What am I talking about? Crane Simulator 2009, of course! What are you waiting for, go out and buy it! It's the best crane sim since 2008, what more can I say?
 
PEACE

In a vain effort to attribute some relevance and artistic credit to everyone's favorite pastime (blogging, duh), I've decided to compare them to the crowning achievement of a totally different medium. These blogs are like the Orson Welles...es of games. I mean blogs. About games. Or something.
 
1)  http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/video_game_king/blog/
Video Game King has mastered the art of blogging. He doesn't just pretend to blog, he IS the blog. He plays like 5 games a week. He writes blogs about these games. I don't read nearly all of them all the way through but his dedication is inspiring to generations of bloggers, all these years later. Kudos.
 
2) http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/sweep/blog/
 Though Sweep's wonder years have come and gone, he still manages to write relevant and occasionally thought-provoking blogs, as well as entertaining all of us with tales of his drunkenness. Truly, this is the age of web 2.blog.
 
3)  http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/dalai/blog/
Dalai writes like 5 blogs a week. Though not all are as substantial, this easily makes him the Samuel L Jackson of blogging: No matter what he does, his personality and voice always steal the show. Remember Phantom Menace? Remember Sam Jackson in that? Remember anything else about that movie? Thought not.
 
4) http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/lordofultima/blog/
 If you like Street Fighter, this guy has got you COVERED. Especially if you like Akuma, or Gouki as the cool kids call him. I stopped watching a long time ago, but his singular dedication to what to some is a pointless fleeting pasttime is inspiring enough to earn him the Street Fighter The Movie: The Game award.
 
5)  http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/citizenkane/ 
The actual Citizen Kane of Giant Blogs does not live up to his namesake, but points for trying! And someone has to post all those funny gifs and memes!
 
6 ) http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/oni/blog/
I hardly write blogs anymore (mostly because no one reads them). and so, due to my under-appreciated genius and vision, I give myself the Jerry Seinfeld award for uselessness.

  Ah man, the Dreamcast. Cut down before its prime.

To be fair, it was not a terrific console. It did not have THAT many great games. It made a fuckton of noise. The breakdown rate was pretty high. But it was just so far ahead of its time. It had online play, and I'm sure PSO influenced lots of developers. Shenmue was just amazingly ambitious. Soul Calibur was like... the perfect game, at the time. It really captured the gamers' imaginations. There was just so much insanely creative stuff on it, like Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, PSO, Project Gotham, and of course it was THE console for arcade ports of fighting games and original shmups.  Jet Set Radio inspired an entirely new art style in games. It was pretty radical at the time, and because of the stylized graphics, it still holds up pretty well.  Powerstone may have been directly responsible for games like Super Smash Bros.
 
I played some Shenmue today, because Giant Bomb did a series of quick look throwbacks, and while most games haven't held up so great, Shenmue kinda has. And there are few games I am more nostalgic for. It's everything 14-year old me wanted out of games: Huge scope and ambition and cinematic storytelling. It was flawed, sure, but by painstakingly creating this huge, rich world and being so deliberately paced, it draws you in like few other games do. The mundanity of some of Ryo's life is somehow compelling. 
 
Its death was inevitable. But I'd like to think the gaming landscape today is that much richer because of the Dreamcast.

Time and time again, Blizzard manages to keep surprising and delighting me with their ongoing work to ensure World of Warcraft stays on top of the MMO pile. Just when you think they've abandoned the old world in favour of pumping out more and more endgame content to keep the hardcore happy, they announce the next expansion will only raise the level cap by 5 and will totally revamp the old world top to bottom. This, without a doubt, is the smartest decision they could've made. Why? I'll tell you why, good sir/madam!
 
Alts.
 
Everybody rolls them. There isn't a single person who doesn't, at some point, get bored with his class and decides he wants to try a facerolling Ret pally, or maybe face-melting Warlock. Because hey, the grass is always greener, right? But you can only find Mankrik's wife so many times before you get bored of that, too. It's a long road to 80, and despite Blizzard's constant moves to make leveling faster, it can still feel like a drag, especially since the quests aren't as plentiful as in the later expansions, so the old world feels somewhat dated compared to the more recent additions to the game. Redesigning the entire old world means that everyone will WANT to level alts again, and will probably result in more people hitting the level cap in the first place. Though I can still imagine burnout setting in once you get to Outland, but I guess it's too much to hope Blizzard will also accomodate levels 60 through 70 (and maybe even beyond) in Azeroth, but we'll see. 
 

 This also has the added benefit of finally being able to use flying mounts in Azeroth, so you no longer feel sort of gimped. In addition to all this, Blizzard has also announced that they are severely streamlining the itemization system. Gone are confusing stats like armor penetration, and less-confusing, but still somewhat obtuse, stats like attack power, mana per 5 seconds, block value and defense. Obviously, this means how these stats work, as well as talent trees, will see some major overhauls. For one, Plate-tanks will get new talents to compensate for the lack of defense on gear. It should make itemizing your gear much more intuitive and will (hopefully) result in less people Needing on gear that isn't really meant for them.
 
I am not currently playing World of Warcraft, but they always manage to pull me back in somehow. Now that I do have a pretty decently geared 80 Prot/Ret Pally, I definitely plan to go back once Arthas is killable, for one. That dude has it coming.

At the end of Demon's Souls introductory tutorial level, you die. You face a giant boss that shrugs off your attacks and kills you with a single hit. This perfectly encapsulates Demon's Souls. In a word, it is uncompromising. Unlike most games, the enemies in Demon's Souls aren't there for you to kill, they are there to kill you. In that, it is reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden, but it shares few other similarities with contemporary action-adventure games.

At its core, Demon's Souls is a role-playing game. You kill monsters to earn their 'souls', the game's universal currency used for everything from buying and upgrading weapons to increasing your character's stats. You select which world to travel to, five in all, from a central hub where you can upgrade and buy new weapons, level up, learn magic and store items. In this Nexus, you are safe. Everywhere else, you are fair game to the vilest, most vicious enemies you've likely seen in any game since the NES days.

Demon's Souls marries its RPG elements to a combat system that, if anything, is reminiscent of the wildly popular (if you're Japanese) Monster Hunter games. That is to say weapons feel weighty and kind of slow, compared to games like God of War and Ninja Gaiden. There are no elaborate combos to remember, it's just light attack, heavy attack, block, parry and roll (again, don't think Ninja Gaiden, instead, go outside, take a running start, and do your best roll. Roughly like that.) You can also use some magic attacks, if your character is so inclined, or a bow and arrow, but melee is the main focus of combat, and also the most satisfying. You can attack an enemy from the back for a critical hit, resulting in impaling your foe with whatever weapon you're using and kicking him free of it. Timing a parry just right will let you counter-attack, running your enemy through so hard you knock him to the ground and follow through with your weapon. I'm just saying.


Every time you encounter a new sort of enemy, you are probably going to die. Until you know what each type of enemy can do, you're probably gonna bite it. If you rush in and mash the attack button, you're gonna be very dead. And when you die, you drop all your hard-earned souls. Then it's a very careful, cautionary trek back to where you died to reclaim your souls, and should you die again in that journey, those souls you dropped the first time? Yup, gone. Finito. For good.

At this point, you're probably thinking, "this does not sound like fun!" But the thing is, it's so rarely frustrating. Sure, there are a couple of deaths that you probably didn't see coming, because it's impossible to, but once you know about them, they can be avoided. When you die to an enemy, it's your own fault, and you could've done better. And the next time, you do. Almost every death is a learning experience. Learning to be more careful, learning to block that attack just so, learning that maybe you'll want to use the spear that allows you to block while attacking rather than the big broadsword that leaves your defenses wide open. And the moment you defeat the foe that so completely destroyed you earlier, there is hardly a more satisfying feeling in any game.

The game's stages are also very cleverly designed in that you open up shortcuts as you go, so when you die, you'll save considerable time getting to your corpse. Which is especially useful getting to the bosses, because as you might expect, those will probably also end up killing you a bunch of times. The bosses, at times, rival those from Shadow of the Colossus in size, as you will face giant dragons, a towering knight, a flaming spider and much more.

Luckily, you don't have to face all these challenges alone, for Demon's Souls features a very unique multiplayer system. For starters, as long as your PS3 is connected to PSN, you can see other players running around as white ghosts, in their own world doing their own thing. Also, these other players can leave notes on the ground, warning of impending danger. This can definitely end up saving your life, so your first time through you might want to read most of them. Not only that, but you can also summon other players as Blue Phantoms to help you in your world.


There is, however, a catch, as nothing in Demon's Souls comes free. You see, you can only summon these other players when you are in Body Form. You can attain body form by using a rare item or defeating a boss. The alternative is Soul form, and yes, that is pretty much the default mode in Demon's Souls: death. When in body form, however, other, more malicious players can also invade your world as Black Phantoms to try and kill you. That's right, the only way you can enlist help is by consenting to a form of PvP, where the stakes are the souls you've collected. If you're lucky, you won't get invaded, or you'll get invaded by an incompetent player. Should you be so unlucky as to be invaded by a player who is geared solely with the purpose in mind to destroy other players, well... be prepared to fight. Luckily, the Blue Phantom players you summoned can help you against the invader. I have, on one occasion, fought a single Black Phantom for about 15 minutes before he finally left himself open for a finishing blow, in this case my spear through his back followed by my boot kicking him off a cliffside. It was, in a word, epic.

The relentless nature of the game is compounded by the uniquely solitary feeling you get from it. There is no voice chat, so even when you're in co-op, you never get the comfort of a real human presence with you. There is hardly any music. The environments are eery, desolate and hostile, and at times hauntingly beautiful. Looking from the parapets of the Boletarian castle, you may take heart for a brief moment, before advancing towards the next murderous enemy. Other stages are without the prospect of any hope. In fact they feel designed to crush any feeling of hope you might have had. Precarious cliffsides and narrow walkways over a dark abyss, and a swamp that literally wants to kill you. It's not a technical marvel by today's standards, but in terms of presenting a cohesive atmosphere and some hauntingly beautiful vistas, it's unmatched.

There is quite simply nothing like Demon's Souls available today. There are so many nuances and features this review doesn't even cover, as I could literally write pages about it (check out the wiki - I wrote most of it). It is a game for the hardcore, by the hardcore, clearly created with lots and lots of love, even ff at first it seems that the designers may, in fact, hate you. And in turn, you fall in love with it.

Note: Demon's Souls is slated for a Fall release in the USA, but the Asian versions (minus the Japanese ones) are in full English, so import away. Though it has been brought to my attention that Atlus is doing some cool stuff for the NA release (see comments), so you may want to hold off for a little while.