“The way some video game fans spew awful hatred at the companies who make the things they love makes me sick to my stomach sometimes.” -Felicia Day

Announced at E3? Probably not. Also, this terrible name won't be used.

Don’t listen to all of the rumors about the next generation of Microsoft and Sony home consoles being announced at E3 2012.

Cedrick Delmax, director of marketing for Microsoft France, said in an interview with Le Point that “Xbox 360′s cycle is not at all finished. The proof is that we don’t see the logic in cutting the price this year.” Referencing the presence of the Nintendo Wii U at E3 2011 and 2012, he added that “we [Microsoft] are not here to counter Nintendo and they’re not here to fight the other manufacturers.”

Delmax also said that Microsoft isn’t concerned with Sony’s supposed decision not to showcase the next Playstation console this year.

Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony, has already said that there are no “plans” to announce another Playstation at E3 of this year. In another interview with Le Point, Philippe Cardon, president of Sony France, said that Sony was the last to release a console in the current generation and “will probably be the last to announce something.”

It’s important not to misinterpret the elusiveness of the responses from both console manufacturers. That caginess is likely to serve to cover the tracks of each company with respect to how their competitors and shareholders are closely monitering them. Delmax said it best when he pointed out that Xbox 360s are still selling. Playstation 3 units are still selling as well, so any announcement of a future console will undercut current sales for both consoles.

The abysmal software sales of Wii titles, combined with the continued decline of Wii sales after it hit its stride, certainly add to the reasons for Sony and Microsoft not to be intimidated. Add that to the fact that a lot of the announced titles for the Wii U are multiplatform titles available on existing consoles and you should feel happy with the console you already own for a good while longer.

My wife loves to read.  She decided after three of George R.R. Martin’s books from the Song of Fire & Ice series that she would take a break and read the first book in the Hunger Games series.  Believe it or not, she finished all three books in just three days.  And as much as she loved the books, my wife was sad at the end.  It wasn’t the ending itself that made her sad.  For her, the adventure was over.  This happened with the Harry Potter series as well.  Here was a series my wife grew up with, and then before she knew it, it was over.  The books finished a few years ago, but the final movie came out just last year.  In the blink of an eye, a big part of her high school and college years was over.  She told me it was like a piece of her was gone.

That got me to thinking of similar experiences I had.  I’ll admit, I was sad when Harry Potter was finished.  I came in around the sixth book.  As late to the party as I was, the series created some great memories for me.  Video games are no different.  You spend hours, days, weeks, even months, immersed in a game just to see it end.  But, it isn’t the end that matters.  As cliché as this may sound, it’s the journey that is the important part.

Take Final Fantasy VI as an example.  People will argue until they are blue in the face, or even passed out from lack of oxygen, that Final Fantasy VII is the best in the series.  To me, FFVI had the best cast of characters and a storyline that was touching AND made sense.  From the moment Terra’s Theme hits and you see her walking in Magitek armor with Biggs and Wedge, the story takes you in and holds on for dear life.

You follow a multitude of compelling characters through a revolution, world-changing catastrophe, and loss of loved ones.  It hits you again and again with emotional moments that make you laugh and cry and do both at the same time.  Then there’s the epic final battle with one of the craziest antagonists in gaming, Kefka.  Once you beat Kefka, the game ends with each character’s story wrapping up nicely.

The game itself can take 60-80 hours if you decide to tackle every bit and do an extensive amount of level-grinding.  80 hours, that’s around 3 and a half days over a few months of playing the game.  That is a lot of time to spend with these characters.  But, when it is all said and done, do you remember what really happens at the end?  Aside of saving the world, I don’t have very fond memories of the ending.  I remember meeting Cyan’s dead wife and son.  I remember Kefka poisoning the water and killing General Leo.  It’s the moments like these that get me excited to play the game again someday.

Games with a compelling story have a tendency to grow on the player.  I don’t think every game needs a story.  Sometimes you just want to play and not think too much.  And then there are games that have a great story that is diluted through unnecessary sequels.  After finishing Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and hearing Ubisoft wants to keep making games for the series, I am worried.  I really enjoy Assassin’s Creed’s storyline.  But with yearly releases I’m growing tired of playing games that are more a small expansion to the story than adding any real meat.  This is a case where I wouldn’t mind if they took a break.  A year or two off would serve the series well, allowing it to come back refreshed and renewing the journey.

Then there are the games that allow the player to dictate how the story goes.  The single greatest achievement in this to date is the Mass Effect series.  Each decision the player makes has an impact on the overall story.  Something you say to someone in the first game could severely impact the ending of the third game.  As such, the journey becomes extremely important.  Unlike most games though, this journey doesn’t just lead up to the ending, it creates it.  So, the ending becomes purely incidental.

Some games even have a journey that has a tendency to lose track of itself.  It gets twisted and convoluted and can’t seem to find itself.  I’ve heard tell that Final Fantasy XIII-2 suffers from this, but I’ll reserve judgment until I play it.  The series I see that suffered the most from this is Resident Evil.  What started out as a zombie outbreak has exploded into a strange tale that spans into Europe and Africa.  Somehow the U.S President’s daughter gets involved and then there’s a plant with a new version of the original T-Virus.  It goes on and on.  The series even lost sight of the genre it created going from survival-horror to survival-action.  I love the Resident Evil series and can’t wait for the next few games.  I only hope these games can put the series back on track.  Even a reboot wouldn’t hurt.  Really, the more you think about it, this journey may actually need an end to make sense of it all.

This leads me to one of my favorite beginning-to-end journeys (as much as I love The Legend of Zelda, there is a questionable timeline and the series hasn’t ended yet).  Metal Gear Solid has one of the best journeys I have ever taken in video games.  Is the story crazy and convoluted?  Yes, it is.  But, in the end, it makes sense.  This is the first series to get me near tears.  When Solid Snake is trying to get through the thermal area in Outer Haven near the end while Akiba and Meryl are fighting for their lives, I was mashing the square button, standing up, yelling at Snake to keep going.  I had been with him since his foray into Outer Heaven on the NES and I was not about to see him die like this.

Not only did the MGS journey have a great storyline, it also had an unbelievable cast of characters.  From Psycho Mantis to The Boss, from Otacon to Raiden, each character made the journey that much more special.  And Snake, be it Naked Snake or Solid Snake, was caught in the middle, trying to survive through lies and betrayal while doing everything he could to save the world from disaster.  His story is one that is masterfully told and has a clear end to it (at least until some wise guy tries to change that.  Please, Konami, let Kojima-San go on to other projects).

So, what is the moral to my story you ask?  Why, it’s the story itself.  We gamers put a lot of time and effort into video games.  We grow attached to the characters and the stories.  Some are short and easily understood, while others can span multiple games and become convoluted.  What is important isn’t how these games end.  It’s the journeys they take us on that matters.  So, while you may feel like a piece of you is lost when you put 80 hours into a game and finally get to the end, just remember the incredible moments you experienced and the characters that joined you on your quest.  Not every fantasy has to be final.

Just In Bailey –an homage to the secret code from Metriod, which allowed you to play as Samus Aran without her suit– is an editorial column at Vagary.TV brought to you by Joey Alesia. Each week Joey will challenge you to look at a different perspective of the characters, gameplay, and/or plot in your favorite games. Chat up your thoughts below, or send Joey an e-mail at Joey.Alesia@vagary.tv and remember to follow him on Twitter @wrkngclsswrtr.

My freshmen year of college I came to a crossroads in my video game life:  Wind Waker had just come out for the Gamecube.  One other guy on my floor and I were the only ones to pick it up.  There was a friendly bet on the floor as to who would beat it first.  No physical incentive was involved.  We were battling for pride and admiration from others.  Actually, it would have showed who was the biggest dork.  He had a huge advantage.  I gave him a handicap.  I would play without help.  He had the strategy guide and the internet at his disposal.  I had to use my knowledge of Zelda games and awesome video game playing/puzzle solving skills.  I even charted each island myself along with treasures and Tri-Force pieces.  I don’t know if was my awesomeness that helped me to beat the game before he did or the fact that it was all I did outside of going to class, but I did it.  Ever since then I decided that I would play games without aid the first time through and then use a strategy guide or cheat or some other help the next time around.  The only exceptions to my rule would be rented games or long games like Final Fantasy.  Like I said earlier though, this crossroad came during my freshmen year of college.  Cheating was a whole other story prior to my time at Northern Illinois University.

If you’ve been reading my articles, you know what systems I’ve owned and what kinds of games I play.  What you don’t know if that for each system up to the original Playstation, I owned some type of cheating device.  I also bought strategy guides, but if I wrote about those the article would stop here.  For the NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Gear, I owned a Game Genie.  For the Playstation and Nintendo 64, I owned a Gameshark.  These devices aided in changing parts of a game’s code and thus altering different areas of the game.  You would input codes at the start up.  The codes could grant things such as invincibility, unlocking different levels or even changing the look of a game.  The devices would come with booklets that had codes for games that were out at the time and you could get more codes via game magazines or experimentation.

The Game Genie helped me make it through games that were difficult to impossible either because I was too young or the design was bad.  Dragon Warrior for the NES was really hard for a kid six years of age.  With aid of the Game Genie, I didn’t need to worry about losing HP, MP or keys.  I could run through the game in a matter of hours and fight off even the hardest of enemies.  Friday the 13^th was another game that was difficult for me.  Not only was it scary that Jason could pop out at any time, it was also insanely difficult and had pretty shoddy gameplay mechanics.  But, again, thanks to the Game Genie, I was able to survive Jason’s onslaughts, sometimes just standing there while he tried to hurt me and laughing at his failure to do so.  It even made the NES game, Karnov, playable.  And for anyone who has played Karnov, you know the hours of frustration that game provided.

One crazy thing I remember when using the Game Genie for the Sega Game Gear was the hidden messages I found.  I was at a friend’s house fiddling around with my Game Gear, tapping random buttons and inputting random codes.  Next thing I know, there is a blue screen with a message saying, “Help.  I’m a prisoner in a Game Genie factory.”  I was in 4^th grade at the time and was admittedly pretty scared.  There were other messages too which I don’t remember as much as that one.  Years later, I researched what the messages were and found out they were just little Easter eggs.  Even so, the messages were creepy.

When the N64 and PSone came around, Gameshark was the “in” cheating device.  The codes were longer but allowed for more things to be changed.  Plus, you could save the codes in the device so you didn’t have to keep inputting them every time you start the game.  Being able to avoid level grinding in Final Fantasy VII was a blessing.  The version I remember having was the Gameshark Pro, which let you design your own codes and added a whole new dimension to the game, or froze it and deleted your save data, but mistakes had to be made in the name of cheating.

That leads me to the problems with the Game Genie and Gameshark.  They were great for allowing you to make game easier or add a different dimension.  Too often though, they made games broken.  The devices would delete save data or corrupt your game.  Sometimes, they would make the game too easy.  Have you ever played through the first disc of FFVII at level 99?  It’s not a whole lot of fun.

This is also the reason why I try my hardest not to cheat in a video game either by using a cheat device or a strategy guide or even the internet.  I want the challenge.  I like that feeling of accomplishment.  Even better than that is the “holy crap I found something” feeling.  I don’t frown on using guides or devices.  To each his/her own.  The Game Genie/Gameshark and I had plenty of great memories.  But, that’s what they are, memories.  It’s a sign that I’ve grown as a person and as a gamer.

Just In Bailey –an homage to the secret code from Metriod, which allowed you to play as Samus Aran without her suit– is an editorial column at Vagary.TV brought to you by Joey Alesia. Each week Joey will challenge you to look at a different perspective of the characters, gameplay, and/or plot in your favorite games. Chat up your thoughts below, or send Joey an e-mail at Joey.Alesia@vagary.tv

You don’t need to listen to some of the podcast deliberations on the site to realize that 2011 has been one of the finest years for gaming in a long while. The year had downloadable titles like Bastion sit next to or above high profile retail games like Portal 2 and surprises like Rayman: Origins and Saint’s Row: The Third. The seldom appreciated and often dust ridden Wii was graced with the latest Nintendo dungeon adventure of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

With all of those games in mind, we locked ourselves in a Google Document and threw emails at each other until we came up with a list of Vagary.TV’s games of the year. Enjoy.

The Don Parsons Award for Best Flying Game: Ace Combat Assault Horizon

Don comes down from his mountain to review flight games. In his spare time, he reviews flight games

By: Don Parsons

2011 was a stellar year for flight combat game enthusiasts (see: Me). From the great story-telling of Air Conflicts: Secret Wars to the fantastic plane modeling and dog-fighting of Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters, there was one that really stood out. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon exceeded all expectations, and not only delivered some great combat in the skies, but also gave us an epic and cinematic story. As if that wasn’t enough, it actually had people playing the game online. Both other games had online modes but, sadly, not a soul could be found playing them. Assault Horizon blew me away with its presentation and deserves to be called the Flying Game of the Year.

Best Xbox 360 Exclusive: Gears of War 3

Marcus' du-rag finally comes off. 'Nuff said.

By: Chris Scott

No other series, sans Halo, means as much to the Xbox brand as Gears of War. Knowing that, developer Epic Games had a lot of weight on its shoulders for the finale of the Gears saga to begin with, and Microsoft’s first party lineup of games in 2011 was oddly devoid of many big name games.

Fortunately for both Epic and Microsoft, Gears of War 3 not only delivers on the expectations for the series, it handily exceeds them. The single player campaign, which is also playable in four player co-op, is the best in the series and actually delivers some emotional characterizations to characters many people thought had none. Horde mode was drastically remodeled and delivers one of the best co-op experiences this year and is complimented by Beast mode, an incredibly fun reversal of the Horde formula. The competitive multiplayer is deeper, more balanced, and more fun that it has ever been. Additionally, the game controls better than ever, the new weapons are a ton of fun, and it’s more visually improved and diverse than any Gears game to date. Everything about Gears 3 feels incredibly polished. No game offered the complete package that Gears of War 3 did but, most importantly, it was a hell of a lot of fun to play.

Best Playstation 3 Exclusive: Uncharted 3 Drake’s Deception

Drenched in hopelessness and vulnerability without a drop to drink

By: Kyle Baron

Uncharted 3 had plot holes and some contrived sequences that existed in service of gameplay, but none of that even entered my mind when I was playing it. Nathan Drake’s latest and possibly last venture on home consoles is a technical marvel that has you travelling across the world through acrid tombs, under the glaring suns of deserts, and through the often exploding and crumbling action set pieces of ocean liners and ancient castles.

Beneath all of that, Uncharted 3 tells a subtle yet pervasive story of Nathan as a man who is always close to what he wants while he’s about to lose everything else in the process. In and out of all of the gunfights, we see that his love for adventure and treasure is threatening to take the ones he loves away from him; it might be a narrow escape by a friend or the love of his life mumbling about her wedding ring, but that underlying battle is what stuck with me until the end of the game. Uncharted 3 beat out Infamous 2 for this award by one measly vote, and that really speaks to the level of emotion that both games subtly meter out with great effect.

Sure, the Playstation Network outage was an absolute mess, but Playstation 3′s had a great year for great exclusives.

Runner Up: Infamous 2

Best Shooter of the Year: Battlefield 3

It's best to just vault over single player into the rest of the game, really.

By: Don Parsons

The battlefield for modern shooters was rough in 2011. There were two camps split down the middle, with a small margin enjoying both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. After our staff voting, there was clearly one winner: Battlefield 3. While not a bad thing at all, most people feel like Modern Warfare 3 is just “more Call of Duty,” whereas Battlefield 3 took what made Battlefield: Bad Company 2 great and expanded it.

Everything that makes the Battlefield series great is here. The Conquest and Rush game modes, developer DICE-designed maps [that are always amazing], squad-based teamwork, and epic vehicular combat are all great. There’s also been a few changes that are just grand enough to stand out and make this feel like a step forward instead of the “same old thing.” The biggest of those changes is to the weapon progression system, which has kept me personally invested for dozens of hours. Smaller things like jets and being able to go prone also enhance this beautiful collective package.

Runners Up: Gears of War 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Game of the Year:  The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

Not all of our staff were psyched about Skyrim being our game of the year

By: Tony Odett

Over the past few years, I’ve developed what I like to call “video game restraint.” When I was younger, time seemed to disappear when I put a game in my console. I’d forget to eat and sleep. I’d think about the game I was obsessively playing while at work that day, while of course trying to function on the three hours of sleep I had gotten because I had needed to beat just one more level, complete one more quest, or take one more city.  But then I became an adult with a wife, kids, and a big boy job. My gaming obsession was curtailed, and those feelings of addiction were forever lost. Even Mass Effect 2, which I thought was the best game I had ever played, found itself chopped into two hour increments, and never played past 1:00 a.m. I was until complete control.

Until Skyrim.

The real crux of a game, the thing that really matters, the most important factor for anyone isn’t storyline or graphics. It’s not even gameplay. No, the most important quality a game has, deep down, is how playing it makes you feel. Skyrim makes me feel like a kid again. It takes me back to a place in my life I had thought gone forever, where time melts away and I am lost in a new, amazing world.  Skyrim has moved me from jaded disillusionment to utter gaming joy. With deep lore, an addicting leveling system, loads of quests, and the deepest, most populating gaming world I’ve ever seen, I give you Skyrim, Vagary’s 2011 Game of the Year

Runner up: Super Mario 3D Land

Video games have gone through many different eras.  From the Stone Age of Pong to the Renaissance Age of Super Mario Bros. to the Hi-Def Age of today.  I come from the Renaissance Age.  I come from a time when games were difficult on principle.  My time saw no trophies and endings were a simple “Thanks for playing.”  It was also a time without hard drives, memory cards, or cloud saves.  You had few choices when playing a game.  Either you beat the game in a single sitting, prayed that the battery back-up didn’t delete your save (which it did without fail near the end of whatever game you were playing), or you made sure you wrote down the password you were given in order to continue in the same state you left off.

Passwords are a strange thing.  Look at this column’s title.  “Justin Bailey” was a password in Metroid that allowed you to play the game as Samus Aran without her suit.  A simple name revealed the game’s biggest secret.  Many games used them to drop the player in the same relative level with the same amount of lives and items.  The set-up of the password differed from game to game.  Some would have a string of characters, sometimes 20 or more.  Others, like Mega Man 2, would resemble a bingo card.  They were an art form.  Abstract, maybe, but an art form nonetheless.

As a kid, passwords were a blessing and a curse to me.  In Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, getting to Iron Mike was a huge challenge as you had a limited number of chances.  There were intervals every 3 or so fights where Little Mac would run in a very stylish pink jumpsuit while his fat manager rode a bicycle in front of him through New York.  These segments would end at the Statue of Liberty and provide the player with a password.  Or you could just input a certain password and jump straight to Kid Dynamite himself.  He would beat you senseless over and over and over again.  The punishment was frustrating.  But, with that password you had a quicker way of getting to him.

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest also had a password system.  As a pseudo-RPG, the game would have been better served with a battery back-up.  It was a hard game.  The enemies were tough.  You could travel for hours without figuring out where to go next.  And then the darkness would come.  Oh the darkness, when “it [was] a terrible night to have a curse” and the enemies went from being difficult to being near-impossible.  Konami was kind enough to provide a password to give you all of Dracula’s body parts, maximum life and the strongest whip available and drop you at his front door.  It may have skipped you ahead, but, trust me when I say that the game was difficult enough to warrant the skip.

Another cool thing about passwords was that they could be anywhere: magazines, instruction manuals, even found hidden in the games themselves.  It was also a cool feeling if you found one out yourself.  They could put a new spin on a game and increase the replay value.  They were also a cool thing to share with friends.  It was a lot easier to bring a piece of paper with some numbers scribbled on it than to drag your hard drive and have to switch it out and remember to bring it home again.

Passwords are a lost relic in gaming.  What was once a necessary way to save your progress in a game has shrunk to just being a simple cheat code.  I know they’re cumbersome and there was little rhyme or reason or even an easy way to remember them.  To me, it’s a nostalgia thing.  Like the really bad action movies of the 1980s, it’s just fun to go back to a simpler time when something didn’t require rhyme or reason.  I don’t think they would work so well today seeing how complicated games are now.  However, I do owe the password props for helping me name my column and being a cool part of my childhood.  They may be a lost art of gaming, but that’s what makes them so special.

Just In Bailey –an homage to the secret code from Metriod, which allowed you to play as Samus Aran without her suit– is an editorial column at Vagary.TV brought to you by Joey Alesia. Each week Joey will challenge you to look at a different perspective of the characters, gameplay, and/or plot in your favorite games. Chat up your thoughts below, or send Joey an e-mail at Joey.Alesia@vagary.tv

Happy New Year, Gamers!  I hope everyone had a great holiday season, whichever one you celebrate.  2011 was definitely a good year for video games and I hope you were able to partake in some of the biggest releases in gaming.  2012 looks to be another good year to be a gamer with the release of the Playstation Vita, maybe the Wii U, and a good line-up of games, including the final chapter of the Mass Effect trilogy.  I hope it’s also a big year for the Just In Bailey column.  I have some good ideas in the works and hope to provide you with quality reading material at least 52 times.  Now, down to brass tacks.

The video game industry has grown by leaps and bounds.  With 3 major home consoles, PCs, 2 major handhelds, and now mobile devices entering the fray, there is no shortage of choices.  But there is a shortage of money.  Unless you have an unlimited supply of disposable income, deciding what to spend your [parents'] hard-earned money on can be daunting.  So, how do you decide what system to buy?  Well, for the most part, a system is judged on the quality of the software.  But, what games do you buy?  How do you know if a game is worth spending upwards of $60 on (more if you buy collectors editions)?  Like so many people in today’s fast-paced world, you don’t have nearly enough time to research every game out there.  So, you put your trust in someone else to tell you if a game is worth your time and money.  You look to the reviews done by sites such as Vagary.TV, monthly magazines, and even television shows.

Game reviews are pretty standard fare.  The reviewer plays the game with a critical eye, judging everything from storyline to sound.  They write up an article, giving their opinion of the game and maybe even throw in a few jokes so the review doesn’t read like stereo instructions.  This is all fine and dandy.  I like to read other opinions.  There’s a benefit to getting another person’s perspective.  And then they go and do something that really doesn’t help matters.  They assign a score.  Sometimes this score is on a five point scale.  Sometimes it’s on a 10 point scale.  And then there’s Metacritic, which gives an average of multiple review scores and converting the numbers to fit a 100 point scale.

Video games, like movies, books, and pretty much anything creative, are subjective in nature.  My opinion of a game may be completely different from your opinion.  I liked Final Fantasy XIII, and I hear that’s a pretty exclusive club.  There are a lot of people that don’t like it.  Maybe they dislike the gameplay or the story.  Or maybe they are completely against anything Final Fantasy.  So, what if the reviewer is one of these people?  How can they be completely objective?  This goes double for those reviewers that are extremely cynical (or act that way because they think it’s funny).  You can also read in their eyes and words that they relish hating on certain games just because they are part of a particular brand or genre.  In order to throw my cash a certain way there needs to be a bit of trust between me and the reviewer.  If the reviewer is going to hate on a game just to get a rise out of their audience, why should I trust them?  Given the nature of the medium, I wouldn’t expect absolute objectivity.  I just want the reviewer to tell the truth.

Then there’s the scoring system.  Again, as a creative medium, video games need to treated subjectively.  Is there really much difference in a 9.3 or a 9.4 rating?  Or between a 3/5 and a 4/5?  How does the reviewer come to the conclusion that a game just doesn’t quite make the 7.5 rating and gives it a 7.0?  And to give a game a perfect score?  Is any game truly perfect in every way?  Numbers have a way of just muddling things up.  I really had to laugh when the reviews came in for Uncharted 3 and the game did not get perfect scores across the board.  The outcry was hilarious.  Did it stop the game from selling millions of copies?  Not by a long shot.  Was it a great game?  Definitely.  Why didn’t it get perfect scores across the board?  I can think of two reasons.  Reason the first, a review is purely subjective and not every person sees the game the same way.  Reason the second, it wasn’t a perfect game.  But, fans everywhere were in an uproar over the lack of perfect scoring from the different reviewers.  Would they have been as upset if someone just told them the game was awesome?  Instead, they got heated over a digit.

My point is simply this:  video game reviews aren’t going anywhere.  Nor should they.  Like I said before, I like hearing other perspectives on games.  And let’s face it, people have way too many other things going on in their lives to test drive every game that comes out to find out where to spend their money.  I just take issue with the numbers game.  You can’t do the reader justice by placing a score on something that can be seen as art and is, therefore, subjective.  Last time I checked out the Art Institute of Chicago, I didn’t see critic scores next to the paintings and sculptures.  If I were a game  reviewer and had some freedom in the way I “rate” a game, I would do it as follows:

Is the game a purchase? A rental? Or, should you just not waste your time?  If I thought a game had enough content to warrant the sticker price, I would recommend it as a purchase.  Or a used purchase if I didn’t think the game was worth the full freight.  If I thought the game was worth giving a try but didn’t warrant spending $40 to $60 US on, I would recommend it as a rental.  With GameFly, Blockbuster, Redbox, and soon, Netflix, there are still options for those of us who want to try a game without spending a lot of money.  Then, if I thought a game was a waste of time, I would advise the reader not to bother with it and move on to something better. And when offering up my opinion, I would also give some comparisons to games the reader may have already played so they know what to expect.

It isn’t a perfect system, but I think it’s pretty effective.   Like the subjective material we play for fun, and sometimes profit, reviews are an opinion.  All I want is for someone to tell me their thoughts and the truth.  I don’t need a number to tell me whether or not I should play a game.  All I want the numbers to do is create the game and I’ll, in turn, be their judge, jury, and executioner.

Just In Bailey –an homage to the secret code from Metriod, which allowed you to play as Samus Aran without her suit– is an editorial column at Vagary.TV brought to you by Joey Alesia. Each week Joey will challenge you to look at a different perspective of the characters, gameplay, and/or plot in your favorite games. Chat up your thoughts below, or send Joey an e-mail at Joey.Alesia@vagary.tv

This is what $15 looked like in 2009. Now it's free.

Be happy if you bought or redeemed on online pass for your Playstation 3 copy of Battlefield 3.

The outstanding little package of 2009′s downloadable Battlefield 1943 is now free for anyone with an online pass for a Playstation 3 copy of Battlefield 3.

There were promises made at E3 2011 that all PS3 copies of Battlefield 3 would include the stand alone downloadable predecessor. There was a bit of a PR mess after users found 1943 missing from their game cases, with publisher Electronic Arts saying that “In lieu of 1943 being available on disk for PS3 customers, EA has made all BF3 expansions available early to PS3 customers.” That didn’t go over well, as a lawsuit was later filed against EA. Within a matter of months, the publisher announced that Playstation 3 users with online passes for Battlefield 3 would receive their free game.

As of this writing, the free copy of 1943 is available on the North American and European stores, with Asia and Japan being eligible for the code redemption on Dec 17 2011.

There are still a few steps you have to take in order to get your code, and EA details them here.

From EA’s site:

1. Activate your Battlefield 3 Online Pass for the PlayStation 3 using the voucher included in the game (see step #5 for additional instructions).

2. Visit 1943redemption.battlefield.com on or after the dates outlined above for your region and log in with your Origin ID and password. Click here if you need help with retrieving your account information.

3. Select your territory. Note vouchers do not work across regions. Players in Australia and New Zealand should select Europe.

4. You will then receive a PlayStation 3 voucher for Battlefield 1943.

5. input your voucher into the PlayStation Network store. Instructions below.

1. From the XMB (cross media-bar) of the PlayStation 3 connected to a network, choose [account management] under the [PlayStation Network].
2. From the menu select redeem codes.
3. Enter voucher and select continue.
4. Download Battlefield 1943.

I found it to be easy. If you haven’t already, I recommend creating an account on EA.com using the option to register with your PSN ID. At that point, you log on with your usual PSN credentials and it will automatically recognize many of the EA games you’ve played, Battlefield 3 included. Then you just hit up the 1943 redemption site to snag your code.

From eroding compounds to sunlight forests, the environments really pop

I expected Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken to be a persistently self aware artsy indie action game that banked on the game’s premise of chicken-versus-fascist-penguins to propel the comedy forward. Instead, Rocketbirds is a surprisingly methodical adventure game that touches on war crimes and light humour while busying the player with artfully composed adventure set pieces.

Originally a $10 flash game, developer Ratloop Asia’s Rocketbirds is a side scrolling adventure where you control Hardboiled, a bipedal gun wielding chicken, in a world where a fascist military regime of penguins has brought the world to its knees.

The simple controls have you firing, doing tactical rolls, occasionally taking cover, or automatically giving an enemy an uppercut if you get close. Even at its most frenetic, with enemies popping up on both sides of the screen as they often do midway through the game, the combat is a deliberately paced balancing act of you using your guns and grenades to keep enemies juggled in the air so that they can’t fire back. There are also some simple pressure plate puzzles to solve, as well as some surprisingly fun gadgets, but I really don’t want to spoil the latter here.

Soon after it appears and progresses in difficulty, group combat becomes the game’s lone gameplay fault. Enemies like to appear at both sides of the screen at once, which leaves you in an awkward spot if there’s no cover. Sure, you can spray bullets at one crowd of enemies and then the other on the opposite side of the screen, and this works fine for a while. However, the enemies will eventually clump up in groups and your bullets will end up juggling corpses instead of the live enemies standing right behind them as they ready their weapons. Even if you’re careful, you can sometimes end up being kept in the air by bullets for a little while. This results in a lot of starting over from one of the game’s generous checkpoints in order to figuratively bang your head against a wall until something works.

Wait, why is that guy on the bottom about to cap his buddy?

Thankfully, the jetpack combat sequences, introduced by Hardboiled saying “time for some jetpaction,” are free from any frustrations. It has a sort of aerial dogfighting feel to it, with you and several airborne penguins doing loops and killing your throttle in order to get on each others’ tails and send feathers flying off into the clouds with a spray of bullets. Oh, and you can also lead anti-air rockets back into the peop…I mean, penguins who fired them.

In fact, the game isn’t really about penguins and chickens at all. Through some overheard dialogue and the game’s several wordless cutscenes drenched in stylish chiptune-indie rock, the game expounds on Hardboiled’s background and motiviations. Child soldiers, genocide, hope, and loss of innocence all lie subtly in the undergrowth of themes that make the game more than just a ubiquitous revenge tale.

While it works perfectly in the game’s many cutscenes, a lot of the in-game tracks don’t quite fit. Sure, the Atari-era chip tune techno and catchy guitar riffs work, but once you start listening to the lyrics you’ll wonder why a song about relationships is playing while you’re sending the blood of enemies careening into walls at the ends of a shotgun’s buckshot.

The excellent cutscenes aren’t the only thing Rocketbird has going for it beyond the combat – the art direction is hard to ignore. Although the game is played from a side-scrolling perspective, the environments have a fantastic amount of depth and rich colour to them even in the darkest corners of the game world; sun drenched mossy trees, rainy night-time airbase raids, and blood and rot stained detention centres are a few of the visual treats you’ll tromp and blast your way through. A lot of the environments have backgrounds that pitch left and right as you walk across the screen, which creates a great sense of depth.

Speaking of depth, anyone with 3D glasses will be pleasantly surprised to see how well Rocketbirds executes on the technology. I played through the entire three hour co-op campaign in 3D and I wouldn’t want to play it again in any other way. The rich colours and depth really popped out in a pervasive and unobtrusive way, something that only Shadow of the Colossus has done for me.

The single player environments get recycled, but co-op is still worth your time

Co-op sets you and a buddy out on a rescue mission through a handful of recycled single player levels with some extra puzzles thrown in. The real difference lies in you and your buddy, playing as Vietnam-era soldier budgies (no, I’m not joking), overcoming the limitations of your size. You’re both short and you can’t roll around with the same speed of Hardboiled, so you’ll have to piggyback on each others’ shoulders to fire over certain pieces of cover, reach high up ledges, and solve puzzles.

Sadly, the co-op campaign doesn’t receive the same treatment as single player as far as cutscenes go. I’m aware of how odd it seems to be lamenting the absence of cutscenes in a game where you, y’know, play, but that’s only because they were such an integral and well-done part of the single player game.

Despite some minor combat frustrations, Rocketbirds is easily one of the most satisfying downloadable experiences I’ve had on the PSN in a while. I still have the game’s music in my head as I’m writing this, and I still pop in and replay a level or two to soak in the game’s lovingly handled juxtaposition of fart jokes and contemporary themes. Gamers who download this PSN exclusive while expecting a frenetic twitch-fest or an unimaginative cheap-laugh will be pleasantly surprised by a tenderly crafted world and some competent action not often found in something that used to be a played in a browser.

4/5

The last thing I saw before my social life ended

Adventure inclined gamers now have a better picture of what their schedules will look like this November.

Thanks to someone with the user name ‘Mehrunes Artem,’ Russian Elder Scrolls website, Elderscrolls.net, has dug up the full map for Bethesda’s upcoming RPG behemoth, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

Not surprisingly, the new province, Skyrim, looks incredibly mountainous. The last game in the series that had this many mountains was the 2002 release of Morrowind, which is still regarded by many Elder Scrolls enthusiasts as the best game in the series.

The map above is the English version, translated by game news site Myona. Look and click down below for the full size map in all its Russian glory.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim will be released November 11 of this year.