Koei

It's all led up to this. Tim defends Too Human. Chi defends Dynasty Warriors. Who will live? Who will die? Find out in this, the second half of our "Out Of Our Comfort Zone" extravaganza. With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard Naik, and Tim "No Singing This Time" Spaeth.

Download: Right click here and select "Save Target As..."
Subscribe: iTunes | Zune | RSS
Read: Transcript

Topics discussed:

• Too Human
• Dynasty Warriors 6

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

Sometimes a videogame can make itself less of a worthwhile experience by making its existence as a videogame too obvious. This may seem initially to be a contradiction in terms, but what about a movie that's constantly reminding the viewer that it's a movie? When a child plays pretend, do they constantly tell themselves that they aren't driving that fire engine, it's just their imagination?

According to ESRB, this game contains: Suggestive Themes, Violence

Game Description: Crimson Sea pits you against an unknown enemy that hides in the shadows. Vibration, sound, movement, everything hints at a presence that is slowly approaching. Where are they? Where will they appear? Experience the tension and thrill of the hunt. Then suddenly they're here—all around you. Thousands, tens of thousands of alien creatures fill the screen. Fear tightens its grip as you fire off burst after burst until gradually fear changes to the excitement of prevailing against overwhelming odds.

It's only March, and it's already been a great season for diverse gamers. For proof, we need look no further than the niche genre of music gaming. For a category of entertainment that had formerly been labeled too Japanese for western tastes, music games seem to be here to stay. It's funny to look back and see that such a thing was almost unthinkable even as recently as five years ago.

According to the ESRB, this game contains: Mild Language

Gitaroo Man is probably the most demanding of rhythm games I've played and seems more improvisational in terms of working with beats than other music games like the flexibly challenging Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) series or Sega's more tempo-forgiving game, Rez.

Game Description: Gitaroo Man is an entirely new type of music rhythm game, in which your instrument is actually your weapon in the fight against evil. Unlike traditional music games that simply require the player to press buttons in rhythm with onscreen actions, Gitaroo Man makes players use both the analog stick and controller buttons at the same time, thus manipulating the onscreen characters with jumps, ducks, and attacks.

Since Im not going to attempt to tackle the meta-issues or any cultural relevance here, Ill focus on the nuts and bolts of the game itself, irrespective of its historical background.

Saiyuki is at it's a heart a turn-based strategy role-playing game (RPG) similar to games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Vandal Hearts. Whether or not this genre is appropriate given the source material is debatable, but it's an interesting route the developers choose to take nonetheless.