A while ago, I came across the story on Kotaku of an alternate version of a pokemon cartridge which featured a ghost pokemon that actually killed opposing pokemon and trainers in the game. Here's the story.

It was chilling to see a game I know twisted into something else. Recently, I found a similar story about a Majora's Mask Cartridge. That story is here. These stories had a big impact on me. I think it would be awesome to see DLC that plays off of this idea of a perversion of the original text.

Rockstar is doing something similar with Undead Nightmare. They're taking the players' expectation of the game world and twisting it to create a whole new feel that's exciting to play through. In a game with a strong sense of narrative, I think this can be very effective.

Kingdom Hearts was one of my favorite series on the PS2. As I play through Birth By Sleep on the PSP, I'm consistently impressed by how well Square Enix managed to squeeze the game onto the handheld.

The graphics are top notch. Kingdom hearts has a strong art direction that relies on exaggerated characters and cartoony effects rather than realism. Everything is colorful and the levels are fun to traverse. The character animations go a long way in giving each character you meet a distinct personality.

The combat is just as fun as it was in KH2. With special abilities to equip and D-Links which allow you to power up with the help of a comrade, the action never gets old. I'm playing on proud mode which requires that you actually utilize all the moves at your disposal.

There's something to be said for some of the quirky titles that feel at home on a handheld; Puzzle Quest, Patapon, Lumines... but I'm glad a console experience can be translated smoothly to the PSP.

As I continue to play Fallout: New Vegas, I am beginning to see how connected the narrative is. The whole world and all its factions are deeply connected. The actions of one faction affect another and since you can work in league with the different factions, your choices have actual weight.

I think New Vegas succeeds at creating a deeply connected world whereas Fallout 3 felt a little more disjointed. I'm at a point now where I'll have to stop and just sit there thinking about a decision and its repercussions before taking action. I'm feeling a sense of pity for characters that I once hated and I'm becoming wary of characters that seem to have good intentions. The way the game plays its characters a

And the blog has begun! I guess I'll start with what I'm currently playing.

Fallout: New Vegas. I loved Fallout 3 and Vegas is continuing the tradition. While it has plenty of bugs and oddities, let's focus on the strong points of Fallout and all of Bethesda's recent games: the narrative. In Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Vegas, narrative can be found anywhere. Whether you're talking to an NPC, watching interactions between characters or reading a book, story elements permeate every facet of the game.

Every location has rich history, and this is conveyed both visually and through text. The worlds of these games are made real by repetition. For instance, in Fallout: New Vegas, I ran into a character in the middle of the wasteland that warned me of invisible guardians of a mountain. He emphasized the impossibility of reaching the top of the mountain and convinced me not to take the quest with my low-level character. I kept the interaction in the back of my mind and walked away.

A couple hours later, I was tasked with eradicating ghouls from a facility so that the town of Novac would be rid of them. When I arrived at the facility, I spoke to a ghoul who told me that there were monsters in the basement that prevented the ghouls from leaving. I headed to the basement and discovered that the monsters were invisible nightkin deluded to the point that they believed they were being lead by an animal's skull. The nightkin were a connecting factor between this quest and the one I turned away from. I learned that the nightkin were not inherently invisible, but addicted to the stealth boy drug.

The characters and stories of the wasteland are not isolated to different sectors, but rather spread out across the world. The result is a game world where characters actually seem to live in and affect the environment.