G-pinions

So a couple of months ago, Tom, Dan, Myself, and several other people who I can't remember and therefore are not integral to this story, were playing Pictionary. Tom and Dan were a team, combing to form approximately the worst artist in the world. I was raised on a Waldorf education with a director for a father and an art teacher for a mother, so I can hold my own in the world of illustration. However, these two douches were on the same mental wavelength of untalent, and somehow figured out each other's terrible, horrible drawings in the blink of an eye, and eventually won the game. Needless to say, I was fairly frustrated. Below is Tom's take on the word "Tusk" from said game, along with an annotated version with my thoughts on the art piece. Enjoy.











And with my observations:






Yes, Dan guessed it correctly in a matter of seconds. Fuck. Them.

The number one reason I buy a game is entertainment. The number two factor in buying a game is price. Take a great football franchise like ESPN NFL 2K and slash $30 off the normal price, and you will force me to purchase my first football title since the fun, though flawed, NFL2K2.

There was an article a little while ago saying that Sega would be more aggressive in their pricing for this year’s addition. No matter how hard Visual Concepts works each year, the NFL2K name simply cannot compete with Madden. Though Madden has been in a slump since it was the undisputed king of the 16-bit era, it still flies off the store shelves each year while buyers pass on the far superior Sega franchise.

Besides the ridiculously low $20 price, the game has two really cool features that are making me oh so anxious for the magical release date to arrive. First, via an awesome online system, you are able to set up a football community of your very own. This is essentially the video game equivalent of fantasy football. You can go on Sega’s website and set up a community, choosing who can join and how many people are allowed in. Then, you essentially run an NFL league of your very own. You trade and release players within your own league, and play games every week. Eventually, just like in real life, the weak will fall by the wayside and one champion will be crowned. For any die hard football fan, this is like a wet dream with no messy cleanup.

Maybe even cooler is the anal retentive stat keeping of the game. Every time you play, the creepy CPU monitors every nuance of your play style. If you run the ball to the right 60% of the time – the game knows. If you tend to go for it on 4th and less than 5 when you’re on the opponent’s side of the 50 – the game knows. If you blitz your weakside linebacker on every 3rd down more than 7 yards – the game knows.

Numbers alone would not make this feature outstanding though. What the game does offer is the ability to use said stats in an actual game. It is one thing to hear that you never throw on the left side of the field, but it’s another thing entirely to play against yourself and realize just how easy it is to defend your weak passing attack. This is probably the coolest thing I have ever heard of in a football title. You can practice and actually improve the whole style in which you play the game.

And if that wasn’t cool enough, you can now run a real life practice. You get to decide how to talk to your team after the game. You get to decide if your QB spends more time in the weight room or watching film. You can even make your wide receiver who refuses to shut his mouth run drills with the linebackers for a practice. That should quiet his complain hole. Yeah, I know, you non-football fans are rolling your eyes. But, when you are lucky enough to be a fan of a real life team that doesn’t even try to compete anymore, being able to whip a virtual team into shape each week is simply a joy.

A game that already played better than anything out there is finally getting some great franchise features that make the game a true gem. No, I haven’t played it yet, but, assuming that Sega didn’t complete scrap the gameplay, this should be the football game this season. Unless, of course, NCAA ‘05 has something to say out it.

Don’t worry, hate as I do the intolerable Crystal Chronicles, you will not find an oversized picture of me at the end of this post doing unthinkable acts to the offending disc. Instead, I hope my words can not only steer ignorant gamers away from this pointless title, but also impact the industry as a whole so we will not be burdened with bad games ever again.

I know I have talked about Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles on more than one occasion on this site already. Before it came out I was quite excited for the title. 4 player games are almost always a blast, and anything that requires a Gameboy to manage your resources has to be pretty cool, right? For all the hype and praise heaped upon this title, all I can assume is people are blinded by their Square loyalty or just enjoy games that should be given as gifts to blind horses.

The worst thing about this title is the quest you are partaking in is completely pointless. In most RPGs, one is rewarded with a better character the longer they play the game. In this game, your character evolves so very little there doesn’t really seem to be a point at all. For instance, there are only a few different types of magic, and, for some reason, they cannot be upgraded in any way. In the very first dungeon you will come across Fire and be happy, but you will then use that Fire spell in every dungeon in the game, with no chance of getting Fire 2 or Fira.

And it’s not like you forget about the inadequate combat system because the worlds you are traveling to are so breathtaking. There are two types of areas in this game: indoor and outdoor. And every single one looks exactly the same. Dungeons consist of walking to a certain point, hitting open a gate, then walking back to the gate. After 20 minutes of this you fight a boss of some kind. Very repetitive.

Even the inventory system is clunky. Square requires players to use their Gameboy so one would think the inventory system would be the shining beacon of the game. Instead, they made it as much of a chore as in any other RPG. Since you lose all your magic abilities at the end of each section, you are forced to manually re-equip them when you find them once more in another dungeon. It only takes a little while to go through the Gameboy and set up your command attacks again, but during this time your character neither attacks nor defends against enemies. Furthermore, if one of your 4 command spots is using a healing item, that item is not automatically re-equipped after you use it. So when you are in the middle of a battle and need to use two pieces of meat to fully heal yourself, you have to go into your GBA and set it up again, all while your character is most likely suffering some horrible fate at the hands of the boss.

While this may not sound too horrible, the game has a very small number of Phoenix Downs, so if you do die - and you will die often - there’s a good chance you will not be brought back to life by a friend. The only thing worse than playing this game is not being allowed to play it.

Also, fighting in the game is really boring. Hit A to either attack physically or via magic. That is it. I don’t play this genre, well, ever, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but something a little more complicated than hitting A when an enemy is nearby would be a lot more fun.

While the game can be an adequate distraction from life for an hour or two, after you realize there is no point to your quest the game becomes pretty much unplayable. FF:CC is repetitive and boring, and is a perfect example of how bad GBA/GC integration can be. I’ll probably play Four Swords in a few days to see if that actually uses the GBA correctly. I still don’t understand why FF:CC requires the GBA when they could have just had a small, transparent menu on screen.

Crappity crap crap crap. I guess I didn't expect much from this one, as the couple of months before and after E3 are usually shit for games, but this is just lazy.

Demos:

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Mayhem - I've always hated Scooby Doo with the burning passion of a thousand gonorrheal flesh pustules. It's not funny or scary, and the animation is terrible. This game makes sure to keep those themes of lameness intact, authentic to the end. The voices, sound effects are all spot-on, allowing even blind gamers to at least know without witnessing it that they are involved in some shitty Scooby Doo-related activity. The game itself is a mixed bag of feces and vomit, based solely around repetitive fetch quests and, um, avoiding ghosts. Yes, you can't actually attack any of them, just avoid them as they whittle away your health. Or, run right by them. Your call. Oh, and you can switch at any point between Scooby or Shaggy, with no discernible effect on gameplay. Yay!

MVP Baseball 2004 - I've played fifty times more RBI Baseball than all other baseball games combined, and things will probably stay that way. However, this game still kicks ass. Usual EA Sports quality, meaning the best graphics, animation, presentation, control, and gameplay around. I got my ass handed to me 0-6 in four innings or so, but still loved every minute of it. Once you get the hang of pitching and batting and fielding, and all the little minute choices to be made within each, the game starts to flow really nicely, and really draws you in. Little touches, like having to adjust the throwing power on the fly when tossing it in from the outfield to a base, make it so you have to constantly be paying attention and play your best if you want to compete. This game just drips with quality, and if I gave a damn about baseball, it would be mine.

Ribbit King - A fan favorite around here, apparently. This game isn't that awful, but it really has no business existing. It's basically a very poor, very Japanese man's Hot Shots Golf, except you launch a frog off of a little see-saw instead of a golf ball off of a tee. You basically take turns (you and a caveman panda bear) launching this frog around (the game you play is called Frolf - cute) very open courses, picking up points and power-ups on your way to the hole. The one thing I do like about it is that there is no crappy putting involved, since the hole is huge - you just launch it in once you get close. I guess I also like the various obstacles and such littering the courses, although they sometimes toss your frog further than it needs to be from the hole. The beauty of Hot Shots if that it's ridiculously deep if you want it to be; they took out all sense of depth and strategy in Ribbit King. No curve, no wind, not even an accuracy meter. Just power. Also, Hot Shots lush graphics and soothing, simple golf sounds have been replaced with wanna-be Animal Crossing graphics (without the nice color palette) and little bleeps and bloops to indicate a noble attempt at sound effects. I won't even mention the blatantly homosexual post-game announcer. And by far the worst music ever. My ears shat blood. So, if you're old enough to like the idea of golf, but young enough where you haven't mastered the skill of pressing more than one button on a controller, this may be for you. Still, probably not.

Paperboy & Smash TV - For whatever reason, Sony thought it would be a grand idea to put two demos of games from Midway's first Arcade Treasures collection, when a new, even better one is coming out in a couple of months. I mean, these games are obviously both great, arcade-perfect ports, but if you were at all interested you would own the $20 collection by now. I do.

MLB Slugfest: Loaded - This game seems to be fairly well-liked, but I didn't see anything special about it. MVP Baseball is much better, and the whole 'Xtreme' attitude comes off very gimmicky. Never mind the decades of load time that pass between each menu screen as you creep ever closer to actually playing - hopefully a side effect of the game not being finished. Blah.

Everything else:

There's a sweet video of MGS3, but I've already seen better ones since E3. They've got a nice video on the making of Sly Cooper 2: Band of Thieves, I've just never really been interested in the series because of the lame art style (IMO). Way of the Samurai 2 and Bujingai: The Forsaken City also look like a lot of fun based on the videos on this disc, so I guess they did their job. That's really it, besides the monthly somewhat-boring GT4 update and completely pointless Rise to Honor launch party coverage. I don't give a FUCK about what Jet Li has to say about videogames.

So, overall...big-time suck.

You would think a game that includes 4 player co-op would be fun. You would think that a game that essentially duplicates Halo, a game I have dubbed The Greatest Game This Generation, would be a blast to play. You would think a game that includes a generic reptile/human hybrid who laments “My fire stick is out of ammo” would be at least worth a play through. You would also think, upon playing Brute Force, that not only could you have designed a better game, but that 989 Studios could as well.

So what is so bad about this game? How could a game break the cardinal rule that every co-op game, regardless of quality, is fun? Brute Force set out to be Halo 1.5. And, in many ways, it succeeded. The only problem is it took the worst aspects of Halo and made them even worse. For instance, the game has almost identical controls as Halo. But, for some inexplicable reason, they made the game 3rd person. Good idea guys, just add another problem to a game that is full of them. Camera should never be an issue in action based shooters, but just wait until you get in confinded spaces or come close to any object at all. Watch as your view is obscured. Why not just make it a first person shooter?

Also, just like in Halo, you are forced to play every level two times to win the game. You rejoice when you get to the end, but then they make you turn around and go through every bloody level one more time. And if you thought you were bored with the four different enemy types in Halo, Brute Force has halved that number. And, in some levels, there is only one type of enemy. Who thought that would be a good idea?

And, while the game gives you 4 distinctly different characters, two of them are completely worthless. One of the characters is a sniper, which makes close combat fighting, the vast majority of the game, almost impossible. This may be the first game in history with female characters where I actually prefer being a man. Who thought it would be a good idea to make a character with 50% health and an arsenal that includes various types of pea shooters?

To make matters worse, this has to be the worst collection of characters ever. The lizard is this freaky little creep who says things like “I can smell the vile of their soul coming from the elevator.” What the heck does that even mean? And Tex, Captain Generic himself, constantly demands a medic… something not actually in the game. Yay!

While Nick and I have played through most of the game together, it has been a horrible ordeal. We sprint to the shiny blue hubs that advance us farther in the game so we don’t have to continue with the repetitive gameplay. We purposely die when we are low in health so we can be reborn, at the same point, with full health and ammo. You have to love a game that offers no challenge at all.

And the one cool feature that would make the game slightly more fun is completely ignored. You score money for every objective you completely, every enemy you kill, and every structure you destroy. Subsequently, when you die, you are penalized. At the end of the level you can see your cash totaled up and how you accumulated it. Pretty cool, right? The only problem is there isn’t a thing to do with said money. If you could go to a store and buy a vehicle or a fun game it would be worth it, but, as it stands, it only offers you a goal that no right minded player will attempt to achieve.

The only entertainment that can be found in this game is laughing at its ridiculousness. In the middle of a battle, on a planet we invaded with the objective “Kill all inhabitants,” we are told by our general that, upon being attacked in an open field, that we were ambushed. Ambushed in the middle of a war with nonstop combat? Yeah…

Oh! And this game doesn’t even have Live play. Not like I love the idea of playing this game online, but it would be something. At least Nick and I could go through these horrible missions co-op with two other people stuck controlling the useless women. The one thing that could have made this game playable and they left it out. Disgrace.

So, what is there good about the game? One word: Shadoon.