I stumbled upon GamerDNA the other day and thought the concept was pretty neat. Basically it works like Facebook but for the gaming community. One of the activities it uses to build DNA is adding games to a profile, so I took that opportunity to answer the unanswerable: What are my favorite games of all time?

I say unanswerable because, like any media, it is difficult to compare different genres or styles and say one is better than another. On top of that, no game is perfect; every one has flaws that are difficult for me to overlook, and as I get older, forgive. But impossible as it may, I set forth to discover for myself, what are the games I consider “the best”.

Here’s what I came up with:

• Sony PlayStation: 3
• Sega Saturn: 8
• Sega Dreamcast: 3
• PC: 1

No Xbox, no PS2, and nothing from the current generation of consoles. What gives?

For starters, there is an obvious lack of original PlayStation titles. Don’t get me wrong, there were a ton of great, generation-defining games for that console. But in reflection, they just don’t hold up. The original Resident Evil? Um, who wants to go back to tank controls. Tomb Raider? Antiquated. Final Fantasy VII? Dated. These games were significant for when they were released, but they just didn’t stand the test of time.

What about the N64? Surely Zelda or Mario should be on this list; Mario 64 probably should, if I ever get a chance to play through it. But I’ve never been a big fan of Ocarina of Time, as stated in an earlier post. Goldeneye? I think we’ve all been down this path lately – it was good in 1997, but it’s pretty underwhelming now.

And why are there so many Saturn games on the list? Probably more attributed to personal preference, but the benefit that console had was its arcade conversions, which catered to those short bursts of one-on-one competition that still work great today. I can pick up and play any of the Saturn games on my list today, without hesitation, and still have the same great experience I had 10 years ago.

As Leigh Alexander wrote, the four-month bell cure is more prevalent today than ever before. Banjo-Kazooie lived a great life as an improvement on Mario 64 for years, before it fell out of favor as a collect-a-thon. Today is a different story – BioShock, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 all were considered the top of their class when they were first received; now they are reeling from the critical backlash in mere months. Hell, Little Big Planet and Mirror’s Edge seemed to be D.O.A. after months of industry praise prior to their release. The curve seems to be tightening, which can’t be good for the industry.

So can there ever be a modern classic? A game that we gamers are confident can stand the test of time? The closest one in this generation has to be Call of Duty 4 because of its multiplayer legs. That is until COD Next comes out in 2009…which in turn asks the question, does the modern iteration cycle of gaming franchises hurt a game’s chance for immortality?

It’s kind of like the problem with movies today – Wizard of Oz was a classic, preserved in time to be viewed each Holiday season. The original Star Wars saw theatrical re-releases yearly and continued to pack in audiences. There were these cinematic classics that were sacred and treated as such. Until video came along. Now a movie like The Dark Knight sees home video release five months after the theatrical premiere, which it will then be saturated in to the public conscience to the point it is forgettable. Kinda like Forest Gump, or Titanic, or a slew of other best-pics of yesteryear. The Polar Express has tried to do this by re-releasing in IMAX 3D every Christmas, but the list of theaters willing to carry it are dwindling by the year. Then there is A Christmas Story. It landed like a dud during its theatrical run, but found its legs on video and has since blossomed into a modern-day film classic – if not by quality then at least by tradition.

In a similar vein, could it be the forgotten games of today could become the most memorable ones in the future? Could the PS2 be remembered by Katamari and not GTA III? Or the Xbox remembered by Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee and not Halo?

Only time will tell.

Today I was listening to the latest Giant Bomb Bombcast (which if you don’t already, you really should give it a listen), and I was struck by Jeff Gerstmann’s take on the new Sonic game, Sonic Unleashed. To paraphrase, he didn’t like it, and his reasoning behind that opinion was the game might not have been made for his audience. He said it was positioned to be the great comeback of Sonic for the die-hard fans, but the game ultimately was skewed way too young to cater to said fans. Again, I’m paraphrasing, but he said a six year-old might have fun with it.

Might. That word got me thinking.

There’s a couple of things going on here. One is the ever-increasing rift between the gaming critics and the “New Age of Video Games,” or what might be commonly known as the Wii Generation. The press have been up in arms for the past two years Nintendo is no longer addressing its core audience. One can argue the core audience has shifted from die-hard Mario disciples to the casual market. And indeed, that is what is keeping Nintendo miles from the competition. So why fault Sega for trying to capture a segment of this market? Or Microsoft, with its Lips/Movies/Scene-It! trifecta? The press dismiss these games almost immediately because reviewer opinion is highly subjective, and most reviewers at mainstream outlets are hardcore gamers. People like N’Gai Croal and John Davison have seen this disconnect, and in the latter’s case have positioned themselves pretty well for its future.

The second thing is regarding the quality of game reviews. Sure, someone like Gerstmann will never rank Sonic Unleashed at the top of their Game Of The Year picks, but can they use their subjectivity to pen an objective viewpoint? I know that sounds contradictory but hear me out for a second. What I’m talking about is not to play through a game assuming the role of a six year-old, especially if one has no connection to that mindset. And it’s not to go down the typical review checkpoints to see if it satisfies technical and mechanical baselines. It’s something else, and it got me thinking. How does Roger Ebert approach reviewing a film that is clearly not for his demographic? Babe was a childrens’ film, albeit one with adults in mind. But if he dismissed it because it had a talking pig, how would it have played for the general audience?

So I came up with this experiment – review editors take notice. What they should do is give every staff reviewer a casual or kids game to critique. Pair that game with a film of similar and comparable tone. Let the reviewer write the game review, and then compare that with Ebert’s film review of the film to which it was paired. Even though the media is different, it should provide some insight to Ebert’s thought process, which in turn can be applied to the reviewer’s repertoire for approaching future games in the same vein.

The goal here is not to dumb down the reviews for the targeted audience, nor is it to dismiss a game because it’s not for the critic’s demographic. It’s to be able to see what’s not good for the reviewer may be good for the reader and the ability to explain why.

For those who say, “print is dead,” I reply:

“…really?”

Just because Ziff-Davis is shuttering its remaining publications like CGW and PC Magazine, and the once-great Electronic Gaming Monthly, or EGM to you young-ins, is anemic to the point of flatlining, doesn’t mean it’s all doom-and-gloom for the rest. Page Flippin’ is going to be a somewhat-regular column of all that is good in the gaming mags.

In recent months, new EGM EIC James Meilke has taken the magazine in a direction we all wished it went ten years ago – a decidedly Japan-centric, fanboy slant – and proved that was the wrong idea for its general audience. The coverage, although it has been more niche-focused, seems only skin deep and lacks the depth the material requires. Perhaps its because of the never-ending bloodletting of the 1UP staff – almost every major article was penned by Meilke himself, a tall order for someone whose full-time job is to actually run the magazine.

But where EGM is failing, others are succeeding. Take for instance the awesome Rare profile OXM did a couple of issues back. Or Game Informer’s clever preview of Left 4 Dead, weaved within a multi-page, comprehensive overview of Valve Studios. These are two examples of excellent and creative writing which satisfies both the “hardcore” and general audiences. It’s also evidence that these magazines and, to an extent their publishers, respect and encourage traditional and fundamental journalism.

So how do these magazines follow up such standout features, and more important, can they?

Let’s start with the January 2009 issue of Game Informer, of which EIC Andy McNamara introduces MMO Report, the first of many new regular features for the magazine. Where EGM has unsuccessfully tried to shove PC gaming coverage into a page or two, GI has consistently covered PC and console gaming for years. The MMO Report shows their continued dedication to covering all aspects of gaming. Here are some other standouts from the issue:

• Afterwords with Lionhead Studios Design Director Dene Carter fields tough questions from the magazine’s readers about the critically and commercially acclaimed Fable II, like “Was there ever a point in development that the game had a more comprehensive property management system?” or “Why did you add co-op functionality on the game if we could not bring our characters into the other player’s game?”
• Achievement Dos and Don’ts, like “[do] chart the player’s progress toward unlocking achievements”, or “[don't] make multiplayer achievements if multiplayer is an afterthought”. What would normally be a page-filler in any other magazine is a thorough critique on the implementation of achievements in Xbox Live games.
• Continued exclusive reveals, such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Guitar Hero: Metallica. Among the wealth of news, some inadvertent (or maybe not) disclosure why Lars Ulrich is such a dick: “at my house, we didn’t have any video games allowed…so when Guitar hero III came out I broke my own rule and I asked our friends at Activision if it was possible to get one of these since there was a Metallica song on there.”

Now on to the January 2009 issue of OXM:

• Independents Day covers the top XNA Community Games, thankfully profiling the creators of the games themselves and not the totally annoying community manager (and ex-1UP alumni, go figure) Kathleen Sanders. And if you still haven’t played Weapon of Choice, you now have no excuse.
• Dead On Live,  a rundown of some older XBL titles and what you would find if you tried to play online. It was interesting to see Shadowrun still had a dedicated audience, while GTA IV was “flatlined”, although this clearly was written before the recent uptick in XBL stats.
• Based on how all other outlets were holding onto their Riddick news, it’s clear OXM had the exclusive on the Assault on Dark Athena information. Too bad the embargo was broken before this hit newsstands, but embargoes are bad anyway.
• The whole identity theft issue with Xbox Live has been covered to death over the past year, but Get Your Hands off My Gamertag! seems to recap the information in one concise and complete package, while updating with current trends and providing valuable tips on how users can protect themselves. It’s reminiscent of the DRM article Dan Americh put up a few issues back, where he guided readers through the process by doing it himself and documenting his findings. I applaud OXM by continually putting themselves in the readers’ shoes in order to provide the most accurate information.

So there you have it. Those of you brave enough to step away from your RSS readers and head to the newsstands will be awarded, or at least surprised, at what you’ll find.

In no particular order:

How I Met Your Mother
Ghost Adventures
Kyle Orton
Electronic Arts
The Blur Reunion
Netflix on the NXE
Hellboy II, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, The Dark Knight – all the great comic book movies this year (in ascending order)
Giant Bomb
Cheap Ass Gamer
Nintendo DS
DRM Free MP3s at Amazon.com
Joss Whedon
Buffy, Firefly, Angel, Army of Darkness - awesome comics based on film/television franchises
Return of The X-Files
Diners, Drive-ins and Dives
Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern

But most of all:

My Kids

I’ve been playing Viva Pinata for the DS over the past week, and I just wanted to reap praise on this little title that could. What, you say, little? Hasn’t Rare’s franchise been in the critical limelight for years already? Yes, and well, I thought the original Viva Pinata game for the Xbox 360 was more than just a little underwhelming. But now I’d like to set the record straight.

I always thought Viva Pinata had the underpinnings of a good game, it was just in a sour wrapper (oh what a pun!). And I wrote years ago how I thought it would have better legs as a PC game. But lo and behold, Rare decided to make a DS version, and I have to say this is probably the best possible incarnation of this title. Not only does the dual screen presentation and touch functionality make it snappy and more user friendly, but it remarkably does this while packing the Xbox 360 game in its entirety to the little handheld platform.

Sure, it still has some of the shortcomings, such as the linearity and lack of online play, but it trumps its next-gen brother in others. Load times are reduced to the point of being non-existant, which helps tremendously when popping in and out of game menus. The encyclopedia, which was buried behind loading screens and menus in the Xbox 360 version, is but a quick click and touch away. And the encyclopedia is essential for progressing through the game, mind you.

The DS game has not only vindicated Rare’s original concept, but proved this is the platform on which it should have existed all along.

Yes, I’m afraid so. As I mentioned before, Adobe Acrobat and Custom Soundtrack support would be nice. But as I’ve been spending more time with the DS, here’s a few more that have come to mind:

• Remove the UMD drive. Sell games on flash memory and via download from the PSN store. That’ll help with battery life, load times, and hopefully make navigating and using the PSP a snappy, speedy experience. It will probably reduce the size and increase the durability of the handheld to make it more feasible as a portable device. And the added benefit of having flash memory carts instead of UMDs? Combined with a smaller footprint of the handheld itself, it means gamers can take more games with them wherever they go, easily. Sony has recently said they took the wrong approach with the PSP, trying to make it more of a portable PS2 rather than emphasize the simple 2D gaming of the DS. But I disagree. I think they had the right idea, just the wrong design for a handheld to support that. If they add the obvious second analog stick, increase the load times, make it more portable, and still deliver a higher quality, higher polish gaming experience, I think they have a goldmine on their hands.

• Better WiFi connectivity. It would be nice if the PSP could stream audio and video files from a PC. It would also be nice if it had 802.11g or even N, but I don’t know what the latter would do to battery life. I’d even like the ability to transfer files from my PC or PS3 via wireless, instead of hunting for a USB cable. And in terms of battery life, I’m fine with the current length of 4-6 hours. If I’ve been gaming for that long in one sitting I need a break anyway. But if the console provided a quicker startup/shutdown, then it would support those quick 10, 20, or 30 minute gaming sessions that should be native to portable gaming. Even if the game itself does not promote these quick gaming bursts, remember – sleep/standby mode is your friend.

Sony is almost there in terms of really breaking through with handheld gaming. The ideas and core concepts are in place, but the devil’s in the details, and what seems like small problems are the things that are really holding the system back. I hope to see a PSP2 in 2009, with all of these recommendations incorporated in the design. I really like my PSP, and I think it has a lot of great games and functionality, but I’d really like to be able to use it as it’s intended.

Until then, hello DS.

I had just returned from my parents’ house for Christmas with a goggle (is that a word?) of new N64 games but had made plans to visit my friend in Dayton, OH for New Years. The local news was threatening some imminent snowfall to hit the area in the days ahead, but the forecast at that time was still hit-or-miss, so I went anyway.

Well, that threatening snowfall was upon us, but the local Ohio news wasn’t making a big deal about it. Not as much as three hours away where I lived, anyway.

“I dunno, man, if this snow hits I’ll never get home,” I said to my friend.

“Aw, c’mon. They’re saying it’s nothing. Don’t be a wuss,” he said. Or something stupid like that.

But my better judgment got the best of me, so I decided to pack up and leave on the eve of the storm. And sure enough, once I hit Indianapolis the snow started to fall, and I-65 started to get a little slippery, and then I had to reduce my speed, which made me drive a little longer as the weather got worse. I arrived at my apartment late in the evening, snow falling as predicted, and I was safe and sound if not a little weary from the drive.

The next morning I awake to about a foot of snow, with another foot predicted. Sweetness, I thought, I have nowhere to go except stay home and crack open some of those Christmas presents, starting with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time…

The snow over New Years’ weekend feel to over two feet. Everything was closed including my work for two days. My car was snowplowed in, so I wasn’t getting anywhere. And I think I didn’t shower for two days while I played Zelda.

Strangely, I didn’t finish it. I got to “grown-up” Link and kinda got sick of it (I know, blasphemous!). Either that or got sick of me doing my best Jabba the Hutt imitation on the couch and decided to shovel myself out. And you know something? To this day, I’ve never returned to the world of Hyrule.

Why is this a memorable Christmas story? Because it reminds me of my two favorite things I had to give up as a responsible adult: snow days and bachelorhood. And it’s something I’ll always remember everytime the weather forecast predicts a big snowstorm.

Ah Sony. Remember a couple of years ago when I wrote how much I liked my PSP, only after loading it with custom firmware? Well, recently I purchased a PS3, and thought with all the cool things it can do with my PSP, I found a way to go legit with it and the Sony firmware path.

Now that I have, my PSP is…a little boring again. Sure, it has some good, if not great, games, but the loading times are just way too long for me to boot it up for a quick gaming session. I’ve been switching between Wipeout Pulse and Final Fantasy I, but both are pretty underwhelming for AAA PSP titles; the former teased me with the potential for downloadable content but provided none (in the US – EU got theirs, which boggles my mind why it couldn’t come out here), and with Final Fantasy I could really benefit from some custom soundtrack support from the XMB.

So how could it be better? Well, I can’t convert a video on it to save my life. And it would be cool if it had Adobe Acrobat support. Audible-ready support would be neato as well, so I could have a virtual library on the go. And again, custom soundtracks please. Please.

The PSP is what it is, and therefore it’s always going to be the second-fiddle, not-quite-handheld handheld. I use it mainly for remote play, so I don’t have to turn on my entire entertainment center to check the latest additions to the PSN marketplace. And while that PSN content is downloading I boot up my DS for some convenient portable gaming.

Source: Flame on: PS3 a ‘sinking ship’ (PSP, too)

It was Christmas Eve, 1991, and some high-school friends of mine all got together during Winter break for midnight mass. After church, one person in the group who worked as a manager at Little Caesars invited about 10 of us all back to his store at the local strip mall, cranked up the ovens and we all pigged out on pizzas and Crazy Bread while hiding in the back so the patrolling cops didn’t think it was a bunch of punks looting the place.

Normally, that would be the highlight of anyone’s Christmas story. But then my two closest friends, Tim and Jerome, came back to my parents house with me to loot my place, as we tore open the wrapped Sega Genesis games, obviously given away by those memorable clamshell plastic cases. One of those games was an arcade favorite of ours, Pit Fighter.

Now, I have a problem of falling asleep doing basically anything, at any hour of the day. So combining church, 2AM, and a stomach full of Caesars is certain doom. I think I survived a few bouts of the game before handing over the controller, and Tim and Jerome unabashedly mooched off of my gift, round after round, until I slowly drifted off for a long Winter’s nap…

I woke up in the morning on the living room floor, TV and Genesis powered off, and no Tim and Jerome to be found. They ended up playing to their hearts content while I succumbed to those visions of sugarplums. As good as friends could be, they considerately turned everything off and cleaned up before they left.

But the best part? Jerome in a particularly heated Pit Fighter match, said to me, “man, I don’t know how games can ever look better than this…”

These used to be free, by the way, but times are tough and I’m sure there’s enough demand for this that my supply is worth something. What’s that, you ask? Well…

I know how to save Sonic the Hedgehog.

No, it doesn’t involve BioWare. But it could involve another EA team.

The Challenge: How can a 3D Sonic game capture the excitement of its 2D brethren?

The Answer: You gotta have faith. Mirror’s Edge Faith, that is. People can’t stop talking about how invigorating it is to seamlessly run, jump, roll and slide through obstacle courses in the sky. It’s all about the connection between the player and the character’s movements, pulling off these tricks at a sprint. So then, why can’t Sonic be a parkour expert as well? What could be better than effortlessly navigating through the neon lights of Spring Yard zone, or jumping through the clouds in Green Hill zone? Of course, First Person Sonic probably isn’t a good idea, so it’d have to be third person, which makes it more like Prince of Persia sans combat and time rewind, but you get the picture.

Extra Credit: Sega is hell bent on keeping the Werehog, you say? I got that covered too. Thanks to a little game known as Silhouette Mirage for the Sega Saturn. The concept of Silhouette Mirage was later used in Ikaruga, which had the player switch character attributes to perform certain offensive and defensive abilities. So combining the two influences, you have a parkour-sim at breakneck speeds in the Sonic worlds, attacking and defending against enemies by switching between Hedgehog and Werehog polarities along the way.

How friggin’ cool would this be? C’mon, Sega, this will only cost you a dollar!