This is a game that I will be talking about for a long time. I was not familiar with the series, and only ended up playing it because a friend badgered me to play it for several years, and I have to say, I am extremely glad I did.

I'd like to start by saying that I am absolutely terrible at stealthy games, and (shame) I did have to play it on the easiest difficulty setting for it to be enjoyable for me. However, it was extremely enjoyable and it is a game that I will be playing and recommending to people for a long time.

The game starts out fairly quickly with about ten minutes of instruction for people who have never played. Right off the bat, you see how much this game relies on stealth. From my experience, this is not at all the kind of game where you can run around guns blazing and accomplish everything you need to. This was a big problem for me in the beginning of the game, because that's normally exactly what i would do in a game like this, but it simply doesn't work.

There is an option to play the game lethal or non lethal, and if you choose the latter, you are provided with more than enough tools to complete the game without killing anyone. On the flip side, you're also given a large variety of lethal weapons that will destroy nearly anyone coming your way, including police robots trained to gun you down with no mercy.
The thing I really enjoyed about this choice is that it was not concrete; if you chose to play non-lethal but you killed someone, you were not penalized for it. You just won't get the "Pacifist" achievement for not killing anyone (except the bosses, there's no choice there.)

Overall, an excellent and well put together game that challenged my mind as well as my skills as a gamer.

Conversation topic: Which ending did you choose?

I thought i would touch on this subject since i'm currently playing through the game on N64, and share my opinion on the recent revamp of the classic for the newest Nintendo handheld.

In advance, my opinion is very biased for two reasons. One, i don't own a 3DS and will not buy one simply to play this game. Two, as one or two of you may know, i'm very involved in the collection, preservation, and of course playing of classic console games.

That being said, I think this remake will be pretty freakin cool, because Majora's Mask is one of my all time favorite games. Perhaps not as cool as the original though, because face it, it's the exact same game run through a filter so it's not so blocky. It also doesn't have the "new game" thing going for it in my opinion, but i suppose fourteen years is quite a long time. Long enough that some of the kids playing the 3DS version might not know that this was already a best-selling game on a cartridge based console. The kids playing this game might not have ever even seen a Nintendo 64, which is quite depressing.

Because this was one of the more popular Nintendo 64 games, and one of the higher selling Legend of Zelda games, I clearly see why they would choose to re-release. The game was even given the Game of the Decade award by GameFAQs in 2010. My big question is why did Nintendo choose this game in particular, instead of any of the others? Specifically, why did they pick this over Ocarina of Time, which according to sales charts, sold more than twice as many copies as Majora's Mask. (http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda for reference)


A few questions to stew on;
Was this the game that Nintendo should have re-made? Should they have gone all the way and re-released it for the WII-U?

and just for kicks, what is your favorite Legend of Zelda game?

I have now played all three Dead Space games, and have decided to make my voice heard about the third game in the series. Most of what I have to say is positive. However, there are quite a few things that were changed in the third game that i feel really take away from not only the series, but the genre. Before you dive in, this is mostly about the differences between the games, not the plot. Not quite as exciting, but please feel free to keep reading if you're interested.

First I'd like to say that Dead Space is considered a "Survival Horror" game, and you see this in bounds in the first game. You start off with a plasma welder as your only weapon, and you struggle through the game scavenging for health packs, weapon-specific ammunition, and save points. The game is truly frightening, not only because of the nearly sickening graphic pop-out violence, but also because of how desperately sparse your resources are sometimes. The game is constantly dark, and lacks a solid soundtrack, which leaves a lot of room for flashing lights to catch you off guard, and horrific sounds to jar you to the bone, whether someone is coming or not. Simply put, the game is like a very well designed interactive horror film.

The second game is nearly identical to the first with a couple well placed upgrades, like the ability to "run," which is really no more than a fast paced walk. Also, the main character Isaac has a voice in the second game. The gameplay is almost exactly the same, the story line is quite a bit deeper, and its maybe a bit harder overall.

The third game is so different it could almost be a standalone. The story is a continuation of the first two, and most aspects of the game are very similar, but there are so many differences in the game that I felt it necessary to tell the internet about it. To start, the game looks very different. The basics are the same, but interactive objects are different, the monsters look a lot different (mostly due to upgraded graphics i think, but they really look completely different), and the atmosphere is much different. Surprisingly, the game is still just as linear as the first two. This is definitely a game series that is solidly sticking to the linear video game instead of branching out to free reign. I am glad about this because I believe that being linear keeps the focus solely on the game instead of exploring, and in a horror based game, it doesn’t do much good to branch out anyway, it would just get you into trouble.

The store in the game is completely gone, and the upgrade system has been wiped and replaced. Instead of entering the store and buying ammunition, weapons, suits, you go to the suit kiosk and pick the suit your want which you get from purchasing them as DLC. In the kiosk you also use resources you pick up laying around (scrap metal, semiconductors, transducers, etc) to upgrade your suit instead of purchasing the upgrades with credits. Similarly, you go to the bench where you would before add power nodes to upgrade suit and weapons, and you craft your weapons out of scavenged parts and use the resources to make your own med kits and ammunition. Ammunition is now universal, and the amount of shots you get out of an ammunition pack depends on your weapon and how you upgrade it. You still have power nodes, but they are only for weapons, and they are specific. Reload speed, damage, rate of fire, and clip size.

The biggest difference to me is Autosave. In the first two games you could not save unless you found a save point which made the game even more intense because when you got into a stressful situation if you turn the console off and start later you start at the save point, which may be very far behind where you stopped when you turned the game off. I feel this strongly takes away from the game, as it takes away the stress factor, which is important in a survival horror game.

Well anyway, i'm done ranting now. I'd love to hear your opinions. Which game is your favorite, and how do you feel about the changes?

I can't say much about the Call of Duty series, i played it off and on from the beginning but never played it seriously until Black Ops II. However, i've been hooked on Dead Space since the first game, and i believe that the correlation between the two will make a very solid war game, as the guys in the video describe.

Plus the guys who do dead space obviously know what they're doing. I'm pretty sure the only survival horror game that compares to Dead Space would be Resident Evil: Directors Cut for the Playstation. The collaboration between the two should make a terrifyingly realistic war game that portrays the deepness of war while still being an edge of your seat game as the Call of Duty series promises.

I'm not sure how excited i am about how Halo-ish it looks though...

Food for thought.

As someone who's never written anything about video games before, i figured this game would be a good one to start with.

Final Fantasy VII has held title of my favorite video game for about twelve years now. When i got my first copy in 1999, i didn't know anything about it. in fact, I believe my father got it for me as a gift as a mistake, thinking it was another game that i had asked for. It was terribly exciting to me when i started playing it, as a six or seven year old, because it had bad words in it like "damn" and it made me feel very adult and grown up, so it peaked my interest. At the time, i didn't quite have the capacity to undertake a game as involved as this one, so i grew bored with it about halfway through the first disc and i set it aside.

A few years ago, i picked it back up again, hearing that it was gathering monetary value as a cult following game and that it might be worth some money. I was not too turned by it's value, but instead by it's refound popularity. i decided to give it another go and ended up playing through to the part where Cloud and Cid (and whomever else is in your party at the time) fight Palmer and his goons and take off on the Tiny Bronco, and got stuck at that spot due to an error in the disc. i held that spot for several months waiting to find a cheaper copy at my local used game store. I ended up getting a very nice black label copy for i believe $20, which was incredible since at the time it was going for $75-150 on ebay depending on it's condition. I took it home, popped it in the playstation, played through the battle several times (I was rusty), and jumped for joy when the Tiny Bronco flight scene played through without a hitch, and i continued the game. A few weeks later, finding little bits of down time here and there to play, i finally beat the game, and it was one of the most accomplished feelings i had ever had in my life. So, now that i've poured out my soul, i will talk about the game.

The game, in my humble opinion, holds its own today against modern video games as far as plot thickness and the ability to convey an extremely lengthy story while still being an action packed RPG. It has everything! Romance, comedy, suspense, confusion, even a twist! The sheer depth of this game still blows me away as something that came out on the original playstation platform. Yes, it had three discs, but it was hours of gameplay. i mean HOURS. the first time playing all the way through, i logged about 56 hours into this game. A ridiculous amount of time. (though it pales to the over 150 hours i have into Fallout 3 on my pc...) There's just so much going on in the story of this game, it's like an interactive television series, with all it's twists and turns, new characters, new areas, plot twists, good guys, bad guys, good guys who turn out to be bad guys but are still kinda on your side in the end, side quests, and for the most part, it's an open world game. Sure, you have to follow the story line, but you can go pretty much wherever you want.

I'm not terribly good at writing about things. You should just go play the game.