Saturday, March 13, 2004

Does Bonk count?

Today I will talk about a topic that really pissed me off... and in the process, I will anger Nick. Win/win situation, I'd say.

I was at Nick's place a few days ago. There, in his room, was an issue of PSM. Now, I don't read video game magazines by rule. The rule is: if the magazine sucks, it isn’t worth my time. Ever since Next Generation became Next Gen I have not been able to find a decent, well written video game magazine for adults. But seeing a new PSM on his bed, with pretty pictures and colors, I couldn't resist.

There, on the cover of the magazine, was the headline "The Top Game Series of All Time!!!!!" or something close, maybe only three exclamation points. It may have also said "Exclusive" somewhere in there.

While leafing through the mag to find the article, I started hypothesizing about what would be on the list. In my ignorance, the first thing out of my mouth was "It's either Mario or Zelda, I wonder who they'll chose." Nick was quick to jump on me with the ultra obvious "It's a PlayStation list."

I continued to guess, finding it increasingly difficult to locate the actual article. "Well, Twisted Metal will be on there for sure. That series is money. And Tekken will… what else? Final Fantasy better not be number one seeing as it’s been on a million Nintendo systems." Nick: "You're not going to be happy."

So I see this bullshit list and guess what 10 series PSM included for Best PlayStation Series of All time? Go on, guess. Twisted Metal seems like a good choice. Ape Escape is fun, maybe that is on there. Or Jak or Ratchet or something. They're all good. Maybe they'd even choose something in its infancy, like Red Faction. I hate it but Nick seems to love it. Let's see, what else is a great PlayStation exclusive title... And there was my mistake.

In order, the list reads as follows:
Number 10 - Ridge Racer
Number 9 - Tekken
Number 8 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
Number 7 - SSX
Number 6 - Resident Evil
Number 5 - Metal Gear Solid
Number 4 - John Madden Football
Number 3 - Grand Theft Auto
Number 2 - Gran Turismo
Number 1 - Final Fantasy

Ok, I can't remember the last game on the list, but it certainly doesn't help their case. When I do find it out I will edit this.

Anyway, what do you notice about that list? That's right, none of the games are exclusively PlayStation games. Sorry, sorry - one of them is only available on the PlayStation.

The rest? Ridge Racer first made it's jump to multiplatform four years ago with Ridge Racer 64. And don't forget about R: Racing Evolution released for all three systems just last year.

Next up is Tekken. This, it could be argued, is pretty much exclusive. All five major titles have been released for the PSX or PS2. But, then there's that one game: Tekken Advance. Not really exclusive if it's on a Nintendo system as well, eh?

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater has appeared on everything from the PC to the N-Gage and the Dreamcast. Not an exclusive.

SSX: Tricky was actually a Gamecube launch title way back in the day.

Resident Evil 0 was a Gamecube exclusive and Resident Evil 4 will be as well.

Metal Gear Solid is another obvious example. The first in the Solid series was just re-released for the Gamecube. And don't forget, the series originated on the NES and MSX in 1987.

Phew... this is exhausting...

Ok, John Madden Football has been on just about every system.

Sense a trend?

Grand Theft Auto was released on the Xbox last year. And, of course, Final Fantasy has been on ever Nintendo system minus the N64 and Virtual Boy.

Which means that, out of 10 series, only one, Gran Turismo, was actually exclusive to the PlayStation.

Why does this anger me? First of all, if they are including any series with even one game on the PlayStation why not include Street Fighter over Tekken? And Castlevania has been amazing, why not include that somewhere in there?

But I guess what really frustrated me is, in a lot of ways, this is what Sony has brought to the industry. Yes, the PSX and PS2 are hugely popular consoles, but as far as exclusive content, well, they just don't have it. If there was a top Nintendo Games List you can be sure they wouldn't have to resort to multiplatform titles. Heck, you can have a top 10 Nintendo Published series that would be pretty impressive.

But with Sony, since they don't actually make most of their games, they have no control where they go. They own the rights to Gran Turismo, but other than that, at least according to PSM, their best games aren't even theirs.

I guess this makes me think Sony might be in trouble long term. Yes, they are doing great now, but more and more games are going multiplatform. Without a strong in-house development team I don't think Sony can really succeed long term.

I know you think that's bullshit. The PlayStation name sells to all the mainstream gamers. They don't know about multiplatform or exclusive, they only know what's "cool" and the PlayStation name is still cool. But let's just say, for example, that next generation, Sony and Microsoft continue to do what they are doing now. They have an amazing, set top console. It has DVD playback, a built in hard drive and TiVo; not to mention backward compatibility. I know, there are rumors that MS will not include a hard drive, but this could still happen so bare with me.

On the other side, Nintendo releases a console that will be just as powerful, but will once again not have any extra features. Just a stripped down console. Made for games and games alone. This could also happen, in fact I would bet on this.

In my hypothetical example, all three systems will come out between September and November of 2006 with a launch lineup of 10 games. Now, in theory, all three systems are out at the same time and all have basically the same games, except Nintendo has a new Mario and Smash Bros., Xbox 2 has Perfect Dark 2 and Sony has the new GTA, exclusive for 6 months. This is not a reach at all.

Only real difference? Xbox and PS3 will be $300, GC2 will be $200.

Without exclusive games there is no way to differentiate yourself from the competition. And right now, it doesn't look like Sony has the exclusive firepower of Nintendo, and it seems like MS is still more eager to purchase series/developers to make games their own.

I might be wrong about this, but seeing as they have so few real exclusives anymore, it did make me think. If Sony doesn't release their system a year earlier, they won't have 20 million systems in home before the competition comes out and it will be even more difficult to shore up exclusive titles.

Killing time

I've been a pretty big Mortal Kombat fan since the beginning. I admittedly never owned one of them until Mortal Kombat Trilogy on the Playstation (which was cool, but buggy as a termite nest), but I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing them at arcades and friends houses in my youth. The series has always had a totally different appeal than Street Fighter for me. Fatalities and fireballs aside, even the basic fighting is a whole different deal. It's always been a lot more rigid and precise then SF, which is odd considering it's motion captured (more or less) and SF is animated. But I don't look at that rigidity as a bad thing, it's just one of the more subtle ways that the series differ. I'd definitely rather be stuck with Street Fighter on a desert island because of it's impeccably balanced design and deceptively deep move sets, but I'm talking about MK at the moment. Anyhow, the fatalities, ninjas vs. cyborgs fights, and four-armed women always rubbed me the right way, even if it was a bit over the top some of the time (or always over the top all of the time, whatever). MK:Deadly Alliance on the PS2 continued the series in fine fashion, with intensely gratifying weapons-based combat and multiple fighting styles. Er, kombat. Busting out some broadswords with Scorpion or tearing someone's shit up with axes as Kano was every bit as spine-shatteringly visceral as I had hoped for. I rarely buy fighting games though (Tekken 3, SF:Alpha3 and MK:Trilogy being the exceptions), and although MK:DA was awesome I had gotten my fill renting it a couple of times.

Well, that's the brief backstory on today's column. I want to tell you about the upcoming Mortal Kombat: Deception. You see, it's looking like this game is going to kick more ass than even I would have imagined, and I think that it might even have the honor of being the fourth fighting game that I've ever bought. Oh, one last side note first: Although I've been a PSM subscriber from issue one, their writing has gotten somewhat weaker over the last year or so, probably because of the multiple staff changes they've had. But christ, this is getting rediculous; in their intro paragraph for their MD:Deception preview, they have the following text - "(Ed) Boon's team, determined not to simply rest on the last game's success, has cooked up wild new ideas that even the most hardcore MK fans won't expect: multi-tiered battle arenas...death traps and background weapons...an overhauled Konquest mode...more Fatalities...new and returning characters..." etc. etc. (the etc.'s are actually part of what I wanted to talk about so I won't mention them). Now, I dunno about all you other hardcore MK fans, but I think they're selling us a little short. Because, you know, we never would have thought of multi-tiered battle arenas (ala DOA or older MK games) or more fatalities. And a fighting game sequel with old AND returning characters? What kind of witchcraft is this? No fucking way I would have thought of that in my absolute WILDEST imagination. PSM are gonna set the whole gaming industry in a tizzy with such ludicrous revelations. WILD I tell you, WILD. Anyways, PSM needs to get some better writers and fire these cocksores*. Enough of their douchebaggery, and on to my preview. As I was saying, MK:Deception is looking great. The stages look moodier than ever, including a prison boat of sorts where inmates grab at you from their cells and bodies swing from the rafters, hanging from nooses (which you can smack into your opponent, no less). The character design is badass, including sweet redesigns of such sorely missed fellows as Baraka, Ermac and Noob Saibot. The 'death traps' (blades that cut you up your opponent, things to impale them on, etc.) aren't a new idea is the series, but being able to hit your opponent into them during the round is certainly novel. The 'background weapons' are certain very powerful weapons contained within each level that are specific to that level, and each have their own specific move set that comes with them. It can be a race and/or a risk to pick them up though, especially seeing as some are placed right to the death traps. I can just imagine the gratification of booting my opponent through some spinning blades that sheer him in twane seconds after he grabbed an axe the size of my torso. Drool. Another insanely cool addition is a hari kari move for each character. Meaning that when 'finishing' time comes around, it's a race for who can creatively gut you first. Your opponent...or you.

These things are all layers of icing on already sweet cake though. The bulk of it, the body, the coolest thing of all, is the revamped Konquest mode. Konquest was a mode in MK:DA where you'd move your character along a path on an overhead map (along a line, with one button press), stopping at various dojos and gazebos along the way to learn your moves and weapon sets one by one, and unlock hundred of new costumes and characters and levels and artwork and doodads from the Krypt while you were at it. It was a great mode, and a fucking quality way to learn how to play. In MK:Deception, you start as a generic character roaming the streets, stopping to talk to people along the way, or punch them for no reason, GTA-style. Many people you talk to will have a new technique to show you, or a new thingy to unlock. A bit deeper, down alleyways and through dojos, lies every single MK character ever, there to give you a few lessons and help you build and shape your character with new styles and new moves. Some are only available at certain times, but you can always 'meditate' (just chill and watch the civilians and sun whip by you at hyper speed) to make events come up a little sooner. Your character will age by days and weeks and years, so by the time you're ready to duke it out onlien, your character will look quite unique. That's right, I said online. The first online PS2 fighter, mind you. Possibly the first online 3D fighter ever if DOA:Online keeps getting delayed. So, yeah, that should rule. Oh, damn, I almost forget, there's more. For kicks (no pun intended), the developers even added at least two fairly substantial minigames, all playable online. One is a next-gen successor to the NES classic Archon (kinda of like battle chess with MK charcaters for pieces, but you control it when the pieces duke it out in a regular match when you try to take a piece). How cool of a way is that to make you proficient with all of the characters? Quite cool, says I. And lastly (although I'm sure more will be revealed), a SF:Puzzle Fighter Turbo knock-off puzzle game, complete with cute little hyper-deformed MK characters. So, point is, this game is fucking packed with stuff to do, and if it turns out to suck, I'll eat my hat. And Tom's hat. And Dan's really expensive hat, feather and all.

Oh, and Tom and I had the time of our lives tonight playing Taboo until three in the morning. Talk about a fucking game, that's a real man's game right there.

* Tom Mc Shea, last Thursday.

Thursday, March 11, 2004

J-j-j-jaded

While I think that Mr. Wong's article that Tom brought up (required reading for this post) makes some good points and is intelligently written and fairly humorous, I think it ultimately misses it's mark. It feels like it's written by a jaded gamer, trying to come to terms with their waning interest in gaming by putting together an argument against the industry and against the fans. My main two points of disagreement are these:

First of all, the videogame industry "crash" of the mid-eighties was mostly a result of the market being flooded. No matter how big of a fad game systems were at the time, the market couldn't evenly support the flood of software that occurred. I mean, christ, they buried thousands of copies of E.T. in the desert to get rid of them. Games today, well, it's a different story. Usually the worst that happens nowadays is that a good game will get lost in the holiday shuffle (BG&E, for instance), which will force the price down. Companies rarely pump out total crap prolifically - you just can't do it, it's too expensive. You have to have good graphics or a big name to sell a game, and that takes money. Atari games could easily make their development costs back even if the game didn't sell too well, to a point (the point when consumers stopped buying the crap altogether). But if a game doesn't sell well today...well, don't expect a sequel, or another game from that company for a while. I'm not saying that the overall quality of games released is higher now than ever (although that's a whole separate argument), I'm saying that the same company can't afford to suck regularly, because the market won't afford them to. Games were a fad back then, and an industry can only grow so much based on a fad. But with 90 million current generation systems sold, as he mentions, videogames are most certainly not a fad anymore. So as far as an industry-killing software flood goes, forget about it.

Secondly, his statement about "original gamers," late twenty-somethings growing up and out of gaming, well, that might be true. But you know what else is true? Kids are playing games, and in very large numbers. And guess what? More children are born every day. I know, I was shocked to hear that too. So for every OG that loses interest, five more eager young rapscallions are there waiting to take his place. And with videogames only a couple more years away from officially being a "cool" hobby, I don't think adult gamers of the future are going to get the same disrespect they get now. They'll be the ones running the country, because hey, "How many non-Amish friends do you have under age 30 who don't have a game console in the house?", right? And besides, the average gamer is 24, so there's that whole argument out the window already.

I have a lot more issues with the article, but between Tom and I it's safe to say we don't agree with it, and that's good enough for me, unless I feel like spouting off some more later. Hoorah for videogames!

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

And you think I'm bitter

First, read this article. Ding!

Did you read the whole thing? It's long, I know, but you can do it. Go back and read the paragraphs you skimmed. Pop quiz: what color was Batman in the Atari screenshot? What was that? Black? No, that's the real Batman. Go back and read it again, I can wait...

So, I've never skied before, but I imagine I'd be real bad at it. I don't know, it just seems like my knees would freeze and I'd fall down or something. Can't that happen? My knees sometimes freeze when I walk down the street. Yeah, I sometimes fall...

Ok, you done now? So what did you think? A video game crash is imminent? Imminent you say? You agree with him? Fuck you, you're both wrong. And I'll tell you why.

First and foremost, we live in a rich nation. Yeah, Bush put his peeper in our outholes pretty good, but money is still plentiful. We have money to spend. How else could Starbucks stay in business? They charge 5 Bones for coffee you know.

And, since we have an excess of money, it has to go somewhere, right? We're not rushing to our Bank One's, throwing our money at them yelling "Please! Take my money before I spend it on more crap I don't need!" Nope, we buy the crap.

Oh, I don't know on what exactly, but many things. We buy the good kind of peanut butter for one, not that store brand. That's an extra dollar every week or two. We see movies we really shouldn't, just because we're bored. Some of us even donate money, just giving it away. Those of us with girlfriends or bum boyfriends have to buy lavish gifts for them to ensure fun time in the sack. And, of course, we buy video games.

There really isn't enough cool stuff to buy if you take video games out of the equation. So, that's my first reason why video games will not have another crash.

Second, there are so many fucking sweet games that come out every year that one can't help loving our industry. There are entire companies who consistently release very good to great games with every single release. Bungie. EAD. Ubi Soft. Rare (Shut up!). Blizzard. Konami. Capcom... The list goes on and on. All of these companies are committed to quality and consistently produce amazing games we, the video game buying public, can't wait to sink our teeth into.

And then there are those licensed games. I talk a lot of shit about them but, guess what, people love them. They love being James Bond or Mary Kate or The Bearenstein Bears. Yeah, it's cool being a random secret agent trying to save the world, but how much cooler is it to be Jack Baurer, saying "No, Chappell, I have to do this to save lives! I get results!" while you go kill terrorists. That's what we want. That's why we play games.

And yeah, maybe Mr. Bitter didn't love Rogue Sqadrdon, but what about Knights of the Old Republic? Remember the part where that guy goes "Nevermind" and you reply "You got it."? That was priceless. You didn't get that kind of entertainment in the last two Star Wars movies combined.

And, despite what this loon thinks, people don't see movies or buy games because they revolutionized the world. The most popular stuff in both mediums is usually something that has been done a million times before but this one has Snoop or Online Play.

And that brings us right to Online Play. This bitter little man would have been the same guy, 10 years ago, saying AOL should just cut its losses, no one except teenaged nerds will want to go online. Now my mom plays people in Switzerland in Scrabble every night. You don't think that will catch on in the console world as well? Right now their are two problems why online isn't successful: 1) People don't want to shell out $50 for Xbox Live and 2) People don't want to shell out $40 for a PS2 network adaptor. If they were free, like games on the PC are, then maybe you'd see more than 28 million people playing.

People like this piss me off. I still play old FPS, Goldeneye is one of my favorite games ever. Doom 2 sold really well for the GBA. People play old games if they are still great. And, sure, there hasn't been a huge leap in football games the last two years, but remember that first year with Dynasty Mode? That was pretty amazing, wasn't it?

All I have to say is that video games are alive and well. Nintendo is right that you can only go so far with graphics before gameplay comes in vogue again, but there is no reason to believe enough companies won't follow Nintendo's lead and make games great.

It's about bloody time

Ladies and gentleman, I am pleased to announce that The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is finally coming out. Even better, it's coming out this week! Yay! Finally something we all can agree about. Except Dan of course. Someone has to play Devil's Advocate for every frickin' good movie. He likes Jackass but not Human Nature and expects people to take his opinion seriously?

Quack!

And, of course Nick, you know that Conker Live and Uncut isn't a rehash. The focus of the game is online play. Consider it Rare's version of Quake 3 Arena.

Good morning, captain

I'm not going to argue anymore about licensed games with Tom "I speak objectively" McShea. "So, when all is said and done, licensed games are just not as good as original games." How can I even begin to argue with such a statement?

Anyhow, as far as Rare losing their touch...well, I haven't played a Rare game in a while, but I think that that fact alone says something about their last couple of games. And I don't think much is going to change this year with the Conker rehash (although Kameo might have a shot if it's actually ever released). I agree with the theory that Perfect Dark 2 (or 0, or whatever) will end up as an X-Box2 launch title, but it's gonna be hella weak if they don't release a great game between now and then. It might seem silly, but I fear the same thing is happening with them as happened with Oddworld Inhabitants. They're bought out by Micro$oft, and shit goes downhill. In general I applaud Microsoft as a game company for green-lighting more creative, original games than I thought they would when they got into the console business, but I just don't think they're willing to take too many risks with their first and second party software, so I don't imagine they encourage companies like Rare as much as Nintendo did. At this point it almost seems like it's more about having the name for them, and taking a big piece of cheese from Nintendo and Sony, respectively. I'm glad that Bungie didn't end up with quite the same fate, but considering how awesome the Marathon games were as early as 1991, I expected Halo to be even better than it is. I just hate to see a good developer go down the tubes, is all.

I've been playing Metal Arms multiplayer over the last couple of days, and I have to say, it's pretty great. It's just pure fun. The multiplayer options are myriad (they remind me of Halo in terms of depth), and the gameplay is fast, creative, and visceral. Being able to jack into other bots to control, as well as drive tanks and ride mechs, is not only sweet, but really makes the game. The developers only decided on adding the 'jacking' feature late into the development cycle, but it drastically changes gameplay, and helps it stand out in a relatively stagnant genre. I actually caught a really interesting program on G4 a while ago about the game, which led me to purchase it. The developer, Swingin' Ape Studios, just seem like a bunch of passionate, knowledgeable guys, and are all about cramming as much fun as possible into their work. They kept cramming more and more features and weapons and environments into Metal Arms up until the last minute, and enjoy playing it as much as anyone else. I myself can't wait to break into the single player game (tomorrow, perhaps?), and will mos def be reporting back on it. Check out their website in the meantime, you'll see what I mean when I say they're a company that's all about the fun.

I usually don't take much of an interest in PC games (although I do wish I had one right now to play Farcry on), but two have stood out to me recently based on what I've read and seen, and so I deem them discussion worthy. The first is The Matrix Online. Now, I liked Enter the Matrix more than most people, but considering Shiny had been working on it for like seventeen years, it was still a big fucking disappointment (they should have just put in Earthworm Jim). So I figure maybe the license would be better off in someone else's hands, but it would seem not. TMO is a new MMORPG developed my Monolith, and it looks like crap. I mean, I don't see what the game consists of (or can consist of) besides wandering around and fighting, as nothing else has even been hinted at. For that matter, I have absolutely no faith that the fighting engine will do the Matrix universe justice. I mean, two players moving faster than physics allows should kinda cancel each other out, right? So much for cool bullet time battles. And based on the video that I've seen of it, every character that you can be (or design, whatever) just looks like a lame ripoff of one of the movie characters. The worst part about it all, and what really convinces me that the game will blow goats, is that Ubisoft pulled out of the project as the publisher during the development (Warner Bros. is now the publisher - ha!). And these days I have a hell of a lot of faith in Ubisoft thanks to their new "commitment to quality" (which is grossly evident in their last couple of games). So, when they drop off, so does my interest level. Here's to hoping.

The other game I wanted to speak briefly about is World of Warcraft, a MMORPG of a different sort (the good sort). I played a fair amount of Warcraft 1 and 2 back in the day, and a spot or two of Starcraft and Warcraft 3 before I stopped playing computer games, and I have a fairly huge amount of respect for Blizzard. I would fully expect that a MMO Warcraft game be top quality, but a video which I saw of a player riding a gryphon around the various environments made my jaw drop. Soaring over gorgeous landscapes like that is the stuff of gamers dreams, and I commend Blizzard for so far surpassing my expectations, even if it is just graphically at this point. Speaking of which, the rendering for the cutscenes also looks to be coming along swimmingly, with textures and muscle movement on par with FF: The Spirits Within, the Animatrix, and anything else you can imagine. But then again, the "craft" series has always had some badass cutscenes, so I should expect no less. Still check out the video though, it's mighty impressive.

Well, that's all for now, loyal dans.... I mean fans. I'm off to fight the lumbering dinosaur that is sleep.

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

I WON! I WON!!!!

I entered a contest to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and won! Weeeee! Free ticket! I don't know how many, but I'm going to see it next Thursday! Yay!

Preaching from the choir

Just a little more about what I said yesterday. I don't know why I didn't stress that enough.

It's probably not too surprising that, in the history of video games, the only company that IGN felt made a licensed game worthy of the Top 100 Games of All Time list was Rare with their FPS masterpeice Goldeneye.

Right now, a lot of people are down on Rare. They say they are in a slump. They say they've lost something. They've lost their edge. They've become soft this generation, since Microsoft bought them out. Since they sold out to the man.

I say that is bullshit. Rare has consistently been one of the top developers in the world for more than 20 years. 20! Since before the NES came out. Since video games were even a popular medium. I hardly doubt they lost all that talent in only a few years.

Yes, you can look at the fact that they've lost many people from their talented staff over the years. But, guess what, they are one of the best developers in the world, of course they're going to lose some of their talent over the years. The key is brining new people in.

After Goldeneye they lost a number of key artists and programmers. It may have caused Perfect Dark to come out a little later than they would have liked, but it certainly didn't hurt that game any. Perfect Dark was Goldeneye but better in every aspect but one: balance. With all the new weapons, with 2nd functions on every gun, it was hard to have a completely balanced match. But that was easily remedied by allowing the user to create their own weapon set.

Other than that, a short handed Goldeneye development team blew one of the greatest games ever out of the water. A longer and harder story mode. Co-op and Counter-op play. 8 computer controlled bots, something no other console FPS was able to accomplish until a year ago. Not too shabby. The first FPS with a Challenge Mode, which the Timesplitters team has adopted as their own. A shooting range mode. The list goes on and on and on.

Rare hasn't lost a thing.

So, you can say that Grabbed by the Ghoulies was repetitive, even if you haven't played it. You can say the GBA Banjo-Kazooie isn't as good as its N64 brothers, but that's obvious. Kazooie and Tooie are two of the top 20 games of all time. You can say that Conker wasn't even fun, to which you'd be wrong.

While it's true Rare hasn't made a great game since Conker's Bad Fur Day, that was only in 2001. They've only released a few games since then.

Anyway, I just felt the need to defend my favorite video game developer. If Conker: Live and Uncut and Perfect Dark Zero come out and suck, maybe they have slipped. But for right now, it seems more likely they will continue their greatness rather than let 20 years of being at the top go down the toilet.

I think I'm going to play some Jet Force Gemini for a bit now.

Monday, March 08, 2004

More important issues

But first, the last say on the whole licensed game talk. If you look at any Top 100 Games of All Time list you won't find many licensed games. Take IGN's list. They have nine licensed games on their list, and all but one of them are sports titles. The only one to not be a sports titles, and the only one to crack the top 20, was Goldeneye. So, when all is said and done, licensed games are just not as good as original games. Regardless of how fun they may be for a short time, they are not classics. They are not great. So what's the point?

Anyway, I've had a hankering for finishing some unfinished games of late. I had this same hankering last month, actually, and went back to my unfinished Mario Sunshine. That game still pisses me off with its horrible camera (Mario 64 and the Banjo series never had this problem. Don't tell me a good camera in a 3D platform game cannot be done) and annoying controls. I would have been much happier with a straight Mario 64-2. Sure, innovation is what got Nintendo to where they are in the first place, but you have to just recognize what is and is not ultimately fun, and Mario Sunshine is just too frustrating to really enjoy. So, alas, that still sits on my shelf, unfinished and unloved.

But, I am opening my heart to a trio of other currently unfinished games. Granted, I already have a bevy of games I need to tackle, from Orta to FF8 and Ape Escape 2, but these 3 games... I can hear them calling to me in the night. Crying. Moaning. Screaming. I need to complete them. I need to put them to rest.

First up, because it was released first and I feel I owe it to myself to finish, is the much maligned Star Fox Adventure. I will be the first to admit this game is far from perfect. The gameplay is somewhat repetitive, falling into a Donkey Kong 64 area of gaming where collecting objects is the only thing the keeps you playing. Not a good system to build the rock of your church.

But, upon starting up the game again today, at the 45% mark, I was very pleased to see what lay in front of me. As it had been more than a year since last I played it, I had no idea what I was supposed to do exactly. Luckily for me, as soon as I entered the next room the game cut to an in game cut scene showing me my task at hand: Kill dinos and play your magic flute for the cute birdy. Nice.

What really surprised me, though, was how quick I picked up the controls again. I figured I'd have to thumb through the instruction manual to remember what button did what, but the game is so darn intuitive a moron could figure out the controls. A is attack, B is the action button, X evades. L is camera and R is block. Oh, and the C stick, like in Metroid Prime after it, is your inventory. This always messes me up a little since I want C to stand for Camera, but it's not that hard to use.

Anyway, you'll probably hear more about this game as I get closer to completing it. For those of you who don't know, Rare is still my favorite developer, with EAD coming in at 1A. Even if SFA and Grabbed by the Ghoulies aren't great (though I haven't played GbtG yet to have an opinion) any company that gave me Blast Corps, Goldeneye, Battletoads, Anticipation, Snake Rattle and Roll, not to mention the great game show games of the past, and the highly underrated Diddy Kong Racing, will always have a place in my heart.

Oh, and did you hear the rumor that Rare has a secret game they will debut at E3? To quash two rumors before they start, the Banjo-Kazooie team just finished GbtG so don't expect them to unveil a new Banjo. Also, Perfect Dark Zero was announced 18 years ago, so that hardly qualifies as new. Plus, I fully expect PD0 to be an XBox 2 launch title. So... let the speculation begin.

My hope/prayer/need is a sequel to Blast Corps. Imagine a 4 player co-op game! Or, I shouldn't even say this... Xbox Live...

If it's original let's hope it's not a racer, First Person Shooter or platform game. Rare has already made at least one great game in each genre (Diddy Kong Racing and RC Pro Am for racers, GE and Perfect Dark for FPS and, of course, Donkey Kong Country and the Banjo series for platformers). I'd love to see them take on a new genre, or maybe even invent one. I'm getting giddy just thinking about it.

It's about damn time

Whew, it's been a while since I posted last. I've been working on the site design and such though, so at least I've still been contributing to the G-pinions universe, per se. Since one of my main purposes on this site is to argue and discuss with Tom, I shall proceed to catch up with the topics of the last week or so. Enjoy.

Licensed games - Yes, they have historically blown. And as a genre, they will probably always lag a bit behind of the rest, simply because their time constraints and prerequsites are different for developers than most. But I still think that they have a place in videogames, and that for the most part, they've gotten better. The Lord of the Rings games are great for the most part, and mirror the high production values of the movies. The Hulk game was pure fun, aside from a few frustrating battles, and Wolverine's revenge was badass if you were even a slight fan of the character. I even enjoyed Enter the Matrix, which is quite the taboo opinion in the industry it seems. I'm sure at least that many licensed games were released in the same time span that were virtual excrement, but I must have steered clear of them because I haven't played a bad licensed game for quite a while. As far as the Fight Club game, I'm all for it. It's being developed by a group of guys and gals who understand it's a delicate license, and want to do the movie justice as much as we want to see them do the movie justice. And the game covers timespans in the movie that you didn't get to see, such as Tyler Durden fighting in all of the cities that he travelled to, which is just badass. As long as a developer has the interest of the fans and not the publisher in mind, I'm behind them all the way. Some games that use an old license for a completely different type of game can be hit or miss with their audience I imagine, such as the upcoming Seven Samurai 20XX. The game looks decently cool, but I don't think any hardcore Kurosawa fans are gonna be stoked to kill hordes of cyborgs in the future in his name. And I have yet to see a great game based off of a TV series (except maybe Simpsons: Hit or Run), so I wouldn't get your hopes up about the "24" game, Tommy boy.

Tom busting his shit playing Mario Party - That's what you get for playing it by yourself.

The new Splinter Cell - Stealth games are obviously an acquired taste, but I'm a big Metal Gear fan. I don't think the combat needs to be deep and thrilling, otherwise there would be no motivation to sneak around. I like knowing that I'm almost surely fucked if I get caught. I can totally understand the appeal of the first Splinter Cell, but it was just a bit too slow for my tastes. There's stealth, and then there's crawling along a ledge for fifteen minutes only to get spotted by some moron who was standing behind a lightpost when you jumped down. But it was very well done for what it was. Pandora Tomorrow, on the other hand, is a totally different story, thanks to the online multiplayer mode. I'm sure the single player mode will be the tits, and I might even play it if I get the game, but the online mode just sounds mega-awesome, as Tom mentioned. Two on two, spies (third person with stealth and gadgets galore) versus mercenaries (first person with guns and anti-spy shit) online action. Check out these videos for a taste of both sides, it's pretty fucking spectacular what you can do. The guys playing in the videos talk like professional douchebags, but they get the point across of how crucial communication is. And Tom's point is well taken about how it might be tough to find four fairly intelligent people to play with online, but if I can sometimes manage it with sixteen people in Socom, I figure I'll be able to pull it off in PT. The balance of sides just seems so perfect; the spies can knock out the mercenaries but not kill them - they have to complete an objective (such as setting off a bomb) to win, while the mercenaries just need to find spy ass and beat spy ass until spy ass is no more. Sweetness.

That about brings us up to date. I'll have some more original thoughts tomorrow, I've got some good stuff brewing. For now, I'm off to watch my cat fight with a rubber cockroach and a speaker. Bring it speaker, bring it.

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