Remember the SNES version of SimCity, where building and city management were all well and good, but some of the most fun times could come from unleashing natural disasters, nuclear meltdowns, or even a Godzilla-sized Bowser Koopa on your city? Well, imagine what would happen if someone took that joy and gave you the ability to let monsters loose on other people's towns, and to build up defenses for your own.



Bossa's Monstermind does exactly that, by fusing city-building elements common to other social games, a bit of tower defense, and a heaping helping of havoc for you to wreak on your friends' creations. Town fare is a wide, but pretty standard, array of businesses to raise money with which to build, housing for citizens to make everything work, and roads you need to have adjacent to your structures and connected to city hall to keep things functional. Town defenses have their own subsection, which is split between active turrets and missile launchers, and passive defensive such as sandbag barricades and masonry walls. There's also a special items section, for more effective defenses that come with appropriate costs, such as tanks and mines, but that aren't capable of being repaired after being damaged or destroyed.



Finally, there's a huge variety of monsters to choose from, most of which will look familiar to anyone even vaguely familiar with classic monster films of the days of yore. Giant apes, UFOs, and even a giant enemy crab are all at your fingertips, and the second beastie made available to you is a giant-sized version of one very familiar green robot. Being a Dune afficionado, my personal favorite is the giant worm, but there's definitely something in there for everyone.



The game sees fairly regular updates to keep things fresh, with a Halloween reskin that covered your town hall in cobwebs and turned many of the monsters into skeletons or other appropriately spooky alt-versions, and a full-fledged new snowman monster was introduced this past holiday season. Gameplay updates have included the recent addition of the ability to store your structures while you redesign your town, rather than having to scrap them entirely and dole out for an entirely new version, and a few months ago, an update introduced the ability to attack random opponents rather than just your friends list, though it also opens you up to random attack. Not long after that, a somewhat controversial update was implemented to reward those who built towns with a wide variety of money-making structures and put a damper on players who'd just clumped together a bunch of big profit generators by damping the payout from a given structure type after a certain amount of them are built. This drove away some of the higher-level players, who'd scraped their way to massive fortresses of motels and hotels under the old ruleset, including several members of the MASH TacticS fanbase, and ended the tyrannical reign over our ranks by the one and only Pico Mause. Objectively, however, even I have to admit it was a great way to level the playing field and open things up to fresh meat.



Sure, Monstermind's as much of a waste of time as any other social game, but you do have the added benefits of a "harvest" that doesn't disappear while you're away (unless someone trashes your town), and the fact that any destruction, be it inflicted upon you or waged against someone else, will net you experience, which accumulates to unlock new and better structures and monsters. It's at least half a step up from any of Zynga's innumerable 'villes, and it's gotta be more rewarding than The Sims Social, so I highly suggest checking it out.

Let me start by saying that I'm as thrilled as ever that SoulCalibur V came out. I bought it day one, and I'm in love with the game as much as I have been with all of the series' prior installments. The overhaul given to the multiplayer aspects of the game was amazing, and it's great to be totally free of duplicate or near-duplicate weapon styles amongst the cast of characters. However, there were a few things left to be desired this time around. If there happens to be a [i]SoulCalibur VI[i] in the works, there's a few things that really need to happen.

Every Soul Has A Tale



The shift in story focus this time around to actually trying to explain the interrelation between Soul Edge and Soul Calibur was a nice change of pace. However, in the process of laying everything on the shoulders of Pyrrha and Patroklos, pretty much every other character in the game, old and new, got short-shrifted. Characters with long-running backstories were cast as mere accessories to the main storyline, with little or no development of their own, and the slew of new characters introduced were left complete mysteries to anyone who couldn't be bothered to check out the game's website.

Granted, the old way of going about things was cumbersome; learning the backstories of everyone in previous SoulCalibur games (and, typically, unlocking everyone with a story) required playing through the entire arcade mode with everyone in the roster. Not the most exciting prospect, especially for those more interested in multiplayer, and that many runs through the game could prove quite the time sink.

So, how to include everyone without taking forever to do so? I'd like to see a story mode that incorporates every character's interaction with the two swords, handled in a sort of relay fashion that hands the player a new character to control every few fights. Not only would this keep the entire cast involved, but it would give players a chance to get a feel for every fighting style. It wouldn't have to be a straight sequence, either; using a character once or twice, and then jumping back to them later on down the line would be absolutely doable.

The whole idea would be to intertwine everyone's stories and maintain some sort of interesting canon while still working around a core plotline. If trying to wrap everything up into one mode proved too overwhelming, splitting it into separate, smaller storylines based on locations of origin (Asia and Europe) or which of the blades the characters are more aligned with would probably solve the problem.

A Learning Experience



My favorite tutorial mode of all time, at least in a fighting game, would have to be the system in the Dead or Alive games, wherein you can watch videos of the moves for all the different characters, and you can actually play through the entire movesets, with the game telling you what move to complete and not letting you progress to the next move until you successfully pull off the current one.

SoulCalibur has half the equation down, in that there's a video mode in the training sessions that lets you see how moves are supposed to look in action, while showing the command prompt to do them, but I think it'd be a much more effective way to build new players' skill, especially given how many new characters have been introduced, to implement the whole "do it 'til you get it right" aspect.

I'd also like to see the return of a challenge mode that helps instruct players in the use of some of the more involved systems, such as Guard Impacts and Brave Edge attacks, to help even the battlefield between newcomers and veteran players. I believe they did such a thing in SCIII or SCIV, but it hasn't seen a return in this latest iteration.

DLC Should Be Exactly That



I learned a bit too late (i.e. when I went to pick up my copy of the game) that GameStop was not one of the retailers participating in the Dampierre preorder program. While it was annoying enough to see the blank slot where he should be staring back at me, it was downright infuriating to find Dampierre and custom characters with his combat style were available to fight in Quick Battle mode.

While it was a bit ridiculous, the implementation of system-exclusive characters meant to be DLC further down the line worked pretty well in [i]SoulCalibur IV[/b]. Sure, it was a bit irritating knowing you you had to wait to fill out your entire roster with Yoda or Darth Vader, depending on which system you were playing the game, but the opposite system's exclusives were never encountered in gameplay until they were available for purchase.

Taunting your customers like they did with Dampierre, just because they may not have preordered or picked the wrong outlet with which to reserve the game, isn't cool. If you're going to make something like that available after a wait, keep it unavailable until that wait is over.

Bring Back My Bonnie To Me



This last item's a bit of a personal preference, but if you think about it, the series' continuity somewhat demands it. Seong Mi-na's been around as far back as the original Soul Edge/Soul Blade days, up through SCIV, and leaving her out of V after having come so far was practically criminal. Sure, Rock's MIA, but he got dropped years ago in favor of keeping Astaroth around (and, in all honesty, should've seen Bangoo take up his axe at some point down the line). Sophitia and Taki, while pretty much out of the picture, have clear successors in Pyrrha (who also carries shades of Cassandra) and Natsu, respectively, and Li Long's replacement, Maxi, has kept on trucking through the series despite having been killed off in SoulCalibur II. Even Kilik manages to worm his way back in as an Edge-Master-style character, which is doubly inexplicable considering Edge Master is back, and Elysia fills the role of his Inferno-esque boss fight and counterpart.

Those who've left the limelight in the seventeen in-game years between SoulCalibur IV and now at least find some sort of side mention in the plot, but Seong Mi-na's nowhere to be found, in any form, and I think it's unacceptable. Even with the huge time gap, she'd still only be 40 by the time SoulCalibur V happens, and judging by Ivy's persistent hotness at perma-32, I think she'd still be pretty fine and pretty capable. Whether or not Project Soul neglects the opportunity to provide her as DLC in the current title, I would be more than happy to see her return as a badass MILF in the next SoulCalibur.



All in all, SoulCalibur V took some great strides toward rejuvenating the series and keeping it potentially viable for a few more games, but I think with a bit more polish and some revisitation of some of the elements the series left behind this time around, [i}SoulCalibur[/i] could be fully reborn in a form with nearly as much impact as the first SoulCalibur had back in arcades and on the Sega Dreamcast.

A lot of game series, both classic and more recent, tend to rely on changing up their settings between sequels to help keep things fresh as they progress through new iterations. The Mario Brothers, for instance, have gone from slogging through sewers, to various sections of the Mushroom Kingdom, dinosaur-infested archipelagos, and even into the depths of Mario's mind and the unforgiving vacuum of outer space. Samus Aran's ship's taken her all over her own galaxy, as have the adventures of Master Chief Petty Officer John-117. Every game in the Final Fantasy series, despite recycling names and concepts on a regular basis, has avoided reuse of exact locations (outside of the growing trend of direct FF sequels, anyway).

However, one legendary land has managed to expand, both in geographical size and narrative depth, over and over throughout the years, while retaining the core elements that helped it stick in the hearts and minds of gamers when it was first laid out onscreen. The kingdom of Hyrule, despite regular overhauls and upheavals, has remained essentially the same for the duration of its in-game existence, which is a testament to the enduring power of the Legend of Zelda.

Even in its earliest form, Hyrule was not afraid to try and bill itself as an established realm. Unlike some of its contemporaries, which rarely went further than numbering their different regions, places in Hyrule had legitimate names. Ask a gamer about Death Mountain, Spectacle Rock, or the Lost Woods, and chances are, they'll be familiar with those locales in at least one form or another.



Zelda II, despite being an oft-debated step in the series in regards to its quality and impact on the canon, took enormous strides toward establishing Hyrule as a land where people other than the creepy, cave-dwelling elderly and a handful of greedy merchants lived, introducing full-fledged towns into the mix. The game itself begins in an entirely new area, but eventually, things progress to reveal that the Hyrule players of the first game knew and loved comprises, in slightly different form, the southern half of The Adventure Of Link's map. Death Mountain returns as a key trial, as Link needs to pass through it from the north this time around on his quest to awaken the comatose Zelda. The second Zelda game also began to more clearly define the different biomes present in Hyrule; forests, fields, caves, beaches, and a few other realms all had distinctly different backgrounds during enemy encounters, fleshing out a world that started as just trees, rocks, water, and a bit of graveyard territory.

A Link To The Past, Zelda's leap to a new generation on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, actually went back to basics in many ways, opting to build upon some of the established locations and make so much more of them rather than expanding the realm even further. Death Mountain returned to its classic position at the northernmost point of the world map, and the idea of Hyrule Castle as a central hub for everything else, as introduced in Zelda II, was reiterated, establishing a trend that would carry on for the rest of the series. The many villages present in LttP's predecessor were condensed down to the iconic Kakariko, and the clearly defined biomes were even more distinguished, with the introduction of swamps, navigable riverlands, and the expansive Lake Hylia came with the first instances of relevantly-themed, elemental dungeons, which have become a series staple.



That's not to say the Hyrule of A Link To The Past was overly condensed; in order to trim the fat a bit and provide players with enough room to explore, the game introduced a mirror version of the overworld in the form of the Dark World, which featured its own unique reflections of familiar, Light World locations while still managing to be new enough in most respects to avoid feeling like a replay of the game's first half. The Dark World, formerly the Golden Land, was so well-established that it would see revisitations of its own further down the line, from Ocarina Of Time's grim, Ganondorf-run future, to the Twilight Realm in Twilight Princess.



With the next big leap for the series, from top-down 2D wanderings to wide-ranging, 3D exploration, Ocarina Of Time was forced to reinvent Hyrule entirely with the change of view. Thankfully, Nintendo managed to do so without losing any of the charm or history Hyrule had already built for itself, and in many ways, blew the Hyrule we'd grown up with out of the water. Returning were the centerpiece of Hyrule Castle, circumscribed by icons such as Lake Hylia, Death Mountain, Kakariko Village, and we saw expanded versions of familiar places as well. The river where Link acquired his flippers in Link To The Past was expanded into a full-fledged Zora kingdom, and the Desert Of Mystery was rechristened the Gerudo Desert, another name that has persisted to this day.

Hyrule Castle also spawned a town area of its own, providing a home for more friendly characters than just the villagers of Kakariko, and the introduction of the Gorons on Death Mountain and a much more agreeable race of Zoras introduced a great deal more diversity, both racially and in personality, to the land, making it feel much more like a living, breathing place.



Moving on to the Gamecube, Nintendo took some huge risks with Wind Waker. Not only did they make a highly controversial choice in the use of cel-shaded graphics, but they took the entirety of Hyrule and drowned it. The seas of Wind Waker were the first world clearly disconnected from the Hyrule of yore (not counting realms such as Koholint Island and Termina, which both appeared in somewhat-connected sequels and mentioned Hyrule right off the bat as being from where Link had arrived), but still managed to integrate some familiar elements of their predecessors. Spectacle Rock reappeared in the form of Spectacle Island, and the Great Fairy fountains Link found various boosts in before got their own islands as well. It wasn't until the game's finale that players learned they were actually sailing above the Hyrule they grew up with, finding themselves in the magically sealed castle that'd been the seat of the kingdom for so long.



Twilight Princess, at the end of Gamecube's run (or the advent of the Wii, depending on which version you picked up) made a similar move to Link to The Past in that it returned to a slightly more condensed, and very much-more land-based take on Hyrule, jumping back two console-debut Zeldas to the Hyrule of Ocarina Of Time much like LttP basically overhauled the first Legend Of Zelda's setting. Despite relying a lot on this sort of revisitation, TP did a nice job of making all the old realms feel new and unique, and even foreshadowed the setting of its successor, Skyward Sword, by introducing a small island realm in the sky toward the latter part of the game.



Similarly, Skyward Sword took one step forward while stepping two games back; rather than flooding Hyrule in water, the islands of the most recent Zelda game float above a sea of clouds. Below those clouds lurk elements familiar to many an afficionado, what with the staple, nature-elemental dungeons and enemies we've all seen plenty of times before. Despite being a rather radical take on the Zelda norm, the Hyrule of Skyward Sword manages to retain enough of its predecessors' familiarity to feel just as homey as any other take on the land.

While it may seem I've spent the bulk of my time so far focusing mostly on the visual consistency of Hyrule's reinterpretations over the years, many of Link's haunts have also built an aural legacy. So many locations in Hyrule have established their own theme music, with core elements that have returned over and over as their assigned homelands have returned. Also recurring are the tasks Link has needed to perform in many of those locations, both in the form of overworld quests and in regards to the dungeons to explore there. These elements have lent even more persistence to Hyrule as a whole, and subsequently the the Zelda series en masse.

There are few game settings out there that have endured for a quarter of a century as Hyrule has, which is a testament to how much work has gone into preserving the essentials of the land Link and Zelda call home. Knowing they can come home to such a familiar kingdom is likely one of the Zelda games have had such staying power with long-time fans and draw for neophytes, keeping the franchise thriving regardless of the occasional missteps made with the games. That fans swore and fought for years over the likelihood of an established series timeline, even in the face of repeated denials on Nintendo's part up until their recent acquiescence, also lends creedence to the enduring permanence of Hyrulian landmarks and of the kingdom as a whole.

Knowing now that the timeline and interconnections we all thought existed were truly there all along makes it clear that great care has been taken over the years to maintain Hyrule as a locale, and in some respects, a character in and of itself, and it leads one to hope Nintendo will continue to keep up the good groundskeeping as long as Zelda games continue to be made. Hyrule's been a home away from home for me for quite some time, and I don't know what I'd do if it suddenly wasn't there to come back to.

There are plenty of great games waiting for release this year, and more than a few of them have crossed my radar, but I'm actually more interested in where some of last year's new releases are bound over the course of 2012. Three games in particular have had quite the run of DLC going for them, and we've already been promised more in the case of two of them, so that's where my eyes are currently.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine



The crew over at Relic and THQ have already cranked out two great expansion packs to Space Marine, with Exterminatus mode joining the ranks of several other great horde-style modes, and Chaos Unleashed taking that formula and reversing the roles, a la Gears Of War 3's Beast Mode. There are still a few slots left for more downloadable content on the in-game download menu, and word has it that as soon as this month, we're supposed to expect some fresh material involving Dreadnoughts. Some fans have been clamoring for these beasts of battle for quite some time now, so it'll be interesting to see how they're being implemented, as well as how Relic plans to top their introduction with further DLC down the line.


Saints Row The Third



When THQ promised 40 weeks of DLC support for Saints Row The Third, many balked at the possibility of that promise being upheld, or were convinced there had to be on-disc content locked away to make this possible. While the latter appears to have been the case, pricing seems to have been reasonable for most of the packs so far, and a season pass was available both via pre-orders directly from THQ and for sale post-release to ease the sting of some forthcoming mission packs. Some of these early packs have been better than others (chum shotgun, f'yeah!), THQ is at least upholding its promise to deliver further content as the weeks progress, and I, for one, cannot wait to see what the more involved DLC packs hold in store for the city of Steelport.


Teh Halolz



Even with Halo 4 expected for this forthcoming holiday season, 343 Industries went and bolstered the already-thriving Halo: Reach multiplayer scene with a map pack tied on to Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, injecting some fresh fighting grounds in the form of overhauled classics into the mix. While there haven't been any announcements as to further content between now and this fall/winter, one has to wonder if there's room for a little more support for Reach's multiplayer before 4 picks up the torch, and whether 343 are even going to implement a completely new multiplayer mode or not. History has shown, at least in Bungie's case, that support lingered on pretty much indefinitely for prior Halo titles, what with servers being kept up for Halo 2 and Halo PC until the original Xbox servers for Live were shut down, and servers still being up for Halo 3 and ODST so it'll be interesting to see how 343 handles the server side of things through this year and into the future.

And, to be fair, I'm totally stoked on Halo 4 itself, but there hasn't been nearly enough teaser material released to provide much to talk about, outside of blatant speculation.




As much as there is to look forward to this year in new gamage, it's more fascinating to me seeing how companies may finally be more thoroughly embracing the post-release content market, which may very well be a key component in the slow, steady creep towards digital distribution gaining a more valid stance. It's not like I'll even be caught up on 2011's games before the 2012 holiday blitz anyway, so it can't hurt to keep one eye looking behind.

The Japan Institute of Science and Technology recently took the already badassed science behind quantum levitation, and applied it in the only logical fashion possible: they made a replica track and ships based on the Studio Liverpool, PlayStation-exclusive WipeOut franchise, and raced those mofos.

Embedding's disabled for cblogs, so here's a link to the video of them setting things up and letting them run. I'm sure there are plenty more practical applications of this technology, once it becomes practical to implement it on a larger scale, but let's be honest with ourselves. Racing hovercrafts capable of blowing the hell out of each other is important work, and we as a society need to get busy making that a reality, post-haste.



According to series lore, we've either got five years or about twenty more years (going by Wip3Out or more recent series retconning, respectively) to make this happen. Get crackin', science folk.

There're a few projects I've been mulling over or putting off in regards to gaming for a while now, completely separate from the massive backlog that's been building up for years. Given that the world may very well end next December, if a long-dead civilization has anything to say about it, I'd imagine it's high time I got to it. This 2012 (as opposed to all the other 2012s), there are four gaming tasks I aim to get done, or at the very least, started.

1) (Adventure) Islands in the Stream



I've touched on this and mentioned it in passing before, but finally exposing myself (teehee) to the wonders that grace Dtoid's Twitch.TV channel really got some creative juices flowing. Several ideas for video shorts are still backburnered in my mind, stewing for the day I might have the equipment and props necessary to complete them, but seeing live streaming working as a valid form of entertainment rather than just quiet dudes showing off as they click away at whatever blew my mind wide open.

After thinking about things off and on since around October, I finally feel confident that I've got enough different show concepts worth bouncing off an audience; stuff with some thematics rather than just sitting there trying to be funny or comment on things while I play. Just a week or two ago, I realized I should still have a USB video capture cable, which should be enough to at least take a crack at things in standard definition to see if there's any sort of audience for my antics. Worst comes to worst, I can trim some of the concepts down into more encapsulated forms and throw them on my Youtube account, instead.

Gonna take me a bit more time to get things cleaned up around the apartment and work out lighting, angles, and any other set-related issues, but I look forward to going live with The Bun Is In Your Mind in February. Being the shameless attention whore I pretend to be on the internet, I will, of course, be linking things once test runs begin. For all two and a half of you who may actually want to watch.


2) Come Up Screaming



While I'd seen Rock Band and Guitar Hero nights occasionally at bars, especially during my two trips to Vegas, I caught this year's Umloud! charity event (hosted, in part, by MasH TACTICS' Jon Carnage and Wesley Ruscher), and was hooked. By hook or by crook, I aim to find some reason to be in San Francisco next winter, and have a plastic (oh no) band behind me for one song in particular, one I try to get a session in on at least once a week (especially since trying to pin down the five-devil bass part is murder).

Some (read: all) of the details have yet to be worked out, but one of the other Chill Bros has already agreed to join me if this actually comes together, so we just need to find a drummer, a guitarist, and maybe a bassist. I say maybe on that last element because I've not yet decided whether to try and do double duty on vox and bass, or sacrifice my love of the latter to allow more freedom of stage presence.

Either way, it's a great event that I'd love to be a part of, and I'm tired of hitting up karaoke bars that don't have the song in question on their playlists anyway, because I know it by heart. And no, I'm not letting it slip yet, out of undue paranoia that someone might steal it from me come signup time. That, and it may change, if my one-man crusade to get some Jawbreaker tunes as DLC ever succeeds.

I've got until next fall to round out and name the band, and to scrape together airfare and find a place to sleep, so we'll see what happens.


3) Those Don't Wash Off, You Know



Almost five years ago now, I commissioned a certan Peter H. Nguyen to do up a Mega Man Legends-themed tattoo design for me, intending to get it done before the year was out. Alas, between monetary concerns, the tattoo shop I had an in with closing, and the guy there who did my first tattoo ever slightly screwing it up (it's since been fixed with a touchup), I never got around to it, and still haven't.

In the intervening years, that tat idea, intended for my upper right arm, grew some new friends in other concepts, eventually evolving into an entire gaming-inspired half-sleeve. From there, it continued ballooning, and today is part of an ambitious piece I'd like to get, tying together with a music-themed half-sleeve on my left arm (that's at least been started, but also has a ways to go). I think it's about damn time to get some of the core elements laid out and at least linework completed, and perhaps a good chunk of the color as well.

Before anyone chimes in with the "it's permanent, it should mean something to you," argument or its myriad variations, rest assured that one of the other reasons I've held off for this long, and why I've reined in my desire for ink a fair bit, is because I wanted to be sure the work I want done still meant something to me after the spur of the moment. And it does.

Granted, there's still a bit of waiting to do, given that it also hinges on a non-gaming resolution to stop plateauing and finish getting in shape this coming year, but yeah. It's time. All I really need to do now is find some other artists I can commission the various parts to or a decent tattoo artist with some familiarity with gaming, so they'll be able to understand and work with the ideas floating around in my head when we start talking shop.


4) Getting Elbow Deep



Another pet project I've been unable to attend to, mostly due to lack of free time, is learning to code in enough of a capacity to make my own game. Nothing too huge in scope (to be honest, it could probably be done as an extensive SNES hack >_>), but I've been incubating a whole pile of concept material for a fan game for far too long, and would like it to see the light of players' monitors in some form, even as just a Flash title.

There'd probably be a bit of learning how to do sprite art/editing as well, given that I'm looking at a 16-bit look and feel for the whole thing, but I did my fair share of rocking Mario Paint back in the day, so I am not afraid. Even just getting a barebones test alpha together before the year is out would count as a victory. And, should I get even more completed? Well, I hope 343 Industries is as tolerant, if not supportive, of fan-created work as Bungie always was. This should be interesting.



So yeah, I've got some work ahead of me, but I'll consider myself pretty well accomplished if I get around to fulfilling so much as one of the above. Looks to be a fun, nerdy-ass year coming up, and I wish you all the best in completing your own endeavors as well.



On the off chance anyone reading this knows or is a really good artist familiar with Halo, Phantasy Star Online, or .hack//... you have my attention.