Gaming off the Beaten Path

  Let's start this week's entry with a little video game trivia. Your question: What title won Gamespot's "Game of the Year" award in 1998? I mean, there were so many great games that came out that year and thus, so many possible answers. Maybe one of the legendary console titles? The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Metal Gear Solid? Perhaps a PC classic? Half Life? Star Craft? Baldur's Gate? Maybe something a little more out there? Xenogears? Panzer Dragoon Saga? Star Ocean: The Second Story? Well, your time is up and if you picked any one of those all-time great classics, you would be wrong. The answer isn't one of those games. It wasn't Resident Evil 2 or Parasite Eve. It wasn't Sonic Adventure or Spyro the Dragon. It wasn't F-Zero X or Street Fighter Alpha 3. No, in this absolutely absurdly, unfairly amazing year for gaming, Gamespot's Game of the Year went to a little title called Grim Fandango. I guess it really wasn't "lit...

  It looks I've gotten myself into a nice little pattern with reviewing Wii games. I started with a typical licensed Wii title, then moved on to an actual game. Well, now it's time to get back to those super fun, always top-quality licensed titles. This week, we have ourselves yet another licensed video game based on another reality show. But this time is going to be a little bit different. Unlike the Amazing Race, which I had only some familiarity with, I've watched a ton of Survivor. I wouldn't call myself a super fan, but I'm definitely a fan and I've seen most of the seasons. Reality shows get a lot of flak for being staged and unoriginal, but remember, Survivor was kind of the OG of the genre. It's crazy that what started as a one-time social experiment has turned into a game show that's run for more than 40 seasons across three decades. I guess it makes sense, stick 20 randos on an island, deny them food, pit them against each other in various gam...

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, it seemed like every game with some level of fantasy elements was labeled an RPG. I guess I get it, most of the titles that popularized the genre in the West were rooted in elements of fantasy, borrowing heavily from Tolkien and others of his ilk. RPGs became closely connected to the genre and became almost synonymous with it. Hell, Final Fantasy has "fantasy" right there in the title. Of course, not every RPG fit this mold. You had Phantasy Star and Mother/Earthbound, and even Final Fantasy itself eventually branched out into more sci-fi territory. But those were outliers, at least they were at the time, and it seemed like whenever a game with an elf carrying a sword and casting magic came out, it got slapped with the RPG label whether it fit or not. Which brings us to Alundra, a title commonly lumped in with the golden era PS1 RPGs. It was developed by Matrix Software, but published in the U.S. by Working Design, a studio known ...

  Time to check another console off the list. This time, we are going to go with something a little more modern. As I've alluded to in previous posts, I consider the 7th console generation to be very much modern, even if it is going on 15 years old. It was a very interesting time in gaming, a time where online play was becoming the norm and video games were reaching new audiences outside the standard "gamer" stereotypes. The "bit wars" were over, this was the first generation of consoles I never once heard referred to by the number of bits they had (it largely stopped in the previous generation, but early media surrounding the Dreamcast and PS2 did refer to those consoles as "128-bit"). A war that started between Sega and Nintendo ended with two new powers, Sony and Microsoft, at the top of the gaming industry. The former decided to take itself out of the console market, electing instead to become a 3rd party software developer. The latter was on the d...

  "This game was soooooo ahead of its time." How many times have we heard that before? Hell, how many times have I said it on here myself? Probably a million or so, give or take. While it's always had its reliance on certain genres, from 2D fighters to mascot platformers to open world adventures, the video game industry has never been afraid of a little innovation. It may not seem like it now, but it's true. And it was especially true during the 3rd console generation: make no mistake about it, the late 80's and early 90's were still very much the wild, wild west. It's not that developers didn't try their best to innovate in the first two generations, but their hands were often tied by extremely limited technology. It's not that they didn't try (and succeed) on the 4th, 5th or even 6th generation consoles, but by that point people were starting to figure out what worked and what didn't in a video game. The NES (and Master System, etc.) were...

 I want to start this week by talking a little bit about genre bias and its impact on video game ratings. There is a huge variety of different gaming genres out there and not every gamer is going to enjoy every type of game. Whether you are writing for a major gaming site or you are someone like me, you are bound to have personal feelings on which genres you like and which you don't. I have made it pretty clear I don't really like racing games and that RPGs are my favorite, so I kind of grade those genres on something of a curve, even if its only subconsciously. Some genres appeal to more gamers than others, mostly fringe stuff. One of those fringe genres, at least I consider it to be fringe, it point and click adventure. These games are very different than anything else out there, for better or worse, and I recognize they aren't for everyone. But if you like these kinds of games, or can even tolerate them, you need to play 2064: Read Only Memories right now. 2064 is not an...

I am always going to prefer old school games to modern ones.  I would never say never, but its unlikely that will ever change.  Gaming always had an “indy-ness” to it, even with big budget titles.  With that came a certain sense of creativity that has since been lost. However, modern gaming offers a bevy of conveniences that absolutely improve the player experience.  One of the biggest is easy access to cheap games.  I have talked about PS Plus/Games with Gold at length, but even beyond those services there are massive libraries of budget titles, including this week’s entry Anodyne.  How budget was it?  I spend $0.99 on this game.  Ninety Nine cents.  That’s the cost of a doughnut at Dunkin Donuts.  I don’t know if I have ever bought a game for less (although through a strange BoGo promotion in the early 00s, GameStop did once give me, not charge me, give me, $1.50 to take a game.)   But at that pric...

The Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon Hi Kids!  Today we are going to talk about a very serious topic...drugs. It’s no secret that drugs are bad for you.  They are illegal, unhealthy and expensive.  Of course, that isn’t going to stop people from using them, but just because someone else does something doesn’t mean you should too.  Even if they can make you see or feel something completely out of the realm of ordinary, the long and short term effects can be devastating.   Besides, there are plenty of ways to experience what its like to be high/tripping/rolling/etc. without risking your health.  One of those is to play “The Mystical Ninja.”  The best way I can imagine this game’s development is that a team of folks at Konami hacked the source code of Super Mario 64, ingested one or more types of some unknown illicit substance, watched a documentary about Japanese culture and made a video game. And, despite all of its technical fl...