…Well, that’s what the game SAID.

Now, I will stop being oh-so-enigmatic with my obscure quotes and explain.

Before explaining, though: I finished Trace Memory. I missed a couple of things along the way, so even though I completed the main character’s quest I didn’t get the entire story. I may go back and see if a second run-through works better. There’s supposed to be bonus stuff if you beat the game a second time, anyway.

I wasn’t quite ready to jump right in to a second play-through, though, and so I went to the shelves o’ unplayed games.

My criteria were:

1) Not an FPS. Played too many of those lately and Halo 3 is coming next week.

2) Somewhat artsy. This skews the balance rather in favor of asian developers, which is fine since I’ve played an awful lot of western-developed games lately too.

3) Short, because, well, Halo 3 is coming next week.

Orange letters on a black spine jumped out at me. Rez.

Who was I to say no to that?

I bought Rez last month, at a little shop in Nakano Broadway, for the kingly sum of 980 yen. Since the North American release goes for a fair sum of money, I think I did all right there, especially as it’s smart enough to look at the system configuration on my Japanese PS2, realize that the console is set to English, and set itself to English mode.

It’s not exactly as short as some would claim, but it is a pretty short game. You need to unlock levels in stages – beat level 1 to unlock level 2, then you can start on level 2 and beat it to unlock level 3, repeat for level 4… and then you need to beat all four of those levels in the same play session to unlock level 5. If you’re good at shooters, this probably doesn’t take very long. For me, it took three or four hours to unlock level 5 and then several tries to beat level 5… with the “not so good ending”, I’ll admit, and that’s where the title of this post comes from. Explanation finished.

(I would need to get a 95% shot-down rate for the level to get the “good ending” – this is unlikely. I only managed an 85.7% rating, so I’d need to hit a LOT more targets.)

It was a good time. It plays an awful lot like Panzer Dragoon would if you could only use lock-on firing, and it manages to pull off a “next-generation TRON” look better than Tron 2.0 did. I’m glad it’s being reissued on XBLA because I’ll be able to recommend it to people without having to say “oh, yeah, if you can find a copy that’s not TOO expensive…”

School starts next week. I’ve got a schedule of Economics, Statistics, and Drama, and something like $320 in textbooks to buy for those classes. Education: No place for wimps.