Just popped out to the village for some ciggies and thought "Heck, they'll all be snoozing after that grand Sunday Roast, I may as well grab my lappy and head off to the pub for a swift half" So here I am.

My self-imposed exile from blogland lasted all of 48 hours!

It gave me a chance to catch up on a few less important things, like housework and my beloved PlayStation.

I even got round to opening my latest purchase for said PS2 - Final Fantasy XII.

Here's my initial review of it:-

Seems quite good.

Nah, seriously here it is -

Graphics - Stunning, as is now to be expected from the game now it has moved on from the PSX days. Human characters are believable, long-gone are the Manga-style characters of FFVII and the backgrounds, buildings and vehicles are extremely well rendered.

Story-line - Long and convoluted, as is expected from the FF series, looking forward to many an hour trying to figure out just exactly where I got to before saving the game, let alone what's going on.

Battle sequences - Much better now that they are actually based in the area that you are in, rather than being transported off to fight on some standardised environment. The attacks do take some time to get used to, but once you do, it should become second nature (I hope - I haven't played it that much yet!)

All in all, even after only having played for a couple of hours, it seems far better than any of it's predecessors.

9/10