The exclusives I'd recommend:
-Tales of the Abyss. I know you said you didn't generally like jRPGs, but you listed Kingdom Hearts in your "likes," and the Tales games have similar twitch-based combat.
-Sly Cooper 1-3. Platforming, stealth, and just general fun.
-Devil May Cry 3. Pretty much a given. Skip 2.
-Ratchet & Clank 1-4. 1 and 2 are hybrid platformer/3rd-person shooters; 3 & 4 are more like 90% shooting, 10% platforming.
-Odin Sphere. A long, fun, beautiful action/beat-'em-up with RPG elements.
Cross-platform titles:
-Silent Hill 3 & 4. Kind of a given, since you liked 2.
-Psi Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Second Sight. Psychic-power-physics-stealth-shooters. Both deserve play if you haven't played them on other consoles.
-Beyond Good & Evil. An action-stealth game that's often compared to Zelda.
-Fatal Frame 1-3. Similar to Silent Hill, in that they're Japanese-style surrealist-horror games.
-Viewtiful Joe 1 & 2, but only if you don't own a Gamecube or Wii. 2-D beat 'em ups re-imagined.
Games that I WOULDN'T recommend:
-Final Fantasy XII. It's not that different from other jRPGs, and the game basically plays itself.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
