Lego Star Wars: It would’ve been impossible to make a bricks-out action game like the console versions, so we get an overhead-perspective action-puzzler. If it actually seemed to save my progress I probably would still be playing it but playing the same first few levels over and over is even more tedious when you know how to solve it. It’s about holding the 4 key and waiting for duder to waddle over to the green switch.

Time Crisis: Somehow Namco didn’t figure out a way to include a bundled peripheral in the download — hardy har har — so the point-of-view playfield has been split into a nine-square field corresponding to the keypad. See a guy, press a button to shoot him. Like whack-a-mole, only you have to duck when the moles shoot back. The 3D looks pretty good but my phone’s a little too slow for it to play well. I get the impression this was intended for those Nokia superphones.

Doom RPG: Awesome throwback game, adapting the Doom universe to a turn-based role-player. The “dungeons” are different areas of the UAC Mars base and scroll smoothly in a style reminiscent of Wolfenstein [I mean Wolfenstein -- the "camera" doesn't bounce the way Doom does].  The writing is top-notch, filled with geeky references.  My favorite moment was when the Marine tries to access a SQL database with typed insults.

Orcs & Elves: Newer game in the same vein from the same developers [Fountainhead Entertainment, now "id mobile"].  Medieval theme and beautiful graphics but too slow.  Probably my phone.

Midtown Madness 3D: Too slow for my phone.  Even if it wasn’t, I can’t imagine a 3D “free roaming” driver playing well on a phone.   Just because you can do something like that doesn’t mean you should.  I bet a drive-straight and steer game like outrun would play great on modern phones, though — I’ll have to look for one.

Drakengard: Too, too tough.  Always wanted to try the PS2 version, may still check it out someday.

Zelda Legend: Humorously poor Zelda-themed sprite swap and string edit hack of “Drakengard.”

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I wondered, “How did they cram all the excitement of the arcade game into such a tiny package?” My question was more or less answered when I clicked through the tutorial and saw these ominous words: “PRESS 6 TO ATTACK”

High Voltage Online » Dial-A-Combo: SNK vs. Capcom on your mobile phone

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World Record for Rock Band’s Tom Sawyer Expert

 The click-clack of the Rock Band drum kit kind of give this a "Rush-remixed-by-Timbaland" sound to me.

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Does anyone really think Mario is such a multifaceted and absorbing character that he deserves to be explored fully over the course of 50 titles about racing buggies? Be honest here! Wouldn’t you have more fun if they actually created some new characters whose lives are somehow linked with buggy racing or tennis instead of following Mario around through his every activity like a documentary crew? I don’t eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes and then want to see Tony the Tiger playing with a dildo on a webcam or watch a movie about him solving crimes on the mean streets of New York.

Zach Parsons, The Five Worst Gaming Articles of 2005

That really, really sums it up. I guess it goes without saying that I still want a Wii, eventually, but it’s not like they have trouble coming up with new characters every once in a while — they’d probably come up with more if they didn’t have the warp pipe to go back to so much.

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• Dynasty Warriors 5 [xbox]: Was very excited about tiger sidekicks in the battles. As in, instead of humans, tigers. But the wife and I played this game one afternoon [we play this only in two-player co-op mode] and discovered that, in two-player co-op mode at least, the detail in characters and the numbers have finally exceeded the limits of the game engine, resulting in characters disappearing in the middle of a battle. They’re still there, just invisible. This wouldn’t be the end of the world with, say, an extra private trying to get a hit in on you. Okay, then later you’re fighting a high-ranking enemy officer, and they disappear, and then you get hit with a brutal musou attack from Commander Invisible. Dialing down the difficulty to “Easy” makes it way too easy.

  I’m seriously thinking about selling this back and buying a used copy of Dynasty Warriors 4. No tigers, no make-your-own-officer mode, but at least it was, you know, playable.

• LA Rush [ps2]: I’m a huge fan of Atari’s arcade San Fran Rush games who once purchased a used Nintendo 64 primarily to play “Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA.” So I was excited to hear that it was getting updated for an era that has brought us games like the Burnout series and Midnight Club, but keeping the gimmicky, shortcut-laden tracks. Well, I’ve spent a couple of hours tooling around the game’s Los Angeles, and the tendency toward realism is vexing. Whle catching air off of a conveniently-placed car hauler is great fun, it pales in comparison to the arcade Rush games, where inside of a minute-and-a-half you would’ve hit a loop-de-loop and a ten story drop off a skyscraper.
• The Warriors [xbox]: This game would be a lot of fun even if I didn’t have a soft spot for the movie. But I do have that soft spot, and the dedication to the original source makes the game that much more fun. Rockstar reproduced the gritty look of the titles and NY at night [for NYC gangs, it's always night], and even opens the game-loading screens with the 1970s-era Paramount Pictures logo, just as if you were watching the movie.
• Dead to Rights Reckoning [psp]: Meh. It was okay. I have never played a Dead to Rights game so I can’t say whether the porting to PSP made it so underwhelming. I didn’t fully understand the controls but that didn’t stop me from finishing a number of levels before growing bored.

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It’s funny — I had always figured myself as more of a Dian Wei type.

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• One of the things I would never be able to do without the Internets is hear a guy named Homer Pimpson freestyle over the old NBA on NBC theme. As long as I’m at it, now would be a good time to point out Diffusion’s Diffusions Famous TV Theme Remixes [they're all British shows, though] and the French version of the A-Team theme [in mp3, scroll down], which is “the French version” because its lyrics are in French. Yes, it has sung lyrics. And they are in French. If you like NBC TV themes, also look for “Platinum Stars” by Li’l Flip, where the Pac-Man sampling Houston guy and his cronies flow over a break from “Gimme a Break!”
• Indie game reviews [that is, reviews of free and/or indie-published games] here
  and here.
• May have to investigate this further: a one-click installer for a VNC server hardwired to connect to you, intended for helpdesk applications, but maybe good for Mom and Dad’s computer too [your Mom and Dad, I mean; mine are on a Mac].

Aaah, that felt good. Off to bed.

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I think the video-game reviewers do a better job of selecting their review subjects — instead of choosing easy straw men to beat on and going ballistic over the latest Grand Theft Auto installment, they choose games that are more likely to appeal to kids and highlight the games with the least violence.

I never thought I’d be arguing that the PTC didn’t go far enough, but I think they underestimate the graphic detail in Burnout 3 [no direct link, but visit the link above and scroll down or find for Burnout]. They laugh it off as cartoonish, but I think the graphics are more realistic than they give it credit for. Although I can easily enjoy the Road Rage mode with its fetishistic slow-mo closeups on you and your competitors’ shattered glass and shredded metal, the Crash mode, where you drive vehicles into busy traffic consisting of mundane, average-looking passenger and freight vehicles, gives me the creeps.

Although cars [beside your own] rarely explode or show fatal damage to the passenger compartments, I still feel a twinge of guilt when I play it [though I do play it]. I remind myself that this is a lot like crashing my toy cars in the sandbox or on the couch in the family room when I was a kid. Another friend, however, tells me he imagines packed buses, full oil tankers, families in the minivans and the whole nine. I guess that’s how he rolls.

Will this stop me from picking out Burnout Legends for the PSP? Not likely. But I won’t share them with the kids immediately any more than I will get them started with GTA.

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I like that the star villains are called “Killer 66.” They must have kicked out the craziest twenty-two members.

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