I would officially like to retract anything I said about not liking Brutal Legend, or not being able to finish it. I take it all back. I love you, Brutal Legend. I'm sorry I said you were Pikmin. I was just disgruntled because Cory was making fun of my Snuggie.

Once I stopped thinking of Brutal Legend as a console RTS and started thinking of it as an action game with AI helpers (as Tim Schafer suggests, actually -- link has gameplay spoilers, of course), I warmed up to the gameplay immensely. And while I doubt I'll ever be a professional Stage Battler, I've had a lot more fun as the game has progressed.

I liked Pikmin.

For a true horror game, think two and a half words: "M-rated peripherals"

Nipple clips hooked up to a rumble pack and eletrical nodes you can hook up wherever that interact with your game.

Target audience = frats for hazing purposes, S&M crowd, and the Japanese.

But ... but that's what they are. Controlling multiple units in real time. You can call it an "action RTS" if you need to make the distinction, but I think that's splitting hairs when you're talking about the stage battles.

You'll also need to get further in the game, they get more complex and RTS-like in structure with larger map areas and more unit allocation considerations.

Interesting topic to choose considering Certis was basically left out of the conversation... anyway, Fatal Frame 2 was simply too frightening for me. Thank the gods I never played the first one.

Oddly enough, I didn't find Fatal Frame 2 nearly as terrifying as the first game, and granted, that was partly because I went into it already knowing what to expect re: cameras and creepy sacrifice and stuff. But I also felt that FF2 focused far more on the combat elements, which gives the player a feeling of being more in control--which, for me, really removed the fright from the game. It's when you're too weak to fight, when you have to run away more often than not, that's what I think makes for a truly fearful experience. The original Fatal Frame did that superbly (I quite literally had nightmares for weeks), as well as the original Resident Evil.

ETA: I thought Silent Hill 2 wasn't so much scary as disturbing. It's the difference between Alien (which terrified the bejeezus out of me) and the Saw movies (which are just plain gross).

Another game that deserves mention is The Dark Eye. Poe's stories played by very weird puppets, with unsettling music score and William S. Burroughs reading one of Poe's poems. A very memorable scary game for me.

I finished Silent Hill 2 on the morning of my wedding day, so I can fully corroborate this.

I've heard these called "real-time tactics" games, since there isn't as much of a long-term strategy involved.

I think it moved.

I've played very few games that could come close to be considered scary in my lifetime. The only game that ever truly scared me was the first Doom. I played it in the mid-90s with the lights turned off and headphones on, so that added to the scary factor. Plus, the gameplay was so new to me. I had never played anything like it before, so that may have also contributed to me being scared.

It's kind of the same with horror movies. After seeing Friday the 13th and Halloween, it was hard for other horror movies to scare me, because I had learned to expect the scary parts and had become desensitized to the dread/suspense that is supposed to build up to them.

Blaz Blue is also out for the PS3. You can even play it on the ps3 game on the psp using the weird connect thingy. During the podcast you said it was only for the xbox 360.

We really don't need to discuss how much further anyone's could, would or should move.

The Shalebridge Cradle from Thief 3-- An insane asylum and an orphanage rolled into the same building, which of course caught fire and killed all the residents.

The only logical conclusion? The building gaining a malevolent sentience and a personal investigation of the grounds in question. By you.

For anyone interested, PC Gamer did a wonderful article back in the day, available online, called "Journey into the Cradle".

1. I stopped playing Fatal Frame 2 because it was just too phenomenally creepy.

2. I think the e-mail about story in games is complaining more about *execution* than anything else. And I think he is for the most part right. Video games depend on using elements of other media to try and execute their stories (writing, graphics, sound design, dialog, plot, pacing) and most if not all fall short from a purely technical standpoint along these axes. Even the best games fall pretty short, and yes I'll include Bioshock in there. My general feeling is that video game stories are poorly paced, badly written, and generally adolescent, and this detracts from the overall experience. There are some exceptions to this, but I think I can count them on one hand.

But even with these weaknesses, video games still deliver an experience that can be enjoyable and entertaining and even emotionally involving. But the best of them center around that ill-defined concept that we call "gameplay" rather than narrative.

Going to find my flame suit now.