Monday mornings, lower-echelon geekiness, and Arcana Heart

Playing:
Arcana Heart
(PS2)

In my aforementioned effort to try and muster the time to do more of the fun things in life, I did the unspeakable and woke up extra early on a Monday morning. I fought through the 7:00 a.m. traffic to get to the office and drop off some paperwork, went to the beach, shot some hoops by myself, went back to the beach to kill time until the mall opened, did a bit of unnecessary shopping, drove home to get a bite to eat, then went to work and remained there until the evening time. In effect, my plan to cut back on gratuitous driving lasted all of 48 hours, but on the other hand, I guess it ended up being a pretty good day. Sure, it's easy to convince yourself that you had a busy day by peppering your mornings with petty indulgences, but I also think that there's some consolation to be had whenever you throw a wrinkle into your daily routine.

The dudes at Gamestop got a little too excited when I purchased my copy of Arcana Heart. I just wanted to buy my merch and bounce, but the gentleman at the register felt it necessary to give me a full review of the game, complete with semi-disturbing sound effects and bad Street Fighter analogies. I suppose that there are many different levels of dork out there, so it's kind of nice to know that, at least outwardly, I'm a very low echelon nerd in the grand scheme of things. The game itself is indeed quite fun though. It plays like Guilty Gear at half speed - a bit jarring since I'd been playing a lot of KOF XI lately - and it's actually a deceptively deep fighter. The game's "homing cancel" feature functions much like GGXX's "roman cancel," effectively making stringing combos together a heck of a lot of fun. The roster is only 11 characters deep (all girls), but in an interesting twist, you equip your fighter with a backup Arcana before the bouts begin. In some cases, the Arcana can double the amount of special and super moves that your character has, and with the 11 fighters and 11 different Arcana, there's a fairly respectable 121 unique character combinations that you can play around with. Not quite Capcom vs SNK 2 here, but there are definitely enough gameplay nuances to keep the hardcore gamers engaged for a while. The soundtrack is a bit of a snoozer, but the fighting engine is smooth and loads of fun, so a definite thumbs up from me.