I Bring Nothing to the Table

You’re playing through an RPG. You’ve gained five levels, found some sweet equipment drops, minimized the use of your precious items, and then it happens. You come up against a behemoth of a monster. Your party is decimated, your progress lost, your controller tossed through the screen.

Does this even begin to sound familiar to anyone? It’s like modern gaming, in an effort to bring in an even broader audience, has started to dumb down our video game experience. Think back to the last four, at the very least, Final Fantasy games (not counting XI). Aside from side quest bosses who are geared to be a challenge, how often did you even find yourself remotely challenged in these games? I honestly don’t think I worried much about save points in any of these games (aside from when I was hunting the harder mobs in XII) at all. There was none of that between-save-point stress and worry that a game with any difficulty might throw at me. I just go on through the game, breezing through the fights and find myself at the final boss, sometimes taking more than one try to kill him, but, more often than not, just breezing through him too.

It’s not just RPGs either. Think back to Mario Galaxy. The only challenge in that game came from the green stars where the developers were given free range to punish players into some of the toughest, most fun challenges possible. Even The Legend of Zelda isn’t safe. The last two console installments, The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, were among the easiest games I have ever played. Sure, their stories were epic and fun, but the bosses were jokes compared to past Zelda games. They dealt close to no heart damage, they had hyper-predictable patterns, and they were just plain not challenging. I don’t think that I’ve evolved much in skill as a gamer since about the sixth grade and I definitely remember more challenge in both Link’s Awakening and A Link to the Past when I played them (late to the game, I know).

There is hope. Mistwalker’s latest RPG for the Xbox 360, Lost Odyssey, will actually make you hope that a save point is imminent. The enemies will brutalize you if you mess up. It seems odd that I’m actually hoping for a game to punish me for screwing up or not leveling up, but I just can’t take a game that doesn’t even challenge me in the slightest. I consume games mainly for story, this is true, but I don’t want the story-telling to come so easily that I might as well be watching a movie or reading a book. It can get frustrating when a game is difficult because it’s broken or the computer cheats :cough: Mario Kart Wii :cough:, but it’s also tremendously satisfying to spend an hour bashing your head against the wall trying to defeat a boss only to finally get it down and win with just a sliver of health left.

This is why I look forward to the day when I will be able to devote more time to Persona 3: FES. The short time I spent with the game already almost beat me in a random encounter and I’m sure that an actual boss will own me several times. I fully believe that a game should punish you for making a mistake and I already know from experience that Persona will wail on me for being an idiot.

There’s certainly a market for casual games and casual gamers out there, one only needs to look to the Wii to see that fact with obvious clarity, but surely it wouldn’t be too difficult for developers to go out and actually make a game tough for players. The inclusion of difficulty levels, even with the fact that it means more work, will satisfy me. Here’s hoping that we see harder games in the future.

SPOILER ALERT: This review may cover plot points that will spoil MGS3.

“Whoever wins, the battle does not end. The loser is set free from the battlefield, while the winner must remain there. And the survivor will live out his life as the warrior until the day he dies.”

-Big Boss to Solid Snake

The Story

Metal Gear’s story completely revolves around the subjects of loyalty and betrayal. From the absolute first game for the MGX all the way to Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake is always manipulated and even betrayed by the very people he has put his trust in. MGS 3 explores what is probably not the first betrayal in the MG canon, but the first important one. Kojima hops into his way-back machine to take us to 1964, the height of the Cold War. Our protagonist, the man who started it all, the man who will become Big Boss, the man who is the genetic father to Solid, Liquid, and Solidus, and the man who first takes the codename (Naked) Snake. It turns out that the Cuban Missile Crisis was not really averted at all by removing missiles from Turkey. No, it was a direct result of the US returning a valuable weapon’s scientist to the USSR. Well guess what, the US wants Sokolov back and so begins the Virtuous Mission.

Naked Snake is air dropped into the heart of the Soviet jungle and instructed to keep a low profile as he recovers Sokolov. On his support squad are Major Zero, the movie-loving Para-Medic, and last, we have Snake’s mentor, The Boss. If you’ve been reading this review at all, you can probably guess what happens to Snake as he begins his escape from Russia with Sokolov. The Boss betrays Snake, her team, the Cobra Unit, abducts Sokolov, and Snake is hurled off a bridge with a broken arm by The Boss where he is eventually recovered by US forces and taken home.

On their way out, the main antagonist, Colonel Volgin, nukes the former research facility that Sokolov was working at using missiles The Boss gave him as goodwill gifts, steals the Shagohad super weapon, and flees with Sokolov, the Cobra Unit, and Ocelot. Snake is debriefed by Major Zero a week later. Both Snake and the Major are in danger of being executed for treason. Khrushchev is not happy about the nuke going off and the US government does not believe that Snake was not involved with the defection of The Boss, his former mentor. Major Zero, Snake, and Para-Medic have one last chance: Snake must infiltrate Soviet Russia yet again, rescue Sokolov, destroy the Shagohad, kill Colonel Volgin, and, to prove his loyalty, kill The Boss. Because The Boss leads the elite Cobra Unit, the mission is given the name Snake Eater and the main game begins.

In many ways, this story is truly the masterpiece of MGS to date. Big Boss was a character born out of the 8-bit days, so his personality and his motivations seem very one-dimensional to anyone who remembers Metal Gear. Naked Snake’s (the future Big Boss) betrayal at the hands of The Boss is absolutely meant to parallel Solid Snakes betrayal at the hands of Big Boss and shows the unfortunate and inevitable chain of events that plagues every protagonist of Metal Gear games. Naked, Solid, even Raiden have all had to murder their mentors and masters as a final test to prove their worth. The final battle between Snake and The Boss gave me chills, I could not believe how well-acted and well-put together it was. MGS3’s ending is also amazing. You honestly have no soul if the end of this game, from at least the fight with The Boss onwards does not touch you in some way.

“I raised you. I loved you. I’ve given you weapons, taught you techniques, endowed you with knowledge. There is nothing more for me to give you. All that’s left for you to take is my life, by your own hand. One must die and one must live. No victory, no defeat. The survivor will carry on the fight. It is our destiny… The one who survives will inherit the title of Boss. And the one who inherits the title of Boss will face an existence of endless battle.”

-The Boss to Naked Snake

Gameplay

If you thought MGS2 had its gameplay down to a science, wait until you boot up Metal Gear Solid 3. The camera, I think, should be the first things we talk about. MGS and MGS2 featured fixed cameras that restricted your view to preset, dynamic camera angles (less dymanic, more static in MGS) that oftentimes concealed guards, but was assisted by the super-accurate radar, complete with vision cones. Well Metal Gear Solid 3 takes place in 1964. There are no nanomachines or soliton radars to show you where all the enemies are. You have sonar and a motion detector. One makes an audible beep, the other is only useful when enemies are moving. Both can also pick up wildlife. If you haven’t yet figured this out, MGS3 takes out a large degree of the guard stupidity where you would be able to tell exactly how far a guard could see based on his vision cone. It’s another added bit of realism that is quite difficult to get used to at first, but eventually really adds to the game as it starts to feel like less of a game.

On the topic of realism…Snake now has a stamina bar that determines how well he can aim, how long he can hang, and will, I believe, begin to drain his life bar if fully depleted. Stamina is recovered by eating the food scattered throughout the jungle, from snakes to frogs to mushrooms to flying squirrels and more. These animals can be shot dead (or knifed dead, exploded dead, punched dead, etc.) and stored in that way or tranquilized and stored in cages to keep fresh or even use as weapons (ie: throwing a poisonous snake at a guard to freak him out and/or poison him) Food can spoil and actually give Snake indigestion, which brings us to our next point. Snake’s health bar can be artificially depleted through injury. Bullet wounds, cuts and gashes, broken bones, poisonous animals, leeches, and indigestion can all afflict Snake and he must either repair his maladies in the CURE menu or you can also just save and quit and let time do the healing for you.

Even more controversial than the stamina meter is the camouflage system. At any given moment in time, Snake has a percentage bar in the top right corner telling the player how well Snake is blending in with his surroundings. High camo ratings means the enemy cannot see you, even if you are on the floor right in front of him. Of course, if he runs right up next to you and you’re not 100% camo-ed (which is impossible with included camo) you will be spotted. It doesn’t sound all that bad at first pass, but since camo options are handled in the pause menu, it amounts to a whole lot of pausing and unpausing just to swap face paints or camo suits. The new system does help add to the realism and make for smarter guards, but your willingness to suspend disbelief can be tested when, like I said, a guard is standing right next to you, but your forest colored pants are preventing him from seeing you.

The same basic weapons and accessories/items are included, but with a 1960s twist. There are no laser sights and there is no C4, but you get dynamite instead. Included is a new “Backpack” system, where Snake can only hold eight items and eight weapons accessible from the in-game menu, each with individual weights. The more weight he’s carrying at a given moment, the faster his stamina depletes. Items and weapons are swapped using an option in the pause menu.

Snake also still has the option to go through the entire game without specifically killing one human being through his own actions (mostly). As you all know, this is one of my favorite features of the Metal Gear series and it actually made me start GTA IV this week wondering if I could get by without killing anyone (you can’t).

One last word on the setting. MGS has typically had Snake infiltrating modern facilities and bases, not traipsing through the jungle, which I feel is a bit weaker of a locale. Hiding in the grass is cool and all, but I just love sneaking through futuristic settings instead of through the jungle, where I get bit by leeches and have to burn them off with a cigar. MGS4 should include a nice mix of both the more open jungle environments and the typical closed MGS locations, which should be a nice change of pace.

“Liquid and Solid hunted down Big Boss, trying to sever the tie that bound them to him. Unless you kill me and face your past, Jack, you will never escape. You’ll stay in the endless loop — your own double helix.”

-Solidus Snake to Raiden

Graphics

As mentioned before, MGS3 instead deals with a jungle setting, which means that we get a nice green, damp, jungle-y look. The color is a bit washed out on my PS3, but I’m wiling to forget that. The character models all look superb and only showed their last-gen limitations sparingly. This is one of the best looking games on the PS2 though, it’s not to be missed.

“You’re a soldier! Finish your mission! Prove your loyalty!”

-The Boss to Naked Snake

Sound

Jungle sounds! Birds, frogs, snakes, etc. They all sound about right. The strength of MGS3 lies in its superb soundtrack. If you ever go to my last.fm page, you may have noticed that I very recently received about six CDs worth of Metal Gear Solid soundtracks, which I am loving to death. The music in this game continually wows me as I listen to it.

The voice acting in this game continues to hold up to the high levels of quality one would expect. Snake, still voiced by David Hayter, is still the man and his team is still funny, if not just a wee bit less interesting this time around. There are still funny moments though:

“Sigint: Uh, Snake… What are you doing?

Snake: I’m in a box.

Sigint: A cardboard box? Why are you…?

Snake: I dunno. I was just looking at it and I suddenly got this urge to get inside. No, not just an urge - more than that. It was my destiny to be here; in the box.

Sigint: Destiny…?

Snake: Yeah. And then when I put it on, I suddenly got this feeling of inner peace. I can’t put it into words. I feel… safe. Like this is where I was meant to be. Like I’d found the key to true happiness.

Sigint: …

Snake: Does any of that make sense?

Sigint: Not even a little.

Snake: You should come inside the box… Then you’ll know what I mean.

Sigint: Man, I don’t wanna know what you mean! Between you and Para-Medic, is everyone but me that is hooked up with the Major strange!?

Snake: …

Sigint: Yeah, well, anyway, I suppose even that dumbass box might make a decent disguise if you wear it inside a building.”

Overall

I’m still absolutely in love with the Metal Gear Solid series, even after three games. The characteristic humor is still there (when you die you get a message that fades into “Time Paradox.” this message can also be prompted by killing Ocelot, a character in the later (chronologically) MGS games), the gameplay is still 100% superb, and the stories all get better with each game. I’m starting to approach a bit of a bittersweet point with MGS4, since I’ve heard it’s the pinnacle of the series, but I don’t want it all to end. Should you play Metal Gear Solid 3? Absolutely.

“There’s only room for one Boss… and one Snake…”

-The Boss to Naked Snake

If any of you clicked over to Leigh’s post at Sexy Videogameland about obsessively completing games, then you already know where I’m about to go with this post. If you didn’t, here’s yet another link.

Call it a personality disorder, but I have an obsessive need to unlock the full 100% potential for video games that I enjoy. I know what you’re thinking, if he’s gotta include the “enjoy” caveat, it’s not really obsessive then, is it? Let me tell you, that caveat did not come easily. It took years of mental conditioning to be able to realize “Hey, I want to play too many other games to go at this pace on such a crummy game…” Once I did finally realize that forcing myself to 100% complete a game that, honestly, wasn’t worth it, I’m was able to log off of Gamefaqs and get onto another game that will eat up my time. You see, since I’m a university student, I do have more time to play than 9-5ers, but I don’t have as much time as when I was in high school because of classes, exams, homework, and trying to maintain a social life (kids, stay away from World of Warcraft).

Where do I draw the line? Mainly wherever it’s going to just take too much time to be worth it. I loved Final Fantasy X, but when the game asked me to dodge lightning something like one hundred times in a row to get an ultimate weapon, I said screw it. My party was tough enough that I wouldn’t need that one ultimate weapon just to kill Sin. If it wasn’t, I would train up and make do. There were other, less time-consumingly stupid sidequests that I could go waste my time on.

The advent of the Gamerscore on Xbox Live! has brought up some really interesting issues too. Before achievement points and worrying about increasing my Gamerscore (I know it’s low, but I don’t have the time to be a real achievement point whore), I honestly never worried about fully completing an action game or a music game. I’ll tell you which achievements I can resist though - Guitar Hero 3’s asininely stupid ones like playing through the career mode on a controller instead of the guitar (really? play through on my controller for ONLY 15 achievement points), winning 500 matches (grind, anyone?), or even playing through a song on expert with the sound settings turned down (no sound in a MUSIC GAME?). The Rock Band achievements are much less idiotic. Fully completing cities, completing career modes, achieving milestones in the World Tour mode, these are all acceptable to me.

My first Xbox 360 JRPG introduced a new dastardly trick to entice me to get full completes on games that don’t deserve it. Lost Odyssey, mind you, is not one of them, but my progress to the end of the game has been halted by the achievement point list that includes optional bosses and leveling up all the characters in my team. It’s definitely brilliant because those side quests, in other RPGs, usually include neat story details about the characters that you wouldn’t see otherwise, they give you sweet weapons and armor, and they also satisfy my need to fully complete an RPG that I love.

Just because I’m able to resist these urges more and more nowadays doesn’t mean I’m fully out of the woods. I was trying to burn through MGS and MGS2 to complete the series before MGS4’s launch in June, but now that I’m on MGS3 and June’s far away, I’ve taken it upon myself to hit up Gamefaqs to find out where all the Kerotans (strange little frog thingies that you have to shoot) are and all the different types of food so that I can get a whole bunch of sweet bonuses after I complete the game. Persona 3: FES launches today, but will be in Gamestop waiting for me tomorrow, and I have no idea what I’m gonna do about all the Social Links. After reading Leigh’s article, I convinced myself that I should just play the game naturally, but then I went and watched the 1UP show and learned that the Social Links that you max out contribute to your ending. How could I not try to max them out and get the best possible ending now?

I will admit that part of my completionist nature comes from the fact that I have a lot of games on my plate and I want to get to them all. If I can beat them all 100% the first time through, then I don’t have to play them again to see the stuff that I missed. People usually ask me about this when they see me browsing Gamefaqs or another walkthrough when playing a video game, either asking “Why don’t you just finish the game if you can?” or “Why are you looking at the guide? Why don’t you figure it out yourself?”

The answer to both has to do with enjoying the storylines of games oftentimes a lot more than the gameplay. If it’s a good game, I want to see as much of it as possible, so I bother with the sidequests to learn more about the characters. Anyone who has ever wandered through the Phoenix Cave in Final Fantasy VI knows how incredibly moving (maybe this is just me) it is to see Locke passionately search for the one thing he has heard can save Rachel. Most people, I like to think, were moved when (SPOILER ALERT) the Phoenix failed to revive Rachel (/SPOILER ALERT). It’s little touches like this that go to flesh out just why Locke is so committed to protecting Terra and Celes once he meets each woman.

If it’s a bad game, heck, I just want to be done. I don’t care about figuring out the strategy to kill a poorly designed boss with a character I don’t give a damn about. I don’t care about figuring out the proper path through a bland Zelda-ripoff temple. It’s just not satisfying since by that point I’m playing the game only because I like to finish what I start.

Adventure games are the exception to this. I oftentimes love the game, I’m just not willing to try and figure out how I’m supposed to use the chicken with the tree to save the monkey in the swamp. The game type just asks you to think too much like the designer to complete mentally unnatural and unintuitive tasks. Yahtzee makes some good points about Adventure game design in his review of Zachkand Wiki that I totally agree with.

In the end, I guess I’m not that bad about obsessively completing a game, but when the design is just so well-done as to encourage the player to do it, I honestly can’t resist. When you have a screen full of little glass windows to smash open for Super Smash Brothers Brawl, who can resist the urge to just go for the unlockables? Those trophies and stickers are also so cool…

SPOILER ALERT: This review may cover plot points that will spoil MGS2.

The Story

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty picks up several years after the first MGS. Snake is still retired from FOXHOUND, but he is a part of the anti-Metal Gear proliferation group Philanthropy with Otacon. Snake and Otacon actively collect intel and information on Metal Gears and release them throughout the world to keep the global balance of power even and it’s rumored that they even destroy some Metal Gear models outright. This is where you come in, as Snake in the “Tanker Chapter.” It’s also where the shit hits the fan. Snake’s mission is disrupted by the arrival of Ocelot Revolver, one of the bosses from MGS and a former member of FOXHOUND, only his hand has been re-attached…or has it? He periodically lapses into another voice and mental state where he sounds and acts like Liquid Snake, Solid Snake’s “brother” (they are both clones of Big Boss). As you might be able to guess, the routine mission becomes anything but. Ocelot steals the Metal Gear RAY, destroys the tanker, and sinks Solid Snake to the bottom of the ocean.

The “Plant Chapter” begins with an operative infiltrating aquatically, strangely familiar to Snake’s entrance in MGS. The scuba mask comes off…Who the heck is this guy? Why is Jack, codenamed Raiden, working with the Colonel from MGS? Who is he? What is going on at this water treatment plant where the President of the United States has been kidnapped? MGS2 succeeds on so many levels beyond MGS in its story, it’s hard to even quantify how much better it is. The story is far more epic, the plot twists way stranger, and the final outcome more surprising than ANYONE could have guessed. Many a critic has hated on what seems like a convoluted story, but a little concentration and patience for the long cutscenes reveals a game that does, in fact, make sense. MGS2 surpasses its ancestry in every way on this one.

Of particular note is, and this is way spoilerific, but also way awesome, occurs when the Colonel begins acting VERY erratically. I know about this plot point before I started playing it and it still gave the the proverbial willies. Be sure to watch the clip to get the full effect, but the Colonel, in typical MGS fashion, seriously breaks the fourth wall telling you to turn off the game, referencing the NES Metal Gear games, repeating lines from MGS, showing footage from other games, etc. This is all during a part of the game where Raiden has been stripped of his equipment and clothing, so he’s running around the base buck naked, holding his hands over his crotch. Consequently, he cannot perform any actions which would require him to not be covering his naughty bits.

Gameplay

After playing MGS2, I’ve concluded that third person, top-down cameras are what made the original MGS so damn hard to me. Being able to zoom in and fire in first person mode in MGS2 combined with the other camera tweaks makes for a MUCH smoother experience. Stealth is still absolutely the name of the game in MGS2 and the new camera system does its best to fully revitalize the old stealth system.

The guards are no longer fully restricted to their cones of vision, making them much less stupid. Guards now have radios and, once you are spotted, have to call in for support before the entire facility is on alert. This allows you to be spotted, run up to a guard, knock him out, and prevent his transmission. Unfortunately, if a guard even turns on his radio, knocking him out will still not keep you in the clear. A transmission will come through the walkie-talkie saying “What’s going on? Where are you? Send support to X location” and then the facility will be crawling with guards looking for you. On the plus side, knocking out the guard bought you some time to hide. On the downside…you’re gonna be stuck hiding from guards for somewhere around two to two and a half minutes. I usually spent this time not even paying attention to the game, doing something…anything else. I can understand the realism of an added state of alertness, but it’s still boring. In the end, I forgive them for trying to make it more realistic. I mean…what kind of facility is really gonna just be chill three minutes after some guard got knocked out or killed? It’s a miracle we even get that.

Other sweet guard behaviors: You can leave dirty magazines around to distract them. If they spot one, they’ll just chill out and read the magazine for a bit. Good for sneaking around a guard’s patrol route. Killing a guard is bad news, if another guard spots a guard corpse, he will immediately alert all guards, so what can you do? Kill a guard, stuff him in a locker. Insta-safe. This actually brings me to my next point: you don’t have to kill in MGS2.

For a mission that relied so heavily on stealth, MGS really had a lot of moments where you were forced to kill guards to progress. MGS2 dispenses with that notion by offering Snake and Raiden (more on Raiden later) a tranquilizer pistol and sniper rifle (for the sniping parts). Bosses no longer solely have health meters, they also have stamina meters that can be depleted with tranquilizer darts. It really adds another dimension to the game when you decide to play it as a pacifist (as I did…kind of…more on that later) and I thoroughly enjoyed that. It can also make the game really hard. There’s one particular boss battle where a lack of explosive force or automatic gunfire really handicaps you to the extreme.

As I said before, you have to play about 80% of the game as Raiden. He can do everything Snake can, but he’s just so uncool compared to Snake. If you reference that MGS4 teaser, you’ll spot the white-haired, delicate flower of a protagonist fighting with Snake for the main character role in MGS4. Hideo Kojima readily admits that Raiden was created to be a pretty boy just to appeal to female gamers, which is a bit obnoxious…I do understand his real rationale though, that Snake is a pro and to have to treat Snake as a rookie again wouldn’t make too much sense. I take offense to this many times in sequels where it doesn’t make sense that, say, Samus Aran, all-around bad ass, has forgotten how to use her blaster. It does also allow for a really sweet story that I’m sure Kojima was quite proud of himself for coming up with.

So if Raiden plays the same as Snake, what’s there to complain about? In the last hour of gameplay, you are randomly given a High-Frequency sword to tool around with. Swordsmanship is awkwardly assigned to the right analog stick, which basically results in me getting kicked in the face by anyone with a sword and kicked in the face and shot by anyone with a gun. You can magically block bullets with it, which is nice. You’re also able to flip the sword to use the dull edge to stun enemies, to continue your kill-less streak, but, and I suppose this is realistic, stabs are still killing blows and, worse still, Raiden doesn’t always turn the blade around when he brings it back in the opposite direction, resulting in the disembowelment of enemies on some of his random combo slashes. Imagine how peeved I was to end up with four kills at the end of the game because of this…

Graphics

Holy cow. MGS and MGS2 are like night and day to each other. While MGS2 is not going to raise many eyebrows nowadays, I think it still looks stupendous. Textures were good, animations weren’t clunky or awkward, characters had moving lips and eyes…It’s really a very pretty game.

Sound

No accents on your team in this one, which is sad, but otherwise the sound is great. None of the music really stands out, but none of it annoys me either. I’d call it a success.

Overall

MGS2 is another one of those games that you absolutely must play if you consider yourself a connoisseur of video games. I’ve played tons of stealth missions in video games both older and younger than MGS2 and I cannot think of one that comes even close to this in getting it right. Having the option to completely NOT KILL ANYONE really makes MGS2 stand out for me (and becomes rather important for MGS3) for those times where I don’t want to just mindlessly kill and maim everyone I come across. The improvements over MGS push it into absolute must play status and I cannot recommend MGS2 (Substance, the remake of Sons of Liberty with added stuff) enough.

Enjoy this commercial for the Xbox version of MGS2: Substance

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

About two weeks ago baseball season began and I dusted off my copy of MLB Power Pros to enjoy what was probably my favorite Nintendo release of last year. For those of you who don’t know, MLB Power Pros is the first US localization of the Japanese Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū series that has been releasing since 1994 on the Super Famicom. Why hasn’t this game showed up stateside until September of last year? Take a look at this video:

This super deformed style of person (called a Powapuro-kun in Japan) and the create-a-player mode (essentially a Japanese dating sim style game) combined to make this game “too Japanese,” even once the series began getting MLB licensing and stopped featuring only Nipponese Professional Baseball League players and teams.

So this game finally showed up on this side of the Pacific and it was amazing, but the fan-community, myself included, worried incessantly about whether or not the sales would be enough to carry the game to a sequel. Then a miracle happened. Amazon dropped the price by some indeterminate amount, baseball season started, MLB 2k8 for Wii and PS2 was mediocre, and MLB PP managed to land near the top of the sales charts at the end of March or early April. I decided to check out the official 2k Games forums and saw the usual “Will there be a sequel thread,” but this thread had an forum administrator telling us that more info would be forthcoming. Not too long ago, news on that thread hit that 2k Games was looking at a July release date. All I can say is: I can’t wait. They can count 100% on a purchase from me.

Unless you’re a hardcore Japanophile JRPG consumer, chances are you’ve never heard of the Shin Megami Tensei series. It’s no Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, but the game does have prominence in the Japanese market as a super complex and morally intense RPG series with incredibly deep storytelling.

One of the many spin-off series, Persona, has been appearing in America since its inception, but in heavily edited forms. Persona 1 had character ethnicities changed, stupid translation, etc. Persona 2 came out in two games, but only one made it stateside. Speculation as to why ranges from a homosexual character to the fact that one of the enemies is a resurrected Hitler with his unholy battalion.

Then Persona 3 hit Japan with the force of a bullet to the brain. No, seriously. The way to execute summons in this game, the source of the main characters powers, can only be achieved only by shooting yourself in the head with what appears to be a handgun (they’re called evokers). This comprises the dungeon crawling part of the game, but the rest is essentially a Japanese high school/dating sim (wow, two in one post!). Naturally, US Shin Megami Tensei fans were immediately skeptical about a US localization. Somehow, we did get a version in the states with decently high review scores, but the sales were low because a special edition came out in Japan and US buyers didn’t want to get nickeled and dimed buying the same game twice.

Meet Persona 3: FES. It’s the full special edition of Persona 3, complete with an extra 30 hour long epilogue (that’s almost a completely new game) for only $29.99 on the PS2. It’s got sweet anime cutscenes (see above), a quick, innovative, but hard battle system, and a killer story worth experiencing. I’m absolutely picking this up 22 April.

Last, and I know I’m way late to the game, but given the proximity of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and my buddy Lee’s recommendations, I picked up Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection. I’m still on the first game, Metal Gear Solid, and I have to say I’m really enjoying it. Hideo Kojima weaves a great tale complete with tons of great 4th wall breaking humor and a crass, smoking, womanizing protagonist who is just plain great to play as. This doesn’t even begin to account for the supporting characters, which consist of a Chinese woman who spouts proverbs, an otaku scientist, villains who do awesome things like read your memory card mid-battle to prove they’re psychic, and many more great characters. If you’ve lived under a rock as I have for all these years and you have either a backwards compatible PS3, PS2, or at least both a PS2 (non-backwards compatible) and PSX, go back and play this game. It’s way dated, but it’s awesome.