We don't normally review games here at Multiplayer, but this time we made an exception.

On Friday, I dealt with a moral dilemma: should I lend my early copy of "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" to a co-worker, whose nine year-old was having a Saturday night birthday/slumber party? Or should I take it home for myself and finally enjoy the game we've all been waiting years for?

While there were many comments arguing for both options (as well as a few inventive ones, like replacing the "Brawl" disc with the "Melee" one), I decided to lend the game to my co-worker for his kid. The only condition? I wanted photographic proof (see above) that they played the game, as well as a brief review from said birthday boy.

Here it is...

The review:

"This game is awesome because you get to play as cool characters and the arenas rock. My favorite part has so far been fighting the hand. I love the graphics and the fact that you can pause, zoom and take photos of the screens. There are a lot of characters, it's great fun. You can play for a long time without getting bored."

From my co-worker:

"Thank you so much. I am officially the coolest dad. They all called their friends to tell them that they were playing the game a day earlier."

You might have noticed that we got "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" a little bit early.

But I honestly haven't been able to play it much, because resident fanatic Jason Cipriano has been playing it. For research, of course.

Now that it's Friday, I will finally have a chance to take it home and enjoy it over the weekend. Cip will be dutifully waiting in line with all the other fans Saturday night until the midnight release at his local GameStop.

However, there's just one problem, which came up only moments ago...

An older co-worker of mine came into our office and asked if he could borrow the game. His nine year-old son is celebrating his birthday on Saturday night with a sleepover with several of his friends, and they'd love to play the multiplayer fighting game together.

B-b-b-but I want to play it.

What should I do? Should I be selfish and tell him "no"? Or should I let the kids enjoy it first? Maybe I should just give in and buy another copy?

Let me know what you think before 5pm EST, which is when I'll decide what to do.

[UPDATE March 7, 5:15pm]

Thanks to everyone that commented with their thoughts. After careful consideration, I decided to let my co-worker borrow the game over the weekend. I haven't decided if I should buy the game again or not; I may just play something else, like "Lost Odyssey." Either way, at least I'll know that I've made one nine year-old and his friends very happy...

[UPDATE March 10, 12:45pm] 

After spending the weekend with it, the nine year-old gave us his review.

Move over "BioShock." The 2007 video game that has moral quandaries that are twisting my gut is "Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn."

[Warning: SPOILERS ABOUT "Radiant Dawn" THROUGHOUT THIS POST]

If you've got a Wii and at least 20 hours of life to spare, I recommend playing "Radiant Dawn" yourself. You too may experience a series of ethical dilemmas that make killing Little Sisters -- or frying companion cubes -- seem no more tortured than a coin flip.

"Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn," like previous games in the series, is basically glorified chess -- if only chess pieces had little lives as fantasy characters and got stronger every time you played a new game with the same pieces. Oh, and if the pieces transformed into cooler pieces if you used them a lot. In the old "Fire Emblem" games, the pieces/units/characters would die and stay dead for the rest of the game if you put them in a bad spot. In October I both praised that death feature and expressed my concern that the removal of it from the Wii sequel's default play mode would undermine the emotional impact of the new game.

So I was coasting through the new "Fire Emblem" on Wii using the game's new save system, keeping all of my characters alive, lamenting the loss of the old death feature. This new game was a no-consequence breeze.

Then something happened that shocked me. And I realized that the "Fire Emblem" designers are still pros at emotionally manipulating their customers.

Let's put it this way:

Has any game ever required you to fight to the death against the very characters you just spent several hours leveling up?

Spoilers ensue, but, really, I highly recommend you read on, experience the game yourself, or both.

Read more...

Last week, we put up a video of "NBA Live 08" cover athlete Gilbert Arenas talking about playing "Halo 3."

He seemed concerned about getting his rank up on both "Halo 2" and "Halo 3" and said, "I'm pretty good, I'm pretty talented. I was actually beating the pros."

But after a close look at Arenas' "Halo 3" stats, Bungie forum members (and a few commenters here) noticed something fishy. If you look at his games, you'll see that he plays a bunch of Social Doubles where the other team quits out, leaving him in first place. To boot, the length of most of his matches is less than five seconds. Though we're not certain he's cheating, it does look suspicious.

The Washington Post confronted Arenas and got a confession, though the NBA star doesn't think he's doing anything wrong:

"It's a glitch," he explained. "It's a glitch in the game. I seen some kids that were like 600s, they won 600 Halo games and we only had that game for two weeks. And all the kids go to school. So I'm like, 'What the hell you all doing?' And they said that's what they doing, two-on-two." ... "That has nothing to do with me playing against other people, because when I play against other people I'm a 47 out of 50," he argued. "It has nothing to do with your [skill]. That's just like me playing basketball and I say, 'The first one to 100,000 shots...' and I go in there and say 'Yeah, I made 100,000, I won.' But when you go out there you can't shoot the ball."

And what does Bungie have to say about all this? Kotaku got a statement straight from the "Halo" makers themselves:

"As Gilbert Arenas himself admitted, his EXP is suspect. What isn't suspect, however, is his skill level, a far better gauge of a player's ability than the grinding of EXP. He is a level 42, which is pretty exceptional, especially considering all of the time he's likely putting into grinding."

Although what Arenas is doing isn't exactly ethical, does it matter? What do you think?