Shacknews Holiday Game Guide

rosewood writes "Shacknews' Jason Bergman, aka loonyboi has his 'Holiday Buying Guide 2002' up and ready to read. PC, Gamecube, PS2, Xbox, and Gameboy Advance and over 70 games are covered! You can also look up how other games have rated each game at Shackreviews." Not every game is touched on in-depth, but it's a great resource to narrow down the choices for that special gamer in your life.

No Macintosh games?

[LordNimon]

Macintosh owners play games, too. In fact, a guide like this would be of more value to Mac gamers. Mac games are harder to find, so if you want to buy a game for a Mac user, you probably can't rely on your local CompUseless sales droid to know what's hot and what's not.

Re:Gamecube is the console to get this season

[Trevelyan]

They are, Resident Evil is an example of that.
But anyway just because some of their games are targeted at the young, does not make them any less fun to play.
I have sonic adventure 2, and as long as tails voice dont make you too homicidal (I know ppl who switch the lang to jap because of it) It is fun to play (but not too challenging). I wish it had more of what the game calls action levels, ie the ones where you run around as fast as you can (which is what made sonic famous in the first place)

Games I look forward to: Metriod Prime (and Fusion (GBA)), Zelda and some others.
I was waiting for Perfect Dark Zero (was a main reason for buying a cube) but alas it is not to be, PD0 will go to the X-Box (which I will not buy)

No games on a PC that makes you want a PC

[BubbaTheBarbarian]

Is there anything that truly catches your imagination? It used to be EQ, or Quake 3. I just tried UT3K, and well, it is nice.

That is all I can say about it. It is nice.

The last game I bought and was into was RTCW. Is this the end of PC gaming as we know it? Is our road that of being console unit's bitch?

The problem, as I see it, is that there is no game that caters to the PC's strengths. Nothing that makes me want to play, for lack of a better phrase, addicts me.

What would bring PC gaming back to the heady days of Doome, Civ2, Quake 3 and UT, when we ruled the roost? What would make something interesting?

Re:No games on a PC that makes you want a PC

[Anonymous Coward]

What would bring PC gaming back to the heady days of Doome, Civ2, Quake 3 and UT, when we ruled the roost? What would make something interesting?

This attitude seems prevalent among people who had a PC as their first computer, but actually the game market was already deep into creative decline at that time. That decline started somewhere during the 16-bit age when the creative individuals were being replaced by development-by-committee, and when presentation became more important than content.

Apart from the refreshing newness of being 3D, games like Doom or Quake or UT were not really that interesting. Try playing them again if you disagree...

Re:Gamecube is the console to get this season

[Qzukk]

What do you call innovative games?

I like games where some new idea is brought up. Like Fantavision, an early PS2 puzzle game where you built your own fireworks displays and watched them go off. Or that Mosquito game, where you fly around sucking blood. Lets not forget Ico, it redefined the puzzler to add incredible ambience.

Coming up on the RPG end is .hack (also ps2), which is set in a multiplayer online world, without actually being online. According to what I've heard, it actually works well. Xenosaga will be coming out next year as well, while I haven't heard much about the Japanese release, if its anything like Xenogears, by the end you'll be caught actually thinking about the role of humanity.

Gamecube has its innovation too, I've been thinking of getting a gamecube for Animal Crossing, and maybe Evolution Worlds (ok, that one might not be a good example of "innovation" but I thought the first two Evolution games on dreamcast were cute, and this looks exactly like those did) . Other than that, super monkey ball is pretty innovative. Nintendo more-or-less created the idea of "party games" (at least for parties not wanting to play football all day).

The biggest problem with "innovation" is that its unwelcome in the markets. Take a look in the history on slashdot and read the Unfinished Adventures article. Face it, the sad truth is that things that blow up with blood and guts sell well. Being able to beat up hookers is an added bonus. Bucking the trend results in product cancellation, or in the case of console games from Japan, just not showing up on this side of the ocean.

Personally I'm hoping that the upcoming PS2 release of the Sakura Taisen games will mean we will finally get to play Sakura Taisen/Sakura Wars here in English. That would be great innovation, at least in our market.

Somebody always says it, but...

[tigertigr]

Look for an old Dreamcast if you don't have one. I just bought one myself a few weeks ago and I can't stop playing it. There's tons of fun games for it and they are dirt cheap. Most of the games I've found have been around $15CDN.

I highly recommend it.

the old tired kids argument

[newsdee]

Chances are that most trigger-happy fps players will hate Metroid Prime. It's not hyped because it's a standard FPS, but because it's a new game of the Metroid series (and actually succeeds in conveying a similar gameplay to the older 2D version).

Also to pretend that GC games are only appropiate to kids is a major fallacy. A game does not need a rating of Mature to be enjoyable.

Besides, if what most people call "adult games" are in fact new instances of "Quake3 nth-clone" or "Famous Name's Hyped Sport", then I'm very happy playing kiddie games, thank you.

Consume!

[nfotxn]

I love how holidays are synonymous with buying now.

ugh.