Simpsons Hit & Run - Gamecube

I'm not sure why but for the most part video games based off of The Simpsons are pretty bad. Sure there's a couple that are okay, but overall they're not great. Maybe it's because most video games based off of TV shows/movies tend to be bad, but I was always kind of disappointed that there wasn't a really good Simpsons game.

About five or six years ago I picked up Simpsons Hit & Run for the PC and thought "This is the game I've been wanting!" It was funny, there was a ton of references sprinkled throughout, it had the voice actors doing all the lines, and it was a pretty fun little sand box game.

I would play it for a bit and then would forget about it. Then a year or so later I would remember how much fun I had playing it and would start it up again. I would get to about the third level and then find some other game that interested me more and start playing it. I never managed to make it past the third level.

Well one day I was sitting around and thought "I should see if I can get Simpsons Hit & Run on some console I have." What would you know, Amazon had it for Gamecube for $4. Done.

I have to admit, I was pretty excited about playing Simpsons Hit & Run, and really it was everything I remember. There were actually some pretty funny lines, I did laugh out loud at one point. There are tons of hidden little references throughout the game, like head into the Kwik-E-Mart and you'll see Frostillicus in the freezer. There's a lot of little in jokes if you pay attention. I was having a pretty good time, I finally made it to the third level and realized that I had only played a bit of it, from here on it was going to be new to me.

After the third level Simpsons Hit & Run morphed into some sort of horrid beast from the dark depths of hell. I went from describing the game as fun to "possibly the most frustrating game I have ever played." That's no lie, I honestly cannot remember a game that so thoroughly frustrated me. There were times I'm pretty sure I was just yelling a string of expletives at my TV.

Up to level three it wasn't that difficult. There were timed missions but nothing to hard. After level three it seemed like EVERY mission was timed, also you never got enough time. The game worked on the idea that you needed EXACTLY 47 seconds to do a mission, so they would give you 45 seconds. Hey you have a spare 2 seconds, what are you complaining about! As long as you don't crash, slow down, or do anything that may eat up your precious 2 seconds you're fine. Also when I say you needed 45 seconds that's only if you know all of the shortcuts. If you don't you're going to need about 60 seconds... better know those shortcuts! I'm not kidding. There were missions that I did in a fast car, didn't crash, took all of the shortcuts, and overall drove incredibly well... and still ran out of time. This wasn't an occasional problem, this was on about 90% of the missions after level three. I would say on average I probably would fail a mission at least once, but more likely two or three times. If it was because I was doing poorly, I can understand it... mostly though it was just because you had a VERY limited amount of time and any little thing that screwed that up made you fail the mission.

The missions are what killed Simpsons Hit & Run. As I've said I hate timed anything in video games and think they shouldn't be in them. Almost all the missions in Simpsons Hit & Run are timed and done horribly. So much to the point where you become incredibly frustrated and want to break the game in as many pieces as possible. It's lucky it survived.

Squid.

Dead Nation - PS3

So after the whole "Awww crap! Our servers have been haxored!" debacle that happened with the PS3 they gave away two free games. Seemed like a good deal to me since it didn't effect me at all. I think it made it so I had to watch Netflix on my Xbox360 and that's about it. I couldn't really decide which games I wanted, it came down to Little Big Planet, Dead Nation and InFamous. Since my brother was getting InFamous and I figured I could play over at his house I decided to go with Dead Nation, and quite frankly I'm glad that I did.

I've always enjoyed top down shooters since probably I first played Smash TV on SNES. I think they're a very under-appreciated genre. When done well I think they're a really good, brainless time. And that's exactly what Dead Nation is. It's not going to win awards for writing but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy pretty much every minute I played of it.

One of my major complaints about zombie games is that there are not enough zombies. With Dead Nation there was no problem on that front. When you first start playing there's a lot of zombies, somewhere around level three you get more zombies then you can handle. Making it this frantic, fun filled race to the checkpoint. Much like Left 4 Dead (which this game borrows quiet a bit from) you get a variety of different zombies including the fat zombies, the fast zombies, the jumping zombies, the hulking zombies and your run of the mill zombies. There's a LOT of zombies. Everywhere. You will spend every single level running from zombies, trying to get the horde off of you and trying to make it to the end of the level alive. It's just a damn good time.

Dead Nation is $15, has a ton of replayability, is fairly long (I would say probably a good 10+ hours), and overall is just really, really fun. If you have PS3 and didn't pick this up as your "we're sorry!" game I highly suggest you buy it.

Squid.

Minecraft and Terraria - PC

Yeah, we're going to go with a double feature here.

I had been hearing about Terraria for quite some time, mostly about how it was this awesome 2D Minecraft clone. After watching some videos, seeing some screenshots I decided to buy it. Everyone had said how awesome it was, always comparing it to Minecraft... here's the thing though, I had never actually played Minecraft. My brother had bought it a while back and would talk about how great it was, but I just never got around to playing it.

So I started playing Terraria and I was immediately hooked. In the first week I owned it I think I put twenty or so hours into it. There was just so much to explore, digging and digging and digging, finding caves, finding ore, making bigger and better gear. This was a game about exploring. I had an incredibly extensive set of tunnels under my spawn point, so much so that occasionally I would die and have absolutely no idea on how to get back to where I was. I eventually had to start putting up signs so I knew where I was.

It was so odd to me, I realized that pretty much all I was doing while I was playing Terraria was digging. Digging into tunnels, digging for ore, digging to go lower and lower into the world. Digging. But you know what? I was having a blast doing it. If you had told me that I would be playing a game that was essentially me digging AND having a great time doing it, I'm not sure I would have believed you. The last game whose central theme was digging that enjoyed this much was Dig Dug... and that was on the Commodore 64. But here were are. Digging and having a good time doing it.

I was still hearing about how Terraria was a Minecraft clone. How Minecraft was better, how Terraria was just a rip off. I thought "Well, I enjoy Terria... maybe I should give Minecraft a try".

So I bought Minecraft.

Before I get into that let me say something. I don't see Terraria as a Minecraft clone. At least in a certain sense. Yes, you have a pick axe and a ton of other things that are in Minecraft, it's greatly influenced by it... you can tell. I would even give you that it's gameplay mechanics are a rip off of Minecraft, but in my opinion they're very, very different games.

Terraria is a game about exploring. Digging down, finding new tunnels, finding new worlds. Minecraft is about building, building houses, building villages, building... well pretty much anything you want. But there's very little exploring in Minecraft, in fact exploring can be very difficult. There's very little building in Terraria, once you've built a house to get in the merchants there really no reason to continue building as far as I can tell. So in my opinion they're very similar games but with very different end games.

So after buying Minecraft I logged on to a multiplayer server that my brother's friend hosts. I was immediately in awe of some of the things that were built. Huge buildings, giant railway systems, a giant central village. It was actually kind of amazing. Not really wanting to get in their way I decided to make my house far away from town, if my Terraria world was big, Minecraft was enormous. The world was overwhelmingly big. I finally found a place for my house... but I had no idea where I was. I actually died and wasn't sure if I could find my way back to my new house.

So I built a grand house to live in. Then I started to mine, after I could make better tools I started to make an incredibly long tunnel to my brother's house so that if I died and couldn't find my way back I could just go to my brothers house and follow the tunnel back to my own house. So then what? Well my brother was trying to catch a squid so I made him a railway so he could get it back to his aquarium. Why not build a GIANT roller coaster near my house? So I did that. Well parts of it are kind of boring, maybe I could make it go through a diorama that shows the different worlds of Minecraft. Well that's done... now what? A pirate ship, a floating island castle, a farm, an enormous castle. I built them all. If you can think it up, you can build it in Minecraft. Seriously, just look at some of the amazing things people have built.

Minecraft is like a giant game of Legos. It's like being ten again and having pretty much unlimited Legos. Minecraft is a game about creativity. It's a game about thinking of something and making it. It's a game where you'll find yourself going "Oh! I should make that!" and once you're done with that you'll think "Making that would be awesome!" and before you know it ten hours has passed. It's incredibly addictive and fun.

So which game would I suggest? Both. They're both amazing games, and they're both fun in entirely different ways. They both get updates that add new and interesting things to the games, and they both continue to get better and better. Spend the $30, get them both and enjoy them both. They're definitely worth the money and you won't regret it.

Squid.

Condemned: Criminal Origins - Xbox 360

Condemned: Criminal Origins was kind of a blast from the past for me. Condemned was the first Xbox 360 game I ever owned, and the first Xbox 360 game I ever beat.

My brother had just bought an Xbox 360 bundle with Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones. Right after he bought it I house sat for him for a week. Neither of those games really appealed to me so I headed over to Game Stop to see if I could find something I wanted to play. At this point in time I didn't own an Xbox 360 so I didn't really want something very expensive, I was looking for something in the 10$ or so range. That's when I found Condemned, it looked fun, the premise sounded pretty awesome, and I love scary games, so I picked it up.

I am glad I did. Condemned is an awesome game. From pretty much start to finish I loved it. It was one of those games where I sat down and just played, and played, and played, losing track of time. I think I beat it about a day or two after buying it.

Condemned is in my top probably five scariest games I've played. The first time a crazy guy jumps out of the shadows behind you to beat your skull in with a pipe will scare the hell out of you. In most games they give you a flashlight that you can only leave on for a small amount of time before your batteries die and have to recharge... in Condemened your flashlight is always on. Constantly. And trust me, you'll be thankful for that. The atmosphere of the game is just creepy. It works incredibly well.

I wasn't too sure about an entire game based on melee combat (there's a few guns scattered around the game, but not many). Most FPS games have kind of horrible melee combat, but Condemned makes it work. I think this makes the game even more intense. When you see someone you can't just shoot him from a distance, you have to get pretty much right up next to him to get within range for your found weapons (pipes, 2x4, axes, etc.)

Overall, Condemned is a great game. There's a lot of things about this game that if they hadn't worked would have doomed the game, but everything seems to come together perfectly. For a launch title it was a surprisingly solid game. Really a must play if you like scary games and want something different from the FPS genre.

Squid.

Halo Reach - Xbox 360

We all know my feelings on the originalHalo. I've played Halo, Halo 2, and Halo ODST, and yet I've never been all that thrilled by the Halo series. None of them ever seemed all that exciting or good to me. They were all fun, but I never felt like they were truly great games. That all changed with Halo Reach.

Halo Reach is everything I wanted the first Halo to be. One thing I never felt in the first Halo was the pull to keep playing. I always would get to a point and think "Well, I guess I'll stop now." In Halo Reach it was more of a "Holy crap! It's two in the morning and I should really stop now... after I finish this level." There was a drive to keep playing, a wanting to know what was going to happen next. Halo Reach completely sucked me in.

The action was great, the story was great (though was somewhat confusing having never played a few of the games), and overall was just an incredibly fun game.

Here's the thing. Halo Reach was a good enough game that I'm seriously considering playing the series over again. Over the years I've played the games and haven't really been all that interested in them... but Halo Reach was great. Maybe the problem was me, maybe I wasn't giving them the chance that I should have. It's either that or Halo Reach was a great end cap to a series that was overrated. I'm not really sure.

At the end of the day though Halo Reach was a great game. Even if you're like me and didn't particularly enjoy the series you should certainly give Reach a chance.

Squid.

BioShock - Xbox 360

BioShock is kind of a conundrum to me. Everyone seems to love this game; it currently has a 96 on Metacritic. It is almost universally loved by fans and critics alike. It seemed like a game I should enjoy. A story driven FPS with a very interesting setting? Sign me up!

When I first played the game a year or so ago I was underwhelmed. I didn’t dislike the game, but on the other hand I didn’t really like it either. I never quite got into the game, it was decent enough but I didn’t find it as compelling as everyone else seemed to. The story was good, the setting was good, but I just couldn’t get engrossed in the game. The problem is that I can’t really tell you why. Everything tells me it should be a good game, but I never found it more than just somewhat entertaining.

After beating it the first time I thought it was just me; maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood. I had just beaten Fallout 3 a couple days before, maybe I was kind of burned out on first person shooters the first time I had played it. Maybe I was unfairly comparing the two games… who knows? I just felt like I should give it another chance, another try.

I started it up and for the first couple hours I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the ambiance of the game, I enjoyed the writing, I enjoyed the music… and then the enjoyment just kind of stopped. I still liked all of those things, I still thought they were very good, I just wasn’t enjoying myself. I felt like I was trudging through the game, I wasn’t having fun, I was just playing it to beat it.

And I did. I stuck around long enough to beat the game. I felt the exact same way the second time around. I didn’t think it was a bad game, but I didn’t think it was a good game… but again, I couldn’t tell you why I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t know what it is about BioShock but I just can’t seem to get into it.

I appear to be one of the few who didn’t think that BioShock was an absolutely amazing game, and I don’t understand why. BioShock appears, even to me, to be a very good game… it’s just a very good game that I don’t seem to enjoy.

Squid.

Snoopy Flying Ace - Xbox Live Arcade

If you ever told me I would really enjoy a video game based off of the Peanuts cartoon strip I would have probably called you crazy... there are just some things that I wouldn't think would lend themselves well to the medium. Turns out I was wrong. Though I think if you had told me the Peanuts game I was going to enjoy was going to be a World War I flying game I probably would have tilted my head the same way a dog does when you tell it something.

A while back my brother bought Snoopy Flying Ace, but I never really played it. I heard it was fun but it didn't really interest me all that much. Then XBLA had a huge sale and Snoopy Flying Ace was dropped to 400MS points. It's hard for me to turn down a $5 game, so I bought it.

Snoopy Flying Ace is just cartoony fun. It's what you expect from a dogfight sim based off of Peanuts. The single player isn't a huge long experience, but it is fun. It's just difficult enough to not be frustrating and just easy enough to just be fun. I spent a couple hours going through the campaign one weekend and had a good time doing it. I never made it to the multiplayer (I was sans internet at the time) but if it's as fun as the single player I can see sinking quite a few hours into it.

Snoopy Flying Ace is totally worth the $5 I paid and is certainly worth the $10 it normally is. If you want a kind of cartoony flying/dogfight game it's definitely worth checking out.

Squid.