master of cards

acquired yesterday:

ghost in the shell: stand alone complex soundtrack, volume 3 – from which the title comes, a lyric from the first track ‘the end of all you’ll know.’ most of the music is from 2nd gig, with a few tracks here and there from the first season.
totally mind-blowing. the faster tracks are full of kanno enthusiasm, but as per her other work, the more serene and at times orchestral tracks really do shine. very emotive, very creative, and sonically fantastic.

dead leaves soundtrack – absolutely brilliant, and without the manic visuals, actually very surreal and spacious. epic sounds, epic. a great soundtrack to a great feature.

killer 7 – perhaps the last great title for the gamecube. chibi-r is optimistic about (zelda) twilight princess, but considering what happened to the end of wind-waker after its initial brilliance, i have my doubts. it just seems inevitable that it will be rushed to compete with other top-line titles on the other consoles, and as with wind-waker, there will be clear points at which we’ll see quality and content dropping off.
my impressions so far are pretty much the same as all of the other positive ones sprinkled around the net – it looks brilliant. not only is it stylized, but the animations, transitions, framerate and overall visual presentation are at an extremely high quality level. the only hassle i have is that it’s a big commitment game – one of those ones i don’t generally have a lot of time for – and the difficulty level is such to suit that kind of game – which is great, but it’ll be hard for me to finish simply because of time. i don’t care though – the presentation is rare and worthy of having – this like ico, is gaming-art at its best.

cds curtesy of neowing (cdjapan), killer 7 curtesy of someone i don’t want nintendo stopping from importing games. sorry nintendo australia, but the australian film and literature board probably lost you these two sales, as i imagine it was their shenanigans that kept delaying the release – that and the whole hot coffee thing.