Don't get me wrong – Final Fantasy XIII is an incredible title. Sure its a bit slow and chatty at the start but that doesn't mean that it isn't an RPG force to be reckoned with.

While there many things to praise this latest FF title for: the jaw-dropping cinematics, its stellar voice acting and loveable cast, its Paradigm and Crystalium systems, something is still lacking from SquareEnix's latest RPG title.

Growing up with the Final Fantasy franchise, I looked forward more than anything to the new magic and summon spells, primarily the graphical effects and animation. There was a time when casting spells and summoning creatures would mean that the camera would focus on the caster and the targeted enemy, making these moments all the more memorable. With FFXIII, as it was with its predecessor FFXII, cinematic spell casting has taken a back seat to the fast-paced battle system, happening just as quickly as Attack commands and without the cinematic flair of FF titles like FFVII-X. Sure you xan catch a glimpse of the cast spell, but it just isn't what it used to be. The same can be said about Focuses summon effects. Lengthy intro scenes have replaced the majesty of a summon creature's ultimate attack, making their inclusion something of an afterthought. And do we really need to momentarily control these summoned creatures? This gimmick was okay in Final Fantasy X but it just doesn't feel right anymore.

To me, an FF Summon meant a small moment of wonder where a fantastical creature was called to the battlefield from some alternate plane of existence to deliver a devastating attack. With FFXIII, these attacks just aren't as cool as they used to be and aren't nearly as eye-appealing when compared to some of the Final Fantasy franchise's earlier summon effects and animations – with Final Fantasy VIII & IX having some of the most involved summon sequences ever crafted by SquareEnix.

Maybe I'm just nitpicking here, but I miss the days where magic and summon effects took center stage in the battlefield. Sure the action happens really fast but there is a certain loss to be had with this seamless battle system. How do the rest of you Final Fantasy fans feel about this?

This is going to sound contradictory after my previous post praising the Mega Man series for returning so exactly to its 8-bit roots, but after playing through Mega Man 10, I think I'm done with the 8-bit Mega Man revival.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely enjoyed it, even if it wasn't quite as nailed in as Mega Man 9 – or thankfully not nearly as difficult. There were inspired, imaginative stage in it, in particular Solar Man's and Strike Man's. I loved Strike Man's mid-level bosses, as pictured above – so funny, so creative. Both those stages offered the best music too, Solar Man's a particularly unusual but resoundingly triumphant piece of chiptune. It was all over the place, better than half the music you hear in modern games, and so full of pace that it really made the stage exciting.

I almost feel like I've defeated my own argument here. Yes, Capcom has proven that an 8-bit game can stand up in the modern era and be plenty of fun. And there's no doubt that fans will lap up further 8-bit releases. I'd just like to see Mega Man 11 follow the New Super Mario Bros. series formula now that Capcom has shown 8-bit still works. Keep the values and the presentation of the old Mega Man games, but do it with spruced up visuals on the DS. Yes, there's things like Mega Man ZX but it's just not the same, even if it is quite a good game.

Yeah I don't know, I feel like I've defeated my own argument again. Did anyone else play Mega Man 10? You looking forward to more of the same in Mega Man 11?

So, the big news from Nintendo's Media Summit last month was the earlier-than-expected release date for Super Mario Galaxy 2, with American Wii owners now counting the days until May 23. Of course, poor, foolish British owners like myself have to wait until June 11. At least Final Fantasy XIII is hitting this week worldwide – props to Square-Enix for actually delivering on that promise.

Thing is, for all the talk of the new Metroid game, a possible 2010 release of a new Zelda, things like the return of Sin and Punishment, I still can't believe we're having to look to things like FlingSmash for our new-IP fix. Well, it isn't unbelievable, given that this is what Nintendo have been doing for years upon years. Maybe what more astounds me is the proclaimed satisfaction at new iterations for Galaxy, Zelda and Metroid. Yes, I'm excited for all of them, but are they really enough?

I still have serious doubts a new Zelda game on the Wii will be any great departure from Twilight Princess, that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be anything more than a – admittedly very welcome – glorified expansion pack for the original, and that Metroid: Other M will successfully retain the series' values that have made Metroid so beloved. Although, again admittedly, the word on Other M is ‘so far, so good'.

But really, we're going to be talking about a sequel to the Wii shortly, and I find it hard to believe that system will be launching with anything except the typical range of sub-standard launch titles mixed in with one or two sequels to traditional franchises. So, really, where is the room for new Nintendo IPs?

How important is it? Maybe not at all from an industry perspective, but as a Nintendo fan I lament the world's most famous, arguably its best game developer, failing to provide original software. Then again, I'll be one of the first in the queue to buy Galaxy 2. I guess I'm part of the problem, then.

I'll freely admit it: there have been consoles over the years that I have loved enough to be a fanboy of them. The Game Boy, the Super Nintendo, the PlayStation 2. And I was definitely a Sony fanboy during the PS2 days, but such has been my admiration for all three home consoles in this generation that any Sony fanboyism has simply died anyway.

Yet, after the way Nintendo, fanboys, Microsoft fanboys, and worst of all the press reacted to the bug affecting Sony consoles a couple of weeks ago, I'm almost tempted to repin by Sony badge of honor.

I can probably accept the digs from the other console's fanboys, even if it's so easy to retort against them. Sure, people couldn't turn on their PS3 for day, but at least if they wanted to, they could see it underneath the huge pile of dust – am I right, Nintendo fanboys? Or do the Microsoft fanboys need reminding of the whole RRoD thing? You know, where you can't ever turn on the console again?

But that would just be me coming down to their level. So I won't do that…

It's the proclamations from some quarters of the press, though, that really bothers. People actually suggesting this was "the end of PlayStation", "the biggest PR disaster possible", "the nail in the coffin of the console wars". I mean, really? Two weeks later, and we've already moved on. I think Sony's doing okay, you know?

Frankly, the PS3 fanboys are as bad as anyone with the way they react on N4G, but you can almost extend them some sympathy after seeing how much people overreacted to this.

Almost, but not quite.

This is a very subjective post, and really we're only going to know more when we get the sales figures in. Nonetheless, after reading some comments this week from the interweb and weighing up my own feeling on the subject, I'm starting to think that this March release date for Final Fantasy XII is going to backfire.

I'm a huge Final Fantasy fanboy. I grew up with the series is in its SNES days, but really fell in love with it in its PlayStation days, particularly with Final Fantasy X on the PS2. Since Final Fantasy IX, I've bought every single main series Final Fantasy game on release day – even Final Fantasy X-2.

And yet release day has come and gone and I haven't bought Final Fantasy XIII.

I do plan to get the game at some point, probably not in the too distant future (we're talking days rather than weeks), but right now all the talk of '25 hours before it gets good', combined with the epic Q1 we're coming out of – there are still tons of 2010 Q1 and 2009 Q4 games I still need to play – well, I'm having doubts about whether I have the time for Final Fantasy right now.

And that's from a Final Fantasy fanboy – although maybe I've lost my license after that statement. Anyway, my point is that if even ex Final Fantasy fanboys like myself are doubting about getting the game at the moment, what about all the new people who we're supposed to believe Square-Enix are going to lure to the franchise with a 360 release. They've done Lost Odyssey, they've got plenty of other games to play right now, so will they even bother with a purchase?

I suspect  Modern Warfare 2 fallout could really work against Final Fantasy XIII in the coming weeks, but of course only time will tell. I hope I'm proven wrong.

Ugh, I can't believe I used that word. I appall myself.

After playing through recent Xbox Live Arcade games Kriss X (a word puzzle game) and Encleverment Experiment (a kid-friendly Brain Training clone), both from the Blitz Arcade development house,  I feel the need to speak up for games that do come under the ‘edutainment' banner. Both those games did not review especially well – or get reviewed by that many publications – yet both are kid-friendly, very charming pieces of software.

They both have excellent interfaces with well thought-out tutorials that provide plenty of hand-holding for younger players. Yet both games accommodate adult players with ranges of difficulty (to an extent). Encleverment Experiment, in particular, offers a lot of fun in its multiplayer modes, aping the simple yet frantic rivalry you get with Buzz and Scene It! games.

Yet some reviewers only approached the games from brain-testing perspectives, as if they were purely aimed at adult players, calling them out for not really providing a test or for being too simplistic. Sure, because the friendly bespectacled owl in KrissX and the little, beady-eyed professor who goes whizzing around on a flying podium in Encleverment Experiment don't lead you to think this game might just be for someone a bit younger. Definitely not.

I'm aware that reviews of kids games with only adults in mind has long been a problem in this business, but I suppose with Metacritic now providing this metric of scores, it's a problem which I think is becoming more significant. It needs to be called out again. Not every game is made with adult males in mind, and the ones that aren't shouldn't' get shot down just because they aren't.

Okay, I know I've been going on about Heavy Rain this week and its good and bad points, yet I haven't even mentioned things like the tremendous graphical detail, the great big gaping plot holes, its concepts of agency, the strength of the script, and absolutely everything else that's worthy of discussion.

So I'll make this the last Heavy Rain post of the week, and this one's going to be on FBI agent Norman Jayden and his Minority Report-style sunglasses of the future. As in, what the hell?

Rather than manually searching for clues like, you know, a proper detective would, Jayden has travelled into the future and brought back sunglasses that can detect anything abnormal in a given area, from a bit of pollen floating around to the tiniest of footprints, and then give you information so detailed and extraneous on said abnormality that it puts Wikipedia to shame. Oh, and it can transform your office into a virtual Saharan desert in the blink of a jagged frame rate.

I do understand that it's there to make the detective work more fluid, and make the player feel like Dr. House without having any Housian skills. It's just totally at odds with the contemporary theme, the aim to provide a real story in a world players can identify with. It felt like a cop-out to me.

Then again, I'm not sure I can identify with a world in which every single person you meet has the potential to be a murderous psychopath. London's pretty dire, but it's not that dire.

So, Mega Man 10 hit WiiWare last week, and will arrive on the PlayStation Network this week, as well as Xbox Live Arcade by the end of March. I would've finished it already, except it hit UK WiiWare on Friday, four days after the US store – balls to that. Also, I suck at Mega Man, so that would've worked against me. It's so damn hard that I wonder sometimes if I only play it for the awesome music…

Either way, I definitely appreciated Mega Man 9 as a retro continuation of a series that lost its way in later years. It was a nice contrast against Bionic Commando: Rearmed in the middle of 2008, one a series continuation replicating halcyon 8-bit days, the other a fantastic remastering of a classic 8-bit game.

There are plenty of retro continuation titles these days, with two New Super Mario Bros. titles, Contra ReBirth, and the upcoming episodes of Sonic the Hedgehog 4. As I much as I loved the modernizing of Mario in NSMB, and simply that Sonic is finally returning to 2D platforming on home consoles, I do prefer the 'as it was' movement of Mega Man 9. That series was always about its 8-bit presentation and tough-as-nails platforming. Sadly, Mega Man just comes across as soulless in newer forms.

So that got me thinking: what other classics would I want continued in 'as it was' form, with old-school visuals and sound? The only thing I could come up with was Crazy Taxi 4. That would be great, wouldn't it? Just like the original Crazy Taxi, with jerky controls, tons of advertising et al, but with a few more characters, more levels and even more booming Offspring tunage.

Someone, make that happen.