I say this because I’ve made this declaration before…. or, well, a version of it, anyway.  It’s no secret to anyone that I have a bit of a backlog problem.  Everyone has flaws, okay?  I’ve even tried, on this very site, methods of spurring myself to get a handle on things, but it generally seems to fall apart after a while.  In the interest of driving down that very scary number, then, and in the spirit of the New Year that is upon us, I’m going to try something a little different, and I invite any and all closet backloggers out there to play along with me.

I like lists.  So, my gaming “resolution” for this year is very simple: I’m going to make a list here of all the games I complete (start to finish) in 2011.  As a loose goal, I’d like to have completed an average of a game a week over this year: 52 games.  This sounds pretty reasonable to me.  The rules are as follows:

1. You don’t talk about Fight Club.  Wait…. wrong list.

1! All games on the list must be played, as mentioned above, beginning to end this year.  Games that I started in 2010 and finish in 2011 don’t count (although this only excludes Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light), nor do any games which I may start in 2011 and not finish until 2012.  Games that I give up on are likewise excluded.

2. Games that I have played before do not count, unless it’s a remake/upgrade.  Persona 3 Portable is okay; Final Fantasy 8 on PSN for the billionth time is not.

3. 100% completion isn’t necessary, just the main storyline.  Extra time spent on a game is… well, extra.

4. Downloadable games count, as long as they are full games and not added content onto a pre-existing game.  I’m not saying I *won’t* play this stuff, just that it doesn’t count on the list.

Pretty simple, right?  The list will start here as soon as I finish my first game.  Happy 2011!

THE LIST!

1. Little Big Planet (PS3)- 1/2

2. God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PSP)- 1/7

3. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable (PSP)- 1/28

4. Rock Band 3 (360)- 2/1

5. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Wii)- 2/3

6. Dead Space (360)- 2/6

7. Trinity Universe (PS3)- 2/14

8. Dead Space: Extraction (Wii)- 2/19

9. Dead Space: Ignition (XBLA)- 2/19

10. Dead Space 2 (360)- 2/24

11. Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time (PS3)- 2/26

12. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS)- (very early on) 3/1

13. Demon’s Souls (PS3) (Really!)- 3/6

14. Splatterhouse (360)- 3/16

15. Nier (PS3)- 3/27

16. Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii)- 4/1

17. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (360)- 4/6

18. Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonus (PS3)- 4/8

19. Pokemon White (DS)- 4/9

20. Torchlight (XBLA)- 4/17

21. Portal 2 (360)- 4/24

22. Okamiden (DS)- 4/28

23. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (XBLA)- 5/8

24. Bulletstorm (360)- 5/10

25. Mortal Kombat (PS3)- 5/17

26. Bejeweled Twist (DS)- 5/20

27. Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters (PSP)- 5/25

28. Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 2 (XBLA)- 5/27

29. Skies of Arcadia: Legends (GC)- 5/30

30. L.A. Noire (360)- 6/7

31. Alice: Madness Returns (360)- 6/19

32. Costume Quest (XBLA)- 6/21

33. Sly 2: Band of Thieves (PS3)- 6/30

34. Monster Tale (DS)- 7/14

35. Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Edition (XBLA)- 7/17

36. FEAR 3 (360)- 7/20

37. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (Wii)- 7/31

38. Bastion (XBLA)- 8/2

39. Lego Rock Band (360)- 8/9

40. Catherine (360)- 8/12

41. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (XBLA)- 8/20

42. Lost In Shadow (Wii)- 8/27

43. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (360)- 8/29

44. inFAMOUS 2 (PS3)- 9/5

45. Chocolatier (DS)- 9/5

46. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (360)- 9/17

47. Eternal Sonata (PS3)- 10/9

48. Trouble Witches NEO! (XBLA) (Yes, really. Shut up.)- 10/9

49. Child of Eden (360)- 10/10

50. X-Men: Destiny (360)- 10/14

51. Kirby: Mass Attack (DS)- 10/25

52. Batman: Arkham City (360)- 11/4

53. Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS)- 11/8

54. Kirby’s Return to Dream Land (Wii)- 11/13

55. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (PS3)- 11/20

56. Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)- 11/21

57. Sonic Generations (360)- 11/25

58. Sid Meier’s Civilization V (PC)- 12/15

59. The Binding of Isaac (PC)- 12/20

Let me be very upfront with this for the benefit of every reader. Milliamp Ltd contacted me via Twitter after I made public my iPod’s problem on the same service, and offered me their repair service for free in exchange for a review of their service. They did not at any time ask for a specifically positive review, just for a review. This is no great secret; they are quite open about making these offers. As it turned out, I did have a small out-of-pocket expense, for the return shipping to me. Fair enough. I checked out several reviews of their service myself before I sent my iPod off; they were universally positive. As a customer, that was encouraging.

Milliamp's website is a little old-fashioned, but is clear, concise, informative and easy to navigate.

Milliamp Ltd may be known to older iPod users as iPodJuice, and have been in the iPod, and latterly iPhone, repair business for five years now, according to their website (www.milliamp.com). As well as offering repairs in-house with a variety of shipping options, they also sell the parts for the fearless to tackle repairs themselves at home. Just about the only thing they don’t do is battery replacements on the tiny iPod Shuffle series, since “it is very hard to open the iPod Shuffle without breaking it” (source: milliamp.com FAQ).

The website provides clear, but extensive, instructions for packaging and shipping your iPod safely to Milliamp. It’s also kind enough to put the fear of God into you by showing exactly what can happen when suitable precautions aren’t taken – I dread to think how the phone call to the customer whose iPod escaped its standard letter envelope in transit (yes, really) went. After selecting my shipping and actual repair options, and checking out, I received a UPS shipping label in my email the following day (they did say processing that with UPS could take up to 36 hours; in my case, it arrived just shy of 15 hours later). I followed their shipping instructions, noting as I went how obvious, but also how easily overlooked, some of their recommendations were, such as placing masking tape over the hold switch, sealing the iPod in an anti-static or sandwich bag to prevent moisture damage in transit, the use of plenty of bubble-wrap but not messy and staticky packing peanuts, etc.

UPS did what they needed to do, and got my iPod to Milliamp in the stated time. This isn’t a review of UPS’ service, although it’s worth noting that they’re a company I generally trust as I’ve had nothing but good experiences from them. Milliamp also offers other shipping options, such as USPS or FedEx, depending on your preference.

This was just the summary of the condition Milliamp received my iPod in. Suitably exhaustive!

Milliamp then proceeded to be in near-constant contact with me via email, very clearly informing me of my order’s status, the extensive testing procedures they put my iPod through, and the results thereof. (They even noted a particular cosmetic addition I’d made to my iPod, strips of black gaffer tape down the sides to disguise the results of my own ham-fisted efforts at investigating its innards; which served to reaffirm that yes, it was without doubt MY iPod.) Oddly, they put down that my iPod was only producing sound from the right headphone channel, when my own experience (with multiple sets of headphones) was the opposite. Not worthy of concern, I thought, but worthy of note.

The turnaround was exceptionally quick; despite only needing a relatively minor part replacement, I’d been expecting for various reasons that my iPod might be with Milliamp for a few days. Not even. The day after they received it, it was back in the hands of UPS and winging its way back to me. Their contact with me, since I’d sent my iPod to them, had totaled seven emails in less than two days, just to keep me informed in exhaustive (but welcome) detail as to what was going on. Frankly, I’m almost surprised they didn’t include photographs!

The repair was completed swiftly, and communication was near-constant, but never became too much.

My iPod was soon back with me; UPS again doing what they do. Milliamp had been even more thorough and agreeably paranoid with packing up my iPod than I had been. A UPS padded shipping pouch contained a surprisingly large cardboard box, inside which was yet another UPS shipping pouch, and inside that was a large quantity of bubble wrap securely surrounding my iPod, itself in a small Ziploc baggie. In another, smaller baggie was my old battery (Milliamp had very kindly fitted a replacement one, thus vastly boosting my iPod’s rapidly flagging battery life). Their website said old batteries are returned with your device upon request, although I hadn’t requested its return. Not that this was a problem, mind you.

Sure enough, my iPod was back to full health, and it was great to listen to music in stereo once again. I did notice that there appeared to be some very slight dark marks of usage in the replaced headphone socket and hold switch. I wondered if this meant the replacement assembly was a used part (although I should stress it worked perfectly, and neither the socket nor switch felt worn down at all.) I emailed Milliamp to ask if this was the case. They emailed me back as quickly as I could expect – early on the Monday morning following my late-Friday-night email to them – and told me that the assembly was new, but that the hold switch wasn’t fitting quite correctly, so they replaced the cosmetic white/orange part of the hold switch with my original one.

...and once again, all was well with the world.

In conclusion, I can honestly say it’s been a long time since I’ve had such exemplary service. The job done was perfectly; the turnaround time was extremely swift; the communication was exhaustively in-depth, courteous and approachable; and the prices for the various services on offer seem to me to be very reasonable. Milliamp met or exceeded every possible expectation I could have for them in taking care of one of my most valued and heavily-used pieces of electronics, and I feel I can recommend their services without any reservation.

Milliamp is located in San Antonio, Texas, accepts walk-in customers, and can be found on the web at www.milliamp.com, or by phone at 1-800-809-8133.

The untouched product.  Can’t you just smell the anticipation?

The inner case and the outer sleeve.  I really like the way the box looks, what with all the tiny handprints and such.

The sleeve for the LP (of the soundtrack from the first game) along with the art book and the CD soundtrack to the second game.

The game case was nestled in the bottom of the box.  It is shiny.  Over to the left there are the posters, which came rolled, as you see them here.

Another shot of the LP case, along with the rolled posters.

The LP out of its case.

The whole deal together.  This is what a collector’s edition should look like.

The posters wouldn’t stay flat for long enough that I could take a shot, so I had to weight them down with other bits of the package.  Spoils the effect somewhat, but you get the general idea.

The same shot backed out a bit… I guess it actually did look kind of neat that way.

One last close-up of the box.

Pure Awesome

No, not even Halo can claim such a position. Hop on any video game message board in existence and say “What do you guys think about Halo?” and you’ll be met with three very distinct barrages of opinions – love, hate, and a middling indifference. This is as sure-fire a bet as the Internet can offer outside of Rule 34. In fact, very, very few games are those sacred cows. One of them is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

I’m not going to slam the game. Put simply, I think it’s a fine game; but I don’t like it much at all. The reasons why this is the case are utterly irrelevant. I’d be willing to bet that every single person reading this article has a game, especially a highly-rated one from the last couple of years, that they could say this about. Not a game to be hated, to be claimed was overrated, or any other implication that anyone else’s opinion is flat-out wrong; just something they didn’t like for whatever reason that other people do. And I’d also be willing to bet that it’s a game you could say this about in front of your nerdiest peers, and they wouldn’t care that you thought that way.

A couple of days ago I opined on Twitter that I didn’t care a jot about the forthcoming Modern Warfare 2, because I hadn’t liked CoD4, its predecessor, either as a single-player or multiplayer game. (That I’m also somewhat sick of the forthcoming game’s infernal hype train is another irrelevance.) This led to several people on Twitter – including folks I consider friends, not just followers and followees – seeming shocked, surprised, and even a little saddened that I could possibly say such a thing. How could I dislike this game? This sacred cow that is held in such high esteem? How was that even possible? I had to be wrong. Broken, even. The very opinion itself was greeted with waves of disbelief and incredulity.

This is not to belittle any of those commenters in any way. They were – are – all people whose opinions I value, as it happens. I’m not calling them out or looking to pick a fight. I’m more perplexed at what the tone of the responses represent.

CoD4's not even my favorite game to feature the fascinating abandoned city of Pripyat.

Let me reiterate: I don’t think CoD4 is a bad game. Far from it. It just doesn’t float my boat, and it’s not because I have any dislike for the first-person shooter genre. There are many aspects to the game which ultimately combine to form what is, to me, a dealbreaker. That’s my purely subjective opinion and that’s all it is; and we all know what the ephemeral “they” say about opinions. The thing is, though, with practically any other game, I wouldn’t have to qualify it like that. It would be accepted, and moved past. Not CoD4. I don’t know if the game could be deified more if it had a Nintendo logo on it.

I listen to a lot of gaming podcasts. My day job allows me a lot of listening time and that’s one way I fill it. Most of these podcasts are helmed by hosts who know their co-hosts well; who in many cases also work together at websites or publications covering the same subject. Many don’t; some even do their shows with literal oceans or continents between hosts, conversing through Skype or some other means. But one thing they almost all seem to have in common is respect for their co-hosts’ tastes. If one of them doesn’t like The Hot Game of the Moment, it’s not a big deal. Is it familiarity with each other that breeds this respect? Is it implicit on its own merits? Or is it simply that, well in excess of 99% of the time, the subject under discussion isn’t a sacred cow?

Why is it that it can be so well-accepted that someone, be they a little minnow like me or a big fish in the pond of the gaming press, may not give a damn about Final Fantasy XIII, or Forza Motorsport 3, or Halo 3 ODST, or Uncharted 2, or even Brütal Legend – the latter the perfect example of a game that should be a sacred cow – but the moment I say I don’t care about a hugely-hyped FPS because I didn’t care for its prequel (a game that to date has sold more copies than World of Warcraft has subscribers), the immediate reaction – and one I’d more than likely get from practically any corner of the internet with any interest in video games whatsoever – is spluttering denial and disbelief from the faithful while anyone who shared my opinion kept their heads down? (Therein lies the great disparity by comparison to the earlier example of Halo.) It’s not because CoD4 is objectively better than every other game I’ve namechecked so far. It’s barely even comparable to most of those by virtue of its genre; those old apples and oranges, and all that. It’s almost like a cult of personality, only – if you’ll excuse more fruit references – this isn’t some banana republic’s dictator; it’s a video game. Nothing more, nothing less.

Modern Warfare 2 is developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision, and is scheduled for release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on November 10th 2009. The author will not be purchasing it but wishes many hours of entertainment to the plethora of readers who will.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released in November 2007 and has sold over 13 million copies to date across all platforms. It remains one of the most-played online console games in the world.

The Lynx’s gestation began at Epyx, a company better known for software, especially on the Commodore 64 in the mid-’80s. The machine eventually came to to market in 1989, after Atari had picked up the project – originally codenamed Handy – and renamed it. Funnily enough, it would remain a bone of contention that the development environment for the Lynx was based on the 16-bit Commodore Amiga computer – the direct competitor to Atari’s own comparable ST line of computers in the still-multiplatform home computer marketplace of the late ’80s and early ’90s before the PC’s performance and price levels caught up to became the de facto standard.

The Lynx was the first of what would become a succession of Game Boy competitors. Sega would eventually release the Game Gear and later the Nomad, and NEC the TurboExpress, a portable TurboGrafx-16, but these machines suffered similar flaws to those that plagued the Lynx as well as coming out far too late, years after the Game Boy had already established its dominance.

The redesigned Lynx II

The Lynx represented a completely different approach to handheld consoles than Nintendo’s all-conquering little machine. For a start, it was portable only in a technical sense, relatively speaking. Close to twice the size of the Game Boy, it also drained batteries far faster (making the AC adapter less of an optional extra and more of a necessity), and its backlit screen, while great in a dark environment, was near-useless in daylight. An optional sun-shield accessory was a less-than-ideal solution. Also, the system’s reliability and build quality was fairly poor. A redesigned Lynx that was often referred to unofficially as the Lynx II wasn’t too far behind the original, correcting several physical design flaws – for example, replacing the original’s bizarre side-opening cartridge hatch with a traditional cart slot, and finally offering stereo output through the headphone socket – as well as offering significantly better build quality and also slightly improving the atrocious battery life.

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Both variants of the Lynx offered a symmetrical horizontal layout with the option to flip over for left-handed use, connectivity between up to eight consoles (if you were lucky enough to know any other Lynx owners), a vibrant color display and – for the time – hugely powerful hardware. While the screen hasn’t aged well in the intervening two decades, the hardware has – it wasn’t until the Game Boy Advance launched in 2001, twelve years after the Lynx’s debut, that a more powerful handheld console was available. While its capability to do truly polygonal 3D visuals was limited, it could fudge 3D effects remarkably well due to its incredible sprite-handling abilities. Scaling and rotation of hundreds of sprites at once were its specialties, matched even in home consoles only by the advent of the SNES and Sega CD years later. Some games even used both sprite-scaling and polygonal 3D at the same time, often to great effect.

The result of this weirdly powerful but esoterically-designed hardware was a plethora of remarkably unique games, mostly by Atari and Epyx themselves – as is so often the case with ultimately failed consoles, third-party publisher and developer support was severely lacking, and by the time the plug was finally pulled, the Lynx had a relatively small library of available games. However, the flipside of this trait is that the system has a very small amount of shovelware in that library, and indeed it has a reasonable number of fantastic titles – including some great conversions of arcade titles of the era – that remain well worth playing even now.

Here’s just a few of my favorites:

Chip’s Challenge – One of the Lynx’s best games didn’t really take advantage of the system’s crazy hardware abilities much at all. Chip’s Challenge was a stage-based puzzle game, where you guide nerdy Chip through some of the most devious, evil and brain-melting traps you’ve ever come across. Yes, it’s a puzzler that will challenge (ho ho) your smarts as well as reaction times. It doesn’t look like much, but appearances can be deceptive.

S.T.U.N. Runner – Atari’s 1989 arcade tunnel-racer-cum-shoot-’em-up game was converted (I hesitate to use the rather inaccurate term ‘port’ in this bygone era of gaming) for virtually every noteworthy computer system under the sun, but every one was a dismal failure except the Lynx version. Even by the Lynx’s standards, the game’s re-working of the arcade classic’s blistering 3D visuals using sprite-scaling was a technical tour de force.

Xybots – One of the earliest examples of a co-operative shooter in a 3D environment, Xybots originally appeared in arcades in 1987. The Lynx version dispensed with the other versions’ split-screen layout in favor of utilizing the link cable, but was otherwise identical. Before 3D visuals evolved to the point where games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom became feasible, Xybots gave us a glimpse of where we were headed, and was a damn fine game in its own right. Bonus: the main characters have two of the best names in gaming history: Major Rock Hardy and Captain Ace Gunn.

Todd’s Adventures in Slime World – An almost Metroid-esque, side-scrolling shooty explore-’em-up, Slime World mixed up beautifully gooey graphics (it’s amazing what the Lynx’s graphics hardware can do with oozing, dripping snot) tons of secrets, solid action, a bunch of different modes and support for up to eight players both co-operatively and competitively to become one of the system’s classics. It even includes a zit-popping mini-game! Just what you’ve always wanted, I know.

Gates of Zendocon – This side-scrolling shoot-’em-up (we didn’t call them ’shmups’ back then) was less remarkable for its action as it was for its exploration. Its 51 levels could be explored in a non-linear fashion through the titular gates at the end – and sometimes in the middle – of whichever level you happened to be in at the time, and the visual diversity was so imaginitive that you’d always want to see where you’d end up next. Explosions that would literally fill the screen without a hint of slowdown were the icing on the cake.

I didn’t quite know how to tell you this so I figured I would just come out with it.  I’m pregnant.  I’m pretty sure it’s yours.  I’m gonna go ahead and blame this on tequila because it seems like a reasonable thing to blame in this situation.  Your mom is going to be so pumped.  She’ll probably start knitting baby clothes.  If she does I want that Link outfit on the internets.

Love, your friend,

Elaine

I have never been to a gathering that made me happier than PAX.  I had no idea how much I needed something like this until I was actually there.  This past weekend wasn’t about me seeing games so I could talk about them on a podcast and it wasn’t about me talking to developers.  What it was about is being around 60,000 people who share the same interests and who all have something to talk to one another about.  I made a ton of friends just waiting in line for panels and playing games on the show floor.  I have never been so happy to talk to strangers in my entire life (the stranger danger campaign scared me as a child).

I have a slew of pictures that will get posted over the next week once I recover from this evil plague I have.  For now just know that if you are on the fence about attending a PAX of any kind you should just do it.  Do it now.  Book your flight, train, hitching route, or family friend to drive you around.  Wil Wheaton probably summed this all up beset during his panel when he discussed how he really did feel at home at PAX.  This is what many of us want every day to be like but at least we can have our one or two weekends every year.

I’ll post more in the next few days about the games that I saw but know that little games like Shank and Deathspank should be on your radar.  You should also know that ODST and Left 4 Dead 2 are exactly what you are expecting them to be and if you aren’t playing Beatles Rock Band in between paragraphs of this post you are out of your damn mind.  Also, if you didn’t already know about it check out the card game Munchkins.  It was introduced to me at PAX and it’s awesome.   I can say with certainty though that these games are not the reason I came home from PAX so incredibly happy, it was instead all of the people I met and talked to over the course of the weekend.

I’m going to try and get my good friend Dan back on a short show this week to talk a bit about what we saw at the show (he was my man date for the weekend…..DIVORCE!).  Your regularly scheduled podcast will absolutely return next week and with it the reading and answering of all your wonderful listener mail.  Keep an eye on my twitter as well as the SOC twitter account for a way to win a PAX T-shirt or a Beatles T-shirt for your Xbox Live Avatar too!