My Seven Most Memorable Gaming Moments

This was originally going to go up on Sakurahana's blog section that I do work for but they have a character limit over there and I hit it. Worked to hard on this and put too much of myself into it to just cut it down or scrap it so it's going up here. If you read my stuff there, I'll get something else up later. If you read my stuff here, then lucky you I actually posted something! 

No offence to the many "most memorable moments in gaming" lists out there, but I rarely see games and memories that impacted me personally. Maybe that means I have really bad taste in games, or maybe that just means I am impressed by weird things. Either way, I like sharing the parts of gaming that make me happy to keep playing games, and I figure, what better way then to talk about the moments that just forced me to glue myself to a chair for hours on end. Why seven instead of a nice round number like ten or five? Because ten seemed to high and there's too many for me to narrow down to just five. That seems criminal. So seven it is. 

Oh and uh, *ahem*, there are a few ---> SPOILERS
You can't say I didn't warn you now.

7. Your Dog Dies (Fable II)

Fable II was a solid game, if a little disappointing. One of the features of the game was your dog. Though he was supposed to be so much more of a feature than he was, I still enjoyed having the dog around. The dog is with you from the start of the game, you and your sister rescue him from bullies in the opening hour of the game. From that point on he stays with you for most of the game as your loyal companion. So what better way to up the ante near the end of the story than for your dog to take a bullet for you? 

After all of your adventures, your dog saves your life because it's your best friend. From the opening moments of the game, your dog is by your side whenever possible. He fights alongside you, interacts with people you interact with, he even helps you find treasure. While the main villain, Lord Lucien, already took my sister from me at the start of the game. He followed that up by working hundreds of people to death building The Spire, a large tower that Lucien believes will grant him untold power. But when he killed my dog, I had nothing but the thought of killing that sick bastard. When the ending came around my vengeance felt hollow. The ending didn't give me the great battle I sought, nor did it allow me to really kill Lucien myself. But the second the three "epilouge choices" came up, I immediately picked the one that brought my dog back. I may not have saved the thousand or so people Lucien's evil killed, but I got my best friend back. 

6. Walking Out Of Vault 101 (Fallout 3)

Bethesda has, in my mind, become the master of drawing you into a game world. Many games have better openings, but few suck me in the way Bethesda's games do. But of all of the memorable "first steps" I've taken, this is the one that never gets old to me. In Fallout 3, your character has spent his (or her) entire life in the subterranean Vault 101, one of the last places human life survives on Earth. Or so you're taught anyhow. You see in Vault 101, no one enters, no one leaves. You live in the vault and you die in the vault. You spend the tutorial section of the game growing up in the vault with your father. Then one day he simply disappears, leaving all sorts of trouble in his wake. Though he tells you not to follow him, it becomes apparent rather quickly that you have little choice in the matter. 

After battling your way to the entrance, you finally reach the door to the outside world. A place you have been told is uninhabitable. As you emerge, the sun's brightness blinds you. After all, you have spent your whole life prior to this moment underground with artificial lighting. Then your eyes adjust, and you find yourself looking out over the wasteland that was once Washington DC. Your dad is out there somewhere, but you have no idea where. You've only just stepped foot in a whole new world (to you.) Where oh where might I head first...


5. Wandering New Mombasa Alone (Halo 3: ODST)

A great game? Not really, and probably the worst overall out of all the Halo titles. And yet, it's the one that I felt had the most potential out of all of them save the first. The reason I think that comes from the experience I had wandering the streets of the city of New Mombasa alone. Your character, simply called "The Rookie," is a member of an elite unit of marines whose job is to be be dropped from a planets orbit into the middle of a firefight. Kind of like the future's version of an airbourne division. You get dropped into the middle of a huge battle between the attacking alien species, The Covenant, and humanity. Your drop suddenly goes wrong when one of the Covenant's ships leaves the battle and sends out a shock wave that flings your drop pod off course and into the city. A few hours later you wake up, alone in the middle of the city which is now largely abandoned except for roaming enemy patrols. Your job is to simply find your squad and get out of the city. 

That experience is the part of this game that just blew me away. Taking on a large enemy patrol, sneaking by enemies when out of ammo, and just trying to survive. Something about the city itself really immersed me in the game, and the ever present sense of danger meant you could never let your guard down. The other parts of the game where you have to play as your other squad mates felt unnecessary and were more in line with the traditional Halo experience. But when I was in control of the Rookie, the game felt fresh and new. The feeling of being alone in a giant city filled with enemies was something I had never quite had before. 


4. Stalingrad (Call of Duty)

Whenever someone asks me why I used to love Call of Duty, this is the moment that pops up immediately. Back before the series was all just over the top set pieces and anger inducing multiplayer, the original Call of Duty has a simple World War II shooter that attempted to bring you into the many different fronts of the war, whether it was the Americans on D-Day, the British trying to covertly blow up a Nazi ship, or the Soviets fighting in the intense Russian winter. The missions in said Russian winter were about the most intense parts of a game I have played. When your first arrive in Stalingrad your taking a nice boat ride. Well as nice as a boat ride can be with German artillery trying to blow you up and you superior officers shooting any survivors trying to swim back to shore. Just as you reach the dock, you step off and then get knocked over as everyone else on your boat gets blown up by an artillery round. You are then shafted by the military supply officer, who gives you a single cartridge of ammo...and no gun to even fire it with. 

You spend the next fifteen minutes acting as bait for a sniper to take out targets and generally trying to do as much as you can without a weapon to defend yourself with. The battle itself is spectacular, as you watch wave after wave of Soviet troops try to over run the German position in the city. As tense as the Normandy landings have been in other shooters, the first few Soviet missions in Call of Duty tops them ever so slightly. 

3. The View of Palaven (Mass Effect 3) 

That shot right there is one of the most chillingly beautiful shots I have ever seen in a game. In the Mass Effect universe, a sentient race of machines called the Reapers comes through the galaxy every 50,000 years or so and harvests all space faring life in the galaxy. The first to games are about Commander Shepherd, the main character, first learning of the threat, and then trying to prepare for it even as the major forces in the galaxy all call the threat a myth. The third and final game of the trilogy is about the war with the Reapers itself. Though watching Earth become overrun with Reaper forces in the first hour of the game was a chilling moment in and of itself, something about seeing the war from an up close and personal perspective really brought it home for me. When your journey brings you to this battlefront, you really get a solid understanding of just how bad things are going. 

Seeing all those fires burning on the surface of the planet, and looking around on the moon and seeing all of the enemies ships and forces just drives home how one sided this war is, and how much life is at stake. I always felt like I was Commander Shepherd, but that moment gave me an insight into how much this war must weigh on him (or her) knowing all those lives are riding on him (or her.) 

2. John Marston's Death (Red Dead Redemption)

It's not my favourite game of all time, but Red Dead Redemption was an amazing game nonetheless. The characters were varied and felt real, the gameworld was fun to explore, and the story was absolutely gripping (when I got around to playing it). And having a character with a story, yet having the control of who he ultimately is was great. While some people played Mr. Marston as a criminal outlaw, and others played him as an impartial man who cared nothing for the events of the world, I played him as a man truly seeking nothing more than the freedom to live his life away from the sins of his past. Whether he regretted the actions of his past didn't matter. By tracking down and killing his former partners in crime one by one, Marston was cutting himself off from his past, in order to have a future, even if he was being forced to do it. 

After he finally kills his former gang leader, John is finally released from his service to the US government and allowed to go home...until the same men who forced him to kill all of his former gang show up with 20 officers to finish the job. It was the saddest and hopeless moment I have ever played. No matter how many of them you take with you, there's no running from his fate. For some this moment was nothing more than Marston getting what was coming to him, but for me it was a shocking and sudden end to a man who truly wished nothing more than to go home and give his family a better life than he had. Through his death, he was redeemed, and gave his family that chance (though the "epilouge" shows it was probably all or naught.) There have been some shocking deaths in gaming, but nothing reduced me to tears the way John Marston's did. 


1. Choosing My First Pokemon (Pokemon Games)

Come on, did you expect anything less coming from me? While choosing my first pokemon was a moment in and of itself, I always have the same feeling every time I start up a new game. Some people cast off their starters if they have others they want to bring in from a previous game through trades, but I always reserve a spot for my starting pokemon. No matter how bad things get, and no matter how many others I catch, my starter is my partner in the world of Pokemon. It can be either my first one out, or my ace pokemon, who turns a tough battle around. I don;t really know how better to put it. 


These are just my moments though. Obviously we are all influenced by what we play. Obviously there is a lack of some JRPG's on my list, but that'because I was raised on western titles, and that's the bulk of where the games I play today come from. That doesn't mean any other moment is any less significant. I'm curious as to what moments everyone else will never forget, just because it's interesting to see how different games and experiences impact people. 

Note: Not sure how this white stuff got here, honest. 

The Golden Age

...Bask in the glory!

A lot of people, myself included, often have a lot of complaints and concerns about how the gaming and the industry as a whole. We see a lot of things that worry us, or make us think that the games industry might become a shadow of what it used to be. We see games like Modern Warfare 3 and worry that First Person Shooters might become glorified Michael Bay shooting galleries. We see the closure of studios that made awesome games and grow concerned that only the giant companies will be able to churn out games, or we see once great publishers and developers on the brink of bankruptcy. Everywhere we look it seems things are not going well. Some have even argued that the best days of gaming are behind us.

However, despite the many things that upset me or worry me these days I have never been more excited about where gaming is headed. In fact, I think the best is just around the corner.

When I talk with friends, or write various pieces, I often find myself somewhat depressed. Especially when I look at some of the games I have played the past year or two and see how many disappointed me, or just weren't very strong titles. The other day though, I took another look and saw just as many that surprised me or lived up to the hype around them. So I decided to think on it more, and I realized something should not be all that shocking, but yet still felt like a revelation. In order to set that up, think about this for a second:

This is what games looked like ten years ago.

Look at all that blood...

This is what they look like now.

At least the trees are safe.

I really hope the difference is obvious. Graphics have moved so far ahead in just ten years, we actually doubt we can improve them much further right now. Graphics may not be everything in a game but they can really help pull players into a game world and with the graphical power we have nowadays. We can create detailed worlds and characters, and we can create better visual effects with the technology we currently have. Thanks to this, we have some truly realistic looking games, such as Crysis and Forza 4, as well as some very interesting art styles in games like in Limbo and Catherine. We have games like Skyrim, where the game world feels truly alive, and even classics like Mario and Legend of Zelda have benefited from the advances made in graphical technology.

It's not just graphics though. Gaming has become something that just about everybody does in some fashion. With all these people playing games, indie developers have been able to find an audience for their games. Just browse the internet for games sometime. There are literally tens of thousands of independent projects and companies that produce all sorts of games. It's not just the well known ones like Castle Crashers and Limbo. The internet is filled with hidden gems like Super Brothers: Sword and Sorcery EP. In fact, some of the better games of the past five years have been indie titles. Independent developers also aren't obligated to make their games a certain way nor do they have a publisher or larger group to answer to. This has allowed for some truly innovative games from the indie developers. I mean look at the success of Minecraft if you don't believe that indie games can succeed in the industry. The past five years of gaming have also brought countless innovations and changes to the industry thanks in part to the number of people playing now. The Wii was hyped by Nintendo as a big change for gaming, and for a while it was. The Wii successfully pulled in a huge new crowd to video gaming, and proved, at least for a little bit, that motion control can be more than just a gimmick. They've followed that up with the 3DS, a handheld with glasses free 3D. While the games may not quite be there yet, the technology behind it is impressive.

It's not just indie games that have benefited from gaming becoming a popular activity. Because of the number of people playing, games rake in all kinds of dough for their developers and publishers. This enables them to hire better staff to create better games. This has shown up particularly in the writing department. Fifteen years ago most developers could not afford to pay for actual writers. A few people  involved with the game development would usually be given the task to do the bulk of the writing. And if you look at some of the games from fifteen years ago, that doesn't really seem all that hard to believe. Nowadays however, we have some truly talented people penning incredible scripts, worlds, and lore for our favourite games. The rise of the writing quality has allowed for the creation of some of the best stories and worlds that we have ever seen in gaming in the past few years. Mass Effect and Bioshock are examples of games that have truly raised the bar for writing in games. The amount of money pouring into the industry has also enabled developers to hire better voice actors, and bring in more experienced and diverse personnel for everything fro creating the soundtrack to designing the game art.

RA Salvatore is writing game fiction now. Surely Stephen King isn't too far behind...

Of course there are bad parts about the industry and where it's headed, but when hasn't there been?  Gaming today sits upon the precipice of maybe going somewhere no entertainment medium can take us. With books you can read stories, but what it looks like, or what it might feel like to be in that story are left largely up to your imagination. Not a bad thing, but sometimes we want to see what we're reading. So then we've got movies, which take written stories and then show us what it would look like. It brings us into the world the story is trying to tell. However, we're still just an audience. We don't have any control over what's going on, and we don't have any say in how things happen. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but often times we want to experience these stories for ourselves, or to put ourselves into the characters shoes, or hell, even just insert our actual selves into the story and make it go how we would want it too. This is where gaming shines. It puts us into these stories and settings and allows us to experience them directly. Sometimes we experience them as a defined character, other times the character is more or less us. We could soon see games that will take us places movies and books just simply can't. We've already seen many situations in games were the decisions we're given aren't necessarily good or evil. Some decisions in games are judgement calls.

Now we're seeing games like the upcoming Rainbow Six: Patriots where every decision and option is in a morally grey area, and it's up to you whether defeating the bad guys should come at any cost. Then we have the Mass Effect trilogy, which takes every decision you make and lets it snowball up until the upcoming conclusion, where every choice you have made will determine the fate of the whole galaxy. Who lives, who dies, if you even succeed at all. Entire civilizations could disappear because of your choices. Games like this can cause us to examine who we are as people, and what decisions we'd make when push comes to shove. Even without these choices, we're beginning to see games that make us feel like we're part of what's going on. We're not just playing as a big dot that eats smaller dots, we're experiencing an event  through a characters eyes. We're not just watching the action unfold before us, we're taking part in it. Even classic titles like Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Pokemon feel more alive than ever before.

And if you just want to run around blowing people's heads off in Fallout: New Vegas, you can do that too.

My seven year old gaming self thought Microsoft Flight Simulator 95 was one of the most incredible games ever, and I thought that games that looked any better wouldn't be something that  Iwould see until I had kids. Really if I look back on it, gaming has come so far in such a short time. It's almost unrecognizable from when I was kid. Even more so for people who grew up in the era of arcades and the Atari 5200. And you know what? I think it's going to grow and change just as much in the next fifteen years. Call it a hunch.

Perhaps the Unreal 3 tech demo "The Samaritan" reinforces the hunch...

Well that was long one, I hope you enjoyed it.
Until next time!

Image Source:
#1. http://3.s3.envato.com/files/4040128/Golden_Glow_Preview.jpg
#2.http://i.neoseeker.com/screenshots/R2FtZXMvUEMvQWN0aW9uL0FkdmVudHVyZQ==/diablo_ii_the_lord_of_destruction_image2.jpg
#3. http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/shared/images/articles/600-crysis-2-computer/Crysis2-screen3.jpg
#4. http://www.boomtron.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Salvatore-R-A.jpg
#5. http://www.udk.com/elements/img/galleries/Samaritan2.jpg

Weekly Wrap Up: Gordon Freeman In The House?

...I swear if this is some kind of sick joke.

A Valve employee has been spotted wearing a Half-Life 3 t-shirt. Yes, apparently Chandana Ekanayak, an executive producer at Uber Entertainment (the guys behind Monday Night Combat), spotted a random valve employee wearing the shirt pictured above. Now, hold on a second here (prepare for your dreams to be deleted here, along with mine), before we get too carried away I'd like to point out that Random Valve Employee Man had absoluetly no problem having a a picture of the shirt taken by Ekanayak, who proceeded to stick it up on Twitter. If Valve were really close to a Half-Life 3 reveal they most certainly would be doing their gosh darnedest to keep it under wraps until the big reveal. Not to mention stuff like this can get someone fired. So unless Random Valve Employee Guy really disliked his job with one of the premier game developers, I think it unlikely he'd just let a picture be taken unless it meant very little for the time being.

That said we'll have to wait and see what Valve's inevitable response to this will be.

In the meantime, here's some more gaming news from the past week.

Sony Clarifies One Account Policy For PS Vita

NeoGaf discovered this weekend that the Playstation Vita will allow only one Playstation Network account per portable.

So what in blazes does that mean exactly?

At a recent hands-on event, Sony tried to clarify. "Only one account. If you want to use a different account you need to format the system to factory settings." Sony's Brad Douglas, Sony Japans Third-Party Relations guy clarified further by mentioning that the Playstation Portable also only allows one account. The only difference is that the Portable doesn't force you to do a factory reset to log in. The main reason players have two accounts is so they can play digital titles available in Japan, as well as their own country. The factory reset throws a wrench into that by forcing you to stay region locked essentially, unless you like jumping through very small hoops on fire draped over piranha tanks. 


EA Online Passes Can Expire 
A now, and understandably so, disgruntled NeoGaf member has learned that the online passes that EA requires for access to it's games online content expire after a certain amount of time after purchasing a brand new copy of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit only to find the games online pass activation key had expired. Some other members looked through the EULA and did find a clause that states the codes can in fact expire. Joystiq followed up on the story and as it turns out some games passes are set to expire, according to a customer service advisor with EA. So essentially for these games even if you buy the game new you will still have to pay to access online features, a move initially made to combat used game sales.

Again, people are understandably upset with EA. I think it's absolutely unbelievable that they never really came out and notified anyone about this. Yes it's in their EULA agreement but this is the kind of thing people really need to know ahead of time.

XCOM Loses A Developing Team

2K games has announced that it's Canberra, Australia development team, which was helping to work on the upcoming XCOM reboot, would be shifted to help with development of Bioshock: Infinite instead.

Initially, this lead to speculation that XCOM might be on hold, or might have even been canceled. However, 2K Games told Kotaku that 2K Marin was still developing the game with the hope that the game would still be a strong title. However, when pressed for more information about the size of the development team, 2K declined to get more specific. "As a rule we do not comment on the size of our development team."

I don't view this as a setback for XCOM necessarily. Bioshock: Infinite is shaping up to be one of the premier titles for next year, and 2K probably recognizes that in order to get it out in time for it's tenative holiday 2012 release, they're going to need as many people working on it as possible.

GamePro Sails Away Into The Sunset

This news is not a good sign for the state of the printed gaming press.

One of the longest running magazines about video games, starting way back in 1988, GamePro announced that it will be ceasing it's publication as a standalone company as of today, December 5th. Both the site, and the magazine will be shutting down. In a statement on their site (which probably no longer exists) was this:

Thank you for your loyalty, support, and participation in the GamePro.com community. At noon on December 5, 2011, the U.S. version of GamePro online will shut down as an independent site. GamePro will become part of PCWorld.com (http://www.pcworld.com/gamepro) offering gaming news, reviews, and how-tos from the PCWorld team. Thank you to the entire GamePro staff for their hard work and dedication.

 GamePro was one helped to give the games industry a voice, especially as it began it's rise into the pop culture stratosphere. Handfuls of talented writers and journalists have written for the magazine. It's death is a significant blow to gaming journalism and really give us a sign of the times.

Dragon Age Getting Multiplayer

An insider has claimed that Dragon Age will be getting a multiplayer mode that has an arena-like style to it. The mode will cover Player versus Environment, Player versus Player, and Player versus Dragon play modes. Details on the PvE section are slim, but according to the source the mode is fairly far along in development. IT is apparently being developed using DICE's Frostbite 2.0 engine. What was not made clear is if this rumored multiplayer mode is going to be DLC of some kind for Dragon Age II, or if it will be in an upcoming game. Or perhaps a game on it's own entirely. 


Sadly, this news seems to confirm somewhat the rumors that EA is requiring all of it's games to have some kind of online multiplayer. And unlike the Mass Effect co-op mode, so far this mode sounds somewhat unrelated to anything in Dragon Age as of now. Then again we didn't know exactly what Mass Effect's multiplayer was exactly until it was announced/leaked. Still given the success of recent RPG's like Skyrim and Skyward Sword, one has to wonder if requiring games that have previously been single player to have multiplayer is a good idea or not. 


Okay so maybe this past week wasn't all happy news. Hopefully this coming week will be a bit happier. And, with a bit of luck, maybe some Gordon Freeman too.  

Flufflist: The Top Five Western RPG's Of All Time

...No there is no Zelda here.

With the release of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, western RPG's made a bold statement. Despite having no multiplayer whatsoever, it has been one of the best selling games this year. It is also one of the best reviewed, with over 50 perfect scores from critics, and the player reception has been just as good. It actually has me thinking about where it might end up in the all time RPG's list a few years from now. It also made me think about all the other western RPG's I've played, and their legacies too. So here, from me to you, is a list of the top five western RPG's of All Time (from my point of view)

Oh and spoilers and stuff....you've been warned.

Honorable Mention: Neverwinter Nights

Neverwinter Nights is a rare game in my mind, and it holds a special place with me personally because this was the game that really got me into RPGs. I had always been a somewhat casual gamer kid before I found my dad's copy of Neverwinter Nights, but I was hooked forever afterwards. At the time of it's release, Neverwinter Nights had some pretty decent graphics, but it was the turn-based gameplay based on Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition rules that had people interested. The solid gameplay is every D&D fans dream when it comes to taking the pen and paper experience to the digital world. The story was solid, though it did slow at times. However, these all took a backseat to the multiplayer and mod community. The robust multiplayer allowed players to pick from a multitude of severs to play consistent campaign's, as well as the campaign that shipped with the game. But for me, the thing that sets this game apart is the mod community. Neverwinter Nights shipped with the Aurora Toolset, which allowed players to create their own campaigns to play in the game. Couple that with the people who made new items, hakpacks to use with the toolset, and custom audio, and some of these campaigns actually beat out the one that came with the game. There is practically YEARS worth of excellent gaming to be found on the internet thanks to the community that loves the game so much. And that's really what sets this game apart from the others on this list (except Morrowind perhaps) is that the community actively made improvements to the game. While the game shows some serious age now, it is still worth picking up, because there is still so much to discover through the community.

#5. Planescape: Torment

If you like to be evil, and you don't want any morality conflicting your decisions, then Planescape: Torment are right up your alley. The dark and emotional story are unlike anything else I've played in an RPG. The story isn't about happy endings or saving the world from evil. It's about a man simply named...uhh...The Nameless One, who he is unable to remember who he is when he wakes up in a morgue at the start of the game. As you play you learn that The Nameless One is immortal but every time he "dies" he forgets his past. Your free to discover the truth how you see fit, and the games dark setting and premise feel refreshingly different from usual RPG's. Really this is one of the stronger stories in a game, because it's more personal. Your choices in the game often times have unpredictable consequences and makes playing the game fun and engaging, You also have the ability to learn new abilities by "remembering" one of The Nameless One's past lives, which is a genius idea. The game had some incredible music and voice acting as well, and a lot of it still holds up today. The interface is also intuitive, even today, keeping menus and screens limited so you can focus on playing the game. The gameplay is also very solid, if a bit easy. While Planescape: Torment earned a great critical reception at release, people avoided it for some odd reason. Perhaps the dark story and setting were a little too different at the time. Whatever the case, Planescape: Torment is a cult classic that has never earned the attention it deserves, but that doesn't diminish how incredibly brilliant it really was and still is.

#4. Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Morrowind is the ultimate game for exploration. The story starts with you on a prison ship, as you are transported to a small port. The guards call you up from below the decks. They check you out in a ever so brief tutorial of how the game works, which doubles as your character creation process. They politely suggest you visit a man named Caius Cosades and then send you on your merry way. From that point on the island of Vvardenfell is your oyster. You can go anywhere, do anything, be anything. Join a guild, help one of the three big houses that run the province, go side questing, or just go run around the island until your bored. For me, I never was even able to finish the story until about two years after I got the game. I got so involved with the world and the various quests and people and places that I never felt a serious desire to wrap the main story up. This game is unlike the others on this list because the story and characters take a backseat in this one entirely. Storytelling has never been Bethesda's strong suit, and they wouldn't argue that. That's because The Elder Scrolls games have always been about doing whatever you feel like doing. But Morrowind made you just feel like doing something, even if you didn't know what. The world is incredibly detailed as far as aesthetics and content are concerned. And all you have to do is see the sheer number of readable books to know that there is a pretty detailed history to go through if you feel like it as well. Morrowind also has a fairly dedicated mod community that has made numerous improvements to the game that have kept the game fresh even after Elder Scrolls IV came out. Morrowind doesn't need a super detailed story to make it enjoyable. Sometimes, just firing up the game and knowing you can do whatever comes to mind on a given day makes it incredibly addictive.

#3. Mass Effect

Mass Effect is a prime example of excellent storytelling and world building in an RPG. While the gameplay is solid, and the graphics are certainly breathtaking, Mass Effect took a leap forward for games with it's story and characters. The story's premise is as follows: The Reapers, a sentient race of machine-like beings who sweep through the galaxy every 50,000 years or so and wipe all sentient life out of the galaxy. They've repeated this process for millions of years. Now it;s up to Commander Shepard and his crew to stop them once and for all. I have never played anything even close to what I get with Mass Effect when it comes to story. It's like playing a Sci-Fi movie, except your in the drivers seat. The world itself is spectacularly well put together. All the alien races have their own histories, the technology has interesting concepts, and the codex that builds as you explore the game world shows just how much effort Bioware took in building the galaxy you wander through. Really some of the history of the galaxy is so interesting it almost demands some games of their own. The characters are extremely memorable, and they all have different personalities, motives, and views on the universe and how things work. Wrex, a Krogan Battlemaster, enjoys fighting like most of his species, but is also one of the few who cares about his dying races future. Meanwhile you have Garrus, a Turian who hates to let the bad guys win. So much so that he is an "ends justify the means" type. He's also an extremely talented soldier, he's like Dirty Harry and Batman mixed into one package. Mass Effect's universe is so deeply detailed, it seems almost certain that we'll be playing in it long after Commander Shepard's story is finished this March. Just so long as we stay away from the elevators...

#2. Knights of the Old Republic

Back in 2003 Star Wars had already had a rich history when it came to games. Rouge Squadron, Dark Forces, the Jedi Knight games. But when Bioware were given the opportunity to create an original story in the Star Wars universe, they were given a golden opportunity to put their company on the map. It was also a big risk, taking on what became the biggest Star Wars game ever, which included a huge risk by setting the game thousands years before Darth Vader was even a whiny little brat named Anakin. But Bioware not only delivered a solid game, and they also didn't just delivere the most memorable Star Wars game ever. Bioware delivered on of the greatest RPGs of all time. The game wasn't just an RPG with Star Wars sprinkled in. Every second of the game feels like Star Wars.The gameplay was solid, if a little easy at times. The soundtrack was also incredible. They didn't rip tracks out of the movies, they created an original score that gave the game it;s own feeling, while also still sounding like something straight out of A New Hope or Return of the Jedi. But it was the characters and the story that really make this game memorable. Characters like HK-47 and Carth Onasi are just as beloved by Star Wars fans as Darth Vader or Obi Wan. They also develop very well, and have interesting back stories of their own. The story though, was what really made Knights of the Old Republic memorable. In my opinion, it's not just good, it's better than even the original trilogy of Star Wars movies. It's paced so perfectly, you never feel like things are rushing along or are moving too slowly. The side quests and companion quests are just as fun and detailed as the ones in the main story. And the big twist, that you are (or at least used to be) one of the most evil forces in the entire galaxy came so far out of left field you never saw it coming. It was like "Luke I am your father" all over again. My jaw had to be screwed back into place after it happened. Perhaps the biggest compliment one can give Knights of the Old Republic, is that it holds up so well. It does show it's age when compared against today's newer RPGs, but the characters, the story, even some of the gameplay, near the top of the pack. The only question left to answer now is will The Old Republic MMO live up to the legacy of the original?

#1. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

The oldest game on this list also happens to be the best. Simply put, western RPG developers have been trying to top this one for more than ten years, and while many have gotten somewhat close, no one has been able to fully top what this game did. It's main story alone is almost 70 hours short. Add in the side quests, class specific quests, an companion quests and this game is nearly 200 hours in length. The story is incredible in and of itself, taking a few twists and turns en route to a hell of a final showdown. The game, for it's time, was absolutely drop dead gorgeous, and even today, while clearly dated, they aren't half bad. The characers in Baldur's Gate II are by far some of the best in gaming period. Minsc (and Boo!) alone has earned a place in gaming lore forever, but add in characters like Imonen, the childhood friend of the protagonist, Yoshimo, the mysterious swordsman, and Edwin, a rouge wizard who enjoys insulting you (and gets transformed into a girl if you play through his side quests)  and you have a great party to adventure around with. In fact, even with room for five people to take with you, I found it difficult to choose from the extensive list many times. Add to all that the gameplay and leveling systems which were nearly flawless, and you have a game that just stands at the top of the mountain. The story is thrilling, the characters interesting and detailed, and the world is vast and deep. Nothing has quite reached the level of fun, depth and storytelling that Baldur's Gate II reached.

So there it is. I imagine more than a few of you are wondering are a few different games are here. So post up what you think in the comments. Did I get it really wrong? Do you agree? Let me know!

Until next time space cowboy...

News: Shepard Can Lose, Skyrim Same-Sex Marriage, and more!

...investigative reporting without the investigation.

This week was filled with interesting information reveals for games coming out over the next few months, as well as a Warthog preview in Forza. Yes, the Halo Warthog as it will appear in Halo 4 (supposedly)was show off in Forza 4. No you can not drive it. Not in Forza anyway...

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Will Allow Same-Sex Marrige
In case you didn't hear already, Bethesda is taking a page out of Peter Molyneux's book and allowing you to marry NPC's and have relationships with them in Skyrim. Skyrim will allow men to marry men, and ladies to marry ladies, if they so choose. As far as I'm concerned, good on Bethesda for not restricting marriage to men and women only. I also like their response that it's not even that big a deal. The same-sex part not the relationship mechanic itself. That part is supposed to be very useful, partially because your partner can accompany you around the game world, offer you relationship-specific quests, and probably some other things we haven't seen yet.

You Can Lose In Mass Effect 3

As much as I didn't want to read this, I already kind of knew it should be possible. Bioware has confirmed that if you play Mass Effect 3 and have been screwing things up royally from Eden Prime to the final showdown with the reapers, you can fail to stop them. Bioware has already said there are many possible endings for Mass Effect 3 and that it all comes down to the choices you've made, so really this isn't so much a shocking reveal as it is a confirmation of our suspicions. Still, failing so bad the entire galaxy is wiped out. How many games can say you can even do that?

Turn 10 Shows Off Halo 4's Warthog in Forza 4's Showroom
Turn 10 has made on hell of a crossover with Halo at Halofest, showing off the first look at Halo 4's version of the Warthog in Forza 4's car viewing garage mode. You can check it out yourself when Forza 4 ships this fall, but the Halofest execs stressed that you can not race the vehicle in the game (they say because it's too slow, I say because it'd be too much awesome) , and even unlocking the vehicle to view will involve some dedication from players. They haven't said what it will take to unlock it, but they have said it won't be easy.

Man Sues Microsoft for $500 Billion Dollars

I really wish I was making that up. To sum the story up for those of us non-legal folk, David Stebbins found a loophole that allows Xbox consumers to amend the Terms of Service. Microsoft, by law, has to respond to the letter by either adding the changes or (as per Stebbins terms) cancel his account. If they didn't respond in ten days, Microsoft would be forced to submit to the new terms. Stebbins' added in a 'forfeit victory clause' that said Microsoft would have to pay him $500 billion dollars if they did not respond within 24 hours of the new Terms going into effect. Guess what Microsoft did not do? Now let me be upfront about this: No matter the legal implications of this, there is no chance that Microsoft will ever be forced to pay all that money to this guy. I can't even speculate what the hell is going to happen with this, but I can tell you right now, this guy has a better chance of being bit by a shark, hit by lightning, winning the lottery, and winning a Nobel Prize in the space of five minutes, then he does of getting that money.

Thats all for this weeks news. Check back next week to see if Half Life 3 has been announced! (spoiler alert: it won't be.)

Originality and the Sequel

...the follow-up post to one of the most critically acclaimed blog posts of the past month!

A heads up, your going to see Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls come up a lot in this one.

It's been a few weeks. Life, and my own struggle to find something I want to talk about have kept me away recently. Recently I played the demo of Catherine and was blown away by how different it was to anything I had played recently, perhaps even ever. It got me thinking about how many uniquely different games I had played recently, and I found myself rather stunned that pretty much every game I was playing or was looking at acquiring had a number in it somewhere.

So why is that weird?

Because I always talk about how there isn't enough originality in gaming these days and how I wish there were more varied experiences to be had.

And yet, here I am playing Elder Scrolls IV, Halo: Reach, and Fable III.

My current time sink. And what a time sink it is...

I understand the need for sequels, I also enjoy them when they are done well (See: Mass Effect 2) and not obvious attempts to capitalize on a games popularity (See: Bioshock 2). And there is room for both the unique and interesting, and for the sequel's in gaming.

The first obvious reason sequels exist is for the same reason books and movies get sequels and trilogy's. The developer is telling a story and needs to spread it out over two or three installments (or more). Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, and Assassins Creed are all examples of this. They are also the franchise's that I would give as the best examples of how to do it right. Bioware and Ubisoft both took fan reaction and criticism into account when making future installments of their games to not only fix missteps and problems, but to keep the experience fresh, and Bethesda is always pushing the limits of how big open world RPG's can get.

The second reason they exist is because they are an easy way for a developer to get a steady stream of cash coming in. Games are a business at this scale, and the first thing a developer or publisher needs to consider is how much money they are making and how much future projects could make. A lot of people out there consistently bash gaming developers and publishers for releasing sequels of games they deem "terrible" or "garbage". Unfortunately as much as I'd like to be on their side in some cases, franchise's like Call of Duty and  Battlefield and EA's yearly sports titles rake in millions of dollars for developers. That money goes three places (and a few others but for our purpose we'll stick with three...), to the people working for these companies, to make more of the games in these franchises, and towards brand new IP's. Without these games raking in millions, developers and publishers can't take chances on anything brilliant or different because there are so many uncertainties.

Of course there is a whole other part to his sequel-original problem. A lot of people also get upset at new games that are released and seem very similar to other games they've played. There are two big reasons for this in my mind. First, there have been so many stories written in across many mediums that at this point, everyone is copying something from somewhere or someone at some point in the game (also known as inspiration most of the time). Second, developers adapt already in use game engine's and interfaces and designs for their own projects. Bethesda has a good thing going with the Elder Scrolls game design. So much so that they adapted the play style and game design for Fallout 3 when they acquired the game's rights from Interplay. People don't often realize how much work goes into a game, and to do everything from the ground up takes a lot of hard work and time. Very often a design team is given a certain amount of time to complete a game, so for many developer's it is simply a matter of how much time they want to spend in what area's of a game's development. Few games have the luxury of being lovingly crafted by a team given as much time as they need to work with it, and it isn't hard to spot games that fall into that category because they are often very detailed, very deep, and very good.

I will say though, there has to be other concept art and cover art ideas out there other than "faded background guy".

It;s very easy to play a game and say, "Oh this game isn't original, this dev team just didn't care." If you spend all your time looking only for the truly unique and interesting games, like Catherine, your going to miss a lot of really good games, just because the resemble something you already played. Of course if the game is lacking originality in the sense that it is very average, then I can understand a bit more, but to miss a games like Mass Effect or Battlefield just because you've played something similar is a shame.

Before I end this, I just want to once again mention Extra Life. My donation page as well as my team's page, are now live and ready for your spare change and dollars to go towards a great cause. Anything you can contribute will be greatly appreciated, and it will help some children who really need it. I know there's a lot of things you'd rather put money towards, or maybe the economy crunch has you saving as much as you can. But even the smallest contribution is going to make a difference. If you can only send a few dollars, then that's more than fine.

http://www.extra-life.org/participant/polaris


And so with that out of the way,  I must be on my way. I need some sleep at some point today after all.

Take it easy.