So I’m kind of an artsy-fartsy.

I know. I know it’s not exactly something to brag about, but I’ve long ago given up even pretending I run with the fast and cool set. I love art. I love all kinds of art, and I’m the kind of person that believes anything can be art. Even people. Even video games. Most especially, I love what art can accomplish. It’s a communication of sorts, between the artist and the audience, and the myriad of things any particular piece can say is as varied as you and I.

So I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to some little pieces of art in the gaming world, games that push the envelope of what it really means to experience a new world, a new identity, and to use what you learn there to re-think even your own world and your own identity (One of the most important aspects of art, I believe). Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg of what is out there in the world of what are commonly referred to as “experimental” games. Often simple to play, but not for the simple-minded, they always offer something deeper, for the curious and for those willing to dig a little more into what any one experience can offer. All of these games, except for one, were finalists in the 2010 Independent Games Festival, the organization that brought to the gaming world’s attention such gems as World of Goo, Castle Crashers, and Braid. The games I’ve chosen to showcase appeal to me because of their special intersections with artistic mediums and functions, and if they catch your fancy, have a look at the other finalists and winners at their website.

TODAY I DIE

I’ll begin with one of my absolute favorites, the playable poetry of Today I Die. This flash game, created by the talented Daniel Benmergui, presents you with what seems like a suicide note. Through manipulating items in the environment and words in the poem, you can change the poem (and the gameworld itself) in surprising and meaningful ways. Described on the IGF site as “A game poem about the prison of worldviews, and salvation in playfulness,” this game rewards curiosity and those willing to explore the possibilities that the poem presents. You can try the game out for yourself here.

LIMBO

Winning in the categories of “Technical Excellence” and “Excellence in Visual Art” is Limbo, by PlayDead, described very simply as “Uncertain of his sister’s destiny, a boy enters LIMBO…” The perfect combination of a technically proficient gameworld and compelling artistic representation, the screenshots depict a dark landscape that is lonely and oppressive, as one would expect in such a place, yet poignant enough to make you want to explore it. Watching the teaser video I was instantly reminded of one of my favorite illustrators, Edward Gorey, who always managed to be dark and macabre and yet humorous and humanly touching.

Selections from the Gashlycrumb Tinnies by Edward Gorey

You can check out the Limbo Video Teaser here. I am especially intrigued at the prospect of solving puzzles and exploring the world in the changing environments and rotating rooms that are depicted.

CLOSURE

Finalists at the IGF are notorious for presenting games that offer novel experiences, or challenge the expectations that previous games set up. Closure is a game that challenges our perceptions of what is in dark spaces and how we use the dark. No longer something to avoid, in case the Kryll or ravenous zombies swoop out to devour you, the dark represents a void to be manipulated. The dark is not just a hidden continuation of things you cannot see, but rather within the darkness, nothing exists at all. What is dark is therefore passable, and figuring out how to manipulate this concept (starting with orbs of light you carry) is how you puzzle your way through each level. Instead of ruining the fun by over-explaining it (like a horrible joke gone wrong), I invite you to give it a try yourself. Part of the enjoyment in this game, much like in Today I Die, is found in the exploration of the world and its mechanics, and the process of learning by failure and retrying becomes an experience in itself. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the sound effects are very well done (the game won “Excellence in Audio”).

Finally, you can’t have art without political or social commentary. Italiani Brava Gente, created by the artist Antonio Riello, is actually not so much a game as a social commentary using the medium of games. For Riello, his gameworld is a place where “forbidden…obsessions are hidden,” and the hidden agenda for this particular piece is what Riello sees as growing xenophobia and intolerance in Italy (as reflected in the image of the menu screen below).

ITALIANI BRAVE GENTE

Although this last example is not part of the IGF like the others (it’s actually more a piece of art than a game), I include it because it is an insightful and slightly humorous example of the intersection of art and games. It is a video game more strictly as a piece of art.

And you just don’t get much more artsy-fartsy than that.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Note: This article was first published on the Frag Doll Website as part of their Cadette program. Big thanks to Miss Risky for first introducing me to Today I Die and getting me interested in following and learning about experimental type games! You can read her more thorough review on that particular game right here!

If you like playing on the Xbox 360, then it’s probably safe to say that you like getting achievements. Oh come now, don’t deny it. You may claim you don’t go after them actively, but everyone is satisfied to get one when that little icon pops on your screen. It’s a freaking mini-party. Many achievements are standard fare: complete a mission, defeat a boss or a certain number of enemies, collect some items. But some games don’t take themselves too seriously and provide achievements outside the box, many of them humorous additions to already great games.

Here’s a tribute to achievements that push the envelope, and usually require you to do something outside of the normal parameters of the game’s intended gameplay. Special props go to Valve, I could have written an entire article about their clever titles and word-play, but I tried to spread the love around a bit. WARNING: some spoilers follow.

9 Irony – Bioshock 2: In the first game, there was an achievement called “Irony,” which required the player to snap a photo of the recently deceased Sanders Cohen (who spent a whole level forcing you to kill people and take a picture of them for his masterpiece). 9 Irony adds a clever word pun to the mix, and requires you to throw a golf club at a statue of Andrew Ryan (who famously forced you to kill him with the same weapon in the first game). Easy to get, it’s only worth five points, but for me most of the cleverness lies in the title.

My Brother is an Italian Plumber – Borderlands: Super Mario references may be cliché, but I still had fun trying to jump on Skag heads to get my “plumber-style” kill.

Big Bully – A Kingdom for Keflings: Now I would never condone acting like a bully in real life, but kicking helpless Keflings across the map with your avatar was obsessively funny. And by obsessive, I mean that I kept doing it even after I got an achievement for it.

Flushed – Half Life 2: Gravity Guns are cool, and result in numerous ways of eliminating your foes. Conking one with a hurled toilet is near the top of my list (right next to shooting teddy bears at Super Mutants in Fallout 3).

The Fowl Player – Fable 2: You get an achievement in this game for kicking a chicken (Don’t worry, they have reinforced feathers), but the game ups the ante by giving you another achievement for kicking one while wearing a chicken suit. “We’re sickened.”

True Identity – Rainbow Six Vegas 2: One of the cool features about this shooter is that you can upload a photo with your Vision cam to create a character that looks like you. Cooler thing is you get an achievement for doing so. Coolest thing is putting on a face mask before you take your pic, and then freaking out everyone online with your creepy looking character.

Psychotic Prankster – Fallout 3: In any game with moral choices, I always tend to play the nice paragon. This explains why I reloaded my save after pick-pocketing a stranger and leaving, in return, a live grenade in their pants. And so I don’t seem like a complete prude, I did laugh at them randomly exploding before I reloaded.

Cr0wnd – Left 4 Dead: This one wasn’t as much fun to get as it was fun to watch your other friends try to get. Hearing them run away screaming after their headshot attempt fails never got old. Especially after you just explained to them that getting as close as possible first is the best strategy. Also of note, Cl0wnd in Left 4 Dead 2 requires you to honk clown noses.

…Where Credit is due – Eat Lead: 60 points just for watching the credits, one of the easiest achievements I’ve ever gotten. Eat Lead also wins points for the funny descriptions for almost all of the achievements (for example, Pure Energy: Get 50 Energy Pistol kills. “Blaster? I hardly know ‘er!”)

Crowd Pleaser – LEGO Star Wars: TCS: Call me petty for taking out my movie annoyance grudge on a poor, defenseless video game character made of virtual Legos, but breaking Jar Jar 20 times sure felt satisfying.

Guardin’ Gnome – Left 4 Dead 2 and Little Rocket Man – Half Life 2: Episode 2: As far as fun and silly achievements go, these two up the difficulty level by requiring you to carry a garden gnome across an entire campaign. It’s not too bad in L4D2 if you have buddies, just be careful on the roller coaster so your little friend doesn’t go flying away. For HL2, most of the time you could set him down somewhere while you did what you had to do, but the driving sequences were tough. That little bugger did not want to stay in my buggy. Frustrating moments aside, getting these achievements did provide some laughs and humorous moments.

Did I leave any of your favorites out? Lemmie know, I only included achievements I got myself!

Specialized ammo, that is. My preference for RPG mage-dom aside, there’s something incredibly satisfying about (virtually) vanquishing your enemies with the (usually graphically) impressive effects of burning fire or frigid ice. And with so many games currently dipping into the melting pot of cross-genre trends, I can now enjoy tormenting my foes with the extreme effects of bad weather (among other things!) with my guns too. Here’s a rundown of a few of my recent favorites.

Bioshock 2: There are different ammo types for each weapon, and the Power to the People stations allow you to upgrade your weapon, adding capacity, increasing damage, and the like. But the funnest options were Heated Rivets (giving each rivet a change to set enemies on fire), and Electrified Shells (giving each shotgun shell the change to electrocute your enemy). Now you might say, “But Dope, you already have these effects in the Plasmids you get to use while exploring the underwater city of Rapture, isn’t it a bit superfluous to have your guns have these effects too?” NO. Heck, no. The fact that I can stack these effects with the glories of Cyclone traps, telekinesis, and hypnosis just makes everything that much more devastating. In the case of Bioshock, more definitely means better.

Mass Effect 2: I really don’t want to get caught up in a genre argument regarding what type of game Mass Effect is and what it isn’t. That said, I play it more like a shooter, that’s just my style. What can I say, I’m a girl and I always over-pack, and when it comes to packing heat, I like to play with all the guns. Playing as a Soldier in Mass Effect 2 provided some wonderful options not present in the first game, most especially the various ammo types. Call me cliche, but incendiary and cyro ammo were my BFFs; their effects were both, well…effective and fun to use! Shattering frozen enemies never gets old, but what does get old are the constant and overdone screams of my foes on fire. Can’t my enemies just suffer their deaths a little more gracefully while I’m having so much fun?

Borderlands: Elemental Effects. Two simple words, yet so many wonderful flavors of destruction. Whether you like melting your enemies with poison, blistering their skin with fire, exploding their very flesh off their bones, or zapping their armor to their bodies with electricity, Borderlands has the gun for you. Or a hundred. Er, a few thousand. Okay, there’s a lot of guns. But I played a Siren, she favored the SMG and was built to use it. Add an overpowered Hellfire SMG to that mix, and oh the fun I had tearing through enemies like butter. Call me a pyro, but playing with fire in this game was funner than running around campfires with marshmallow torches when I was a kid.

Okay, so I just did that last year, sue me.

In the past we’ve been presented with numerous negative factors about video games. Still today, there are plenty of non-gamers that fall into the same stereotype regarding how bad video gamers are for our health. There is however, a lot of positive attributes that us gamers already recognize, such as it’s a good stress reliever to be able to kick back at the end of the day and virtually end someone’s life.

An aspect that is sometimes overlooked which I love is the learning factor about games. In that, I’m referring to the games that are based on historical events, even if it’s based on them loosely. When I was younger, I grasped the the entire event in a video game more than I do these days. Today it is more about the graphics for me and the mechanics of a game but ever so often, I will get sucked into a game and learn more about our past that I wasn’t taught while in school, or never bothered to further educate myself about it.

A game I recently played was Battlestations: Pacific. It was a huge milestone for me to invest so many hours into a game, only to walk away each time and realize I still don’t have a single achievement (I can’t help being such an achievement whore), but learning even slightly more about our history should be something we’re encouraged to do. For those that aren’t familiar with Battlestations series, the year is set between 1941-1945. The attacks are about Pearl Harbor and Battle of Okinawa (aka Operation Iceberg). You do have a chance to play as the Japanese and create the “what if” scenareo, though I never was interested in that aspect of the game so I have no opinion on that matter.

That being said, there are so may games out there that can teach us a lot about history or help us use our imagination and create a “what if” scenario, such as Company of Heroes, Age of Empires Series, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 and Total War Series, which is only naming a few. In all obviousness, parents shouldn’t succumb to slanted opinions about how video games aren’t suitable for children since a few of the games I’ve mentioned above are turn based strategy games.

Being one of those people that play the “Microsofts rat race game at signing up for the new updates before everyone else”, my review on the fall 2009 update is as followed. There really are only 4 obvious new updates to the dashboard since we’ve already received the larger update prior.

Facebook
The mother of bulkiness and redundant features. I know the whole social networking phase is still pretty popular and everyone is all over it but I do think that Microsoft spent too much time programming this section whereas they should have focused more on the Last.FM section, where it is strongly needed.

There is a new blade for each persons status, mimicing the NXE style, as you will see in the images to follow. This makes the section seem quite big. It would have been a better idea to make each blade belong to one person with their wall posts included, considering most people have 50+ friends on facebook to begin with. I assume our friends list on facebook will eventually grow since we’ll be able to find our xbox mates on there as well. Since they’ve programmed it this bulky blade way (which is aethetically, very nice), they’ve excluded one main feature; viewing a friends wall and making a wall post.

After using facebook for many years, we all know that there are many of our friends that never update their status but we still post on our wall. It seems a little ridiculous that this feature has been left out complete. We are able to view our friends profiles, their status and even their photos but no option to leave messages on their wall. I know the facebook module is a work in process but surely they could have cut down on some other section, simplified facebook a little, like they have done with twitter, and given us one of the core features.

Twitter
This has to be the addition I’m most happy with since it basically includes most of the same features you recieve when you login to twitter on your computer. I’ve loved twitter for a while and now that I’ve got it on my xbox, I couldn’t be happier! One nice addition would be to allow us to update our twitter account through the guide, instead of makin us go through the dashboard. Even if you don’t allow us to view our twitter feed, at least let us update through the guide! It’s a simple application that we could get a lot of use out of.

Last.FM
I started using Last.FM about 3 years ago and thought it was a great audio scobbler. I loved how it would record how many times I listen to certain bands/songs, especially since I’ve always been guilty of reformatting my computer a handful of times every year and itunes resets the song count. So that is all I’ve ever used it for. Nothing more.

When it comes to the suggestion of new bands/music, I most definately prefer Pandora (U.S.A based only) and their gnome system. Even though Pandora has transformed into a paid service a few months back, I still prefer it much more over Last.FM. My main reason for saying that is that their programming to recognize the bands I really enjoy through the songs I’ve favoured is a huge plus. This is what Last.fm is lacking. When I start a new station based on a band and I get to hear the actual band play only a couple of times over a period of a few hours, it makes me doubt the system. Even when I’ve favoured a few songs within the station, I still barely get to hear them and continue getting more different selections.

The next problem with the Last.FM addition is, I can’t play my set stations while I’m gaming! I don’t know what they were thinking when they didn’t program it so we could listening to music while doing other stuff on my xbox. Music is something we all have on IN THE BACKGROUND, what was Microsoft thinking when they thought we’d only be interested in listening to music throught the Last.FM screen? Though it is useful when I’m cleaning the house!

The last problem I’ve noticed is, they should give us the option to display what band & song we’re playing while other’s view our profile. They’ve included this for Netflix and we have it while we’re on our computer using MSN Messenger. It should be known that we expect this feature! And no, I have no problem letting people see that i’m listening to some more emo music!

The positive side to Last.FM is the quality of music is crisp and I’ve seldom noticed songs being jumpy. There is a small tool bar for the song being played which scrolls the band name as well. It’s a decent size and would be superb if they implemented that to be visible ontop of whatever game we choose to play, or include it within the guide.

Overall, this can turn out to be a gamers dream component if they make some more adjustments.

Zune
I’ve got the least experiance with the Zune’s full functions since I’m an iPod gal (though that’s all I’ll limit myself to purchase from Apple). Zune section has replaced the movie section completely but the best part of this is they finally have given us the option to search for movies/tv shows by typing the name, instead of making me search manually.

Even though we can download full movies for a wooping 1200 MSP (SD), I doubt I’d EVER pay that much for a movie when I’d prefer a hard copy of it on DVD and save the room on my HD for game and not add to clutter. I’m pretty sure most people will agree with me there, unless they can offer us a really good deal on downloading them instead of going to a retail store. Some movies cost 1200 MSP (SD) to rent while others you can buy for the same amount. Not sure if this is a glitch yet. There is also no option to download music in mp3 format at this time.

(Images courtesy of gearlive.com)

Last night there was a world premier sneak peak at the big sisters from BioShock 2, as well as some gameplay.

It will spoil the game a little if you watch it, so be warned! I’ve already noticed improvements with weapons along with new weapons I must get my hands on. It is the same great atmosphere we grew to love though.

One thing that is a little bothersome to me about the trailer was the voice of the big sister. Yes I realize she’s a few years older now but it sounds like they used voice rendering software to change the tone from male to female. I hope I’m not alone with that assumption.

Public Service Announcement for my fellow gamer girls:

You love games. You love thinking about games. You love talking about games. And maybe you also love learning about how they’re designed. There’s a fabulous opportunity for you to get a taste of the game design process, via Ian Schreiber’s Game Design Concepts class.

It’s free, open to all, and participation can be as involved (or un-involved) as you like. There’s a required textbook that’ll set you back $25, but that’s worlds cheaper than anything I’ve ever bought for a university course.

From the blog:

This class runs from Monday, June 29 through Sunday, September 6. Posts appear on the blog Mondays and Thursdays each week at noon GMT. Discussions and sharing of ideas happen on a continual basis.

I’m signed up, and eagerly awaiting the course. Fellow G&G’ers, if you decide to register or follow along, let me know via the comments here. Click over to this post for more details on how to register.

I should begin, to be fair, with my immeasurable love for all things campy. I enjoy reading fantastic fan-fiction and I got just a little weepy during Sam Hart’s YouTube debut of Mario Kart Love Song. So it shouldn’t be a surprise when I say that I have yet to come across a game turned film franchise that I couldn’t get excited about.

Now don’t get me wrong; the excitement doesn’t always last. As an avid fan of Dark Angel I admit that the first three minutes of Xavier Gen’s Hitman had me out of my seat and on my way out to my car before the opening credits had even finished rolling. It took me a couple of tries over many years but at this point I have managed to sit through the entire movie. Once. I consider it a minor miracle. The same feeling can be turned towards movies like Max Payne and Resident Evil: Degeneration. While visually stimulating and semi-successful at the box office they were otherwise lacking in pizazz. Then there are movies that can only be described as pure, unadulterated, Fan Candy. I am talking about the greats of gaming/movie madness. Super Mario Brothers, Dead or Alive, Mortal Kombat, Wing Commander, these are movies that I can watch over and over again and infinitum until the day my brain melts and starts leaking out my ears.

Whether they were heart warming, rage inducing, or brain melting, in the past quarter of a century American Cinema has seen about 40 versions of game turned movie. That number includes a variety of things like game spin-offs, very loose adaptations, and straight up big screen copies. Some of them have been insane blockbusters (Tomb Raider, Resident Evil) some have been great fun but financially unsuccessful (In the Name of the King , Alone in the Dark) and most dwell in the misty grey world of fandom (BloodRayne). Now lets recap…40+ movies in 25+ years. So color me surprised when I discovered that there are at least 30 movies in the works to be released within the next few years. The rough math, for those of us who don’t like math, would be 30+ movies in 3+ years.

With these overwhelming numbers the question begs: Will it be too much?

With titles like BioShock, Resident Evil 4, God of War, and another Mortal Kombat (with Lambert!!!!!) as just a few of the movies soon to hit the Silver Screen do we even care? Given that movies based on games are rarely successful I find myself wondering why Hollywood thinks there is going to be a change in that trend. Do they know something we don’t? Have they kidnapped Theresa, every hero’s favorite sister, and forced her to rat out the blockbusters of the future? Maybe the executives finally got their hand’s on a decent 8-ball

All in all it looks as though we gamers are going to have a few good years of fan candy ahead of us. With so much looming over the horizon, the anticipation may just kill me.

I recently came across an updated list (12/08/2008) of the Top Offensive Games of 2007/2008 done by The Timothy Plan. While I applaud attempts by parents to raise their children right and be informed regarding which games to allow them to play, gamers and their games have a history of being publicly maligned and attacked by political and social groups with a great amount of misinformation involved (Case in point, the Fox News/Mass Effect debacle). This list is no different, it is almost an amusing read. The fallacies range from the downright ridiculous to the blatantly false. Here is a list of some of the things that caught my eye, but feel free to add your own!

STD’s in Fallout 3? I spent a heck of a lot of hours in this game, never came across this. Also, it is pointed out that you can wear a nightgown, one that, by the way, covers more of a girl than most sundresses or tank/shorts combos I see girls wearing just about every day in public.

Homosexual themes in Army of Two? Come on, this is certainly never overtly suggested, though anyone can “read” this kind of theme in just about anything, if they are paranoid and homophobic enough. That reminds me, they have homosexuality as a separate category from sexual references, which seems a bit overkill (I’d bring up homophobic as well, but that was already mentioned).

Sex used as a weapon in Crackdown? This just made me giggle. WHERE do they come up with this stuff? Will they never realize hyperbole gets them nowhere?

Name calling guys a “girl” in Bully? I’m sorry but kids have been doing this one since before video games were even invented.

Age of Conan is addictive? Bwahahahaha! Ahem *cough* sorry.

Mass Effect and Gears of War 2 are apparently FPS? I hate to be picky, but if THEY are going to be so ridiculous in their attempts to find each and every small point that might be even a teeny bit offensive to Christian extremists, then they should at least make an attempt to label the games right.

Hellgate: London features the word “hell.” OMG no way?!? These guys are really on the ball here!

Heavyweights
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira	Brock Lesnar
Frank Mir	Brandon Vera (LH)
Gabriel Gonzaga	Cain Velasquez
Cheick Kongo	Eddie Sanchez
Heath Herring	Andrei Arlovski
Mirko Crocop	Fabricio Werdum
Tim Sylvia	Mark Coleman
Antoni Hardonk	Justin McCully

Light Heavyweights
Chuck Liddell	Quinton “Rampage” Jackson
Forrest Griffin	Tito Ortiz
Keith Jardine	Wanderlei Silva
Mauricio “Shogun” Rua	Lyoto Machida
Rashad Evans	Stephan Bonnar
James Irvin	Wilson Gouveia (MW)
Houston Alexander	Kazuhiro Nakamura
Thiago Silva	Tim Boetsch
Ryan Bader (DLC)

Middleweights
Anderson Silva (LH)	Rich Franklin (LH)
Dan Henderson (LH)	Michael Bisping (LH)
Kendall Grove	Chris Leben
Jason MacDonald	Nate Marquardt
Drew McFedries	Ricardo Almeida
Evan Tanner	Yushin Okami
Demian Maia	Martin Kampmann (WW)
Amir Sadollah (WW)	Thales Leites
Welterweights
Georges St-Pierre	Matt Hughes
Matt Serra (LW)	Jon Fitch
Karo Parisyan	Josh Koscheck
Diego Sanchez	Mike Swick (MW)
Marcus Davis	Thiago Alves
Chris Lytle	Ben Saunders
Josh Burkman	Kyle Bradley
Matt Arroyo	Anthony Johnson
Lightweights
BJ Penn (WW)	Sean Sherk (WW)
Kenny Florian	Roger Huerta
Joe Stevenson	Mac Danzig
Nathan Diaz	Spencer Fisher
Tyson Griffin	Gray Maynard
Thiago Tavares	Joe Lauzon
Rich Clementi	Mark Bocek
Hermes Franca	Frank Edgar
Efrain Escudero (DLC)

Read Our Review Of: UFC 2009 Undisputed

Stepping away from my usual posts about new releases, I want to talk about a website I frequent often and want to share with the gaming world!

Gamer Tag Pics (GTP) is a vast social networking site for Xbox 360 gamers all over the globe! Since starting up in 2003, it has amassed numerous amounts of users from all sorts of gaming backgrounds together.

The one thing I love about GTP is the fact that you have full control of your own corner of the web – From profile creation, blogging and even the ability to write your very own game reviews for the website! With an extensive search engine, featured blogs, forums and the option to create a full HTML “intro” page to your profile, there really is a lot to do on the website!

Similar to places like MySpace & Facebook you can post galleries of photos, check out your friend’s “feed” to see what’s going on in their gaming/GTP life, poke around their Gamerscore more indepth and have a chat with people online via the forums/PM system!

Setting up your profile with GTP is a cinch – Just register using your GamerTag for Xbox Live, fill out the gaming-geared bio, upload a photo (or five!) and you’re off! Once your profile is complete, get to searching your online friends with the GTP GamerTag search engine – It really is as easy as it sounds; just put in your XBL friend’s GamerTag and, if they’re a user, their profile will be ready and waiting for you to add them! Be sure to send a message to any of your XBL friend’s who aren’t on Gamer Tag Pics and get them to register!

GTP is a great place to find new like-minded friends and is PERFECT for clans who are looking to recruit new members! Setting up matches, finding a buddy to run through a co-op game together or even just finding people to chat in a party together, is a easy as pie on the GTP Forums! Don’t worry – You do not need to re-sign up to join in on the fun at the forums, just use the same login and password for the main GTP site!

Oh, and while you’re busy registering yourself away on GTP - Don’t forget to add little ol’ me!

I recently purchased the game, Eternal Sonata. Visually this game is stunning. I’m not really enjoying the battles that much, it seems a little like Enchanted Arms which I wasn’t a huge fan of. If you’re like me and you can’t stand turn based RPGs, than this game is not for you.

However, the soundtrack for this game is absolutely beautiful. If you enjoy Chopin, this soundtrack is a must for you. There are beautiful piano and violin pieces on 4 CD’s, with a total of 69 songs. The soundtrack has been hard to come across but luckily Amazon has picked up on it’s brilliance and imported it, which will save you a lot of trouble unlike myself.

A couple of songs that stand out the most are Kokoro Ne Kiseki, Amadare, Wa Wo Toutobu Shirabe and Broken Balance.