Sorry for taking so long to finish up this list. But here is my favorite game of the decade. First off, a recap of 10-2:
10. Metal Gear Solid 4
9. Call of Duty 4
8. World of Goo
7. Grand Theft Auto IV
6. Valkyria Chronicles
5. God of War II
4. Mass Effect
3. Uncharted 2
2. Chrono Cross
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1. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
As stated in my thoughts on Mass Effect, Bioware are master storytellers. Take that talent and add in the Star Wars universe and you have KOTOR. But what's so great about the game is that you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it. It's a well-crafted RPG with a riveting plot, an excellent cast of characters, and a fun combat system. Being a big Star Wars fan certainly doesn't hurt though. Using force powers and wielding a lightsaber is easily one of the most thrilling things I've ever done in a video game.
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Hope you enjoyed taking a look at my favorite video games of the decade. Happy holidays everyone!
Thanks to Homer Rabara for the image.
Been playing quite a bit of Forza 3 and it's probalby the best racing game I've played to date. Picture of my sweet ride!
Thank goodness for roll cages!
Someone tell Collin that the TGS design looks fantastic, fun, funtastic, and fun.
So, I just got home and my plans to jump right into Aion: Tower of Eternity have been temporarily put on hold while I wait in a queue to get into my chosen server. Right now the wait time is sitting at 22 minutes, but it said something similar about 10 minutes ago, and when the number changes it's not always moving in the right direction. Anyhow, since I can't play just yet I figured I'd post an early impressions-style reviews blog entry about the game. And, since I'm having some trouble accessing the reviews blog right now, it's gonna end up here instead - at least for the moment.
In case you're unfamiliar with Aion, it's a new MMO from NCSoft that's been available in Korea for a while, but which officially goes live here in North America tomorrow. I preordered the game several weeks ago, so I was able to get in on the "headstart" launch that went live at noon yesterday. After seven or eight hours of play I'm still only level 12, but I'm starting to get a good feel for where the game is headed I think, and so far I'm liking it a lot. And here's why, in an easily-digestible bullet point format:
- Character Creation
Aion's character creation tools are extremely powerful - like, EA Sports powerful. Sure, you can just pick a head, a body, and a hairstyle if you don't really care for this stuff, but if you want to recreate Pygar from the movie Barbarella, you have the option to tinker with just about every facial feature imaginable. The flipside of the character editor is that it gives you the freedom to make unrealistically proportioned characters with, for example, heads that are far too small for their bodies, or with tree-trunk arms and legs bolted onto a puny torso. Save for some presumably PVP-minded players opting for the tiniest character they can come up with, though, most people appear to be opting for something that at least resembles a human being. - The Launch
Perhaps it's not surprising given that the game is already out in Korea, but queues aside, Aion's launch has been an incredibly smooth one thus far. I was able to get into the game around 10 minutes after the announced midday start time, and although I was disconnected about 10 minutes later, I've experienced no problems since. With new players descending on the starter areas like a swarm of hungry locusts, content was getting devoured quicker than it could respawn, but getting quests completed was rarely a problem. - Combat
So far the assassin that I've spent most of my time playing as is a lot of fun - somewhat similar to a rogue in World of Warcraft, but with less emphasis on stealth. There doesn't appear to be a combo system as such, at least not in the WoW-rogue sense, but you can chain attacks together and, rather than having to map every move to a different button, every move in a chain is mapped to the same button. So, for example, after I perform my "Swift Edge" attack, I then use the same button to perform a "Soul Slash" and, when I reach level 22, I'll be able to press it a third time for a Rune Slash. It's been done before, but after sinking so much time into WoW and into organizing dozens of different buttons, it's a feature that I very much appreciate. - The Visuals
Even if I end up posting a dozen of these blogs before I'm ready to write a full review of Aion, I think I'll find it tricky to ever do so without mentioning how great it looks. The aesthetic is somewhat similar to that of Guild Wars, but with superior animation and the CryEngine under the hood. I posted some new screenshots, taken on my relatively modest home PC, to the gamespace today - definitely worth checking out. - Flying
Perhaps the most unique thing about Aion is that, from level 10 onwards, your character has angel-like wings that you can use to fly. Initially, you can only sustain flight for one minute, but my understanding is that increases as you level up. Also, you can only fly in certain zones, which seems a little odd, but is necessary so that you don't just bypass enemies and stuff completely. - Gathering & Crafting
Although I've trained as a weaponsmith, I've yet to spend much time crafting - there are a lot of materials that need to be purchased in order to work with metals it seems, and I came close to bankrupting myself long before I was able to craft a simple steel dagger. Gathering is interesting in that, rather than having to train in order to learn how to pick things up off the ground, everyone can do it. So, providing you take the time to pick flowers and fruit early on, you'll find that you're able to mine iron and gather other higher-level resources later on. Bag space is an ever-present concern, of course, but these things seemingly stack in massive numbers (I have 110 of one resource right now), you get big bags (known as "cubes" in-game), and there's a bank/warehouse system with both character-specific slots and account slots that can be accessed by all of your characters on the same server. I'm a pack-rat by nature, so bag space is always a "thing" for me, but right now it's not taking up nearly as much of my time in Aion as it always has in WoW.
And, with that it looks like I'm ready to get back into the game. Be sure to go and check out those screenshots, and expect more Aion coverage from me in the near future.
Cheers
I've been a bit remiss in posting on GS, but I'm not quite a ghost yet. 
I came back from 29 Palms a bit earlier in the month, only to find out that I had a week-long field op the following week. Totally burned out from back to back fieldings, I just became kind of a recluse, so I'd like to apologize once again to those I'd shunned on XBox Live. It's the nature of the profilic beast that when I'm signed in, I'm also online, and I just wasn't in the mood to talk to anybody. (Trust me, my wife says I was quite the bear when I first came back from Cali.)
At any rate, I'm once again between field ops, since October promises another trip to Fort Bragg for a month (20 or so days) of pure military goofiness. Ah, who cares about that?!? You guys are here about the games!
One of my buddies heading out to Afghanistan hooked me up with a bunch of games to bolster me between GameFly titles, so I'll be playing quite a few. While I finally got rid of my copy of Halo 3, I can probably be enticed to play online with Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty 4, or GTA IV if you can handle a bit of n00bishness in the mix.
I finished my first playthrough of Inifinite Undiscovery, putting a final touch to 26 hours worth of game. It doesn't sound like a lot for an RPG, but I'll admit to blazing through the latter parts once I realized that a lot of content simply wasn't available on the initial playthrough. It'll be a while before I tackle the next difficulty and the secret dungeon. I know there's a lot of content I missed out on, and I have quite a few achievements waiting to be picked up here.
I also played Ghostbusters recently. Fun game, filled with the same wit and mayhem from the two movies and the cartoon series. Worth picking up if you're a fan, and the online content is really interesting. Along with teaming up with fellow Ghostbusters to bust ghosts, there are certain type of ghosts (Most Wanted Ghosts) that appear only after you've captured other ghosts from other levels. It's a nice bit of flagging that's not available in other games, and is a bit more exciting than what can be found in other titles. Plus, you can earn money to buy other costumes and whatnot. Really fun!
Also put to rest was Batman: Arkham Asylum, hands down the best Batman game to date. And while that's not saying much in regards to the Batman series, this game is definitely getting my game of the year vote. Fluid combat, dark atmosphere and visuals, killer soundtrack and voicework, plus penned by the master himself: Paul Dini of DC Comics and Batman: The Animated Series fame, this game has it all! If you haven't played it yet, you owe it to yourself to rent this game. (Because of the length, I wouldn't recommend dropping $60 on it!!)
Finally, I am plodding through Resident Evil 5, not because it's a poor game, but because it's M rating means that I only play it when my daughter's not around to get freaked out by the non-zombies and epic violence. Still not crazy about the controls, but Capcom has yet to make a game that I'm completely impressed by. Is it just me, or is Chris just hard to control? I feel like I'm slightly retarded every time I aim in on a non-zombie.
Anyway, that's me for now. I'll update soon! Thanks for stopping by!
If you're interested in the design and thinking behind games I highly recommend Danc's Shared Items. He has a very nice perspective on game design, and the feed has great content collected from a wide spectrum of game blogs. His Lost Gardenblog is also good, but (obviously) is not as wide ranging as his shared items.
Part of my own volition, part out of necessity.
I've been waffling for a long time about buying a home server or making a home server - my girlfriend and I each have our own computers and the process of backing each of them up is a painstaking process as I run back and forth with an external hard drive and complete the process every couple of weeks or so. I could automate it, but that requires spending money. Then again, I have had failed hard drives before and the prospect of losing import files, photos, and videos is not pleasant. Especially with a kid on the way and the **bleep**-ton of photos that will come from that.
I'm also on a budget, which means no more reckless spending. So I bought a simple little D-link DNS-323, which is basically a dinky processor and OS crammed in a metal box that fits two hard drives. It acts as a network drive (or drives), a print server, and will stream media to both the PS3 and Xbox 360 and iTunes on both our computers.
It's kind of neat, although I quickly realized that while my router is competent when it comes to sharing the internet, it only does 100mbps networking - no 1000mbps gigabit. So the hard drive peaks at about 12MB/s for writing data...which means my initial 400GB backup took a LONG time. Almost as long as the 10 hour cloning of my old hard drive.
During all of that, though, I quickly realized how disorganized all my computer files are. They date back to the mid-90s and are piled in folders that at the time seemed to make sense. Only now I have gigabyte upon gigabyte of random files dumped in random locations and the slow, slow process of digging through them all and figuring out where they belong is driving me insane. It's like what I do at work part of the time, since we also have files from previous employees and directors dating back to the 80s and there were no systems of electronic organization.
Of course, once I do organize them I have to figure out a system of keeping it up to date or I'll just have to drive myself nuts again in a year's time. I also want to set up scheduled, automatic backups now, which is part of the reason I bought this little NAS. No more running around with a hard drive doing it by hand!
Sorry about the huge gap in between emblem uploads. I got distracted by Comic-Con work but I just finished up a batch of E3 emblem assignments.
If you have a ps3, you need to at least play infamous through once! that game literally took me by suprise. i could not put it down! it is a mix of grand theft auto, fable, and spiderman all in one! it is so much fun. i played through as an evil guy (i always play as a good guy, so this was really fun for me). this game is the best game for the ps3 so far this year! can't wait for more greeat games this year!!
Here are three cool new E3 site features I'm excited to see live in the days before E3:
- Showfloor Map - We've done Flash maps before, but this year we tried to strike an even balance between function (as site navigation and place information) and playfulness.
- Custom Twitter stream (right-column of E3 page or as a popup) - This custom Twitter app mixes discussions between editors' Twitter accounts and users who reply to them. Even before the show, it's already been an entertaining stream of discussion, and it's only going to get better during the show. To use it as a Twitter app, click the link to pop it out into its own window.
- E3 Photo Feature - We only have one batch up now, but as the show progresses, many sets of images taken from the show floor and related E3 events will get added to the photostream. We've been pretty limited in how we put up images on GameSpot (only as screenshots or standalone news images), and this is a test for doing more to tell a story with images.
E3 is reborn for 2009, and the new show deserved some extra GameSpot site development effort.
Here is what a bunch of us former GameSpotters have been working on.
First of all, I just want to publicly air my support for the man who will, in less than an hour, be our new President. I'm not going into this new administration with blinders on, and I can safely say that I already question one or two of his ideas, but I do have faith that President Obama will have a positive effect on the office of the President, on the country as a whole, and on our perception in the larger world. He is inheriting a great opportunity, and a massive burden. Here's hoping that he (and we) can rise to the occasion.
And on a much more trivial note, my lovely wife just bought me an amazingly extravagant early birthday present: an XBox 360. This big lump sum purchase leaves us rather cash-poor at the moment, so no games other than the two that came with the system ("Lego Indiana Jones" and "Kung-Fu Panda"). I did, however, sign up for XBox Live, which is very cool. The only problem is that I had to sign up as "grailwolf13" because someone already had the name "grailwolf". It's very odd. That's the first time I've ever had anyone else take my usual name, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. Anyway, if you see a "grailwolf" on XBox Live, it's not me, but a "grailwolf13" uttering my usual catchphrase will be the genuine article.
I won't be able to be online very often (at least, not playing), but if you see me around go ahead and introduce yourself. And if you need someone to catch bullets, fall off platforms, or get eaten by zombies, I'm your guy. Hurdy gur,
-Marc
Hello everyone, I thought I'd post the following PM I received from jkatj and the response I sent. I should've explained this earlier but if you all could help to get the word out I'd appreciate it.
"Hi waltmor, Sorry to bother you, but I have a question that I think you might be able to help me with. Lately, I've been noticing in addition to forums for shows with names like "Official Episode Discussion: [episode name]" there are sometimes show forums set up titled "Homepage Discussion: [episode name]." I've been wondering what different purpose the two are meant to have. While searching around trying to find an answer, I noticed that you started all the "Homepage Discussion" forums that I can find right now (for example in forums for "The Unit," "30 Rock," "CSI"). Could you fill me in on what should be discussed under "Homepage Discussion" vs. "Official Episode Discussion"? I appreciate your help"
The difference is that I'm trying to keep comments made on the homepage in the main feature block out of the official episode discussions. I have to associate a forum topic to each of the main homepage headlines now in order to accommodate the comments that are made. And I'd rather keep them outside the official discussion threads because they're shorter and much more casual than the entries in the official threads. Does that make sense?
If anyone has a better suggestion for what to title each of these new threads please let me know. I settled on "Homepage Discussion" because I thought that might be self-explanatory but if that's not working so well I can adjust it.
It's that time of the year, again!
Believe it or not, this is my first red ring of death. Fittingly, Left 4 Dead is what sent my supposed "RROD-proof" Halo Special Edition console to its green, green grave. The poor thing was barely a year old! Fortunately, my cousin has my back-up premium unit, which I had sent back to Microsoft twice already for repairs.
My final thoughts before Xbox 360 #3 bit the dust:
"No Mercy on easy difficulty with pistols with no health packs and no friendly fire. I can do it!"
"Oooh, gpbmike is on. Oh, but he's watching some lame Netflix movie."
"I'll just jump straight off this building for a short-cut, thank you very much. Follow me, Bill!"
"Wait--What the hell? OK, reset. Wait a minute. Breathe. Turn back on."
"Well ... Damn it."
EDIT: Could it be the NXE? "Is NXE causing red ring of death for Xbox 360?"
This game looks unbelievable. Zero-G battles is all I need 
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/oh-snap-cc-red-alert-3-hands-on/326/
An old-school GameSpot reunion. I love how Jeff pretends like he's meeting Greg for the first time.
