Death is a part of life, and that’s just as true of video games as it is of reality… so here’s a list of my five favorite deaths in video games, complete with links to video clips.

5. Ganon (Legend of Zelda: Windwaker)
To be honest, despite playing through scores of Zelda games over the years, most of them multiple times, the only incarnation of the “death” of Ganon (quotations due to the fact that the guy has yet to have the decency to… you know… stay dead) that sticks in my mind is the one from Windwaker. Link plunged the Master Sword into his freaking head. Into. His. Head. That’s hardcore right there.
See the death

4. Aeris/Aerith (Final Fantasy VII)
I know, I know. It’s cliche, and it’s on every top deaths list on the planet. You know, I wasn’t especially upset when Aeris became a human shish-kebob at the end of disc one… in fact, she annoyed me from the moment she joined the party. But I was rather shocked. It was the first time I’d seen a developer abruptly kill off one of the main characters not even halfway through the game. I was even more surprised when she didn’t get the resurrection later in the game that I was certain she would.
See the death

3. Agent 47 (Hitman: Blood Money)
Ok, so I know that technically 47 doesn’t die at the end of Blood Money… but the bad guys all think he does, and that’s all that matters, because it leads to one kick-ass final mission. You know, the one in which you suddenly rise from the dead in the middle of your own funeral, and have to kill all the people attending said funeral. How’s that for retribution?
See the death

2. Zack Fair (Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII)
What strikes me about this death is the fact that, if you’re the least bit familiar with the original Final Fantasy VII, you already know it’s coming. You knew it when you pre-ordered the game four months in advance, and yet that doesn’t detract from it’s emotional impact… if anything, it adds to it. Congratulations, you beat the game! Annnnnnnnnnnnd… you’re dead.
See the death

1. Pretty Much the Entire Village (Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly)
This makes the list primarily because Sae’s maniacal laughter as she stands amongst the corpses of her fellow villagers with the Kusabi hovering beside her actually gave me nightmares. As such, I think it will forever live in my mind as the single most disturbing scene in a video game. It will also remain one of my favorite games.
See the death

So yesterday I happened across a story on local6.com (which I later saw was also linked on one of my favorite gaming blogs, Kotaku) that made me cringe. Not because of the allegations made by the story, but because of what an utterly craptastic piece of “journalism” is was. What made it even worse was the follow-up, also posted by Kotaku.

Let’s look at this, shall we?

The headline of the piece: “Predators Could Target Children During Online Games, Cybercrime Officer Warns”

The sub-headline: “Maurer: Kids Being Asked To Take Photos Of Themselves Naked”

The first freaking sentance: Child predators who are apparently offering “game points” in exchange for nude images through Internet-connected video games have prompted a warning for parents from a cybercrime detective.

The second freaking sentence, which is actually a quote from the guy upon whom this “article” is based: “Kids are playing games, and they are being asked to take photos of themselves naked in order to get game points,” Florida Attorney General Cybercrime Detective Lt. David Maurer said. “There is not only the chatting version of the games but also a webcam involved.”

What aggravates me about this is not so much the implication that there are sexual predators loose in online games (there are… and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves), but rather the overall vagueness and inaccuracies in the article itself.

First of all, I would very much like to know what games the guy has been playing to come to this conclusion. I haven’t played a game that uses a points-based system in years… and to my knowledge, there isn’t a game out there that lets you give away experience points. In-game cash, yes… Items, yes… but not points of any kind. All this statement proves to me is that Florida Attorney General Cybercrime Detective Lt. David Maurer doesn’t have the faintest idea what the hell he’s on about.

I also have an issue with his list of “the most popular games”, which includes Halo 3, Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, and Grand Theft Auto. Halo 3, while certainly popular, and still widely played, is hardly the most current of games. The rest are not so much games as they are franchises… unless of course, he was actually implying that 1987’s Final Fantasy is one of today’s most popular online games… with the exception for FF11, the Final Fantasy series doesn’t even offer online play. Nor does any Grand Theft Auto title prior to IV, and none of the games he mentions use these “points” that predators are supposedly offering. And seriously… no WoW?

I would also point out that two of his four most popular games are M-rated (three if “Call of Duty” refers to CoD4) and targeted specifically at older gamers… not kids. But that’s another rant altogether.

To make matters worse, according to Kotaku, the “journalist”, when contacted, responded with “I believe he was referring to some of the fantasy games where players go on quests to be awarded points and different levels. I personally am not a “gamer” so I have not encountered such a problem. But feel free to call the cybercrimes unit of the state attorney’s office in Tallahassee and I’m sure they could fill you in.”

Apparently the news media is no longer required to do research or even know what they’re talking about before resorting to scare-mongering (but then, that’s been the case for years…). Half the danger of children being online is due to parents being so woefully uninformed (primarily because they listen to crap stories like this).

We see it all the time. A game is released, or appears somewhere on the internet, that pushes the limits of good taste, and suddenly everyone from Fox News to CNN is up in arms about how is corrupting our youth. Critics tell us all how awful it is, some gamers defend the game, some agree, some couldn’t care less, parents panic, lawsuits are launched, etc., etc., etc.

What’s ironic here is that the public outcry just makes the game that much more popular. People who have never even heard of the game, or who have heard of it but just weren’t all that interested in trying it out, now flock to it, raising traffic and/or sales figures (just look at what the Hot Coffee scandal did for sales of GTA San Andreas…).

Today’s video game controversy is brought to us by Newgrounds and Kongregate, and is called “The Torture Game 2″. It’s a free flash game (well, really more of a ragdoll physics engine). It started with a parental alert from the Parents Television Council, then MSNBC picked up the story, and then it popped up on FOX News.

Don’t get me wrong… the game is one of those tasteless little creations that are kind of fun for a while because they’re so very wrong, and then people get sick of it. And a lot of the people commenting on the game even acknowledge this. Most of these titles enjoy a brief stint as a novelty and then fade away into the archives.

It’s when mainstream news gets ahold of the story that they become something more. Is there really anyone out there who can say that they never once wanted to do something even more after their parents told them no? Had it not been for the overzealous critics and the warnings about how “dangerous” it is, the game would have made the rounds online and then quietly the attention would die off.

But thanks to outlets like MSNBC and FOX News, even more traffic is being driven to the game, gaming blogs like Game Politics are posting about the mainstream attention on the game, and traffic to game itself is up.

It’s a perfect example of the old axiom “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”.

A friend of mine was over last night for a little Wii, and she did something that bugs the heck out of me. She put a game back in the wrong place. And that’s when I realized, I have a problem. I’m WAY too obsessed with the way I keep my games.

I’m sure most gamers out there keep their collection organized, but I think I might take things to the extreme. In the first place, my games are organized, first, by system (in alphabetical order of the console’s name), then alphabetically by title (unless the title is part of a series, in which case series name trumps title… however, system trumps series, so Final Fantasy VII is on a completely different shelf than Final Fantasy XII).

All games absolutely must also have cover art. If I happen to buy a used game that doesn’t have cover art, I will get on the internet and search until I find an image file big enough for me to print out and stick on the case.

I also log all of my games (and game hardware) at time of purchase, with purchase price (sans sales tax), date, and whether it was a new or used title. The log gets updated for both purchases and sales, even though it’s rare that I sell a game (in addition to compulsively organizing my games, I’m also kind of a hoarder…). The result is that I could tell you damn near exactly how much money I’ve invested in games over the past 8 years (but I won’t), and can get a pretty good estimate even further back than that.

And don’t even get me started on the accessories…

So tell me… am I alone, or are other gamers just as picky as I am?

I am an admitted garage sale addict. You’ll find me out rummaging though other people’s stuff just about every weekend in the summer. It’s one of my favorite past times in the summer. The unfortunate downside to this is that I’ve consequentially ended up with a whole stack of games I picked up for uber-cheap but just haven’t had time to play and/or finish yet (hey, I work full time… I can’t just sit around playing games all day… I think my boss would frown on that, and the217.com wouldn’t get the new photo galleries I’m working on).

So just for shits and giggles, here’s my list of games I need to play this summer… which, sadly, is longer than my summer reading list this year. That’s probably not a good thing.

1. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
I picked this up after downloading the WiiWare title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King. I never bothered with it previously, because because even though I’m a huge FF fan, what I saw of the game in previews didn’t look very Final Fantasy-like. But I found it for $2, so I figured I’d give it a shot. This is my current play, and I’m about 3 hours in.

2. Soul Caliber III
I’m kind of behind in this series, given that IV is not really that far from completion… I picked this one up almost a year ago at a garage sale and haven’t even touched it yet.

3. Ratchet & Clank
I grabbed this one for cheap at EB Games when I was going through a massive platformer phase. I really, really, want to play it, but I just haven’t had the time.

4. Jak II and III
I got these a month after Ratchet & Clank because I’d just finished Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy and was curious about where the story was going. I’m still curious, because I haven’t played them yet.

5. Daxter
Daxter came with my PSP… I played about two hours before setting it aside in favor of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (the whole reason I bought the PSP in the first place). I intend to get back to Daxter at some point… it’s kind of a cute, if simple, game.

6. Metal Gear Solid
Believe it or not, I’ve never played any of the Metal Gear games. I found this at a garage sale awhile back but have been hesitant to start a two-disc game due to time constraints… now that summer’s here, this one is getting played.

7. Guitar Hero III
This is more of an “I need to finish it” that and “I need to play it” situation. I’ve put in a good amount of time on it, but there’s still quite a bit I haven’t unlocked, and I have yet to make it through a song on any mode other than easy.

8. Kameo
When I bought my XBOX 360, it came with a handful of games, several of which I’d been wanting to play. Kameo is one of them…

9. Dead Rising
… Dead Rising is another. I’ve been alternating between this and Kameo for a past serveral weeks now.

10. Assassin’s Creed
I had a moment of weakness at EB and bought this one used, even though it was priced a little higher than I would have liked… but I’ve heard good things about it.

11. Saint’s Row
Same shopping trip as Assassin’s Creed, they were having a special… buy two games, get the third free… So I got Assassin’s Creed, Saints Row, and …

12. Destroy All Humans!
… this game, which has been on my buy list for some time now. I rented it way back when it first came out and played a bit, but didn’t have time to finish.

13. Bully
Another garage sale purchase. I rented this the day after it came out, played through a good portion of it, and then had to return it. I wasn’t fond enough of it to go out and buy it right away, but at garage sale prices, I’m willing.

14. Halo 3
This and Halo 2 both came along with my 360… I actually tried this for an hour and wasn’t especially impressed (shooter just really aren’t my thing), but I plan on giving it another chance at some point.

15. Mario Kart Wii
I’ve actually spent more time than I’m willing to admit playing this game, but I’ve still got a lot to unlock. Unfortunately, I’m not a very good driver, so it’s taking awhile.

So there you have it. My backlog of games that I need to get through this summer so I can justify buying new games when they come out later this year. If you have your own list, feel free to share in the comments section. ^_^

So… according to Shacknews, Sony is going to start piping dynamic in-games ads into it’s PS3 titles. Oh joy. They even have the nerve to state that it creates “a richer experience for gamers”. Bull, Sony. You just want me to spend more of my hard-earned money than I’ve already spent on the games in the first place.

Not that in-game advertising is a new concept by any means (they been doing it on the 360 and PC for some time now), but aren’t we bombarded enough by ads on a daily basis? I understand the need for advertising revenue, I really do… but personally, I think this is just one step closer to us actually paying for the commercials themselves (although in retrospect, Burger King already achieved this when it started hawking Burger King-based 360 games for a few months… and McDonalds beat them to the punch way back in the days of the NES). Never mind that some developers don’t even think in-game ads are all that effective.

My point is though, that ads are so ubiquitous nowadays, that people don’t even bat an eye when they hear they’re showing up somewhere else. Next thing you know you’ll be doing your real-life Christmas shopping as a bonus mission in the middle of Grand Theft Auto VII.

Why is it that when people who don’t play video games try to understand people who do, they inevitably try to come up with some profound theory as to gamers’ love of games? I’ve heard a lot of strange ones, some not so strange ones, and some that may even be plausible to an extent, but the fact of the matter is there’s really no single reason why we like games.

Speaking from a female perspective, one of my favorite theories put for by a non-gaming classmate of mine, back, I think, in my first year at U of I, was that I played games to meet guys. Now I’m sure there are some gals out there who have, in fact, feigned interest in games in order to catch the attention of a member of the opposite sex, and maybe even came to enjoy them because of it… but I’m not one of them.

First off, it was a pretty asinine thing to say to me in particular because I’m almost exclusively a solo gamer, and when I do play multiplayer it’s usually either online or with my friends (the majority of whom are female, anyway). Second, I’ll talk about games with anyone who will listen, be they male or female… I don’t particularly care, as long as they want to hear about how awesome the latest Final Fantasy is. And finally, I’ve been into games much longer than I’ve been into guys (at age 8, guys are still pretty icky, after all).

But guys get it just as bad, I think… This morning, I read this article in the Daily Illini about how video games are a replacement for sex. Obvious gender-biases in the article aside (members of the female sex DO play video games, even if you do not, Miss Brott), I think the author was way off the mark, or at the very least, far too generalized.

And then of course there are the zealots out there who insist that gamers are an inherently violent bunch, playing their murder simulators to get their jollies. I won’t mention names here, since certain people like this tend to Google themselves obsessively and just love to see their names pop up on even tiny insignificant blogs like mine, but I’m sure most of you can guess.

In the end, I don’t believe there’s any one reason gamers like their games. I know I certainly don’t have just one supreme reason, and I would be shocked if any gamer out there can honestly say that they do.

Let’s face it… the weather isn’t very nice, and it’s not looking to get much better. Cloudy all day, with rain on and off, and more rain tomorrow (and honestly, I don’t think my yard can take much more flooding…). What to do, what to do? Of course, there’s always the obvious… plug in the *insert console of choice here* and play something! Here are my top ten picks.

10. Soul Blade
Also known as Soul Edge, this is the first entry of the Soul Caliber series, which appeared on the original PlayStation. In fact, my sister won our first PS1 playing this game in a contest. It has always been my favorite of the series, for some reason. Maybe it’s the nostalgia… or maybe it’s the unique way Sophitia can leap up onto her opponent’s head and snap their neck with her thighs… Yeah. That’s probably it.

9. Mario Paint
What? Mario Paint for Super Nintendo (going old-school here…) is great for killing some time on an otherwise crappy day. Sure, you can do pretty much the same thing on your PC with MSPaint, but you just don’t get that same trademarked Mario experience there. The game has no purpose other than to bring out your creative side in a gimicky, Nintendo-y way, and come on… you’ve got to love playing with the music editor. Everyone loved the music editor… right? Or was that just me?

8. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Twilight Princess was great, and Windwaker was none too shabby either, but Ocarina of Time has been my favorite of the series ever since it knocked Link’s Awakening out of that spot years ago. Bonus points if you can grab the special edition for GameCube that contains the Master Quest version of the game (which one of these days I really need to get around to finishing…). Ocarina also gets points for introducing us to Sheik.

7. Kya: Dark Lineage
A great little platformer for PS2, that’s a bit of an unknown (and which I spotlighted in one of my Hidden Gem posts, so you know it rocks…). It just plain fun, and it’s also very colorful, which is nice on a drab day like today. It’s got everything from speed courses to platforming to melee combat and puzzle solving all rolled into on convenient game, and the controls, while varied, are nowhere near as complex as they sound. The developers did a great job of making it easy to play but challenging to complete. Give it a try.

6. Super Mario Galaxy
Mario titles are always fun, and the first proper Mario title for Wii is no exception. The Wii controls give it a whole new spin, and it’s got a bit more story than usual, and it even has a whole new princess with help out in addition to rescuing Peach from Browser’s clutches. I have to admit, I still haven’t collected every star in the game yet. I suppose that’s a good project for a rainy day, right?

5. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
For those of you who are more interested in playing a game during a stormy night than on a rainy day, how about a good scare? Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for GameCube fits the bill, and has some pretty unique gameplay elements, and has some of the ickiest scenes I’ve ever seen on GameCube. Eternal Darkness is kind of a mind trip. Your character can start to hallucinate as they get more freaked out, and at some points it’s hard to tell what’s the hallucination and what’s really there trying to gnaw your head off.

4. Final Fantasy Crystal Chonicles: My Life as a King
Available on Wii via the WiiWare section of the Shop Channel for a mere 1500 Wii Points, My Life as a King is an addictive little kingdom-building sim (that will be getting a full review here on Another Castle in the very near future) that’s great to sit around and play for a couple hours or just for 15 minutes here and there. Your choice.

3. Dark Cloud
An action-RPG for PS2, that also features city-reconstruction as you quest to find the missing pieces of towns that have been trapped in spheres called Atla. It’s very easy to get into, and hard to put down. One nifty feature of this is that your characters don’t level up, but rather your weapons do. Weapons can also be transformed into whole new configurations. There’s a sequel floating around somewhere out there that I’ve yet to get my hands on.

2. Dead Rising
An XBOX 360 title I only just recently became personally acquainted with (having finally shelled out the cash for a 360, you’ll probably be seeing a lot more titles for the console in these lists and elsewhere on my blog in the future). Killing zombies is fun. Everyone knows it, no one argues with it. It’s just a fact. It’s even more fun when you can do it with just about anything you can pick up.

1. Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
Another platformer for PS2, the Jak & Daxter series is awesome all around, but this is the one I absolutely had to get 100% completion on and is perfect for days like today. Daxter is great comic relief, and the platforming is some of the best around on PS2.

So, you may have heard that WiiWare launched yesterday. With it came a brand new Final Fantasy title, which naturally I had to immediately download and play. Well… maybe “immediately” isn’t the right word.

My first issue was with the Wii Shop itself. I could connect, but the connection kept getting dropped right as I was about to add Wii Points to my account so I could buy the game. Now if I were a smarter person, I would have saved myself the headache and Googled the error code before I did anything else. But I’m not. I’m an idiot.

So after attempting six or seven times to buy Wii Points and failing miserably, it (*cough*half an hour later*cough*) finally occurred to me that, gee… maybe my connection keeps getting dropped because my router is having some sort of emotional crisis or whatever it is that gets into those things when they stop working right.

Since yelling at the damned thing never seems to work, I decided to skip that step and try the age-old fix-all of unplugging it and plugging it back in. Well, that didn’t work, either. Now, I should probably, at this point, explain that I’m not a hardware person. If the issue is software-related I can usually figure out where the problem is, but when my hardware starts acting funny, my usual recourse is to format C:\ and cry myself to sleep.

As that solution seemed a little extreme for a router problem, so it was off to the Nintendo support website in the hopes that someone out there had the same problem I did. Handy thing that site. I was right… the problem was with my router. Support told me to try changing the broadcast channel from 1 to 11.

Except, since I’m not a hardware person, I had no idea how to do that. In the end, I decided to do the unthinkable… I referred to the manual. Funny thing is, my Wii always connected to the internet just fine before Comcast took over my service. Bastards. They forced me to read a manual.

Anyway, I guess the whole point of this post is to let you know that around 11:00 last night, I did finally get my hands on the WiiWare title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (look for the review coming soon) and also if your Wii’s internet connection keeps getting dropped, save yourself some time and try your router on channel 11.

The web’s just full of goodies today. The Chicago Tribune today is running a story about U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and his quest to protect children from being “virtually exploited” in Second Life… even though Rep. Kirk himself acknowledges that no such case has ever been reported in Second Life.

The argument he makes is that it COULD happen, so we must protect children by issuing a consumer-alert warning (that no one’s going to pay a damn bit of attention to, anyway). Stop wasting my tax dollars.

Parents who care enough to pay attention to consumer-alerts are of two types. The over-protective kind that don’t let their kids do anything, and the the sane parents who actually know how to parent their children. The first type likely wouldn’t allow the kid on Second Life in the first place, and the second would be far more likely to pay attention to their child’s internet habits.

What made me laugh about this whole thing is that Rep. Kirk declares Second Life to be “a new scare, uncharted territory”. Exactly how long has Second Life been around? *cough*since 2003*cough* It’s hardly new, and certainly not uncharted. It launched right around the same time as MySpace. Apparently no parent has ever heard of Second Life… but they all know MySpace.

And who’s fault is that? Their own, because they let their kids run rampant on the internet without supervision or even a cursory glance at the screen.