Looking back now, I have no idea why I haven't played Kingdom Hearts before.  I mean, if old Squaresoft could make a half-compelling RPG out of the Mario world, why can't a Disney-devoted RPG by Square be just as good as the Final Fantasy line I've loved my whole life?  It was Goofy.  Every time I saw a clip with Goofy in a scene with Cloud Strife, something inside me said “no.”

Well, this is me humming a new tune.  After years of watching the occasional Youtube clip, trailers, and my friends telling me what a deep and cohesive ongoing story the series is creating, I have to say I'm getting kind of excited about KH: 358/2 Days.

The first thing that hooked me was the staying power.  RPGs either work or they don't, and lame RPGs don't stick around.  But what really has me considering a purchase when this game comes out in September is the fact that the new Kingdom Hearts will be a redemption story.  I am a huge sucker for redemption stories.  In the KH mythos, a person's soul can become divided into a weakened, original character, and a shadowy Nobody that roams the earth, basically soulless.  In Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, the series hero undergoes that tragedy, and his Nobody becomes entangled with murky dealings and starts to strive to become more than a soulless, wandering shadow. 

As usual, when Square[Soft/-Enix] goes for a story about character relationships and growth, there's a tear-jerker around every corner.  From the trailers and the synopsis on the game's web site, it looks likely to have you screeching war cries when the evildoers come to call.  I predict there will be at least one moment in this game that's as intense as Aerith's death scene or Palom and Porom's rescue of the party at Baron castle.

Teh trailzor:

I love open-ended games.  I love wandering off the beaten path to find things nobody's heard of, or at least, things the NPCs didn't tell me to go find.  These games know what I'm talkin' about, and they deliver.

Spore

Spore takes open-ended-ness to a new level.  By letting you customize the creature's powers and traits, even the same areas become different on a replay, but forget all that.  Right from the earliest levels of creature creation, you never know what's off the horizon of the screen – fertile feeding grounds, or a huge predator eating everything in sight. 

GTA

Every game in the Grand Theft Auto series has been amazingly open-ended.  Nevermind that there might only be one endgame mission path, the missions are just a guide to playing in the detailed urban world.  NPCs are quirky – walking around on foot observing characters leads to all kinds of encounters that can be lucrative or just make you say “wow – what?!”  The open-ended design of Grand Theft Auto games has only increased with San Andreas and GTA IV.

Katamari

Katamari Damacy, We Love Katamari, My & My Katamari and Beautiful Katamari – four games that not only focus on providing huge freedom in how you approach each map, but of course, they also give you the scale factor of traveling around in inch-sized or mile-sized obstacle courses.  No other game series lets you start by collecting paperclips and knickknacks in an office building, then after some more exploring, come back and grab the building itself later.

The Sims

Nothing makes a situation more random and interesting than people, and this game series, simulating people who deal with all the different factors of living, is definitely both interesting and random.  Secret crushes!  Stupid stubborn grudges!  Food cravings!  The perils of chronic laziness!  The urge to go plant a garden instead of going to work!  All kinds of perfectly normal human urges manifest in the curious minds of these Sims, and the result is really a unique story each time you play it, made better by the fact that there's no cut-scenes, just living-as-gameplay.

Do you play airborne or space-borne combat games?  Do you have trouble staying out of your enemy's firing zones?  Do you get your wings shot off, in situations you should be able to handle?  We, here at Tanks Game, understand. 

Every day, thousands of gamers just like you get their butts blasted off in dog-fighting games because they don't understand the basics of evasion.  Why, it happened to me just today.  Try as I might, I just couldn't move that gigantic Galaxy Class starship the right way, and the cost of my failure was hundreds of virtual lives.

If only I'd been thinking about these basic tips...

I must apologize for the horrible quality of these illustrations.  I am not an artist.

Stay out of the box.
When you're evading, enemy teams will try to corral you, firing so that you're between them and keeping the pressure on you so that you can't pick up speed or distance.  By knowing where they are and how they're angling, you can decide which hits to allow them to land vs. when you really must turn.  If they're boxing you in, keep the speed on even if it means getting hit.  If they've got you boxed in, you need to fly tricky, sacrificing speed for maneuverability.

Keep an eye on every nearby hostile.
Radars lie.  Know where all hostiles are, unless they're moving out of combat range.  Don't pay all your attention to your own target.  Always think about who's targeting you.  Most games let you quickly pan through nearby targets: a “Nearest Hostile” button, a “My Attacker” button, and in some games the Next/Previous Target buttons will sort by distance.  Check each hostile's distance and orientation every several seconds.  (By orientation, I mean its angle relative to your own craft.)  If a hostile's nose is starting to line up with your craft, prepare to be fired at.  Keeping alert means taking less damage.

Getting “away” doesn't always mean away from their nose.
Getting away from hostiles doesn't have to mean you're in front of them and everyone's moving the same direction.  Most craft have their weapons facing front, and their engines facing rear.  Getting yourself behind one or more enemies, especially if they're moving forward, is a great way to get out of a box.  If you're on an attack run in a jousting pattern, you can easily fake like you're flying into a box, then cut behind an enemy who's moving at decent speed at the last second.  Observe what each pilot is predicting, and thwart it.

Joust, don't box.
In a messy fight where you're outnumbered and outgunned, you don't ever want to “hang in there and finish them off” unless you are in a very superior situation.  Hanging in close to land continuous hits on the same enemy who's trying to shake you reduces your speed and keeps your craft in one small area.  That means everyone but your target is starting to see you as a fish in a barrel.  They're putting themselves somewhere that lets them get in as many hits as possible before you realize you've made a mistake, PLUS letting them chase you easily once you finally start moving away.  Try to recognize when and if your thirst for blood has left you at low speed, dogfighting in a small zone.  When that happens, increase speed first, then use targeting buttons to find the cleanest way out of that zone immediately.

Use momentum in your favor.
Momentum is the reason why a heavy thing that's moving fast, can't slow down fast.  Aircraft and starships are heavy things, and when they're moving and turning, their speed and angle works against them if they suddenly want to stop or change direction.  This also applies to target-seeking weapons such as heat-seeking missiles.  Use momentum to your advantage by constantly forcing enemies to turn hard in one direction, and just when they're about to acquire you, turn as sharply as you can.  The finesse here is that moving fast will often make it harder to turn fast, so you need to decelerate and “goose” the throttle repeatedly as you turn in order to both turn and move quickly enough.  This trick can deny a sharpshooter his shot, and keep auto-locking weapons from scoring a hit.

Conserve your ammo.
Don't fire in a panic every time you “might have a shot.”  For energy weapons that get weaker at a distance, why fire at maximum range, unless it's doing something useful?  Remember, these are evasive maneuvers.  You should be thinking of every chance to dodge, not every chance to fire.  Firing on the run might deter pursuit at the best of times.  Few games let you kick butt while fleeing in terror

Alright flyboys and girls, stay alive up there!

I'm chomping at the bit. If you've never played Spore, this is the best time to start. The spore-sized and tribal stages are addicting enough, but pretty soon your civilized creatures will start venturing out into the universe, completing a full life cycle of game play. Not since SimEarth has any game boldly gone from the primordial muck to traveling the stars, and it's never been done especially well until Spore.

I gathered a collection of promos and gameplay videos to introduce you to Spore if you haven't played it. It's got elements of Katamari Damacy, Civilization, World of Warcraft, and when Galactic Adventures comes out in a few days, it'll beat Star Trek Online at its own game.

First, you're just a spore. You swim around eating meat that's smaller than you, avoiding or battling other creatures your own size or larger. The action is cute but deadly, and extremely free-form. Your little spore can fight smart and deter or kill gigantic predators, or flee certain death by plunging headlong into something even more deadly, only to slip out of the way at the last second. As you eat you get bigger and gather genetic power-ups, then you call a mate, and play as the newborn spore with new evolutionary selections.

Eventually you crawl out of the water and start the land-based adventure. This is similar to the watery spore stage – you're foraging for food, avoiding predators, mating and evolving, but it plays a bit more like an MMO or 3rd person action game. Eventually, you start banding together with your own kind, and the tribal phase begins. Here, gameplay starts taking on elements of both Civilization, and a real-time strategy. You build, develop a social structure, meet neighboring tribes and grow by either conquest or cooperation.

Finally, Spore: Galactic Adventures will take your advanced spore species into space for a kit of cute, zany and action-packed missions, and create new missions that other Galactic Adventures players can travel to take part in.

Here's more detail about the new gameplay in Spore: Galactic Adventures and one of the stock missions that comes with it.

Ghostbusters is out, and it is two things: difficult, and awesome. Aiming a proton pack is not easy, but if you've seen the movies, you know that's accurate. The writing is really top-notch, with Ramis and Akroyd's signature SCTV wit peppered all through it.

I'm pleased to say that, along with the other original Ghostbusters actors, Annie Potts is back, providing voice for her character, the secretary Janine Melnitz. That was a big deal to me, her line deliveries were the highlight of quite a few scenes in the movies and I hadn't been able to confirm Potts reprising that role until now. By comparison, I love Rick Moranis in every movie he's ever been in, but the lack of Louis Tulley isn't as big a deal as leaving out the original Janine would have been.

Both the difficulty and the awesomeness start 10 minutes into the game. You're likely to spend more time scorching wallpaper and blowing up furniture than actually catching ghosts during your first hunt, but after a while you start to get a feel for the unruly proton streams and learn how to wrangle and shepherd the ghosts into one of the Ghostbusters's signature traps, to be carted off to spend the rest of eternity in your containment unit.

Because the proton packs are so unpredictable, Ghostbusters has a high risk of friendly fire. You can get hit by a computer-controlled teammate, an exploding bit of scenery, or a nasty blast wave if you cross the streams. Meanwhile, ghosts fight back by slapping furniture at you, dragging you around when you've got them tethered for capture, occupying the same space as a Ghostbuster so his friends shoot at him, and of course, slimeing you. In short, it's extremely dangerous to be in a chaotic ghostbusting situation with all four teammates shooting wild. It helps to listen to Egon and Ray, they keep their heads and give good advice during combat.

Man, this game is too fun. Back to it, y'all!

Original 1980s Saturday morning Transformers voice actors Frank Welker and Peter Cullen reprise their roles as Megatron and Optimus Prime for the tie-in game Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. If you're old enough to remember the original Transformers feature film from 1986, then hearing Optimus declare “One shall stand, one shall fall” might send a cold chill down your spine. It did me: Prime once said those words right before getting killed in battle. Good work, whoever decided to re-use that today, the oldsters are hooked with the nostalgia, now what else have you got...?

Well, for one thing they've got Devastator, the ultra-gigantic Decepticon that spawns Voltron-style whenever the Constructicons get mad. Any bossfight where a two-story-tall robot has to jump as hard as it can just to reach up to the boss's midsection... that's a big robot.

For another they've got new-school Bumblebee. Old-school Bumblebee was a nerdy scout who could barely defend himself against a rogue mini-cassette tape. Today's Bumblebee does spinning slash attacks and is generally a lot cooler. This old-school Transformers fan approves – let's revise Bumblebee as far as possible away from resembling Scooter from Go-Bots.

Finally they've got what looks like kickbutt gameplay. Story mode has both Autobot and Decepticon campaigns. Unlike the previous Transformers movie tie-in game, missions can be done in any order using Megaman-like stage select. Multiplayer modes include deathmatch, team deathmatch, a capture-the-flag style mode, and a fourth where you fight to control areas of the map. Transformations are near instantaneous, allowing some insane action sequences during play.

Take a look at the trailer, if you haven't already seen it. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is released for PS2, PS3, Wii, PSP, Windows, and Xbox 360 on June 23. The single player campaigns will also be released on June 23 as two separate games for the Nintendo DS.

Trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Got time to laugh? These videos do not suck – and that's a guarantee. Don't worry, all the videos are rated 'E for Everyone' – though, I can't promise the comments or the rest of each user's videos will be.

Konami Code

This guy knows how to get 30 lives in the original NES version of Contra. And, oh my goodness, does he seem happy about it. The song is only as hilarious as the singer, and in this case, you might need stitches.

Incidentally, this is the video that launched this blog post - “If I can find a really good music video about 'Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start,' then I'm doing a Youtube videos blog post.”

I Can't Defeat Airman

Next up is the music video matching the lyrics to the first video-game related “poem” I ever read. It's quoted on TVTropes.com's “That One Boss” page, which is where I first encountered it. It works great as a poem:

I can't defeat Air Man

No matter how I try to dodge all his tornadoes, he just kills me again
And even though I can get behind him
It's no use, I try to fight, but I get blown away in the end.
I shoot as fast as I can,
But when I had to go against Air Man's tornado I was helpless again
I'll try again, of course, but this is my plan
I'll keep my E tank saved in reserve just as long as I can

...but, in fact, there's more to it!

This version of the video is made of distilled awesomesauce:

This version's cuter, done manga style starring a girl who goes into rock music to pay for a Game Genie. The singing is not as clear but I couldn't pass it up:

12 Days of (Starcraft) Christmas

I can't believe it took so long to find someone that did something good with this song! It was made by Blizzard, back when Starcraft was their latest 'big deal' game. Listening to the overlords screaming “Fiiiiiive ooooverlooOOAAARRRRRRDDS!” is worth it alone.

...is the title of a new game. Honestly.

I was looking at Amazon's list of what's coming soon, wondering if I had seen all there would be to see for the first half of summer. Suddenly, I saw a title that made me think Amazon was playing a practical joke on me.

The foolhardy townsmen clutched their swords, plunging ahead. “Steel yourself, young lad,” the elder said, “for the villain is just beyon- YE GODS, IT BURNS!!”

If that works for you in any way, then check this out. Being released for PlayStation Portable next month: “Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! What did I do to deserve this?” (...Let's just call it HIoPB or Badman, shall we?) In a nutshell, imagine someone gave Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater his own video game – even better, imagine Black Mage traveled to another dimension and conquered Dig-Dug.

HIoPB is the story of a villainous summoner with a dungeon, minding his own evil business. As his plans for world domination unfold, heroic adventurers keep finding the player's lair and trying to raid it. You, the villain, must summon monsters and traps to deal with the intruders. It's a level-by-level strategy game done with slapstick humor and old-school graphical style.

Your “Badman” isn't just a summoner and megalomaniac, though, he's also Dig-Du... er, he's a digger. You get to design the maze that the adventurers must navigate, as well as filling it with peril. A good strategy game gets its re-playability from offering open-ended choices, and “Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! What did I do to deserve this?” has that. Players who start getting good at Badman can take their advanced skills to try and help Dig-Du... I mean, their villain, dispatch his pursuers more quickly.

“Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! What did I do to deserve this?” is by NIS America, responsible for several highly-rated games based in fantasy lands like Mana Khemla and Atelier Iris Eternal Mana. HIoPB takes cheesy dialog and its simplistic oldschool styling very seriously, and is definitely a game made for getting a lot of good chuckles while doing something with your thumbs. It hits shelves as hard as it can in mid-July.