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Review – Castle Shikigami 2

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Castle Shikigami 2
Developed by Alfa Systems
Published by XS Games
Released 11.12.04


The shooter, it is said, is a dying genre. Debatabley the first video game created, Spacewar, was a one on one shooter, so it is also a proud and essential genre. News of its demise has not fallen upon hardcore gamers’ ears lightly. The shooter is an odd genre in some respects. Many critics of current games complain that games are too long, too involved, and too complex. To reach a bigger audience, games should be shorter and simpler. The shooter tends to be both shallow and quickly completed, yet it is not embraced by the general populace. Is this because they are far too hard for the average person or because companies refuse to publish and advertise this type of game? It may entirely be the former, but I doubt it. In a world of 3d graphics magic, publishers often do their best to shun anything 2d, indiscriminate of quality and possible profit. →  I’d rather die than not read this article!

Dear EA

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Dear Electronic Arts,

On June 28th, Frank Gibeau told Next Generation, “It’s really hard to think of new ideas.” Perhaps it’s only because I’m a genius, but I come up with new ideas all the time. I have enclosed two new game concepts for your consideration. A resume is not included because these designs speak for themselves.

Library Simulator – Build the library of your dreams. Decide the layout, build improvements, and take down unused wings. Hire staff to keep peace, shelve books, and keep the patrons quiet. Choose amongst dozens of librarians, each with their own special talents and interests. Develop the collection to best suit your demographic, or attempt to move the library in a new direction and capture more demographics. By preventing your library from dipping into the red and keeping your patrons happy you can keep it open indefinitely, which is good because you’ll want to see all of the new technologies that will eventually become available to your library, assuming you fund the research. →  SaGa Frontier Readmastered

Concerned Citizen

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Grand Theft Auto 3 has come under a lot of heat because of the Hot Coffee mod, which allows the player to have polygonal sex with his video game girlfriend. GameStop, crusader for freedom Jack Thompson, and Hillary Clinton are among those who have lined up against Rock Star for making such an immoral product. Murdering prostitutes is questionable behavior, but having sexual intercourse is just ethically wrong so I, too, decided to share my discontent… but in the most positive way possible, by thanking those retailers who pulled the game from their shelf. Enjoy.

Thank you for being a family friendly store. Capitalism will never work if we just allow people to buy whatever they want. We need more huge corporations to stand up to products Jesus wouldn’t like and say, “No. Our customers do not want this.” Freedom of choice is just a euphemism for evil and I applaud you in your efforts to cut down on evil. The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 remind me of how precious our freedom is and that it cannot be squandered on things like allowing consumers to buy products that are legal, yet possibly offensive to anyone without cable. →  One must imagine video games happy.

Oh Joy, a new video game site

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This is a brand new style for a web site. We are totally extreme, to the maxx and in your face. And sarcastic, I bet you’ve never seen a website that uses sarcasm. Well this one does. Get over it.

My God, that man is sitting on an enormous gun!

Since there are about 600 trillion websites already dedicated to reviewing video games, we knew we had to come up with a good angle. First, we thought we’d go with the “we have no angle” angle. Seinfeld did it so why can’t we? Seinfeld also had extremely talented writers, we do not. So then we thought “if we are just true to ourselves and the games, our humanity will shine through.” But the idea that the writers on bigger, richer sites are writing something that’s false to themselves or creating a personality to sell the site is sort of offensive. Some of those guys probably suck, but most are no different than us (except they have real jobs), so the angle that we would be the only honest, tell it like it is (kind of like the Eminem of game reviews), from the heart journalists died a quiet death. →  Today I consider myself the luckiest reader on the face of the earth.