Spirit Tracks

The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks is the newest addition to the Zelda Series, and I mean NEW. It just came out last week. I got my hands on a copy fresh off the truck at Gamestop and played way more than I should have considering it was the last week before finals and I had a lot to do.
The Spirit Tracks is for the Nintendo DS and had some great new additions to the gameplay. Most interaction in the game is controlled by the touchscreen with the stylus. You tap where you want Link to go and he goes there, tap an enemy and he attacks.

This game also added a new game mechanic, driving a train around the world map. Rather than giving you full freedom to explore the game world, you draw a path on a map with your stylus and the train follows that path. You can turn at intersections to change your path and fire a cannon at enemies as you truck along. I think this mechanic works to help the game world feel much larger. In previous games, you could walk from one end of the world to another, but in the one, knowing that you have to take the train makes the world seem HUGE.

Another new story element and mechanic added was having Princess Zelda's spirit with you throughout the entire game. She helps move the story along and in some areas, she can control Phantoms, huge walking suits of armor. When she's controlling the Phantom, you draw the path for her to follow so you can control two characters at once.

I think the game is a great new addition to the series and gave me a reason to keep my DS. Great story line and interesting new characters. Also, if you're a fan of the series, you'll know that Link has never had much of a personality. In this game he has a bit more of one. I won't ruin it for you, check it out.

Twilight Princess

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess brought Zelda to the next generation. As Ocarina of Time did, it revolutionized the way that we play Zelda. Where Ocarina brought Zelda into the third dimension, Twilight Princess gave Link a new way to play, the Wii Remote. Using the Wii Remote, your swings translate into sword slashes in the game. The graphics are also greatly improved and the story is great. This has to be my second favorite game of all time. There's so much action and I love the story and the characters and the art style. It doesn't have quite the wow factor that Ocarina of Time had because a lot of the surprises of playing in a 3d world had already happened but they tried some new things and I thought it was great.

Ocarina of Time

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is my favorite game of all time. It has been for about 10 years and I have played through the entire game at least 20 times. What is it about the game that makes it so great? Why is it that I can play the game every year around Christmas time and still enjoy it just as much as I did the first time? Well for starters, It brought a great game series into a new dimension. It had a huge immersive game world that I could explore. It had great music and a great story. I'm inspired every time I play it.

It's truly a timeless classic. I hope one day I can make a game that has the same qualities as this game. I want people who play it to go back and play it over and over again and inspire gamers to want to make games just like this game did for me.

Terrorism In Video Games

Recently a high profile game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, was released. This game contains a very controversial level. It's been getting a lot of flack from the media because of how shockingly violent it is. In this level of the game, you play as a terrorist in an airport mowing down innocent civilians.
Is this really necessary to the game? The game gives you the option of skipping the level without hurting the progress of the story. They being the case, why even have it in the game? I love video games, and some of my favorite games have significant amounts of violence in them, but this is just beyond me...
Video games already get enough bad press for "causing violence." There's no good reason I can think of to put something this controversial in a game, knowing full well that everyone will criticize it. Violent video games are banned in some countries like Australia and this game isn't going to help change that.

If you want to see the scene, you can watch it below, but be warned, it's pretty disturbing...

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Anyone who was a kid in the late 90's knows exactly what I mean when I say "gotta catch 'em all!" POKEMON! The game that everyone loved in elementary school and the show that everyone watched when they got home from school.

Thinking back, it's CRAZY how popular the game was. Everyone I knew as a kid played the game, collected the cards, and watched the show. And the creators must have done something right because they're still making Pokemon games, cards, and shows and they're still popular with kids. My girlfriend's younger brother is OBSESSED with it. It's hilarious because it reminds me of myself as a kid.
Exploring a world and capturing hundreds of creatures and forcing them to battle each other seems cruel but I guess it appeals to kids for some reason.

Fable 2

Fable 2 is an open world fantasy role playing game. That's pretty much a game where you play a character in a fantasy world and you can pretty much do whatever you want in the game. It gives the player a large world to explore and lots of quests to complete and skills to gain. I thought it was a really fun game, but there was one thing I wasn't to crazy about, the lack of story. As a student of Digital storytelling, I feel like narrative can be really important in games and it's something that more and more games are letting go of. There are ways to give the player more freedom without sacrificing narrative and I would love to explore those in my career as a game designer. I'm really interested in experimenting with branching narrative. Sort of making it like a "choose your own adventure" but have the decisions based more upon subtle things rather than flat out asking you "follow the knight or go back."
Don't get me wrong, there were some things I liked about Fable 2, but there were a lot of things that could be improved.

Spore

Even though Spore has been out for a while, I still feel like it's worth talking about. For those of you unfamiliar with Spore, it's a "god-game" where you play as evolution. You start out with a microscopic organism that you can customize and as you progress, your creature gets more options for customization. Eventually, your creature will sprout legs and swim to land. Then you can further evolve your creature to have more parts and customization options. You progress to be able to have more creatures in a pack and eventually, a tribe, and then a civilization.
The game is constantly changing and everything is procedurally generated so the animations and music are generated by the computer rather than created by designers. The thing I love most about Spore is the Creature Creator. You can design the ugliest, most impractical creatures that would never survive in the real world or build the most powerful intimidating killing machine you can imagine. Really the whole game comes down to whatever the player can imagine and that is really cool.