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Hellz yeah. Told you, man, this soundtrack is memorable as hell.

Like I said, major character development down the line.

My personal favorite. I guess that would make me a Treppie.

You know, I really do. But that doesn't change the fact that Persona has some of the best voice acting, character development and storylines in any RPG.


Ironically, I don't like the card game, OR summoning. Like, usually pretty much every time I play through FF8, I don't use summons AT ALL.


Yeah, I guess it is overhyped, as far as its difficulty. It's not so much about complicated, as it is about the tweeking. Like, later on, you might have "Life", and that'll give you the most HP at the time, OR id you junction it to your Elemental Defense, it'll lower all your elemental damage by a lot, so then you have to choose... That kind of thing.

Amen!

Strip Poker 4 lyfe.

Oi, Oi'm gonna go see a pre-screening of Oh NoES! tonight, so I'll give you my thoughts on it (This is mostly directed at you, Bio).

Oh NoES! = A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Thought I'd be clever...Guess not haha.

Anyways, it was very disappointing, and a step in the wrong direction for horror.

After watching it, my exact first thoughts were "So it has come to this."

On the downside:

1. Directors think that scary nowadays means rapid movements, quick cuts and nonstop BOO! moments. While some would say that's what Drag Me to Hell was all about, the difference between DMtH and Oh NoES! is that DMtH was effective in it's fusing of rapid movements, quick cuts and BOO! moments to milk the scares outta you (Though DMtH wasn't as nearly twitchy as Oh NoES! is). Sadly, I only shifted once during Oh NoES!, but that was because the guy next to me did a sissy jump during a said lame BOO! moment and scared me rather than the movie scaring me, haha. Dammit, scary imagery is the key! Directors are forgetting to remember that.

2. Lack in kill creativity. Because I didn't find the movie scary, I relied on the deaths and Freddy screentime to entertain me. I'll get to Freddy in a few moments, because I want to talk about the deaths right now. They were all very unoriginal, and nothing we haven't seen either before in a Freddy movie, or a thousand times in others. The one good death was at the very end.

3. Recycled imagery. I think you Bio or Thee Stranger mentioned this before, but they used a lot of the same imagery the original series generated over the years. While that doesn't seem so bad, the remake truly only shone when it used original ideas over recycled ones.

On the upside:

1. The new Freddy is the old Freddy! Say what you will Bio, but I will say with sweet sixteen sincereness that if you see the remake and don't like the new Freddy, then you are not a Freddy fan; just a Robert Englund fan.

Now why would I say that? Like I said, because the new Freddy is the old Freddy; just a lot more perverted and sadistic. What's great is that that what I was getting from the previews is that he was just all business this time around. On the contrary; He's still as playful and jokingly as ever.

The only slight downfall might be his voice. You may just not like it.

2. Good use of CGI. They did some cool stuff with the CGI to generate some new, creepy imagery. And like I said, that's where the movie truly shone.

3. More detailed origin story. It was a nice touch, and led you to believe that the plot would lead into a different direction, which is the direction I would have preferred. (I'll tell you what that direction is once you see the remake, or now if you don't plan on seeing it.)

Well, those are my thoughts on it.

As an original Nightmare fanatic, I'd recommened only going to see it to get a new Freddy fix.

F*** yeah I know you're a Freddy fan. That's why I said what I said. I'll be very disappointed if you don't at least like the new old Freddy, makeup aside.

EDIT: But what I really want to say is that new Freddy is the old Freddy for the fact that they didn't drastically alter his appearance or demeanor.

Yes, read my edit above.

Anyways, I was way more afraid that they would change his demeanor than his appearance. I knew for a fact that they wouldn't change a lot about his look for fear of possibly shying old school fans away. So I was a lot happier to see that Freddy's attitude was still mostly the same rather than see that they only slightly altered his face.

Okay, I finally finished the damn thing. Half-assed some, but I finished the damn list. Not of the Top Ten Best Games, because that's kind of impossible for me to narrow down. Plus, I already made one list way back with all the Metal Gear Solids, Resident Evils, what have you. And s**t like Fallout 3 and Dead Space would definitely have a place in my list, too. So I'm just kind of going for unique, obscure, or forgotten classics (and a little bit of survival horror, just because) with this one. So without further adieu, it's...

The Top Ten Games Thee Stranger Would Like to Mention


I came into existence quite a while after the whole Atari era, but every once in a while, my dad would bust out the 2800 or the Colecovision or what have you and we'd all play it. One such time he decided to hook up every single one of his Ataris and Colecos simultaneously, and since he didn't have room to hook it all up at the entertainment center, the Atari 5200 ended up in me and my brother's room on a tiny old 50s black & white television. I would have much rather had the Coleco, but since we were stuck with the 5200 on our first ever very own TV set, we played it. We were up late at night one time, looking through all the games, when I came across one of the few that was still in the box. The cover art immediately struck me. Kinda scared me even. I think to get the most out of this game, the best way to play is alone. And at night. This game is like the spiritual precursor to Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) in that the game is entirely comprised of boss battles, and each said boss battle is a puzzle in itself. The object of the game is to protect your home planet (which looks an awful lot like our own) from a wave of massive (and I do mean massive) planet-destroying warships known as dreadnaughts. Your defense against these looming, gigantic death machines of imminent doom? Dinky little starfighter ships. The game begins with an overview screen that displays the surface your planet and shows the dreadnaught entering orbit and slowly begin to descend down towards your planet from above. Then your little X-Wing sets out on its mission, zooming across the stars until you come upon the dreadnaught, bomb the hell out what sections you can as you fly over the surface of the thing, pass over it, and cut back to the overview screen where you watch the dreadnaught inching down just a little further towards your planet. Each time you pass the dreadnaught, it gets a little closer. Each time your fighter is destroyed by cannon fire, it gets a little closer. It's always getting closer. And once it reaches the the energy field, you can say goodbye to your home planet. Obviously, this can make for a pretty intense game. Especially on higher difficulties. You have to do everything in your power to stop the dreadnaughts from destroying your planet. There are a few ways. You can flat-out destroy them by bombing all of their energy vents. And that's the only way to destroy them completely. But those are very well-guarded on certain dreadnaughts. Destroying the cannons that guard the vents will work of course, but you only have a certain number of passes you can make. And it's always getting closer. You can destroy its engines to slow it down and buy you some more time, but it's still moving. If you destroy all its missile silos, it can't bomb your planet when it reaches range, but you still have to destroy it with whatever fighters you have left or it's still game over. So there's very much to take into consideration... but this is all while you're zooming past the thing and dodging all sorts of nasty s**t it's throwing at you over and over, and watching it get closer and closer every time you pass or get blown up. It's all action, but it is also very much a thinking man's game. The sound is very minimalist. Which is another reason why I think this game is best played alone, late at night. All there really is as far as sound goes, is the rumble of the dreadnaught's engines, your laser cannon, and the occasional explosion (sometimes, very loud ones). The game is completely effective, and maybe even a little creepy. Even today.


The funnest racing game ever made, if you ask me. I'm not a big fan of racing games, to tell the truth. I find them about as boring and repetitive as your standard NASCAR racing event. But the Road Rash games are quite different. And they're the ones that have given me the most hours up late at night playing with my friends, the most laughs, and most importantly, the most fun. No other kind of racing game delivers the kind of dynamic that racing with motorcycles in Road Rash does. I mean, what other racing game literally has you fighting for position? Not just nudging each other with your vehicle, but punching and kicking? Or bashing each other over the head with blunt objects like baseball bats or chains until you've successfully sent the other flying off his bike, only to be run over by another car the second he stands up? Only Road Rash. And only on a bike could you stand up to the kind of obstacle courses Road Rash's tracks become with the insane amount of traffic you have to weave in an out of (often in the midst of the aforementioned fist fights), and with human pedestrians often serving as your road bumps. On top of that, this is illegal street racing, so you constantly have the cops on your a**. The infamous "BUSTED!" didn't begin with GTA. This game constantly keeps you on your toes, and there's nothing more satisfying than when you're defending your position from a guy who's approaching you from the left lane, and he's too preoccupied with trying to beat you down to notice that incoming car coming right at him, POW! good times.


Kinda like the precursor to the Mario Party games in a way. This was one of two party games made by EA for the 3DO where you play as a contestant on a game show. A really strange, bizarre kinda game show in some parallel universe of some kind. The other one was called "Twisted", and one of the contestants was actually a computer-rendered Pez Dispenser. This was the spiritual sequel, and this one featured all live actors for the contestants. It is set in the fictional communist nation of Bizzarnia, in which its communist government has just fallen, and so that means you can win cash and valuable prizes on the all new, all capitalist People's Game Show. And so, a select few citizens are kidnapped and forced to compete as contestants on this game show to basically win American citizenship and live the whole american dream thing. There had always been game show games, even on the original NES. But this was the first time I really saw it become kind of a reality. They even played short little commercials in between the action. Not sure why I chose this one over Twisted, I guess I just kind of liked the premise a little better, and it also came after Twisted, so there was more mini games and a more improved interface. As well as lots of trivia questions. I can't really convey the wackiness of this game through text... just watch the intro and you'll see vaguely what I mean. It was a great party game, though. Both this and Twisted just reek of early 90s. And are wonderfully weird, and wonderfully cheesy. They just don't make 'em like this anymore. Shine on you crazy diamonds.



I've said it before, but no video game has ever scared me. Plenty of horror games have made me feel tense, or even a little unsettled while I was playing them, but nothing really remarkable. I only count something as scary if it truly disturbs me. If it sticks with me after the game, movie, whatever is off. Like, if I'm having trouble sleeping, or an urge to turn the light on at night, or nightmares. Frankly, I don't see how the likes of Nemesis or Pyramid Head could really scare anybody. Especially Nemesis. Rocket Launchers and "S.T.A.R.S..." aren't scary, guys. Mr. X had a much more menacing presence if you ask me. But I digress. If any video game character ever came remotely close to scaring me, it would have to be Scissorman. The game is Clock Tower, and it's pretty much an interactive slasher flick. Actually, this game is a sequel. But since we never got an English translation of the SNES original, this is our original. But, the game does pick up where the original left off, and involves a group of characters trying to solve the mystery of the Scissorman Murders from the last game. It's definitely dated by today's standards. It sports a point-and-click interface to move your character around and interact with objects and the environment, and there's a good deal of detective work before you get into the real meat of the game: the encounters with Scissorman. You can't ******** with this guy. At all. It's not like Pyramid Head or Nemesis, where you can pump a few bullets into him and either put him down for a little while, or he'll go away for a little while. No. You have to run & hide, and figure out how to escape whatever building you're trapped in. And that's a puzzle in itself. But aside from that, Scissorman also enjoys ******** with you. It's constant tension. You can always hear him coming, because you'll always hear the constant shearing of his big-a** scissors when he's near. This also helps to determine how near or far away he is when you're hiding in a room. Then the noise will disappear and you'll think you're safe for now, when suddenly the fax machine will kick on. You go over and grab the paper, "I'm comin' for ya!" so then you go for the door and he busts in. You run into the bathroom, and hide in one of the stalls. You can hear your character's heart is racing as you hear him enter with the loud shearing of the scissors, and then it abruptly stops. "Wha...?" right before, BOOM, you hear the wood splinter as the scissors come through the side of the bathroom stall, right through your gut (Jason Voorhees style), turning you into shichkebob. Game Over. And that's just one of the many ways people die in this game. Yeah. This game is awesome. If you ever see it anywhere, buy it.


Well, it definitely helps a bit that I'm a huge fan of the John Carpenter film, and this right here is its psuedo video game sequel. But even so, I think this game could stand on its own easily. That said, it really does capture a lot of the essence and the imagery from the 1982 classic. I love how even the loading screen is a reference to a scene in the film. What's offered here as far as the storyline goes is perfectly adequate and enjoyable. The only real problem I have with it is that I loved the ambiguity and creepiness of the ending of the Carpenter film (which, just like the original Halloween, I thought was ******** brilliant). Unfortunately, being that this a direct sequel, it pretty much squashes that ambiguity right in the very beginning. If you know the film, then you know the enemy you're dealing with here. A hostile, shape-shifting alien lifeform that can imitate any other lifeform it touches. Every piece of it is its own living, sentient entity. Plenty of files to read up on to discover just what happened at these two military research outposts you're investigating. Anyone could be the Thing. And in keeping with the whole who-can-you-trust theme of the film, this game often puts your character in charge of a team of other men, which you have to try keep under control when they're losing it under the pressure, and also maintain their trust in you (usually by giving them ammunition of some sort), so they can unlock doors for you, heal you, and just basically cooperate so you can try get out of this mess. But can you trust them? You'll often have your whole party suddenly come under attack as someone in party turns into some kind of crazy monster out of the blue. Combat basically consists of shooting the monsters with some standard kind of bullet-firing gun, and weakening them up enough in the process so that you can then torch them to ash with the flamethrower (as that is the only way to kill the thing completely). In all practicality, you should just go straight to the flamethrower and torch them, like in the movie. But I understand that weapon variety is important to a video game sometimes, and combat can be very intense and enjoyable. Though maybe just a wee bit dated by today's standards. Ultimately though, probably the best licensed game I ever played.



Another gift that Nintendo innovated and bestowed upon the gaming world came last gen in the form of what's called handheld-to-console interconnectivity. Which, well, people were kind of skeptical of at first. Kinda gimmicky maybe, but as s**t like this game right here proved, it was a pretty ******** brilliant idea. This particular game was actually designed by Shigeru Miyamoto I believe. I'm sure everyone here has played Pac Man at some point in their life. But this game transformed Pac Man into a killer multiplayer party game. You plug in three controllers and a Gameboy Advance into the Gamecube. The three players with controllers are playing as the three ghosts on screen. And the person on the GBA is playing as Pac Man. And by playing as Pac Man, they're just playing regular ol' Pac Man on the gameboy. The other three are playing as the ghosts. As you can see by the screenshot, the ghosts don't have a full view of the map. If the ghosts did, there's no way Pac Man would ever have a chance. Of course, the guy playing Pac Man on GBA has the advantage of being be able to see the entire map. So as the ghosts, you really have to work together. Like, "he's over here!" and then you all round up and chase him, only for him to eat a power pellet and consume you all. This game was a blast.



This is a game that tells you to put this friggin' game down and go outside. It's been argued that flower is more of a pretentious tech demo than an actual game, but to me, this is a perfect example of gaming as an art form. I don't know if it's so much a game as it is an experience, but I do know that it was actually a pretty moving experience. Everything about this game is just simply beautiful. From the amazing graphics, to the simple yet elegant gameplay, to the stellar soundtrack. I have to hand it to ThatGameCompany. So like I said, the gameplay is simple. You take control of the wind and simply guide a single flower pedal along various lush landscapes, gliding across other flowers in order to collect more flower pedals and basically restore life to the planet. I know how that sounds, but you really just have to play it to get it. And I really just find it quite amazing that each time you collect a flower pedal, a music note plays that perfectly blends with the soundtrack. No matter what time that music note plays. Everyone who has a PS3 should play this game. At the very least, it makes for a pretty elaborate screen saver to show off your HDTV/PS3.


"Your actions have consequences. You either win or lose. Do the right thing." Alright, first of all, this is a game (if you could call it that...) that you must play for yourself. Anything I say about it will spoil the experience. And that's pretty much what this little indie game is: an experience. Or rather, an experiment. You can download it here. The game will probably take you five minutes, at best, to finish. So just download it and play it first. And remember, the esc button will exit the game. Spoilers in white: Okay, so you played it? Did you win or lose? I lost quite quickly. Kinda makes you think a bit, doesn't it? Usually killing some random person in a video game means almost nothing to us. But the fact that this guy is dead, and that I lost, and that there's no way I can bring him back (even if you delete this game and re-download it, he will still be dead), killing some random dude in a video game actually has a little weight behind it for once. And maybe, you feel just a tad guilty about your actions.


Skull Monkeys is the sequel to the PC adventure game, The Neverhood. But it detaches from the original in gameplay somewhat as Skull Monkeys is a platformer. These two games, as well as Earthworm Jim are the brainchildren of Doug TenNapel. An animator and comic book artist. I actually met him at the '08 Comic Con. But anyway, if you have any appreciation for the kind of 90s avant-garde style, and zany and off the wall kind of bizarreness and humor of stuff like Earthworm Jim and Oddworld, this game should right up your alley. The animation/claymation is great. The gameplay is classic, challenging and fun. And it's also hilarious. As is the soundtrack (especially the Bonus Room Song xD). And I'll never get tired of farting clones. I love this game.


The puzzle game to rival Tetris. Or dare I say, possibly even best it. And believe me, that's a hell of a statement coming from me. From the same guys who brought you Rez and Lumines comes Meteos. One of the best puzzle games ever created. A meaty puzzle game, with loads and loads of content that you will be spending hours upon hours exploring and unlocking. This game is crack. Fun crack. And what's more, it's even got a storyline. Who ever heard of a puzzle game with a storyline? Okay, so it's not that deep or stellar or anything, but it's there. And it definitely adds just that much more flavor to an already delicious meal. The main gist is there's an evil, sentient planet out to destroy all the other planets of the galaxy by unleashing a bunch of meteors (or meteos) out into space to bombard and crush said planets. By matching at least three of the same color or shape of meteos in a line, they will ignite and spit the meteos back out into space (or in some game modes, back at the opposing planet until it is destroyed). Controls are simple. You use the DS stylus on the touchscreen to drag the various meteos vertically, matching them up in either a horizontal or vertical line to launch them out of the atmosphere (though you can match meteos horizontally for ignitions, you can only drag them around the screen vertically). But there's so many various different little intricacies revolving around executing that very simple concept that it's always engaging, and always has you trying cobble together that killer combo. Like when you launch one stack of meteos using, say, a line of three horizontally and gravity begins to pull the remainder of the stack back down to the earth, and then you launch another line of, like, five horizontally and it hooks the aforementioned stack on its way up and pushes the entire thing out into space, completely clearing the screen. Hope that made sense... And each planet has its own look and its own species, as well its own laws and its own levels of gravity which also effect gameplay. And the only way to see or unlock many of these planets is by playing the Star Quest mode, which adds its own stipulations and missions to the basic gameplay template which you have to complete in order to explore certain sections of the galaxy and achieve the best ending. So in addition to everything else, it even adds in a sense of wonder and exploration to the mix, as you're scouring the universe in search of new planets. And you can use the planets/species you unlock in either one player exhibition modes, or two-player battle mode. Either online or off. Two copies of the game not required. Which is also an absolute blast. I only payed $20 for this game, and I've gotten more content and more hours of enjoyment out of it than I have the majority of $50+ games I've purchased. If you're a DS owner, this definitely belongs in your collection.

Here's a good question: what was better? The PSX or the PS2.