Here I'm going to list my top 20 favourite levels in games I've played so far. Some might seem a little surprising, and I'm sure nobody will agree with me on certain ones, but each has been picked for a reason, and I will explain why. Be warned, spoilers feature prominently in this list. So, in no particular order:

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice For All - Final Case

Not only is it by far the longest case in the game, it is also one of epic proportions. It's a seven hour struggle that swings from hostage situations, to trying to find you own client guilty, to desperately buying time to save a friend's life, to sweeping a room full of teddy bears for bugs, to… well, you get the picture. The spectacle of it is increased by two different endings that are very clearly defined as 'good' and 'bad'. Exhilarating, exhausting, but most of all, excellent.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - The End

In a game so full of incredible boss battles and moments it could have filled this list all by itself, it's tough to pick just one section of this masterpiece to enter into this list. So it's after some deliberation I find myself remembering the 2 hour sniper fight with pensioner The End as my favourite moment in this game, or maybe any. A test of endurance and skill, you'll soon realise this isn't going to be over any time soon (unless you use one of the many amusing and innovative methods to cheat your way past it.) You'll soon be looking for the glint of sun reflected off of the lens of your foe's binoculars, or using the thermal goggles to track his footprints, or maybe even donning a crocodile cap and hiding in the river to trick him… But it's the thing that follows this physically and mentally exhausting fight that's really the icing on the cake; a four minute ladder climb with nothing to do but stare at the wall and listen to the quiet vocal solo. That, game designers, is called pacing.

Lylat Wars/Star Fox 64 - Venom

Lylat Wars/Star Fox 64 was a game shockingly ahead of it's time. It had multiple routes through the game subtly determined by how well you performed in it's levels, and it introduced rumble and a dogfighting multiplayer mode. The final level was a pure revenge mission which had you racing towards the villain of the piece, Andross. An inredible example of on rails gameplay preceded one of gaming's best boss fights, and it was all capped off by the ability to seemingly raise Fox's dad from the dead. But only if you were good enough.

Shadow of the Colossus - Final Colossus

In a game entirely based around making you feel guilty for doing the only thing you could, by the end of the game you were feeling suitably mentally worn down, especially as your only companion in the whole game, your horse Agro, has just died in order to save you (or so you are led to believe..) So it's wearily, but with a sense of awe and dread, that you begin to scale this enormous level cleverly designed as an astonishing looking monster. Will you be able to bring yourself to kill it? Well, there's no alternative…
Guitar Hero 3 - TtFaF

In arguably the most punishing game in both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series, having just bested the likes of Metallica's One and Slayer's Raining Blood, you would think that you had beaten the best Neversoft had to offer. Well, not exactly. To truly finish the game you had this impenetrable wall of notes to contend with, and it was one that started with an intro that required many players to import real guitar techniques (ie tapping) into their plastic Les Pauls just to get past the intro. And if you managed to get past that, there was still an umpteen number of finger frazzling solos to get through. Yeah, good luck with those…

Star Wars Battlefront - Bespin Platforms

Probably the strangest choice on the list so far, this open level was a firm fan favourite for Battlefront players. Mainly because it consisted of two choking walkways leading to one central platform, where one grenade could send you flying off of the level into the seeming infinity of Bespin's atmosphere. It's incredibly exhilarating battling your way through an enemy infested corridor in order to reach the key central control point. At least until a wild grenade ends your fun in an instant. Level design at it's best.

Grim Fandango - Rubacava

In a game filled with great areas to, err, point and click in, it's surprising that there was such a clear favourite in my mind. The harbour city of Rubacava is the site of the longest single portion of the game, and it's one of the most enjoyable places to explore in any videogame ever. As soft jazz music plays subtly in the background, you'll make your way through the town and encounter numerous film noir-esque characters along the way, all smoking and wearing berets, some even calling you incomprehensible slang names. The actual gameplay here is genius, too, with a particular highlight being locking a waiter into a cupboard and listening to his many different cries for freedom. Or maybe I'm just sadistic.

Zelda: OoT - Hyrule Field

Frequently hailed as the greatest game of all time, the one thing everybody who has played this will remember is the first time you ride into the sprawling Hyrule Field on your humble steed, Epona. As the obligatory 'epic' music kicks in, you'll struggle to contain your excitement as you try, and fail, to find a fault or barrier in this huge playground. Well, maybe you won't today, in the world of ultrarealism and fully fledged open worlds, but back in 1998 it was a real shock.

Resident Evil 4 - Village Opening

Best Opening Level Ever? Probably. Nothing quite sets the tone for the desperate battle for survival that RE4 is, like being chased through a rural Spanish village by angry farmers who are aiming their pitchforks at you. And just when you might have found a 'safe' place to hole up for a while, you'll hear the terrifying sounds of a chainsaw revving up, before the door of wherever you're hiding is kicked down by a guy brandishing the aforementioned chainsaw and wearing a bag on his hand. Don't act quickly enough, and you'll 'get to' see one of the most spectacularly brutal deaths in gaming. So yeah, it's a good level.

Half Life 2 - Turret Standoff

While most would pick Ravenholm as their standout moment from this incredible game, I've decided to go for the desperate standoff in the prison during which your main weapon is a gravity gun. Well, a gravity fun that can lift up gun turrets and place them in front of your rapidly advancing foes, conveniently mowing them down so you don't have to. What starts off as a relatively simple puzzle of sorts soon becomes the most intense, elaborate Tower Defence game you'll ever play. And if that sounds like I'm trying to belittle it, then be assured that I mean that in the most praiseworthy way possible. Panic-inducing chaos at it's best.

So, that's the first 10. Look out for part 2 sometime soon!

What with exams and revision taking over my life lately, I've found less and less time for 'hardcore' console games. So I've naturally been drawn towards the Nintendo DS, and it's expansive library of bite sized adventures. Now, I would still definitely consider myself a 'hardcore gamer', so I'm only playing games I deem suited to my style, and not patronising. In the hopefully-regular blog, I'd like to write about an obscure, mature, 'hardcore' DS game I've been playing. This week, I'm going to start with what could well prove to be my favourite game on the system for the foreseeable future; Hotel Dusk: Room 215.

You play boozy ex-cop Kyle Hyde, who quit the job after shooting his partner. He's now a salesman, but he works for an old contact of his from the force. If this doesn't sold film noir enough yet, it's set in 1979, it's all in a beautiful black and white art style, and you're looking for someone- the aforementioned partner. Now, if you're the kind of person that found the cut scenes in Gears of War 2 too boring and drawn out, this is most certainly not the game for you. It clocked in, for me, at a meaty 17 hours of gameplay, which was comprised of about 90% talking to people, and 10% puzzle solving. And that is a LOT of talking.

So it's good that the dialogue is just so good. You'll question whether this really was made in Japan, as the classic American detective delivers cutting one liners so perfectly fitting the tone of the game, and the film noir genre it represents alone on the DS, that you'll think it had to be penned by an American mystery novelist. The story is superb, and, despite a slow start (read; VERY slow start) really gets its hooks into you, and it does come to a very satisfying conclusion, with, surprisingly, alternate endings. If you're looking for a good mystery novel, and you own a DS, you might just be better off picking this up. To reinforce just how like a book the game is, you hold the DS on its side, in the style of Brain Training. You really get into the zone with the game after a while, and you'll be surprised at how quickly your playtime clocks up, as you get into a 'just one more plot reveal' kind of thinking.

The puzzles are good, too, and are very much grounded in the real world, with the most 'outrageous' thing you have to do being, very minor spoilers, breaking down a wall with a hammer. They're logical, and some make great use of the system, some even requiring you the close the DS and open it again. Perhaps because they are so logical, they are a little easy, but it felt to me as if the puzzles were there to intersperse the plot development, rather than the other way around.

All in all, Hotel Dusk is a great play/read, and one that you will struggle to put down after the first hour or so. It features easily the most mature story on the DS (and by mature, I don't mean violent or with sexual content…) and some of the best developed characters in any game I've played. However, the admittedly crawling pace will be a (perhaps justifiable) turnoff for those with shorter attention spans. But that would be a shame, as those who get into it are sure to find a rewarding, lengthy adventure with a great ending. It's also cheap now, being over two years old, so it's definitely worth a try if you like your games to have a little more brains than they do brawn. Now, to close with a terrible pun, this is one hotel you won't want to check out of! A-ha.

In November 2006, Epic Games released their masterpiece Gears of War to critical acclaim and, more importantly, huge sales. Almost exactly two years later, Gears of War 2 is ready. The game is, once again, critically acclaimed, garnering an impressive 9 from us here at Hookedgamers, and selling 2 million copies on its first day of release. The considerably online following the original had gathered lapped it up, and set about tearing apart the noobs of the world in their new maps and modes. But, one month on, should we just step back for a second and start to look carefully at one thing; namely, the broken online multiplayer?

Now, I'm sure you've read the numerous articles and blog posts on how long the matchmaking system takes to find a game, or how there are numerous glitches already being found and exploited, but there's one aspect I haven't really seen come under much fire; the gameplay itself.

Gears of War had a gun with a chainsaw on it. That same chainsaw is Gears' equivalent of Star Wars' lightsaber, and everybody seems to love it. Ridiculous attachments are fine when you're ripping Locust up from arse to face in the campaign, but take the saw online and it's a different beast entirely. The original Gears neatly negated the chainsaw's power by making it incredibly easy to stop somebody who was brandishing one in your general direction- hit them once, with any weapon, and they would stumble backwards a step or two, lethal melee weapon withdrawn, and they needed to wait for a second to get it going on. Gears 2 spits in this mechanic's face, instead opting for a mildly ridiculous alternative; the chainsaw is quite often unstoppable.

I realise that I am now likely to face the flurries of. 'noob!' and the, 'you suck!'s, but no, I do not. I'm just one of the 2 million victims of the ridiculous chainsaw that threatens to ruin Gears of War 2 online for me. To give a few examples, there have been times where there has been a guy in the cover opposite me, In Gears 1, we could have had a respectable shootout, maybe getting support from our teammates, but overall attempting to out-think, or at least out-shoot, each other. Gears 2 is having none of that. Epic know that the casual gamer that they so desperately want to ensnare wants ACTION! with a capital A, and so this scenario in Gears 2 plays out accordingly.

So, instead of the shootout I wanted, he will suddenly pop out of cover. 'Great,' I'll think, getting my active and aiming at him with my shottie. I'll hit him once or twice, but he'll get round to my side of the cover, still revving his chainsaw. 'Oh, it'll be fine,' I think ignorantly. 'I'll just get him once from here with my shotgun, and he'll either die, or at least lower his chainsaw.' I happily empty a round or two into the guy, but he strides on towards me and proceeds to tear me a new arsehole. 'Oh well, that was obviously just down to lag, he can't just have walked through my shots like that and kept his chainsaw revved.' Well, I'm wrong again. The amount of times I've done this to people, or had it done to me, is insane, and needs to be rectified.



But I don't think Epic can really fix this. The chainsaw is so integral to the online that any patch they put out could potentially worsen the problem, and to be honest any worse than this is just comical. So, fine, we're stuck with a broken chainsaw, at least everything else is retained from the original, and is consequently going to be fine.

But no, wrong again. I've never had a problem with spawn camping before; I found the satisfaction you get from breaking free of the enemies' trap to be a worthy reward for the annoyance you suffer during the camping. But Gears 2 takes this one step further. Now, I have only experienced this on one map (Pavillion) and in one game mode (Submission), but I see no reason why it would fail on other maps. The enemy team will eventually work their way into our unchanging spawn point, and they'll just stand their with their chainsaws revved. Now, to all those who are about to tell me how badly I suck, listen up. I spawned and immediately entered into the all too familiar 'getting chainsawed' animation. I was killed so quickly that my HUD did not even appear. I tried to get around this by tapping A to roll away the instant I spawned, but there's not much you can do if you are literally spawning onto a revved chainsaw. However, this is probably patchable, so I can at least hope for redemption here.

Another point of contention I have is the ability to 'plant' grenades as if they were mines, one of the many additions to the sequel. I will preface this with the fact that it is my fault, but still; the grenades are often invisible, and they only give you the warning noise for about half a second before exploding off one of your limbs. I understand giving a visual indicator or longer escape time would negate the point of using this feature, but I feel entitled to complain when I've been blown up by a grenade stuck to my spawn with about a half second to react.

I could go on about Gears 2 and how I will happily return to the original once I've had my share of achievements and matches, but I think I'll have got my point across, and given people enough material to insult my skill for, so I will sign off with a quote from one of my friends who had just gone on a chainsaw killing spree; 'You know something's wrong with the game when you feel guilty for killing somebody a certain way…'

The amount of times I've been yelled at by my friends to 'get CoD4, because it's awesome!' led me to believe that they were speaking the truth, and that maybe Infinity Ward's modern shooter really was the better FPS than my beloved Halo 3. So, a week later, I unwrapped my Amazon package and slotted the disc into my 360 once again; I'd bought the game before, when it came out, beaten it on Veteran and sold it, not really caring that much for the online portion. But now, pressured into buying it again, I was expecting big things. Shortly after playing it for a few hours, I realised my friends were all being paid off by Infinity Ward to lie to me: this game sucks.

Now, I know the entire gaming world will disagree with me, but the game takes no skill whatsoever to exceed in. One anecdote which proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt is the fact that when I briefly left my seat to answer the phone, I came back to find I had two extra kills. Yes, I was being a noob and using martyrdom, but the fact that you can succeed at the game without actually playing it suggests to me that there are some stronger forces at work here than anything even remotely resembling skill.

As me and my equally frustrated friend moved through multiple game types and maps, we were getting killed in more and more awe inspiringly stupid and unskilful ways; we were shot from out of the map, instantly when we spawned, we were punished for getting kills (see Martyrdom), we got killed in less than one shot on multiple occasions, although that may be down to lag, and we generally were shown a slideshow of everything wrong with CoD4, with the main participants being the entire community still playing it.

My friends' complaints against Halo ranged from 'it's too easy to get kills', 'it takes ages to kill someone!' (contradictions for the win), 'once you get the power weapons, you've won' and finally, the old 'the game takes no skill.' Well, for the first one, they are comparing this to CoD4, where you can kill somebody without playing. For the second argument they have, that is because most of my friends are bad at the game and do not understand that aiming for the head actually does work. For the third argument, if somebody picks up the shotgun, of course charging at them at close range is going to hand them an easy victory. Finally, if CoD4, with it's spawn campers, glitchers, ridiculously overpowered perks, fanatic followers and ridiculously strong weapons takes skill, then Halo 3 takes more skill than playing Through the Fire on Flames on real guitar at the same time as winning a Gold medal in the Olympics Long Jump, 1500 metres and every event in the Paralympics, whilst building a time machine to go back in time and paint the Mona Lisa before Picasso did it.

To summarize, the mass market has for some reason bought into CoD4, and latched onto it like superglue, defending it's questionable honour at every turn. They claim it takes huge amounts of skill to succeed at, whilst Halo is for noobs and perks are the 'greatest innovation in gaming since the analogue stick.' Well, as much as these people are entitled to their opinions, they can be factually discounted until their argument devolves into simply calling people noobs, incredibly ironically in my opinion. At least in Halo you have to be playing to get kills.

As we move now into the summer months, will we be facing yet another drought, like we experienced for most of last year's summer? BioShock filled the gap nicely in '07, but what will we have this year, if anything, to keep ourselves busy?

Well, Ninja Gaiden II just came out, and you can look out for the Hooked Gamers review coming very shortly. It's a great action game, and one that any 360 owner should pick up if they find themselves with nothing to play.

Then, of course, is Metal Gear Solid 4, which is sounding like it's going to be long enough to fill up the entire summer on it's own. The game's shaping up very well, and look out for the Hooked Gamers review of it coming in the next two weeks.

Also for the 360, and PS3 is Alone in the Dark, the newest entry in the long running horror series. it's looking extremely frightening and incredibly ambitious, and is a must for fans of the previous games in the series.

With 360 and PS3 covered, that leaves PC and Wii. The PC just had Age of Conan, which is going the right way about becoming the first World of Warcraft beater we've ever seen. It's vast world and interesting differentiation between single and multiplayer are stunning PC gamers worldwide.

And then there was one. The Wii doesn't really have any significant first party software coming out that we know of anytime in the near or distant future, with just a slew of cash-in party games coming out for the system. Wii owners had better hope Nintendo announce something at E3, or they might have to branch out to another system to satisfy their gaming needs.

Overall, there is no shortage of games to play this Summer, except seemingly on the Wii, which still has ports of 360 and PS3 games coming. Enjoy your summer, and know that there will be games to play when you come back from the beach!

As somebody who would typically be branded as a hardcore gamer, I am started to see a worrying trend in the games of today which immediately set alarm bells ringing for me. I think the image at the start of this post might give you a little hint as to what I am talking about, coupled with the title being a summary of my fears. Gaming seems to be going very casual.

With the success of Nintendo's Wii and DS, gaming has truly broken that barrier standing between it and the 'regular' human being, allowing it to reach far more people than the antisocial hermits we hardcore gamers are often seen as. Suddenly games are about everyday life, and apparently we don't get enough of that in, well, everyday life.

The bestsellers on the Wii are Wii Sports (basically by default) and Wii Play. Anybody who has played these games will attest to the fact that they are fun and easily accessible to everyone, but this comes with the tradeoff that they have almost no depth or replayability past the first hour or so of playing. However, ridiculous amounts of sales are testament to the fact that these arguably worse, shallower games are what the public want, and that gaming is moving away from it's roots.

Now, this wouldn't seem too alarming, if it weren't for the fact that the success of casual games has put dollar signs in every publisher's eyes in place of their pupils. 'These shallow, cheap to make games are selling really well. What we should do is capitalise on this, and release our own slew of equally shallow, cheap to make games. This is a surefire scheme to transfer my pupils into real money for me to roll around in. And the hardcore gamers won't be able to do anything about it, since they're in such a minority. Huzzah!' How many times have marketing execs had these thoughts, I do not know, but I'd bet on it being more often now than it was even a year ago.
If this trend continues, then what we hardcore guys are looking at is the slow erosion of the levels of skill and practice required to play our most loved titles, until eventually everywhere you look in a games store will yield nothing but 'casual' games. My message to devs: casual doesn't have to mean shallow.

But then with every cloud is a silver lining, and in this case the silver linings are few and far between, if still in existence. The fact that so many people are playing casual games could lead to the unlikely outcome of these people wanting to progress onto more challenging titles, helping to sell more of the Half Lifes and Metal Gears of the gaming world. However unlikely this seems, consider the fact that if even one in every ten casual gamers advances their gaming to the next level, this will still probably be more people than those who start playing hardcore games unprompted.

Another plus point is that with every fat kid who loses weight because of Wii Fit, the press will concentrate less and less upon violence and sex in videogames, and more and more upon how 'Wii Sports saved my son from obesity'. Okay, maybe we're not quite at that level yet, but we should see games becoming less of a scapegoat for crime and bad behaviour over the coming years.

So basically, casual gaming is fine, if not a very good thing, for gaming, unless it starts eating into more hardcore experiences, which has slowly started to happen. There is certainly a market for both types of games, and as long as developers realise that their game will still sell even if it uses more than four buttons.

With all of Denis Dyack's talk of a one console future, it got me wondering if I would actually want that to happen. So let's look at the positives, which are numerous and obvious. It would be less money spent on one machine that was the equivalent of the three we have now, it would mean there would be no fear of missing out on an eagerly anticipated game that was exclusive to a system you didn't own, it would mean that every company would work together on making every aspect great, and it would mean one gamerscore system (the clincher. ;) I jest.)

But then there are some significant negatives. I personally like the idea of different consoles targeted at different audiences, with the Wii not to my tastes at all, and the 360 and PS3 perfectly catering for my gaming needs. It might also mean the death of the PC, which might not be able to withstand the combined might of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. But most importantly, it would mean no more original ideas or IPs.

It's true that competition fosters creativity, and in a one console future, you wouldn't need any awesome exclusive games to sell your system, as it's the only one on the market. Would we have seen Mario 64, Metal Gear Solid, even Halo if there was only one console? No, and that would probably get rid of what is good about gaming; you can have new experiences with every game you play. If there was only one console, then every genre could just have one franchise that got yearly updates, and we would have no choice but to buy them if we wanted to play anything. Which we would. So if you're thinking that this would be a great idea, then you're only partially right.

It would be fantastic for developers and publishers, as they'd never need to innovate again. But for us, as gamers, it could be the worst thing that could possibly happen to our beloved industry.

Hey everyone who might be reading this. I'm Marvellous G, I assume the newest staff member here at Hookedgamers, and I just wanted to say a quick 'hello'. I'm mainly a console gamer *holds up flame shield* but I'm interested in all kinds of games. Well, good ones. I'm ridiculously biased towards any Metal Gear game, so don't believe any articles I write about MGS4. ;) So yeah, I'm the noob, don't be too mean to me as I fumble around cluelessly. I'll see you guys around on the site, and look out for my articles! Enjoy the site!