There I was, circa 2003 installing a little game called ‘Soldier Of Fortune II’. I’d played the previous version and had hours of fun blasting limbs from as far as I could tell a legion of douchebags in wifebeaters and SS wannabees. The install finished and within the first 15 minutes of playing I was having fun manually chopping pieces of my downed foes skull off in something that Ed Gein would get an erection over. See kids, there was this magic time around when publishers didn’t really have to appease the ratings boards as strictly and things like SOF and even Half Life were just expected to be able to turn your opponents into a bloody mess of giblets with a grenade or in some cases a crowbar.

Now it seems that game developers are more focused on creating overly subversive stories instead on giving the player a little more poignant realism in the form of optional total bodily dismemberment. Yeah sure there are still gibs in UT3 and God Of War has bloody decapitations but all in all after being a gore hound for these earlier games they just strike me as a little weak. Which brings me to my next point:

The all powerful, game stomping, fail-safe line of the A-O rating. Publishers shy away from this because there’s a good chance that their product will be outlawed in several countries as well as shunned by retailers. But if you’ve gotten around to playing Madworld you’ll see the same argument that hack directors make when they want to show their cocks in their terribly pretentious arthouse film. And that is; ‘It’s pornography unless it’s artistic.’ This is why Madhouse ever came about the way it did and on that system. Considering that the Wii is barely above the PS2 in graphics power I have a feeling that this game could have been done far more violently years ago for the aforementioned system. (continue reading…)

Grandia is a game I played over and over when I was younger, and now, nearly eight years down the line, I decided to give it another go for nostalgia’s sake.  Many of the flaws escaped my notice when I was just a wide-eyed kid, new to the RPG genre and still fascinated by the idea of a storyline in a video game, but what I loved about the game- the fun battles, the colorful characters, the sheer sense of fun and adventure- have all aged like a fine wine.

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As a product of an oddly eclectic Christian upbringing, I’ve encountered quite a bit of radical stuff during my Sunday school classes.  One of the things I’ve always had problems with, however, is the principle of turning the other cheek.

Not that it made  sense to me at the time. For me, not retaliating was the ultimate excuse for being a doormat. Turn the other cheek? Yeah, right. I’d rather do the eye for an eye thingy–even in an MMORPG. (continue reading…)

This gem has just been released in Japan, and aside from the terrible, terrible name, the game is great! If you have a flashcart, you can just grab the Japanese copy because it includes a full english translation (and uncensored cards)!

This is another game in the series of the Yu-Gi-Oh: World Championship series. I own both 2006 and 2008, having gotten all cards on 2008 and having played a lot of 2006. And again, this game is fun, because I love the Yugioh card game. There’s so much variety, and because every release includes a whole bunch of new cards, it’s worth playing them every year. (continue reading…)

The Five Hats of Gaming present…

…the top five games not worth full price

Brought to you by Fedora Man

Well it’s finally March; or rather it has been March for half a month now, whatever. It’s hard keeping track of time when you’re on another planet fighting the living embodiment of anger with nothing but hat based weaponry and your wit; not to mention making love to all the alien women who all suspiciously speak English (call me). In fact it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the time when you’re fighting robots and defending humanity twenty-four hours a day seven days a week (or sometimes eight days a week depending on where I am) so cut me some slack on the issue. But in between throwing my Fedora-rangs (not a rip-off of Batman) and solving super crime in my Fedora Cave I did manage to get down to Gamestop to browse the selection. I was thinking “Damn, I need some new games to play in between sleeping and fighting five dimensional creatures that my mind can’t fully comprehend.” Because honestly, what the hell else am I going to do in my spare time but play games on my super computer?

A horrible thing happened as I browsed the new games list: most of them weren’t worth the displayed price and I’ll be damned if I spend a cent of my billions of dollars if it’s on something overpriced and uninteresting. At first I believed some crime was afoot. Perhaps my non-arch-nemesis (but a nemesis nonetheless) The Emo-inator replaced all the great new games with some games that were released last year and already had at least thirty dollars shaved off the price tag in reality. But I quickly found out he was still in jail after his last big scheme (replacing all the pen ink in my mansion with black eyeliner). So I returned to Gamestop and demanded answers! “Why are these games priced at sixty dollars!” I demanded to know. “There is no way in hell they’re worth that much money!” I grabbed that pimply faced bastard by his collar and pulled him close to my face to show him I was serious. The rest after that was a blur, but I’m pretty sure the police came and I think I was trying to explain my innocence to them while being beaten with their night sticks. I couldn’t do anything since I wasn’t in costume (my fedora) so I just had to take the ass kicking. There is some good news though: I did manage to write down a list of games to bring to the public’s attention before I got sent to jail. Now the list was hastily scrawled on a dollar bill and there’s also a lot of blood on it but I’m pretty sure I can read it so I hope you can appreciate what I’ve done for you in the following list.

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Voice acting in video games was once an enthralling, amazing, almost unheardof thing.  It was pretty awesome to hear ‘VALKYRIE SHOT THE FOOD’ come from a Gameboy’s mono speaker.  Yeah, I saw that shit-eating grin, you remember.

As technology grew though, it became more and more common to have soundbytes of your hero screaming and yelling, and eventually games became fully voiced.  There are ups and downs to such things that I won’t discuss here, ’cause that’s best left to an article dedicated thereto.  Here, I wanna discuss Star Fox.

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Bioshock, now infamous amongst gamers of all seasoning, shook the industry by proving singleplayer gaming was NOT dead. It proved Co-op was not necessary to be interesting, that multiplayer modes were not mandatory in an FPS, and that stupid plot lines and outrageous characters would not feel out of place in a serious tone. For lots of reasons, Bioshock was a great game, but for one, it killed the experience for me. Right now, I’m going to warn you, if you have not played the game, I cannot assure you I won’t spoil it. I’m going to talk as if you have finished it, so spoilers potentially start HERE.====================== (continue reading…)

Something for all you blood lusting Wii owners, it’s MadWorld by Platinum Games. With the drought of something worthwhile, MadWorld will delight all out there who owns a Wii. Carefully crafted by Platinum Games, the former developers of Clover Studio, you know it’s going to bring own the bacon.

MadWorld is stylized game, consisting of mainly three colors – if you haven’t guessed already. Taking the look from Sin City, MadWorld does it extremely well. The graphical presentation is nice, smooth and creamy; or rather, nice to look at as the spectrum is actually really fitting for the game. The game does a good job making the world, well Mad, as it seems to a broken down trash heap of no humanity left. The level design sports good variety as no two levels looks the same, giving out nice atmosphere to the bloodshed that is all around you. (continue reading…)

I’ll bite.  The following is gaming as it relates to my life, or vice-versa.

Childhood

I did not have a pleasant childhood.  My mother had some severe psychological disorders and chemical imbalances, as did I.  My brother always seemed to be barely aware of the world around him.

I know, I know, poor me.  However, these terrible things are what led me to Ebeneezer’s, the local arcade, where I quickly became ‘Little Sister’ to the majority of the regulars.  I was not allowed to be myself at home, even as young as three or four years old, but since my mother couldn’t handle having me around, I was often dropped off at the arcade or the library.  The arcade was where I learned about various arcade hardware which lead me to working on computers later in life, and spurred my interest in digital music.  It also introduced me to the phrase ‘winners don’t do drugs,’ which popped up on the intro to nearly every game.

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I’m curious to see how you all got started with the vidya, so feel free to copy this post’s format if you want.

Childhood
When I was three years old, my father bought me a NES. My mother objected, but Dad insisted that it would be good for my hand/eye coordination. That tiny event, which took place almost twenty years ago, was the most influential event in my early life. If I hadn’t become interested in video games, I would have never become interested in all things electronic, which would convince me to start tinkering with computers, which would lead to me getting my A+ certification at a fairly young age, which would inspire me to pursue a degree in Computer Technology at Purdue. Also, I would have never become a young basement-dweller, which would lead my parents to forcing me into middle school band, which would introduce me to a vast majority of my pre-college friends, which would lead me to doing marching band, which would force me to get in shape, and on and on and on.

But I’m rambling. Let’s talk about the vidya. (continue reading…)