Would You Like That Supersized? – DSi XL and Social Gaming

I love portable gaming. Love it. Over the years, I've probably owned about every iteration of the Game Boy (minus the Micro, and even then I was eying it for a while), and have absolutely loved my DS Lite. That is, until this last summer, when it went MIA.

I can't even think what happened to it. I told myself it was under my dresser for the longest time, but when I moved out of my room completely (my brother inherited it) it wasn't there. I was saddened. That sucker went everywhere with me: Italy, Japan, Salt Lake City for the Warped Tour, my entire then-present Carroll career (I remember sitting in my room freshman year, playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance because Eugene and I didn't have a TV), everywhere. My only hope is that it's found greener pastures now, because it is sorely missed. Hell, I want to pour out a little liquor for it right now.

Goodbye, dear friend. You are truly missed.

I've been holding off buying a new one for a while now, partly because

1. I've been holding out hope that I will magically find it every time I go back to my parents' house (I feel like the boyfriend who's still waiting for his old beau to walk back through that door "any day now")
   
2. In truth, I hadn't really used it that much in the months leading up to its disappearance, and I didn't really want to buy the thing and not use it
   
3. I'm a college student, and have only so much disposable income (see part b for why this would affect my buying judgment)
   

I've scoped out other models at pawn shops (for excellent prices, might I add), but I haven't been able to push myself into buying one again.

With the recent release of the DSi XL, though, I've started having thoughts about repurchasing my lost companion. This comes largely from my reading habits; with the launch of new Nintendo hardware comes an inevitable tidal wave of "review" or "impressions" articles from various gaming and tech website, which I happen to frequent. Still, there is one thing I gleaned from those articles that has been starting to take hold in my mind: the DSi XL's potential for social gaming.

DS Lite (left) and the DSi XL (right). The thing is enormous; its screen is supposed to be almost twice as big.

Keep in mind, when I say social gaming, I mean not that others will be able to play with you, but that others will be able to experience the game you are playing with you. This is made possible by the XL's massive screens (seriously, they're freakin' huge!) and the greatly-increased viewing angle that comes with them (meaning that it's way easier to look over someone's shoulder and see what they're doing).

I mentioned my love of portable gaming. I also love social gaming. Some of my favorite memories are of playing Rock Band with a bunch of buddies or throwing down at a great big Goldeneye multiplayer party, and I am part of the camp that thinks WATCHING someone play games is underrated. I love sharing things I enjoy, and it only stands to reason that I would want to share my gaming experience with others.

Therefore, this combination of taking my games everywhere and inviting people to be interested in those games (potentially) is an intriguing one for me. Part of the reason I think I wasn't using my DS very much is because I often felt like I was excluding people from my presence whenever I used it. I have reached an age where people are no longer curious about what game I'm playing (lamentable, but them's the breaks), and I always felt guilty about shutting people out whenever I was gaming on the go. Hence the slowing-down of usage.

The XL is aimed mostly at older people (grandparents, etc) who may not have the eyesight required to squint at a tiny screen for hours on end. Hey, makes sense to me.

While I don't think that the DSi XL will magically make people gravitate towards my piece of handheld plastic, I do think that the potential exists for someone to want to sneak a peek at what might be going on in my hot little hands (for much of the same reason that people snoop out the cover of the book you're reading: the thing is huge enough to notice, and you might as well check it out). And that potential is enough for me to be confident enough to bring out my device of choice in public again.

Of course, the big obstacle at this point is price: the DSi XL retails for $189.99, which is a BIG chunk of change for something I will use pretty casually (not to mention that I have a large stack of games going unplayed as we speak). The pawn shop DS Lites I found have gone for about $80, meaning that I would face a price hike of more than a hundred bucks if I were to jump on this thing.

Still, I have a feeling that it would be pretty worth it to go for the XL: the screens are bigger, all reports indicate that it simply feels better to handle, and the platform sounds more usable in a group setting. With my family's upcoming trip to China on the horizon (which prompts an immediate excuse for the purchase of a portable gaming device), I think I'll have to set aside some money so that I can enjoy gaming on the go once again.

Anyone purchased a DSi XL and can tell me about it? Have any thoughts on the topics of portable or social gaming. Sound off in the comment section below! I would love to see what your ideas are on this subject that is close to my heart.

Tub Thumpin’ – Hot Tub Time Machine

Color me pleasantly surprised.

I went into this movie expecting to hate it. HATE it. Instead what I got was an above average, slightly self-aware buddy comedy that will remind some viewers of "The Hangover" (or, in my case, the trailer for "The Hangover").

Make no mistake, this isn't some high comedy revelation; it's still chock full of gross-out gags, gratuitous T&A, and language as though the actors were getting paid for each swear. Still, for a movie called "Hot Tub Time Machine," it wasn't half bad.

The movie stars three friends, Lou (Rob Corddry from "The Daily Show"), Nick (Craig Robinson from "The Office"), and Adam (John Cusack …just, John Cusack) at various states of discontent in their lives (par for the course, in a comedy like this).

Left to right: Robinson, Duke, Corddry, Cusack. "Do I have to be the a@#$&*% who says that we went back in time?"

One night, Lou gets drunk and runs his car in his garage while jamming out to Mötley Crüe. He assures Adam and Nick that it wasn't a suicide attempt, but just to be on the safe side, they take him (and Adam's nephew Jacob, played by Clark Duke) back to their old glory grounds: Kodiak Valley, a ski resort that makes Mardi Gras look like Ash Wednesday, if you get what I'm saying.

Only the place isn't so hot anymore; it's broken down, full of cats, and they're waited on by Phil (Crispin Glover, who provides one of the film's best running gags), the one-armed baggage man who kicks, stomps, and scoots their bags to their room, then sticks out his only hand for a tip.

They then, of course, discover the titular Hot Tub and get transported back to the 80's, which touches off the rest of the movie and about every series of time travel setups you can think of. The only thing missing is an appearance from Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

What I'm failing to capture is the slightly whimsical and totally farcical tone of this movie. Everything happens at a pretty quick pace, and the movie is actually fairly witty in spite of its occasional foray into stereotypical "college humor" territory.

In "The Time Machine," it was a recliner. In "Back to the Future," it's a DeLorean. In "Hot Tub Time Machine," it's a jacuzzi. I'm waiting for a movie about the time traveling cardboard box from Calvin And Hobbes.

This movie had a lot of great little touches, such as how the characters sometimes take a second to chime in on each others' garbled wording or meaning screw-ups ("In what part of the a------ handbook does it talk about abandoning your friends?!" "Actually, I'm pretty sure that part'd probably be in the a------ handbook." "Alright, my bad, point taken.").

I also liked how one of the characters uses "The Terminator" to explain how they've travelled back in time, and how the main "villain" is obsessed with the movie "Red Dawn."

"Wolverines!"

This movie goes out of its way to evoke 80's nostalgia. The soundtrack brims with 80's tunes like Poison and Public Enemy, and the movie has an off-kilter unforced vibe to it. And that's BEFORE the main characters get thrown back in time.

The movie is can be pretty dumb, but it knows when to hang back and make fun of itself (unlike of most "college comedies" that come out every couple of weeks, which are excessive to the point of reproach), and for that reason (and the fact it does have some pretty good gags) I'm recommending it. This'll teach me to judge a book by its cover, though if you see the name "Hot Tub Time Machine" and think it totally sounds like your bag, feel free to judge away.

The Force Will Be With You, Always – Super Star Wars

A lot of you young whippersnappers might not remember this, but there was a time when video games were hard. Like, REALLY HARD. Oh sure, it's tricky to pick up Modern Warfare and do well, but what we're talking is a whole new level of hard. I'm saying controller-tossing, foot-stomping, expletive-hurling difficulty the likes of which you can't find nowadays. Super Star Wars is such a game.

To be fair, its sequel (Super Empire Strikes Back, for those of you keeping score at home) is even MORE difficult, but (as Brian Ferriter pointed out to me the other day) at least that game had a password system that let you skip to the level you got a Game Over at. In Super Star Wars, if you run out of Continues (a magical difficulty-enhancing device that has all but disappeared from modern games), you stared over. As in FROM THE VERY BEGINNING.

If you like Tatooine, you're in luck: you'll be seeing this place a lot.

The tradeoff for this stupid-high level of challenge is that beating the game becomes an achievement. Literally. As soon as I beat it, I seriously took a picture of the screen to prove that I did it. I guarantee that I will remember beating Super Star Wars (where I was, who I was with, when it happened, etc.) way more than I will for beating something like Pure or The Orange Box.

This is what victory looks like.

But more about the game. Super Star Wars is a pretty standardly-designed sidescrolling movie game that was prevalent up until sidescrolling games became unfashionable (and even then, they still kept making 'em for the Game Boy Advance!). It involves progressing from left to right and shooting everything that isn't you, all while traversing through stages that (rather loosely) follow the plot of the movie? Remember that part in the movie where Luke tears through a whole herd of Banthas before fighting a giant mutant Womp Rat? Well you'll sure get to play through it!

The shooting controls are reasonably tight; you can't aim and shoot at the same time, but you can aim in 7 different directions (you can't shoot down). Jumping is a rather tricky and hit-or-miss affair, making me long for the Mega Man games of yore (or in Mega Man 10's case, the Mega Man games of a few weeks ago). Also, the slide move, which is accomplished by pressing diagonal-down and either right or left is kinda fitful; it works well most of the time, but tends to get confused when used multiple times repeatedly (like, say, when you're in the middle of the hardest boss in the game, and instead of sliding, it makes you jump in the air… I'm not bitter).

Some of the bosses are pretty tough. And pretty fiction-breaking. What exactly is an "Imperial Defense Droid?"

These two aforementioned problems only exacerbate what is EASILY the most frustrating part of the game: the horribly unfair-feeling level design. Granted, a certain amount of repeated enemies and instant-death traps are to be expected in this kind of a game. But these places cross the line from "Oh, I Guess I Can Be Expected To Do That" to "How Was I Supposed To Know That Was There?!!!??!"

For example, in the Death Star Hanger level, I have to negotiate these pits that appear to be instant-death traps (which, they are). Fair enough. I also have to negotiate fighting Storm Troopers and little robots that push me into the pits. Also fair enough. But how am I supposed to jump over these pits if THE GAME KEEPS DROPPING STORM TROOPERS ON ME WHILE I'M JUMPING??? And they don't even fall in a pattern! They just randomly drop on me, more often than not right while I'm jumping over the pits! There's a fine line between challenging the player and just being a douche.

You can also expect to be hit by TIE Fighters. Which you can't avoid. What's this game got against me anyways?

So I guess the question that it comes down to is "How much frustration am I willing to put up with in my video games?" If you play games to unwind, do NOT touch Super Star Wars. If you enjoy video games periodically, you might get a curiosity point from checking out some of the levels (don't buy it on eBay just for curiosity, though, unless it's like $10 with shipping). If you're an old-school gamer who has likely played and beaten harder games than this in one sitting, go for it; some of the levels are fun, the shooting action works for the most part, and it's Star Wars. Just don't come crying to me when your Continues are gone and you have to start way back on Tatooine.

I've been crawling in the dark, looking for the answer – “Edge of Darkness”

"Edge of Darkness" is a relatively standard thriller that is nevertheless affecting.

Affecting in the sense that I expected a sudden and violent death for several hours after my viewing of it. Walking back alone is not recommended.

Full of conspiracy theories and secret cover-ups, "Edge of Darkness" is much less an action film than the trailers would have you believe. The movie is an adaptation of the 1985 BBC television series, and despite the original series' 6-hour length, the film never becomes too complicated or overstuffed.

"Edge of Darkness" stars Mel Gibson in his first leading role since "Signs" in 2002. Though he has attracted much ire from, shall we say, his personal life in recent years, it is nonetheless good to see him back onscreen again.

Gibson makes an effective return in "Edge of Darkness."

Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a Boston police detective whose daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) killed in front of him on his front porch. Authorities believe that he was the intended target and that she was caught in the crossfire. Craven is not so sure.

What follows is an investigation that leads Craven through many different sections and districts of Boston. He is helped in part by the enigmatic Jedburgh (Ray Winston, previously seen in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"), who could be friend, foe, both, or neither.

Referred to by his employers as a "clean-up man," Winston gives a wry and intriguing performance as Jedburg.

Gibson plays Craven as a straight and no nonsense man with a Boston accent who is driven by a single purpose: to find out what happened to his daughter. While this role has been played by many an actor in many a movie, Gibson brings a grounded and hard-boiled edge to the character that makes him less of a superhuman action star and more of a man, relatable and human.

At times, he is darkly comedic. Consider a scene in which his partner on the force tells Craven to sleep at his place instead of Craven's house. "There's a guy out there who's armed and dangerous," he says. "What do you think I am?" responds Craven. Or a scene in which he finds a guy who may have had an indirect hand in his daughter's death and gives him a good thrashing. "I'm not going to hit you again, she wouldn't want me to," sighs Craven, and then on second thought does it anyway.

After 8 years, it's nice to have Mel Gibson back to kick some ass.

Though the plot could be described as a standard police thriller, the dialogue and characters are rather well-written. The movie has many small touches where it seems to respect the thinking capacities of its audience and mentions things without overexplaining them, such as a reference to the writings of Scott Fitzgerald or an untranslated bit of Latin; "You know what that means," says one character, and the other simply nods because, yes, he does know what it means.

Producer Graham King, like in his previous production "The Departed," uses the Boston setting to great effect, allowing its distinctly New England look to distinguish the movie without drawing too much attention to itself. The whole world seems very lived-in, and not drummed up for the occasion: Craven's kitchen is full of old wooden cabinets and outdated appliances, and even Craven himself is a man who we sense has been around awhile and isn't acting world-weary for the sheer hell of it.

Here is a man who looks every inch of his 50+ years.

Director Martin Campbell, who also directed "Casino Royale," also takes things a bit old-fashioned. Rather than using the Queasy Cam effect to create more "immersion" or quickly cutting between the characters while they're talking, he simply lets the camera sit still and photograph them.

There is a fistfight during an earlier part of the movie, and dear readers, I could actually tell who was punching who. In a world where every thriller and its uncle is looking to ape "The Bourne Ultimatum," I can't tell you how nice it is to watch an action scene and know what's going on the entire time.

I enjoyed "Edge of Darkness," but it's definitely not for everyone. The movie is punctuated by moments of sudden and intense violence, and the ending is rather Shakespearian, if you get what I'm saying.

Still, the movie definitely had its moments, and Gibson's performance and character-work is a sight to behold. Tense and intelligent, "Edge of Darkness" will please moviegoers looking to have a darkly good time.

My Top Three Albums of the 2000’s (Plus Five)

The other day, one of my Facebook friends asked me what I thought was the best album of the 2000's. I initially decided to give him a poisoned-tongued back-lashing, but on further reflection I figured that, given my penchant for lists, it'd be a worthy and fun question to answer, if I were to disregard the initial limitations of just one album, as well as the concept of "best"; there were a lot of albums that I didn't listen to in the past 10 years, and a lot of genres of music I don't care for enough to purchase albums from. Also, "best" is a pretty general criteria, so it's hard to say what makes one album "better" than the others. With all of that out of the way, here are my top 3 (and 5 runners-up) favorite albums of the 2000's, because I happen to enjoy them (no particular order):

Fall Out Boy - Take This To Your Grave

This album basically perfected the power pop sound of most emo bands today, regardless of how you feel about it (I happen to like it very much). The lyrics were emotional without sobby, and they walked the line between being clever and being smugly self-aware. The music itself was incredibly punchy, with the guitars, drums, and bass creating an energetic package the was fit to burst; think a can of Monster in your iPod.

Kanye West - The College Dropout

This album popularized the "chipmunk soul" practice of beatmaking: find an old soul sample, speed it up, and add drums for a unique and energetic-sounding flavor for your music (yes, Wu-Tang did it first in 1993, but this album brought it to a whole new audience). Kanye's lyrics, similar to Fall Out Boy's, were self-aware and clever, but since this was when he had just been signed and before he grew to be his Taylor Swift-interrupting self, I can forgive it; the album is actually pretty funny for all of its lyrical left fieldness. It has a few too many skits, but since they literally add nothing to the album, you can take them out without adversely affecting the rest of the excellently produced and well-executed package.

Jurassic 5 - Quality Control

This album really got me into hip hop. Jurassic 5's combination of mic-swapping wordplay and singing harmonies (trust me, it's less pretentious and "independent" than it sounds) creates a light and very palatable package. Each MC has their own strengths and sounds, but together they create variety in their deliveries, ensuring that the song is constantly changing and guarding against fatigue from listening to the same person. Clever wordplay and exciting delivery help bring the performances up to consistently enjoyable and listenable level. The beats by Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark are varied and nostalgic-sounding, sampling older soul or jazz recordings for a laid-back and low profile sound that help bring the MCs to the forefront.

Runners-up

This list is actually more here for sentimental reasons. These aren't blow-you-away albums at all, but remain in my heart because of the time that's been spent with them. In listening to these albums, you may get to know me, or at least what I've listened to:

The Lonely Island - Incredibad

I'm actually blown away by this record. Not only because of how funny it is, but how consistently well it works as actual MUSIC. Clearly the members of The Lonely Island are avid hip hop fans, because the love they put into their style parodies and song structures is apparent from the moment you press play. Good hip hop is hard to make, and good FAKE hip hop is even harder (just ask Brokencyde...), and the care taken to make each beat catchy, each style parody work, and each lyric wack (but not too wack) makes this one a favorite of mine for reasons I wouldn't have expected.

Story Of The Year - Page Avenue

In truth, there's nothing special about this album. Many of the songs sit somewhere in the middle of the Thrill-O-Meter, and listeners who aren't a fan of this particular brand of music certainly won't have their minds changed. That said, I happen to like the genre of music Story Of The Year is in, and Page Avenue is one of my favorites; it helps that I was 15 and Reckless when this came out, so I have emotional attachment on my side. I'm always a sucker for energetic music, and Story Of The Year has it in spades. Future albums would have the band growing a bit too big for their britches, but this album truly feels like they're playing without a net, and it's that hunger that makes me love it.

Autopilot Off - Make A Sound

If the previous album was nothing special, that goes double for this one. This one is straight pop-punk from back to front. I can't adequately explain why I like this album, except that I do. To describe it is to describe a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup: there's absolutely nothing about this that makes it any better than anything else in the cupboard, except that it's comfort food. Sweet sweet comfort food.

Little Brother - The Minstrel Show

You know those romantic comedies where the hero is introduced to the heroine at a party, and they decide that the other is nothing special, but then they meet later in the movie and decide that they love each other after all? Neither do I, because I fabricated that scenario right now, but that's what this album was like. Witty like Kanye West, but with the verbal gymnastics like Jurassic 5, this album provides a bit of Southern comfort in the form of breezy, soulful productions and playful, tight rhymes. The concept album execution also adds a little bit of extra amusement: the whole album is an "episode" of a TV program called "The Minstrel Show" and the various fake viewer-endorsements and fake-commercials create a cohesion not found in most albums.

Goodnight Sunrise - Close And Counting

Sure, a decade is a long time, but Goodnight Sunrise throws its hat into the power pop ring with the best of them. Better than most, actually, because of Dan Murphy's songwriting ability (ie, he is able to write a song about Girls without making it sound like A Song About Girls; try listening to Amber Pacific and telling me the same thing). As a Montana band, these guys first blew me away in 2006, where their energy and hooks basically made me an uber-fan with only one show. Bright, energetic (the key word for this retrospective), and hooky like a fishing boat, Goodnight Sunrise is easily one of the better power pop bands in the business. Though their recent EP has more and equally good songs, I have to give the nod to this one; these songs made me into the frothing, ravaging fan that I am today, and how can you not say that the first hit wasn't the best?

There you go. 10 years of music, and I was mostly aware for six of them. Time will tell if I'm still spinning these in another 10 years, but for now they're basically my unofficial endorsement for the coveted If I Were Stuck On A Desert Island award.

Got any quibbles with my taste? Or perhaps any albums that were close to your heart during the 2000's? Sound off in the comments section!

Monday, Monday – Hey Monday – Hold On Tight

As I have addressed in previous posts, I love power pop. Power pop, for those that aren't in the Hip Genre Names club, is a style of music that resembles traditional pop music, but with more electric guitars and punk rock energy (it feels more "powerful," hence the name). Hey Monday, a quintet from West Palm Beach, FL, scratches my power pop itch with great melodies, booming energy, and excellent vocal work from one of the better female lead singers in the industry.

Hold On Tight is a record that in many ways feels very old-fashioned: it's lyrics don't wink at the audience, the production doesn't attempt any grandiose tricks like adding a symphony or a spoken word bridge, and the songs are all about 3:30—4:00 minutes long. In other words, this is a pop record the way they used to make 'em.

The music is sugar-coated enough to give someone a diabetic coma. The vocals soar, the guitars shine, and the hooks are big enough to snag Jaws, bigger boat be damned (check out "Obvious" and "Run, Don't Walk" to start off, but check your blood sugar first). Singer Cassadee Pope Brings appropriate energy and spunk to her performances, but lends a fair bit of sweetness and (dare I say it) prettiness to each song, making each listen a far cry from the many nasally-voiced bands that populate the genre.

In many ways, this album is the anti-Brand New Eyes. On Paramore's newest entry, the band is clearly on a cathartic streak, attacking the track with a tightly-wound blend of pop and therapeutic aggression. With Hold On Tight, Hey Monday seems bent on making a record for people to listen to and feel good doing so. Though several songs head into more emotional territory ("Homecoming"'s tale of someone who comes home to find their significant other with someone else, "Josey"'s story of a girl who parties too much), everything is played with such a bright sheen that even the more lyrically heavy songs sound downright jovial. Which one the "better" album is comes down to preference.

If you're not a fan of poppy music, or feel awkward listening to music that will be appealing to teenagers, I'd give this one a wide berth. However, for listeners that don't mind a bit of bubblegum in their music, or for those who prefer to listen to music with their tongue firmly in their cheek, Hold On Tight is a solid piece of guilty pleasure that is worth blaring in the car… with the windows rolled securely up, of course.

War. War never changes. – Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Like everyone else in the game industry, I was moderately curious about Modern Warfare 2 and whether or not it would live up to the INSANE amount of hype that had been generated about it. I really liked the first one (to the point where I bought an Xbox 360 to play it on), but I was a bit scared of retaking the plunge into COD territory. Because I really liked the game, I convinced myself that I should play through the single-player campaign on Hardened and then again on Veteran, and to try and get every single Achievement.

By the time I was finished, I had succeeded in completely ruining the game for myself; on Veteran, the annoying, stupid flaws of the campaign came into much sharper focus, like the infinitely respawning enemies (especially in levels like Charlie Don't Surf and, well, basically every mission where you were an Army Ranger) and the enemies' Dan Marino-esque ability to throw a grenade into my pocket at 200 yards. I also can't really play the multiplayer anymore, on account that I hate at least half of the maps (Bog, Pipeline, and Bloc immediately come to mind, with a few more waiting in the wings), and these maps seem to be the most popular ones.

That said, I can't deny that both the single-player and multiplayer were both really polished and very fun while they lasted, and developer Infinity Ward make some quality first person shooter action, so I decided to rent it to give it a shot. After eight days of time with the game (I figure the small late fee was worth it), I've decided that it's a very polished and much-improved version of a game I had basically already played two years ago.

The single-player campaign has you hopping between different characters in true Call Of Duty fashion, but most of the time is split between Private James Ramirez of the US Army and "Roach" Sanderson of Taskforce 141, an MI6-style organization tasked with doing special ops stuff. While the first game had a relatively down-to-earth style with a couple of over-the-top moments (killing approximately 40,000 Russian soldiers during the last mission seems like a bit too many), this one is flat out Jerry Bruckheimer; this game is unabashedly built around set piece "Holy crap, did you see that?" moments, and the game is simultaneously sillier and more thrilling for it.

Many silly, epic moments pepper the experience.

The developers at Infinity Ward seem to have taken a lot of fan feedback into account with the campaign: there are no infinitely respawning enemies, the mission locales are much more varied than the last game (where there were basically two levels: desert and Russian grassy knoll), and the sniping mission from the first game has received several sequels.

The campaign is short; I plowed through it in one sitting in about five hours. However, it's a really tight, well-executed campaign with virtually no fat or downtime, and had a blast playing through the whole thing in one shot (I would recommend doing it that way, actually). There are still a couple infuriating spots (the last part of the Rio de Janero level looks to be this game's TV station) and some of the moments are just borderline ridiculous (like when you launch a snowmobile over a chasm in order to escape from Russian soldiers), but for the most part the game ran at a consistently high level. There are fewer "Wow" moments than the first game (there's no Death From Above level or anything like that), but most of the game hits such a consistently high bar that it's hard to distinguish one absolutely incredible moment from another one (well, that's not true, but far be it for me to spoil them here).

Infinity Ward utilizes their favorite You Are The Character moments for storytelling.

So the single-player is fun, if a bit ridiculous, but the multiplayer is what made the first game have such lasting appeal (it's been in the top 3 games on Xbox Live since its release two years ago). I spent most of my time with the multiplayer component, and I am pleased to say that everything that bugged my about the first game's multiplayer has been fixed:

• Perks are rebalanced (stupid ones like Iron Lung are unlockable "Pro" perks that stack on top of the regular ones, and Martyrdom has been relegated to a reward for dying too much). Also, your first perk is actually a perk this time, instead of deciding which explosive you get.

• Weapons feel better and less slanted towards the P-90 and M-16. All of them are fun to use, and effective in the right hands.

• The maps are actually fun! I've spent about twelve to fifteen hours in the multiplayer and haven't run across a map that's made me say "Here we go again" (though, like the first one, some of the maps repeat far more often than others, like Quarry).

• You can assign shotguns to your secondary weapon. Lordy lordy lordy, this is something I've wanted for a while; I tend to sprint around the map without looking around too much, so flailing with a shotgun whenever I accidentally run into someone is a great asset.

• You get points for just about everything you do: kill someone after dying a lot, performing a headshot, using a certain weapon enough, using a certain perk enough, everything. This gives a great sense of progression to the game, and it tells me that I don't need to be uber hardcore to level up.

• There are more varied game modes. Specifically, the addition of a Battlefield: Bad Company-style mode called Demolition, in which an attacking team has to plant a bomb on two crates, and a defending team has to prevent them from doing this for a certain amount of time. I think this mode is a bit more broken than B:BC, but is still fun nonetheless.

Demolition gives me some Gold Rush fun.

If I have to fault the multiplayer experience for anything, it's because I have become too accustomed to the freedom that Bad Company's multiplayer gave me. One of the things I liked most about multiplayer for Bad Company was its destructable environments; the ability to destroy walls and obstacles added a whole mess of variety to games, and maps played out differently almost every single time because of that variety. In Modern Warfare 2, each map has a specific set of choke points and places where the fighting generally happens. As I've established before, I'm not that good at FPS games, and I like it in Bad Company that I don't constantly get worked by guys who know the level layout better than I do.

Then there's the co-op Special Ops mode that I didn't get a chance to play. I fooled around with a couple single-player challenges, but it's quite apparent that this game mode works best with two human beings sitting side-by-side on the couch. The first Modern Warfare game lacked any sort of co-op, so I'm glad to see that Infinity Ward understands that playing WITH someone who's way better than you is much more fun than playing AGAINST someone who's way better than you.

Special Ops lets two players tackle moments from the campaign.

All in all, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is more than worth the $60 you would spend of in at Target. The single-player is a tightly scripted, rollercoaster thrill ride, the multiplayer is polished and better than ever, and Special Ops is great for when friends come over. I don't think I'll be getting it just yet (I plan on buying Bad Company 2 in March, and how many online shooters do I need anyways?), but I wouldn't discourage anyone from picking this one up.

So It’s Come To This – My Top 10 Favorite Games

My good friend Jordyn Auvil has a thing for lists. Being as how I hang with her a lot, and given my penchant for lists anyways , this blog was as inevitable as the sun rising or a Michael Bay movie featuring explosions.

But why games and not movies or music? Rest assured, dear readers, that those are coming too. For right now, though, video games have played more of a direct role in my freetime (I guess I'm rebelling at the times during my freshman, sophomore, and parts of junior year when I didn't play 'em so much), so they get the favoritism first. Here we go!

**DISCLAIMER** This list is by no means final. It's mostly me looking at my spreadsheet (yes, I have a spreadsheet) of games I own and deciding what goes up there. Also, the ranking's pretty much just how I'm feeling about the game right now, so it's mostly arbitrary. Except the number one spot. That one's basically in stone.

First up, games that I really appreciate and enjoy, but just didn't have the heart to add to the official list.

Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):

Goldeneye 007 – N64

If I could measure how many hours of play I've given to this game, how many hours of stalking and killing my friends in the Temple, how many different game types my friends and I invented for the multiplayer… well, I'm not sure I can. What I'm trying to say is that, while history will recognize Goldeneye as the first FPS to get it RIGHT on the consoles, I simply remember it as the best damn multiplayer game ever. Seriously, ask any of your friends who were gamers who were raised in the 90's about Goldeneye, and they will more than likely have some story for you about how late they stayed up planting proximity mines in the facility, or using the Golden Gun in the Stacks, or hiding in the walls in the Complex. Goldeneye hasn't aged particularly well compared to modern-day FPSs (I can't heal once I've been shot? Are you serious?), but I'll be damned if it isn't one of my favorite old-school multiplayer game to play today.

Lunar: The Silver Star Story – Playstation

I'm a sucker for 16-bit RPGs, and I came along at just the right age for Lunar: The Silver Star Story for the original Playstation. The game is actually a remake/Special Edition of a game for the Sega CD with updated graphics, full-length anime cutscenes, and an updated (not to mention impossibly compitent and often hilarious) English localization. This game plays like everything I love about 16-bit RPGs, including a wonderfully cliched (yet still quite compelling, mostly due to the characters) story of love redemption and collecting elemental things from elementally-themed dungeons, beautifully animated sprites (those 2-D picture things from the Super Nintendo), and well-exectued turn-based combat.

It also has no random battles, a relative absense of grind (the bosses level up with you, so you're in for a decent challenge no matter what you do), and a quick-moving story for JRPGs. The one thing that sets this apart from so many other games is its charm. It's just so old-school in everything it does, and it does it with such commitment, that I can't help but love it, like a silly puppy who slips around on the slick kitchen floor.

Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time– PS2/Gamecube/Xbox

I've found Middle Eastern storytelling absolutely fascinating since I first watched Aladdin, and it was only further enhanced after playing this game. Never has a non-RPG game's narrative captivated me so, with a romantic and epic tale of survival between a prince and princess. What made the story the absolute best for me was the way the story was told—it was literally told to the player, with the prince narrative the tale retrospectively, just the way the tales were orally told in the Arabian Nights books (which, as I bragged in my Prince Of Persia trailer entry, I have read before, so I feel qualified to make hyperbolic comparisons to that fabled series). The platforming is buttery-smooth, the progression never throws the player a dull moment, the visuals are stunning and inventive, but what really sets this triple-A game apart from a sea of triple-A games is how it combines all of these elements with a compelling and wonderfully executed narrative.

Rock Band 2 – Xbox 360/PS3

This game allowed me to do two things: first, it allowed me to finally learn the motor skills it would take to drum (haven't found a real kit to try yet, but I'm working on it) and it acted as the perfect bonding tool for roommates last semester. Seriously, nothing says comradery like everyone acting like idiots with plastic instruments and sharing a feeling of awesomeness because of how good we did at "Snow" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I've loved the Guitar Hero games for a while, and this one raises the stakes even more. Kudos to Harmonix for exuding liquid awesome from every pore.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 – Playstation

I have a strong fetish for the Action Sports genre. I think it comes with my desire to accrue points while listening to rock music, so that sort of makes it fun straight-away. No game did Action Sports better in the early Y2K days than Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, a game that took the formula of Complete Objectives While Earning Points And Listening To Goldfinger and made it something amazing, expanding the game worlds, adding objectives, and adding even more bands to the soundtrack.

It also gave players the ability to Manual, a move that allowed for even bigger and more ridiculous combos. Players were also able to make their own skate parks and skaters that looked just like them (or not), as well as customize their skaters with all kinds of special moves and tricks. When I came to college, this was basically the only game I played for like three months, and that was well after I had played this game to death in middle school. Many Action Sports games have come and go, but few of them have the staying power of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.

And now, onto the main event!

10) Battlefield: Bad Company – Xbox 360/PS3

Hi, my name is Andrew, and I like to make things blow up. Like any red-blooded American worth his M-80s on Fourth of July, I enjoy a good explosion, which is why Bad Company is here. I don't think I have anything to say here that I didn't already say in my Bad Company blog entry, but it's worth reiterating that I will always give the thumbs-up to a game that encourages you to destroy its buildings. I will also give the thumbs-up to multiplayer games that don't make me feel like I'm wasting my time; even though I'm not the best at killing streaks or what have you, I feel like I'm contributing when I blow up an objective or defuse a bomb from one of our objectives. This is a game that thanks me for playing, and to tip my hat I give them number 10.

9) Burnout Paradise – Xbox 360/PS3

In 2005 I picked up Burnout 3: Takedown at a pawn shop and experienced a revelation in racing games: here was a game that not only condoned crashing, but actively encouraged it! Specifically, crashing your opponents into obstacles, and it rewards you with extra speed to boot! I loved the speed and the attitude, but my Burnout passion didn't come alive until Paradise dropped in 2008. Unlike Takedown, Paradise was open-world, meaning you can drive your car around the living breathing city and take on events wherever and whenever (emphasis on this part) you feel like.

It seems like a lot of genres these days are jumping the open-world shark, but Criterion Games was able to add open-world mechanics to its game without making it feel tacked-on. The city feels great for just randomly cruising around and racing through, and there are a ton of hidden billboards, super jumps, and gates to find and smash through, encouraging exploration. Criterion also gave the community a ton of DLC add-ons, giving fans a reason to keep coming back.

Unfortunately, there are a couple flys in the ointment of fast speedy goodness. The city is so labyrinthine in its many alleyways and streets that it's easy to get lost when you're trying to find the best way to race to downtown at 300 mph. Also, the soundtrack is kinda lame, though with next-gen music streaming, this really isn't that big an issue. Burnout Paradise is a great racing game to kick back and just soak in.

8) Tetris Attack/Planet Puzzle League – SNES/Gameboy/DS

Like millions of casual gamers and iPhone owners the world over, I love puzzle games. I love Tetris to the point of considering buying the DS version, and I used to have a Dr. Mario addiction that was fed by my grandmother, of all people. But never have I loved a puzzle game more than Tetris Attack/Planet Puzzle League.

In this game, you have a stack of multi-colored blocks that keep rising from the bottom, and the ability to get two blocks to swap sides with each other. The object is to keep the blocks from reaching the top of the screen. When you line up three blocks of the same color, the blocks disappear and all of the blocks on top of them fall down, allowing for a million different opportunities to create combos. While it's marginally possible to create combos in the SNES version, it wasn't until I bought the DS version that I was able to create huge, donkey-choking combos that would clear half the screen.

The brilliance of Planet Puzzle League is its balance. The more blocks you have on the screen, the more combo opportunities you have, but the closer you are to death. The game forces you to walk the line between being overwhelmed with blocks and being in full control of where your next combo comes from. This is a game that I can play for literally hours and be okay with, though after playing for that long I would probably see rising blocks whenever I closed my eyes.

7) Need For Speed: Underground – PS2/Gamecube/Xbox

Ah, my first non-Mario Kart racing game that I truly enjoyed. As I said in my Battlefield: Bad Company blog, I never really had any racing games when I had my N64, and it probably would have stayed that way during my Gamecube days if I had not visited my cousin Michael's place during the 2003 holiday season and tried it out on his PC. While I wasn't necessarily blown away with the racing mechanics (I had played Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 at my friend Clay's already), what I did like was the "street racing" feel; I was at the precise age and hormone balance where anything that reminded me of The Fast And The Furious was the coolest beans this side of the South Pole.

Yes, the street racing drew me in, but it was my friend Regi who took it to the next level. In the game, you can customize your car with rims, body kits, spoilers, and vinyl graphics; you can also get your car on a magazine cover as a sort of in-game achievement system ("Post the fastest Sprint time to get your car on the cover of Flamenhaugen!"). I never really mucked around with the car customization, but it was Regi who created the idea of changing your car's look every time you got your car on a magazine cover. This lead to epic World Of Warcraft moments where we would compete in races just to try and unlock parts for our cars. He also introduced me to manual control in the game, which adds to the tension, especially when combined with racing inside the cockpit.

A couple of minor gripes. The game only takes place at night, which makes sense for the atmosphere and vibe, but can kind of look monotonous. Also, some of the later challenges are just brutal and stupid (most of these involve 6 or 7 lap races; I will always get the first 5 laps perfectly, then screw up the last one. ALWAYS). Despite the frustrations involved, though, I can't think of another racing game that I've replayed from the beginning six (6) times because I enjoy progressing so much. Beats the heck out of Project Gotham 4.

6) Ratchet And Clank: Going Commando/Ratchet And Clank: Up Your Arsenal – PS2

Being reared primarily on Nintendo consoles, it's not hard to imagine that I have a sweet spot for platforming games. Simply put, I just like to jump on things. With the advent of Goldeneye 007 on the N64, I also found out I like to shoot things. Lo and behold, Insomniac, the studio behind the Spyro series on the Playstation, saw the obvious potential for a crossover and created the Ratchet And Clank franchise, a series of platforming games where the main character leaps nimbly around with a stockpile of weapons that would shame North Korea.

It's kind of a cop-out to double post in one space, but honestly, if you've played these games, you'd realize that there's almost no difference, especially in my heart (awwww). Basically, in each game, your goal is to leapfrog your way from planet to planet, progressing from each linear level to each linear level, blowing up things and enemies, and collecting the currency that they leave behind in order to purchase bigger and more ridiculous weapons. In both games, the formula hardly changes; the similarities between Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal are almost 1:1, including the planet where you track down crystals in order to exchange them for ridonkulous amounts of money.

But they're so doggone good! The platforming is solid, the weapons feel great, and the stories are nice and relaxed. The only differences to me is the story and levels in Going Commando (I like them just a skosh better) and the tightened-up gameplay mechanics from Up Your Arsenal (it just feels better). So they both go here. Heck, they're both kind of on the short side, so you could probably plow through them both in the time it would take you to finish, say, half of Dragon Age: Origins.

5) Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest – SNES

Like I said, I just like jumping on things. And no game for me fulfills the jumping-on penchant like Diddy's Kong Quest. The followup to Rare's smash hit Donkey Kong Country (which apparently is liked by every SNES owner in the world except for me), DKC2 takes the action and makes it pirate-themed. Donkey Kong has been kidnapped, and it's up to Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie Kong to retrieve him.

One thing I love about this game is the level variety. The action takes you everywhere from a standard pirate ship, to your prerequisite lava world that's borderline required in every platforming game, to a haunted theme park (okay, didn't see THAT one coming). Each place feels unique and, more importantly, fun, which lots of hidden bonus areas that are an incredible pain to find (after playing this game for twelve years, I finally completed my first 102% game last year). The difficulty curve is absolutely perfect too; the early levels are an absolute breeze to go through as you learn all of the mechanics of the game, while later levels will challenge your skills and test your patience (Castle Crush and Chain Link Chamber, I'm looking at you both).

This was the first game I purchased with my SNES back in 1996 and my friend Luke and I absolutely lapped it up. While the first game was a bit too "realistic" in the art direction (Oh! It's a temple! And a coral reef!) and the third one was way too cartoony (what's with the googly eyes on the robot bees? Why is that Kremling holding a trashcan lid?), the second one strikes every balance just right and lives on as one of my favorites. A slice of gaming comfort food if there ever was one, this is my absolute favorite platforming game.

4) Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars – SNES

What's a Favorite Game List without a Mario game, right? Only this one's a bit different from the usual fare. Super Mario RPG was my very first RPG. Think about that. This is the first game to teach me how to equip an item, the first game to teach me the joys of beating lots of bad guys in order to grind experience points, the first game to really draw me into its narrative rather than have me play it because it was fun (well, it's that too). Not only was this game a first, but it's pretty fun too.

The story deals with Mario rescuing Princess Toadstool from Bowser, only to be interrupted by your Uber Enemy named Smithy. He scatters you, Bowser, and Princess Toadstool all over the Mushroom Kingdom, and you have to find her. Along the way you run into Mallow, a "tadpole" from one of the towns you visit, and Geno, who informs you that unless you defeat Smithy and collect all of the Star Pieces he scattered all over the kingdom, no one's dreams will ever be able to come true (trust me, it makes sense when you actually play the game). You travel to all sorts of places in the Mushroom Kingdom, from Marrymore (a place where all of the locals come to get married) to a sunken ship (to retrieve a Star Piece) to Nimbus Land (a kingdom in the clouds ruled by a large tropical bird called Dodo), meeting memorable characters and having adventures that are just as strange as the places you visit.

Combat is turn-based, meaning that you and your enemies take turns hitting each other until someone keels over. Mario's signature jump and fireflower moves make it in the game, and Toadstool and Bowser even join you at one point in the game. The system represents a more simple version of turn-based combat than in other RPGs; magic-replenishing items are inexpensive and plentiful, so you can use your stronger attacks more often instead of saving them for a rainy day, and you never fight more than five enemies at a time. You can also see your enemies in the levels (no random encounters!) and there are some light platforming elements for each of them, such as hopping on flying turtle shells to reach the top of Land's End.

Levels take inspiration from old Mario platforming games. This level plays that old "duhnuh nuhnuh nuhnuh" underground music from the NES Mario.

What I really like about Super Mario RPG is its humor. The whole game just has an air of silliness to it, such as when you're fighting a giant wedding cake and then another character comes along and eats it. Or when you fight this five-part boss battle against a multi-colored team called the Axem Rangers (what does this remind you of?). Or another scene where Mario and Bowser accidentally kiss. For all of the silliness, the game has a heartfelt story, particularly with Mallow and Geno, and some of the characters you encounter actually stand out as being well-developed, which is surprising for a game where one of your characters' ultimate weapons is a frying pan.

Super Mario RPG is basically RPGs For Noobs, and I'm glad for it. It didn't scare me off with complicated and unintuitive menus or gameplay mechanics, and it was a great time from first to last.

3) SSX 3 – PS2/Gamecube/Xbox

Oh SSX 3. This is a game that got me excited about winter sports like I never have been before; even to this day, I want to hit the slopes and experience the freedom and thrills that I got from this humble PS2 game (well, back in the day it was on the 'Cube, but the differences are marginal at best). It started with my purchase of SSX Tricky back in 2001, which, through its deft combination of fast racing and huge tricks, was the first snowboarding game to make me CARE about the sport (1080, Twisted Edge, Cool Boarders, they all just made me want to switch to a more reliable form of racing). When I got SSX 3 for Christmas in 2003, I was hoping that it would live up to Tricky, which I had played pretty steadily for about nine months. I had no idea what I was in store for.

Unlike previous games in the series, SSX 3 is open-world. That is to say, it drops you in and says "Have fun! Do events if you want to, or spend your time screwing around on the slopes!" It was this switch to open world that made me love the game so much. I could go anywhere on the mountain that I wanted, pulling tricks and finding new shortcuts, all without hitting a menu screen or waiting for the next area to load. I could even travel to the game's "Back Country" parts of the mountain, where the game dispenses with groomed runs and puts you on an untracked section full of weather, trees, and an occasional avalanche. This sense of freedom captured my imagination, to the point where I would go skiing and imagine what Bridger Bowl would be like if it were in SSX 3.

The game is full of gorgeous shots of the mountain and its surrounding valleys.

Of course, all of this exploration is for naught if the game mechanics don't make it fun, and SSX 3 is incredibly fun. It keeps the tight controls from the previous SSX games and improves upon them in little ways, such as how the game finishes off flips for you if you've rotated your body most of the way around (something that had broken COUNTLESS combos for me in Tricky). The game also adds a degree of customization, letting you pick what Uber Tricks your character will pull off (your big special moves, which range from flipping the board over your head to breakdancing on top of it) and even letting you buy clothes and boards for your characters.

The presentation absolutely stole the show for me, and not just because it created these huge open courses (though that was definitely part of it). The snow, whether it's falling or being shooshed beneath your board, looks spectacular, and the game creates gorgeous vistas for you to oogle at while you're flying down the mountain at 75mph. The soundtrack is the usual EA Trax fare (songs from up-and-coming artists on one of EA's label partners), but has a couple of cool features, such as dynamically fading in and out if you hit an especially big jump. Also, for being usual EA Trax fare, I find the soundtrack to be quite satisfying; there is a good blend of electronic music with some rock and hip-hop, with artists like Queens Of The Stone Age, Autopilot Off, and The Chemical Brothers. I have gone to great lengths to procure songs from this soundtrack for myself, and I listen to them every time I hit the mountain.

Courses range from sunny groomed runs to blizzardy untracked patches of mountain. This game can be downright harrowing!

When it's cold and snowy outside, this is the game I immediately think of. I imagine myself flying off a jump, tunes swelling in my ear as I rack up the high score. The game enhances my appreciation for a real-life sport, and the developers at EA Canada should pat themselves on the back for their handiwork and get cracking on a next-gen sequel!

2) Pokemon Red and Blue – Gameboy

What can be said about Pokemon that hasn't already been said? It was been made and remade over and over for the last ten years, with almost nary a sign of aging. Even Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, which came out in 2007 are almost functionally identical to Red and Blue from the Gameboy. What makes these games so addicting, so compelling, so stick-and-carrot that even to this day gamers all over the world feel compelled to Catch 'Em All? In truth, I'm not sure if I want to know, because then that would spoil the illusion and I would be dissecting the very magic that has kept me gaming for over a decade now.

Part of what makes Pokemon so compelling for me is its almost complete union with my childhood. My imagination put me in the game: with my trusty Pokeballs at my belt and a backpack full of Super Potion, I travelled from town to town, battling Gym Leaders and rival trainers, getting me one step closer to Victory Roada and my inevitable duel with the Elite Four. My imagination added drama where there was none, taking what I had seen in the TV show and adding my own narrative twists; sometimes it was the Pokemon that were on the quest, independent of a trainer, and sometimes I imagined my friends were trainers. Montana is a very wide-open and spread-out state, so I would imagine that, when I went to towns like Butte or Bozeman, I was simply going on another expedition, traversing the countryside on the way to another gym and looking for even more rare Pokemon. I defy anyone who says that video games stunt a child's imagination—on the contrary, I would say that Pokemon helped me invent some of my wildest and most adventurous stories.

That's me over there, in the baseball cap.

The concept is deceptively simple. You start out with one Pokemon, given to you by your mentor Professor Oak. From there, you set out on a journey to be the very best, like no one ever was (I'll be damned if the TV series didn't make this game even more epic than it was, either). You could capture wild Pokemon by wearing down their HP until they were weak, and then take a gamble at throwing a Pokeball at them in an attempt to add them to your collection. The game pulled a sneaky move by keeping track of which Pokemon you had captured, and which ones you had merely seen, urging the perfectionist in you to seek out that one rare breed that you had missed or not seen yet. You may have caught a Rattata in Viridian Forest, but did you catch Raticate, its bigger and faster evolution?

Each Pokemon had at least one "type," and each type had its own strengths and weaknesses. Fire-types were strong against Grass-types, but were weak against Water-types, and so on and so forth for the game's 15 different types. Each Pokemon could learn different types of moves; a Water-type Pokemon might be able to learn Ice- or Ground-type moves in addition to just Water-type moves. Each Pokemon are allowed four different moves, and choosing which four moves best suited your Pokemon was a matter of strategy. Do you give your Jolteon Agility to increase its speed, or do you give it Thunder Wave to try to paralyze opponents? Perhaps you'll give Lapras Acid Armor to boost its defense, but you might give it Psychic instead to surprise any Poison-type Pokemon you run into.

You begin by raising one of these li'l guys in the beginning. Then it only goes uphill from there.

You were allowed six Pokemon to a side, making each encounter a matter of choosing your Pokemon carefully. Perhaps you would lead in with Weezing to poison your opponent, then swap to Cloyster and let your high defense absord the damage your opponent deals while he is weakened by the Poison, or maybe you would put your opponent to sleep with Butterfree and switch to Dragonite for a finishing Hyper Beam. The strategies and battle plans that could be implemented were myriad.

Pokemon is not an easy game to work through; just like the best JRPGs, sometimes it is just best to have a strategy guide sitting next to you in order to find out where to go next. I had the best thing for this game: a six-issue mini-magazine series called Pokemon Power, which were given out in Nintendo Powers 111-116. These detailed the dungeons and Pokemon that you could find in them, but were vague in their descriptions of what to do in a given town. To a fiction-starved 4^th grader, these open-ended instructions felt like a map, left behind by some intrepid explorer and discovered by me, following his footsteps and discovering exotic cities and dangerous caves.

Even today, Pokemon is probably one of the most epic gaming experiences I can have. The technology wasn't huge, there weren't detailed graphics and epic plot lines for me to follow, just a template left for me and my imagination. And for that reason alone, no game can top the exploration and freedom this one brings to the table—how could you possibly have a game that is more epic than my imagination?

1) Chrono Trigger – SNES

To anyone who knows me, this game will come as no surprise. It is the PERFECT game. Its beautiful art and art direction have not aged a day since 1995, its gameplay still feels modern and fresh as though it were released today, and it still tells one of the best-told stories I have had the privilege to play through. Its character development is superb, its soundtrack a work of art, and the whole package is polished and executed in a way that is timeless. That's a lot of hyperbole for one game, but Chrono Trigger is that kind of game that makes me want to spew superlatives like I've developed food poisoning over a bowl of synonyms for "totally freaking sweet."

To be clear, the story is rather cliched and silly in places: your party includes a cave woman, a robot, and a medival knight who has been turned into a frog. Your starting weapons include "Wooden Sword" and "Dart Gun." One of your quests is to pour soda pop on the grave of an explorer. But what makes the story-telling in Chrono Trigger for me is its lack of self-importance (I'm looking right at you, Final Fantasy VII). Its narrative has you traveling all through time to stop the world coming to an end at the hands on an enormous evil in the year 1999. On the journey, you'll meet and develop relationships with a broad cast of characters, ranging from the brooding villian from 600 A.D. Magus to the shape-changing and consistently goofy Spekkio. I'm constantly surprised how, even with 2-D, sprite-based graphics, the story is affecting, with themes of love, abandonment, friendship, forgiveness, and true courage in the face of adversity. The story is never over-dramatic or too big for its britches—it knows it has a good story to tell, and it tells it with a restraint that would make any film-maker jealous.

Over the course of the game you'll assemble quite a cast of characters, each with their own unique personality and backstory.

Of course, games are meant to be played, and Chrono Trigger a multitude of good gameplay ideas; so many, in fact, that I often wonder why more games haven't ripped this game off completely. Up to bat first is the Tech system, a method of combining your magic attacks with your other two party members to make even BIGGER magic attacks (team up Frog with Marle for the aptly named Glacier, and attack that drops a big ol' block of ice on a group on enemies). Second is the Tech Point system: enemies give up Tech Points after they're defeated, rewarding players with special attacks when enough Tech Points are collected. Third is the decision NOT to include random battles, which allows players to see (and dodge) enemies when exploring the game's areas (more RPGs are doing this these days, and it makes me very happy). The game is bubbling over with ways to get the player to have fun while they're experiencing the game's narrative.

Crono and Marle team up for the Dual Tech: Ice Sword. It's pretty self-explanitory.

Chrono Trigger's art was designed by Akira Toriyama, who created the Dragon Ball series. Toriyama adds character and personality to everyone on-screen, from all of the seven main characters to even the lowliest monster. Gamers visit locations both beautiful and horrible, from a bright and cheery present day fair, to post-apocalyptic wasteland where humans take refuge in futuristic domes, to a magical kingdom above the clouds. Accompanying the visuals is my favorite game soundtrack, composed by Yasunori Mitsuda and aided by long-time composer for Final Fantasy, Nobuo Uematsu. The melodies are merry and sorrowful, joyous and haunting, guiding the player through every experience and making the best of every moment. These songs are still a regular part of the Play! series of video game symphony performances, and belong on anyone's classical music shelf (I don't say that lightly).

Artist Akira Toriyama lends his unique style in fleshing out the cast of Chrono Trigger.

Perhaps my favorite part about Chrono Trigger is its ability to give the player an experience. The story can last about 8-10 hours, but not a single minute of it feels like filler. The story is tightly wound and never wears out its welcome. In a genre occupied by games that boast 40+ hours of gameplay to beat the main quest, it's remarkable that this game concentrates on delivering a tight and polished experience from beginning to end. I can't offer any higher praise than to say that this game is probably my prized possession out of everything game-related that I own.

This game may not be the best ever created, but it is the game I hold closest to my heart. As with other games on this list, this game went straight to my heart and captured my imagination. I don't expect you to get the same experience I did. I only hope to impress upon you what this game means to me. Its characters and themes will live with me all of my life, it is my favorite game of all time.

Got any favorite video games? Have any comments on what's here (or what ISN'T here)? Leave me a comment below!