Sega

So does the final release of Shenmue live up to all the hype of being the most expensive game ever made and deliver Dreamcast owners onto the promised land of gaming bliss? The answer is yes and no. Shenmue is the Bill Clinton of videogames; extremely ambitious, arguably successful, and yet undoubtedly flawed.

Sega seems to have a theme going lately consisting of games which are extremely original and challenging on many levels, yet strangely, they aren't very much fun to play. Seaman was the first game in the recent trend, and Shenmue is definitely another.

For all you see and hear, Jet Grind Radio is possibly the coolest game ever made. The art direction for the game is amazing and hits that narrow target of hip that other games miss—almost everything you see and hear melts your heart with an effortless style.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Violence, Mild Language

Game Description: In the 21st century, the Tokyoto city government bans kids from expressing themselves in any way. Only three things keep their spirits alive: Overdriver magnetic-motor skates, graffiti, and a pirate-radio broadcast that's called Jet Grind Radio. Explore and, uh, decorate three fully interactive worlds in which traffic moves at real time and pedestrians wander the streets. Watch out for police who'll want to nab you for breaking the law, and rival crews that want to deface your artwork. The "Cartoon Dimension" art style gives the game the appearance of a 2D comic, but the characters move through it in complete 3D. Animations run at 30 frames per second. Ten characters are available at the outset, each of which has its own style and abilities.

Jet Grind Radio is like the love child of Crazy Taxi and Space Channel 5. Take Crazy Taxi's gameplay, Channel 5's visual flair, and the music from both games, and you basically have Jet Grind Radio. Though the game can get repetitive, and the frustration factor is higher than it should be, Jet Grind Radio fares much better in the long run than its would-be parents.

NFL 2K1 is just the cure for the football fan who is tired of the same old NFL videogames. Here we have a football franchise that's still growing—still searching for that identity, which so instrumental in determining a sports game's success. The NFL 2K series alone has that potential to show us new things, visually and otherwise. NFL 2K1 generates excitement by default (it is, after all, a Dreamcast exclusive). Anything on PlayStation and Nintendo 64 should justifiably look stale in comparison.

Yet much to my own surprise, despite these usually unforgiving errors, I actually started to enjoy playing WSB2K1 after extended games. Chalk it up mainly to the pitcher/batter interface. There are going to be some obvious complaints like the ones that Dale made about the indistinguishable pitch selection and the lack of batter movement around the box. But there are also some really great positives to the system.

When I first played last year's NFL 2K, I was, to put it lightly, amazed. The play-by-play was great, and the action was both fast and cerebral. The game breathed new life into the stale video-football genre, setting a standard that has yet to be equaled. Now comes its sequel, NFL 2K1, and it is everything anyone could ask for, and then some.