Christmas

I hope everyone had a spectacular celebration of capitalism this December!

Fuck you Ikea, try as hard as you want to make your instructions as vague as you want, all I need is a too small monkey wrench and three hours.

For the love of my life, a new Harvest Moon to pour a couple hundred hours into.

Star Wars Hot Coccoa Mix!

Pokedad Review: Omega

So the newest dlc for Mass Effect is entitled Omega, and takes place on Bioware's Mos Eisley inspired planet of outlaws. Aria meets you on the Citadel and informs Shep that Cerberus has taken control of her station, and wants the commander's help in getting it back. Unlike other ME dlc's and against common sense, Shepard isn't allowed to bring any of her own party with her, instead using Aria herself, and a new female turian teammate, Nyreen.

So, I've never really liked the Omega station to be honest, its always screamed cliche as I ran around doing uninteresting fetch quests, however, I have always liked Aria. She seems to rebel strongly against the typical Asari roles, and really does a good job convincing me that she is a ruthless crimelord. So, with my interest peaked, I helped Aria repel the Cerberus occupation.

The problem is that its all action, and no story. Sure you find out that Aria and Nyreen used to bang, and that there is a new gang on Omega, but the outlines of these stories are bare, and 95% of the time, you'll be fighting. That isn't to say that the fights aren't fun, Aria's biotics are the most powerful of any character that you've ever been in a party with, and Nyreen gets a ton of stealth kills. The battles are fast and frantic, especially if you're playing as a vanguard, which lets you bomb into clusters of 10-15 Cerberus troops at once.

At the end of the day, my biggest problem is with the bad guy for this dlc, General Oleg Petrovsky. Apparently, everyone knows about him but Shepard, yet he has never been mentioned before, even when the commander WORKED FOR CERBERUS. I understand that there are other prominent characters in the series that you can say the same about, (like Kai Leng), but with Oleg, its painfully obvious that he was created for this dlc alone.

So, there are a few pros, like Aria's story, a couple new horror enemies, and crazy fights. There are a few bad things though too, like not being able to keep Nyreen on the Normandy after the dlc is over, or the spontaneously created Oleg, and the 2nd hand story. All in all, I had fun, but by no means is this a must buy, even for the crazier Mass Effect fans.

Pokemon Memes

Do you love Pokemon memes as much as I do?

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Fuck you bandwidth!!

Games I can't wait to play with my son

Oliver just turned 2 on Sunday, and I can't help but daydream about playing great games with him someday, to share with him all the joy and art appreciation that comes with video game devotion. Here are 5 that I will use to present my case to him..

Wind Waker
Not my favorite Zelda ever, but perfect for a child's introduction into such a lifechanging franchise. The art style is fucking gorgeous and whimsical, accompanied by Koji Kondo's best soundtrack. The only thing that isn't kid friendly about this almost perfect game is the pedophilic Tingle and the fact that Link very adultily stabs Ganondorf through the skull during the final fight. No resurrection, no banishment, a straight up violent murder.

Silent Hill 3
Yes, this game is terrifying, and yes, Heather eats her own fetus, but there are major accomplishments in this game. The best lighting of it's time, a creepy-fantastic score, and in my opinion, the most cerebral and disturbing scare scenes any video game has ever had. Silent Hill 3 is proof that video games can evoke potent emotions out of the player.



Final Fantasy 9

Again, a franchise installment that isn't my favorite, I want Oliver to play FF9 because of it's perfect blending of old and new. Square celebrated what made them great in the first place and innovated many new things to keep pushing them forward. Even if it does have a stupid, random, and frustratingly unknown final boss.




Shadow of the Colossus

Before Shadow of the Colossus, I would spout out all of the items on my made up checklist that made a great game. My naive self would say such republican-minded sentences as, "A great game has to have a great story", or, "You must have a compelling main character,". Shadow of the Colossus has neither of these, and happens to be a masterpiece. It proved to me, that there are no rules, great games are great games.

Katamari Damacy
Enough seriousness, this game is fun, and an 8 hour acid trip. Watch the opening scene and tell me you aren't burning to play it's randomness. I can't wait to roll up people and skyscrapers with Oliver.

Review: The Walking Dead Point and Click Adventure Game!

Based off of quite possibly the greatest comic book series of the past decade, (and I heard something about a tv show?), Walking Dead gave the video game medium a shot with a 5 episode point and click adventure series. When it was announced, I raised more than one eyebrow upon seeing that Telltale Games were the ones behind it, seeing as they make the Law and Order point and clicks, along with Back To the Future and Tales of Monkey Island. I've been playing this Walking Dead series for a couple months, and now that episode 5 is done and completed, its time for the full review.

The comic book and tv show have achieved such great success because of Robert Kirkman's writing and vision of the world after a zombie apocalypse. What makes the stories so compelling is the fear, not of zombies, but of other people. Zombies ironically become an afterthought as other human beings fight and struggle for survival, and the vision definately stays true in the video game. You play Lee, a man who was on his way to prison the day of the outbreak for murdering his wife. What you get is a sort of redemption story for Lee, as he vows to protect adorable little Clementine, a girl orphaned by the virus.

Lee is one hell of a well written character (voiced by the amazing Dave Fennoy from Mass Effect and motherfucking Darkwing Duck), who really gives Rick a run for his money in terms of likeability. Lee struggles, first with surviving, then leading a group, getting closure for a dead family who had basically disowned him after the murder, and raising a little girl who depends on him completely. Throughout the 5 chapters, Lee deals with bandits, cannibalistic farmers, shady drifters, a lunatic cult of cancer survivors, and finally, in the 5th chapter, the most disturbing villain I have seen in a very long time. You get to know Lee pretty well by the end, and you should feel even more sympathetic to his desperate salvation story.

The game is centered around a Bioware style decision wheel, with super important questions lobbed at you quite frequently. You're also timed for each choice, making some of the bigger decisions a frantic and stressful ordeal (in a good way), which answering blindly can lead to serious consequences like the death of a team member, or loss of your own limb. The writing is so crisp that I never saw anything as forced, and the big showdowns at the end of each chapter are edge-of-your-seat exciting, as Lee takes seriously drastic actions to keep his group safe. Every decision you make has a serious effect, a small decision like who gets a candy bar in chapter 1 can decide if you're surviving or not in chapter 5. This gives the game a sort of random fate feeling, and I know that sounds bad, but it really makes the game more realistic in my opinion, you can prepare all you want, but you never know what going to happen.

This game series is amazing, and it is certainly on par with my favorite point and clicks, (Monkey Island, Myst). The Walking Dead game isn't just fan service, its a completely new story about a different group that is just as well written as the comic. Telltale created a game that achieves probably the hardest goal that development companies struggle with, making the player actually give a shit. Love it, can't wait for season 2.

Games I Never Beat: Sonic CD

So, even amidst all the chaos of new games, I always try to re-visit and conquer games that have conquered me before. When games sit on my shelf unbeaten, it always bugs me. So, here's my first attempt at punching an old enemy right in the mouth, Sonic CD.

Is that...an angel? Wtf?

I never beat this game when I was little simply because I didn't have a whole lot of exposure to it. Sega CD's were scarce, and I personally had a Saturn, and this game almost passed me by. Luckily, I got to play it a couple times at a friend's house, and I remember it the way most Sonic fans do, as the best installment in the series. So, now Xbox Live has released it, giving me a chance to have a little nostalgia.

One of my huge gripes about the Sonic franchise on a whole, is that they force precision jumps in a game thats all about blurspeed. Sonic CD doesn't have a lot of these moments, (except for Wacky Workbench, hate those levels), instead ramping up the difficulty of the boss fights to achieve some balance.

And fuck are a few of those fights tough. The Quartz Quadrant alone is probably the most frustrating Sonic boss I've ever faced, (although the new Sonic 4 final boss is a close 2nd), and The Wacky Workbench platform jumping spree boss took me 15 tries. Be prepared to try several ideas and many different approaches to each boss before figuring them out.

All that aside, I beat the fucker, and now I'm going to go back for some extra achievements, I had such a nice retro experience with this rare Sonic game. Its sad, because this really was the last Hedgehog game before all the new characters took the series over and made it boring. If you have a chance, go find it.