Lenyu

The blade will be called the Coldshoulder, and it will ignore many!

xmas is teh h0tn3ss

I understand your point - I had a similar reaction playing CoD4 DS. There is a level where the player is on a helicopter shooting at "insurgents" fighting from battered buildings and from converted pick-up trucks. Through the entire level I thought to myself that this is supposed to represent Arabs, people who believe they are fighting a foreign aggressor. Some Arabs are terrorists, attacking civilians, but in the game I played, these were conventional fighters defending what remains of their homes. It bothered me, and that is why I sold the game back.

This is something that keeps games from being considered Art. Art should rejoice in the grey areas of life and at the moral difficulties faced by average people. Games like COD4:DS and COD:WaW replace that ambiguity with black-and-white issues.

I'll be the nasty person to offer a dissenting view. First, let me say that I enjoyed this list and its concept. I especially agree about Koholint Island. I remember as a kid watching that happen and think to myself: "What am I supposed to feel? Happy that I won?" It was such an ambivalent, complicated emotion, even for a twelve year old.

That brings me to the point about games as art. Regarding the Metal Gear game, but first a caveat. The moment you describe about choosing to tell the truth is a touching one that sounds on the same level as any great movie. However, all of the exposition (Grey Fox, a cyborg ninja who battled Metal Gear Rex) sounds like scifi dribble. For your typical non-gamer critic, this is indistinguishable from machoistic scifi male fantasy. The worlds of literature and film have tended to reach their most artistic when dealing with real people in real situations, rather than heroic, unrealistic characters of most games. What makes a game hero worthwhile is that he is incredibly different, yet what makes a novel character worthwhile is how similar and undifferent he is.

An example might be Joseph K from Franz Kafka's The Trial compared to Solid Snake from Metal Gear. Which person is most like me? For someone like Ebert (who has attacked games as non-artistic), that is an important difference.

Lastly, I personally think games can be art - I'm offering this opinion as a devil's advocate to help understand the people with whom I disagree. The goal of all debate should be understanding.

Where am I?

I had hours of fun in the Burnout Paradise demo - I was amazed at how big the small area was, and so much to do! It basically guilted me into buying the full game - and I'm happy I did.

Umm - Samus Aran is way hot and super cool. I so crush on her.

God love it, these games look cool. Front Mission has robots and robots are teh b00m smacky.

Witches! As was said above, the sweet sweet touching (enabled by a DS, of course).

>Impact: For the acronym-challenged, those would be Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, Zelda: Link to the Past, and .. uhh.. I don't know a SoM off hand.

Personally, I had a long period when I didn't play much and missed out on many of these games. Chrono Trigger is one that people keep talking about that I'd love to play, but I don't have the time to find the original cartridge, system, etc. The Final Fantasy games are another - FF7 is still really expensive, even for a used PC version.

Also, I like the portability of the DS - especially the ability to just close it and know it is in sleep mode automatically. With a baby in the house, sometimes I have to drop everything and go running.