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Yes, definitely biased; though, not biased in the way you might think. I, for one, will spill it straight up that I love this game as well as it’s predecessor on the original Xbox. I’m more than positive, however, that there is a plethora of people out there that absolutely loathe this franchise, and are keen to spouting off the creator, Peter Molyneux’s, name like they have beer with him every Friday. For some ungodly reason, they’ve had a horrible experience with either title, or have heard enough about someone else’s horrible experience to never want to play the game and take the stance of being the stubborn shit-head they are and not actually play it for themselves and declare independent thought.

I’m here, today, to be one of those people; a shit-head. You’re going to read a review on this game from a perspective of one that thinks less of Fable II than they might of their ex. For if one in favor of the title were to look past the charm, glamor, and tuxedo that is the game’s reputation by those that worship it, it’s actually quite easy to call the game out on its shortcomings. Because in all honesty, this game needs a lot of work.

Let’s talk about graphics! Those things that make up the reason the video game industry is still around, right? The glimmering shiny display of neatly organized polygons blended with a unique art style that, from things small to tall, look like they came straight out of a fairy-tale book. Take these concepts and mash them all together to form bland and generic templated houses, shops, towns, and wooded areas. What indeed looks absolutely amazing on paper (and it does... see concept artwork below) doesn’t end up looking all that stellar in a video game.

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Mirror’s Edge is...a unique game. The demo available on Xbox Live sat on my hard drive for months before I actually played it. When I finally boot it up, it was a breath of fresh air to be greeted with the vibrant primaries against clean whites that make up a majority of ME‘s color palette. Quite the contrast from the plethora of grit & grime, post-apocalyptic mess that has been the video game industry as of late.

Not that this is much better, really. The game is set in a strict government regulated future where large amounts of cash are invested in keeping buildings clean and deploying armies of mindless gunslingers to take out rooftop ninjas carrying bright-yellow shoulder bags. Mirror’s Edge is first-person platformer that consists of scaling sky-scrapers and clearing gaps in between all while watching your girlie figure and maintaining your calluses. You play as Faith (or maybe Faythe; that would be cooler ), a faithful employee of service "X" consisting of couriers, or "runners", delivering "Y" to "Z" by hand to avoid conventional means of communication by keeping under the radar of a government that apparently closely resembles a Fourth Reich.

Mirror’s Edge definitely has a lot going for it. This is most apparent when you’re sprinting along ledges of rooftops hundreds of feet in the air jumping from one building to the next. The next platform lights up red, and you know you’re next jump is gonna be a doozy. Pick yourself up and zip line across the jagged skyline, fall a couple storeys & land into a roll, sprint to the door where you shoulder your way inside to a narrow corridor where you wall-jump up to the air-duct vent that leads outside & you do it all over again.

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The World War II genre of video games has become an extremely saturated market over the last couple years thanks to our friends over at Electronic Arts shitting out a new Medal of Honor title every six months. But it’s not just EA, really... check out this list. Of the 170+ games in that list, 135 of them were, or will be, released since 2000. This should give you a good idea of just how many games have cluttered such an interesting topic; one that might have people scratching their heads as to why anyone would even make a "game" about in the first place.

If you read the article I wrote on BIA:HH, you’d know that obviously I’m not all that thrilled on what’s happened in the industry to my favorite historical event. Not since the famed opening level in Medal of Honor: Frontlines, where you participate in a Saving Private Ryan-esque beach storming, has there been a WWII game as good as this. I say that with 100% sincerity, so you can go buy the game now.

I’ve never really been a fan of the Call of Duty titles; I always thought they were too stiff, boring, and inaccurate. That’s where this game helps the franchise take a turn for the better. As soon as the campaign starts up you’re pummeled with real archive footage of soldiers dodging bullets through trenches, seamen shooting Zeros out of the sky only to be kamikaze’d by another, and all the death, guts & glory that comes along with such an epic war. Hands down I knew right away this game was going to set some standards for the genre. The sheer fact alone that they used footage as graphic as what my eyes were just raped with meant that the developers at Treyarch were serious about this game.

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The Midnight Club series has always been a favorite of mine in the racing genre. Los Angeles definitely does the franchise justice. The game is as fast paced and thrilling as ever, and even tends to bring the borders of reality and simulation even closer; except when it comes to winnings and spending money to upgrade your car. Underground racing games have always been too exaggerative in this area in my opinion; giving you way more than you’d ever expect to win in a street race and getting to spend it at a parts store where the owner is your bitch.

Since I don’t live in LA I couldn’t tell you as others might that significant landmarks are as easy or as hard to find in the game as they are in real life. From what I can tell, though, it definitely hits the spot when aiming to make the player feel like they are in a real city. Streets and buildings resemble everyday stores and stops, and the navigation screen is something of an eye-opener; bringing a GoogleMaps-like effect to the player after calling the map. The traffic on the other hand is...not so real. I often found myself easily keeping a pace of over a buck-fifty on the highways and main streets. Hell, even the back alleys were a bit of a chuckle. Nothing, not even a dumpster, can withstand the madness of a Skyline roaring it’s way.

I’ve read/heard many complaints about the difficulty of the game, and I have to say... QUIT YOUR BITCHING! Rants range from checkpoints becoming difficult to find, to the AI having some strange ability to rubber-band back to your general position. Seriously folks? Are we that spoiled with the difficulty curve on video games these days? Go back to Contra would ya? For me, this is where Midnight Zen comes to play.

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Immediately following the events of Richter Belmont’s adventure, Rondo of Blood for the TurboGrafx-16, Dracula X - Nocturne in the Moonlight starts you off smack in the middle of the final boss fight against Dracula from the previous game in the Castlevania series. Known here in the U.S. as Castlevania - Symphony of the Night, Nocturne is the Japanese version of one of the best titles of the 32bit era. I had the privilege of playing the Sega Saturn exclusive version, which contains more areas of the castle to explore and additional features and dialogue than the PlayStation.

I first played this title when it was released as downloadable content on Xbox Live Arcade. Of course, that was the English port, but it was still enough to suck me into the decade old 2D adventure. Anyone who knows me knows that Super Metroid is my favorite game of all time, and Nocturne‘s gameplay is not far off. It’s a lengthy 2D RPG platformer that takes you through the bowels of Dracula’s castle in search of what’s caused Castlevania to come back into existence. Collecting a slew of weaponry, armor and items along the way, the main character, Alucard Tepes, is something of a recluse. He doesn’t talk much, but there’s honestly no need (Hell, Samus gets away with it...). On his journey he meets Maria, a sprite from Richter’s adventure searching the castle for him after his disappearance. They exchange awkward silences and facial expressions occasionally throughout the castle and eventually end up duking it out. You’ll see two different endings depending on the choice you make and/or items you collect.

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When I first bought RPG back in the summer of ‘96, I’d never played an role playing game before. I don’t even think I knew that this game WAS an RPG. I remember picking it up for two reasons: 1) because the cover was awesome looking; it has all these bright colors and looks very enticing - and 2) I wanted to make my friends jealous.

When I got the game home, I popped it in and I was pleased with it’s opening, music, and interface. One thing, though, left me confused; what was with this whole "battle system"? The concept of taking turns to fight each other was new to me, and it left me scratching my head as I tried to follow along with the guide I bought.

Twelve years later, I decided to play the game and take it seriously. I was trained at RPGs with good ol’ Final Fantasy VII, and have been a snob when it comes to RPGs ever since. Some I can play, some I absolutely love, and some I absolutely loathe. So, I set aside an hour or two every night before bed to get some pre-Paper Mario action in.

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As you know I’ve become more and more agitated with the lack of talent at IGN and have become more inclined to start looking elsewhere for game coverage. I’ve been going there for more than 10 years now, and a lot of the people there are just completely inexperienced with journalism and gameplay let alone the ability to give an unbiased review. These ARE two different things, but when you clash the two subjects it needs to be able to flow extremely well with an unbiased opinion.

I’m very sorry to say that as IGN has grown in size, they are proportionally growing less appealing to people that really care about video games and aren’t fanboys or just playing them for the sake of pop culture. As for knowledge of their competition, it feels like IGN has completely failed when it comes to this aspect of their industry. Most of the time the coverage and/or content is completely equal to that of Gamespot’s; the articles are nearly the same with a few words and emphasis changed here and there.

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The Dark Knight is easily the one of the best movies I’ve ever even thought about seeing, and seeing it the second time was just as pants-wetting. However, when the previews were over and I was still only looking at normal movie screen, I realized that my second experience with the film would hardly do justice against the previous viewing with the eight-storey tall IMAX version. The beginning of the movie wowed every soul in the theater as a collective gasp came over the audience during the opening shot of Gotham city covering the entire screen. The first six or so minutes consisted of straight IMAX-filmed movie that made everyone realize how absurdly large the screen actually is, only to be followed by the best 146 minutes anyone will probably ever experience in a movie theater.

If you’ve not seen the movie yet, I’ll do the honor in telling you to stop reading this and order your tickets now (then come back of course...). It lives up to everything you could ever want from a Batman movie and completely obliterates and puts to shame everything Batman up to this moment. At no point whatsoever during the film did I feel as though something could have been done differently. Every shot, camera angle, or word spoken was gracefully executed by some of the best film crew and actors Hollywood could possibly throw at a script with such high expectations.

Ledger’s performance as the Joker is absolutely golden, and unfortunately can never be looked forward to in a future title. When I originally heard of Ledger’s selection as the character, I was somewhat disappointed that other prospects were not chosen. As anticipation of the movie increased, and footage and understanding of the character slowly seeped from the set, I’ve grown to admire the staff’s choice of Ledger as the infamous Joker. In some ways I’d wished his laugh was a bit more maniacal and/or breathy, but in seeing his performance for the second time I caught on to, and admired much more, the sarcastic outlook on life and philosophy Ledger managed to pull off so effortlessly.

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From what I’ve read in the reviews, this movie is extremely underrated. Usually, a movie being rated as low as this one means two things: A) the reviewer really didn’t understand what the movie-makers were trying to do or convey, or B) the movie just really sucked.

So here we have Speed Racer, the newest film by the creators of the Matrix movies and fictitious world. A flick highly anticipated by myself and some colleagues, and quite frankly advertised as two hours of eye-candy.

I’d like to point out first off that if you’re wondering what the movie is like if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s basically 120 minutes of trailer-esque cinema; pumped full of anime-related humor, dialogue, and cinematography. Basically, if you liked what you saw in the trailer and you were any sort of fan of the show, be it a religious watcher or in passing, go see this movie. I went into it as someone who used to watch the seemingly endless re-runs on Cartoon Network over a decade ago and always thought it would be cool to see it live action.

Here’s where my complaint about bad reviews comes in. I’m not going to sit here and tell you why "Speed Racer is the best movie ever made!", or rave up and down how cool it was like some lame-ass fanboy groupie. Instead I’ll just tell you straight up that if you admire, at all, the style of anime from the ’60s and ’70s and have any sort of imagination of how it could be conveyed in live action (or any imagination at all...) that this IS the best movie for that. I sat through the entire film laughing my ass off at how amazingly simple yet complex everything about the movie was and how well the Wachowski brothers were able to bring this depth-less show to life.

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Going and standing in line at midnight in front of a Gamestop with a bunch of sweaty smelly game nerds has never really been my cup of joe. I recall the morning of November 9, 2004 at Full Sail; coming in at 9am only to find that I was the only one awake in class. Oh, that’s right...you’re all dumbasses. I drove by the Gamestop outside the Fashion Square Mall to see all you kids lined up outside the Ruby Tuesday next door awaiting the follow-up to the viral yet entertaining ilovebees.com.

I just couldn’t help but think to myself how impatient people are, that they couldn’t just wait til’ the next day to spend that 50-60 bucks depending on which version they reserved. 1pm rolls around and I bounce from class straight to Circuit City right down the road from the drive-by I performed the night before, waltzed in, grabbed a special edition of Halo 2, threw down some wadded up cash that probably belonged to a few pizza delivery guys, walked out, popped the game in, and enjoyed myself for a good four hours or so on an eight foot projected screen surrounded by 1500 watts of speakers, all until I had to go back to class. (sentence fragment; consider revising) No, that’s not really a text error; I put it there to fool you... because I’m awesome.

That all changed April 29th...or I guess technically April 30th. I’d stopped playing every other game days before because I was so excited about the one I’m about to mention. I’ve anticipated EVERY aspect of this game; graphics, AI, gameplay, PHYSICS. Yes, I stood in front of a Gamestop at midnight. No, I wasn’t standing there for hours. I showed up at midnight. So shut-up.

What’s that? You want to know what game I’m talking about? Oh, sorry...Grand Theft Auto IV. I was amazed the second the opening cut-scene started, "And you can too!". The technique of integrating credits into the environment is genius. You’d think, "Who’d look at that stuff?" It’s actually quite hard (for me anyway) not to look at it. Excellent stuff.

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