Competitive online multiplayer shooters really haven't grabbed me since back during the days of Unreal Tournament 2004 or the first Call of Duty game. Following those two, I really just lost a lot of interest in the genre. I've been playing it since back in the Goldeneye days (sans the online aspect), and I feel like I've seen pretty much all there is to see in the genre, barring a few innovations here and there such as the leveling system introduced in the first Modern Warfare.

I've always wondered why other types of games get so much flak for failing to innovate, yet first person shooters consistently feature the exact same basic design for their online multiplayer and nothing is mentioned about it. A great example is the rhythm genre, which is falling flat on its face thanks to oversaturation and a total lack of any kind of meaningful innovation. Why do we get sick of those games, but a new FPS for us to play online every three months is a totally welcome release?

I pass every day at work by listening to a lot of podcasts. I listen to nearly every popular gaming podcast out there. I'm pretty acquainted with the pros and cons of each, so I've thought about writing up a quick little blog post on the three best that I've come across.

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You can't toss a stone without hitting a podcast in the modern-day shaping of the video game industry. Every publication has one, and some of the bigger gaming juggernauts produce multiple podcasts to further satiate the demanding masses of fans who pass the work day with them, myself included.

Bored at work one day, I decided to run a search for some new gaming podcasts to listen to. I was disappointed when I couldn't find too many decent podcast lists to use as reference. After downloading and listening to quite a bit of them, I decided to construct this brief write-up to help out those searching for a way to make their nine-to-five move by a little bit quicker.

The Giant Bombcast

The Giant Bombcast is one of the most polished, hilarious, and enlightening podcasts on the internet. Made up of four ex-Gamespot editors with a bottomless heap of gaming knowledge, the show is simply the best all-around gaming podcast on the internet. Whether you're looking for laughs, reviews, or breaking news, the bombcast is the place to go first.

The Joystiq Podcast

While Joystiq doesn't tout the big names like the bombcast does, it does come more reliably and more consistently with laughs. Host Chris Grant has a hilariously dry sense of humor that plays perfectly with Justin McElroy's more obvious style. Joystiq editor Ludwig Kietzmann rounds out the cast to create the funniest video game podcast on the internet.

The Freelancers Podcast

The Freelancers Podcast is a relatively new show created by freelance video game journalists Xav de Matos and Kyle Horner. Xav and Kyle discuss the inner workings of the industry biweekly and interview some of the biggest names in gaming journalism today. While this isn't the place to come for breaking news or reviews, getting a peek into the inner workings of the industry from the point-of-view of a freelancer is both eye-opening and entertaining.

I grew up as a huge JRPG nerd. One of my first and most memorable gaming experiences was buying the original Dragon Quest (or Dragon Warrior, if you prefer) with my mother when I was four or five years old solely due to the cool dragon on the box art. I brought it home, popped it into my NES, and realized that I was shit-out-of-luck because I would have to do a whole score of reading in order to play it.

When my father arrived home from work that day, he played it with me by his side, explaining at each step the words that I didn't understand. Thus, it wasn't only my gaming that began with JRPGs, but my reading and vocabulary as well. I went on to play a whole ton of text-heavy JRPGs after that, and I credit them with helping to develop my ability to read and write as a young student.

Playing JRPGs that held a high emphasis on reading text dialogue has been a huge boon to both reading and writing in my life. I've never been much good at math or science, so without those valuable early experiences I may never have even made it through college. Sadly, my girlfriend doesn't see it this way. Neither do most non-gamers who hold the opinion that video games "rot your brain", or whatever. But I know better than any where my inspirations have come from.

Final Fantasy VII is acclaimed as one of the high-water marks of the role-playing genre. Many gamers, particularly RPG fans, have played through this game not once but a multitude of times. I downloaded the game off of the Playstation Network and played through it one more time on my PSP to assess how the game has aged.

The very first thing that I noticed about the game was the chasm between how well the audio design and soundtrack have aged versus how poorly the graphics have. It becomes clearly apparent that sprites have aged far better than polygons when comparing this game to an older, sprite-based games in the series such as Final Fantasy VI. Sprites carried a certain charm to them, and remain tolerable despite their lack of beauty. Polygons, for lack of a better description, just look strange and ugly. Their blockiness represents a human character far more poorly than even a sprite can. To compare it to Hollywood, sprites are like Disney cartoon of the '70s, while polygons are like the bad special effects of the '80s. The audio, however, has aged gracefully. Nobuo Uematsu's score has always been perfect for the game, and I remembered how fond I was of it the first time around immediately upon starting the game again.

Final Fantasy VII, to me, was the beginning of Square's "hit-or-miss" character design specifically regarding western gamers. As a western gamer, I just can't see the appeal in a character like Cait Sith. While the majority of the characters still have good levels of depth and development, Cait Sith is a worthless entity who brings absolutely nothing to the game. He's a quirky stuffed toy injected into the game to please a culture that I just can't understand. Square Enix has continued down this path even further in future games, particularly in Final Fantasy XII, which saw two children as the main protagonists. Yuck. But there are some game-savers here. Cloud is such a deep and human character that it's worth playing through the game just to witness his growth. Sephiroth's villainy hasn't shown age, either. He's still one of the best gaming villains in history, a title well earned.

It's obvious what to expect from the gameplay. This game is purely old school JRPG. It doesn't bother me, as it's a type of game that I once had a huge affinity for. I can jump back into the more slowly-paced, turn-based battle systems any time and still enjoy it. To others, it may be a bit more tedious. This is especially true regarding random battles. As an old-school JRPG player, random battles are familiar to me and sort of a necessary evil. To others, the tedium may be intolerable. It's difficult for me to be objective enough to say.

I've always loved the materia system. It's my favorite form of character development in any Final Fantasy game, and it holds up. Growing your materia through the management of your weapons is so much fun, and the high-level materia such as Slash-All and Double Cut really make you feel like one powerful SOB toward the end portion of the game. Reaching the next level of these magical orbs is so rewarding.

The main complaint that I have about the game is an issue that never seemed to bother me before. The control of Cloud through the various pre-rendered areas is absolutely atrocious. Pressing up on the directional pad will sometimes cause him to go left or right, and pressing right or left on the pad will sometimes cause him to go down. There's no clear indication of when this will happen -- It's unique to each area. This becomes particularly annoying in areas where random battles occur. Very often I'd find myself doubling back due to this, and fighting far more random battles than I actually had to.

I wouldn't be able to conclude this without mentioning the cutscenes and minigames. The idea of rewarding players with a CGI cutscene during certain parts of the game was a fresh, new concept at the time of the game's release. Seeing Square flew their graphical prowess was mind-blowing, and the cutscenes were unlike anything in video games at the time. They truly were rewarding, and I remember being so impressed that I recorded them on a VHS tape for later playback. The minigames were also groundbreaking, but have aged poorly. Bad control plagues many of them, specifically the motorcycle and snowboarding games. But the inclusion of these changed the genre for years -- The lack of minigames in a post-Final Fantasy VII JRPG was a strange omission.

Final Fantasy VII has got its problems. In some cases, it's aged beautifully and become the historically powerful title that gamers expected it to be upon its release. Final Fantasy VII brought RPGs as a whole into the mainstream. Without Final Fantasy VII, games like Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 may never have been developed at all. The graphics and control, however, will be nearly unbearable to any gamer going back in time to play this game for the first time.

The Good: Materia system is still as rewarding as ever. Cloud is deep and interesting main character, and Sephiroth mirrors him as a superb villain. Nobuo Uematsu's score has aged like a fine wine. Huge impact on the RPG genre is undeniable, and the $10 price point on PSN makes it well worth a purchase.

The Bad: Polygonal graphics are ugly and have not aged well. Control in prerendered areas is unforgivably bad. Characters like Caith Sith fall flat with western audiences. Random battles get annoying.

Final Verdict: Like an old painting, Final Fantasy VII continues to be historically relevant and is worth seeing and experiencing if only to recognize the influence it had on present day gaming. But the paint has aged, and the artwork is unfortunately not quite as vibrant and stunning as it once was.

Jeez, that's a tough one. I can't even think of the worst game I've played so far this year. Maybe Star Wars: Force Unleashed. What a terribly overrated game that was.

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I read an article recently claiming that video game enthusiasts have been too harsh on developers Treyarch when comparing their renditions of the popular Call Of Duty game series to mainstay developers Infinity Ward's versions. This is, in my own humble opinion, a load of bull.

Here is the article: http://forums.xbox.com/23202585/ShowPost.aspx

Now then, here is the part of the article that I am staunchly opposed to...

"I'm not buying anything from Treyarch, they made COD3..."
*Sighs*
Before you put Infinity ward on a pedestal, know this before doing so: Treyarch made one of the best games to ever be made, back when they were named Grey Matter Studios, which was Return to Castle: Wolfenstein. They were also given only 8 months to make COD3, and the normal FPS takes two years.
This time around they had two years, and they decided they are using the COD4 engine.

Please. We don't need to make excuses for Treyarch. The proof is in the games.

They have created two Call of Duty games at this point -- Call of Duty 2: Big Red One, and Call Of Duty 3. Both have been mediocre. This should be evidence in itself that Treyarch does not hold a candle to Infinity Ward, especially after the gem that Infinity Ward dropped with Call Of Duty 4.

Furthermore, citing the Return to Castle Wolfenstein as a reason why Treyarch should be respected is complete nonsense. First of all: Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a very good game, yes. But if you really think it was one of the "greatest games ever to be made" you desperately need to get out there and game a little bit more before you start broadcasting your opinion onto the internet.

Secondly; Gray Matter did not become Treyarch, they merged with Treyarch before the development of Big Red One, and more than three quarters of the staff that developed Return to Castle Wolfenstein did not take part in putting out Call Of Duty 3. The whole "they were Gray Matter seven years ago" argument is completely weak, unfounded, and only serves as proof that the writer of this segment is grasping at straws.

Don't even start talking about time spent on development. Lack of time put into development results in buggy, broken games. Call Of Duty 3 wasn't a bag game because of functionality issues. It was a bad game because the story and gameplay were equally stale, the dialogue was poorly written and unbelievable, and the entire game didn't compare to Call Of Duty 2 in terms of overall quality in the core aspects of video game making. When you consider that Big Red One suffered from the same pitfalls years ago that Call Of Duty 3 did more recently, you start to put two and two together.

Treyarch doesn't need any excuses to be made for them. They have a record of developing mediocre games thus far, and as long as they keep treading the same rails laid by Infinity Ward years ago, they will never be a stellar developer. Infinity Ward made leaps and bounds in the industry last year to pull themselves out of the dry, beaten-to-death hole that is first-person World War II-themed games. While they were doing that, Treyarch passed them on the same path while walking the opposite way.

A stale concept done by a convictedly mediocre developer does not scream "good game". If you've played the original Call of Duty, there's nothing more to see here. Unless you're an absolutely rabid Call Of Duty fanboy, stay far away from Treyarch's next effort in Call Of Duty: World At War and purchase the year-old Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare if you haven't already.