2004 will kill me.

Here's a quick look at all of the badass Gamecube titles coming out this year. I am going to be twice as broke as I was last winter. I'll highlight the ones I will absolutely purchase, and I'll underline the ones I'll most likely purchase. Everything else is a slight possibility.

Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
Tales of Symphonia
Pikmin 2
Starcraft: Ghost
Killer 7
Paper Mario 2
Viewtiful Joe 2
Baten Kaitos
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Resident Evil 4
Star Fox 2
Mario Party 6
Geist
Second Sight
Super Monkey Ball 3

Goddammit, I can't afford all that shit!! That's all on one fucking console! I need to just go hardcore and finish all of my uncompleted games before August, or I'm going to die.

That's a lot of games, Raziel. That's some crazy shit. Even if I had the money, I probably still wouldn't be able to beat all of those.

I'm getting metroid prime 2 definately.

Well, I'm already pretty positive that most of those won't be terribly time-consuming. Four Swords is a multiplayer game, and therefore, I'm not going to obssess over beating it completely. Pikmin 2 and Viewtiful Joe 2 probably won't be terribly long, considering that the first games in both series weren't that lengthy. MP2, RE4 and SF2 will probably devour every second of my free time until I beat them, which means I'll probably have them done in a few days. The ones I'm mostly worried about are Paper Mario 2, Tales of Symphonia and Baten Kaitos. Those are all RPGs, and most likely, they'll be around 30 to 40 hours long. If I manage to complete all that stuff before the end of the year, I'll grab Second Sight and maybe Killer 7.

It's not the free-time aspect I'm worried about, it's the cost. If you add that all up, estimating that each game will be at $49.99, that's about $450 on the games I'm most certainly buying, with an additional $200 on the games that I'll probably pick up. So, with tax, that's about $700 on games before the end of this year, excluding God-only-knows how much I've spent this year already. Granted, that's only an entire paycheck, but still, that's a hefty amount of money to plunk down on games in what amounts to about 5 months of time.

Whats baten kaitos and killer 7 about? They sound good.

Baten Kaitos is an epic fantasy RPG with some technological elements to it. Example: a large castle guarded by soldiers equipped with machine guns. I have no idea what the story is about. The only major thing I know about the game is that everything is handled through cards called "Magnus". Now, don't get all huffy, it's not Yu-Gi-Oh! The battle system uses a card-based command structure, but you're not summoning weird Pokemon monsters with those cards. There are several different types of cards ranging from stadard attacks with your weapon, to badass spells, to other special abilities and effects. The reason that the battle system is done in card-format is because you can select multiple cards to use in a single turn, which allows for combinations. Example: you select an Attack card, followed by a Fire Spell card of some sort. The combination of the two might allow you to use a Fire Sword attack. My example is an extremely simplified explanation of the actual system, because it's apparently a lot more complex than that. Besides the combat system, all items, equipment and money are contained within these cards. I'm stoked to learn more.

Killer 7 is a totally different beast. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I have no idea what it is. All I know is that it's cel-shaded, extremely violent, and that it utilizes quasi-first-person-shooter elements. I know a bit about the story, though. You play an aging hitman named Harman Smith who has seven different deadly personalities. Harman himself is whellchair-bound, but he has the strange ability to actually make his personalities take physical form. Each one of his identities also has the last name "Smith", and each one has a unique power such as the ability to slow time or to read other people's minds. Beyond that, I have no idea what the game is, which is why I'm hesitant about it. It's supposed to be out this year, but Capcom is keeping a lid on it until the last moment, apparently.

Either way, I'm stoked about Baten Kaitos, and I'm waiting to learn more about Killer 7.