G-pinions

Dammit. Even though EGM's Timesplitters: Future Perfect reviews were less than insightful and incredibly undescriptive, their mixed reactions to the game had me nice and unexcited for it. And thusly, my wallet was safe for the remainder of March. Now, IGN goes and writes a multiplayer preview that has me drooling for the game all over again. Zombie moose? Cyborg cactus? These are things that I need to experience where they exist. I absolutely adore the first two games, but I ended up preferring the offline multiplayer of Red Faction, and eventually the off/online multiplayer of Halo. That, and Timesplitters 2 becomes near-impossible to %100 after unlocking the first hundred or so characters. The online multiplayer of Future Perfect sounds great though. I don't imagine it would take away much from my quasi-nightly Halo 2 sessions, but now I definitely have to at least try it.

And if that wasn't enough, I'm now dying to play Brothers in Arms as well. IGN overrates most things quite extremely, but it's still hard to ignore a 9.3 rating and proclamation that it's the best war shooter on the system. Every screenshot and video up until now had always been of the same damn level, which helped to keep me lukewarm towards the game. Now I hear that it looks, plays and sounds like a violent dream, and I'm all over it. So again, dammit, more games to get, or at least rent. I suppose it's my fault for owning all three system so I'm able to look forward to every half-decent thing that comes along, but it's hard to keep my attention on the few games I'm busy playing now, nevermind a dozen more every month.

Jumping around as usual, it would appear that I'm not the only one grossly frustrated with RE4's story. Well, more accurately, everything the characters say and how they say it. The story itself is really interesting, with cults and science and such, but it's marred so obtrusively by the godawful voice acting and script. I can't believe that more reviews didn't even mention it, nevermind mark off for it. It's a major facet of the game, and it's basically driving everything you do. And whether you love or hate story in games (I'm in-between, I always watch it but don't always enjoy it), it should still be up to par with the gameplay. A great story can make a good game even better, but it goes the other way too. In RE4's case, it just completely takes you out of the game whenever Leon opens his damn mouth, whether it's to brazenly reassure Ashley or blab to whomever the hell on his Codec. In such an atmospheric, immersive game, it's like being poked in the ribs every twenty minutes. Oh well, few games are perfect, and it's about the only significant flaw in this one.

Oh, before I forget, bid on this. It's for a good cause, and it's through the best website.

I think I have entered a very bad place. Do you remember when I wrote about Paper Mario 2 a few weeks ago? Do you remember how I said it was quite boring and completely unimaginative? That intelligent Systems should be ashamed of themselves for releasing such an uninspired RPG after Mario's last such adventure, Superstar Saga, was pure gaming bliss? Surprise surprise, despite the numerous flaws seemingly bubbling out of every silicon pore, I am still knee deep in this game. In fact, after completing the three hundred and second fetch quest last night, I eased the odometer into the 40 hour range.

I assume you have turned off your mind while reading this, so I'll propose a question to further this post: why the heck are you still playing this game? This is where the tears form in my eyes as I recount my days before I started playing Paper Mario. In January I was playing Metroid Prime: Echoes. It was a really good game, but it has the same problems as Metroid Prime; it's just too much. I spent more time racking my brain where that previously inaccessible area was than actually jumping and shooting. Every second of Echoes felt like I was solving some overly complex, Cube-esque puzzle. I needed a break. I needed a game that would allow me to fasten a drool cup under my chin and a bib around my neck. I needed Paper Mario.

So why did I think Paper Mario would help? First of all, it's an RPG. Though Nick and maybe other readers of this site may not believe it, RPGs are one of my favorite genres. There are many reasons why this is true, but one of the most important ones is that they are some of the most relaxing games around. I played Ninja Gaiden for five hours last Saturday, and I was completely exhausted when I was done. There is nothing quite like being on the edge of your seat for five straight hours, tense with fear the entire time and constantly seeing your video game dreams crushed by yet another death.

Paper Mario, and every other RPG for that matter, is the Sunday of games. I'm never on the edge of my seat, I never have to rack my brain to move on, and I never sweat with fear. Resident Evil and Ninja Gaiden may be two of the best games ever, but Paper Mario is what calls to me. It's the next best thing to sitting on my butt watching reruns of Friends. So I guess I just went the extra step, in the midst of a hobby shrouded in being lazy, and found the laziest game in the laziest genre out there.

Also, RPGs are a chance for me to really work that creative, video game developing mind of mine. You see, when a game like RE4 comes around and just is perfection in almost every way (except the story, which stinks) there isn't anything else to do but enjoy the experience. But Paper Mario, and just about every RPG not named Chrono Trigger, are so full of problems that I can't help but think of ways to improve it while I'm playing. I really hate being restricted in RPG, yet every single RPG out there offers severe limitations. Why can't I do anything I want? I don't think every game needs to throw in the good vs evil dynamic, but I would like some choice in how the story takes place. Paper Mario is just a long, poorly written book - and I can't even skip to the good parts. I think the days of scripted RPGs are over.

I wonder what an RPG that incorporated Pikmin's time system would be like. For example, I've been at the end of the game for about five hours now. What would happen if, because I didn't show up right away, the Shadow Queen rose from the tomb and started to take over the world? Everything is so scripted that the story is relegated to waiting idly until I come and turn the page. Shouldn't this be a living, breathing world where events happen without Mario being present? And why can't I get Luigi to team up with me? He's in this game, always talking about some boring adventure he's having, but I can't get him to tag along. Does this make any sense? Wouldn't it be better to have Luigi than a Gomba and a toddler Yoshi?

And why does everything take so long? At the end of the game there is a ten minute cutscene before you are able to fight the end boss. And then, in the middle of that battle, there is another 10 minute cutscene, this one even lamer than the last, that can't be skipped. I've sat through these twice now, the first time I read it, diligent story reader that I am, but the GC froze towards the end of the second cutscene. The second time, I just flipped to the TV and continually hit B to run through the dialog while watching highlights from the previous nights NBA games. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but necessary because Intelligent Systems hates me. I ended up dying at the end boss, which means I have to sit through another 20 minute of cutscenes when I finally win the game today. Can this really be called entertainment?

Anyway, I have only myself to blame. 40 hours is a long time to spend on a game you don't even like that much.

As I understand it, Devil May Cry 3 is incredibly difficult. This is frustrating me without even having played it, and is draining a lot of the excitement I had about picking it up on Thursday. The reason that this one bothers me more than usual is two-fold: firstly, they went out of their way to make this game more difficult for the U.S. release - our Normal mode is Japan's Hard mode; secondly, it's an action game - it exists (or should, at least) purely for fun and fast-paced excitement, not tedious five-minute battles that rely as much on luck as memorizing button combinations.

The best action games, and fighting games for that matter, all share a common approachability - they're easy to get into and do decently well in, but tough to master and learn the intricacies of. Ninja Gaiden is an exception to the rule, but I still think it didn't need to be as hard as it is (Tom is playing it now, and he'll soon understand the Alma anguish). I also understand Itagaki's approach with Gaiden, that he wanted it to be learnt and played more like a fighting game than anything else. While he achieved that, it was more by necessity than player choice. Games should be flexible enough to allow you to choose your level of investment, and DMC is definitely something you should be able to pick up and play for five minutes. What makes this an even larger problem is how fickle American gamers are - if they're not having fun within the first minutes they're not interested. You can bet DMC3 will sell well initially, but I'm sure plenty of those copies will be traded right back in once people find out that they can't pass the second level. I'm hoping it's not as bad as they say, or that I'm good enough to not have a problem with it, but I have little faith in either.

My other thing to bitch about today is this: If someone working on an Xbox2 game is to be believed, few, if any, XBox2 games will run at 60fps. To me, this is inexcusable. Plenty of people, such as my otherwise brilliant co-writer Tom (who is currently squinting to read this), can't even hazard a guess as to what framerate a game runs at, and can't sense slowdown until their character actually stops moving. For those of us that can see every fluctuation in that area, you'll appreciate just how much better a 60fps game looks than a 30fps one, even at a lower level graphically. The PS1 didn't have many, but I vividly remember the ones that did; the current-gen systems have a much larger handful of these games, but they are far from the majority. Did Moore's Law just skip this category? Nothing but the most technologically complex games should run at anything less than 60fps in the next generation, and even that shouldn't be the case. If the PS3 is able to provide this while the Xbox2 cannot (many recent rumors have suggested it will be the hardware-superior one this time), it would heavily influence my multiplatform purchasing decisions. Developer's just need to get it together and overcome this hurdle, lest I toss and turn every night for the rest of my miserable life.