Best Work

To illustrate his experience with Way Of The Samurai, Chi compared the game to John Woo films, specifically Hard-Boiled. The film is used to indicate his feelings that there are underlying themes of loyalty, morality and honor. I also thought of an influential filmmaker and film while playing this game. Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing was always on my mind.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, from developer Bethesda Softworks, often seems so much like a full days work that it's easy to forget its just a game.

It takes a particular kind of mindset to really enjoy a game like Morrowind. You really have to get what the designers are trying to do and understand why they avoid what seem like more obvious alternatives. Like the two previous games of the Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind has its sights set on one goal: to provide us, the players, with all the limitless possibility our finite little minds can comprehend.

Way Of The Samurai is like an interactive Woo film in that forces players to make tough decisions regarding loyalty, morality, and honor much like the one Alan made in Hard-Boiled. And much like a Woo film, the game resolves its conflicts with blood-drenched violence.

Patience is a virtue. A disappearing virtue soon to be extinct, but a virtue nonetheless. In this age of instant gratification and sensory overload, its easy to see why the King's Field series has been so consistently overlooked and underappreciated. The gaming industry has been chronically ill-suited to promote the appreciation of subtle, atmospheric titles.

Pikmin may look cute and cartoon-y, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a game with gameplay as engaging.

The original Metal Gear Solid is one of the most important and most distinctive titles in video game history. Like its sequel, Metal Gear Solid created a considerable uproar when screenshots and movies were first leaked to the public. When it was released in 1998, it quickly became one of the most popular games ever, causing a heated debate over the merits of the game.

Mechanical innovation is often viewed as strictly contextual, in that it solves a problem or improves the functionality of a gameplay element. Gunvalkyrie challenges this perception by eschewing the conventions of its genre with a complex, unorthodox control scheme that radically shapes the direction of the game.

Playing Rez can be highly infectious even if for just a few minutes, so even the casual gamer might want to try that stage "just one more time." The mix of visuals and sound makes it as fun to watch as it is to play.

Dynasty Warriors 3 is, at its core, what many old-school gamers call a beat-em-up. In the tradition of coin-op classics like Double Dragon and Final Fight, a beat-'em-ups most distinguishing characteristic is usually the endless hordes of computer opponents a player must combat (usually with fists, weapons and anything else a player can get his hands on) and the repetitive nature of the gameplay which is usually tantamount to a wholelotta button-mashing.