Is this the latest sign that traditional RPG titles are being shoved out the door to make room for more MMORPG games and shooter games?

I suppose you could argue that a KOTOR MMO does not necessarily preclude a Knights of the Old Republic 3 traditional RPG title, but in my opinion, reading between the lines, the answer is pretty clear. This MMO is being developed instead of a traditional sequel to Knights of the Old Republic 2, not in addition to such a sequel.

This depresses me beyond measure. Is there truly no market in the video game industry these days for single player, story driven role playing games with memorable characters and branching plot-lines? Have we as video game players truly sent the message, via our wallets, that developers should no longer bother with traditional rpg titles and instead focus all their time and effort into making power-leveling MMO games?

I would write more analysis, and probably will write more at some point, but right now I'm just too damned disappointed to belabor the point any further.

Well, as your friendly neighborhood RPG fanatic I can't allow today's news about Final Fantasy XIII, formerly a PS3 exclusive, now being slated for simultaneous release on the 360 pass without comment.

I admit to feeling a bit of mixed feelings about this news. On the one hand, I am, of course, happy for anything that makes RPG games sell better because they have become, sadly, a dying breed the last three years. I'm not saying that they are completely gone, and that they won't experience a revival at some point, but the scarce and low-quality nature of most RPGs released this console generation has certainly been depressing for me.

So therefore, I naturally support anything that will make a top-tier RPG manufacturer like Square Enix make more cash. They may not be everyone's favorite RPG maker, as the split between JRPG fans and WRPG fans remains rather pronounced and growing, but everyone needs to at least respect their place in the RPG universe. Sadly, this doesn't mean that I completely support how Final Fantasy XIII lost its exclusivity.



Currently, Final Fantasy XIII is scheduled for simultaneous release on both consoles in 2008. That very fact contains a hidden nugget of information that can't be overlooked. By having a simultaneous release on both consoles in 2008, it is extremely obvious that either the 360 version of the game has been in production for a very long time and Square Enix never bothered to tell either Sony or its own fans that it was working with Microsoft behind the scenes on this, or one of the two versions is going to be a junky port.

Think about it for a moment. RPG development cycles are long and expensive. It is one of the reasons so few top tier RPG games are being made these days. If Square was planning on bringing this title to the 360, and 2008 is the release date for both versions, either it must have been working on the 360 version in secret for a very long time or one version is being developed in a hurry.

Of course the other possible explanation is that neither version is going to be released in 2008 after all and Square Enix isn't bothering to let us know that the release of this top title is going to be pushed back. But assuming that it isn't the case, and they really do intend to release both versions in 2008, then one of my first two explanations must be true. This is very disappointing to me. I'm disappointed because Square let fans of their games believe it was a PS3 exclusive for a very long time after they knew it wasn't true. Some of us, me included, had Final Fantasy XIII as one of our prime reasons for buying the PS3 in the first place.



I am also disappointed because what they did can easily be described as mildly unethical. While I don't really have a favorite between the 360 and the PS3, loving them both for different reasons, I don't support deceit. If Square Enix really has been working on FFXIII for the 360 for many months now, then they have been deceiving Sony by letting Sony believe, and plan their business strategy around, FFXIII being one of their top-shelf exclusives.

Don't get me wrong. My sympathy for Sony has very definite limits. They were arrogant in the last generation and to a lesser extent in this one, but I think folks may want to keep a close eye on Square as a company going forward and examine their statements rather closely. They definitely showed a very ruthless streak in how they played this one.

What's that old saying? All's fair in love and war. And as we learned with Bioware selling out to EA, no company is really any different from any other. All the more reason to love the games and not the companies behind them.

During one of his debates with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama stated that at some point during every election year "silly season" begins.

I've decided, for my own personal amusement and because some of these are just too obvious to be left unremarked upon and not pointed out, to compile a brief list of how you can recognize when "silly season" has begun.



You know Silly Season has begun when.......

1. The "Marriage Protection Amendment" is back in the news again. Here's President Bush talking about it on June 5th, 2006.. Ironically, I heard nothing about it in the year and a half following the 2006 elections. It's like the issue doesn't really matter to Republicans unless it's an election season and they can try and use it to try and get evangelicals to come out and vote for them.

Lo and behold, here's the issue being brought back, this last week. I'm sure the timing is a coincidence. I'm also quite positive that moral pillars like Larry Craig and David Vitter being among the bill's chief sponsors is hilarious.

2. Grover Norquist tastefully describes Barack Obama as John Kerry with a tan. Score one for racial sensitivity! The biggest news organization in the country refers to Obama's wife as, quote, his "baby mama". Score two for racial sensitivity. And, a fist pound for good luck between a husband and his wife is referred to as a, quote, "terrorist fist jab". Score three.

3. Politicians actively campaign against a particular bill and then try and take credit for it when it passes anyway.

4. Politicians spend millions of dollars that they don't have (always a good signal of their ability to manage the largest economy in the world) on negative attack ads against the opponent, and then ask their opponent to pay them back when they lose in return for their support. Hard to see how a couple with an estimated net worth in excess of $100 million dollars can ask people to help pay back their loans to themselves. Score one for chutzpah!

5. Hideously immoral and evil issues go unreported because there's another missing white girl who needs breathless 24 hours a day coverage.

6. The most important issue presently facing my country will receive two minutes of coverage per WEEK in the news over the course of the year to date. It's a good thing we don't have 150,000 troops in Iraq right now or else that might be a travesty. (How many missing girls are there to focus on? Sheesh...)

7. Budget crises will take a backseat to governors being caught in oh so tender moments with former Playboy bunnies while they're in the middle of going through a divorce. (Three cheers for the party of moral values!)

8. A man who claims to personally exorcise demons will be mentioned as a top-tier VP candidate. (I'm just wondering how that would look on a job resume. What job that you submit a resume for would you list "exorcist" as being among your qualifications?) If you're a superhero who can battle demons, shouldn't you be wearing funny tights and driving souped up cars around instead of sitting behind a desk all day?

9. Liberals will begin attacking each other. Seriously, it just wouldn't be the Democratic party that I know and love if we weren't busy eating our own young during election season instead of focusing on the Republicans. Ignore what I said yesterday about wagering on Obama to be the next president. We should never underestimate the ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the gaping jaws of victory.

10. Democrats will cave in to a President with a job approval rating hovering around 25% because they don't want to look...weak. Once again, it wouldn't be the Democratic party if it didn't apply the bizzarro world thinking that the best way to look strong on national security issues is to back down from a weakened president and give the minority party 98% of what it wants.

Despite my own political inclinations on the issues, I tried to bash both sides more or less equally but highly doubt that I was successful. Still, considering all of this was in the news in the last two days alone this is what military folks like to call a target rich environment.

Not sure how many of you out there are soccer/European football fans, but this move is one of the funniest and most clever ones I've seen in a while.

And after you view that, don't forget to read my new Ninja Gaiden Sigma review.

Have a great weekend all. Next up on the review slate docket is Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

While I fully intend to continue reading and replying to comments left on my recent State of the Union address on the U.S. presidential race between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, I have a distinct desire to follow through on my promise to my readers to start moving my blog along a little faster. I also want to start justifying my recently awarded "Top 100 Reviewers" emblem on Gamespot.

So, without further ado, here is my review for Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the PS3. As always, if you feel the review is well written even if you don't necessarily agree with the conclusions, please do me the courtesy of giving my review a recommendation/thumbs up at this link here.

Edit: The fact that I did this review only a short time after one of the best reviewers on Gamespot, PAJ89, did his review of Ninja Gaiden 2 is a coincidence. Seriously.



Ninja Gaiden Sigma Review

The Good:
Terrific graphics supported by a silky smooth 60 frames per second. An incredible array of fighting moves and a good selection of weapons and styles to choose from. Beautiful environments. Great music. Lots of replay value.

The Bad:
Story is lackluster. Character development is non-existent. Voice acting is lame. Game difficulty is frustrating to the extreme. Collector's Edition is a rip-off.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma was the first top tier exclusive title to come to the PS3 and remains, to this day, one of the most popular games on the platform. It was a huge disappointment to PS3 owners everywhere when Ninja Gaiden 2 was announced to be a 360 exclusive (though this author suspects the proper phrase is likely to end up being "a 360 timed exclusive" at some point).

But was this game worth the hype and accolades that it deserved? I had the chance to sit down and play it recently and came away with decidedly mixed feelings. Time to go to the scorecards to see if the steak matches the sizzle.

To begin with, I want to focus on the positive, and there is plenty of that to focus on. Ninja Gaiden Sigma is nothing if not an incredibly polished and well-finished title. This polish begins with the gameplay.

If you can find them all, you'll be treated to nine different melee weapons and eight different projectile weapons. While there is some overlap between them, where a couple of weapons handle similarly and have very similar moves, there are enough differences that the gameplay has a significant amount of variety should the gamer choose to make use of it.

Nearly all the melee weapons in the game can be powered up further by paying an in-game blacksmith to refine them. By "blacksmithing" your weapons, you unlock new moves that can only be utilized once the weapon is further powered up. This seems a bit counterintuitive at times. After all, how does smithing the sword better have any impact at all on Ryu Hyabusa's ability to swing it? It would impact how much damage the weapon does, but there is a definite logical flaw in the reasoning. Still, that is a minor point in the big scheme of things, which is that having a wide variety of weapons and the ability to power them up is never a bad thing.

All the weapons and moves in the world wouldn't make for a good game if the frame rates didn't manage to keep up, and players will be happy to know that they manage beautifully. The game runs completely smoothly, without so much as a hiccup anywhere at all during the gameplay. In fact, the silky smooth nature of the moves is perhaps the best part of the game.

Nor does this refer exclusively to the fighting moves. The platforming moves that you, as a ninja, can perform are equally flawless. Whether it is running up walls, along walls, or jumping along the heads of your enemies, this game captures the feel of being a ninja perfectly. The way the body motions are replicated on screen is seamless, but sadly, brutally challenging.

Be prepared to die, and die often, while playing this game. This isn't a reflection on your skill as a video game player. Rather, this is a reflection on the fact that this is one of the hardest games in recent memory. This is the worst part of the game. It is unbelievably frustrating how hard this game is. Some reviews have made mention that the difficulty is a bit toned down from the first release of this game on the original Xbox, but this is more in the area of the placement of shops and save points than the actual difficulty of the environments or enemies.

This game is just brutally difficult to the point it severely impacts how fun the game is to play. What's worse, it doesn't include the ability to stop in the middle of the action and load a recent save if you get off to a bad start. Rather, you need to either completely exit the game and restart or wait for the enemies to finish beating the snot out of you to reload. A sparse instruction manual that does not in any way show how to perform some of the more important moves in the game doesn't help the difficulty. Ironically, this very factor lends the game a lot of replay value. A lot of people will have more fun playing this game the second time through than they did the first.

For those who either picked up the collector's edition copy of the game or have access to an Internet function and basic awareness of what a Google search is, you also play several levels as the beautiful, well-endowed fiend hunter Rachel. This makes the collector's edition, which costs $10 more, something of a ripoff since at that point the only "bonus" for the collector's edition is a behind the scenes how the game was made video, and that isn't really worth $10.

Rachel's gameplay shows a similar polish to Ryu's, even if her basic modus operandi is somewhat different. Where Ryu handles like a cobra; lean, lethal and astonishingly fast, Rachel is more of a bear. She is slow, but her moves are extremely powerful and heavy hitting. The storyline explanation is that she has "fiend" blood in her that makes her extremely strong, but whatever the reason it is a very nice touch that, for once, the male protagonist in a game is the extremely fast but light hitting one whereas the female is the slow, front-lines bruiser.

Sadly, or perhaps fortunately depending on your opinion on the subject, this break from tradition does not extend to Rachel's, ahem, "attributes" or attire. Rachel's body figure is tactfully described as "generous" and generously revealed as well. This is a nice lead into a discussion on the graphics of the game.

To say that the graphics are pleasing is a bit of an understatement. While the game never reaches the visual splendor of, say, Heavenly Sword, it still manages to hold its own thanks in large part to the level design. The level design is expansive, so much so that you may have to be careful to jot just a couple of quick notes when you save for the night in case you forget what your ultimate destination and objective was when you pick the game back up the next day since the game doesn't give you a journal to reference.

If there is a weakness with the level design it is with the repetitiveness of it. This is a weakness that actually overlaps the storyline. For a ninja, Ryu does remarkably little planning. You'll revisit several of the same environments multiple times because Ryu doesn't seem to have the first clue how to achieve his ultimate goals. He's like a force of nature, destroying all in his path, but with little in the way of direction.

He knows what he wants to achieve (vaguely) but doesn't really map out how he's going to go about doing so. The cut scenes don't give a lot of clues either and so sometimes you're going to end up doing a lot of wandering around and pondering what exactly you're supposed to be accomplishing, where, and how to go about accomplishing it. Thinking and planning are not Ryu's strong points.

And, as I've hinted previously, the storyline isn't this game's strongpoint either. "Tacked on" would be a kind way to phrase it. While, granted, a good and well fleshed out story isn't always the central focus of a game of this type, it often seems that Sigma's storyline exist just so some developer or programmer somewhere could check a box off on a list of their action items.

This weakness extends to character development. To summarize: don't expect a lot. To elaborate: particularly for Ryu. In an ironic twist, Rachel's personality and motivations are explored in much more depth than Ryu's are and, in the process, she comes across as a much more likeable figure.

The storyline isn't helped much by the sparse dialog and pathetic voice acting either. Have you ever watched an old martial arts movie where none of the actors speak English and their lips continue to move long after the voice over dubbing is finished reading the lines, thus providing very strong hints that it isn't the actual actors on the screen speaking? Sigma comes across that way. True, the lip-syncing is done better, but the actual voice acting itself is just plain bad. As in second-rate JRPG bad.

Fortunately for Sigma, and anyone playing it, the in-game music makes up for what the voice acting lacks to some extent. The music always fits the mood and is generally high quality. So what's the verdict?

Ninja Gaiden Sigma is a great game, but it is not a must-own for anyone who has a PS3. People who do not play action games on a regular basis will not like this game because of the difficulty level and will almost certainly not finish the game. The lack of a strong storyline to provide a hook, combined with the difficulty, will provide a big disincentive for casual action game fans to play it through until the end.

True Score: 8.2

Update: Valid questions have been raising about the question order of the LA Times/Bloomberg poll that I site below. I'll let a professional explain the problem.

Given that I'm the only person at Gamespot, that I know of at least, who blogs about politics on a regular basis, it makes sense that my first blog back after a long hiatus would be one discussing the political earthquakes that have taken place in the United States since I last had a political blog post up.

Where to start? I think I'll start with the loser of the 2008 Democratic primary.

I've made no secret of the fact that I am not a particularly big fan of Senator Hillary Clinton. I like her position on the policy issues facing the United States a lot more than I do Senator John McCain. Yet, despite this I would have probably had to drink heavily before casting a vote for her in the U.S. general election should she have managed to beat Senator Barack Obama in the Democratic primary.

Author's Note: I have a strong personal dislike of Hillary Clinton. This is about to be expressed. If any of my readers like her...well...sorry. Agree to disagree and all that.
Specifically, I have always believed that she cared first and foremost about herself and her own personal power before any of the people she claimed to represent. I've always felt that she would say and do anything to be elected. To a certain extent, this is to be expected of a politician. If a politician doesn't get elected, they don't get paid. This creates a pretty strong incentive to lie if necessary to get elected. Among my blog readers, are there any who are willing to step up and say that if the difference between getting a high paying, glamorous job and being an unemployed loser was to lie they would you do so?

You don't have to say so if you don't like. I have a high opinion of my readers and their general moral center. But let's face it, if we were put in that position constantly and repeatedly 12 hours a day for eighteen months while running for office, we'd probably all tell a lie or two during that span. That having been said, while the Clintons, both Hillary and Bill, for all that I think they are incredibly talented, intelligent and, yes, charismatic people, I never really felt they were good people.

They still managed to surprise me in this campaign season though. If you had asked me two years ago if President Clinton would actively campaign on his wife's behalf by appealing to racist white folks in southern states - in effect mimicking the infamous "Southern Strategy" of appealing to racist white folks that Republicans have applied every election since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - I would have laughed in your face. Bill Clinton was often referred to as "the first black president" while he was in office because he was so close to that segment of the U.S. population.

But there they both were. Winning at all costs. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on the night the final primary ballots were cast and Obama secured the nomination. Hillary Clinton did not concede graciously and congratulate Obama on breaking other barriers by becoming the first black man to be a major party's nominee for president.

Instead, while her supporters chanted "Denver! Denver! Denver!" (A reference to their belief that Clinton should take her campaign all the way to the Democratic convention in August and argue that Obama should be disqualified) she said she was not making any decisions that night. Hubris. There was no "decision" to be made. She had lost. Period. The right thing to do was not to try and take away from Obama's historic accomplishment but instead to congratulate him and cede him his rightfully earned spotlight. She later conceded, but only after dozens of her own supporters in Congress and the Senate met with her privately and said they'd pull their support if she went forward.

So, this time the Clintons who won at all costs ended up losing. This, of course, brings me back to my original point. A woman ran to become President of the United States and won eighteen million votes in a Democratic primary and lost!

Think about that for a moment. Eighteen million votes is more than the number cast for any candidate for the presidency in a primary election in the history of the United States and she still lost!

Granted, this particular primary was the most lengthy and sharply contested in U.S. history, but eighteen million votes is an astonishing number.

Primaries are when only the most politically active bother to pay attention. I've always viewed them as a stain on my country's electoral system because, inevitably, it means that the extremists on both the right and the left of the political spectrum nominate the two candidates who campaign in the general election. This means we inevitably end up with polarizing general elections where both camps accuse the other of being outside of the American mainstream, with some truth in both views.

But this year so many Americans are paying attention and coming out to vote during the primary season that the losing candidate won eighteen million votes. That's incredible and historic.

None of you know how painful this is for me to say this. Actually, maybe a couple of you do realize it. Senator Clinton ran a historic, impressive and groundbreaking campaign. The first woman president of the U.S., while it won't be Clinton, should write her a personal letter of thanks when she wins the election. Senator Clinton has made it possible for a woman to become president in this country. It will happen in my lifetime. I guarantee it.

This brings us to the winner of the Democratic primary.

Ladies and Gentlemen, put your hands together. Stand up and shout. For the one. The only. The next president of the United States...

Barack Obama.

For my international readers, I'd like to try a little exercise. After the 2004 election when the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry, was defeated by the incumbent George W. Bush (I refuse to call him "president"), how many of you would have believed it possible that four years later that same country would put forth, for the first time in its history, a black man as a major party candidate for the presidency?

Anyone who said yes is a liar.

None of you believed this possible.

ChiliDragon once asked me how it was possible that the same country who gave Bill Clinton two terms in office could turn around and give George W. Bush two terms in office. She, correctly, pointed out that policy wise these two are as similar as Reed Richards and Dr. Doom. Okay, so maybe those weren't her exact words, but it's a lot more interesting metaphor than the one she selected to describe the apparent case of multiple personality disorder that my country suffers from.

Well, I explained to her that the history of U.S. politics is very much like the pendulum of one of those grandfather clocks.

Since a large portion of the U.S. electorate really just wants to be left alone to do whatever they want without interference, the only time they really start paying attention is when they see something that seriously ticks them off, or their standard of living really starts being impacted.

Specifically, U.S. history is riddled with examples of people on one side of our political spectrum or another overreaching and provoking a backlash. The corporate excesses and corruption of the 1920's and early 1930's, which led in large part to the Great Depression, caused the country to elect a Congress and a President (FDR) who passed "Great Society Programs" Medicare and Social Security that persist - despite all Republican efforts - to this day. The "free love and drug abuse" era of the 1960's, not to mention the Civil Rights Act of 1964, led to a backlash that has seen only two Democrats elected to the presidency since.

I could go on but a doomed desire for brevity forbids it. The point is that Republicans have overreached the last eight years. George W. Bush in 2000 ran as a moderate for those of you who either don't remember or weren't really paying attention at the time. His campaign can be accurately summed up in two short words. "Compassionate Conservative". Bush was supposed to be a new kind of conservative from what liberals in this country referred to as people who lacked a heart and didn't care less about the concerns of people whose annual income was less than six or seven figures.

Once he got into office however, Bush has proceeded to govern from the extreme right wing, listening primary to his very, very conservative evangelical base and big corporations and nobody else. Now the backlash has begun.

That is why two different major pollsters show Senator Obama with an incredible double digit lead over Senator McCain.

Does this mean that an Obama presidency is assured? Of course not. But if you were laying a wager in Las Vegas right now and were given even money on who would be the next president of the U.S., you would be a fool to wager on McCain.

So, is a rather hastily thrown together and haphazardly supported theory on "backlash" the only reason that Obama is winning? No. While it helps, it is hardly the whole story.

A larger part of the story boils down to the candidates themselves. Right now, all available evidence points to the fact that one is just, overall, light years better as a campaigner than the other. Witness two different speeches on the night that Obama clinched the Democratic nomination.

Senator Obama's to a stadium packed with many thousands of people of all different ages and ethnic backgrounds here.

Senator McCain's in front of a weird green backdrop where a 71 year old man appears to be, incredibly, the oldest man in the room out of a couple of hundred people here. This is a speech that even McCain's fellow Republicans thought was awful.

But the differences go beyond just one's ability to give a helluva a lot better speech than the other can. It also boils down to how their supporters feel about their candidate. It is also in the enthusiasm gap. Senator McCain has, in my opinion, an undeserved reputation as a "straight talker" who bucks his party when it is the right thing to do. (That's a brutal video. Worth the watching.) He even flirted with the possibility of being Senator John Kerry's Vice President choice in 2004 and, if reports are to be believed, did not vote for Bush in 2004.

These things make a large number of conservatives in the U.S. dislike and distrust him. They feel that he isn't sufficiently "conservative" enough for them even though McCain actually voted in nearly lockstep with President Bush during these last eight years. 95% of the time he voted with the other Republicans of his party. Nevertheless, his handful of high profile departures give him his "maverick" reputation that leads to conservatives disliking him.

This dislike is compounded by the fact that, according to polls, a large number of his supporters don't think he is going to win. Ironically, this reputation which causes the media in the U.S. to ignore the various flip-flops shown in the video I linked to above is both his greatest strength and weakness. If he didn't have that reputation, he wouldn't get a lot of the favorable coverage that he gets, but he'd also probably be doing better with conservative voters in the U.S. than he presently is doing.

Senator Obama on the other hand, has perhaps the most energized supporters in decades. In the most recent national poll fully half of Obama's supporters said they were "very enthusiastic" about their candidate and over eighty percent are either "enthusiastic" or "very enthusiastic".

This advantage shows up in more than just polls. It shows up in the form of people donating money to support the campaign or coming out to volunteer, or convincing their neighbors.

Ironically, it also shows up in one other place that would not be expected: the "Cool" factor. Right now, it is considered "cool" to be a Democrat and a supporter of Senator Obama. He's the young, attractive, cool candidate. Senator McCain on the other hand, as you saw in that video above of him giving a speech with the green background, is starting to bear a startling resemblance to Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies.

So add it all up!

It is too early to say for certain. After all, Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee in 1988, had a double digit lead in June when he was running against George W. Bush's father and ended up losing. So liberals in the U.S. - and the rest of the world - cannot rest easy.

But the smart money right now is that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States.