Role-Playing

According to the ESRB, this game contains: Blood and Gore, Violence

As a gamer, do you ever notice that some development studios tend to turn out the same substandard kind of product without ever stepping back to evaluate their handiwork before churning out a sequel? Im not talking about the debugging process or other technical things like that, but rather, game design and philosophy in general.

Game Description: A hero with a mysterious past. A young girl holding the key to world domination. A villain who will stop at nothing to unlock the path to unlimited power. Prepare to experience an RPG unlike any other. Welcome to the world of Shadow Hearts. A young girl holding the key to world domination. A villain who will stop at nothing to unlock the path to unlimited power. Prepare to experience an RPG unlike any other. Dark, unique story and good character development. Excellent dialog breathes life into the characters.

Shadow Hearts is the game Koudelka should have been—an earnest and intriguing RPG that mixes a historical setting with an occult influence in much the same way the Persona/Megami Tensei games have been doing for years. The end result is one of the darkest and most interesting console RPGs to come along in recent memory (the only other games that really compare are Atlus Persona titles). Sacnoth clearly learned from their errors with Koudelka, and its because of this that Shadow Hearts is so good,

Game Description: Experience the massively popular world of Baldur's Gate as never before! Dark Alliance thrusts you into an epic adventure filled with intense action, intricate puzzles and sinister intrigue: where your mastery of cold steel and devastating spells is the only thing between you and ultimate evil. Play as one of three amazing heroes, each with unique powers, appearances and skills and hack and slash your way through more than 40 action-packed levels and battle over 35 vicious creatures including Gelatinous Cubes, Frost Giants and Dragons.

The ESRB reports that this game contains: Blood, Use of Alcohol, Violence

The release of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance for the PlayStation 2—a high-profile PC franchise appearing on a console—is something unusual. This is not entirely new, as the Ultima series made appearances on consoles in addition to its original PC releases. But Dark Alliance differs from the console versions of Ultima in that its gameplay deviates heavily from its franchise-mates on the PC. The other Baldur's Gate games were an excellent example of the PC style of role-playing games—open-ended strategic games based heavily on rules from pencil-and-paper RPGs. Instead, Dark Alliance is a fast-paced, real-time action game where one player controls one character; any attached rules are mainly flavoring for the main course of arcade-style action. Given the incredible difference in gameplay, it's no surprise that rather than attempt to build Dark Alliance itself, franchise studio Black Isle contracted Snowblind Studios to develop it.

I don't know why developers are so averted to bringing computer-style role-playing games (RPG) to home videogame consoles. The Baldur's Gate series is a critically acclaimed, popular title in the PC gaming world. While Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance for the PlayStation 2 brings gamers closer to the Dungeons And Dragons RPG setting, the title proves that sometimes the apple falls a bit too far from the tree. In short, Dark Alliance doesn't represent the same caliber game to which PC gamers are treated.

The premise of the Pokémon Stadium games hasn't changed with the new sequel. Anyone who's ever played the original knows exactly what to expect with Pokémon Stadium 2. The main idea is still to take Pokémon trained on the Game Boy versions (which now include the most recent Gold and Silver ones) and transfer them over to the Nintendo 64 via the Transfer Pak so that they can battle in a much grander and more vivid three-dimensional arena.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Animated Violence