Morrowind

Title: Morrowind - GOTY
Platform Played On: Xbox
Release Date: May 1, 2002
Date Played: January - June 2008
Time Played: 300 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5




Opinion:
I was deep into exploring the world of Norrath in my EverQuest 1 adventures when Morrowind came out.  I installed it, ran around a bit, and thought to myself.  This is just like single player EQ, why would I play this if I can play in a world with real people? And so Morrowind was put away for many years.

Starting Town

In college my friend Jeff told me about his epic adventures in Morrowind, collecting armor/weapons and most importantly candles, and arranging them in his house within the game. All of these stories were super intriguing, but I was still jumping from MMO to MMO, and it was during my time in Unholy Legion (WOW guild) that Xbox 360 came out and with it Oblivion.  I remember huge anticipation for Oblivion among my guild mates, but once again it came and went without me playing it.

It was not until early 2008 that I decided to mod an old Xbox (that was passed down to me from Jeff (whose Morrowind adventures I mentioned earlier). And after successfully modifying it I loaded his Morrowind save that was still there from 2003. I saw his decked out character, and his candle arrangements. It really made me want to play Morrowind.  By this time I came to realize the beauty of Morrowind and Oblivion (Arena, and Daggerfall too of course). The beauty is that unlike MMOs you can permanently change the world. Take Jeff's house for instance. He killed whoever lived there and took their house as his own. The fact that you could do that was incredible! Normally you can either not kill NPCs or they would respawn. Not here, once killed they are gone forever. Needless to say, I decided to give Morrowind a shot and experience it firsthand.

Menu System (Click to Zoom)

Now being 2008 with games like Oblivion out, there are a ton of mods available to make Morrowind a more enjoyable experience (to put it lightly).  Basically mods that make it look like (if not better than) Oblivion, with lush high resolution textures, far draw distances and reskinned NPCs.  However I wanted a true experience, I wanted to play it the way it was meant to be played. The way everyone that told me epic stories played through the game. And so I fired up Xbox (the original one), which sounds like a vacuum cleaner, grabbed the controller with the weird Black and White buttons, and embarked on my journey.

Morrowind was an incredible experience. It felt like no other RPG out there.  I was dropped into a world, received vague directions to my destination and beyond that I could do whatever I wanted. I could go any direction, kill anyone, and all of my decisions and actions had permanent consequences. 

After solving a few mystery quests in the starting town I headed off to explore the world. Right off the bat I decided that I was going to be an archer, and so I picked up a bow and some arrows and went looking for something to kill.  I knew that skills went up the more you used them, but I was not prepared for the harsh reality of shooting a rat point blank 10-20 times with my bow before I would even hit it. Whenever I traveled I jumped to level my athleticism, when I fought I took my time and shot it over and over again until I killed it to level up my marksman skill. By the end of the game I was able to 1 shot almost anything from a mile away with my bow and run/jump over small hills due to my athletic skill. 300 hours in and having grasped the mechanics I had a crazy powerful character with boots of levitation and gloves of teleportation. Robes of weightlessness and weapons of lightning. It was a blast!

Without Any Mods (top) vs Graphical Overhaul Mod (bottom)
Click to Zoom

To jump back to the beginning for a minute, one of my first interesting encounters happened when I was strolling down the road, and exploring the wilderness. All of a sudden out of nowhere a robed man comes crashing from the sky and dies from the fall right in front of my eyes.  What the hell? Says I, as I took a look around wondering if anyone else saw what I just witnessed. I went to see if the man was alright.. and unfortunately he was not. He did however have a book that fell out of his hands as he hit the ground. Upon further inspection I came to realize that it was his journal, and that furthermore he was researching potions of levitation. All of a sudden it became clear, that this unfortunate wizard became the victim of his own creations. I grabbed the 3 potions he had left on him and went on.  Its moments like this that made Morrowind magical. I imagine many people have never even encountered him. But I did, because I chose this specific path to walk down, and there are thousands of ways you can go.  Morrowind allows you to forge your own adventure.  You do not have to do any quest in any particular order. It encourages you to go out there explore and absorb the world.

Morrowind did not have fast travel (unlike most modern RPGs, including Oblivion and Skyrim), instead it had sort of a bus system. You could travel between half a dozen locations around the world for a small fee.  And to be honest I prefer that system. I opt to not fast travel, as there are so many random interesting things to find while journeying from point A to point B in the world of Morrowind (and Oblivion/Skyrim), that it would be a shame to fast travel and miss them. Needless to say, I trekked up and down Morrowind exploring every single inch of the map. This included the two expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon. Tribunal was alright, but Bloodmoon added a whole icy island to the northeast of Morrowind, which had a very interesting and you could even say epic questline involving werewolves.

Logbook Would go to 500+ Pages (Click to Zoom)

One major issue that I encountered with Morrowind on the Xbox in particular is lack of Quest journal.  You have one big log book (that by the end of the game got to be 500+ pages), in which all events are stored.  In order to even realize that you have a quest you either have to write it down in real life on a piece of paper or do them one at a time avoiding everything else (which is basically impossible). So what I did was note page numbers and then cross them out. If I got a quest to recover stolen treasure, and it is on page 414 in my Log book, then I would write down 414-Treasure Quest then I would be able to look it up on that page if I needed more details.  It is a troublesome system, in which if you forget to note down the quest you can easily lose it forever among hundreds of pages of text.  On the PC version however you have a full on quest log, which stores quests 1 by 1 in a nice and organized fashion.  PC also has the mods (as I mentioned before, to make it more user friends and look like a 2011 game). Other than those things and draw distance it is an identical game, and I enjoyed the experience I had with it on the Xbox.

Morrowind is a great game. It is a little bit on the hardcore RPG side, and may be hard for a non gamer to get into. But once you break that initial barrier and grasp the basics of the mechanics it becomes an epic journey. Unless you are like me and want to play the true 2002 experience I would recommend playing it on PC, and grabbing some of the graphical overhaul mods to make it look like a modern game. This is a must play for any serious RPGer.

With overhauled graphics mod. (Click to Zoom)

Cut The Rope

Title: Cut The Rope
Platform Played On: iPhone/iPad
Release Date: October 7, 2010
Date Played: Winter-Summer 2011
Time Played: 4 hours
Completed (Y/N): No (75%)
Score: 5/5

Opinion:
Cut the Rope is a cute puzzler with a decent amount of depth.

In Cut the Rope your goal is to get a piece of candy to the little green dude. Using your finger to "cut the rope" you have to utilize physics and specific game mechanics to navigate the piece of candy to him.

As you progress through the stages new mechanics are added, I must note, quite a bit of new mechanics. After a few dozen levels you are dealing with spiders, spikes, moving anchors and timers. Needless to say there is plenty of content there to keep you interested for a long time, and the best part about it is that its perfect for bite size consumption.

Overall the presentation is very sharp and cute. There are hundreds of levels and hours upon hours of gameplay. It is a great game to play on your phone while traveling or waiting for something and have only a few minutes to spare.

Crysis

Title: Crysis
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: November 13, 2007
Date Played: October - November 2011
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5



Opinion:
Crysis is a spiritual sequel to 2004's FarCry and is used by many gamers as a shining example of PC gaming.

Right off the bat I want to say that even in 2011, this is the most amazing looking game I have ever played or seen. I seriously can not believe video games can look this good. There are moments towards the back half of the game where you are surrounded by crystal formations in weightlessness, and shooting one (or all) of these crystal formations creates the most amazing physics show ever. Each crystal splits into hundreds of pieces, each with its own inertia and spin based on where the bullet hit it.  This amazing physics show is so flawless it is exactly like it would happen in real life. And I would sit there for minutes watching hundreds of particles and crystals spinning and bouncing around.

Click to Zoom

Looking at things retrospectively, I am glad that the PC I had in 2007 was unable to run Crysis, because there is no way any PC at that time would be able to run it with all the bells and whistles set to 11.  Now on a i7 930 with a 470GTX it simply looks and feels incredible. The environmental effects, the textures (ground/buildings/people) all look amazingly realistic.

All that being said, Crysis is not just a pretty game. It has an interesting premise and the actual game mechanics are fairly unique.  You have a special top of the line spec ops suit, which can divert its power to 4 different aspects.  Strength, which gives you long jump, and very powerful punches. Speed, which makes you move faster. Shield, which decreases the amount of damage you take. And Stealth, which renders you invisible.  You can switch between these abilities on the fly, performing some amazing Batman moves in the process. This aspect alone allows you to make unique approaches as you move through the game. Coupled with expansive environments and plenty of cover it really makes it fell like you have a lot of choice approaching your goal.

Click to Zoom

As you can tell, Crysis is an amazing game both visually and technically; however it does have one major problem.  Pacing. It is not very good at keeping things interesting during the first couple of hours. There is too much running around from place to place without anything interesting going on. Towards the end though action picks up and the game keeps you engaged all the way to the credits.

Crysis is a must play just for its graphical fidelity and physics if nothing else.  I would definitelly recommend it to anyone with a 2010 or newer video card or on Xbox360 where it was just re-released last month using Crysis 2 engine.  This is THE game to show off how pretty computer games can be.

Zelda - Ocarina of Time

Title: Zelda - Ocarina of Time
Platform Played On: Gamecube
Release Date: November 23, 1998
Date Played: May 2007
Time Played: 20 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5


Opinion:
Ocarina of Time is considered to be one of the best games of all time and is a gem in hearts of many gamers.

I never had an N64, nor any friends with one, so I didnt get a chance to play Ocarina of Time until I bought a Wii, and through its backwards compatibility with GameCube I managed to play Ocarina of Time that was released on the Canadian limited edition disc for GameCube (It also contained Zelda 1, Zelda 2, Majoras Mask and a demo of Windwaker), pretty amazing collection if you ask me. I am not going to divulge into mechanics of Ocarina of Time since they are very similar to every other Zelda game in existence. I will however talk about what in my opinion make this game so great even today over a decade since its release. 

The game starts with the "boy without a fairy" (Link) waking up and finally getting a fairy (Navi); however he now is not just another Kakiri with a fairy, he is summoned by the great Deku tree, in order to embark on a journey to defeat evil. As you can see Ocarina of Time's story is interesting from the very first moments, and it stays interesting throughout. The music and new story twists keep you on your toes as you adventure through Hyrule.

Everything about this game is so well designed. The dungeon layout is great and thought inspiring, the midi music is written beautifully, and the enemies are designed in a way that it is fun to figure out strategies to defeating them. Ocarina of Time also has an unbelievable attention to detail, like the ability to slice signs with your sword, little fairies flying around the environment and even things as simple as the idle animation for Link. All in all a 25 hour journey all jam packed into a 25 megabyte cartridge. Isnt that amazing? Today even the simplest of games are thousands of megabytes.

Ocarina of Time is a great classic game. Sure it has some dated graphics, but everything else (mechanics) are as solid as ever, and this is a must play for any gamer at one point or another. For those that simply can not look past the dated graphics I will simply say that its unfortunate. You are missing out on a game with a great story, solid mechanics and fun gameplay. I feel that the game has aged pretty well.

Uncharted - Drake's Fortune

Title: Uncharted - Drake's Fortune
Platform Played On: PlayStation 3
Release Date: November 16, 2007
Date Played: October 2009
Time Played: 8 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5


Opinion:
I didn't have a chance to play Uncharted (for the lack of a PS3) until right around the time Uncharted 2 was due to come out.  Having bought a PS3 for MGS4 earlier that year (June 09), I borrowed a copy of Uncharted from my friend Roger and set off to chart the uncharteds.

At a first glance I thought, hmm this is just Tomb Raider with a dude... oh how wrong was I... I should be smacked for even thinking that. Naughty Dog (developer) took the Tomb Raider idea, and completely reinvented it from the ground up.

The story is very Indiana Jones like, both in the plot and character actions. It is semi historic with some twists to make it intriguing and interesting, which is done superbly. The basic premise is that Francis Drake (a legendary English captain) found El Dorado and detailed its location in his journal. You are Nathan Drake (a descendant of Francis Drake), are a simple guy, who doesn't like to risk his neck too much, but loves the idea of getting rich by finding a treasure.  So having stumbled upon Drake's journal, you set off to find El Dorado.

Talking about Nathan Drake brings me to the next point about how Uncharted reinvented the genre. Lara Croft is a stale, big boobed, never get hurt, always kicking ass character.  Nathan Drake on the other hand is a pretty simple guy, who gets shot, beat up, and betrayed. These factors along with excellent narration and offhand comments throughout the game make drake an extremely believable and likable character. Unlike Lara Croft, you actually care about Nathan Drake.

Third facet, which is mostly due to the technological advances,  is the fact that every single texture, animation, vista, and sound are spot on. It is full of jaw dropping moments where I couldn't believe how sophisticated and realistic the scene looked.

Combination of all these qualities create an amazing and unforgettable movie like experience. At times your mind is completely absorbed by the story and visuals to the point that you say to yourself "oh, right, this is a game not a movie".

Uncharted - Drake's Fortune is an excellent game (I don't even want to call it that), its an experience that everyone that likes adventure movies (that's right adventure movies) should check out.  What I am trying to get across is that this game is not only for gamers but for those that may not even like games but like adventure movies. Good job Naughty Dog, you made a masterpiece. You showed Tomb Raider that it is not even close to its full potential.

Half-Life

Title: Half-Life
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: October 31, 1998
Date Played: 1999
Time Played: 40+ hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5

Opinion:
What a game, what a game!

Shortly after Half Life's release I heard buzz on the internet about how this was the next Doom, the next level.. the next amazing thing. And right off the bat I remember how different it felt from every other shooter.  First off, it was the first time that I have ever experienced a true prologue to a shooter. Half Life started with Gordon Freeman (you) having just another day at work, and for the first half an hour of the game you are simply interacting with people and going through the routines of a workday.  Every other shooter at the time would just spawn you in a room full of guys with a gun in hand and spend the first half of the game explaining to you where you are while you are mercilessly slaughter everyone.  Half Life was different it was the first shooter I have ever played that had a true beginning, climax and end, and not just the climax.

Infamous Crowbar

Not only was Half Life's pacing interesting and intriguing, it was the best looking shooter to date.  When you talked to other people their mouths actually moved, and they showed emotion. The guns felt great, with excellent sounds and explosions. It was clear from the first 10 minutes with Half Life that it was the next big thing.

One of my favorite and most memorable parts of the game is when you are crawling through the air duct and hear soldiers talking in the room that the duct is running through, then all of a sudden one of the soldiers says "What was that?"... I remember saying to myself.. "oh $#1t"... next moment you have bullets cutting holes in the duct with beams of light shooting through from one side to the other.  I felt that that scene was the most incredible graphical feat a video game has accomplished to date.

This was also the first game ever where I felt like I caused the conflict. Most (I even want to say all) other shooters simply threw you into ongoing conflict that was caused by something or someone else. It was a profound feeling of OH SNAP... I SCREWED EVERYONE...

So there I was enjoying the hell out of this amazing game, it was so good I didn't want it to end, but as every other game there has to be an end. And as I was ready for credits to roll after completing an epic battle with what I thought to be the final boss I get transported to the alien world... SAY WAAAAAT... that twist was so incredible (although the alien world is my least favorite part of the game).. but the fact that a dozen hours into the game everything gets turned on its head was unprecedented. You get new guns, the terrain changes completely, even the mechanics are altered as there is now different gravity.  It was crazy...

Half Life is a very well designed game that felt more like a movie than a mindless shooter.  It coined the infamous crowbar and set the benchmark for all first person shooters of the late 90's. It featured bosses that required thinking and observation.

Half Life's engine (based on the original Quake engine), went on to be used in a variety of genre defining mods, from Couter-Strike and Day of Defeat to Team Fortress.

Overall Half Life is a great game, which should be played by everyone at one point or another. Luckily for those that didn't have the opportunity to play it back in the late 90's Valve re-released it on Steam using the Half Life 2 engine, which makes it look a lot better, and adds physics. 

G-Man

PS - You are probably wondering... wait what.. who is that guy? And why is there this random text talking about this random guy? Well I thought it would be symbolic to finish off this post just like the game does... This is G-Man, no one knows who he is or what his mission is. You see him a few times in the most interesting places in the game, and at the very end you are offered an interesting choice.... I shall say no more... What a great game!

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX

Title: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX
Platform Played On: Gameboy Emulator on PC
Release Date: June 6, 1993 (Dec 1, 1998 for DX version)
Date Played: Winter 1999
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5




Opinion:
Link's Awakening was the first Zelda game I have ever played.  It was introduced to me by my friend David (the same one that introduced me to Diablo).

Neither one of us had a Gameboy at the time, but he had either played it somewhere or saw someone playing it somewhere, and so when he told me how awesome it was we plugged in my AOL 56k connection and scoured the web for the ROM and an emulator.

I didn't know what Hyrule, Triforce or Zelda were at the time since this was my first Zelda game. But surprisingly Links Awakening is missing all of those elements.  Its just a story of Link and his quest for musical instruments to wake up a fish god.  May sound cheesy, but that premise is backed by solid controls, interesting world layout and great game mechanics.  I am just going to come out and say it, this is probably my favorite Zelda game of all time.  Overall gameplay wise its similar to Link To The Past, but on a handheld with awesome monochrome graphics.

Speaking of monochrome, the original Link's Awakening came out in 1993, but in 1998 it was re-released for gameboy color with full on color palette, the game looked better than ever before.  I believe we dabbled a bit into the monochrome version, but most of our gameplay was on this color (DX) version.

Having only one computer, we did some crazy stuff with the GameBoy emulator. We would get two instances of the game running side by side, with left side of the keyboard controlling the left instance and numpad controlling the right instance and we would play Links Awakening side by side on the same monitor with the same keyboard. Not really sure how that worked, since the controls generally only get passed to the active window, but it worked.

I also seem to remember a weird mod that changed everything in the game to sexual items. That was weird, and surprisingly funny to a 13 year old.

Links Awakening is a an amazingly good Zelda game, and with its color version's re-release on 3DS's e-shop I would recommend it to anyone who likes SNES's Link to The Past. This is a very good Zelda game, and I feel that a lot of people dismiss it because it is on a handheld.

Quake

Title: Quake
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: June 22, 1996
Date Played: 2001
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5



Opinion:
Quake is a revolutionary game, its engine (although heavily modified) is still used today, and masterpieces such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare series, and MOHAA used it.  Even Valve's own Source Engine, which powers all of their games is based on the Quake Engine.

Without a doubt Quake was yet another revolution of the FPS genre brought to life by ID, it was unfortunate that I didn't get to experience it until after playing other games such as Half Life, and Quake 2 that raised the first person shooter bar. I didn't play Quake until years after Quake 2 has been out and so I was naturally not very impressed by what it had to offer.  

At its core Quake's gameplay is similar to that of Doom 1 and Doom 2, except it is rendered completely in 3d (without sprites) and has crazier weapons. 

Quake is sort of a founding father for modern games. Its robust engine defined game development for decades. It has an unprecedented number of mods from additional maps to incredibly complex conversions.  A notable mod called Team Fortress was born as a Quake mod, and has since evolved into an incredibly popular game Team Fortress 2, which is enjoyed by millions every day. 

At this point Quake has been greatly surpassed by modern game design and technological evolution (even of its own engine) and there is no reason to play it other than for legacy purposes.  I feel that it would just feel archaic at every level. It even started to feel that way 10 years ago when I played it for the first time.

For those that want to check it out anyway there are plethora of options.  Quake has been ported to almost every platform imaginable, and with mods numbering in the thousands you could get it to run at super high resolution with anti-aliased and up-rezzed textures and modern lighting systems.

Quake will forever stay in history as a defining FPS, and can be easily obtained through digital distribution such as Steam (currently $9.99)

Warhammer 40k: Kill Team

Title: Warhammer 40k: Kill Team
Platform Played On: PlayStation 3
Release Date: July 2011
Date Played: November 2011
Time Played: 5 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5




Opinion:

Warhammer 40k: Kill Team is a twin stick shooter which was put together and released in order to hype the AAA blockbuster Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. Which was due to release shortly after.

The game allows you to pick one of the more popular Space Marine chapters, such as Blood Ravens (made famous by the Dawn of War 2 RTS series). I was paying with my girlfriend and we decided on the more obscure Salamanders. 


You then pick a class, which boils down to Ranged/Melee/ Magic/Average in all but master of none. I ended up selecting ranged, and she went with Melee. This turned out to be a great combo, as I ripped the enemies to shreds at range she would pick off any that would make it through the hellfire to us.

As with most twin stick shooters the gameplay stays basically the same all the way through, and although they try to spice up the action with dramatic narration and camera pans most of that stuff is throwaway. All you need to know is left stick moves you, right stick shoots. You do also get some unlocks which allow you to specialize a bit, things like extra health and extra damage.

Overall Kill Team is a short, but fun shoot em up. I don't know if I would enjoy it nearly as much single player, but multiplayer co-op was a good time. I would recommend tplaying through this game with a buddy.

Demon's Souls

Title: Demon's Souls 
Platform Played On: PlayStation 3

Release Date: October 6, 2009

Date Played: September - November 2011

Time Played: 56 hours

Completed (Y/N): Yes

Score: 5/5

Opinion:

Demon's Souls is hard to explain.  There is nothing like it out there, and it is a must have experience for any serious gamer.

In Demon's Souls you are dropped into a world that is filled with undead and soul devouring demons, a world with no hope.  You are dismissed by those around as just one of many thousands that have tried to restore the world of Bolataria to its former glory but failed. The game starts with putting you in the Nexus (hub world). You have a vendor, a character that will hold items for you (bank) and a wise one that will level you up throughout the game. From the Nexus you can access 5 worlds, each with three to five levels.

Demons Souls is incredible, it takes such an unconventional approach to things we take for granted in most games. For example, there is a handful of NPCs aside the aforementioned three, they are scattered within the levels and you usually have to go through quite a bit of exploring and battling to rescue them. You can play the whole game and totally miss the key or level or something or other that you would use to rescue them, and these are no generic whatever NPCs, these guys are spell vendors and other important figures. What is incredible is that someone could rescue them 2 hours into the game, another person (like me, or us since I played through the game switching off with my girlfriend Jill), could rescue them 45 hours into the game, others perhaps will not rescue them at all.  Yet you can still finish the game without any problems never have met these characters.  This incredible balance of powers is what makes Demon's Souls such a great experience, it leaves a ton of headroom for each and every player to have their own story, their own experience.  This is reinforced by the fact that it is a completely non linear game, you can do stages in almost any order you want.

The most important thing in Demon's Souls are souls, duh! They are the meaning of life in that grim universe. Vendors take souls instead of cash, you use souls to gain levels, to repair and upgrade weapons and armor. Basically they are very important.  You gain souls by killing things, the bigger and more bad-ass the creature, the higher is your soul reward. There is no way to bank the souls, the only way to get rid of them is to actually spend them. Now the kicker is that when you die, (which happens quite often) you lose whatever souls you had on you. They get left at the spot that you were at 10 seconds before your death. If you die again, those souls will disappear forever. If you had 200,000 souls on you (a very large amount, especially in the early game), and end up dying twice without recovering them... thats it they are gone, and there is no way to game the system either, the game allows for one save, and quicksaves after every action, things like pressing a button or moving 10 feet down a hallway triggers an autosave, so whatever happens really does happen. You can not copy the save or make any sort of clone. What happens in Demon's Souls, stays in Demon's Souls.

So when you die, and you WILL die in Demon's Souls not only do you have to worry about not dying again, but you have that corpse with thousands of souls on your mind for losing which you can only blame yourself.

I havent even talked about the online component of Demon's Souls, which is another fascinating aspect of this unusual game.  At any point another payer can jump into your game and outright murder you. It can happen when you are making your way through a creepy dark hallway with little health and a corpse 10 feet away from you. it can happen while you are struggling in a battle with a sliver of health left.  Granted, you can "invade" other people's games as well, and its a ton of fun, but it could lead to a controller throwing moment if it happens to you. There are also nice aspects to entering other people's games. If you are struggling with a boss you can request help, and a few guys can jump in and help you out. Conversely you can help others out and get rewarded for doing so.

If you choose to play online you can also see ghosts of other players in your area, and possibly the most innovative part of the game their blood stains and messages. The whole game world is littered with thousands of messages from silly and misleading (like, "SUPER SPECIAL TREASURE BELOW!, next to a bottomless pit with spikes at the bottom), some are actually useful, with positioning and strategy hints for fights. Thankfully they can be rated and you can tell which ones you should actually listen to.

Its mechanics like this that make Demon's Souls a unique and although brutal, remarkably fun and unforgettable experience. It pays homage to the old days when games were unforgiving. It is one of very few games these days to do something different, something that isn't stale and predictable. One of the bosses, delevels you if you are not careful for Pete's sake!


Overall everyone that likes dungeon crawlers, loot, and wants a unique, unforgettable experience should check out Demon's Souls. It is very, very good.

GTA III

Title: GTA III
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: May 20, 2002
Date Played: June - September 2002
Time Played: 40 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5



Opinion:
I remember being largely unimpressed by the original top down GTA games and as such I was skeptical of GTA III; however to everyone's surprise the final product turned out to what might as well be a completely different franchise, and the game (as well as the franchise) went on to define the open world 3rd person genre.

At its release Grand Thief Auto 3 was a PlayStation 2 exclusive, and being strictly a PC gamer I did not get a chance to play it until the following year when the PC port came out. And by that time Grand Thief Auto 3 gained an incredible amount of buzz on the internet and in the media.

I distinctly remember the opening sequence and how stunningly cinematic it was. GTA3 did not mess around and threw you right into the action. Within the first couple of seconds you are being busted out of an armored police truck and a whole bridge size of Golden Gate is blown up. You hop into a car and drive the hell away from the scene, which is littered with dead cops. After that short cut scene the game world opens up, and I remember that incredible feeling of being able to go wherever I wanted and do whatever I wanted.

The world felt like a living breathing city, with unique and detailed buildings and each street felt like it was hand crafted, to the point that after a few hours of playing you could tell where you were simply by looking around.  This fact alone speaks to the quality of the game and efforts Rockstar put into realizing it.  The city felt incredibly big and the ability to hop in and out of vehicles, shoot guns whenever I wanted to gave a great sense of freedom.

Prior to GTA most open world games focused either on world exploration by foot or vehicles. Grand Thief Auto 3 combined these aspects into one cohesive experience, which made a computer world seem more real than ever before. Car driving was handled well, giving you a variety of vehicles, from strong and slow to weak and fast, weapon variety was great enough to allow you to switch between different combat styles and missions changed up from driving, to run and gun and sniping.  And if you got bored of doing missions you could always go on a rampage and paint the city red. Overall it was a great package that kept you entertained for hours on end. 

GTA III was a profound and evolutionary game. It defined the new standards for the third person open world genre to the point that similar games are called "GTA Clones" to this day. 

Living Breathing World

Diablo

Title: Diablo
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: November 30, 1996
Date Played: Winter 1998, Summer 2001
Time Played: 20 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5


Opinion:
Diablo is an interesting game, and although I didnt play it until years after its release it was still a unique experience.

I was first turned onto the game in 8th grade by my friend David. I cant recall his exact words, but it went something like this. "Hey man, have you heard of this game called 'Diablo' ?" (mind you the game was 3 years old at this point). I replied with a "No".  I remember his excitement as he said "Dude, my sister's friend's mom is into it.. im going to see if we can borrow it". Dave being the man of his word came over a few days later with his sister's mom's copy of Diablo in hand.

First thing that was amazing about this game is Battle.net, whaaat? You can play with other people from all over the world? Online play was a new concept to me (and David). Before Diablo we would just play LAN games over a serial connection (thats right, serial).

We've spent a couple hours running around Diablo while agreeing that its pretty sweet. Unfortunately with Delta Force, and Half Life out, not to mention the need to give the game back we had to stop playing.

It was not until years later, after spending hundreds of hours on Diablo 2 and its expansion Lord of Destruction that I went back to Diablo 1 and its expansion Hellfire to revisit the roots of one of the most additive games I have ever played.

Not surprisingly Diablo 1 looked extremely dated after playing Diablo 2, its game systems and level layout were primitive, and it was missing things that seemed fundamental to the game. Instead of featuring a handful of diverse locations and towns it had only one town, and one dungeon, and even though this dungeon would vary its visuals a little bit, it was still the same one dungeon. The character animations and movement seemed bulky and combat was restricted to only a few styles.

Hellfire Expansion Cover

Now, we have to take into consideration the fact that we are comparing a 5 year old game to an entertainment media marvel here, so it is unfair to hammer Diablo for these things.  The point I am trying to make here is that I did not enjoy Diablo 1 as much as I probably would have if I had the chance to beat it when it first came out, or even in 1999 when I first played it, so I stuck with it for the sake of seeing the story. I must note that the word Blizzard meant nothing to me at the time. There were a great number of marvelous games coming out from all sorts of publishers, and Blizzard was just another EA (Red Alert 2), Valve (Half Life), Sierra (Homeworld) etc...

I was glad to complete Diablo and its expansion Hellfire, and although I now understood the origins of this franchise the story itself was very loose and have very few plot point to it.  Speaking of Hellfire, this was a weird expansion introducing really strange levels and almost no story elements. It did fix some of the mechanics (such as run mechanic), but overall is a throwaway experience, which is perhaps the reason Blizzard does not consider it canon.

Diablo was a technological masterpiece, it introduced the isometric hack and slash gameplay and defined a genre.  It introduced a concept of dungeon crawling with your friends from across the world via Battle.net; however it would feel extremely primitive if played today, so unless you want to play it for the legacy sake, I would jump straight into Diablo 2, or wait for Diablo 3 next year.

One Of The Weird Themes From Hellfire Expansion

Counter Strike

Title: Counter Strike
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: June 12, 1999
Date Played: September 1999 - June 2004
Time Played: 300+ hours
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 5/5


Opinion:
Counter Strike was the first time I engaged in any kind of competitive gaming. Prior to CS, entirety of my gaming career was based around single player.

I first found out about this amazing mod for Half Life in 9th grade while talking to some newly aquired friends in my Algebra class, same friends that would introduce me to EverQuest later that school year.  At the time Counter Strike was in version beta 0.7, hosted on the creator's web site, and noone really knew about this revolutionary mod.

Counter Strike offered a handful of maps with 3 different objectives, Demolition (where terrorists had to plan a bomb and protect it for 30 seconds), VIP (Where one of he Counter Terrorists had only a pistol and had to be escorted across the level without being killed), and Hostage (rescue hostages). My most memorable  moments are not on de_dust like most other players, I fondly remember 747, oilrig and Aztec maps, two of which were removed shortly after the game went mainstream.

Counter Strike and its 800x600 resolution days revolutionized competitive multiplayer and sucked thousands of hours from players worldwide. Its been twelve years, and Counter Strike is still one of the most played games worldwide, towering over more recent titles such as Call of Duty, and Left 4 Dead, it even has more players than its remake CS:Source.

Counter Strike remains to be a great multiplayer game, if you have never played it, then perhaps you are better of jumping into Counter Strike: Source, as the original Counter Strike looks pretty dated. But if graphics are of no importance to you, then CS is still as strong and as fun as it was 12 years ago, before some of its current players were even born.

Current Players Online - 10am Nov 2, 2011

Back to The Future: The Game (Episode 4 of 5)

Title: Back to The Future: The Game (Episode 4 of 5)
Platform Played On: iPad
Release Date: June 23, 2011
Date Played: October 2011
Time Played: 3 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5


Opinion:
The journey continues! This is episode 4 of 5 of the Back to The Future 3 (the movie) sequel. We are back in circa 1930 Hill Valley, with Doc in his teenage years and unaware of the incredible inventions he is yet to invent.

To be honest I am getting a little tired of going back to this 1930's Hill Valley, yeah you get to see new environments and puzzles are different, but Id like to travel to more different times, like a time per episode would be great. Instead this is the 3rd time in 4 episodes where we spent majority of time in 1930's.

This episode is all about restoring the original 1985 timeline without it turning into what we saw in episode 3. I must give credit to Tell Tale for throwing in some emotional curve balls towards the end of this episode, which make you question if you are doing the right thing. I like that, it makes what you do carry some weight.

There have been some technical improvements, but the game is still not perfect on the iPad. Framerate is noticeably better, and there is hardly any stuttering anymore.  The textures are noticeably higher quality and the UI is more responsive than in the previous episodes.  There were a few instances where the music all of a sudden was louder than voices, so it was impossible to hear what the characters were saying, and there are some poorly placed triggers.  One spot in particular, which happens to be the most complicated and longest puzzle in the game you can be a few minutes into it and accidentally tap the wrong thing because its within a few pixels of the right thing.. and that wrong thing resets the whole puzzle.  It took me a good 10+ minutes to figure out why the puzzle kept resetting. A bit annoying.

Overall I am continuing to like this series and am looking forward to episode 5. Although they seem to have improved the iPad version, the PC/Mac version is still a better choice if you want to play through these.