Hideo Kojima

Game Description: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater introduces new depth and thrilling gameplay. It's a new level of gaming, with all the detailed levels, thrilling gameplay and stunning plot twists players crave. Set in the 1960s, you become a legendary soldier sent to uncover the secret behind Metal Gear, a top-secret superweapon with nuclear capability. You are all alone in hostile territory—but you will complete this mission, to secure the continued existence of human life.

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

More than anything else, a game designer has the unique ability to inflict pain on people. Whether this pain comes in terms of boredom or frustration or sadness is irrelevant. If a game designer can create dissonance, get the player to reflect on why they are experiencing it, and focus that reflection back into core mechanics of the game, he or she has just accomplished something that only videogames can do.

I can do without a lot of the pseudo-religious preachiness that certain games inflict on the player in the form of hefty non-interactive dialogue. While a game can spout out socially relevant and morally suggestive dialogue all it wants, it's just as easy for gamers to impatiently scroll through the text while letting their eyes wander around the room and not paying any attention to the message that the game is so painstakingly trying to convey.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Fantasy Violence

Game Description: Playing Boktai requires sunlight. The solar sensor responds to the player's environment and reflects the amount of solar energy (sunlight) in the game at real time. When there is strong sunlight, solar energy charges up quickly. When weak, it charges up slowly. Sunlight is required mainly to charge energy to the solar gun which is the player's only weapon, and to fight the boss at the Pile Driver. And during moments other than these, the sensor will detect solar energy, causing the game content to change. In Boktai, with the real time clock inside the cartridge, game contents change over time from daytime to nighttime, just like actual time in our world. The Undead that are active during the night stay quiet in the dungeon during the day.

With the glut of incomprehensible storylines, system-crashing bugs, and—most offensive of all—misspellings and bad grammar found in games these days, it seems as if in the mad rush to fill store shelves, a growing percentage of publishers and developers are getting increasingly lackadaisical.

Game Description: From Metal Gear Solid 2 producer Hideo Kojima, comes the sequel to the anime inspired mech combat game Zone of the Enders. In Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, take control of a lightning fast mechanized robot and fight an evil militaristic force with new weapons, maneuvers, and tactics. Conflicts and settings of ZOE2 take place in cityscapes, enemy fortresses, and even in the depths of space! Sequel to the mech-powered combat game, with a new cast of characters and an epic story.

Loyal readers of the site may recall my less-than-favorable review of the original Zone Of The Enders back in 2001. Despite a great battle engine and the attachment of Hideo Kojima's name, it was a shallow bore that sold more copies than it deserved thanks to a massive wave of hyperbole and the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo disc it was packaged with. The project was massively unsatisfying, and I couldn't understand why an illustrious house like Konami would release such a half-baked product. Evidently, someone at Konami HQ must have been thinking the same thing.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood and Gore, Violence