I finished playing through Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier. I have to say that early on, the game hits you hard with a great battle system with intricacies that keep on coming. However, later into the game battles can be tedious, long and boring. The boss battles are particularly guilty of ridiculous length. Let me just say that if you're good at RPGs you will be able to optimize your characters to the point that you know for sure they aren't all going to die. However, bosses can take of thousands of hits (literally, as you'll easily be doing 30+ hits on an average, non-power-up attack) to defeat, and the boss battles are plentiful.

All in all, though, this 30+ hour game does manage to hold your attention. It's definitely something new, and adds some good features to classic RPG gameplay (when I mention classic RPG gameplay, I don't mean the battle system, which is innovative and unique). This is a very notable point, as the story line is not captivating in any way once it starts to unfold. It's entirely too confusing and disjointed, and the dialogue, while entertaining, is disjointed and does little to keep the player moving along in the right direction on the intended path.

If you're a fan of RPGs with unique elements and can handle the lack of a solid storyline (which is something I generally rate as unforgivable), I really recommend you pick this game up. The battle system will keep you busy until you finally master it a few hours in. Even then the minor details will continue to reveal themselves to you, generally keeping battle interesting. Towards the end it will seem to drag on needlessly, but I felt accomplished when I was done. The learning curve is based almost entirely on your grasp of the intricacies of the combat system, and the difficulty is a bit high at the begining. Those who aren't discouraged by the harsh start will be rewarded.

I noticed there has been a real lull in portable releases. The PSP could practically be considered dead at this point, and nothing exhilarating has been released on the DS since Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier. Other consoles aren't fairing too much better, with a very notable exception: UFC 2009: Undisputed. The president of the UFC, Dana White, realized that the last few UFC offerings for the PS2, Xbox and GameCube were very disappointing. That out of then way, UFC 2009 is absolutely brilliant. The strategy of MMA is captured very well, while still maintaining an arcade-like pace to keep players from getting bored. Fans of fighting games who are interested in a very high level of depth or gamers who are fans of UFC or MMA in general have no excuse for passing this one up.

I've been looking at playing some Free Realms. I've played several free MMOs in the past, with various levels of satisfaction. Free Realms really looks like no other MMO offering, whether free- or pay-to-play. I'll definitely have to give it a few hours of consideration.

Finally, I'm having trouble admitting to myself that I'm just not that excited about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was great. The single player was fresh, although very short, and everyone knows the multiplayer trumped anything else at the time. Keeping this in mind, I gave Call of Duty: World of War a try. My issue with the WW2 Call of Duty games is the difficulty ramp. You can always tell when you're on the final level of a Call of Duty game, and it has nothing to do with the storyline. Suddenly you're dying at every twist and turn, and you end up seeing the same checkpoint dozens of times before you can see the end credits. The multiplayer, while good, didn't offer the same ground-breaking presentation of Modern Warfare. It seemed as though they took Modern Warfare and dialed the time scale back instead of coming up with new innovations. The replacement of the helicopter with dogs is a good example. While offering the same type of benefits, the dogs were just ridiculous. Very poorly done indeed, and I apologize for not going into more detail.

My point is that I feel Call of Duty is falling back into a rut. I realize Modern Warfare 2 is going to feature new experiences. But overall, it seems like it's going to be more of the same, and that's unfortunate, but it's what series like this do. I hope they come up with enough new ideas to make the multiplayer feel fresh, but I just can't see how it can be done without a complete overhaul, which is something I realize the developers are not going to be willing to do.