On this day five years ago, I registered an account on Newgrounds out of boredom. Five years after I made this account, I'm amazingly still here. Although I've said this for the last few NG account birthdays of mine but I really didn't think I'd be here for five years when I first joined. I originally thought I'd be here no more than a year and a bit and move on to another site which is what happened to the previous sites I was addicted to before knowing Newgrounds.

What's kept me here all these years are all the great people I know from the BBS, most especially the Where is/How to? and Clubs & Crews forums and the awesome fans I have who I actually talk to on a regular basis. I don't want to name anyone since not only will it be likely for someone to whine about being missed out on a thank you list I would have made but if I were to mention every single great user on Newgrounds I came across, I'd be here all night.

Of course, there needs to be a special mention for two particular who run the site extremely well and I'm definitely grateful for Tom and Wade Fulp since without them, there'd be no Newgrounds at all. Although some may disagree with me on this but I say Wade does his job very well overall and I appreciate all the trouble he goes through to take care of the site. As for Tom, this guy is truly amazing. I'm not saying this just because he created Newgrounds but the amount of work he puts into pushing the site even further with many ideas in mind, attending lots of meet-ups, conventions and such, programming games for The Behemoth and taking care of his family is really outstanding. I sometimes wonder if he even gets any rest from all of this or how much energy he has inside. However, if he's having a blast with his life, who can complain?

A lot definitely happens over five years and I'm not talking about just Newgrounds here but also my life. When I joined, I was an extremely stressed student in high school due to work in certain subjects and how teaching staff and other students treated me there. Now, I'm just an unemployed bum who's looking for work but is struggling due to how much of a shithole the UK is right now. Both times aren't/weren't pleasant looking but we can easily look at different parts of our lives and be grateful for them such as myself having many great friends.

Even my interests have changed drastically over the past years. I'm into a wider range of video games and music now compared to when I was 14. However, what's remained the same since are my overall thoughts on books, films and TV. I'm still not into reading books, still pretty weak on film knowledge in general and TV is still as shit as ever in my view, although I have gotten into a few more shows since then. Infact, I wasn't even a big fan of Futurama at the age of 14...Yes, you heard me correctly.

What I find the strangest about then and now is if you mentioned YouTube, Twitter, Nintendo Wii or anything else that came out after 2005, people would be like "What the fuck are you on about?" Time sure changes and goes too fast.

So yes, it's been a fantastic five years here. No need to make a history on my Newgrounds activities since I joined but I can easily say a lot of interesting things happened since and I've met many awesome people on this site and whether I'll still be here by 2014 or not, only time will tell. I may have lasted five years here but another five is uncertain since by then, I'll most likely have a full-time job and possibly a relationship as well. We'll just have to wait and see if I still have time for this site by then. Let's just hope my 100th flash is finished before then. :P

Previous rants:

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 3)
Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 2)
Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 1)
Nintendo: Overview
Nintendo DS
Wii _____ Games
Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
Before I begin the rant, allow me to say HOLY FUCKING SHIT! After a few recent visits on GameFAQs, I was wondering to myself, "Will they be announcing their next pathetic Character Battle soon?" I kinda found the answer today here. Now this character poll is more like it!

Every single character in the roster is perfectly legitimate and the most characters there are from one franchise is only two (or three depending on whether you count Mario, Yoshi and Donkey Kong as one franchise or individuals). These two points are what that other site's character polls utterly fail at. This is excellent since although all but ten characters were picked by Gamespot themselves, they at least knew which characters deserves to be there.

While I don't recognise every character in the contest, I can sure as hell appreciate them for including Lara Croft, Lester K. Chaykin (from Another World/Out of This World), Abe, Crash Bandicoot and many others. There are some very obscure choices on the list and it's good to know Gamespot have a better idea on which characters deserve to be here, unlike THAT OTHER SITE!

Sure, there are some obvious choices such as Mario, Cloud and Link but since this is held by Gamespot, they can slip. Who knows, we might see an interesting choice of winners for each round considering Master Chief is losing to Bub and Bob. So yeah, I'm really impressed with what Gamespot have done and they're doing a great job, unlike *sigh* THAT OTHER FUCKING SITE! I'm guessing there'll be an All Time Greatest Video Game Villain as well considering the lack of Bowser and Sephiroth. ANYWAY, time for the rant.

Electronic Arts....Well, this will be a lot of fun, won't it? EA have become infamous for several things and most of us should name at least one thing wrong with them. However, EA haven't entirely been a bad company. They have at least made/published worthwhile titles back then and today such as Theme Park, Command & Conquer, Brutal Legend and Rock Band (Considering the fun side of it only), so they're not entirely bad but the amount of terrible actions they've made in the gaming industry does outweigh its positive side.

One of the things EA are notorious for are acquiring other game companies. The occasional few companies they obtained such as Bullfrog and Maxis would have been fine and a few others who have struggled with financial issues (before the current crisis, that is) but they have acquired over THIRTY game companies since the early 90's when they started taking over other companies. Sure, this is business but this only makes these sort of companies even bigger and giving very little chance for smaller companies to rise. EA only looks like an evil empire that crushes smaller businesses like insects. As a matter of fact, one of the co-founders of id Software said that himself at one point so good to know even other game developers can see through this bullshit.

The sad thing is, EA's acquisitions will continue, most especially when UbiSoft, another major game company have said to merge with them someday. Not only that, EA once attempted to take over Take-Two Interactive when they were unwilling to be merged with them and considering that's they own Rockstar Games and 2K Games and would have had some rights over Grand Theft Auto, it really gives it away for what EA want which is MONEY!

Speaking of money, EA are one of those companies who are known for creating many movie-based titles. The one series of movie-based games that I have a bone to pick on is the Lord of the Rings games. Now it's only inevitable for a company like EA to make movie-based games on a popular series of films such as The Lord of the Rings and release them on every console. What is truly unacceptable of EA to do is not how poorly made they are but actually the fact that even after the last film in the trilogy was released, the fuckers still intended to make YET MORE games based on the franchise.

Why on earth did there have to be more Lord of the Rings games after the film trilogy was finished? They shouldn't have made any more games based on the novels afterwards but nope, they still went and made MANY games no matter what. Now this is truly milking the franchise and it's truly disgusting. It may not be as bad as Guitar Hero getting at least 20 new titles every year but how EA are treating The Lord of the Rings is almost as bad, especially when the last game they should have made was The Return of the King. Worst of all, EA are still making yet more games based on The Lord of the Rings and for what? My only guess is to make money. Do they even have any respect for Tolkien? There is a huge doubt on that.

Now there's another book/film franchise with many video game titles who are also made by EA but surprisingly enough, the only other Harry Potter game they've made is a stupid Quidditch mini-game. For now, they haven't milked the franchise as bad as they milked The Lord of the Rings but once they make the last game, just you wait and see EA announcing yet more Harry Potter games just so they can suck away yet more money from kids and their parents.

Despite all of this, EA as a company have improved over the past years. There were a lot of problems with their employment policies and DRM issues, especially when Spore was released. EA's working hours a few years back were utterly terrible with over 60 hours a week and UNPAID OVERTIME and it makes me think, who would want to work with a company who force you to work so many hours and not pay you for overtime? Most would look for a job elsewhere if that ever happened to them. Fortunately, EA have wised up and are being less harsh on overtime and will pay extra if workers need to spend more time at the office.

As for DRM, EA used to have a SecuROM software which limits the amount of installs you could do on one disc so if you hit the limit (formerly three and later five), you're screwed and had to buy another copy. EA have wised up here as well where instead of having DRM, anyone who buys the game legitimately will be given extra features for the games they buy. So anyone pirating the game will not get the extras they'll offer for the games and hand them out to the honest buyers. If the company got everything right to make sure there's no back doors, this is actually a good idea and although the honest buyers outweigh the pirates, more companies should reward customers of their services for purchasing their games rightfully.

It's also good for EA to publish noteworthy titles such as Rock Band and Brutal Legend. However, the good they've done here doesn't let them get away with their bad actions, most especially their money-grabbing scheme known as EA Sports. Next time, we'll be looking into:

E! A! Sports! Shitty games/we're in for the money (Courtesy of Pokelord-EX and BatDan)

Since their silver wedding is coming up, they booked a cruise to celebrate their 25th anniversary and left today. They'll be back in 2 weeks time so in the mean time, the house is all mine and my sister's. I'm actually glad my sister's here this time since the house won't be so quiet like when my family went to Egypt.

The most I have planned while they're away is arranging a party with my friends. For my own time, I'm wanting to play a lot of Oblivion and watching through season 3 of The Simpsons. Anything else, we'll just see.

Previous rants:

Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 3)
Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 2)
Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 1)
Nintendo: Overview
Nintendo DS
Wii _____ Games
Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
Yes, I know I'm supposed to be writing up the EA rant right now but after my experiences with this particular game, I had to share my thoughts on what was wrong. The EA rant is still on the way but first things first, I want this off my chest. Also, if you enjoy Morrowind, fine by me. I can understand why others like this game despite the issues I'm going to address but I gave it a good enough chance and had enough of it after 15 hours.

A few weeks ago, I saw Morrowind and Oblivion uploaded to Steam along with an offer where you could get the two games with expansion packs for 20% off, making it just £17.50. I thought it was a fantastic offer and couldn't pass it up considering both games have great reception.

Just recently, I found a great time to start playing Morrowind and not getting distracted by other games and when I just picked it up, I couldn't quite get into the plot. I thought maybe I'll catch on later with it but eh, I guess I didn't care enough about the main plot in the end.

I like to give every game I play a chance so I didn't stop playing after an hour or two. In the past, I've played games that required me to spend a few hours before passing it up and I knew Morrowind was no exception. It took me a while to get used to the surroundings and how the combat system worked. The fantasy settings did look very good and it was fun to explore the areas, although I probably only saw 10% or less of the whole game.

The combat system was atrocious. I know about the character's stats and shit as with other RPGs I've played and I was aware of the fatigue bar affecting the character's performance with battling but what really got me was even if the fatigue bar was full, my character was still missing quite often. What's worse was that even when my fatigue was very low, the character's success rate at attacking the enemy wasn't much different.

This really frustrated me since I often rested to recover health and fatigue and when I search for some enemies to fight, the last thing I want to see is my character failing to hit a goddamn rat with his double axe. It's worse when as a low level character facing some of the weakest enemies in the game, they should not have to struggle killing a fucking rat with a double axe. I mean, I could be a better hero than this piece of shit. GET YOUR ASS BACK TO THE FRIER, DAMMIT!

Oh, if anyone cares what my character was, he was an Argonian Warrior. I chose Argonian simply because it was a reptilian creature and suited best for me and the Warrior class was a good option to choose in my view. So yeah, it's a shame how a character such as the one I had somehow missed attacking a rat a few times at full energy.

What else really annoyed me was the jumping mechanics. OK, it's only fair to take damage from a huge fall but when you're going to fall in deep water from such heights and STILL lose some of your health, that's really fucked up. Falling in water should prevent you from taking damage. Imagine you're playing Tomb Raider and Lara took damage from falling from tall heights EVEN IF she falls in the water. Wouldn't that be a pain in the ass? Also, the way to increase your Acrobatics is really silly when to level up, you just need to keep jumping. Yeah, spend all day pressing the jump button and you'll have a high level in Acrobatics in no time. I was level 60 in this specific skill before I packed it in.

The game engine for Morrowind is awful. Quite often I experienced the game lagging and even freezing for a few seconds. For a laptop that runs modern games very well and struggles to play a 2002 game, this isn't a good sign at all. What's worse is that Oblivion runs much better than Morrowind...THIS DOES NOT ADD UP AT ALL!!

That's not even the worst issues I had with Morrowind. The biggest trouble were the glitches I came across. The first experience was falling below ground randomly a few times and this is definitely bad when you can't get back up except by inserting a console command to put you in the town you were in but that doesn't actually put you back on ground where you were, only to a specific part of the place. This may not sound bad but some of these commands actually place you somewhere away from the location itself making it impossible to travel back by foot. Your only options would be to go elsewhere via console command or a spell to get you there assuming there is such thing. I don't know since I never looked that far and have no desire to.

The next glitchy problem was being able to discard/sell key items. Although I should have been more careful with some of the items I got rid of, the game designers should have had the decency to prevent you from throwing away items you need for quests. For one of the quests I wanted to complete, I needed to give Character A an item Character B wanted me to deliver. However, it turns out I accidentally dropped the item out of the inventory and what did I had to do in order to get this quest done? I had to insert a console command to give me the goddamn item! You don't get to sell key items in Final Fantasy, Pokemon and such, so why was this allowed in Morrowind?

And the last glitch I came across which was the one where I thought enough was enough was NPCs disappearing, most especially when one guy who was following me around for one quest and after climbing over a hill and looked back, it turns out he disappeared. I spent half an hour searching for him and were wasn't a trace of him. Sure, I could have just reloaded the latest save but after that, I thought "Fuck this, why continue when I'm bound to experience yet more similar problems?"

That was a few too many bad glitches and I felt I gave this game more than enough of a chance. 15 hours of playtime and it all ended with having too much trouble with glitches. As it was a Steam release as well as Game of the Year edition, it makes you wonder one thing. Did they even test the game before releasing it? You'd think a company like Bethesda Softworks who are most likely a big company (not huge like Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony, though) would have had some good game testers to find any bugs but nope, some major ones were horribly overlooked.

Of course, Daggerfall is said to be much worse but we're talking about Morrowind here. Like I said, some of you may enjoy this game despite its glitches but it really kills the fun for me when I have to start cheating in order to make progress in the game. And yes, I'm aware that there are mods that solve these issues but really, Bethesda Softworks themselves should have fixed them, not someone outside the company.

In conclusion, Morrowind was a game I've been curious about for a long time now and recently had a great chance after a great Steam offer for the two Elder Scrolls games as well as having a kick ass laptop. It all seemed good from the beginning but shortly went downhill from the appalling combat system, silly jumping mechanics and a poor game engine and of course, the goddamn glitches which should have been fixed by the company themselves. I'm sorry but third-party mods just doesn't do it for me so I won't be searching for ways to fix these problems. And now, one thing left to do to Morrowind: UNINFUCKINGSTALL!

Yeah, I've been rather slow with my news posts recently, most especially when I've only written up ONE Gaming Industry Bullshit Rants since my birthday. Of course, that's not really good of myself but bare with me, I've had a few things going on in my life recently which I'll mention when I feel ready to do so. Unless it's a multi-part rant, I don't publicly announce what's next for my gaming rants but due to how things are recently, I wish to let you all know that the upcoming rant will be on Electronic Arts, so this will be a bumpy ride but I'll manage to get this rant done in my own time.

Anyway, for something before my next gaming rant, I have a few more complaints about YouTube. The first one being the new (kinda) layout. Not that different to what it was previously but what really annoyed me off the bat was how the account menu bar completely covers over my username. Therefore, preventing myself from easily clicking on my username on the homepage or wherever else on the site. Really, did anyone at the office even think having the menu bar completely covering the account name was a stupid? I want the nice convenience of clicking my name at the top right corner back.

Also, although I don't have this feature activated on my account and only saw it on a screenshot but I noticed the slightly different layout also has a bigger "Videos People Are Watching Right Now" box and I just want to say this, WHO the hell wants to know someone's watching some idiot getting hurt or a shitty ass YouTube Poop? Whoever thought this would be a great idea for YouTube obviously doesn't know what's good and what's bad for the site since that feature is one of the most useless things I've ever known in my life. It's even worse when something this worthless is given an even bigger box than before. Last time I remember, it was just a small box at the top.

Speaking of new layout, does anyone remember the new channel designs they were supposed to bring out a month ago? Although YouTube received a huge backlash when they announced the new layout, they said they were going to force the new layout on all channels on 15th July. Well, almost a month later and....My channel's still intact. Not that I wanted the new layout as the old one worked fine and didn't need any changes at all, but really, it's not a good thing for a major corporation like YouTube to fail to deliver their promises, especially when it still says at the bottom that the new layout will be forced on everyone on that date. Ah well, at least it's good most of us can still use the old layout since the new one is vastly inferior to what we have right and really, if it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT!

One other thing I have to comment on YouTube right now is the suspension of Team Four Star, the creators of Dragonball Z Abridged Series. Regardless of if the actual animation company got the videos taken down or not, this is such a terrible move when full episodes of the real thing are STILL UP!! Why a parody series got taken down and not the full episodes is really pathetic, especially when the parody series can be considered as free advertising. However, what am I to expect when the same thing happened with Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series?

So yeah, that's a few more bad moves from YouTube. This won't make me close my account or anything since not only do I know that if I even tried to leave I'd only come back but I'd much rather keep my current account name. Still, THAT'S BULLSHIT! And now to get working on the EA rant.

Hello all and welcome to my Top 15 Games I Played When I Was 18. After considering the amount of games I've discovered over the last 12 months, I thought I could make a pretty good list saying which are the greatest games (in my opinion anyway) I played over the time.

A few things before I start the list:

- Only games which I first played the full version of from 12th July 2008 - 11th July 2009, so no games which I played years ago such as Final Fantasy VII and Oddworld.
- Yes, some of these games I should have played much sooner but that's how life goes.
- There are minor spoilers, so read at your own risk!
- Some explanations aren't as detailed as others, but I was starting to run out of steam at the end. I was getting along the list just fine up until a few things that happened recently.

15. Mega Man 9 (WiiWare)

The second Mega Man game I've ever played and this game was returning to the roots of the NES games, most especially 2 and 3. A hard as hell game (Mega Man is said to be hard in general anyway) but fun at the same time. The graphics, music, sound and gameplay in this game were very much like the original games. This return to form style is what other game companies should do if they're going to make a game of a popular franchise where it's a "return to form", most especially trying to make a game that looked like it came out 10 - 20 years ago.

14. Bioshock (PC)

Would you kindly agree with this game placed at #14 on my list? Now that I got the "Would you kindly" joke out of the way, let me say that Bioshock was a fun experience. Taking place in an underwater city Rapture run by a dictator with ADAM-obsessed splicers attacking you everywhere and Big Daddies defending Little Sisters. This game has a great opener showing the protagonist Jack surviving from a plane crash and discovering Rapture, who is introduced to the city by the dictator Andrew Ryan.

The Big Daddy, along with being one of the greatest monster designs in video gaming, it's also someone you know if you decided to fuck around with, they wouldn't go down without a fight. As soon as you attack them, they could kick your ass really hard right away, and that's what a monster like Big Daddy should do to you.

There was a wide range of selection to choose from for weapons and plasma, but maybe there was far too much to choose one. You're likely to find yourself only using a small portion of what you can have, making a lot of weapons redundant no matter how much fun they may be to use. My other compalint about the game was the final boss. It was rather underwhelming to me and for how much you go through, I expected something more epic.

Contrary to what I said, the plot was still great and the multiple endings were a nice choice. BioShock is a great game and unless you don't have your head up your ass over the whole "This is a System Shock 2 rip-off" debate, this is a game you should have a look at whether you end up loving it or hating it. As for me, I'm looking forward to the sequel.

13. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)

One of the most anticipated titles of 2008 and you're probably thinking "Why is this so low?" I'll admit, I had some disappoints towards this game, most especially introducing third-party characters, making your own stages and...Just how the game was overall. There's some very nice features in this game, no doubt about it but in the end, I felt Nintendo tried too hard. Brawl felt more like an expansion to Melee, even with all the new features they added.

Despite my disappointments, the game was all still fun to play. It's a shame this game didn't make a bigger impact on my gaming interests than Melee did as I easily spent 100 hours on it. Brawl, on the other hand, only around 25-33% of that time.

12. Ecco: The Tides of Time (MD)

Although I played the first games over 10 years and only went as far as level 5 back then, I never even knew there was a sequel to Ecco the Dolphin on the Mega Drive, let alone playing it. The only other Ecco game I was aware of was Defender of the Future. When I got back to playing Ecco the Dolphin last year, I found out this sequel and as soon as I completed Ecco the Dolphin, I HAD to play The Tides of Time, even if it meant to get out the Mega Drive I left alone for 10 years. (NOTE: I got Ecco on the Wii and wanted The Tides of Time on the original console).

So what did I like about this game? It was a great follow-up to the original game and the difficulty was the same as ever, except they made the first levels much easier than the first few in its predecessor, which is acceptable since it had a fairer learning curve. There was also a difficulty setting so if you didn't want the game to be too hard, you could play it on easy mode or if you wanted the game to be more challenging, you could choose hard mode.

The only problem with this game was how it ended. The ending implied there'd be another game following the story to The Tides of Time, but guess what happened? Supposedly, Sega scrapped that game and made Ecco Jr. All I can say is, what the fuck were Sega thinking?! You should NEVER EVER leave a story unconcluded like that and it's bullshit how this happens in a lot of video games. Despite that, Ecco: The Tides of Time is a fantastic game and it's a shame the franchise has been forgotten by many gamers or even bashed to death by those who have many followers/sheeps. *cough*Stuttering Craig*cough*

11. Grand Theft Auto III (PC)

Yes, I never played any GTA games until this year, but to me that not the biggest shock of this list. There are games higher up on the list which'll make you think "How the hell have you missed out on these games all these years?!"

Anyway, the first 3D game in the series and wow, it was great! Having the freedom to roam around the city was a great experience. Of course, you couldn't go everywhere at first but as you progressed, the whole game was available to you and I spent hours messing around in the city whether it be trying to get 6-stars wanted level, performing the craziest stunts possible, basically anything I could do. It was even better with custom soundtrack and as a heavy metal fan, how I could I say no to driving around in the game while having my favourite songs played? :D

As for the plot, at first I wasn't too fond of the whole idea of using the mafia but later on it grew to me and I thought it was very good. The only thing I didn't like from start to end was the silent protagonist Claude. Personally, I didn't think the use of a silent protagonist worked well with committing crime, doing errands for others and getting told off by some characters because of a few mess-ups Claude did. If he had some dialogue, he would have been much better and showed more expression. Besides that, Grand Theft Auto III is still an awesome game.

10. Half-Life 2 (PC)

Not only do Valve know how to make great First-Person Shooter games, they also know what great action sequences to add in their games. When they let you drive a speedboat and a buggy, operate a crane and even include a weapon to command antlions to attack enemies, you know you're in for a treat.

Half-Life 2 is a great follow-up to one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. Taking place in City 17, away from the Black Mesa Research Facility. The main enemies are Combines and the old favourite annoying creatures, headcrabs and barnacles. The vortigaunts also made a return in the sequel, but surprisingly befriended the humans after the events of the first game which is a damn shame considering they were enemies to begin with and should have remained as enemies.

Another notable part in Half-Life 2 was obtaining the Gravity Gun. The ability to grab objects from a distance and even blast them away was awesome. Of course, you can't exactly use the Gravity Gun to pick up a building, but throwing a gas tank is a great way to fight against your enemies whether it be Combines or headcrab zombies.

Half-Life 2 has so much to tell that it has two episodes following the main game and a third episode to come out sometime in the future. Half-Life 2 is definitely a great gaming experience and I look forward to Valve concluding the episode trilogy.

9. Tombi (PS1)

Often declared as one of the rarest PS1 games and rightfully so. Tombi was made in 1997 by a small company called Whoopee Camp but didn't quite reach Platinum status due to lack of sales. Sadly, the company went out of business shortly after the release of the sequel and thus the game is a bitch to get when you need to take at least £40 out of your wallet for a pre-owned copy. I spent £45 on this game and trust me, it was well worth it for the nostalgia factor.

Tombi combines RPG elements with platformer into one and it works fantastically. What's not to like about a Tarzan-like kid with pink hair fighting against evil pigs who have plagued the island? Tombi has many sidequests to take as well as many weapons and power-ups to choose from.

Another great thing about Tombi is that this was made by Tokuro Fujiwara, the very same guy behind Ghosts 'n Goblins and Mega Man. Makes it more surprising how this game was so overlooked back then. Ah well, what matters is that I loved the full version of the game and hopefully I've introduced a few more people to the short-lived franchise.

8. Mega Man 2 (VC/NES)

The first Mega Man game I picked up and wow, what a great NES title. The level designs, the boss fights and of course, the unforgettable music are all fantastic. Often considered the easiest game in the franchise as well as the best, but regardless of difficulty, this is still a great platformer. Even if it's truly the easiest Mega Man game, it's still a challenge for the first time, especially on difficult mode. Fantastic game from start to finish with the exception of the PAL conversion bullshit on the Wii.

7. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PC)

The follow-up to Grand Theft Auto III using the same engine. This game had many things that made it a huge improvement from GTA3. First of all, the main character Tommy Vercetti actually talks and expresses what he likes and hates. The expressions were a hell lot better than Claude going "Yeah yeah" to every mission he took. The plot was also better than its predecessor for the way it starts off the game with an ambush and having to recover from it for the lost money in the process. This all builds up to the climatic finale with Sonny and Vercetti.

What else was so great about Vice City? Ah yes, motorcycles, they're a lot of fun despite possibly crashing into so many objects within a few minutes. The first thing I had to do in Vice City was stealing the first motorcycle I came across and drove around the place for a few hours to get used to the surrounding before even taking the first mission.

Another great thing this game had was the music. OK, I've not listened to every single radio station it had but VROCK was enough to satisfy me with its hard rock, heavy metal music and its humour value. I was listening to this radio station 1/4 of the whole game time while the other 3/4 was for my custom soundtrack.

The only complaints I have about this game are the awkward ass helicopter/plane controls, some of the annoying as hell missions and the less amount of places to perform stunts than in GTA3. Fortunately, the first two points are easily compensated by the awesomeness of the game overall and the last point, if I'm so desperate to perform crazy stunts, I'll just play GTA3 again.

Overall, Vice City is a fantastic game and although I've yet to play GTA San Andreas and GTA4, but if there was only one GTA I could play, it would be Vice City.

6. Doom + Doom II (PC)

I'll admit, I'm cheating here by combining two games into one, but can you really blame me when both games are very much alike, except the sequel has extra monsters and one new weapon? Also, it's really hard to decide which out of the two is superior.

While Doom isn't the exact pioneer of First-Person Shooting, it is definitely a huge influence on the genre. It's just as important as Half-Life and Counter Strike in the gaming industry. Who can forget the heavy metal-esque music played in the background whilst you're tearing imps, zombies and demons apart with your chainsaw? Another thing you couldn't forget was the Big Fucking Gun (BFG).

The level designs in both games were very well done for the amount of secrets in a single and the nonlinear nature of them. The fun factor for these levels are even better when you're ambushed by a horde of monsters. The only complaint I have about these two games is how the bosses in the first game were later reused in the sequel. It just makes them seem less significant than their one-time appearances in Doom (excluding the bonus episode). Anyway, this game is without a doubt a landmark in the gaming industry.

5. Portal (PC)

Portal is one of the most iconic and original games of this decade. For its humour value, unique gameplay and concept, Portal is definitely a gaming classic despite its short length. The time length is both good and bad since if you wish to play through it again, it's only an hour of gameplay. On the other hand, after playing through it once, you'll be wanting far more than additional challenges to levels you've already played. Fortunately, there are several Portal third-party mods to play. Regardless of length, Portal is still awesome thanks to its key points.

4. Half-Life (PC)

As much fun as Half-Life 2 is, I much prefer the original Half-Life for it being the legendary debut from Valve as well as other reasons. The company that brought you Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead, Portal and Team Fortress 2, this is where it all started for Valve.

Why I prefer this over Half-Life 2 is because the settings in the Black Mesa Research Facility and the desert have a better atmosphere than the sequel overall. Facing against aliens from another dimension as well as the US Marines and the Black Ops. With the amount of enemies against you, it's no surprise that Half-Life is full of action throughout the game.

Of course, the mysterous G-Man is another thing to mention as despite being around for 11 years and being one of the main characters, we've yet to know a lot of things about him and he's an awesome mysterious character.

The headcrabs, vortigaunts and the other aliens from Xen had a great purpose of appearing in the Black Mesa Research Facility and led the way for Gordon Freeman to confront with the leader of Xen, Nihilanth.

For all these reasons, Half-Life has every right to have all its praise for being an iconic First-Person Shooter as well as the best selling PC game of all time.

3. Super Metroid (VC/SNES)

I believe I speak for most here by saying this is where the Metroid franchise was truly established. The first two Metroid games were rather poor but this game was what made Metroid a franchise loved by many gamers worldwide and just one play through this game was enough for me to understand that statement.

The power-up system and map feature was done very well and enhanced the gameplay of Super Metroid. Infact, these aspects of are so good that this is what we've seen on every Metroid game since, especially Fusion and Zero Mission which are very much alike to this game.

What's more, the best was saved till last. Super Metroid has hands down one of the most impressive boss fights EVER with the awesome twists when facing Mother Brain. For these reasons, Super Metroid is one of the best in the series and one of the must-have retro games. If you've yet to pick up this game, what are you waiting for?

2. Psychonauts (PC)

Why make a comment on this game when I made a whole review of it? Seriously, though, Psychonauts is awesome and one of the very few great platformers of the 2000's.

1. Chrono Trigger (DS)

It took so fucking long for this game to come out in Europe and the wait was well worth it. Chrono Trigger does not only top this list, but it's become my all-time favourite non-Final Fantasy RPG, even though. Hironobu Sakaguchi took part in designing this game and Nobuo Uematsu composed some of the tracks,

There are so many great things about Chrono Trigger including the awesomeness of the characters, soundtrack and storyline as well as the multiple endings and sidequests this game has to offer. This a game involving time travelling and the beating the main antagonist Lavos who destroys the world in the future and what's not to like about that? It's also fun to see how a robot from the future interacts with people from the caveman ages. What makes the storyline even better is how all the characters from their time zones link to each other as they all relate to the actions from Lavos.

The game's so good, I had to watch every single ending, even if it meant a bit of repetition, but it was still worth it to see everything. All of this certainly made the wait for a European release of the game well worth it. While it's still bullshit how Square took that long to release the damn game in Europe, at least it was something worth waiting for, unlike other things. Hopefully with the success of the re-release, Square will consider re-releasing more older titles, most especially those that were never released in PAL regions.

Should we do something?

Previous rants:

Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 2)
Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 1)
Nintendo: Overview
Nintendo DS
Wii _____ Games
Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
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Hello all and welcome to the third and last part of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band rant. It's been a few weeks since the last rant so to recap what was said so far, I first talked about the extreme obsession of the whole craze and then went onto the expenses for the video games, peripherals and downloadable content. And now for the last big issue with these games:

MILKING!!

That's right, these games, most especially the Guitar Hero franchise, have been milked to death. Activision begun milking their franchise with spinoffs. Now the occasional one such as Rock the 80's would have been tolerable, but they decided to take a step further by making games for individual bands starting with Aerosmith followed by Metallica and now Van Halen, which is to be released later this year.

They announced Guitar Hero: Metallica just before Aerosmith's game was to come out and two months after Metallica's game was out, it was announced for Van Halen to have a Guitar Hero game as well. All these games are coming out in a short period of time and it'll be no surprise if they announce yet another Artist X game around the time Van Halen's game comes out. Infact, due to sales and success, they'll probably announce two more Guitar Hero: Artist X titles around the time Van Halen's game comes out and wouldn't that be milking the franchise even further?

Really, besides the excuse to grab more money than needed, why do they need to make a whole video game on one band? What makes these games so different to the main titles? The most they can do is a plot consisting of a band history or a basic world tour. If they're going all the way to have so many new songs and....just new songs, why can't they just release massive DLC packs? There's already pretty big DLC packs for certain bands such as Iron Maiden and the same thing should be done for those who are getting their own games.

That's not all for the milking in the franchise. Each year, there's a brand new Guitar Hero/Rock Band game which are acceptable if they make actual changes, but when Activision announced the fifth main Guitar Hero, they also announced Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Band Hero and DJ Hero AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME! Seriously, that's four new titles at once.

Band Hero is basically another Guitar Hero spinoff, but will appeal to a younger audience and feature mainstream tracks targetted towards family audiences, the same kind of audience Nintendo mostly care about these days. So unless there'll actually be different instruments for Band Hero (which I highly doubt), why on earth give this game a different title to Guitar Hero? Infact, this is the name the franchise should have now, but obviously the name Guitar Hero is such a big name they refuse to change it to Band Hero, even if drums and vocals are part of these games since World Tour.

DJ Hero is self-explanatory. Your only instrument shall be the DJ turntable, which to be fair isn't a bad idea as it appeals to who have different tastes in music. However, there is a huge problem with making a new series of music rhythm playing. This will become another thing for Activision to milk the fuck out of. Just imagine the yearly games along with spinoffs, most especially those that are based on a specific artist for DJ Hero as well. If they don't end up doing that and keep it to a reasonable amount of releases, good for them but we all know that's not going to happen. We know they're going to make yet more games just to suck up yet more money from their customers.

What's more, now that they're making a new Hero series, what's going to be next? Will they make Hero games based on other instruments? It'll be no surprise if they end up making an Orchestra Hero. Imagine how many peripherals that would have. It would be INSANE and considering Activision are one of the biggest money whores out there, they're bound to do it eventually.

The saddest part about the whole craze is, Activision ACTUALLY INTEND to "triple" the amount of Guitar Hero releases by next year, so there could be around 30 Guitar Hero titles by then and right now, there's around 45 Final Fantasy titles. If they keep this trend up, there'll not only be more Hero games than Final Fantasy games but the Hero series could eventually have more games than Mario, and Mario is known to have a shitload of spin offs. All can be said here is this shit needs to calm down as soon as possible before if it goes completely out of control.

In conclusion, Guitar Hero and Rock Band as games were (and still are excluding all the bullshit) a great idea to begin with, but as time went by and the craze became more pouplar, the companies, more especially Activision, begun to milk the hell out of their franchises by making so many unecessary spinoffs when most of them could easily be huge DLC packs. The amount of games they're making is getting out of hand and it seems they'll only make yet more titles for the sake of more money.

The expenses for the games and DLC content are also ridiculous when a full kit is £150 at first and a single downloadable track is £1.80. This is further proof that the companies want as much money as possible. As for the gamers, there are those who are taking these games far too seriously and need to realise these games were intended to have fun, not who could score the most points on Through the Fire and Flames Expert mode.

All these reasons are why the whole craze has simply gone insane and why I've completely lost interest in the whole thing. After all this ranting on Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I really should relax by playing a few tracks on Audiosurf, a game which I bought for £6 and allows me to play any track I desire.

Yep, another year older and while 19 isn't much of a special age, a few fun things have happened since my birthday party started so all is good so far. :)
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EDIT: So how was my birthday? It was pretty good overall. I have nothing to complain about what happened on my birthday party and the birthday itself. Most of my friends attended my party on Saturday and we all had a great time, despite one of them eating most of the garlic bread when he didn't realise it was that he was eating and not his Margherita pizza. ¬_¬

Another amusing incident that happened on the night was a frog coming into our kitchen as the back door was wide open for a few hours. My sister found this frog after accidentally stepping on it (she wasn't wearing shoes at the time) and we had to get it outside. It ended up going almost everywhere in the conservatory and getting my dad to help out while drunk wasn't the best idea in mind. He only made it more difficult but fortunately, we were able to catch it and released it outside.

As for Sunday, all I wanted as to relax and see my family which is what I got. Of course, I was given presents and I like everything I got. My presents were:

DVDs:

Iron Maiden - Flight 666
Metalocalypse season 1

CDs:

Deep Purple - Fireball
Judas Priest - Angel of Retribution
Slayer - Show No Mercy

Others:

Badass computer mouse
£65 + £25 HMV voucher
Cards, lol

EDIT: I went in today and I was fine. The doctor told me my right eye does have Keratoconus, but a treatment for it now isn't necessary. He claims this occurred from my eczema which actually makes sense considering the amount of times I've had to rub my eyes because of how itchy they were. I was also told it seems to only affect one eye for the majority of those who have this eye disorder. Fortunately, I won't need any operation for it and the most I'll need is contact lenses. My glasses are good enough now and the doctor told me to see how it goes over the next few years and contact them if the sight becomes weaker. All's left to do now is getting an eye scan in 4 weeks time.

Tomorrow I'll be going in to hospital to have my right eye examined after being told by the opticians at the start of this month that I might have Keratoconus. I can't say that's what I definitely have but the eye test has clearly told me my left eye's sight is stronger than my right so an examination is required sooner than later. My only concern is what the outcome will be but I'm pretty sure I'll be fine in the end. All I can do is hope for the best. I'll update this news post again to let you all know how it went.

In other news, only a fortnight away until my birthday. I can't say 19 is as special as 18 or 20 but it's still a day I'm looking forward to. The only meaning this age has is being the last year of the second decade. I guess it's good to have a little breather in between two major ages. And yes, I do think 20 is more significant than 21 since as the age drinking limit is 18 in the UK, it doesn't really mean anything here these days. Well, not for me at least which is why I don't want anyone to make a big fuss about when I turn 21. But hey, that's nothing to worry about until 2 years time. :P

Again, I'm hoping for the best tomorrow.