OK, so it's not quite Christmas, but it might as well be. As you probably have already noticed the holiday release schedule is in full swing. This means that the stack of games that need to be reviewed on Alex's desk is growing perilously high, which in turn means that as soon as one of us finishes a review there's a new game or three waiting to take its place. I've been playing games for most of my life and I've been writing reviews for over seven years so you'd think I'd be ready for this glut of games, you know, the glut that happens every year. But I'm not. The game avalanche sneaks up on me every single year.

My brain knows that Christmas is in December. It also knows that developers and publishers all strive to have their big titles out by Christmas. Here's the problem: Publishers are tired of having their games buried amongst all the other games that are released in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some of them have gotten the crazy idea that "people actually buy games in months other than November and December" in their heads and they've started releasing their big holiday games in October. When this trend first started they'd release them in late October, but now it seems the whole month is fair game.

Heck, what am I talking about? Thanks to Halo 3 raking in like a billion dollars in 12 minutes, even September is ripe for blockbuster games. Now you see why every year I'm cruising along thinking I've got plenty of free time before the review schedule gets hectic, and then all of the sudden I'm getting smacked in the face with a new game from Alex every time I make the mistake of making eye contact with him.

Yep, poor old me. I have to play a bunch of great games for the next two months. Waaaahhhh. Ah well, I'll be ready for the rush next year.

It's not often that I find myself especially blindsided by a game's quality these days. Working in this business as I do, I usually have some kind of insight ahead of time as to whether a game is total garbage or kind of awesome. This past weekend I worked on Zack & Wiki for the Wii, a game I knew next to nothing about, and only had vague claims of "that game looked kind of neat" to go on from folk around the office. That's a real vague claim as claims around here go. I've played plenty of games that "looked kind of neat" only to end up sucking, and sucking hard. And, of course, the opposite is true as well. Frankly, I took the assignment because I had the most time this weekend, it had a Monday embargo, and it just made sense. I was not, in any sense, looking forward to this one.

And yet, here is the review, altogether positive and wholeheartedly recommending the product. Again, I expected very little out of this game, and yet the more I played it, the more I was simply shocked as to how well the whole thing was put together. I'm notoriously bad about playing games over the weekend. My ADD goes absolutely haywire when I'm at home and left to my own devices, and I can rarely focus on anything for more than a few minutes at a time, but with Zack & Wiki, I stuck with it. Not just because I had to for work, but because I seriously wanted to get through all the game's excellent puzzles. I was legitimately hooked. Pretty much the last sensation I was expecting from this one.

It just goes to show you that as predictable as this industry can be, sometimes something comes from out of left field and knocks you back on your coal-mining ass. Puzzle Quest did that to a lot of people earlier in the year, and more recently, Portal has kind of taken on this kind of mythic level of praise from practically everyone who plays it. But you know what? I'd dare say that both those games, though maybe better than expected, were still expected to be pretty rad. Zack & Wiki, for all its "looked kind of neat" comments, never really built up much hype. Maybe a few of those crazy forum kids knew something I didn't, but it's safe to say that general expectations were low. Now, I would hope, expectations will raise, as will sales. This is a game absolutely worth owning. I can't say I've said that about a whole lot of Wii games thus far.

Now, let's be fair, the game ain't perfect. Zack & Wiki as characters are kind of lame, and for as much trouble as Capcom went to creating this new property, it sure didn't spend much time on the script. But what it did spend the time on was the gameplay--and the presentation too, but more importantly, gameplay. Specifically, it did something most third-party developers haven't really done with the Wii. It took the time to make the control mechanics work, and work well. Every now and again I'd encounter an off-feeling mechanic, or a stage that didn't feel quite as great as the other 20-some-odd stages (I think there was one boss fight I legitimately disliked, and maybe one or two puzzles that bugged me--that was about it), but those were, by and large, aberrations in an otherwise great game.

To me, this begs a question: How many Dewy's Adventures' and Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire's were people going to put up with before enough was enough? I've seen some people complain that we hate the Wii and that our scores are always lower than everyone else's and blahblahblah. Whatever. While I understand that's the typical forum kid rabblerousing, I'd like to think that Zack & Wiki proves a point. It proves that it's not a matter of disliking the Wii, so much as it is a matter of being pissed off at how few developers were really putting this console through its paces, taking the time to build something unique and awesome, something that isn't from the Mario Factory and yet smacks of the kind of quality we've come to expect from the console builder's software over the years. I mean, let's face it: Occasional Barrel Blast aside, it's been practically all Nintendo coming out with the hot games for this thing, with a very few exceptions. Zack & Wiki shows that when you put in the time, you can make controls that are intuitive and fun, you can make a game that looks truly excellent, however limited the system's hardware might be, and you can do it all without shoving standard Nintendo characters into the mix--even if this game's hero could have used a bit of tweaking.

Now the question is, will it sell? One would hope, given the insane number of Wii consoles out there. Given the $40 price tag, it seems almost criminal to think that people might ignore this one. And yet, at the same time, I can't help but get a Psychonauts-like "critics darling" vibe off this one. I don't want that feeling, but it's there, nagging at me, the same way it did when I played that fateful game. I'd like to see Capcom get rewarded for going out on a limb here, much the same way I want to see publishers who shovel utter dreck onto Wii shelves like compost onto a pile lose a good deal of money and be forced to rethink their strategies. To the nearly 150,000 people who dropped $50 on the utter mediocrity that was Cooking Mama: Cook Off, and the more than 350,000 people who put down full price on the buggy, mindless, altogether unpleasant garbage that was Red Steel, you are hereby required to pick up Zack & Wiki, or I'm coming to all your houses, and it's going to be extremely unpleasant.

I guess my main motivation for writing this was to make a semi-plea to all the Wii owners of the world not to ignore this one. I know the review should be enough, but, you know, the review should have been enough for Psychonauts too, and look how well that went. If the cute is too much for you, I get it, I really do. But even still, it's worth giving this game a look if you like challenging adventure games.

News of NBA Live 08's upcoming online team play patch (which will pit five-on-five teams across 10 different consoles)--along with FIFA 08's similar announcement a few months back--might just be the biggest sports news of the year. Sure, once the patch is live, you're going to have players online who have no idea what they are doing. Everyone's going to be crowding underneath the basket trying to pick up a rebound. There will be ball-hogging galore. It's going to be a mess right out of the gate. But, sooner or later, groups of friends are going to figure out how to play the game as a team, where to put their players, how to run plays effectively, how to communicate on the floor (you know, like real hoops team does). And those teams are going to wipe the floor with the virtual Allen Iverson's online.

So EA is finally taking online seriously, it seems. Both NHL and NBA Live 08 have online leagues. NHL (and soon, Live and FIFA) include the ability to play online with multiple players. Next year's Madden will almost certainly include one or both of these features. Tiger Woods 08's hit or miss GamerNet feature needed some polish out of the box but sounds like it could get better in the future. And NASCAR 08... okay, bad example. Let's just say NASCAR has a ways to go before it catches up.

This is all good, if overdue, news. The sports gaming fan's dream of 11-on-11 Madden or FIFA games seems to be well within our grasp; the technical restrictions of such features are rapidly falling away. The problem that will remain long into the future, however, is one of design. How do you make 11-on-11 (or 5-on-5 in hoops, or 6-on-6 in hockey) a fun, compelling experience for everyone involved, even those who aren't shooting the basketball or firing the puck at net? After all, online team play sounds great but someone's going to have to end up being Wally Szczerbiak.

The first problem will be the getting the online miscreants in line. The same guys who refuse to punt on fourth down, who refuse to give the ball to anyone but Kobe, and who use language towards perfect strangers that would make car mechanics blush when you're playing against them will be a problem when they're your teammate as well. The trick here, I think, will be for developers like EA (and honestly anyone who is thinking about the future of online sports games) to encourage folks to work together without adding artifice to the experience (such as a pass timer, or something else that forces players to spread the ball around and play as if there wasn't an "I" in team).

Online jackballs are the short-term problem. The long term challenge is making sure that playing offensive tackle is fun. Or that the guy playing Andris Biedrins is having as much fun going up for offensive boards as the guy locked in as Baron Davis is having tearing it up from every spot on the floor. It needs to be just as fun to play Joe Thornton bowling towards the net as it is Kyle McLaren sitting at the point and blasting pucks at the goalie (or, more accurately blowing guys up in the defensive zone). Series like Madden NFL and Sony's MLB series has attempted this kind of thing in the past with career modes, which let you play any role on the field. Still, I think there's more work that needs to be done. After all, eleven-on-eleven football sounds like a hoot, but there's no way you're going to get me to play Olin Kreutz for a four quarters the way things play now.

In a way, I suppose the two problems--and the solutions--are related. Reward people for playing nicely, for fulfilling their role, and playing as a team. Make every role on the pitch, field, or ice as important as every other. Even the punter. Give the punter some love, too. It's probably asking too much of a game to change human nature, especially online human nature. Still, it's worth trying, right? No, you can't change folks through game design. But you can encourage them to do better. To try harder.

I was going to write an editorial today griping about a number of things that have been bugging me. But I've written plenty of those over the last few months so I figured it was time to mix things up and focus on some of what's good in the world of games. Allrighty then, let's see what's good!

Rock Band
I know, I know I'm always yapping about Rock Band. I'm yapping about it today because I'm going to get to play it tonight at the GameSpot Players' Ball. I imagine I'll have to fight through a crowd to get my grubby little hands on it, but I'll do my best. That brings me to something else I'm looking forward to...

GameSpot's Players' Ball
You're going to be watching, right? We'll have the Tournament TV finals of Rainbow Six Vegas, Rock Band, Guitar Hero 3, Need For Speed: ProStreet, Ratchet & Clank, and a whole bunch of other cool games playable for the masses. If you're not one of the lucky few who got an invite, you can check it out on the site at 6:30pm PST. It should be sweet!

Orange Box
I have never played Half-Life or Half-Life 2. Yes, I am crazy, but hear me out. Half-Life came out when I was broke and had a crappy computer that couldn't play it. I was going to get Half-Life 2 because I actually had a PC that would run it, but I'm not a big PC gamer, so when I heard it was coming to Xbox I decided to wait. Then it came out for the Xbox and had a terrible frame rate so I decided I'd get it on the PC. Then I heard it was coming to the 360 so I decided to wait again. It comes out tomorrow and I'm super-excited about it. Toss in Episodes 1 & 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 and I don't know where to start.

The new Xbox 360
OK, it's not a "new" model that looks totally different that I'm talking about, but it might as well be. I don't know if it's because of the new drive, the smaller chip that runs cooler thereby reducing how much the fan runs or what, but this new 360 we got in the office is QUIET. It's crazy. I'm totally buying one as soon as I know for sure that I can get it in an elite model.

Thanksgiving
I look forward to Thanksgiving every year because I love Thanksgiving dinner and I love lying on the couch watching football while I try not to explode from said dinner. This year Thanksgiving gets an extra boost because I'm going to sit around and play games for an extended weekend. My girlfriend is headed back to the East Coast to hang out with her family so that leaves me all alone with a stack of games and lots of free time. Games, games, games!

Candy
No real reason. I just love candy. Nerd Ropes are awesome.

I was going to write more but I've got to get ready to head to the Players' Ball. Tune in tonight to check out all the shenanigans. I'll wave to you, I promise!

I confess that last night was the first time I had played Halo 3, unless you count the tiny bit of time I spent with the multiplayer beta earlier this year. My first personal gaming priority is to finish Bioshock, and I want to spend more time with skate, so Halo 3 is going on the back-burner. All of my gaming time--even my free time--is spent with games for work, and because I am the resident RPG player, I get all these long-ass games that take a lot of time. It's sad, too, because I can spend 50 hours on a game, but it won't necessarily make for a longer review than games that take 10 hours to complete, so I always have this feeling that my output lags behind my fellow editors. I keep begging Alex to give me something short and light. Too bad the short, light stuff I get invariably sucks. In any case, my personal gaming time is incredibly limited, so I only have time for a single game at a time, and it will take me weeks to finish a 15-hour game at this point.

But back to the story at hand. We had a lot of fun at GameSpot Game Night on Wednesday. I am a big fan of major chaos in shooters, so for the first game, we played king of the hill, only I set gravity to 50%, and the hill to move randomly every 15 seconds. It was insane. For me, in the good way, though a few folks thought I must have been smoking something. I did learn a few things, though:

1. Jason Ocampo is excitable. During a bombing run match, Jason was the most vocal member of the team, screaming out the bomb location, calling for us to defend the bomb, and generally lifting adrenaline levels to the extreme. It was pretty awesome, and makes me want to play with Jason more often.

2. My brother is a great Halo player. I was so excited: My half-brother Andrew joined us last night. Now, I've never met Andy, or my real dad for that matter, but Andy and I have been talking for close to a year now. I hope to get him out here soon though for a visit. In any case, it's freaky how much he sounds like me, looks like me, acts like me. Well, he's a better Halo player than I am, but I am 14 years older, so I'll use that as an excuse. In any case, his gamertag is reign416. Send him an invite and chat him up. Tell him Kevin sent ya.

So check out some highlights from the infamous king of the hill match. They were thrown together quickly, but it should give you an idea of how much fun these nights are. Next week? Quake Wars!

This was originally published on October 3, 2007. If you're reading this much later than that, stuff might well have changed. Tokyo doesn't stand still for long.

I lived in Tokyo for about two years, and here are a few of my favourite shops for buying games--second hand, new, and English language. It's notoriously difficult to find anywhere in Tokyo, so I've included a crap map.

Not surprisingly, the biggest concentration of video game shops is in Den Den Electric Town, otherwise known as Akihabara.

Akihabara area (JR Akihabara station)

Super Potato
This is like a video game graveyard--where old game consoles and games go when they're not quite ready to die. Over three floors, and filled with retro games including the Virtual Boy, SNES, all the way to the still very much alive and kicking PlayStation 2. The top floor is a small retro arcade, where you can sit and play favourite old games. Prices are reasonable.

Address: 3F Kitanayashi Bldg, 1-11-2 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku
Tel: 03-5289-9933
Open: Mon-Fri 11am-8pm, Sat-Sun 10am-8pm
Web site: www.superpotato.com

Game and DVD Trader
Traders is a second hand DVD and video game chain, with several branches across Tokyo. There's also one on the Chuo-Dori. This is the biggest one I've ever been in, and has stacks of Nintendo DS and PlayStation games on the ground floor, along with some 'questionable' PC games.

Address : Sotokanda 1-4-9 Chiyoda-ku
Tel: 03-3255-0777
Open: Mon, Tues, Wed 11am-8pm, Fri and Sat 10am-8.30pm, Thu, Sun, Holidays 10am-8pm
Web site: http://www.e-trader.jp/

Yodobashi Camera Akiba
Touted as the biggest electronics store in the world when it opened, I'm not sure how we can substantiate that, but it's certainly big. Very big. Games are on the seventh floor, along with toys, and it has probably the biggest selection in one place in all of Akihabara. However, titles are also a little more expensive than in some of the smaller outlets. Games sometimes get taken off the shelves faster than they can be restacked, so it's worth asking at the till if you can't find something. Taking the showa-dori exit from JR Akihabara station will bring you out right beside one of the entrances.

Address: 1-1 Kanda Hanaokacho, Chiyoda-ku
Tel: 03-5209-1010
Open daily 9:30am-10pm
Web site: http://www.yodobashi.com/

Game Hollywood
Game Hollywood stocks import American games in all formats, which is handy if you live in Japan, love gaming, and don't speak Japanese. There's a wide selection of titles here, and new ones tend to show up fairly fast. You can also check on the handy Web site to see if what you want is in stock or not before you head out.

Address: 5th Floor, Uchida Building, Sotokanda 1-9-9 Chiyoda-ku
Tel: 03-5297-3281
Open: Daily 11am to 8pm
Web site: http://www.gmh.jp/

Messe Sanoh Chaos
Moved to handily right next to Game Hollywood from its previous location up a dodgy staircase on the Chuo-Dori, Messe Sanoh is cheaper than Game Hollywood, and has a bigger PC foreign game section. It's worth trying here first, and if they don't have what you want, popping next door to Game Hollywood.

Address: 1st Floor Kankou Building, Sotokanda 1-9-11 Chiyoda-ku
Open: Mon, Tues, Wed 10.30am-8pm Thur, Sat 10am-8pm Fri 10am-8.30 Sun, Holidays 10am-7.30pm
Web site: http://www.messe.gr.jp/

Harajuku area (JR Harajuku)

Book Off
This hilariously named chain of second hand book shops also stock a wide range of used video games and consoles in all the current formats. They also have sister stores called Hard Off that sell second hand hardware, if you hadn't finishedlaughing. This branch is the most centrally located, but it's worth venturing out into the suburbs for real bargains--for example the Ogikubo branch (just across the big crossing from the JR Ogikubo main exit) has a whole two bookshelves of games under 1,000 yen on all formats.

Address: 1-8-8 Jinguumae Shibuya-ku Tokyo (On the Meiji-Dori towards Shinjuku, just past the New Balance store.)
Open: daily 10am-9pm
Web site: http://bookoff.co.jp/index.html

Shibuya area (JR Shibuya)

Mandarake
This chain has apparently been around for a while, but I guess I never noticed it. Primarily a manga comic store, it's crammed full of manga comics, including rare and special editions, and also figures, posters, and cosplay costumes. They also have a game section, selling all the usual formats, plus a few retro bits and pieces.

Address: Shibuya Beam B2, 31-2 Udagawacho, Shibuya-Ku
Tel: 03-3477-0777
Open: Daily from 12noon-8pm
Web site: http://www.mandarake.co.jp/english/shop/sby.html (English map on the Web site)

TheCrap Map of Akihabara

KEY Where 1-Super Potato 2-Game Hollywood 3-Messe Sanoh 4-Game and DVDTrader 5-Yodobashi Camera Akiba. More or less.

This is getting ridiculous. Holiday 2007 was supposed to be it, the big bang, the nonstop assault of AAA titles nuking our wallets and pushing the industry's sales figures to unparalleled heights. Now it just seems like an appetizer for early 2008.

Even before today's delay of Unreal Tournament 3 on the PlayStation 3, the end of 2007 had suffered an exodus of big games. After a stroll through the GameSpot archives, I compiled the following list of games once confirmed for late 2007, but later slipped into 2008 (most of them in the first three months of the year):

Grand Theft Auto IV
Metal Gear Solid 4
Splinter Cell: Conviction
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Xbox 360 World in Conflict
Mercenaries 2
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
PS3 Home
The Club
Too Human
Age of Conan
Dark Sector
Warhammer Online
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Wheelman
Gray Matter
Blast Works
Lost Odyssey
Turok
Warhound
Spore (originally scheduled by end of March 08, now set to release by April 1, 2009)
Star Wars: Force Unleashed

If you added the assortment of annualized franchises like EA and 2K's sports games, Tony Hawk, Raw vs. Smackdown, Guitar Hero, and a Nintendo title or two in there, that list of games would be a pretty great fourth quarter all on its own.

Even though it sucks having to wait to get my hands on some of these games, I'm all for this. I'm pretty tired of the lemming-like rush to the fourth quarter and having a few short weeks in October and November each year where absolutely everything comes out, and then entire months in the rest of the year where the new release lists are retail wastelands and I wind up eagerly anticipating an SNK compilation just to have something new to throw in the PS2. People play games the whole year 'round. I think they're willing to buy them the whole year 'round, provided their new options are actually good options.

If nothing else, these mass delays suggest companies are developing a sense of shame when it comes to rushing out releases just to take advantage of the year-end sales frenzy. Shame is good, and gaming publishers in general need a lot more of it.

If my theory holds true, then the NPD numbers for early 2008 should show some significant growth year-over-year, perhaps even more growth than we get during the 2007 holiday months. On the other hand, there are often reasons why things are the way they are--even if those reasons aren't readily apparent--so we could see a bunch of AAA titles released to an apathetic public that really will only buy massive quantities of games at the end of each year. You never know.

EDIT: Hey, let's add Super Smash Bros. Brawl to that list. And Pirates of the Burning Sea (Thanks commenter).And Rock Band as a stand-alone game. And I don't think eitherTalisman or Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is going to hit Xbox Live this year. Halo 3's the biggest thing happening this year, and it's already happened. The first half of '08 is shaping up to be bigger than the fourth quarter of '05, '06, or '07 (fourth quarter of '04 had GTA: San Andreas, Halo 2, the DS, and Metal Gear Solid 3 ALL IN ONE WEEK. I think the biggest week before that was the Dreamcast and Final Fantasy 8 launching on the same day, Sept. 9, 1999). I know it's unfair comparing six months to three, but I can't think of any year shaping up to start as big as next year should be. I know a few of these titles are likely to slip to holiday 08 (I'll say Spore, Wheelman, and Force Unleashed seem like good candidates), but it's still a ridiculous list regardless.

EDIT 2: Add Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom to the delayed list.