It's been a long time since I've blogged my reactions to some piece of gaming news which has cropped up. Indeed, the only one I can think of that's most recent is one in which I ranted about how the Xbox360 Elite was a bad business move on numerous levels and that has to have been about a year since then. But today is a special day because two news articles I chanced upon have compelled me to return to form at least one more time because they both essentially address a topic I hold near and dear as a gamer: obscure games. And these aren't related to just any old bunch of obscure games, either. These are related to what many would call among the best of the batch. To see what I'm talking about, though, let's just jump in with my sentiments about these two articles of which I speak.

Sega, PlatinumGames sign four-game deal

At heart, I am a huge fan of Clover. It might have churned out a few too many Viewtiful Joe games that diluted what made it truly special in its first incarnation (and why it made me give it the only 10 in my years of reviewing), but at the end of the day, Clover knew how to make great games really, really well. One only needs to play Okami for a while to know that they were more than competent as a developer. So suffice it to say that long after Capcom disbanded the studio, I've been keeping track of the team up to its current incarnation, PlatinumGames.

The news that they were able to sign on with Sega, of all publishers, was surprising to me in a two major ways. Number one was probably that I just plain wasn't expecting the development studio to actually show up in the gaming news for quite sometime. After all, the company has been around for only a year and it can take while for any business to get its footing. Number two was that Clover, while known for being able to create really high-quality work, didn't typically have its games do too well in retail, especially in its later years. Sure, Viewtiful Joe was a success for it, but I don't think anybody is delusional enough to think that games such as Okami and God Hand actually broke anywhere near one million units. With that in mind, Sega has been a publisher which tends to go with relatively low-risk projects. Sure, it releases a Samba de Amigo and other such things every once a while, but the myriad of Sonic games should be enough to indicate that they prefer to play it safe, especially since fate hasn't always been too kind to it since dropping out of the hardware business. Having that sort of mentality mix with the people of what is essentially Clover II seems somewhat unprecedented.

But, this may actually be what both sides need. Sega, as recent news has indicated, isn't doing especially well financially, what with the $500 million it recently posted in losses because of a declining pachinko machine market. That could be due to a number of things, but if they marketed PlatinumGames' four projects right, some new blood in Sega's very old veins could be very beneficial for it both financially and in terms of adding more properties to a stable which could use them. For PlatinumGames, things could work out very well in their favor, as Sega is certainly more than capable of bringing their works to a large audience in ways which Capcom didn't attempt. Having Sega back them already does quite a bit for them with regards to exposure and it can only grow from there.

To quickly address the actual games which PlatinumGames is currently on, they all sound good and solid. This is a group of people which has always prefered to refine and hone the mechanics of a game's genre to a very fine point rather than outright completely innovate it, which has worked really well in its favor in its past. That's why I think some of their games such as Bayonetta, for example, will turn out to be more than mere clones of their predecessor, even if their initial descriptions wouldn't allude to that notion. A lot of their past games as Clover have had a similar issue, yet turned out fine in the end. Okami is very much so an action-adventure in the vein of The Legend of Zelda, but it still manages to do things which allow it to meet, if not beat, that series' standards. Viewtiful Joe shares a lot of qualities with old school beat 'em ups, but mixes things up more than enough to ensure it still feels unique. So I'm not going to start worrying about these new games' level of quality until we actually get to see them more.

But which one are you interested in the most, allmybase? Why, Madworld on the Wii. It looks like the next step for stylistically violent games on the Wii after No More Heroes, which is something I'll welcome with very open arms. Plus, it has an art styIe which is looking to push the hardware in some interesting directions. Oh, and the trailer and IGN preview make an excellent case for it, too. Dude, Man Darts. Bloody hell.

Report: Beyond Good & Evil 2 on the way

I'll admit that I have yet to play what many consider an underrated cIassic from the mind of David Ancel. Heresy, I know, considering that this was one of the "biggest" obscure games to hit consoles during the previous generation. With the announcement that its corresponding sequel has been in preproduction for the past year despite not having an official green light from Ubisoft yet, it tells me a couple of things, namely that now is a better time than ever to actually find a copy of the original and play it and that the people who have played it must indeed love it very much if Ancel is willing to go this far with its successor despite not knowing its publishing prospects. We live in a time where video games are just barely starting to branch out beyond the mainstream and allow something without a huge marketing budget to still do well in its own. Games like Audiosurf and Knytt Stories have done a lot with familiarizing the community with the underground, but a big player such as Beyond Good & Evil could do a lot to help expand its audience even further. For now, though, we'll see if number two actually bears any fruit beyond some concept art and design documents.

I apologize for not responding to people's comments on the previous entry. Hopefully I'll get around to doing that sometime soon. Having said that, the late night has compelled me to post another article which I wrote for my school newspaper while I was still actually working for it as a modest staff editor. (Can't say there's much to do for it during May, you know....) It's not really as "chock full" of Americanisms as the last one, so hopefully it's more universal. The only things which hopefully need explaining are that my high school is indeed named after President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and that its corresponding school paper is called "The Statesman" for reasons beyond my own little thing I've nicknamed "comprehension." Other than that, it should be pretty understandable.

Here's hoping more entertainment can be derived from this once again unedited piece. If you've got any questions about how I conceive these little bits of insanity, you're free to go ahead and ask. And with that, we're off.
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Meaning of life discovered by student, found to be "fairly lame"

Various philosophical movements have sprouted throughout the eras in human history so as to search for and hopefully comprehend some sort of meaning to the species' existence. Although some people have indeed managed to find a potential purpose, all of the solutions have had their share of pundits, mostly because they aren't necessarily as all-inclusive as they are supposed to be. Leave it to a member of John F. Kennedy High School's student body, then, to find the true one for himself and present in such a way that it cannot be debatable. The actual impact of this finding, though, may not be as dramatic as it seems at first glance. It is important, yes, but not as major as many have long believed.

The student, who requested that his name be withheld for safety reasons, determined several weeks ago that the meaning of life is simple: to exist in whichever manner is best for each and every individual. This, he believed, is supposed to be flexible enough so that people are able to make their own decisions without being restricted at all. Although he didn't specifically mention how he came to reach the conclusion, he reassured The Statesman that "no matter what it may seem like, it took a lot of scientific experiments to get to that point. When I wasn't being influenced by tempting forces from college and beyond while contemplating, rest assured that much work was being done to get to that accomplishment."

Nobody, however, is particularly excited about the revelation. While all of the populace of John F. Kennedy find the anonymous student's findings to be agreeable, that is as far it is willing go to actually acknowledge them. Everybody wants to live according to the new teaching, but to do anything else for it is believed to be overkill. Even the discoverer of the meaning of life himself happens to agree with such sentiments. "It's anticlimactic, I know," he said. "There's always quite a bit of hype around the vastness and significance that is supposed to exude from it. I was as disappointed as everybody else when I found out that the meaning of life actually isn't 42 like what that one book and movie indicated. But at least we finally have something in that area, and that's what counts, even if it's hard to really care beyond the minimum amount."

When asked about what he was planning on doing next in his life, the student-turned-world-famous-philosopher simply mentioned that he "wanted to disprove that annoyingly popular thing called 'global warming' on MythBusters." Until that time comes, however, his place in history has been firmly rooted as the one who found the true meaning of life with which everyone could agree. Nobody may find it particularly fascinating, but that quality isn't enough to take away the guy's legacy. Like it or not, he and his "especially lame" things are bound to be cIassroom material for generations and generations to come.

As I've referenced on here a few times, writing isn't an activity of mine which is exclusive to this domain. Quite the opposite, in fact. I do plenty of that sort of thing over the course of a typical day in my life and, although a lot of it is school work, I've come to be known as one of the more prolific (and better trained) people in that area. From lengthy essays which dissect the psychological nuances of the two main characters in Equus to ramblings about campaign financing for scholarships from publishing houses, my work is known in certain circles. However, by far the material which has the largest audience by a very large margin is for the school paper here. Following the advice of the teacher who got me into writing in the first place, I decided to spend this past year in high school, my senior year, working for the press outlet. (Well, granted, I also joined because of the sheer mediocrity of it that I wanted to help erase, but that story is for another day.) Now that the May edition has been published, though, I'm technically out of work, what with that pesky thing of a godsend called graduation on the horizon. To celebrate, I feel that I should start posting some of my work on here which I did over the school year, since I know that some interest has been present since I first mentioned it. Because a lot of my stuff was eventually written in the vein of The Onion, it's not meant to be taken seriously. I also wrote some serious articles, but a lot of people remember what I've done more for the humorous pieces and I wish to reflect that here. With that said, here's the beginning of what will very likely be a series on here so that you all can get a glimpse of the (mostly) non-gaming-related material I can churn out when requested. This first one probably needs no explanation if you live in most parts of the US, but I will say that a lot of the inspiration came from my own peers, as well as the culture of my state of Colorado in general. With that, here it is in all of its unedited glory.

American Caucasians attempt to speak Spanish; what else is new?

Despite being the melting pot of virtually every ethnicity imaginable, the time has not yet come for the various cultures of which America is composed, to finally mesh together and be as one. Such was the conclusion reached after a recent convention in which prominent members of the Caucasian (also known as "white") population in the United States tried to speak and write in remotely cohesive Spanish. Although many applaud the message behind the attempts, the end result of the convention was less than positive and did not bode very well for the future of the nation in that respect. Things have stayed more or less the same as a result, as progress has been damned in that respect.

"Hola," every courteous doorman began their greeting, "no me llamo Pedro o Jesus o Juan porque tenemos más nombres que esos en español. Son esteriotípicos." The two sentences were an effort on the part of the convention to start immersing the Caucasians in the tongue as soon as possible. With the goal of giving the species a passing semblance of fluency by the end of it, many believed that the sooner they received a proper introduction, the sooner they could hold their own against native speakers of every Spanish dialect, including those of the medieval variety. After actually signing themselves in, the participants had the chance to take part in a variety of grammatical lessons, conversational simulations, Dora the Explorer viewings, lectures on por versus para in which improper usage of either one justified nun-style ruler beatings, and discussions about the viability of Spanglish as its own world language. Having a budget of nearly half a billion dollars, many analysts predicted that the convention would finally allow Caucasians to successfully converge with the Spanish language and realize that maybe, just maybe, English was not the only viable option for their survival.

All of those dreams, however, were quickly dashed once the first Caucasian person to enter the convention, a man called Mel Gibson so as to protect his real identity, attempted to follow directions by simply repeating the written phrase "Soy Bob Marley" out loud. What was instead said by Gibson was "Soy beans and parsley," which he claimed he had once heard in a Harry Potter movie. Immediately after he uttered the phrase, though, all hell broke loose and chaos took over the proceedings for the remainder of the three-day gathering. "It was like Hillary Clinton and her supporters tried to eradicate Barack Obama and his posse by waging an all-out civil war long after the Democratic National Convention," Gibson recollected. "Anarchy was the name of the game, and a sucky one at that."

To say that the Caucasian species has gone back to step one regarding the matter of Spanish fluency would imply that they had even accomplished that much, which, as many historians have pointed out, has not ever happened. In the aftermath of the convention, most people now believe that it is impossible to get "the white man" to be remotely comfortable with Spanish and that any further attempts would simply worsen the situation to an even greater extent. Indeed, if Colorado State Representative Douglas Bruce's remarks are any indicator, trying to make the language be a part of such people's lives is simply not worthwhile. Some things are not meant to be accomplished and what the convention strived for may have just been one of them.

So thanks to the magic of aggregate review scores, it turns out that Grand Theft Auto IV has bested Ocarina of Time in terms of being the highest rated game of all time. I don't believe that I'm extremely off when I say that a lot of the latter game's fans are crying heresy over the Internet. It is blasphemous, apparently, that it is possible for a game of a completely different genre to get a higher average review score than the highly influential Legend of Zelda installment. Having once been extremely obsessed with the game as well in a number of unconventional ways, I can understand the fans' position. But, let's take a step back and try to inject some rationality into this. Few people may be getting truly hysterical over it, but the fact that it's becoming trendy to get depressed over this particular review score comparison in particular is absurd. That's why I feel compelled at this very late hour to bring up a few points in the form of a list. No beating around the bush can be found in them; they're close to being blunt at its purest form. They're my opinion and only my opinion and everyone is welcome to agree or disagree with as much of it as they want; discussion is essentially half the point of this in the first place.

Point Number One: Ocarina of Time hasn't been new since 1998.

The majority of gamers probably won't deny that Ocarina of Time's gameplay generally does a good job of holding up in this day and age. Much like Super Mario 64, even after pioneering its respective genre for the world of polygons, Ocarina of Time is still one of the better games to implement the basic formulas behind it. That, however, doesn't mean that standards in the gaming industry are unable to change. Quite the contrary, in fact. As our medium grows in every way possible, including technologically and demographically, it is to be expected that the metaphorical bar being raised from time to time is a natural step. What was once the latest and greatest thing eventually loses its luster in most mediums because of a variety of factors and video games aren't an exception to that. Why stay stuck in 1998 when the possibilities which 2008 has to offer allow for even better, deeper content? It's okay to say that Ocarina of Time is a really great game, but the industry shouldn't hold itself back because of its legacy. Who knows? Maybe moving on will actually allow a better game to come, if it hasn't arrived already.

Point Number Two: Later Legend of Zelda installments refined Ocarina of Time's mechanics.

Ocarina of Time may have been revolutionary for its time, but that doesn't mean that later games in the series have avoided doing a better job at implementing what it was trying to do. Majora's Mask, for example, spent a great deal of effort on characterization, something which, while present in Ocarina of Time, was hardly the star of the show. Wind Waker took the open world concept and gave it a lot more real estate. (We'll save the talk about the usefulness of that nautical space for another day, though.) Simply put, later Zelda games have been elaborating upon what the seminal Nintendo 64 game started and have typically succeeded at doing so. Let the sleeping dog lie and let the Zelda series, as well as the gaming industry as a whole, continue to evolve in its wake. It's ultimately better for everyone involved. Such leashes tend to choke off potential quality before it can even remotely take root.

Point Number Three: If Ocarina of Time is still the best game of all time in your book, then why does it matter what places like GameRankings have to say about it?

At the end of the day, the only opinion which really matters about a game is your own. Just because everyone loves to hate Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, for example, doesn't mean you're obligated to agree with them. The same is true with this case about Grand Theft Auto IV's scores trumping Ocarina of Time's. If you think Ocarina of Time is the better game, then by all means, you're fine to think that. Nothing has really changed anyway if you still love the game to this day, so why let Grand Theft Auto IV ruffle some feathers all of a sudden? It's not like GameSpot, IGN, and the collective union of game reviewers are going to take away your house if you stick to your guns. Your opinion is yours and nothing has to change that if you don't want it to. One's opinion never belongs in the hands of others at any point in life.

Point Number Four: Perhaps actually playing Grand Theft Auto IV is in order?

So let's say that you are indeed genuinely bummed that Ocarina of Time is no longer king of the review scores. But would it kill you to play the game yourself to see if maybe, just maybe, those numbers are actually warranted? There's no better way to get a real impression of a game than to play it and with Grand Theft Auto IV, a good time might actually be had with an open mind. And if it turns out that it actually is (somehow) a better game than Ocarina of Time, will it strip that Zelda game of its special qualities? No. It just means that there might be more than one game which has such things going for it. I know that I can attest to such sentiments. There are some games which came after Ocarina of Time which I can look back on as fondly as that game, if not even more so. The times change and it can actually be pretty rewarding to tag along for the ride.

I personally believe that some people are taking the matter too seriously. Those scores for Grand Theft Auto IV aren't scientific fact; they're simply numbers tacked on to a review so as to concisely summarize a writer's opinion. (The same must be said for Ocarina of Time's scores, as well.) This isn't a needed debate about whether the earth is flat or whether the universe revolves around our own planet. If nothing else, Grand Theft Auto IV's release is a special historical moment in gaming in a number of deliberate, intended ways; its review score coup is simply a coincidental side-effect. Nobody will stop you from believing Ocarina of Time is the best game of all time if that's what you believe, just like how nobody will stop me if I believe that even better games have come along since then, including within the game's own series. None of those sites which have given the game a ten have asked you personally to change your mind about Ocarina of Time or any other game for that matter. This just seems to be an instance where far too much reading has been done between the lines. Far, far too much.