Gaming off the Beaten Path

  Well, we haven't had one of these in a while. One of the phenomena I have always found interesting is how some series become major players during one gaming generation, only to be largely forgotten once new consoles are released. I found this to be especially prevalent in the 6th generation, especially with the PlayStation 2 and GameCube . I've already looked at titles like Onimusha: Warlords and Jak and Daxter, which were huge, heavily hyped 6th gen series that just disappeared after the 7th gen started. It's not like they haven't received HD remasters or ports or collection re-releases, but in terms of new games, there has been nothing. And no, mobile games don't count. Zone of the Enders fit perfectly into this category. It was a huge, huge deal when it came out and was extremely well received  critically. It came out in a time where game creators didn't get the director treatment they do now, but it was created by Hideo Kojima, one of the earliest people...

  After a slight delay, it's finally time to crown a 5th anniversary champion. These two RPG heavyweights are some of the genre's most renowned titles of all time, so this is going to be a knockdown, drag out slugfest. As it stands, they defeated some stiff competition to get here, and both titles are absolutely deserving. Both scored 9.75s and were strongly considered for 10s. Hey, one or both might get bumped up after this battle. I'm sure many people already consider them 10s, which is going to make said battle tough to decide. This isn't like the comparison I did with Chained Echoes and Sea of Stars, with all due respect to those two titles the ones we are comparing today have had time to marinate. The book on them is written, as written as the book on a game can be, and history has already decided them to be great. Of course, they are both RPGs, so we will be using the same categories as our last battle. Those are: Round 1: Graphics Round 2: Sound Round 3: Story Ro...

Welcome Claire! Consider the area you're in a...special playground I have prepared just for you. Please try and keep me amused, and do not disappoint me by dying too soon! Halloween is here, so that means it's time to get spooky once again. It's been a while, but we're finally getting back to Resident Evil. I am not a huge fan of horror in general, but Resident Evil is one of my all-time favorite gaming franchises. It has the third most games in my personal top 100, behind only Mega Man and Final Fantasy, and is tied with FF for the most games on my 10s list (three apiece, for the record). Last year, I reviewed the absolutely incredible Gamecube remake on Halloween. Maybe next year I'll review Resident Evil 4, another 10/10 that just recently received a big budget remake. Both of those are all time classics, they are not only personal favorites but also important touchstones in the gaming industry as a whole. But, as great as they are, as revolutionary as they were,...

  I always find it interesting to look back on how some of these game series ended up on my radar. It's true of any media really, hell, any "thing" at all. You hear about something through word of mouth or see it in a store or experience it because someone else is super into it and boom, all the sudden it's part of your universe. In a weird way, it's kind of a phenomena that doesn't really happen anymore. Nine times out of 10, you learn about something new from social media or via some targeted internet marketing blitz (or both). I grew up in a small town, in an era when the internet was still young and access to it was spotty at best. I did have a subscription to a handful of video game magazines. Almost all of these were console based and even when they did cover PC games, I usually ignored them. I had long since cancelled my subscription to PC gamer by the early 00's, so there was a brief period where that was a complete blind spot for me. And that was ...

The early 00's were a very formative time for video games. This was especially true of console first person shooters. FPS' were dime a dozen on the PC, but it was still a bit of a struggle to get them right on consoles. The first real success, at least to me, came in the form of a handful of really solid Doom ports to the 5th generation consoles, as well as some noble efforts to port the FPS giant to 4th gen hardware (I played a tons of SNES Doom, and I still find it very enjoyable despite the fact it's definitely not the best way to play the game). Turok: Dinosaur Hunter gave way to Goldeneye, which gave way to Perfect Dark on the N64. And if those titles were the seed of FPS' as a viable genre on console, Halo was the tree they eventually blossomed into. Look, I don't like Halo nearly as much as most people do. But you absolutely cannot deny it was revolutionary in terms of graphics, presentation, gameplay and especially control scheme. Halo did for FPS on console...