The Democratic primary season isn't the only thing that stuck around much longer than expected. The normal christmas release season just kept dragging on and halfway into this year. Well with Ninja Gaiden II, and MGS4 finally out I think we can safely call it an end to the gaming year. (The next one starts up real soon though so brace yourself.) In the past year or so, my 360 and Wii libraries exploded, and the PS3 finally got some of it's long awaited exclusives. We finally saw a decent FFVII spinoff, and Square Enix made their first original RPG for a Nintendo platform in years. And to top it all off two games temporarily dethroned Ocarina of Time from the number one spot on gamerankings. I have this compulsive urge to play everything that gets AAA ratings. So when a game flops I usually just shrug my shoulders and be happy that I have one less game on my plate. But Ninja Gaiden II was something I was looking forward to even more than GTA4. Even with the bad reviews I had this hope that the game would get updated and repackaged just like the first game. Maybe they could go back and fix the game's flaws. Well the leader of Team Ninja just left Tecmo, so I'll just have to kiss that pipedream goodbye. As bad as Ninja Gaiden II flopping goes there's something even creepier on the horizon in games. Is anyone else getting this nasty vibe that the review system as we know it is about to implode? We're starting to see review scores days ahead of a game's release date. Also more and more reviewers are deviating from the traditional 1-10 scale. Or as the Penny Arcade guys put it",I expect to hit up gamerankings and see a review in degrees farenheit. That'll be some ****ing useful information". It seems as if these days anybody can get into the review business. I recently discovered that Penthouse has their own section for game reviews. Metacritics standards are getting worse and worse. I wonder if we'll ever see a penthouse review up on metacritic? They are letting some of the dumbest reviews onto their site these days after all. I guess this is all good news for somebody though. Whatever Ninja Gaiden's creator works on next he can be sure to get a freebie score of 100 on metacritic, so long as he includes some B00BIES!!!11!!1!

Well I just finished playing Chrono Trigger...for the first time... Yes, ever. What's really sad is that CT turns out to be the most innovative traditional turn based RPG I've ever played. The developers of CT seem to have asked themselves some very important questions about traditional RPGs before making the game. Why am I encountering a monster every few steps (even in areas I had already cleared out)? Why are there two seperate menus for magic and abilities? Why is it that when I take a certian character out of my party temporarily he or she doesn't grow in power along with the rest of my group? (Or rather, why should I be forced to go back and level this character up, just to enjoy some character variety? It is through asking all these questions and more that CT suceeds. I think asking these types of questions is the secret to revitalizing stale genres. Why do I respawn in online matches? Why is there always an enemy creature with only melee abilities running towards me in FPS games? Why do Poke'mon just jump out at me when I am on the hunt for them, and they don't want to be caught? Why don't the cops ever help me in San Andreas? Why am I always sidescrolling from left to right? Why not another direction from time to time? Why am I always the hero of the story? Developers need to ask themselves these kinds of questions, especially with formulaic features that you would never even think to alter or remove from said genre.

Throughout time numerous inventions have become obsolete. People are (usually) no longer executed with a guillotine. Trains have fallen to semi-trucks, and airplanes. A lot of inventions have simply lost their usefulness in our modern age. But there are tools invented long ago that are still every bit as important to our world as the computer, the automobile, or any of the various complex machines we depend upon today. Just imagine what life would be like without the wheel, or screws. Planes wouldn't fly, and cars wouldn't go. In the same sense that wheels, and screws laid the groundwork for more complex inventions, there are video games that laid the groundwork for what we play today. Also in the same sense that there are ancient tools that have endured the test of time enough to stand tall with even the most complex inventions, there are older video games which can stand toe to toe with modern games. A few games out there are so popular that they have been repackaged and sold multiple times, to multiple generations of gamers, on multiple game systems. The following is a list of games that have all three qualities mentioned above. Anybody that is even casually interested in games should play these.

The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time: Wii Virtual Console 2006, Gamecube 2003, N64 1998. Final Fantasy VI: (also known as FF3 on the SNES). SNES 1994, Playstation (part of a compilation called Final Fantasy Collection) 1997, GBA 2006. Chrono Trigger: SNES 1995, Playstation (same compilation as above) 1997. Chrono Cross: Playstation

Super Metroid: SNES 1992, Wii VC 2007. Super Mario Bros. 3: NES 1990, SNES (part of super mario all stars compilation), GBA (known as Super Mario Advance 4).

Castlevania Symphony of the Night: Playstation 1997, Xbox 360 2006, PSP (Known as Dracula X).

Final Fantasy Tactics: Playstation, GBA, and PSP. Mortal Kombat II: Too many to list here lol. Super Street Fighter II Turbo: See above lol. Super Mario 64: N64 1996, Nintendo DS 2004, Wii VC 2006.

Poke'Mon (preferably Fire Red or Leaf Green): All Nintendo Handhelds.

The following is a list of games that are not quite old enough to be considered classics but are still very very good. Ninja Gaiden Black, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, GTA4, Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime, Halo Combat Evolved, Devil May Cry 3, Dragonquest VIII, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and Advance Wars Dual Strike.

I was researching all the failed consoles out there a few days ago. I realized that all the failed game systems have one thing in common. They were all expensive powerhouses, in comparison with the competition. Meanwhile all the successful consoles were cheap, and easy to make games for. The Wii has this winning formula but through my talks with co-workers, I discovered a subset of gamers that are even more important than the non-gamer. A lot of young males ages 18 to 29 own a video game system. In most console cycles almost everyone in this group owns a current gen system by now (year 3). But this time around things are different. A lot of people are hanging onto their PS2's or Xboxes because they feel the current gen systems are too expensive, and don't offer a leap in graphics. Normally these casual male gamers would flock to the cheapest next gen console (see ps2, ps1, and genesis). But Nintendo has failed to pay attention to these casual male gamers. If the Wii is to be the next PS2 Nintendo needs to clear this hurdle.

I think the title is pretty self explanatory. Here goes nothing...

Xbox 360: The red ring of death isn't the only thing lame about this console. I think a lot of people will agree with me when I say that the 360 has no modern classics yet. There's nothing really awesome out for the 360 yet. Sure there's a handful of games that have review scores in the 90's. But every one of those games has a massive flaw to it that just keeps it from being an RE4, or Ninja Gaiden. Oblivion has level scaling. The online shooters are just that On-Line Shooters. There's hardly a single player aspect to those games. Until the 360 gets Bioshock it's a wasteland of B games, and overrated B plus games that get A plus review scores.

DS: Well Nintendo usually cycles in a new portable every four years. So the DS is reaching the end of it's life cycle IMO. And what do we have for it? Well we have Advanced Wars DS which is stellar, but lacks one aspect which would make it legendary.... online play! Next we have Mario Kart which is pretty good until you realize that the weapon drops are nerfed in online play, and snakers are abound. If this was two years ago I'd say the DS was awesome. But it has too few grand games for something reaching the end of it's life. The DS is plagued with B and C rated "non-gamer games". Not to mention that nobody has made any real use of the touch screen.

P.S. Poke'mon and Castlevania are stale franchises.

PSP: Are you kidding me? Imagine the DS only half it's "good" games work better on home consoles. If this thing didn't double as a trillion other devices most PSP's would be gathering dust. Sony just misses the entire concept of a handheld in the first place. A portable is for playing fun little sidescrollers, puzzle games, and other things. Not console games. And they are certianly not suppost to cost as much as a console.

PS3: This one's too easy. There's almost nothing out for it. What is out for it is pretty good though. Right now NG Sigma, Resistance, and VF5 are pretty appealing. Almost better than what the 360 is offering. But VF5 is one of those lame 3-D fighting franchises that is only for the elitist 3-D fighting fans. These fighters are rediculously overly complex. A perfect example of this is having to hit diagonal up + A to jump in DoA4. Why not just hit daigonal up? Or even a jump button? Also Sigma is just an old Xbox game. So that still leaves almost nothing really good out for the PS3.

Wii: Zelda is getting stale. Poke'mon kicked the bucket on consoles with the debute of colleseum 2. Wario Ware is a lame mini game compilation that only a grandmother could like. If the DS's touch screen is any predictor of things to come, nobody will be using the motion controlls very well. (At least until nintendo shows them how it's done with one of it's 1st party games.) Nintendo is abandoning it's hardcore followers in favor of grandma, and mommy. After Metroid and Mario come out Nintendo will be out of good franchises to put on the Wii.

Well today "The Darkness" got an 8.5 from the new review system. This marks the first decent game to get the new review treatment. But just how good is this game? Is it "old review system 8.5" good? Or better? Or worse? We will never know. Perhaps it would have scored an 8.3 on the old review system but it got moved up to an 8.5!?! Or was it moved down from an 8.7? 0.o

For now the new review system is annoying as hell, because we don't have enough reference points to base it off of. Only a few games have been rated so far.Eventually we will be able to tell which games are better based on the frequency that Gamespot doles out awards and demoters. If a certain demoter or award becomes a rarity then we will know that the game reviewed either has a fantastic high point, or a terrible mistake contained within. If an award or demoter becomes common place we will learn to ignore it or shrug it off.Eventually we will be able to say, "Game B got X awards/demoters, and game A got Y awards/demoters, so even though both games got a 9.5 we know game B is just a little better than game A.

Then again we might start to argue over which demoters, and awards count more towards the overall quality of the game? "Doesn'tmindshortgames McGee" might think a game is worth picking up based on it's "fantastic multiplayer" award. However Timmy "Playsbyhimself" might argue that the very same game is just too short to be worth his while.

Even though I despise the new 0.5 review increments because they belittle the intellect of the gaming community (as if we can't comprehend 8.7, or 9.1), I have to say that the old review system was a bit flawed. Anybody that has done a game review here on gamespot has probably punched in the individual scores for tilt, value, sound, etc., only to find out that the reviewinator 2000 brings up a number that you personally disagree with. Even though the computer says 8.9 you might feel that the game deserves higher or lower. This is because everybody values different aspects of a game differently. I for one am obsessed with gameplay, and I never count graphics or sound into my review scores. I would rather play Ocarina of Time with out of date graphics than play Forza "OMG!! Teh cars are photorealistic" Motorsport 2.

In a perfect world we wouldn't have lost the 0.1 increments, but gained the new icons. In a perfect world the gamespot team would listen to our complaints. But I think once we have enough reviews we will be able to differentiate between the quality of games despite parallel review scores.