Gaming off the Beaten Path

  I don't play a whole lot of modern games, they generally don't interest me. But every once in a while, something new catches my eye. I do occasionally review newer games, but it's usually because they fall into my lap rather than because I seek them out. Typically, the ones that I do play are from the 7th gen. I guess I should back up and talk about what I consider modern. To me, anything from the 7th gen on is considered modern. The PS3, 360 and Wii kind of start what I consider the modern era. Even those games are 15 years old at this point, pushing 20. I'm also not talking about games that are done in an old school style, stuff like Chained Echoes or Mega Man 10. Those games are modern, but they exist on a completely different plane than the stuff I'm talking about. Which brings me to Yakuza: Like a Dragon. A lot of people were really excited about this game when it came out...and I wasn't one of them. The announcement of a new game in a franchise known for...

  Sometimes, I wish I had more time to play video games. You know what? That's not a sometimes, it's an always kind of thing. I actually do play the games I review and unless something is just straight up terrible, I try to play it to completion. Trust me, I'd like to play more RPGs but I can't bang out a 40 hour game in a week. Usually, I feel like I have sufficient time to get at least an everyday gamer's level of understanding of a game. That's kind of all I need, it's sort of in line with my gimmick. But sometimes I come across something I wish I could put more time into, or at least feel like I should put more time into. I have heard since the 90's just how great Virtua Fighter 2 is, that it's incredibly easy to learn but incredibly difficult to master. I don't know how true it is, but I remember hearing stories of Japanese players lining up and waiting for hours to receive lessons from pro VF2 players back in the 90's. It's not hard...

Making a good sequel is easier said than done. For all the good that can come from change, a lot of bad can come from it too. And sometimes being more ambitious leads to bigger pitfalls that simpler games just don't have to contend with. Illusion of Gaia isn't a true sequel to Soul Blazer, which I looked at earlier in the year, but it is the second title in what's come to be known as the Quintet Trilogy. I talked at length about my experience (or lack thereof) with these games and the story behind them already. To summarize, they were a series of action RPGs developed by Quintet and published by Enix in the 90s. Illusion of Gaia was released in the West in 1994, two years after Soul Blazer. It was by far the most readily available of the trio, Soul Blazer was hard to find near me and Terranigma wasn't even released in the U.S. But Illusion of Gaia was available for rent just about every week at all of my local video stores, so it still shocks me that I had never played ...

  It's been quite a while since I've done a post that's not about a game, but it's time to discuss the latest TV adaptation of a classic gaming franchise: Twisted Metal. Twisted Metal is a franchise I have a lot of love for, so much so that I dedicated an entire month to it on my blog. The reason for that coverage? The announcement of a new TV show, based on the long-dormant franchise. Well, that show is finally here. Not going to lie, I hated everything about this show when I first heard about it. I even talked in one of my reviews about how the initial plot synopsis sounded like it was written by someone who had never once played the games.  But then the trailers started coming out. The first one I saw showed that someone, somewhere at the very least understood the darkly irreverent attitude of the series. That was good. Then the trailer with Sweet Tooth dropped, and you could tell right away they nailed everything about him. That got me really interested. But I still...

  Yippee Ki-Yay, it's time to talk about everyone's favorite Christmas movie. Look, I don't actually have any specific thoughts on whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, I guess I could see it either way. At the end of the day, it's just a matter of opinion. What's not a matter of opinion is just how big a deal Die Hard was when it came out in 1988. We all know the story; John McClain attempts to reconnect with his estranged wife by attending her company Christmas party at Nakatomi Inc. All is going according to plan when the building is attacked by a band of terrorists led by Hans Gruber. The villains are trying to get access to the vault on the 30th floor and will stop a nothing to get it.  Based on the 1979 Novel "Nothing Lasts Forever" by Roderick Thorpe, expectations were low for the film. Studio execs were unsure what to think of Bruce Willis, who was more known as a television actor at the time, as a leading man in an action movie. Several bi...

  Hey, he said he'd be back. We are forging ahead with our licensed 80's movie games, but there's no way we were moving past Arnold Schwarzennegger without covering Terminator. This is the first time we are going to be covering the franchise, but it's most certainly not going to be the last. For one, there are tons of Terminator games out there across a variety of consoles and generations. But for all I talk about how much I dislike movies, Terminator and Terminator 2 are among the rare examples of films that I can watch over and over again. The second movie is particularly excellent, still one of my all time favorites to this day. I think most people are familiar with the plot by now. The year is 2029, and humanity is on its last legs, fighting off a horde of sentient machines led by a rogue AI, Chat G...err, uh, Skynet. Skynet decides the best way to finally end humanity is to send a highly advanced Terminator, the T-1000, back in time to kill resistance leader John C...

I am having too much fun with these 80's action movie games, so let's keep going with those. We're leaving Stallone and the jungles of Vietnam behind, but we're going to keep the bullets flying with Schwarzenegger in the jungles of South America. Originally panned by most critics upon release, Predator has become a big-time sci-fi cult classic. The film tells the story of Alan "Dutch" Schaefer and his squad, sent on a CIA mission to rescue hostages from an unspecified South American nation. They defeat the guerillas, only to encounter something far worse: an invisible alien creature called the Predator, hell bent on taking them out one by one. This was Arnold Schwarzenegger at his cheesy 80's best, supported by Carl Weathers, Jesse "The Body" Ventura and a pretty solid cast. I wonder how many other movies starred two future governors?  The film became known for its gratuitous violence and gore, not to mention the iconic Arnold one liners. The Pre...