The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The Shivering Isles.

Just when I thought I was out ... they pull me back in. That's right, the tired and overused line from The Godfather III. Bite me. I had put one-hundred thirty-seven hours and change into Oblivion last March and April. And now it's a year later and I'm once again donning my character and finding myself back in the game with the expansion pack The Shivering Isles. The expansion is available through Xbox Live Marketplace and it will run you 2,400 Microsoft Points. Is it worth the $30 and roughly one gigabyte worth of hard drive space? If you liked Oblivion, then the answer is a resounding yes. If you didn't, well, then the answer is a resounding no. Shivering Isles is an expansion that doesn't mix things up. It's more of the same. Oh, they offer new areas complete with new towns and non-player characters replete with their own new quests for you to complete. They offer new armor and weapons and items. You get new dungeons with new puzzles and traps. You get new creatures to fight and loot. The land mass of Shivering Isles makes up roughly twenty-five percent of Oblivion's world. So you're getting a sizable adventure. You're just not getting anything new. If you thought anything broken about Oblivion, nothing has been fixed here. If you loved Oblivion, then you're getting more to love with Shivering Isles. Two things have stood out in my travels of the Shivering Isles. The graphics and the art direction are fabulous. The world of the Shivering Isles is gorgeous. Especially the night sky of the lands of mania. It's a wonderfully and impossibly filled sky of glowing purples and blues and yellow. It's entirely fantastical. It's about as far away from realism as possible. And it's a breath of fresh air for it. The other thing that's stood out is the character of Sheogorath who happens to be the God of the realm and the one who puts you on your quest. He's entirely insane and is wonderfully handled and voiced. He walks the fine line rather well. He's out there enough to get the job done without going too far over the top. Within the story, you're in his realm. He wants your help in ridding the Shivering Isles of what's called the Greymarch. The Shivering Isles reflect its creator in Sheogorath. The Shivering Isles are split into the lands of mania and dementia. Everything and everyone in them are insane. They're either manic, or demented. The lands of mania are bright and colorful and are right at home within Alice and Wonderland. The lands of dementia are dark and depressed and are right at home within some horrific fairy-tale. It's very cool concept that seems to have been handled perfectly. I've been spending my time just doing side quests and exploring. It's time to start in on the main quest proper. Hopefully it'll maintain the quality level exhibited thus far.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

The much anticipated Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has come and gone on Xbox Live Arcade. I have completed the game and have unlocked all of the game's achievements.  Symphony of the Night is the game that reinvigorated the Castlevania series. It's the one that rescued the series from itself. The pure action titles of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras have been replaced with the more action RPG like Metroid style gameplay. You character can now level up and become stronger. He has weapons and armor and items to deal with. He's no longer on a predetermined path and the well defined stages have been replaced with a sprawling castle that limits your movement based on your abilities. Find whatever it is you need that enables you to advance. The new format allows for hidden rooms and secrets aplenty. The items and weapons and armor allow you to find a play style that more suits your preference by experimenting with combinations. The real star of the show is the attention to detail. The art style in the creatures and the backgrounds both are lush. They're both quite varied. There are just little extra details everywhere you look. The bosses are fun and plentiful. The game's challenge is much easier than I remembered it. It's an all around great game. A classic. In coming to the Xbox 360 they've improved the graphics. The graphic update is much appreciated as the original game hasn't aged all that well. It's just tough to look at those early 32-bit game graphics on a technical level. The original version is available as an option for the purists. The game's original voices are left untouched. The game has without a doubt the worst voice acting ever used in a game. It's just awful. This provides for a game that so unintentionally cheesy that it somehow becomes charming in and of itself. The game's FMV segments have been removed. They've added achievements of course. Two are particularly noteworthy. The Seeker achievement is for completing the game with 200.6% of the castle explored. And the Belmont's Revenge achievement is for completing the inverted castle as Richter. Both of these tasks I couldn't be bothered to do originally ten years ago on the PlayStation. Those achievements really do add some incentive and replay value. I don't think I would have bothered this time around without them. It's interesting to note that most of the people on my friend's list have bought the game. And most of those peoplestill own the original PlayStation version. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a great game and hopefully the sales will be such as to start a trend in porting worthy Saturn and PlayStation era games to Xbox Live Arcade. I'm giving Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the X360 a 9.

Virtual Console -- Adding to the Virtual Pile.

It's another Virtual Monday. I've come to heavily anticipate Monday ever since it became virtual. Not quite to the level of a little kid on Christmas morning rushing down the stairs to see what's there, but almost. Monday is the day Nintendo releases new Virtual Console games on the Wii Shop Channel. It's now become ritual to fire up the Wii on Mondays to check the new goods in hopes of seeing some shining gem or believed long lost opportunity has been put up on the channel. The Wii has essentially been out four months. In that time I've purchased eleven Virtual Console games. I've played through one of those titles. I finally got around to playing through Bonk's Adventure the other day. It's still as cool and fun as I've remembered it. And I'm currently playing through Kirby's Adventure. So far the Virtual Console games I've been buying fall under four categories. The most common being games I used to own but sold like Alien Crush, Bonk's Adventure, Dungeon Explorer, Military Madness, R-Type, Splatterhouse, and Vigilante. Probably the most stupid thing I've ever done was in selling my 8-bit systems and games as well as those of the Turbo Graffix. The second category would be games I rented back in the day and completed which made me sort of put off purchasing them because I had already played them, great or not, so I could buy something else entirely new. I planned to pick them up eventually but somehow never got around to it. So I assumed them lost. Games like Beyond Oasis and Kid Icarus fall under that category. And the rarest category thus far is games I never owned or played before. Kirby's Adventure is one such game. I somehow managed to never purchase it nor got around to renting it. The final category is games I actually already own in their original real world forms such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I have the working cartridge in mint condition with all the packaging and the like, but I just can't be bothered to dig out the SNES. There is a little bit of torturous pleasure in checking in on Mondays to see if one of the titles from your wish-list has made it, but other than that the Virtual Console is turning out to be a major boon. It's been better than I'd hoped for to this point. Now if I could only find the time to play through everything...

Sonic and the Secret Rings -- Null and Void.

What a shame Sonic and the Secret Rings turned out to be. The good graphics, decent yet goofy hard rock music, and the game's mission based structure actually work. The great sense of speed is there. Everything you want about a Sonic game is there except acceptable controls. The controls just kill the game entirely. They're broken. They do not work. Companies need to take notice. This is not how you set the controls for a Wii game. Do not build your games around the gimmick of the Wii. Everything would have been fine if they had only included the option for traditional controls. I will never finish this game because I can't bring myself to suffer the controls a second longer. I'm now concerned about Super Paper Mario as it has some 3D functionality and also only uses the Wii Remote without the Nunchuck.

Sonic and the Secret Rings -- Catering to the Gimmick.

I find the control scheme for Sonic and the Secret Rings to be abysmal. It just plain sucks. No two ways about it. The game is played with the Wii Remote alone. The Wii Remote is held sideways between both hands with the D-pad on the left and the 1 and 2 buttons on the right. Sonic moves forward and builds up speed on his own while you're holding the Wii Remote level. You turn Sonic left and right by tilting the Wii Remote left and right. Sonic moves forward along the paths of the game and you're really only moving left and right within the restricted pathway. Sonic can jump with pressing of the 2 button. Taping the 2 button results in a small jump and holding the 2 button results in a higher and longer jump. When near objects that Sonic can lock on to, like enemies and bumpers, a green reticule appears over the target. When it turns to red you can attack them by quickly titling the controller forward. Imagine the motion Sonic would make throwing his head forward to spindash toward an enemy and you'll get the idea. You can stop Sonic from moving down the path by twisting the controller backwards so that the buttons are facing towards your own body. The problem comes from the controls not being the most responsive. The just flake out on you. They don't always work. They're frustrating. And they're scaring me off any sort of game with 3D functionality that only uses the Wii Remote without the Nunchuck attachment that happens not to be a racing game. They represent my absolute worst fears concerning the Wii. They're catering to the gimmick and not the gameplay. This is what not to do with the controls for a Wii game in my opinion. There should have been a standard control option that used the Nunchuck attachment. I'm going to attempt to struggle through the game some more as there are some cool concepts, but I have my doubts as to whether I'll be able to tolerate it enough to see the credits roll.

Sonic and the Secret Rings -- Initial Impression.

Next up is the first real Wii title for me. Wii Sports was a controller tech demo at best. Twilight Princess was a Gamecube game with Wii control function tacked on. Nothing else in the system's infancy has even been remotely appealing. So Sonic and the Secret Rings is the first game built for the Wii from the ground up that I'm going to be playing. That being said, two things initially come to mind based on my first playing of the game. It's certainly prettier than anything released before it on the Wii. The second thing, and the more important one, the controls. Oh man, the controls...

Crackdown -- Final Opinion, For Now.

I have completed Crackdown for now. I say for now because I've finished the game with forty-three of forty-three achievements unlocked for nine-hundred gamer points. The game doesn't ship with the full one-thousand points. The remaining one-hundred points will arrive with the game's downloadable content. Crackdown delivers on one of the buzzword industry concepts, emergent gameplay. Gameplay that unfolds off the rails. Where you set out to do something and get sidetracked, and sidetracked again, and so on until you've forgotten what you were supposed to be doing in the first place. Throw another living player into the mix and you truly arrive at emergent gameplay. Crackdown's gameplay controls wonderfully. You'll lock-on to the wrong person every once in a while but for the most part it works great. The graphics are very impressive considering the sandbox nature of the game. The city is brightly colored and the mix of architectural styles that make up Pacific City's buildings work very well. The city is pretty from a design point of view. And the city's layout is well thought out.  The texture mapping especially shines. The textures are rich and detailed and everything is covered with them. The game's music works for me. Although I wouldn't be listening to any of these tracks on their own outside of the game they do their job. They provide background noise for the city. The music isn't so up front for Crackdown as it would be for Grand Theft Auto. But of course the star attraction of Crackdown would be the online co-op. And it easily steals the show here. It's just great fun. In fact I would say ninety-five percent of my time with the game was spent playing online co-op. That lowly five percent spent in pursuit of the hidden orbs alone so there would be no distractions. I can't wait for the download content. I can't wait for the sequel.  I'm giving Crackdown a 9. Truly fun.

Crackdown -- The Sandbox, Plus One.

Well, I'm sure of it, Crackdown is greatness. But why? It's just a sandbox game. It's just another Grand Theft Auto clone, isn't it? It is another sandbox game. You get to run and gun and drive your way through another living city. You get to shoot people and run them over and generally cause all sorts of mayhem. You get to search every nook and cranny for hidden items. Just like Saints Row before it, Crackdown takes the basic GTA formula and improves on the mechanics. It features combat control with better aiming and better overall vehicle and character control. And just like Saint's Row it features the Havok physics engine so bodies bounce and the unexpected tends to happen quite often. And unlike Saints Row before it Crackdown wisely ditches the story element of GTA. Crackdown's story is minimal. You'll get some background information on each of the three gangs and the twenty-one bosses within the game. When you get close enough to a boss, you'll get their history in a brief dossier scene. So essentially you're looking at a GTA clone with improved mechanics and a minimal at best story? Realtime Worlds did bring a couple of things of their own to the table. It's in these couple innovations that Crackdown's brilliance shines through in my opinion. In the game you're playing a genetically enhanced supercop. You're able to level your skills in five distinct areas. They are agility, driving, explosives, strength, and weapons. As you use each of the skills or find hidden items that boost skills you're steadily increasing their levels.  Increase a specific skill by one-hundred and you'll level the skill. Each skill can be leveled four times. At level one in strength for example you can lift objects up to a certain weight and throw them for a set distance. In other words you can pick up a trash can and throw it thirty feet down the street. By strength level four you can lift a bus and throw it over buildings. At agility level four you'll be leaping and bounding from the rooftops like the Incredible Hulk. The sense of power and progression is great. You'll want to level your skill levels. And you'll enjoy doing it. The biggest innovation is really a simple one. Sure, the game has you creating havoc in the streets with the Havok engine and everything is just totally unpredictable. Realtime Worlds has enabled online co-op with the sandbox. Just adding in one more living player to the living city adds an amazing amount of unpredictability to the mix. And this is the real deal co-op. This isn't special closed off missions like in Saints Row. Someone can come into your game whenever. This enables me to be in a car race within the game and have Magus come out of nowhere in his own car and cause a head-on collision, and I still manage to complete the race. This enables me to be minding my own business attempting to level my weapons skill rating by shooting some gang members only to be shot in the back by a rocket I never saw coming followed up by Riddel's giggling. Just because she's mean like that. The online co-op of Crackdown is brilliantly fun in an arcade like way. It's old style co-op run and gun fun brought to the sandbox. We've all essentially been playing the same way. We've been leveling our skills and completing the races and trying for achievements and just generally having a blast messing around without killing the bosses and advancing toward what would be the game's end.  It's a game where you'll set out to do something specific and just get instantly distracted and distracted again and you'll have long forgotten what you were supposed to be doing. And it doesn't even matter, because it's just so much fun.

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure -- Final Opinion.

It took me roughly twenty hours to get through Gurumin. The game is clearly Falcom's attempt at gathering a female audience in Japan. Gurumin's story is decidedly for the young. You take on the role of a twelve-year-old girl named Parin who has been sent to live with her grandfather while her parents are away on business. Upon arrival Parin finds herself in a mining town with no other children. Shortly thereafter she finds a portal that connects her world to a world of monsters. She befriends the inhabitants of Monster Village. Soon after a threat appears and the adventure begins. The game is filled with about a dozen named characters for her to interact with. The story is very Saturday morning cartoon for girls. It's all about friendship. The story is good for what it is. It's no Ys or Popful Mail, however. It's charming enough and actually decently funny. The game looks great and sounds even better. The graphics are clean and crisp and while not really pushing the PSP really work well. The music is the standard Team JDK stuff. In other words, the music is really good. The voice acting is better than average. The controls work well and there aren't any real issues. The dungeon designs are solid. The puzzles are never head-scratchingly tough. There is the typical Falcom level of replay value. Boss rush, and numerous difficulties, as well as many outfits and art are there to be unlocked via multiple playthroughs. Gurumin provides good fun for those looking for an action RPG on the go. I'm giving Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure an 8.