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I've been pondering a series of articles that will be a bit of a departure for this blog. I know I talk a lot about video games, or comic books, or wrestling. Basically, I do have interest in these things, but for the most part, I've tried to keep things non-controversial. I have friends who do not share my beliefs. I know this.

However, this vacation has given me time to think, and my mind has gone in some interesting directions. As should be obvious to even a casual reader of this blog, I'm a tech nerd. Not as much as some people I know, but still up there. Starting in 1989, I was involved in what were called Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSes. These were computers set up in people's homes where you could call them with your modem, and leave messages for other users, or play games, or download programs. Early BBSes were pretty primitive, most only having one telephone line. Later versions had between 6-10 lines, facilitating live chat and multiplayer games. In 1994, I started attending Point Loma, and got into the early version of the Internet. Both of these were very different beasts than the Internet we know now, but even in the early days, it was sometimes difficult being a Christian in these environments, as there was a lot of interaction with non-Christians. These days though, it can be outright hostile.

When I have a big article in mind, it can sometimes churn in my mind a bit before I can decide the best way to go about it. In particular, I was afraid that this series of articles could look like an attack on those of different faiths. That's not my intention at all. Therefore, I think my ideal starting point is looking at other Christians.

Most people outside of the faith rarely, if ever, read Bibles. So, their impression of Christianity comes from Christians that they know. The most natural kind of conversion takes place when a non-believer sees a believer truly living in the faith, and sees that they have something in their lives that the non-believer is missing. When the non-believer cannot see anything different in the life of the believer, then the non-believer has no reason to think there can be anything different. Moreover, it becomes easy for the non-believer to dismiss all believers as deluded hypocrites.

It's not a fair judgment. Sometimes, a believer's life is like a person in a car who relinquishes the steering wheel to Jesus so that Jesus can take the believer where the believer needs to go. However, some believers decide they don't want to go there, and take the wheel back, and end up crashing. Even though it was the believer driving, some might think that that was the result of giving the wheel to Jesus. It was not. It was the result of taking it back.

Now I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm not. But some of the saddest events of human history have come when people who have called themselves Christian have ignored the Bible. At one point, Jesus summarizes the rules of Christianity thusly: Love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself. When asked who a “neighbor” was, Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, with the message being that everybody is your neighbor.

But because of humanity being flawed, we see many examples throughout history of people not only calling themselves Christian, but proclaiming themselves to be actively doing the will of God, not following these instructions, and disasters always results. Just off the top of my head, I can cite the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the misdeeds of the Catholic Church that led to the Protestant Reformation (though, it should be noted that the Catholic Church had its own series of reformations after that to fix these issues), Southern slave holders before and during the Civil War, and a lot of the members of the Ku Klux Klan afterwards. There's even historical evidence that Hitler considered himself a Christian. But in each case, you can see the profound lack of following one or both of the above commandments.

Even today, this is still an issue to varying degrees. Without getting into things publicly, I can tell you that I have suffered immensely due to misdeeds of people who call themselves Christian, especially when said people have some measure of authority with a Christian institution. And in some ways I think it's good I know the harm that can result, now that I can be described as having authority in a Christian institution. I know to be careful in my dealings with others, to not become that sort of person.

Disgraced ex-lawyer Jack Thompson is another example. Thompson built a career upon picking some target of popular culture, then doing whatever he could to ban or restrict it in the supposed name of the children. Video games were his frequent target, but far from his only one. After his recent disbarment, his announced plan was to sue for religious discrimination, claiming that his actions were legally protected exercise of his faith.

But if you just looked at how he conducted himself, you didn't see any attempt to glorify God. You saw an attempt to glorify Jack Thompson. He was rude and profane in any attempts to communicate with him. When confronted with arguments he could not counter, he responded by changing the issue to personally attacking the arguer. He even engaged in behavior against heads of video game companies reminiscent of stalking (once even calling the mother of the CEO of the video game company that made the Grand Theft Auto series to tell her she should be ashamed of her son.) There was certainly no love for neighbors from Jack Thompson, and that's part of why he's no longer allowed to practice law.

It's a hard lot to be a Christian in a lot of ways. You have to do your best to follow those commandments, even when dealing with a world that categorically does not follow them, and even mocks them as hopelessly naive.

But I don't think this piece would be complete without discussing the topic that non-believers most often cite in their attempts to say Christians are not obeying these commandments. There has been a larger and larger movement in recent years to cast homosexuality as something intrinsic to a person, comparable to hair color, skin color or what hand a person is more proficient in using. I reject this idea, and the studies behind which I believe are agenda-based pseudoscience. In particular, I believe the existence of bisexuality really kills this idea that it's like a switch in your brain and there cannot be a choice. Bisexual people could certainly choose one alternative or the other.

It's difficult to discuss homosexuality in today's world. I have had friends, both online and offline, who were homosexual. And in today's society, it feels like speaking against homosexuality is tantamount to an attack on people who happen to be homosexual. This is even to the extent that it seems that people are classified into two categories: Either those who accept homosexuality as a natural, inborn trait, and that it deserves to be considered as equally valid to heterosexuality, or those that fear it, and would commit violence against homosexuals for no other reason than their sexual preference if given a choice.

In fact, one of the difficulties in discussing this topic is the idea that those who support homosexuality have a ready-made response in order to switch the topic of discussion from the argument to the arguer. That response is the accusation of homophobia. I do believe homophobia does exist, but that it is strictly confined to those who would practice violence. In no other topic can you be condemned as “afraid” for simply disagreeing. And it is somewhat hypocritical given that homosexuality itself was once classified as a mental illness. Now, its opponents are being accused of having some sort of mental issue themselves, and once you go down that road, productive discussion is impossible. I remember one online debate where I merely said that I did not believe sexuality was intrinsic, and a responder immediately responded that I was being a homophobic, which in this person's mind was supposedly a hate crime, and thus I should be immediately banned. Fortunately, sanity prevailed.

There is a third option between total acceptance and violent response. I condemn those who would commit violence against anyone outside of direct self defense, and if those people claim to be doing so in the name of Jesus, then they are very clearly going against what the Bible says. However, the Bible is very clear in several places as defining homosexual acts as sinful, which implies that it is a choice. Some people have tried to refute this, focusing especially on the clearest language in the Bible on the topic, that of Leviticus 18:22, which defines such conduct as an “abomination”, or something that is hateful and vile towards the Lord.

Most opposition thus focuses on the idea that the law codes of Leviticus also forbid a number of other things, that Christians do or use. And the answer to this comes in understanding of Leviticus. This was part of the code that was handed down to the Jews under the Old Covenant in order that other races would see the Jews as different and special. However, the Old Covenant did not work, and Jesus pointed out that a lot of these rules no longer applied under the New Covenant. However, claiming that the classification of homosexuality is one of these rules that no longer applies is extremely problematic. Even under the new covenant, the purpose of sexuality in general is procreation inside the bonds of marriage (clearly defined as man and woman, fitting the procreation purpose). There are several other verses which cover the topic, and there are plenty of online references of these verses you can search for.

Some try to claim that “modern theology” has discovered that these verses actually have a different meaning than what they say, but I find these lines of logic entirely specious. Unfortunately, there is a growing movement in churches to try to fit the Bible and even God himself within the confines of known science. I actually walked out of a church service once (where I was there only for an assignment in college on comparative denominations) because the pastor was preaching about how “we know” that Jesus did not literally turn water into wine. It's a very dangerous line of reasoning. If nothing else, you're making Jesus incapable of the supernatural, and the supernatural includes the ability to save every person on Earth from their sins with His sacrifice.

So how should Christians react to homosexuality? The answer to that is the same as it is to any question about how Christians should act: the way Jesus would. And I believe that He would love homosexuals, and be with them, and speak to them. But he would not accept their sin. This is in line with how Jesus treated prostitutes and tax collectors (which were a lot nastier than the modern IRS). I also believe that it is possible for a willing homosexual to become heterosexual with spiritual counseling. Unfortunately, some of these programs have been not run well, or gotten bad results from unwilling participants. However, there are verified cases of these programs working... as well as verified threats on the lives of those who successfully went through it from certain homosexuals. I would think these attempts are difficult though, because it would be like trying to recover from alcoholism and literally being unable to avoid alcohol in your daily life.

Part of this love that I think a lot of Christians fail at though is attempts to promote homosexuality to a higher level of sin than what is in their lives. We all know the story about Jesus telling a mob ready to stone a sinful woman that the person without sin should be the first to throw the stone at her (John 8:1-11), but we forget that one often. All of us have sin in our lives (Romans 3:23), and are not fit to cast stones at anyone else.

When it comes down to it, I believe that a Christian who is practicing homosexuality is placing a sinful lifestyle before God, and at the very least cheating themselves out of blessing. Churches that accept homosexuality are teaching false doctrine. Does that have consequences towards salvation? I cannot answer that. Although, one of the scariest passages of the Bible should be pointed out: Matthew 7:21-22 talks about final judgment. Specifically, that there will be people on Judgment Day who say that they did this or that in Jesus' name, even up to the point of healing the sick or casting out demons, and they'll be told by Jesus that He never knew them. Or, more to the point, that they never really knew Him. There may very well be those who preach acceptance of homosexuality in that crowd, and there may be those who committed violence against homosexuals in that crowd.

But one thing I know for sure... there will definitely be those who failed to love God with everything they had, and their neighbor as themselves in that crowd.

Believe it or not, this is actually only part 1 of a planned 3 parts of this. More later.

Kind of a hodge podge of general catch up today.

E-mail Hacked:

The other week, it was a good thing I was up late because my primary e-mail account was hacked. Luckily, I managed to catch the problem as soon as messages began bouncing off, and immediately change my password. My apologies to anyone who reads this if you were sent one of the messages from the hacker.

At the same time, though, I hope everyone knows a little bit of common sense on the Internet. If you receive an e-mail of just a suspicious looking link (or with really generic text), even from a friend or family member, you absolutely have to think there's something going on, and not follow the link. Playing World of Warcraft has given me some experience in this, as a search of my mail's spam filter instantly reveals about 2 or 3 mails a week I get for phishing attempts for my WoW password. Whenever I really do send someone a link, I tell them why I think the link would be interesting to them, so they know it's from me.

But in the meantime, I've basically placed the e-mail under authentication. Basically, once every month, or any time I log in from an unfamiliar IP address, I'm asked for a 6 digit code from an authenticator installed on my iPad. It's very similar to the security measures for my WoW account.

NFL:

The NFL lockout has ended and football is back in business. In the end, the only casualty was the Hall of Fame Game, which would have pitted my Rams against the Chicago Bears.

It seemed there were a lot of people automatically blaming the owners for this. For them, the logic ended at the fact that the owners opted out of the old Collective Bargaining Agreement (which the players certainly would have done had the CBA not benefited them). The old CBA was really rushed through in order to give outgoing NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue a legacy, and didn't really favor the owners. Add to that the fact that the U.S., if not the whole world has been in a recession for years now, and it's easy to see why owners weren't making enough money.

Some actually argued that the owners were, essentially, making their side up. That despite every other business doing poorly, the NFL was somehow making money hand over fist and the owners were just being greedy. The owners even did offer, in response to NFLPA demands to see the books, to have an independent person see the books and confirm this, but the NFLPA declined it. To me, this kills the lying claim, but it wasn't just random idiots on the Internet making these claims, it was also people who actually are paid for writing their opinions on football.

But at least now the nonsense is over. I'm excited about the additions that Rams GM Billy Devaney has made to the team. Devaney has a strategy of not going after the huge splashy names, but picking up solid contributors, which makes sense in a league with a salary cap. (Though he did get the guy many rated as the best available safety, which was a need position for the Rams). I'm really excited for the upcoming season.

Hacking Groups:

I've written a bit here before about Anonymous, the hacking group that is blamed for, among other things, taking down the PlayStation Network for approximately 2 months earlier this year. In some ways, it is difficult to classify Anonymous as a group, as supposedly, anyone who agrees with their ideas is part of them, except for the idea that some members basically say other people aren't part of it.

To sum up, Anonymous fancies themselves as masked avengers for the Internet community, attacking companies and even governments for supposed wrongdoing. Sony's supposed wrongdoings included removal of the OtherOS feature, which allowed Linux to be installed on a PS3, and prosecuting those involved in hacking PS3 firmware. A splinter group has arisen, calling itself LulzSec, basically hacking because they find it funny to do so.

But both groups have been united on one issue lately. They're starting to get caught and they don't like it. As more and more people get arrested for being part of this, the two groups are responding with more and more threatening messages about how they're just an idea and they can't be stopped, and how arrests will result in more hacking, essentially trying to scare governments into not arresting them.

Both groups are just bullies. All bullies are cowards at heart. Here, hiding behind the anonymity of a computer screen allows the bullying. But the last thing they want is consequences for their actions. Being an avenger is a lot less fun if there are consequences... and it's also a lot less funny then.

The proper course of action... keep arresting, keep prosecuting. Throw the book at those caught. Eventually, the remaining kiddies will see that it's just not worth it, and stop.

Vacation:

Still enjoying my summer off from work. I really love my job, especially working with the students, but it is tiring, and having time off is a good thing. This, even though I find myself slipping into old habits of having extremely variable sleeping times.

But it's starting to get to the point where I am looking forward to returning, which is good. The way to happiness with your work is to have a job where you're going there because you want to, not because you have to.

Anyway, I think that's enough randomness for one entry. See you next time.

I'm so eager to actually finish my project that I'm going to go without a lead-in, other than one last bit of explanation. Last time, I mentioned the Humble Indie Bundles, and included games from the 1^st and 2^nd bundles (basically, what happened was I bought the 2^nd bundle, then one day soon after got an e-mail saying that they were throwing in the 1^st bundle as well). The 3^rd bundle is somewhat special, as it's actually called the Frozenbyte Bundle, since all of the included games are made by the game company Frozenbyte. It technically includes 2 more games that have still yet to be made, but I don't hold out huge hope for them. Basically, Frozenbyte wanted to do a bundle package, then realized that the Humble Bundles already had a good model and good word of mouth in place, so they went that route.

That clear, once more into the breach, dear friends...

Penumbra: Overture – PC/Steam
Penumbra: Overture is part of the 1^st Humble Indie Bundle. It's a 3D adventure game with an emphasis on manipulation of objects in the environment. It has a horror theme, as a man who has never known his father gets a letter from him after his mother's funeral. The father is dead too, but points Junior towards a safe deposit box in which Junior is named as an executor. In the box, is a book with incomprehensible writing and a map of a location in Northern Greenland, along with instructions to burn the book. Our protagonist, blaming human nature for his idiocy, ignores the instructions and goes there. Not sure if this is my cup of tea.

Poker Night at the Inventory – PC/Steam
Poker Night is Telltale Games' fanservice. The concept is that a group of characters from other Telltale Games titles get together and play Texas Hold 'Em (since all poker games now have to be Texas Hold 'Em). The characters include Max from Sam & Max: Freelance Police, Strong Bad from the series of games based around characters from homestarrunner.com, The Heavy Weapons Guy from Team Fortress 2 and Tycho Brahe from Penny Arcade. Oddly enough, since the Penny Arcade games (covered here earlier) were based on an alternate reality for the strip, this is the only game to depict a mainstream Penny Arcade character. The characters are hilarious in their conversation with each other, bringing up lots of foibles from their individual series. As a bonus, characters will occasionally offer up a trademark item as their buy in, and if you're the one to knock them out of the game, you unlock it as an item in the now Free-to-play Team Fortress 2. So far, I've gotten Tycho's Pac-Man watch, which seems to trade hands in the strip whenever one of the characters kills the other. But one thing bugs me... Telltale developed the Tales of Monkey Island games... where is Guybrush Threepwood? Perhaps he'll be in a future game, since the plot is that "The Inventory" is a club dedicated to game playing, and other Telltale characters are there. There are other games to play besides Texas Hold 'Em.

Revenge of the Titans – PC/Steam
Revenge of the Titans is a tower defense game based around stopping aliens from attacking your bases. In comparison to the other 2 tower defense games I have, it doesn't look as nice. It was part of the 2^nd Humble Indie Bundle.

Samorost 2 – PC/Steam
Samorost 2 is an odd Flash game that came as part of the 1^st Humble Bundle. Basically, aliens come and kidnap a guy's dog, and the guy goes after him, initiating a point and click adventure. It seems really reminiscent of Mechanarium, but that one is better.

Shadowgrounds series – PC/Steam
(PC/Steam: Shadowgrounds; Shadowgrounds: Survivor)
This series came as part of the Frozenbyte Bundle, and it's a lot like Alien Breed 2: a third person shooter where you control movement with WASD keys and aim and fire your gun with the mouse. You also fight aliens, these ones being a lot like the Starship Troopers aliens, only a lot smaller. Basically, humanity has colonized Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and the colony has been invaded. In the second one, it's almost comical how much ammunition has been left laying around the site of the alien attack you investigate. And who in their right mind decided that the best way to combat this invasion was to send one guy?

Sid Meier's Civilization V – PC/Steam
This one ended up a little delayed for me because I bought it off Steam then found out that my old computer simply refused to run it. It would just instantly crash instead because it couldn't handle it. But the new computer runs it beautifully, especially after the graphics card installation. Like a lot of Sid Meier's games, this is NOT one to play if you have to wake up early the next morning because it will hook you. You basically develop a civilization, starting from one isolated tribe of settlers and warriors to protect the settlers into a thriving multi city civilization. This version features improved graphics, independent city-states and some simplification of the whole formula. For example, you can only have one military unit per tile now, including in cities, but cities have built in defenses. So it's a lot harder to have wars with other countries since even cities with no troops can hold out for quite a while.

Star Trek Online – PC/Steam
This one I got because it was so discounted on Steam, that even the “Digital Deluxe Version” with freebies like the Original Series uniforms, and the ability to have an NX registry tag (instead of the standard NCC), the game still cost less than the free month of service it comes with. It's interesting. It takes place in the original continuity after the events of the beginning of the 2009 reboot. So, Vulcan is fine, Romulus is gone, and the absence of the home planet of the Romulan Empire has completely de-stabilized the quadrant. Klingons and the Federation are again at war, or near it, due largely to the influence of the Undine (known better as Species 8472). You play as a Federation officer (Klingons character creation is apparently unlocked later), who ends up in command of his ship after everyone on board of higher rank is conveniently killed. You end up getting your ship out of trouble, and an Admiral basically proclaims that Starfleet is currently taking talented commanders where they find them, regardless of rank, and appoints you as the ship's regular captain. As you can tell, there is some poetic license taken here. My character on away team missions actually brings a disruptor minigun of all things, and Starfleet is allowing a LOT of latitude when it comes to customization, including installing disruptors on my ship rather than phasers, and being very open to uniform choices. Right now, my crew (you get crew as you progress through the game, and they tend to be the ones who come with you on Away Missions and communicate with you, so you can get attached easily) are all dressed in TOS uniforms with me in the “Kirk alternate tunic”. I probably won't be playing this every month like I do WoW, but I might put in a month here or there.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – PC/Steam
This game is a classic, first made in 2003. It sells on Steam for $10 and even if the graphics are dated, it's a worthwhile pickup (especially on sale). The game was famous because it actually used the D20 Tabletop RPG system to decide all its combat. As well, it was developed by BioWare who have become famous for including insane amounts of dialogue, as well as the possibility for the player to decide just how good (or evil) the protagonist is. This has led to other games in my collection like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Definitely a worthwhile piece of gaming history.

Tales of Monkey Island Episodes I-V – PC/Steam
Even though these were 5 separate purchases on Steam, I'm bundling them together because they're all part of the same game. This renewal of the classic gaming system has been criticized for being too fanboyish, but it's definitely worth a play for anyone who loves the series like I do. Dominic Armato continues as the voice of Guybrush from the 3^rd and 4^th games, and continues to be perfect at it (basically, he wanted the job because he was a fan of the original game).

Trine – PC/Steam
Trine was part of the Frozenbyte Bundle, but is a very highly reviewed game, even getting half an episode devoted to in on Zero Punctuation. It's a platformer with the twist that you are actually 3 different people magically fused into the same body, and you switch between the three with the press of a button. The three include a warrior, who's good at short range attacks, a female thief who can attack at range, and a mage who can conjure objects into existence. If the game does have criticism, it's of the mage, as his ability can be creatively used to get past many obstacles that it seemed that the designers intended a more complex solution to.

Wings of Prey – PC/Steam
I got this one for very cheap in a recent Steam sale. Basically, my most recent World War II Flight Simulator was 1992's Aces of the Pacific series, so I wanted something more up to date. So far, Wings of Prey LOOKS fantastic, but the controls are awful. The mouse is not a good way to control a plane. Hopefully, there's an option file I can get into and change to a controller pad. So I might look more at this one later.

World of Goo – PC/Steam
This unique game was part of the 1^st Humble Indie Bundle. Basically, it's a puzzle game. On each level, there's a collection of goo balls at one part of the level and a vacuum tube you have to get the goo to in another part. You get the goo to the vacuum tube by building a bridge to the tube. You build a bridge by moving the goo balls into various places, and having them connect to each other to form structures. The challenges are that you have to use as few goo balls as possible because you get more of a bonus the more goo balls actually go to the tube, and physics can be a harsh mistress if you make your goo constructions too ramshackle. A very nice and original puzzle game.

And that wraps us up! For future installments, I'll just keep notes and post updates whenever I get to 10 games or so. I may go back and do things like free Steam games or PSN free downloads, because there is some interesting stuff there, but not anytime soon.

I'd like to thank anybody who read through all these, and hopefully, in the case of any gamers out there, I might have gotten you interested in a game. In the near future, I might move on to completion of other projects, and definitely to some revamp of this blog and its associated subpages.

So to everyone out there, keep on gaming... and I'll still be around...

As I continue to relax and unwind on my vacation, I found it interesting how I'm not as active on the Internet as I used to be. Sure, I still post these blog entries to a hypothetical audience, and still participate on things like Facebook or World of Warcraft, but these are very limited. I completely control who I interact with and why.

In times past, I used to be involved in various communities online, or even run communities. But, honestly, the main reason I don't do that as much anymore is because people online are jerks. And I'm not even talking about my previous experiences with cyberstalking. Honestly, that idiot I decided long ago all I could do is pity, because even if he ever let down his protection of anonymity, there's nothing I could do to him that's anywhere near as bad as the reality he lives with every day: Being who he is.

And, granted, you deal with deception, betrayal and meanness in real life too. I've had more than my share of experience with that as well.

But most everyone has heard the phrase before that “it's just the Internet”. This is a pretty ugly concept if you can imagine it. Basically, it's the idea that the rules of common decency simply don't apply online. In real life, there's not only a fear that certain behavior would get you punched in the nose, but among well-adjusted people, it's difficult to go out of your way to be a jerk to someone.

However, the authors of the webcomic Penny Arcade put this issue in extremely simple terms. I'm going to censor out a bit of profanity here, but they came up with something called the Greater Internet (Jerk) Theory. The theory is simple: That the Internet provides, by its nature, two factors: anonymity, and an audience. And that the combination of those two factors makes a total jerk. They even made a T-Shirt out of this idea.

And unfortunately, it's far too true. I admit I've been pulled into my share of flame wars, but I at least try to put in the effort of trying to be a good and rational person, but those who don't really drag down communities. There's no point in debating with a person who has a demonstrable history of constantly resorting to flame wars when they can't counter your points anymore. As long as someone doesn't mind being irrational, they can always respond “You're just stupid” to even the argument which completely demolishes each and every point they ever had.

And often, if called on their behavior, they'll respond that “It's just the Internet.” The issue has become so widespread that even observers will defend someone who just started a flame war for no apparent reason with that phrase. In fact, in some communities, people will deliberately act stupid in the hope that they'll get someone to call them on it. Under Bizarro-logic, the person who was "acting" stupid then "wins" because he "trolled" the person who justifiably called them stupid, and the community goes along with that idea.

And that ends up leaving two solutions for moderation of the community:

The first option is that you regulate the irrational. Basically, you appoint moderators whose main job is to see who has no interest in being rational, and, shall we say, help them find new things to do with their time. But that ends up being a constant job, since the irrational, by definition, end up often refusing to admit that the owners of a community have the right to regulate it and try to sneak back in. Even without that factor, some communities are so far gone that it'd be the equivalent of multiple amputation. Plus, the irrational will always say they got banned because of their opinions or beliefs, and refusing to acknowledge their idiotic behavior. And, unfortunately, there are good people who get taken in by the hogwash.

The second option is the extreme other solution: just let it go. But once you do that, you basically have to give up on your goals of having your community be someplace for serious discussion. It's a little reminiscent of the World of Warcraft boards when every now and then someone pitches a fit that profanity should be allowed. It's one of the topic that the mods there refuse to tolerate, because it simply comes down to the idea that if the moderators did not impose a non cursing policy on everyone, then the people who want to curse would be imposing their policy on everyone. If your community has people to refuse to be rational, they will impose the irrationality on everyone. There's a reason why there is security at serious discussions like Presidential Debates and the like.

As to why people are like this, there are a number of people on the Internet who are literally mentally ill in some way. It's very easy to hide from a distance, especially since the line between mental illness and severe cases of immature and selfish behavior is thinner than you might think from my experience with both. But for a lot, there's simply something missing from their lives that leads them to seek approval, justification, and most importantly, attention from the Internet. And it's not a healthy thing.

I believe in the theory that people have a “God shaped hole” in them. That basically, without God, people know something is missing in their lives, and they try to fill it with other things. Those other things might being temporary happiness, but a healthy walk with God is the only thing that will truly fill it. Even as a Christian, at times, I've tried to find satisfaction in outside things, but for those who do not truly know God, they really have to find any way they can to fill it, and a lot of people online try to fill it with attention from other people. Usually they'll be belligerent and settle for negative attention, but I've also seen people trolling for pity too.

To sum up, it's not the Internet... it's the people on it. And there's always someone on the other side of that keyboard and monitor. What's the point of being nasty or irrational?

But, onto other things...

Before I get into the reviews, it's important to define a term I'm going to use a lot here and during next time's review: The Humble Indie Bundles. Basically, every now and then, a bunch of independent developers get together and put their games into a bundle. The gimmick is that a consumer decides how much they are going to pay for the bundles of games. You could pay 1 cent if you wanted to (I paid more than that, but I have to admit not much more). Then the money is divided between developers, charity and others. Wikipedia it for more info. But anyway, until recently, the majority of my Steam games were from these bundles (or the free games that I'm not covering at all here). That's why originally I wasn't going to include Steam in this project. The ones I do not mention the Humble Bundles on were not part of the bundles, and I bought them.

Alien Breed 2: Assault – PC/Steam
As I said, I'm generally leaving off free games, but Alien Breed 2 is different. Basically, it wasn't free for everyone. Steam had a promotion where you could obtain “points” by doing various things, and spend the points on various DLC. Just so they could say a game was on there, this was the one game buyable with points. Alien Breed 2 is a 3^rd person shooter from a top down ¾ perspective. You move your guy with the WASD keys, and he will aim towards wherever your mouse is pointed. It's an odd combination, but it's interesting.

Aquaria – PC/Steam
This game came from the 1^st Humble Indie Bundle. It reminds me a lot of Ecco the Dolphin so far. You can definitely tell Indie games from big studio games. There's a different feel about them, and while I do have to say there's some interesting stuff here, the opening narration where the character I control basically tells me we're both part of this story and blah blah blah... really strikes me as pretentious.

Audiosurf – PC/Steam
The first of two games in a row based around the concept of using your MP3 files. This one is based around a racing type game where you try to collect colored squares and avoid grey squares. This one isn't too impressive. If you only get one game based on your MP3 files, then get this next one.

Beat Hazard – PC/Steam
This is an excellent game, and I was very glad to get it for under $4 in the recent sale. The game is very reminiscent of Asteroids, and plays in two ways. Normally, you use the WASD keys to move around and the mouse to move your target scope. No matter where you move to, you will fire at that scope (and anything between you or past the scope). With an Xbox Controller hooked up to your PC (which seems to be pushed by Microsoft to be the new standard for game input), you move with the left stick and aim with the right, similar to old titles like Smash TV. Like Audiosurf, you actually use your own MP3 files to determine gameplay, but here you can actually see the distinction: the volume of the song determines how much firepower your ship has, so a loud thrashing song has your ship putting out a virtual rainbow of firepower, but if the song suddenly goes quiet, so do your guns and it's fun to try to survive then. The game even offers online play by matching up your song info. If you use iTunes like I do, you need to download an extra addon for that, but it's very cheap.

Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition – PC/Steam
Some of the people behind Warhammer once came up with an interesting idea... instead of standard fantasy type settings, why not have the various races play football? This gave birth to a game played with miniatures that was somewhat hard to get into due to the price of miniatures and complexity of the rules. This is the latest PC adaptation of the game. There are 20 races in the game and excellent graphics. However, the trailers are a bit misleading. This is not an action/arcade type game. This is the same game as the miniatures version. There is a live mode, but that just results in having to select units and give commands in real time. I do want to spend more time with this one.

Braid – PC/Steam
Braid came from the 2^nd Humble Indie Bundle, and is best described as a combination of Super Mario Bros. and Prince of Persia. It's got Mario style platforming combined with Prince of Persia style time reversal, so it's very puzzle based.

Gish – PC/Steam
Gish was part of the 1^st Humble Indie Bundle. Gish is a sentient ball of tar. His female friend is captured, and he goes through a platforming game to rescue her, the catch is that he has certain “powers” from being a ball of tar, including sticking to walls and flowing through cracks.

Guild Wars Trilogy – PC/Steam
Guild Wars is an online game that decided to use a different model than World of Warcraft. The game does not charge online fees. Most of the game world is instanced, meaning players travel through it alone, or with NPCs, or ONLY with the group they form, rather than having a persistent whole online world like WoW. This is a collection of the original game and the first two expansions, picked up because it was on sale for very cheap. I've yet to form a conclusion on it yet.

Left 4 Dead series – PC/Steam
(PC/Steam: Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2)
The Left 4 Dead series is something of a departure for me. I usually shun online FPS experiences because I am quite frankly no good at them. In a recent one, I managed to get 3 kills while being killed 22 times, and that was really good for me. The L4D series is different though because it's co-op FPS. The game wastes little time on plot. Basically, you're just one of 4 surviving humans caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. And while a gamer's first instinct might be to mess around out of character and kill his fellow survivors, you NEED all the help you can get against the Zombie Horde. The 2^nd game really just offers some new maps, weapons and items, along with a different cast of survivors.

Lugaru HD – PC/Steam
Lugaru is part of the 1^st Humble Indie Bundle. Basically, you're in a 3D environment, and at first, it looks kind of like Super Mario 64. However, it's a combat game as you're a humanoid rabbit fighting enemies with martial arts. Basically the challenge is how fast you can clear each stage.

Machinarium – PC/Steam
Machinarium is an old style adventure game written in Flash. With no introduction as to what's going on, you're a robot tossed into a junkyard. With a little bit of adventure puzzling, you manage to fix yourself with various spare parts you find there, and the objective is then to get back into the city. Could be interesting. It was part of the 2^nd Humble Indie Bundle.

Osmos – PC/Steam
Osmos is a very clever game (which came as part of the 2^nd Humble Indie Bundle). It's 2D, in a top down perspective. You are, basically, an amoeba. Your goal is to absorb smaller amoebas and add their mass to your own. You must avoid larger amoebas or they'll do the same to you, but if you can add enough mass, you'll become larger. But the catch while you're trying to do this is that the only way to actually move is to fire out bits of your own mass, making yourself smaller each time you do so, and said bits can be absorbed by other amoebas to make them larger, so you have to manage a lot of things while trying to become the biggest amoeba in the level.

Next time, on the ultimate edition of these reviews, the other half of the Steam games, including Penumbra: Overture, Poker Night at the Inventory, Revenge of the Titans, Samorost 2, the Shadowgrounds series, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Star Trek Online, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the Tales of Monkey Island series, Trine, Wings of Prey and World of Goo. And that will wrap us up!

I realized that even though I talked about my trip to Songtan last week, I forgot to give the specifics on the jerseys I got. I've always had a soft spot for jerseys and I needed some non dress shirts for my time away from work. The first two jerseys I found for $10 in a clearance sale.

Los Angeles Lakers yellow home jersey, #7, Lamar Odom: If I had to pick an NBA team, I'd pick the Lakers, and while Odom isn't particularly a favorite, he's a solid contributor. My other option in the sale was Ron Artest, who is insane. It does go to show how long it's been since I followed basketball, since I was expecting a tank top, essentially, but the shoulder straps have gone so wide, it's more accurately a sleeveless shirt.

New York Yankees home jersey, #13. Currently, this is Alex Rodriguez, but home jerseys don't have names on them, so unless A-Rod gets his number retired, it will be someone else's jersey someday. I got a lot of flack over this, since I'm not a New Yorker, but I don't have a team, and I'm not even a baseball fan. I'm not going to say “My team won” if the Yankees win another series. It's just one of the classic jerseys out there. I might eventually get a Jordan jersey if I saw a good deal on one.

St. Louis Rams alternate jersey, #8, Sam Bradford. No one can give me flack over this, as I've followed the Rams for over 30 years now. This marks my 5^th Rams jersey and the first one that's not home colored. My others include #13 Kurt Warner, and #80 Isaac Bruce, in the short-lived 2000 style jersey, with yellow stripes on the side, an Eric Dickerson #29 jersey that is more evocative of a hockey jersey, and a #28 Marshall Faulk in the 1999 style. It's important to note that the jerseys I've gotten here (everyone except for Warner and Bruce) are counterfeit, even though the counterfeiters here do an excellent job. The Faulk jersey features a Super Bowl XXXIV patch, but the Rams wore their white uniforms at SB34. Also, until they changed in 2000, they used applique names and numbers rather than sewn on ones. But I just care that it looks nice.

The alternate color deserves some explanation. All teams have at least two active jersey color schemes, a light one and a dark one. In most cases, the dark one is the home jersey (the Dallas Cowboys are a notable exception to this). In a game, the home team gets to pick which jersey it will wear, forcing their opponent to the opposite color. Some teams are known to pick their lighter jerseys in hotter weather. In addition to this, teams have an official alternate jersey. In the Rams case, it's a gold jersey with blue numbers, and is somewhat of a fashion disaster. As a fan, I'm glad to have it though. Sometimes, teams have been using their alternate colors, or changing them out for throwback jerseys for a season. (For merchandising reasons, teams have to notify the League during the offseason if they want to use throwbacks. After the death of team owner Georgia Frontiere, the Rams wanted to use their throwback uniforms to honor her memory but were not allowed to do so until the next season.

Anyway, to sum up, jerseys are neat.

Before I get to video game reviews, something came up after last time's entry. One of my entries last time was Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Unfortunately, I learned today that Capcom intends to continue an idea that they've done before. Basically, they are releasing a version of the game with 12 new characters (including fan favorite Phoenix Wright), and other tweaks. However, these will NOT be made available to purchasers of the original game, like me. They expect that fans who bought the original game will pony up another $50-$60 for the new game. The reason they do this is that people let them. They claim that there's just TOO much new in the Ultra version and they CAN'T release the changes as DLC, but that's garbage. Both consoles allow downloading of complete disk based games. If nobody bought the new game, they'd change their tune quickly.

It won't do much by itself, but here's one customer who will refuse to buy the new game, at least until it is either severely discounted (as all games eventually are) or used (and even then if they don't pull the stunt of having secondhand customers pay for online access, which I might talk about more later).

Certain game companies can be scum sometimes. Onto the reviews:

Space Ace – PS3
Space Ace is the spiritual successor to Dragon's Lair, which would get an actual sequel later. Like that game, it's a laserdisc that shows a cartoon (again, beautifully animated by Don Bluth). If you make the right choices in the constant Quick Time Events, the story continues, otherwise it jumps to an appropriate death scene. There's a bit of a gimmick here as Dexter, the main character, has been hit by an Infanto Ray in the game's introduction, making him play for most of the game as an awkward teenager, though able to temporarily return to adulthood and strength at certain scripted moments. Like Dragon's Lair, a good look at what was once state of the art in gaming.

Starcraft series – PC
(PC: Starcraft; Starcraft: Brood War)
I've never been a huge RTS fan, but Starcraft is HUGE here. From what I've found out, there are actually two separate cable channels devoted to it. And at the Blizzcons I've been to, nearly the entire field in the Starcraft tournament is Korean. I've also actually busted two different kids for playing Starcraft in the computer lab rather than work like they were supposed to (back at Eumseong, since we don't have a computer lab at Mungyeong yet). Someone once said that Blizzard does not innovate, but they polish exceptionally well, and Starcraft is a very polished and balanced RTS that plays very differently depending on which of the three factions you use. If you like RTS games, get this.

The Movies – PC
This is a game that I was sad did not do better, and survive as a franchise. You are head of a movie studio, and you end up needing to hire actors, writers, directors, etc. in order to make the studio function. You can control the writing of scripts, casting of your stars, construction of your lots, everything. You can even see the finished movies, even though they tend to run for about a minute and just be baffling. Worth a look see at least.

TMNT 2: Turtles in Time Reshelled – PS3
Back in the height of the arcades, just before fighting games really took over, one of the main draws was four (or six) player co-op brawlers. Notable entries in this genre included X-Men, The Avengers, The Simpsons and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is an HD remake of the sequel to the latter game. Like the Monkey Island Special Editions, it's basically the same look, but with better graphics pasted on top. I got this one because I was a fan of the genre, and because on June 30^th, the game was deleted from PSN and XBLA because Ubisoft failed to renew the license. So you can't get this game anymore.

Viva Piñata – PC
How to describe Viva Piñata... basically, it's Microsoft's answer to Pokemon. But rather than casting you as a 10 year old, inexplicably wandering from city to city on your own without food or clothes or anything, you are given a garden to clean up and tend. As you tend, you end up attracting various Piñata to your garden as you fulfill certain conditions, and said Piñata can choose to live in your garden when certain other conditions are achieved. The goal is, well, to catch 'em all. In a couple of funny notes, you can breed Piñata, but unlike Pokemon, which simply dismisses the whole process as “mysterious”, you actually see the Romance Dance (literally just a dance), after which a stork Piñata brings a new baby to your garden. Also, since these are Piñatas, you can break them open for candy. It is quite possible, and in fact a valid gameplay strategy, to break open a Piñata and feed its candy to its child. Um... yeah.

Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception – PSP
You may notice that, like my Wii, I only have one registered game for PSP. There's a reason for that, and I'll leave it at that. Ace Combat is a long running flight sim series, and I think there'll be some definite play potential here. Graphics look great for PSP.

Crackdown series – 360
(360: Crackdown; Crackdown 2)
The original Crackdown was a huge seller for Microsoft, in large part because early on it was bundled with beta invitations for Halo 3, but it was a great game. It's a GTA style sandbox city with a twist: you are actually an agent of the police, and it's your job to get rid of various gangs in the city by eliminating underlings until you weaken a gang leader enough to risk a direct attack. As well, as you progress through the game, you improve your leaping ability and strength to the point where you're comparable to the original appearances of Superman. As well, the game is narrated by a supervisor who can become very darkly humorous, especially when you're fooling around rather than doing what you're supposed to.

Gauntlet II – PS3
The original Gauntlet was a landmark in the arcades. In fact, my original online handle of Wizard came from the first time I ever played Gauntlet at a Disneyland arcade. Gauntlet introduced 4 player co-op play in a dungeon crawler. Gauntlet II shined the original up by allowing players to choose which character they wanted to be regardless which color was available. I remember in the early 90s, when I briefly went to community college, putting quite a lot of time into a Gauntlet II machine that granted 700 health for each quarter, so a dollar was a nice long satisfying playthrough. However, the original Gauntlet games really got killed by the transition to home consoles. The constantly decreasing health insured that you only played the game in small doses. Once you could play for as long as you wanted to, it got old quickly. I picked this up for $2.50 off the PSN (with a PlayStation Plus discount) since it is still worth an occasional play. It was the same sale where I got Rampage World Tour.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith – PS3
As you may have picked up, I'm a huge fan of rhythm games, having a complete set of Rock Band instruments. More songs are always better, and I'm rapidly approaching a total of 1,000 unique songs spread across my multiple music games. What really bolsters the whole collection is picking up older (and thus discounted) Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. This one ran me $15 and includes a total of 41 songs. 29 are by Aerosmith, or their guitarist Joe Perry, and 12 songs by bands that either inspired Aerosmith or have played with them before. Only 4 songs are covers (but you might get the wrong impression playing through career mode as the first tier is of only 2 songs and both are covers). Since Aerosmith signed an exclusive deal with Guitar Hero for this game to be made, Aerosmith songs are sadly lacking from Rock Band (which only has a cover of “Train Kept A' Rollin'”). Unfortunately, this is from the same era as Guitar Hero III, and thus like that game, only supports guitars and not full bands. But it's still a pleasant solo experience.

And with that, we have finished the entire collection except for Steam games. Next time, on the penultimate edition of these reviews, half of the Steam games, including Alien Breed 2: Assault, Aquaria, Audiosurf, Beat Hazard, Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition, Braid, Gish, Guild Wars Trilogy, the Left 4 Dead series, Lugaru HD, Machinarium and Osmos.

If you can say one thing about regular work, it does keep my sleeping habits regular. Without it, or any other needs to be awake at certain times, it's easy to slip back into old habits of going to sleep when I feel tired, waking up when I no longer feel tired, and taking long naps during the day to throw me off even further. It will mean a small adjustment when I start working again, but that's not really an issue.

Otherwise, just hanging out, completing various projects both online and off. On World of Warcraft, I reached “Honored” status with my guild, and was thus able to buy most of the good stuff, including a “minipet” Guild Page who functions as a vendor (which will be great for those times I'm out in the wild and have a full bag of junk that needs to be sold to make room), a tabard to help me gain guild reputation even faster, and the set of heirloom gear I mentioned yesterday.

But speaking of projects I need to finish... on to reviews...

LittleBigPlanet 2 – PS3
On the surface, this one is the same as the original LittleBigPlanet. I even had the same narrator welcome me “back” with the same Sackboy design and pod, as LBP2 is compatible with all of the original's content. But a lot of new stuff has been added, especially in the level editor, where stories of some very complex designing have come up. In the story campaigns so far, Sackboy has gained a grappling hook, which adds to the platforming goodness. The game is designed to appeal to kids, but there's a lot for adults here as well.

Madden NFL 11 – iPad
Full fledged iPad football! The only drawbacks are that a lot of modes have been removed, and of course, the iPad's control issues really pop up, especially with passing. But probably the best football experience you'll find on the Pad, and pretty cheap these days.

Madden NFL Arcade – 360
I usually combine franchises, but this is different enough from the above and the regular version of Madden that it warranted separation. Basically, this is EA's attempt to ape Blitz, and it doesn't quite work. You play 4 on 4 using 2009 NFL rosters. Play selection is limited to run, short pass, medium pass or deep pass, or defending against same. Plus, it uses the somewhat infuriating “computer assistance” system where the computer actually gets better when playing from behind. Recommendation to avoid.

MLB 11: The Show – PS3
During the 90's, Sony's in-house sports developer, 989 Sports, was a joke, and their sports games were awful compared to EA and other developers. But SCE Studios San Diego has escaped their fate, and I heard tell that their baseball game, MLB: The Show was the best baseball game available for consoles. And, man, is it. It is so much better than the MLB 2K9 game I have for PS3. Right now, I'm playing through a career mode in which I'm actually starting with a AA team (the Montgomery Biscuits) and having to work my way up to the Pros. I should have no problem with this, as my BPA tends to hover between .300 and .400. All this enjoyment, and I'm just a casual fan. The commentary in this game, btw, is excellent as it seems they recorded commentary for just about every combination of circumstances they could think of. When I step to the plate late in the game, the announcers discuss how I've done earlier in the game, even throwing up a replay if I had a home run. GET. THIS. GAME.

Magic: The Gathering: Duel of the Planeswalkers – 360
I never got into Magic: The Gathering. I have gotten into other games, such as Star Trek CCG (1^st and 2^nd editions, both of which right now are in storage back in California) and the World of Warcraft TCG (which I did bring). So it's hard for me to follow along with this one. As well, the only good simulation I've seen of a TCG/CCG on a computer is the short-lived online version of Decipher's Lord of the Rings CCG (which I played only through beta, and actually attracted a few fans who loved watching me play, just because the prevailing logic at the time was small Fellowships who could “sneak through” at the end, and I used huge Fellowships that basically relied on opponents having not enough cards to stop me. Anyway, this one has been kind of hard to follow, even though from what I hear, Magic's rules are fairly similar to WoW TCG's. And to make matters worse, I paid money for this on 360, then it became a free download on PlayStation Plus to promote the new edition of the game.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds – 360
This is a game that exists only due to fan demand. The 2^nd game released in 2000, and afterwards, the companies went their different ways. Marvel would collaborate first with Electronic Arts, then with Activision, but fan demand for the game was high, especially after the 2^nd game came out on PSN and XBLA. Finally, in February, the game released. The roster was much smaller, but the graphics are just gorgeous, and some of the new additions are awesome. In particular, Deadpool tends to taunt the player, and actually has a special attack where he rips down his own health bar and attacks the opponent with it. If you like fighting games at all, get this game. There's some DLC, but it's pretty reasonable, including new characters Jill (from Resident Evil) and Shuma-Gorath, as well as some new costumes: Norman Osborn's Iron Patriot armor for Iron Man and Captain America's non Captain America duds are the standouts. If you like fighters, get this one.

Mass Effect – 360
I got this one based on word of mouth, especially since with ME2 out and ME3 soon (if not already out), it was pretty cheap. Like other Bioware games, there's an insane amount of work put into character interaction with you deciding through your statements and actions whether your character is a good person (Paragon) or a bad person (Renegade). Will spend more time with this.

Monday Night Combat – 360
This one seems to be online multiplayer focused. In the far future, humanity is growing clones and using them to fight as mass media entertainment, hence instead of Monday Night Football, we have Monday Night Combat. I played through the tutorial level, with a guy who seemed rather evocative of Terrell Owens, both in general appearance and wearing the number 81. I might spend more time with this later.

NHL 09 – PS3
I had been wanting a hockey game for PS3, since it was the last major sport I needed. I managed to find a cheap one at a GameStop in Songtan that caters to American players (since it's just outside the Osan Air Force Base). I'm not sure what to make of it yet. The controls are different from most hockey games I've played as shots, dekes and checks have been mapped to the right analog stick instead of buttons. But the game is very highly reviewed, so I might just have to spend some time with it.

Rampage: World Tour – PS, PS3
For the longest time, Midway advertised 4 of their classic games for $2.50 each on PlayStation Plus, and I went ahead and bought two of them: Gauntlet II (covered tomorrow) and Rampage. Oddly enough, even though the ad for the game seemed to clearly indicate the original game, what I downloaded was the sequel, Rampage: World Tour. World Tour is a lot more freeroaming, and has more stuff to destroy and more people trying to stop you. There was a sequel, Universal Tour, which wasn't very well received. Oddly enough, this marks the third time I've bought this game. I bought it on the original PlayStation back in the day, and as part of the Midway Arcade Treasures II pack for PS2. But it's fun.

Next time, Space Ace, Starcraft series, The Movies, TMNT 2: Turtles in Time Reshelled, Viva Piñata, Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, the CrackDown series, Gauntlet II and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. This would be the last update of the project, but I realized that I neglected to include Steam games, so two more after this.

I'm still enjoying vacation, and cleaning up around the house. As well, I finally fulfilled my plans to make my older computer into a home karaoke system. The hold up was that I tried using adapters to connect my PC to the television, but my old computer's built in graphics were simply not capable of putting out a TV signal. So I had to get a converter box, which I found for pretty cheap on eBay from a seller in Hong Kong, and it was waiting on my desk once my fellow teachers came home from vacation (my neighbors brought it home for me). At first, I was a little worried that it wasn't going to work either, as the graphics were very flickery. But I chanced upon the perfect and easy solution. Simply disconnecting the power to the box (which connected to a USB port on the computer) and reconnecting it fixed the problem.

Now the next step is to go through the 30GB of karaoke files I have on the computer, fix the ID3 tags so they will display correctly in the free karaoke program KaraFun Player, and remove duplicates. When you don't have an actual music collection on the computer in question, iTunes makes an excellent tool for fixing the ID3 tags. Once I get that established, I've found some methods on the Internet that claim to take a directory full of MP3s and generate a custom Excel file list of it. If that works out, then I can simply use Dropbox to move said list to my iPad, and use the Numbers app to actually use my iPad as a karaoke song manual. In a way, it's a glorious flashback to college, except my infamous karaoke machine there was cassette tape based and I had to print up my own lyrics sheets.

In other news, I've been playing World of Warcraft quite a bit recently and pushed my character Boffo to level 85, the new level cap of the Cataclysm expansion. This comes in handy because a lot of the holiday activities require a level 85 character. Now I'm pushing a bit more to raise my reputation with my guild. Guild reputation is a new feature in Cataclysm. As long as you stay in the same guild, you can build reputation just as you can with various NPC factions in the game. Once I hit the reputation level of “Honored”, I can buy some neat stuff from the Guild Vendor, including new pets and new heirloom gear (Gear that can be passed between all characters on the same account and server, though they're working on removing the server restriction, that usually gives experience point bonus on all kills while using it) to level up my alts faster.

By the way, I am aware that my World of Warcraft page is broken. I'm also planning to do some revamp work on this site during my vacation and fix that, among other things.

Anyway, on to review...

inFamous – PS3
I got this one for free as part of the U.S. Welcome Back Program. This made me pretty glad I didn't buy it, as I had the other retail game offered, LittleBigPlanet. Basically, you are a victim of an evil corporation's experiments. When they accidentally gave you lightning based powers, you escaped. As the title implies, the game is all about a moral choice system, whether you'll become a hero or a walking disaster to the inhabitants of the city. This one is definitely getting more play later.

Jenga HD – iPad
It's amazing what they'll make computer versions of, as this is a video adaptation of the stacking blocks game, something that made my coworkers tell me that I've taken things way too far. The physics are great, but the controls don't quite add up, which is an issue in a lot of iPad games.

Just Cause series – multiple
(360: Just Cause, PC/Steam: Just Cause 2)
Like Grand Theft Auto, the Just Cause series is a sandbox. But instead of being a criminal, you're a secret agent inserted into a hostile country. But for a secret agent, you can do a lot of messing around. Just Cause 2 in particular was highly reviewed for adding a grappling hook to the arsenal, making the game play a bit like combination of GTA and a Spider-Man game. JC2 needed the improved graphics card I mentioned last time to even play, but now that it has it, it runs silky smooth.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days – 360
K&L is one of the most controversial game series in history, but it's controversial with gamers rather than self appointed moral guardians. When the first game released, Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot (the same site I link to for my game list) gave it a “Fair” rating. However, Eidos, the publisher of the game, was advertising heavily with GameSpot and allegedly convinced GameSpot to fire Gerstmann. GameSpot denied that Gerstmann's termination was due to the review, but the damage was done to both the site and to the game franchise. Reviewers have therefore been hostile towards the 2^nd game, and it's easy to see why. K&L is a cover based first person shooter, but you end up still taking bullet hits in cover. Also, there's a gimmick that all the graphics are simulated as if they were shot by an invisible cameraman with a handheld camera, and that gets old fast. Not to mention that both K&L are thoroughly unlikeable, starting right from the beginning with Lynch hanging out with a woman on a couch (with some implications there) and getting up to call his wife and tell her he loves her. Classy. I got this game cheap and it's easy to see why. Recommendation to pass.

Killzone 3 – PS3
Killzone 3 is the latest in Sony's FPS franchise. It's actually pretty cool, but for some reason, it just seems that the 360 is better for FPS'es, not only because the controllers have actual trigger shaped buttons, but just the feel of the game feels better on a 360. It's hard to describe. I did like interactive bits, like actually having to turn the Sixaxis controller to simulate turning a crank to open a gate. More time will be spent on this later too.

Kinect Adventures – 360
This is a pack-in game for the X-Box Kinect. As you might expect, it's a series of minigames meant to show off the Kinect, but it's actually pretty fun. My favorite game is where you control a river raft by moving back and forth and jumping to make the raft jump. For bonus points, the Kinect takes pictures of you playing at random times, and you will look pretty ridiculous. Good for parties.

The Last Guy – PS3
This was part of the Welcome Back package for Hong Kong, but I had some interest in the game before just based on the title. But the title is a bit of a misnomer. It seems to imply that you're the last man on Earth. You are not. It turns out that Earth was hit by a purple ray that turned everyone who happened to be outside into zombies. The people inside were protected, but are now stuck inside awaiting rescue from the zombies. You are the “chosen one” (not Jeff Jarrett) whose job it is to go to the buildings and have the people follow you to safety. It's played from a top down perspective and it does have an issue in that the zombies are really hard to see. I've heard that in later rounds, the zombies are much bigger, but in the early stages, it just seems you're losing health for no reason. But, it is kind of intriguing.

Limbo – 360
I heard Limbo once described as LittleBigPlanet if it were designed by someone really depressed, and that's pretty apt. Upon starting the game, you get absolutely no introduction. You're just in the standard 2D platforming setup. And everything is monochrome and mostly dark. The times the sun does peek through serve as more depressing than anything else. But there's some rather interesting puzzle platforming going on, starting with a point a couple minutes into the game where a giant spider is trying to kill you, and you fight it off by taking a bear trap (which also usually kills you) and pulling it so that the spider sticks 3 of its legs into it. Interesting game.

Lego Rock Band – PS3
Like Green Day Rock Band, this was bought for the ability to transfer its song library into the main Rock Band series, and the entire library transfers. However, it's also pretty fun to play on its own. Harmonix collaborated with Traveler's Tales, who developed the various other Lego games, notably Lego Star Wars, so that your performers are Lego figures. It even allows playing of Rock Band 2 DLC, so long as the songs in question are rated as “family friendly”. On certain songs, you even get Lego versions of the real artist performing.

Next time, LittleBigPlanet 2, Madden NFL 11 for iPad, Madden NFL Arcade, MLB 11: The Show, Monopoly, Magic: The Gathering: Duel of the Planeswalkers, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, Mass Effect, Monday Night Combat and NHL 09.

Interesting day today.

First off, I realized that even though I got a nice new computer, the onboard graphics just weren't cutting it. This makes sense, since only gamers, and a few others would need intense onboard graphics. But with the new card, which was reviewed as being a good “mid-budget” DirectX 11 card, the games I have are all now running at maximum graphics settings. World of Warcraft in particular is running at maximum settings, and at 60 frames per second at those settings, so it looks so much smoother now. I won't be able to play games at max settings forever, but I should be set for quite a few years now.

In other news tonight, a siren started going off in my apartment complex. It seems to have only been a test, as the first times it went off, it only went off for a second. There was something announced, but not even my neighbor, who speaks a little Korean, could make it out. But eventually it turned off and we returned to our apartments.

Now, on to a little game review.

Gears of War Triple Pack – 360
This pack ended up being a little bit of a misnomer for me. It included the first and second Gears of War games, but the third bit in the triple pack was a group of maps for multiplayer play. And unfortunately, the maps come in the form of a download code for Xbox Live Arcade, and that code is registered as not available in Asia. So, someday I might be able to redeem it, but I'm not a huge online guy anyway. Gears of War is one of the premium franchises on Xbox, with a strong emphasis on cover based shooting. As well, the game offers co-op split screen play, but this does really limit your screen real estate, and it gets somewhat frustrating on the stages where the game separates your characters, and you can end up losing the stage even though your character is fine and you literally could not help your friend.

Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime – 360
This is a downloadable title on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Unlike the first-person perspective of the retail game, this is a ¾ top down title. As such, it's somewhat reminiscent of Gauntlet. May be worth a look see for Ghostbusters fans, but there are better titles.

Gran Turismo 5 – PS3
This is the latest iteration of Sony's premiere driving franchise. If you are running low on space, you'll want to be advised that this game hogs up 8 gigabytes of space on your hard drive. Gran Turismo games are famous for the level of customization and the huge number of cars available. So far, I'm not overly impressed though. Cars are very difficult to keep on the road and the game just doesn't feel fast.

Green Day: Rock Band – PS3
This game is the same kind of concept as The Beatles: Rock Band, but only a very few would argue that the groups are comparable. I've actually never played the game itself, but got it just because it was budget priced by the time I got it, and allowed exporting to the main Rock Band games, and there are few Green Day songs I like to play, most notably “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” which I use as my theme song in wrestling games.

Guitar Hero series – multiple
(PS3: Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero V; DS: Guitar Hero: On Tour)
I previously covered Guitar Hero V, but wanted to mention it here just for clarity. I got the earlier games later just for the sake of having the songs. Guitar Hero III was not set to compete with Rock Band yet, so it's still only a guitar game. It's somewhat infamous because Axl Rose sued Activision after allowing “Welcome to the Jungle” in the game, then finding out that Slash was a hidden character in the game and could actually be used to play the song. Guitar Hero World Tour substituted for Guitar Hero 4, and included such non repeated songs as Beat It and Hotal California, introducing the band format to Guitar Hero games. The DS game, Guitar Hero: On Tour, was heavily discounted because it relies on the original DS and DS Lite's Game Boy Advance cartridge slot to plug in a guitar peripheral, and the DSi and 3DS do not have this slot. It's got real accuracy issues, so it's a curiosity at best.

Gun – 360
I haven't spent time in this game yet, but it's a western themed game, similar to the later Red Dead Redemption. It's described as okay, but not as good as RDR.

Halo series – 360
(Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST)
Halo is THE premiere franchise for Xbox and one of the better FPSes out there. The Asian version of Halo 3 actually plays, but has Japanese vocals, even though all the text is in English, which is an odd combination. Halo 3 ODST actually takes place afterwards, so I'm saving it for when and if I beat Halo.

Heavy Rain: Move Edition – PS3
Heavy Rain is less of a game and more of an interactive movie. Like Dragon's Lair, the entire game takes place through Quick Time Events. Success and failure will not end the game but will lead to various changes in the ending. The depressing and adult oriented story (this is comparable to an R rated movie, and not just barely R either) involves a serial killer who targets children. You jump back and forth between the perspective of 4 different characters: The father of a missing child feared to be the killer's next victim, a private eye investigating the killings, an FBI agent investigating the killings, and a woman pulled in just to be exploited in various scenes of the story. It's definitely worth a playthrough, but I can't really play more than a few chapters in one playthrough. The Move Edition indicates functionality with PlayStation Move, although the functionality was also added to the original version through patching. That said, I prefer just using the controller, due to the imprecision of motion controls.

Next time, inFamous, Jenga HD, Just Cause series, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, Killzone 3, Kinect Adventures, The Last Guy, Limbo and LEGO Rock Band.

Well, so much for the streak.

I've been kicking back this week, after the semester ended last Friday. Given that I won't be working summer semester (just needed a vacation), I'll be off for quite a while longer. It is incredibly nice to be able to wake up simply whenever I'm no longer tired, and not have to worry about alarms. It's a luxury I don't get often, and most probably when I have a family, I'll never have again.

On Wednesday, I went to Seoul and used my year long pass to Lotte World, the amusement park there. I may go again sometime before the month is up.

But anyway, onto reviews:

Dragon's Lair – PS3
Back in the day, before the arcade's heyday with the dawn of fighting games, game technology was still mostly using sprites for graphics. In 1983, a then revolutionary game was put out. Dragon's Lair used a laser disc for graphics. The resultant game's gameplay was limited to what are currently referred to as Quick Time Events. But the resultant game was miles prettier than anything else at the time, especially because the game was drawn by famous animator Don Bluth. Currently, the game is available for $10 on PlayStation Network. It hasn't aged as well as one would hope, but definitely worth a play for old school gamers.

Duke Nukem 3D – iPad
Before the recent (and years late) release of Duke Nukem Forever, the apparent end of this series was Duke Nukem 3D, taking the game from a shooter platformer to a first person shooter. This was downloaded from the App Store since it was only 99 cents, but it does suffer from the iPad's lack of external controls.

EyePet: Move Edition – PS3
I got this game at the same time as the PlayStation Move, in order to have a game to use it with. Basically, you end up getting this cute fuzzy thing that you can dress in cute outfits. It looked intriguing, but would probably be better for little kids. PS Move in general is just not as impressive as, say, Xbox Kinect. It's essentially like Wii controls, only the PlayStation Eye webcam tracks movements instead of a sensor bar.

F.E.A.R. Files – 360
When I bought WWE All Stars, the original descriptions of it on play-asia.com said that THQ elected to use region locks on the game, hence I had to buy the U.S. version. The U.S. version ended up being delayed, and play-asia suggested that I buy the Asian version instead, which turned out to NOT have region protection. This gave me a little bit of credit with them, since the Asian version was cheaper. This was one of the cheap games I got. I haven't played it yet, but this is the two expansions to the first game of the F.E.A.R. series (which I mentioned back when I covered F.E.A.R. 2). These were actually rendered non-canon to the series itself as they were developed by a different company than the first game, then the original company came back for the sequel and ignored them.

FIFA Soccer 11 – PS3
This is THE game I slap in when I want to play some soccer. Graphics are great, gameplay is smooth, tons upon tons of teams. I even found Korea's in country soccer league, the K-League, and play as the Ulsan Hyundai in the career mode. Very high recommendation, and lots better than the 09 game.

Fallout: New Vegas – PS3
This is a sorta sequel to Bethesda Softworks' post apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3. I really enjoyed their game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, so I picked this up. Unfortunately, for trophy requirements, there's no invulnerability code, and it's hard to find out where to go without getting killed by vastly superior enemies... like insects. I'll put more time into this later.

Family Feud 2010 Edition – PS3
I got this in a 3 pack of game show adaptations (including Press Your Luck and The Price Is Right) and this is probably the best of the bunch, but Family Feud has always been fairly easy to adapt, so long as the computer can recognize answers. Here, this is done by having a word bank, and once you enter in a few letters, you should be able to select your choice. This does lead to a wrong choice becoming obvious because it isn't in the word bank, but is probably the best way to do it.

Fat Princess – PS3
Fat Princess feels like a combination of an RTS and dungeon crawler. Basically, you are a member of either the blue or red faction. By obtaining one of six hats, you change between six classes. The objective is to kidnap the enemy's princess and return her to your castle. To prevent this, you find cake and feed it to your princess, making her heavier and thus harder to move. The princess has an ultra metabolism so this is just a temporary solution. I'll spend more time on this later.

Front Mission Evolved – PS3
Front Mission Evolved is the other game I got with the left over credit from switching WWE All Stars to Asian version, as described above. Front Mission Evolved is a third person shooter in which you are piloting a mech during an attack on the futuristic U.S. The game feels a little average, but I can imagine that a mech fanatic would love it, due to the high level of mech customization available.

Full House Poker – 360
This is a downloadable title on Xbox Live Arcade. Basically, like all poker games nowadays, it's Texas Hold 'Em. You are represented by your Xbox Live Avatar, meaning that I'm sitting there in a Hulk Hogan outfit. It's a pretty sweet little timesink, and you can win a couple of free outfit pieces for your avatar.

Next time, Gears of War Triple Pack, Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, Gran Turismo 5, Green Day: Rock Band, the Guitar Hero series, Gun, the Halo games and Heavy Rain: Move Edition.

Welcome, folks.

All in all, I had a productive weekend. I cleaned, got my hair cut, shopped, and moved about 30 gigabytes of karaoke files to the old computer. Technically, as soon as I get a working adapter from a VGA connection to my TV, it will work. It's just that for clarity's sake, I need to work on giving all the files proper ID3 tags and taking out duplicates. Then I can automatically make an Excel file out of the contents of the directory and display it on my iPad.

Speaking of which, my iPad is now syncing with my new computer. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any speed increase while syncing, but certain apps work a lot better, especially an app that will allow me to play a video file from my computer on my iPad. Normally, the file needs to be converted into MP4 format, the iPad's native format, before playing, but the new computer is fast enough to “live convert” the file and show me the results without lag.

With this new advantage, I managed to catch up a bit on my Smallville viewing. I've viewed up until the Booster Gold episode. As a fan of the character since Booster Gold #1 back in 1986, I was really happy with it. I felt they did the character justice.

Anyway, let's get some games review done before I have to hit the hay for tomorrow.

Call of Duty: Black Ops – 360
One of the premiere First Person Shooter franchises out there. You're a captured soldier and being shown a mysterious series of numbers. You apparently know what they mean, but the information has been repressed, so a lot of the game is in flashback. In the first mission, you participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion, but I saw no sign of Coleman Francis anywhere. You eventually do kill Castro, but NOTHING KILLS CASTRO, so it's just a body double. I've played up until having a meeting with a badly voice acted JFK. I'll spend some more time with this later.

Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do – 360
This is a series that started on the Wii that became a Kinect launch title. It's basically a lot of minigames simulating various games you might play at a carnival. In a neat touch, I played the dunk take and the dunkees were the avatars of people on my friends list.

Castle Crashers – 360
This game started out as a Flash game on Newgrounds that migrated to the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. It plays a little bit like Golden Axe, only slightly faster. I think it may really benefit from group play.

Catan – 360
Catan is another Xbox Live Arcade purchase. Apparently, it's an adaptation of a somewhat complicated board game, where you and other civilizations develop a small island. Every game, the island's geography is different, so you have to plan carefully. I might spend more time with this.

Come On LocoRoco! Buubuu Cocoreccho – PS3
This was part of the PSN Welcome Back promotion for Hong Kong. Given that I had made a Hong Kong PSN account in order to use a game code (namely, the Online Pass for The Sims 3, which I bought from a Hong Kong seller), I was able to download free games on that account too, but the pickings were far slimmer. LocoRoco is a PSP franchise, and this is the first game outside of that. It incorporates the PlayStation 3's “Sixaxis” abilities to detect motion. Basically, the objective is to get a bunch of blob things to a goal. From what I've heard, the game only has one level, but it's a big one.

Dance Central – 360
This game is made by Harmonix, the developers of Rock Band. In a way, this game was a logical result once the Kinect was developed, in that instead of singing or playing on plastic instruments, you have to match the onscreen dance. It's a tough game, and could become an exercise routine as well. But I don't see me ever getting into this as much as I do Rock Band.

Dead Nation – PS3
One of the United States free games for the PSN Welcome Back program. Basically, you're a lone survivor in a zombie holocaust (again), and you play from a ¾ top down perspective. Left stick moves your character, right stick aims your gun. Seems decent enough fun for free.

Dead to Rights: Retribution – PS3
This may be the most violent game I've ever played. Even more so than first person shooters or Grand Theft Auto. You're a typical movie cop, in that you care more about results than the rules. The game is combination brawler and shooter. When you bring an opponent down to low health, you can press X to execute an ultraviolent finishing move, during which all other enemies conveniently disappear. You also spend some time playing as your dog, Shadow. Shadow cannot shoot, but moves very quickly and is very devastating at short range. During some missions, Shadow helps you, and you have to sometimes go revive him if he is knocked out. It's hard to play this game more than a level at a time, that's how violent it is.

Dilbert's Desktop Games – PC
This is actually a purchase from my college days that I remembered to add. Dilbert's Desktop Games is a collection of vaguely Dilbert related minigames that range from eh, to passably fun. If you secure an objective in each game, you can print out a certificate proudly announcing that you wasted time playing. Worth a look for serious Dilbert fans.

Dragon Age – multiple
(360: Dragon Age: Origins; Dragon Age II)
I got Dragon Age II first because there's been a lot of hype for it and have really enjoyed the game so far. The game reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy XII, because there's that same idea where you can program the AI for your allies. Taking one review's advice, I gave each of my allies a priority to use a health potion if their health goes below 10%. Also, I like that for each choice, you're given three options on how to respond: A good option, a sarcastic option and an evil option. My choices typically go between good and sarcastic, as you might guess.

If there's drawbacks to the game, they include the fact that there's a very limited number of environments you'll do your dungeon crawling in, and if you have a dialogue immediately after a fight scene, you'll have all the blood splashed on you during the fight in the dialogue. Since my character was a Warrior, he ended up with a lot of blood on him, which was somewhat disturbing. Plus, I liked Dragon Age II so much that I went back to buy Dragon Age: Origins, the original game. Unfortunately, with that one, they didn't incorporate main character voice acting yet.

But I'll definitely be spending more time with both games. Also, BioWare is doing a neat promotion. Registering your game with them unlocks bonus items, not just for the registered games, but for other games as well. So when I registered Dragon Age: Origins, it gave me bonus items for Dragon Age II and Mass Effect II as well (which I don't have). Unfortunately, the original Mass Effect is not part of the program. But if you like RPGs, get these two.

Next time, we'll cover Dragon's Lair, Duke Nukem 3D, EyePet: Move Edition, F.E.A.R. Files, FIFA Soccer 11, Fallout: New Vegas, Family Feud 2010, Fat Princess, Front Mission Evolved and Full House Poker.

Welcome back, as the blog streak has been officially broken. Between finally finishing the main bulk of the games project, and it being Friday, I decided to take a rest. But I'm back now, and ready to rock.

Recently, I posted on my status about people who respond dishonestly to arguments. Maybe they think they're being nice by lying to someone and saying that they're on their side. Or maybe they think the way to end an argument is to claim that they've been convinced when they really haven't. I wanted to reiterate in my blog that both of these are lies, and lies, no matter how well intentioned, have a bad habit of always coming back to cause more problems. Plus, in both these cases, the lies can have the unfortunate side effect of closing your mind to the possibility that the other person is right. Some of the worst arguments happen when one side refuses to believe that there's even the smallest possibility that they are wrong.

I think the best recipe on how to deal with people is to speak the truth in love, as the Bible states. But, if this does not work, then you need to cut your losses. I've unfortunately been in the sad position of being the only one working on keeping a friendship going. Unfortunately, because of this, I sometimes tend the other way out of paranoia, but I will help if a person is showing sincere effort to keep things afloat.

But it comes down to this: Lies always cause problems. Don't lie to your friends and loved ones if they are indeed that.

On a happier note, the new computer continues to rock out loud, even though the language barrier is even more of an issue than it was with Korean XP, since at least I had experience with Korean XP and knew where everything is. But it plays games like a dream. Things look so beautiful with the options turned up on high. Frankly, if I kept this computer in the living room, I'd simply use it for my karaoke system.

But, it will be nice having a separate system. There is a minor setback to that as the VGA-RCA Video adapter I got does not work. I was already worried about resolution anyhow, so I decided to get a VGA-HD Composite adapter instead. That should work. In the meantime, I am... somehow... procuring many many songs.

Let's go ahead and get in some added game review...

'Splosion Man – 360
'Splosion Man is a 2D platformer physics puzzle game. Without giving any backstory, you are put into the role of a man bursting out of captivity inside a lab. You apparently have no memories, and based upon your character's constant cackling, you are insane. As the title indicates, 'Splosion Man has the power to explode at will without damage to himself. Explosions are used for jumping and attacking. In some ways, the game doesn't bear scrutiny because certain sections were obviously constructed as clever puzzles for you to get through, but that doesn't make any sense for a lab. It's just a bit of mindless physics puzzle fun.

3 on 3 NHL Arcade – 360
Basically, EA released little arcade versions of their games somewhat evocative of Midway series, like Blitz and Hitz. The NHL one is actually a bit better than the Madden one, but it feels slow, which is not good for an arcade game.

3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures – multiple
(360: 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures; 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures 2)
Basically, what it says on the tin, minigolf in a variety of fantastic locales, ranging from what you might see at a minigolf park to the downright physically impossible (such as putting your ball around an asteroid too small to have its own gravity). Developed by Sierra On-Line, who I have fond memories of.

Aliens vs. Predator – PS3
Technically, I should point out that this is the 2010 game, not the 1990's one. I played through a little bit, and in the human mode, this game is just dripping with atmosphere. I'll probably go back to this one eventually, though I'm only a casual fan of both series, and only bought the game because it was discounted.

Avatar games – multiple
(360: Avatar Adventures Online; Avatar Fighting; Avatar Karting; Avatar Laser Wars)
These aren't, I believe, in a series, but they're variations on a theme. In addition to the Xbox Live Arcade games, Xbox Live also hosts a lot of indie games, which run for only a dollar or two. These are four of them, all sharing the common theme of using your Xbox Live Avatar as your character, similar to how certain games use Miis on Nintendo Wii.

Avatar Adventures Online is a free MMO, but is below Everquest 1 in technology and appearance. Avatar Fighting is a slow fighter with not many moves. Karting is also fairly slow. Laser Wars is an FPS. Never went out of training mode with that one. Basically, you get what you pay for.

Battlefield 1943 – 360
Battlefield 1943 is a really nice looking WWII FPS, but, like Warhawk, only includes online modes. There are three character classes, and it's worth a pickup if you're into the genre.

For next time, we've got Call of Duty: Black Ops, Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do, Castle Crashers, Catan, Come On LocoRoco! Buubuu Cocoreccho, Dance Central, Dead Nation, Dead to Rights: Retribution, Dilbert's Desktop Games, and the Dragon Age series.

Welcome, all.

Not much going on tonight. I was scheduled to see Kung Fu Panda 2 with my “school family”, a group of 6 students that I'm assigned to look out for and take special care of. Unfortunately, we should have thought to pre-order our tickets as the theater was sold out. There was sitting in the aisle available (this not being America and its fire codes), but 2 out of the 6 could not make with the possibility of a third. This didn't seem right to go without half the group.

Tomorrow is kind of a relaxing day for me. My Mondays and Wednesdays are kind of loaded because I have after school program that day. Monday in particular is hectic as I have 4 out of 6 possible class periods and then the after school. But Friday, I only have 3, and I'm off 1^st period, giving me prep time. Nice little wind down for the week. Plus, I am giving serious thought to taking the summer off and just hanging out with my AC, new computer, and other fun goodies. It'd be a great battery charger.

But anyway, after I posted my “coming up next” list for yesterday's blog, I realized that I could actually finish off the main list tonight by adding one more game. So I did that.

Warhawk – PS3
Warhawk was a game I got for cheap because it's a launch title. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten much play out of it because once you finish the training, it is ONLY an online multiplayer game. That said, it was good enough to inspire a recent spiritual sequel, Starhawk.

Wet – PS3
Despite the tongue-in-cheek name, Wet refers to “wet work” or assassination. It's a shooter game that focuses on the main character's acrobatic stunts. When you do a flipping dive, or slide or wall run, the visuals go into slow-motion giving you the chance to make multiple hits in one dive. The first few times it will look awesome, but doing it over and over again will get old quick. I do want to play this one a bit more though.

Wing Commander – SNES
The port of a game that started a very popular franchise back in the day. Wing Commander was simulated 3D space combat, although it cheated by actually having the ships be a 2D image that changed depending on what angle it was at. You were fighting for the survival of the human race in a war that humanity is losing against catlike aliens known as the Kilrathi. Oddly, this port has a bit of censorship in it. At one point, a fellow pilot's recommendation of liquor as a way to relax between missions is replaced by napping. And yet, the pilot's admonition to not get caught by your flight commander remains. I guess the Colonel hates his pilots being well-rested. No wonder we're losing this war.

Wing Commander Arena – 360
Ugh. Wing Commander fans, don't get this game. It basically feels like a completely different game just slapped with Wing Commander branding. You fly ships in third person rather than the trademark first person view of the series, and basically just fight in deathmatch mode online in a largely 2D environment. The series deserved better.

Wing Commander III: The Heart of the Tiger – PS
A very brave undertaking for Sony's little white box, this is a version of the PC hit. Like its original, this game has 4 discs since it is very cutscene heavy (moving with this game from computer generated talking heads to live action, featuring Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill as Colonel Blair). But since it was made early in the PlayStation's life cycle, all the controls are mapped to the original PlayStation controller (no analog stick function), so it becomes necessary to keep the manual on hand to keep all the controls straight. Back in my college days, I once saw a hobby shop trying to sell this as a collector's item for $70... then laughed when Software Etc. wanted $15 for it.

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom – PS
I actually got this one before WCIII's PS version (though I had played the PC version before). In this one, there's an upgrade and the controls use the analog controls. In fact, there's limited, but bugged, compatibility with Dual Shock feedback. The story involves the Terran Confederation falling into very hard times after winning the war. Veterans have been dismissed from the military in huge numbers causing economic depression. Colonel Blair is drawn back into the cockpit due to outbreaks in piracy and tensions with the Border Worlds. Both games deserve a playthrough. Wing Commander IV is available on the PlayStation Network for a good price.

World Championship Cards – PS2
This is an awful game I only got because it came in a three pack with the awesome Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection. Like the Garfield game, I consider it a free and worthless bonus to that awesome game. This game doesn't even have graphics outside of the fairly worthless character creator, representing each card with a text number and suit symbol. Poker is left out since this series was apparently so hot, they wanted to milk it for all its worth. For what's left, there's not much that's not done better elsewhere. Plus, was the simple card game War really begging for a video game adaptation? Pass.

Winning Eleven 2010 – PS3
I had always heard people claiming that this unlicensed game series was better than the official FIFA series. I didn't play this one too much, not noticing too much gameplay difference and feeling like the lack of licensing did hurt it.

World of Warcraft – PC
(owned expansions: The Burning Crusade, The Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm)
You can probably guess that this game will receive a good review considering that I have a subsite of my homepage dedicated to it. I have a total of 16 characters spread out over 2 servers in the game of various level, ranging at last count from level 16 to level 82 (out of 85). Some unfortunately get way too much into this game, but it's always been just a hobby for me. I actually got into it after a friend invited me to the 2005 BlizzCon, a convention for Blizzard games, and then guessed correctly that my old computer would run the game in its early days. Nowadays, one of the reasons that I got this new computer was that it would run WoW (as it's known) in full graphics settings, rather than the absolute low settings I needed for the desktop that's becoming a karaoke machine.

Some quick details on the expansions. Each one basically introduced a new big bad, new questing areas, and a new level cap. Burning Crusade raised the cap from 60 to 70 as players fought against the Burning Legion (demons intent on destroying the players' home planet) and Illidan Stormrage, a Night Elf who became so obsessed with hunting demons that he became one himself. You get to journey to the ruins of another world, known as Outland. In The Wrath of the Lich King, you obviously fight the Lich King, the person responsible for the creation of the undead player character race, The Forsaken. You journey to Northrend, a continent far to the North of the main areas, and quest to level 80. In Cataclysm, the developers wanted an excuse to remake the original world, and thus to allow flying mounts. The original world was not designed for flying mounts in mind, and thus used a lot of shortcuts that players on foot, or on the prescribed flight paths between cities would never see. So some time has passed since the original game and there are many new quests in the old world. The causer of this “cataclysm” was an ancient dragon known as Deathwing. This has also opened up previously unused zones in the old world, and the level cap has been raised to 85.

It's a fun game, but the main issue is that people online can be real jerks at times, and it can be addicting if you let it. Fortunately for me, I never really liked raiding, as my early experiences with the game led me to see that it can really make people jerks over numbers on a computer server. In fact, the first guild I was in basically fell apart (though has since recovered) when the raiders tried to stage a hostile takeover for the express purpose of kicking out the non-raiders, whom they viewed as inferior and “not helping” the guild.

You Don't Know Jack HD – iPad
I was a big fan of this game back in my college days, and it's been recreated here. Though it does seem that when you buy the game, there's only a limited number of episodes to play through. Now if only someone will adapt the old game made by the same company, Acrophobia.

Coming up next, we loop around and hit some of the games acquired (or in some cases remembered) while this list was being made, starting with 'Splosion Man, 3 on 3 NHL Arcade, the 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures series, Aliens vs. Predator, Avatar Adventures Online, Avatar Fighting, Avatar Karting, Avatar Laser Wars, and Battlefield 1943. The end is in sight! Thanks for sticking with me, folks!

On the 12^th day of blogging, my true love gave to me...

Really in a mellow mood these days. Things are going relatively well. As always, there is room for improvement, but I think there are people in place who want to see things improved.

Loving the new computer as I'm getting more and more installed on it. Still waiting on the final adapters needed turn the old computer into a karaoke system.

In the meantime, let's do some reviewery.

WCW/nWo Thunder – PS
The 3^rd of the 5 WCW games on the PS, and in contention for the worst. It really didn't innovate in succeeding WCW Nitro, just gave us more choices. One neat addition to the game was the “alliance” system. You could align each wrestler as WCW (basically meaning no alliance), NWO White, NWO Red, Raven's Flock, or the Four Horsemen. This impacted who came out to save you in alliances, and possibly costume redesigns. Putting the British Bulldog in Raven's Flock gave him a cool monochrome version of his Union Jack cape, but Goldberg in the Flock turned his trunks into jean shorts of the exact same size, looking for all the world like Daisy Dukes. The disco hall arena was essentially unplayable as taunting forced other players to taunt, and you could basically heal back to full health while pointlessly dancing. Man, a lot of ink for a bad game.

WWE All Stars – 360
This project was designed as an arcade type fun experience as opposed to the SmackDown vs. RAW series' simulation. The game included 15 current stars and 15 “Legends” and is half wrestling game, half fighter. Due to TNA contracts, Ric Flair and Mick Foley got left out, but Hulk Hogan was not, due to his signing a licensing contract in his last run with WWE. This game is also the return to WWE video games for Randy Savage, prior to his recent passing. It is a lot of fun, but can be very simplistic at times.

WWE Crush Hour – PS2
Kind of an experiment by THQ to use the WWE license for other games. The basic plot is that Vince McMahon has been so successful that he's taken over all of television, and thus needs to fill up programming time with things besides wrestling... so his choice is a Twisted Metal ripoff. The experiment is largely regarded as a failure, but there's a decent amount of fun to be had here. The neat part is game modes inspired by WWE events, such as a Royal Rumble mode where cars come in at certain intervals.

WWE/WWF SmackDown series – multiple
(PS: WWF SmackDown!; PS2: WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It; WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth; WWE SmackDown! Here Comes The Pain; WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW; WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2007, 2008, 2009; PS3: WWE SmackDown vs RAW 2009, 2010, 2011)
Pretty much THE wrestling game for a while now, spanning three generations. SmackDown was THQ's first WWE game after the large licensing shift that saw WCW move from THQ to EA, WWE move from Acclaim to THQ and ECW have its first and only video game with Acclaim. Most of the PS2-PS3 era games allow for 8 player simultaneous play, and usually have some special new modes. Women, both existing WWE Divas and female CAWs have been forced into a supporting role as the ability to wrestle men has been deliberately locked out. CAWs (created wrestlers) have, in general, gone from the “red headed step children” of the game to fully supported. However, THQ has recently announced that they are dropping the SmackDown vs RAW branding and completely redoing the game, titling next year's effort simply WWE '12. The game's story modes are usually very good and deserve at least one playthrough (2007's storyline with Candice Michelle's magic wand must be played through once to be believed), though have had the unfortunate tendency to become tragic in hindsight (Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit both had feuds against the Undertaker with obvious results in the year before their real life deaths).

WWF Attitude – PS, N64
Acclaim's final WWF game was basically just WWF Warzone done right, with 40+ wrestlers and a fully functional Create-A-Wrestler mode. It also marked the last appearance of Owen Hart in a wrestling game, as it came out just after Owen's death. Last minute changes changed Owen's fan reaction to cheers. Unfortunately, Owen's widow understandably has very negative feelings about wrestling in general and WWE in specific and has not allowed for his likeness to be used again.

WWF No Mercy – N64
One of the last classic gasps of the N64 era. There are still people who claim that this is the best wrestling game ever. This has insanely customizable rulesets (you can do things like a Royal Rumble in which the elimination occurs only via First Blood, turning it into a rotating bar brawl if you take it backstage) as well as a lot of specific controls that didn't exist in games before (such as running grapples for one). Plays incredibly smoothly too. Just as a hint though... the game WILL allow you to use a male wrestler to compete for the Women's Title... BUT it will punish you by showing your character in a bikini. I had the misfortune to find this out while using my self-resembling created wrestler.

WWF Wrestlemania 2000 – N64
The first THQ game for WWE on the N64. Like its successor above, it retained the same engine used in WCW/nWo Revenge, and honed it further. Great game, but no reason to play it once No Mercy came out.

Next time, I will cover Warhawk, Wet, Wing Commander, Wing Commander Arena, Wing Commander III: The Heart of the Tiger, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, World Championship Cards, Winning Eleven 2010 and World of Warcraft as we near the end of the road for the alphabetical list of games, but there's plenty to cover in the updates to the library since the project began..

Welcome, my friends, to the first web page update from the new computer. I had to tear myself away from The Sims 3 in order to post this in the day limit for my 11^th straight day of blog.

Also, just received in the mail is a new HD adapter for my Xbox 360, one that is actually HD and not just using HD cables. The crucial difference is a switch on the plug itself. Now my Xbox is humming along at 720p just like my PlayStation 3. My Wii is still hopeless in that regard.

Also, I got an adapter that will connect VGA to RCA video. This is part of the process to convert my old computer into a karaoke machine. The other crucial part, a 3.5 millimeter jack to RCA audio adapter is still en route. I have high hopes.

Let's get down to the review.

UFC 2010 Undisputed – PS3:
A lot of people like to pretend the same types of people watch UFC and pro wrestling. While there is naturally some overlap, especially with crossover stars like Brock Lesnar, there are many who are fans of one and not the other. I'm not a UFC fan. The main reason I got this was because a PlayStation Plus random bonus was some extra fighters, and play-asia.com had it on special. Basically, though, any game where you can knock someone down, then stand over them and punch them until they give up is a keeper. So far, my guy tends to be a flat out brawling specialist, but is in real trouble if grappled.

Uncharted 2: Among Theives – PS3:
In what I've played of this one so far, I'm a thief who got betrayed by his accomplices, and am reliving the story of how he got to this point through flashback. Gameplay is good, but it's easy to get lost and not know where you have to go next. When this happens, you look like a fool jumping around a castle until you happen to hit the right spot, with your ally being no help whatsoever. I got the Game of the Year edition, but can't access the extras without an account on the Korean PSN.

Uno games – multiple:
(360: Uno, Uno Rush)
Very competent Uno game. Just be warned that the computer is fairly ruthless about calling Uno on you if you forget unless you turn that option off. One included extra deck is for the 35^th anniversary of the game and includes some special “35” cards. The next card played has to be a 3 or a 5 of any color, which can get nasty. Uno Rush is a completely separate game with “rush” style gameplay. During opponent's turns, you “stack” your cards, so as to be ready to play multiple cards at once. No real reason these couldn't have been one game.

The Urbz: Sims in the City – PS2:
I have mixed feelings about this one. It's an attempt to vary up normal Sims gameplay with an urban element. It doesn't really work, and hence spawned no sequels. Urbz was console only and on the consoles of the time, it suffers massive load times, which really take you out of the game. On the other hand, this game just happened to be my mother's last birthday present to me, just one month before she passed on. As such, I am tempted to forgive its faults somewhat.

Virtua Fighter 5 – PS3:
Ever since I upgraded to current gen, it seems I've become a bit of a fighting game collector, getting at least one game from each franchise. Virtua Fighter is very good fighting action. Oddly, though, you cannot jump in the game. I suppose that makes it more realistic since real people don't jump 10 feet in the air, but it does alter strategy. This game has come a long way since its primitive 3D roots.

WCW Mayhem – PS:
The 4^th out of 5 WCW games to be released on the PlayStation, and also the 2^nd to last WCW branded game ever. I really liked Mayhem, especially since I picked it up new. The Nitro/Thunder engine was completely scrapped and a new one made. One of the selling points of the game was that this was one of the early games where you could leave the ring area and go into the back of the arena to fight, although it wasn't as good as WWF No Mercy in this respect. The sequel, WCW Backstage Assault, tried to eschew the ring entirely and have the whole game take place in other areas, and did miserably. In one historical note, this is the first WCW game to include commentary, and wrestling fans will probably insert their own Tony Schiavone jokes here.

WCW Nitro – PS:
The 2^nd WCW game, and one that was very good for its day. Fairly simplistic fighting, and tons of characters. Only the main characters had finishers though. One of those left out was Ric Flair, due to yet another lawsuit between him and WCW. He was included at the last minute as a bonus character, with no finishers. Main characters also had “rants”, little video clips explaining why you should pick them to play the game with, except for Kevin Nash, who explained that you weren't cool enough to pick him.

WCW vs. the World – PS:
PlayStation's first WCW game, and the first game I bought for the system. The game contained a fairly limited number of actual WCW wrestlers, and a lot of international stars. Due to copyright reasons, the international stars had changed names, but a trip to GameFAQs easily cleared up who was who. One of the boss characters in the game is quite clearly Andre the Giant, but marked as The Giant (currently WWE's The Big Show). I must have missed Big Show's giant fro days. Due to graphic limitations, the game actually looked like action figures were wrestling, but that was pretty neat in its way.

WCW/nWo Revenge – N64:
In the N64/PlayStation generation, the wrestling games developed by AKI and published by THQ were the cream of the crop, and are a big reason why THQ has the WWE license today. This game, like WCW vs. nWo World Tour before it used the engine that THQ published WWF games would go on to use for WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and WWF No Mercy. Lots of characters, great gameplay, and in a neat move, you could actually change the appearance of the main characters and they would show up in the intro with the revised look. There were some limitations of the cartridge format of the N64 though, notably in sound.

Next time, we look at WCW/nWo Thunder, and the WWE/WWF games, most notably the SmackDown series.

Wow! This might be my last entry to you guys on this computer (and operating system). The new computer has installed and is installing Windows 7 right now. When I get it all up and running, I'll give further updates.

…

Later note, it's all working. In fact, before I can post this entry, I'll need to transfer it to the new machine.

In the meantime, I can do a bit more game review coming into the home stretch.

Theme Park (multiple systems)
(PS: Theme Park; PS2: Theme Park Roller Coaster)
I didn't mention this one last time because for some reason, my GameSpot list lists these two at the end. Basically, they're the same concept. You build a theme park with certain set pieces. You also need to hire staff to keep it clean and running. Not only do these parks charge for admission, food and gifts, but also each ride, and even the bathrooms. Cruel park owners can sell cheap drinks and charge a king's ransom for bathrooms. Theme Park Roller Coaster was one of my first PS2 games. It upgrades the graphics from the PS1 version and adds a first person perspective, but suffers from excessive load times and using too much space on the memory card.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 (PS2)
EA's franchise golf title. Good for what it does.

Tony Hawk (multiple)
(PS2: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4, Tony Hawk Underground, Tony Hawk Underground 2)
It amazes me that the Tony Hawk series is meant to promote skateboarding. All the bails I've had during my playing of this game has convinced me that if I ever want to kill myself, there are far less painful methods. I would love to get a PS3 version. Pretty fun, except I never got into THUG 2.

Top Gear Rally (N64)
A free gift from one of my cousins. An okay little racer, but nothing special.

Torchlight (360)
A Diablo clone on the Xbox Live Arcade. A pretty fun way to spend some time dungeon grinding. My character specialized in minion summoning, making the whole game a mass beatup.

Trivial Pursuit Unhinged (PS2)
This game offers both a traditional mode of the game and an Unhinged mode built towards video game multiplayer. 6 celebrities read the questions from various categories, such as Bill Nye for Science and Terry Bradshaw for Sports & Leisure. A nice bargain pickup.

Turok (multiple)
(N64: Turok: Dinosaur Hunter; Turok 2: Seeds of Evil; Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion)
Part of the inheritance. Never played. Everything I heard said that Turok was awful.

Coming up next time, hopefully soon and on the new machine, we have UFC 2010 Undisputed, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uno games, The Urbz: Sims in the City, Virtua Fighter 5, WCW Mayhem, WCW Nitro, WCW vs. the World and WCW/nWo Revenge.

Greeting and felicitations, blog-fans!

As I type a soul shattering 9^th blog entry in a row to you, I've made a big step.

The computer I'm currently typing on has been moved into my spare room pending the arrival of the new computer. It will stay here until I've transferred all the content off of it, and basically whittled it down to just Windows, Firefox, my virus scanner, the karaoke player and songs. I'm almost as excited about this computer's new function as I am about the newer computer itself, as really, this will cost very little in terms of real money due to creative use of materials on hand.

Some of you may be wondering why I have a spare room. GVCS, unlike a lot of other Korean schools, tends to house its foreign employees in multi-room apartments rather than studios. This saves the school money, but can result in a lot of complication, such as when the school makes a horrible mistake and decides to hire someone who has no business being a teacher in a Christian school. When I moved from Eumseong to Mungyeong, there was a switch from three room to two room apartments, and I was scheduled to have a new teacher as a roommate. That teacher ended up resigning before moving to Mungyeong.

While it's sad that he quit, it did clear the way for me to get a single apartment, which I've been loving. As an only child, I am more used to solitude than other people, and my apartment has a decent amount of stuff to do, which seems to be slowly increasing. But because of this, I generally don't hang out much in the spare room. At any time, the school could hire a new single male foreigner, and put him in here. But it's not likely to happen for at least 2 months, so in the meantime, I can use it as a workroom.

When all is said and done, all the parts of this computer will be in the living room by the TV, except the monitor. The monitor will become a fairly superfluous 2^nd monitor on the new system, because one can never have enough monitor. The future is here, and it is epic.

In addition, I'm getting a little adapter that will let two sets of headphones plug into my iPad. This will come in handy if I ever travel with someone. Both of us could watch a movie or listen to music on our own set of headphones.

In the meantime, let's hit up the game review.

Street Fighter IV – PS3:
The absolute pinnacle of the arcade era was the release of Street Fighter II, and the resulting explosion of fighter games. IV plays just like II, but is in full 3D graphics rather than sprites. It's really fun. I will warn people though to turn off the feature for online play invites though, or it becomes impossible to play through the single player game (which you need to do to unlock hidden characters) without being interrupted.

Super Mario 64 – N64:
As mentioned earlier, this was the included game (in the last generation of consoles to have such a thing) for most purchasers of the Nintendo 64. I was one of the exceptions, getting Star Wars Episode I: Racer instead. This has been praised as a masterpiece, but I never really got into 3D platforming.

Super Mario All Stars – SNES/Wii:
This one is a rare gem in the SNES library. It includes old Super Mario games redesigned with SNES graphics, and thus looking much like Super Mario World. The included games are Super Mario Bros. 1, 2 and 3, with the Japanese SMB2 included as “The Lost Levels”, marking its only American release. If you enjoyed these games at all, this was a must have. Now, for the franchise's 30^th Anniversary, this has been re-released as a Wii game. Be warned, it is a straight port, with no upgrades, so if you already have a still working copy of the SNES version, there's nothing new here. The Wii version does come with a soundtrack CD with themes from all the old games. It's not something you'll listen to over and over again, but there are some good memories associated with this music for long time gamers.

Super Monkey Ball 2: Sakura Edition for iPad – iPad:
I got this one on a recommend from Super Monkey Ball überfan Taylor Hankins. Unlike a lot of other games for iPad, the iPad's touchscreen only controls actually work well for the game. There's both a main game and fun minigames.

Syphon Filter 1 & 2 – PS:
Syphon Filter was the effort of Sony imprint publisher 989 Studios to compete with the Metal Gear Solid games. I actually bought both games for cheap from one of my cousins, but it was near the end of the PS1 era, and I never played much due to the fact that my multichannel memory card had broken and my normal one had been borrowed and never returned. Games 1 and 3 are available and on my PS3 as PlayStation Plus downloads, but it's hard for me to play PS1 era games for the most part now.

TNA Impact! - PS2:
This is WWE “competitor” Total Nonstop Action's thus far sole attempt to enter the video game market. The wrestling engine is passable, and this will likely be the only game ever to employ a 6 sided ring, as TNA has switched back to a normal style ring. In story mode, you are a wrestler named Suicide who is asked to throw a match. When you refuse and win the TNA Championship, you are ambushed and left for dead. With a new costume, you work your way back into TNA by having matches at places like Air Force Bases and have to combat against an evil mastermind. Anyone who knows anything about TNA can probably guess who the mastermind is. As an odd note, TNA actually attempted to crosspromote the game by bringing in real wrestlers to wrestle in the Suicide role, most notably TNA mainstay Christopher Daniels. Odd bit of gaming history.

Tekken 6 – PS3:
One of gaming's classic series. Everything feels polished here, and there's an insane number of character to choose from. My favorite is Mokujin, a walking tree who uses the moveset of a random character (different each fight). There's also an adventure mode transforming the game into a brawler, and character customization. For a while, my Mokujin looked like it was a huge fan of Ash from Pokemon. Definite recommend. I just wish the Tag Team mode of the game below was included.

Tekken Tag Tournament – PS2:
As you can tell by the title, this game has a bit of a gimmick. You don't fight 1 on 1, but you fight with a partner. You tag in your partner by pressing all 4 shoulder buttons at once. You have to be strategic with it because on your health bar, there's a short shaded section. This is health you can actually recover by tagging out and resting. I just wish that like a Dreamcast game I played near the same time, the partner who is not currently fighting could force a tag. This made for wacky fun when partners decided to stop cooperating, but it is impossible here. As an odd side bonus, there's a bowling mini game. Playing with the various robot Jacks is unfair in this mode as they get targeting systems. As an Easter egg, you can actually knock down a couple of people stupid enough to be standing near the pins.

Tetris DS – DS:
Back in the day, Tetris was THE game for handhelds due to the fact that it came with the original Game Boy. This is a perfect game for those old school fans, as the game is chock full of alternate and online modes. One of my favorites is the push mode, where either the computer or a human opponent is playing at the same time as you, only with his blocks coming down from the other side and both of you building from a structure of blocks in the middle. As you form lines, you push the structure towards the other player, and the goal is to push it all the way down to him. The only flaw: Where is the original Game Boy era music? It's public domain so bumping it in favor of having just classic NES themes is sad. One fun bit: When playing classic Tetris, the game only needs one screen. So it keeps the other screen occupied with a Mario or Zelda game playing by itself.

Next time, we continue down the home stretch of this project, with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003, the Tony Hawk series, Top Gear Rally, Torchlight, Trivial Pursuit Unhinged, and the Turok series. Be here.

Wow, things are generally exciting, beyond my tempting insanity by going for a record breaking 8^th straight day of blog.

Had a great day at Parent-Teacher Conferences, even though it was a bit hectic. The time went really fast because unlike previous PTC's, there were constant conferences. In retrospect, I suppose I should have expected this since I teach every 7^th and 8^th grader in the school (though most for only 2 50 minute classes per week). It was really heartwarming to hear several parents tell me that their child says that I was their favorite teacher, and in at least one case, an 8^th grade student is considering going into history for their career. It wasn't every student by any means of course. No teacher is effective with every single student, as different students need different results so we hire different teachers.

I possibly should have avoided the temptation to change my feedback to “Your child has committed many major felonies recently and will be sent to jail soon” while the student was present. But I'm bad at that avoiding temptation thing.

After the end of the day, I had the bright idea to go to the local HomePlus and go shopping... as did all the parents, resulting in my PTC day extending. After HomePlus, I went home by taxi, with the cab playing suitably mellow music as I reflected on how good a day it was.

When I got home, I saw that the new computer has shipped, even if various adapters have yet to ship. So the computer it self should be here on Monday, meaning I will be CLIMBING THE WALLS that day.

I've also reflected on just how epicly awesome this conversion of the old computer into a karaoke system could be, even though it will be a little work. Basically, a lot of the files you can download have bad or nonexistent ID3 tags on them. And this makes my karaoke program, KaraFun, not display info correctly. So I have to edit all the ID3 tags, and got a program to do that. But there's quite a few of them.

That said, even though I already have a few, my collection is pretty specifically geared to fit me, with very few songs outside my interest range. So in the interests of possible guests, I'm getting more songs to attract a broader range.

Once I have this all set up, I found another program that will look at a directory full of MP3's and make a list of them in an Excel file. One transfer of said file later, and my iPad makes a handy dandy karaoke song manual! I love projects where I can improvise and still have the results be awesome. But there's a lot of work ahead.

In the fun category, the PlayStation Network has finally risen from its grave and is working again in South Korea. I immediately went and re-authorized my console, causing it to be able to use all my DLC again. In addition, I'm now downloading and installing all the free goodies, as well as re-downloading and installing all the free PlayStation Plus stuff that I had gotten then had to delete due to lack of room. That won't be a factor for a while.

For those wondering, I picked Infamous and Dead Nation for my games. (LittleBigPlanet being a game I already owned). I also have had a Hong Kong account (for registering the Hong Kong version of The Sims 3), so I'll get a couple of games from there too. But it looks like Sony was smart enough to block new accounts from the content, otherwise everyone would have all of them.

In a bit of news that really doesn't surprise me anymore, it does seem that the Internet percentage of either children or irrational people (the behavior can be surprisingly similar as I've found out) is getting higher all the time. I've actually seen a group of purported adults on a message board whine because someone broke the rules and was (unfortunately temporarily) banned. A number of these yahoos actually whined about “snitching”, as if that was some real factor in life. Concerns about snitching belong on a playground. If someone breaks the rules, they should blame themselves, not the person who reported them. At least, that's what rational people do... hence the Catch 22 of the situation I suppose.

Anyway, let's move on to happy fun review.

Star Trek: Encounters – PS2:
This was a budget title that I picked up for $10, and if I had spent any more, I'd feel profoundly ripped off. It claims to include ships from all 5 series in chronological order: Enterprise, TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager (and possibly the movies too), but I could never get past the Enterprise section. This features top down gameplay (which is odd for a game about a ship that can move 3 dimensionally. Did Khan design this game?)

Star Trek: Shattered Universe – PS2:
This is a better game but not by much. It's a Wing Commander ripoff. You might be asking how can you ripoff Wing Commander in a universe that does not include fighters. Basically, a negative space wedgie transports the Excelsior, under command of Captain Sulu, to the Mirror Universe, but somehow in the bodies and the ship of the crew's alternates. And, conveniently, in the hold are fighters, and you gain more fighters as you complete missions. For most of the game, you are pursued by the I.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Mirror Pavel Chekov. I got stuck on one irritating mission where Mirror Chekov defects to your side, and your assignment is to protect both ships from attack. The ships are so far apart from each other as to make this incredibly difficult. Can no one but you do anything in this game?

Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force – PS2:
This is probably the best Star Trek licensed game out there. It's a first person shooter designed around the concept that Voyager has trained a special security squad called the Hazard Team to deal with the extreme dangers the ship can find itself in. This is a pretty logical concept, and it's too bad it never went outside of the game. You are Ensign Alex (or Alexandra) Munro (Ensign Munroooooo!), second in command of the Hazard Team. I actually stopped playing this game for a few years, after getting stuck in, you guessed it, a sewer level. But an excellent Let's Play series done by Linkara of Atop the 4^th Wall encouraged me to pick it up again, and I beat it. Definite recommend for Trek fans, though technology has passed it by for FPS fans.

Star Wars Episode I: Racer – N64:
Unlike most of the population out there who owned a Nintendo 64, I did not get my system with Super Mario 64. My first N64 game was this. And it was actually kind of neat, since the day before I got the system, it was priced at $120. I was working at Wal-Mart for a temporary Christmas job at the time, and even though that turned horrible due to an abusive superior, employees got a 10 percent discount on items bought there, and for a Christmas bonus, we received a card good for an extra 10 percent on one item. On top of that, the day before I got it, it was marked down from $120 to $100, meaning I got the whole thing for $80.

Anyway, the game itself is great for its day and tech, especially after you buy and install the special “Expansion Pack” to increase the system's RAM. Although it was my first exposure to the idea that in modern realistic racing games, turning corners is kind of horrible. I got an extra one of these in my inheritance and routed it elsewhere, just like I did Starfox 64.

Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast – PC:
This one starts as a standard Star Wars themed FPS. If you get into the game far enough, which I never did, it turns out that the protagonist was actually trained as a Jedi, abandoned it, and then goes back to it during the game, giving you a lightsaber and Force abilities. Fans will like it.

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds – PC:
A Star Wars Real Time Strategy game that was old and discounted when I bought it. I played with it some, but as a guy who is not a fan of RTS's (too susceptible to the “I'm in your base killing your d00ds” issue), I actually had more fun with it, setting up battles. Mass numbers of Ewoks with no ranged attacks vs. TIE Fighters was somewhat funny.

Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter – PS2:
Another Wing Commander ripoff, though this time at least in a milieu that supports such things. However, I could never really get into it, especially after being stuck on a very hard defense mission. One of the gimmicks is that you have a limited number of Force powers you can use to help you in combat.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire – N64:
Back in the day, this idea launched a huge franchise. Basically, George Lucas wanted to explore the idea of a story taking place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi without actually making a movie about it until he was sure it would work. Thus, instead, a video game, comic, novel, trading cards and toys were all introduced. I got the video game as part of my N64 inheritance. It never struck me as all that great, especially with the shift in gameplay modes happening constantly. It also didn't look very good on the N64.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – PS3:
The story to this one is that between Episodes III and IV, Darth Vader secretly trains an apprentice. He's being a bad boy by doing this, as the prequel trilogy taught us that the Sith can only ever have two, a master and an apprentice. Thus, by teaching an apprentice, Vader wants to move up a spot. The new apprentice, Starkiller (which was Luke Skywalker's original last name in early drafts of Star Wars), is sent on secret missions where he needs to kill everyone he sees, since there cannot be any witnesses to someone besides Vader and the Emperor using Dark Side powers. I only got a couple of levels into this, becoming stuck and not knowing where exactly I'm supposed to go next. I might get into it again someday because the game boasts a very creative combat system in which you can use a variety of Force Powers to kill enemies, especially by combining the powers. Just as a word of warning, DO NOT get this game for the Wii. It's so watered down as to be a different game.

Stormrise – PS3:
I got this as part of a double pack with a game I actually wanted, and never played it. All reviewers agree that it's awful, and that's why. It's actually the lowest rated game I have according to Gamespot ratings, taking that title away from the actually somewhat fun MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch. It's billed as an RTS where you control from an individual squad rather than a top down perspective but the game is apparently bug-riddled.

Next time, we will cover Street Fighter IV, Super Mario 64, Super-Mario All Stars, Super Monkey Ball 2: Sakura Edition for iPad, Syphon Filter I & II, TNA Impact, Tekken 6, Tekken Tag Tournament and Tetris DS.

Wow. Already to the T's. Then I just have to go back and fill in the adds since I started the list (or at least stopped trying to insert updates).

Wow, a week straight of blog entries!

Right now, just kind of relaxing and kicking back, recovering from the work week. I love my job, but I do need my recharge time. In fact, because of this, I won't be going to a weekend thing that other American employees are going to, with no disrespect to anyone else involved.

Big news is I'm going to be getting a massive computer upgrade. I'm upgrading to a Compaq Presario CQ3430KL. My computer back home was a Presario, and I had a good experience with it. Plus, this will be my big jump from Windows XP to Windows 7 (I've officially skipped Vista), and will be a computer that can run the latest software and won't have massive slowdown. In addition, I'm doing a big upgrade at monitor, going to a 23” Flatron E2360V. Now World of Warcraft is gonna rock. And it's really the last major upgrade I missed out on during my jobless time.

Plus, I had a flash of inspiration on what to do with the computer I'm typing on now and will be changing it to a dedicated home karaoke system. Which is totally what I need. Said upgrade will be accomplished with some adapters, running me less than $20.

In case anyone is wondering, I have kept abreast of the announcements of the PlayStation Vita, and the Nintendo Wii U, but like the 3DS before it, I'm not all that enthused for them. I think after this computer, I'm pretty set for systems for a while, plus I'm of a mindset now to wait until later generations of a console come out. My PS3 is the Slim model and my Xbox is the Elite and I'm very happy with both.

I may be going out later, so let's hit up a little review.

SingStar 80's – PS2:

This is my second owned music game (after the unfortunately now unworkable Karaoke Revolution due to busted microphone). I got a set of the game and two microphones for $30. The game contains 30 80's songs, which is, of course, THE GREATEST MUSICAL DECADE EVER. In most cases, the actual video is used, and just like other games, you simply match the pitch. Great game, but limited. I got a bonus out of it though as the microphones worked with both my computer and with Rock Band 3's harmony vocals. These mics will become part of the home karaoke system.

Snoopy Flying Ace – 360:

SFA is a download from the Xbox Live Arcade, basically converting our favorite beagle's daydreams into a World War I sim. Obviously, the emphasis is on fun rather than accuracy. I played a little and it's certainly serviceable, though Peanuts content seems rather light. And why can't Snoopy actually fly a doghouse? And why was there no licensing of the Snoopy vs. The Red Baron song?

Sonic Rush – DS:

Sonic games are generally horrible in 3D, but pretty good in 2D. I don't know what it is, but this game was one of those that was awesome when I first got it, but just meh now. The game plays and looks very similar to the old Genesis games, though with better graphics, a new character besides Sonic, and the ability to run between the two screens (although you lose sight of Sonic for a second doing so). Worth a play at least, but probably not a buy unless you're a huge Sonic fan.

SoulCalibur IV – PS3:

Somewhere along the way, I started collecting a lot of fighting games, and SC4 is a good one. All the characters have weapons, although they don't do as much damage as one would think they should. This game had a bit of a cameo, as Darth Vader is a character in the PS3 with Yoda being downloadable. This scheme is reversed for the 360. The game revolves around characters trying to win a fighting tournament to win two potentially universe destroying blades, SoulCalibur and SoulEdge. Each character has different plans for them, and the game literally contains a flowchart detailing each character's relation to the others and plans for the blades. That's too nerdy even for me. One of the hidden characters that I've yet to unlock is the Apprentice from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, so that kind of felt like one game was expressing jealousy that I was playing this game instead of it.

South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! - 360:

Historically, South Park based games have been awful. But this is a very good one. The only Tower Defense game I ever played before was Fieldrunners, and this one works a little differently. It seems to be a fairly fun game. I did get the cheapest 360 achievement ever by simply watching one of the unlocked videos of South Park clips in the game.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene – iPad:

This is quite possibly the best iPad game I have. It basically starts out as the ORIGINAL 1970s Space Invaders with monochrome graphics, and as the game goes by, you get more mobility and more weapons. Control is fairly slick, with the game autofiring for you, and you just needing to guide your ship around. Definitely should be played by all old school gamers.

Spider-Man 2 – PS2:

This game is a thankfully rare exception to the endless list of bad movie tie-in games. This game really feels like you're Spider-Man, swinging around New York City. The general plot is tied to that of the movie, obviously, but new levels are added, involving you taking on villains like The Rhino, Shocker, Electro and Mysterio. The only problem is that the random things you can encounter between plot missions come in about 10 or so varieties, which you will encounter ad nauseum. The pathological hatred for the little girl who lost her balloon became so intense that in the spiritual sequel to this game, Ultimate Spider-Man, you play as Venom, and demonstrate your ability to eat people on her as her balloon goes flying off into freedom. One of the most fun things to do was to pick up a random mook off the street, web up to a tall building, and do a spinning piledriver off of it. This rendered the bad guy “unconscious”. You could also defeat rooftop based robbers by simply flinging them off the building with no consequences.

Spider-Man Total Mayhem HD – iPad:

I picked this one up for 99 cents, and I'd definitely say I've gotten a dollar's worth of enjoyment out of it. It's a linear beat 'em up, but the Spider-Man power controls work well on the iPad and the graphics are great.

Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild – PS2:

The third game of the good racing game pack for PS2 along with ATV Offroad Fury 2 and Need For Speed 2. The original Splashdown was a Gamecube-exclusive launch title for that console. The sequel is multi-console. It's the best jetski racing game I've owned, but its only competition for that title was Jet Moto for the PS1. That said, there's a lot of creative levels and you'll have lots of fun, especially with a well done trick system. Though the racer's repeated dialogue does get tiresome quickly.

Star Fox 64 – N64:

This one's a classic game. Not only did I buy one for myself, but I got an extra one in my inheritance and ended up shipping it to Matt Sutton. You are Star Fox, an anthropomorphic fox flying a space fighter (and sometimes a tank) in an attempt to prevent the evil overlord Andross from taking over the galaxy. Your companions on this journey are an egotistical falcon, an older mentor type rabbit, and the true infernal source of all annoyance, Slippy the toad. It's a great little space fighter and one of those games that should be played at least one. Die, Slippy, die.

You can call next time's update the Star Trek and Star Wars one. Star Trek checks in with Encounters, Shattered Universe and Elite Force. Star Wars is a huge video game property, checking in with Episode I: Racer, Jedi Outcast, Galactic Battlegrounds, Jedi Starfighter, Shadows of the Empire and The Force Unleashed. And we finish off with Stormrise. See you then.

Let's continue the bloggy goodness for a mindnumbing 6^th day in a row!

Today is all about what is perhaps my 2^nd favorite franchise out there, The Sims. The Sims, in a way, is the ultimate extension of the SimCity wide open sandbox format. Instead of controlling a city, you're controlling lives. In all of the games, you control 1-8 computerized people or “Sims” as they just live their life. From then on, you can do anything you want with it, whether you want your Sims to achieve the American dream, or die horrible and hilarious deaths, or anything in between. This franchise is a major cash cow for EA, especially after micro-transactions were added to the mix, with a store where you buy Sim items for real money. But that's jumping ahead.

PC GAMES:

The Sims 1
Expansions Owned: Livin' Large, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed, Superstar, Makin' Magic.

The game that started it all. The early game was not really true 3D, but sprite based depending on which perspective you pick. Basic gameplay has remained the same, but there were limitations. Even though babies grew up to become children, children never grew up to become adults. Also, the game had no concept of weekends. You could take a day off anytime you felt like it, but taking a 2^nd day off in a row resulted in being fired. When you went to your job, you simply left your house and were inaccessible to the player.

As to the expansions:

Livin' Large included a lot of new objects and careers but no new gameplay elements.

House Party introduced the ability to throw parties. Good parties had Drew Carey attend, voiced by the actor himself in the game's trademark pseudo-language “Simlish”. Bad parties had a Depressing Clown appear and make everyone feel worse.

Hot Date introduced a “Downtown” area where your Sims could go out on the town, and possibly meet “Townie” Sims. It also introduced relationship meters based on both daily and lifetime values, so that you could no longer influence someone to marry you on the day you met them, or become alienated from lifetime friends so quickly.

Vacation was very much like Hot Date, except that it introduced different areas to take a vacation in. Your vacation could last as long as your money did.

Unleashed introduced pets to the game. The original game had a hamster cage and an aquarium, but mobile pets like cats and dogs had to wait until this expansion. Pets could not be directly controlled by the player, but could be trained to avoid unwanted behavior.

Superstar introduced the idea of being a celebrity for a career. Celebrities actually controlled their actions while at “work”. Celebrities got promoted by boosting their fame to sufficient levels.

Makin' Magic introduced a magic system (somewhat reminiscent of Harry Potter) as well as a magic themed outside area.

After this expansion though, EA thought it would be nice to give the franchise a graphical ugprade (as well as re-use old expansion pack ideas), hence...

The Sims 2
Expansions Owned: University, Nightlife, Open For Business, Pets.

With this sequel, graphics were upgraded to true 3D. Options were increased, including the ability to befriend and even become romantically involved with and marry the maid. Sims now had a system of wants and fears, where their happiness depended on the user's ability to meet the wants and avoid the fears. Also, full aging was introduced, making generational play possible. Some players have online journals of 7 generations of family.

University is probably my favorite Sims expansion pack. It added a “Young Adult” life stage and the ability to attend college. College worked much like a job, with Sims having to build skills, and put in class time to go on to subsequent years. Though there is one nice failure story for me to share. One day, I created a Young Adult Sim, and put him into college. I had the brilliant idea to have him work in the cafeteria section of his dorm for extra money. On his very first day, a fire broke out. Dealing with the fire plunged all his needs into the red. After the fire, I tried to get him to his dorm room, but just outside his room, he collapsed. As he literally had no friends at this point, no one intervened as a Grim Reaper came and collected him. So basically, this wimp died of exhaustion on his first day of college.

Nightlife is essentially the same pack as Hot Date, though a dating mechanic has been added to rate good and bad dates.

Open For Business was a very interesting pack. It allowed Sims to become independent business owners. With a little creativity, you could have any kind of business you wanted, although electronics boutiques that offered haircuts were really only useful to give difficult customers “free” makeovers and end up making them look like clowns. It also included stations for Sims to specialize in robot making, toy making or flower bundling.

Pets was essentially the same pack as Unleashed, but the pets were very true to life and customizable. An untrained cat with no scratching post could literally turn a couch into scraps. The pets could also, strangely enough, get jobs, and it's very odd when your cat has a better job than you do.

There were other expansion packs I did not get for this game, as well as Stuff Packs, which, as implied, did not include any new gameplay but only new objects.

The Sims 3
Expansions Owned: World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night
Stuff Packs Owned: High End Loft Stuff

Here, the graphics are further upgraded. Also, the main selling point of this game is that you are in a complete neighborhood and can easily switch between locales, sometimes getting wants to do things like play Guitar in the park. Also introduced are the concepts of Moodlets, where recent events can positively or negatively impact your mood.

World Adventures is a lot like Vacation, but offers the ability to go on various adventures in your travels.

Ambitions includes Professions, which are like jobs, but much more directly controllable. Also, for the first time, laundry is introduced to the game through a simple mechanic. If you own this pack or a washing machine downloaded from the store, wants will pop up from your Sims to get a washing machine and a dryer. When you do, laundry piles will spawn whenever you change clothes. By collecting these piles and washing and drying them, you can get a moodlet where you're in a better mood because your clothes are clean.

Late Night is a lot like Hot Date and Nightlife, emphasizing bars and clubs. A celebrity mechanic is also introduced, a la Superstar. My version of The Sims 3 came packaged with Late Night.

An upcoming expansion is Generations, focusing on unique experiences for Sims depending on their stage of life. An awesome trailer is on Youtube, featuring a boy and a girl growing up and sharing these different experiences together, ultimately become married and growing old together. There is also a Pets expansion planned as well. EA tends to stuff these expansions together.

High End Loft Stuff is the only Stuff Pack I've ever bought for The Sims. In this day of micro-transactions, the amount of Stuff you actually get is somewhat low (you still pay over 50 cents per item), but does fit the description perfectly. In addition, several classic items from the first Sims game are reproduced here for Sims 3.

CONSOLE SIMS GAMES:

The Sims (multiple)
(PS2: The Sims, The Sims: Bustin' Out)

These games are very similar, and involved Sims 1-style gameplay with a full 3D environment. One big addition is the “Get A Life” mode, in which you move into several different premade houses and accomplish various goals to unlock more items. Bustin' Out also includes for the first time ever, a 2 player mode of The Sims, in which the screen is split diagonally, and both players control a Sim. Can be very fun.

The Sims 2 (DS)

Ugh. Awful. You cannot play in the standard Sims sandbox mode on this. Instead, you play through a horrible story mode in which you are stuck in a small town and become manager of its hotel. A big letdown from me is the gestures system in which you make guests in your hotel happy by performing certain gestures for them, with how to do these gestures only shown once. You have a “sanity” meter to contend with as if this was Survival Horror and not the Sims, and the biggest crime of all: Animal Crossing Syndrome. You have to play the game every real life day to succeed at it. Strong recommendation to avoid.

The Sims 3 (PS3)

Very faithful adaptation of the PC version, except for long loading screens when switching locations. Because of that, I went back and got the PC version games after getting this.

That wraps up this retrospective on a game that can easily consume a whole night if you let it. Next time, review continues with SingStar 80s, Snoopy Flying Ace, Sonic Rush, SoulCalibur IV, South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play!, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man Total Mayhem HD, Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild, and Star Fox 64.

Hey all,

I'm loving the new AC. It really helps me to be able to relax during these Korean summers when I get home. Thus, since I'm relaxed, I can blog a little more, going on 5^th day in a row now.

To reviews:

Saint's Row 2 (PS3)
The original Saint's Row was an Xbox-exclusive title. The sequel went multi franchise. Much like the plot of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you're a member of a gang, here based on the street of “Saint's Row”, hence the title. While you were recovering/in prison from the events of the first game, the gang dissolved, and you're trying to bring them back to power. While it certainly borrows a lot from the GTA series, there's more of an emphasis on fun than realism. Good game.

Scrabble for iPad (iPad)
Like Risk, if you like the original board game, then this just compresses it down to a smaller space. When you play against other people, it does have the disadvantage that you can't see your tiles until it is your turn. The computer pulls some amazing words out at times too.

Sea World Adventure Parks Tycoon (PC)
I read one review once of this game that deliberately misquoted Henry Ford and said “You can build any type of theme park you want, so long as it's Sea World.” As someone who had a year pass to Sea World before (2001), I was very intrigued by this game. It does use the Theme Park model in that not only are there charges for admission, food and souvenirs, but rides and even the bathroom. The idea is to keep guests happy so that they won't leave. Things like long waits, trash in the park or excessive prices make them unhappy.

This game unfortunately suffers from a “Should Have Been Caught In Beta” level oversight though. Unlike every other game in this genre, there is no way to rotate your camera. This makes it impossible to place any lines behind the huge rides. Also, there's just not enough variety in offered attractions, even taking everything at all the Sea World parks into account. Could have been better than it was.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (PS3, iPad)
This is a remake of the original PC game in the tightest sense possible. Basically, HD graphics have just been pasted over all the original game environments. You can even switch back to the original graphics with the touch of a button (something that earns an incredibly cheap trophy in the PS3 version). Dominic Armato returns continuing his excellent voicework as Guybrush Threepwood from the last two games of the series. I got the iPad version later because it was only a dollar. This is a must play for every gamer out there.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (PS2)
A gift from my cousin Joshua for the Christmas before I came to Korea. Basically, you are a teen at a boarding school who has been assigned to a special dorm house. It turns out there are only 3 other students in this dorm house and 2 of them are girls. Your first night at the house, you discover that every night at midnight, time stops for the rest of the world and every human being on Earth turns into a coffin, and demons roam around. You are one of the rare humans that do not, so you need to summon various... things of your own to fight the demons. This being Japan, you do so by using an “Evoker”, something that looks just like a gun with which you proceed to shoot yourself in the head and summon your guardian to fight for you.

...wait, what?

Said guardians are pulled from just about every mythology out there. And yes, God and Jesus are even among the guardians you can conceivably summon and have fight for you in this game.

…wait. WHAT?!

And then the other half of the game is a simulator of high school, where you build relationships in order to empower certain types of guardians. I have read in places that it is possible to build a romantic relationship with nearly any female in the game.

Yeah, this game is one of those reasons people think Japan is pretty weird sometimes.

SimCity (multiple systems)
(PC: SimCity 3000, The SimCity Box; iPad: SimCity Deluxe for iPad)

SimCity is the original “open ended sandbox” game by Will Wright. You are mayor of a city, and you make all the decisions as to where things are built, how much to charge in taxes, etc. Unless you set your options as to not have them, you also have to deal with disasters as they occur. Progressive versions include the jump from sprite graphics to 3D and minor gameplay improvements. The SimCity Box was a combo pack, containing SimCity 4 and its expansion Rush Hour (containing lots of ways to manage traffic), SimCity Societies and its expansion Destinations, which are decent, and the forgettable SnapCity, an odd attempt to combine Tetris and SimCity. Get the Box if you can and want to get into this game. The iPad version is interesting and thankfully adds a confirmation dialogue each time you add a new zone or roads, as it's easy to misenter with finger gestures.

The Simpsons Game (PS3)
This game can best be described as “Weird stuff happens to the Simpsons and they take every opportunity to mock video games while dealing with it”. It's a 3D Platformer with lots and lots of lampshading, including the Comic Book Guy pointing out when the worst cliches of gaming happen. I'll probably spend more time with this one later.

The Simpsons: Hit & Run (PS2)
A lot of early Simpsons games can be described as “The Simpsons Rip Off __________ (whichever popular game is out).” These kind of games include the awful Simpsons Skateboard and Wrestling games, as well as the passable Simpsons Road Rage, which ripped off Crazy Taxi. Hit & Run is an attempt at a non-violent ripoff of GTA. Some great moments, although it was discovered that it was way too easy to beat timed vehicle sections by simply walking to a place on the map you're supposed to be before entering a vehicle. There's also some frustrating racing sections as well, where close finishes can mean either a mission failed or succeeded, even if neither makes much sense with you and your opponent within sight of each other. There are better games out there, though this was good in its day.

Next time, we again have one franchise dominate the review... The Sims. See you then.

Welcome back, true believers!

Would you believe it, it's a 4^th straight night of blog update! With this kind of pace, I could actually conceivably finish this project!

Nothing else too much on my mind tonight, so let's get crackin'.

Risk: The Official Game (iPad)
Pretty much what it says on the tin. The classic board game, without all the mess or rules confusion. You can play against the computer or other players. I have noticed that the times I've played against the computer, it always gives me the whole of South America to start with, giving me a huge advantage. Graphics look perfectly fine. If you like the board game, pick this up.

Robotech: Battlecry (PS2)
Back in the day, I was a huge fan of Robotech. In a time where every cartoon on television had a non changeable status quo, Robotech had 13 straight weeks of episodes that contained an actual story arc. The episodes had to absolutely be shown in order or it makes no sense. It was actually a combination of three Japanese series, with some dialogue changed to tie them together.

This game is based on the first of the series, Macross. It's set after aliens have all but destroyed Earth and you are a pilot in the Robotech Defense Force. Despite the original characters being a bit too similar to characters from the show, this game would get my highest recommendation, except for one buggy level in which I need to destroy 3 alien camps and then I would get tasked to go rescue a hostage. No matter what I did, the game would end in 30 seconds telling me I failed (with the hostage much too far away to rescue). Then I would have to restart from the beginning of the mission! Ugh.

Robotech: Invasion (PS2)
This is based on the third series, Mospeada, or as it's more commonly referred to in America, the Invid Invasion. Basically, after two wars, the human race and their military has been devastated, and when a third alien force shows up, the planet is conquered easily. You are part of the resistance, and the game takes place in Cyclone mecha (motorcycles that transform to power armor). It actually plays quite a bit like an FPS where you have the power to transform into a motorcycle. Though in practice, this ability is only useful for when you are traveling between destinations. The power armor form is preferable for fighting. Again, a need to play if you liked the series. Still waiting on a game based on the Southern Cross part of the show.

Rock Band (multiple)
(PS3: Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Rock Band 3; iPad: Rock Band Reloaded)
Ah, my legal drug. Anyone who knows me knows what I'm going to rate this. With song export features, I have nearly 550 songs available to play in Rock Band, with an additional 325 from other music games.

I had played the early Guitar Hero games and really liked them. Rock Band expanded on that concept, allowing one person to sing, two to play guitar and one to drum. The controllers are very expensive, but once you have them, they fortunately now tend to work on all games.

When I started in on this genre, I bought Rock Band 1 & 2 at the same time (along with Guitar Hero 5 and Beatles Rock Band). Improvements between Rock Band 1 & 2 were relatively minor, though it was nice to be able to use the same created characters for any instrument.

Rock Band 3 was a huge leap for the series though. It added in a keyboard peripheral (though older songs lack support for it), and 3 part harmonies (introduced in The Beatles: Rock Band). There were also superior sorting systems added in for those with massive music collections, and objectives tailor made to exactly what you had in your collection. Also, to the benefit of those I play with, once 1 player unlocked certain clothing items, they were unlocked for all characters.

I have a lot of fun with singing or guitar, though drums are hard for me. In fact, at our last group session of the game, I actually played bass and sung at the same time, which is all sorts of wacky fun. Highest recommendation if you have the money to get into it.

Roller Coaster Tycoon (PC)
Roller Coaster Tycoon is, as previously stated, one of the big exception to the pattern of _________ Tycoon games to be as horrible as the generic ____________ Movie movies. It spawned 2 sequels. Unfortunately, this one is the only one I've played and by the time I played it, the graphics were dated, and it seemed inferior to the Theme Park games.

Rubik's World (DS)
This is a budget DS title that certainly does everything possible with an unlikely sounding license, that of Rubik's Cube. It includes virtual Cubes for you to play with ranging from 2x2x2 to 5x5x5, with the classic 3x3x3 of course. Unfortunately, touch controls on the DS are a little dicey for it, and it's easy to make inadvertent moves. Also thrown in are tutorials on how to solve the Cube (which some Korean kids can do scary well), and Rubik related puzzle games. Certainly worth a look see if you like the Cube, but don't expect much. The money might be better spent on an actual Cube.

Rugby 2004 (PS2)
I bought this one mainly because it was a budget title in the EA Sports line. I never knew much about Rugby except that it's kind of sort of like American football, and this game didn't help that. It got its main value from me and a friend trying to figure out what was going on. The commentary on this one is a mess, with accents so thick as to be indistinguishable, as opposed to the FIFA series' excellent commentary. I did learn why it's called a “touchdown” though. In Rugby, you actually need to be downed in the endzone, to literally “touch down”. If you run through like many players do in the NFL, the score doesn't count.

Rumble Roses (PS2)
Um... yeah. This one.

Basically, I collect wrestling games. And this is another one based on the SmackDown engine. The difference being that all the wrestlers are female. This game did boast of an impressive polygon count for its day. From the hype of the game, every toe is individually rendered. And it does look great.

But it's a very tongue in cheek experience (hopefully). The wrestlers all meet certain stereotypes (like one is a Cheerleader) and they have an alternate gimmick/costume if they change their in game alignment between face (good guy) and heel (bad guy). For example, turning the cheerleader face will make her into a school girl.

However, there's no getting around the fact that the girls in this game are as exploited as imaginary women can be. Definitely not for the politically correct.

SSX (multiple)
(PS2: SSX, SSX Tricky)
I combined these two, because the concept is pretty basic. You are at the top of the hill. You need to snowboard down to the bottom. I actually got Tricky first, and then the original later because it had different courses. The only real difference is a trick emphasis in Tricky (astounding!) with a trick meter you can build up until you can do a super trick.

As you win races with a certain racer, you can unlock different costumes and boards for them, as well as increase their attributes, making it somewhat pointless to use anyone else. I wasn't thrilled with the fact that one of the characters is a Buddhist, and thus constantly quipping pseudo-Buddhist quips (but the stuff was so stereotypical that I might be unhappy for different reasons had he been a Christian)

Next time, we'll cover Saints Row 2, Scrabble, Sea World Adventure Parks Tycoon, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, The SimCity Games, The Simpsons Game and The Simpsons: Hit & Run.

Greetings all,

On the third and final day of my extended weekend, I have decided to continue my reviews. I've even slightly extended the amount of games reviewed because we're coming up on another franchise review session, and I didn't want to be in the middle of a 10 game stretch when that hits.

But before that, a bit of happy news. I finally got my air conditioner. I had ordered it on the 18^th, so it definitely took its sweet time getting here. This is really an investment, since I have problems sleeping when it gets too warm, and the Korean summers are just brutal. Now, I'll be nice and cool. I actually was a little surprised, since I thought my AC unit would just be a small wall unit that cooled air from inside the house. Instead, it also has a large fan unit on my balcony. Sometimes, it can be hard to notice the coolness, but just one step outside and it's uncomfortably warmer. I just have to be careful because it's an electricity hog.

At this point, the only major thing I need to look at is possibly upgrading this computer. XP based computers are pretty much near the end of their lifecycle, and too many great games are coming out that I can't play.

Anyway, on to review:

Power Move Pro Wrestling (PS):
This early wrestling game (called Toukon Retsuden in Japan) is the first usage of what would become the engine for the SmackDown games. It includes 12 wrestlers from New Japan Pro Wrestling renamed to avoid copyright. It's basically an interesting look at history more than anything else.

Powerdrome (PS2):
This game was third in the pack of bad race games for $10 that also included Ford Racing 3 and Motocross Mania 3. This is futuristic racing, a la Star Wars Episode I Racer or Wipeout, but not as good as either game.

Press Your Luck: 2010 Edition (PS3):
This is a near spot on recreation of the 1980's game show, but it does have issues. Games tend to come down to you having nearly all the spins, and then just trying to avoid Whammies until the end of the game (4 Whammies and you are disqualified regardless of your score). Also, this game was the source of the infamous question “What is Mexico?” with the answer being “A country.”

The Price is Right (PS3):
I actually got this one, Press Your Luck and Family Feud in a sale package of downloaded games to essentially equated to buy 2, get one free. It's pretty spot on Price is Right play, though there's no sign of Bob Barker or Drew Carey. Plus, games that depend on pricing don't age well. You have to think in terms of prices when the game was made. Plus while you might be able to realize that a certain car costs between $13,000 and $14,000, that won't help you determine what the 3^rd digit is, rendering the gameplay into a bit of random guessing.

Quake (N64):
Part of my inheritance. I didn't play this one much. Although back in the day, I had a lot of fun with the superior PC version in LAN parties.

Quantum of Solace (PS3):
This one was a cheap purchase off of Gmarket, but it will likely never see much play because it's one of my few games entirely in Korean. And given that in a movie tie-in game, you have to know what's going on, I'm not sure if it even can be played.

Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando (PS2):
The Ratchet and Clank series are 3^rd person shooters/platformers. A decent bit of fun if you like the genre. Didn't play this one much before moving out here.

Real Soccer 2011 HD (iPad):
I got this one because it was 99 cents or so. A great game in terms of graphics, but control of games by virtual joystick on the iPad can be a little dodgy. Plus, team selection is limited to national teams. Definitely worth the price though.

Red Dead Redemption (PS3):
Made by RockStar Games, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series. This was reportedly their attempt to make a game that they thought would be good even if it didn't sell well. But it's done very well. You are a cowboy in the dying days of the Old West tracking down members of your old gang. On the way, just like GTA, there's tons of sidequests and mini-games. Basically almost anything you can think of doing as a cowboy, you can do here. The first time you drink until you pass out will likely be humorous. The ONLY problem with the game is that since horses are much slower than cars, it takes you a while to get places. Excellent game.

Red Faction II (PS2):
Red Faction's selling point has always been destructible scenery. But only a limited amount is destroyable and the game itself just is not very fun. I gave up on it when I was stuck inside one of the cardinal sins of gaming: A sewer level.

Resistance 2 (PS3):
The original Resistance was one of the PS3 launch titles, and was a very highly touted shooter. What I've played of the sequel has been very good as well. I need to play some more of this one.

Ridge Racer 7 (PS3):
Another iteration of a very long lived series. Ridge Racer 7 is fun, but doesn't compare well to other racers like Gran Turismo 5 in the graphics department or Modnation Racers in the fun department.

Next time, Risk, Robotech: Battlecry and Invasion, the Rock Band series, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Rubik's World, Rugby 2004, Rumble Roses and the SSX Series.

I'm going to go ahead and continue the review. Since I just wrote the last entry last night, there's no new stuff to talk about before I go into this. So... Pokemon. (And yes, I know the e is accented, but I don't feel like typing that in every time).

I admit, Pokemon is a game marketed at kids. The anime is particular is downright awful if you take it seriously, though it's much better if you view it as the show knowing and admitting that it's goofy and reveling in it.

The basic plot of the games is that when a child becomes approximately 10 years old, they leave home to go wander throughout the entire country, despite not bringing things like food, clothes, water, etc. Before they leave town, they are given their choice of 3 starter Pokemon that you ordinarily cannot get anywhere else in the game. Using this, they battle and capture other Pokemon in an attempt to become powerful enough to earn badges by defeating the leaders of 8 gyms, and then become the champion of the region by defeating the current champion.

Even though it's a kid's game, it's surprisingly deep. The element that you can capture and add to your forces any wild Pokemon is really neat. Plus, the trading aspect adds some variety to the game, especially after the 4^th Generation. Traded Pokemon get a 50% experience point bonus in battle. Traded Pokemon from outside your country get a 70% bonus instead. But traded Pokemon will not obey you at high levels without enough gym badges.

Anyway, the basic format of each “Generation” of Pokemon games is that there are two initial core games. Each of these is essentially the same game, but lack certain Pokemon, so if you want to collect all of them, you need to have a friend with the other “flavor” of game. Later, an enhanced version is released. On the consoles, a “Stadium” game is released allowing you to have Pokemon fights on a big screen with superior graphics. Later on, remakes of the two initial games will be made, taking advantage of improvements in graphics technology since then, and compatible with later Pokemon. So let's dip right into it.

FIRST GENERATION:
Initial Games: (Game Boy): Pokemon Blue & Red (called Pocket Monsters Green & Red in Japan)
Enhanced Version: Pokemon Yellow
Stadium (N64): Pokemon Stadium
Remakes (GBA): Pokemon Leaf Green & Fire Red
I Have: Blue, Red, Stadium, Leaf Green

Most of the Pokemon that non-fans will recognize are in this 1^st generation. The Game Boy graphics were very blocky, and the Pokemon calls were all various screeches with the limited sound system. These have stayed constant even though the tech has improved since. Pokemon Yellow added compatibility with the Game Boy Color, and is the closest representation of the anime, as you get a Pikachu who follows you around as your starter rather than a traditional starter.

I got Stadium as part of my N64 inheritance and ended up buying Blue and Red off eBay to use Stadium to its full extent. Stadium even lets you trade between two cartridges without the need for a 2^nd Game Boy.

SECOND GENERATION:
Initial Games: (Game Boy Color): Pokemon Gold & Silver
Enhanced Version: Pokemon Crystal
Stadium (N64): Pokemon Stadium 2
Remakes (DS): Pokemon Heart Gold & Soul Silver
I Have: Heart Gold

For a long time, this was the hardest game to get Pokemon from, as 2^nd generation didn't have any games compatible with the modern DS. In fact, to get the starters before Heart Gold's release, you had to play a 3^rd Generation game, successfully complete the Pokedex from that game, then you would get rewarded with ONE starter. To collect them all, you had to then delete the game, then complete the Pokedex 2 additional times (trading your starter someplace safe first of course).

Heart Gold came with a unique selling point, the “Pokewalker”. You could “transfer” a Pokemon to an included pedometer, walk around with it to gain points, then use the points to capture Pokemon or find items. It's a nice gimmick, but doesn't come with enough variety to be worth more than a month of play.

THIRD GENERATION:
Initial Games: (Game Boy Advance) Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire
Enhanced Version: Pokemon Emerald
Stadium (GC): Pokemon Colosseum & XD
I have: Emerald

No remakes for this generation yet. Basically, better graphics and more Pokemon. The value starting with this generation is the fact that the GBA games can work as a “dongle” with the 4^th generation games and allowing you to catch certain Pokemon in this games that you otherwise might not be able to.

FOURTH GENERATION:
Initial Games: (DS) Pokemon Diamond & Pearl
Enhanced Version: Platinum
Stadium: (Wii) Pokemon Battle Revolution
I have: Pearl

These games benefited from the capabilities of the DS, mainly dual screen gameplay and WiFi connectivity. This generation introduced the Global Trade System, which allows Pokemon to be traded with people worldwide (though it can be a mess trying to find trade proposals that aren't ludicrously stupid).

FIFTH GENERATION:
Initial Games: (DS) Pokemon Black & White
I have: Black

This one just came out a couple of months ago, and the developers are really showing off what they can do with the DS' limited capabilities. Future games will probably come out for the 3DS. The Pokewalker mentioned previously was replaced with the Pokemon Dream World, which actually connects to the Internet and lets you play a simple online game to be able to transfer Pokemon back to the main game. I haven't been playing this too much because my DS battery is dying and only gets an hour or so of play time.

Wow, did I get wordy about this franchise, though most of it was the intro.

Next time, we'll hit up Power Move Pro Wrestling, Powerdrome, Press Your Luck 2010 Edition, the Price is Right, Quake, Quantum of Solace, Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando, Real Soccer 2011 HD, Red Dead Redemption and Red Faction II..

Welcome back, true believers.

Given that I'm on a three day break, and staying in town in the vain hope that my air conditioner is eventually actually installed, I have a little time on my hands.

As has become my common MO lately, I'll discuss a current issue for a bit before continuing with the games project.

The latest news out of my hobbies is that the DC Comics universe has a major revamp coming. Due to the nature of comic book solicitations coming out months in advance, they couldn't keep this secret. Basically, every book in the DC Universe is going to reset in numbering to #1, and the company will begin putting out 52 books a month. They are resetting the entire universe as a lure to new readers. At the same time, they will begin same-day distribution of their comics.

This is very reminiscent of 1985-6's series Crisis on Infinite Earths, which reset DC Continuity. Though there were things that didn't work out with it because some continuities got reset, and others didn't, causing contradictions that eventually had to be worked out (Donna Troy and the Legion of Super-Heroes hitting the biggest continuity snarls as a result). But with this new universe, EVERYTHING is being reset.

I have mixed feelings. The issue with reboots is that it means some very good stories suddenly didn't actually happen in the new continuity, which makes them feel cheaper. But if the stories are good, I will follow them.

In other brief news, despite the PlayStation Network being restored to the rest of the world, South Korea is still suffering from an outage, as the government here, along with those of Japan and Hong Kong, is insisting on knowing what exactly Sony will do to keep credit card information safe. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon, as my hard drive upgrade has rendered all of my DLC games and extras unusable until I can confirm I'm still the same account holder. This includes all of my Rock Band DLC songs.

But anyway, on to review.

Pac-Man Collection (GBA):
I bought this one just to have something to fill the Game Boy Advance slot on my Nintendo DS. It has 4 different Pac-Man related games. The first is the classic Pac-Man. Since the dimensions of the DS screen do not match the original arcade machine, you can choose an option to show the whole maze in the center of the screen (which is really small), or have the maze scroll up and down as you play. Other games include Pac-Attack (a Pac-Man version of games like Tetris and Columns), Pac-Mania (upgraded graphics, a ¾ perspective and jumping), and Pac-Man Arrangement (another upgraded version of the original game). Sadly, no Ms. Pac-Man or Super Pac-Man here, but it was only $10. But I would advise retro fans to get Pac-Man Championship Edition DX before this one.

Pac-Man World 2 (PS2):
This one is one in a series of 3D platformers. It feels a bit like a shallow ripoff of Super Mario 64, though there are some nice Pac-Man elements. Plus you can unlock classic Pac-Man games by playing.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness (PS3):
I would say that this is an adaptation of the webcomic, which it certainly is, but with an odd twist. The setting is kind of a 1930's-esque steampunk type affair, in which your player character allies with Tycho and Gabe to fight robots, with a combat system very reminiscent of the Mario & Luigi DS games. I got both episodes for $3 combined in a PlayStation Network sale.

Perfect Dark (N64 & 360):
This is the spiritual successor to perhaps the best N64 game ever, Goldeneye. Basically, the developer didn't get the license for Bond after the first game. The game was rereleased onto Xbox Live Arcade and it's worth a playthrough for FPS fans.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice For All (DS):
This is an interesting game, but it does have some Japanese weirdness to it. You play as defense attorney Phoenix Wright and get hired to represent various clients and get them found not guilty. The gameplay switches back and forth between an Investigation Mode where you search various scenes related to the crime for items and people to talk to about the case, and a Trial Mode where you're actually in the courtroom, trying to find holes in the witnesses' stories and contradictions with evidence.

The weirdness to the game comes with the legal system. We're not dealing with American “innocent until proven guilty” law. Basically, your client is guilty until you prove them innocent. Making mistakes in your case makes the judge lose patience and once he loses all patience, he proclaims your client to be guilty. This can lead to bizarre situations where you've definitively proven that the prosecution's main witness has lied on the stand and very well could be the actual murderer, and yet your client is found guilty even with that huge chunk of doubt. Even outside of that, the game's logic is very linear, meaning there's no replay value to the game unless you just liked the humor. The investigation phases proceed until you find every clue you need, and you must use items and testimony in the EXACT order the programmers intended (meaning you can lose judge patience for presenting an item “too early” even though it makes perfect sense to do so.

In addition, the game has a weird plot element that your assistant (and her very young cousin) can channel the spirits of the dead, resulting in a physical change to look like the person being channeled, resulting in the young girl suddenly taking on the appearance of a very endowed woman in her late 20's. Odd game, but worth a playthrough if your appreciate Japanese quirkiness.

Pinball FX2: Marvel Pinball (360):
Pinball FX2 is a free download from Xbox Live Arcade that is a shell of a pinball game. The money comes from having to buy tables to use on it. There is a lot of this on Xbox Live Arcade by the way. Marvel Pinball is a collection of 4 Marvel Comic themed pinball tables, including Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man and Blade. Seems fun, but actually seems less polished than the below entry.

Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection (PS2):
I got this one as part of a $10 pack, and basically considered this title to be worth the price of the pack alone (especially with the other two games in the pack being the horrid Garfield: Lasagna World Tour and World Championship Cards). This game includes 8 tables based on real tables put out by Williams Electronics (although versions for later consoles include more tables). I wanted this one for one table, Pin*Bot. I absolutely LOVED Pin*Bot back in the old arcade days. As well, Taxi is a lot of fun (and includes injokes from other Williams pinball games) and Funhouse is just incredible, including a talking head that chides you as you play the game, and the ability to smack the head with the ball, or put the ball down its throat while the mouth is open.

Physics and appearance are just spot on. This game is gorgeous and feels just like playing the original machines.

PixelJunk Racers: 2^nd Lap (PS3):
PixelJunk Racers is a PSN download which harkens back to old slot car days. You control a car from a top down perspective in various events (though thankfully, unlike slot cars, you can change lanes). 2^nd Lap is a revamp of the original game with more events (that was actually given to original game purchasers for free). Not all that great, but I've seen reviews that suggest it's a lot better as a multiplayer game.

Next time, one franchise dominates the entire review session, as I review the history of Pokemon games to cover those entries in my collection.

Time to take a drama break. No big philosophical insights on the nature of the universe and comic books today, but I will mention for those of you who missed it on Facebook that I completed an upgrade project over the weekend. My poor PS3's 120 GB hard drive was bursting at the seams. I had to go back often and check for game data to delete from it just to give me space for other things. As I had mentioned before, upgrading a PS3 hard drive is surprisingly easy for an end user.

All I had to do was buy a new drive (I went pretty swank, picking up a 500GB model). I also needed to back up my old data. Fortunately, I had an internal 300GB drive I wasn't using, so I picked up an external case for that. I also picked up an external case for the old 120GB drive once I removed it.

The big pain of the procedure was that PS3 does not recognize drives formatted in the NTSC standard. However, Windows XP refuses to format large drives in anything BUT the NTSC standard, as I ended up going through 2 or 3 useless and extremely long formats to find out. I finally resolved that with an external program that formatted in the FAT32 standard. After that, I went through an extremely long backup process that took until the next morning. Then came the relatively easy disc swap, and then the even longer restore process. Once that was done, my 5 gigs of space available went up to well over 300, and my PS3 is swank. However, I need to wait until I can access the PlayStation Network again to use most of my downloaded content since right now, the DLC thinks it's on a different PlayStation. Unfortunately, the PSN network is taking longer for Korea and Hong Kong to return than it is for anyone else.

Once I was sure the backup worked though, I inserted the old disc into the smaller case and gave it away to someone who was thinking of buying a disc. That person will get more happiness out of having a disc period than I will for having an extra one, so that's a sweet deal.

Anyway, on to the reviews...

NFL Xtreme – PlayStation
This game is not good. Sony's sports game division, which has immeasurably improved since the last decade, noticed that NFL Blitz was a hot property and attempted to make a ripoff of it, adapting the NFL Gameday '98 engine. Basically, they ended up with something that kinda sorta looked like Blitz if you squinted, but was slower, less wide open and a lot less fun.

NHL – Multiple Systems
(NHL 99 – N64, NHL 2004 – PS2)
EA Sports' basic hockey game. 99 was fun, but I bought 2004 a lot later for a dollar, and never got much more than that out of it. My best hockey game remains ESPN NHL 2K5

NHL Hitz Pro – PS2
This is a close competitor to the aforementioned ESPN NHL 2K5 for my best hockey game. NHL Hitz was part of Midway's extreme sports lineup. Midway released versions of their games with full teams calling it Pro. In this, a lot of the extreme style hockey is taken out, but you're left with a hockey sim with more emphasis on hard checks and fights. Pretty good play and some good commentary.

Need For Speed – Multiple Systems
(Need For Speed – Hot Pursuit 2 – PS2; Need For Speed – Hot Pursuit – PS3)
Contrary to the numbering, the PS2 game came first. I bought it as part of a 3 pack of racing games sold for charity. It follows the basic Need for Speed formula, either you're a racer racing through the countryside on a predefined track with lots of shortcuts, evading the police, or you actually ARE the police trying to catch the racers. And by catch, I mean run off the road. This is very certainly due process. The PS3 game basically takes what's there and shines it all up. It was made by Criterion Games, who made Burnout Paradise, and I actually liked this game better than that one (though part of that was getting ripped off on Paradise). There is something unrealistically ultrafun about getting Lamborghini cop cars.

Nintendogs – Dachshund and Friends – DS
This one is on my list of games to show girls and make them say “Oooohhhh....” It undeniably is cute. Nintendogs actually comes in different versions, but unlike the Pokemon games, all of the dogs are eventually available in all of the games. In Dachshund and Friends, the dogs available at the start of the game are the Miniature Dachshund, Golden Retriever, Beagle, Pug, Siberian Husky and Shih Tzu (I need to watch my language!) Playing through the game will unlock the starting dogs from all the games. Two dogs, the Jack Russell Terrier (like the dog on Frasier) and the Dalmatian are unlocked from finding special items on walks.

This game unfortunately suffers from Animal Crossing syndrome. With as many games as I have, games can often go on the shelf for months or maybe years before I play them again, but if you don't play this game every day, you end up coming back to a starving, dehydrated, filthy dog that has forgotten all his tricks. As a final note, there are ways to have a lot of inappropriate fun in the game, such as continually chucking a Moai Statue (think a smaller version of the Easter Island heads) at your poor dogs.

The Orange Box – PS3
This is a games collection that ended up exploding out of what people thought it was going to be. Valve Software had really late on releasing Episode 2 of Half-Life 2's continuing story. As compensation, they sold this package. The Orange Box included not only Episode 2, but Episode 1 and the original Half-Life 2 game. It was said that people who already had the games could give their extra copies to their friends. In addition to this excellent shooter, the Orange Box also contained Team Fortress 2, an upgraded version of the famous Half Life player vs player mod, and Portal.

Portal was never expected to be anything special. It's a short 2 hour game in which you're armed with a “Portal Gun” that can create portals which you can jump through, losing no momentum. The rest of the game is basically a huge puzzle, added by a demented computer babbling some decidedly dark humor at you. It's one of those games everyone needs to play. It even generated a stand-alone sequel.

Overlord: Raising Hell – PS3
This is an interesting game. You're the bad guy, a Sauron-ripoff who creates little imps to accomplish his goals. As a result, this game can be described as “Evil Pikmin”. This is the PS3 remake of the original Xbox 360 exclusive game. A little bit of fun.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX – PS3
This is a downloaded title available on both the PlayStation Network Store (whenever that comes back) and Xbox Live Arcade. Basically, it's the same gameplay us long time gamers have grown up on, but you run through a constantly changing gamefield, with gameplay speeding up to as much as 30x normal speed (with it slowing down considerably if you are in danger of dying) and potentially containing somewhere around 50 ghosts chasing you at one time. If you liked the original game at all, play this.

Next time, we will cover Pac-Man Collection, Pac-Man World 2, Penny Arcade Adventures, Perfect Dark, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice For All, Pinball FX 2: Marvel Pinball, Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection, and PixelJunk Racers: 2^nd Lap.

Welcome to the blog. We've got fun and games.

Things are going decently. I may or may not be moving soon, but either way, I'll be retaining my position at Mungyeong. I'll just be moving across town.

In other news, I bought an air conditioner as the hot, humid Korean summers are just brutal. Given that I do not need a huge fancy unit for just my room, I got a model that the store was moving out of stock, so it was fairly reasonable. Plus, if I do move, the new tenant will be reimbursing me for the unit, with the new apartment already having a unit.

Also, as a long time wrestling fan, I need to address the death of Randy Poffo, known more familiarly to us all as the famous wrestler Randy “Macho Man” Savage. Savage died yesterday at the age of 54 when he drove his Jeep into a tree. It has been speculated that Savage suffered a heart attack while driving.

Savage was a mainstay of the 1980s and early 90s WWF. He was likely 2^nd only to Hulk Hogan in terms of popularity in WWF during most of this time. Savage is regarded to have stolen the show at Wrestlemania III due to an excellent match with Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat and would be rewarded with winning a tournament for the WWF Championship at Wrestlemania IV.

Wrestlemania VII featured another showstealing match, as Savage would lose in a “career vs. career” match to the Ultimate Warrior. This excellent match also featured the storyline of Savage's reconciliation with Miss Elizabeth. After being reinstated to competitor status, he would win the WWF Championship a second time at Wrestlemania VIII, then captured the WCW Championship 4 times during a 1990s run in that promotion. As a side note, all 6 of these title reigns ended with a loss of the title to either Hulk Hogan or Ric Flair.

Savage's most famous feuds were with Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. Unfortunately, the former feud ended up extending into real life when Savage blamed Hogan for his divorce from his manager and real life wife, the late Elizabeth Hulette (better known to wrestling fans as Miss Elizabeth). In addition, for some reason, he ended up in a very bitter feud with Vince McMahon and was blacklisted from the WWE for years. (Out of respect for the dead, I shall refrain from listing the purported reason for this feud, especially since there are some very logical arguments against it.)

Fortunately, before his death, Savage managed to resolve both feuds, even appearing in and promoting the newest WWE game, WWE All Stars. One of the first things I did with the game is play as the famous tag team of “The Megapowers”, Hogan and Savage.

As well, Savage received accolades both for being the long time spokesman for Slim Jim (“Snap into a Slim Jim! Oh yeah!”), and a cameo as “Bonesaw” in the first Spider-Man movie.

Rest in peace, Randy. Thanks for the great matches.

In the meantime, let's continue with the game reviewery.

NCAA Football – multiple systems:

(PlayStation 2: 2003, 2004, 2005 & 08; PlayStation 3: 11)

I usually get NCAA games simply because they will allow me to take a graduating class and import it into the equivalent year's Madden game. (It may not even require the same year, I'm not sure). I've always loved creating a PLNU team and having them dominate the country. Early games, for some reason, did not have a suggest the play option for defense, but that's been fixed. The latest game includes lots of online features, including the ability to design a PLNU team with a correct logo (at least from my era. MY PLNU is not, and never will be “The Sea Lions”. We're Crusaders.)

NFL 2K3 – PS2

This is Sega's NFL franchise game from the year before they gained ESPN branding. I only played it a couple of times because I had newer games in the franchise, but I do need to note that the game includes a lineup rundown at the beginning of the game, just like TV. Modern games don't do this, which is a shame.

On a side note, I recently received an e-mail solicitation to join a class action suit against Electronic Arts due to their new exclusivity contract with the NFL. I didn't even respond because the whole idea is stupid. 99% of licensed properties in games are exclusive to one publisher or another. Activision certainly cannot sue THQ due to THQ's exclusive deal with WWE. Any verdict against EA would essentially outlaw exclusive licensing deals, which would never happen.

NFL Blitz – multiple systems

(PS1: NFL Blitz; N64: NFL Blitz 2000)

NFL Blitz was a fun game back in the day, but similar to Crazy Taxi and Gauntlet, it's much more fun as an arcade game where playtime is limited. When you get to play all you want for free, it becomes somewhat boring due to the limited scope of the game.) As well, the Rams teams in these games are horrible because even NFL Blitz 2000 was actually put out before the 1999 season, and as a result, the Rams are on their 1998 4-12 level, not their 1999 Super Bowl level.

Pretty much everyone knows the gameplay. Blitz was the second “arcade sports” game, with over the top stylized play emphasizing fun over realism (after NBA Jam). This trend continues today with the aforementioned WWE All Stars game.

NFL Quarterback Club 2000 – N64

This is now defunct publisher Acclaim's entry into the once crowded NFL game market. This game is awful compared to the Madden game of the same year on the same system. Particularly annoying was the need to press a button to catch the ball. I will admit though that the game had awesome cheats built it, including a “Rugby mode” where fumbles were much more common, a code to make the ball bounce in weird and unpredictable ways, and a code to make the ball occasionally explode.

NFL Street – PS2

(PS2: NFL Street, NFL Street 2)

This is a followup on EA Sports Big's excellent NBA Street series. The game revolves around 7 on 7 football, with the same players playing as both offense and defense. NFL Legends are also present in the game at the height of their careers (Eric Dickerson is a legend in the 2^nd game). Upgrades in the 2^nd game include additional moves, the “Gamebreaker II” [a prerendered sequence that made it even more likely the play would go for a touchdown, and enhanced customization options. I'd certainly buy a PS3 NFL Street game.

That closes us down for now. Next time, NFL Xtreme, the NHL games, NHL Hitz Pro, the Need for Speed games, Nintendogs, The Orange Box, Overlord: Raising Hell and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX.

Hey all, before I get into a last bit of games review for the weekend, here's the recent news.

Friday, for only the 2^nd time in my history at GVCS, I had to miss a day of work due to illness. In this case, it was food poisoning. I'm not sure if anything triggered it that day, or it was simply a relapse of the issue I had with it on Monday (which I would have also missed had it not been a vacation day), but I'm better now, and will hopefully stay that way.

Next, after a nearly month long outage due to hacker attacks, the PlayStation Network is going back online again. Most of the U.S. already has its basic service restored. Access to the PlayStation Store and other services will come later. Apparently, there's a bit of a delay for Asia, because the Japanese government is still asking questions about the attack. I've already got a PSN Store credit ready to go, as, of course, I need more Rock Band songs.

As well, briefly on the topic from last time, it appears that DC is either backing off a bit from their controversial “Superman renounces American citizenship” thing, or there's internal discontent with it, as in the recent issue of Superman (which I have not read yet), Superman apparently goes on a bigger soapbox rant than I did about why the American Way is a good thing and applies to everyone. Huh. I suppose DC got people talking and that's what they wanted.

Anyway, what I decided to do with my reviews is a bit of a hybrid of my previous idea and the way I was doing it before. From here on in, multiple entries in a same series all get lumped together into one entry. You'll see how it works as we go on.

Anyway, to the reviews!

Motorstorm: Apocalypse – PS3:

This is a new game, gotten just in time to fit into its place on the list. I haven't played it too much yet, but the basic idea is that an island city has been evacuated due to a terrible earthquake coming. You play as various people who think that coming here to RACE is a GREAT IDEA. This game would have really benefited from the Burnout engine, as ramming people is a bit unsatisfying. The game is gorgeous, but that's not difficult these days.

NASCAR Thunder 2004 – PS2:

I had other installments of this title, but gave them away as gifts. This game suffers from Madden Syndrome, basically unless you're a real fanatic, there's no reason to get this one year after year. The best bets are to see what updates are added, and thus is it worth your money. I tend to be a fanatic only for WWE and NFL (with NCAA Football being a bit of an extension due to the ability to export NCAA Draft Classes into Madden games). On the PS2, the hardware limitations really hurt this game. If playing 2 players, the total field goes from 43 cars to 19. Though it is real fun in this game to drive backwards (if you do it in the single player mode, your crew will be very unhappy with you, and some of those quotes went into my random quotemaker). One time, we even ran a whole race where I ran the race legitimately, he drove backwards to demolish the competition (and often me, but both of us could regenerate), and once they were all dead, I got to the finish line and stopped, and let him run the race correctly until he made it into 2^nd place before finishing. That was a glorious way to waste some time.

NBA 2K9 – PS3:

Never really played this one. Got it in a cheap 2 pack with NBA Ballers off of Gmarket, and was already playing NBA Live 2009. I got the pack mainly for Ballers, and... more on that in a second.

NBA Ballers: Chosen One – PS3:

Ugh, this game is awful. I thought it would be similar to the excellent NBA Street series, but... no. Controls feel very clunky, and graphics are substandard. In a laughable “they should have caught this in beta testing” moment, I like to design characters who actually look like I do, so my created characters are big. When I go for a jump shot in this game, I instantly lose weight while in mid air, only to regain it when I land. If only it were that easy...

NBA Live – Multiple:

(SNES: NBA Showdown, PC: NBA Live 08, PS3: NBA Live 09)

EA's basic NBA Simulation. Interestingly enough, the basic graphics layout is very similar to the SNES days. Basketball has been a relatively easy game to simulate as there are only 10 players on the floor at a time. Back in the day with the SNES game (which I'm including here for being basically the same thing), I once played a game with a friend where both of our teams were all clones of Shaquille O'Neal, and the house rule was that we had to take half court shots. He won 3-0. Basically, this is more than serviceable, but suffers from a lot of complaints of not being different enough from previous years.

NBA Street – Multiple:

(PS2: NBA Street, NBA Street Vol. 2, NBA Street V3)

Three on three NBA basketball done very well. In the career mode, you are a created baller putting together a team of unstoppable allies while increasing your own skills. In the latest game, I play as myself in a Lakers uniform, with teammates Kobe Bryant and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. First one was great, but options were limited. The second one I didn't play much simply because I ended up getting the third one like 2 weeks later. The third one is awesome. Some of the smoothest controls I've ever seen in a video game. I especially liked when during a game, the randomly chattering announcer decided that he was going to give me a name. He called me Dunk Deluxe, due to my predilection for dunking. And since then, he's referred to me as that, with that being “signed” onto the screen if my character gets a Gamebreaker basket. So to recap... NBA Street is fun. NBA Ballers is... not.

And that gets us to 10 games for this edition. Next time, I want to get in some maintenance on some outdated features on this website, as well as add new ones.

Also, next time game review goes on, we've got NCAA Football games, NFL 2K3, NFL Blitz games, NFL Quarterback Club 2000 and NFL Street Games.

Hey all,

One big thing I forgot to talk about last time was the recent plot development in DC Comics' Action Comics #900. The main story in this book is great, and I highly recommend that, although it is the wrap-up to a 7 part story in which Lex Luthor became the hero of Action Comics. The kerfluffle has all started because of a backup story. Superman is contacted by the U.S. Government and berated because he attended a human rights demonstration in Iran. He did not act or speak, but just stood there in solidarity for 24 hours. The issue is that Iran starts making claims that Superman was following orders of the U.S. Government, and as a result, Iran is calling it an act of war.

Superman's solution to this issue is rather extreme. He decides that he is going to appear before the United Nations and officially renounce his United States citizenship. He is not doing this because of any disagreement with U.S. policy (even though rogue members of the Army were recently instrumental in the murder of a significant number of his people who had survived the destruction of Krypton, including his aunt and uncle, who happen to be Supergirl's parents.) Rather, he is doing it so that he can take actions and have them reflect solely on himself and not on America.

In story, this is pretty understandable. DC has even done stories focusing on how communist and third-world countries had signed treaties banning American superheroes from operating there. Superheroes and supervillains have to be a big issue in the DC Universe Earth because America has more of them than all the rest of the world combined.

In reality, it needs to be realized that this is a sales stunt. DC Comics wants people talking about Superman. It will likely be forgotten within a year or so.

Really, there's only one part I take issue with. The writer of the story chose to include the line that the “American way” (from the famous 50s series tagline) isn't big enough anymore. To me, that demonstrates a misunderstanding of precisely what the American way is. It isn't about the American government or whatever current American policy is in place. It's a concept that goes beyond America. Thomas Jefferson summed it up in the Declaration of Independence with the immortal words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness “

These words surpassed even Jefferson's intentions, as he never dreamed they would be applied to women or minorities. But this notion that people have basic rights that cannot be taken away by any king or tyrant, THAT is the American Way that Superman has been defending, and it's just as vital now, as it was when it changed the world more than 200 years ago. It's not just for America, it's for everybody. It will never “not be big enough anymore”.

But I will get down from my soapbox now and review some games.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty – PS2:

Before I get into this review, let me sum up what this series is about. You are an espionage operative (usually a man codenamed Solid Snake) investigating and trying to stop the usage of a new nuclear weapon delivery system. The titular Metal Gears are huge bipedal tanks that circumvent many treaties by actually firing nuclear bullets rather than missiles or bombs, using a railgun to magnetically propel the weapon at proper speeds to go from continent to continent. However, director Hideo Kojima is infamous for some rather... unusual dialogue scripting in his games, so sometimes the dialogues is laughable or just outright weird...

In this installment (which was so anticipated that including a demo of the game in another game propelled that game to bestseller status), for most of the game, you actually don't play as Solid Snake, but a new operative, codenamed Raiden (Raiden would not be appreciated much by the fanbase, getting a rep as a whiny prettyboy, and the 4^th game does a lot to redeem him). And much like the first one, while the story is fairly linear, there's freedom to play around in the game's toybox. Solid recommendation, if you'll pardon the pun.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots – PS3:

Like I mentioned last time, I never played the third game, which was a prequel, though I'd like to get back to it someday (maybe if the earlier games are remade with PS3 graphics, like what happened to the God of War series, I'd buy that). Basically, the billing of this game is that it's the end of Solid Snake's story, his last mission. And to celebrate, almost every character who hadn't died in the previous games makes a reappearance. You even go back to the location of the first game. This game is extraordinarily cutscene happy. You go 22 minutes from starting the game to actually playing, and some cutscenes are over an hour long... but it's very enthralling. I made the mistake of playing on a school night once, starting at 8PM, then looking up what I thought was a short time later and realizing it was after midnight. This is definitely one I want to finish someday.

MetropolisMania – PS2:

This Japanese title is best described as a combination of Animal Crossing and SimCity that never quite manages to reach the fun level of either. Basically, the plot is that all the world's troubles come from overcrowding and poor planning, as well as lack of communication, so a guy who looks unfortunately way too much like Hitler says that people like you have been appointed as Metropolis Makers in order to build healthy interactive communities. There are 5 levels in the game, and I never got past the 2^nd because balancing everyone's needs is tricky. You do have to remember to never place homes near the factory as the noise causes them to get madder and madder until they leave, as there's nothing you can do to fix the problem. (Though it is funny to see them with literally red faces right before this point). This was released as a budget title, and you'll get a decent amount of fun from it.

Midway Arcade Treasures 2 – PS2:

This is a collection of Midway's best arcade games, focusing on the later games they released. (The 1^st edition is early games, and the last one is 8 racing games). Notable games in this collection include Mortal Kombat II and III (but not the 1^st), APB, Cyberball 2072, Hard Drivin', NARC, Rampage: World Tour (the original is in the 1^st edition), Total Carnage and Gauntlet II. There are minor issues though, including the game Pit Fighter actually running too fast to be playable (something that should have been caught in a beta test). But as a discount game, not a bad collection. I considered getting the 1^st to go along with this one.

ModNation Racers – PS3:

Basically, the idea behind this game is taking Mario Kart style cart racing and combining it with LittleBigPlanet's ultra emphasis on creation mode. ModNation will let you customize everything, including racer, car and track, and the community has some excellent downloads out there. The only bad side is that like LBP, the game is marketed up the wazoo with tons of microtransactions available for download, but the basic set is very good.

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge – PS3

I always loved the quirky humor of the Monkey Island games. You take the role of lovable but not bright pirate Guybrush Threepwood in a classic point and click adventure game. In the Special Edition, graphics have been redesigned to current graphics standards, but it's basically like they took the old game and just drew over it. The idea is to still remain as close to the original games as possible. The same voice actor for Guybrush remains, which is great because he's brilliant at it. The game includes the capacity to switch back and forth between the new and original graphics, and in the 2^nd remake, voices are still retained when you do this. I loved these games so much growing up that not only did I buy this for PS3, I got both games for the iPad as well (for 99 cents each, which isn't bad).

Mortal Kombat Trilogy – N64:

Another game from my inheritance. I didn't play this one much because I was never much of a fan of the original Mortal Kombat games and I already had a better looking and more faithful version of MK2 and MK3 on the Midway collection above. Plus, this game got poor reviews due to graphics and sound quality, as well as leaving out fighters to conserve memory.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe – PS3:

When this was announced, people hoped it would be the answer to Marvel vs. Capcom, and unfortunately, this title never quite reaches those heights. But good DC games are very rare, so I was glad I got this one. It does suffer from the same problem that the last DC fighting game had (Justice League Task Force, developed by Blizzard of all people) in that you really don't have a good answer for how Batman can fight Superman or Captain Marvel or Green Lantern hand to hand (though at least here an attempt is made). Oh yeah, the Mortal Kombat guys are in here too. The plot involves simultaneous accidents in the DC Universe and the Mortal Kombat universes causing the two universes to merge, threatening both with destruction. I was kinda sad to never see any DLC for this one. I would have bought a Booster Gold DLC character in a second.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon – PS2:

Very good fighting game with a huge amount of characters. As well, it has a very robust character creation system, an adventure mode that combines the fighter style with a free roaming beat 'em up, and oddly, a cart racing mode. Had quite a bit of fun with this.

Motocross Mania 3 – PS3:

This game was another game I picked up only because it was part of a heavily discounted 3 pack. It's a racing game where you can pick up melee weapons to attack your opponents. Awful graphics. A little fun can be eked out here, but I'd recommend a pass.

That's going to do it for now. Next time, I do a little bit of change to the format, as I have quite a few NBA games, so the next article will be all about them.

Oh, poor poor neglected blog. I leave it alone for so long. I can buy it candy and flowers, but there's no way it can keep trusting me after the way I keep disappointing it.

But, what can I say? The GVCS job, while satisfying in a lot of ways, is pretty hard. There are quite a few nights I come home, get dinner, and go right to bed, still waking up tired the next day.

But now, I've got 4 days off for break, with a weekend in between them (with apologies to my Eumseong cow orkers, who only got 2 days off), I've got some time to just kick back, catch up on my gaming, relax and just enjoy life. Plus, catch up on this blog.

Obviously, the major recent news has been the recent death of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist Osama bin Laden at the hands of United Special Forces. This has caused a bit of a rift among my Facebook friends as some celebrate his death, and others say it's wrong to celebrate any death (including some posting a status of a purported Martin Luther King Jr. quote that seems to have been not said by King).

I can definitely see both sides. 9/11 was the worst attack on the United States since the Pearl Harbor attack. It's THE memorable event of my generation, just like JFK's assassination for the previous one. Many seem to have forgotten about it by now, but I remember in the immediate aftermath, former President George W. Bush talked about the need to end terrorism, which I still think is a good idea. Some say this is impossible, but I think that kind of plays into the terrorists' hands. If you simply state as fact that terrorism is inevitable, then the only option to deal with it is negotiation and capitulation, and this just encourages its use. In this vein, killing the criminal who murdered all these people is very justified. It was extraordinarily unlikely that bin Laden could be captured to stand trial.

(By the way, in case I have any 9/11 conspiracy theorists reading, do yourself a favor and Google “Popular Mechanics” and “9/11”. There is an excellent article in which each major claim of the theorists is debunked, with some proven to be flat out lies.)

On the other hand, as a Christian, you don't want to celebrate any death. The Bible makes it clear that we are all sinners, and none of us deserve to attain heaven any more than bin Laden did.

In the end, all I can really do is see both sides. I point to Romans 14, one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. It talks about how some Christians felt led by God to abstain from eating meat, and some did not, and that there was strife between them. Paul tells them, basically, that for those who felt God's call to not eat meat, eating meat was a sin. But for those who did not, it was not. Both sides should respect each other, but not lead the other side into a sin If you feel that it is wrong to celebrate any death, no matter how heinous the person, then I commend you for sticking up for your principles. If you feel like it is justified to celebrate this person's death, I will not judge you, as I do not feel qualified to do so.

Moving on from that, other recent news was the hopefully final resolution of the idiotic “birther controversy”. Basically, conspiracy theorists (them again?) have alleged that President Barack Obama was really born in Kenya, and not Hawaii as he claimed, and thus under Article II of the United States Constitution, was ineligible to become the President, as the position requires a natural born citizen of at least 35 years of age. It was silly from day 1 if you think about it, since why would someone spend so much money and time on a campaign if they knew they weren't really eligible? This has been investigated time and time again since 2008, with every investigation revealing that, yes, Obama was born in Hawaii like he said he was. Because Donald Trump has recently gotten into the act, the Obama administration finally managed the release of Obama's “long form” birth certificate, which Hawaii usually does not let out. With a few exceptions foolishly claiming counterfeiting, the fallout has been the same exact people talking about this saying that the administration was wasting time by answering. I'm certainly not the biggest fan of Obama's time in office, but this is just silly.

Finally, other big news lately has been hitting my living room. Sony's PlayStation Network was hacked recently. One group suspected is the hacker group Anonymous, who had threatened Sony based on their removal of a function called “Other OS” (which allowed the installation of Linux on the PS3, and was being used for hacking purposes), as well as Sony's lawsuit against a man named George Hotz, who had successfully hacked the PlayStation 3. As a result of this attack, the PlayStation Network has been down for over a week now. When it comes back, Sony is promising a “Welcome Back” program, which will provide users with free games and such for compensation.

Personally, I'm not affected TOO much because I was never an avid online gamer (outside of World of Warcraft, and even there I'm very casual). Plus, signal lag is a major issue here in Korea while playing against a North American gamer or on a North American server. Plus, I never used any permanent credit cards on the Network, so if there was a theft of credit card information (and Sony has publicly stated that there has been no reported increase in credit card fraud), it won't hurt me. But I never thought malicious hackers were cool. Some people out there seem to think that all major corporations are evil and whoever hurts them is a hero, no matter how much it inconveniences everyone, but I view that as a very immature attitude. If you don't like a company, don't buy their products. You're not a hero by stopping them from doing business, you're a criminal. And I hope that these idiots get some time to think about that in jail.

Anyway, I think I've got a game review article on tap so I'll probably post that soon.

How about some more game review?

Madden 06 – PC:

This is close to the last year that Madden would be developed for the PC platform (last year was 08), and it's a shame because it's a good product. The visuals are gorgeous compared to consoles, especially on widescreen. This is the first year that the Superstar mode was introduced, letting you play as one player through a career. But it's a little unpolished here as they hadn't thought to give players control of which team drafts them, so you have me as a diehard Rams fan playing for the Raiders or the Texans. In one funny note, the game incorporates the real 2005 NFL Draft, having you go in the third round. In one go around, I went to the Texans, who had already drafted a DT in the first round that year, and I was actually better as a third round pick than the first round guy.

Madden 09 – DS:

I got this one mainly because I heard about the DS Madden games including the ability to draw out hot routes. However, this game is a piece of garbage due to a bug that really should have been caught in any competent beta test: You cannot complete passes. Perhaps 1-2% of all passes are caught. This isn't a skill thing because the computer has the same issue. So it gets really boring, really fast. I believe this is the last time they made a Madden game for DS...

Madden 11 – PS3:

This one is really good. Of course, the graphics on the PS3 are outstanding, but there's a lot going for this title. The innovation this year is called Gameflow. Basically, instead of having to pick a play every time, you can have coordinators pick a play for you. I've been using “Computer pick my play” for years when I've been able to, but here you can actually have coordinators say what the play and their plan for it is. If you have a Bluetooth headset, you can even have the coordinators voices in that while the rest of the game plays on TV audio. In addition, in the franchise mode, during the month of October, the players actually wear the Breast Cancer Awareness Month pink gear. As well, if your system clock reads December, each game will have a shot of a Santa in the crowd wearing a home team colored hat, regardless of the time in the game. A lot of fun here. I'm nearing the end of the 2^nd season of my franchise, and one of my roommates is actually playing through Superstar mode with a quarterback he started in NCAA Football 11.

Major League Baseball 2K5 – PS2:

The last of the games I got from the year where Sega sold all their sports titles for $20 new, this is a very serviceable baseball game. The only thing missing is ability to create your own teams, but a lot of fun.

Major League Baseball 2K8 – PS2:

Didn't play this one that much due to coming to Korea, but it seemed mostly just a roster update and minor graphics update of 2K5.

Major League Baseball 2K9 – PS3:

I was hoping for a continuation the same kind of gameplay I was getting, but with better graphics. But I think they did something to the pitching interface and I didn't much care for it. If I get a baseball game in the future, it will probably be from the MLB: The Show series, which I've heard good things about.

Mall Tycoon – PC:

Awful game. Way back in the day, there was a game called Railroad Tycoon, which was pretty good. In a more recent example, Roller Coaster Tycoon was also pretty good. Cue cutrate games producers realizing that you can't trademark the word Tycoon, and this was among the first in a slew of bad ________ Tycoon games. Basically, you design your own mall, but the graphics are so clunky and the gameplay so bland that I could never really get into it.

Mario Kart 64 – N64:

Another “inherited” game and the second in the Mario Kart gameplay. Excellent game for its times, and it began the tradition of bringing back tracks from previous games, just as some of its tracks are brought back in the DS and Wii versions.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 – PS3:

This is a PSN download that I got for $10. MvC2 was a very hot arcade game that had a DreamCast (among others) port. This game has excellent graphics, and very frantic gameplay. But even on Easy Mode, this one is hard until you get all the combos down. Looking forward to the 3^rd game in a few months.

Metal Gear Solid – PS1:

I never played the old NES Metal Gears, so this was my first exposure to the series, and it's an excellent game to say the least. In certain ways as well, after you've beaten it, it can almost become a sandbox, especially after you get the completely gamebreaking stealth. The game seems to encourage messing around, especially when you get chewed out by your support team for killing the birds hanging around. The story gets a bit silly at times, but Hideo Kojima is famous for that.

Next time, we'll cover Metal Gear Solid 2 & 4 (I never got 3), as well as MetropolisMania, Midway Arcade Treasures 2, Modnation Racers, Monkey Island 2: Special Edition, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Motocross Mania 3 and NASCAR Thunder 2004.

I feel in a writing mood, and I have some break to unwind over, so let me continue talking about video game reviews.

I'm going to go ahead and press on to the end after this entry, then go back and pick up any games I didn't include because I didn't have them at the time of writing. But we'll start with 5 newer ones promised last time...

Grand Theft Auto IV – Episodes From Liberty City – PS3:

I haven't played this one at all, mainly because all the advice I've seen online is to finish Grand Theft Auto IV, then play this. This is a collection of two followup stories that have been offered as downloadable content. Nowadays, you can get both the main game and this on one disc, but I have it on two. I may discuss these more later.

Guitar Hero 5 – PS3:

As you know, I really love karaoke. As well, I loved the Guitar Hero games on PS2 that just included guitar. GH5 is the 2^nd game of the series that takes the Rock Band concept of having lead vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Though there are minor play differences from Rock Band, the basic concept is the same. All songs are unlocked from the beginning, a concept that Rock Band would later go on to borrow for Rock Band 3 as well as the “side” games (Beatles, Green Day and Lego). But playing through lets you unlock new venues and avatars of celebrities, such as Johnny Cash, Carlos Santana, Shirley Manson and Kurt Cobain. This last actually caused a lawsuit as Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, says she was led to believe that Cobain would only be available to sing Nirvana songs, and having him sing other songs makes him look silly and damages his image. I actually prefer playing Rock Band due to a more robust character creator as well as the fact that Rock Band has a much more efficient song import, meaning that from out of the entire collection of games (except Beatles Rock Band), only about 15 songs or so don't play in Rock Band 3.

Katamari Forever – PS3:

I was always intrigued a bit by the Katamari Damacy games, and their quirky gameplay. This is a game that could have only come from Japan, with its very odd emphasis on rolling up household items into a ball which grows larger and larger, despite the growing oddness of the items. I never got to play one until picking up Katamari Forever. This is actually a very good jumping on point as it includes several classic levels from earlier games, which would be new to me. I want to play this one a bit more before forming an opinion.

LEGO Star Wars – The Complete Saga – PS3:

The original LEGO Star Wars covered only the prequel trilogy, with a sequel covering the classic films. Since then, the quirky humor of the game as well as nostalgia value makes it pretty appealing for fans of the series. Other LEGO games made since include Batman, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter, taking the same formula of a tongue in cheek look at the source material. This compilation includes all 6 films of the franchise, and actually is a fix for some of the issues (the Classic Trilogy game let you import characters from the previous game, but they could not do some of the gameplay functions added to the 2^nd game, so there was little reason to ever use them). As a bonus, to promote the then upcoming Indiana Jones game, you could unlock Indiana as a character... and having Han Solo and Indiana Jones adventuring together is awesome.

The Lord of the Rings – Conquest – PS3:

This game is interesting. Its play reminds me a lot of battlegrounds in World of Warcraft as it has you play through various battles of the movies, often with the ability to switch to different classes as you need to. One huge problem with the game though is that you seem to be the only person in the whole army capable of DOING anything. I've lost battles because I managed to take out 4 of the major enemies by myself with the rest of my army unable to take out the 5^th. Enemies even seem to realize that you're the one with a guy controlling you outside the TV because they tend to target you and nothing else, really hurting immersion. I'll want to play this one some more though.

Madden 2001 – PS2:

OK, here we go. Lots of very similar Maddens. 2001 was a very memorable one for me. It was one of (if not the) first game I bought after getting my PS2 and would thus be only one of two Madden games I paid full price for (the other one being Madden 11). The graphics took a huge leap with the new technology, and I got a lot of playtime out of this, simulating 3 or 4 full seasons. As a bonus, since the years are actually one above what they should be, this is actually the game for the 2000 season, and thus the Rams were a super team, since they were based on the 1999 version. On a weird note, while I was playing through seasons, the computer ended up releasing Marvin Harrison and Steve McNair from their teams with no one picking them up. I signed both, keeping Harrison and trading McNair, and ended up with a deadly corps of receivers. As well, since this is the first iteration on new hardware, EA pulled their usual shenanigans and omitted features. This way, they can readd them later as a selling point for newer games.

Madden 2002 – PS2:

I never played this one much. I got it for a dollar on the same day I bought Madden 2004 (for 4 dollars), since I was kind of collecting Maddens back then. I did notice that it included player introductions, a neat twist I really wish the current games would have.

Madden 2003 – PS2:

This was my immediate successor to Madden 2001. Basically, just roster updates and a bit cleaner graphics.

Madden 2004 – PS2:

This Madden is a little infamous. The cover athlete was Michael Vick (boy did the Madden Curse haunt him...), and as typical, the programmers sweetened his ratings a little bit as a result. The result was that Vick's major flaw (on field anyway) of accuracy was fixed, turning him into a superman in the game.

Madden 2005 – PS2:

Mainly just got this one to integrate with NCAA Football 2005. This is the last Madden that had to compete for the NFL license and a lot of people think it's inferior to ESPN NFL 2K5. I agree with that to a very large extent, but I do like the Hit Stick functions and beefs to defensive play that were added with this version.

Well, that's all for this game. Next time, I hopefully get us out of repetitive franchise titles for a while after I finish off Madden with Madden 06 (PC), Madden 09 (DS) and Madden 11 (PS3). From there, I move on to Major League Baseball and get it out of the way, covering 2K5, 2K8 and 2K9. From there, I finish off with Mall Tycoon, Mario Kart 64, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Metal Gear Solid.

Should I blog? Yes, I should.

The games listing project is on a bit of hold right now, but I have made a decision to no longer include PlayStation Plus games, as I’m finding I have to delete them for space. I may need to look into the possibility of upgrading the Hard Drive on it, but luckily, the PS3 seems designed with user modification in mind (very rare for a console) and it’s very possible for an end user to just buy a standard mini hard drive and install it.

Some of the big news lately is that apparently, I’m being transferred over to our new Mungyeong Campus over in March. It’s a surprising move, given that I teach 10^th grade and that the 10^th grade program isn’t moving over yet. I’m told that what I’ll be doing is participating in a dual teaching program. Under this program, which is being experimented with in America as well, I would teach a lesson completely in English, and immediately afterwards, the students are taught the same lesson in Korean, so I’d be working closely with another teacher. At first, I was really pessimistic about this move, but after it was explained to me, it started really growing on me. Of course, plans change quickly around here, so nothing is set in stone yet, so we’ll have to see.

My other big news is about my newest toy. As some of you know, I was planning to go home for Christmas for a visit. However, the prices I was being quoted, it was just too expensive to go, especially when adding in that I’d be giving up two months of salary. So I agreed to stay here and work and I was needed.  So I had a little extra money saved up (especially since I’ve paid my family all the money I owed them and didn’t have that to worry about anymore).

I happened to notice one day that one of my fellow teachers had an iPad, Apple’s new tablet computer.  I had of course heard of the iPad, but never really thought much about it. But when I first saw it, I thought it was pretty neat. However, most of the iPads sold over here are the 3G variety, which means they have to be bought under a contract. And even if I wanted to take out a contract, I couldn’t because I’m not a Korean citizen.

However, I happened to be looking on a forum site dedicated to ESL teaching abroad and just the day before payday, somebody posted about how he had received a 64GB Wi-Fi only iPad from his company as part of an IPO party. He didn’t want it and was selling it. I contacted him and he offered to come from Daejeon where he was to Eumseong where I was to deliver it personally to “sweeten the deal”. So I took the plunge. According to one of my roommates here,  I paid about $100 less than what this model was being sold for in Korean stores.

And I have to say, I love this thing. The dealmaker for me was finding out that I could buy an app and use it to transfer my PowerPoint presentations for class  to the iPad and use it to display them. This would free up my school laptop for other things, including grading and attendance. And I have noticed that even in a tough winter semester (the school day is just about over an hour longer), my efficiency has gone way up. I’m actually doing the vast majority of my grading in class, and there are times when I get back to the office for my prep period, design a new daily quiz for the next day, and prepare my next day’s PowerPoint (made much easier by the fact that I can just find the section I’m doing, find the PowerPoint from last semester when I did that section, and copy and paste in the relevant content) and I’ve literally done everything I need to for the day with about an hour of work time to go.

Not to mention that there’s some neat games on here. The iPad will never replace consoles as a gaming platform, but it does a lot to replace the DS as a portable platform. I’ve got the iPad absolutely loaded with things, and it’s still not even half full.

The only problem with it is that it’s a Mac product, and I feel like I’m betraying my PC roots. I’ve been a PC guy ever since my grandfather made the jump from the old TRS 80 Model IV (vintage 1983) to the Tandy 1000 SX (vintage 1987). And I persisted in my PC-ness despite all the Commodore fans, the Amiga fans and later the Linux fans laughing at me. But the biggest rivals were always the Apple/Mac fans. I never liked Macs. The Macs and their one button mice can go away and not bother me anymore. But I like this. So we’re all going to pretend the iPad is not a Mac. Are we deal buddies? Cool.

Anyway, it’s actually an exciting time. To write about everything going on would take forever, but there’s stuff even bigger than this in store that seems ready to make 2011 bigger and better than 2010 was.

Tune in later, same Bat Time, same Bat Station.