Well, are you? I know that you're too damned high and mighty to read the post of a user, but what you've done to GameSpot as a community and as a website is unforgivable. By firing Jeff as you did, you ripped out the soul of GameSpot and caused the entire userbase to question every review posted from here on out. People won't be able to see a 9.0+ review and not wonder if some corporate drone was responsible.

I understand that GameSpot and CNET is a business, and businesses need money to stay afloat and pay the staff. However, this is different. For a review to matter, the reviewers need to be trusted. Their opinions need to be honest and well-presented. They need to be readable, and they need to speak truthfully, even if the truth isn't something that the game publishers and developers in question want to hear. By letting Jeff go, you've sent the message that these facts aren't important to you, and that youd rather keep your advertisers than reader loyalty.

And believe me, I was loyal to your website for years. I trusted GameSpot's reviews on a more consistant basis than any other review source available. I've been a stand-up member of the GS forums and community, and for a while, I was even a forum moderator. Thanks to you, all of that's being thrown away. I've already cancelled my Total Access subscription, and I may very well take my posting elsewhere, once I know where it is that I want to go.

More than anything though, I feel depressed for what your betrayal has done to good people like Jeff, Alex, Bethany, and Kevin. May they all find happiness whereever life takes them.

Is this how you treat intelligence? Is this how you treat honesty? You're pathetic; you've managed to destroy what took years to create, and all the while, you're tucked in your office counting Eidos's money. If you aren't satisified with what you've done, if your destruction of everything that the GS editorial staff stood for isn't enough to quench you, then you are nothing, and I hope that your greed-fueled actions come back to haunt you.

As this will most likely be my final posting on the GameSpot blog system, allow me to close by telling you one last thing. Whether you understand the reference or not is unimportant to me, but that doesn't change my sentiment:

Don't go to Heaven.

I wish I were writing about the worst review in terms of worst game ever reviewed. After all, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is barely deserving of the single point on the scale that GameSpot gave it, if only because they don't hand out zeroes. Also, "You're Winner" still has some punch when delivered properly. But no, what I'm writing about is the worst review in terms of review quality that I have ever read on this website. The GameSpot review of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

Now, to start off, and to be fair, I have yet to finish the game. I'm in the middle of Part 3 and still have a ways to go before I reach the end. Even so, there are so many inaccuracies, misplaced criticisms and obtuse comments that it's absolutely mind boggling. Did Lark play the same game that I'm playing? I assume he did, but wow. Where to begin.

I suppose a good spot to start would be in the closing statements that summarize the review: "Ultimately, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a huge disappointment. It seems that nothing was learned from the making of Path of Radiance, and as a direct follow-up, Radiant Dawn can't even live up to its predecessor's epic story."

That's actually one of the more sane-sounding statements, if still off-base. I'll get back to that in a moment. Let's try this one: "Despite being a Wii game, it doesn't make any attempt to use any of the system's strengths, such as Mii support, online support, or motion controls and pointing, even though the advantages of such integration should be plainly obvious."

Mii support? He's complaining about the lack of Mii support in a Fire Emblem game? If that's a valid complaint, I should start complaining about the lack of sword combat in Madden. I mean seriously, Mii support? What benefit could that possibly bring? Why is it a negative that it's not in there? Huh?

That bit of lunacy aside, what about online support? I admit that online battles between players in the game would be fun, but here's the thing. Once again, is it something that the game needs? The vast majority of strategy RPGs I've played don't even feature multiplayer components of any kind, and those that do (such as the GBA Fire Emblem titles) I never bothered to use. I play Fire Emblem games for their challenging campaigns and interesting storylines and characters. Not online multiplayer.

And the controls? Well, the Wii provides plenty of control options. There's the Wii Remote turned sideways, the Cla$$ic Controller, or if you really liked the Path of Radiance controls, GameCube controller support. Would it have been nice if units could be moved using the pointer on the Wii Remote? Maybe, but once again, why knock a game for not using such a scheme when there are three perfectly good control schemes to choose from?

Next? More gameplay discussion, in which there is whining about the difficulty: "Although some may see this as a boon, the difficulty ventures beyond the realm of challenging and into the bitter waters of maddening, and it will easily overwhelm even experienced tacticians. The ability to save in midbattle is a welcome new feature that helps to mitigate the punishing difficulty, but because you are essentially forced to rely on it all of the time, it cheapens the overall experience greatly--unless you like the idea of starting entire battles over again upward of seven times until you can complete them without losing precious allies. There are three difficulty settings, but as previously mentioned, even the easy setting is extremely tough."

As an experienced Fire Emblem player, I find the difficulty on Normal a challenge, but not overwhelmingly frustrating. I originally thought that the Battle Save feature was nothing more than a way to make the game easier for newcomers, but it's really a tool for everyone because the of the steep difficulty climb compared to Path of Radiance. And you know, as someone who has gotten used to the particulars of Fire Emblem gameplay, that increased difficulty isn't so bad. That the game threw me into the fire instead of a series of increasingly complex tutorials disguised as missions is great. Newcomers still have tutorials to reference, and it is an admittedly steep hill to climb, but is the fact that the game doesn't hold your hand really a bad thing? Some missions have been tense, but the mission design and variety in Radiant Dawn is miles ahead of the missions in Path of Radiance with a greater variety of objectives and environments.

Enough about the gameplay for now. Let's get to the story: "With your army, you will battle a series of villains that are for the most part so laughably one-dimensional that they might as well be cackling while tying young damsels to railroad tracks and twirling their handlebar mustaches."

Huh. All right, then. The review states that the villains do get better later in the game, but let's put the focus on the villains in the early portion, specifically Part 1, focusing on the Dawn Brigade's battle against Begnion. To recap, at the end of Path of Radiance, Begnion took control of Daein, and an occupation force was since put in place. Doesn't it strike anyone else that realistically, a corrupt military commander in such a powerful situation might get his jollies from putting his boot down on the populace? It was already well-established in Path of Radiance that Begnion's senators are corrupt, so why should that corruption not extend to members of the military ranks?

To touch on the story of Radiant Dawn in general, the game is much more event-focused than the previous game, which was focused entirely on Ike's maturation. Path of Radiance introduced the major players, and most every surviving character from the game makes an appearance in Radiant Dawn in one form or another. For people that have played the previous game, these are characters that we already know, and so there's no need to reintroduce them. Rather than a personal story like Ike's, this is a story of the continent, putting focus on specific groups of characters depending on the section, and even leads to some surprises. For instance, there's one chapter in which two minor player characters from PoR, Nephenee and Brom, become the leads in what turns out to be a very tense boss fight. That's just awesome.

One more bit about the story, quoth the review: "Without any way of tying one stationary backdrop into another (given that cutscenes are so rare), events often occur inexplicably, such as one case early in the game when Micaiah is in a forest one moment and in a prison the next."

This is the reviewer being either willfully ignorant or just plain obtuse. I mean really. In the part of the game described here, Micaiah is alone in the forest when her group has split up to look for someone. She falls into the enemy's trap. Naturally, she's sent to a prison. What was the reviewer expecting? What do you normally do with criminals? Hire them to sell junk on QVC?

After getting out of work, I took the bus out to the mall to pick up my Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn preorder and have spent the evening playing through the first few chapters. I've played up to the point where the shop and management screens become available, so I think I'm ready to give some impressions of the game.

First off, Radiant Dawn is, from the start, a much more difficult game than Path of Radiance. Through the first several missions at least, the battle is lost if any of your characters die, rather than just the main character. I had to restart Chapter 3 several times because one of my weaker units would get picked off. It's still a fair challenge, however, and the whiners...er, newcomers will be glad to know that there's a Battle Save option, which creates a permanent save during battle so you don't have to restart if you don't want. (Though you're still screwed if you Battle Save right before an enemy unit kills one of your guys.)

Radiant Dawn also allows uploading clear save data from Path of Radiance. By loading a clear file, you'll get some boosts to returning characters and unlock all of the support conversations from Path of Radiance that were unlocked on the save file. I'm not sure what else if anything it does, but given what a help a particular returnee was for me in Chapter 3 (once I started putting her to use, that is), it's definitely a nice boost.

Speaking of supports, the support system has also been tweaked. Each character is now limited to one support relationship, so if you want to create a support relationship between Micaiah and Laura, for example, you'll need to break the support between Micaiah and Sothe that exists from the game's start. I have yet to see any support conversations, however, so I'm not sure how else the supports come into play. I may find out the further I play into the game. However, there is a character tree in the library that displays the relationships of all of the characters as each new character is revealed, which is a nice touch, along with a list of terms that should be of help to anyone that didn't play Path of Radiance.

Otherwise, the game is Fire Emblem through and through, with some tweaks here and there that enhance the gameplay and presentation. For instance, any time support effects go off during battle, a brief animation will play before the start of a skirmish to highlight the affected characters. Also, the names of skills and skill effects appear as they go off, so you don't have to feel mystified when a character suddenly does something completely awesome seemingly at random. Elevation also plays a role on the battlefield, and characters can climb up or drop down certain ledges to access shortcuts or to give a height advantage to archers. The overall quality of the graphics and animation has also been increased over Path of Radiance, with more detailed character models, a sharper cel-shaded look, and more impressive combat. The same goes for the one FMV cutscene I've seen so far.

I've been playing the game with a Classic Controller, and it works great. I asusme that when a GameCube controller is plugged in, it uses the Path of Radiance controls, which were also nice, but I doubt I'll bother with the Wii Remote-only option. There isn't any use of motion control in the game whatsoever, but that makes perfect sense because strategy RPGs don't need waggle.

Overall, Radiant Dawn is a larger, much more impressive game than Path of Radiance. If you have a Wii, it is totally worth picking up. I imagine that this is a game that will be keeping me occupied for quite a while.

Tomorrow is Halloween, one of the best days of the year. After all, when else can kids be encouraged to dress up in costumes and harrass neighbors for candy? It's a day meant to have fun, and I'll be having plenty of my own at a small party tomorrow after I get off of work. It should be a blast.

What's that? There's something else happening tomorrow? Ohhh...right. The release of Manhunt 2, the media's Most Dangerous Game in the World(tm). Not long from now, we'll all learn whether or not all of the hype, media attention, delays, and edits were worth it. My prediction? Probably not.

The basic fact is that Manhunt 2 is a video game, another violent one in a growing list of media pariahs that will surely destroy humanity. When it wasn't Manhunt 2, it was Bully. Before that, it was the GTA series, and further back, games like Carmageddon, Mortal Kombat, and all the way back to Death Race 2000, when a tiny car ran over stick-figure people. Oh, the humanity.

Kidding and obvious media targets aside, I don't think that Manhunt 2 is really worth the attention it's getting. Very few games are. Having played through the earliest portions of the first Manhunt that a friend lent me, I honestly didn't see what the appeal was. It's a very slow, plodding game where the player must sneak up on enemies and kill them with a variety of instruments ranging from plastic bags to axes and baseball bats before progressing to the next stage. Wash, rinse, repeat. I suppose I could be criticized for not giving the game a fair chance, but:

1. I found the game boring, tedious, and frankly a bit unpleasant, and

2. No one was paying me to play the game to completion, so why should I?

For what it's worth, I have seen my friend play through a latter portion of the game, mainly the Pigsy fight near the end, and even my friend, who otherwise enjoyed the game, couldn't even hope to take Pigsy seriously. The horrendous, unstoppable homicide machine kept by the Director is some weirdo in a pig mask with his junk hanging out and a voice that makes him sound like Animal from the Muppets. Aside from blatant, crass shock value (a staple of Rockstar's supposedly "mature" sense of humor), there really is no point to this character, or rather, the point was completely lost once Pigsy was revealed to be completely absurd.

All of this in mind, I'm not someone that has been waiting for Manhunt 2 with baited breath. I never actually expected there to be a sequel, to be honest. However, I'm not simply going to dismiss the game out of hand. Though the gameplay of the first game was less than enthralling, and chances are that I'll find Manhunt 2 no different in that regard, Wii Remote or no, at the very least, the plot seems more interesting. A seemingly innocent, but psychologically disturbed man attempting to remember who he is and how he got there is, at least to me, more interesting than a very crass, basic rendition of The Most Dangerous Game. James Earl Cash was not a sympathetic figure. Daniel Lamb might be, or he might not be, but early promotional trailers and information suggest that he was at one point an innocent idealist that made some naively stupid choices. If the premise is able to hold itself up, the game might be worth a rent from me, but unless the Wii version makes some revelatory adjustments to the gameplay, I'll otherwise be inclined to pass on an actual purchase.

To touch on the AO rating controversy, it sounds like the developer was able to appease the ESRB without losing too much of their vision, but I honestly don't believe that Rockstar or Take-Two handled the situation well at all. Let me just say that, given the level of extreme violence in the game, the nature of inflicting said violence, and some of the violent actions themselves (a castration execution via a pair of pliers was supposedly removed in the process or earning the M rating), it was foolish for Rockstar to assume that the game would receive an M. If they had stopped to consider the idea that maybe, just maybe, they were going overboard, they and Take-Two wouldn't have come off reacting with such shock and indignation. I think Rockstar needs some lessons in how to handle PR nightmares if they really want to continue walking the tightrope. ("That Hot Coffee minigame is a user's mod, honest!") In any case, now that the game has been edited and rerated, the only thing left is to see the final product when it finally hits. Perhaps it will be a good game, but a game worth all of this press and all of this trouble? We'll see.

Excuse my blatant act of Grand Theft Topic from duxup, but I think it's appropriate. A few weeks ago, my parents were visiting me out here in Seattle, and they asked me if I had a small radio of any sort, which I don't. The reason they asked mainly had to do with a major storm that hit the city last December that left me without power for three days and a large portion of Seattle and the surrounding area in the dark even longer; a battery operated radio would naturally come in handy to hear any news reports in that kind of situation.

So my mom said that she had a radio that she didn't need and offered to mail it to me. It arrived in the mail today, and it's a pretty basic Radio Shack number. The whole unit is about the size of a walkie-talkie, complete with extendable antenna. The first thing I think when I see it? It looks like the kind of radio you'd use as a warning beacon in Silent Hill.

So there you go. I'm now more prepared in the event of either another citywide blackout or a transition into a hellish dimension where the walls of my apartment are made of meat.

This NFL season, I've made my first foray into fantasy sports by joining the OGU's fantasy fooball league. My team, the Dapper Dandies, are currently holding steady at 3-3 with the Monday Night game to go, but I have a bad feeling. Why do I have a bad feeling?

Mainly, it's because I didn't play a QB this week. Vince Young is my primary quarterback, and I already goofed once by leaving him in the line up during the Titans' bye week. This time, however, there was a lot of waffling as to whether or not he would be healed enough to play after suffering an injury last week. I didn't exactly have any great choices in replacing him, and he hadn't been announced as definitely being out, so I left him in.

So I get up on Sunday morning and log on to ESPN.com to see an article stating that Young was out for the game.

Thanks for telling me ahead of time, guys. Seriously.

Now, maybe my other players will be able to pick up enough slack to pick up the win. When young went down last week, his contribution to my fantasy league score was actually negative, but I still managed to pull it out. Compared to that, his inevitable score of 0.00 will be an improvement. Still, given my experience in fantasy football so far, it's amazing to think that there are people who take it with dead seriousness.

Don't get me wrong. It's fun to try and put together a winning combination of players that will earn more points than my opponent. However, this isn't like Madden; I don't have direct control over what happens on the field, and once the games start, my line up is locked in no matter what happens. While performances can be predicted based on past experience, it's still a crap shoot. A good player on a good team won't necessarily have a good week, and all of the prepared data in the world is useless if someone goes down with an injury.

I guess what I've learned so far can be condensed down to two points:

1. Don't bother trying to overanalyze. I always thought that those fantasy draft and stat guides were a waste of money, and I haven't seen anything that would change my mind in that regard.

2. Never draft the most recent Madden cover athelete. The curse will haunt your fantasy league performance.

It seems like if one developer has been making more noise than all of the rest lately, it has to be Capcom. First came the initially-surprising-but-oh-wait-this-makes-total-sense news that Monster Hunter 3, which was in development as a PS3 exclusive, is now a Wii exclusive. In just the past few days, Capcom has announced both a new Bionic Commando and Street Fighter IV, both of which has the oldschool fans drooling, if hesitant. What could they possibly announce next?

Another one for the obvious column: Capcom is making a version of Okami for the Wii. Given that the game sold so poorly on the PS2, it's good to see them giving it another chance, especially on a console with the potential to make the brush-stroke mechanics even more interesting and intuitive.

Now Capcom, how about a new Dark Stalkers with an actual redrawn Morrigan sprite set? Or at the very least, a version of Dead Rising with text I can read on my SDTV without going blind?

As most all of us know by now, yesterday, EA announced its acquisition of Bioware and Pandemic for a ridiculously large sum of money. Although I'm not one to support panicky, idiot-spawning fear-mongering, this is a situation that has a lot of gamers concerned, and rightfully so. In the past, EA similarly purchased Origin and Westwood Studios, two PC game developers with high-quality titles and myriad achievements under their belts. Origin and Westwood were then subsequently dismantled and absorbed into the EA studio collective. While Westwood's Command & Conquer has done well for itself under EA's wing, particularly with Command & Conquer 3, it hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. Even worse, of Origin's popular series, only Ultima really remains, and only in the form of Ultima Online, which still receives the occasional content update.

This isn't to suggest that Bioware is officially doomed, and that some smackwit development team at a completely different EA studio is going to piss on everything that they created with Jade Empire 08, 09, and 10. However, history can be a strong indicator, and so Bioware could be headed down a similar path as Origin.

So if you don't like what's happened, what is there that you can do? Well, there is one thing, though many of you won't necessarily agree with it. The simplest way to protest against EA's purchase of Bioware is to not buy Mass Effect. If you preordered it, cancel it and move that money to another game you have your eyes on. When it's released, don't buy it. Don't even buy it when the game hits the eventual bargain bin. Though it may seem like a childish way to go about this, if enough people elect to give EA the finger instead of giving Bioware their money, then maybe it will send a message. It might not save Bioware from the corporate guillotine, but it might at least send the message to not jerk us around.

Would it work? Only if enough people did it. Besides, it's not like Bioware needs your money to stay afloat with all the green EA just fed them.

In recent weeks, a user forum that I frequent here on GameSpot has lost two posters in two separate incidents involving disagreements with GS's reviews. More specifically, these people took issue with the reviewers themselves. The first came in the wake of Brett Todd's review of the Oblivion-esque Two Worlds. I think that it's fair to say that Brett likes the game. It's not by any means perfect, and he notes its flaws in the review quite well, I believe. Still, what he liked, he liked enough to award a 7.0, and in reading it, I can see that.

After the review was posted, I read some comments from a person or two asking whether or not Brett happens to be crazy or what-have-you, which is all fine and dandy to me. When you review games, or movies, or books for a living, you have to expect that people will disagree with you no matter what you say. Brett could have come to the conclusion that Two Worlds is a horrendous piece of garbage not worth the disc containing its code, and people would revolt in saying how awesome the game is. That's just the way that opinion works, which brings me to my point. That reviews are, by their very nature, opinion.

Obviously, when a person reviews a game, they should always try to come into it with an open mind and be as objective in their assessment as they can. However, the act of maintaining pure objectivity in the act of reviewing is impossible because through the course of the review process, the reviewer is establishing opinions on the game's graphics, sound, gameplay, and story that are by their very nature subjective. In the course of reviewing Two Worlds, Brett did not have a magical checklist to check off whether the game is good or bad, point-by-point. If I'm playing a game that I think is fun, but has its share of obvious flaws that could kill interest in it for other people, I'm not going to go around telling people that I did not have fun and that it's worth no one's time.

And that fact, the fact that reviews are not entirely objective and are in the end based on human opinion, is what drove one GS user over the edge, essentially screaming on the forum that Brett Todd should be fired for shoddy reviewing. Though several of us tried to reason with him and explain the above to him, he wouldn't have any of it and decided to leave. Whether he's gone off to some other game review site to eventually be disappointed again, I have no idea. The entire episode was bizarre.

Not as bizarre as a more recent episode, though. Following the posting of Kevin VanOrd's Eternal Sonata review, a discussion of the game began on this same user forum, and one poster, a person who was easily one of the best contributors to the community with her wit and arguments, suddenly went over the deep end. This person had been looking forward to Blue Dragon for quite some time, and when it came out, she bought it and enjoyed it. She apparently had little if anything to agree with in Kevin's 6.0 review of Blue Dragon, and hey, it happens. If I followed GameSpot's every whim, I probably wouldn't have bought any of Koei's Dynasty/Samurai Warriors games for the past several years, but I can't get enough of those.

So anyway, what did Kevin's Blue Dragon score have to do with the 8.5 he gave to Eternal Sonata? Well, in the discussion thread, the poster in question stated an argument that essentially said Kevin was an untrustworthy reviewer based on the fact that he hadn't beaten King Kong on the 360, and then posted "evidence", namely his gamercard, with its incomplete list of King Kong achievements.

In the immortal words of a great philosopher, "Huh?" Since when does a person's gamercard or gamerscore denote how worthy their opinion is on a game? If I'm looking at an incomplete King Kong achievement list, what's there for me to say that the player didn't just rent the game and not have the time to finish it over a weekend, or sent it back to Gamefly after determining that it wasn't worth beating? He wasn't even given the responsibility of reviewing the game, so why should Kevin be chastised for leaving it unbeaten? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

The argument that spawned from this was long, ugly, drawn out, and ended with the poster leaving the community, which is unfortunate because like I said, up until that point she was one of the better contributors. What these two episodes come down to, however, is that we shouldn't just treat reviewers, whether they be GameSpot's or any other site's, as robots. They're men and women that do their best to deliver accurate assessments of games so that we know what we're getting ourselves into if we decide to play them. If my opinion doesn't match the reviewer's, I'll note that when I'm talking about it. It's also true that sometimes, there are people who just can't ever seem to come to an agreement with any of a particular reviewer's opinions. I stopped counting the number of RPGs I enjoyed that Greg Mueller hated, but I certainly never outright called for him to be fired.

As for the pair of former GS community members in question, I don't want to sound as though I'm talking about them behind their backs. I know that their arguments as I've presented them may not paint them in the best of light, but they truly weren't very thought out or logical to begin with. Should either of them happen to see this, they're free to come back and refute anything I've said, either as a comment below or through a private message. However, given that both of these incidents happened within weeks of each other, and given how stunning each incident was, I felt that they should make good examples of what happens when we start demanding reviewers be as calculating and logical as robots and stop thinking about the people writing the reviews as human beings with emotions.

Like most of you reading this, my world has been swamped with Halo 3 marketing. Unlike a lot of 360 owners, however, I haven't bought the game, nor do I plan to buy it. I've said it elsewhere, but FPS games are not my genre of choice, and I never found Halo all that compelling to begin with. It's just not my thing.

Of course, Halo is the thing for a lot of gamers out there. I haven't ever played the series for more than a little bit of the first, but thought I don't like it, I'm not going to roll around on the floor screaming that it sucks. However, given the hype poured onto the game by Microsoft and the expectations set by fans of the first two games, I am worried that something inevitable is around the corner. The backlash.

It comes in a definite cycle. You might call it the Final Fantasy VII effect, in which the steps generally look like this:

1. Game X in a beloved series by a reputed developer receives massive hype manufactured by a marketing machine.

2. Fan expectations rise to a boiling point.

3. Game X is released to overwhelmingly fantastic reviews.

4. The game sells like crazy.

5. Some fans experience a let down, finding quirks and issues that all of the marketing and positive reviews glossed over, leading to a growing negative reaction to the game.

6. Offput fans riled by zealotrous fanboys.

7. Zealotrous fanboys riled by offput fans.

8. VIOLENCE AND CARNAGE.

9. Offput fans grow to resent the game and denounce the hype that went into Game X in the first place. Over time, numerous critical articles against Game X are written with varying degrees of argumentative and intellectual strength.

10. Next "God's Gift to Gaming" marketing campaign begins for Game Y.

Do you think that Halo 3 will suffer a similar fate? Do you think that it's already started?

Retro Studios has really come a long way. Back in the beginning of the GameCube era, they were a new developer without any major successes under their belt. Their biggest project, Raven Blade, seemingly floundered in the development stage. Then something crazy happened. Nintendo gave the small Texas-based developer the keys to the Metroid franchise, and in the face of overwhelming scrutiny and criticism, made a first-person adventure starring Samus that kicked all of our asses. Who the hell saw that coming?

Now it's 2007, and with the Metroid Prime trilogy complete, Retro will most likely take a well-deserved rest from the franchise. But where do they go from here? With a solid history of development experience under their belt, will they try to bring back Raven Blade? Is there another new IP that they fancy working on? Will Nintendo give them the keys to another long-dormant franchise, like Kid Icarus? What form will it take?

Whatever Retro does, I'm sure that everyone will be watching closely.

Before I begin, I need to say that it's going to be SPOILERS for Persona 3 from here on out. If you have not played beyond the July 7th full moon and don't want anything spoiled, stop reading now.

For those not familiar with Persona 3 (but decided to brave the SPOILERS anyway--this is your last warning), the game is structured around the Japanese school year calendar. You play a high school student (you name him at the start), who, along with a few others in the school, has the power to summon a Persona to assist in fighting monstrous things called Shadows that appear during what is called the Dark Hour. Much has been made about the Persona-summoning element; it was even referenced in a Penny Arcade comic, but what it boils down to is that the characters put devices that resemble guns to their heads and pull the triggers, emulating the act of a violent suicide without any actual gore or death. The first time you see it, it's an eye-opener, and the game is certainly not subtle in its depiction.

Shocking as that facet of the game is, however, I didn't find it nearly as twisted, or potentially frightening, as an event in the game that takes place on July 7th. Every full moon, a special mission occurs in which the player's party must eradicate a stronger-than-average shadow. In this particular case, the shadow is located in a love hotel, which makes sense, as the shadow in question had been targeting couples. Arriving at said hotel during the Dark Hour, the player finds the shadow in question in the hotel's master suite and destroys it, only to become trapped inside due to the presence of another strong shadow. While investigating the room in search of a way out, the characters examine an odd mirror, and...

There's a very sudden, brief cut scene in which one of the characters, Yukari, is taking a shower.

Huh?

The game transitions back to the main character, who awakens to find himself in a hotel room with fuzzy memories, the sound of the shower running in the nearby bathroom. What follows is a conversation in the player character's mind, as an invading voice tempts him into giving in to his urges. What's particularly shocking and more than a little creepy about this is that the player is given the option (several times) to give in mentally and force himself on Yukari.

As I played the game, I chose every option to allow the character to fight the voice and the urges. Eventually, his mind cleared, and when Yukari (who's mind cleared while in the shower) emerged from the bathroom in nothing but a towel, and awkward scene ensued where she panicked, slapped the player character, and ran back inside, leading to a scene of awkward embarrassment for both.

More than anything else I've seen in the game, this one scene has become a defining moment for how mature Persona 3 really is. For all of its symbolic "suicides", the murders, and everything else, this one particular encounter gives the player a startling amount of control (or conversely, lack thereof) in deciding what direction to take the moment. I don't know what happens if the player chooses to give in to the voice and the urge, though I doubt the situation progresses too far. Perhaps a slap to the face is all it takes for the player's mind to clear, but it's the implication. The thought that "Yes, I'd like to rape Yukari," that makes the event stand out in my mind.

Persona 3 is a game of choices, but it's this choice in particular that has shocked me more than any other so far. In addition to playing hero, the player is also just a normal high school student. He's human, falliable, and just as prone to dangers as anyone else. Though most all of his actions and dialogue are defined by the player's choices, it's because he's the player's avatar that he becomes so compelling.

Last week, I got together with a friend of mine for a nice dinner and chat. I was also able to give her a late birthday present; the DS RPG Magical Starsign. She's a big RPG fan, but she had never heard of the game before. It didn't surprise me since it had largely gone unnoticed upon its release, but I had played into a copy of my own a bit and thought it might be something she'd like.

A week passed, and I didn't hear much from her aside from a brief e-mail on Friday. Then, late last night, I received another e-mail that was a big shock. I won't go into too much detail, as it's a private matter, but sometime during the past week, she had a very painful break-up with her girlfriend whom she had been very close to for several years and friends with for a lot longer. It's not an event that she can even bear thinking about, and the situation is only bound to make things more awkward for the both of them since they have both been involved in the same D&D gaming group with me and a couple of others for the past three years now.

What was very nice to read, however, is that she is starting to pull through it, albeit slowly, and she says that Magical Starsign has been of great help in getting her mind off of things. Despite its very silly nature (half of the characters are named after food), she finds it fun, and surprised me a bit with saying that it reminded her in a way of Xenogears. Don't ask me how. I still need clarification on that.

Of course, the game isn't the only thing that's helping her out, but it's really nice to know that a game I picked out for her on a whim turned out to be the perfect choice. Every little bit can help.

If there's one thing I find particularly fascinating regarding the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it's the way that the long-dormant characters of Kid Icarus are being treated. Just as an example, here's a picture of Kid Icarus protagonist Pit, as he was depicted over twenty years ago:

And here's a picture of his updated form from Smash Bros. Brawl:

Big difference, huh? He went from being a little cherub dude to something decidedly tougher looking. Not bad. Of course, he's not the only Kid Icarus character making an appearance. Here's another old image, this time of Palutena, goddess and Kid Icarus's damsel-in-distress:

Not bad, though she's been pretty much shunted to the background by Peach and Zelda. Oh, but what have we here?

HOLY ****. There are certain advantages to being a goddess, like being able to dwarf all of the foolish princesses around you.

More than anything, though, seeing Pit and Palutena updated like this makes my desire for a new Kid Icarus game grow even more. I mean, come on, Nintendo. You've already updated two of the main players from the original game. Give Medusa a makeover, hell, maybe even the Eggplant Wizard, and give us a new Kid Icarus already. The wait between Super Metroid and Metroid Prime was long enough. Seeing the characters updated like this is the worst kind of tease. It just makes me feel more than ever that these characters need to return in a game of their own.

Over the past week and change, I've been playing Valkyrie Profile 2. By all accounts, it's a very fun game and something that RPG fans should definitely play, but over the past several days, it's been a slow-going grind.

This has nothing to do with the pace of the game, mind you. For the most part, the game moves along at a fair clip. That is, it moves along until you get a large number of characters in your party. Through the first three chapters, every dungeon has an average of two or so recruitable characters (einherjar), in addition to the storyline characters that join the party naturally. When einherjar characters are boosted to at least five levels higher than their starting level, they can be freed back into the world, relinquishing bonus items as compensation that can be used to boost your remaining characters. Some einherjar, when encountered in the world after they have been freed, will give other bonus items or money after being talked to a couple of times. With the number of einherjar present, you can probably imagine that the game encouages the player to level up and release einherjar at a fairly regular pace.

Additionally, there's an optional "side quest" that will reward the player with two overpowered weapons if two particular story characters are leveled to at least level 40 before the end of chapter three. Bonus.

However, this is where a certain flaw in the game rears its ugly head. The experience distribution is stingy in comparison to the amount of experience required to level. By the time a character is in his or her thirties, the experience required to reach the next level is in the hundreds of thousands, yet even in the latter half of chapter three, most monster encounters will on average give between 30,000-40,000 experience, divided equally among the characters (and that's only if you have a particular item that doubles earned experience at the cost of not earning any cash). At best, a character might receive about 10,000 experience points per encounter, which can make things rather tedious when trying to boost the story characters to level 40. Factor in all of the einherjar that need to be leveled, and things get rather ridiculous.

This is really only one of the reasons why Valkyrie Profile 2 is an inferior game compared to the original. Valkyrie Profile had a very strict time limit in which each chapter needed to be completed, but the the rate at which characters joined, experience was earned, and characters were released was much more structured. The game also didn't hesitate to hand out bonus experience at certain points that could be divided freely among the characters. In Valkyrie Profile 2, barring the extremely rare one-shot experience boost item, the only way to level characters up is through combat. With an active party size of four characters and a roster that might be three times that size, it's a time-consuming venture, to say the least. At 34 hours in, I've leveled the two story characters into their upper-mid thirties in an effort to get the bonus weapons, but it will still still be another several hours at least before they're both at level 40, and that's with sacrificing play time from other characters, one of which is still at level 16. To this, all I have to say is that it's a good thing that the combat system is fun to play. I've been using it a lot.

Free roaming sandbox worlds. Experience-based leveling structures. Cursing at incompetent teammates in Elvish. All of these are common elements in today's video game landscape, yet long before gamers were hopping around like idiots to level up in Oblivion, gamers were killing goblins by the truck load using a twenty-sided die. I speak, of course, of pen-and-paper games like Dungeons & Dragons, which due to their inherently freeform nature are able to provide moments of entertainment exceeding even the most awe inspring video game due to the virtual medium's inherent coded barriers.

It is with this unnecessary pomp in mind that I share with you all quite possibly the single most ridiculous moment I have ever experienced in any game, be it with a die or a controller in my hand.

The scenario:

In a D&D 3.5 campaign of a friend's design, my party members (a cleric, a barbarian/ranger, and a mage) and I (a bard/crystal hunter [custom class designed by the DM]) enter a tower in search of a particular artifact when we encounter a demon of classic design, with long horns, red skin, and a generally snarky disposition. The demon is standing atop a large pile of human skulls stacked in the center of the chamber. Combat naturally ensues.

After several rounds of back and forth, including toasting the barbarian with a fireball to destroy a host of demon decoys, my character runs up to the bone pile the demon is standing on and casts Ironthunder Horn in an attempt to jostle the monster from his perch. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. After another snarky comment from the demon, I indicate that my character, Rogan, undoes his fly and takes a piss on the bone pile, just to show the demon that he's not scared of him.

On the following initiative pass, the demon, now invisible goes first, and drops down next to Rogan and attacks him with his claws and teeth. Rogan, going second, attempts to attack the demon back with a luck blade (a weapon with a special luck attribute). Unfortunately, I roll a 1, a critical failure. Using the luck attribute, I take my alotted once-a-day reroll, rewind time Prince of Persia-style, and attack again. Once again, I roll a 1. God damn it.

At this point the demon makes another snarky comment, at which point I counter by jokingly saying that "I slap the demon with my dick."

I had no intention of actually having Rogan doing so, but the DM egged me on and had me roll a jump check. I roll a success, and Rogan jumps to the precise height required. The DM then says that I can roll to attempt the cock-slap, but that the only way I could possibly succeed is by rolling a natural twenty. D20 in hand, I roll the die.

"I rolled a twenty."

The entire roomful of players immediately explodes into laughter as Rogan manages to pop the demon across its invisible face with his junk after the DM failed the percentile roll that would have allowed the invisibility effect to allow him to avoid the attack. The attack doesn't damage the demons HP, but its dignity is thoroughly shattered. A legend is born.

Yeah, try doing that in WoW sometime.

Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii: Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 is officially on Japanese shelves, meaning that it's only a matter of time before import shops begin getting their own inventory and filling preorders. The original Ouendan and its western spin-off Elite Beat Agents are two of my favorite handheld games, and either one or the other has been entrenched in my DS for most of the past six months, ever since the release of EBA. I hope to have my own copy of Ouendan 2 within the next couple of weeks if all goes well with my preorder, but I thougth that I would celebrate the sequel's release by looking back at what I consider to be the five best stages from each game. Let us begin, shall we?

Elite Beat Agents: Top Five Stages

5. Canned Heat:
Elite Beat Agents was my introduction to the Ouendan mode of gameplay, and for a while, I thought I had it all figured out. Tap, drag, and spin to the music. The stages were challenging, but with a little practice, I could get through them with little trouble. Then Canned Heat came along and delivered a needed blow to my ego. Whatever it was, the tempo, the beat pattern, or what have you, Canned Heat on Cruisin' was the first stage in the game that I could honestly consider devious. I also love those high kicks the agents do towards the end of the stage for that extra level of flash, and hey, any stage with a ninja has got to be cool.

4. Material Girl:
For being a game developed in Japan, the designers really nailed a good parody of western pop culture here. The hapless victims in need are a pair of dimbulb socialite sisters not entirely unlike a certain couple actual dimbulb socialites. The song choice of Madonna's Material Girl honestly couldn't be more apt here. Also, Commander Kahn wears a Hawaiian shirt in the intro for that extra bit of random absurdity.

3. Survivor:
Speaking of parodies of western culture, Survivor is another hilarious one. The stage is actually the last of the unlockable bonus stages, so not everyone that's played the game has probably had the chance to see it, but the story behind it is actually a parody of the stereotypical FPS, right down to the protagonist's muscular space marine frame...only he's a really grim vendor of peanuts forced to fight off humans zombified by some really funky mushrooms. His only weapon? A gun that shoots his ungodly salty peanuts, the only cure for the zombie plague. It's truly one of those moments that needs to be seen to be believed.

2. The Anthem:
Ignore the fact that this stage is set to a song by Good Charlotte, because the game has a way of making even the least popular of the game's song selections work within the context of their stages. The Anthem is no different, as its rapid melody is set perfectly to a battle between a washed-up baseball player and a fire-breathing golem. In a game full of bizarre scenarios, this one is one of the most fantastic of the bunch, and the crazy pace of the beat patterns makes it all the more memorable.

The fact that the agents enter the scene via Elite Tea Cup just kicks ass.

1. Jumpin' Jack Flash:
Jesus H. Christ. If Canned Heat was a simple wake-up call, Jumpin' Jack Flash is like trying to survive in an Ultimate Fighting Championship match with your feet cemented to the floor. This stage doesn't pull any punches and is a far greater challenge than any other song in the entire game, but it's the sort of welcome challenge that's addicting. After reaching this song for the first time on Cruisin', I stayed up late every night for several days trying to master it until I finally managed to take it down with a 1AM surge of adrenaline. Another forumite once said that this was probably the best rhythm game stage of all-time, and that's an argument that I'm inclined to agree with, up to a point.

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan: Top Five Stages

5. Loop & Loop:
This stage, about a high school student desperately trying to study for his college entrance exams, is the first stage in the game, and by that token, is the stage that introduced everyone to the game. If this stage simply didn't have what made the rest of the game as a whole so attractive and so amazing, it could very well have been that Ouendan would never have become the import sensation that it is, and perhaps not even EBA would exist. That said, this stage has it all, from the student's desperate cry of "OUENDAN!" to the cheersquad's exhuberant, manly entrance, to the kick-ass gameplay that the series is known for. A fitting introduction if there ever was one.

4. Taisetsuna Mono:
The titanic struggle between a fair, upstanding man seeking to be elected mayor up against a scoundrel that brainwashes the voters with purple afros.

Wait, what?

You read that right. Beyond its crazy take on the good versus evil premise, the song is actually one of my favorites in the game, and I can't help but like the poor guy that the cheersquad is trying to help.

3. Atsuki Kodou no Hate:
The third pick was the toughest choice for me. There are too many great stages in Ouendan to pick very easily, and numbers 2 and 1 on this list are essentially locked up. The Atsuki Kodou no Hate stage, which features a new gym teacher having to deal with a homeroom full of rude, gossipy teenage girls, doesn't particularly stand out for any real reason on the surface, but it's one of my personal favorites. I particularly like how the beat pattern towards the end of normal difficulty version emulates the idea of the teacher taking his students for a run around the track.

2. Over the Distance:
After eleven stages of non-stop chaos and absurdity, this stage hit me hard. Shaking aside the manly shouts, the focus is entirely on the spirit of a dead man that wants to see his grieving girlfriend. The way the stage is told and the tone of the music make it a surprisingly touching stage; one that has frequently made my eyes tear up, if not make me cry outright. EBA has a stage very similar to this in tone and nature, and it's also very touching, but if I had to make a choice, I would choose Over the Distance to EBA's You're the Inspiration.

1. Ready Steady Go:
Epic. ****ing epic. Although Jumpin' Jack Flash trumps it in the technical aspect of the beat patterns, Ready Steady Go's stage is one built upon absolute passion. From the introduction that reunites the game's cast as the song picks up steam to the entire world shouting "OSU!" in unison, it's a pure adrenaline rush. With four minutes until an asteroid is scheduled to slam into Earth, the cheersquad pulls everyone out of their panic and lights an emotional fire under their asses to destroy it with pure fighting spirit. The euphoric experience of beating this stage for the first time isn't unlike the euphoria that followed beating Jumpin' Jack Flash. Where EBA is more about staying cool under pressure, Ouendan is about fiery spirit and passion, and the final stages of both games bring these aspects front and center, but Ouendan did it first, and arguably did it better despite its more linear beat structure.

Will the final song in Ouendan 2 manage to live up to Ready Steady Go and Jumpin' Jack Flash? It's obviously too early for me to say, but from all early indications I've seen for the game, all signs point to yes. I'm confident that it won't disappoint.

So how about you? What are your favorite Ouendan/EBA stages?

Pet Peeve: GameSpot's habit of replacing the navigation bar with easy access links to the previews, reviews, and general news items in favor of a red bar with a single link to a lone "BREAKING NEWS" item.

It's annoying, GS.  Stop it.

UPS dropped off my 360 yesterday, fresh from Microsoft's service center.  I plugged it in, started it up, and everything appears nominal, so I'll hope for the best.

Also, it's amazing what thoughts can pop up at random.  For about a minute just now, I was whistling the theme to Super Mario World.