Christophero Sly

I disliked it, rather strongly. The worst of the Halos in my opinion. To me, it didn't feel like a Halo game. Had some of the trappings, but none of the soul.

Darksiders (PS3) Until further notice, my GOTG.

Superman doesn't get near the recognition it deserves for having what were at the time of its release novel game elements. -Multiple game-world screens -Multiple independent actors -Persistent world -Warp screens -Multiple game objectives (that work cross-purposely!) Among others. Can't think of a game on the 2600 that was more pioneering.

I'm convinced it's mockup. If you look closely, you can see that it shares the same cartridge template as Basic Math. Moreover, the label would look very different if it was an actual Atari release. The artwork for the cart mockup has clearly been lifted directly from the box, same goes for the title text. Oddly enough, even though they appear to be legitimate labels, Flag Capture, Adventure, and Warlords are all mockups as well (well, at least two of them are) because they are each using the same cartridge template that was used for Star Ship and Basic Math. Someone went to a great deal of trouble to create the cartridges on that page.

Ah... didn't notice that. It's a mock-up then. Edit: Basic Math appears to be a mock-up as well.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/19/4716444/how-atari-box-art-turned-8-bit-games-into-virtual-wonderlands RE: Star Ship cart with actual picture label towards bottom of that page. If it's legit, I assume it's an Atari-Corp re-release. I doesn't have the usual copyright line below the illustration, however. Can anyone verify that this thing actually exists or can I assume that it is some sort of mock-up made for the purposes of the article?

Gear of War 2 (360) A huge surprise. I strongly disliked the first Gears of War and expected to feel the same way about this sequel. But pretty much everything I disliked about the first game has been fixed in GoW2. The pacing, staging, and narrative sweep are all vastly improved. The gunplay is more satisfying. There's a much greater variety to the various stages, with some exceptional level design and spectacular set pieces. GoW2 flows in a way that the first one just didn't. Everything feels much more "open" this time around. GoW2 has a "personality" that its predecessor lacked. The gameplay is as shallow as ever, but the mechanics are so dialed-in and the whole thing is so over-the-top that I couldn't help but get swept up in the experience. B+

Trim my modern gaming library by at least half, two-thirds would be even better. Also, take a hard look at my classic gaming collection and make some long-term decisions about what I want to keep and what I can let go.

Mirror's Edge (360) Great concept. Terrible execution. Why guns were ever added to this game is one of gaming's great mysteries. Their presence is so incongruent that they ruin the game, turning it into perhaps the most aggravating example of trial-and-error gameplay I've ever experienced. It's not that I necessarily mind trial-and-error gameplay. When it's a test of skill--fine. But here, it's entirely stochastic. Whether you complete a stage on your first try or end up replaying it a dozen times comes down to one or two random stray bullets. There are far better ways to generate tension and instill a sense of celerity in the player than filling the screen with hot lead. Guns represent such lazy design in this game, and their addition is so indicative of what's gone wrong in gaming this generation. It's a shame; the concept had enormous potential, but all that can really be salvaged here is some strong art and sound direction--the story/plot/acting are also crap and add nothing to the game. I gave a great deal of consideration to whether I felt this was a mediocre game undone by numerous flaws, or a bad game of which I could maybe say a few positive things. In the final analysis, it doesn't matter to me how much potential an idea carries. How unique or beautiful a game looks and sounds, on it's own, is also irrelevant. If it isn't any fun, if playing it is a chore, it's a bad game. D+

More Genesis sports games for the Sega-16 effort. Bass Masters Classic - Simplistic mechanics and shallow gameplay. C- MLBPA Baseball - Completely broken pitching. It's all but impossible to strike out the CPU, and that ruins what is otherwise a decent game. C- Super High Impact - Only have to play one game to beat this one, which took me about 15 minutes, not long enough for me to form an opinion. NA NBA Live '95 - Most consider this the best game of 16-bit basketball. I've never really been a fan. It's just too sloppy for my tastes. B Mike Ditka's Power Football - A weak game with many fundamental flaws, but it's not without its charms. D+ NBA Live '96 - It may be my imagination, but this installment feels more responsive and a bit less sloppy than '95. The AI seems to be improved as well. Still not a big fan of this series though. B

Neverwinter Night 2: Mask of the Betrayer (PC/MAC(WINE)) At least an order of magnitude better than the original Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign. MotB still suffers from the Aurora engine's many flaws--the awful camera being the most grievous. And, as always, attempting to fit a turn-based rule set into a real-time framework, is, was, and always will be ill-advised. Nevertheless, the writing, characters, plot, pacing, encounter designs, dialog, etc. in MotB are vastly improved over the original campaign. MotB could have been one of the greatest cRPG's ever made. Instead I'm left to ponder whether MotB was, ultimately, just as much of a waste of my time as the original campaign was. B-

Sounds like he had a rift with management.

Wow! That's a sea change in my understanding of PAL gaming. I never really understood just how much slower PAL was. That's how folks in Europe had to play Sonic? Oh, man, that's so unfair! How many Genesis/MD games were optimized for PAL? Is Sonic just an outlier, or does that video reflect the comparative differences between PAL and NTSC gaming across the board on the Genesis/MD, and even beyond, I guess?

The Suffering - XBOX Not really a survival-horror game, as I was lead to believe. Supernatural-action game is a better descriptor. Actually, it doesn't make for much of an action game either. Stiff control, cumbersome inventory management, and poor AI firmly root the gameplay in mediocrity. The story is weak, convoluted, and meandering, and the game fails to generate the "atmosphere" and sense of immersion that are essential for games of this nature. The game has a few good ideas, but never capitalizes on them to create anything worthwhile. Mediocrity defined. C

Why is that Sonic game running so slowly in that video? Everything is moving in slow-motion and the music is playing so slow it sounds like I'm listening to it on a walkman with dying batteries. Is the slowdown an artifact of this mod? Has the video been deliberately slowed down for the purpose of demonstrating something? Or is that really the difference between PAL and NTSC?

There are too many sub-forums as it is. This site needs to be condensed, not expanded. It's becoming cumbersome to navigate all this subdivision. For example, I'm interested in discussing all of the modern consoles, but jumping between each of their sub-forums is such a pain that I rarely check anything but the root modern gaming forum. Why do we need separate forums for modern gaming discussions anyway? Those topics don't even generate that much interest here. It would be much more convenient to have just one forum for all modern gaming discussion and one for all non-atari classic gaming discussion.

That's a known variation. I have no idea which one is more common.

Still chipping away at Genesis sports games for the Sega-16 effort. NFL Quarterback Club Just a few quirks keep this one off the A-list of 16-bit football games. B+ David Robinson's Supreme Court A decent game, for what it is. B NBA Showdown '94 Something of a hybrid between the vs series and the Live series. Passing system could use some work, but otherwise respectable. B NBA Action '94 The best 16-bit basketball game I've played. There's a certain realism and authenticity to this game that no other 16-bit basketball game quite captures. A-

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/76656-the-official-heavy-sixer-serial-#-list/ I get this. Interesting...

Indeed. It's sad and disgusting that Todd's reputation is being slandered here without any real evidence to support these accusations. Everything here is just hearsay, misinterpretation and ignorance. I don't doubt Todd's scores. Whatever discrepancies exist are entirely the product of TG's systemic idiocy. TG's (or any other record-holding sites) submissions protocols should never have allowed legacy scores like Todd's to be included in their database without stringent video or eyewitness documentation. In doing so, they created a double-standard that was bound to eventually lead to these sorts of allegations. It's a shame that Todd is the one now suffering the consequences. After all the revelations and soap operas that have emerged from TG over the years, it's a wonder that anyone still considers them a legitimate repository of video game records. A few years ago, I got involved in the attempt to get them to make a differentiation between scores set on emulators and those set on original hardware. It was like pulling teeth. The imperious attitudes, the sweeping-under-the-rug, and the lack--the fear--of transparency that permeated that site were astonishing things to behold. And now I learn that they're charging money to verify scores? Truly pathetic. I doubt your time because it's simply not possible. The game is coded in such a way that it does not produce scores with .x9 second fractionals. The only legitimate times you can earn are x.x1, x.x4, and x.x7, and x.x8. So you didn't get that score either. So, yeah... I've been chasing Todd's Dragster record for a decade. The closest I, or anyone else, have gotten is 5.61. But I have a pretty good idea of how Todd got 5.51, and Thomas's hack shows that even lower scores are possible. It's just a matter of perfect execution, something Todd has managed, and the rest of us have not.

F-1 World Grand Prix - Still haven't played an F1 game I've enjoyed as much as this one. World Driver Championship - Great game, but it takes a while to get used to the "driving-a-bar-of-soap" physics and the soundtrack is awful; make sure you turn it off in the options. I also enjoyed Top Gear Rally. Really impressive physics in that one. Didn't much care for the rest of the N64's library, however. Sold my collection years ago.

World Series Baseball '96 - Genesis The hitting has been toned down a bit, but this is essentially the same game as World Series Baseball '95, which isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately for me, having spent a fair amount of time with the series now, I've come to understand the nuances of pitching to a degree that the game(and likely the series) is pretty much broken for me. A good game in it's own right, but I believe that sequels like this should make improvements to the formula, and this game doesn't. B+ Planescape: Torment - PC (Mac) The writing is well above average, but I didn't find the story to be all that compelling, and the plot itself, in typical Obsidian fashion, is too convoluted for it's own good. Every other RPG element in the game is substandard, especially the boring and nearly non-existent combat. The game's lengthy first act includes some of the most tedious and blatant fetch-questing I've ever endured. I wouldn't fault anyone who abandoned this game before the halfway mark. Planescape: Torment is the most story-driven RPG I've ever played. The story elements are so predominating that I'm not sure why Obsidian even chose to make the game an RPG. Frankly, it would have been better off as a point-and-click adventure or somesuch. On balance, I enjoyed the game enough to give it a B, but I don't subscribe at all to the prevalent hyperbolic sentiment that this is the greatest CRPG ever made.

More Genesis sports games. World Series Baseball '95 - A great improvement over the original installment. The controls are still a bit sketchy and the presentation could use a few more refinements, but the batting, pitching, and statistical underpinnings of WSB '95 are supremely satisfying. This is probably my favorite baseball game of all time. A- R.B.I. '94 - Fun enough, but top-tier pitchers break the game--you can easily throw perfect no-hitters against the CPU. An option to jump straight to the playoffs would have been nice. C- John Madden Football - The passing system saw noticeable refinement in the immediate sequel (Madden '92), but it's still a bit unwieldy here. Regardless, a remarkably good football game, especially for its time. B NFL '95 - Stiff and slow. The AI is crippled. It's nearly impossible to have success passing the ball. It's ridiculously difficult to tackle the opposing ball carriers--they bounce off your defenders like pinballs. Not quite broken, but thoroughly mediocre. C-

I hate it when useful sites like this fix something that isn't broken. The new layout is just awful. And all that ad space just makes the site look cheap and, frankly, unprofessional.

I couldn't disagree more with this sentiment. Makes me ill, to tell you the truth. This mentality of dumbing-down gameplay is already too pervasive in modern game design. I want to play games, challenging games, not watch movies. Now, don't get me wrong; a good story is important, and something that I appreciate. I'm not dismissing story at all. But skipping gameplay in order to just get on with the cutscenes!? I mean, what are we even talking about here? Moreover, suggesting that common ground exists between those people who don't finish their games and those people (like myself) who despise DRM is thoroughly fallacious reasoning. Good, I say. We don't need anymore sequels! The fact that this is a "sequel-driven" industry is what's crippling this industry.