When I was a kid I was a big fan of Pokemon. I even had a Pokemon-themed Christmas once; Pokemon Annual, Pokemon Pokedex (cheap little LCD and plastic job), Pokemon Socks etc. etc. Needless to say as I grew older I grew out of this habit. Strangely enough it was around about the time that the second generation of games came out on the GameBoy. Then again, there's probably nothing strange about it at all.
Pokemon is one of those eternal children's franchises, in the vein of Power Rangers, that constantly redoes itself using the same basic concept for each successive generation of parent-bothering midgets to flounder their cash on. There's really no trick to it at all; just add new Pokemon, perhaps one or two new gameplay mechanics, and ship away for billions of dollars. It's a surefire formula. The question is, just how much integrity do the people making Pokemon really have?
In essence the Pokemon games haven't changed at all since their first release some ten years ago. Each game has brought little to the basic idea of capturing monsters and having them cruelly beat the living snot out of each other for our amusement. What's perhaps most shocking of this is that, beyond the graphics, there's little that has been done to even improve the game. The latest incarnations on the DS haven't even gotten around to fully animating each of the Pokemon. Sure there's a hundred or so of them, but anything is better than simply warping the sprite. What annoys me about the games in general is that they fail to even deviate slightly from the tested formula, most likely because the fan base continues to buy the games.
But let's be serious, just about every other franchise of game has tried to improve in some respect. Heck even sporting games, which could get away with basic team line-up changes and are confined to the rules of the sport they represent, are a far cry away from games of the same genre ten years ago. Compare something like Fifa '97 with Fifa '07. Beyond the transition from 2D to 3D there have been numerous updates to the basic control system, the way in which the physics of the ball works, etc. Pokemon hasn't even done that, allowing the DS's touch-screen capabilities to fall to the wayside. In short, Game Freak are lazy, money-grabbing bastard. But we can't really blame them for that. They have to keep their employees pockets filled.
No, who we should really blame are all the people who plays these games and never once complain. I played through the very first Pokemon game (Blue in case you were wondering), and since then I can't bring myself to play through any of the others because I feel as though I'm just retreading water. The gameplay is nothing innovative and hardly captivating. There are much better RPG's to waste your time on. Yet the amount of information and time gushed into Pokemon boggles the mind. If you don't believe me check out this Gamefaqs guide on stats gaining in Pokemon; it's something like fifty+ pages long. The subject in question is getting maximum stats for Pokemon. Now in any RPG it's always something of a challenge to try and get the best stats possible. But it's insane just how far people are willing to go for about two or three points of stats difference; controlling levels, feeding vitamins at the right time, breeding the right pokemon, making sure they have the right "personality" - there's a lot of variables, perhaps too many for a game supposedly targeted at children. It's crazy, but the attention to detail the community at large is willing to give it is even crazier. Still crazier is the demand for such information; It's fair to say in the past decade the Pokemon games in their various guises have barely left the Top 10 viewed pages on Gamefaqs, and indeed the level of discussion into tactics in the game is immense.
What's startling about this is that the games themselves aren't even that difficult; you can quite easily complete all the challenges within using capture Pokemon that have been sufficiently levelled. The only real reason to spend hours upon hours gushing over Pokemon, carefully picking their moves list and stats, is two fold; Firstly to have a blast owning everything in the game without a moment's thought, and second to take on other Pokemon players (NOT trainers, that title is just stupid). In the first sense there's no real point to this besides a sense of superiority over the electronic world in which your miniature beasts reside, and in the second it's probably difficult to find players that you will have a real hard time defeating because most players know everything about the games anyway. Really when it comes down to it it's more probable you'll die because you had the wrong element of Pokemon out when the battle started than the hundreds of hours spent raising their stats.
Personally I feel that Game Freak's customers should demand more out of their products. The complacency of each new release to be nothing more than a rehash of old ideas is disgraceful for consumers and shouldn't be allowed. When all the other games companies are striving to create new products and failing to make a profit whilst Game Freak spits out the same crap and makes millions that should give pause for thought. We always complain about companies like Microsoft that release inferior products and have a stranglehold on the market; well now everyone has a chance to make a difference. When the next Pokemon game comes out, don't buy it. Bring down the sales. Stand outside of shops and bat back children with sticks so they don't buy the games either. Eventually the world will become a better place. Or at least a slightly more innovative one.
Sunday 16 March 2008
Tuesday 11 March 2008
Metal Gear Solid - Tacky Shit
I have this habit of vehemently hating games series that everyone else seems to love. Most of the time this stems from the fact that they offer gameplay that I don't find engaging and are as allergic to change and innovation as the Vatican. Prevalent amongst these games are the Grand Theft Auto series, which I have always seen as a sub-par Arcade-esque experience, not to mention the grossly insulting San Andreas version which has every Black and Hispanic under the Californian sun engaging in all manner of stereotypical gang-shootings and mother-effing possible. Of course people got more outraged by the extremely crude sex game than any of this other malarkey. Remember kids; racial stereotyping is OK, provided you don't get your cock out.
The worst of my bile, however, is reserved for the Metal Gear Solid series. It baffles me the lengths people will go to to prove how much they love the games (comparable to the madness that gripped people over Portal, culminating in an internet-wide love of; dignity handed in at the door). I'm convinced that by 2010 there's going to be a full-blown Hideo Kojima religion with large golden Foxes and people praying under cardboard boxes. It's like the guy's some kind of messiah of gaming, and before he came along every game was shit and now anything he touches turns into diamonds. Shaped like Jesus.
What's even more annoying about this is that I've yet to understand why the Metal Gear Solid series gets as much love as it does. So far I have played through half of MGS2, parts of MGS1 and a quick go on the other games. At no time was I having anything close to fun. It was torture, pure and simple, for a number of reasons. But since we have so many vehement fan-boys screaming their lungs out constantly over this gaming drivel, I feel it would be better to counter-attack against the noise by addressing certain factors that people love about the series.
TEH GAMEPLAYS IS SOOOOO GUD!!! SNEAK SNEAK SNEAK!!!!
Let' s get one thing straight; Metal Gear Solid is by no means the best stealth game ever. In fact I would say it ranks amongst some of the worst. There are a number of reasons for this, the main one being that other games have just done it much, much better. Take the fantastic Thief series. It has all the hallmarks of a stealth game; sneaking, knocking people out, evading capture etc. But it manages it infinitely better by simply the best viewpoint for stealth; first-person. I lose count of the number of times I had to fanny about with the camera controls just to see if there was someone around the corner from where I was. If only for an automatic lean function. The whole eye-in-the-sky spiel is odd because it kind of puts you in the chair of a limited-prescence God. In other words not much good for anything. Above-eye viewpoints are only to be used in RTS and Sports games. There's little you can do in terms of planning your overall route, there's no way to avoid going down the pre-set path the developers have forced upon you, and don't even get me started on the wonky senses of the guards who can switch from being deaf, dumb and blind wherein a rhinoceros couldn't get their attention, to having the eyes of a hawk, ears of a bat and self-awareness of a seventy-thousand eyed Beholder. Of course it doesn't help that the game suffers from gameplay schizophrenia. Actually that leads me nicely to the next point;
U CAN DU LOADZ OF FING, LOLOLOLOLOLOLLLLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!
There's a place for excessive mini-games and reaction puzzles and that's the WarioWare series. What strikes me as odd about MGS in general is that it constantly throws you a curve-ball. The actual time you spend sneaking around is minimal. Most of the time you'll be pointing microphones at people while they whaffle on, trying to detected a bomb using a scent marker, dodging around lasers using a packet of cigarettes ad nausea. To me these seem like distracting padding, as if the development team realised that they couldn't make stealth exciting for the game's run so went out of their way to make these bloody things. I wouldn't mind if they were in the least bit entertaining, or heck, sporadic enough to make them special when they do show up. Sometimes being conservative is a good thing.
SNAKE IS SUC A BADASS!!!!!!! LOLOLLMAOROLFCOPTER!!!!
Solid Snake is marginally badass, I'll give you that. But he's not that badass. He can only take about three hits and he's down. That's weak as hell. He's also the type to avoid confrontation rather than seek it out, adding to his pussification factor. He only gains bonus points because of his voice and the fact he hits on every female he finds. I can name three computer game characters who are infinitely more badass right off the top of my head; Duke Nukem, Kratos and Max Payne. There, three people who could easily kick the crap out of Snake without a second thought. And they'd do it with more style to boot.
BUT TEH STORIES IS SOOO AWESEEESOMMEENS!!!!
This is perhaps the one thing I have most contention with when it comes to the MGS series. There's this myth that somehow the stories are artistic, brilliantly written works of art. Well they're not. I wrote stories when I was at Primary School that were more engaging and deep than any of the tripe seen in MGS. Hell, I've seen Steven Seagal movies with plots better than the one's in these games. The major problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be; gritty Bourne-esque espionage or camp, frothy nonsense. The art direction would suggest the first, while every single line of dialogue and most of the cut scenes suggest the opposite. It's a bit like the Pope giving an interview about the dangers of condom use whilst juggling. You know what he's trying to say is important but for the life of you you don't know why in the hell he keeps throwing those balls around. The plots themselves are also utter nonsense. Actually they're the worst kind of nonsense - nonsense that takes itself very seriously. I mean, severed arms holding the personality of the bad guy? Cybernetic ninjas in a world of ranged weapons? Guys in tanks talking kitschy dialogue with all the seriousness of a Shakespearean play? It's trash, pure and simple. It belongs on some godforsaken late-night movie on the Sci-Fi channel. Stuff like this is why games aren't taken seriously.
Then there's the cutscenes. I'm not a big fan of any parts of a game that aren't interactive in some way. At least in Half Life you could mess around with the crowbar whilst people nattered on at you. The sense of immersion never went away. In this sense cutscenes for me need to be interesting, engaging and snappy. MGS's are none of these. They drag on forever, with every single line of dialog having close to a five second pause after it. Try counting the beats yourself, it's painful. Also there's no need for any gratuitous slow-motion shots unless it's showing something really awesome, like someone's head exploding. Even worse is the Codec conversations that are just painful to have to listen to. I don't know how anyone can sit whilst the characters babble to each other for fifteen plus minutes at a time about the same frothy nonsense I mentioned above with naught to do but wiggling their portraits about with the analog sticks. It's like Chinese water torture. Or Japanese game torture.
UR RUBBASH, MGS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!
MGS has produced approximately two good things; Metal Gear Awesome and Metal Gear Awesome 2 . What's telling is that both of these fine, hilarious movies highlights why the series annoys me; utter nonsense taken way too seriously. Everything that happens in the movies is not exaggerated at all beyond the dialog.
I will stand by my convictions until the end; MGS1/2/3 are bad games, pure and simple. Other games play better, have better stories, are no where near as frustrating and are a lot more engaging. Of course my hatred of this series only adds onto the pile of things that only I seem to have a distaste for. Then again I'm aware of the fact that 50% of people have below-average intelligence. That would correlate nicely with the size of the voices that raise these games to the high heavens. So therefore I conclude that if you like MGS you must be an idiot. And you can't argue with logic mixed with statistics.
The worst of my bile, however, is reserved for the Metal Gear Solid series. It baffles me the lengths people will go to to prove how much they love the games (comparable to the madness that gripped people over Portal, culminating in an internet-wide love of; dignity handed in at the door). I'm convinced that by 2010 there's going to be a full-blown Hideo Kojima religion with large golden Foxes and people praying under cardboard boxes. It's like the guy's some kind of messiah of gaming, and before he came along every game was shit and now anything he touches turns into diamonds. Shaped like Jesus.
What's even more annoying about this is that I've yet to understand why the Metal Gear Solid series gets as much love as it does. So far I have played through half of MGS2, parts of MGS1 and a quick go on the other games. At no time was I having anything close to fun. It was torture, pure and simple, for a number of reasons. But since we have so many vehement fan-boys screaming their lungs out constantly over this gaming drivel, I feel it would be better to counter-attack against the noise by addressing certain factors that people love about the series.
TEH GAMEPLAYS IS SOOOOO GUD!!! SNEAK SNEAK SNEAK!!!!
Let' s get one thing straight; Metal Gear Solid is by no means the best stealth game ever. In fact I would say it ranks amongst some of the worst. There are a number of reasons for this, the main one being that other games have just done it much, much better. Take the fantastic Thief series. It has all the hallmarks of a stealth game; sneaking, knocking people out, evading capture etc. But it manages it infinitely better by simply the best viewpoint for stealth; first-person. I lose count of the number of times I had to fanny about with the camera controls just to see if there was someone around the corner from where I was. If only for an automatic lean function. The whole eye-in-the-sky spiel is odd because it kind of puts you in the chair of a limited-prescence God. In other words not much good for anything. Above-eye viewpoints are only to be used in RTS and Sports games. There's little you can do in terms of planning your overall route, there's no way to avoid going down the pre-set path the developers have forced upon you, and don't even get me started on the wonky senses of the guards who can switch from being deaf, dumb and blind wherein a rhinoceros couldn't get their attention, to having the eyes of a hawk, ears of a bat and self-awareness of a seventy-thousand eyed Beholder. Of course it doesn't help that the game suffers from gameplay schizophrenia. Actually that leads me nicely to the next point;
U CAN DU LOADZ OF FING, LOLOLOLOLOLOLLLLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!
There's a place for excessive mini-games and reaction puzzles and that's the WarioWare series. What strikes me as odd about MGS in general is that it constantly throws you a curve-ball. The actual time you spend sneaking around is minimal. Most of the time you'll be pointing microphones at people while they whaffle on, trying to detected a bomb using a scent marker, dodging around lasers using a packet of cigarettes ad nausea. To me these seem like distracting padding, as if the development team realised that they couldn't make stealth exciting for the game's run so went out of their way to make these bloody things. I wouldn't mind if they were in the least bit entertaining, or heck, sporadic enough to make them special when they do show up. Sometimes being conservative is a good thing.
SNAKE IS SUC A BADASS!!!!!!! LOLOLLMAOROLFCOPTER!!!!
Solid Snake is marginally badass, I'll give you that. But he's not that badass. He can only take about three hits and he's down. That's weak as hell. He's also the type to avoid confrontation rather than seek it out, adding to his pussification factor. He only gains bonus points because of his voice and the fact he hits on every female he finds. I can name three computer game characters who are infinitely more badass right off the top of my head; Duke Nukem, Kratos and Max Payne. There, three people who could easily kick the crap out of Snake without a second thought. And they'd do it with more style to boot.
BUT TEH STORIES IS SOOO AWESEEESOMMEENS!!!!
This is perhaps the one thing I have most contention with when it comes to the MGS series. There's this myth that somehow the stories are artistic, brilliantly written works of art. Well they're not. I wrote stories when I was at Primary School that were more engaging and deep than any of the tripe seen in MGS. Hell, I've seen Steven Seagal movies with plots better than the one's in these games. The major problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be; gritty Bourne-esque espionage or camp, frothy nonsense. The art direction would suggest the first, while every single line of dialogue and most of the cut scenes suggest the opposite. It's a bit like the Pope giving an interview about the dangers of condom use whilst juggling. You know what he's trying to say is important but for the life of you you don't know why in the hell he keeps throwing those balls around. The plots themselves are also utter nonsense. Actually they're the worst kind of nonsense - nonsense that takes itself very seriously. I mean, severed arms holding the personality of the bad guy? Cybernetic ninjas in a world of ranged weapons? Guys in tanks talking kitschy dialogue with all the seriousness of a Shakespearean play? It's trash, pure and simple. It belongs on some godforsaken late-night movie on the Sci-Fi channel. Stuff like this is why games aren't taken seriously.
Then there's the cutscenes. I'm not a big fan of any parts of a game that aren't interactive in some way. At least in Half Life you could mess around with the crowbar whilst people nattered on at you. The sense of immersion never went away. In this sense cutscenes for me need to be interesting, engaging and snappy. MGS's are none of these. They drag on forever, with every single line of dialog having close to a five second pause after it. Try counting the beats yourself, it's painful. Also there's no need for any gratuitous slow-motion shots unless it's showing something really awesome, like someone's head exploding. Even worse is the Codec conversations that are just painful to have to listen to. I don't know how anyone can sit whilst the characters babble to each other for fifteen plus minutes at a time about the same frothy nonsense I mentioned above with naught to do but wiggling their portraits about with the analog sticks. It's like Chinese water torture. Or Japanese game torture.
UR RUBBASH, MGS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!
MGS has produced approximately two good things; Metal Gear Awesome and Metal Gear Awesome 2 . What's telling is that both of these fine, hilarious movies highlights why the series annoys me; utter nonsense taken way too seriously. Everything that happens in the movies is not exaggerated at all beyond the dialog.
I will stand by my convictions until the end; MGS1/2/3 are bad games, pure and simple. Other games play better, have better stories, are no where near as frustrating and are a lot more engaging. Of course my hatred of this series only adds onto the pile of things that only I seem to have a distaste for. Then again I'm aware of the fact that 50% of people have below-average intelligence. That would correlate nicely with the size of the voices that raise these games to the high heavens. So therefore I conclude that if you like MGS you must be an idiot. And you can't argue with logic mixed with statistics.
Sunday 2 March 2008
Get with the guys - DS Vs. PSP
At some point between the release of the DS and PSP respectively and now, there seems to have been a noticeable shift in the perceived demographic of the two major hand-helds. I have several theories as to why this occurred,which I'll go into momentarily. As far as my observations go, it seems that for the most part, Nintendo DSes are for girls, and PSPs are for boys.
You need only look at the two consoles to see why this may be the case. Just have a look at their designs. The PSP is a wedge, a black-and-chrome machine with no external bells and whistles. Just use the buttons and take the pain as it were. By comparison the DS is practically dainty. Go try out a DS Lite at your local games store; it's about the size of a large playing card, made for the hands of a child. It also comes in pink, the uniform colour of all things girly. Granted the PSP supposedly comes in pink. I've heard rumours, but I've yet to see any evidence. Until that time PSPs are black and cold, DSes are pink and fluffy.
Then there's the range of games on each. The PSP is all about violence and action. There's some of the stalwarts of the PS2 such as Grand Theft Auto and Tekken, along with distinctly blokey series such as FIFA. The DS has things like Animal Crossing and Nintendogs. You just try and get blood, guts and explosions on the DS - you'll most likely fall flat.
If you want to check my theory, the next time you're in a room of known game players, if they're mainly guys ask if they have a DS, and if they're gals (less likely I know) ask if they have a PSP. In either case the parties will most likely sneer at you and probably spit in your general direction. Even in gaming there's a sex divide. O well, at least I have both, but I've always been a bit fruity.
You need only look at the two consoles to see why this may be the case. Just have a look at their designs. The PSP is a wedge, a black-and-chrome machine with no external bells and whistles. Just use the buttons and take the pain as it were. By comparison the DS is practically dainty. Go try out a DS Lite at your local games store; it's about the size of a large playing card, made for the hands of a child. It also comes in pink, the uniform colour of all things girly. Granted the PSP supposedly comes in pink. I've heard rumours, but I've yet to see any evidence. Until that time PSPs are black and cold, DSes are pink and fluffy.
Then there's the range of games on each. The PSP is all about violence and action. There's some of the stalwarts of the PS2 such as Grand Theft Auto and Tekken, along with distinctly blokey series such as FIFA. The DS has things like Animal Crossing and Nintendogs. You just try and get blood, guts and explosions on the DS - you'll most likely fall flat.
If you want to check my theory, the next time you're in a room of known game players, if they're mainly guys ask if they have a DS, and if they're gals (less likely I know) ask if they have a PSP. In either case the parties will most likely sneer at you and probably spit in your general direction. Even in gaming there's a sex divide. O well, at least I have both, but I've always been a bit fruity.
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