I've been busy with academics and life in general. In the meantime, when I had the chance I would enjoy Oblivion. That said, I have the sad feeling there's a game out there that has a way cooler combat system.

Mount&Blade by Taleworlds is a realistic medieval fantasy adventure game. There are no Ogres, dragons, or magic missiles. Combat is relatively lethal, and you only heal in non-combat situations. If a knight hits you with a couched lance, it's going to hurt. This game is lethal and I am quickly falling in love.

It has its flaws. There is no overarching storyline, a few pregenerated quests with the rest being random. Your character generally walks too slow in non-combat conditions and there lies the occasional clipping when your horse gets surrounded by multiple baddies. And finally, there's no way to retreat from enemies as your character's party doesn't get relocated in the overworld.

But for a game that is still in beta .93, it's amazingly fun. The ability to command warbands of troops who over time become powerful like you, and to have several heroes as subcommanders means the innate gameplay has the addictive "it" that makes a game good.

Sex sells...or so that's an old mantra. Bleh. By now you've probably heard of the Wii Topless vids, aka a pointless waste of time.

The link is NSFW, so I'm not posting it here but in a subsequent post, for sakes of keeping prying eyes away but seriously, the Wii is little more than a smoke and mirrors campaign. Link Crossbow Training?!?! What the crap?

That said, I'm enjoying my 360 so far...probably going to pick up Assassin's Creed sooner or later, or start fooling around with XNA. Assault Heroes looks promising too, might download it.

I watched Blazing Saddles last night, and silly though it was, it got me thinking for a moment: "There ain't no decent Western game out there. I ain't talking bout no Wild Arms, where they throw in the kitchen sink o' fantastical creatures, but I'm talking about a doggone romp through the West where you can shoot, lasso, and dynamite your way to glee."

I believe that the Western, like the Movie Game, the Star Trek Game, and the Superhero Game, is worthy of being classified with its own Curse: The Western Curse. After Lucasfilm did Outlaws Ltd, then the genre remained more or less untouched. Of the many items that appeared, High Noon by Six-Shooter Studios appeared to have promise (free-roaming FPS/RPG hybrid built on the Lithtech Engine?) but without being able to find a publisher, Six-Shooters went kaput. After this, we've got games that either are mediocre (Gun!), or place the West as a smaller sidenote in a larger game (Timesplitters series, Age of Empires 3).

The other three curses were eventually broken at some time or another. When Goldeneye 64 came out, everyone was shocked to find a legitimately awesome game...though most games based on movies still suck, I'm sure somewhere there's one that's decent enough...Star Trek games constantly flopped, then suddenly Starfleet Command and Elite Force shocked Star Trek fans...and Superhero games are actually decent now, what with the console adaptations of Marvel characters (Hulk and Spiderman 2 come to mind), or the awesome tactical gameplay of Freedom Force (and its semisequel Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich). So why can't the Western break its curse?

Is it because even more than the aforementioned three cursed groups, the audience is even more niche? Like movies/games based on the Roman Empire before Gladiator came out (think hard about this: Without Gladiator, would we have Rome: Total War?f The chance does exist but it probably would have been less of a seller now that stuff Rome-based is relatively more popular). What would it take to fix this?

It's been forever since I've been on here, and I have several games I need to review. Mainly Computer RPGs, the games I'm planning to review include:

-Age of Wonders Shadow Magic: Calling this an RPG may be stretching it...it's a turn-based strategy where you research spells, build cities, etc...sort of like a modern Master of Magic, but with lots of cool spells/abilities, and a decent multiplayer mode.
-Fallout 2: This game is easily one of the best computer RPGs ever...based on the SPECIAL System (Black Isle was origianlly going to use GURPS for the original Fallout, but Steve Jackson protested at the violence), the game is relatively nonlinear in that the main quest can be defeated in a single speedrun, and that everything else can be considered long sidequests...and how this game makes GTA look like Mario. You can marry then sell your wife/husband into slavery, deal drugs, get addicted on drugs, etc.
-Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption. I believe this game should easily be in the top 10 underrated games of all time. When it first came out, everyone went "Awesome multiplayer, great graphics/sound/plot/combat system...but IT USES SAVE CRYSTALS?!!? WHAT COMPUTER GAME DOES THIS? 1 out of 10...(Computer Gaming World is very guilty of this)...almost immediately, the game was patched to let one save anywhere and issue orders while the game was paused, and yet nobody felt it worthy to give this game a follow-up review...the graphics have aged pretty well, the multiplayer mode is still solid (think Neverwinter Nights but with a better combat engine) and there's a slew of mods for the game...

I was very disappointed in New Super Mario Bros for its difficulty (the lack of it), and wondered if there was something more challenging. Well, I should've been careful what I wished for.
http://www.destructoid.com/experience-the-hardest-mario-ever-no-fluffing-required--30939.phtml

If anyone can tell me how to link the video in this site, it'd be greatly appreciated.

It's amazing how attitudes can change over the period of 10 years. We've gone from a paranoid society that blamed games like Quake for mass shootings, where videogaming enthusiasts were at best social outsiders, to a slightly less paranoid society where games like Halo 2 and The Sims exemplify the mainstream nature of the industry. The new question that arises is whether or not this form of entertainment is also capable of being used for more artistic nature.

On one hand, we can look at the Japanese videogame industry, as people like to assume this is where a lot of creativity comes from. While you may have games of a surrealist nature like Rez or Katamari Damacy, you also end up having clunkers like Metal Gear Solid which act pretentious about philosophy but degenerate into having sub-standard plots that aren't anything but intrusive. While the cyberspace motif of Rez is reminiscient of the 80s and Tron, the actual game is little more than shooting stuff and taking in the surreal visuals and music...or vibrating your girlfriend to orgasm. Beware for the site below is somewhat unsafe for work, but it shows how weird the Japanese can be with videogaming.

(http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/...

On the other end of the spectrum, we've got the Western developments in games. While many of them don't even bother to try to wax philosophical, content to be about shooting/rushing/outracing your enemy, there still lies the occasional game that makes you question whether or not games are capable of much more than they are.

The first such game I would like to dwell on is Alpha Centauri. This game was made in 1999 for the PC as the spiritual successor to Civilization II. Whereas Civilization II was an empire-building game based on history where one would select one of several factions and build an infrastructure, cities, etc. while researching technological landmarks ("The Wheel," "Feudalism," etc.), Alpha Centauri replaced national differences with philosophical differences. The eco-technological Gaia's Stepdaughers were at odds with the capitalist Morganites (named after the infamous banking legacy JP Morgan) who despised the communistic Human Hive, who viewed the humanitarian Peacekeepers as weaklings, who viewed the hyper-survivalist Spartans as gun-toting nuts, who viewed the technophiliac University as a bunch of wimpy nerds.

Or something like that. While some groups were statistically more likely to ally or war based on their factional beliefs, in the end it was possible to conduct social engineering on your society. Do you want a free-market capitalist economy, or a planned socialist economy like Sweden? Maybe you feel like making Ted Turner your financial advisor, and you'll create an environment-friendly government at the cost of economic growth. (CAPTAIN PLANET!). You could select whether to be a police state or a democracy, or even a religious theocracy like Iran. You could select what your society values most: Power, Wealth, or Knowledge. And you could eventually work towards attaining some form of transhumanistic society; whether you wanted a society where everyone was a cybernetically enhanced superbeing, whether you had a eudaimonic society where everyone was able to work in paradise, or whether you wanted to use drugs to control your minions, ala Brave New World, you could theoretically pull it off. The weirdest thing though was the technologies you researched; while you'd research your typical technological advances like Applied Mathematics or Organic Superlubricant, you could also direct your research on unlocking philosophical truths such as the nature of Nicomachean Ethics or how to attain The Will to Power. So the game ended up having you wondering what is the purpose of life? Are we just meant to fuck a lot, to uncover truth, or to become filthy rich? Maybe a warrior-society will keep us strong, or maybe religion is our primary key to salvation. Who knows?

Another game I would like to dwell on is Deus Ex, also released for the PC. At first, it appears like any other shooter game, yet looks are deceiving. You create your character using a wide variety of stats, so you could learn how to be a master sniper, or maybe how to hack ATMs for cash. The actual reason this game is good is because of its unusually decent plot, which involves a world-domination conspiracy dealing with the Illuminati, Area 51, Echelon IV, the Knights Templar, and a good deal of other conspiracy groups (note this game came out at least a year before the Da Vinci code made conspiracy theories idiotically mainstream). How you acted in the game would affect the outcomes of future events, and potentially how the game ended as well; you were given the choice of multiple endings depending on how you believed society should work best: Should you destroy all global communication and force people into technological feudalism that would eventually result in the rise of independent city-states? Do you help resurrect the Illuminati and 20th century capitalism (a bunch of wealthy people protected by lawyers and tax codes)? Or do you merge yourself with a rogue AI in the attempt to invent a God in a manner that would make Rosseau proud? The game was worth playing through multiple times as each time you played through, you would find something you missed, and your worldview on society would subsequently be altered. Maybe you missed the allusion to the USENET Oracle, or reading about the fall of the Templars? Maybe you're curious as to how the Hashishin figure into all of this?

The point of this all is that there can be two different extremes by which a game could be classified as art. We've got the visual extreme in which games sacrifice depth for the sake of using artistic motif (games like Rez, Ikaruga, Katamari Damacy, Panzer Dragoon, etc), or we've got the games that look like any other at first yet are so loaded in philosophical debate that they can actually affect your outlook on life.

Commentary would be great, for this was a relatively hastily-written article.

Well, now that I righted the wrongs of Honestgamers not having a review for Guardian Heroes, I suppose I'm going to continue writing wrongs. There are several games I notice are missing reviews and by Jove I am going to review them:

Alpha Centauri
Fighters Megamix
Jagged Alliance 2
Metal Slug X
X-com Apocalypse

There are several others I missed out on but for now I'm putting more priority on these reviews.

That's right; I might actually get off my lazy bum and write a review or few. Anyway, here's a list of titles I am hoping to write them for:

Die Hard Arcade (SEGA Saturn)
Fighters Megamix (SEGA Saturn)
Guardian Heroes (SEGA Saturn)
Shining Force III Ep 1 (SEGA Saturn)
Chrono Trigger (SNES)
Final Fantasy V (SNES)
Final Fantasy VI (SNES)
Majora's Mask (N64)
Ikaruga (Gamecube)
Fire Emblem 9 (Gamecube)
Naruto: Gekitou No Taisen 4 (Gamecube)
Star Wars: Battlefront II (PC)
Metal Slug 3 (Xbox/PS2)

Sometime ago, Genj did an article on the current state of Capcom and their IPs. This was a good article with a template that could easily be applied to any other set of companies. For today, I am looking at Konami to see where they are and where they're going:

Konami's Franchises:
Contra: Having popularized the platformer run-and-gun, Contra was a classic. Then with the exception of Contra: Hard Corps, the series would then fall apart with Contra Force, Contra III, and those god-awful 3D Contras on the Playstation and PS2. This is a dead series.
Castlevania: Once a brilliant exploration game, Castlevania reached a high point with Dracula X for the Turbo-CD. Then the series fell apart with Symphony of the Night and Castlevania 64, and has been on the decline ever since. I do wish for Portrait of Ruin to be good, as it is the first Castlevania since Dracula X to take place outside Dracula's castle.
Metal Gear: The MSX game was OK for it's time, as was Metal Gear 2 (which was coincidentially NOT made by Kojima). Metal Gear Solid was a horrible stealth game, rendered obsolete a month later with Thief: The Dark Project (which unfortunately nobody ever heard of), MGS II was generally hated, I've yet to play MGS III, and Ac!d just angered people with it's card-game mechanics.
Gradius: This schmup series I never liked, up until Gradius V which I want to play (if only because I'm a Treasure fan).
Tokimeki Memorial: Konami's cash cow numero uno. I have yet to actually play any of them as I am not into dating sims (my rationale is they actually hurt my chances at getting a real date).

So we have one, maybe two IPs of theirs that can be good.

Normally, this isn't a problem as I've up until now taken the easy route to running JP games on my Saturn (aka Action Replay 4-in-1). But I cannot find the codes for the games I need to run:

Dragon Force II
Panzer Dragoon Azel
Christmas Nights

Does anyone know where I can find the codes to make these JP games run on my NTSC console, or shall I have to mod the console itself. Are there any professional modders out there, or any good manuals so that (hopefully not) I'll have to mod it myself?

I've always wondered if certain games would lose their playability over a prolonged period of time, and the surprising thing is that despite our Street Fighters, our Virtua Fighters, etc. being rendered unplayable, there are still games that one can pop in today and still enjoy.

Guardian Heroes: 10 years, and it's still a very playable title. While there have been many great stat-brawlers like X-men Legends II and Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, they fail to capture the precision of this title. By limiting themselves to three 2d planes, Treasure was able to create a game that rewarded players for executing elegant combos and punished button mashers (unless you played as the oh-so-cheap Kanon Grey, or Sword Han)...

Starcraft: Will it ever die? I'm sure it will when Starcraft II comes out, but seeing how it's retained such a dedicated fanbase despite games like the Age of Empires II and Red Alert II: Yuri's Revenge, and Warcraft III, it's safe to say Starcraft will be around for awhile.

Diablo II: With so much stuff to kill, and stuff to kill with, this game is truly the awesomeness.

Quake 2/Half-Life/etc: I'm not sure if I should put these in for while the main games are boring nowadays, the mods for it are truly awesome. Remember RocketQuake, which turned Quake 2 into an aerial combat game? Action Quake? What about Firearms Half-Life? etc?

Goldeneye 64/Perfect Dark: Eh? Here's a weird set; the having only a single analog stick on the N64 controller was annoying, but fast-foward to the days of console emulation, and now one can map a single dual-analog controller (or the mouse and keyboard) to allow one more precision when it comes to aiming. In Perfect-Dark's setup, I am able to macro a single button to press both B and Z making it a LOT easier to do Alternate fire on weapons.

EDIT: Man was I in a haste, that I forgot to mention Contra: Hard Corps. It is a classic who's greatness wouldn't be challenged until much later when SNK created the oh-so-awesome Metal Slug 3.

Deus Ex: One of the best RPGs I've ever played. You'd be wise to pick up a copy if you find one. Invisible War was an insult to it though.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves: Perhaps the most fun I've had with a fighter in awhile; it feels so intuitive and few characters feel overpowered. If you can survive the horrid translation, the Dreamcast version is worth getting.

Half-Life 2: Felt uninspired. I loved throwing stuff around but in the end the game felt like an overglorified tech demo.

Halo 2: Finish the fight...in the next game. Earth will never be the same...with the two missions you play in it. New features include sticky bullets, a shotgun that can't decide it's range, and a sword that frequently outclasses it. Don't worry if you're a kid; you can sound all cool and shit as you spout racist profanities with the "encrypted" voice. Fun!

Jagged Alliance: This may be the best "Tactics" RPG I've ever played (yes, even taking Disgaea and La Pucelle into account). It's amazing the sheer number of ways they give you to kill your foe without ever having to put magic in the game.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
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A current list of impressions from reading coverage:

-Afrika: Is this a game? A tech demo? Whatever it is, this is one of the worst trailers out there.
-Assassin's Creed: Though a trailer, it gives us a hint of what to expect from gameplay. It looks a lot like a medieval Splinter Cell, which would be cool if done right. Of course, it's Ubisoft so more likely than not...
-Gears of War: The inventory system looks a LOT like Perfect Dark. I'm going to keep my eye on this one, if only because it's the guys that did Unreal Tournament...
-Halo 3: All they gave us was a movie. No gameplay footage hurts my impression. Of course, I was disappointed by the previous two games so unless Bungie pulls their act together, I doubt I'll play this instead of UT2007 when it comes out.
-Lost Planet: Looks fun, plus it has mecha. I'm interested in this one if only because it's a Capcom title that is not the bazillionth remake of Street Fighter (whatever) or Resident Evil.
-Metal Gear Solid 4: I was disappointed when I realized that I was looking at a trailer once again; I like to see actual gameplay footage rather than a cheesy movie.
-Red Steel: I remember when people were hyped about this sometime ago. It looks a LOT like Perfect Dark Zero if you ask me. Though it still looks better than most Gamecube titles and hopefully shutting up the gameplay>graphics arguments that give me nightmares to these days, there are several issues I have. The Freeze Bullet looks cool yet the swordplay looks wonky as each swipe becomes a predetermined attack (meaning the game could easily be done with a gamepad) rather than you having total freedom and the game calculating damage based on momentum, etc. The ability to use the "nunchuck" peripheral as a parrying blade looks cool though...maybe if Oblivion were ported to this system, Bethesda could find a way to bring back dual-wielding from Daggerfall? (hint, hint)
-Smash Bros Brawl: (This was an exception as though a trailer, it hints as to what will actually be in the game) SNAAAKE! I cracked up at the trailer due to the random mishmash of elements. I count on Smash Bros to rock, yet hearing third-party characters will be added is great, if only to quell fanboy wars. Now we may be able to prove that Sonic is greater than Mario, or Link greater than Cloud. Samus vs. Megaman? Ryu vs. Terry Bogard?
-Warhawk: Tell me. If the developers only got the tilt-sensor (not motion sensing) controllers 2 weeks before E3, how will they be able to use it without it becoming a gimmick? Looks rather generic if you ask me.

Yesterday, I lamented on the death of hardcore gaming and the rise of the casual gaming. Coincidentially, another evil has been spawned from this series of events: the "Nongame" game, which either is a collection of minigames, or a nongame outright. In short, companies are releasing in increasing frequency collections of minigames or nongames rather than focusing on gameplay-intensive.

Nintendo started this some time ago with Mario Paint and other groups soon followed. Think of the many Mario Parties (you KNOW they're going to do Mario Party 8, whether we like it or not), Monkey Ball, WarioWare, Bishi Bashi Special, Feel the Magic, Osu! Tatakae! Ouedan!, etc. Nintendogs is inexplicably popular (my sister was like "They're cute," to which I reply "It's the fucking Dogz craze again; you got bored before and you will again.") and I've noticed Wiitards (thanks Zig) out defending Bob Ross Painting in full force, citing Family Guy as the reason this painter is awesome even if the actual software will most likely suck.

In the end, this rise of nongames is brainwashing people; I've checked the Gamefaqs and Nsider forums for the Wii and see people talking about the possibilities of cooking or carpentry-themed minigames (even if these aren't really fantasies as one can do these as real-life hobbies) being turned into games of their own right (though I admit I suggested rather than doing carpentry as a game in it's own right, give players the ability to board up a house in a Night of the Living Dead type scenario). Nevermind that the controller is basically a 3d analog stick that has the potential to improve REAL games (e.g. notice how when dual-wielding in FPS games, your guns share the same crosshair; imagine if you could aim at seperate targets); wiimps seem to want non-games at the moment even if a few weeks ago they were spouting gameplay>graphics in perfect unison. Unless I'm floored at E3, I'm very skeptical as to their new console which is a crying shame as I liked the controller and would've liked to develop games for it.

Once upon a time, hardcore gamers reigned supreme. Then the casual gamer appeared. To accomidate this inferior being, gaming nowadays has become more mainstreamed that with the exception of the occasional challenge (e.g. Ninja Gaiden Black on Ninja Master mode) or import, one can literally breeze through todays movie-fests, all to sate the fragile ego of the casual gamer. You know when you're speaking to a casual gamer when:
-He's never heard of any other RPG series besides Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior.
-He buys the same sports title every year.
-He associates shooters with Halo rather than Thunderforce III, Darius Gaiden or Contra: Hard Corps.
-He thinks Tekken is a good fighting game.
-And that Metal Gear Solid is a good stealth game.
-He thinks the Saturn doesn't have any games ("All it had was NiGHTs" said one guy.)

What happened to the gaming environment? Why have the sidescroller beat-em-up and top-down shooter disappeared save for the occasional import? Why was I able to breeze through Legendary Mode of Halo 1 without breaking a sweat? And why is it that "professional reviewers" are now criticizing games for being too difficult (case in point: Gamespy Review of Ikaruga) or not having state-of-the-art graphics (Gamespot review of Alien Hominid)?

Though far be it from me to blame this change of gaming trends, I put the blame on the Multimedia Revolution and Sony. Back in the early 90s when the CD was introduced as replacement for floppy discs and VHS tapes, people were crazy for "interactive multimedia" or in layman's terms, crap. The most logical case of this trend came in Myst and Night Trap, two popular pieces of shit no real gamer would be caught dead with. Eventually, people wised up to this fad of bad FMV and non-interactive gaming and the end of the Multimedia Revolution (and the subsequent deaths of the 3D0, CD-I, CD32, and Sega CD, as well as the cancellation of the Hasbro Controlvision and Nintendo Playstation) left Sony in a prime position to take over the CD medium.

Market their new Playstation they did well, and market games the third-parties did. With movie-like FMVs to take away from actual gameplay (though the gameplay was better than the crap for previous systems), games like FFVII and Metal Gear Solid made gaming a popular form of entertainment for everyone besides kids and diehard enthusiasts. Nevermind the fact that GameArts had pulled off the successful integration of interaction and non-interaction with Lunar: Eternal Blue, for only a few diehard gamers even heard of Lunar as it got buried in a sea of shit.

In the end, the rise of mainstream gravely wounded hardcore gamers; why make a top-down shooter that sells 50,000 copies when one could make an FMV-fest that sells a million? Of course, a good portion of these million people do not know how to lose, and so the games get toned down in difficulty (notice a difficulty difference between Contra: Shattered Soldier and Neo Contra?); true, some games have adjustable difficulties yet many more either don't have this (most RPGs and Nintendo games) or require you play through easy mode to unlock the (marginally) harder mode.

I rant. I know there are plenty of good titles out there nowadays, like Splinter Cell and Freedom Force, yet it feels like there's more overrated crap nowadays. Even Nintendo, after reaching a high point quality-wise in the 64 era (what with Mario 64, Goldeneye 007, Custom Robo, and Sin&Punishment) now sucks save for Fire Emblem (and this game series has more challengers now that tactical RPGs are relatively popular now).

This may be a biased article but I'm too worn out to check for subjectivity as of now. I need to catch some sleep.