posts by aaron
aaron

Review – Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

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As much as I like the Grand Theft Auto series, I’ve always been more of an “owner” than a “fan.” I own the three PS2 installments and played only Vice City to any extensive degree. In GTA 3, I used the cheat code to spawn tanks over and over again outside of my hideout, blew them up, and discovered that they remained there after having saved a game, and the only way I could get rid of them all would have been to painstakingly push them all into the river with another tank, or to start a new game and lose all of my (admittedly meager) progress. In San Andreas, I exercised over and over again, became extremely muscular, then encountered a difficult early mission and lost interest in the game.

I’m not sure why Vice City held my interest so much more than the others, but Tommy Vercetti was a fun bastard of a character, the city had a lot of character itself, and the mission where you gun down the drug lord’s mansion in a helicopter may be one of the most memorable in the series’ history. →  Read, I am your father!

Best Game Ever – Pinball Quest

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Genre blending is a splendid little thing. Diddy Kong Racing, one of Rare’s greatest Nintendo 64 games, is a wonderful mix of racing and adventure. Mario & Luigi Super Star Saga is a clever RPG with platforming elements thrown in. Games that stick adamantly to a certain form run the risk of getting stale, and introducing elements from other genres is a great way to keep things fresh.

I don’t get it.

Video game pinball is no stranger to this phenomenon. I remember the high hopes I had for Odama when I first heard about it sometime a few years ago. A pinball-based tactical wargame? That sort of thing just sells itself. Mario Pinball Land, similarly, had you explore typically Mario-esque worlds with a peculiar ball-shaped Mario. Interesting concepts, and rarely seen, too. But the games themselves didn’t go over so well with critics, sometimes cited for their unreasonable difficulty (Odama, oddly enough, was described as being both too easy and too hard by different reviewers). →  Read more? No, I’ll read it all.