I don't want to sound like an old curmudgeon - but my favorite online gaming experiences are all firmly grounded in the naughts - that is the period between 2000 and 2009 and specifically for me the period between 2000 and the release of Halo 3 on November 7, 2007.

Online console gaming for me began with the release of Phantasy Star Online in January, 2001. It's difficult for me to express how incredible it was to load up another world on your console and for the first time see, hear and talk to people from all over the world. The only thing that might compare to this in today's terms might be the sensation of trying the Oculus Rift for the first time. You feel stunned into disbelief but at the same time fully comprehend that there can be no going back. Phantasy Star Online - with it's little dial-up modem and external mic that connected to the controller and the memory card with the little video screen on it - was that and more. Some of my fondest gaming moments are from that period - joining up in groups of four defeating round after round of boss monsters. Beyond just the online component however - the average quality of the people in the gaming community at the time was very high. There wasn't much in the way of trolling, not even a joke about one's 'but hole' (that's a Dark Souls 2 joke). It was classy - I think that we were all in awe and just really freaking loved the experience. I remember at one point I posted something like - 'Wow - this is amazing' to which somebody responding with only a 'Yup' and we all knew that nothing else needed to be said because we were all experiencing the same sense of wonder. My username - Grazen - comes from that period as well. I was creating my character - she was a wizard, very tall dressed in green - and I needed to make up a name and the gr... gr.. of green came to mind followed by the sneeze of Grazen. It's been my handle ever since.

The original Xbox versions of Halo delivered a similar experience. The original Halo needed a lot of work and a LAN to get it to work, but man if you were willing to put in the work and put together four consoles (with four players on each!) you could have a party to end all parties. It was glorious! Halo 2 helped to launch the Xbox Live - and this the single best Halo game ever made (ok, so sue me) brought a structured online competitive gaming platform to consoles. The community of players was incredible - it was much smaller than it is today and it seemed more mature (though not necessarily much older). The pinnacle of the online Halo gaming universe was Halo 3 with the Forge that enabled players to develop and share their own maps plus a whole host of stats tracking via Bungie.net. The community of Halo gamers in 2007 were the core players. Many had made the leap from Halo 2 and the quality of the community was second to none. It was good, clean, competitive and for the most part respectful.

As the years passed and competitive FPS games went mainstream the average quality of the online community declined. Call me elitist or a gaming snob or whatever you want (and you will) but the community that developed around the COD games or the Battlefield games or Halo 4 congealed into a very different environment than the naught world of PSO to Halo 3. It was nasty, it was brutish, it wasn't as much fun. It was disappointing to be sure - but that's the price of success, large numbers mean that the average player is more a tag along @sshOle and less a true fan.

My weekend with Destiny brought back some of that old gaming goodness. The community was great - the game was great - the experience was great... it was a throwback to that earlier time. I'm going to keep playing on this beta for as many hours as I can put into it. It's not often that we get a second chance to relive one of our greatest gaming moments, particularly after 14 years. Destiny - in terms of the beta - has put together the best of PSO, Halo 3 and that awesome online community into a single package and doled it out for us to enjoy.

Let's enjoy it.

<If you agree and want to create a community of like-minded gamers on Destiny, join our clan The Fallen Chiefs. You can find us for both the Xbox and the PS3/4 on Bungie.net>

My gaming rut is over and once again I have Skyrim to thank! After seeing numerous images and videos of the RealVision ENB mod on the web I started lusting over it's unbelievably good graphics. Was it possible that these shots were real - could Skyrim look that good for me? I'm not much of a modder - but I was motivated to get this done. I read what I could, downloaded the NMM installer from Nexus Mods and began the process of installing the exhaustive list of mods (and in the correct order!) to get my Skyrim to look like their Skyrim.

It took about two weeks (hey - I have a job, a wife and three kids!) but I finally got it working. It is stunning! I started a new character and spent a weekend in Skyrim exploring the environment. THIS is next gen gaming - not the peonic little consoles offered by Sony and Microsoft or Nintendo - THIS is what games should look like. THIS is the future! Unfortunately the next time that I tried to load Skyrim, about three days later, the game crashed and hasn't loaded since. Maybe the future needs a little more time.

In any case - the Skyrim mod experience energized me up for this most recent wave of gaming. I picked up Wolfenstein and devoured it. A terrific game if somewhat traditional - but there's nothing wrong with a great single player FPS campaign if the story is solid and there's Nazi's to be killed. I picked up Dark Souls 2 and put it aside after many, many deaths to finish Wolfenstein - but I've returned to it and it really is an amazing game. It's like nothing else out there - discovery is the key in the game and of course repetition. I've leveled up to the low 60's now and I'm committed to finish it before I hit my hundred thousandth death.

My 'to play' backlog is actually quite large now. I've been picking away at Age of Wonders 3 - it's a 4x game in a fantasy universe - and though I wish that I was better at it (and had more time to invest in it), it is scratching an itch until the next Civ game is released. I've started up State of Decay and need to give that a little more time to gel before I form an opinion, and I'm looking at Endless Space, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and The Last Federation as well. I also decided to launch Hearthstone and Starcraft II to see what all of the excitement was about, and I'm enjoying both of them.

On the mod front I installed The Long War mod for X-COM: Enemy WIthin and wow - it's a long, brutal, difficult and unforgiving war. Probably too much for me.

I'm now ready to roll into the Destiny Beta to see what that's about - but in all, it feels good. I've got my gaming cajones back.

My last two posts reflected on my inability to play certain high profile games. Since then I've picked up and tried a number of new games (Titanfall, Bravely Default, Call of Juarez, Skyward Collapse, Gunpoint, Papers Please, FTL, Rogue Legacy, Walking Dead Season 2, The Wolf Among Us, TESO Beta, Brothers, Remember Me, Payday 2, Galactic Civilizations 1 and 2) and by and large they're not resonating with me. To be fair, I\m about 40 hours into Bravely Default, and enjoying the retro feel of it. I played Brothers and thoroughly enjoyed it. Of the rest, I found Papers Please to be very interesting, but I'm not motivated enough by it to play it over and over again to see the different endings. FTL was given a fair shot - but it kicks my ass and that's no fun.

Of the rest, Titanfall was the big launch game, and to be fair to the game, I'm not big into multiplayer and there's not enough there (and |I'm frankly not motivated enough to become good enough at it) to keep me motivated to keep at it. Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us are both high quality games and I'm enjoying both. As for the rest, a veritable hodge podge of PS+ or XBL Gold or inexpensive Steam Sale games - I've given most of them a quick shot and shelved them for now.

The unfortunate fact is that there's nothing out there that's pushing me back into gaming. I spend more time following the news and listening to the podcasts than I do actually playing the games. I think that it's in part due to the changes going on in the industry in which we're seeing some big shifts into inexpensive indie games plus twitch based multiplayer - but the traditional, deep single player game is sadly missing. If I was to pin this on one event - I think that Skyrim ruined gaming for me by providing a rich, detailed and amazing (and moddable!) world that makes everything else pale in comparison. I would perhaps add to this games like Civilization V that can be replayed and modded ad infinitum - and next to this style of game (deep, replayable, moddable - or 'DRM' for short, though that's a horrible acronym) the typical, cheezy, high priced crap out there just no longer compares.

The king of this new DRM genre is of course Minecraft - and though I don't play it myself - ||I have three kids that have been playing this game for years now. Think about that - one game has provided three years of gameplay and it's nowhere near the end of its run. There are a good number of games following in the Minecraft fold, many available as early access titles, but none seem to offer the depth of experience that Minecraft offers.

Perhaps I'm no longer a real gamer. Maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe these new genres have permanently affected my views on gaming. Whatever the case, I have Daylight, Dark Souls II and Castlevania in my sites for the next new months, hopefully these will break me out of my gaming rut.

Is it just me or is this franchise failed to evolve one whit since MGS2 on the PS2? I was so looking forward to this launch as the first big game of the year (and least to me) on my powerful new gaming rig that I got for Christmas. Unfortunately this glitch filled button mashing throwback to game design circa 2001 hasn't kept pace with gaming trends or just good gaming practices in general. A horrible story, with characters that continue to be caricatures, and one of the most hated gaming characters of all time makes his return as a feminine looking cyborg samurai in high heels! What's worse, about twenty minutes into the game I get hit with a big invisible wall! This is 2014 - invisible walls that appear for a boss battle and then magically disappear once the battle is defeated have no place in gaming! At the very least they should be described within the context of the game... I mean why didn't Raiden say - "Holy fcuk, there was a giant invisible wall here and now it's gone... somebody look into it!".

Unlike with my prior post on Zelda, I'm not ready to give up on Metal Gear - I have a long history with the franchise and played every game (in the MGS series in any case) going back to the PSone. Kojima and Japanese game developers need to evolve with the times though. This ain't the 90's.

The Legend of Zelda is widely acclaimed as one of the most important game franchises. I go back a long way here as a 40+ year old gamer so I've seen many, many Zelda launches over the years on every Nintendo console since the NES.

I can't do it though. I've tried, but it just doesn't work for me. To be clear, I'm talking about playing the game and getting enjoyment out of it. Last year I picked up the 3DS release of Ocarina of Time as my first 3DS game - that's how committed I was to finally getting into Zelda. I lasted about 60 minutes on it before I became bored. I never went back.

This year the 3DS release of A Link Between Worlds was chosen by many gaming sites as one of the best games of the year. Giant Bomb selected it as their runner up for best game. So I decided to give it another shot. I like good games, why not this one? I gave this one more time - a full five hours - before the strong sense of boredom hit in and I just couldn't play it anymore. I'm therefore putting aside my pride and announcing that I'm quitting Zelda. She's beautiful, and complicated, but we're just not right for each other.

So long Zelda. I wish you well ;.(

Now that I've had a few days to calm down from my invective filled analysis of 2013 in Part I of this review - here's a few games / trends / ideas that I really enjoyed and that I'm looking forward to more of in the future.

1. Virtual Reality - This may be still in the early days but the Oculus Rift is one of the most exciting pieces of technology - in any field - to emerge this year. While largely overlooked by the main stream the OR may be the next big wave of technology innovation that is so badly needed right now to take us to the next level in terms of immersion. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention Microsoft's Illumiroom that wowed everybody with the vision of a fully immersive environment right in our living room's. Unfortunately this is just an early demo at the time and given that it's a Microsoft product, we can only expect that by the time it sees release (if it ever does) that it will be considerably less 'good' than what we're looking at here in this demo. For those that think that I'm being snarky - just go take a look at the Kinect launch video from 2010 versus the quality of the final product.

2. Steam / Steam Machines / SteamOS and everything else Steam - As a mid-term trend, I'm hopeful that the emergence of an alternative to Windows and to the major console players offered by Valve via the SteamOS initiative really takes root and begins to make some waves in the industry in 2014 and beyond. Steam has arguably had a greater impact on gaming than either the PS3 or the Xbox 360 in the last generation. I believe that it has single handedly rescued PC based gaming, ushered in an era of lower priced games and deep discounts and it has given the indie community a vehicle for launching cool mods to enhance gameplay and edgy and experimental projects to tens of millions of potential customers. It doesn't surprise me that Steam has more users than either XBL or PSN and that it owns all of the records for users, concurrent users and the like. Valve is looking to create an open source platform for gaming similar to what Google has done with Android for smartphones. I'm hoping to see this trend really emerge into something meaningful over the next few years with the Steam Machines and the SteamOS.

3. Meaningful Game Changing DLC: Firaxis leads the way here with really meaningful and game changing DLC in Civilization V and XCOM Enemy Within. It helps that these are my favorite games from 2010 and 2012 respectively - but in each case a $20 or $30 expansion (and available for much less to those patient enough to wait for a Steam sale, see above) brought me hours and hours of enjoyment for these games. This is how DLC should be done.

4. Best Games: The Last of Us; Fire Emblem Awakening; Civilization Brave New World; XCOM: Enemy Within. The fact that two of the four are expansions to older games speaks to the sad state of the industry. Last of Us was a terrific story though the actually game play was frustrating. Fire Emblem Awakening was outstanding, though I tired of the Japanese anime type tropes and the relative immaturity of many of the characters.

Here's to a better 2014!

I've been listening/reading/watching a number of different sites rank their top games of the year over the last week and it appears that given the platitudes that these dudes are serving up to the gaming industry that I'm in the minority. This year was not a good year for games, gamers or gaming. A number of terrible gaming trends emerged, many big games shipped that were clearly unfinished or even broken - heck even the two new consoles that shipped stumbled (barely) out of the gate. Many of the 'best' games listed were either annual releases of the same old same old games (I'm looking at you Ass Creed IV and BF4 and COD 14) or they were smallish indie type games that made it to the top of the best game charts in part because the major studios suck.

Alright, that last bit sounded a bit irate, but bear with me. Let's look at some of the major trends: Full priced games that ship with in-app stores. This is a horrible, horrible trend and it's a path toward game monitization that results in either forcing gamers to pay more for the same old games, to acquire ridiculously priced 'premium' versions at $80 or more (I think I saw one at $150!) or to purchase 'season passes' to get content that really should be part of the experience. Even Fire Emblem Awakening - a 3DS game - has an in game store looking to serve you little maps for $10 a pop! Let's face it once we buy a Season Pass - they have our money in their bank account - what incentive do they have to actually spend the time and money to make that content compelling? I know of more than a few gamers that are still waiting - in some cases half a year or more - for content from a game that they're no longer playing. Paying full price for an alpha version of a game (I'm looking at you DayZ) is only slightly behind this trend in the crap trends of the year list followed only barely by paying full price for a game via Kickstarter that isn't even in development yet! At this rate, by the end of 2014 we're going to be paying to educate developers before they hit grade school followed by paying for developer sperm looking for donor eggs for games that will ship in 2035.

Here's another trend that emerged this year: Shipping broken games. SimCity 5. Battlefield 4. COD Ghosts. It seems as if some of the biggest franchises of the year were shipped before they were ready to meet budget. SimCity 5 is still broken - and what's worse even if the servers are up and running the game was broken so horribly, likely by the suits in the back - in order to create a DRM filled always online small city environment in which to sell us more crap that we don't need. BF 4 is so broken that it destroys save files - and it's broken across every version of the game. Not sure if Ghosts is broken or whether it just sucks. Whatever the case, please stop doing this.

Finally, let's take a look at some of the 'terrific' indie games that made the top lists. Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Garry's Mod, FTL, Rogue Legacy, Papers Please and all of the rest are interesting new games by the indie community - and maybe some of them deserve to be on our top games list for the year - but to the extent that they are, it highlights the total dearth of major games and our relative lack of interest in the new trends, the crappy stories, the nickel and diming and the total ass that has become the major game publishers. EA, Activision, Ubisoft in particular, are slowly eating the soul of gaming as an art and creating golden arched versions of our favourite franchises. A pox on all of them. Good riddance that this Annus horribilis is over.

Sean Malstrom, a prominent gamer-blogger and oil & gas industry analyst has been on a rant lately about the impact of hardcore gamers in the interactive entertaiment industry. His views appear to be that "hardcore" gamers are destroying the videogame industry and that they must be destroyed if the industry is to avoid a 1980's style crash. His views are interesting - if half baked, he does not define what he means by hardcore and makes references to male adult gamers that are fans of My Little Pony (?) though to the extent that one is able to follow his reasoning it appears to be misguided. The hardcore gamer is an important and critical consumer, and those companies that ignore them do so at their own risk.

I define a "hardcore" gamer as any gamer of any type that spends more than $300 per year on videogames (excluding hardware). I would consider those gamers that spend more than $500 per year on game software to be the extreme hardcore. This would place me in the "extreme" category for example - though that would include purchases for my three kids on various platforms including the 360, PS3, Wii, PC, 3DS, iOS, Android and BlackBerry. I would consider those on the lower end of this range to be the casual "hardcore", who by this definition are spending about $30 per month on games - that's the equivalent of three Netflix subscriptions. This lower end includes many of those that are often considered casual gamers - but at $30 per month should they be viewed as casual? I don't think so.

The point that Sean fails to appreciate is that the hardcore are the "paying" hardcore - and the paying hardcore are broad, wide and deep. The extreme hardcore are the "influencers" and the casual hardcore are the followers and these groups play off each other. Those extremers that spend the bucks on the WoW subscriptions and the rigs to play them are often vocal and loud and when EA messes up their Sim City servers or screw up their Mass Effect ending or look to gouge players by charging extra for the "real" ending to Dead Space 3 - the casual hardcore pay attention even if they've never played these games! A recent Forbes poll that was published during the Mass Effect 3 debacle listed EA as the most hated company in America - this is a cause and effect led by the extreme hardcore influencing the casual hardcore. They need and feed off each other.

A strategy of "destroying" the hardcore and focusing on non-gamers is doomed to fail. My wife for example, may sing the odd Karaoke song on Kinect or play Wii Sports - but she will never, ever, ever spend $300 per year on games. Ever. This strategy may be succesful for a while - the original Wii is a great example - but non-gamers don't buy games while the casual hardcore take leadership from the extreme hardcore, and without that leadership they also stop spending money on new games. This was the ultimate fate of the Wii - a woefully low game attach rate - and the consequences are now being felt on the Wii U, a system that is barely selling just months after launch. The recent Sony press conference announcing the PS4 recognized this by courting the extreme hardcore, the influencers, to get the buzz going, while including enough cool technology talking points for the casual hardcore to put it on their Christmas list. It's not a guarantee of success, but it at least recognized the realities of the market.

Let's see what Microsoft has up their sleeves for the next Xbox. Meanwhile Sean Malstron might want to put some thought into his rants.

/sorry - I don't run spell checks on blog posts. 

I finally got around to completing the Halo Reach campaign this evening and I' surprised and somewhat disappointed in the direction hat Bungie has decided to take thefranchise in this, their final kick at the can for the Halo franchise. To be clear, Reach is a good game and perhaps given the amount of content in the game I would go so far as to call it a great game... but Halo has moved too far in the wrong direction since Halo 3, and it appears to me that Bungie has run out of innovative ideas when it comes to the campaign and so they have resorted to offering up a bloated campaign that tries hard to be innovative but is instead derivative, it tries so hard to be fresh that it has slowly destroyed many of the elements that made Halo Halo.

I have a number of other complaints, including an AI that feels broken and that often cheats but I'll leave that for a latr post. I'm tired from the gaming and typing this up on my Kindle just now is putting some extra strain on my thumbs.

Gamers with jobs and families need to manage their time carefully in order to find time to engage in our past time - and with little time and lots to do, I have placed the difficult yet enjoyable Demon's Soul on my permanent backburner of "games that I intend to get to... some day", along with Persona 3 and 4, Grandia III and Chrono Cross. This is a long and deep backburner.

A few weeks ago I realized that the Overlord DLC for Mass Effect 2 was released and available for download. I played the story through to completion in a few hours and it was clear that Bioware decided to show off after some decidedly bland DLC packages that came across as afterthoughts or quick cash grabs. Overlord takes place on a lush and living planet that features the best visuals in the series to date. The story tracks a set of virtual intelligence experiments conducted by Cerberus that appear to have gone awry and now threaten the galaxy as they spin out of control. Following a trail of clues and lies, the player as Commander Shephard needs to come to assess the situation, find those responsible, and determine a course of action. This story may be linked to the recent novel Mass Effect Retribution which also follows the path of similar experiments by Cerberus on different characters. If you are a fan of Mass Effect, this download is well worth the time. I played the story through as the "good" Shephard - I'll try to get back to it eventually to play it as a "badass" Shephard over the next few months.

I also had occasion to fly across the continent on a business trip in the last week and decided to take out the DSi and take Dragon Quest IX out for a spin. The game starts slowly but it is instantly recognizable as a throw back to the days of old when games were turn based and enemies consisted of giant evil cucumbers. It's a delightful game though I'm likely only a few hours in to what is likely a thirty hour game so I'll reserve any judgement until I'm further in. I'll be flying to Europe later this month, which should give me ample time to make some deeper inroads into this story based game.