A little Kingdom Hearts on the road

I did some quick (GameFly) queue management about a week before I headed out of town so that I could get a DS game for my trip. I had lots of time in airplanes, airports, and a hotel room where I mostly played Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. What an odd name. But it makes a bit more sense once you realize that it's the main character's time that he spends with Organization XIII. I dunno, the story is kinda weird. I made it to day 51 or so since I got frustrated and bored once they want you to start using magic attacks rather than just hammering away on dudes with your sword. Oh, sorry, keyblade.

This series has always had a bizarre mix of spiky haired Japanese dudes from Square-Enix...and Disney characters. Ya, you read that right. We're talking Mickey and Donald here. Strangely, it sort of works. This game is very Japanese though. Unless you get blue sea-salt ice cream after every mission with your buddies. You do, don't you?

I had played KH 1 and 2 all the way through, but I didn't have enough patience for this one. It being on the DS had a lot to do with that, I think. At least the other games had decent visuals on the PS2. I got sort of sick of DS polygons and repetitive missions.

I also picked up Mass Effect 2. I'm really liking it and am about 12 hours in. I love the focus on combat. I love that they've downplayed the inventory management in this outing. I got a bit sick of continually replacing Shotgun n with Shotgun n+1 in the first game every time I opened a treasure chest. So I may write more about it later or just be lazy and point you to Matt's impressions from earlier.