Horse Racing – Intellivision

Ladies and gentlemen, may I call your attention to the young man holding the mysterious rectangular device! Draw closer and notice that it is unlike anything you have seen before. Such exotic technology can only be called a wonder.
But wait, does the room begin to fall away? Do you begin to question your senses? My friends, you are no longer the drab urbanites that you imagined yourselves to be, clad in corduroy and stiff, plaid shirts from Sears. You, my friends, are the elite! Cash overflows from your pockets! Your top hats cast shadows on those rabble in the cheap seats. You, my friends, are high-stakes gamblers in the sport of kings, and tonight the rumble of hooves around the track promises glory to the luckiest few — or to those who have a discerning eye for a winning thoroughbred.
It was 1979, and I was 7 years old. With its 12 buttons on the front, two buttons on each side and a magical, silver wheel at the thumb, I held the most astonishing gaming controller ever made – the Intellivision controller. It put the Atari’s single joystick and red button to shame. And I, in my thick nerd glasses and aqua corduroys, was using this magical device to draw a crowd of actual grownups – probably half in the bag from several hours of partying – to play a game with me.
A game. With a child. In the midst of a grownup party. This had never happened before. And it was all through the magic of one of the least-sexy games ever created: Intellivision Horse Racing.
The game itself was simple even by Intellivision standards. Four horses started out of the gate. Two of them could be controlled by players, who raced them against each other and the computer-controlled steeds. The controls consisted of the dial to move up or down, one button for “coax” and another for “whip.” The horses would get tired quickly; you could usually get away with two coaxes and one whip. Any more shenanigans from the jockey would cause your horse to rupture something or other, leaving you to slog mournfully around the track while everyone else was watering their horses and tipping mint juleps.
As a mano-a-mano affair, Horse Racing was a miserable failure. But the real magic of the game came in the betting. You see, while only two players could actually control horses, up to six players could participate in the betting. Before each of the 10 consecutive races, the game was a round-robin affair where each person in the room weighed the odds, sized up the ponies based on past races and decided whether to choose an easy favorite to win or pick the exacta for big money. The green horse looks like the clear favorite, but his last win was a six-furlong race with a dry track. Can he go the distance for 12 furlongs in the mud? How sharp are these gamblers I’m betting against? Should I play it safe with the easy odds that pay low, or go for broke with the longshot? I don’t know, they've been drinking Stroh's all night – they don't seem to be very focused.
And of course, they weren't. At least not as much as I was. But this was the chemistry that brought a crowd of grownups into the living room to play a game with a 7-year-old. As the whiz kid running the show with this rare, new "family entertainment system," I felt like a million bucks. It’s a scene I wouldn’t witness again until the invention of Wii bowling. But corduroy doesn't come in that color anymore, and now I’m one of the grownups.
By Shane Hoffman

Left 4 Dead - Xbox 360

Zombies, zombies, zombies. Everywhere you look these days you’re almost guaranteed to find something zombie related. People fear that one day there will be a zombie apocalypse where we’ll find ourselves standing together, whether in a mall or local gun shop, and fending for our lives in hopes of a rescue. For years, movies have dramatized our demise by zombies with fun, no brainer action flicks but it wasn’t until Left 4 Dead on Xbox 360 did I realize how much fun it would really be if it did happen.
Left 4 Dead is basically every climatic moment of all your favorite zombie movies rolled into one. You and three other teammates are stranded in four different scenarios and have to band together to make it to the “finale” and escape the zombie ridden escapade. Left 4 Dead is really the first game for me that really embodies survival; and when I say survive I mean teamwork. If you don’t work together as a team then you might as well forget about getting to the chopper. But with every game, there is a twist. You may struggle together, heal each other, even defend your friend from the zombie horde but then it happens: How will you act when you are running to the boat and your friend goes down? Will you attempt to rescue him and put yourself in jeopardy? (Think of everything you’ve been through together.) Or do you selfishly turn away and run saving your own life?
This is what makes Left 4 Dead so genius. For approximately an hour, you and your buddies have been blasting zombies into next week on your journey for survival in hopes of a rescue. The next thing you know you are holed up inside an old farmhouse, cornered in a bathroom, low on ammo and finally the rescue vehicle pulls up. Then it’s decided. Go! Everyone makes a break for it. Jumping out windows, down broken stairs, covering as much ground as possible. Who will survive?.
I have spent countless hours with my friends blasting zombies for pure fun while wondering along the way “will I make it?” It’s the concept that makes this game one of the best I have ever played. You really care about your teammates when you’re playing and if one goes down, you make sure to get them back up. Left 4 Dead may not look like that pretty shiny gem but it’s so much more than eye candy. You won’t find graphics like a Gears of War or Modern Warfare but it doesn’t have to be. The gameplay brings this platinum title to glory. But the best thing about this game is that fact that if you don’t survive; you had a heck of a ride getting there and you can’t wait to do it all over again. That is what makes this game great. The replay value is endless.
In my personal opinion, Left 4 Dead is the greatest survival/teamwork game ever made. Strong words but I’ll let the game do the talking for me. If you haven’t played Left 4 Dead then I highly recommend you get yourself a copy. Even if you don’t have any friends to play with you’ll have no problem hooking up with three strangers and trying your luck at survival. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Four strangers banding together, fighting for survival. Wonder where they got that idea from? Join the fight against the zombie apocalypse. It’ll be the most fun you’ll ever have fighting for your life.
By Stephen O'Blenis

Mechassault – Xbox

`"It's like the best arcade game you've ever played."
Those words of praise came from the man who would one day marry my oldest niece. He's a photographer, a gamer, and a hell of good guy all around. He's the kind of guy whose recommendations you take to heart.
And his last name is Champion. So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.
Without his recommendation I may have never picked up Mechassault. I had been burned by bad mech games before. I've found them either too complicated or almost unplayable.
Mechassault is simple, to be sure, but it's one of those games that is nearly impossible to put down once you get into it. I found myself thinking about this game all the time, planning my strategy for my return to the planet where me and my colleagues crash landed and encountered the Word of Blake cult.
Mechassault boils down the awesome power of huge mechs to a twitchy shooter that is like Halo in its simplicity. Smooth controls make it so your mech always does what you want it to do. Changing weapons is easier than blinking your eyes. Defensive maneuvers – such as jumpjets and cloaking – are useful and intuitive. And finding your way around the world is easy.
All this would mean nothing if you didn't have a cool world to tool around in and some decent enemies.
No problems there.
Everything in this world is destructible. A lot of games make that claim, but Mech Assault does it so well that you'll find yourself hanging back in some stages just so you can level entire cities. The enemies – from lowly grunts and tanks to towering mechs – are just challenging enough to keep you coming back. (And when you manage to kill those mechs, the explosion and sound effects that accompany the accomplishment are fantastic.) Being an original Xbox game means the graphics are excellent - they still hold up well.
When the game came out I didn't have Xbox Live, so I missed out on the thrills of playing this game online. With those servers shutting down any day now, I know it was not meant to be.
Maybe I'll get lucky in the future, because there are two games from the original Xbox that absolutely demand sequels. Crimson Skies is one of them – this is the other.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Operation Wolf - Nintendo Entertainment System

It was the late Eighties. My matinee heroes were Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and Bruce Willis. And there in the arcade stood a cabinet with an Uzi sticking up in place of a joystick. Ah, the lovely sidescrolling action unfolded as a cast of thousands of swarthy, Hispanics from some unnamed Central American country (Val Verde, perhaps?) popped up ready for me to cut down in a hail of simulated gunfire. How could any red-blooded, jingoistic, American boy fail to love Operation Wolf?
Of course, the problem was that arcade games cost quarters. And being something of a cheap bastard, I never liked plugging quarters into those machines. Still, Operation Wolf called to me. My brother saved up his quarters to buy a Nintendo. I remember the box of grey and taupe plastic and the rectangle controllers. The system also came with a gun-shaped controller for Duck Hunt. Point and pull the trigger. Could it be any more simple? I played a few rounds of Duck Hunt in my day, but I was never a big gamer.
Then Operation Wolf came out for Nintendo, and I shelled out the $50 for it. I missed the simulated blowback Uzi, but I was happy. The amazing thing for me was how close to the cabinet game it looked. No longer did I have to plug quarters into the machine. I played for hours until one day, I beat the game. As I recall, the ending had my first-person shooter character rescue some hostages, shepherd them through another round, and then jump onto a transport plane out of that pixilated green hell-hole
I went to college about that time. One Friday night I went down to the rathskellar and saw another cabinet game standing there. It was Operation Thunderbolt: the sequel to Operation Wolf. This was a two player version and had two MAC-10 submachine guns sticking up from the cabinet. I sidled up next to the crewcut fellow freshman playing the game and plunked my quarters in to take control of Player 2. Together, he and I blasted away at the African hostage takers (really, could you make such a politically incorrect game these days?) until these newest hostages were saved. And between us, it didn’t take as many quarters as I feared. All that home practice paid off. My wingman was an ROTC cadet. He and I became fast friends and shared a dorm room the next year as well as assorted other adventures.
After graduation, he got commissioned as an Army infantry officer and – soberly -- shot things for real. Sadly, I haven’t talked to him in far too long. He’s been a little busy these past nine years. I google his name sometimes; you’d be surprised what you can find online. He was part of the Army 1st Infantry Division task force that supported the Marines during the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. He was widely quoted out of context in the media on the use of white phosphorus incendiary rounds during that battle. But knowing him, he’s probably prouder of his efforts to organize his area of operations for the first free election in Iraq in decades. That was also reported – but not as widely.
By John Fitzpatrick

Virtua Fighter – SEGA 32X

I've always been a sucker for underdog products.
When everyone else was playing with Star Wars figures, I was still playing Army men.
When my best friends were collecting all those cool He-Man action figures, I was kicking it with Crystar: The Crystal Warrior (Never heard of him? You're not alone.)
And when the gaming world scoffed at the SEGA 32X and looked ahead to the superiority of other machines, I marched right out and bought one.
I've never regretted it.
At the time I was a cub reporter with the Providence Journal – living in a large house with grad students and restaurant workers. We stayed up late, had lots of parties and pretended we were still undergraduates. When I first brought home the 32X it was a revelation. We didn't know it was a poorly marketed albatross for the venerable SEGA Genesis. We just knew it came with a lot of extra wires, looked pretty high tech and allowed us to play the best fighting game ever made for people who don't know how to play fighting games: Virtua Fighter.
We spent many evenings passing around the controller in makeshift tournaments. We marveled when Pai's little hat would get knocked off by a kick to the face. We cheered when one of us would pull off a flawless victory - a "perfect" – against an opponent.
We drank beer and mashed buttons.
It was not an elegant way to spend our evenings, but it was not an elegant game. Even someone who had never played before could hack their way to victory if their timing was right.
Or if they chose to play as Pai. Easily the best fighter of the bunch, her victories mounted like so many quarters at the bottom of an arcade cabinet. Until one day, a roommate with too much time on his hands was able to utter these now-famous words:
"I beat Pai with Mau today."
And what a day it was.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

The Club - Xbox 360, PS3

Is it my dedication to heralding forgotten titles that drives me or is it the fact that I am woefully behind in my gaming because I can only play for so long before my wife and child reclaim me for their own selfish agenda (such as parenting, being a good husband and cooking things on the grill for them)? Who knows?
What matters is The Club, despite being quickly forgotten last year, is a fun game from SEGA that I don't want you to miss.
What if a developer known for racing games made a shooter? The answer is The Club. Bizarre Creations, the Project Gotham folks, apply the seat-of-the-pants racing sensibilities to this shooter and the result is a game unlike any other I've played. It rewards quick reflexes and gives new meaning to the term "twitchy" gameplay. There is no time to stop and think, no time to hide and snipe, and no time for love, Dr. Jones.
You gotta run and gun in this game, and even that time-honored expression doesn't fully embody the gameplay of The Club. (A side note: Anyone who has played the Project Gotham games is familiar with attention to detail and the clean graphical style for which Bizarre Creations is known. This is also evident in The Club. The opening cut-scenes – in which the characters are introduced – are excellent. The crisp graphics and lighting effects are also a joy to behold. What's best is that the graphics – while excellent – don't get in the way. Since this is not a game in which you are rewarded for stopping to smell the roses, that's a good thing.)
Once you choose a character – I recommend one that's fast – you are put through a series of shooting galleries in elaborate settings with a varying set of rules. There is some variety here, but every game involves you quickly killing as many enemies as possible in a timely manner. You are rewarded for creative kills and encouraged to kill quickly and repeatedly by a combo meter that keeps filling up as long as you're dishing out the death. If you let too much time pass without a kill – or by shooting one of the many "skull shots" littered around the game arena – your combo meter will drop. It drops fast and it's one of the features that keeps the adrenaline pumping while you play. (It's like trying to keep your line tight while you head to the next checkpoint in a racing game.)
There's a skeleton of a story here but that's not why you're playing The Club. You're playing it because it's a fine test of speed and accuracy that rewards folks who like to retry a mission until they nail it. For the rest of us – casual killers, if you will – The Club is a fun pick-up-and-play game that offers a nice diversion from the typical shooter.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball – Super Nintendo

In the mid 1990s there were few athletes, if any, more famous and seemingly superhuman than Ken Griffey Jr. Long before Mark McGwire ate steroids by the handful (not that it helped him hit homers) and Barry Bonds’ head grew to hippopotamus-like proportions, Griffey Jr. was the great American hope to smash Roger Maris’ famed home run record.
He was also the only real person in Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. Though the title had a MLB license, it didn’t have licensing from the players’ union, which meant real stadiums and teams with imaginary players. One of the best parts of the game was how these “fake” players would be given nicknames so anyone with half a brain could figure out who they were really supposed to be.
Long before anyone used a joystick to determine the downward action of a 12-6 curveball, baseball video games were simple and repetitive affairs. In Griffey’s baseball game, pitches were either fast or slow, strikes or balls. Hitting was also simple. You pressed a button and you swung the bat.
If a batter struck out, they would either sigh and put their head down, yell at the umpire or my personal favorite, snap a bat over their knee. All-in-all, the game was simple and charming.
Including me, there were four boys who grew up in my neighborhood within two years of each other. Every one of us owned this game.
The home run derby was fun and the season modes let you go from something like 20 games all the way to a full season of 162 games. No matter how many games you played or how many times the same music looped over and over again it never got old.
Oh, and you could hit 575– home runs. Maybe the imaginary players in this game were on imaginary steroids too.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Final Fantasy Tactics - Playstation

Mediocre graphics, stupid music and super repetitive gameplay.
At a glance, that’s a brief summary of the 1997 Square Enix release Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT). A spin-off of the Final Fantasy franchise (one of the most successful franchise in video game history) for the original Playstation, this game was released in-between the main title’s seventh and eighth installments.
Despite some of its obvious shortcomings, however, FFT is easily one of my favorite games of all time. Why? Because no title released on any console ever has done such a remarkable job of fusing the RPG and RTS genres. While you can level up your character and open up different abilities and spells based on experience, the in-battle fighting system only allows so much energy per character for each turn, creating a strategic element not seen in many RPGs.
The game also allows you to wander back and forth between areas picking fights with random villains for an infinite period of time without having to advance the story. What this means is you can get your team to a God-like level of power before even embarking on the second mission, making the main story line a cake walk covered in carnage and the bones of your enemies.
Yeah, that’s what I liked about it. Forget the main story. It’s something to do with medieval knights or something. I don’t even remember it. But I don’t care about it now and I didn’t care about it then. All I cared about was running over gangs of thugs with my wizard and a monk who could shoot shockwaves from his fists. When I was a younger fella, I lived in a house down in Providence with a few friends. By the time we moved out, I had played the game so much and annoyed my roommates so extensively that one of them hid the game from me.
To this day, none of them have admitted to doing it, but I know at least one of them reads this blog and buddy, I know the truth.
FFT is awesome and while many franchises release spin-off titles that flop miserably, this release is a valuable addition to the Final Fantasy universe. You can play it for months or even years and never get bored, at least I didn’t.
By George Morse
gmnorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Pac-Man - Atari 400

When I was a kid all I wanted more than anything was an Atari 2600, just like the one my best friend had hooked up to the one television they had in their house. Unfortunately for me, Rachel lived further away than I was allowed to ride on my pink Huffy, so it was only about every other weekend when we'd hunker down in front of the state-of-the-art 20-inch screen playing Combat until her parents came down the split-level stairs to catch Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs on 20/20. Alas, my dreams were thwarted when one Christmas my dad presented my sister and me with our big shared gift that year: An Atari 400 computer. A COMPUTER. Because he wanted us to learn something about this upcoming home computing revolution he'd read about in Popular Science. The computer came with some kind of drawing program that my dad referred to as a "game," and I dutifully occupied my Christmas drawing multi-colored circles. As much as I tried to hate that computer, I will confess that I did learn a thing or two about programming, mainly because I enjoyed making the computer respond with obscenities whenever I typed the right BASIC command.
I had the sense to save my Christmas money that year and head on down to the videogame kiosk in the local Sears, where I was delighted to find that I could, in fact, buy games for my nerd machine. The first game I plunked down about $50 for (keeping in mind this was some time around 1983 - in today's dollars, that's what, like $750?) was Pac-Man. The ride home in the front seat (this was also before seat belts and kids riding in the back until they're eligible for the draft) of dad's blue AMC Hornet was torture. I think I even asked to jump out of the car at the traffic light 6 blocks from home because I knew I could run home between the neighbor's yards faster than dad could get there on solid pavement. My plea fell on deaf ears and I had to wait out those last few blocks before I hopped out of the car in the gravel driveway, cleared the chain-link fence, and sprinted up the stairs to the attic playroom.
The best part about the fact that the Atari was a "shared' gift was that though my sister was only about a year older than me, her interests skewed toward boys and makeup, whereas my interests were of the ilk to position me for the It's Academic team I would compete on 5 years down the road. That is to say, the Atari was mine alone. This became especially important after I slammed the cartridge into the slot and discovered that this version was BETTER than the system at Rachel's! This Pac-Man wasn't a washed-out blob on a pastel background! The colors were vibrant. The dots were nearly round (round dots - a revolution in home computing, indeed!). There was music, just like the Pac-Man at the arcade up the street that I wasn't allowed to visit because that's where the less-respectable girls in the neighborhood went to smoke with the 20-year-old counter jockeys.
I can't say I know how long I played that day, but I do know it was dark when mom called me down for dinner and I couldn't move my thumbs for most of that night thanks to the joystick cramp I'd grown to ignore. And I doubt I ever got off the first screen. But I was hooked. I played probably the entirety of the next day, and every day thereafter before AND after school, stopping only to eat and throw something together each night and call it homework. It was around this time that Rachel started figuring out that boys existed and that the way to hang out with them wasn't to sit in an attic staring at a 15-inch tv screen with poor horizontal hold. But I continued saving every dollar I could get my hands on and soon had a fairly decent collection of now-classic games: Asteroids, Galaxian, even Centipede (with the roller-ball joystick that I think my dad finally chipped in for one day at Sears after he saw how crestfallen I was upon learning that you had to buy it separately). I never was really especially good at any of them (a pinball wizard, I wasn't), but I could beat my own high scores fairly reliably and that was enough to keep me coming back for a time. Some time over the next few years, I must have figured out that boys weren't entirely gross and I started kinda wanting to hang out with them too, which meant less time spent in the dusty attic playing Breakout. Which was probably not an entirely bad thing. It also meant that the precious twenties from Grandma's birthday cards were destined more and more for the Fashion Bug rip-off up the street. The 400 was at some point upgraded to an 800, and finally replaced by a ColecoVision (a real videogame console, finally!). There was an all-too-brief period in which a boy who actually enjoyed spending time with me also enjoyed playing Jeopardy! on the Coleco (which held what we believed to be the best Easter egg of all time, wherein "Schwarzenegger" was an acceptable answer to all Final Jeopardy questions, as long as you spelled it correctly). Thereafter, the sum total of my gaming experience over the next 20 years consisted almost entirely of watching a succession of significant others unlock all the cheats for the NHL series on PlayStation.
This year, the big family present I picked up was a Wii system, with a 4 and 5 year-old in mind. I was almost nervous about Christmas morning, when the kids awoke to find a Wii controller in each stocking, remembering back to my own thinly-veiled disappointment on that Christmas nearly 30 years prior. I thought for certain that my daughter would cry out that all she wanted was a Snuggie blanket. (A big thank you to the incessant marketing machine that is the Sprout channel; thanks to them she also desperately needs Wonder Hangers.) But after spending a little time designing our personalized Miis, we all discovered that the preschool set likes to box. And play tennis. And do yoga (the Wii Fit was SUPPOSED to be for me, but I find myself waiting in line for it at the end of the day). It's fun, and probably somewhat good for all of us too. And maybe someday, my daughter will wait on the porch to meet the UPS truck carrying her hot-off-the-presses copy of Wii jai-alai that was advance ordered on Amazon. But for me, that first "running through the neighbor's yard to get home that much faster and start playing" honor will always belong to a little yellow semi-circle and a few computer-generated ghosts.
By Jo-Ann Kriebel

XIII - Xbox, PS2, Gamecube

I was living in Philadelphia, running the bar at a Greek restaurant in a ritzy neighborhood called Manayunk. Actually, just the main street in Manayunk was ritzy - Manhattan salons, upscale restaurants, expensive boutiques. A few blocks up the road where I lived with my wife (then girlfriend) was a working class neighborhood with narrow streets and a lot of churches. (The part in the movie Unbreakable where the kid is playing football in the park was filmed there.)
I'd come home at 3 a.m. after closing the bar and get in some gaming before passing out. One of the games I remember fondly from this period was XIII. If Manayunk was a working class neighborhood fronting a fancy facade, XIII was a B-list shooter fronting a spectacular veneer.
Sometimes style is enough to trump substance.
It's rare, but it happens.
In XIII, a daring title from the previous console generation, the attention to style overwhelmed everything else. For me it was an obvious buy: I love first person shooters and I'm a big fan of cell-shaded graphics. XIII had both, and it played out like a 1960s espionage film.
You wake up on a desolate strip of New England beach. The near-fatal impact of a bullet has left your head pounding, and your memory erased. And you've got the number XIII tattooed on your chest. A pretty lifeguard in a red swimsuit helps you along. In your pocket is a key to a New York City bank box. You struggle to your feet and get assaulted again. You're shocked with how easily you're able to dispatch the bad guys.
It's not the most original beginning to a thriller (game, film or novel) but it's intriguing and it gets better.
And the game features Adam West in what was probably his last serious role before playing the mayor on Family Guy. (Come to think of it, it may be his only serious role. Ever.)
XIII took a lot of criticism for having more style than substance. I can't argue that. But I can say that at 3 a.m. when I would come home from work it was nice to have a game with a great story, good looks and gameplay that I could easily master before my eyes fell shut under the weight of the day.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Spider-Man - Nintendo 64

In the year 2000 I turned 28, took on a second newspaper as editor and rented a one-room apartment across from the newsroom. With the extra responsibility at the paper came a few extra dollars in my paycheck. I treated myself to a new TV and a copy of Spider-Man for the N64.
I never once regretted choosing the N64 over the Playstation. For all the raving about Sony's first console (and, I admit, it was a revolutionary console) I will still take the N64's best titles over the PS1's any day.
Spider-Man, which came out on both platforms, is no exception.
You should know, however, that I'm a Spidey geek. I've got a sleeve tattoo of Spidey and my favorite villains as well as a life-sized statue of him in my den.
One of the greatest moments of my journalism career came when I got to interview Stan Lee. I was writing a profile of a local comic books store - trying to get at what kept them afloat in the age of eBay and kids' waning interest in reading comics. I got it in my head that I had to interview Stan Lee for what was, at best, a local human interest story. After much wrangling with his PR flack I finally got the interview.
"Please hold for Mr. Lee," his secretary said.
Ten seconds passed like ten days.
And then:
"Is this the valorous Victor?"
Then I gushed over the phone for about 5 minutes and did the least objective interview of my life.
"You have been to the mountain," said fellow reporter, the late, great Arthur Turgeon.
He was right.
So imagine my delight when I began playing Spider-Man and was greeted by Stan Lee's narration in the game's opening. I knew right away that this was going to be a quality title that would do the hero justice. It certainly did. (I still love the Spider-Man game form the Atari 2600 just as much. You can bet that one will make this list as well.)
Some things define us. For me one of those things has always been Spider-Man. I've loved him since I was a little kid. My brother once took me to a face-painting booth at a carnival and I made the lady paint my face like Spidey's mask. My 2-year-old daughter knows more about Spidey than she does about Elmo. And on the first date I ever had with the wonderful woman who is now my wife, I laid out the (abbreviated) mythology of a character who has resonated with me for as long as I can remember. I knew I loved her the minute I set eyes on her so I wanted to lay it all out there right at the beginning.
I guess it worked.
This game honors each and every memory I have of the web-slinger.
Rare is the game that can top that.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Grand Prix - Atari 2600

One warm summer morning in 1982 found me in the basement, joystick in hand. I was already deep into my Atari addiction when Activision released Grand Prix. A 10-year-old kid living in a Baltimore suburb, I had played Asteroids and Adventure to death. Those games were great, but they lacked the polish and vivid colors of Activision titles. Grand Prix was no exception, and I knew this was true that morning as my mother watched me play. I was going for a record.
Why?
Not to brag about it on the internet or to unlock a new track; but to beat a track in a certain amount of time so I could send in a photo of my TV screen for a special Activision iron-on patch. (Note to Activision: Bring back the patches.)
As mom watched me fail over and over again I noticed she didn't seem as bored as she usually did when watching me play a video game.
"They should make you play this game before you get a driver's license," she said.
Today the game looks like it was created by a kindergarten class, but in 1982 the vibrant graphics and realistic sound effects were total racing immersion. The simple gameplay - race to the finish line, avoiding obstacles and other cars, as fast as possible - forced you to memorize patterns and pull off maneuvers with zero room for error.
That summer was two years before everything would change for my family. It was two years before my father got laid off from the tugboats and my mother rejoined the workforce after decades of being a stellar housewife. The days of her watching me play some stupid game in the basement would soon be over. I wasn't growing up hard, to be sure, but I grew up a little faster.
But on that summer morning with my mother watching I beat that track and she took the picture.
Of course, we left the lights on and the picture never came out. All you could see was me sitting next to a white screen. I've always wondered how many more kids would have patches now if they were better photographers. (And what did the folks at Activision do with all those pictures anyway?)
Grand Prix is a great game on its own merits, but it also a catalyst for fond memories of my youth.
You can't ask for much more than that.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Super Mario Kart - Super Nintendo

Around the same time that my brother left for college, my mom got rid of our cable. My brother, always an avid gamer, took most of his newer gaming systems with him to the University of Delaware. I was going into my junior year of high school. Though once I beat Mindsweeper in eight seconds and went through the typical obsession with Snood in middle school - computer and video games weren't really my thing. But now my brother was gone, it was only my mother and me in the house and we had no TV! How was I going to procrastinate on doing my US History homework with so few distractions? Then I found my brother's Super Nintendo had been left behind in the basement, and with it - Super Mario Kart.
I always loved Super Mario Kart and it had always belonged to my brother, meaning I only ever played with him where his superior gaming skills left me out of most of the harder rounds or in Eighth place (the lowest of the game) where he would spin laps around me. And now here it was - forgotten - it was mine!
Obsession ensued. I usually chose to drive with Toad - the mushroom player with a red and white cap. I could have picked Toad because he was light, because he took turns easily and had decent acceleration. But no, really I think I picked him because he was small and so was I. Why didn't I choose Princess Toadstool - the only female character? Because, come on - that's just too obvious. My brother, in fact, often played with Princess because she did have the best acceleration in the game. I remember Donkey Kong being very heavy and I wasn't used to a lot of extra weight. Mario was boring - what's the fun of Mario coming in first place - his name is on the box. Luigi was just kind of there, a sub par Mario. Yoshi was my second choice, or was it Koopa Troopa? I don't remember but in racing games it's usually best to choose a supporting character.
I am now 25 and have not played SMK in many years but recently my brother came to visit me in Brooklyn and reminded me of my brief obsession with the game in the Fall of 2002. He told a story I'd never heard about how one of his most crestfallen moments was when he returned home for Thanksgiving break and his little sister could beat him at Super Mario Kart. That's when I remembered - I had been good. Really, really good. I could swerve quickly around Rainbow Road without falling off the sides, I knew you needed to break when going around a turn, and I could skid over mud or ice without drowning. I have no idea if my skills still remain but a friend just got the new MarioKart for Wii. Time for round two?
By Fia Alvarez
fiaalvarez@gmail.com

Shadow Complex - XBLA

Downloadable content is a hallmark of this console generation. Some critics say the proliferation of game add-ons and arcade titles is picking the pockets of gamers. I'm not one of those critics. No one is holding a gun to your head demanding you buy that Gears of War armor for your avatar.
The truth is this console generation has featured the best gaming bargains of all time. What began with The Orange Box continued in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Shadow Complex is a downloadable game that offers more thrills than many recent full releases. Anyone who has ever spent $60 for 7 hours of gaming (I'm looking at you Wolverine) will happily drop $15 on this excellent title.
The game clocks in at about 7 hours, depending on how thorough you are. After that you will likely start over from the beginning to see how quickly you can beat the game. There's also a Proving Ground option that offers timed challenges. That's a lot of gaming for a little price.
The side-scrolling shooter (think Metroid) honors the old-school style of gameplay while offering a truly next-gen presentation. The graphics are first class. The level design is excellent. The gameplay - save for some slight targeting issues – is rock solid. It's no surprise that Epic Games has released yet another excellent title for the Xbox 360 - they're made for each other. What is surprising is how much quality is packed into this little download. You start with only a flashlight and a pistol, but you'll be a cyborg killing machine by the end of the game. The weapons are ingenious and fun, but they don't overshadow the exploration angle. Your flashlight will reveal tons of secret passageways, weapons and gadgets.
You'll have a hard time putting this title down. I've got a stack of games I'm trying to get through right now but I put them all aside when I downloaded "Shadow Complex." There's something to be said for a rock solid game that offers players a decent story and an end in sight. I am reminded of the old days when you would be rewarded for finishing a game with the simple satisfaction of knowing you did it. "Shadow Complex" is such a game. It will not bore you. It will challenge you. And, once you beat it, you'll probably come back again.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Frontlines: Fuel of War - Xbox 360

Somewhere in the timeline between DOOM and Halo first person shooters got a reputation as being senseless endeavors with little substance. It’s true that cookie-cutter titles exist in the market, but that’s true of any genre. Especially in this glorious console generation — where A-list titles pop up year-round for all systems — there has been a backlash against what some people perceive as stupid shooters.
Into the flooded market appeared Frontlines: Fuel of War. It had neither the hype of Halo 3 or the depth of Bioshock.
But guess what?
It’s fun.
I mean really fun. I mean “keep it in the console until you’ve beaten it and then take it online immediately” kind of fun. Does it have to be anything else? Does it have to aspire to touch the heart and bridge the gap between film and first person shooter? Does it have to make a difference in my life on a personal, private level?
No. It has to be fun. And it is.
This is not to say that Kaos Studios didn’t round out the game with a decent, timely story about our energy crisis and one possible future. They did. They even included a journalist embedded with the soldiers that I obviously found endearing. But while the story in Frontlines is a fine skeleton, the meat on the bones is the fun factor.
You’ll feel it the minute you fire your first weapon. I don’t think I’ve seen tighter gunplay in a shooter. It’s not just that targeting and hits are done flawlessly; it’s that the guns feel amazing. They’re tight, responsive and satisfying. And they sound fantastic. I bought this game when my wife and I had our first kid. With a newborn at home I played all my games with a set of Sennheiser RS130 Wireless RF Headphones. These are serious headphones, and they came in handy with Frontlines because the sound is so good. (It’s probably better that I didn’t play the game with my surround sound system because the two women who walk their dogs by my house 38 times a day would likely think there was a firefight going on in my living room.)
FPS fans will be able to pick up and play this title easily. When you do you’ll quickly find that the war zone is littered with not only weapons and warriors, but tons of hardware. You’ll pilot a variety of vehicles in this game — which all handle satisfactorily — but the real fun starts when you stumble across the game’s many drones. These are remote-controlled, scale-model helicopters, tanks and other weapons of war that you can safely send into battle while you hide in the distance. I especially liked the helicopters, which pack an amazingly destructive arsenal of weaponry on their tiny frames.
In closing, allow me to explain it like this: When I got my copy of Frontlines I took it to a friend’s house where a poker game was to commence. I figured we’d check it out after we played cards. He was anxious to try the game so I fired it up and handed him the controller.
“This is awesome,” he said after a few minutes.
He was right. (And we never managed to put it down long enough to play cards.)
Frontlines: Fuel of War was not the defining moment that heralded the future of shooters. But it’s fun; a lot of fun.
And that’s awesome.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Personal Trainer: Cooking - Nintendo DS

I’ve worked in my share of decent restaurant kitchens and I’m here to tell you: This “game’s” demonstration for filleting anchovies (among other fine tutorials) is as good as I’ve seen anywhere.
Personal Trainer: Cooking not only makes planning and creating meals easy and fun, it makes you want to cook. That’s an impressive accomplishment for this unassuming little non-game. That’s right. This is not a game. Not even close. As Nintendo continues to redefine what a gaming console (or handheld, in this case) can do, they struck gold with Personal Trainer: Cooking.
Evidence of this is not only in the fact that the software is successful in helping people of all skills turn out fine meals, but that it has the one quality all good cookbooks have: You can’t put it down. Like a good cookbook that is fun to read even when you’re not cooking, Personal Trainer: Cooking is fun to explore any time. I found myself searching the globe with its cool country-by-country recipe finder looking for exotic dishes. Or I’d set a calorie limit (or just punch in the staples I had in the pantry) and see what I could come up with. If that’s not enough, the training videos included are excellent.
One small but important feature: Voice activation. Once you get cooking you don’t have to touch the DS again. You can tell the DS to repeat a prior step or continue on and it will recognize your voice. This beats thumbing through a cookbook with panko bread crumbs pasted onto your hands or fumbling with your remote control to pause that episode of Molto Mario you recorded.
The title boasts well over 200 recipes from around the globe. A calendar feature keeps track of the recipes you’ve cooked. The ingredient manager makes this an easy way to go shopping. There’s even a handy onboard calculator to keep your spending in check at the market.
I’m not about to give up on my obsession with collecting and reading cookbooks, but I will say this is easily the best $20 you’ll spend on any cooking gadget or book in your life.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Ninja Blade - Xbox 360

My room is dark and my headphones are snug. Ninja Blade opens before me and I am ready to give this title my undivided attention. A dramatic opening on the drop ship leads to a surprisingly fast quick time sequence (hitting the right button when prompted to let the cinematic action unfold) and then I crash through a skyscraper window and prepare to dispatch some hideous bad guys.
Not bad.
Much sooner than I expect a mini-boss climbs up the side of the building and onto the killing floor. More hack and slash, more button sequences, more bad guys.
I’m into this game only five minutes and I’m already doing a lot more than the typical tutorial and backstory that slows too many games down from the start.
And that’s how it goes with Ninja Blade, a fast and fun game by From Software that successfully brings a variety of gameplay elements to the XBOX 360 with polish and excitement. Having a darkened room and good headphones help — as they would with any game. Immersion is a guarantee with this set up. And the game deserves it. The graphics are crisp and the sound rocks.
It’s easy to compare the gameplay to other titles, so that’s what I’ll do. First you’re given a little God of War with the button timing. Then it’s more Kratos — or Conan, I’ve always thought the Conan slasher was underrated — with the swordplay. A bit of Prince of Persia comes in with some wall runs and jumps and then the sequence repeats. Haters will point to these other games as superior examples for their respective gameplay elements.
But haters always hate. Why there are so many haters in the gaming community is a topic for another column, but I’m not one of them. I’ll take a game on its own terms and its ability to bring a good time to my console.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Parsec - TI99

It's a throw back game, and probably not available anymore. I played this game in 1982 on a Texas Instruments TI99 computer console plugged into a Quasar television set.
Around the same vintage as the Atari 2600, the TI personal computer had a few cartridge games. Parsec was their flagship game and I think it shipped with the system.
At first glance, Parsec is basically a horizontal Galaga, or Vanguard. But unlike those arcade games, you could play it at home, and it was beatable with 16 levels of increasing difficulty. Your 2D spaceship battles UFOs with a sensitive laser blaster. The TI99 had a decent joystick. It was similar to the Atari 2600 remote, with just the stick and a single fire button, but lighter, more responsive, and the red fire button was wide like a (soon to be) Mac mouse clicker.
At each level you need to refuel and to clear the level you have to navigate the asteroid belt. To accomplish this, you need to switch gears. It's a cool feature. The default is 3, and your ship bounces around nicely to combat the alien vessels, but you need to slow down your horizontal movement to 2 in order to navigate the asteroids, and down to speed 1 to crawl through the refueling station.
Great game, wish I still had it in the attic.
By Matthew Zuchowski

Scribblenauts - Nintendo DS

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time engaged in one of the greatest debates in all of childhood: Who would win in a fight?
Superman or The Hulk?
The Hulk.
Godzilla or a T-Rex?
Godzilla
My dad or your dad?
My dad.
You get the idea. My next-door-neighbor and I would waste summer afternoons in our Baltimore suburb playing this silly game before we got bored and, of course, got into mischief. (Later in life I killed some time by throwing a tub of BBQ sauce at some dude's garage. I'm ashamed to say how old I was at the time. Let's just say I almost missed the prom because I was grounded.)
Perhaps kids of this generation will be spared the shame of youth with Scribblenauts, a game that lets you do almost anything in its virtual world. If you want to see if God is more powerful than Godzilla, go for it. If you want to see if a vampire can beat a wolfman, have at it. This is not the purpose of the game, however, but it's a plus.
The goal of this ingenious game is simple: Help Maxwell (you) solve challenge after challenge in a game world that you control. The trick here is that you choose what to put in the game world to help complete each task. For instance, let’s say there is a challenge in which you have to rescue a kitten from a tree. Using the Nintendo DS touch screen to insert objects into the game world, you could arm yourself with a hatchet and chop the tree down. Or you could write in a fireman and let him do the work for you. Or you could get a little nasty and use a slingshot to shoot the cat out of the tree (although points are awarded for avoiding violence).
The challenges in Scribblenauts range from the simple cat-caught-in-tree example to helping sea captains avoid ice bergs.
If you can think it, you can probably write it into the game world. The game recognizes some 10,000 words and translates them into characters and objects. And if you don’t feel like a challenge, you can simply write goofy stuff into the game world and see how they interact. I recommend the following: God and Satan; a vampire and garlic; a cop and a crook; Bigfoot and a dragon.
This is easily one of the best games I’ve played on my DS. If I would have had a game like this when I was young, perhaps I wouldn't have been so easily distracted and some poor man's garage door wouldn't smell like ribs.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Resident Evil 5 - Xbox 360, PS3

Awesome.
Summing up the experience of playing “Resident Evil 5” is just that simple. It is awesome in nearly every way. Sadly, that word is so overused that most people have forgotten it should be reserved for things that truly inspire awe – an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration and even fear.
It is the rare game that has you sitting back a bit on your couch so there is enough room for it to exist in your living room. You feel a need to be respectful of its place in the world. All the hallmarks of a first class game are here: Solid story, jaw-dropping graphics, excellent pacing, etc. It’s games like this that remind us why we play games in the first place. “Resident Evil 5” is among the handful of stellar games from this generation that will be remembered forever, such as “Bioshock” and “Fallout 3.”
Considering that the same could be said of its predecessor, “Resident Evil 4,” I think someone at Capcom knows what they’re doing.
You probably already know the major talking points about the game.
There is co-op play (it’s excellent).
The graphics are as good as we’ve ever seen in a game (they are).
It takes place in Africa (and, in my humble opinion, the game is not racist - but it's a good debate.)
The gameplay is similar to that of “Resident Evil 4” (getting a little long in the tooth, but works perfectly).
What else do you need to know? Well, as you once again take control of beefy commando Chris Redfield you are joined by a partner named Sheva Alomar in a mission to take on a bioterrorism threat infecting a fictional African country. I never realized how alone I felt in RE4 until I played through this one with Sheva. It’s nice having someone else around when it’s raining zombies; even if that someone is under AI control.
The game boasts impressive online components, an improved inventory system that is enhanced by the co-op sharing options, and enough thrills to keep you busy playing until the very end. Some say it’s not as scary as other installments. They’re right, but the intensity is so high that you may not notice.
Two minor but frustrating things to mention:
1. Despite the attention to detail and the stunning environments, for some reason a line of clothes hanging in a village will stop you in your tracks. Seriously. The first time I tried to walk through a few towels hanging on a line and was rebuffed as if it were a brick wall I was a little disappointed. I know it’s a small detail, but it immediately took my head out of the game.
2. Sheva, despite being a fine warrior and companion, is a mannequin the rest of the time. At one point I shot a gas canister and the explosion was amazing. Sheva, however, remained stonefaced as if nothing had happened.
Are these small points? Absolutely. In fact, if this game wasn’t so amazing I wouldn’t even bring them up. But it is the intense attention to detail and quality that is evident throughout the game that makes these little bits of silliness stand out.
And this title truly is a stand out title.
I'm not even a survival horror fan. I'm not a big country music fan either, but I love Johnny Cash. That's because the best demands respect.
And this game is one of the best ever.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Resident Evil - Playstation

I remember it clear as day.
It was just after Christmas and I had to be about 12 or so. This kid who lived in my neighborhood, who was spoiled rotten by his parents grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and anyone who had anything to do with him, had just gotten the original Playstation. He also got an X-Games title to go with it and this other game that I thought had a stupid name.
It may seem like a video game standard today but the first time I heard “Resident Evil” I laughed out loud. I mean, seriously, it sounds like some type of direct-to-video horror movie some guy shot with a video camera in his basement and some I-Party supplies. And to think, somebody, somewhere was the first person to think of this. Sitting in their cubicle at Capcom someone went “Hey! Resident Evil! I’ve got to be onto something here!” and then, adding insult to injury, hundreds of people involved in the development process signed onto the name before slapping it on the box and throwing it out into the world.
It was a dumb name then and it’s a dumb name now.
But people forget that because the game is awesome.
I remember we were about 10 minutes into playing it when a huge spider lept through a window and we had to take it out with a shotgun. It was awesome and brutal. For the next couple months, me and two friends made our way through the game.
This was before the Internet was a big thing, mind you. I still had dial-up AOL that wouldn’t let me on during snow days because the lines were busy so finding plot spoilers online wasn’t like it is today.
Nah, you had to play the game. You had to earn it. Which is what was great about Resident Evil. The reward for surviving each task made you want to continue. The new rooms, the new creatures, the new weapons, the alleged cheatcode that supposedly let you play the game as Jill naked, it was all to be gained by playing the game.
So yeah, the quality of Resident Evil titles may be a no-brainer nowadays, but you can’t overlook how important the first title was … even if it has one of the worst names in video game history.
Personally, I think “Trapped in a Mansion Zombie and Creature Killing Spree” is just as catchy.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Video Pinball - Atari 2600

Before I was tall enough to play real pinball I was obsessed with this simple pinball game for the original Atari. Complete with bumbers, tilt action, spinners and specials, Video Pinball was – and still is – a great and simple game that can be enjoyed casually or fanatically.
What I mean by fanatically is that, if you want to, you can have this virtual piball table do your bidding for incredibly high schores. The tilt feature – which allows you to sort of steer the ball around the board – is primitive. However, without it this game woud be about as fun as playing Combat by yourself. I spent hours in front of the cathode ray tube carefully adjusting my tilt skills to get the ball to go where I want, when I wanted.
Oh, and by "ball" I mean the tiny square that was supposed to be the pinball.
The approximation of real world physics in the game is primitive as well, but it works. The ball either floats softly or rockets around the table. It also boats a rollover bonus – getting the ball to roll over an Atari logo.
There are some good pinball gmaes on the market these days – we'll eventually get to some of them on this list – but most of them suffer from the same problem: Pinball is supposed to be played on a pinball machine. The mini-video games that modern pinball games incorporate into their gameplay are usually weak. The same goes for most pinball games played on a TV. It's hard to replicate the pinball experiecne with a game pad and a television.
Luckily, Video Pinball on the Atari 2600 was so primitive and limited in its abilities that it entirely skipped this problem. My older brother bought this game for me and he and I played it for hours. Next time I see him, I think we'll fire this one up.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Mercenaries – Xbox, PS2

Known best for its go anywhere, commandeer anything gameplay, the original Mercenaries was a standout sandbox game at a time when everyone was jumping into the sandbox genre. It managed to be political and (contextually) realistic while not taking itself too seriously.
And it featured voice work by Carl Weathers.
That’s right. Apollo Creed himself.
Is there anyone cooler than Carl Weathers? In the Rocky movies he was always the coolest guy. He had style, he had charisma, and he could act. (Sorry, Sly.) Then he starred in a movie called “Action Jackson.”
That’s almost as cool as being named Max Power.
He followed that goofy - but still cool - action flick with a great performance in Predator and then a surprisingly hilarious turn in Happy Gilmore. They don’t make them any cooler than Carl Weathers. If there was any justice in the world, the Chick Norris phenomenon would belong to Carl Weathers.
Oh, and the game is a blast. You choose from three mercenaries - the chick, the black dude and the white guy with the ‘extreme’ haircut – and proceed to tear through a warzone while taking missions from a variety of political and underworld factions. Your mission is to kill or capture each of the bad guys on the notorious Deck of 52. In between there are enough side missions to keep you busy for months. You’ll drive tanks, fly choppers, unleash air strikes and plant C4 all over the place. It’s a little like playing GTA without feeling bad about accidentally running over pedestrians and cops.
Mercenaries was unfortunately followed up by a lackluster sequel. However, the original is one of the better games of the last generation. Considering a used Xbox is about $20 and you can get the game for $5, it’s well worth it. (Side note: I know the 360 is backwards compatible with most Xbox games, but I prefer the big black box whenever I have an excuse to fire it up.)
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Super Mario Galaxy - Nintendo Wii

Super Mario has always been awesome. I'm pretty sure it was the first console video game I ever played. I played everything from Kingdom Hearts on the PS2 to Skate on the Xbox 360 … and Mario has kept me a Nintendo man. Jumping around in world 1-1 and racing on the Rainbow Road has given me confidence that the Mario franchise is one of the best video game series in the world. In one of his newer adventures, Mario gets to kick goomba butt in space! Super Mario Galaxy makes you freak out on physics and lets you swipe coins on the ceiling.
Collect power stars by beating Bowser's minions, fly to the center of the universe and save the princess. I'd say that's a pretty simple storyline … with a couple of twists along the way. A friend will help you on your way by giving you hints on the level or just flat out telling you what to do. You'll surf manta rays and float around in giant bubbles to almost unreachable stars. Collect the elusive green stars and unlock an extra hard galaxy meant for the best gamers (as stated by the little green guys themselves).
Beat Bowser and you unlock your brother Luigi as a playable character. The game was awesome and kept me distracted for almost the whole summer. I rate the game an 8 out of 10 because the camera would screw around every once in a while … but all in all it was pretty great. I guess I'm saying you should play it if you like alternative platformers.
One more thing: Avoid the black holes. They're bad.
By Sebastian Rodriguez Lawton

Unreal Tournament III - PS3, Xbox 360

I got into gaming journalism because I believe games are the most influential new storytelling medium of my generation (that’s Generation X if you need to know). But I also got into it because I love a great game. Readers of this blog understand our definition of a great game boils down to one simple question: Did you have a great time playing it?
By that standard, I’m here to tell you that Unreal Tournament III is a great game.
I was new to the series when I played this one. As I hunkered down with my XBOX 360 copy, I didn’t know what I was getting into. The main character looks like he could be Dom’s brother (“Gears of War”) and the opening “story” was a little light on details. Then I was dropped into the first mission of the campaign. It’s not really a campaign as much as it is a series of training missions to familiarize you with the real meat of the game — the online mode. Everyone knows this game is all about online frag fests. I’ll get to that later.
But let me tell you first how nice it was to be dropped into a map with decent AI opponents and tons of weapons and power-ups at my disposal. Back in the days before online console gaming was common I would play games like Perfect Dark on the N64 and rejoice in the “bot mode” when I couldn’t get the boys together for a game. Sure, it’s nothing like playing against a human being. But it’s a nice touch, one I wish more FPS games would carry over from the old days.
In UT3, these bots are far superior to those on the N64 classic. They’re nothing compared to the warriors who await you online, but the deeper you get into the campaign mode the more satisfied you will become when your team wins. This is especially true in Warfare mode, which requires a sophisticated amount of AI bot coordination and offers a ton of satisfaction with victory, even when you’re the only human being in the room.
I know a lot of you skipped right over the campaign to go online for blood, and I don’t blame you. The action online is lightning fast — no lag here — and filled with variety. Again, the Warfare mode I mentioned above is particularly satisfying — especially when you’re playing with friends.
As for the graphics and overall presentation, this is what we’ve come to expect from the franchise. The game is beautifully crisp and the level design is fantastic. Characters have the telltale thickness that has become a hallmark of these games, vehicles look appropriately cool and the campaign cutscenes are as good as it gets. For a game that moves this fast and has this much going on, everything looks and plays beautifully.
You’ve got a lot of options when it comes to FPS games. Don't miss this one. It flawlessly executes its mission in a way that few games can match. It knows exactly what it wants to be and it succeeds. The 360 version includes split-screen mode for co-op play, new characters and five additional maps.
And it was published by Midway, our old departed friend.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Smackdown vs Raw 2010 - Xbox 360, PS3

Finally … the champ is here.
I’ve been a longtime wrestling fan for many years and played my share of wrestling games. I’ve been to plenty of events, met wrestlers and heck, I’ve even gone to wrestling school. Hopefully that qualifies me enough to be a wrestling fan and give me opinion on THQ’s grappler. I shell out my cash every year to pick up the latest copy of SVR with great anticipation for it to be the better than that last. That is usually the case, but with the good always comes the bad. Not this time. Smackdown vs Raw 2010 is the best wrestling game yet. It’s beautiful, deep and will satisfy even the most judgmental wrestling fanatic.
From the blood, sweat and tears to the long golden locks of HHH, THQ captures the detail and presentation of the WWE. If anything, presentation really puts you in the game and makes you feel like you’ve laced up the boots of your favorite superstar. You would swear you’re watching a pay-per-view event right in your living room. Some great examples are the in-depth instructions and presentation before the 30-man Royal Rumble. It is exactly like ordering the PPV on TV as you watch the announcer informing all wrestlers and fans exactly what to expect for this match. The game gets so detailed that you’ll see a wrestlers feet barely miss the floor before sneaking back in under the bottom rope ready to go another round in the rumble.
As far as the gameplay, fans of the franchise will feel right at home.
Every SVR game comes packed with match types and this one is no slouch. THQ added a few extras like the Championship Scramble and some brand new back stage brawls. With so much content you won’t find yourself running out of matches but instead spending more time thinking of what the match will be and the stipulations. One thing I did notice was the removal of the Casket Match which has always been a lot of fun to play but with the amount of extras it’s not that hard to forgive. Another personal favorite was the fact that all arenas are unlocked straight out of the case. No more battling crazy tasks to unlock the ECW arena or Saturday Night’s Main Event. They are all there as soon as you pick up the controller to play with a buddy. Each arena is also equipped with all the logos and stages that you would find at the actual event right down to the entrance graphics and brand name announcers. Presentation is everything and having the WWE Live logo pop up before each match and then ending with the WWE credits is down right fantastic. You really cannot ask for more for a total broadcast experience.
Smackdown vs Raw 2010 packs a knockout punch. With an overwhelming amount of content the replay value for this game is through the roof. Any wrestling fan will find it hard to put the game down whether playing online, with friends or in one of the many single player careers. There's even a “Build your own story” mode where you can create your own storyline that you have been dying to see on Monday Night Raw.
This is a game you can always put down and then pick right back up again for some of the finest sports entertainment you’ll ever find on a video game system. It’ll be a long time before this game is topped.
I’m headed back to the ring for my shot at being the undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the world. All challenges welcome.
By Stephen O'Blenis
Steve.Oblenis@LSI-INDUSTRIES.com

Bayonetta – Xbox 360, PS3

"Action-packed, non-stop, heart-pumping, edge of your seat action." These are common words used to describe any summertime blockbuster movie. These buzz words have become associated to action movies for years but don't rush down to your local theater just yet. I'm talking about a video game.
Yes, a video game. This game embodies every one of those words and then some. Never have I played a game that doesn't give you a break. There is pure and constant action. The only break you'll have is a saucy cinematic that ties the story together and, trust me, you'll be hoping for these breaks. Welcome to the world of "Bayonetta."
"Bayonetta" is simply the most action I have ever experienced in a video game. To borrow a common phrase, it's like "being on a non-stop roller coaster" of action. The story is basically about a witch who has been asleep for over 500 years and now she has awakened and cannot remember her past. She seems to be caught in the battle between heaven and hell and uses her extraordinary skills to blast and slash her enemies to bits. Bayonetta is not a woman to mess with. She has shotguns on her legs. Need I say more? The bosses in this game are like nothing you have ever seen. Yes, "God of War" does a sensational job but "Bayonetta" has just about the largest boss battles ever. Every time you think you've seen the unreal, it just gets crazier. I won't even mention the final battle. This game should come with a warning label. It contains so many "look at that!" moments you don't want to play alone. I literally would look around and wish someone was in the room with me to see what I just did. Incredible.
The gameplay is top-notch, the controls tight and the graphics are outstanding. Everything that makes a game great. The amount of weapons and moves cannot be obtained with only one play through – and trust me when I say that the first play through on normal is no walk in the park. You'll be pushing 15-17 hours of action. There were sometimes that I wanted to pick up and play but I just couldn't because I knew I was just too tired to continue. You need energy for this game. How many games can you say that about?
"Bayonetta" is large on all scales. Her arsenal is huge, her move set just seems to continue to grow and the items you pick up along the way never seem to stop astonishing. The game is simply great. So I guess the question remains, "Can a brand new game be one of the greatest of all time?" Keep in mind that the main character is also female and, other than Lara Croft, female characters don't get much love from the video game world. I say, absolutely. This game is something I will always remember. That is what makes a game great. The story, the characters, the action. Everything you would find in a blockbuster movie is in a blockbuster game. Just because a game is new doesn't mean it isn't able to sit among the greatest of all time. So strap yourself in and hold on; you're about to fall under the spell of "Bayonetta."
By Stephen O'Blenis
Steve.Oblenis@LSI-INDUSTRIES.com

Duck Hunt - NES

Yeah, Duck Hunt.
If you bought a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the early 1980s these are the first two things you did – you played Mario, then you got frustrated because the game was remarkably difficult so you eventually grabbed the little plastic gun that came with your system and played Duck Hunt.
The concept of the game was, and still is, incredibly simple. You shoot ducks or you shoot skeet with a little plastic gun that clicks worse than a Guitar Hero controller. You would get three bullets at each level and after you had made your virtual kill a happy hunting dog would jump into the high grass and retrieve your trophy.
If you missed, this same dog would laugh at you and no matter how many times you tried to do it in the past you would pull the plastic trigger dozens of time while aiming the device straight at the smart-assed dog.
What’s impressive about this title, however, is that in all the years that have followed it no game has replicated the Duck Hunt shooting experience with a similar type of plastic gun. Yes, the first person shooter market is bigger than ever. But my mom and my girlfriend could play Duck Hunt and I don’t think either one of them would last two seconds in a Call of Duty multiplayer game on Xbox Live.
In later years the Sega Genesis would release it’s own plastic gun title known as Mad Dog McCree, but it flopped and if you remember the title it’s probably because you remember how bad it was. The Super Nintendo also took a shot at the genre with a mini-plastic bazooka, but that was quickly forgotten.
But I have never and I will never forget Duck Hunt.

Worms Armageddon - Nintendo 64

Ever play with worms? I have. Usually in my backyard when I was a young boy but I never dreamed I would still be doing it as an adult. I love it. It's an addiction. And it's even more fun with friends. Obviously I'm talking about a game called "Worms." If you've never heard of it I'm not surprised. It has a small following but this is a game that I love to introduce people to because it's just so much fun to play that it's turned so many others into believers. My first encounter with this classic little game came when I was in college. I remember being bored in one of my computer classes and I began to download this game suggesting the idea of a war-time strategy with worm soldiers. I couldn't pass it up. So simple it's genius. A 2D generated landscape with a team of worms scattered throughout the warzone. A turn based game that allows you to eliminate your opponent in so many ways until the last man, err, worm is standing. Brilliant.
It wasn't until the N64 that Worms really skyrocketed with its rendition of Worms Armageddon. One of the best multiplayer games to date that I bet you've never played. You name your worms. Pick a nationality; yes they talk. Then blow your opponent sky high with a rocket launcher. I cannot convey to you the pure fun this game can be with three other friends. It's stressful, funny, and strategic. Think about it. It's your move, you maneuver your worm via ninja rope into better position of the enemy. Then you cycle through your weapons for the perfect choice. Bazooka? Nah. Shotgun? Nope. Grenade? No way. Holy hand grenade? Oh yes. You then heave back and launch your angelic friend bouncing off 2D landscapes and lands directly beside your enemy. Perfect. You fist pump in the air (you actually will) as you see the enemy worm's eyes enlarge to the size of light bulbs: "Oh no!"
The last thing they will hear is a choir sing "Hallelujah" as the grenade blows apart half the map sending the worm skyrocketing into the watery depths below. Your worms cheer, but you have a long way to go to win the war.
All of that was just one move. Now you can imagine what the rest of the game is like. Swatting worms with baseball bats, uzis, shotguns, exploding sheep; yes, I said exploding sheep. This game is a blast. Literally. If you have never played this game then you are missing out on what multiplayer fun is all about. Find an N64 and grab your friends because war is not always hell, here it's heaven. Suit up soldier.
By Stephen O'Blenis
Steve.Oblenis@LSI-INDUSTRIES.com

Halo 3 - Xbox 360

On the week of The Halo 3 launch my mother called and asked me the following question:
“When will you play Halo 3, Hon?”
You know you’ve crossed into a new entertainment phenomenon if a 72-year-old woman from East Baltimore knows when a video game is hitting the shelves. She even knew that some people were lining up at midnight to buy the game the moment it was released.
I’ve spent the past decade heralding the coming onslaught of the video game medium. The industry eclipsed Hollywood in sales a long time ago. No one really believed me when I used to tell them that more money is spent annually on games than movies. No one believed me when I’d defend my hobby by saying your average game player is around 30 years old. And no one even wanted to talk with me about gaming’s eventual crossover from “Asteroids” to art form.
Now that’s all anyone is talking about. These topics are on the lips of TV talking heads, politicians and mothers in East Baltimore.
Now they’re starting to believe.
As a game, Halo 3 managed to exceed the hype juggernaut. It was as great as you wanted it to be. The added features to multiplayer and campaign mode were all excellent. You played as the Master Chief from beginning to end – no offense to the Arbiter of Halo 2, but that was a gimmick I never liked much. The story – twisted and confounding as ever - was tied up. And the graphics were astounding. A lot of people hate on the Halo graphics and I've never understood it. From Master Chief's dramatic crash landing that opens the game through the varied levels and firefights that follow, I found Halo 3 to be a refreshingly bright landscape of impressive graphics (though I agree the faces often look terrible.) Perhaps the original Halo was so groundbreaking in the graphics department that people were expecting photo-realism and were disappointed when all they got were stellar visuals.
In Halo 3 you finish the fight you started in the first game. That reference is obvious. I was more intrigued by the “Believe” tagline. I think it’s a bold way of saying: “Yes. There’s a lot of hype surrounding this game and things rarely, if ever, live up to their hype. This will. Believe it.”
And it did.
Even before the game was released to the masses, critics from gaming magazines and elsewhere in the media hailed it as a triumph. It was not the best game of all time but it was unanimously regarded as an excellent game and a fitting end to the Halo trilogy.
But is it art?
A lot of ink has been (and will be) spilled on the topic of video games as art. I will humbly submit that the question is so subjective as to be nearly irrelevant. The better questions are: Is it fun? Is it well done? Does it spark the imagination? Does it stay with you?
Do you want more?
Here’s my take. If you believe that storytelling is art than it stands to reason that Halo 3 is art. When I first popped it into my XBOX 360 and started finishing the fight, I was certainly impressed by the graphics and the gameplay. The game looks fantastic and is as much fun to play as any game out there. But what kept me in front of the television, what drove me to charge through the game’s many battlefields and challenges without looking back, what sent me through the game as fast as I could with guns blazing is that I wanted to see what happened in the end.
I was happy to finish the fight (because the game is all about fighting) but after getting hooked on the first Halo game seven years ago I was ready to find out what happens at the end of this story. What happens to the many characters who, just like in the movies or in a book, have become familiar and important to me? Who wins the war? What happens to the most important character — me? For this is what the truly great games do for us. Master Chief isn’t just a cyborg space marine — he’s you while you’re playing the game. He is an empty husk in which we place ourselves as we’re running through mission after mission and saving the lives of those characters around us who we’ve grown to love.
Any good movie or book keeps you interested long enough to see what happens in the end. Halo 3 isn’t the first video game to do this, but it does it well.
The video game medium may only be scratching the surface of compelling storytelling, but it’s there.
And it’s art.
Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com