Episode 4 of our sports gaming video show, The Lineup, is a go! On this show, we keep it simple: boxing and football. In addtion to first looks at Fight Night Round 4, and an X's and O's segment on 2K's Prizefighter, we've got the latest edition of Aaron's annual quest to whip Mike Tyson's butt in Punch Out! On the gridiron front, we're going old school with the first look at Tecmo Bowl Kickoff, induct our first game into The Lineup Hall of Fame, and end things off with Shanker and Aaron battling it out... blindfolded. Yes, it's just as ridiculous as it sounds.

Punching, hitting, and Shanker becoming an apologist for Mike Tyson's criminal career... this show's got it all! We hope you enjoy this episode of The Lineup as much as NBA referees enjoy fixing games... allegedly!

So I'm sitting on my couch this morning, playing GRID online with a bunch of folks from Switzerland. Or at least, I think they're from Switzerland, judging by the flags they're rocking next to their names. Could be England. Anyway, we're running a Formula 1000 race (by far my favorite cars in the game) at Donington (except for Spa, probably my favorite track in the game) and I'm holding my own in fourth place.

All of a sudden, as I'm trying to judge whether I'm going to brake on that blind, slightly uphill turn eight, the game goes crazy on me, the screen turns the color of puke, and I'm instantly awarded two achievements: Short Haul (for driving 500 miles in the game) and Long Haul (for driving 1000 miles). This after only having driven approximately 300 miles in the game total. Huh?

Now, a game-crashing bug isn't all that new but I don't think I've ever seen a bug so severe that it broke the achievement system. Not that I'm complaining or anything; I'll take the achievements points however I can get them. But this was new for me. Has anyone else run into anything like this in GRID, or any other game for that matter?

I should have written a blog post a month ago. Instead, under cover of night, I joined the Gamespot review team and started thrusting my opinion on the unsuspecting masses, without so much as a tip of my hat. How impersonal. I can imagine many people scratching their heads, wondering who this unknown man was, and why he insists on having a space in his last name. I will offer no such explanation here, though. Instead, I'd like to devote my opening statement to one of the true marvels of the gaming world: No More Heroes.

My first reaction after viewing the Real Ending of this game was, "Are you serious?" I played and loved Killer7 two years ago, but even after becoming seriously interested in Harmon's spiritual secrets (is he God, Satan or both?), I still thought No More Heroes was pretty nuts. I cannot believe that someone like Goichi Suda has been allowed to make games on home consoles; his ideas seem to clash with everything else out there. But this is not just a new K7 with a different gameplay mechanic. While Killer7 had a deep story behind the overflowing blood and schizophrenic mind shifts, No More Heroes is just about being as over-the-top as the digital medium will allow. I am simply ecstatic that it exists.

There is not one serious element embedded in this game. From the name of the main character (Travis Touchdown) to the town you reside (Santa Destroy) to the very story holding these extremely violent excursions together (Quest to be the #1 assassin), this game is unrelentingly focused on being the strangest game out there. And while some people have been known to complain about the rather sedate minigames you must play between assassination missions, this juxtaposition further cements just how completely out there this game tries to be. Can you think of any other title in which you can cleanly chop off five heads with one fell swoop of your lightsaber in one minute, and then go collect coconuts on the beach the next? And it actually makes sense?

After sitting through the ending credits with a dumbfounded smile plastered on my face, and gasping in gleeful shock after the final, post-credits revelation, I reflexively glanced over at my collection of games from the last two generations. Aside from Katamari Damacy, of which no amount of praise would be too much, the rest of my collection (many of which are all time greats) are simply predictable in comparison. The stories are safe and easily digestible. Even when they bring about real emotion (as is the case in the exquisite Okami), there isn't anything that's truly shocking. Games like No More Heroes simply do not exist. The idea that someone can conceive of something so completely out there and actually find funding for such a project gives me hope for the future. There are no restrictions!

From beginning to end, No More Heroes realizes that it is beyond reality and pushes this idea to the furthest point possible. The combat seems to laugh in the face of other games in which a similar fight-to-be-the-best formula is enacted. This isn't a game about testing your gaming mettle; it's a saccharine-soaked bloodbath of joy. Only a modicum of skill is needed to destroy the 10 assassins who stand in your way to be the best, but isn't that how it should be? In one's own surreal imagination, when you're picturing your own quest to greatness, is there ever an insurmountable boulder blocking your path? Or do you have previously unrealized skills and abilities in your dreams, where lightsabers can be ordered online and every obstacle you must overcome is not only quite easy, but located less than 3 minutes from your home?

In many ways, No More Heroes feels like the daydream of a very sophisticated 12-year-old boy. The characters and situations are so thinly linked, it feels like a crazed tale being concocted by a group of insatiable friends constantly trying to outdo the other's bizarre turns. The twists that surface towards the end of the game are so cliché they are actually unexpected here. Suda51 may not be a master storyteller, but he certainly understands how to pique one's interest and pay off when push comes to shove. NMH ends on such a high note, it's impossible to even imagine a respectable sequel, even though my dreams usually end with an easy path to success.

Using any established criteria to determine what is and what is not a great video game, No More Heroes would fail in every category but sheer inventiveness. But you know what? In this blog where numbers have no place, I can throw my own distorted take out there and just see what happens. I am not willing to say that NMH is the best game that has come out this generation – I will need at least a year or two to fully digest what I played – but I can say with full certainty that this is one of the most memorable and enjoyable games released in years. I can say that this is why I started playing games in the first place and why I have chosen to review games for a living. To me, video games are all about living something that is simply not possible in real life. No More Heroes goes one step beyond that, giving me a virtual world that I wouldn't have even imagined beforehand. This is a true work of art.

Right, so let's talk about that GTAIV score. For those who haven't seen or heard, here's the deal: there was a bug in our publishing system on Monday that caused the incorrect score for GTAIV, a 9.5, to appear for on some pages for a while. This happened hours before we posted the actual score with the review, a 10. This has all led to a lot of talk and speculation so I'm going to set things straight, short answer: it's not true. Longer answer requires me to run you through stuff which I'll be doing now.

Our review process is like so: Once our reviewer has finished the game, he writes his review, submits it to copyedit, and then goes back over the text to look over the changes copyedit made before submitting it to production who then produce the review. Once the review is produced as a Web page on our QA servers, a link goes out to the reviews team for the peer review process. During that time the review score is not final. I'll say that again for dramatic emphasis: During that time the review score is not final.

In the case of GTAIV, that non-final review had a score of 9.5 attached to it--a score which the peer review process is designed to fine-tune and then set in stone. As has been standard GameSpot operating procedure for years, the last step of the peer review process is a discussion about review content and score. The content discussion entails making sure that relevant gameplay features and whatnot are mentioned to ensure the review is accurate as possible--and that said score matches said review.

As Justin noted in his blog, there were enough people in the reviews group who felt GTAIV deserved a 10 that we all holed up in a room to settle the matter....as the review was in the QA process on our staging servers with a 9.5 score attached to it. Ironically, one of the staff poked their head in the room during the at-times heated discussion and mentioned that it looked like a bug on the staging site had caused the QA score to go live for a split second. The importance of this event didn't sink in at first, since were so embroiled in our talks. Why were we so focused? Because we take matters of review score seriously. I'll reiterate what Justin said in his blog: We don't hand out 10s lightly--we've given out just four in GameSpot's entire history.

I've hit up our tech folks to find out what the deal was. After some back and forth, they got me answers because I wanted to post about this and include some info. So here's the tech nitty gritty for those that care:

* a 9.5 score, which as I noted above was not final, was the original score placed on the GTA4 page and became the page that was cached while testing and reviewing the site for quality assurance.

* Due to a bug in our publishing system that has since been corrected, a cached page containing the score and review blurb, but not the review itself, appeared on the Production version of the site.

* The length of time this was up is not precisely known but logs show that changes were made from 4:45PM PST - 8:20PM PST, with the actual review going live at 8:20PM PST.

And there you have it. A publishing snafu + some tremendously awful timing = needless drama. I'm well aware there's a bunch of folks out there happy to add this to the conspiracy theory tapestry that has been woven about GameSpot. Adding to said conspiracy was a blog post from a moderator saying the 9.5 score was deliberately put up as a "red herring" to test reader reaction. The same moderator has since corrected himself, pointing out that in 2003, an accidental score of 0.0 was posted for one of the highest-review games of the year--Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (9.1).

I'm disappointed that, end of the day, one of the best-written and best produced text and video reviews is being cynically written off by some. None of the naysayers know the effort that went into making sure our review of probably the biggest--and so far, the best--game of the year was as bulletproof as possible. The personal attacks on Justin are unnecessary. Apparently people don't realize that Justin's been at GameSpot for 9 years--starting with the original GameSpot UK--and has reviewed all sorts of games in that time.

But so it goes. Bugs and assorted glitches are a fact of life on the web just as misspellings and assorted printing issues can be with print magazines. We take our reviews seriously here and we don't post them until they're ready. This is why GTAIV went up when we wanted it to with the score we wanted it to have. For those that gave us the benefit of the doubt and that didn't jump to conclusions, you have my thanks. To the others? ...

Today was an amazing day for a few reasons. First and foremost, I put a monkey on the homepage and PS3 hub.

(Not really the text in the original)

This immediately makes today the best day ever (I've saved that image since CES for this glorious day). Unfortunately, I had to almost instantly pull it down afterwards cause of some issues with the deployment of the reason I put it up. So if that image interests you for non-monkey-related reasons (and why would it?) then don't worry, it will make its return soon.

Another thing of note is that if you frequent our Mario Kart Wii or Grand Theft Auto IV launch centers, I've had countdown timers added! This is something we've done a few times in the past, and I want to see us get back to it--especially since a ton of users have requested it. So go check it out!

Something that most of you probably don't know is that I manage our launch centers, so if you have any cool, reasonable ideas of things to add to them in the future, let me know! I'd really like to see them grow and am constantly thinking up or looking for new things to do with them.

Finally, the other thing I got to do was make fun of Aquaman. No day should be spent without some good ol' fashioned Aquaman bashing. Check the homepage and news page polls (I write our polls too) and voice your opinion about the craziness that is Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe!

Yesterday on On The Spot I had the good fortune to demo Echochrome, a unique puzzle game developed by JapanStudio. I played the game for about an hour before the show, trying to get a sense for how the game works so that I could speak competently about it and, hopefully, play it competently as well. I believe I achieved my aim (though you can judge for yourself), but in the process of doing so I caught a glimpse of the true nature of the game. The clean line animation and ascetic aethestic (yes I just wrote that yes I am pleased with myself) belie the aberrant laws of the abstruse universe Echochrome defines and inhabits. I watched a gameplay video and my brain said, hey, that looks weird. I played the game, and my brain said, whoa, I feel weird.

I believe this unsettled feeling is generated by my brain's attempt to reconcile the dimensional nature of the game. On a basic level, the image I see when I play the game is as two-dimensional as the screen I play it on. But my brain's got skills, see?, and it moves right past that and on to conceptualizing the game space. When an Echochrome puzzle loads, it rotates for a brief period before your character starts moving. This rotation reveals a three-dimensional object, with ledges and columns extending along the X, Y, and Z axes. I know rotating the puzzle on these different axes is how I'm going to accomplish my goals, so my brain files this space away as three-dimensional. Everything in its right place.

Then Liney starts moving. Liney is the gender-neutral, imagination-shaming name that I came up just now with for the character that walks around and often falls to his doom. Once Liney is on the move, it starts to become clear to my brain that it may have made a clerical error. While Liney walks to and fro and flies through the air as if inhabiting three-dimensional space, there's clearly something else going on.

In my On The Spot demo, I first have Liney fall through a hole into oblivion. Then, by rotating the space, I cause Liney to fall on a platform that now appears to be positioned below him. A 3D space would have Liney off into oblivion again, but his fall onto the platform indicates that the laws of a two-dimensional space are now in effect. My brain is not a member of the Flipmode Squad and as such does not appreciate this flipping of modes.

But my brain can roll with the punches, and after a few such flips begins to formulate a theory about how things work in the Echoverse. When planning Liney's path, it helps to think in 3D. When Liney's on the move, 2D rules the roost. Sounds simple enough, right? What I'm setting you up for here is that no, it's not that simple. Planning Liney's path (3D) requires that I think in terms of Liney's movement (2D), so the separation my brain is trying to enforce becomes untenable. This is troubling because this very separation is the separation between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, the difference that makes the two distinct. In one, objects are flat. In the other, objects have depth. Echochrome dances between the two like a mischievous jester. The effect of this weirding dance is the blurring and intermingling of the boundaries between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. Do me a favor and read the previous sentence again. That's. Effed. Up.

It's a truly bizarre sensation. At several points, I felt like my brain was travelling down familiar paths of thought only to find that the paths had changed and there was improper signage telling it where to go next. This feeling gradually lessened as I spent more time on that one level and began to feel comfortable with certain ways of moving, but it never fully vanished and came back with a vengeance when I dared other levels. I imagine, given more hours of play time, that it might be possible to train my brain to think echochromally, but even that theory makes my brain shudder a bit. I can't decide if I want more time with the game so I can master its amorphous ways, or if I just want to wrap a blanket around my brain and go bang out some arithmetic.

Bonus Fun Facts

- The artistic presentation of Echochrome reminds me of a book I read as an adolescent, "House of Stairs" by William Sleator. In the book, five teenage orphans are placed in a vast building with no ceiling, walls, or floor, only stairs running in all directions with the occasional platform here or there. The children are simultaneously enclosed by cavernous empty space and exposed by the lack of any privacy at all. The aethestic parallel is clear, but I think the book also messed with my mind a bit in a way that resonates with brain-bending nature of Echochrome.

- I made it through the entire demo without once mentioning M.C. Escher. Lark would be proud.

- When I was a kid, I had a black stuffed animal otter that I named Blacky.

It's hard not to have mixed feelings about the newly announced game from EA based on The Simpsons. To give you some context, I'm one of those guys who thinks that the TV show used to be a top-notch, consistently entertaining comedy series that has become...something different.

The Simpsons: Hit and Run for PS2 / Xbox / GameCube (2003) 

As far as the game goes, it's not clear what direction it will take. The most recent Simpsons-licensed video game, The Simpsons: Hit and Run from 2003, was actually a pretty good take-off on the open-ended, driving-focused Grand Theft Auto series. The licensed games before that, well, they weren't so good. Simpsons Skateboarding from 2002 was a terrible attempt to grab hold of the already-peaking "extreme sports" trend that was created by the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series but fell flat on its face with a broken control scheme and really bad graphics. Before that came The Simpsons Road Rage from December 2001, a Crazy Taxi knock-off that had lousy control and physics, and the extremely disappointing The Simpsons Wrestling for the original PlayStation from April 2001, which had control problems, camera problems, and really, really unsatisfying gameplay. Aside from the other sparse bright spots in Simpsons video game history, the surprisingly decent The Simpsons: Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror for the original Game Boy from March 2001, and the flawed-but-fun The Simpsons Arcade Game from Konami back in 1991, Our Favorite Family hasn't had much luck in the world of video games.

Simpsons Skateboarding for PS2 (2002)

If you've played all of the above games (I won't mention the pre-PlayStation-era games, most of which were flat-out garbage), you'll know what I'm talking about. However, you'll also know that with all the licensed Simpsons games released in the past 6 or 7 years or so, that the show's creative team has at least made an effort to contribute to the games. Every Simpsons game from Simpsons Wrestling on up has featured original voiceover from the show's actual cast, as well as numerous sight gags and in-jokes that cater directly to fans of the show, such as how the the scratchy-voiced Krusty the Clown character is the announcer in Road Rage, similar to how Crazy Taxi's scratchy-voiced Wolfman Jack impersonator. So, at the risk of editorializing and coming off biased, I'd have to say that the series' uneven history in the world of video games isn't the fault of the show's creators--from what I can tell, they seem to have at least tried to hold up their end of the bargain. According to our recent preview story, the new game will include self-conscious video game parodies, which is definitely territory that the show has explored before. I think most fans would agree that the show has successfully parodied video games (and video game-related marketing) in older episodes with bits like Video Boxing (a classic parody of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! featuring Homer- and Bart-like boxers in place of Glass Joe and Little Mac) and BoneStorm! (a not-so-subtle parody of the over-the-top advertising campaigns used for the Mortal Kombat games). As far as what this means for the new game, and how well the current writing staff will be able to handle it, I'll leave that for you to decide.

The Simpsons Wrestling for PlayStation (2001)

As far as the gameplay goes, we don't have many details yet, but whether the new project succeeds as a game will, of course, come down to execution. Working with a property as big and as popular as The Simpsons almost seems like a license to print money, so it's easy for us to get cynical about these games and assume the developers will use the license as a crutch--not really bothering to make a decent game and letting the name on the box sell the game. I really hope the team at EA doesn't fall into this trap. A Simpsons game that stays true to its source material will be appealing to the show's fans, but a Simpsons game that also plays really well could be a much, much bigger success...for everyone, not just EA.