PS2

Guitar Hero: World Tour - 1
Rock Band 2 - 0

Finding Flaws in a Final Fantasy Masterpiece

HIGH The point in the story about four-fifths of the way through, wherein the characters all abandon their misguided faith and fight for what's right instead.

LOW Having to level up for three hours in order to defeat the final boss.

WTF The rock track "Other World" that plays during the final boss fight. Very strange for a fantasy game.

A Spectacular Crime Drama Bringing "Mature" Content to New Heights

HIGH Some of the best writing and character work in video games, ever.

LOW The technical side could really use a revamp.

WTF I have to go out and aimlessly "enjoy the city" again?!?

Game Description: The sequel to Sega's ambitious adventure game set in the heart and underbelly of Tokyo.

Haven't had a whole heck of a lot of time to game this week, but what little time I did have was devoted to Sega's Yakuza 2.

This guy is one seriously badass motherf*cker

I'm not going to talk a lot about it right now because I feel an ethical responsibility to review it and I want to save some ammo for that future piece, but I will say that I think it's great. For those who don't know, the game is basically a real-time brawler with some light RPG elements bound together by an extremely well-written crime drama storyline -- and in this case, i do mean well-written. It's not a parody or a caricature of a story twisted around and made to fit all sorts of absurdly contrived game nonsense... it's a real, honest-to-goodness, straight-up serious crime drama.

Ars Technica closely examines some recent games that raise controversial themes and issues.

On Super Columbine Massacre RPG!:

Essentially, SCMRPG! is a psychological examination of Harris and Klebold. It attempts to put the player into their mindset, exploring how and why they came to do what they did. The subject matter itself questions what a game is meant to be. Though people normally play video games for sheer enjoyment, there is none to be found in SCMRPG! Instead, I found myself actively dreading entering the game world, unwilling to perform the actions necessary to progress.

On Metal Gear Solid 4:

In the world of MGS4, war has become a business, and PMCs are in the center of it. The new war economy means that the world is in a constant state of battle, locked in perpetual proxy wars fought for business purposes. But while this is an interesting concept to contemplate, unfortunately it is not covered with real depth.

As a Kojima game, MGS4 spends much more time tackling strange philosophical debates than it does real world issues like PMCs. And given the fact that the existence of these corporations only came to light recently, it's a topic that is at the forefront of many people's minds. The game is wonderful, but the opportunity for a serious look at the subject was squandered.

It's a long, hard road to get to this scene.

I just finished Raw Danger! on PS2 a few minutes ago... as I said earlier, it started out being a real struggle mostly for technical reasons, and that remained true all the way to the end. In terms of production, it was extremely rough and the budget for the game must have been practically zero. I'm still totally in love with the concept of surviving a natural disaster as the basis for gameplay, but the execution here was just too severely hampered to ever be totally enjoyable.

Game Description: Colosseum: Road To Freedom takes you to the time after Caesar's death and follows the life of a gladiator in those trying times. Travel back in time to the height of the Roman Empire circa 190 AD, to see the brutal reality of life-and-death fights in the Colosseum. Narcissus the Gladiator saw his village burnt to ashes by Roman soldiers. On his quest for revenge, he is captured and sent to the arena, to entertain the Roman citizens by shedding blood.

Every strike and its delivery is determined by the player.  This alone makes it a unique title, and one with considerable appeal for players interested in the gladiatorial subject matter.

There's a little bit of a lull in game releases right now before the total insanity of fourth-quarter holiday sales get started, so I'm taking the time to catch up on a few older titles. I played on PS2 last week and had a good time with that (check the review ) and this week, it's also on PS2.