I only use the air-quotes facetiously in my title, because Boom Blox truly does proffer hours of anger-managing fun. The modes of play in this surprising Steven Spielberg-EA joint project cover a cavalcade of building-block applications, such as the less rage-venting, Jenga-style game of Dismantle, and similarly, Plumbing, where obstructions in a point-laden block’s fall must be precisely unobstructed. But if up til now you have been living on the planet Earth, and thus, have ample unresolved tension in your life, taking a Wiimote in hand and slinging a bowling ball at a stack of inert, brightly-colored blocks with collateral damage to happy smiling animals truly gets the lead out. The siege-like Throwing modes, including a level modeled after the game Warlords (which I love), will provide serious therapy for you and your three closest friends/enemies. It’s harmless demolition with a peppy, quality aesthetic (and since you’re repeating more or less the same actions for extended periods, stuff like good music and interesting backdrops becomes pretty important.)

I really recommend Boom Blox for a good time.

I know Nintendo understands the sacred place of its first formula-racing franchise in the history of gaming, even if the SNES original was more or less a glorified tech demo. I know because ever since the brilliant F-Zero X for N64, they have made repeated reference to it in other, more widely-beloved franchises, keeping their comic book-styled speed demon low, but clearly visible on the radar. Just look at the recent Wii outings of two heavy-hitting properties (trying to avoid spoilers here) for abundant reminders of the Falcons, Captain and Blue.

It’s my understanding that the sales numbers for F-Zero GX were staggeringly low–not high, as one might expect of a development handled with every conceivable respect for quality. The modest movement of these slick units could have been ’cause GX was a vicious and exacting challenge, only well worth mastering to the dedicated pilot and technician. Adrenaline ran high as there were consistent awards and milestones as you came to reign over each crazy-fast circuit, added to the fierce thrill of besting 40 other racers instead of a paltry 8 to 12 each time. In F-Zero, if you’re looking to take someone out, you have to be the better pilot and ram them to pieces–nothing short of a completely skill-based endeavor will net you victory.

I ardently hope Nintendo, with whatsoever help they may require, will succumb to the power of its own suggestions and continue this series on Wii. But in the meantime, we can always see what a feat of game design looks like by popping in F-Zero GX.

Summer is here, and hot weather comes with. If you want to stay cool and safe from the hazards of sun exposure but still enjoy a wild, sweaty-palmed, and sometimes-steamy excursion to the heart of the pre-Incan jungle, might I suggest the game pictured at right. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune delivers a cinematic experience to rival the movies (I’m looking at you, Indy), but the gameplay is just as much a part of this ride: gunfights, puzzles, rock-climbing, and sprints across collapsing trap floors provide exhilirating thrills you watch AND play. On the trail of Sir Francis Drake, the world shall be your oyster, even when things go wrong–and, as in any salt-worthy, twisting bit of Hollywood yarn, they will. Dare the heights and depths of the world, take in spectacular views, and yeah, punch in a face or two in Uncharted.

Portal, Valve’s experiment of player-turned-guinea-pig and infinite loops you can walk through, has produced favourable results among its subjects and generated significant interest in the gaming community. I now know why. I just played the PS3 Orange Box, and for Portal alone, I beseech you to do the same. Phrases like ‘pioneering new directions in imagination’ and ‘the simplest forms of genius’ don’t begin to describe this game, but that’s all I’ve got coming to me. You won’t know what hit you–seriously, you’re thrown without explanation into successive exercises in interdimensional interior design at the Aperture Labs Enrichment Program, and are expected to take the controls of a vortex-spouting gun like it comes naturally. But because the design is flawless, it is as natural as you ever imagined walking through a thousand mirrored mirrors to be. The asylum theme provides much amusement, and also your character’s constant companion in the form of a not-so-slightly unstable robotic voice. All things in Portal are in perfect proportion to respect your intelligence and to entice you to experiment for the sheer fun of falling through the ceiling at terminal velocity forever.

Sometimes, an even bigger fuss really is warranted. Also available on PC (not pictured because there’s another blog where that might happen).

Although the lay-gamer would probably associate Wii Fit with that girly yoga stuff, it seems Nintendo’s at-home fitness software knows how to keep us in shape long before it’s out of the box. Since I got off work on the 21st, I’ve had to keep moving further down the trail of “SOLD OUT” signs that now undoubtedly stretches from the Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico. The game, using the included, pressure-sensitive Balance Board, surely offers a sport to the tastes of any region–be it the old favourite of my arcade days, Downhill Slalom skiing, finally made possible at home by the scale beneath each of your feet, or Soccer goal-tending, which tracks your head position as you attempt to contact a ball with it. I don’t know how well the motion-tracking functions, but the expert review suggests well. If the people who can play these sports year-round would only kindly ship me one of their copies, I might know for sure!

Of course, if, to avoid hours of fruitless searching, you turn around to face a computer, you’ll find Wii Fit is available in abundance from retailers on PriceGrabber. Close to the MSRP, to boot, which thanks to the likes of eBay is increasingly rare. So, as the horrendous diet ads go, what are you ‘weighting’ for? Wii Fit takes weights up to 300 lbs.!

To think just a month or two ago I wanted to cover some Dreamcast peripherals–inspired by the fact that all ours are gradually getting worn out–and I could find next-to-none here. A scenario that likely sounds familiar: the wires in the cord of my official controller have begun to lose contact at the controller end, thus powering off during and corrupting many a VMU save, or just leaving me in a kind of pause-unpause slow-motion as the system repeatedly detects the ‘removed’ control pad. Luckily for cool Dreamcast owners such as ourselves, there’s a nice assortment of replacements here:

So rejoice! Even if your equipment isn’t defective, the site is full of hope if you, like me, still cherish your old systems and want to enjoy them at maximal value. Or maybe you just thought Sega struck gold and made the most comfortable controller ever, and you know that, while the patents are jealously guarded for all time, there are adaptors floating around to use console controllers as USB joypads. I know at least two people in this camp–shout-outs to my Dreamcast homeboys Josh and Paul!

No one here better even halfway believe that, no matter how much we love cereals and canned pastas ending with ‘O’. Meteos is a game: as a pretty well-publicized early entrant on the DS scene, I don’t imagine there’s much confusion to that… but one look at the startlingly action-oriented puzzle game, and you do start to wonder: just what is going on with these rocket-blocks and changing gravitational pulls consarnit?!

Meteos is a rare member of the elite in a genre that is full of the average. Q! Entertainment’s puzzler draws on a heritage steeped in synesthetic design–that’s kind of like saying cross-sensory, in plainer English–producing a unified rhythm of sights, sounds, and movement. It’s supposed to draw you further in and block out the outside world, but whether or not you like dancing stick-figure aliens and ambient synths, the ever-paramount gameplay is sublime. In your bid to group three-or-more like pieces that will rocket the stack above off your planet and onto one of your opponents’, be sure to use the touch screen for speeds and technical finesse that are unachievable with conventional digital inputs (and thus in almost all rival games I can think of). Meteos is playable with criminal ease by anyone who ever grabbed a pencil in the public school system. It’s stylish, but best of all, it’s meaty.

Meteos. Available in scampering space-men format and Disney paintjob that allows the coveted book-style holding method, omigosh.

To show that I don’t have some problem with all things mainstream, and because, despite all contrary appearances, I really don’t want to alienate everybody, here’s an already rabidly-popular game that I can get behind. Actually… in trying to vindicate this blog, I still manage to pick one of (if not the least) rabid-making Final Fantasy of them all: IX. At the close of the PS1’s life, it rewound the clock on the over-sexed, under-cerebral prior two instalments to the glory days of big-eyed, small-mouthed FANTASY worlds and characters. That divided opinion and displeased some fans–but not all of them. FFIX fans, you ARE somebody!

Something a spiritual sequel to the NES forefather of them all, FFIX took the best of the old and the new and made one of the biggest, happening-est and most technical-merit-filled games on the system. It’s a real joy to attend this throwback school of lovable characters, magical imagination and upbeat storytelling. It’s Final Fantasy the way it used to–and but for popular opinion, should still–be, but don’t just take my word for it, or use it against trying it. FFIX should be the counterweight in your own gauge of all the offerings that have come since.

In their rush to make it big first on the new hardware, a lot of the preponderance of early PS2 RPGs received some harsh critical panning. Shadow Hearts was not surprisingly among them–it showed hastily-drawn development lines around its every component, it had weak-to-crippling voice talent, and it barely eked past PS1 levels graphically-speaking. A sequel to Koudelka, a short PS1 RPG that had some reviewer difficulties of its own, Shadow Hearts may have seemed an unlikely candidate for a further sequel… but not to me.

I really enjoyed Shadow Hearts’ thematically-mature story of necromantic, murderous intrigue and dark contracts with destiny, despite all its less desirable qualities. When Aruze realized it had done something good, but just good enough, the idea clicked to work harder on the sequel, and Shadow Hearts: Covenant leaped and bounded past the previous production in all its values. Fully-voiced cutscenes with people who actually tried, seriously upgraded visuals that ditched the single-screen prerendered look for giant Christo-European locales, and an opening movie that kicks the crap out of everything edgey and angsty that Final Fantasy ever tried: this is what makes a Covenant. This is what makes you want to join it.

Talking about Panzer Dragoon two posts back brought to mind a game that bears it little-to-no resemblance, but whose similar title drew me to it. Every so often here on the site there surfaces a copy of this, one of the last, and arguably one of the most enjoyable, PS1 RPGs, at a startingly low price. Yes, I DO mean the Legend of Dragoon. I know there is a contingent of sympathizers out there that appreciates LoD’s diamond-in-the-rough qualities, but (deep breath) I’m already bracing for the flack that will be duly bestowed me for making such a statement of a game on a system where the well-established progeny of Final Fantasy reigned supreme.

Okay, that takes care of the acknowledgments, now on to why this is being featured: Legend of Dragoon has a keen gimmick that was largely responsible for affecting the sweeping changes to the turn-based battling mechanic as seen on PS2–timed attacks. RPGs had done this as early as the SNES days, but LoD differs in that every physical attack, from the most basic two-hit combo to upwards of an 8-hit barrage, requires flawless rhythmic accuracy to land successfully, and hence too every battle to win. Nothing keeps you better pumped for the duration of the requisite two-hour boss fights that plague this genre than LoD’s timed attacks, and possibly the oddly shredding soundtrack. Just look at the Shadow Hearts series for an indication that LoD turned some heads (hmm… make next post on that).

Also notable for some of the best prerendered backgrounds on the system and very pretty battle effects, LoD still looks decent today, even if the engine often shows its seams. Story-wise, even if the translation hurts at first, there’s a lot of good plot development in this and a surprising maturation of dialogue and purpose (just get past disc 1). Random fact: My favourite character is King Albert, the Fighting King. I almost never have favourites anymore.