I've been playing games for a long time. I remember when 16-bit games were the new thing, and I watched the rise and then fall of arcade gaming in America. I remember when playing at home with more than two people at once was a revolution. I remember when gaming in a huge group consisted of four Xbox Systems hooked up in four different rooms with a private network as we all played on split-screens and yelled at each other across the house. And now I have fond memories of playing online as well as offline in different aspects.

For me, gaming is not just a solo experience. I mean, I do have those games where I get sucked in and play them on my own, but I really enjoy games where I can play with friends, and I especially like games where I can play with friends in the same room. I enjoy split-screen stuff, and I enjoy online stuff. A lot of times, I wish that games would implement doing both at once a little better. But not all games can be Halo, I guess.

Recently, (about a week ago, I guess), the most recent MAG beta ended. I have to say that I am amazingly impressed. I'm really excited for this game. I don't think there have been too many other games that have so deftly captured the utilization of teamwork in a game, even in games like SOCOM. MAG is seriously in a class of it's own.

Now, for those of you who don't like it, I can sympathize. After playing Modern Warfare 1, and recently 2, this game was a little hard for me to wrap my head around. You see, those games are really more about the solo game, even in multiplayer. It's not about the team, it's about scoring your own points. In Modern Warfare, you run around, maybe camp in a good spot, and try to get as many kills as you can. But MAG isn't that game.

MAG is a slower-paced game where you really have to help your team in order to succeed. If you're looking to be the triumphant hero by blazing a swath of destruction, this isn't your game. Instead, it's about finding your role, and doing it. Not everyone is a front-line soldier. I know that I'm not. I tried my hand a sniping, and though I'm alright, I'm not the best at it. Instead, I've found that I'm an excellent Support and Medical Soldier.

In the beta, the goal was simply either to capture objectives, or to defend objectives. In order to do that, you had to keep your squad alive. While I would sometimes get kills, most often I would simply run up with a Medical Kit and revive people around me, keeping them alive and healthy. There were several games where I would get perhaps two or three kills, but 20+ revives, and I really felt like I was contributing, because the soldiers around me could keep on fighting.

When there were others contributing, I had MAG groups that were simply unstoppable, because everyone was looking out for each other. One soldier would fall, and there would be two there to revive him, heal him up, and repair whatever damage allowed someone to get a shot at him. We would hold our bunkers, hold our ground, and fight hard, because we each knew that someone had our back if something started going sour.

Now, of course, I've played MAG sessions where the opposite is true, and everyone seemed to just be looking out for themselves. It fell apart, and we lost that session horribly. I continued to try to support my teammates, but with no one else looking out for each other, it just became a mess of everyone dying, no one repairing, and no one reviving one another, and the other side just slaughtered us. But even then, as those of us with headsets discussed the game, we realized, for the most part, what went wrong. The lack of teamwork killed us, and we all knew it.

It's a very different crowd though, between MAG and MW2. When I went back into Modern Warfare last night, I was disappointed to realize that the sense of camaradarie was replaced by straight-up anger at one another. Frustration turned into all-out hatred, and soon the racial slurs and sexual epithets started to fly, and I just listened in perverse fascination at the sheer contrast.

How could two games, which on the surface seem so similar, produce such diverse reactions? I think it's just the nature of the design. MAG is focused on teamwork. You can't just muscle your way. You can't just camp in one spot and expect it all to work out for your benefit. The maps are just too big, and there's just too many ways to approach. You need help. You need your teammates.

On the flipside, a MW2 master can just walk his way through the opposition, building up a Killstreak of 10-15 with relative ease if they're good enough. The game is all about showing off how badass you are, how much you can dominate your opponent. And because of that, it's all about the glory of one, and not the glory of your team.

I'll be buying MAG as soon as it comes out, because of that difference. I want to support a game that focuses on putting emphasis toward working together. I don't think that there are enough of them. While Co-Op is on the rise, I think that MAG is on a completely different level. It's in a class of it's own.

I like to play games, but more importantly, I like to play games withmy friends, not just against them. This is a game that will let me do that.

See you guys on the front lines.

- K

(Probably going to be some minor spoilers in here. Just a warning. - K)

Well, I just finished Assassin's Creed 2 last night... Er, this morning. I think it was about 2 or so this morning, actually. It was quite an experience. I really enjoyed the first one, though it did get a little repetitive after a while, and this one does share some of those minor faults, (like Ezio randomly jumping off a building to his death when there is a perfectly good path right in front of him... ), all in all is was a wonderful gaming experience.

But what impressed me even more was the conceptual story. It was very "conspiracy theory" meets "sci-fiction alternate history", and I'm just geek enough to love it. I mean, going through history and referencing Edison, Tesla, Hitler Stalin, JFK, and who knows how many other historical figures, all as part of this grand war that has been fought in the shadows for generations... It was just all too crazy.

At the very end of it all, after Ezio has finally reached his goal, one which even he didn't fully comprehend, and the screen has finally gone dark, you find yourself sitting there, your mind trying desperately to comprehend what in the world you've just seen. There's just a couple amazing beats where nothing happens, and then Desmond comes in and says the exact phrase that you've been thinking:

"What the f***?!"

If you've played the game, and you haven't collected all of the "Truth" symbols, I would recommend doing so, because the amount of work that was put into that side-quest is so unbelievable, it's just kind of astounding. There were just so many moments as I was working through those puzzles where I couldn't believe the connections that they were making. Of course, it's all fiction, but it has such a feeling of truth to it that I was simply blown away.

What an amazing work. This is the kind of story that gaming deserves, and I'm really excited for the next one in a few years. Congrats, Ubisoft. You've bested yourself in an amazing way.

- K

I've been playing Modern Warfare 2 since it first came out. I picked up the Hardened Edition on day one, beat the normal campaign that night, and then started playing the online multiplayer, quickly coming up against Level 50 and Level 60 players in the Team Deathmatch modes, and regularly getting my butt handed to me over and over. Since then, I've gotten better and better, learning new strategies, coming to understand the game a little better, and improving skills.

But I think my biggest help has come in the form of the Offline Multiplayer of MW2.

Now, I don't know it it was just an afterthought, but playing offline is an almost identical experience to playing online, albiet with a considerably smaller group. I have a group of six friends or so who have come to really enjoy the game, and we get together every week or so and play for a few hours, and it's really been a blast. Everyone creates their own profile, and so they get to track their own progress. It brings me back to the old days of Goldeneye or other similar split-screen games before online gaming became the standard.

After every match, each of us will go through, hoping that we unlocked some new Callsign or Emblem, or maybe got that gun upgrade or Perk Unlock that we've been working on. We do silly things, try new strategies, and generally all just die a lot. And with the XP system completely intact, just about everything you do brings you a little closer to another unlock or upgrade or something else, and the action doesn't seem to get stale. It's an engrossing experience, which has just made for some really crazy nights.

It's such a different experience when you're not only playing with other people, but when those people are in the room with you. While tempers have flared on occasion, things generally stay in good spirits, and there isn't the usual annoyances of prepubescent or otherwise immature players singing or shouting stupidity into their headsets. It's just friends playing the game. And even though we're all not all that good, we're getting better.

The only complaints that I have, (and I know Infinity Ward is reading this, so I'll be sure to spell them out clearly ), are minor. But here they are.

1. LAN - While network support is included, it only allows for one-player-per-machine, which is annoying. While we can play four people split-screen, we can't add another system and play with eight. I don't know how difficult that would be to release in a patch or something, or even in DLC, but I know I'd really enjoy it. It's just that there might not be enough demand for it.

2. No Map Cycling - Every time you play, you have to change the map, which is tedious. I wish that there was a "RANDOM" option that we could just highlight, and leave alone, but there isn't. So we've just taken to starting at Afghan every time and cycling through the maps manually. It only takes a second, but that would have been a nice feature.

3. Radar On by Default - Every time we change the map, the "Game Mode" option switches the "Radar Always On" mode to "Yes", which is kind of stupid. My friends and I debate about whether it enhances or detracts from the game, but I personally prefer it to be off. There's no subtlety or sneaking when everyone in the map knows exactly where you are at all times, and some of the perks and weapons upgrades are designed specifically to keep you off the radar as much as possible. I just wish that the options that you select once would save, so that you didn't have to go in and rearrange your options every time that you changed the map.

All in all, it's a very cool, but very likely underutilized feature. If you have some buddies over and have nothing to do, I highly recommend giving this a try.

- K

I wonder sometimes about whether gaming to me is a help or a hindrance. On the one hand, I love the way that video games allow me to lose myself in a different world for a few hours every couple of days. But on the flip side, that's exactly the problem. It's so easy for me to get swallowed up, drawn into a game that I kind of lose track of time, and unfortunately I don't always get the things done that I should.

Yesterday, I was supposed to be finishing up a project that I needed finished this morning, and I had plenty of time to do it. But, because I'm kind of a bonehead, and because I haven't played much in the past few weeks, I picked up my PS3 controller "just for a little while." Three hours later, I was still working my way through MW2 on Veteran, and I kept looking over at my clock, annoyed that I wasn't actually finishing my project.

Now, I got the thing done this morning, and everything worked out great, but there have been a number of situations where I've kind of procrastinated my priorities in lieu of a game, just because I find myself drawn back, pulled into gaming.

Oi. I know that each of us has felt this way, gone a little overdose on gaming for a while, or allowed ourselves to slip into a few "overly long" gaming sessions. Either that, or we go on a binge because we haven't had a chance to play in a while. Gaming can be a difficult temptress, and it's just something that I need to keep in mind. It's just a game, after all, and it's still going to be there after I get my stuff done.

So, it's more about willpower than anything, and that's just something I need to exercise. Game on, but game responsibly, I guess is the lesson. Just something to think about.

- K

So, I was in Gamestop today, as my little brother wanted to pick up a PSP. He's had his PSP-1000 forever, and the UMD drive doesn't really stay closed anymore, and so he wanted a new one. I figured a used one would be the way to go, as long as it worked right.

In any case, while we were there, one of the screens popped up an interview talking about Dragon Age: Origins which, as anyone who may have been reading in the past little while knows, has taken up a significant amount of my attention recently. I casually mentioned to him that I really liked that game.

One of the salesmen overheard me, and grabbed a copy of the game to show me that they carried it. I replied that I already owned it, and really liked it. Apparently because I'd already made the purchase, he preceded to tell me that he didn't like the game because he "just couldn't get over the graphics, so I gave it back."

Now, I've heard this kind of thing before on the topic of this game, and I have to say that I don't understand the complaint at all. I've read it here on Gamespot, I've read it in other places online, and now I've heard it from a game store employee. So, I went back and turned it on today. And... I still don't get it.

Have we become such snobs that psuedo-realism isn't enough for us? I could understand if the gameplay wasn't great (it is). I could understand complaining that the storytelling was bad (it isn't.) I could understand just about any other reason, at least if it made the game not fun to play, but because the graphics were a little below some undetermined average, it's completely unplayable?

I just don't get it.

How could a game like Demon Souls (which has pretty good graphics but is a masochist's wet dream) be so overwhelmingly recommended despite its complete lack of storytelling and character development, and a game like Dragon Age (with excellent characters and powerful storytelling tools) be panned because of the art direction? It's like whining because the supersonic racecar wasn't painted in your favorite color.

Whatever, I guess. It just leaves me with an excellent, fun game to play, despite the strange standards that others seem to hold their game up to. And now, back to Ferelden.

- BK

I miss the days of the arcade. When the opponents you played against were ones you usually knew by name. When the latest and greatest games weren't the ones at home on your NES or Genesis, but were the cool ones at the mall, or at the 7-11 down the street. When you could wear your prowess with Kano or Guile on your sleeve and people in the arcade would recognize that.

But then the arcades waned, and stumbled, and died away, to leave only a shell of gaming's former glory, with only the online universe and itsidiosyncrasies to take its place. And now we get to deal with gamers (and others) who feel like the world owes them everything simply because they want it.

Why is it that there is this weird a profound sense of entitlement that seems to take over throughout the tech-driven universe? Everyone seems to feel that they exist, therefore they deserve everything and anything from anyone at any time. They feel like they can get anything for free, and they deserve it.

"Oh, Microsoft cancelled my account after I hacked something, which is against their rules. I should sue them." "Oh, Nintendo isn't allowing me to do something that they don't support and didn't intend their system to be used for. I deserve to now be monetarily compensated." "Oh, World of Warcraft is charging for things that I can't afford. It's not fair. They should pay ME to play their game." All this going back to the classic "Oh, I was an idiot and spilled coffee on myself because I was driving while drinking it. I deserve 8 million dollars."

Is the world just nuts? Has everyone just lost their ability to reason? Their use of common sense?

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of it. But I think I know what some of the problem is.

I remember back to the days before the US Arcade scene disappeared into the realms of consoles. I remember playing Tekken, and consistently stomping people with Eddy, and then Hwoarang, and later with Steve and Marduk in Tekken 4. I remember cocky, punk teenagers walking up and bragging to their friends how they were going to smoke me. And I remember their stunned silence after they werethoroughlytrounced a few times over.

There may have been swearing, but it was never at me. After all, when there's a physical proximity of less than two feet between you and the person you want to yell at, it makes you really reconsider whether the idea is worth it. And usually, it's not, and you just walk away, and let yourself cool off instead of doing something stupid over a video game.

But now, we have the online realm. Little punk 13-year olds living off their mommy's dime can swear up a storm at you, insulting everything from your mother to your race to your humanity, and the most that they get is either told to pipe down, or you can mute them. But to me personally, you know what I think they need? You know what would help them more than all the stupid parenting books and whatever else is being used to raise them?

A swift kick in the butt.

I was raised to be respectful to others, and it annoys me more than anything that there are people who don't have the same ideals when it comes to that. If you don't agree with me, fine. I don't mind that. But keep it to yourself. I'm not an idiot because I'm different than you. So grow up a little, realize that the world doesn't revolve around you, and treat people with even a shred of decency.

But even as I say this, I realize that the people to whom this would do the most good for are those who willfully ignore it, and so these words fall on deaf ears. Alas, all I can do is stick to my guns and not let it bother me too much.

Oi. I miss the days of the arcade.

"Each of us are extras in another man's movie, but we decide if it's a speaking part." - B. Karratti

I think that each of us plays games for many different reasons. We do it to unwind. Some of us may do it to actually get ourselves more riled up. We game to cooperate with others. We game to dominate others with our unbelievable skill. We game because while we can't exactly live the stories on a film or be the heroes in the stories that we read in books, comic books or watch on TV, we can feel like we're doing those things in a game (at least to some degree).

It's a surreal kind of escapism; the ability to become another person, to say those things and do those deeds that we don't have the opportunities to say or do in real life. We can blow a helicopter out of the sky, we can destroy legions of the undead, and we can save the world, get the girl, and when it's all said and done, we can do it all over again.

But for me, it's not only the "Holy Sh**!" moments that keep me locked into a game. Sure, there's plenty of times where a certain jaw-dropping sequence will nearly make me drop the controller as I jump out of my chair in unbelievable, mind-bending amazement at what has just happened on the screen. But more often than not, those little moments fade over time to become more of a triviality.

What keeps me playing, especially in a single-player game, is the story. It's the experience. And it seems that, while I've been annoyed about the perceived absence of good storytelling in many of the games in recent years, the past few months have been a divine plethora of choice storytelling game experiences. From Ghostbusters, to Batman: Arkham Asylum, to Brutal Legend, and most recently Uncharted 2 and even Modern Warfare 2, the storytelling in games has just been getting better and better.

But my most recent game took it all to a whole new level.

I just finished Dragon Age: Origins this morning, after a lengthy campaign of many, many hours. Immediately, however, I started from a different origin story, and I'm going to do it all over again. It's been quite some time since I was last pulled into a game so deeply, especially in ways that made me think about my choices, made me question my decisions, and forced me to live with the consequences.

I don't really want to go into a spoilerific stream of things, so let me be general in my praise here. The gameplay is excellent. There are a number of difficulty settings for all different play tastes. There's the super-meticulous turn-based strategy experts who understand all the nuances of Mana and damage types and how each point will affect each character... And then there's the setting for guys like me who only wants to worry about keeping my character alive while I'm hacking a couple of lightning swords at a dragon's feet. But the most important part about the gameplay is, to me, that it doesn't get in the way of the story.

And what an experience this story is. There's themes of loyalty, themes of passion, lust, greed, honor, respect, hatred and fear, as well as hundreds of variations of it all. As the pivotal character of the story, your decisions affect everything, from the way that history will reflect on your adventures, to your relationships with your characters, to who will stand by your side at the end of it all. And what makes the whole thing so engaging is how deep and intimate so many of these little moments can be.

SPOILER

For example - I spent a lot of my attention, at least in the camp, with Morrigan. I wanted to know her stories, understand her history. I think I eventually ended up exhausting all of the dialog options for her, actually. But early on, she related a story about the fact that she had once found a golden mirror that she cherished as a child, but later her mother shattered it as a lesson to her.

The story disappeared into the recesses of my mind, until a few days later, when I was playing again, and I happened to spot the gift of a "Mirror" in one of the shops in Orzammar. I bought it immediately, thinking of Morrigan's story, and gave it to her at the camp. It created a very powerful little scene where she was very appreciative of the gift. It was a very interesting, "thoughtful gift moment", one that only served to deepen the immersion of the player in the story. That attention to detail is just amazing to me.

END SPOILERS

I haven't had this kind of experience since I played Fallout 3, or even Oblivion, which is an easy comparison, but Dragon Age is so much more polished, so much more rich in character and depth, that I would hasten to say that they've surpassed both of those games completely. This is an open-world RPG done right, and I can't wait to play it again.

Well, this has gone on longer than I anticipated, so let me just end it like this - If you haven't played this game, you should. But this isn't a kids' game. This is a story that requires some maturity, some thought, and some patience and curiosity to truly appreciate. If you have the time and patience to allow yourself to be drawn into an unbelievably rich, yet richly believable gameworld, than this is the game for you.

Trust me, you'll love it.

- Karratti