Everyone seems to be reviewing old games these days, so I'll do the same;
Deus Ex:
For crap's sake, play it
Done and dusted.
(P.S. Proper article coming when I think of something to write. Then again who the hell reads this anyway?)
Sunday 27 April 2008
Tuesday 22 April 2008
An Open Letter To Sega Re: Sonic The Hedgehog
Dear Sega;
As a lifelong fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, I think I can safely say that the series as a whole has lost it's way. I am not the only person who thinks this; you need only send one of your interns on a Google-search for any Sonic product post '99 to see just what the community thinks of the frankly inferior products you've been producing. It's a shame because Sonic made Sega the name it is today in many parts of the world, and the character still holds a lot of respect and selling power. However a name is only ever as good as the product it is backing, and in this sense recent efforts have been distinctly wanting. For this reason among others I want to suggest, for future titles, that you immediately forthwith implement the following changes;
1 - Get rid of the third D
Seriously, games like Sonic just don't work in three-dimensions. Since the original games relied on a combination of fast movement and controllable two-dimensional physics adding a third dimension just confounds things further. Believe me, you're on the right track with the Sonic Advance/Rush series. You can still make good looking games using all those fancy bells and whistles that come with modern consoles. Trust me, Sonic works when you're limited to up, down, left and right (and a + start)
2 - Shut Sonic up
Sonic was infinitely more endearing when he didn't open his stupid trap. In the context of comics and cartoons then there's a pressing need to have him speak dialogue, but much of his personality can be shown through inventive idle animations, actions within the games and so on. It's bad enough you made the poor guy speak, but to give him the prototypical "radical dude" vocal tics was stupendously obvious and above all obnoxious. Bill and Ted has long since passed, let it go already.
3 - Get rid of Shadow
I can understand; one day you were scanning through the music channels and chanced upon something by My Crappy Romance or other such tosh and thought "hey, the kids are into this misery deal, let's go with that". But really, come on, was it that necessary to start making spin-offs with the guy? Beside the fact that he has the personality of a wet tea-bag, the guy plays like wank in the games. Chaos control can suck my balls.
4 - Stop adding so many supporting characters
Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and possibly Amy. That's all you really need to make a Sonic game right there. Robotnik/Eggman/Whatever the hell you call him as the main bad guy and a suitable robotic anthropomorphic representation of a main cast member as a mini-nemesis. It's simple, it's effect and it's not sickeningly annoying. I needn't remind you that you're starting to run dry on the whole cute animal stock. For every cute animal on this planet, there's a thousand evil ones. You know you're scraping the barrel when you start using bats. I mean really, bats? Are they really so endearing? Name me one character that ever made his or her name by being associated with bats. Yeah, I thought not.
5 - Would you let us collect Chaos Emeralds and get Super Forms again for goodness sake?
I love going all Dragonball Z when I get fifty rings. I love being able to dash through levels at the speed of light destroying everything in my path. It's an incentive to explore to find the posts/rings to get to the special zone, it's a reward for me putting in so much darned effort in the first place. Brief storyline-based levels that last a few minutes do not count.
6 - No more cross-species love interests
I don't think I need to elabourate more. Just don't do it, okay?
7 - Stop adding pointless gameplay mechanics
What, I've got to deal with souls and do tricks in the middle of the air to get through a level? I've got enough going on avoiding bad-guys and the like without arsing about with such things. We get it, you're trying to do something different, but at the very least if you're going to implement such things make them a passive choice for the player and not a necessity for play. Kind of like the Super forms. See how that works?
8 - Remake Sonic 3 + S&K
Dammit all, just create a modern version of Sonic3K. Really you haven't made a decent Sonic game since then. From then on just make extensions on that same game layout until the end of time. We'll all thank you for it.
I hope you take my criticism on board because I'm telling you, I'm this close to getting a Mario game. I haven't bought a Mario game since '93. Is that what you want? Do you want the plumber to win? Do you want some overweight Italian municipal worker usurping my loyalty? I didn't think so.
In short, get your shit together.
-Captain Maxx Power
P.S. Actually I just realised, there's Batman, Batgirl and the actual Bat Man (as in a man who's a Bat). But not that many people know about the last guy so he doesn't count. My points are still valid though so get to it, chop chop!
As a lifelong fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, I think I can safely say that the series as a whole has lost it's way. I am not the only person who thinks this; you need only send one of your interns on a Google-search for any Sonic product post '99 to see just what the community thinks of the frankly inferior products you've been producing. It's a shame because Sonic made Sega the name it is today in many parts of the world, and the character still holds a lot of respect and selling power. However a name is only ever as good as the product it is backing, and in this sense recent efforts have been distinctly wanting. For this reason among others I want to suggest, for future titles, that you immediately forthwith implement the following changes;
1 - Get rid of the third D
Seriously, games like Sonic just don't work in three-dimensions. Since the original games relied on a combination of fast movement and controllable two-dimensional physics adding a third dimension just confounds things further. Believe me, you're on the right track with the Sonic Advance/Rush series. You can still make good looking games using all those fancy bells and whistles that come with modern consoles. Trust me, Sonic works when you're limited to up, down, left and right (and a + start)
2 - Shut Sonic up
Sonic was infinitely more endearing when he didn't open his stupid trap. In the context of comics and cartoons then there's a pressing need to have him speak dialogue, but much of his personality can be shown through inventive idle animations, actions within the games and so on. It's bad enough you made the poor guy speak, but to give him the prototypical "radical dude" vocal tics was stupendously obvious and above all obnoxious. Bill and Ted has long since passed, let it go already.
3 - Get rid of Shadow
I can understand; one day you were scanning through the music channels and chanced upon something by My Crappy Romance or other such tosh and thought "hey, the kids are into this misery deal, let's go with that". But really, come on, was it that necessary to start making spin-offs with the guy? Beside the fact that he has the personality of a wet tea-bag, the guy plays like wank in the games. Chaos control can suck my balls.
4 - Stop adding so many supporting characters
Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and possibly Amy. That's all you really need to make a Sonic game right there. Robotnik/Eggman/Whatever the hell you call him as the main bad guy and a suitable robotic anthropomorphic representation of a main cast member as a mini-nemesis. It's simple, it's effect and it's not sickeningly annoying. I needn't remind you that you're starting to run dry on the whole cute animal stock. For every cute animal on this planet, there's a thousand evil ones. You know you're scraping the barrel when you start using bats. I mean really, bats? Are they really so endearing? Name me one character that ever made his or her name by being associated with bats. Yeah, I thought not.
5 - Would you let us collect Chaos Emeralds and get Super Forms again for goodness sake?
I love going all Dragonball Z when I get fifty rings. I love being able to dash through levels at the speed of light destroying everything in my path. It's an incentive to explore to find the posts/rings to get to the special zone, it's a reward for me putting in so much darned effort in the first place. Brief storyline-based levels that last a few minutes do not count.
6 - No more cross-species love interests
I don't think I need to elabourate more. Just don't do it, okay?
7 - Stop adding pointless gameplay mechanics
What, I've got to deal with souls and do tricks in the middle of the air to get through a level? I've got enough going on avoiding bad-guys and the like without arsing about with such things. We get it, you're trying to do something different, but at the very least if you're going to implement such things make them a passive choice for the player and not a necessity for play. Kind of like the Super forms. See how that works?
8 - Remake Sonic 3 + S&K
Dammit all, just create a modern version of Sonic3K. Really you haven't made a decent Sonic game since then. From then on just make extensions on that same game layout until the end of time. We'll all thank you for it.
I hope you take my criticism on board because I'm telling you, I'm this close to getting a Mario game. I haven't bought a Mario game since '93. Is that what you want? Do you want the plumber to win? Do you want some overweight Italian municipal worker usurping my loyalty? I didn't think so.
In short, get your shit together.
-Captain Maxx Power
P.S. Actually I just realised, there's Batman, Batgirl and the actual Bat Man (as in a man who's a Bat). But not that many people know about the last guy so he doesn't count. My points are still valid though so get to it, chop chop!
Saturday 5 April 2008
The Decline Of Single-Player Gaming
Almost everyone who plays games online is either an asshole, an idiot or both. If there are any reasonable, smart people out there then they either don't make themselves known or their voices are drowned out by the static of teenage boys determined to prove their personal worth to their peers and in the process lose what little dignity they have. The internet is unique in that it offers no direct backlash from directed insults. It's probably not a stretch to imagine these same kids wouldn't call people who bump into them on the street "fukin n00b cockscukr". Still the relative anonymity of the internet allows for such perpetually soul-destroying stupidity to continue wide rife. For those of us who like to play games online, this makes the experience a combination of utter frustration and insane anger management, one that many of us could probably do without.
Yet the current trends lean towards a market that is saturated with multiplayer games. Of course we've been told since the early 90's that online gaming was the future, but it took a number of years for technology to catch up. Before that online gaming was a baffling task of IP addresses and modem settings, with MMOG's reserved to text-based MUDs that were about as penetrable as a titanium fortress surrounded by a moat of lava. Perhaps because of this earlier online communities were somewhat more bearable, although pomposity was just a big a virus as arrogance is today. With the advent of ADSL and Cable games such as Everquest and the like found their feet. At around this time games started integrating methods of finding servers to play on automatically. So it was that online gaming became available to the unwashed masses. They saw it and it was good...for about five minutes. Then it was a pre-pubescent "swear-off" of epic proportions, one that still doesn't abate. I may be exaggerating slightly of course, but I think most gamers can agree this is the norm.
By comparison the realm of Single-Player games doesn't experience this problem. The only contenders you have is the game itself, and even then it's unlikely to have a twenty minute chat log filled with cock and "your mama" jokes involved. Not only that but Single-Player games offer many experiences that Multiplayer just can't - Fantastic atmosphere, brilliant story-telling, and above all you don't have to retread the same places over and over again as you do when playing online.
But it seems the modding community in general is filled with those same idiots and assholes I mentioned earlier. Go have a look at somewhere like Moddb.com; most games are filled to the brim with Multi-Player mods, each one more disinteresting than the last. It seems that the idea that people just want to play online extends deep. Single-Player mods are a lot more sparse, which is a shame because most of them are brilliant pieces of work. Nowadays you'd be lucky if a Single-Player mod launched every two~three months. Multi-Player releases you can expect every week, perhaps even every few days. Of course the sheer volume of online mods means that the vast majority of them are underplayed. The major downfall of any online game is that you need enough people playing for it to be successful. Who's going to bother with SWAT-Tactics Combat 2 when you can just play Counter-Strike? Most online mods are not only bland, but theoretically unplayable. It's the metaphorical equivalent of Ford deciding to pump out Reliant Robins at a ratio of 5 to 1 against all their other cars. The modding market is saturated with this tripe, and it shows no signs of abating.
It wasn't always like this. In the hay-day of Doom and Quake, before the advent of the aforementioned faster connections, Single-Player maps and mods were all over. It was a flood of unique and interesting architecture and design, and one was never stuck to find maps that were both brilliantly made and fun to play. Then came the fast-connections, and with it seemingly the death of Single-Player maps and mods. It's telling that when I was still working for PlanetHalfLife (before I was unceremoniously dropped from their rooster due to being told to wait for a Multi-Player session for a mod that never materialised), I was the only staff writer who would do Single-Player reviews. Since my departure the output on Single-Player content has dried up to a trickle. It seems no one genuinely cares about Single-Player experiences any more.
So why is this? Surely with all these idiots and assholes the opportunity to get away from the moronic masses and play something fun on your own would appeal to pretty much every gamer? Well I personally don't know the answer to that. Maybe it's an odd sort of self-mutilation; people get a thrill out of dealing with these wankers. Maybe people just don't think there's any worth of Single-Player mods anymore. It's a sad state of affairs we have nowadays, and it's seemingly getting worse.
Perhaps I'm being a bit negative; In some years we may have a renaissance of user-created Single-Player content. But in the meantime those of us who appreciate the subtle poetry of Single-Player mods must content with the quagmire of trash that the online community largely ignores, sifting through for the small gems of gameplay experience left in a sea of waste created by our own hands.
Yet the current trends lean towards a market that is saturated with multiplayer games. Of course we've been told since the early 90's that online gaming was the future, but it took a number of years for technology to catch up. Before that online gaming was a baffling task of IP addresses and modem settings, with MMOG's reserved to text-based MUDs that were about as penetrable as a titanium fortress surrounded by a moat of lava. Perhaps because of this earlier online communities were somewhat more bearable, although pomposity was just a big a virus as arrogance is today. With the advent of ADSL and Cable games such as Everquest and the like found their feet. At around this time games started integrating methods of finding servers to play on automatically. So it was that online gaming became available to the unwashed masses. They saw it and it was good...for about five minutes. Then it was a pre-pubescent "swear-off" of epic proportions, one that still doesn't abate. I may be exaggerating slightly of course, but I think most gamers can agree this is the norm.
By comparison the realm of Single-Player games doesn't experience this problem. The only contenders you have is the game itself, and even then it's unlikely to have a twenty minute chat log filled with cock and "your mama" jokes involved. Not only that but Single-Player games offer many experiences that Multiplayer just can't - Fantastic atmosphere, brilliant story-telling, and above all you don't have to retread the same places over and over again as you do when playing online.
But it seems the modding community in general is filled with those same idiots and assholes I mentioned earlier. Go have a look at somewhere like Moddb.com; most games are filled to the brim with Multi-Player mods, each one more disinteresting than the last. It seems that the idea that people just want to play online extends deep. Single-Player mods are a lot more sparse, which is a shame because most of them are brilliant pieces of work. Nowadays you'd be lucky if a Single-Player mod launched every two~three months. Multi-Player releases you can expect every week, perhaps even every few days. Of course the sheer volume of online mods means that the vast majority of them are underplayed. The major downfall of any online game is that you need enough people playing for it to be successful. Who's going to bother with SWAT-Tactics Combat 2 when you can just play Counter-Strike? Most online mods are not only bland, but theoretically unplayable. It's the metaphorical equivalent of Ford deciding to pump out Reliant Robins at a ratio of 5 to 1 against all their other cars. The modding market is saturated with this tripe, and it shows no signs of abating.
It wasn't always like this. In the hay-day of Doom and Quake, before the advent of the aforementioned faster connections, Single-Player maps and mods were all over. It was a flood of unique and interesting architecture and design, and one was never stuck to find maps that were both brilliantly made and fun to play. Then came the fast-connections, and with it seemingly the death of Single-Player maps and mods. It's telling that when I was still working for PlanetHalfLife (before I was unceremoniously dropped from their rooster due to being told to wait for a Multi-Player session for a mod that never materialised), I was the only staff writer who would do Single-Player reviews. Since my departure the output on Single-Player content has dried up to a trickle. It seems no one genuinely cares about Single-Player experiences any more.
So why is this? Surely with all these idiots and assholes the opportunity to get away from the moronic masses and play something fun on your own would appeal to pretty much every gamer? Well I personally don't know the answer to that. Maybe it's an odd sort of self-mutilation; people get a thrill out of dealing with these wankers. Maybe people just don't think there's any worth of Single-Player mods anymore. It's a sad state of affairs we have nowadays, and it's seemingly getting worse.
Perhaps I'm being a bit negative; In some years we may have a renaissance of user-created Single-Player content. But in the meantime those of us who appreciate the subtle poetry of Single-Player mods must content with the quagmire of trash that the online community largely ignores, sifting through for the small gems of gameplay experience left in a sea of waste created by our own hands.
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