9-22-06

Today Dave and I played the demo for Fuzion Frenzy 2, the sequel to the greatest original game ever made for x-box. (I say "original" because Soul Calibur 2 and Oblivion were both made for other platforms. Halo comes in a distant fourth.) I am sad -- no, astonished, grieved, and heartbroken -- to report that all of the charm, vivacity, and splendor of the original was, on the way to the sequel, stuffed in a moldy trashbag and dumped in a nearby river. The music is no longer punchy and upbeat; the characters have lost all character, having been transformed into lanky generic anime-ish dweebs in multicolored Halo suits; the games are new and different but slow-paced and uninspiring; the guy who yelled "FUZIOOOOOOON FRENZEEEEEEE!!!" is gone. And the demo only includes three games. Three!! Contrast that to the original Fuzion Frenzy demo, which had enough games to actually justify paying money for Halo.

It's still a bunch of mini-games, and maybe some of them are fun, but the spirit of the game, the soul, has been completely ripped out.