Lance Garrison

Ah, sports. Cornerstone of American society. Like many nerds growing up, I had a deep ambivalence about sports for much of my childhood and adolescence. I never outright hated sports, but I certainly never had any interest in playing sports games outside of NBA JAM and the original NFL Blitz. So what happens when a gamer who has been out of the sports game loop for about fifteen years picks up the controller and jumps back into the fray? Well, I can now say from experience: the results aren't pretty.

The other night, over hot wings, beer and hockey, HevyD and I got to talking about the great badasses in video game history. Although we threw out different names, we both agreed on the importance of recognizing these individuals as part of a mighty pantheon. The topic for this article was born. Hit the jump to read about my first five picks for the all-time video game badass pantheon. 

It all used to be much more difficult.

You had to find a time to get together. If you were still a kid, you often needed to secure a ride across town. If a friend moved even a few cities away, console multiplayer gaming could quickly became an incredibly rare event. If you had more than two players, you needed some obscure piece of equipment to get things going. Eventually, we did get our four controller ports, but after a time we needed four consoles and four TVs to get a system link up and running.

Now, all I have to do to game with a friend on the other side of the country is put on my headset and adjust the mouthpiece. After that, my friend is only a few clicks away from joining me. The audio quality will make it seem like he is almost sitting next to me. Almost.

Some foolish soon-to-be-former Apple employee left a prototype iPhone at a bar the other night. Now, instead of a flashy debut in Steve Jobs' next stage presentation, it has been unceremoniously torn apart by the tech-heads over at Gizmodo.com. Like it or not, the iPhone has become a force to be reckoned with in the world of gaming and the specifications of a new iPhone model will soon be the talk of the town. Hit the jump for a quick rundown and for linkage to Gizmodo's through report.

Recently the University of Michigan software development club held a 48-hour game development challenge in which legendary game developer Sid Meier took part as both a judge and honorary competitor. A short documentary has been made showing the process and it's a great piece for anyone interested in game development or in seeing just how skilled old Jedi masters like Meier really are. Hit the jump to watch the 23 minute video. 

The other week I got an IM from my friend telling me how much fun the new a**hole Shepard was to play. I instantly knew what he was talking about, because only a short time prior I had played Mass Effect 2 and taken a lot of enjoyment from the outrageous bad-cop antics of the "renegade" Commander Shepard.

Moral Choice systems and multiple endings are nothing new in video games at this point, yet any game where we don't have to save the world (or where we can be a complete prick in the process) still feels like something of an oddity. Enough so, that listing our respective video game moral choices is a sure topic of discussion anytime Bioware or a like-minded company puts out a new title*. As a result of these kinds of conversations I've noticed something unusual: there are certain games and certain situations where players just love to be bad.

Video games have always been a medium of constant and fast-paced evolution. Every generation of gaming takes massive technological strides forward with game designers always eager to create the latest and greatest. While this can be very rewarding for gamers, sometimes it seems as if the fundamentals of great game design get left in the dust.

One such area is video game music. While there are plenty of modern games that feature fantastic music (the eerie Blade Runner-esque score of Mass Effect comes to mind), there are also a great deal that seem to take a “good enough” approach, that relegates it to an afterthought. Ironically, in an era where any level of quality is possible in game music, I find myself seeing more ambition in the technologically limited past. Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and Earthbound are three titles that succeeded wildly in the realm of music, while doing it with much less than what the modern big budget game has at its disposal. Anyone who wants to understand what goes into a good soundtrack should look no further than these three classics.

The discipline and devotion of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II is legendary to this day. In one case, a man named Hiroo Onoda was stranded on a remote Pacific Island and continued to wage a guerrilla campaign until 1974 despite multiple notices that the war had ended. It was only a face to face order from a former commanding officer that finally convinced him the conflict was at an end. 

I bring this up because lately some areas of the gamer community have reminded me of this maniacal devotion to a conflict that is over. The rise of the casual gamer should be seen as a victory for our group of long term outsiders. It is nothing less than a vindication that we nerds got it right and were at the forefront of something with mass appeal. But instead of celebrating, the community is more ready for battle than ever.

Welcome to the first entry in what I hope will be a recurring series - Nostalgia-Free Classic Gaming. Nostalgia is a powerful force in the video game market and its influence is something I've thought a lot about. While the power of nostalgia has caused a sharpening of classic gameplay elements over the years, it has also locked gaming into something of an arrested development, where we are visited by the same characters year to year. In addition to this, Mario, Mega Man and Sonic have all recently retreated into the nostalgic style of yesterday. While these games may be a blast to play, they certainly aren't doing anything to advance the medium beyond its roots.

While it has given us a strong sense of community, I feel gamers in general are too sentimental about the past. So, I've created Nostalgia-Free Classic Gaming as a slaughter-house for sacred cows. Nostalgia-Free will seek to answer one question: "Does it hold up without the benefit of nostalgia?" Very little slack will be cut for age or innovation. I want to analyze these games from a 2010 player perspective, not a historical perspective. It's a harsh and unfair criteria, but the games that make it through will be seen as truly timeless. To be consistent, I'll be limiting this series to highly acclaimed games that I haven't already played. I'm not going to pretend that I can disregard my own bias and play my old favorites with new eyes. Luckily, I have several gaming blind spots that I think will make for interesting reviews in the future. With introductions out of the way, it's time to roll out the first Nostalgia-Free review.

The Game: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Released in 1997 for the PSX and the Sega Saturn, developed by KCE Tokyo and published by Konami. I'll be playing the re-release available on XBLA.

Let's get one thing out of the way right up front - I have no credentials for reviewing an MMO. This is the first I have ever played. My review is strictly an outsider's perspective that I undertook because of my love for Star Trek.

Make no mistake, I really love Star Trek. On any given day I might sit down and re-watch two or three episodes of Deep Space Nine or The Original Series for no particular reason. DS9 is my favorite trek, and while it's a step-child among the Trek franchises, my love of it prepared me well to judge Star Trek: Online as a fan. No other series spent as much time hanging out with the major powers of the Trek Universe (Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian) as DS9 did. It established an even greater depth to the Star Trek mythos and defined the power struggles between what you might call the core Trek races. Did ST:O manage to recreate the depth and excitement of Star Trek at its best? Read my first impressions after the jump.