This past year was in gaming was an interesting one, and with all of the "Top 10" and "Top 5" lists being dealt, I thought that I might as well shuffle my own into the deck.  These awards aren't necessarily going to games that I felt were the best in their categories, but they made a personal impact on me, and for that, I think that they deserve at least a little bit of recognition.

Best Game With My Name In The Credits:
Winner:  Ultimate Board Games Collection (PS2)
As a temp, I was assigned to work for a tiny publisher called Valcon Games for the months of May and June last year to help them test this game.  It was quite a jolt at first, having been used to the large testing teams present at NOA, as I was, for several weeks, the only guy testing this game full-time.  I received some help from the COO, his son, who was home from college, and a third-party testing company, along with a few guys on the developer end, but there were days where it was just me, plugging away and trying to find as many bugs as I could in a budget-priced board game compilation.  It was rather grueling, but at the same time, the gentlemen that own and operate Valcon are nice guys with a lot of industry experience, and unlike Nintendo, offered to put my name in the credits.  Great game?  Not my cup of tea, but as budget games go, I did my damnedest to make sure that it was a budget game that wasn't broken.

Runner-Up:  Pirates:  Legend of the Black Buccaneer
I didn't contribute to this game nearly as much since it had already been approved for release in Europe when Valcon picked it up.  I spent my last couple of days for the company piecing together a primitive walk-through for the game.

Most Bizarrely Comical Character That Isn't A Rabbid:
Winner:  Nene, Samurai Warriors 2
There really has to be something said for a ninja that admonishes her enemies like a stern mother, but Nene's bonus stage in Samurai Warriors 2 just takes the joke to it's most ludicrous extreme.  My reactions ranged from jaw-dropping thoughts of "WTF?" to laughter, but it was consistantly goofy throughout.

Runner-Up:  Col. Blueberry, Metal Saga
Metal Saga has a lot of bizarre enemies, but Col. Blueberry takes the cake.  He spends the entire battle lounging on a seat strapped to a muscular henchman's back, and the Henchman spends the entire fight inching closer and closer to the party and not actually attacking.  When the henchman dies, he falls backwards and crushes the colonel under his own weight.  I've walked into a lot of boss fights unprepaired for the challenge, but I don't think anything could have prepaired me for that.

Most Ridiculous Character Design:
Winner:  Shalua Rui, Dirge of Cerberus:  Final Fantasy VII

And she goes into combat zones dressed like this.  God damn you, Nomura.  I enjoyed the game...but seriously, what the hell?

Runner-Up:  N/A.  Who the hell could compete with this?

Best Fighting Game Not To Be Taken Seriously:
Winner:  Super Gem Fighter:  Mini-Mix
Super Gem Fighter is an old game that was included as a bonus in the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, but it's easily the goofiest fighting game released this year or any year.  It's cute, it's silly, it's a pitch-perfect self-parody of Capcom's own fighting games, and it still plays roughly a million times better than any Mortal Kombat game.

Runner-Up:  Mortal Kombat:  Armageddon
I'm only mentioning this as a runner-up because:
A)  Not many other games fit here, and
B)  Some dude made Jack Thompson in the Create-A-Fighter mode, complete with "Legalese" as a fighting style and managed to send the real Thompson into another hissy fit in the process after posting pictures online.  That's just awesome.

Best Bonus Feature:
Winner:  Metal Gear/Metal Gear 2:  Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3:  Subsistance
Kojima Productions went above and beyond when they reissued Metal Gear Solid 3 with an online multiplayer mode, movie theater, and other new features, but to go back and translate the MSX versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 into English and include them in the package just shows an incredible level of class and respect for their audience.

Runner-Up:  Metal Gear Raiden, Metal Gear Solid 3:  Subsistance
I laughed, you laughed, everyone else laughed.  Well, except Raiden.

Most Bizarre Coincidence:
Winner:  Posting my Metal Gear Solid 2:  Sons of Liberty player review on July 4, 2006.

Runner-Up:  N/A.  Can't think of anything crazy enough to put here.

Best Movie Adaptation of a Video Game:
Winner:  Silent Hill
Granted, the competition in this category is minimal, but for what faults there were with Silent Hill's story, the movie nailed the feel of the games far better than any game-based movie adaptation before it, save perhaps the original Mortal Kombat.  It's a movie that deserves praise for its visuals and atmosphere if not its plotting.

Runner-Up:  Final Fantasy VII:  Advent Children
Although this is a sequel to a game rather than an adaptation, it still turned out fairly well.  I do take issue with the over-the-top acrobatics (I feel that those would have been best saved for truly superhuman moments such as limit breaks), but as video game films go, this didn't turn out that bad.  It also serves as a decent ending to Final Fantasy VII, which suffered from both a lack of a real ending and an abominable English translation.

Plus, some dude on the internet made this as a classic reference back to possibly the best part of Final Fantasy VII:

Best Sequel:
Winner:  Suikoden V
Suikoden IV was a slow, horrid mess.  I liked it at the start, but with the tedious sea travel combined with an excessive random encounter rate that made even me curse, the game quickly became a great disappointment.  Suikoden V corrects everything that the previous game did wrong and returns the game to its stronger points, foregoing poor experimentation for the tried, true, and fun.

Runner-Up:  Drakengard 2
Drakengard was a fun game with an absolutely insane storyline that suffered from some unfortunate gameplay issues, but Drakengard 2 fixes the gameplay in many ways for the better.  Unfortunately, the storyline is much more tame this time around, but it does still contain some twisted moments.  Here's to hoping that if they make a third Drakengard that the game will see its gameplay even further refined and a storyline worthy the first game.

Most Surprisingly Enjoyable Game:
Winner:  Final Fantasy XII
For the longest time, I was very closed-minded about this game.  Early news didn't excite me the way that news about a Final Fantasy game should, and the demo packed with Dragon Quest VIII was horrendous.  I just wasn't getting the sort of feeling from the game that I needed, particularly after the disastrous Final Fantasy X-2.  However, good word of mouth and reviews led me to finally try the game, and I must say that, even though I'm still playing it and only about forty hours in, it is far, far better than I had led myself to believe.  Perhaps going in with extremely low expectations helped this view, but Final Fantasy XII has turned out to be a pleasantly enjoyable surprise.

Runner-Up:  Madden NFL 07 (Wii Version)
I haven't enjoyed a Madden game seriously since the SNES days of the early 1990s, but the Wii version of Madden caught my interest and kept it.  With honest-to-god evolution for the first time in many years, Madden finally feels fresh and new, and even with its lackluster graphics and lack of online play, it's an amazing feeling to throw a pass or kick a ball in this game.

Demos are worthless.

I know that might sound stupid to a lot of people, if it weren't such a blatantly obvious shock statement made to keep you reading.  After all, the video game industry uses game demos all of the time to entice people into playing their games.  The thing is, for as good as they can be, demos aren't representative of the game experience as a whole and thus shouldn't be used as a make it/break it point in choosing what to buy.

Sonic the Hedgehog on the 360 is a prime example of why demos need to be viewed with caution.  As has been documented, first there there was this.  And then there was this.  What's the difference?  A large chunk of the game that wasn't included in the demo.  Namely the chunk that would have served as the deal breaker, the part that would have saved Donutta from dropping money on a certified POS.

On the flip side, a poor demo can make a game appear to be worse than it actually is.  The Final Fantasy XII demo that was included with Dragon Quest VIII was one of the worst demos I've ever played.  It included two fairly brief sections of gameplay pulled from their context, very little in the way of tutorials, and a head-first introduction to the most controversial Final Fantasy battle system since Final Fantasy VIII.  That's about it.  No discussion of the License Grid, no ability to adjust gambits, and nothing resembling a challenge in any way.  The demo was, at best, unappetizing and unpleasant.  If it weren't for reports about the rest of the game, ranging from GameSpot's review to intriguing word of mouth, I honestly wouldn't have even bothered with this game, but I bought it and it's far better than I thought it would be.

So take heed, fellow gamers, before you put your trust in a game demo.  They never paint a complete picture of what a game is like, and what the demos don't reveal may be far more important than what they do.  That download on XBL might have been pleasing, and that disc that came with that new game might have been crap, but don't make the mistake of assuming that they represent the full product.

Earlier this week, GameSpot began posting its yearly Best & Worst Awards, and started things off by announcing the winners of the Special Achievements.  Among the categories up for grabs on Monday was Best New Character(s).  The nominee list was quite a diverse bunch, featuring such figures as Jimmy Hopkins from Bully, the Rabbids of the latest Rayman game, and Zoe Castillo from Dreamfall:  The Longest Journey.

Then GameSpot handed the award to Gears of War’s Delta Squad.

Now, I haven’t played Gears of War.  I have very little interest in the game’s subject matter, and the character archetype of the brutish, gun-toting space marine is not my cup of tea.  However, if the Delta Squad proved to step out of the shadow of the stereotypical steroid-infused musclehead, then I’m all for that.  Evolution of character concepts is a good thing, after all.

But then this serves as GameSpot’s description for Delta Squad’s selection:

“Gears of War may be light on story, but the machismo-laced interplay between the four members of Delta Squad makes the few-and-far-between quiet moments in the game all the more satisfying.  Four macho lunkheads like to shoot guns, blow things up, and make fun of each other.  To paraphrase The Cole Train: 'Yeah!  Woo!  Bring it on, sucka!  That’s our kinda $#@!'"

Well, there goes that character evolution theory.  From the way GameSpot describes it, the four protagonists of Gears of War aren’t any different from the average gun-toting lunkhead found in many-a-video game.  Come to think of it, they sound like some of the morons that used to be on my high school’s football team.  I find this selection…less than satisfactory, shall we say.

The truly insulting thing is that there are so many other characters that could have easily made this nominee list that are more deserving for the honor than Delta Squad, if not the other nominees already present.  Just a quick list off of the top of my head:

Rocket Slime – Dragon Quest Heroes:  Rocket Slime

Gamers are finally given the chance to play as Dragon Quest’s hapless low-level mascot.  Rocket’s cute, squishy, and spineless, and he’s got a lot of fun slime-based abilities.  He just oozes charisma.  (I’m sorry.  I had to fit a slime-related pun in there somewhere.)

The Elite Beat Agents – Elite Beat Agents

The agents specialize in helping those in need through the power of dance, and they’re always there when needed.  Their cool charm matches the skill of their footwork, and their only goal is to help others succeed.  Saving the world to the tune of Jumpin’ Jack Flash doesn’t hurt, either.

Alicia/Silmeria – Valkyrie Profile 2:  Silmeria

Of any character introduced this year, Alicia’s problem is among the most unique.  She shares her body with a valkyrie, and that fact is enough to put her life in danger.  It’s really interesting and fun seeing how the two characters have to cope with situations given their different personalities and attitudes, particularly as things start going from bad to worse.

Midna – The Legend of Zelda:  Twilight Princess

Of all of Link’s various helpers and sidekicks, Midna is easily the best, although her competion isn’t particularly fierce.  Navi simply drove everyone mad with her incessant backseat adventuring, and Tingle was…well, let’s not talk about him.  Midna provides some great comical attitude to assist Link’s silent heroism, and she turns out to be an intriguing character in her own right.

The list could go on, but the point is, there were a large number of characters that were more than worthy of being considered for this award, and many of them didn’t subscribe to stereotypes or archetypes as drab and overused as the space marine with arms thicker than tree trunks.  If I wanted to go out into left field, I’d say that the reinvented protagonists of Final Fantasy III were more deserving.  The story they’re involved in might not be particularly deep, but the writers did a good job of giving each of the characters notable personalities that really show in the many conversations, including the new optional party chats.  Although they aren’t the most complex, or most original characters out there, their presence does wonders to reinvigorate an old game in which the original heroes were a quartet of clones impossible to identify with.  Good characterization helps make the experience a better one.  Do they deserve to win more than Zoe or the Rabbids?  No, I wouldn’t say that, but judging from the way GameSpot views the Gears of War protagonists, the Warriors of Light are at least more deserving than the Delta Squad.

One of the things I asked my parents for Christmas this year was a new TV.  My old one, which I originally got back in college, was decent for what I needed at the time.  It was small and had a built-in VCR.  Nothing spectacular, but when you're in college and want access to a TV in your dorm room, it's a godsend.

Anyway, that TV has been showing its age over the past year, starting with distortions along the edges of the picture and the sound occasionally muffling in its one speaker.  It still worked, but not at the level one would prefer.  Particularly when I'm watching a dramatic scene in Rob Roy and suddenly can't hear anything for thirty seconds.  The new TV isn't really anything to boast about, particularly when I see so many people posting pictures of their ZOMG brand 70" HDTVs with built-in coffee brewers.  It's a 24" SDTV with an S-Video input and stereo sound, which is a huge technological step up from the old set even if it isn't widescreen and impossible to enjoy Dead Rising on.  My only complaint is that I will probably have to hunt for a VCR, if only to watch the few tapes in my collection that haven't or won't seen DVD replacements.

So I've basically gained ten inches of viewing space, stereo sound, and higher-quality video input at the cost of watching my old Fire Emblem anime tape and that promotional FFVII video I keep around for the novelty.  I'd say that's a fair trade.

Okay, crazy thought time:

You know the stage based around the mayorial election in Ouendan?  Sony's like that fugly dude using Purple Afro Power to brainwash people into voting for him, while Nintendo is the poor guy that the cheersquad helps out.  It's like someone played that stage and scored a perfect run of 300s across the board.

It's late.  I'm bored.  Give me your crazy analogies, people.  I don't care what games you use or if they make complete sense or not.

Osu!

My latest NOA assignment has officially come to an end.  For whatever reason, the temp agency rep didn't call me until this afternoon (a Sunday), but she said that the assignment is over, and so I won't need to go in tomorrow.  It's a shame, but I did put in a good five months on it, and in that time, I did my part to make sure that the Wii launch went off as smoothly as possible.  Perhaps I'll work there again when the time comes, perhaps I'll move on, but either way I'm proud of what I accomplished.

Osu!

What I'm not so proud of is that my honeymoon with my own Wii console has come to an end.  The cause was nothing particularly dramatic; Madden simply locked up in the middle of a game, but it's the first time I've had any game lock up on the system.  Then again, it's an EA game, so I should have expected as much.

Osu!

In other news, if you haven't guessed by now, is that I finally picked up my own copy of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan from a local import shop.  I'm a huge fan of Elite Beat Agents, and I always wanted to give Ouendan a shot, but never seemed to have the time or the inclination to hunt down a copy.  Now that I have, however, I'm really glad that I did.  In a lot of ways, it feels just like EBA, and it doesn't have all of its successor's refinements, but damn it, those cheerleaders are awesome.

P.S.:  If you've PMed me recently, don't be offended if I don't get back to you right away.  For whatever reason, my inbox isn't opening properly.  I don't know whether it's a problem on my end or GS's, but I'll be getting to the bottom of it soon enough.

...

Osu!

Oh, boy, is it.

The forums erupted the moment the review for Twilight Princess went up, and the reaction didn't surprise me in the least.  Zelda is one of the most recognized, distinguished series in the history of video games, and so reactions were bound to be strong.  There are the fanboys that wouldn't be satisfied unless Zelda got the eleven that they feel it so richly deserves (never mind that the vast majority of these people never even touched the game in any form before they made these comments).  There are the Sony and Microsoft fanboys that thought that the game should have been rated lower because, you know, it obviously sucked.  8.8!  Oooooooooh!

Of course, then there are the level-headed people out there that realize that while 8.8 isn't the best rating a game could get, it's still far from the worst, and far, far better than the average game could really hope for.  Twlight Princess might be "bad" for a Zelda game, but that's still excellent company.

I'll be honest.  There are some negative points I agree with in Jeff's review, and some that I don't agree with.  I don't have to agree with it, and I'm sure that the vast majority of gamers out there that were interested in Twilight Princess would have bought the game even if Jeff had given it a seven or a six.  The point is, despite the game's faults, it is, by and large, still a game worth playing, even though it's largely a game that you might feel like you played before.

That's not to say that I don't think that GameSpot staff members are immune to criticism.  Matt Rorie demonstrated nothing but foolishness in his Soapbox diatribe that railed against both the Zelda series and the fanbase.  He is entitled to his opinion, just as Jeff is entitled to his, but the difference is that while Jeff's review is well-argued and (to someone with a balanced emotional state) agreeable, Rorie's rantings come across more like one of the Sony or Microsoft fanboys baiting a twelve-year-old Zelda fanatic into a tantrum.  To an extent, his argument is justified, but the direction in which he took it made him no better than some of the worst members of the forum community, even with his greater command of spelling and grammar.

Zelda is a series that could use some changes.  They don't need to be major; I'm not asking for Link to buff up and don power armor while Zelda's pole-dancing at Club Hyrule, but even some more variation in the traditional structure of the series would be welcome.  Ganon doesn't always have to be the villain; Link's Awakening was proof of that, and the series can also play with new twists to the mechanics, as was shown in Majora's Mask.  For all of the same-ness that people complain about, Nintendo can and has put twists on the formula to varying degrees.  To see them take another such step in the next Zelda title would be more than welcome.

So let me get this straight, GameSpot.  Genji: Days of the Blade and its prequel are, according to the review for the new PS3 game, based on The Tale of Genji?  Whoever told you this is very, very mistaken.  I can tell you this because I have a two-volume English translation of the text sitting on my bookshelf, and nowhere in the story does it feature anything even remotely related to the video game.

The Tale of Genji is an ongoing romantic saga about the life of a man given the name of Genji, a name commonly given to those who did not hold royal claim to the throne despite being related to the line of succession by blood.  The book details his many various romances with women of various social standing and was in fact written by Murasaki Shikibu, a courtlady of Heian Japan, and contains little to no acts of physical violence at all.

To suggest that the Genji action game series is somehow related to this old piece of literature strikes me as ludicrous.  Granted, it's been a few years since I've last read the text all the way through (the Royale Tyler translation published by Viking), but I'm positive that Sony's action game series has absolutely nothing to do with The Tale of Genji.

Unless you're a psychic genius that somehow managed to find this blog entry without clicking through a gauntlet of GameSpot pages to get here, you probably know a hell of a lot more about the Wii now than you did this morning.  The system will have a price of $250, pack-in game included, and that has me stoked.  There are a lot of interesting and fun-looking games coming out on the horizon, and at that price, it will be easy to afford.  I couldn't be happier with the announcement.

So why is it that some people are being so stubbornly ignorant about what the Wii is?  From some arguments, you'd think that Nintendo took a GameCube, glued Wii receiving techology to the motherboard, and threw it out the door.  Talking to these people, it becomes obvious that the only way they'd be happy is if Nintendo sold the system for $99, game and extra controller included.

I'm going to reiterate a stance I've stated on a couple of occasions already.  I don't know how much money Nintendo spent on the Wii's R&D process, nor do I have any clue how much it costs to produce the system.  Judging from the cost of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, a sizeable chunk of that money more than likely went into developing the motion sensing technology, but other than that, I don't really know, and I don't care.  It doesn't matter to me if the Wii is capable of the least graphic power of the next-gen systems.  I'm not a technophile that masturbates at the sight of new hardware specs.  The fuming horde of whiners furious at the concept that Nintendo could charge $250, claiming that the system is overpriced in the face of the $600 PS3 (pack-in game not included), are behaving in such a way that it's absolutely baffling to watch them put forth such ludicrous arguments.

The fact is that I paid a total of about $250 for my GameCube and initial game the holiday season following the launch.  I'll be paying a roughly equal amount to buy a new console with upgraded graphics technology and control capabilities that are far and away outside of what any of the previous gen consoles could ever do.  The whiners can piss and moan about how they're not getting a Nintendo PS3 for the price that the company is offering.  While they're busy acting like screeching monkeys, however, I'll be having fun with a new console that does everything I had expected of it, plus more.

I finished the story mode in Dirge of Cerberus tonight, and from start to finish, I thought that it was a great ride.  It's not an eleven point awesome, but it does pretty much everything it sets out to do well, and with enough flourish that it remains fun and interesting from beginning to end.  There are only a few different weapon types in the game, but the customization system provides a surprising number of options to choose from as the game goes along, and really, I'd settle for a few weapons that are good fun to use than have a sea of weapons that I'm never going to bother with.

In short, I pretty much disagreed with every single negative point in Greg Mueller's review.  As a matter of fact, I can't say that I've ever been fond of his review style, which is seemingly to take a game and gleefully tear it apart, positives be damned.  To paraphrase another GS regular, it's like he's the website's official anti-RPG reviewer.

I'd recommend to anyone reading this to at least rent Dirge of Cerberus through whatever method you prefer and give the game a shot.  It's not something that will be for everyone's taste, but it's certainly a lot better than Mueller makes it out to be.