26 | October | 2011 | "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"

…So I can actually (and finally!) get my own Kinect and play the game. My living room is nicely-sized, but in the wrong way that I’d need to have my TV near the front door and blocking access to the kitchen in order to play any Kinect games. I can do Move stuff just fine, though. Oh well. Go, From Software! I’d say Capcom will have a nifty niche hit here provided that some folks get over the fact that more types of games can be done well on Kinect outside of dance, exercise and “family” titles. So far, color me very impressed with this game (even as a work in progress). I’d be even MORE impressed if Capcom added the original Xbox game and sequel to the disc as bonuses so those who missed out can finally play them without having to pay an arm and a leg for that MASSIVE custom controller (and find out the second game needed a single-player campaign which it didn’t have as an online-only expansion pack).

While this watercolor image for the Japanese version of the game is indeed a truly lovely piece of art, it’s also pretty generic to a fault. At best, It looks like a greeting card for some made up holiday (Happy Festivus!) or a menu from some renaissance fair salad bar and at worst, like a roadside sign advertising a fairy farm (Come Pet Our Unicorn. Please. Thank You).

Given the lush backgrounds found in both the DS and PS3 versions, I was hoping to see a Level-5/Studio Ghibli combo cover to end all covers. Or at least art to match the beautiful images found on the official PS3 and Nintendo DS sites for each system’s respective games. Here’s a link to a recent trailer as well so you can see that the game is absolutely a LOT more gorgeous than this placeholder-looking cover image. Oh well. It’s not THAT bad. Still, I guess it’ll be up to Namco Bandai to give us a North American version with a cover image that soars. As long as they use art from the dev team or Studio Ghibli-provided assets, it should be a winner.