Who would have guessed a nuclear fallout could be so depressing? I'll concede that, during such a catastrophic event, most people would die and the tortured living would be crazy with the smell of death enveloping them. I'll even admit that buildings designed to withstand a 4.0 shake on the Richter scale may not be able to stand strong during a 40 megawatt blast. Yes, shades of gray dominating the landscape seems like a plausible consequence for setting off a massive bomb. But does it have to look so darn uninviting?

I have been playing Fallout 3 the last few days and I feel like I am the unlucky survivor of a digital, yet still quite powerful, blast. A large part of the appeal of playing games as a whole, and specifically open world games, is the joy in discovering new places that not only provide enticing gameplay opportunities, but offer a visual treat as well. It's why I so eagerly traipsed through Stilwater and Liberty City this year, roamed the lands of Albion twice, and place Nippon at the top of my virtual vacation resorts. I search for diversity, beauty, and exhilarating new areas... and Fallout 3 doesn't have any of that.

Everything looks identical in post-apocalyptic D.C. One town melds into the other, each awash in a sea of indistinguishable crumbling buildings and a gray palette that has never heard of the word "pigmentation." Fallout 3 is an ugly game, almost too ugly to play. RPGs are an escape, a way to experience the world in a consequence free environments. To interact with people in a way you would never dream of in real life and see sights mere humans have not been privy to.  Yeah, the game captures what the world would be like after the bomb hits, but is that really a good thing? There is no imagination, no life, no reason to explore in Fallout 3. 

I am not a stupid man. I understand that, to create a post-apocalyptic wasteland, you have to eschew the majority of the color scale. I knew going in that this wasn't going to be as warm or enticing as Nuts & Bolts or Oblivion. The sheer lack of imagination is startling, though. I am not impressed with a strict representation of what our world is destined to look like. They could create a virtual cow intestine or factually correct landfill and I wouldn't want to experience those either. Fallout 3 has become a monotonous, arduous experience. Apparantly, a perfect recreation of human destruction makes for a lousy game world. 

I have issues with the shooting (the worst aspects of First Person Shooters and Role Playing Games in one tight package!) and the character interaction (three choices, none of them what I want to say), but it's the bleak aesthetics that's keeping me away. Is there a reason to keep trudging through this desolate landscape? Or should I shelve it for a world actually worth visiting? 

If you guys haven't noticed, I finally posted my Banjo review yesterday. About time! I hope I swayed those on the fence into picking it up. It's easily one of my favorite games of the year, just a ridiculously awesome experience.

I was writing the review yesterday and got to the part where I needed to describe how the excellent creation tool works. I had a sentence that read something like, "The only thing you'll need is an engine, fuel tank, and a seat for Banjo to sit on--the rest is up to you." Reading that sentence over, it occurred to me that I may be wrong. Did I really need an engine and fuel tank?

I fired up the game (any excuse to spend more time with N&B is ok in my book) to see what I could come up with. I had a very basic idea: Banjo's seat with just a spring underneath. Springs don't require fuel, right? They're natural, like wind or bears with backpacks. I went to the track to make sure it actually worked and, well, it was ridiculous. Has anyone else tried this? The spring is so powerful, I was rocketing all around the arena, hitting my head on the ceiling and whipping across the bumpy ground. Pure chaos. All that work poured into crafting the perfect vehicle, and all I needed was a chair with a spring. Who knew?

Anyone else have wacky vehicles they'd like to share? I'd love if you could send your blueprints to me. I want to see what this game can really do! 

I got my first chance to finally play a finished version of Banjo: Nuts and Bolts this weekend, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I finally had one of those laugh-out-loud, now-I-get-what-Rare-was-thinking, moments that I thought I should share. 

I spent my first few hours using preset vehicles, only going into the workshop a couple times to perform slight tweaks to my ride. But now I'm facing off against Grunty for the first time and needed something with a little more oomph. I've been avoiding my first confrontation with her until I get some better pieces, but I figured that I should just suck it up and see what she's got.

In typical ridiculous Rare fashion, my first battle with the witch involves a giant coconut that can somehow destroy the world. I'm not sure about the details, but I'm sure science is involved. My job was to steal this overgrown nut from her, which would require more power than I'm used to. I would have to build a vehicle from scratch to overcome this problem. To the workshop!

I had a basic concept in my head: I usually have this huge tray in my car to carry objects around, but I didn't need that here. I needed something quick and maneuverable, but also powerful enough to do battle head-to-head. I stripped everything down to the core essentially--a few blocks provided the basic structure, with spiked ramps along the side to protect me from heavy contact. I mounted Fulgore's Fist, a melee weapon, on the front of my tiny ride so I could cause pain with a direct hit, and mounted the egg gun above it to provide some long range attacks.

Of course, I forgot all about an engine. Silly me. So I went back to add an engine, along with an ammo tank for my egg gun and fuel for my car to move. But, once again, I found my vehicle inoperable. Turns out in my attempt to streamline, I only attached three wheels (one in front, two in back) which makes it a pain to turn. I added two wheels and, before starting up the mission again, went to the test track to make sure it worked. It maneuvered like a breeze, was faster than my other cars, and the egg gun had great range. I was happily ramming an overgrown soccer ball around with Fulgore's Fist for a good five minutes before I remembered my objective: get that coconut!

After 20 minutes of tinkering with my first self-made car, I finally set off to fight the witch. I tore off after her like a man possessed, slamming on the X button to egg her stupid car to oblivion. And... I won. After 8 seconds, I was collecting my prize of notes, jiggies, and a shiny T.T. Trophy. So awesome! All that planning and plotting and all I needed was an egg gun. 

This game is going to take a lot of my time. If my review takes a little longer than usual to go up, just realize I'm carefully molding the perfect tool of destruction. I can't wait until I get a spring, or a boat-mobile! 

Who needs a meaningless number to pop up when you achieve some triumphant act? Not I! The achievements in Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 are amazing, but they're over so quickly. We could make our own and make this amazing game even more exciting. Who's with me?

First up: Survive for 1 minute in Pacifism mode without destroying any enemies. You have to avoid those pesky blue followers and the blasted gates. Are you a bad enough dude to pull this off?

Give me your best new achievements for the best new game on Xbox Live Arcade.

Dinosaurs may be the biggest tease in the history of life. We're talking about giant lizards that are extremely agile, smarter than your average beagle and have teeth sharper than Cutco knives. What could possibly be cooler than that? But they had to die out a few hundred million years before I was born (always late to the party...) and now I'm left impatiently waiting for geneticists to figure out this whole cloning-extinct-creatures process in my lifetime. You would think that video games would be the perfect place to recreate the animals I so cherish. This is the medium that made kart-driving, turtle-shell-tossing monkeys a common occurrence after all; surely digital artists should be able to craft a worthwhile dinosaur simulation, right?

The newest Turok game was supposed to overcome the sins committed by previous dinosaur-themed failures, but it turned out to be just as delusive as all the other games that have mangled the memories of these majestic monsters. It's not a bad game, but it has less than enticing dinosaur interactions. Shooting at tiny creatures who look like a mere blur as they sprint through foliage and under your legs may seem like a fun idea in some warped view of reality, but it has never made for an exciting video game. It's like shooting rats in a dank sewer level--developers seem to toss in these atrocious ideas to make us prove our love. In Turok, I quickly realized how futile my high-powered rifle was against these tiny terrors, so I whipped out my knife. It seems like it would be cool covering your hands in the blood of long-dead animals, but I couldn't find any enjoyment in slamming the trigger every few seconds to watch the same canned death animations over and over again. Dinosaurs deserve better than this!

I reached the low point in my dino-gaming quest a few years ago when I bought (as in paid real money for) a Nintendo DS game called Dino Master. How could a game in which you're the master of dinosaurs possible be bad? That's what I get for spending my hard-earned cash on a fancy title. This is just a rip off of Qix, an arcade game that was released the year I was born. You've probably played a million knock-offs of this concept through the years, none of them any good. I didn't realize it was a mere Qix clone when I bought it, but that didn't immediately make it a waste of my time. As long as it's loaded with dinosaurs that need mastering, I can't really complain, right? Turns out the Qix portion, the vast majority of the gameplay experience, has mythical creatures that bear no resemblance to my favorite extinct creatures. The dino sections are these excruciating, turn-based, no animation, one-on-one, rock-paper-scissor battles. Who thought that would be a good idea?

I have two ideas to push this dinosaur subgenre to the forefront of gaming. First of all, someone has to put a Raptor Rex in their game. I don't really care what capacity or even what type of game it's placed in, I just want to see this represented somewhere. Feel free to admire the subtle awesomeness of this amazing bianimal via the wonders of MS Paint. If you can't tell, it's a raptor wearing a cowboy hat, wielding a whip and riding atop a T Rex. Someone, anyone, steal my idea! It's way too hard making one of these things in the Graffiti Kingdom character creator.

Second idea: Nintendinosaur. Nintendogs would have been a fine game if I didn't already own a very needy dog of my own. Why not create a pet simulation for an animal I am not physically able to own in real life? And it could even interact with my Nintendog! I'll leave that feature to your imagination. If we can have games based on grooming cats and horses (I refuse to pluralize things with a z), we should have one for dinosaurs.

Who's with me? I've suffered through enough lousy dinosaur games for one lifetime. I demand a better virtual dinosaur experience!

I should have written a blog post a month ago. Instead, under cover of night, I joined the Gamespot review team and started thrusting my opinion on the unsuspecting masses, without so much as a tip of my hat. How impersonal. I can imagine many people scratching their heads, wondering who this unknown man was, and why he insists on having a space in his last name. I will offer no such explanation here, though. Instead, I'd like to devote my opening statement to one of the true marvels of the gaming world: No More Heroes.

My first reaction after viewing the Real Ending of this game was, "Are you serious?" I played and loved Killer7 two years ago, but even after becoming seriously interested in Harmon's spiritual secrets (is he God, Satan or both?), I still thought No More Heroes was pretty nuts. I cannot believe that someone like Goichi Suda has been allowed to make games on home consoles; his ideas seem to clash with everything else out there. But this is not just a new K7 with a different gameplay mechanic. While Killer7 had a deep story behind the overflowing blood and schizophrenic mind shifts, No More Heroes is just about being as over-the-top as the digital medium will allow. I am simply ecstatic that it exists.

There is not one serious element embedded in this game. From the name of the main character (Travis Touchdown) to the town you reside (Santa Destroy) to the very story holding these extremely violent excursions together (Quest to be the #1 assassin), this game is unrelentingly focused on being the strangest game out there. And while some people have been known to complain about the rather sedate minigames you must play between assassination missions, this juxtaposition further cements just how completely out there this game tries to be. Can you think of any other title in which you can cleanly chop off five heads with one fell swoop of your lightsaber in one minute, and then go collect coconuts on the beach the next? And it actually makes sense?

After sitting through the ending credits with a dumbfounded smile plastered on my face, and gasping in gleeful shock after the final, post-credits revelation, I reflexively glanced over at my collection of games from the last two generations. Aside from Katamari Damacy, of which no amount of praise would be too much, the rest of my collection (many of which are all time greats) are simply predictable in comparison. The stories are safe and easily digestible. Even when they bring about real emotion (as is the case in the exquisite Okami), there isn't anything that's truly shocking. Games like No More Heroes simply do not exist. The idea that someone can conceive of something so completely out there and actually find funding for such a project gives me hope for the future. There are no restrictions!

From beginning to end, No More Heroes realizes that it is beyond reality and pushes this idea to the furthest point possible. The combat seems to laugh in the face of other games in which a similar fight-to-be-the-best formula is enacted. This isn't a game about testing your gaming mettle; it's a saccharine-soaked bloodbath of joy. Only a modicum of skill is needed to destroy the 10 assassins who stand in your way to be the best, but isn't that how it should be? In one's own surreal imagination, when you're picturing your own quest to greatness, is there ever an insurmountable boulder blocking your path? Or do you have previously unrealized skills and abilities in your dreams, where lightsabers can be ordered online and every obstacle you must overcome is not only quite easy, but located less than 3 minutes from your home?

In many ways, No More Heroes feels like the daydream of a very sophisticated 12-year-old boy. The characters and situations are so thinly linked, it feels like a crazed tale being concocted by a group of insatiable friends constantly trying to outdo the other's bizarre turns. The twists that surface towards the end of the game are so cliché they are actually unexpected here. Suda51 may not be a master storyteller, but he certainly understands how to pique one's interest and pay off when push comes to shove. NMH ends on such a high note, it's impossible to even imagine a respectable sequel, even though my dreams usually end with an easy path to success.

Using any established criteria to determine what is and what is not a great video game, No More Heroes would fail in every category but sheer inventiveness. But you know what? In this blog where numbers have no place, I can throw my own distorted take out there and just see what happens. I am not willing to say that NMH is the best game that has come out this generation – I will need at least a year or two to fully digest what I played – but I can say with full certainty that this is one of the most memorable and enjoyable games released in years. I can say that this is why I started playing games in the first place and why I have chosen to review games for a living. To me, video games are all about living something that is simply not possible in real life. No More Heroes goes one step beyond that, giving me a virtual world that I wouldn't have even imagined beforehand. This is a true work of art.