Super Mario 64 is a bad listener.

Shadow of the Colossus is a terrible cup-holder.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is too flame retardant.

Super Smash Bros. Melee isn't flame retardant enough.

Chrono Trigger is lousy in bed.

Rock Band doesn't cook a burger all the way through.

Psychonauts doesn't toast well.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare fails to keep birds away from my crops.

Portal doesn't make for a good sail.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time never tips.

Super Mario Bros. 3 has poor cell phone reception.

Mother 3 doesn't have HBO.

Brutal Legend, Super Smash Bros (Brawl and original), the occasional late-night drunken split-screen game of Call of Duty: World at War (knives and grenades only!), and Snood during class.

Best Hero: Mario

Duh. Mario is video games. Maybe he's not the most three dimensional or well-developed character, but he's sure as hell the most internationally beloved. That counts for something, right?

Runners-up: Samus Aran (gaming's first and perhaps only feminist icon), Solid Snake (for being a grizzled badass...with an actual development arc)

Best Villain: Pokey Minch

Pokey is one of the most fascinating characters to emerge from any medium, period. Everything about the evil little bastard makes the player endlessly alternate between loathing and pitying him. Sure, he's a reckless, sadistic thug who destroys and corrupts mostly just because he's bored, but he's also a lonely, pathetic, maladjusted child who simply isn't mature enough to understand that the world is bigger than his immediate wants and needs, a personality flaw only made dangerous by the enormous power he more or less stumbles into by accident.

Runners-up: Ganondorf (there's a fanatical resilience and even a little hint of sadness in there that keep him from being just another black-clad mustache-twirler; in the chronologically later games it practically seems like he prioritizes torturing Link and Zelda way above the whole Hyrule-conquering thing), GlaDOS (the funniest video game character ever? Maybe)

Best Sidekick: Agro

The most amazing thing about Agro is that the player cares more about him than they probably have about most of the human characters they've interacted with in gaming, and that's because Team ICO made him seem so astonishingly real. He moves like a real horse does (there's a tiny delay between the Wanderer directing Agro's movement and Agro actually moving) and he acts like a real horse does (he can get distracted or scared). The best qualities that we look for in a sidekick are loyalty and the formation of a meaningful bond with the main hero, and Agro has both in ways that far surpass any other gaming sidekick.

Runners-up: Luigi (the poor guy has put up with so much shit over the past few decades, yet still he comes back for every adventure/kart race/tennis match), Frog (okay, so maybe he's not really a sidekick in the traditional sense, but fuck the traditional sense, Frog is awesome. Show me one other video game character who can speak so eloquently only to gut some enemies with a magical sword ten seconds later...and all presumably without the aid of opposable thumbs...)

I probably won't have time to get/play everything I want, plus I'm probably forgetting some major wishlist items here due to my lack of updated knowledge about release dates, but whatever:

1. Assassin's Creed II

Basically, the first game was one of the most promising AAA titles of this generation so far, and it introduced some pretty great new concepts (the story was cool and interestingly told, the environments were jaw-droppingly beautiful, and the fluidity of movement is among gaming's best)...but it fell short in execution (dull, repetitive side missions, flat-out retarded enemy A.I., stale combat, and a pretty short running time considering how often you're repeating the same actions over and over again). The sequel seems to be fixing everything that was wrong with the first game (you can swim!) and adding some cool new features as well.

2. Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of my favorite games of all time. $60 for more of that plus a multiplayer system that enhances the already near-perfect one of the last game while (hopefully) not trying to fix what isn't broken is definitely a good buy as far as I can tell. The only thing that has me a little worried is that the singler player campaign looks like it might take things a little over the top for my tastes. CoD 4's campaign was best when it was raw and visceral, dropping us into the conflict without dramatizing or glorifying it (the end of "Shock and Awe" will be talked about for many years to come, I'm sure of it), but the new game seems to be mostly eschewing that for big, flashy set-pieces. Still, I've got faith in Infinity Ward to give us a great experience.

3. Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony

I've been missing out on these DLC releases, so maybe the December break is the perfect time to check 'em out. And while I'm at it, there's some Virtual Console titles I've got my eye on as well.

At 11/2/09 03:34 PM, SteveGuzzi wrote: you ain't cool, unless you pee your pants.

If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.

Definitely the one where they go to the Depression-era-gangster-themed planet. Trek got pretty silly at times, but this was just way over the top.

I think that it would be pretty hard to argue that there are no games that could be considered true works of art. The only real question now is how we define "art" in the medium of video games. Are all games art? Or just some of them? Does a game need only to have certain factors that are present in other mediums to be considered art (e.g. a strong narrative, distinctive or pleasing aesthetic qualities), or are there certain things that can only be done in games, and that must be done in games for them to be considered art? Unfortunately, gaming (especially artistically ambitious gaming) is such a young medium that there's very little precedent for analyzing these types of things. But here's my opinion on the matter:

Many games are art. Many other games, however, are just toys. The distinction is usually obvious, but it can get a little tricky when we start getting into games whose most important qualities are entirely unique to the gaming medium (i.e. old games that don't have much in the way of story or visual/aural presentation but have loads of interesting gameplay), so I'm not really going to get into that. However, it does lead me to my next point:

A game can be considered art for containing factors present in other media in a meaningful way, such as story (e.g. Metal Gear Solid) or aesthetics (e.g. your examples), but what's far more important for gaming's future as an art form and far more exciting for us gamers is when a game also utilizes the one artistic factor exclusive to video games: interactivity. This is still a largely unexplored frontier, but developers (mostly indies) are slowly starting to unlock the incredible potential that interactivity has for conveying artistic meaning. I defy anyone to play a game like Passage or Execution (they're both very short and free to download. Google 'em, and make sure you play Execution at least twice) and then tell me that the interactive qualities of a game can't make a person feel something or think deeply about something.

But those are just tiny little tastes of what's to come if we keep exploring the artistic possibilities of interactivity. In terms of more mainstream games, there are tons of examples of games that have moments of this kind of significant gameplay (e.g. Metal Gear Solid 4's infamous "microwave" sequence, the incineration of the Companion Cube in Portal, the nuke scene in Call of Duty 4) but fail to utilize them consistently throughout (e.g. most of the MGS oeuvre, which is practically a movie at times). Still, developers should be encouraged to keep making these kinds of moments, because if you think about it, you'll probably find that they're the most memorable parts of all these games.

As far as I can tell, there are really only three examples of games that I've played (that I can think of right now) where story, visuals, sound, and interactivity are all used brilliantly and consistently throughout the entire duration of the experience to form a cohesive and significant work of art. The first is Shadow of the Colossus, in which every strike of the sword comes with a pang of guilt, and the player gets a very real sense of Wander and Agro as characters through the gameplay. The second is Braid, in which the cryptic words, images, and even references to gaming itself turn out to have been intertwined with the gameplay all along, as revealed in an unexpected and jaw-dropping finale. The third is...okay, I'll just come right out and say it: I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game. Why, you ask? Well, because to a certain extent, IWBtG is one of the first ever games whose genre can be defined as "comedy." Much of the humor is derived from the gameplay itself, and while "so frustrating it's funny" has probably been done before, only in IWBtG is it done in such a way that it cuttingly satirizes our idealistic nostalgia for the 8-bit days, where we neglect the fact that many of the games we so passionately defend were actually riddled with glaring design flaws.

Which is not to say that I don't encourage the industry to keep making games that are artistic in more traditional ways, too. I mean, the more games like Psychonauts, Metal Gear Solid, Mass Effect, EarthBound, etc., the better. But still, all just stuff to consider.

TL;DR- Yes.

Mine wasn't bad, considering we traipsed into temple late and then broke fast a good 3 or 4 hours before we were supposed to because my brother had to catch an early flight back to school.

One of the easier Yom Kippurs of my lifetime. Basically the opposite of the time when it was on my birthday.

At 9/24/09 06:22 AM, Aci6 wrote: I don't know if its been in production for so long or if there's been some problems or what

There were some major problems. It's basically a miracle that the game is being released at all. I think that funding was an issue throughout the entire development process, which was made exponentially worse when Activision unceremoniously dumped the game after getting it in the Vivendi merger (because they couldn't "exploit it every year"). Listen closely now, because the following sentence might actually tear a hole in the space-time continuum:

Thank God for EA.

I personally think that the best game overall is A Link to the Past, simply because everything just comes together so nicely, especially the gameplay, which is more or less perfect (something that can't be said for the understandably sometimes clunky Ocarina of Time and the slightly less understandably far too easy Twilight Princess). The items are all put to good use throughout the game instead of just being one-dungeon gimmicks. The graphics are gorgeous for 16-bit, and the world is filled with color and detail. The dungeons are challenging without being frustrating, and the boss fights are some of the series' best. The music is some of gaming's most memorable. What's not to like?

Ocarina of Time comes close, though. It has quite possibly the best original soundtrack of any game ever. The gameplay is obviously top-notch, though there are some flaws and frustrating moments here and there. Most of all, though, it displays the series' setting, general atmosphere, characters, overarching plotline, and themes (basically, all the storytelling elements) in a kind of broad, sweeping way that none of the other games in the series have been able to match before or since. Somehow, even though most of the other games in the series portray their worlds in much more detail, Ocarina of Time's still seems the most fully realized.

And of course the other games have their own merits. Wind Waker is by far the best looking game in the series, and kind of reminds me of a Disney movie (I mean this in the best way possible), though its climax and ending are oddly some of the series' most mature and philosophically complex moments. Twilight Princess is sleek, modern (as modern as Nintendo gets, anyway), and the most cinematic and action-packed game in the series. Majora's Mask takes the story and basic gameplay tools to some very unexpected, dark, weird, and most of all fascinating places. And of course, the original game not only started off the whole series, but arguably pioneered the entire realm of the narrative video game.

So yeah, with just a few exceptions, Zelda can really do no wrong.

P.S. I know I'm neglecting the handheld games here, but I haven't played them in a very long time. But um...yeah, they're all good.

I'm not much of a metal fan, and what I've seen of the gameplay so far looks slightly underwhelming, but this is going to be a must-buy for me based on the genius of Tim Schafer alone. The visual style and writing are, as is to be expected from Schafer, awesome. And it's nice to see that he's finally starting to be provided with the AAA budget and marketing resources he's always deserved.

At 9/23/09 04:24 PM, dajudge wrote: Chrono Break.

This. We're probably never going to see another all-star development team like this again.

And also, of course, Duke Nukem Forever. Even Chinese Democracy ended up being released for God's sake...

At this point I have to start thinking that Activision is actually becoming the most hated company in the industry on purpose. The only question is why. Maybe they just get a laugh out of everyone buying their games regardless.

At 3/17/09 09:50 PM, Kwing wrote: Harmonica - OJ Simpson
Bagpipes - Danny Devito
Accordion - Weird Al Yankovich
Vocals - Tiny Tim

You have no idea how much money I'd be willing to pay for this album.

There are no restrictions on flamethrower ownership in 40 states.

Mario was originally going to have a deep, gruff voice and be from Brooklyn.

Paul McCartney got the inspiration for the Beatles' song "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" when, while in India, he saw two monkeys having sex in the middle of a road.

The lowest grossing movie of all time is Zyzzyx Road (2006), which starred Leo Grillo, Katherine Heigl and Tom Sizemore. It made $30 at the box office.

At 9/21/09 01:00 AM, dmansland wrote: You're not an obssesive fanboy who feels the need to flame anyone with a different opinion, learn to accept others taste in gaming, let go of the stupid console war and "hardcore/casual" gamer bullshit, and play a variety of games, not just 1 genre or game.

This. But just to have a little fun...

At 9/21/09 12:39 AM, metalgearray wrote: You get Halloween costumes of your preferred game characters XD

Done. I made an awesome Ness costume last year.

At 9/20/09 09:02 PM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: Until you've read a wikipedia article about your favorite game.

My favorites and many, many more. And I'll do you one better: You're not a true gamer until you've searched the Internet for thematic analyses for your favorite games.

Oh, and one more to add to the list: you're not a true gamer until you've written your college admissions essay about one (yep, I wrote mine about Super Mario 64).

Get it.

-It's got quite possibly the best production values of any game ever. It's certainly one of the biggest and most ambitious games ever made.

-The gameplay is fun and pretty flexible in terms of how you want to play (though it skews a bit too far away from the series' stealth roots for my taste).

-There are some absolutely jaw-dropping special sequences and boss fights (the "microwave" sequence in particular is one of the most amazing hints at gaming's potential as a storytelling medium that I've ever experienced and cements Kojima's place as one of gaming's few genuine auteurs...too bad virtually no game I've ever played besides Shadow of the Colossus can sustain this kind of meaningful gameplay for any extended amount of playing time). But all of my parenthetical rambling aside, this is some of the best merging together of gameplay and story/cutscenes that you'll ever see.

-The story is predictably ridiculous and over-the-top, but it wraps up the series nicely (especially the final cutscene) and redeems some seemingly unredeemable characters. If you're willing to deal with putting the controller down to watch A LOT of cutscenes, there's a lot of great stuff here.

So there you go. The only possible deal-breaker I can really see with MGS 4 is the insane length and frequency of cutscenes, but if you can get over that, it's one of the best games available for the PS3.

MGS 2 for sure.

Underwater. Escort. Mission. *shudders*

Star Wars for Game Boy. Unless you count various old-school PC edutainment games whose titles I can no longer remember.

I find the total lack of The Last Guardian in this thread greatly distressing.

Daniel Johnston- "Some Things Last a Long Time"

Hahaha, when I read the thread title the first thing I thought was, "this is going to be about those palm pre commercials, isn't it?" I know exactly what you're talking about.

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Any Vonnegut, really, but especially this one. Mind-blowing andhilarious.

No Country for Old Men
The Little Rascals
It

At 6/30/09 08:33 PM, super-sense wrote: I always thought The Cat Empire have clever lyrics.

Good, I'm not the only person who's heard of them. "The Car Song," lyrically speaking, is probably one of the best songs I've ever heard.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, the be all end all of lyrical genius is Bob Dylan.

I'm in the middle of it now; here are my first impressions:

It's a fun game that's very technically polished, with smooth gameplay, crisp graphics and a surprisingly decent story. As far as I can tell, the game only has two real problems. The first is that for every step forward it takes in terms of game design, it takes one backwards, resulting in a game that doesn't really seem to do anything new. For example, there's a morality system that factors pretty heavily into the game, and it's implemented better than similar systems in many other games. However, you're still only given two options, you're still blatantly told what the "good" and "bad" choices are, and you're still punished for not being either completely good or completely evil.

The second problem is one that plagues a lot of open-world games, which is that many of the missions, quite frankly, suck balls. Almost all of them basically amount to "go to this place. Zap a bunch of bad guys. The end," and it can get pretty repetitive at times. However, I've found that the combat is fluid, dynamic, and just plain fun enough to keep the game from getting truly boring even during the worst missions. Everything just comes together nicely in a way that I can't really describe.

There are two things about InFamous that I'm really impressed by. The first, and maybe this is arguable, is the behavior of the enemies. Basically, they hardly ever stand around waiting to be shot and they can actually aim a goddamn gun. I really felt like I was fighting realistic opponents as opposed to being in a static shooting gallery, especially with the bosses and "Conduits," mildly-superpowered enemies who can actually be pretty tough until you learn their attack patterns. Anyways, your character and all of the enemies look and move great (I was especially impressed with the Reaper Conduit, for some reason). Just zipping around the city, leaping from building to building and blasting enemies along the way is oftentimes more fun than the missions.

Which leads me to the second thing I loved: the city. There's a very real sense of despair surrounding the whole city, and it makes for a great atmosphere. All the buildings look beat up. The streets are covered with garbage and debris. Pedestrians can be heard bemoaning their fates. And then there was the first time I saw someone digging through a trash can. Heavy stuff.

All in all, I'd say InFamous is an enjoyable, if somewhat derivative game. If you can handle some repetitive gameplay, I'd say buy it. Otherwise...

At 6/4/09 06:50 PM, Jezuz wrote: Is it not odd that aspergers is more prevelant in todays society than it was in the past? Possibly because we have more people having issues with parents and family now, which is what causes MANY of the 'symptoms' of your so called disorder.

Um...no. Asperger's modern prevalence doesn't indicate that the condition is fake, it only indicates that a lot of the diagnoses are fake. That's happening now as opposed to in past decades because now there's much more sympathy and much more extensive extra educational resources for kids with conditions such as Asperger's and ADD and whatever. As such there are many asshole parents who quite easily exploit the inherent vagueness in the definitions of those conditions (not to mention that there's a general modern trend of overdiagnosis for pretty much every mental condition you can think of) so as to give their kids an advantage.

It's not "issues with parents and family," it's the ceaseless shitstorms that are the modern education and health care systems.

Consoles (in order of acquisition):

GameCube
PlayStation 2
Xbox 360
Wii
PlayStation 3

Portables (same):

Game Boy Pocket
Game Boy Color
Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance SP
Nintendo DS
PSP

So there.

At only $300 for all that, it's a steal, but most of those games are kinda junky. Might as well go for it, though.

At 6/4/09 10:44 PM, narf109 wrote: I'm not a sniper, I'm not a skilled sword fighting warrior, I'm not a martial artist, and a wiimote, a natal or a wand of gayness will NOT help me break that reality.

Exactly. What we're both saying is that none of the current motion control devices can live up to this ideal. My point, though, is that as a result, the only games motion controls can give us are shallow, one-dimensional toys.

The three console manufacturers and all of the people praising these devices act as though this is some great new frontier for gaming, which I think we all know is bullshit, but what scares me about it is that it implies that the realm of buttons and analog sticks has already been conquered, which it most certainly has not. Maybe we've mastered the technical aspects of it, but not much beyond that. We're not even close to realizing the full potential of even the most traditional gameplay, so why are we getting so far ahead of ourselves?