Update again

New this Tuesday:

• Star Wars Battlefront 2 review (PS2)
• The ESRB Ratings Widget (copyright ESRB, 2008) can now be found at the bottom of this homepage. The widget searches the official ESRB rating of a game title you type in. It also displays the game's content descriptors, which are the ESRB's way of flagging unsuitable content in games. It also lists what platforms the game is available for.

Future developments

• News-letter to accompany Tuesday updates
  
• YFG Styleguide -- has to be consistency somewhere

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Why you won't find it here...
Why there aren't reviews for many movie- or cartooon-based games at Your Family Games
Meghan Ventura

If you’ve glanced over the list of the reviews posted on Your Family Games, then you might have noticed the lack of movie- or cartoon-based games that are based on large, young-audience-targeting franchises. Yet, while in the videogame store or shopping online, you’ve probably noticed Spiderman and X-Men games or the Fantastic Four game that I saw entirely too many commercial spots for on TV when the movie was released. You’ve seen the unceasing deluge of Disney character or Spongebob-based games. You know what I’m talking about. Yet, you never see any of these games represented on Your Family Games.

And, until we hit the big-time, you probably won’t. This can be explained by two reasons.

First, most of these gargantuan franchises—whether the original source material comes from movie, comic book, TV show, book—they have an extremely difficult time being translated into an interesting and decent videogame. And, although there are exceptions to this rule, these games tend to stink. Badly. For example, Jaws Unleashed is a game with wonky controls and repetitive, flat gameplay that revolves around eating things. The videogame versions of Pirates of the Caribbean, Chronicles of Narnia, the Golden Compass and the Fantastic Four are just a sampling of movie games over the past few years that often don’t provide a fundamentally rounded gaming experience.

The second reason is the same reason I’ve been using to explain away almost every aspect of my life for the last one-and-a-half years: I’m a college student, and so are all of the writers. Even if we wanted to afford these typically terrible games, we couldn’t. Well, with careful budgeting we could, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to pay $30 to $50 for a game that offers flawed design and is targeted at 10-year-olds. Part of the fun of gaming is picking out games you think will appeal to you, or that someone has recommended to you. Yet, herein lies the challenge, because the amount of games you want to play always seems to outweigh the amount of money you can afford to spend. Most gamers have to be frugal, careful with their money.

Thus, I can’t in good conscience ask a student writer to buy and review of a sub-par Hannah Montanta game. So, I’m very sorry, but you won’t find any of these kinds of games reviewed here (with the exception of some Star Wars spin-offs, in which the Lego Star Wars and Star Wars Battlefront games have proven to be good fun. Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman also look like promising upcoming titles).

Another result of having the college-aged staff is that while we do feature some E for Everyone games, the current balance in our reviews section tends to slide towards the sometimes touchy T for Teen rating (13+) or the definitely-not-for-kids M for Mature (17+). When you take YFG’s mission of being a resource for family-friendly videogaming and compare it to this current trend in the site’s content, our writings definitely seem to contradict our end-all goal. But when writers send me the list of games they own, the games with the Everyone and Teen ratings get reviewed first. Always. We’re always trying to expand on suggestions for family-friendly content, rather than focus on warning parents about M-rated games that younger kids have no business playing anyway.

Money really does make the world go ‘round, and YFG simply doesn’t have enough to spend on titles that wouldn’t be enjoyable to play. This also makes the site look bad in the fact that we recommend nearly every game we’ve reviewed so far because, as poor college gamers, we would start to hate our beloved hobby if we always picked up games that weren’t worth buying in the first place.

Last quarter, I was talking with the journalism professor who has given me
advice for this site before (a good deal of which I haven’t yet put into practice, shame on me). I told him I was considering trying to partner up with a non-profit game research organization on campus called the GRID Lab. You know, because YFG is non-profit, too, I said.

And then came his correction. YFG isn’t a not a non-profit. We’re a commercial enterprise. We’re just not making any money.

Ah, how true.

Star Wars Battlefront II (PS2)

reviewer: Will Kirschner

Title: Stars Wars Battlefront II
Platform: Playstation 2, Playstation Portable (PSP), Xbox, Xbox 360, PC
Price: $19.99
ESRB Rating: T for Teen (13+)
Developer: Pandemic
Publisher: LucasArts

Age Range: 8+

Buy? Three questions you need to ask yourself before you answer this all-important question: Do you like Star Wars? Do you enjoy shooting games? Do you have friends? If you answered yes to more than one of these, this game is a must have. However, if you do not have anyone to play it with you might just want to rent it.

Summary: The storyline follows a veteran clone/stormtrooper through the events of Star Wars: Episode III to Episode VI. You will experience familiar things to Star Wars fans like the battle of Endor and also deal with side-plots like putting down a revolt on Naboo. You serve as part of the 501th legion, known to the most serious of Star Wars fans as Vader's personal legion, things are guaranteed to get hot and heavy.

Difficulty: This game's major flaw lies in the difficulty of the the two modes. Easy is a joke after 15 minutes of gameplay and hard gives even the most experienced players trouble. Since the prime joy of the game lies in the multi-player realm it isn't such a deal but it makes this game less of a classic.

Learning Curve: There is a very slight learning curve to this game. Basically, you just need to learn the controls to get the game down.

Total Hours of Play: 6 to finish the campaign on easy, 10 to finish the campaign on hard. Limitless hours of play in the multi-player mode.

Family Factor: This is a game that the whole family can play. Disregard the T-rating this game has simulated violence, that begins and ends with guys getting shot and crumpling(no blood, no gross noise, very clean violence). The plot themes are not adult either.

Review:
This game is, in my mind is the pinnacle of first-person shooter (FPS) for the PlayStation 2. It combines a winning format of Star Wars and action gaming. The system battlefront uses is unique for combat games. The teams start out with an equal number of troops and then they fight until one team destroys all of their troops. Now, there won't be hundreds of soldiers on the field but about forty soldiers give the game the feel of a giant battle. The battles are amazing in their simplicity. The controls are intuitive and make playing this game an even more enjoyable experience. The varying modes of play are nice. For example, Galactic Conquest brings the option of buying all your units and their upgrades and choosing your attacks with the same gameplay. You use credits you earn for victories to buy troop types and bonuses for units, starting with the most basic unit of stormtroopers and buying more advanced units as you progress. This can take six hours for you and your friends to finish, providing a night of fierce competition. There is an all-heroes mode, capture the flag, assault and a new mode which allows you to hunt some memorable beasts like the sand people or the giant spider like beasts from the Geonosian arena in Episode II.
Problems with this game are few but are big. The single-player experience would be best experienced in a single rent. The campaign is not exactly riveting and there is no character development to speak of. Playing this game with a friend, however, makes up for this because there is nothing better than the teamwork of taking the wheel of an AT-AT while a friend blows the rebel generator. The experience system is good but could use more bonuses. Most of the weapons have their own challenge, and make you want to try every class. The rank system is cool just because it gives you bragging rights.
Two things that are new from the old system are heroes and space combat. There is nothing cooler than blasting a TIE-Fighter while dodging turbolaser blasts from a Star Destroyer. There is a slight problem with the ships all being basically cookie-cutter clones in ability. If an X-Wing and a TIE could take the same damage the Rebellion would have ended in a week. I know that this presented a problem for the developers but I wish they would have gone a different way with it. For example, three TIES equal one X-Wing in point value. Making the ships all uniform is goofy,because to the hardcore Star Wars fan, TIE's should be falling faster than villains in a Rambo movie. The heroes are classic Star Wars canon stars like Vader,Yoda and my personal favorite Boba Fett. This game did a great thing with their huge amount of heroes and varying weapons. Getting to fry Luke Skywalker with a flamethrower solved years of issues I had with the original Star Wars. The enemy heroes can drive you insane with their ridiculous AI on the tougher mode.
This is another game that is a most have for the FPS lover. It is currently in my top ten list and I still play it weekly. A must have for any fan of Star Wars and a good pick for anyone else.

Related Games: Battlefront I, The Battlefield series, most FPS(first person shooters

New at Your Family Games...

Note from the editor:

Lately, I've been considering the completely sensical idea of having a regular update schedule for Your Family Games.

So for now, I've settled on Tuesday. Why? Weekends are a good time to sort out extracurricular stuff and, by Tuesday morning, I should have survived Monday's six-hour onslaught of class. This new, long overdue strategy is based off my current mash-up of tips I've been given for building a website:

More updates -> more visitors/traffic -> people who may be interested enough in the blog to visit again -> people who might sign up for a newsletter -> newsletter consistently reminds them to come back -> potential regular audience!

*Ta-Dah* That easy? Right?

Anyway....

This Tuesday, we have reviews for The Orange Box (Xbox360) and Lumines 2 (PSP) online. So with Tuesdays, I plan to include either a short column, interesting newsbits from the videogame industry or both. I will have my first column posted later this evening.
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