One Liners

Galcon Fusion

RTS simplified, purified, intensified, addictified.

Jade Empire Limited Edition

Magic Kung Fu fighting to save the Empire.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Player pursues purloined president by messing up Mexico.

Braid

What if you could go back and do it over?

Persona 3 FES

How can we improve this hundred hour game? I know, let's add content!

Indigo Prophecy

It's what happens when game developers eat peyote halfway through producing a game.

Forza Motorsport 2

Race. Win. Acquire. Upgrade. Unlock. And no stinking license tests nor Kudos challenges.

Mercenaries

GTA, but with mercenaries and North Korea.

Max Payne

Dyspeptic detective depopulates designer drug dealer demographic.

Perfect Dark

Corporations, A.I. and Gray Aliens, oh my.

One Liners

Descent 3: Mercenary

Yes, Mr. Dravis.

Descent 3

Die, Dravis!

Serious Sam II

Serious Sam, prettified.

Bejeweled 2 Deluxe

Time-sink trance.

Too Human

Slide attack!

Namco Museum 50th Anniversary

Galaga!

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

Kane is back, as are silly overacted cutscenes.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed

Hooked.

Star Wars Starfighter: Special Edition

Better than the prequel movies, though that's not saying much.

Eternal Sonata

Chopin's dying dream is a high-fantasy JRPG?

One Liners

Project Snowblind

One man army blows up Hong Kong real good.

Tomb Raider Underworld

Lara Croft blows up her own mansion??!!

Darkwatch

Old West Painkiller.

Fallout Brotherhood of Steel

Diablo, Fallout style.

Fallout Tactics

Fallout with squads.

Half-Life: Source

Half-Life plus physics.

Halo 2

More Halo, but with pop-in and an abrupt ending.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Diablo, with superheroes.

Okami

Beautiful odyssey through Japanese mythology.

Universe at War: Earth Assault

Five-cornered fight between humans, aliens, AI robots, powerful ancient Earth-dwellers, and dodgy framerates.

One Liners

Ridge Racer 6

Drifting into victory.

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney

Hob check shun!

Lost Odyssey

Dino-men vs. the pull-ring hat army.

Fable: The Lost Chapters

More fables.

Ridge Racer V

Understeers, understand?

Persona 4

Can we make this game any longer? Yes!

Prince of Persia 2008

Fun flowing free-running.

Fallout 3

Leave It to Beaver meets Mad Max.

Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories

Card combat craziness.

Banjo Kazooie

Gotta collect 'em all. Notes and jiggies and coins, oh my!

XLink Kai, The PlayStation 2, And Gotchas

Recently I and a distant friend were trying to start a game of Project Snowblind on the PS2. We discovered that the Internet servers had been shut down long since. But the game supports LAN play, so we started looking for LAN-over-Internet solutions. At first we tried Hamachi, but discovered that nothing we could do with that tool would bridge our two LANs so that our PS2s could see each other. Next we tried XLink Kai. This we eventually got to work (and work well), but there are some gotchas which I'll list here for the benefit of others who may want to play PS2 LAN-enabled games over the Internet.

1. As of this writing, XLink Kai version 7.4 does not work with PlayStation 2 consoles.

   Instead, install version 7.3.1.7. The user interface is far more confusing, but it definitely works.

2. Kai's instructions are misleading on a critical point. They say that to get Kai to recognize your console, you should search for a game to join. This is true enough, for games that get their network address when they search for a game.

   What actually happens is that when the console asks for an IP address from DHCP, XLink Kai assigns the address before the router can get to it. It's the point at which Kai assigns the console an address that it recognizes it.

   In the case of a game like Project Snowblind, the game connects to the network and asks for an IP address before the user makes a choice whether to host a game or search for one.

   So it's vital that Kai already be running when starting multiplayer on a PS2 game. It's easier to just reset the PS2 after starting Kai. This guarantees that Kai will be running whenever the console asks for an IP address.

It's also worth noting that I successfully ran Kai in Windows XP, which was running in a VirtualBox virtual machine set for bridged networking.

Hamachi And Console Gaming

I tried the other day to set up PlayStation 2 console gaming via Hamachi with a far-away friend. We could never get it to work.

Since game consoles cannot run Hamachi clients, we needed some method for bridging our LANs across Hamachi so that packets sent from one console would show up on the other LAN.

The first thing we tried was using Windows Bridging to connect both our real LANs to Hamachi's virtual one. Broadcasts and pings sent from one LAN did not show up on the other.

The second thing we did was to set up static routes from one LAN to the other across Hamachi, according to a document he found on the Hamachi wiki. Again, broadcasts and pings did not go, even when we turned off (briefly) our firewalls.

Since neither of these methods worked, we gave up on using Hamachi for console gaming, and turned to the dedicated solution: XLink Kai.

One Liners

Gateway II Homeworld

More Heechee clickee.

God of War: Chains of Olympus

Kratos is angry again. Who would've guessed?

Gears of War

Look out! Cliché overload!

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3

Manapults!

Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath

Kane saves face. Well, half.

R-Type Dimensions

Classic hardcore punishing shmup.

Silent Hill: Homecoming

Little Brother is watching you.

Enchanted Arms

Magic guns.

On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2

Perverted Produce Penetrators.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

The Joy of Sax.

One Liners

Tron 2.0

Disk? Oh, tech!

Tribes Vengeance

Fuel dump frenzy.

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch

Gordon Freeman was killed by a flying toilet.

Far Cry

Dr. Moreau's Deathmatch Delight.

Duke Nukem 3D

Damn, I'm looking pixellated.

Half-Life: Opposing Force

Yo Adrian!

Half-Life: Blue Shift

Alien: Oh no, it's a security guard! Run!

Half-Life

Physics geek defeats alien horde with crowbar.

Frederik Pohl's Gateway

Point. Click. Explore the Heechee universe.

One Liners

Sacrifice

Soul food.

Lure of the Temptress

Pixel hunt.

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and the Damned

Do not operate motorcycle with face contacting tire. Unless it's someone else's face.

Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage

Shoot Chinese soldier. Replenish ammo. Repeat until bored or finished.

Exit 2

Taking escapology to the next hundred levels.

X-COM: Terror from the Deep

UFO = Underwater Flying Object.

X-COM: UFO Defense

SHADO war.

Castle Crashers

Merry mayhem.

Beneath a Steel Sky

Grim tale set to cheerful music. Say what?

Unreal Tournament 2004

Run. Shoot. Kill. Die.

One Liners

Halo Wars

They're everywhere!

Halo: Combat Evolved

FPS comfort gaming.

Empire Earth

Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Mindworms! Bzzt bzzt.

Age of Empires II Gold

Lift that barge. Tote that bale. Build that army. Invade that neighbor.

Duke Nukem 3D

Damn, I'm looking good.

Burnout 3: Takedown

Yes, officer, I do know how fast I was going. Road-blurringly, cheek-ripplingly, face-meltingly, doors-blowing-offly fast.

X-COM: Interceptor

Controls as awkward as a nerd's first date.

X-COM: Apocalypse

Unremarkable Steam sale filler.

Tomb Raider Underworld: Beneath the Ashes

Undiscovered ancient tomb beneath tomb raider's mansion? Well isn't that convenient.

One Liners

Killzone

Server still up. Multiplayer still fun.

flOw

Eat or be eaten.

Fallout 2

More mutant merriment.

Fallout

War never changes. Humans, however, mutate.

Darwinia

Paper dolls vs. origami snakes.

Armagetron Advanced

MS Office apps ride light-bikes when they're not working... who knew?

Alien Hominid

The original Flash game. At least I can get groin-kicked for free with this version.

Tomb Raider Underworld: Lara's Shadow

Lara's more badass evil clone.

Prince of Persia: Epilogue

Doing my part to make the DLC problem worse.

One Liners

Alien Hominid HD

This game is hard. Hard. Did I say hard?

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

More Riddick, but with guns.

Desktop Tower Defense

Dune 2000, but more boring.

Dead Space

I dismember you!

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

I'a Dagon!

Peggle Extreme

Half-Life 2 themed Peggle demo.

X-COM: Enforcer

What, I have to shoot some more aliens?

Mona the Assassin

Don't mess with Mona.

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

Short tech demo.

Frozen Bubble

Bubble Bobble boosted.

One Liners

Titan Quest

Click. Click. Click click. Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click ...

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

I have to drive how far to get to a save point?!

Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles

Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, all in one convenient package.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars

Eco, Brown, or Spielberg? We'll see.

Project Gotham Racing 4

Kudos! Again.

Halo 3

Bad cyborg!

Bully: Scholarship Edition

Preppie pranksters.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

The dark... My favorite.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot

Oil men.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

If you build it, it will go.

One Liners

Syberia II

More mechanical mystery.

Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow

Good PSP shooter. Yes. Good. Deal with it.

Speed Racer

Like WipEout, but with cars. And anime style talking head text balloons.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

More Brothers in Arms.

Infinite Undiscovery

Infinite Unexcitement.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

Pretty prequel.

Devil May Cry 4

No one can escape... the claw!

Medieval II Total War

Total strategy.

Rez HD

Trippy musical rail shooter. Great aiming system for consoles.

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Not a new game; just FFT, portable.

One Liners

Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories PSP

Fun if you like GTA. I like GTA.

Star Wars Republic Commando

Cloning around.

Mirror's Edge

Parkour bliss. Shooting not so much.

Flatout 2

Demolition derby delight.

Battlefield 1942

Fun camping the enemy spawn point with a tank.

World in Conflict Complete

WW3 strategy.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

Giant ice bugs and mechs.

GUN

Fun Old West shooter/RPG.

Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars

A different perspective on GTA. Still GTA. Fun.

The Orange Box: Portal

The cake is a delicious lie.

One Liners

Civilization Revolution

Pure. Simple. Fun.

Bejeweled 2 Deluxe

Endless mode? Gem-matching trance.

Sins of a Solar Empire

Epic space battles.

Frontlines: Fuel of War

A game I play to escape everyday worries about politics, economics, the environment, dwindling energy supplies... oh wait...

Battlefield: Bad Company

"Hold the phone. Did you just say I can blow up anything?"

Tales of Vesperia

Pretty JRPG.

Ico

Heart-tugging protectiveness among lonely magnificence.

Guitar Hero 2

Rock out with the band. And practice.

Guitar Hero

Rock out with the band.

Fable II

Good dog!