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Gears of War:

Video Review

Find out what makes Gears of War one of the best games of 2006. watch    download Gears of War is an outstanding technical achievement, but in addition to looking and sounding amazing, it's a seriously awesome action game. The Good: Stellar graphics reset the bar for what consoles can do visually; great soundtrack and killer sound effects; satisfying gameplay in single-player mode; very addictive online play; best use of a chainsaw in any game, ever. The Bad: Story could have been a bit more fleshed out; difficulty could have used some slight tuning.

In Gears of War, a slab of concrete is your best friend. And if that slab of concrete isn't around, you can always make do with burned-out cars, piles of metal, huge columns, or even the ever-popular wall next to a doorway. Why are these inanimate objects so friendly? Because if you aren't hiding behind something in Gears of War, you might as well be dead. Microsoft and Epic have teamed up to create this wicked game of hide-and-seek with high-powered future guns, which delivers one of the most heart-pounding and graphically thrilling experiences of the year. If its exciting campaign doesn't rope you in, chances are the team-based multiplayer will--either way, Gears of War is downright amazing.

 

Marcus Fenix disobeyed orders and got locked up, but in tough times, even a traitorous soldier is better than nothing.

 

The game's campaign tells the tale of a man named Marcus Fenix. He, like the other soldiers around him, is an extremely thick dude that very clearly doesn't have time to bleed. The game immediately sets an action movie-like tone, complete with an interesting post-apocalyptic world that's been overrun by a mysterious force called the Locust. Marcus is a former soldier for the Coalition of Organized Governments, or COG. Their soldiers wear ridiculously huge, bulky armor, but can't be bothered to wear helmets. They're just that tough. Or stupid. Either way, Fenix is a former soldier that's been branded a traitor and locked away, but he's busted out of prison at the opening of the game, to help in the fight against the Locust. After a brief tutorial level where you and Dom, the soldier that busted you out, make your way out of the Locust-infested prison and, yes, get to the chopper, you're connected with the other members of Delta Squad and sent out to find Alpha Squad, which is both missing and supposedly in possession of a device that could turn the tide of the war. The game's story isn't very deep, and aside from a very brief mention in the front of the manual, it doesn't really bother to fill you in on the details behind the conflict or the main character's incarceration. The lack of exposition feels like a missed opportunity to make the characters and the setting even more compelling, and there are parts of the game that seem like they were built specifically to make room for some kind of flashback sequence, but the gameplay is so sharp that you probably won't care.

You'll fight a decent variety of enemies in Gears of War. Most of the Locust are humanoids, with minor visual distinctions between the standard troops, ones with shotguns, and so on. Later on, you'll fight some different-looking humanoid-****enemies that are armed with explosive torque bows, and there are plenty of other critters to face--some small, some screen-filling. They all use slightly different tactics, but the same basic rule applies: Wait for them to pop their heads (or other weak points) out and attempt to shoot it off. The enemy response to your actions has its great moments, but it also has its problems. Enemies hiding behind cover tend to not react when they get hit. From time to time, you might catch the back of an enemy peeking just over a piece of cover, and if you start shooting it, he'll usually just sit there and let you drill him to death. But in spite of its few problems, the action is tense and extremely enjoyable.

Gears of War consists of a large series of pitched battles between your squad and the enemy forces. If you leave your fool head popped up for too long, it'll get shot off every single time, so the proper place for you is tucked behind a wall or some other piece of cover. The cover mechanics work very naturally, making it easy to stick to a wall, pop up or around to take shots at the enemy, and get back down safely. Moving between nearby pieces of cover is also very easy to manage.

This isn't the first time that taking cover has been a focus of gameplay--the mechanics work very similarly to a fairly obscure PlayStation 2 game from Namco called kill.switch. But no game has made this sort of gameplay quite so exciting. One of the greatest feelings in this game is that when you pop out to take a shot, you immediately feel like you're taking your life into your own hands, because the enemy is very good at opening fire the second they see you and you'll see those bullets heading your way. This formula remains thrilling from start to finish, though boss fights and a pretty neat vehicle section help to break up the action.

Thankfully, one shot won't kill you, in most cases. The health meter takes the form of a skull and gear icon that appears onscreen in pieces as you take damage. If it's completed, that means you took one hit too many and you're history. But if you can avoid getting shot for a few seconds, the gear fades away and you're restored to full health. It's a much quicker recharge than something like Halo's energy shields, and this helps keep the action moving while reinforcing that you really need to play cautiously.

You'll usually have three other guys in your squad, but they usually aren't much help. They're good for distracting enemies, and they'll take down a few here and there, but they also tend to get dropped a lot. You can revive them, if you can get over to them and hit the X button, but usually it's easier to just finish the fight yourself, which brings them all back without exposing you to the same enemy fire that took them down in the first place.

 

Gears of War is all about ducking, covering, and blasting your enemies whenever they give you an opening.

 

Gears of War offers two difficulty settings right off the bat, and a third unlocks when you beat the game. The game defaults to the easiest setting, called casual. On this setting, taking cover only becomes important when you're up against heavy odds or later in the game, when the enemies get tougher. The middle setting, hardcore, feels just right at first--you need to take cover, but you can usually pop up and take shots without immediate punishment. But near the tail end of the game, both difficulties ramp up quite a bit. Hardcore starts to get a little unmanageable. Casual gets to be about as hard as the hardcore setting is near the beginning of the game. And once you unlock insane, you'll find that it's aptly named, though not impossible. Overall, the difficulty feels like it could have used a bit more tuning, or another setting that finds the sweet spot between casual and hardcore. But since you can select your difficulty each time you load up your game, it's easy to set it down to casual if you get stuck at a certain checkpoint, then raise it back up once you've made progress. Making your way through the campaign should take most players somewhere from about 10 to 12 hours, depending on the difficulty.

The game has achievements for finishing each of the five acts on each of the three difficulties, and they stack, so if you beat an act on hardcore, you get the casual points, as well. It only seems to keep track of what difficulty setting you're on when you finish the act, so all this switching around won't cause any trouble on that front, either. The game's achievements are pretty good, with a smart mix of points you'll get for simply playing through the game and some more esoteric ones, like points for playing as Dom in co-op, points for perfectly reloading your weapon many times in a row, doing well online, and so on. None of the points seem that far fetched, but you also won't have the full thousand during your first couple of days with the game, either.

Video Review

What sets Relic's remarkable WWII real-time strategy game apart from all the rest? Find out in our video review. watch    download While intimidating, this visceral real-time strategy reenactment of World War II's Western Front showcases just how far RTS game design and presentation quality have come. The Good: Amazing, cutting-edge graphics and remarkable audio bring the battlefield to life; complex, inventive gameplay gives you a ton of interesting things to do; fully interactive, destructible maps add depth and variety; slick online player-matching system makes it easy to get into a multiplayer match. The Bad: Long loading times; only two different factions.

Company of Heroes is a visually stunning real-time strategy game that depicts all the violent chaos of World War II with uncommon intensity. Set during the invasion of Normandy toward the end of the war, Company of Heroes takes its cues from Saving Private Ryan, by portraying both the sheer brutality of the war as well as the humanity of its combatants. Many other recent WWII games have also drawn influence from Steven Spielberg's landmark film, but Company of Heroes is even more graphic. This and the game's highly authentic-looking presentation are its distinguishing features, and it boasts some frantic, well-designed strategic and tactical combat to match. Company of Heroes trades a wide breadth of content for an extremely detailed look at WWII-era ground combat, and its action is so fast paced that it's best suited for the reflexes of an experienced RTS player. So if you're unfazed by any of that, you'll find that this latest real-time strategy game from the developers of Homeworld and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is one of the best, most dramatic and exciting examples in years.

 

The frenzied combat of World War II is translated believably into Relic's lavishly produced, fast-paced real-time strategy game.

 

Provided you have a powerful-enough system and graphics card to fully appreciate the visuals in Company of Heroes, you'll quickly be struck by the level of detail depicted in the game. Infantry move in teams, darting from cover to cover. They may be ordered to occupy any building on the map, and you'll see them shutter the doors and take aim out the windows. Vehicles are shown to scale, so tanks and other armored vehicles look big and imposing, and, indeed, they are. Infantry seem almost helpless against tanks, and you'll hear the men screaming as tank shells explode around them, sending bodies flying, while lucky survivors dive out of the way. Yet by attacking a tank's vulnerable sides and rear armor with explosives, it's possible to turn the tables on these lumbering threats...turning one of the most basic confrontations in Company of Heroes into a thrilling cat-and-mouse game, much more than a typical clash between a couple of RTS units. What's more, the battlefields themselves have at least as much character to them as the various infantry squads and vehicles as your disposal. The quaint French towns that are the set pieces of many of the game's skirmishes truly look as if a war was waged there once the battle is done, since buildings will catch fire and collapse, telephone lines will topple, blackened craters will appear in the wake of artillery blasts, and more. These changes aren't just cosmetic, either. Those blast craters provide cover for your infantry, while the ruined husks of blown-up tanks might interfere with a machine gunner's line of fire.

The game focuses on the Allies' invasion of German-occupied Normandy in 1944, specifically on close-quarters skirmishes between infantry and armor. Company of Heroes presents a number of novel twists to real-time strategy conventions, but at heart this game works like other RTS games do, by putting you in charge of base construction, resource gathering, and tactical command of various military forces in an effort to defeat the opposition. The game includes a good-sized single-player campaign spanning more than a dozen missions, in which Able Company lands on Omaha Beach on D-Day, liberates a number of key towns and strategic points, disrupts German supply lines and secret weapons, and finally helps crush the remnants of the Nazi war machine in France. It's an exciting campaign, tied together with cutscenes and mission briefings coming from a variety of voices, which creates a few threads that help tie the missions together. In addition to the campaign, you can play skirmish matches with up to seven computer-controlled players on a series of different maps, and you can also jump online into the proprietary Relic Online service to challenge other players in ranked and unranked matches. The Relic Online service is a cut above most similar offerings, and lets you easily find a ranked match against players of similar skill or host a match with your own custom settings.

 

Brief but compelling story sequences move the campaign along, which focuses on Able Company's attack against German-occupied Normandy.

 

Because of its limited scope of the Second World War, Company of Heroes has only the two playable factions, which it calls the Allies and the Axis--but really they're the Americans and the Germans. In the campaign, you always play as forces from Able Company and you're always fighting the Germans. There isn't a separate campaign from the German perspective, though the Axis faction is fully playable in skirmish matches and online, and turns out to be fairly different from the Allies despite the basic similarities between the two sides' weaponry. In fact, in a strange departure from similar games, Company of Heroes always forces you to play Allies versus Axis, even in multiplayer matches. Matches with more than two players are always team-based, with one side as the Allies and the other as the Axis, and so forth. While the game's units and battlefields are unusually detailed, it's hard not to wish for additional playable factions and a greater variety of settings, especially given how well Company of Heroes handles the American and German sides.

The gameplay in Company of Heroes is all about frontline combat, and forces you to quickly explore the map. You typically start out with a headquarters and a squad of engineers, who can build structures and setup defenses. Maps are divided up into territories that all have a resource point in them, and the resources you'll need are manpower, munitions, and fuel. Infantry may capture neutral or enemy resource points, causing them to indefinitely contribute a flow of the given resource to your military efforts while also increasing the total number of units you can have in your army. However, all your territories must be connected for the resource flow to continue unabated; if an enemy takes a key territory, this may cut off your supply lines. All resources are used for building more-advanced structures and vehicles, but you only need manpower for basic infantry, who may use special abilities like hand grenades or armor-piercing machine gun rounds for a one-time cost of munitions. Munitions may also be spent to upgrade individual squads with special weapons, like recoilless rifles useful against enemy armor, or Browning automatic rifles that can suppress opposing squads. Your infantry squads are highly resourceful, acting as single units that can be effective down to the last man. They'll last much longer when attacking from behind cover, such as a row of sandbags or the bell tower of an abandoned church.

 

As much as there is to do on a strategic level in Company of Heroes, just managing the tactics of typical firefight can be really intense.

 

If you've played Relic's last real-time strategy game, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, you'll note that many of these conventions were derived and extended from that game. However, Company of Heroes still plays quite differently from Dawn of War because of the nature of its densely packed battlefields and its even greater focus on unit tactics. You have some very interesting options to consider, such as how, when faced with an antitank gun manned by a squad of three, you may attempt to destroy the thing altogether with heavy weapons, or flank the gun and kill its squad, taking the artillery piece for your own. Heavy machine guns and other special weapons work much the same way. One of the great things about Company of Heroes is that, in spite of its somewhat glamorized portrayal of World War II, the game looks and behaves realistically, in how the sorts of tactical maneuvers that are central to the gameplay feel intuitive in practice. For example, you'll naturally want to avoid making your infantry rush a machine gun nest head-on, especially since the withering fire from a German MG42 will force your squad to drop prone, pinned down.

 

daVideo Review

GameSpot Tournament TV's Kevin VanOrd reviews Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. watch    download Tiberium Wars is Command & Conquer at its best, and an absolute blast for series fans and newcomers alike. The Good: Exciting campaign features a ton of quality full-motion video; fast-paced gameplay is fun and exhilarating; scrin race is a fantastic, balanced addition to the c&c universe; battlecast turns the thrilling multiplayer into a spectator sport. The Bad: Game is picky with structure placement.

If you're a fan of the Command & Conquer series, three small words are bound to get you excited: Kane is back. Indeed, so are a good number of beloved series hallmarks, like a huge amount of full-motion video and intense strategic combat. But Tiberium Wars is a lot more than just lip service to franchise enthusiasts, and you don't need the rose-hued glasses of nostalgia to appreciate its polish and intensity. It's simply a superb game that's fun and exciting to play both online and off.

 

Bald is beautiful.

 

No matter which of the two main campaigns you start off with, you're rewarded with a whole lot of live-action video in between missions, featuring familiar actors getting hammy in near-future command centers. There's never been anything subtle about C&C's full-motion video, and, true to form, the campaigns are loaded with wonderfully overblown sequences filled with intrigue and suspense. Yes, Joe Kucan has returned as Nod figurehead Kane, and he's as irresistibly creepy as ever. He and other familiar actors serve up a heap of extravagant solemnity against a backdrop of flashing lights and important-looking video screens.

If you think it sounds over the top, you'd be right--but it's cheesy in the good way, and it won't take you long to get involved in the story and the characters that drive it. The narrative is structured well, with the Global Defense Initiative and Brotherhood of Nod campaigns telling the same story from opposing viewpoints. There's also a new player in the mix: the alien Scrin race. At this stage in the series, the mineral tiberium has propagated over most of the Earth, but it's more than just an environmental plight--it's a key to future technology. It'll take you a couple dozen hours to get through the campaigns, and just when you think you've finished, there are a few surprise missions in store, and they are well worth the time it takes to unlock them. There are also plenty of reasons to return to the campaign once you're done, since the game rewards you with medals based on your performance and tracks a good number of statistics for you to chew on.

The missions themselves are incredibly varied and involve a lot more than destroying an enemy base or defending a particular structure. You'll have to do these things, of course, but you have both primary and secondary objectives to complete, which include using engineers to capture certain buildings, amassing beam cannons to take out defenses, or teaming up with your sworn enemy to defend against alien attack. You'll be doing it all in a variety of real-world theaters, such as Washington, DC, downtown Sydney, and the eerily dry Amazon basin. The near-future take on familiar locales makes the intense battles feel even more thrilling, because the settings are recognizable and meaningful.

 

These Firehawks are delivering more than pizza to Nod's door.

 

That's not to say the combat isn't gripping on its own. If you're usually content to turtle up in real-time strategy games, you're in for a surprise: Battles are intense and focused, and they give you little time to prepare. Like any RTS, you still need to build up resources, but it's a quick process of plopping down a bunch of tiberium refineries and power generators and finding the action, because if you don't, the action will quickly find you. Once you get past the first two acts of each campaign, you'll discover that Tiberium Wars' artificial intelligence is aggressive and resourceful, and it will take advantage of your strategic flaws. Don't expect to put your trust in one or two favored units, because even the most powerful units have noticeable weaknesses.

It's a rusher's paradise, but you shouldn't take it to mean that technological advancement and thoughtful strategy don't have their places. You won't need to deal with long, complex tech trees, and it makes Tiberium Wars feel somewhat limited in this aspect next to advancement-focused strategy games like Supreme Commander. However, you do have multiple powers and upgrades to earn by building various structures. The powers run the gamut from GDI's powerful ion strike to Nod's vapor bomb, and they fit each faction perfectly. As you use units they level up, making them more effective in battle, and in some cases you improve units by more unconventional means. For example, you can use a Nod warmech to destroy your own flame tank, and the mech will then spew fire in addition to its own native attack.

TOKYO--Western gamers are always intensely interested in the comings and goings at Square Enix's Japanese headquarters, located in the bustling Shinjuku district of Tokyo. In this virtual mecca of the RPG world, we had an opportunity to play Before Crisis - Final Fantasy VII, one of the latest (and most controversial) chapters in one of the longest-running and most-respected RPG series on the market, at a Square Enix press event prior to the start of the Toyko Game Show 2004. This action RPG is being developed by Square Enix's Final Fantasy brain trust for the Foma i900 series of mobile phones on NTT DoCoMo's iMode service--a very specific class of handset on a carrier that operates only in Japan. If you've been following the game's progress, you may have heard some detractors across the Pacific preemptively criticizing Before Crisis for being equal parts greed-motivated misstep and monstrous crime of hubris, cursing Square Enix for forcing a huge part of its Final Fantasy-starved Western fan base to eat cake. After several hours of quality time with Before Crisis, we can safely say that there doesn't seem to be malicious intent on Square Enix's part. This game's level of technical accomplishment, which relies upon heavy usage of high-speed network streaming and camera-image recognition, would be more or less impossible to duplicate in the West at present, given our relatively backward command of cellular infrastructure.

 

In Before Crisis - Final Fantasy VII, you'll don the businesslike attire of the Turks.

 

Our demo copy of Before Crisis - Final Fantasy VII came installed on a black FOMA 900iV--the so-called "Cloud Phone," so named for its usage by spiky-haired Avalanche commando (and hero of Square's hit PlayStation RPG Final Fantasy VII) Cloud Strife in a recent Japanese advertising campaign. The game's title screen opens with a low-angle shot of the Shinra Corporation's headquarters in Midgar, panning gradually upward past the neon-red Japanese characters to the top of the skyscraper. At the start of each new game, you are offered a choice between four new Turk recruits, two male and two female. Fans of Final Fantasy VII will remember the Turks as a gang of sharp-dressed thugs--and, like in that game, your recruit character will be dressed in a very conservative black-suit-and-tie ensemble over a white, collared shirt. The first male recruit, a redheaded fellow who wields a spring-loaded baton in an underhand grip, is the only playable character who lacks a firearm at the outset. His compatriots--a blonde woman with short hair, a man with wild black hair who lacks a tie, and another girl with flowing brunette locks--all use guns of one sort or another. Each character has different strengths and weaknesses. The redhead, for instance, has a sizable advantage in hit points and melee damage but fewer magic points, while the brunette sacrifices hardiness for more magic energy and a shotgun that fires a blast in three directions. At a press conference yesterday, Square Enix personnel confirmed that Before Crisis will launch with only these four characters but also promised that more playable Turks would be forthcoming.

After selecting your character and creating an account on Square Enix's Before Crisis server, you are taken to an options screen, where you can change the game's network settings, view your character's available missions, and create "materia"--the crystals of congealed organic force (called "mako energy") that serve as foci for magic spells in the world of Final Fantasy VII. Materia generation and management are important gameplay elements in Before Crisis - Final Fantasy VII. The Turks won't get far in combat without using offensive and defensive magic, so it's vital to outfit their weapons and armor with an assortment of materia before sending them off on a mission. Fortunately, the Turks are a part of Shinra's corporate hierarchy, so they have access to Shinra's advanced mako technology, which can synthesize materia in a laboratory setting. The game simulates this generative process via a brilliant utilization of the i900 series' onboard camera. Simply take a picture with the camera, and the game's onboard image-recognition software will distill the image down to its basic color and create a like-colored materia. Predominantly white pictures make white healing materia, while yellow and red pictures are good for lightning and fire magic, respectively. There appears to be no limit to the amount of materia you can create. However, the crystals gain power as they are used in combat--just as in the original Final Fantasy VII--so it's a good idea to keep a rotation going if you want to have access to a wide assortment of spells.

Once you've performed all these logistical tasks to your satisfaction, your newly equipped Turk can hit the mean streets of Midgar to crack some Avalanche skull. The advertising slogan that has been attached to Before Crisis in Japan translates roughly as "Turks vs. Avalanche: the night before the final battle." In this sense, the game is a true prequel to Final Fantasy VII, finally detailing the Turks' successful counterinsurgency operations against the Midgar-based Avalanche group, six years prior to Cloud's association with the rebels. The first game referred to this civil war only tangentially--here we learn that the Turks' victory over Avalanche was instrumental in establishing Shinra's hegemony over Midgar, allowing them an undisputed monopoly on power until the rebel army was resuscitated under a new generation of leaders that would include Cloud, Tifa, and Barret.

At the start of Before Crisis, however, the outcome of this secret war is still very much in doubt. Tseng, a commander in the Turks, dispatches your recruit to report on Avalanche's activities in a seedy part of Midgar characterized by storefronts and narrow alleyways. It turns out that one of the three principal leaders of Avalanche, a bandanna-wearing rebel named Sears, has prepared a strike against Shinra from the sewers. An in-game cinematic sequence shows the Avalanche band silently filtering onto the streets and overcoming several Shinra guards, at which point your character happens upon them. After a hasty consultation with headquarters on your cell phone, a confrontation ensues.

Xenosaga Episode III is a fitting, if convoluted, end to the cinematic science-fiction role-playing trilogy. The Good: Intuitive battle system and well-balanced customization; great in-battle graphical effects; characters are all given a fitting sendoff. The Bad: Story is wrapped up well, but you'll need to constantly reference a database to keep up with it; obviously edited blood makes a number of scenes completely absurd.

Monolith Soft's Xenosaga series is noted not only for its wordy German subtitles and lengthy cutscene exposition, but for its hugely complex storyline that's influenced by equal parts science fiction, religion, and myth. The series' first two chapters ended with far more questions and mysteries than they answered or explained, so Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra begins with an almost ludicrous amount of enigmas that need resolving. Fortunately, Xenosaga Episode III manages to wrap things up in dramatic and mostly satisfying fashion for the memorable main cast and the universe that they inhabit, while simultaneously leaving the door open for a continuation.

 

The familiar cast has reassembled one last time, including MOMO and her unfortunate, if jaunty, beret.

 

Episode III starts off with scientist Shion Uzuki participating in a break-in at a Vector Corporation research facility in an attempt to gain information. She's discovered that her former employer, which was funding and directing the development of the android KOS-MOS, has a more sinister connection to the appearance of the gnosis (strange ethereal creatures that can destroy the living with a touch) than anyone knows. What's more, apparently Shion's own deceased father had some culpability in the alien invasion now afflicting the universe. With her heart in turmoil, the young scientist turned her back on Vector and has teamed up with Scientia, an anti-UMN organization that fights against the all-encompassing Vector and its distribution network. This small reconnaissance venture begins to scratch at the surface of massive intergalactic power plays, as several factions (including the zealots of the Immigrant Fleet, Ormus) begin to set their plans in motion to use the powerful Zohar artifact for personal gain. Unrest shifts among the member planets of the Federation, and war is threatening the people even as they live in fear of the gnosis.

To reveal any more would spoil the game's serpentine storyline, but Episode III, even though it can't resist throwing in a bunch of new mysterious artifacts, places, factions, and terms, inexorably builds to its ultimate conclusion. Each character comes to his or her own sort of redemption as they resolve their pasts and face the future, and the general confusion of organizations and motives is slowly but surely reduced to a single, ominous objective. An extremely helpful feature is Episode III's massive database, a huge reference table of characters, events, items, and other entries that populates itself as you learn new things--and there's a lot to take in. Needless to say, those who haven't played a Xenosaga game before will have a lot of reading to do to try to get up to speed, but there's also a summary feature that covers the first two games if you need a refresher.

It's hard not to be taken in by all the grand, cinematic drama, and there's plenty of opportunity to do so. Episode III has more than eight hours of voiced story sequences, some of which are delivered in truly massive chunks. With so much voice work and what's largely a weighty, serious script, some of the delivery falters for some individuals. But there are also a number of genuinely moving moments that surround characters that you might never have expected to be sympathetic to. Despite all the twists and turns and a whole bunch of outright insanity at the very end, it's a fascinating tale, even if parts of it seem determined to remain inscrutable.

It's also worth mentioning that, like other installments in the series, this episode has seen some edits for new territories--in particular, the removal of blood from some scenes. While this keeps the game happily in T-for-Teen territory, there is at least one major moment in the game where a character is obviously reacting to large amounts of blood--only the blood itself is completely erased. Instead of being a visceral, if somewhat horrifying, scene, it just looks as if the person is staring at the floor and going insane. While this isn't too far-fetched for the Xenosaga universe, it's still unfortunate, and the scenes that were made bloodless after the fact are extremely obvious.

 

The E.S. units have returned, and they're as ridiculously powerful as ever.

 

The game's battle system is derivative of the versions in previous chapters, with some changes and additions, and is easy to pick up. When on foot, your characters are able to use basic melee skills, powerful tech attacks, or magical ether attacks on enemies. Successfully damaging foes will fill the boost meter, which allows you to either "boost" a character to attack on the next turn, or save boost charges for a variety of special attacks. Something new this time around is break, which is a meter on each character that slowly fills as that character takes damage. If the meter becomes full, that person is afflicted by break status and cannot move for two turns; they're also very vulnerable to critical strikes. The upside is that your enemies also have break meters, so you can use break attacks to immobilize them while setting up boost attacks or other strong moves to polish them off quickly.

When you're not on foot you'll be fighting in E.S. mobile suits, giant robotic war machines with special powers. Each is equipped with an artifact called a Vessel of Anima that allows the unit to get charged up and use blisteringly strong abilities on foes. E.S.-based fights tend to feature a lot of mechs flying around doing crazy-looking attacks, and they feel really satisfying.

Chrono Cross may not have had the largest budget, but it has the largest heart.

Square's Chrono Trigger got everything right. The self-proclaimed "dream team" of scenarist Yuji Hori (Dragon Quest), producer Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy), and character designer Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball Z) created a quirky, enjoyable romp through time with a cast of endearing characters, memorable environments, solid RPG gameplay, and unparalleled presentation. Needless to say, fans have clamored for a sequel ever since.

Which is why, after nearly five years of silence, the announcement of Chrono Cross drew so much ire. Where was the legendary dream team? (Only Sakaguchi contributed to Chrono Cross.) Where was the cast of characters we had grown to know and love? And who the hell was that Thundercats reject named Lynx? Things looked grim for the Chrono Trigger faithful. When Chrono Cross was revealed to have over 40 playable characters, many lost faith in the game entirely. Had Square thrown all pretense of a coherent story out the window?

But fortunately for series fans, Chrono Trigger's dream team doesn't have a monopoly on RPG innovation. As with the first SNES title, everything in Chrono Cross "clicks" in a way most games wish they could imitate. The different parts combine into an instant RPG classic.

The story begins with the hero, Serge, who is thrust into a parallel world where he died under mysterious circumstances over a decade ago. He teams up with a rowdy adventurer, Kid, and sets out in search of the mysterious Frozen Flame, an artifact that lets the holder reshape time and space on a whim. The enigmatic Lynx, a regal man-cat who hunts the Frozen Flame for his own purposes, opposes them. In his quest to return home, Serge will accrue both allies and foes, and he'll find himself thrust into an adventure that reveals his heritage, purpose, and ultimate destiny. Only by crossing between the two dimensions can Serge find the answers to his questions.

Without revealing any more of Chrono Cross' excellent storyline, it can be said that it successfully pulls off the difficult balancing act every sequel faces. It's not a rehash of the original Chrono Trigger, but neither does it exploit the characters and setting of Chrono Trigger for name recognition alone. Instead, it sets up an equally valid, separate, and well-developed world, then slowly and responsibly weaves in elements, characters, and events from the first title. It doesn't continue the original Chrono Trigger mythos so much as it expands it. Gamers will be stunned by the resolution of the disparate plot threads. And with features like a unilaterally taciturn hero, an accommodating attitude toward interdimensional travel, and a new game+ mode, Chrono Cross manages to maintain the ineffable Chrono Trigger feel.

The battle system deviates slightly from the RPG norm. The traditional "active time bar" has been replaced with a bar of seven stamina points. While the engine is still ostensibly turn-based, any character can take a turn at any time as long as they have at least a single stamina point remaining. Enemies can even interrupt your characters' attacks. Party members can unleash weak, medium, and strong attacks, which require one, two, and three stamina points, respectively. Even though the game pauses while waiting for input, the ability to start and end a character's turn whenever you please makes for a more frantic, "real-time" experience.

Elements, Chrono Cross' magic system, is divided into six colors: black and white, red and blue, and green and yellow. The characters all have a "color alignment," which determines their affinity to certain elements. Once you obtain a spell, you place it in an acceptable empty slot on a character's element grid. For example, a spell with level "5+/-2" is a level five spell, but can be placed in any slot from three to seven with the expected drop or rise in effectiveness. Successfully landing a weak, medium, or strong attack adds one, two, or three bars to a characters' element grid. A character with sufficient element bars can cast a spell, but the cost is seven stamina points, temporarily dropping him or her out of action. Combine building element grids and plummeting stamina bars with the dynamic nature of characters' turns, and battles become a constantly shifting endeavor - yet always remain under the player's total control. Once you understand the intricacies of the battle system, encounters are always over quickly.

Two other features of the battle system are dual techs and the color field. As in the original Chrono Trigger, characters can combine their special techniques for dual attacks; while dual techs are not as prevalent as you might expect, they are there to be discovered. The color field keeps track of the color of the last three spells cast. If the field becomes a single color, characters with that color alignment gain a statistical boost. Moreover, a monochromatic field is the only time when one of the game's mighty summons can be unleashed. Manipulating the field to a single color is trickier than you might expect, as the interference of your opponents' spells can't be ignored.

Chrono Cross has to be the most battle-friendly RPG ever released. All opponents are visible onscreen before the battle sequences begin, making battles easy to engage in or avoid. Even more pleasantly, every battle can be escaped whenever you like with a 100-percent success rate. Even boss battles. Don't like the way the battle is going? Your three red magicians hopelessly doomed against a blue powerhouse? Don't reset your console - just run away, regroup, and re-engage. And last but far from least, the option to automatically heal at the end of a battle is a boon from the RPG gods. Don't misunderstand; the game doesn't cure your party for free. But it will intelligently dig through your available spells and stocked inventory and use the necessary elements to return your party to fighting shape. So long, post-battle trips to the status screen, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Cast all fears aside: the latest Final Fantasy is the greatest game ever to bear the name.

I've been a Final Fantasy fan ever since the day the Nintendo Power strategy guide first arrived in my mailbox. Poring over the pages, I just knew that I had to play this game, to live in this other world. Heroes and villains, magic and mystery, epic quests and noble causes were all waiting to unfurl before my eyes. And ever since I vanquished Chaos, I've been hooked. Each of the English games has been analyzed, replayed, and studied as if it were a sacred text - and I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge the Final Fantasy series as the primary impetus behind my Japanese studies.

But after the seventh game, my seemingly limitless faith in the series began to falter. Final Fantasy VII was an excellent title, to be sure; but with a Final Fantasy game, "excellent" is never good enough. Some sections seemed like they were straight out of a Hollywood summer blockbuster: flashy, impressive, but ultimately unsatisfying. It was with some trepidation that I awaited Final Fantasy VIII's release: Would it be a return to the series' roots or a further digression into flash and brashness? In the end, any qualms I had were for naught; Square has finally understood how to use the power of the CD properly. Fear not. Final Fantasy VIII is a masterpiece.

The core of any Final Fantasy game has always been its story, and Final Fantasy VIII's story is the best the series - and likely the genre - has ever seen. With Final Fantasy VII, Square showed that it had mastered the epic; with VIII, it shows that it has mastered the personal. The characters and their relationships are all extremely believable and complex; moreover, the core romance holds up even under the most pessimistic scrutiny. The decision to eschew a cast of dozens and focus on a central cast of six major characters appears to have been a wise one. The characters don't seem like base archetypes or generic "heroes," but like actual people.

Squall Leonheart is a student at Garden, the world's foremost military academy. His classmates are a motley bunch: the brash but good-natured Zell Dincht; the brash but ill-natured Seifer Almasy; the childlike Selphie Tilmitt; the precocious Quistis Trepe; and the personable Rinoa Heartilly. After a successful training mission, Squall, Selphie, and Zell are all inducted into the elite combat-unit-for-hire, SeeD. Their first mission: assisting a rebel organization in the capture of Galbadian president Deling, who is set to announce a new alliance that will bring Galbadia glory and triumph over its opponents. This alliance is not with any faction or nation, but with a powerful sorceress named Edea. Don't worry that the schoolyard trappings make Final Fantasy VIII seem like "Teen Beat RPG," though; these engaging characters experience some of the most epic, grandiose events imaginable. While the plot may begin at an academy, it eventually spans the entire globe - and beyond. The twists and turns the story takes will leave you reeling; at the end of disc four, you'll laugh at the misconceptions you had about the plot with which you first began. A great deal of credit for the story's attractiveness must go to the graphic design. The first Final Fantasy through the sixth featured super-deformed, or SD, heroes: squat body, huge head, saucer-plate eyes. Final Fantasy VII was a hodgepodge of conflicting graphical styles; the field models were SD, the battle models were non-SD, the FMV was mostly non-SD (with a few SD exceptions almost humorously juxtaposed). With Final Fantasy VIII, Square has taken the series fully non-SD, and it's all for the better. The more mature plots of recent titles seemed at odds with the quirky, cartoony look with which the series began. Involving, personal, and emotional stories are far more believable when they come from, well, people, not short, bizarrely shaped cartoon characters. While the SD style suits many games, it's not the best choice for every RPG - and it certainly isn't the best choice for Square's latest Final Fantasy. In Final Fantasy VIII, the field models always match the battle models, which always match the FMV models. Always. This coherency of design is the game's greatest visual asset over its predecessors.

The graphics are absolutely breathtaking. The detail in the backgrounds is frighteningly meticulous, and almost all backgrounds contain some animated elements. Battle sequences are nicely textured, and the sheer number of battle environments is borderline obsessive. Most full-motion video sequences are well integrated with gameplay, eliminating jarring "cuts" to and from CG sequences. Words don't do the graphics justice; neither, for that matter, do stationary screenshots. The motion and animation are what set Final Fantasy VIII's graphics apart from the rest. Both the FMV and in-game graphics are extensively motion-captured, and the difference is stunning. Characters don't just move around the screen; they act. The dance sequence on the first disc is equal in every way to Final Fantasy VI's famous "opera house" sequence. Square has proven that it has the biggest, baddest graphic artists and sound composers in the known world. Now, size no longer matters; they're going to awe you with majesty. While the limitations of the PlayStation hardware rear their ugly head from time to time, the sheer artistry and detail of the movement, the models, and the textures are beyond reproach. The mind reels at the thought of what Square can do with the next generation of gaming machines.

The sound, while excellent, is perhaps the game's weakest point; the music doesn't match the perfection of Final Fantasies IV, V, and VI. Of course, almost no video game has ever equaled the aural bliss of Nobuo Uematsu's SNES trilogy - but the bar was set, and Final Fantasy VIII falls just short. Even so, Uematsu is still a certifiable genius, and the soundtrack is very good, with more "quality" songs than Final Fantasy VII's. Even Faye Wong's pop sensation "Eyes on Me" is surprisingly inoffensive. Sound effects are excellent during FMV sequences, but only average during battle and gameplay sequences. The promised "Dolby Surround Sound" is mostly unnoticeable. Voice acting would have added a great deal to the FMV sequences; the game sometimes feels like the most beautiful silent film ever made.

Battles take place in the traditional RPG "active time" system: Your characters and their opponents take turns unleashing fury (or defending furiously). Final Fantasy VIII introduces (in traditional Japanese RPG style) several new "systems" for you to learn and master: the draw system, the guardian force system, and the junction system. The draw system replaces the traditional "pool of MP" system. All magic in Final Fantasy VIII's world is "drawn" from another source: usually an enemy or a "draw point." Each draw brings with it a number of uses: If you draw the cure spell, for example, you'll usually draw between five and eight uses of the spell. The character who drew can then cast a cure spell five to eight times before the spell must be drawn again and the stock replenished. Some opponents also have special items, such as guardian forces, that can be drawn out of them. The number of uses drawn is dependent on both the drawer's magic power and the strength of the spell being drawn. This is a self-balancing system: Powerful magicians have ready access to powerful spells; lesser magicians have limited access to a few uses, while even-lesser magicians will be unable to draw the spell out at all. Powerful magic becomes more valuable when it isn't easily replaced in a tent or at an inn. When you have only six "uses" of the meteor spell in the entire world, you'll think twice before casting.

The guardian force system is Final Fantasy VIII's way of handling "summoned monsters." Every guardian force, or GF, is like a sub-member of your party. Each has its own HP, life, level, statistics, and abilities. After each battle, your characters earn experience, the GFs earn AP, and all gain levels and skills accordingly. When a GF is summoned, its HP replaces your character's HP for the duration of the "casting" period, and any damage to your character is absorbed by the GF. GFs have their own healing potions, life potions, and even shops.

The junction system works with the GF system to give you varying skills and abilities. Each GF can be joined, or "junctioned," to a character. The effects of this are manifold. First, until junctioned with a GF, a character has no battle commands except "fight." Junctioning a GF gives you immediate access to the "magic," "draw," and "item" commands; many offer extra commands, such as "card," "death sentence," "revive," and "steal." Second, GFs have a list of skills that they can master - like a "job" in Final Fantasy V or Tactics. Some of these are player abilities, some are extra commands, some are party abilities, and some are "junction" abilities. You can assign a certain skill as "active," and all AP will go toward mastering and unlocking that new skill. Third, when junctioned, a character can often junction spells to various statistics. For example, Quezacotl may open up the HP statistic to magic junctioning. You can then junction a spell - probably a cure or life spell - to the HP statistic, and the character's HP will react accordingly. Certain abilities can be unlocked this way; for example, linking a "level three" elemental spell to your characters' defense statistic will let them absorb HP from that element's attacks. The more powerful the spell - and the more uses stocked - the greater the effect on the statistic. The possibilities for customization are immense.

Initial criticism held that the GF system is unbalanced and makes the game too easy. It's true that, at first, your GFs are ridiculously powerful, but as the game progresses, their strength becomes less unbalanced and more absolutely necessary. Late in the game, GFs are all but forgotten as junctions, special commands, and physical attacks take the forefront. While the game does tend to be on the easy side, it's still more difficult than other recent games in the series. Even the greatest RPG fanatics will find the ugly words "Game Over" staring them in the face more than they'd like. Some have also argued that it's too easy to "abuse" the system by repeatedly drawing the same spell from an opponent. Repeated drawing is possible, but it's no more "abuse" than repeatedly fighting the same groups of weak enemies to raise levels and gain money. Repeated drawing is boring, to be sure, but it's a flaw common to the traditional RPG format. Levels and money, by the by, are two more things that Final Fantasy VIII tosses aside in the name of progress - along with traditional ideas of armor and weapons. All levels are one thousand experience points apart from one another, and all enemies give the same amount of experience. How can such a system work? Enemies are always at the same level as your characters, a la Final Fantasy Tactics. As your enemies' levels increase, they gain new skills and abilities; accordingly, abilities gain importance, as you'll never achieve a purely numerical advantage over your opponents. Armor and weapons are also mostly jettisoned. No character wears any sort of armor, and each character has a single weapon that can be "upgraded" at junk shops by combining certain rare items. Without any weapons or armor for you to buy, money is mostly useless - and so it, too, is all but eliminated. The party is paid a periodic stipend (the size of which depends on Squall's SeeD ranking) with which to purchase basic supplies and items.

The RPG purist will immediately scoff, but further reflection reveals that these changes might actually be for the better. After all, in Final Fantasy games, armor and weapons are practically indistinguishable except for their numerical power. And what player won't immediately equip the more powerful item he just discovered or purchased? Weapons, armor, and money are all artificial statistical impediments to your progress through the game; by removing them, Square returns the focus to the story, characters, and battle strategies. It's a simplification, to be sure, but by no means a "dumbing down." You can still customize your attack and defense powers and characteristics (and almost any other statistic) through creative junctioning of assorted magics.

The Card Battle game, Triple Triad, is a more-than-worthy RPG minigame. There are several hundred cards to collect and swap, and local variations on the standard rule set help make each battle unique. Some cards are won from battles against opponents; others are found by using the "card" command on a weakened enemy. What's more, rare cards can be converted to rare items; rare items can be converted to rare weapons. In other words, your skill at the minigame can affect the main game itself. A single in-depth, well-done minigame is vastly preferable to multiple throwaway sequences. Nowadays, when I want to ride a motorcycle, I just plug in Road Rash. The only thing missing is a suitable reward for collecting them all - obsessive RPG fans deserve more than a star of commendation.

The English version of Final Fantasy VIII sports a decent, unassuming translation. While no one is likely to confuse Square's translations with the works of Shakespeare, the localization is grammatically correct and structurally coherent. Given the state of the RPG union, these are grand accomplishments indeed. The English version also sports one of the most welcome additions in RPG localization history: "Junction Exchange." This one-step character-swapping tool swaps spell inventories, junctioned GFs, and junctioned spells with a single click, making what was once a headache into a pleasure. With character swapping made this easy, players of the English version are far more likely to experiment with different party members than their Japanese brethren.

Final Fantasy VIII combines a fantastic story, amazing visuals, and excellent sound with solid RPG gameplay, an eminently tweakable junction system, and scads of secrets and extras. After a string of visually stunning but uninspired games from Square, many gamers feared that Final Fantasy VIII would be more of the same. Cast all fears aside: the latest Final Fantasy is the greatest game ever to bear the name.

Though it divulges a few more bits of storyline, Outbreak's gameplay is simple and repetitive to the extreme, just like its predecessors.

Sometimes a once-promising video game series starts going downhill. The gameplay, concept, characters, graphics, and sound begin failing to impress as they once did. Bandai's .hack (pronounced "dot hack") series isn't anything unusual in this regard--though since its installments are being released just three months apart, it's technically going downhill faster than is normal. Earlier this year, Bandai released the first episode of this straightforward action RPG series, which earned a lot of attention because of its original premise, because of its anime tie-in, and also because the series would span across four separate episodes released in close proximity. Indeed, the company quickly released the second installment, but seeing as that game did nothing to resolve any of its predecessor's numerous shortcomings, evidently the series wasn't aiming as high as its lofty concept might have suggested. The new third installment, dubbed Outbreak, stands as further proof that this series really isn't worth the typical role-playing game fan's time or money. Though it divulges a few more bits of storyline, Outbreak's gameplay is simple and repetitive to the extreme and is even worse off for being just like Mutation before it, which in turn was just like the first episode, Infection, which was marginally good to begin with.

 

Higher level monsters and some new cutscenes are some of the only things to look forward to in his third installment of .hack.

 

Those who played through the previous two games in the series are in store for exactly the same thing once again in Outbreak. The game continues the adventures of Kite, a player character in a massively multiplayer online RPG called The World, who is trying to discover why some players of The World are mysteriously falling comatose--and why The World appears to be getting more and more corrupted. This time you'll be fighting higher-level monsters, ranging from levels 50 through 70, but you'll be in this same range yourself, so there's relatively little difference--you have more hit points, but enemies deal more damage, but your healing spells are more potent. The gameplay still revolves almost exclusively around warping into randomly generated fields, then heading to the entrances of randomly generated dungeons, then battling your way through to the bottom of those dungeons--over and over and over.

The new game offers almost nothing new in terms of graphics, sound, or anything, and even though the dungeons are randomized, by now you'll have slogged through so many dozens of them that there will be absolutely no surprises in store here. The combat, meanwhile, is as awkwardly paced as ever, since the real-time action must constantly be paused so that you can use items, issue basic orders to your party members, and so forth. There's little real strategy or depth to be found, though the combat is tougher this time than in previous episodes, thanks to the predominance of enemies that are either impervious to magic or to physical attacks. Outbreak, like its predecessors, is short by RPG standards--it will take you around 20 hours to play through it--but the action is so incredibly repetitive from the get-go that the game still feels much too long.

Outbreak doesn't have any noteworthy new features, but it does have one noteworthy new shortcoming. Like the previous game, this one lets you import your saved data so that you can start with the same items and experience levels you had at the conclusion of Mutation. However, the very first challenge you're presented with in the game is a solo dungeon crawl that your character may be ill equipped to deal with unless you kept leveling up after you finished Mutation. For whatever reason, none of your party members will join up with you until you pass this dungeon, which means you'll have an inordinately difficult time even trying to level up all by yourself if you're not well equipped to handle the dungeon. So not only is the game repetitive right from the start, but it can be very frustrating at first, too. For what it's worth, once you get past this first hurdle, the going gets easier.

 

Outbreak isn't any more interesting, original, or entertaining than its two predecessors, but it is harder.

 

Only a couple of new characters will join you on your quest this time around, though most all the game's characters are so one-dimensional and so similar in battle that this hardly seems to matter. Likewise, there's just one new town (in which you can raise a couple more types of those piglike grunties), but since all the towns in the game are devoid of anything but the same rudimentary shops and services, there just as well could have been no new town at all. At least Outbreak is somewhat less miserly with the cutscenes and story sequences than Mutation. You do finally start to get a sense of how the series is going to wrap up. Still, the dialogue is as inane as ever. Characters speak in non sequiturs--a poor translation from the original Japanese seems at least partly responsible--and their exchanges will leave you scratching your head more often than not. Some of the character designs of this series may seem appealing, thanks to the concept work by Evangelion's Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, but don't expect any meaningful character development to take place during the course of this game. Do expect, however, more of those pointless e-mail exchanges between the main character and his friends.

Like its predecessors, Outbreak is a full-priced product, though it comes bundled with an anime DVD that at this point may well be more enticing than the actual game. At any rate, Outbreak just doesn't make for a satisfying experience--not unless, for some reason, you love the previous games and you're comfortable spending still more time and more money on a game you've already played through twice, just to see a few more cutscenes. In the end, Outbreak gives more weight to the argument that .hack probably should have been one $50, 30-hour game instead of four $50, 20-hour games. Of course, a fourth and final installment yet remains, but in the wake of this third game, one would have due cause to be skeptical about it.

Tetris' Russian roots were evident from the game's title screen and its traditional Russian music.

Up for Grabs

Designed by Alexei Pajitnov, a programmer at the Moscow Academy of Science, Tetris certainly wasn't expected to have the sort of universal appeal it went on to achieve. In fact, in the years following the game's invention, Tetris became the object of numerous licensing battles and legal disputes as various corporations fought tooth and nail to claim the concept as their own. One of the first versions was published for IBM-compatible computers by Spectrum Holobyte. In 1988, Tetris also became very popular in arcades, thanks to Atari, which published a version that featured two-player simultaneous play.

In 1988, Tengen released a great version of Tetris for the Nintendo Entertainment System, but it was shortly pulled from the shelves when Nintendo sued the company for breach of copyright. Nintendo replaced that version of Tetris with its own, which actually lacked the Tengen version's two-player mode, as well as its excellent music. In '89, Nintendo went on to bundle in a portable version of Tetris with its then-new Game Boy system, which went on to become the best-selling game system of all time, thanks in no small part to Tetris.

Now you can play Tetris on anything from your Xbox to your calculator. There's a great, freely available online-multiplayer-enabled version for the PC available at Tetrinet2.com.

The arcade version of Tetris was one of the first and remains one of the best.

Tetris is indisputably one of the greatest games of all time. However, there's a strong case to be made for calling it not just "one of," but the single all-time greatest game of them all. Put it this way: What other video game or computer game of this era will people still be playing regularly, say, 100 years from now?

Not a one. Not besides Tetris. This is a game that's a timeless ****c and yet is inherently electronic, and therefore modern--unlike the game of chess, for example, you can't play Tetris in any physical form. It's true that Tetris has undergone numerous transformations and alterations in its countless incarnations over the years, but the core game remains the same. And that core game encompasses the unique sort of addictive, hands-on challenge that only this medium can provide.

Tetris actually dates back to the mid-'80s, though its popularity didn't start to surge until some years later. The concept of the game is perfectly simple and by now second nature: You're trying to form solid rows out of pieces of various shapes that fall from the top of the screen in random order. You can't win Tetris--the action just speeds up more and more the longer you last, and the addictive appeal lies in trying to survive the onslaught of falling pieces for longer than you could the last time around. Yet the world-famous gameplay of Tetris was intuitive even when the game was completely new. Something about the falling puzzle pieces and their shapes implored even first-time players to naturally try to line them up and arrange them properly, as if Tetris appeals to some innate sensibility even the most disorganized of us have to put things in order.

This definitive and influential puzzle game went on to inspire an entire genre. In particular, a number of great puzzle games have come out of Japan over the years, all of them featuring their own unique twists on the Tetris formula. Nevertheless, as different as these games may seem, their underlying similarity to Tetris is irrefutable.

Tetris also deservers recognition for being one of the only games ever released to truly appeal to a broad demographic. Most anyone can relate a story about how some relative or other acquaintance of theirs with absolutely no other interest in gaming nevertheless became incredibly addicted to Tetris. Who's to say how many millions of hours have been spent on this game to date, perhaps when they should have been spent engaged in more productive endeavors? A cynic, or maybe an office manager, might argue that Tetris is responsible for more wasted time than anything else from the last 20 years. As for us, we're more than happy to name it one of GameSpot's Greatest Games of All Time.

As a burgeoning grade-school math nerd with a penchant for logic puzzles, I took to Tetris like a fish to water. The game's faux-educational nature kept my parents from hassling me too much during lengthy Tetris jags, which helped turn those jags into full-fledged daylong marathons. I know there's no single Game Boy game I've spent more time with than Tetris, and it may even be my most-played video game, period. I've gone through many puzzle games since then, but at best these games have just aped the elegance and urgency of Tetris. For me, video games are to Tetris like board games are to chess.
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