The gaming industry can be a cruel beast. The fast paced nature of tight release schedules, gamers always looking at the next big thing, and even the gaming press constant battle to always feature the newest games and news sometimes means that certain games get buried underneath the crushing weight of the industry.

I aim to change that with my new column. 'Forgotten Gems' will take a look at games that had quiet releases and low sales, but were absolutely amazing games that deserve your time and attention. I inaugurate the column with the genre smash-up, The Red Star.

The Red Star was a PS2 beat-em-up/shooter hybrid from Acclaim Studios Austin. It is based on the graphic novel of the same name, which provides an alternate history of the world powers. Russia is a nation of high technology and sorcery named the 'United Republics of the Red Star', and are at war with neighboring nation Al'lstaan. The universe that The Red Star exists in is very steampunk oriented, with giant metal blimps and a fusion of technology with mystical powers. It's all very interesting and fun to read, so I suggest you give the comic a look if you are interested in the steampunk genre.
 

The game, which follows the comics storyline, feels like a game that shouldn't exist. The game is a mash up of beat-em-ups and shooters with some RPG elements thrown in for good measure. You can get up close and assault your enemy with hand to hand combos, or you can stay back and fire your guns, laying waste to all that stand in your way. While this may sound to0 polarizing to some, it was the levels were designed to accommodate these styles of play. Some levels had a beat-em-up philosophy; just go to the right or left and mess fools up while others would change it up and thrust shmup style obstacles and gameplay mechanics at you like surviving bullet hell obstacles or firing upon waves of enemies.

If that wasn't enough, the game threw RPG elements in the mix as well. Depending on how well you did in the level, you gain points which can be used to allocate towards your attributes. River City Ransom's influence is being felt far into gaming.
 

The graphics were impressive for a PS2 game and the visual effects and enemies were all nicely detailed. The level backgrounds were a bit bland, but they were always changing as you progressed through the level. The comic book's style was also retained and fits perfectly in a video game. Everything is stylized but not too kiddy or over the top.

So if the game was so great and was practically hardcore gamer catnip, what happened? Acclaim's bankruptcy happened. The game entered production in 2002 and was slated for release on in Fall 2004. There were even demos in Official Playstation Magazine and Official Xbox Magazine. As Acclaim started hemorrhaging money though, they canned the Xbox version and focused solely on the PS2 version. Acclaim's financial situation kept the game delayed until they finally went out of business. The game was presumed dead and hung in limbo until XS Games and Jack of All Games stepped in to finish and publish the game.

This wasn't enough to save it and get it in front of as many eyeballs as it could. The game was released on April 23rd 2007, almost a year and a half into the Xbox 360's life span and 5 months after the Wii and PS3. By this time, gamers were marveling at the power of next-gen systems and the games they produced. The Red Star didn't have a chance and was quickly swept under the rug.

I highly recommend giving this game a shot if you can. It's genre bending smash up that is very unique and fun to play. You can pick up the game for around 8 bucks on Amazon and it's well worth that and more. It's unfortunate that the game was given the treatment it was and began its life for a company that was headed towards bankruptcy. The Red Star is truly a forgotten gem.
 

 No, what I'm not happy with is the loss of imagination and daring new ideas that the technology of today and developers of now have seem to become comfortable with. 

 I'm getting ahead of myself though. Let me step back, provide some history, and set the stage to hopefully convincing you, dear reader, to agree with me.

When I was a young lad growing up, I was very poor. My family couldn't afford many luxuries and while all my friends were talking about bionic commandos and those crazy Italian plumbers, I was stuck trying to convince them that playing with G.I. Joes was still cool. A little later down the line, my mom bought a Commodore 64 from a friend thinking it was a home computer for me to do homework on. Lucky for me, I convinced her that Metal Gear was teaching me arithmetic. Because of my poor standing, I was always a generation behind. My friends would have the NES, I had the Commodore 64. They had a Super Nintendo, I had a NES. It wasn't until I got my first job that I could buy my own games and systems and not until after college that I could keep up currently. 
 

 This brings me to my first point: Imagination.

Games of yesteryear didn't have much in a way of story. If we were fortunate to have the manual, we could bother ourselves to read why were were plumbing the depths of Zebes or fighting Dr. Wily. Even if we did this, we still had a conquered game that we would have to keep playing. As kids, our imaginations were already running crazy, but the games also allowed our minds to fill in the blanks. If I beat the game, I would make up a plot in my head to justify my second playthrough. I defeated Wily and saved the world, but now, Wily stole my girlfriend and I had to get her back .

Games today just don't let us to fill in those blanks anymore. Everything is force fed to us and explained in insane detail. Your wife is your bionic arm and Liquid Snake was imprinted onto Ocelot.  How cool would it be if nothing in BioShock was explained? Just a few tape recordings sprinkled around held together by an abstract plot, leaving you to decide what the game's message is or what everything is about. That's the game I want to see.
 

Retro games also pioneered more frequently then today's games. We saw a new IP almost weekly on older systems and game companies took more and more risks. Yes we still saw sequels on these older systems, there were six Mega Mans on the NES alone,  but we also received a ton of new IPs. 

These days, we are almost drowning in sequels. Activision  has perfected bringing out it's catalouge of Guitar Heros, Call of Duties and movie Tony Hawks to the masses every year. Bungie can't seem to escape Halo and Nintendo makes the same core game every console generation with its mascots. Sorry kids, Zelda hasn't changed since 1987 and when it did with Majora's Mask, everyone complained.

Where's the innovation and bravery to make new IPs? What happened to a game companies sole purpose being to actually create virtual worlds and amazing interactive experiences instead of  acquiring a movie or comic license and proceeding to milk it every year? 

I'm not naive to the workings of the industry and I understand why new IPs are hard to market, while established brands are easier to make money on. I still want a return to those old ideals. I want game companies to create new ideas and challenge us as purveyors of the hobby. Find a way to create a new world for us to explore or a new way of interacting with a old genre. Place a spin on everything we've come to be comfortable. Shake up our ideals and produce something utterly groundbreaking and new.

Yet, this doesn't seem to be the direction the industry is taking and until this happens though, I feel I'll have to stay confined to my rocking chair made of NES controllers and Atari joysticks and crow about how the old days were better. I'm a crotchety gamer....and I'm only 23.

You plop down on your couch, weary from a day of work, ready to play some games to unwind. You turn on your Xbox 360, waving your hands through the air to scroll through your video game collection. You settle on Fable 3, tapping forward in the air to start up the game. After a few hours, you get bored and decide to buy a new game. Pulling up the Games on Demand menu, you again scroll through, settling on Mass Effect 3. After thinking it through, you make the leap, buy the game, and let it download as you go about thinking what's for dinner.

 While the above scenario is a little too soon, the idea of digital distribution is not.  It seems to be the hot topic on every gamers lips; Are we ready to give up our library of boxed games for hard drives filled with our virtual libraries? I try to think of both sides of the question, and sometimes the answers I settle on scare me.

 Up until about two years ago, I didn't really collect games. I would buy the games I really wanted, or rent the ones that only interested me. Occasionally I would trade games in when I was low on cash to get that next new release I wanted. The thought of collecting never really occured to me until I settled into my current job where I have some disposable income. I then started researching collecting and the community that surrounded it, seeing the gamer closets and rooms, like little museums that were definitely built on love and memories. So I decided to start hunting at flea markets and Goodwills, snatching up any deal and gem I came across. In the two years since I've started, I build a small modest collection that I am proud of.

With digital distribution, this hobby then becomes obsolete. We will trade our Pipboy 3000 alarm clocks, Master Chief Helmets, and Alex Mercer action figures in for intangible data on a hard drive. That feeling of having a physical copy in your hand, something that you can claim is yours will be gone. You'll swap that disc out for a license to play the game, and your physical book case will become your virutal one. 
 

But then look to the good in digital distribution and can't await its arrival. The creation of services such as Gametap, GOG, Microsofts Games on Demand, and the forthcoming OnLive, have opened the door to a treasure trove of both classic and modern games to people who otherwise wouldn't of had any way of playing these games. I never would've dreamed of playing Freespace 2, Baulder Gate, or Planescape if it hadn't been for these services, as many of these games are out of print. If OnLive delivers on it's promises, I would be able to play Crysis or any other high end PC game on my laptop, and not have to worry about buying expensive video cards or extra RAM to run the game.

The games would also, hopefully, be cheaper. Since game publishers wont have to spend an extra dollar to print boxes and stamp discs, they can pass that discount on to us. Once rare games are finding new lives on digital stores.  Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 goes for an upwards of eighty dollars on auction sites and the black label version of Final Fantasy VII is becoming harder to find. Yet thanks to the Playstation Network, both games are not inexpensive and ready to be experienced by those people who just can't afford the physical copy. With Microsofts Xbox Originals program, gamers can experience Psychonauts and Crimson Skies for on the cheap. I get excited that people can experience these games without fear that brick and mortar retail stores will push lesser known games off the shelf in favor of the next Madden or Call of Duty.

 Digital distribution is a two headed beast. I like having a tangible collection of games and game paraphernalia, and don't want to give that up. Yet at the same time, the future of gaming can have the doors blown off by allowing all gamers access to games at affordable prices and right to our TVs with the touch of a button. 

Just ask yourself if you're ready.

 The consequences of our actions is something we never want to deal with. We don't want to deal with the fallout of a relationship, the dissolution of a friendship, or the forehead-slapping stupidity of a mistake. As human beings, we don't want to make mistakes, or if we have made them, learn from them and move on as soon as possible. It's no surprise then, that we don't want to deal with them in our videogames either.

Why should we, though? Games are meant to entertain us, let us escape from reality, or be someone completely different than ourselves. The experiences of our digital avatars become manifestations of what we aspire to become or fantasize about doing since the real world certainly doesn't allow you to attach chain blades to your arms and destroy a god.

Yet, what do we do when we are forced to face the consequences of our actions in videogames? We reload a previous save and make sure we don't make that mistake again.

I propose that in certain games, this feature be banned. Outraged? Hear me out.
 

One of my favorite games is one that was lambasted for having a limited save system: Dead Rising. In Dead Rising, you were only allowed one save slot that was constantly overridden with each new autosave. This was implemented to force the gamer into multiple playthroughs of the game as it was meant to played. Pretty sadistic on the surface, but I saw it under a different light.

See, in the game you had to rescue survivors scattered around the zombie infested mall. Get them back to the safe room in one piece and you gained bonuses. If they died, that was it, they were done for, and you couldn't reload to save them. What made it even better: If one of the them died, you would see them as a zombie later on, further reinforcing the fact that you let them die and have to live with that. This created tension every time I ventured out to find more helpless souls. Would I be able to save this group? Am I up to the task?

I may be projecting feelings that probably weren't there, but that is the point. I felt something toward this game because I was forced to deal with my consequences. It elicited an emotional response out of me, something that many games strive for today and fail at miserably. How can you feel an emotional connection to anything you do in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion if you can simply reload a previous save if you made the wrong moral choice?

Or how about in the original Fable? Toward the end, you are faced with a final choice: Throw in the evil sword won from Jack of Blades or keep it and succumb to the evil. You can simply save before this moment, make your choice and then reload to see the other ending. While this does make it easier on gamers, it robs you of any emotion you may feel toward this decision.
 

In Shadow of the Colossus, you bring a loved one to an altar in the hopes that you can find a way to resurrect her and are told to slay the 16 beasts roaming this land to achieve this. As the player, you are not given a concrete reason, but your goal is to save this girl. As you progress along this path, you feel more and more apprehensive about your actions, but this is part of the game. You must kill these colossi in order to achieve victory and get the girl. For those of you who know how the game ends, you know the consequences, and it almost certainly got a response out of you.