Pokémons Ruby and Sapphire are a bit of a sore spot for my GF and me. The Pokégames got my GF gaming again after ages and ages of dust-gathering Atari-lessness. It's something we do together, coz we can be sickeningly cute that way. The couple that Pokés together stays together... or something. :P

But we couldn't shake the feeling that the Gold and Silver versions stomped all over the newer R & S. The Pokébreeding was fun--and allowed sweet dirrrrty cheating, provided you had a Ditto--and the real-time day/night cycle was arguably more inventive than the one in, say, Animal Crossing. (Pokémon availability during different times of day was great). Sending cash savings back home to Mom for safe-keeping was handy, too.

And, yeah, R & S have 2-on-2 battles, and the different bikes, and the ability to sprint, and those neat-o flutes made out of volcanic ash, and the Pokébeauty contest, but... but... ah, it was just more of the same. Minimum effort to keep the series afloat. I choose you, CashCow. The Pokémon themselves were also pretty lame, design-wise... oh, look, it's a real-life animal with a stupid alliterated name!! Sigh. And to think that the developers couldn't wow us more with such capable hardware as the GBA... the audiovisual aspect was sub-par. I'm still waiting--in vain, I guess--for a Pokégame that looks as bad-ass as Golden Sun. The GBA can do it, there's no doubt in my mind.

My GF would also like to nominate the GBA Lufia. On one hand: multiple character classes, PC's with tools for puzzle-solving and exploration, nice sprites, yay!!! On the other hand: frequent return trips through aggravating dungeons, a painfully linear and moronic story, graphical glitches (such as slowdown and flicker)... for her, it was teh suck. Traded in for credit at her earliest convenience.

I had that one, too. It was pain.

Peace.

-The Absu-, who also owned Eve of Extinction but who paid 50 painful fu**king dollars for it when it was brand-new. B4Rf.

There are two games that I like but should have been in a state of complete ecstasy: Kingdom Hearts and Xenosaga I. Yes, I'll admit to liking the games but it isn't the same as what I was expecting. Both had several flaws in the battle systems that shouldn't have been there.
And I understand they both are ongoing stories but I would like to feel as if I actually did something besides finish the first of who knows how many levels. There was just no feeling of accomplishment in either. My final complaint: is Xenosaga/Xenogears a grand story with in-depth plot or a convoluted load of bullshit?

Thanks,
Satan, Lord of the Underworld

Oh, by the way, why is it that no one can express a negative opinion on certain products anymore? I find it funny when certain games, FFVIII/X, are compared to teenage soap operas. Then again I laugh when someone injures themselves.

I would have to say Skies of Arcadia. A game that could have been great except for the random battles. It's pretty sad when a flaw in the game that could have been fixed in 10 minutes ruins an entire game. Those types of flaws are the worst because they're just so obvious. How is it possible that the testers or the development team could not have seen that there were too many random battles? The number of random battles in that game makes we want to cry because I know it's a good game. I just can't appreciate it because I have to fight a battle every 15 seconds. They're not fun battles either, and because the way the battle system was designed you have to wait before you can use your powerful spells and abilities. I played the Dreamcast version, and I've read that they're bad in the Gamecube version, just not as bad.

Random battles are evil.

Oh, and what's wrong with voting Starcraft over Halo? It's got a great single player and multiplayer game.

-Jetcell

Ey, Chris.

You know, Halo would've been a lot better if, say...

they had level designers. That could find their hands. Now, I can understand the game may have been slightly rushed out the door, but after the fifth chapter, the level design goes to hell. When my friend and I, both working our way through Halo for the first time, came to the repetitive zig-zag corridors and identical rooms of the Assault on the Control Room, we both professed our simmering anger to one another as we plodded through. When we had reached The Library, our faith in God or any higher being that could protect His precious children from wide-spread pain and suffering had left us. It was as if Lucifer himself had channeled his demonic powers through my XBOX, unsealing a conduit through the planes to hungrily eat away at the souls of my companion and I until we found ourselves on the floor in a puddle of our own vomit and plagued by a mysterious rash in our hindquarters.

My other gripe with Halo has less to do with the developers and more with the fanbase. I cannot count the number of times a promising Halo LAN party was destroyed by a digustingly drawn out and exhausting round of battle on Blood Gultch. Seriously. XBOX Live should've come with a patch and content boost for Halo upon its release.

Now, hopefully Bungie has recognized their horrible, horrible mistake and HIRED level designers with the mountains of money that came in from Halo staying at 50 bucks for over a year. And hopefully, upon Halo 2's release, the original Halo will be nothing but a bad memory. Because the person who was responsible for The Library shares company with the wretched souls of Tyco and Enron execs. Lord, have mercy.

Yours,
Scotty V., the lovably Agnostic who, from time to time, takes quite a fancy speaking in the tones of a Southern Baptist Minister.

To the Esteemed Mr. Letters Man,

Okay, I tried to resend my original message, but for some reason I don't think the message went through on my server this time, so I'm resending the resend from my old standby Yahoo account. So if this is the second or third time you've seen my crummy letter, then my apologies. and if you're seeing if for the first time, you still have my apologies. Anyway....

My choice for this topic would be the old PS1 game Jumping Flash. It looks like a humdrum first person shooter until you hit the jump button a few times and find yourself hundreds of feet in the air. It really felt more like a cross between a FPS and a 3-D platformer (kinda how I feel about Metroid Prime oddly enough) and I really wish they would do an update of it today. I think most people ignored it because just by looking at it you would think it was total crap. The graphics were really bland even for first-generation PS1. It looked like they were rendered on an NES or something. The enemy design was laughable (when you were actually able to make out what the enemies were even supposed to be that is). And you controlled a ridiculous looking robotic rabbit. Yeah, I think I would have passed on the game too had I not played a level on a demo disc and gotten hooked on the insane jumping mechanics. I've never seen a game since that had such a feeling of scope. If you could see it, you could somehow jump to it. You could look up and see platforms floating way high in the air that you could barely even see and yet you knew you could get to them. The controls on the ground pretty much sucked though, making it hard to hit anything. But that's okay, since the preferred method of taking out enemies was to continue bouncing off their heads and firing from above them until they exploded into power-up goodness. There were some really great level designs too, even if there was some totally random things thrown in sometimes, like the volcano with the giant frying pan over it containing a frying egg (perhaps they were trying to establish a metaphor about Jumping Flash being your brain on drugs).

Unfortunately the main flaw other than the piss-poor graphics are the stages where it actually does become a humdrum FPS. For some reason they decided it would be a good idea to set a handful of stages in some sort of Egyptian pyramid catacombs or something...

Game Designer: "Well we've got this butt-ugly game where the main draw is that the character can jump so high he can see the entire stage laid out below him and rain hell from above on the enemies."

Sony Executive: "Yeah, that's great and all, but I think that whole jumping bit is overplayed. Go make a bunch of levels that look like a bad Doom rip-off where you have to fight close-up in claustrophobic hallways about three feet high and you don't have room to perform so much as a hop!"

Game Desinger: "But the game is called JUMPING Flash...how can you make a game with the word jumping in the title and not let the player jump?"

Sony Executive: "That sounds like a problem for the marketing department!"

Oh well, I've gone on way too long about a game no one remembers anyway. I'm just saying, if they made another one like it today with some decent graphics and ditched the FPS levels and maybe made the main character a little more interesting, that would be one awesome game.

-Larren, who wishes there was a Target near where he lived so he could get him some $20 Pucelle action...