1.) Street Fighter IV(360/PS3) – Capcom still has it. I was afraid we would never see another Street Fighter game, and we got that and soon Super Street Fighter IV.

2.) Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii) – Beautiful 2-D Fighter. Well drawn, lots of action, giant boss battles and the game makes me so hungry for Japanese food!

3.) Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii) – Wrote the review earlier; a nice addition to the franchise.

4.) Assassin’s Creed 2 (360/PS3) – A beautiful game. I like the story, the puzzles, love the feeling of being in Italy. Very well done.

5.) Infamous (PS3) – Do you like this, or do you prefer Prototype? I’ll take Infamous, because at least I can pretend to be a good guy and its graphic novelesque cut scenes.

First up, some background may be in order. As you may already know, the Silent Hill series is one of my all time favorites. As is often the case with even a franchise of its age, after a while, the series has lost some luster. The original Silent Hill was a fantastic game and then Silent Hill 2 made all the right decisions everywhere possible in improving the game. Silent Hill 3 held its own and was enjoyable, but was not invigorating as 2. After that, the games declined steeply. Silent Hill: The Room didn’t feel like Silent Hill to me. The PSP entry (which I have not played) is supposedly pretty bad. Homecoming came out and I made a post, mostly singing its praises. I did not follow up on it, though; the game was promising and I thought it might be the kick in the pants the series needed, but I was wrong. Graphically, it was beautiful. Unfortunately, the flaws did end up being too numerous. The game was far too heavily combat-based, an annoying companion was added, and all this ended up making it too frustrating to finish. Maybe I’ll return to it, but I’m not too motivated.

When I first heard about a Silent Hill game on the Wii, I was very skeptical. Controls could potentially be a problem, the Wii has weaker graphics, Nintendo’s family-friendly reputation might make the developers hold back some content, and then there’s the whole recent history of sucky Silent Hill sequels. Then I heard there is no combat. What the hell? Is this going to be Myst on the Wii?? However, ALL of these preconceived notions ended up being false.

Well, Mike and company seemed to have more faith in the series than I had, myself, and actually picked it up for me as a birthday present. Of course, I played right away… and actually played all the way through. That may not sound like a big deal to you, but I rarely finish games, even ones I love. How far am I in Shenmue 2, again? I’m excited about Yakuza 3 coming to the PS3; have I even beaten the first one yet? No. But I digress.

This is a different type of Silent Hill game. It plays differently than the others and adds in a lot of new mechanics, many of which utilize Wii-specific aspects. Perhaps the very first thing you notice about the game are the graphics – they were pleasantly surprising. In fact, for a Wii, damned good, I’d say. Let’s be realistic, though; they are not better than, say, Homecoming. Close-ups on characters are well detailed with expressive facial features. The developers minimized the number of things on screen at once and add lots and lots of snow and fog. This allowed them a decent amount of detail on certain objects and eliminated pop-ups. There are a few cases of slow down, usually going through doors or during a chase. At the same time, this was pretty minimal and not much to complain about. Some of the shadows/lighting effects could have been improved too. Overall, for a Wii game, it’s pretty impressive.

One of the most impressive things, however, is the narrative. The game is actually a retelling of the original Silent Hill story. Harry Mason gets in a car accident and when he finally regains consciousness, notices his daughter is missing and then searches for her in this strange town called Silent Hill. This game’s story is this same basic premise and most of the game you are wandering Silent Hill searching for your daughter, meeting strangers, and trying to stay alive. However, the game does not take you right to the car accident. Instead, you begin in some kind of therapy session. Various portions of the game switch from third to first person perspectives. This in itself is interesting, like a novel switching between first and third person writing. All of these therapy sessions (though not exclusively) are in the first person.

Our psychologist starts off giving us a personality test. The questionnaire will tell you right away that this game is not your typical family-friendly Wii game. The questions ranged from simple, “Do you make friends easily?” to way too personal, so much that I actually felt embarrassed answering questions about my sex life while some friends watched me play. There is a surprisingly large amount of mature content in the game – actual mature content, not bouncing breasts ala DOA or GTA’s “Hot Coffee”, but intelligent, mature conversation in the context of relationships and realistic intimate encounters, some of it sexual.

The therapy sessions run intermittently between game play, and gets stranger and more intense between you and the psychiatrist as he tests and then lectures you. It appears he’s coaxing you into recalling flashbacks, which is where the game continues in the hopes of finally getting to some kind of admission out of you. This turns out to be a grand revelation at the end of the game.

For the main part of the game, you use the Wiimote to point at a direction as a flashlight and use the nunchuck to move forward or back or to the side. It’s very basic for the most part. The goals are mainly to go from point A to B and discover clues along the way. There is no combat, so for most of the game, you can take your time and explore. There are plenty of macabre and disturbing things. But unlike its “next-gen” console predecessors, it’s far more subtle. Instead of multiple dead bodies hanging from the ceiling on the first level, there might be a dead rabbit in a drawer you open. It doesn’t hit you right away with the heavy stuff. Instead it builds, so when you do discover an actual corpse, it’s more shocking and holds greater significance.

Even though you know there is no combat, it is still creepy with lots of loud noises and events to keep you on your toes. One of the most interesting features is the use of the Wiimote as Harry’s phone. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this – No More Heroes did this. However, it is the first time I’ve seen used as an integral part of the game. No More Heroes used it stylistically but with no real practical purpose. It is used stylistically here but it’s also integral to solving certain puzzles.

One of the things that Homecoming failed to realize is that it wasn’t the fighting of scary demons in Silent Hill that made it scary. It was NOT fighting the scary monsters that evoked this feeling. Our anticipation of danger helped frighten us. Instead, Homecoming crammed the game packed with monsters to the point that it was more frustrating than scary with its constant combat. Shattered Memories went with a complete 180 degree approach, having no combat at all. I was very skeptical of this. Although there wasn’t nearly as much combat in the original, there was SOME. The potential of encountering a monster at any corner was terrifying.

Although there is no combat, Shattered Memories does not turn out to be Myst. There are monsters. Yes, they can kill you. No, you can’t kill them. Instead, the game uses a series of chase sequences where you run away from the demons. To my surprise, the approach works for the most part. The first few chases are very exhilarating and terrifying. The monsters try to grab you and you must find your way through the nightmare world labyrinth of ice and doors that seem to take you in circles. In fact, most of the doors actually do take you in circles! As exciting as they are, after a while, they get more difficult and frustrating. You actually wish you could fight back, and the chases become more annoying than frightening. Thankfully, the game does not go overboard with them. There are about eight chases or so in total. This is maybe one or two too many, but not too many to actually make me quit (which I am prone to do).

Many will complain that the game is too short. As per usual, I leisurely took my time, exploring most of the game environments. I beat it within about 10 hours of game play. I thought the length of the game was perfect. The game has a story and told it, without bothering with too many pointless side-quests, or extending the plot so that it no longer made any coherent sense. There is also the fact that I don’t have time or the patience for 30+ hour games anymore

Lastly, when you load up the game, it starts with a disturbing, yet dubious warning that the game will psychologically analyze you to better frighten you in the game. As far as I can tell and from what I’ve read, the psychoanalysis the game performs changes the ending, but not much else. There are a few superficial cosmetic changes I could tell were obvious from my choices on these tests. The demons in the game changed their appearance in the game, I assume, based on my answers. They began looking more female towards the later stage in the game, as opposed to rather the blank and sexless hellspawn in the beginning. When I started playing the warning itself had a psychological effect and I kept wondering if what I saw was based on the psychological profiling. Probably not in retrospect and knowing what I know, but if you don’t know better, I could see it having an effect, in the same was as the way the Blair Witch Project announced itself a documentary, or Fargo stating it was based on a true story.

The game is not perfect. The chases get frustrating, some of scare tactics lose their effect, and I even ran into a serious glitch that forced me to reset. It is also not as good as Silent Hill 2. Nonetheless, this is a very worthy addition to the series, especially in comparison to more recent efforts. You have to appreciate the effort and the creativity the Climax team pushed. It is not a sequel, nor a straight remake, but an inventive and clever reimagining of the first with original game play and original narrative structure. They went above what was a tried and true formula to give you a new experience, while retaining the feel and atmosphere of the series and managed to get most of it right. They deserve serious kudos for that.

I received a follow-up voice message two days later, as promised, letting me know that the license transfer was still being worked on, but it would be resolved soon and to give them a call back if I had any questions. Later on that day, I received an e-mail letting me know that the transfer was complete. To fully resolve the outstanding issue, however, I would have to go through a manual re-downloading process of each and every individual item purchased while the hard drive was being used on the previous hardware. It was an easy process, if not time consuming. Your “Download History” in “Account Management” is painless to go through, so I sat with a drink and went through one-by-one re-”downloading” each item. I place “downloading” in quotes because the download immediately jumps from 0% or 1% all the way up to 100%, since it is only updating the license on the downloaded content, rather than fully re-acquiring said content.

After going through this process, all Rock Band DLC was accessible even when the ethernet cable was unplugged. Good job, Microsoft.

Now if only we didn’t have this pesky problem called “DRM” that made it impossible to use the things you thought you paid for but really only paid for a license to use at the sole discretion of the overlord company…

But what is a realistic sports game? In what way is it realistic? Should a realistic game be from the players’ perspective or the coach’s perspective, or a fan’s perspective? We have actually had games from the coach’s POV, such as “Let’s manage a baseball team” in Japan. I know Europe has a popular coach simulation for soccer. Lots of popular games even offer these modes in most of the current games, as well. And not just coaching, but front office, personnel duties and scouting as well. You trade, draft and develop players. However, the coaching/GM perspective is really for die hard fans of the game and not what most game players want.

You would think, we want the game from the players’ point of view. Who wouldn’t want to kick a goal, or shoot a basketball, or hit a home run? Yet, most sports games don’t really take the perspective of the player. You don’t have practice, team meetings, an agent, road trips with your teammates or even your locker room experience.

The tendency has been to make playing a professional sports game as close to the television experience as possible. It seems as though the goal of the companies creating the games was to make it as difficult as possible to distinguish between a TV broadcast and a video game experience. I suppose the thinking behind this is that if you can fool some one, even for a second, that they are watching a game on TV as opposed to playing a game, you have created a realistic experience.

The first innovation in this direction is the commentary track added to games. This was a MAJOR selling point back in the 16-bit generation. Sega’s Joe Montana Sports Talk football was a major step in this direction. They didn’t just say the score, they discussed the game. Not only was there commentary, but Sega had the default camera angle from the side of the field, as it is in TV broadcast, despite the inherit impracticality this view provided. A view so flawed for gameplay that almost all football games abandoned it and stuck with the over the head view, despite it not being the typical camera view of TV broadcasts. But if developers could get that view without hindering basic game play, Madden games would switch to it in a heartbeat.

The problem of camera angles is also limiting to baseball games, although a few have tried the TV perspective, most stick with a behind the batter POV. I do remember that commentary in baseball games simulating the TV experience was a major selling point. EA Sports with their Triple Play series, boasted about having the first game with a 2 man broadcast. I believe that was also the game that added (often fake) advertising to the commentary (“Not quite chicken, not quite pork, it’s chork!”). This is probably one of the most annoying things about the TV experience, yet despite its annoyance it’s added for realism. And because it adds realism, we love it!

But how about a sport where the TV angle is the most advantageous angle for gameplay. Enter basketball and soccer games. I’m going to talk mostly about basketball here, but pretty much everything will also apply to soccer (and a lot of it to sports games in general). Excluding the more “fantasy” oriented games, such as NBA Jam or Street, basketball lends itself extremely well to the TV experience. The TV camera angle also lets you see an entire half court and usually, all of the players are on the screen at the same time. Virtually, every NBA game has a “half time report” and “player of the game” intermission. Actual TV commentators are the norm. And of course, instant replay has been around since the 16-bit era.

I bought NBA2K9 the other day. A series I have always held as the standard since its first Dreamcast appearance. I was amazed at how eerily similar it looked to a TV broadcast. I could have easily have been watching a TNT game. In fact, after viewing me playing for a good 15 seconds, my housemate had to ask, “Are you watching a game on TV or is this the videogame?”

This is of course what the developers have always wanted. And it’s not just the realistic graphics and their fluidity or the quality of the commentary. It’s the entire presentation. It’s the way the score is graphically presented on the screen. It’s how certain stats appear on screen and then comments accompanying those stats. It’s the way that Gatorade advertises itself at the beginning of each half with a graphic on the corner of the screen. Is it even possible to make it look more like a TV broadcast than it already does? Have we achieved the pinnacle of this style? And what’s next? Perhaps, now we float away from the TV style and to a more player oriented perspective as if we are really on the field. Nah, they can hardly keep NBA2K9 on the shelves. It’s all about the TV ratings!

I’m about 2 hours into it.  It’s not flawless.  A few complaints, but they are admittedly nit-picky.  So far, Double Helix, so good.  I hope it continues to be this good.

Holy Hell, SNK/Playmore is totally keeping 2D alive with &%#$ing STYLE.

The King of Fighters XII is looking to totally blow the socks off of us 2D-fighter fans. Game Trailers has the latest preview video up for viewing, and it’s sexy as Hell. This game is going to be an amazing complement to have alongside all of the 3D fighters we either already have (Soul Calibur IV) or are coming soon (Street Fighter IV).

My history with the KoF series is a little all over the place. I was very casual about it up until around 1998, and then got incredibly hardcore with it (well, “hardcore” for me). After 2000, though, the games all started bleeding together for me… not to mention the bosses got slightly ridiculous both in style and cheapness (seriously, Goenitz… bite me). ’99 was probably my favorite game in the series thus far. I know a lot of the seriously-hardcore fans have a problem with the striker system, but the specific characters that were in the game, the backgrounds, and the music (oh god, the awesome music!) are what really sell the game for me. I also dipped into the Maximum Impact series, and thoroughly enjoyed 2006 / Maximum Impact 2 despite its transition into quasi-3D.

There’s not much of a point to this entry other than to check in with you all and see what your hype level is for the upcoming fighters… and specifically, KoF. Who’s really digging the updated style for the series? Who’s picking up the American release of ’98 Ultimate Match on LIVE Arcade, and/or already picked it up on PS2?

I’ve got some more SNK love coming for you soon with some talk about a game I finally picked up for myself on Neo-Geo Pocket Color…