I decided to copy my old reviews (off my Mirkan account) and slap them onto this account since I did technically write them. They mostly reflect how I feel about those games still, and especially the retrospective Halo review will come in handy when I eventually do my retrospective Halo 2 review.

I've been on a quest to find the perfect gaming forum for quite some time. One where platform bias is mostly set aside, and where you can borderlessly discuss games on the merits of the games themselves. A place where you can dig deeper into gaming and the philosophies behind it.

If there is such a place I've been unable to find it, so I made my own.

Game & Think (a totally failed attempt at Game & Watch wordplay) is a forum for gaming enthusiasts. Gaming as a concept, a thought, an artform or just as something you do.

It's incredibly difficult to kickstart a forum, so I wager it'll be mostly inactive for quite some time, but I hope it turns out good in the end. I'll just need to.. force some people to post at gunpoint.

Updated!

There's been x amounts of goodness in my gaming life lately, and I have to admit I wasn't prepared for actually loving Phantasy Star Universe like I do. The beta has been extended until the 21st, which still leaves an entire month of waiting for its PAL release. I don't know why playing the beta seems so important to me, because I'll most likely have to start over once the full game comes out, but I just can't help enjoying it immensely.

I recieved my copy of Splinter Cell: Double Agent today, too. Coinciding with the release of Lumines Live! on.. well, Live. After playing three missions of Double Agent I frankly couldn't quite shake the feeling of slight disappointment.

To be honest I don't know what I was expecting really, apart from it being more than "Chaos Theory with shades" - which graphically it.. sort of is. It's not that the game itself isn't better, because it feels dynamic and open and downright thrilling to play. It's just that.. Chaos Theory could essentially have been this game just as easily. It's better in a way that CT itself could've been without the 360, and while I'm not usually one to cry "not next gen!1!!" - actually hating the expression with a fiery passion - this feels disappointingly familiar in terms of animation and visuals. It's sharper, no doubt, but the lighting of the older Splinter Cells was already so fantastic, the HDR here doesn't make a huge difference at all. When you're moving around, especially during night missions you could easily mistake it for CT - in fact my nephew did, coming to pick up his memory unit, seeing me play it. Animation is the culprit for sure, and it cements the notion that this is the Pandora Tomorrow style extension to Chaos Theory much more than a proper sequel.

For the record, the notion that it's better looking than Metal Gear Solid 4, which some have stated, is absolutely laughable. Its textures might win in screenshots, but that's it, I assure you.

All that said, I'll play it proper and probably write a review. I was mighty impressed by Chaos Theory and threw it a passionate 9.6 on my old account, so the foundation for Fisher love is certainly there.

Lumines Live is vastly more disappointing though. It's essentially Lumines, which means that it's possibly one of the best games ever, but it's chopped up and compromised in such an incredibly soulless manner it's difficult to not feel entirely heartbroken about it. There's no Shining, there's no Lights, and the game is roughly a 4th of the length of the original game going through the challenge mode. Extra packs will be made available on the marketplace in due time, priced at 600 points if the first "advanced pack" is any indication, and while that might help make the game feel more complete, it's insane that you're already paying 1200 for something so inferior to the original game.

It's still AWESOME, but in its current state I can't wholeheartedly recommend it. There's lots to do in it in terms of puzzle modes and versus stuff, but the main draw of the original game - the challenge mode - is crippled to the point where its former brilliance doesn't quite come across. I'll holler if any of the subsequent skin/music packs make a big difference.

---

Update: Advanced Pack downloaded!

Some time yesterday the Advanced Pack was indeed released onto the marketplace, and I was right there to gobble it up. Does it feel like the missing piece of my broken heart? Yeah it sort of does in a sense.

Thing is, the philosophy behind Lumines Live is very much that it's Live, in the sense that it's an ever changing Lumines. I didn't truly get that before, but was just adamant to have it be the PSP version. The result is that you can't really talk people into buying LL and have them understand what was so brilliant about Lumines in the first place. In fact, it feels like it's an open source version of the game for people that are already fans - sort of like the complete opposite of what I thought before I grabbed the new pack.

The pack weighs in at another 50MB (!) which essentially makes it the second half of a 100MB game. It adds a bunch of songs, and from what I could tell, the Advanced Challenge Mode is slightly lengthier than the initial one thanks to longer songs. You'll get a few more new ones aswell as a few more from the PSP version. Still no Shining or Lights in sight though, which is a little bit disappointing perhaps, but with the promise of a constant stream of content, that may well change in the future. In any case, the new stuff is occasionally very good and lives up to the high standard set by the original.

Even if you use the skin edit mode you won't get a game that throws as many levels at you as the PSP version did in one go. This is perhaps the only disappointment left once you realise that there'll be many more packs to play through if they keep true to their initial idea behind this edition. The fact that you can't just slap an infinite amount of songs in a playlist seems stupid, and I really expected that to work. One of the greatest things about Lumines was that it seemed endless. It had an unfathomable amount of songs/levels, and when you finally reached the end you got to hear the almost legendary "Lights" and essentially play a sunrise. That's gone here, it's just.. not retained at all.

To summarise: Lumines Live is suddenly a way more promising prospect that while not fully realised yet, feels a great deal more worthwhile having downloaded the advanced pack. If you're just going for the base pack I flat out don't recommend a purchase, but if you're grabbing both then go right ahead. I can say with confidence that PSP Lumines or Lumines Plus for the PS2 will still be the best ways to experience the game, but as someone who already has, this is an excellent customizable, ever changing version to own.

Lumines fans will have to look to Lumines 2 for a true sequel though, because Live clearly isn't it.

I was playing Saints Row earlier today, buying clothes, having my character remodelled (again) and snazzed up my car. Some mission sent me after some hookers supposedly having been kidnapped by the yellow clad Vice Kings.

As I was shooting my way into their HQ I found myself walking instead of running like a nutball, even though I'd obviously shot everybody. It threw my thoughts down a familiar lane. I was walking because it looks cool. I'm basically holding back on playing the game because I want to immerse myself in it.

Sure, you could argue that a game like this is meant to be role played to some extent, evident by the heavy customization options, but what if those are a product of misdirected effort too?

A friend of mine once said something that has become part of my internal terminology. It's not so much a word as it is a phrase. We were playing Brute Force and he said "I wish you could crawl in the grass". Now there's nothing in BF's gameplay mechanics that suggest that there'd be any kind of point to crawling in the grass. Even crouching simply works as a way to steady your aim and regain stamina faster. My friend simply thought it would look cool if you could.

But the thing is; there's nothing there. There's nothing at the end of the pretend role play in these games. It doesn't matter that you walk instead of run in an attempt to not look like a lunatic. It doesn't matter if you drive properly or drive backwards on the sidewalk, and If you find yourself caring about these things, you'll eventually realise that the game doesn't, and that you've been spending ages on distractions instead of progressing at the intended pace.

When we watch a film we expect it to use that time to tell us a story. We wouldn't accept a film that simply stops doing that, becoming incoherent and pointless. A game is supposed to offer gameplay - progression through gameplay, so why do I feel like I should walk - not run - down the streets in a game when there's no progression there? Should this be considered a design flaw?

I think in order to figure out if it is, we need to look at how people play games today. I recently discussed difficult games with the good folks over at the Xboxyde forums, and I tried to remember what was the motivation for playing those games when I was a kid.

Turtles 1 repeatedly used my brain as a squash ball, but I kept at it. Not because there was a story or a cutscene at the end of it, but simply because I wanted to beat it. I wanted to BEAT IT. I uh, never did, but that's beside the point.

Few people today play games to beat them. The challenge isn't even particularly sought after, but rather a nuisance overcome by quick-save-a-thons, cheats and pathetic difficulty settings. If a game is difficult it's just frustrating and flawed, and the definition of difficult seems to have become "I don't almost not make it, I actually don't make it! :O". Challenge isn't welcome.

Instead people complain about how games are shorter these days, when they really aren't. It's just that back then you played the same game over and over until you sodding knew what you had to do to complete the next bit, whereas today, every design choice in terms of progression is made so you don't lose interest before you're spoon fed the next cutscene. Difficulty is the phonecall in the middle of the movie.

Why bring this up? Well, it directly relates to why people sit down and play a game today. They want to be immersed. They don't care about whether or not they kill the boss, they just want to look cool doing it. The philosophy has drastically changed regarding a lot of game design catering to the masses, because the masses barely make a distinction between playing a game and getting to interact with a movie that steadily, without effort, progresses towards the end.

Walking in Saints Row is the crawling in the grass actually implemented. I'm just a dinosaur who has difficulty grasping the concept of encouraging something through theme and content that doesn't actually matter. To me it's the plot device in a crappy movie that doesn't lead anywhere.

"But what about the inmate's crazy sister's boyfriend?" says someone.
"He's just... crawling in the grass."

TGS went by relatively quietly. Somehow everybody pretty much knew what to expect from it in terms of what Microsoft were gonna show at their conference, and few secrets actually came out of it.

It's a couple of hours now since their X06 conference wrapped, and in the wake of that I find myself much more excited about the future of the 360. Splinter Cell was finally locked down as a proper Xbox game even though technology could have it otherwise this coming generation, and Banjo and Halo Wars are two brand new games that actually induce genuine excitement. Because that's rare, really. Somehow most 360 exclusives so far have been mostly sequels or games that for whatever reason you've sort of nodded and gone "yeah, naturally" about.

The Halo Wars trailer at the end of the conference was perhaps the newest, most surprising thing MS has shown in a conference since the first Halo 2 trailer in fact. It promises something rarely seen on consoles - an RTS - and a completely different chunk of history from the epic Halo universe. If Halo made console gamers play FPS, then this'll get them into realtime strategy.

I haven't had the opportunity to actually check out the Banjo trailer yet, but there's really nothing that needs to be said about this game. It's the sequel to this and this. It's everything the 360 needs to feel like it's covering all bases at this point, with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey both being confirmed for both US and Europe during this conference.

Bioshock looks absolutely incredible too, though I'm going to need a support person or voice chat with Winnie the Pooh during my sessions with it, or I may come out severely scarred on the other end. Then again, combining Winnie voice chat with underwater nastyness might scar me worse than having those two experiences separately.

Bioshock - Almost certainly too scary!

It remains to be seen how significant the whole exclusive GTA4 episodes thingie will be in the long run. I wager if Sony manage to get some kind of network up and running, then Rockstar will almost certainly slap some *exclusive episodes* on that aswell. Exclusive content has supposedly gotten more important this generation what with the consoles being about equal in power and performance, but to me it's just vagued everything up.

Speaking of vague exclusives; Assassin's Creed was, as I'm sure you all know, demoed live on 360 hardware. It looks utterly fantastic. The notion of being able to climb anywhere is just intoxicating, and the half-confirmed speculation that it has a futuristic/sci fi twist were more or less confirmed proper at X06. It's an exciting prospect to me because it ensures that while the setting is realistic and reasonably normal, there can still be surprises in there. I think after today's conference, people are pretty much forgetting it's for PS3 at all.

Assassin's Creed - Assassinating the notion of being
a PS3 game.

To top it all off, Doom was released on XBLA and tons of news regarding new titles, along with new screenshots were relased. It's proven itself once and again that it's a success of a service, and quite honestly I think it's going to be difficult for the Wii and PS3 to top it. Not only does it have a consistent stream of classics, but also brand new, genuinely interesting stuff. You can sign me up for a Mutant Storm Empires, that's for sure.

So, while I haven't covered everything, those are probably my most thunk thoughts, so to speak. When it's all over I always feel like something was missing from these X shows though, and I always come to the same realisation - Sony and Nintendo stuff. Because ultimately, the only downside to Microsoft's X0 events is that they don't cover everything, and until Nintendo can get a decent annual Spaceworld up and running and Sony can actually say something half worthwhile during their number crunching, X0 is by far the closest thing to gaming christmas.

Apart from actual christmas of course. Man, it's october soon.

Reviews can be misleading or guiding - accurate or inaccurate in conveying what a game is about and whether or not it's for you. They're written by people, so naturally some of it is gonna be bias, taste, opinion, preferance, all of that human stuff, but while reviews are far from perfect they can nevertheless be dynamic and enlightening.

There's something I don't get though; the notion of price having any kind of significance. We're playing games in a time when they stay full price about three months maybe, and after that they successively drop until they're about 9 quid in Play.com's Why Are We Even Having A Sale Now? sale. At the same time we're supposed to believe that the demands on fun factor or value of a game should be in proportion to its RRP.

Table Tennis - it's fun because it's cheap! Uh, wait...

Once games drop in price, does that make them better? If I'm given Toshinden URA for free, does that make it enjoyable? Does paying 200 quid for Zelda: Ocarina of Time actually make it a less incredible experience? No, it doesn't.

D-Xhird - getting cheaper, but not any better.

My point is; a game should always be judged on the merits of a game. Disregard of any outside influence, because it's ultimately a good game a gamer wants, not a bargain.

Okay, almost done setting everything up again. I used to be "Mirkan" on here and everywhere else for about 10 years, and I finally decided to change my *global* user name. When I realised you can't just change your user name on Gamespot, I thought what the heck and created a new account instead.

Still working on some decorations for this place, and also, Yakuza review coming up fairly soon. Stick around, and mind the wet paint later!