Final Fantasy XIII Review : Micromanagement Promotion

I have finished the tutorial section of the game (so about 20 hours in).  The newly revamped active time battle system has created a fast paced strategy/puzzle game with an RPG wrapper.  Not all of the other aspects of the game are up to the same level, but luckily those can be easily ignored, leaving just a entertaining and challenging battle system.

A couple of somewhat minor gameplay changes have a significant impact on the game by significantly cutting down on the repetition and grinding.  I play games for fun and these changes allow me to focus more on what I find fun in this game.

1. The majority of battles are unique and present a challenge
2. Health is refilled and debuffs (poison, magics, etc.) are removed at the end of every battle
3. Both during a fight or immediately after losing a fight, you have the option to “retry”, which places you right outside of the last encounter, allowing you to make the necessary setup changes to your group before re-engaging, or allowing you to bypass the fight completely if possible
4. The linear nature of the maps allows you to know where you are going and significantly cuts down on the pointless wandering of its predecessors

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Review: Astro A40 (Customer Service)

Coming from a PC FPS background, I found myself lamenting the loss of headphones when I purchased CoD:Modern Warfare 2. Doing some research on headphones I could use with my Xbox, I came across the Turtle Beach x41 and the Astro A40. The consensus seemed to be that though the Turtle Beach x41 was more practical due to it being wireless, the Astro A40 had better overall sound. In the end I decided to go with the Astro A40 as I figured the wires were a small price to pay for better sound.
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