Chime takes inspiration from games like Tetris and Lumines to bring a surprisingly addictive music puzzle to Xbox Live Arcade. Placing various block shapes on the board to form 3x3 or larger blocks changes the music as the clock ticks down. Cover the board and keep your combo going to rack up more time and a higher multiplier.

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First and foremost, the game lives up to the hype. So often we’re told for months and months about all the features an upcoming game is going to sport, Peter Molyneux, only to actually play Fable the game and find it’s a fine game, but nothing mind-blowing.

From the beginning we were told our decisions in the first ME title would matter in the second. Most people, myself included, took that to mean a few major decisions – who lives and dies, which choice you make at the ending, which crew member you decide to bone, etc. Holy shit, Bioware. I think every decision I made in Mass Effect came out in the sequel in some way or another. Better yet, some were hinted at this time that won’t play a role until the next game. Bioware, you freaking RULE. You took a high end “next gen” concept and made it live up to our hopes.

Martin Sheen, the scariest motherfucker in space.

One thing that’s been driving me nuts is listening to every reviewer talk about the missing RPG elements. Guys, are you paying attention? Mass Effect is the purest RPG yet, in my opinion. All the fat has been cut off, leaving one of the purest roleplaying experiences ever created and definitely the best one this generation (so far!).

I will give the game this: There were some things I didn’t like at first that actually worked out later, though I think they could’ve been handled better. First is the mining minigame. I hated hated hated it at first. Then I figured out where to find everything. A clearer tutorial would’ve been nice. Maybe when your crew members give you the mining upgrades they could say something like “Remember that Element Zero seems to be related to the spark of life,” or “You won’t find a heavy metal on a gas giant!” There is rhyme and reason to the mining, and it’s actually pretty slick once you get used to it. By the time I was done I was spending maybe two or three minutes per planet, if that. Just move the cursor around in a relatively procedural way, and tap the scan button to squeeze some extra speed out. The bonus here is that you can be on the looking for anomalies while you’re doing this. Just ignore the gas giants and scan the rock planets.

I also thought I was going to hate my class at first. I chose the Vanguard, and it was confusing to start. The first shotgun doesn’t seem terribly useful, though the other ones later are mighty. I wasn’t making enough use of my class powers and it ended up with me dying quite a bit. Once I figured it out and leveled my powers up a bit, I found myself just wading through battles destroying guys. So my recommendation is give your class some time and really think about the intention of the powerset.

The fact that this guy looks like a green Ultraman is only a small part of his badassness. 

That said, I took issue with the weapons in the game. The original ME was a loot whore’s dream. Guns to your left, guns to your right. Too many guns to pick’em all up. And you could modify each gun to your satisfaction. In ME2 there are maybe four guns in each class, and once you pick up a gun, anyone who is able to equip it can. Now I will say, I didn’t spend much time in menus this time around. I was able to concentrate almost exclusively on the game itself, only going into menus to level and save.

Now onto the reason everyone plays Mass Effect: Hardcore Alien Sex Simuation. Or not. While ME and Bioware’s other games have been lauded for their complex characters, one area I’ve finally realized they fall short in is the smooth transition of a relationship. I’ll admit it is difficult to craft a complex, nuanced romantic relationship in an open-world game like this, but I think things go too far the other way. You go up to the different romance prospects and lead along a certain line of chat and eventually get an option that’s akin to a more PG version of “Hey, I’d like to rub my crotch against your crotch if you know what I mean!” Where is the longing, the kissing, the alone time? How about a real date? I feel like Shepard’s in it for the sex as much as most players are. I didn’t pursue a relationship in the game because I want to see how my relationship with Liara from the first game pans out. There are a couple interesting moments where it is referenced in this game, and I think it’ll be an important aspect of the third. I hope.

On the strictly sexual-preference side of things, I feel the game was a bit lacking. While I wasn’t surprised that there was only one lesbian love interest, it wasn’t at all who I thought it would be. In fact, it was none of the whos I thought it might be. If you’re going the hetero route, male or female, you can pretty much bone anyone on the other side of the fence. If you’re a man looking for a man, you’ll be sorely disappointed. No man-love has been included. Bioware, I know you’re capable of better stuff when it comes to relationships. There’s some awesome dialogue in the game, both plot-related and not. Just apply some more of that to the romance sections.

There, I managed to keep it spoiler free!

also darth vader is sheperd’s secret identity.

Unfortunately, though, Granny’s striking resemblance to Yoda isn’t just visual. She’s really old, and stomping angrily across the country has taken its toll, and she has fallen ill. The cleaned-up and newly sober Matahachi stays by her side, still battling with who he was even as he prays for her health. Finally deciding he’s out of time, Matahachi helps his mother onto his shoulders to carry her back to Miyamoto village. As the two walk, the dissipating anger and hatred comes off the page in waves as Matahachi has a mostly one-way conversation with her.

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Real

The Tigers’ game against the Dreams takes most of the book, both the preparation for and the game itself. Despite the excitement inherent to an important game, it’s hard to match the power of watching someone relearn to live after an accident, or watching people come together to form a close-knit team. The best part of a basketball manga isn’t the basketball – it’s the people.

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I racked my brain for two days to find something good to say about 0 Day Attack on Earth. Yeah, that doesn't bode well. I will say that the game is easy to jump into, with the familiar dual-analog control scheme also seen in games like Geometry Wars. A wide variety of unlockable craft and a four-player co-op mode ensure you won't get bored of the game anytime soon if you, for some reason, like it.

I really hope Square Enix didn't spend more than a couple days creating 0 Day. There's no shortage of twin-stick shooters and the only thing this one does in an attempt to separate itself from the crowd is use satellite photography of the cities of New York, Paris, and Tokyo as the backdrop for the game. Unfortunately, The Last Guy on PSN already beat 0 Day to the punch and did a better job of it, to boot. Here, it just comes off looking chintzy with a way-too-low resolution.

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First, I will say that the swinging mechanic worked very well. I liked the arm for the most part and had a good time with it. The difficulty level was okay most of the time as well. A few parts challenged me, but I usually didn’t swear. The frequency of curses is usually directly related to how broken the game is.

That said, this game isn’t going to win any awards. The biggest problem is the illusion of freedom the game quickly dashes. For just a bit, you think you can swing anywhere, but then you realize that everything but the narrow path through the game is either covered in blue “radiation fog” or gleams with blue “radiation residue” that kills you all but instantly. A particularly impressive swing in the wrong direction is a guaranteed kill. It’s incredibly irritating and feels incredibly contrived; it’s even worse than an invisible wall or closed in area.

The story had its share of issues, too. Everything happened very suddenly. For example, who was the sniper that appeared exactly twice? Even if it should happen that the question was answered at some point in the game, the fact that I was able to miss it in such a linear experience means it wasn’t addressed to any meaningful degree. Further, the whole M. Night Shaymalan twist that occurs at the end of the game could’ve been worked themeatically into the game instead of just being a sudden twist at the end. In Prince of Persia, the story and gameplay supported each other as the love story between the Prince and Elika was established not only in the cutscenes, but also in entirely optional dialogue and the lack of death as Elika saves the prince each time he falls.

Maybe Spencer’s arm could’ve done something similar, saved him without his control at some point, even if it was scripted. Spencer’s unconscious emotional attachment to his arm was touched on briefly in some of the supplemental text you got out of the all-too-common mine-disabling relays, but it was a big empty spot that could’ve made the story much more interesting.

Joe and Spencer were voiced by two of my favorite voice actors, but it was a disappointment to hear both of them under-utilized. Steven Jay Blum seems to have pretty much the same voice in every game and anime, but I’m sure he has to have a few other voices he could use. On the other side, the incredibly flexible Mike Patton voiced Nathan Spencer. The vocalist of groups like Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, and Tomahawk has more vocal range than most whole choirs and he barely uses it. In the Darkness, he did some of the coolest, darkest voices you could hope for and even more, without post-processing. Why’s he voicing the most boring character? Also, they should’ve kept the original character design. The new one just sucks.

Overall the game wasn’t quite as bad as a lot of people said, but at the same time I’m still happy with Dead Space Extraction as my choice for 2009 Game No One Played.

With the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and its addition of four-player simultaneous multiplayer, suddenly Mario players of different types are interacting directly with each other in the game and on the couch, when before they would've stayed out of each other's way taking turns. Special thanks to spriters-resource.com for the graphics!

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Anyway, here are a few excerpts.

Game of the Year: Uncharted 2

Choosing the game of the year has been especially difficult the last few years, and for 2009 it was just the same. A handful of amazing titles like Modern Warfare 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum made the choice as hard as it's ever been, but after a lot of talk, Uncharted 2 came out as the clear winner. Everything you could want out of a game is there; fabulous multiplayer, stop-and-stare graphics and art, top-notch voice acting and writing—-it's all there, along with one of the tightest and most entertaining single-player games we've ever had the privilege of playing. The hardest part about Uncharted 2: Among Thieves isn't finishing it. It's not starting it right back up afterward.

Best Game No One Played: Dead Space: Extraction

If you say "Top 10" in the same sentence as Wii title Dead Space: Extraction, you must mean "How far can a good game get from the Top 10?" In a year with games like Modern Warfare 2 and New Super Mario Bros. Wii selling in the millions effortlessly, Dead Space: Extraction sold a scant 9,000 copies in its first week. The combination of the game existing purely for fans of the original and its release on the Wii was enough to lose most peoples' interest before launch, despite the excellent audio and visual design and surprising revival of the gasping rail-shooter genre.
Like other quality 3rd party titles on the Wii, Extraction might have been one of the best game of the year... that nobody played.

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Sawaki Tadayasu, Moyasimon’s primary protagonist, wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss him. Since childhood, Tadayasu has possessed the ability to see microbes around him without the assistance of a microscope. Instead, he sees incredibly cute little beings floating around, saying all kinds of adorable things like “I’m going to turn some sugar into starch!” as they bob around.

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I can hear the siren blaring as the walls peel away to reveal rusted chain link fences and thick, oozing darkness. Every year or two, Silent Hill calls out to me, challenging me to see if it scares me the right way or the wrong way. With Silent Hill: Shattered Memories hitting the Wii just in time for Christmas, it's time to go back again.

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Now, I'll admit that my wife accidentally spoiled what happened, due to a copy and paste error. While I wish I could've seen it without knowing the truth, watching it with full knowledge made it a very different experience.

When Mirai loses Yuuki, she sort of loses her grip on reality, too. She goes almost immediately into full-blown denial after she signs the papers confirming the identification. She finds her brother and walks off with him, heading home. The only thing is, every time someone comes around, her brother disappears.

Then, randomly, Mirai will tear up and border on bawling for a few moments, wondering why she's crying--genuinely puzzled.

While I think that anime (as well as TV and film) have an easier time of dealing with delicate topics due to the total authorial control they allow, it still is a delicate topic that is easy to handle poorly. However, I liked the way TM8 worked with it. Once you figure out what's going on, it never feels arbitrary or rushed. It's something that has clearly been planned from the beginning and the subtle hints before were handled with grace and finesse.

It seems like I keep coming across stuff like this lately, purely by chance. In the course of just a few weeks I've watched TM8 and played Lucidity and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Lucidity was the story of a girl coping with the loss of her grandmother, her first experience with loss, and it was the player's role to act the parent and help her accept the feelings without hurting herself in the process. Silent Hill--SPOILERS--was also about a girl mourning the loss of someone close, in this case her father. As befitting of Silent Hill, it dealt more with the dark side of loss and the self-destructive tendencies that can accompany a major loss. TM8 is about the realization of that loss, when alone. Really all three games are about young children, though Silent Hill more abstractly. TM8 is by far the most direct of the three, but that doesn't take away from its power.

What It's About

That's right about where the similarities to the original game end. This is hardly a mere graphical upgrade to the original Silent Hill. It's a reimagining of the original story, turning what was once a simple search for a child and encounter with the occult into a complicated psychological tale of loss and memories.

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You know, I really wish King of Fighters didn’t so closely resemble the screenshot to the left. But unfortunately, it does.

After stellar fighting games like Street Fighter IV and BlazBlue this year, does SNK really think gamers are really going to accept a game that looks like this?

OK, I will admit that the animation is fluid, but when that fluid animation is applied to the most pixelated characters you’ve seen since PSone, the animation kinda falls by the wayside.

I’m not particularly well-qualified to talk about the mechanics of the game in any depth, but I will say that I like the Simple mode. I’m bad at fighting games – like really bad – and it lets me play and have fun with the game without having to know everyone’s moves.

I really like the three-fighter mechanic of King of Fighters, it makes for an interesting match and forces fans to become adept with more than one character. I also like the fighting system itself just because it’s a little different than Street Fighter.

Overall, I’m glad I rented it, but more because I didn’t have to buy it, versus having had the opportunity to play it. As much as people are saying graphics don’t matter anymore, King of Fighters XII is one argument otherwise.