It’s silly, it’s corny, it’s cliche and it’s formulaic. Yes somehow Konami’s Marvel Trading Card Game for Sony PSP … works. Anyone familiar with Konami’s YuGiOh! series of trading card videogames knows the formula. It’s familiar, tried and true, about as innovative as sectional sofas.

And still, it works.

Maybe it’s because the game provides US gamers a set of traditional Marvel Comics characters to play through as; Marvel Comics generally has a broader appeal than the Japanese anime stuff most trading card games are based on. In fact, that probably plays a huge factor.

Maybe it’s that the game’s story is presented with comic book style still art rather than trying something more ambitious, but calling to mind comic books in the process, in a style similar to the Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel release from, I think, 2006.

Sure, there are subtle differences in the style of card game MTCG provides compared to YuGiOh … and veterans of the real-life Marvel Trading Card Game will obviously have a step up on newcomers, but … it works.

It’s a game I didn’t expect to like. But I do. It’s not gaming immortality by any means. But I like it.

Lots of people like to call videogame content ratings censorship, but no one’s preventing games with any type of content from being published. They all see the light of day. Under real censorship, they never would.

No, what ESRB ratings are is a guide as to what type of content to expect from a videogame. It’s meant as an aid to parents, and it’s no different than a movie rating from the MPAA. I mean, it’s not like, to buy an M-rated game, you’re require to submit to a DNA test for immigration, or anything. All ESRB ratings want to do is prevent kids 17 and under from getting hold of adult content games, just as there is a desire to keep them away from R-rated movies or access to pornographic magazines.

A lot of ivory-tower idealists will argue that kids can make their own choice, especially at 17, but most parents of teens know better. In teen years, kids only think they know it all. Of course, even some adults – especially liberals – think that of themselves long before they actually are mature. But since maturity is an individual process, and we all age at the same rate, guess what has to be the measure? That’s right, age.

Is 18 a magic number? No. Considering the behavior of most of the kids I went to college with, it should probably be more like 21, or 25. But the line has to be drawn somewhere, and since 18 is the age at which one can enlist in the armed services and go off to a foreign country to fight and die, I guess allowing them access to a little Grand Theft Auto and Hustler isn’t the worst thing in the world.

If you’re wondering what to give a gamer who already has every platform known to exist, there’s a simple answer. Where are the gonna sit while playing their PS3, 360, Wii, DS, PSP, and PC, not to mention their cell phone games and previous-gen consoles?

The answer, of course, lies in the kids furniture department of your local furniture or department store. One of my personal favorites is a spendy one that came out a couple years ago; it was PS2-compatible and offered leather-covered reclining comfort with beverage and magazine holders, as well as side-speakers and built-in Dual Shock 2 rumble functions.

Can you imagine playing Shadow of the Colossus in a contraption like that? It would add a far more engaging dimension than a simple vibrating controller. Each step a colossus took would be epic. Someday…

I’m a big fan of sports management sims and for many years now, my top title in that genre has been Solecismic Software’s Front Office Football and Front Office Football: The College Years. But I’ve found a new favorite.

Wolverine Studios, home to Gary Gorski, has a pair of titles that are genuinely addictive. Total College Basketball, despite the lack of an official NCAA license, puts a real flame to the feet of 2K Sports’ College Hoops 2K7, in terms of the depth of its coaching career mode and its sim features. Sure, it’s a 2D sim and lacks the 3D flash of College Hoops, but when it comes to sports management game play, this is the title that is the Coaster Furniture of the videogame world. Just as Coaster delivers small, practical, compact furniture solutions at a reasonable price, so does Wolverine deliver small, practical, company sports management sims on PC at a reasonable price.

Then there’s the soon-to-be-released update of Total Pro Basketball 2005… it’s gonna be called Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball. It has a load of new features that weren’t in TPB, and is to pro basketball what TCB is to college sports sims.

Hey, Gorski even put out Total Pro Golf, which strips out the 3D stuff and offers a career mode that’s just as fascinating as anything found in Tiger Woods PGA games. Sure, it’s a bit retro, but it’s fun and plays way faster than Tiger Woods PGA. I still have gridiron appreciation for Solecismic, but Wolverine Studios is a new name to watch for fans of this genre.

It’s nothing new to talk about, but I’m still not happy about Sony’s decision to make PlayStation 3 so expensive. It reeks of the arrogance that comes from winning two successive generations of home videogame console hardware wars. It’s the same sort of dynamic that Nintendo faced coming off the success of SNES, when they bucked the trend of CD-based gaming and belligerently released a cart-based Nintendo 64 system.

We all know how that turned out and Nintendo really has yet to recover. Could the same fate be in store for Sony, or does Ken Kutaragi and company have a few more tricks packed away in their emergency kits?

We’ve all heard the propaganda. PS3 delivers more technology in one box than the other two consoles combined. Granted. Fine. But you can just about buy both an Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii for the cost of a 60MB HD PS3.

The folks Sony are not thinking about are the mainstream audience. The ones who make sure that a videogame console isn’t just a 20 million unit niche product over five years, but a 70 million unit, top-selling cultural phenomenon like PSone and PS2 were.

Right now, the budget gamer is looking hard at Nintendo Wii despite the outdated graphics, and the general gamer who’s not well-off is appreciating the Xbox 360 more and more every day.

Sony won two console generations by insisting it’s not about graphics superiority, it’s not about technological superiority, it’s about games… and then delivering on that. But aside from some games that probably won’t see US release until 2008 at the earliest, like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII, the technological edge that PS3 holds over 360 is looking less and less attractive as the 360 seems like the common sense middle-ground for most gamers.

One has to remember, also, that the PSone and PS2 won their wars priced right about where their competition was priced. Introducing dramatic differences in console price, this generation, could change the whole dynamic of who ultimately wins.

I’m not a feminist, per se, but I have to admit that videogame sex symbols like Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame are hardly realistically proportioned. I mean, the typical build for Lara is nothing like Angelina Jolie, who played her in two feature films.

No, the typical build of Lara makes her look like a Calista Flockheart on a serious program of diet pills, yet still possessing enough weight to carry around Pamela Anderson-sized cleavage. Genetically impossible and, truth be told, not very appealing.

That said, the newest Lara Croft game, Tomb Raider Legend, is less egregiously exaggerated in its depiction of Lara, and best of all, the game is finally fun to play again. After a decade of disappointing sequels, it’s about time! At least the gameplay didn’t go on a diet this time out!

While Oblivion may be my RPG of the year, I do want to clarify that Final Fantasy XII is pure gaming bliss in its own right. Released nearly five years after the last “legitimate” Final Fantasy title, FFX (since I don’t count Final Fantasy XI as a legit title, as it was online-only and an MMORPG.)

While the wait was longer than any wait between titles in series’ history, the wait was certainly worth it. No burnout on the series when you wait that long for the next installment, that’s for sure, and the extra time gave Square-Enix a change to show a real progression from FFX. Final Fantasy XII is likely to go down as the most beautiful game ever pulled off on the aging PS2 platform, and certainly delivers almost as much eye candy as anything you’ll get on Xbox 360.

Graphically, the game is just outstanding and beautiful. About the only experience I can compare it to is the real-life beauty of the Outer Banks of North Carolina… if you’ve never been, it’s a place to make sure you get to at least once before your traveling days are behind you.

But I digress. Along with the beauty of the game, there’s a deep level of challenges, an immersive game world and plenty of memorable characters. Sure, it may not be quite the mammoth achievement that Oblivion is, but as a long-time series fan dating all the way back to the first Final Fantasy, all I can say is, thank goodness it’s finally here!

It’s been about six months, maybe more, since I first bought and began to play Elder Srolls: Oblivion for my Xbox 360. I never realized just how deep the game would be at the time I bought it. I’m currently on my second character (trashed my first one because I ended up not liking him), and about 80 hours into the game, and I haven’t even touched the main storyline yet, after emerging from that first dungeon. Some folks estimate that to do and see and discover everything in the game could take well over 500 hours.

That’s depth of gameplay! And the amazing thing about it is how well the experience wears on you. Heck, even great Final Fantasy titles get a bit repetitive after about 20 hours and you need some time away from them before going back and doing another 20, then another break before pushing through to the end. But Oblivion is different.

Maybe it’s because the game has so much freedom in it to do whatever you want, outside and away from the main storyline. You can join one of at least eight guilds, buy houses, invest in stores… heck, you can do just about anything in the game that yuo want to, except maybe hang out with a group of house painters and paint houses all day. And now that I’ve said that, just wait… the developers at Bethesda Softworks will find a way to squeeze even that into the upcoming expansion pack! Sure, it may not be the same as hanging out with the pros at CertaPro, but my point is that the game just offers 100s of hours of playable freedom without ever really forcing you to do something you don’t have an interest in doing.

I didn’t get the chance to write the review for Oblivion over at my gig at DigNews.com. And in a way, I’m glad I didn’t. Playing the game has never been a task, only a joy. As much as I love Final Fantasy XII on PS2, Oblivion is certainly looking to be my favorite RPG of 2006.

The latest assignment I had for DigNews.com was a review of the Eragon movie tie-in games. Sounds simple, right? Not really.

As it turns out, there are basically four versions of the game, not counting wireless phone games based off the movie. They include one version that appears on PC, PS2, Xbox and Xbox 360; one version that is exclusive to PSP; one version that is exclusive to Nindento DS; and one version that is exclusive to GameBoy Advance.

To make matters more complex, I couldn’t review the PC/PS2/Xbox/360 versions all together, because the graphics were too far apart. So I had to split them up so that the Xbox and PS2 versions were combined into one review, and the PC and 360 versions were combined in another review.

Five reviews, five different chances for the developers to “get it right” … and they all failed. Even on the high-end PC/360 version, the graphics were rush-jobbed and nothing to write home about. The basic gameplay was generic and uninspired. And although the games on handheld platforms were all different, none of them were very good at all.

I stand by my standard line on this one: Eragon is a better reading experience than it is a gaming experience.

For several years, I’ve been a videogame reviewer. My first work was for SegaWeb, which grew into a family of sites called GamerWeb. I became the editor of SonyWeb for as long as that site lasted.

In the fallout of that site going under, I became a reviewer for Dignews.com, where I’ve been reviewing videogames ever since. I do a fairly large number of reviews, primarily on PS2 and Xbox 360, but also on PSP and DS, as well as the occasional PC title. I sometimes also do features and previews.

This site will be where I air some of the stuff that doesn’t find its way into my work at DigNews.com. And just a place for some random thoughts, sometimes. Join me!