Steam, Valve’s digital video game distribution system, is the most important thing to happen to PC gaming since the advent of graphics cards. Besides providing a more direct link between developer and consumer, Steam has helped realize the possibility of episodic gaming. Though they don’t quite have the timing down just yet, Valve has been able to shift its focus from large, ambitious projects to smaller, more daring titles. With The Orange Box, Valve has bundled four of these episodic games – three new, one old – together with Half-Life 2, and has created a product with a volume of content matched only by its creativity.

Everything about The Orange Box is fresh and surprising, from the imagination on display in the games included, to the unexpected Steam Community features. The Orange Box is a title that inspires hyperbole. And actually deserves it. Simply put: The Orange Box is the greatest gaming compilation in the history of the medium.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two is perhaps the most anticipated game in the collection. It begins immediately where Episode One left off, finally leaving City 17 behind in favor of subterranean antlion hives and the wide, open riverbeds of White Forest. The more natural settings are a welcome change of pace after two games dominated by urban environments, and instill the series with a newfound sense of originality, even though the Source engine is now three years old. It still looks as fantastic as ever, though, even on relatively ancient PCs, and improvements to the engine’s particle and lighting systems, as well as some improved key character models, allow it to really shine.

More than just another pretty face, Episode Two proves that Valve is unmatched in the video game arena when it comes to pacing. Epic combat events are offset by smaller encounters and quiet, solitary moments, while a clearly defined final objective drives the action forward. Gameplay is equally varied, with plenty of physics-based puzzles and environmental obstacles to overcome between firefights. Vehicles return in Episode 2, with Alyx and Gordon spending about half of the game in possession of a beatup muscle car. While it has no weapons of its own, it comes equipped with a radar display detailing the locations of hidden weapon caches, adding some non-linearity and rewarding exploration to the game. Valve has greatly refined their vehicle controls since Half-Life 2’s release. Gordon’s new ride is much more responsive than his buggy or hovercraft ever were; using this new vehicle feels empowering rather than limiting.

Episode Two is the most story-heavy Half-Life game to date. Non-interactive cutscenes and lengthy conversations are spread throughout the experience with careful attention to pacing, always leaving you thirsty for the next story event, but never fatigued from too much storytelling. At this point, Valve really knows how to do Half-Life well, and Episode Two is handily the best game to bear the name yet. Playing through the game takes about five hours, and by the time you reach the game’s stunning finale, you’ll be chomping at the bit for Episode Three. Here’s hoping we see it before 2009.

Thankfully, The Orange Box contains many other goodies to keep you entertained until then. Developed by the same group behind Narbacular Drop – the team’s senior DigiPen project – Portal incorporates all of the elements found in the original game, building on this foundation to create one of the most memorable gaming experiences in recent memory. Armed only with the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device – a weapon capable of producing blue or orange portals by pressing the left or right mouse button, respectively – you must overcome a series of increasingly difficult, brain-bending puzzles. By placing portals on a floor, wall, or ceiling, you can enter one portal and instantly exit the other. Portals aren’t teleporters, however; they are doorways. As such, you can carry objects through the openings or use them to transport materials too dangerous for you to handle directly. Momentum is also preserved through a portal’s threshold, leading to some especially dizzying (and fun) puzzles in which you must use precisely placed portals to fling yourself across otherwise untraversable pits.

The game plays out through a series of puzzle-laden test chambers that stretch the possibilities of this portal mechanic to its limit. It begins slowly, teaching basic mechanics before handing you direct control of the portals themselves. Up until the end, the game continues to introduce new elements, forcing you to rethink the possibilities of the portals or execute complex maneuvers in rapid succession. The game is always challenging, but never frustrating, layering seemingly simple procedures into intricate tests of skill. Portal may only be three hours long, but advanced maps that rearrange previously completed test chambers and extremely difficult challenges that place strict limits on the number of portals you can use, steps you can take, or the overall time will keep you busy for many hours after the amusing credit sequence.

You’re not entirely alone in Aperture Science’s sparse test chambers. Besides a loveable companion cube, the snarky, sarcastic female AI GLaDOS provides her running commentary on your progress. She gives life to the otherwise sterile environments, and her clever quips act as additional reward for a job well done, playing at the beginning and end of each test chamber. The writing in Portal is genuinely excellent; GLaDOS’ dialogue is simultaneous laugh-out-loud funny and uncomfortably unnerving. Like Half-Life, much of the storytelling is relegated to the gameworld itself rather than expository cinematics, and before game’s end, Portal connects to the Half-Life universe, and Episode 2 in particular, in an interesting way.

Hopefully this isn’t the last Portal game we see. Despite its short playtime, Portal alone is worth the price of The Orange Box, standing out as the most uniquely interesting title in a package saturated with excellence. An innovative, mind-altering experience, Portal will leave your head aching and your palms sweating. Combined with the full force of Half-Life 2 and its first two episodes, Portal and The Orange Box makes for a meaty single player experience, but you’ll spend just as much time, if not more, with the game’s multiplayer component.

Just as Half-Life 2 originally shipped with an updated version of Counter-Strike, so does The Orange Box come bundled with a greatly refined sequel to Team Fortress Classic. Team Fortress 2 is a game whose development has taken on an almost mythic quality. The game has been in development since 1998, and many thought it would join the ranks of Duke Nukem Forever as much-hyped vaporware. Bearing little resemblance to the ultra-realistic military shooter Valve first announced, Team Fortress 2 lives up to its massive hype and delivers a satisfying multiplayer experience.

Streamlined and simplified, the game hasn’t traded accessibility for the richness that made the original so engrossing. Individually, each of the nine classes is easy to pick up and play, but mastering their strengths and weaknesses, and learning how best to apply their unique abilities to best benefit your team, takes time. Regardless of your playstyle, however, you’ll find a class (or nine) that aligns with your tastes. The engineer is a great defense class, able to build powerful automated turrets and teleporters to transport members of your team to the frontlines more quickly; the flamethrower-wielding pyro lacks range but excels at close quarters combat and ambushing players around corners; and the medic is a master healer able to build up invincibility charges that he can apply to other players, to name but a third of the game’s playable roster.

Besides offering a unique play experience, each character also sports a distinct personality: the sniper is a suave Australian hunter, the demoman a drunken Scotsman. All of Team Fortress 2 oozes character. Set in a timeless, over-the-top spy fiction, the game takes visual cues from Normal Rockwell and other mid-20th century artists, utilizing a toon-shading effect that creates sharp contrasts between light and dark. Besides the distinct visuals, the game also utilizes a dynamic dialogue system, allowing characters to react to in-game events with no input from the player. The net sum of these parts is a game with a distinctive visual style and a great deal of charisma. Team Fortress 2 has a welcoming charm that makes killing fun again.

Initially, Team Fortress 2’s speed and frantic nature comes off as sheer, uncontrollable chaos. But the more you play it, the slower the game seems to become. There’s a great deal of depth hidden behind a veil of seemingly chaotic ruckus, and once you take the time to learn the workings of the game, Team Fortress 2 makes for an incredibly rewarding diversion. Each class represents a separate, infinite learning curving. Like many online games these days, Team Fortress 2 includes an exhaustive stat-tracking feature, but here your statistics are only compared against your own. As you play the game, you see yourself getting better and have the numbers to back up your assumptions; the game becomes as much about besting your own accomplishments as beating your opponents. Even ignoring such a thorough stat-tracking system completely, Team Fortress 2 is remarkably replayable, and offers enough depth and variety to keep you glued to your mouse and keyboard for months.

In addition to the five games included in the package, The Orange Box also includes a host of meta features. Steam Community features such as achievements for all three of the new games and a universal friends list adds a tremendous amount of replayability to the games. Seeing your friends hop into Team Fortress 2 will have you follow suite, leaving Episode Two achievement chasing for another day. All of the episodic content, Episode One included, come with impressive commentary modes, providing interesting insight into the development process behind each of these great games.

Even if you already own Half-Life 2 and Episode One, The Orange Box is a necessary purchase. Portal, Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2 alone represent a wealth of content unmatched in any other first-person shooter. For those lucky few new to Half-Life 2 or new to the series in general, The Orange Box allows you to play through the first three entries in the Half-Life 2 saga with no years-long interruption. Sure, the improvements to the Xbox 360 version of Half-Life 2 aren’t present on the PC, and Valve could have thrown in the original Half-Life and had the entire series so far included in a single package, but the simple fact is that, all hyperbole aside, The Orange Box is one of the greatest, most content-rich games ever produced.

Hellgate: London on the Xbox 360 is a rumor that refuses to die, and with good reason. The game is co-published by EA, who has a history of bringing previously PC-exclusive franchises such as The Sims and Command & Conquerer (and The Orange Box) to consoles. Additionally, Hellgate: London’s action-heavy, FPS gameplay would be a perfect match for Microsoft’s console, with its strong online component finding ample support through Xbox Live. And while the game isn’t particularly noteworthy on the PC, outclassed even by recent Diablo 2 wannabes such as Titan Quest, it would be unmatched in the console arena, where most people’s only experience with the loot porn genre comes from Phantasy Star Online and Baldur’s Gate spinoffs.

In their recent patch 0 datadump, featuring information regarding the much-fabled 0-day patch that will magically transform Hellgate: London into a polished AAA title, Flagship revealed that those lucky enough to pay for a Hellgate: London subscription would gain access to Xbox Live-style achievements in addition to a host of other features not worth a monthly fee. Interesting, indeed!

Finally, during my experience in the beta, I was often confused by the game’s strange interface choices. Right clicking on an item in your inventory brings up a radial menu with options to sell, equip, identify, destroy, or break down an item into its component parts. While convenient in theory, in practice this approach feels clunky in comparison to similar titles’ right click-focused interfaces. However, applied to a console controller rather than a PC’s mouse, where dragging and dropping is less logistically feasible, this radial menu makes perfect sense. In fact, it’s nearly identical to the much-hyped radial menu in the Xbox 360 version of EA’s upcoming Command & Conquer 3 expansion.

So, is Hellgate: London coming to the Xbox 360 any time soon? Probably not. But pretending it might be certainly keeps this site up to date for another day and provides lots of Google-friendly terms for the next search engine cache.

Mythos is probably still under NDA, but I’m too lazy to check. I doubt Bill Roper reads this site, anyhow. Besides, I have nothing but nice things to say about the game. Like Hellgate: London, Mythos is an online action RPG from Flagship Studios with heavy Diablo influences, but Mythos is a genuinely great game, even when measured against its lineage. Headed by Travis Baldree, creator of the excellent FATE, Mythos combines character customization and loot pornography with Rogue-like dungeon crawls and MMO sensibilities. The game is currently in Beta and a recent megapatch has revitalized my interest in it, adding tons of new enemies, greatly improved graphics, faster leveling, improved skill trees, better itemization, and new superunique bosses (pictured below). Basically, it plays like a whole new game.

It’s still not clear what form Mythos will take upon release, everthing from a free download with a small monthly fee to a full-fledged, in-a-box-at-Gamestop release have been grinding around the rumor mill. Regardless of how Mythos ultimately turns a profit, I’ll be there. If you haven’t signed up for the beta yet, now’s the time to do it, as new waves of invites are being sent out to coincide with this new patch. Additionally, I still have a couple of beta invites left, should anybody want them.

The NDA on the Hellgate: London Beta was lifted today and I have a lot to say. Judged solely on its own merits, Hellgate: London is a good game. Sure, it could use an extra six months of spit shine before being shoved out the door – though worse games in earlier stages of development have been boxed, shipped, and sold – but this game has quite a pedigree. Half its development team worked on the Diablo franchise and its monthly fee puts it in direct competition with World of Warcraft, the most pervasive game in the history of the medium. Simply put: Hellgate: London does not meet the massive expectations laid upon it; this is not Diablo 3.

It tries very hard to be Diablo 3, though. Hellgate: London is an action RPG with randomly generated levels, skill trees, and plenty of sexy loot porn. Weapon mods replace gems and runes, lockers replace player stashes, and the nano forge replaces the Horadric cube. It improves on the basic Diablo formula as well, adding a third weapon switch slot, replacing gambling with the augmentrex 3000 – a tool that lets you add additional modifiers to items, for a price – and adding a Halo-esque shield mechanic on top of a traditional health bar. There’s also a Wirt’s leg reference, and yes, you do get a wieldable prosthetic limb. But for all these Diablo staples, the game largely seems to have missed the point. Does even Bill Roper not understand what makes Diablo fun?

Sure, the levels are random, but they’re all painfully linear. Building straight lines out of random arrangements of the same dozen set pieces doesn’t make for an interesting or replayable gameworld. Levels rarely branch or diverge – they have no width. The levels themselves connect in boring ways too, shooting off of hub areas like legs on a starfish. The hub connects to area A, connects to area B, connects to area C, then its back to the hub which connects to area D. This same structure is repeated with no variety. And while Diablo 2 had a whole world as its playground, Hellgate: London, rather obviously, only gives us London. There’s only so many way to randomize grey streets, sewers, and subway tunnels.

On top of that, the game just isn’t very fun to play. Combat is very, very easy. Your inventory is huge, allowing you to carry a wealth of potions with you at all times, and the enemies aren’t particularly difficult, interesting, or numerous. You proceed through the game following a single, epic questline, but many offshoot quests turn up along the way. The problem is none of these sidequests require you to diverge from the path in any way. A templar gives you a quest to activate some beacons and a woman wants her dead husband’s wedding ring, but both objectives are en route to your next stop on the main questline express. The whole experience is incredibly linear, and never really feels random at all. Playing the game, you feel as though you’re eating the same path as everyone else – killing the same easy monsters and completing the same boring quests. Attempts to provide more interesting fare – like an RTS-inspired mission where you control a squad of four soldiers against an army of demons – fall flat, proving just as uninteresting and shallow as the rest of the experience.

One of the primary sources of Diablo 2’s longevity stemmed from the skill system. Each class had 30 skills divided between three skill trees. Every skill required players to be a certain level and have at least a single point invested in all prerequisite skills. Additionally, skills complemented one another through a synergy system, allowing you to spend points in otherwise useless skills in order to boost the power of other abilities. The end result was a system that allowed for an extreme amount of customization. You could fill a game with eight characters of the same class and no two of them would have similar builds or playstyles. Hellgate: London’s attempt to mirror this skill system is borderline pathetic.

Each of the six classes has only a single skill tree with (about) 26 skills. The trees themselves almost never branch or bend and are instead arranged in simple, parallel lines. There are no synergies in place, and in order to combat any point saving, the game places strange restrictions on the skills, requiring specific levels for each invested skill point and requiring you spent a certain number of points in a prerequisite skill before you can buy the next ability in the tree. On top of that, many of the skills overlap in terms of function, causing minimal difference between specializations. There’s also a strange imbalance within trees themselves, as ignoring certain skills completely gimps your class while other abilities are entirely useless, existing only to fill a slot in the tree. The system certainly matches Diablo’s in appearance, but functionally it doesn’t allow for any interesting customization.

As you can see, this sort of narrow linearity is a major theme in Hellgate: London. Playing the game is a very guided experience. At no point do you feel in control of the game; the developers’ hands never leave yours. Diablo 2 was so great, and is still so wildly popular, because of the tremendous amount of freedom present in the game. From skill and item selection to the wide, open levels, Diablo 2 was a game that begged you find your own path through it. Hellgate: London has already forged the path and you need only eat it, like a rat (or Pac-Man) in a very linear maze.

For a game that’s already gone gold and is supposed to be on store shelves in less than two weeks, Hellgate: London sure has plenty of nasty bugs. Any enemy that flies, jumps, or hovers is a lost cause, its behavior a buggy menagerie of pathing errors and invincible evasion sessions. Also, skills sometimes get stuck in “on” positions, continually firing until all your mana is depleted. Oh, and the game crashes to desktop. Constantly. In fact, I’m now writing this instead of playing the beta because I experienced such a hardcore crash earlier, that my game no longer works at all, and I lack the will to reinstall it.

As it stands now, Hellgate: London is an unfinished game. I have no doubt that a year and many patches from now, Hellgate: London will be a great game. The basic framework is in place, but too many of the specifics are heavily flawed. The fact that Flagship expects people to pay a monthly fee for this is nothing short of laughable. Hellgate: London is a linear single player game masquerading as an AAA multiplayer title and the heir to Diablo’s legacy. Sure, it’s a good enough game in its own right, but why settle for good when we’ve already experienced greatness?

Regardless of your opinion of his games, there’s no denying that Sonic the Hedgehog is an appealing character; you don’t get staring roles in five different Saturday morning cartoon series on looks alone. Yuji Naka and the developers at Sonic Team have once again hit character gold with the titular hero of Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, but sadly, his debut game is average at best. The spunky kid in a rooster suit deserves better.

When evil crows attack Morning Land and imprison the six rooster elders in giant golden eggs, preventing them from coaxing the sun out of its nightly slumber and therefore plunging the world into eternal night, it’s up to Billy Hatcher to save the day. With the power of eggs, obviously. Despite his flashy rooster costume, Billy isn’t much good on his own. Sure, he can jump and hang from ledges like the best of them, but any jumping puzzle more complex than a few floating platforms or an enemy crowbeast of any size or variety are no match for the well-meaning kid. Thankfully, his magic rooster suit allows him to push and move giant eggs he would be unable to manipulate otherwise.

Huge eggs of a multitude of sizes and colors litter the environment. By simply walking up to one and pushing, Billy can roll the eggs around the landscape, smashing through enemies and barriers with equal ease. Defeating the monsters of Morning Land – that resemble giant lizards and purple gorillas more than “evil crows” – yields fruit, obviously. By rolling up this fruit into your (completely non-Katamari-like) eggs, they’ll grow in size, eventually becoming large enough to hatch, providing Billy with consumable items, powerups, or Pokemon-inspired sidekicks. With over 50 eggs to roll and hatch, Billy has a genuine plethora of powerups at his disposal, but only a handful are ever actually required to overcome an obstacle. In fact, most of the available hatchlings are borderline useless, and with many of the eggs sharing similar colors or patterns, it’s often difficult to discern the useful eggs from the rotten ones.

Besides smashing and hatching, these giant eggs also provide Billy with additional platforming powers. Sharing common heritage with Sonic the Hedgehog, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg also shares the same sort of breakneck speed. Billy rolls eggs around the world with unmatched quickness and spends a great deal of time blasting through freefloating, giant-egg-sized rings. This is fun. However, it quickly shifts from fun to frustrating once instant death pits enter the mix, which is often. As you might expect, performing precision platforming with a giant egg in tow is clunky and inexact. It’s often difficult to gauge where Billy ends and the egg begins, leading to many missed jumps. Additionally, because the eggs have their own weight and momentum, it’s not uncommon to land a jump onto a tiny midair platform only to have the still-rolling egg drag Billy off the edge with it. Rolling around and hanging on to eggs for dear life as you rocket yourself across the landscape is entertaining enough, but it’s not a mechanic suited to high flying live-or-die antics, as the sort of precision needed for a 3D platformer is sorely missing.

All flaws aside, tooling around behind a humungous egg is fresh and original, but the rest of the game just doesn’t complement this new concept. Billy and his giant eggs seem to have found themselves in a generically standard platforming game; it’s hard to believe Sonic Team built this unoriginal gameworld from scratch to host monstrous rolling eggs. Structurally, the game is identical to Super Mario 64, with Billy collecting Courage Emblems in place of stars as rewards for accomplishing various missions. Billy visits a snow level, some sand-soaked ruins, and a fiery volcano – all locals we’ve seen countless times before in this sort of game. Unfortunately, the simple truth here is once you’ve haphazardly rolled a giant egg through a chicken village in the first level of the game, you’ve already seen the most interesting the game ever gets.

At least the game looks and sounds great. The graphics are bright and colorful with a pervasive cuteness. It might not be the most technically impressive title in the GameCube’s library, but the texture work is clean and the art style is consistent. The soundtrack matches the sunny disposition of the visuals, with catchy, upbeat songs accompanying every moment of the game. Stop rolling eggs for a few moments and Billy will start singing along. Heck, do anything at all – jump, collect an item, run into an enemy’s behind – and Billy has something to say about it and, surprisingly enough, Billy’s constant commentary never grows old, remaining charmingly cute until the end.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant egg has seven worlds in total, a throwaway multiplayer component, and the same GBA-downloadable minigames as Phantasy Star Online. All told, you’re looking at about five hours to beat the game and double that to exhaust the content on the disc completely. There’s little incentive to play beyond the ending cinematic, however, as the game is just too frustrating and unoriginal to bother with for long. Still, there are a few terrific boss battles, some memorable music, and a delightful hero that deserves better than this, but then again, the same can be said of Sonic these days. Do yourself a favor, skip the game and just buy the soundtrack – it’s the same experience without the clunky platforming.

Ever since WOPR asked Matthew Broderick “shall we play a game?” in 1983’s Wargames, an entire video gaming generation has wanted to respond with a resounding “yes!” With DEFCON, the third game from independent British developer Introversion Software, we finally get that chance. The game allows you to play against up to five other opponents in a game of global thermonuclear war, a sick, perverted fantasy to be certain. Played out on a white-on-black version of Dr. Strangelove’s Big Board, DEFCON is a simple but moody real-time strategy game that proves a big budget isn’t a prerequisite for big accomplishment.

Like the 1980s computer interfaces that inspired it, DEFCON is a game defined by its minimalism. Clean vector graphics represent units and structures with stylized flair – dotted vector exhaust trails stream behind fighter jets, fleets of neon-outlined ships do battle on darkly juxtaposing high seas. The soundtrack is made up of distant industrial rumbling and the beeping of unseen machinery; the sound builds and resonates to form a brooding, ominous tension. Just when you you’ve chewed your last fingernail to the stump from anxiety, relief comes from the punctuating blast of a nuclear detonation and the subsequent screams of the dying. Never has so much atmosphere been created with so little.

This same overall minimalism translates to the gameplay as well, creating a very approachable real-time strategy experience. Finding human opponents is as simple as clicking a single button, and when the game begins, all players start with exactly the same number of units and structures. Because there’s no resource gathering or unit building – you start the game with all your weapons ready for war – the game rewards thoughtful use of available tools over speedy reaction times or uber micromanagement. All players are locked to the same timetable, as the titular DEFCON level drops over time, from 5 to 1, with tension and hostility rising as the number lowers. At DEFCON 5, players place their structures and units – radars, missile silos, air bases, and fleets made of up various ship types. As time passes and the game reaches DEFCON 3, air and naval combat is allowed. By the time you reach DEFCON 1, the nukes are in the air.

While this simplicity makes for an engaging first experience, unfortunately the same minimalist approach that aids the overall presentation does little to mask the shallow gameplay. Once you’ve mastered sending your warheads in waves to overwhelm enemy defenses – a technique that should require no more than a game or two to perfect – you’ve already seen the most complex the game ever becomes. With our planet as the game’s only map, and six continents acting as the only playable positions, the only real strategic considerations required from game to game comes from deciding when to transform your stationary anti-air defenses into death-spewing missile silos. Honestly, there just isn’t much here, but then again actual nuclear warfare doesn’t require much thought either.

Pressing the big red button and watching the deathtoll rise, hoping to take as many lives as you can before your own population is decimated by nuclear holocaust, is a sickly engaging activity, but it quickly wears thin. DEFCON is essentially multiplayer only; the only offline option pits you against computer-controlled players with no scalable difficulty settings. Even the added paranoia stemming from lose online alliances isn’t enough to give this game the depth or longevity of any other strategy title on the market. Thankfully, DEFCON is cheap at just $15 through Steam, but even at the low price there’s barely enough meat on these bones to justify a purchase.

With a demo that virtually includes the full experience, it’s hard to recommend a game with so little to offer, especially in a genre renowned for its depth and replayability. Easily activated mods offer new visual themes and maps, but still aren’t enough to classify DEFCON as a successful game. Still, for those first couple of matches, DEFCON instills the sort of tense fear even the best in the survival horror genre can barely imitate. While DEFCON may fail as a game, it succeeds as an artistic achievement and as a social statement. As a game where there are no winners, only degrees of losers, it manages to convey a clear message entirely through gameplay, never resorting to preachy, 30-minute cinematics. From a presentation standpoint, other developers could learn a great deal from DEFCON, but for a rewarding strategy experience, you’re better off randomly selecting a game from the local bargain bin.

Like many, I was quick to write off Final Fantasy X-2 as a gimmick-laden exercise in overblown fanservice. Though positive impressions from trusted sources ultimately swayed me into buying the game, the overwhelmingly negative Internet reaction to seeing Yuna trade in her summoner’s staff for a pistol and a pair of hot pants had already tainted my perceptions. I quickly abandoned the game only a few hours into it. X-2 was too different from its predecessor, too different from the rest of the series. Too much had changed between X’s bittersweet finale and X-2’s bubbly opening, and I was unable to change my expectations accordingly.

When Final Fantasy X-2 was first released in 2003, two years had passed since Yuna, Tidus, and company had saved the world of Spira from Sin. Squaresoft had merged with Enix and Final Fantasy X-2 would be both the last Final Fantasy title released under the Square banner in Japan and the first game in the series published by Square Enix in the United States. Though Square had lost its independence, the people of Spira had gained theirs, free from the threat of Sin and the overbearing religion of Yevon. Spira didn’t lay dormant for those two years; it changed along with our own world. X-2 was born of this change, a game “about the ‘changes’ that [occur] from the chaos after gaining … independence.”

The first direct sequel in series history, X-2 is unlike any Final Fantasy game before it. Though it’s firmly rooted in series heritage, it diverges wildly from the epic cadence and measured linearity of past Final Fantasy games. Like Final Fantasy VI’s World of Ruin built up and stretched out to form a standalone game, Final Fantasy X-2 is an open-ended, freeform affair that resembles a Bioware, Bethesda, or Black Isle title in pacing and structure more than a traditional Japanese console RPG.

Freedom comes with Independence, so it’s no surprise that from the onset all of Spira is open for exploration. You begin with an airship and a world map, able to hop quickly to any point of interest. You’ll visit the same locations that defined Yuna’s pilgrimage in Final Fantasy X, all of which have changed in some way in the preceding two years. Exploration yields tremendous rewards as every town, temple, or travel agency plays host to old friends and new allies, all coping with a changing Spira. Randomly choosing any point on the map leads to some activity worth pursuing – a subquest, a minigame, a cinematic – and just when you think you’ve exhausted this wealth of available content, venturing to clearly labeled “hotspots” moves the main storyline forward, opening up new, world-changing chapters.

The various sidequests build in tandem with the main plot down through these chapters. Each subsequent chapter advances not one plot, but dozens, effectively shifting all of Spira forward and ultimately building towards satisfying conclusions for all the various plot threads at game’s end. And best of all, it’s all optional. Help deter escalading violence between the Guado and the Ronso, prevent the ruins of Zanarkand from becoming a gaudy tourist attraction, assist the Al Bhed in their quest to improve Spira with machina, or not. Final Fantasy X-2 instills the series with an unprecedented amount of choice. There are no moral choices here, however; there is a correct solution to every situation and choice merely comes down to whether or not you pursue an activity, not how you pursue it. The entire experience plays like a meeting of Eastern and Western RPG philosophies, incorporating the best values of each. You get the open-ended, exploration-heavy gameplay of a Western title and the rich, predetermined linear story of an Eastern RPG, ultimately carefully balancing overwhelming freedom with strict linearity just right.

In fact, this ability to balance two competing extremes is Final Fantasy X-2’s greatest strength. The game is initially very silly. Yuna and Rikku have joined up with newcomer Paine to form the Gullwings, a trio of fun loving sphere hunters with girl power to spare. The game opens with Yuna performing a J-pop concert in a packed stadium, a trio of bumbling villains, and a loud, cheerful joy, and it ends in somber reflection and the possibility of hope. It strikes a delicate balance between elaborate Scooby Doo jokes and moments of quiet longing. The music signals tonal shifts and ensures we laugh when we’re supposed to and not when we’re not. The most bombastic brass band ever recorded blasts cheerful theme music and easily shifts to quieter, moodier pieces. Additionally, voice acting that’s much improved over Final Fantasy X’s stilted performances brings dialogue to life, lending X-2 a heightened air of credibility. Final Fantasy X-2 wants us to feel the sheer joy of Spira in the Calm – a Spira safe from all danger – but builds a narrative that does not discredit or undermine the poignancy of Final Fantasy X’s conclusion.

When the Gullwings discover the recording of a man who appears shockingly similar to Tidus, they get caught up in the escalading tensions between The Youth League and New Yevon – two groups wresting for control of Spira’s destiny – and set off a series of events relating back to the Machina War a thousand years ago. Before too long, ancient weapons of ultimate evil arrive on the scene, coming as no surprise to anyone who’s ever played a Final Fantasy game before. With Spira rapidly changing, the characters must decide if they will change with it, and look to the past for answers while avoiding its seductive nostalgia. In this way, Final Fantasy X-2 openly tells us how to best approach and understand it. It’s a Final Fantasy game in mythology and systems, but something wholly different in tone and structure. In order to enjoy it we must change any preconceived expectations we have for a Final Fantasy title and appreciate what X-2 does well – incorporating new mechanics with series mainstays.

While the overall structure of the game varies heavily from past entries in the Final Fantasy series, much of the core gameplay remains largely unchanged. Combat plays as it always has; triggering random battles leads to turn-based combat. However, in X-2 combat comes at breakneck speed. At the default settings, ATB bars refill nearly instantly and enemies continue to act as you cycle through menus to select available options, providing you with barely enough time to act, let alone think. Unless you’re a certified genius with the thumb speed to match, dialing down the overall combat speed is highly recommended. Still, even at its slowest settings, combat in X-2 plays faster than in any previous Final Fantasy title, and it’s a good thing too, as battles come often.

The game also incorporates a version of the fan favorite job system. Tried and true job classes like black mages and thieves return alongside new offerings such as the gunner and lady luck. Each job is highly specialized, focused on doing a single thing and doing it well. Black and white mages, for example, lack any sort of basic attack and the songstress is unable to do anything but sing. As such, you’ll be changing jobs often to fulfill the shifting needs of battle. Rather than equip a character with a single job, you instead equip a garment grid which, besides granting some sort of passive bonus, contains a predetermined number of empty job slots. As long has a job is assigned to an equipped garment grid, the character can switch between jobs at any time. Combat, overall, is very easy, but customizing Yuna, Rikku, and Paine with the various jobs is a great deal of fun, just the same.

Unfortunately, nearly all of the enemies and bosses are reused from Final Fantasy X. Though some of these enemies, and especially some of the bosses, have changed in interesting ways since the last time we saw them, spending another 40 hours rebattling the same monsters is redundant and disappointing. In fact, the entire game looks little different from Final Fantasy X, despite the dramatic changes the world has undergone. Tetsuya Nomura returns as character designer, and once again, his designs are hit or miss. Many of the job designs merge the unique style of the character wearing them with the iconic imagery associated with the base job class in clever ways, but nearly all of the supporting cast is flamboyantly overdesigned. Visually, X-2 feels more like an elaborate mod or expansion rather than a full-fledged sequel, and the frequent, if unobtrusive, framerate hitches don’t do it any favors. While the reused graphic assets allows the developers to better draw attention to the areas where Spira has grown or changed, they make the game feel cheaper than it should.

Despite all the controversy surrounding the game and its broad changes to the Final Fantasy formula, at its heart Final Fantasy X-2 is a love letter to fans of the series. The positive fan reaction to Eternal Calm, a short movie included with Final Fantasy X International detailing the fate of Spira after the events of the game, served as the kernel of inspiration for this sequel. As such, X-2 tugs at the heartstrings of longtime fans at every opportunity. Characters named Shinra, Biggs, and Wedge show up over the course of the narrative and in X-2 we learn more about Cactuar ecology and society than we ever thought we needed to know. For the first time ever, you can replay the game with all of your items and skills using a new game plus feature, and with five different endings, there’s plenty of incentive to do so.

As the world’s premiere RPG franchise, a Final Fantasy title comes with 20 years of history. Because the series is renowned for reinventing itself, players expect a certain level of innovation with each new entry, but condemn a Final Fantasy game that strays too far from the established path. For many, Final Fantasy X-2 seems to wander too far from time-honored series conventions, earning itself mostly negative fan reactions and just over half the worldwide sales of Final Fantasy X. A closer inspection, however, reveals that X-2 manages to balance the narrow tightrope between fanservice and complete reinvention, melding the brand new with more traditional fare. Like the Gullwings themselves, players must free themselves from their memories and accept the change X-2 brings with it. The game categorically succeeds, and if you’re willing to toss expectations aside and take a chance on X-2, you’ll find that it’s a change for the better.

With a fully functioning wireless router now in my possession, I spent the better part of the day playing Final Fantasy X-2 with my DS quietly chirping beside me, relentlessly seeking a Mario Kart DS opponent. I was expecting, and in fact rather hoping, to find an online experience defined by snakers, disconnecters, and other such subhuman activity. Instead the few opponents I managed to find were rather polite and cordial - or as polite and cordial as one can be in an environment that disallows communication of any kind (for our safety, of course). I even had an epic, back-and-forth 12-course affair - the result of two tied matchups - with a delightful Mario player named FABIO. All in all, my first online console experience was roughly 1000% less painful and demeaning than I had imagined.

Consider yourself informed, Internet.

Bonus Web 2.0 Challenge/Hopeless Self Delusion: How did the reality of your first online console experience compare to your expectations?

The top ten list (here a term I will use to define a “top” list with any number of ranked items) has become an Internet staple, the lowest common denominator of online content. Listing off the “best,” “greatest,” or “top,” things in a given category easily generates hits – there’s nothing a Google cache loves more – and promotes rapid, mostly unintelligible discussion. As I previously mentioned, CRACKED.com basically exists only to list things in descending order. Any video game site with “game” in its URL will gladly create an arbitrary list of stuff and bill it as a feature article to buy time while the intern transcribes the David Jaffe interview. No less than 30% of GorillaMask’s content (I’m told it’s a very popular site) is comprised of links to lists, almost always of the top ten variety; there have already been three posted so far today. A top ten list requires very little work and has the potential to reap the sort of epic rewards that can only come handed down from Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and the other Gods of Web 2.0 on high.

The problem I have with these lists, our own better-left-forgotten example included, is their general failure to define their terms. This failure of clarity is generally the reason people rant and rave over the content of these sorts of things. Normally these lists use catchall terms like “greatest” or “top” to rank items based on non-transparent criteria. Technical excellent, overall importance or influence, and personal bias are each factored into a final ranking. The real problem here is that there is a difference between “best,” “important,” and “favorite.” “Best” describes technical excellence, an undisputed, quantifiable quality; “important” measures a thing’s originality, influence, and impact; and “favorite” is largely based on personal bias, it ignores obvious flaws in favor of personal preference. Unfortunately, these terms are often used interchangeably.

Now it’s time to have my cake and eat it too. Let’s say I was going to list the five best, most important, and my five personal favorite video games from the last hardware generation, Dreamcast excluded. In this example, I’ll go against standard listing conventions and rank my items from top to bottom rather than bottom to top. See if you can spot the differences.

Because nobody cares and I don’t want to make this update any more retarded and space-filling than it already is, the reasons for these ranking will be relegated to a very special blogger’s commentary edition of the comments.

Though there is some overlap, clearly the lists are ranked based on different (and clearly labeled) criteria. GameSpy’s infamous 25 Most Overrated Games of All Time feature, despite having what appear to be clearly defined terms, still falls prey to the general murkiness of “top” lists. By lumping together games that were disappointing and overhyped with the titular overrated games, GameSpy produced a list no better than a general “greatest” list. Of course, this very same ambiguity lead to a tremendous amount of online discussion, and therefore an equally tremendous number of pageviews.

People love lists, even bad ones. They give folks a chance to quickly and efficiently express an option using numerical ranks. Lists are clean, orderly, and promote discussion. And here on the Internet, where “discussion” means poorly proofread attacks and lengthy opinionated stories leading nowhere in particular, the list is a mighty useful tool, regardless of its quality.

Now everyone sign up for a Listology account and compile lists of the “greatest” DORK Club updates.

While promoting Rudy Coaches a Baseball Team, Sean Astin told MTV that a Goonies sequel is “an absolute certainty” at this point. The movie would likely follow the adventures of the original Goonies’ kids and shamelessly exploit the fond memories of an entire generation. Strong DVD sales of the original are cited as the primary reason this idea is even on the table, effectively laying the blame for this inevitable disaster squarely on the fans. With Anne Ramsey long dead and the looming prospect of a CGI Sloth, hopefully someone with some sense realizes this is a bad idea before it’s too late. Or that Konami already made a ‘good enough’ sequel.

Later: more knee-jerk reactions and unwarranted scorn.