G-pinions

Man, games can be super frustrating, eh? I typed that Mario Hoops review yesterday with anger spewing from my ears. After playing through the first 24 matches with relative ease, I all of a sudden hit one of those ultra cheap walls that makes video games a chore to play. In Hard Rainbow Tournament Extra I had to play against a trio of Square ringers. It was an impossible match. I mentioned yesterday that the game played like a 1 on 3 obstacle course. That's because your teammates literally do nothing. They don't play defense, they never use items, and they stand still on the offensive end. Frustrating at first, but this became infuriating in the last match.

I hate when video games cheat. The reason this last match was so hard is because the computer players could do things that I couldn't. Though I was using Diddy Kong, who is "Speedy," I was decidedly slower than anyone on their team. Not only could they recover any loose balls with ease, they could step in front of me whenever I tried to score. That just flat out sucks. So I wrote an angry review and sent it back to Gamefly as soon as I got home. I don't put up with cheap game design.

And then I realized that this is becoming a trend for me. Just about every game I've gotten from Gamefly has been returned in anger. Saint's Row, which I haven't written about because it's not worth the effort, caused a similar brain aneurism. Smooth sailing for the most part ruined by one ridiculous mission. It wasn't particularly hard, but it was boring. It was the last mission in the Los Carnales rivalry. I had to shoot down an airplane. Shouldn't be that hard, especially since I had limitless rockets, but it was annoying. There were people stationed around the plane to save the escaping bastard and they had rocket launchers too. So I would drive around for a bit before I got blindsided by some guy on a roof 200 meters away. Why was this so annoying? The mission starts on the other side of the city, about 10 minutes away by car. I only played this mission a few times before I got tired of it. Why would anyone want to drive across the city over and over again? Is that considered fun?

Madden and NCAA frustrated me, and were quickly returned, because they were bad. They played like five-year-old games. Why are people wasting their time on these poor imitations of a great sport? I have no idea. Battle for Middle Earth got sent back because the control scheme was ultimately broken. Call of Duty was shipped back because they didn't understand what war was all about or how to properly code artificial intelligence. All of these games reached a point on my tolerance meter where I simply could not take it anymore. All of these games were poorly designed. They relished in frustrating gamers rather than create a riveting gaming experience.

I am enjoying Okami a lot more as I get deeper into the game. This is good game design. You don't have to make cheap missions to artificially extend the life of a game. Okami has a good story and varied gameplay mechanics that make it a pleasure to experience all it has to offer. Not every game is created by developers so in love with gaming. Not every developer is talented enough to make something like Okami in the first place. It just makes it hard to go back to substandard games when I am playing through a masterpiece like this.

Thank God for Gamefly. I can't imagine how pissed I would be if I was stuck with Mario Hoops or Call of Duty 2 in my permanent collection.