I'm going to do a series of gaming ideas to liven up some old genre's with new ideas. First up is RPGs.

Nostalgic for the days of pencil and paper RPGs? Miss the companionship of other obsessive nerds? Ready for the next evolution in electronic gaming?

Presenting:

Little Castle on the Borderlands

Featuring:

Role Playing

Slow Leveling

English Accents

AI 'players'

At the beginning of the game a party of virtual dorks will be created to 'role play' the other members of your party. These deep and dedicated AI companions will do all that your remember from your pen and pencils days, other than smell bad. They will:

· Argue with you about your character's actions

· Overact their characters' dialog

· Take hourly smoke breaks (NOTE: this is a functionality of the Xbox 360 hardware)

· Ask to share your pizza

· Inexplicably not show up at game time

· Have annoying laughs and make creepy misogynistic/homophobic jokes

This game uses a system based on 2nd edition AD&D so not only will you have access to weapon proficiencies and be able to cast spells once per day, you'll be using a massive amount of charts, matrices and treasure tables. And don't forget the DM! A virtual DM will keep all the players in line, staying just this side of a nervous breakdown while shepherding the players through the adventure.

So if you're ready for THACO, armor class and psionics, take a trip back to the 80's with

Little Castle on the Borderlands!

I traded in a bunch of games to Amazon- it worked out well and I pre-ordered Dragon Age: Origins. This deal is better than it looks: $57 ($3 off) is not much, but it's also tax free and free shipping (another $5 for tax and another $5 maybe for shipping) and then there is a $10 credit on amazon that can be used to purchase another game- that's a total of about $23 off the list price. Anyway, this game looks wonderful and I believe it will redeem Bioware after the rather lame leveling mechanics/side quests of Mass Effect. I had gotten $88 for my games trades so I still have some left over for the game that I will apply the $10 credit to. I have high hopes for Borderlands (though I am wary) and Alpha Protocol (which seems less of a risk).

I traded some games to Gamestop as well (they have a $20 bonus if you trade in 4 games, effectively doubling or more games that don't trade for much). I used that to buy The Beatles: Rock Band. It is awesome- I can't say how thrilling it is to know and love every single song on the game's soundtrack. Random songs never make me nervous that a song I hate will show up. It's also rather easier than the other music games- I can do every song on expert, which is not true of any other GH or RB game.

Oh, and I also picked up Rock Revolution for $5 at Best Buy. It is a low budget rip off (I would have expected better from the makers of DDR) but at over 8 songs per $1 it's really a pretty good deal. I've had at least $5 of fun with it so far.

Anyway- Dragon Age is going to rock and I hope that the whole 'Origins' schtick does lead to massively different plotlines when you play as different characters. Even if it is just the first 6 hours that are hugely different, well, that's as long as a lot of games these days.

PS: the Amazon deal on Dragon Age includes a price guarantee so if Amazon lowers the price before it releases they'll refund the difference between that and what you paid.

Looks more exciting than poor old Liara!

I've been thinking of satirical games lately- It's a hard thing to pull off, given that good writing is generally the rarest thing in games.

I'm going to go over the games I found the funniest that I played.

1. Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy. This was a text adventure, and almost as hilarious as the book. It came with the don't panic button and the keep calm sunglasses (that were opaque, so you wouldn't see the danger, and therefore wouldn't panic). It followed the book pretty closely, but the tricks and puzzles were so hilarious (and hilariously complex!) that you had to love it even as you racked your brain to figure it out. Anyone out there remember trying to get the Babel Fish to go into your ear?

2. Fallout 2. Fallout 1 had its moments, but was much more serious about itself. Fallout 2 took itself very lightly and made fun of all sorts of stuff- Magic the Gathering (Tragic the Garnering) which was huge at the time, a medicine man who talked in metaphors that your character would continuously make fun of, the Insane President of the Enclave and plenty of other very funny NPCs and companions (one of which has the bone of his grandfather who gives him advice).

3. The Bard's Tale. I am not talking about the classic from the 80's, I mean a more recent game by the same guy for the original Xbox. It was given poor reviews, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Its gameplay was pure 3rd person hack and slash (something missing in the current generation) but the main character, voiced by the Dread Pirate Roberts from the Princess Bride, stole the show. It made fun of all the fantasy staples- the captured princess, killing rats in the cellar, a Chosen One to save the world, or in this case, the princess is calling everyone she can and trying to convince them they are the Chosen One. Even little kids armed with sticks. And the Bard has a jilted lover in every town, and has a smart ass response to everything. Anyway, I liked it much better than the reviewers did.

4. The Simpsons Movie Game. I bet this game would have scored a lot higher if they had fixed 2 things- a really really nasty game camera and a hideous amount of pointless collectibles that are almost impossible to get with the camera troubles. The writing was some of the best I've seen, replaying some of the best episodes of the Simpsons and then moving into a game satire with anti-gaming politicians and levels spoofing such classics as Medal of Honor (Medal of Homer) Pokemon (Happy Happy Fun Game) Lord of the Rings (Neverquest) and Grand Theft Auto (Grand Theft Scratchy). It gets even better as the family saves their 2D counterparts from being recycled, then goes and confronts Matt Groening himself, and eventually goes even higher, to confront God, who turns out to be a gamer. The camera frustrations are worth it just to see the story.

5. Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. If not for the sloppy FPS controls this game would have been quite good. Er, and it was rather repetitive. So it's hard to recommend, but it is really quite funny. Matt Hazard has had dozens of games and they all come back to torture him in this 'sequel'. 2D Wolfenstein style Nazis can turn sideways and disappear, some enemies wield squirt guns (from a title called Soak-'em pronounced SOCOM), a 80th level wizard friend named Bill who talks like Captain Kirk. You want to see the story, but the game itself feels too much like a chore.

You guys know any good satire games?