Recently, I played Final Fantasy XII (the US version) again and I noticed how boring it became 3 hours later. I started thinking why it became boring and I reached a conclusion that it was in its completely-free license board system. I thought about this massive freedom and remembered Fallout 3, which had me bored because of its open and rule-less world. Now most of you will flame me for hating freedom but realize this: I love freedom to a certain extent.

Since GTA3, games with open-worlds and sandboxes have come out in packs and groups. They had the same theme: Do what you want, where you want it, whenever you want. All you do is save your game and you can run around shooting civilians from your car. I'm not against that in any way. I actually had great fun in GTA: San Andreas as I drove around with 3 stars on my head. But as time passed, the "freedom" you put in a game changed from something to make a game unique into what you need to avoid the replay-ability issue found in most RPGs.

Now this freedom isn't just in how open your world is, it's in different aspects of a game. You have the freedom to choose your dialogue in a conversation. The freedom to choose what equipment and magics your characters can use. Of course all games have this one way or another, but games that feature freedom are the ones that have bucket-loads of it inside.I see games like Final Fantasy XII with an almost rule-less license system and I see openness alright... but I don't see freedom.

Playing an open game gives you a massive world/license board/choice of words with almost no limitations and that's what bores me. There's no guiding hand to tell you that giving a Knight all the Black Magic is wrong. There isn't a long path leading you to where you should be. Freedom is to have this open space and yet have rules and limits as to how you're going to move around.

I know it's hard to make a game that creates a balance between open and closed gameplay but I hope that we get to see such beauty in the future.

I always thought of Nintendo as the company that played it too safe in the gaming world. With its lackluster 2008 and seemingly lame 2009, it was unavoidable that the Wii, Nintendo's representative in the console wars, would have to start putting in some could-be-GotY contenders to keep up with the Xbox 360 and the PS3. The Wii found hits in Resident Evil 4 (2007) and No More Heroes (2008 ), but neither seemed to compete with the likes of Bioshock or Gears of War 2.

So what should the Wii do? It started getting other mature games like Dead Space: Extraction and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. Is it enough, at a time when everyone's gonna start thinking about Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin's Creed 2? I highly doubt any of the games the Wii is gonna have can combat the arsenal of games both of the other consoles have left for the year.

So to the question asked by the title, I highly doubt the Wii is ready to get into the hearts of the hardcore gaming population. If you look at its graphics, it's just a few steps ahead of the PS2 and hell, I could even say that it's somewhat close to the PSP. I admire the Wii because of its innovative idea of playing a video game without simply sitting down and hitting the right trigger while aiming with the left, but Microsoft's Project Natal is surely going to surpass whatever Nintendo will offer in 2010. Nintendo's era of console dominance was due to its family-oriented of business but even the young gamers matured and decided they wanted to be Marcus rather than Mario. Nintendo then tries to attract these gamers by offering games that didn't tickle that inner hardcore and now, they're Left 2 Die.

Most of you may not agree with all that I've posted here but what I know is this: Nintendo's gotta step it up huge or they're gonna go down huge.