This crazy thing that occurs in certain RPGs and action games I've played recently, where you have to do all this horrific high-level stat manipulation and preparation to take on the uber-hard nigh-impossible 1 zillion HP bonus boss... and when you win you get this amazingly powerful ability or equipment that makes you the game's equivalent of an invincible god. It all sounds wonderful until you realize you overcame the game's greatest challenge in order to get equipment that you don't even need because everything else in the game was already ridiculously easy compared to said challenge BEFORE you became uber.

Crisis Core, Mega Man ZX and others, I'm looking at you.

Still love the games though.

Just noticed I reached level 27 here. Not bad for someone as terribly inactive as I am.

Well, let's see...what have I played recently?

Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers (Wii) - gotta love Gamefly. I can play games I wouldn't be caught dead buying, never worrying too much about wasted money. However, this game, strangely enough, isn't a waste of time either. It's actually kind of fun. I'm not a fan of zombies or games that revolve around them too much, but putting that aside I enjoy playing this game in short bursts (yes, I still have it). The controls are actually good (not perfect, but good) and the gameplay is fun. I'm interested in going all the way through it to see what I can unlock. The graphics aren't bad for a Wii game. The gameplay is repetitive and somewhat tiring, hence the short bursts. Worth a rental at least.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) - yes, I am a shameful gamer, for this is the first time I tried this game. I rented it from Gamefly about three weeks ago because I kept hearing about it and wanted to see what the fuss was about. It's a very compelling concept, a game with nothing but boss battles, where overcoming the beast is a challenge for both your strength and your mind. I only got up to the fourth colossus but I can honestly say I'm saddened that I didn't try this game sooner. So simple, yet so epic...

Skate 2 (PS3) - I don't think I spoke about this game yet, though it's been about a month since I rented it. I loved the first Skate, and the sequel didn't really do anything wrong. The new features like walking off-board, moving in-game objects to create skateable lines and controlling your bails for fun and profit didn't all work out quite perfectly, but they don't take away from the experience either. I like the fact that you can make female skaters now, but it seems there are a lot less options for modifying the appearance. Plus in-game NPCs still call you "dude". Oh well. Great game though, might buy it later.

Dragon Quest V (DS) - I've been itching for a decent handheld RPG experience for a long time now. Though there are some decent games on PSP, nothing quite matches the Final Fantasy experience for me. The last time I played a Dragon Quest game, it was on NES and I knew the series as "Dragon Warrior". Yep, that's how ancient I am. But I'm playing DQV on DS now, and I'm heavily engaged. It's weird because I'm not a fan of Akira Toriyama's art (not a DBZ fan at all), and you can't see your characters attacking during battle, and yet the game engages me anyway, at least for now. (Ever since I acquired Picross DS as well, my wife has been dominating control of the DS so I haven't had a chance to really get far in the game yet, but I certainly want to.) The pure 2D RPG experience is hard to find these days...the grinding for levels and gold to buy new weapons and armor, dungeon-diving, watching the story unfold, fighting boss battles...that's true gaming to me.

In other news, I played Super Smash Bros. Brawl with my friends last weekend (after visiting Mom, of course). Generally, I play with Zelda or ZS Samus, but I've always been a fan of Captain Falcon as well (and really, who isn't?). In the first Smash, I was the dominant KO master using Falcon, but I really fell off when Melee came along. It was like Falcon became a lot weaker, or perhaps I just became a bad player. Who knows...but that's when I switched to the powerhouse that is Zelda. Anyway, in Brawl, things went from bad to worse. I had some of the most humiliating Smash matches in my life trying to make Falcon work...until yesterday. After racking up a substantial number of kills and setting my position as the day's winner in stone once again thanks to Zelda, I decided to play with Falcon just for fun. My friends scoffed, of course, until that match ended with me as the winner again. Owned them over and over with well-planned and perfectly-timed Falcon Punches. I don't know how it happened, they don't know how it happened, but suddenly my C.Falcon is getting respect again. I think I'm going to make Falcon my number one Smash character again. I mean, he's always been the coolest but in my hands he's on the verge of becoming the strongest again! Gotta love Brawl.

Being a sort of creative kind of guy, I tend to gravitate toward games that allow some degree of customization. I fell in love with Oblivion because you can be pretty much any kind of character you want to be within the trappings of the game's setting. I wholeheartedly believe Saints Row 2 is superior to GTA 4 merely because being able to customize your character's physical appearance, mannerisms and voice is far better than being stuck with a stock protagonist. I put more time in Phantasy Star Portable and Monster Hunter Freedom (1 and 2) than just about any DS game I ever owned. Skate and its sequel are a couple of my favorite games. I only spent time with wrestling games when they introduced the feature to create female wrestlers (the first one I played seriously was WWF No Mercy on N64).

What I'm getting at is I love games that let the player create their own character. That feature overwhelms a lot of negatives for me. I can play a glitchy game like SR2 or an extremely linear dungeon crawler if I can make the character look the way I want them to (particularly if I can make the character female).

I am by and large a console gamer, and I rarely play anything more than solitaire or Bejeweled on my PC. I never paid much attention to FPS games (even when you can customize your character, what difference does it make if you can't see the character during game play?), RTS games (I have a copy of Starcraft that I bought from Amazon a year ago and never once played) or MMOs. I didn't really play PC games at all until sometime in 2004 when I discovered a little game called City of Heroes. For the uninitiated, City of Heroes (CoH) is an MMO that isn't like other MMOs. It's not a fantasy setting or a futuristic one; it's a super hero universe. You get to design your own character, pick physical appearance, clothing or costume, size and powers, and the customization is insane. I have literally never played a game with that degree of customization before, or since. For a while, I found myself addicted to the game. After all, I'm an artist and a character designer. Making super hero-like characters is what I do. Being able to make virtual representations of my characters and play as them in a persistent MMO was a dream come true for me. Alas though, after a while I had to force myself to stop playing because my artistic development had begun to suffer.

Fast forward a few years. I canceled my CoH account and focused on my art, while filling the void with other games. Oblivion, Saints Row, MHF, Phantasy Star...I found myself actively seeking out games that allowed for character customization. Even sought out low-rated titles like Valhalla Knights and Tales of the World on PSP (didn't play those yet, but I probably will soon). I found myself eventually growing dissatisfied with almost every game I played.

I realized that after experiencing the customization of CoH, nothing else really does it for me. So I've gone back. I reinstalled the game and reactivated my account. I don't play often; I only play heavily on Saturdays, and I'm a lot more casual than I used to be. The game has many, many little features on top of the basic super hero/villain battling missions, but I'm not getting too involved with them. I played a new character up to level 20 (50 is the max) and yet my friends' list is empty. I'm not going to let it grab hold of me again, but I do love the game even now, nearly five years since I first discovered it.

I can see why MMOs are so popular. If a game keeps growing and evolving the way CoH does, it's almost worth the $15 per month asking price because there's always some way to make the experience fresh. There are dozens of power sets I've never experienced, many unlockable items and costume parts I've never seen...oh yeah, and they're letting players make their own story arcs now.

I've reduced the number of Gamefly games I have out at once. I haven't bought a game for my Wii or PS3 in a long time. Until something comes along that lets me be more creative than I can be in CoH, I'll probably never fully let it go.

I'm weird that way.