progressed, and I decided to clear my backlog of 'bought-but-un-played' PS2 games. These included Kingdom Hearts, Devil May Cry 1 & 3, Yakuza II, Scarface and Okami amongst others, in short, plenty to keep me going over the summer. Yakuza II was the first game that I played, and what an absolute joy it was, from start to finish

Now this is a man's game... LOL!

The next project needed to be something very different to Yakuza II though, (it's quite intense at times) so I decided on Kingdom Hearts - Now for some reason, all the saves on my memory card were gone, so it meant starting the game again from scratch. I got to both the Alice In Wonderland world and the Hercules world, and then just got stuck, getting continually wiped out just at the end of battles, making the whole thing tedious, frustrating and repetitious.

OOH! NICE! I want one!!!

Eventually after a few days of play I just got pissed off. I hate abandoning a game unfinished these days, so it was a big decision. I decided to try Scarface. It took me a while to get going on it, but now I cannot stop playing it. I want to complete everything in it, the overall appeal of the game is excellent. Graphics, voice acting and soundtrack are superb, and the story unfolds nicely. The selling of drugs and ownership of turf are paramount to your success as Tony Montana, and this element reminded me very much of GTA China Town Wars. There is also respect points awarded for the purchase of "exotics", luxury items, decor, cars, henchmen and works of art, whose ostentatious acquisition is a key element of boosting status. The violence is frequent, bloody and extremely enjoyable. Lock on with L1, shoot with L2, it couldn't be simpler!

In fact, you could say that Scarface, in reality a GTA clone, compares extremely favourably with it's progenitor. It's worth remembering that this game sat at the top of the gamer's retail charts in the UK, throughout the month of October in 2006, shifting over a million units in its lifespan, and eventually making it's debut in the current gen as a title for the Wii. Despite the very bad rep which movie-tie in games have, I would thoroughly recommend this title to any GTA fan and any lovers of action games in general. And to Sora, Donald,Goofy and the rest of those big shoed, spiky haired, Square Enix inspired sissies, I say what Senor Montana would say: "Hey! F**ck you Chico! Say hello to my little friend..." LOL!