Which is not the point of this post. At least, not directly. Nor are the “bugs” in the game – bugs which the reviewers are quick to point out, but the internet has been strangely quiet about.

No, the point I’ve been rapidly running away from, only to circle back upon when it was least expected is: I’m willing to say that this is the Game Of The Year.

At least, that’s what I was thinking a about an hour ago. Then I began to wonder which games were actually released this year, and how it compares against them.

As I always do when wondering something, I checked Wikipedia – the bastion of all human knowledge. I quickly managed to dig up their list of games released in the year 2010, and was staggered by just how damn many games were actually released in past year.

At a rough counting, I would say a metric shitload of them. Over 200 have been – or will be – pushed out of the developers doors and into the sweaty hands of GameStop workers world wide. Or the local equivalent should one live in a land where GameStops are not a thing.

Regardless, that’s a lot of games. A lot of games I am not, in anyway, qualified to remark upon.

I can, however, compare Fallout: New Vegas to the games that I did play, so I quickly pulled them out of the list, and have compiled them below.

As you can see, there are eight of them.
Eight.

Nine if you count the one that is based on a movie, but hasn’t been released yet. While I know enough that the vast majority of movie based games suck, I’m willing to risk it seeing as it’s related to TRON.

But, again, I digress.

At an average of one game every two months, I’ve picked up one Windows game (even though I only own a Mac), two full XBox games, two full PS3 games, and an XBL Arcade game (not sure why that’s on the list, TBH.) Even though I tend to prefer the PS3, my purchasing has been pretty evenly distributed over the two major consoles.

No Wii love at all this year. Which, honestly, was not a surprise.

With this (short) list in mind, it’s time to double back and again ask: Do I still think Fallout: New Vegas is the best game I’ve played all year?

Star Trek Online (STO) is pretty darn amazing – it has managed to hold my attention, off and on, since February. Cryptic are constantly adding new content, and tweaking/revising existing content. But it does have its own problems. The content that is there, now, is still sparse. The various stories it tries to tell are good, but not great – and are either too fragmented, or not detailed enough. And, surprisingly, there aren’t any immediately memorable characters in the game.

So, while I love the game – and plan on playing it for at least another year – it’s not better than New Vegas.

Next, there’s Just Cause 2, another fun game. A great sandbox game, one that I still play occasionally, when I feel the need to drive around a small island country acting like a horrible person.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say about that. The gameplay is way fun, but there isn’t any memorable story. It’s basically a Micheal Bay action flick, which is great fun to watch/play, but not something that would be nominated for any real awards.

No where near a contender, really.

3D Dot Game Heroes was a lovely, wonderful, fun throwback to the 8bit days of yore. Lots of fun to play, lots of silly side-quests, and self aware story telling. A great, fun game. One of the most fun, and most original, games I’ve played in years.

Also, one of the more frustrating. And not “frustrating until you memorize the dudes movements” kind of things, but “frustrating because the world map is a bit hard to remember, and the damn camera never quite works the way it should, dammit, now how the fuck do I get back to the damn Fire Temple anyway?” kind of thing. I still say it’s the Legend of Zelda sequel I’ve been waiting years for, but it’s not something I think I’ll ever go back and play again, let alone finish.

I’m happy I bought it, and I’ll still heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoys Action RPGs, but that’s about as far as I’m willing to go with this one.

Finally, we come to Halo: Reach. What do I need to say, other than it’s the Haloz? Only, in many ways, it’s not. Yes, you still shoot guys in the face, but there are enough changes to the game that it feels like it belongs to a separate franchise from Halo 3. The single player campaign has been fun, and the characters are well fleshed out. The story is much deeper, and somewhat easier to understand, than the previous Halo games. (Yes, the previous games had stories. Or so I’m told. I only ever got “Aliens bad, shoot them” out of the previous entries, but some gamers swear there’s more too it than that.) And the mulitplayer is frantic, and kinetic, and way more fun than it should be.

It’s also repetitive. It is not at all addictive – I don’t ever find myself thinking “Just one more level, oh, lemme check this out, what the fuck do you mean it’s three in the morning?” when I’m playing Reach. I, quite naturally, get a level in, have my fun, and then am ready to do something else. Something that isn’t Halo.

So, no, Halo: Reach isn’t it either.

Fallout: New Vegas has a compelling main storyline, one that Nadia has said several times is like watching a movie. At times a very creepy movie, but a movie. It also has many, many, many compelling side stories. Many unique, quirky and fun characters to find. It near perfectly balances SRS GAMING with light-hearted humor, and damn creepy moments of WTF’itude.

It’s addicting. With so many places to explore so damn close to one another (it’s really, really hard to go more than four minutes without finding SOMETHING, contrary to some reviews) and with almost everything being actually interesting, it’s very hard to walk away. Even for spectators: Nadia has said, a couple of times, that just watching the game is very addicting – she’ll stay up far later than she intends, just to see what’ll happen next.

And it’s fun. Shooting dudes? Fun. Exploring buildings? Fun. Looting Vaults? Fun. Wandering the Mojave Wasteland, in search of more caps, or more dudes to shoot, or more funny notes, or more weird occurrences? Fun.

So, yeah – upon further, mature, reflection, I’m confidant in saying that Fallout: New Vegas is my Game of the Year. The best damn game I’ve played all year long, and one that will continue to eat my free time for the next six months.

Today I made Captain, and shortly thereafter was awarded the helm of a new ship – the U.S.S. Miskatonic.
She’s a long range science vessel, of the Intrepid class. Well, mostly Intrepid class – the main hull is of the new Discovery class, but the rest of the ship is pure Intrepid.

Some of my colleagues have remarked upon my continuing to accept commissions on science vessels, since I do have a more tactical background and might feel more at home on the bridge of a faster, more powerful ship. While that may be true, to some extent, I prefer the feel of the science ships. They may not be as flashy, but they’ve got it where it counts.

And, really – isn’t exploration and the accumulation of knowledge the founding tenants of both Starfleet and the Federation of Planets? Aren’t we all supposed to be striving to make ourselves better, rather than blowing up everyone else in the sky?

Lately, I’ve been doing all too much of that – spending what seems like ages in Romulan space, sending the shattered fragments of the Romulant Star Empire – and the fledgling Reeman whatever they are – to their untimely deaths. Many of my crew see this as a necessary precaution, having grown up in a time of war. But I remember before – before the war, even before the Romulan Empire fell.

I shouldn’t remember that – I’m not much older than most of my crew. But here I am, sitting in The Big Chair, decades away from my home time. Not through anything Temporal Affairs would be interested in – I went the long way, via cryo-sleep. Damn the Borg, damn them for robbing me of my friend and family, of taking me from Copernicus Station that fateful day…

For turning me into something other than human, but less than normal.

But, no – today is a good day. A day of celebration – The Miskatonic is mine to command.
This should be a grand old voyage, indeed.

Not Actual Box Art

The plot is straight out of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past: A long time ago, there was a big bad guy who did big bad things. Six smart, wise guys got together, and trapped him in a parallel world of his own creation a glowing Orb. Some wizard has sucked up to the king, stolen the Orb, and plans on unleashing the power of the Big Bad. It’s up to you, who just happens to be the direct descendant of the Previous Hero, to save the world.

Sound familiar? Sages are called Scholars, Dungeons are Temples, but otherwise it’s all very much in line with what we know and love. Which, in my opinion, is a great thing.

Graphically, it’s closer to The Legend of Zelda, only in 3D. Kind of like the reverse of Super Paper Mario: Instead of 2D sprites in a 3D world, it’s blocky-sprites in a blocky-sprite world.
Okay, maybe the analogy doesn’t hold up particularly well… But you get the picture.

The game is full of references to past games, from direct quoting of famous lines, to references to the cheat codes and other such trivia that gamers of a certain age will remember fondly. Even the sound effects have been crafted in such a way as to be reminiscent of other titles.

What, then, does this game bring that is new? Sadly, not much. It does contain a rather robust – if complicated – character creation tool, but other than that it is a retro game in high-def.

Which is not at all a bad thing – because 3D Dot Game Heroes has a sense of whimsy and sincerity about it which truly sells the idea. This isn’t something crafted over a weekend by some guy in his basement hoping to cash in on your love of old stuff. No, it’s a love letter to the past, a thank you note for all the fun what we’ve had, and a reminder that such fun need not go away as games evolve into… well, whatever the fuck Twilight Princess was.

Frankly, this is a game that Nintendo should have made, and would do well to take notes from. In many ways this game is more Zelda than the last console entry in the franchise.

I don’t think I can recommend it highly enough.

Just Cause 2 - PS3 Boxart

It’s a game that’s super easy to talk about, because there’s no real risk of spoilers. That’s not to say there isn’t a story to the game, as there is – it’s just that the story is mostly there to get you to move about the map, and isn’t an actual driving force behind gameplay.

It’s actually quite refreshing, and a welcome addition to my game library.

The basics are this: You are Agency agent Rico Rodriguez, sent undercover to the island nation of Panau to find out what happened to the last agent that was sent there, and… Um… Blow shit up? There’s something to do with the government being a military dictatorship, and oil, and other nations having more interest than is probably healthy in this tiny nations future… It’s fun to watch, but nothing too serious.

The game has a tone like an Bond film directed by Micheal Bay, if it was both written by and starred Vin Diesel. Think xXx with a much larger budget, and bad accent. The action is completely over the top – and constantly finds ways to get more ridiculous. Without giving away too much, one boss battle involves a tank on top of a sky-scraper and a guy with satellite targeted missiles raining death down upon you.

Explosions are huge, you spend a lot of time jumping from car roofs to other car roofs, hijacking flying choppers, then jumping from them onto another chopper, hanging from planes and generally being more awesome than is humanly possible.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3evnPPBZE_g] As an example, I tried to blow up a statue with a car, and failed many times… Finally, in frustration, I took a 747 and crashed it into the tiny statue. A video (captured by the PS3, uploaded directly to YouTube) is to the left.

A short search of YouTube shows much of the other crazy mayhem one can get up to in the game. Truly, some epic level fun can be had with this.

Not everything is perfect with this game: The enemy AI can be down right retarded at times. Sure, they’ll take cover and use that to their advantage quite a few times, making you hunt them down – while taking massive damage. However, where they take cover isn’t always the best of spots. Occasionally they’ll hide behind huge tanks of gas, or the standard exploding barrels.

Health packs are damn hard to come by, and the mini-map is damn near useless for finding enemies. Oh, and jets are really, really slow…

Those gripes aside, the game is damn fun. It’s the perfect game for anyone who enjoys blowing shit up, shooting dudes, or wandering lush island paradises. What I’m trying to say is this: Download the demo, give it a spin. Then add the game to your GameFly queue (or head over to Blockbuser), and spend a few days wandering around the Panau countryside.

I’m fairly sure you’ll be glad you did.

Dunny Turns 30

Nadia got me an awesome cake, a nice new blue dress shirt shirt, a great watch, a pac-man t-shirt and a cool laptop bag. Lots of great loot from my great and wonderful girl.

Awesome Cake is Awesome

We had lunch together at [Insert Name of Restaurant Here], nice little Japanese place with great food, and later that night we had dinner with my folks at Tommy Bahamas, followed by watching The Vampires Apprentice – a surprisingly good movie.

The following morning we went to GameWorks with Rosenberg and Coldiron, and stayed there pretty much the whole day playing games, drinking beer, and harassing Sonic. We followed that up with a trip to The Yard House, for more beer, some shots, and good eats. Then we hit Borders, did some wandering and coffee drinking, and headed back home.

All told, it was a darn good birthday.

This, however, is not a post about that birthday. It is, rather, a post mentioning the fact that said birthday did occur, and that a post about the birthday will be posted tonight.

Borderlands Box Art

I’ve heard some refer to Borderlands as a RPS (role playing shooter), or “Diablo with guns”. I tend to agree with the latter; while it is a shooter, there is little to no roleplay – or even story. Like Diablo, you can customize your gear and your skills, but will end up spending most of your time running through areas, shooting things until they stop moving, and collecting sweet loots.

The game does enable one to drop in and out of other peoples games, for a co-op style of play… But I’ve not really messed with that much. I tried it, once, and it wasn’t too shabby. That is to say, the feature worked as advertised. I’m sure if you are a social gamer, that this feature would be a fun one – but I’m not, so it’s not something I actually give a damn about. Mostly I wander the world of Pandora, alone, shooting dudes and taking their stuff.

There are cars, which you can drive and shoot and run people over with, but frankly it feels really cheap. While in a car, everything is a one-hit kill. Creatures that normally can take a crapload of damage splatter under the wheels of your dune buggy. Thankfully, most areas aren’t open to cars – you have to leave your ride outside.

The main draw here is the weaponry – and what weaponry it is! Sniper rifles that cause folks to burst into flames, shotguns that electrocute folks, revolvers that cause dudes to explode… it’s all here. I’ve heard tales of even crazier weapons – like shotguns that shoot rockets, but have yet to encounter them. Mostly, though, a huge part of the fun – what makes many of the challenges worth while – is finding a chest containing some new guns. It’s almost always worth it – rarely do you not find something neat, which you just want wait to try on the next mutant you come across.

This is quickly becoming my favorite game – it’s pretty much the only one I’ve played since I got it. With the promise of even better stuff available on the second go-through, and some sweet zombie fueled DLC available by the end of year, this is more than worth it’s $60 entry fee.

Gabe Newell, Director of Game Development - Valve Software

Hi, how are you? I’m fine. The weather is finally cooling off, which is nice – won’t have to run the AC as often, which in these harsh economic times means I might be able to save a bit of cash.

But, enough small talk – this isn’t a social call. No, I’m actually writing you (or pretending to write to you via my blog) in order to register a formal complaint on the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead on the XBox 360.

This product is, sadly, buggy and not at all worth the seven dollars you are charging for it. Oh, I’ve read the sob story that Microsoft forced you into charging for the content, that you wanted it to be free but Microsoft made you charge for it… And that’s fine, that’s understandable, I suppose. They want you to charge for it, well… charge for it. But a whole seven bucks? For a level that takes less than half an hour to complete, and is full of bugs? I’d expect this from Bethesda, but not you. You made Portal, one of my favorite games of all time, and the Half-Life series of games, which are astounding.

And you also made… This. This pile of crap.

I’m sorry to be harsh, but that’s what it is: A pile of crap, a box of turds costing seven dollars.

The level is rife with clipping issues – many walls and trucks and containers can just be walked through as if they weren’t there. Normally, this wouldn’t be much of an issue – except one kind of needs barriers to act as barriers when one is attempting to find some sort of shelter from an incoming zombie horde.

Or, perhaps, this was an intentional thing, created to ratchet the difficulty of the game up a few notches? I should hope not- that’s what the difficultly setting is for. No, it’s just crappy level design and even worse QA.

There are also several building whose interiors appear to exist on other planes – peering into the door ways from outside gives one a grand view of the entire map, but entering them places on in a dark, dank closet. It’s a neat riff on the whole Portal thing, to be sure – but I don’t think it quite fits with the L4D experience. I also think it might be just plain buggy.

Then, there’s the end game.
Turn on the generator, I’m told.
What generator, I wonder? There’s nothing that looks remotely like a generator anywhere near the rest of the end-game barricades and turret. It was only through wandering around – and back tracking – that I was able to find the damn thing. What happened to the hints from the other levels that gently nudge one in the right direction?

I can see why this was free on the PC – it’s not really worth much. It should have been the same cost on the 360, or – because Big Bad Microsoft is being such a bully – no more than two bucks.

Honestly, had I the chance to do it all over again, I’d much rather have spent the cash on that neat Superman/Batman cartoon than this. I probably would have gotten far more enjoyment from it. And that makes me sad, because I normally enjoy Valve games. This, however, has made me reconsider my purchase of Left 4 Dead 2. I’m forced to wonder if this quickly tossed off bit of DLC is an indication of the level of quality the quickly tossed off sequel is going to be. Unless the reviews are stellar, I’m probably going to wait until I can pick up a used copy and a cheaper price.

Well, thanks for letting me vent – and for normally making quality games. Just stop pushing out over-priced, buggy DLC.

Eventually, I decided to give the second one in the series (Zelda II – The Adventure of Link) another go. It is one of two Zelda related titles that I have played, but not actually completed. I figured I should probably rectify this, and maybe get the Zelda bug out of my system at the same time.

In what I occasionally refer to as my “den”, I have pretty much all of the classic (NES era onwards) consoles, and along with them some of my favorite games. Among those treasures is my copy of Zelda II. And, to make NES gaming easier, I happen to have both the front loader NES (big, boxy VCR looking thing) and the sleeker top-loader NES (with the dog-bone controller). Personally, I do prefer the front-load, but the top-load is better for when you actually want to play without having to fight the console first.

Yet, when it came time to actually start playing the game, I didn’t move to the den, nor did I turn to any of the classic systems: I fired up an emulator on my Mac, plugged in a USB controller, and started playing.

I’m not even really sure why I did this – I’m normally very opposed to emulation. I thought I preferred the feel of the old controller in my hand, and the slight fuzziness caused by the CRT. Yet, there I was, attempting to play (poorly, I might add) Zelda II and kind of enjoying it.

Does this mean that, maybe, it’s time to pack away the old systems and just keep going with the emulation and roms? Are they, really, superior to how I’ve been playing before? Should I just move the big ass CRT out, and plop a computer in, and just run everything off of that from now on?

And, if I do – what games should I play? Should I limit myself to only those that I’ve bought, only those that I own… Or has that statute of limitations played out, and it’s now time to just grab anything I want, and play it? The original creators aren’t making any money off these games anymore anyway, so what harm would it be to pirate them? Who would have to know? I mean, other than the four or five people who read this blog, of course.

As of right now, I’m not sure… I’m, honestly, torn. On the one hand, I really do enjoy owning and playing with the older systems, but on the other I don’t use them often enough to justify having them out all the time – and when I do play, I’d rather play right now, not “as soon as I can get the NES to stop blinking” or even “If the Dreamcast decides to load Slave Zero this time”.

Either way, I’ll probably just keep walking that fine line – hoarding the older stuff like pirate gold, and playing it on a fancy computer because I’m lazy.

Kind of like Crackdown, or Saints Row 2, I suppose. A sort of “One more mission, okay, one more mission, really, I mean it this time, just one more… You know what? I’ll just play another hour or – it’s what time?! Well, one more mission won’t hurt” logic starts running through my head. I can kill hours doing almost nothing in the game, and enjoy it all.

Yesterday was Apples developer conference; nothing major came out of it. Cheaper laptops, cheaper (sort of) iPhones, updated OS’s for both… Nothing revolutionary, nothing really worthy of causing me to head to the Apple Store this weekend to spend money.

One nice thing, though, was the price structure for the next OS X upgrade: $30. That’s right, $30 to upgrade the OS. $40 if you want to do it on five machines, and $130 if you don’t want an “upgrade” version, although what the difference is I’m not sure. Compare that, if you will, to Microsofts price structure. Vista upgrades start at $90 per machine, and the full OS is $250. So, yeah, you might pay a bit more upfront for the Mac, but it evens out over the life of the machine.

At this point, come September, I should have the money stuffed away to pick up – with cash – a new 13″ MacBook Pro the “family” pack of Snow Leopard to update my current Macs. I’m going to offer Nadia my current Mac, and if she doesn’t want it I’ll figure something else out.