I had been slacking lately for posting my reviews here but I caught up on all of them. Reviews for True Crime: NYC, Tomb Raider: Legend and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion have all been posted.

I've got two new reviews up for reading:

Burnout Revenge (360)

UberSoldier (PC)

Enjoy!

So I decided to put up all my game reviews up on GameSpot. I put "As featured at" at the beginning of each one so I hope that keeps people from screaming "plagiarism!" I did do these reviews for other sites but the fact remains that they are reviews that I wrote.

I've often thought of putting my reviews up there but have figured they're way too long for some of the readership. Oh well, I guess I'll find out what other people think of my writing. For anyone who does read them, they have to keep in mind that these reviews span four years and some were written before I had even taken any writing classes. I hope you guys can see the difference by looking at older games to the more recent ones.

As featured on gamershell.com

Compilation games can be a funny thing. They’re a prime example of a certain nostalgic feeling that flows through players as they age. The chance to play games from yesteryear creates a spark of youthful exuberance with a chance to gain back a part of their youth. Sonic Mega Collection, Namco Museum, and Midway Arcade Treasures all stand as a testament of the “olden days” of gaming and are a prime example of what can happen when a developer does it right.

When Electronic Arts announced Command and Conquer: The First Decade and their commitment to update the classics to run in Windows XP a shockwave emanated throughout the C&C community. Was it really true? Were the times of shady patches and backdoor work-arounds over? Would the days of a wise-cracking commando that sprinkled the corpses of his enemies with his cigar ashes finally be realized on Windows XP?

Louis Castle, co-founder of Westwood Studios and co-creator of the Command & Conquer franchise assured fans that they would. In a podcast on February 2, Castle reminded the masses that while EA wasn’t re-making any portion of the games, it still wanted to communicate the original experience of the C&C games to its fans. There would be no increased resolution, there would be no pixilated re-mastering, just the games as fans remembered them packed with a bonus DVD of fan-tributes and interviews.

“As fans remembered” indeed. It seems EA may have a slightly altered version of the past. Players of the original Red Alert most certainly remember the cheesy, pseudo-serious cut scenes of the game which explored an altered past where Hitler was exterminated and the fate of mid-20th century Europe was fought bitterly between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies. All the fake-Stalin goodness must have slipped the developer’s mind since a certain percentage of purchasers of The First Decade have reported errors in the Soviet faction’s cut scenes, which have made them un-viewable.

Aside from cinematics there’s also one major omission from the compilation pack’s roster—Sole Survivor. The oft-forgotten 1997 release is considered by critics to be the black sheep of the C&C franchise. It was an online-only strategy game where players took control of a single unit and could participate in free-for-all or team-based matches. With play modes like capture-the-flag and football it was a game that became popular to only a few C&C followers. Still, games could regularly be found on Westwood Chat, the early-series main multiplayer hub, well into 2000. Perhaps EA should’ve changed The Decade Pack’s description from “You can collect 10 years of Command & Conquer” to “You can collect 10 years of reasonably-selling and profitable Command & Conquer.” History seems to remember the game being released, but that must have slipped by EA.

But there’s probably a good reason for Sole Survivor’s omission from the pack. It’s the same reason that some fans have reacted angrily on fan sites and the official EA forums. Planet Command and Conquer’s resident tech guru Tim Gokcen summed it up best: “There is apparently no multiplayer functionality in [Tiberian Dawn] and Red Alert.” Gokcen also pointed out that past re-releases of games, like Warcraft II Battle.net Edition, have featured enhanced multiplayer instead of being completely stripped out like in The First Decade. So Sole Survivor would really do nothing but highlight the fact that the compilation pack features some broken elements.

Multiplayer and LAN matches were a huge reason the C&C franchise skyrocketed in popularity in the mid-90s. Gaming back then was a scene to behold in and of itself.

Empty Doritos bags sprinkled around the floor, spent cans of Mountain Dew rolling about the computer desk as someone yells, “Behold my gigantic phallic Obelisk of light for it has rained destruction upon your infidel horde of GDI tanks!” to his/her buddies in the same room.

The lowly and unarmored Engineer sprinting to a battered Construction Yard for an instant repair, giving one last gasp of hope against a determined Internet opponent.

Seeing for the first time the pure destruction caused by a sneaky deployment of a Commando-filled Chinook in an enemies base as expletives flashed across the screen and were soon accompanied by the deafening boom of an exploding Tiberium Refinery.

Those were the matches that made the Command & Conquer franchise so much fun and to take those away from dedicated fans seems like a sucker punch. Asking EA to go back and change netcode and multiplayer protocols would seem like too much if the compilation itself were not advertised as a way to get the classic games working on a modern operating system. When a claim like that is made it’s assumed that all the features of a game will be working. There’s a lesson here that when companies meddle with their old libraries they shouldn’t be out to make a cash grab or fans will voice their discontent. One angry fan on CNC Den said simply, “They repackaged the same games on a DVD and clicked ship.”

Sure, there’s a third-party workaround that will enable some of the older C&C games to have limited multiplayer functionality, but after forking over $40 consumers shouldn’t have to scavenge around the Internet to find unofficial fixes for their games. EA has confirmed that it has received information regarding all the problems and is currently looking into the matter. However as the ostentatious Commando in Tiberian Dawn often yelled, the release of this compilation pack seems a little “left-handed.”

As featured on loadedinc.com and cgno.com

Yes, like the villagers who dressed up the witch simply because they didn’t like her, it seems almost everyone is out to hate Microsoft for what they’ve done. There are a few voices of reason in the pack, that see the pricing as a logical move towards different demographics of players, but a lot of people feel betrayed, gouged, and downright angry at what has happened.

The different SKUs for the Xbox 360 entail two entirely unique setups. With the pricier option, you get way more bang for your buck. Besides the Xbox 360 itself, there’s the wireless duo of a controller and headset, cables for you HDTV junkies, the media remote, ethernet cable to connect your box to the internet, interchangeable faceplates, Xbox Live Silver membership, and the mother of all package upgrades: the 20GB hard drive. The cheaper option, at $299, features the bare bones package of an Xbox 360, wired controller, standard AV cables, and the same faceplates and Xbox Live Silver that come with the premier package.

What seems to be happening are a large number of people screaming at Microsoft for the sole purpose of hearing themselves speak. Lest we forget that what you’re getting at the $299 price point is nothing new. Unless players have suffered some sort of amnesia since the last generation’s release, every single console came with the system, a wired controller, and standard AV cable. It’s not a “publicity stunt,” as some industry analysts would have you believe. It’s standard industry practice. To Microsoft’s credit, the $399 package deal is a great bargain, with included peripherals like the hard drive costing $99 in retail alone. Have we so quickly forgotten the “package” deal of the Sony PSP when it was released? You could choose between the $250 value pack, and the $250 value pack. Gee, what a great deal. There wasn’t the same venom released towards Sony at the time, so there seems to be a double standard when it comes to judging certain system launches.

Anyway, the biggest issue seems to be with the exclusion of the hard drive from the cheaper bundle. To understand why this was done you need to look at the gaming market itself, which has more casual gamers than ever before. That’s the market that the core system is going to be aimed towards. GameSpot’s Alex Navarro puts it the best: “The cheaper model is geared toward the more casual player—the people who buy a few games a year and don't care much about any of the ancillary benefits.” He hit it right on the dot.

It’s not as if Microsoft expects the core system to be a big seller, either. In an interview with IGN, Microsoft Vice President Peter Moore explained, “I think that a large majority of people all over the world will be buying the Xbox 360 systems ($399).” The fact that there is a $299 option is a nice gesture, signaling that MS knows that the industry isn’t a uniform set of people who will buy every hardware accessory in sight.

Not every player is going to have access to an insane HDTV to leech the maximum amount of graphical pleasure from each title. Certain players just won’t hold on to their original Xbox games. You’ll find a lot of people trading in their systems and games in order to purchase the 360, as has happened in generations-past. To those people, the inclusion of a hard drive would be a moot point. Microsoft has already informed developers not to rely on the hard drive, so you can forget any rumors you’ve heard to the contrary about games not working on the core system.

There’s a funny thing about rumors though. While a lot of them will be false promises and empty air, every once and a while one will turn out to be true. As far back as November of 2004, rumors swirled around the Internet about a possible three-tier system of Xbox 360 releases. The base model came with no HD, the mid-range system had the drive included, and the highest price point was both a 360 and an entry-level PC. In GameSpot’s weekly Rumor Control feature, the ruling was inconclusive: “Here's hoping this rumor is not bogus.” Regardless of the ruling on the rumor, the fact is that it ended up—to a certain extent—being true. I can understand the anger if the 360 pricing announcement came out of nowhere, but this was something circling through the air for the better part of a year.

There’s no reason for serious gamers not to buy the pricier $399 model. No matter what you think of Microsoft, it is a bargain considering the retail costs of the individual accessories. For the casuals who are going to stick with their annual Madden and GTA purchases, the core system is the perfect solution.

As featured on loadedin.com and cgno.com

How Rockstar has pushed in the industry into legislative crosshairs

Illinois Governor Rod Blajojevich signed a bill into law on July 27th that prohibits the sale or renting of violent or sexually explicit games to minors. Violators of the new law risk being slapped with a $1,000 fine. The Entertainment Software Association condemned the law, calling it a limit of free speech and too vague for retailers to be able to enforce properly. Indeed, the bill which lists “extremely violent” content doesn’t define it. That could mean a few titles each year are subject to the ban, or anything where a gun shoots something. That’s not for us to decide, however, now that belongs to a judge.

This is just the latest assault on the industry caused by the notorious Hot Coffee modification. The mod let users who downloaded it perform a sex scene in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Editors from online magazine GameSpot later performed the scenes on the PlayStation 2 with use of an Action Replay device. As it turns out, the code for the sex game was hidden within the final product, hidden from the prying eyes of the ESRB which, last week, announced a rating change from Mature to Adults Only.

The end result of the San Andreas situation has been a flurry of political scrutiny of the videogame industry with calls for tougher laws against game sales to minors. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York was one of the first, seeking a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into the game, which she got on July 26th. This wouldn’t be the first time Senator Clinton took a shot at the industry either. In March she co-sponsored a bill with Senators Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, and the always gaming-friendly Joseph Lieberman that created a study to discover the effects that different forms of media—Internet, TV, radio, and video games— have on minors.

Aside from the more serious scrutiny, there have been incidences of strange and just-plain-desperate measures, too. Jack Thompson, a lawyer and anti-gaming crusader, has sought to bump up the rating on the casual-hit Sims 2. The reason being, you ask? Mr. Thompson is upset that codes exist which can disable the blur that the game uses to censor out private parts on nude sims. Never mind the fact that EA claims there are only Barbie-esque plastic-looking bodies under the blurs. Apparently, when you’re trying to simulate human life, you can’t simulate breasts, genitals, or reproduction. They may as well mandate individual twin beds in the parent’s bedroom.

Yes, sex is the deer in the legislative headlights and with incidents like the Janet Jackson half-time show angering the masses and Howard Stern being forced from FM radio, should any of us be surprised? The moral crusaders will use any excuse to get this “smut” out of the hands of anyone who’s under 18. Even in the complaints of Sims 2 and in the criticism of the ESRB, the emphasis is on sex, with only fleeting remarks in reference to the violent content in San Andreas. Where was the outcry when the T-rated game Tiberian Sun had live-action actors graphically slitting a despot’s throat? How many complaints were received when Freedom Fighters had you stealthily assassinate a foreign government official? There was no outcry, and that’s partially due to the times. If the current government has taught us anything over these past five years, it’s that evil men deserve to be taken out or killed, simply because they are evil.

You won’t hear much condemnation about the violence in the games because it is the culture that we live in. You won’t hear it about the latest Hollywood blockbuster where the body count reaches into the hundreds and parts fly left and right. You won’t hear it about shows like Real TV, which show bank robbers firing assault rifles through crowded suburbs. You won’t hear it about the news, where our troops in Iraq are shot at every day and we are given the latest body count from the most-recent car bombing. No one will raise a fuss over violence, but they’ll tack it on to any legislation that will supposedly be helping the children, like keeping sexual material away from their eyes. What’s good for the children is great for a re-election campaign.

Of course, no one is guiltier of giving them a reason to than the industry itself. Long ago, the MPAA ratings became the standard for movies. It relied on the voluntary participation of individual retailers and movie outlets, and for almost 40 years the system has worked. The ESRB ratings, which are no less voluntary, can’t boast the same results. For years, retailers have ignored ratings, either by policy or through individual employees. I can vividly remember buying Perfect Dark, rated M, when I was 16 from a Toys-R-Us. Even this past November, teenagers as young as 13 and 14 were purchasing Halo 2, another M-rated title, without so much as a glance from the person behind the counter. You can’t blame the children for wanting a game, but you can make it harder for them to obtain.

It’s not just the retailers; Rockstar is more to blame for this fiasco than any other single party. The politicians wouldn’t be screaming to protect our nations youth if we hadn’t given them a reason to. Rockstar made a mistake by leaving the original code for the sex mini-games available on the discs. Whether or not it was accidental is irrelevant, it’s the fact that it’s on there. How many would condone hidden sex scenes on their favorite Disney animation DVD? I may be stretching the bounds of comparison, but it’s foolish to think that both San Andreas and Aladdin have completely different audiences—I’ve witnessed more than one five year old play GTA.

The games industry has been around for decades, but it’s still in its early stages. As Lev Grossman of Time magazine put it, “The video game is a brand-new medium, and we get to see it evolve from the very beginning.” We must be responsible enough to see this evolution through to the next faze. As games overtake movies in overall revenue, and as next-generation consoles continue to expand the casual market, there will be an increased acceptance of games into the mainstream culture. Unless we take action and police ourselves, we’ll find the AO rating emptying the shelves on everything from mildly-suggestive situations to survival-horror games that may happen to scare a “concerned parent’s” kid. We’ve got to take responsibility, or the politicians in Washington will do it for us.

As featured on loadedinc.com and cgno.com

How to survive Battlefield 2 with your teammates
With the recent release of Battlefield 2, tens of thousands of players have hit the keyboards and mice to battle it up between the United States, China, and Middle-Eastern Coalition. The battlefield can be a dangerous place though. You’ve got to worry about enemy troops, tanks, and planes blowing you to smithereens and reducing your ego to tiny bits. For you new guys, this game can be weird, confusing, and even, perhaps, a little erotic. Here are some tips to help you become an effective fighting tool on the virtual battlefield.
Leave the flying to professionals
Don’t get me wrong, your help is greatly appreciated, especially on the flying front. While I don’t doubt your abilities for a second, I do wonder whether that acrobatic dance you do with the Blackhawk helicopter—where it slams upside down into the ground immediately after takeoff—is an effective way of battling the enemy. Indeed, your flying prowess has come into question, with others expressing their doubts about flying a MiG straight into the side of a mountain. I tell them it’s a brilliant strategy, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.
There’s always the option of practicing your flying, which would probably help you from crashing and burning. If you do want to practice, try the single-player mode. It’s a great training tool that doesn’t incur the wrath of your 31 teammates. Not only will they be happy at you for not flying straight into their tank, they might even give you thanks.
Red vs. Blue, simple enough?
For you new guys, I know it can be tough deciphering friend from foe. You know, with all the new skins for the different classes. You may see someone next to you. Hell, he could have spawned at the same location, but he isn’t wearing a helmet like some of the other guys. Obviously he’s both a threat to you, and your success on the battlefield; never mind the fact that he is running away from you and is not even shooting. That bastard is wearing a hat that’s different than yours, and that makes him dangerous. If you don’t recognize him, he can’t possibly be on your team.
Eventually, you will learn to distinguish the different uniforms. When you first start out, however, it’s best to stick with DICE’s failsafe, and largely idiot-proof way of identifying friend and foe. Hover for a second with your mouse, and you’ll see gamer tags in either blue or red. The lesson of the day is: blue good, red bad. Follow that simple rule and there’s a good chance you won’t be blown up by your own team.
Microphone etiquette
As for communicating, Battlefield 2 features an intricate communication system that works with any microphone. Understand that these microphones are used for communication among squad members to formulate plans of attack and defense. I’m sure the sexuality of your squad commander and how it relates to his or her gamer tag is an important issue, but we don’t need to hear about it.
Also, while your friends at home may laugh at your high-pitched screams over the communicator, the rest of us hate you for it. Sure the decibel level may lower as you hit puberty, but the anger levels from the rest of us never do. Please practice safe, responsible, and normal microphone use. Leave the goat sex, homo-erotic moments, and sexual encounters with my mother out of it.
Leave the women alone
Along that same line, I’d like to make one thing clear: girls play videogames too. I know this may seem like a foreign and occasionally fascinating concept to you, but it happens. Back in the “olden-days,” like the 80s, couples conceived after vigorous sessions of Pac Man, Gradius, and Space Invaders. The end result was the current generation of gamers, some of which happen to be women.
Guess what? They like to play games too, not talk to some salivating degenerate in the hopes of cyber-scoring over GameSpy Arcade. It is not necessary, or even rational for that matter, to stop everything you are doing when you see S3xyKilla wasting a tank on the battlefield. She wants to kill stuff, not talk to you. Hell, chances are it isn’t even a girl. You’re wasting your time, and a precious spot on the roster that would be used more efficiently by someone else.
Adjournment
You now know the basics of not acting like a complete fool on the modern battlefield. Hopefully you can use this knowledge and spread it to others. I’ll see you on the banks of the Persian Gulf and the Chinese shores. Please, for the love of God, don’t shoot me.

How much will gamers be shelling out for Sony’s next-generation wonder machine?

As featured on: loadedinc.com, cgno.com

Sony President Ken Kutaragi went on a media rampage last week, releasing several details about the upcoming PlayStation 3 console. The overall theme of the interviews conducted was the PlayStation 3 media center/super computer. Kutaragi has said again and again, on record, that the PlayStation 3 will not just be a gaming console. We’ve heard this rhetoric before, with the PlayStation 2, but Sony seems to be taking the first steps towards making it a reality. The biggest question is what it means for gamer’s wallets.

In an interview with Japanese outlet Jiji news, Kutaragi admitted that Sony did not have enough development kits for all dev-houses. He attributed this mainly to a lack of parts to manufacture sufficient kits. If a company were serious about the gaming aspect of their next generation console, they would make sure that developers were getting all the tools they needed to get the job done. A shortage of kits means that while most developers will get the tools they need, they won’t get enough of them. Development times will slow and the PlayStation 3 may see a shortage of quality launch titles—this seems something more up Nintendo’s alley, not Sony’s. Considering the time they’ve had to work with—four years since the release of the PlayStation 2—one would think Sony would have been more than prepared for the demand of their products. If there’s a sign that the PlayStation 3 won’t focus primarily on gaming, this could definitely be it.

It’s not a major red flag, however. Sony still has plenty of time before the release of the PlayStation 3 to ship out enough kits to meet demand. Work can still begin on new games on a limited basis and accelerated when more kits are shipped in. The interesting aspects of the PlayStation 3’s creative direction lay in its approach to hard drive support.

Microsoft’s Xbox console was a leap forward in that it used memory cards as a secondary method of storing and transferring game data. An integrated hard drive not only assisted games with hard drive caching—storing information in real time and reducing load times—but also helped the relevancy of Xbox Live by allowing downloadable content. Even for less-wired gamers an HDD let players save without having to worry about space and purchasing additional pricey memory cards.

Sony isn’t ignoring the hard drive factor; in fact, Kutaragi admitted that the PlayStation 3 will have a 2.5 inch HDD bay so players can equip them to the console. However, Kutaragi also stated that current HDD sizes of 80 or 120GB are “still not enough.” This suggests that the PlayStation 3 is going to be a multi-faceted console with several functions. That the hard drives will run Linux suggests addition functionality like video and photo editing. For casual gamers who want no more than game saves and downloadable content, they may need to pony up some extra dough for the rumored PS3 add-on. If 120GB is “not enough,” one can imagine what size the PlayStation 3 hard drives will be, and the price tag will be enough to make almost anyone cringe.

There’s also cracks in the gaming armor of the PlayStation 3 with the recent news that Toshiba and Sony failed to seal a deal to create a dual format DVD. Currently a battle of sorts is being waged between Toshiba’s HD-DVD, the cheaper option, and Sony’s Blu-ray disc, which has a larger storage capacity. In an interview, Sony Blu-ray director Kiyoshi said, “Without 50GB of capacity, we can't answer the demands of long hours of high-definition video recording and high-quality extras. The HD-DVD camp is saying that we don't need that much capacity, but it will be required in the future.” It wouldn’t be completely ludicrous to suggest that the PlayStation 3 is the future that is being described. In fact, it hints at the TiVo-like technology that shipped with the PSX console in Japan back in 2003. As of earlier this year, however, the PSX was deemed a failure. Sony seems to not be taking the hint and trying their luck in the Western market.

I’m all for multi-functional consoles, but the chief concern is the price. I doubt Sony can throw in real-time video recording, high storage capability, cutting-edge graphical power, and have it all bundled in a nice, cheap package. The casual gamer, which propelled the PlayStation 2 to market superiority, seems to be taking a back seat to technophiles and their dream of an all-in-one wonder machine. If Sony alienates their primary market, they may just find Microsoft nipping at their heels in the next generation. The question to be asked is: Which features are going to come stock on the PlayStation 3 and how much extra cash will gamers have to shell out to get a complete package?