I Overscored A Game I Didn’t Beat

Game Informer magazine issue #97 (May 2001) has easily one of the crappiest game to be featured on the cover of that or any other game magazine. The only competition I can think of is the latest Star Trek title or South Park Rally. See, the Xbox was nearing launch and Microsoft was dishing out exclusives to each outlet. GI was still pretty low on the totem, thus we got Azurik – one of the launch games everyone either forget or wish they had.

It also marked my second issue as associate editor. I had started in October 1999 as a web editor (leaving my awesome job as a slave of Gwar). Less than a year and a half later, the same parent company that demanded Game Informer hire a dedicated web staff to make a dedicated website said to shut down the site and lay off some people. I was very fortunate to be kept on and moved over to the print side.

I definitely made some mistakes as a rookie reviewer. My first high-profile review assignment was Zone of the Enders, a PS2 action game where you play a kid in a mech (giant robot) who has to save the world. It was from Hideo Kojima, the man behind the Metal Gear series (as well as another favorite, Snatcher).

After an hour or two, it was pretty obvious this was a quality title. Thank goodness, as there were few other standout games that issue. Baseball games and Super Bombad Racing were about all PS2 had going for it; Xbox and GameCube were months from launch; GBA wasn’t out yet either; and Dreamcast, N64 and PSone were limping along. Though I will say this issue also featured Mars Matrix (buy it), one of my favorite shmups of all time.

Anyway, a game this good meant a large-sized review and possibly Game of the Month. That entailed lots of screenshots – at least a few of them big ones. Back then, we took screens by splitting the video out to our Macs (G4s?). We’d hit space bar, and it would capture the image. PS2 brought about anti-aliasing, which created some ghosting in our images. We found a workaround, but it left the shots looking lower-resolution. Add to that the fact that I was apparently capturing at 320×240 instead of 640×480, and most of my shots were unusable. D’oh. I don’t remember if I had time to go back and recapture shots or not; even if I did, they wouldn’t have been as versatile and organic as the originals.

My second faux pas was more egregious, and I am putting myself out there in admitting it (though you know already, having read the title of this entry). The plot of Zone of the Enders has you piloting this mech that your young avatar Leo quite literally fell into. He wants to save his city while the mech’s AI needs to get its ass to Mars – where an even bigger battle is being waged. So about 5 hours in, maybe more if you count my time taking notes and snapping screens, I’m approaching when I’ll be taking off for Mars – which I assume is the second half or so, in part due to an overhead map in a cutscene.

By then, I’m feeling pretty good about calling it. The gameplay is satisfying and speedy; the graphics are excellent (remember PS2 tech was still considered next-gen); there’s even a little story, albeit with a whiny kid. This is our Game of the Month, I say confidently. I write my review, give it a 9.25, and the reviewer doing the second opinion goes a quarter-point higher with a 9.5. I even say “Unlike a few other PS2 efforts thus far, this is a pretty long game to boot.” You can check out a PDF of the entire review if you feel so inclined.

Fast-forward to this month, May of 2013. 12 years after that issue and that review came out. I’ve had a shrinkwrapped copy of Zone of the Enders ever since, having never played it post-review. I’ve had cravings to pop it in, but it’s just too damn valuable to break the seal. I own a used, mint copy of the sequel, too – Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner – but haven’t played that, either. And I hear ZOE 2 is better in every way.

Fortunately, Konami put out ZOE HD Collection (buy here) last October. Unfortunately, it was said to be rife with issues – especially reduced speed of combat. Fortunately, it was patched (though the Xbox 360 version is said to be superior). Unfortunately, it came out during my year-long game-buying ban. Fortunately, I found it on sale so cheap I couldn’t pass it up.

So I played it, a 12-year-old game with a glossy paint job. I see why I liked it so much. Combat is manic and often zero-gravity, but there’s a bit of strategy to it. It’s faithfully to what I remember. Not everything stood up so well, though. I can’t believe how much backtracking there is. It seems that, with every new area that opens up on the map, you have to revisit every previous one to find a specific item or weapon or unmanned enemy to take over. At least you can level-up along the way, and the sub-weapons you find are pretty cool.

The missions have some variety, but there are really only 2 normal enemy types, and one of them is a major pain in the ass. Boss battles, what few there are, are Kojima-worthy. You even get a cool continue screen if you die. Protagonist Leo can be grating, but he’s pretty human as far as game characters go. The way he and navigation AI Ada speak to one other kept me entertained.

But here’s the kicker: Back when I stopped playing Zone of the Enders to write my review, I was probably an hour away from completing the whole game. My total play time, which ended Tuesday night, was 5 hours, 51 minutes and 40 seconds. And I am not a rushed-style player. The game ends before you even get to Mars; I’m assuming Mars is where ZOE 2 takes place (which I heard isn’t much longer than 6 hours itself).

This was not a surprise, honestly. Even though we didn’t have social media back then, I’d quickly heard about the short length of the game. After that, I unofficially decided to put more time into games I was reviewing. I won’t say that I beat every one – there were times when I reviewed 20 games in one issue, or times I had less than a day to play/write/submit a review as a freelancer – but I did give each of them more of a chance.

I don’t know what I would have given Zone of the Enders had I known its actual length. Maybe it still would have been GI’s Game of the Month. After all, it had a lot going for it in its day. But it’s tough to say this many years later when much of what made it special has been usurped tenfold. I know I became a much better reviewer, in part because of that and other mistakes I made.

— Justin Leeper (@StillManFights)

Me & Metal Gear Solid 2

There weren’t many games that arrived with as much excitement and hype as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for PlayStation 2 (buy here). After all, it was a follow-up to one of the PSone’s best games – which is saying something. I remember the crowd that gathered around Konami‘s E3 booth when the trailer played.

At Game Informer, we got the exclusive review cover. The cover image was drawn by Todd McFarlane. It was the first game to get dual 10s. We had an 8-page strategy guide and a 6-page feature. In an issue that also featured GTA III, Tony Hawk 3, and Dead or Alive 3, MGS 2 was king – and I had nothing to do with any of it.

Okay, that’s not totally true. I got the bright idea to do a 2-page Classic Strategy on the original NES Metal Gear. It was a game I never liked, and forcing myself to “master” it didn’t help matters at all.

The game was reviewed by Kato and Reiner – their last names, as there was already a Matt and an Andy on staff respectively before they were hired. I will always be grateful that they didn’t spoil the game. I, on the other hand, am going to speak freely about this 12-year-old game, so beware. You see, perennial Metal Gear star Solid Snake was only the playable protagonist for the first ~3 hours. After that, you take on winy blond combat rookie Raiden. Can you imagine 16 pages of coverage – we’re talking strategies and screenshots – without giving that away? Props to them!

Of course, I day-one purchased it or got it free from Konami (perk of the job) and quickly devoured the game. Back then, I used to say you always suck for the first couple hours of a Metal Gear game, as you get accustomed to the mechanics and controls not to mention the way it’s more sneak than slaughter. I too loved it.

And just days ago, I replayed it thanks to the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for PS3 (buy here). Note: I bought it on January 6, 2012 so it didn’t violate my year-long game-buying ban. I won’t say I loved it this time, but I got a lot of enjoyment, as well as remembered the things that make a Metal Gear game such a Metal Gear game. I’d like to speak on those things.

First off, the graphics on PS2 were revolutionary. The animation, character models, and textures were all top-of-class for that generation. The slightly updated Xbox port added a lot more effects. I imagine if I popped in the old game, I would be disappointed. But the HD remake essentially looks like how the game does in my memory. It’s smooth yet undetailed. The little extras are all there, but have become pretty commonplace – though things like bean cans floating in a flooded stairwell or a swarm of interactive insects is still very cool.

The story is every bit as head-scratching now, if not more so since it’s not brand new. Let’s see if I can run it down, though I do not expect you to follow:

Solid Snake is part of an anti-Metal Gear organization, and finds out a Metal Gear (giant robo-nuke) is hiding on a Navy-run oil tanker. He goes to check it out the same time Russians commandeer it. He discovers and photographs the new Metal Gear (Ray). But at the same time Revolver Ocelot, a Russian guy from MGS 1, kills the Navy commander and the Russian commander and sinks the ship – seemingly with Snake among the drowned. End Act 1 and Snake as the playable character.
Now it’s two years later. Raiden, a goofy, inexperienced kid who’s part of a black-ops organization run by the same Colonel as MGS 1 (and somehow involving his whiny girlfriend), infiltrates the giant cleanup facility placed over the tanker’s wreckage. Why? Because the President is on there when it was taken over by a group demanding a 30-billion-dollar ransom. That group is a bunch of freaks that can’t die or are vampires and junk. There are still a bunch of Russians on there, too, and together they capture the President, take everyone else hostage, and kill the SEAL teams.
Survivors are limited to Solid Snake in a disguise where Raiden doesn’t know who he is, and the guy who trained one of the freaks – a mad bomber who goes all blow-up-everything before you stop him.
You discover the President committed treason, using his nuke codes to arm the weapon in order to get a piece of the pie from the Illuminati-type group that actually runs the nation. But they betrayed him, so he helps Raiden before being killed by Revolver Ocelot – who had Snake’s genetic twin Liquid’s arm replace the one a cyber ninja cut off in Metal Gear Solid 1. Only Liquid’s spirit is inside the arm and is fighting Ocelot for control. Also, the cyber ninja shows up in the facility though it ends up being the daughter of the Russian commander (and an Act I boss) who is now somehow working with Snake.
You also find Emma, the little step-sister of Snake’s buddy Otacon. Emma has created a lot of the tech involved here, and is a better hacker than her big bro. See, Metal Gear Ray is not the big problem; the entire facility is one giant Metal Gear somehow, named Arsenal Gear. It doesn’t even need nukes to be a dangerous thing. It actually is as much an information suppressor as a weapon. But Emma’s not a bad guy, I guess, because she’s cute and tries to help with a computer virus before she dies and leaves her pet parrot to torment Otacon forever.
The cyber ninja and Snake actually betray Raiden, causing him to become literally naked and helpless. This was just bait to get closer to Solidus Snake, Snake’s heretofore-unheard-of second genetic brother who is also a former President who turned on the Illuminati-type group and has 2 Doctor Octopus tentacles that shoot laser missiles. Around this time, Raiden’s on-call support (Colonel and girlfriend) starts freaking out. Nothing they say makes sense. Turns out they’re 200-year-old AIs or something somehow, emanating from Arsenal Gear itself, and are being affected by the virus. But Raiden’s girlfriend is still a real person too, and discovers Raiden’s past as a child soldier who killed like it ain’t no thang – a history which was somehow set up by Solidus, who commanded them.
Once reunited, Snake gives Raiden the cyber ninja’s sword as an apology present. It’s kind of cool, but doesn’t help at all when you have to fight dozens of Metal Gear Rays back-to-back. However, the final battle has Raiden and his father/godfather/mentor Solidus square off with blades (and those mecha-tentacles in an Inception-esque Manhattan once Arsenal Gear runs aground.

So yeah, the story is kinda crazy. However, it actually tries, and that’s important. And it goes places that you can sometimes follow, many of which are unexpected even if they don’t always land. I do enjoy how it tackles government corruption and even video-game escapism. There are no taboo subjects. Hell, Otacon even slept with his step-mom (Emma’s mother)!

The important thing is how the narrative entails a roller-coaster of gameplay variety. The gang of freaks really is cool, even if you don’t fight one of them. You’ll run around in disguise, track down cleverly-placed bombs, do some swimming, and even have an escort mission that doesn’t suck. It always seems like you have options with what to do next or how to tackle obstacles. It’s not as open as, say, Deus Ex, but also isn’t as linear as God of War.

We have become spoiled with good cameras in games. MGS 2 still uses the fixed-camera perspective, a la old Devil May Cry and Resident Evil. There are times when you can only see yourself from the knee down. It can be frustrating, but the radar is a big help.

First-person is essential for accurate shooting, but it requires pretzel fingers. To shoot in first person, you’ve got to hold R1, hold Square to raise your weapon, and aim with the analog – sometimes holding L1 to lock onto a target. But you’ll only shoot a pistol when letting go of Square.

As I said before, Raiden is a pain in the ass. His actions are so unprofessional, to the point where you want to smack him. And when he and Rose start up, I was almost tempted to skip over the dialogue. Maybe Kojima hoped painting him as a killing machine near the end would redeem his cred, but I’m unconvinced (though I have yet to play his spinoff action game, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance [real title]). If there’s good about the switch in player-character, it’s that we got to view Snake with more awe because he wasn’t stuck being in our clumsy hands. He got to mentor us, as the player. That’s kind of neat.

I’m glad I went back and replayed Metal Gear Solid 2. Looking online, there are enough hidden goodies that I’m half tempted to try it again. Instead, I’ll probably finally play Peace Walker, which was originally a PSP game but included in the collection. Or, ya know, Konami could either port Kojima’s visual novel Snatcher to a current format or localize its Japanese-only spiritual sequel Policenauts.

***EDIT***
I originally gave this game a review score, but I’m deleting it. I think this is a rare case of a game where it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. It does something unique with its medium, and with the concept of sequels and expectation, and is therefor worth playing by anyone who is a fan of said medium whether they expressly “enjoy it” or not.

— Justin Leeper (@StillManFights)

Activision Buys Competition

This is not a story about games I’m playing or pining for new games I want to buy but won’t. This is the type of story you can’t tell if you’re beholden to game publishers for ad revenue for your site/magazine. However, as far as I know, everything I’m stating in this article is true. I’ll try to link to evidence where I can.

In my You Missed The Boat article from two weeks back, one of the games I brought up was Aggressive Inline. To me, it was the best extreme sports game that isn’t part of the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater trilogy.

Aggressive Inline was published by Acclaim and developed by Z-Axis. It came around the summer of 2002. The next game by that partnership was the controversial BMX XXX, which released during the holiday season 2002. While Aggressive Inline (PS2) received an 85 Metacritic score, BMX XXX only managed a 54 Metacritic score.

BMX XXX

Reviewing it for Game Informer, I gave BMX XXX its highest score – 78 out of 100. Even still, I talked about its awful collision and the steps backward it took from Aggressive Inline.

So what happened? Well, on May 22, 2002, Activision announced it had acquired Z-Axis. This would have meant all the development work on Aggressive Inline was done, but the fine-tuning for BMX XXX would have occurred while the developer was in the process of being bought. And BMX XXX smacked of a game where the developers failed to give it the polish necessary to go from decent game to great game. That near-submission time is very important.

What did Activision do with the second-best extreme sports game developer? Not a hell of a lot. Z-Axis – which would later be renamed Underground Development – put out a handful of games before it was closed in 2008: X-Men: The Official Game, the PS3 version of Quake Wars, and Guitar Hero: Van Halen. Kind of a weird assortment of games for the studio to be handed, isn’t it? It would seem like Activision merely bought them to keep them from making competition for its own games, then let it wallow before pulling the plug, doesn’t it?

Maybe there are reasons. Maybe not all the Z-Axis talent came along when Activision bought them. Maybe, once acquired, Activision broke up the band. Maybe Z-Axis was only ever good at making extreme sports titles (they also developed Acclaim’s older games, Dave Mirra BMX and Dave Mirra 2 – both of which received low-80s on Metacritic). But it just seems fishy, doesn’t it? Well, let’s look at another example.

DJ Hero

Not many of you bought it, but I’m sure you’ve heard of the DJ Hero franchise. Instead of plastic guitars, DJ Hero and DJ Hero 2 had you manning plastic turntables, crossfading between two songs and adding effects. It’s honestly pretty fun, and you’re affecting the music more than in Rock Band. However, it maybe didn’t feel as cool or translate to the game-playing masses. The series sold poorly.

Around the time the first DJ Hero was in development, another company had a similar idea. Seven Studios was working on Scratch: The Ultimate DJ. They had even partnered with experienced DJ equipment manufacturer Numark to make their turntable controller. It looked more authentic than Activision’s counterpart, and featured tracks by Beastie Boys, Kanye, and Outkast.

Scratch: The Ultimate DJ

Strangely, Activision would buy Seven Studios in April 2009 – before either game released. Not surprisingly, Scratch’s publisher Genius Products and Numark felt threatened enough to file a lawsuit against Activision. After all, Seven was Scratch’s developer, and being owned by a company who’d announced a competing DJ game didn’t bode well for Scratch’s future.

The lawsuit begat countersuits, until it was pretty obvious Scratch would never see release. Meanwhile, Activision’s diversion play worked, and DJ Hero released without competition in October 2009. Around that time, they reduced the size of Seven’s staff by 50%.

So what did Seven Studios do while flying the Activision banner? While it’s rumored they pitched in on various franchises such as Guitar Hero and DJ Hero, the only game I could find they developed and Activision published before the studio was shut down in early 2011 was a piece of Wii shovelware entitled Space Camp.

So here are two fairly obvious instances of Activision buying studios working on competing games, and then doing next-to-nothing with them before unceremoniously shutting their doors. Yet EA is still considered the worst company in America? Even after the debacle with Infinity Ward? What’s a company gotta do to win an award around here?

The Worst Games I Own

I like to keep it positive, talking about games I fondly remember or ones I’m currently enjoying. However, ever game journalist knows there is a certain twisted joy that comes with writing about a game you dislike.
As playing games was my business for 8 years, the number of crappy games I’ve subjected myself to is not insubstantial. However, I usually avoided keeping those games in my vicinity for long if at all. Still, some slip through the cracks and end up in my physical collection for the long haul. Here are some of the worst games I currently own.

The Guy Game (2004, Xbox)
Metacritic Score: 47
We’ll start with the most infamous game on my list. Picture trying to turn Girls Gone Wild into an interactive trivia experience. There are many bells and whistles the game attempts to incorporate to turn this into something approaching fun. It never comes close. It’s barely hiding in the bushes at night with a pair of binoculars, peeking in fun’s window.
Of course, the main draw is The Guy Game’s inclusion of boobies. We all love boobies, but we don’t love paying $40 and then having to answer inane questions in order to get a glimpse of them.
Fun trivia for this trivia game: One of the female contestants shown ended up being underage. This got the game recalled. Don’t narc me out for having a copy, okay? I’ve already suffered enough having owned it for almost 10 years.

Power Factory featuring C+C Music Factory (1992, Sega CD)
I liked C+C Music Factory back in the day. I’ve even done “Things That Make You Go Hmmm” at karaoke. Hell, I even liked a lot of Sega CD games — Snatcher, Eternal Champions, Sonic CD. Speaking of things that make you go hmmm…
This “game” (and its siblings featuring Mark Wahlberg, INXS, and Kris Kross) entailed stitching footage of grainy music videos together to make a mildly customized finished product that is then somehow reviewed by your onscreen colleagues. There are 3 songs on this disc. There are 64 onscreen colors with which Sega CD could utilize to display video at 320×224 resolution. If you ask an artificial intelligence program what is the absolute worst part of Power Factory, it will dump water on itself in an attempt at AI suicide.
Fun trivia for this unfun game: I scored this a big fat zero when I reviewed it for Game Informer‘s Classic GI section. But only because I couldn’t give a negative number.

Simpsons Wrestling (2001, PSone)
Metacritic Score: 32
For about a decade, there were few things I loved more than The Simpsons, pro wrestling, and video games. Simpsons Wrestling blended all three, and yet was one of the crappiest titles in the PSone’s 2,418-game catalog. You may think, “That’s unpossible!” but it’s totally true.
At first, you’re fooled by the sort-of-okay looking graphics, authentic voiceovers and having a dozen playable characters. Things go south fast as you actually play the thing — which is an aspect of Simpsons Wrestling that I’m pretty sure the developers forgot to devote any time to. Everything gets mind-numbingly repetitive after about 6 minutes, and you will never want to play this again.
Obligatory trivia because I wrote trivia for the last 2 games: When I was a kid, I dreamt of owning every episode of the series on VHS. Of course, DVD came along. And of course, the show got awful to the point where I haven’t been a regular viewer since around the time this game came out.

Lowrider (2003, PS2)
Metacritic Score: 46
It’s 2003. I just left Game Informer after almost exactly 4 years. I’m looking to get into development or something. Meanwhile, I start doing freelance journalism full-time to pay the bills. I figure it’s easy: Play games at home, then write about them, then profit. Getting assigned Lowrider was the first red flag that things weren’t going to be as smooth as I’d planned.
This is a game about cars with no racing. It’s about a North American phenomenon yet is designed by a Japanese company that can’t spell “continue” correctly. It’s about street culture, yet using music more appropriate for a hospital waiting room. It asks you to pay money for it, yet they should pay you money to take it. So many contradictions. And while Lowrider is really the only game of its kind, I advise you to just play GTA and carjack a hooptie with switches.
Trivia: Around this same time, publisher Jaleco also put out Nightcaster 2, sequel to the Xbox launch title no one liked; Trailer Park Tycoon; and Karnaaj Rally, with one of the worst box arts of all time. Quite a departure from Bases Loaded and the NES version of Maniac Mansion.

Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth (1998, N64)
Gamerankings Score: 52.4%
The Japanese know their shoot-em-ups (aka shmups). Hudson Soft knows quality games like Bomberman, Bonk and Nectaris: Military Madness. So when I saw a Hudson shmup for N64 for cheap at a Japanese bookstore here in LA, I jumped. Maybe not literally, but I bought that sum’bitch with the quickness. Almost as fast as my smile disappeared once I got it home.
Maybe the game’s ambition was low, since there was virtually no competition in that genre at the time. And N64 wasn’t exactly overflowing shelves with new releases to spur competitive passion. But honestly, it seems more like a simulation of a shmup instead of being an honest-to-goodness full-fledged release. Like an alien culture was asked to make a shmup just based on YouTube clips. It simply lacks style and flavor, coming off uninspired.
Trivia: Until researching for this story, I literally had no idea this game ever got a U.S. release.
Bonus Trivia: The same time I bought this, I picked up the equally bad Air Boarder 64. I chose Star Soldier for this list, though, because it should have been good.

You Missed The Boat On These Games

You see an endless shelf of video games. What’s good? What’s not? There’s only so much time in the day to play them, which makes the crappy ones that much more of a waste. Even the gaming media has let gems pass by unrecognized for any number of reasons: iffy premise, poor timing, ugly screenshots.
Unlike movies that bomb at the box office, games don’t really get second chances through DVD sales, Netflix, or cable TV. While there are HD updates and digital rereleases, the more obscure titles are usually passed over yet again.
Right now, there are games that you would probably love, sitting in an Amazon warehouse corner like lonely puppies in a shelter. This article is all about games upon which everyone (marketing, media, and/or gaming community) missed the boat.

Everblue 2 (2003, Capcom for PS2)
The ocean is a mysterious place – far more interesting to me than outer space, since it resides on our planet. You’ll see things like mantis shrimps and the fathead. But underwater stages in video games are generally reviled, conjuring memories of attempting to diffuse bombs as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. So I can forgive people for missing the figurative and more literal boat with Everblue 2. It wasn’t like they had nothing else to play on their PS2.
But I loved this game. I gave it an 8.75 in my review in Game Informer. It brought beloved mechanics like collecting and photo-taking (Pokemon Snap!) into a cleverly designed, smooth first-person underwater adventure. Everblue 2 was lengthy and varied, as you did missions for landlocked folks and explored even deeper depths to find life and treasure.
Fortunately, developer found more success under the Nintendo publishing banner with Endless Ocean and Endless Ocean: Blue World, both for the Wii.

Retro Game Challenge(2009, XSeed for DS)
Nothing can duplicate the joy of being a kid in the 8-bit era – where games kicked your ass to give you your money’s worth, game magazines were our version of the internet, and easy to learn/hard to master was our mantra. While nothing can duplicate it, Retro Game Challenge came close. Based on the awesome Game Center CX series in Japan (available on DVD), you were tasked with completing meta missions in new games that pay homage to the golden age of gaming.
Top-down racers, space shmups and a Dragon Quest clone highlight a packed roster. Your challenges are difficult, but fake magazines and cheat codes will be your support system. I found myself playing long after I beat the requirements for each game; they’re that good.
It’s a crying shame this title never caught on in the US. If it had, we’d be playing the sequel now, which never got localized. If you were one of the many who missed Retro Game Challenge, it’s only about $20 new on Amazon. Just click the title above.

Aggressive Inline (2002, Acclaim for PS2/Xbox/GameCube)
The first 3 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles were simply amazing. For the next iteration, our hopes remained high. But then something came out a few months prior to Tony 4’s release that knocked me on my ass. And unbelievably, it was wearing rollerblades.
Acclaim and Z-Axis were doing good things with the Dave Mirra BMX series, but bikes were a little different from boards. Aggressive Inline was a straight-up slap in Tony Hawk’s face, and I slapped a 9.25 out of 10 on my review of it. I still believe it’s a better game than Tony 4 or any Tony Hawk title since. The control was just as tight as Tony’s; the graphics were just as good; the soundtrack featured some heavy hitters like Eric B & Rakim, Sublime and Reel Big Fish.
Remember how these games used to confine you to a timed session? Aggressive Inline killed that. Remember the cool earthquake in the Los Angeles level of Tony 3? Aggressive Inline had something like that on every stage. It even trumped the not-yet-released Tony 4 by allowing you to take on multiple objectives simultaneously.
Whatever your thoughts on rollerblades, this is one of the best extreme-sports video games ever made – especially considering it doesn’t have Tony Hawk on the cover.

Space Griffon VF-9 (1995, Atlus for PSone)
I honestly don’t remember how I came to have a copy of Space Griffon, the launch-window PSone game which featured first-person mech action with RPG elements and an anime storyline. But I do know it blew me away, and I still remember it fondly. That’s more than I can say for its peers Defcon 5, Krazy Ivan, and Space Hulk.
It’s almost as much a survival horror game as anything – more so than the present-day Resident Evil or Dead Space installments. You aren’t totally sure what you’re up against. Health and ammo are relatively scarce. While you and your squad of 3-stage mechs seem invincible early on, momentum shifts quickly. The story is wonderful for its era, and the full voiceover is a nice touch (I recognize the player-character’s voice from dubs of Iron Chef!).
At the time it came out, reviews ranged from 2 out of 10 to 9 out of 10. Today, the graphics that were once above-average are pretty sad, and the speed is painfully slow. However, I’m betting if I popped this game in and jumped into my VF today, I’d still be engrossed in this classic. In fact, I might just have to do that soon.

Ultimate M.U.S.C.L.E. (2003, Bandai for GameCube)
I am a bit of a pro-wrestling aficionado. Not only have I been a fan since I can remember, I was a pro-wrestler for 4 years and wrote/designed 3 WWE video games. For me (and most fans), AKI is the best wrestling game developer there is, was and ever will be. They made WWF No Mercy and its Japanese predecessor, Virtual Pro Wrestling 2. They also developed the Def Jam Vendetta series of hip-hop-inspired fighting games. And we can’t forget this other AKI-developed game.
M.U.S.C.L.E. guys were tiny, soft pink action figures in the 1980s. There were hundreds of them, and while they didn’t move, I had a great time playing with them as a child. The series achieved much greater and prolonged popularity in Japan, where it was known as Kinnikuman. Anime and full-sized action figures abound over there. But thankfully, a few of their games made it to the U.S. – most notably this title for the 3rd-party-exclusive-starved GameCube.
Despite goofy characters like Ramen Man and Dik-Dik Van-Dik, it was pure AKI wrestling satisfaction. The gameplay had the familiar tap or hold button configuration, and a plethora of moves. Two things stick out: Outrageous finishers including the Muscle Buster that was since made real by Impact Wrestling‘s Samoa Joe, and the ability to buy action figures from a vending machine (as fun as the similar feature in Super Smash Bros).
AKI disbanded soon after, leaving Yuke’s the only real wrestling-game maker in the world. A lot of us are hoping for an HD or digital rerelease of some of those classic AKI games, however. But with licensing likely a nightmare, we won’t hold our breath.

Guest Editorial: SimCity Soundoff

Justin’s Note: SimCity is a front-page issue in gaming at the moment. While I have my own set of opinions, I’m not the expert. For that, I defer to Kristian Brogger. During our days at Game Informer, he was the PC editor (and foremost Big Lebowski quoter). So when he wanted to shoot on SimCity, I was more than happy to give him a soapbox. Please to enjoy.

SimCity 2013 by Kristian Brogger

Much of what has already been said in the media and on various review sites about SimCity 2013 is accurate. Yes, the server problems and EA’s DRM-stubbornness are handicapping the game. Yes, the game is fundamentally flawed on a conceptual level in its forced-multiplayer execution and its scope. Yes, the game is a heartbreaking departure from a consistently successful and innovative formula that built one of the most revered and respected franchises in the history of interactive entertainment. With that said, I’m not interested in taking this title through its paces from a feature perspective. You’ve read about that already on various and sundry media outlets. I’m more interested in talking about what brought us to this point.

SimCity 2013 was – in my mind – one of the easiest and most interesting development projects to come down the pike in a decade. By “easy” I mean this: The Maxis team was handed a tried-and-true game formula on a golden platter along with millions of devoted followers who, by the way, consist of both men and women, young and old, from every ethnicity and walk of life. If ever there was a recipe for success, this was it.

SC 2013 most likely looked amazing on paper during the idea phase of development. I think it probably pitched even better, and the higher-ups over at Maxis and EA started slapping each other on the back talking about how their game will “change everything.” Then actual development started. Soon, grand plans were trimmed to manageable expectations, which were in turn trimmed to address reality.

No one had the guts or talent or authority to tell SC 2013’s creative leads, “No. You’ve lost sight of what SimCity is on a foundational level.” George Lucas’s and Steven Spielberg‘s (Lucas’s to a larger extent) recent work has exhibited similar problems. The thinking behind SC 2013 is the same kind of thinking that gave us Jar Jar Binks and atomic bomb-proof refrigerators.

The game is a prisoner of its own myopic creation, mindlessly and endlessly pacing up and down the length of a cage it built for itself.

Do I think SC 2013’s creators wanted this game to be something spectacular? Absolutely. There’s no maliciousness here. There’s lack of vision. There’s lack of common sense.

With that said, it’s a valid and reasonable point to say, “But this game isn’t called SimCity 5 for a reason. It isn’t SimCity 5. It’s a re-imagining and re-engineering of the entire genre.” Okay. I can get on-board with that. It’s logical, but it’s not sensible. If that’s your position then the product released should have been called something else. If the game were called something else, there would have been no reasonable expectation by the series’ userbase that the game was going to follow the basic genetic structure and function to which its decades-long lineage pointed.

“How can you say that?” you may ask. “The game has almost everything all the others did: You build roads, add zones, place municipal services, and try to keep your citizens happy. It’s called SimCity because that’s what SimCity is!” I disagree. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t in one breath say this isn’t SimCity 5, then in the next proclaim it’s still a SimCity game. It is a Sim game of some kind, I will grant you that. It is a Sim game that includes some of the same mechanics as all the previous SimCity games, but city simulation is not at the core of SC 2013. Let me say that again, because I think it’s an important distinction: City simulation is not the point of SC 2013. Online interaction and competition is the core of SC 2013. The game was built with this in mind from the very beginning.

SC 2013 can’t be “fixed,” per se, because the game was built broken in the first place. Yes, some of its mechanics will be tweaked and optimized — traffic, population, etc. But there will never be a moment when the SimCity userbase says, “Now that they’ve fixed [insert problem here], everything is okay.”

Much like the brain trust over at Coca-Cola once thought it knew better than its customers what its customers wanted and thus created New Coke, so too goes SimCity 2013.

My game buying: 2012 vs. 2011

Every year, Game Informer magazine makes a list of their top 50 games of the year. I was an editor for them for 4 years, so I at least pay attention to the list. This year, it’s a great way to gauge just how little I’m buying games.

Of the 50 games on the 2012 list, I own 9 of them, and have beaten 4 of those 9. Not a bad record for your average gamer. Here are the 9 games:
Journey (beaten)
Mass Effect 3 (beaten)
Dishonored (beaten)
10000000 (beaten)
Asura’s Wrath
Dragon’s Dogma
Final Fantasy XIII-2
XCOM
The Walking Dead

I decided to revisit the 2011 list. I own(ed) 32 of those games, and have beaten 8 of them. Now, some may have been purchased in 2012, so there’s not a direct correlation. Still, it’s a big difference, isn’t it? That’s 350% more than the 2012 list, but I beat only 25% of them compared to 45% of the 2012 games, even with the extra time. I guess that shows a portion of my backlog. Here’s the list of games owned/beaten from the 2012 list:
Bulletstorm (beaten)
Portal 2 (beaten)
LA Noire (beaten)
Gears of War 3 (beaten)
Dark Souls (beaten)
Batman: Arkham City (beaten)
Uncharted 3 (beaten)
Skyrim (beaten)
Little Big Planet 2
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Dead Space 2
Marvel vs. Capcom 3
Killzone 3
Radiant Historia
Crysis 2
Mortal Kombat
The Witcher 2
Infamous 2
Shadow of the Damned
Bastion
El Shaddai
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Jetpack Joyride
Driver: San Francisco
Dead Island
NBA 2K12
RAGE
Super Mario 3D Land
Rayman Origins
Saints Row: The Third
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Infinity Blade 2

My favorite Star Wars games

I assume you know about Disney buying LucasFilm. I could talk about how Walt Disney is controlling the global economy, its superheroes, and Tom Hanks’s facial hair from the grave on his way to a monolithic monopoly; but I’m keeping MYOB about games.
More specifically, I want to talk about Star Wars games. The brand’s games, much like its films, have run the gamut from game-of-the-year shoo-ins to insta-coaster. I want to talk about my five favorite games with Star Wars in their title. And spoiler alert: I never played any of the X-Wing games. There are multiple X-Wing games, right?

5. Episode I: Phantom Menace (PSone)
I know this is a controversial pick. However, let me explain: I moved from Richmond VA and my job with GWAR to Minneapolis MN and a gig with Game Informer magazine. I may not have had anywhere to live – and, in fact, I spent several nights in a hotel and one awkward (showerless) night at a fellow editor’s – but I did have a sweet stack of games that served as a welcoming gift. They were Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Final Fantasy Anthology, and Episode I. The first two are all-time favorites. But Episode I surprised me with its action/adventure retelling of the (awful, in hindsight) film. I remember lying on my inflatable mattress, talking to the impoverished NPCs of Tatooine. It was not a bad game (though it was ugly), and was a friend while I was a stranger in a strange land. So cut me some slack!

4. Dark Forces (PC)
I’m a sucker for DOOM style games. I feel like limiting things to branching corridors kept the gameplay tight and the level design honest. While I completed Quake and played my share of Duke, I feel like going 3D kind of messed with a good thing. It became more of a slog than a fast-past puzzle game with guns. Admittedly, I didn’t play a ton of Dark Forces, but I remember it being about as good as one could hope for a Star Wars DOOM.

3. LEGO Star Wars (every system ever)
Traveller’s Tales struck gold, melding two things that everyone loves. It was quirky, it was faithful to the franchise, and most importantly it was fun. I hope whoever came up with this became set for life. It’s up there for the best multiplayer series in video-game history. Remember how Eidos published the first one? Now, you can buy the whole Star Wars saga in one package for about $20. Steal!

1. Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox/PC)
If you notice, I went from #3 to #1. That’s because if you’d seen #2 first, you’d have known this was coming anyway. KOTOR is one of my favorite RPGs of all time. It expanded the Star Wars universe. The gameplay was amazing, finally making RPG battles worth watching. And the story? The stuff of legends! When this came out, my Xbox was on the fritz. Every time a load screen came up, there was a 50/50 chance the system would crash. I still played through the whole thing and didn’t once complain. The game was worth the wait. I’m pretty pissed they went the MMO route for the pseudo third installment. In hindsight, I bet Bioware is, too. Those meatbags.

2. KOTOR II (Xbox/PC)
Anyone who expected this to be better than the first KOTOR is ignorant. It was done by a totally different studio, in much less time. All things considered, it turned out pretty awesome. Sure, it didn’t have the twist its predecessor did, but I did not regret my time spent with it. I should probably play it again sometime.

Honorable Mention: Star Wars Rebel Command
I have yet to play this, but it’s supposed to be pretty dope. I’m sure the teammate AI has long become inferior, but my shrinkwrapped Xbox version has sung me its siren song several times since I procured it.