Last weekend was IT maintenance weekend at my husband’s company so for 2-1/2 days I was left home alone to entertain myself.  What did I do?  I played Enchanted Arms on our XBOX 360 and ate Oreo cookies and chips with salsa into the wee hours of the morning.  It was fabulous!

First Thing:  XBOX 360 + 47″in wide screen HD LCD TV = BLISS!!!

Second Thing:  XBOX 360 + wireless game controller = MORE BLISS!!!

I made a little rat’s nest on the sofa, filled it with food and drink and ate and played until I could barely feel my thumbs.

About the game:  “Enchanted Arms” is Japanese style turn-based RPG.  The story takes place in a alternative universe where magic and technology are essentialy one in the same.  The story isn’t very compelling, there’s way too much dialog, and some very annoying fetch-it missions.  I spent a lot of time pushing the “A ” button as fast as possible to get through the inane conversations.  The battle engine, though, is GREAT!  All battles occur on a grid so you position your characters on the grid according to the position of the baddies you want to take out and the range of the skill you want to use.  Extra rewards are given if you are able to wipe out the baddies within one turn. This aspect of battle was most interesting to me.  There are 6-main characters and a bunch of Pokemon-like golems that you can construct to help you in battle.  There’s character stat management a plenty — for me this became a game of giving my characters enough HP to get through battles while boosting their damage potential so I win battles in one round. 

There were a couple of things in the story that lessened the pain.  I discovered the dialog is much funnier if you choose the dumb dialog when prompted for a response from a multiple choice list.  Also, there was one NPC at about 47% of the story that had a face that looked like someone had directly photoshopped it onto a blocky character body (it stood out in stark constrast to the less detailed faces of the main characters and the other NPC’s.)  I suspect his inclusion was an inside joke amongst the programmers and artists who decided to use the visage of a tyrannical slave driving manager as one of the more slimier and roguish villians.  I was rolling in my rat’s nest — it’s something you have to experience to understand just how funny it was.

The XBOX 360:  The console has a lot of features beside video gaming.  Here’s a brief list:

1.  Play DVD’s

2. Download and view media content from the internet — music, movie trailers, movies, anime, game demos

3. Download and play cheap video games

4. Purchase and download extra game features — weapons, items, extra game levels, maps, and the like

5.  The interface for the many features is colorful and easy to use.

6.  HD display compatible upto 1080p resolution

It’s a nice console.  Too bad it doesn’t have and HD-DVD or Blue Ray :(.

Anyhow, I got through 53% of the story this weekend.  I hope to finish the game by the end of the week.