Why I Like Duke Nukem Forever

Duke Nukem Forever is probably one of the biggest gaming disappointments in the past two decades.  After 15 years in development, how could it not be?  Part of what made it so disappointing, I think, is that people remembered how incredibly awesome Duke Nukem 3D was and expected the same feeling without realizing how different the world had become.  In the mid-90s, there just weren't that many games that had just blatantly crude and sexual humor.  These days, between Leisure Suit Larry and Grand Theft Auto, sex in video games isn't nearly as shocking as it once was.  Even games that don't appeal to that kind of humor or interest have sex; just look at Fable, The Sims, and Fallout: New Vegas for examples.  I wasn't nearly disappointed with Duke Nukem Forever as most people, though.  On the contrary, I quite enjoyed the game.  The single player (which I'm sure few gamers played more than a level or two of because they're online-obsessed noobs) was very reminiscent of older shooters in that it didn't go for realism; it went for absurdity.  Absurdity is what made the old shooters great.  I mean, look at Wolfenstein 3D; how many "realistic" games would have Adolf Hitler in a mechanized battle suit with four chainguns?  Duke Nukem 3D was the same way - trying to save the world's babes from aliens while saving humanity just ended up being a nice plus - and Duke Nukem Forever held on to that.  Whether it was intentional or not to style the game as an "old fashioned" shooter instead of a "modern" shooter, that got it some major points in my book.  One last side note about how sex isn't anything unique in games anymore - having acquiring a vibrator as one of the objectives and having a level actually titled "Duke Nukem's Titty City" while showing several fully exposed boobs was still pretty damn awesome, even for today.

Now I'll address the part most people spend most of their time playing - online multiplayer.  This was another part of the game that I found quite satisfying.  There aren't teams like "Americans vs Russians" or "Allies vs Nazis" or "Humans vs Aliens" in this game.  Nope, it went back to the good old "Red vs Blue" with no difference between the two except for color, and that's how I like it.  Maybe I'm too nostalgic, but whatever the reason, I truly enjoy seeing random red guys fighting random blue guys for no reason except that reds hate blues.  Halo was the last great game that did this, and while the original Halo was the iconic "Red vs Blue" game for most people (hence the machinima series of the same name), I was most reminded of the old Quake and Unreal Tournament games, and because of my fond memories of those games, Duke Nukem Forever's online multiplayer is okay in my book.

I know I'm in a small minority of gamers who were truly satisfied with Duke Nukem Forever, and by not means am I implying that it's 2k Games' masterpiece.  I'm just trying to say that it actually is quite a good game, and to brush it aside because of bad reviews would be a mistake (especially since I got my copy for only $4 at GameStop; a large coffee from Starbucks is more expensive than that).  If you have a gaming PC, a 360, or a PS3 (which is what I have), I definitely suggest at least giving Duke Nukem Forever a fair chance.  The campaign is a lot of fun, and the online multiplayer, at least in my opinion, doesn't really disappoint.

The Legend of Zelda/Metroid

So, I've been on a dual Legend of Zelda and Metroid kick for the past couple weeks.  It started when I realized right after I finished Final Fantasy VII that I had never actually finished Ocarina of Time even though I was on the second to last temple, so I decided to buckle down and finish the game.  As I was doing that, I had a series of doctor's appointments to which to take my grandmother, so I decided to finish Spirit Tracks while I was waiting for her over the various hours of waiting that week (I was similarly close to finishing Spirit Tracks but never actually finished it).  That week, I finished both Legend of Zelda games, bringing my total of finished Zelda games up to two (along with Legend of Zelda and Phantom Hourglass).  I realized that, despite being such a Nintendo fanboy, I really hadn't finished that many Zelda games.  I also realized that, aside from the original Metroid, I had never finished a game of that series, either; that situation had to be rectified.

Over the course of a week and a half, with Wiimote and nunchuk in hand, I plowed through all three Metroid Prime games (I have Metroid Prime Trilogy, so it felt like a fluid transition from one game to the next) and Metroid: Other M.  After I finished Other M, I jumped right into Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and over the next week (I didn't get a lot of game time any one day during that week since I was fixing my room from some flooding on which I'll elaborate in a later blog), I finished Twilight Princess.  After that, I decided to finish up the NES duo and take on Adventure of Link.  Needless to say, I got my balls busted over and over again, but I did, after two days of nearly non-stop gaming, finish it (and I've never been so glad to shelve a cartridge in my life).  Now I'm on to Link to the Past, and I plan to play Majora's Mask and Windwaker (respectively) after I finish it.  Legend of Zelda is just such a great series that it's a shame not to play the games you own.  Going back to Metroid, I hope to get Super Metroid at some point in the not-too-distant future and play through that as I've heard it's one of the best games on the Super Nintendo.

On a side note, I just updated the poll, and in it, I ask what you all think the best Legend of Zelda game is.  The last option is "Other," and I invite anyone who chooses that option to write a comment to this post telling what his or her choice for the best Zelda game is and why.

Why We Game; Why We Collect

I know gamers sometimes take some criticism for gaming, and at least from my experience as a collector, I've taken a LOT of criticism for having a collection the size that mine is.  So why do we game?  Why have I amassed a nearly 500 game collection that spans 20 consoles?  Because it makes me happy.  Because I see the art when I look at the landscapes on Monster Hunter 3.  Because I hear the beauty when I listen to the soundtrack on any Legend of Zelda game.  Because I can appreciate the depth of gameplay to the point of monotony in Shenmue.  Why do people cover their walls in paintings and posters?  Why do people have dozens or hundreds of CDs?  Why do people have multiple shelves of fiction books?  Why do people have dozens of movies?  Most importantly, why is gaming any different?  How is it different?

I'll tell you how it's different from my point of view - a movie can provide two hours of enjoyment for the price of $20.  That comes down to $10 per hour.  A game, on the other hand, provides MUCH longer enjoyment for a lightly higher price.  Let's say that the average game provides roughly 25 hours of enjoyment.  At the average $60, that's $2.40 per hour.  Let's take a monumentally long game like Skyrim, which boasts roughly 300 hours of gameplay.  At $60, that's only 20 cents per hour; a movie, based on hours of entertainment, costs 100 times that much.  Lets even use a short game as an example.  Conduit 2's campaign took me roughly 10 hours to beat, including finding the hidden secrets, and since it's a Wii game, it cost $50.  That's $5 per hour - half of what a movie would cost in entertainment per hour.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that we should all buy video games and never buy another movie.  On the contrary, I'm quite proud to own all 11 Star Trek movies on DVD even though I swore to myself that I would never watch the first or fifth movies again.  What I'm trying to say is that it's wrong for society to view a large movie collection as acceptable or even worthwhile but then look down on gaming.  A word frequently tossed around when it comes to gaming and has been thrown at me numerous times is "addiction."  The definition of addiction is "to devote to something obsessively."  I fully acknowledge that gaming addictions exist.  I admit that I was borderline there last year.  To be addicted to something, though, it has to interfere with other parts of life.  Someone truly addicted to video games would stop hanging out with friends or making time for loved ones.  He/she would neglect school or work or social responsibilities.  Someone who simply prefers to spend his or her spare time playing video games after his or her work and responsibilities are completed, however, is NOT addicted.  That's a hobby.  Addicted is blowing off friends to play Skyrim.  Addicted is not writing a paper for class to play Call of Duty.  Addicted is calling in sick to work to play Fallout.  Writing a paper after class and then sitting down after finishing to play Zelda is not addicted.

"A strong liking of some activity."  That's the definition of passion.  A strong liking.  Yes, I am passionate about video games.  I am passionate about my collection.  I am not addicted to either.  But I haven't addressed the issue of why we game.  I've only talked about why we collect and whether or not we're addicted.  So why do we game?  Why do we pretend to be the Hero of Time and face down Gannondorf to save Hyrule?  It's an escape.  Have you ever heard someone say "I need a drink..."?  It's the same principle, except without the liver damage and poor judgement.  Have you ever known someone who smoked when they got stressed?  It's the same principle, except without coating our lungs in tar and carcinogens while dumping rat poison into our bodies.  The great irony is when smokers, alcoholics, and pot heads criticize gamers.  We want an escape from reality, just like them.  We just prefer to get that escape without damaging our bodies.  Sure, a sedentary lifestyle isn't healthy, either, but I'm a gamer, and I weigh less than 150 pounds.

I'll summarize my point here.  Stop criticizing us.  We (for the most part) are addicted.  We do not have a "problem."  We aren't pathetic.  Our medium of choice is just newer and less respected, but it's no less valid.  Our escape of choice is just nerdier, but if anything, it's less bad.

Die Hard Trilogy (Sega Saturn)

Die Hard Trilogy, also released for Playstation, is actually three games in one (as the name might suggest) - Die Hard, Die Harder, and Die Hard with a Vengeance.  This game is NOT to be confused with the utterly and amazingly badass Die Hard Arcade because this game isn't even worth playing.  Each of the three games are a different genre; Die Hard is a third person shooter, Die Harder is a light gun rail shooter, and Die Hard with a Vengeance is a driving game.  Die Hard gets decent after a while, and Die Harder isn't the worst game in the world, but Die Hard with a Vengeance is just terrible.  It's poorly made, poorly tested, and poorly entertaining.

Game 1 - Die Hard


Die Hard starts off a lot of fun.  Running around shooting people and finding ever better weapons.  What's not to love?  Well, for one, the graphics.  Now, anyone who knows me knows that I don't really care about graphics.  I have more fun playing Chopper Command for Atari 2600 than I do playing Call of Duty: Black Ops for Playstation 3.  My gripe about these graphics is that they make the game almost unplayable.

It's incredibly difficult to tell where you are at times or where you need to go because the walls become transparent to let you see what's a room and what's just a wall.  This isn't so bad at first, but as levels get more complex and have more rooms, it starts to get worse and worse until about halfway through the game, you're ready to give up.  The hardest part by far (at least in my opinion) is finding the bomb at the end of the level.  Whenever you deal with all of the hostages (either saving them or killing them), a bomb appears in an elevator somewhere in the level, and you have thirty seconds to get to that elevator before the bomb explodes and you lose a life and start over from the beginning of the level (if you have extra lives) or get game over (if you don't).  Sometimes the bombs aren't that hard to find; there are levels where there are six elevators, all on one hallway.  There are bombs that take dumb luck to find; there's a level with four elevators, one on each corner of the map.  Fortunately, your mini-map pings red to show you the location of the bomb, but you have to get close enough.

Game 2 - Die Harder

Die Harder is the light gun rail shooter, and it's probably the best (or least bad) of the three.  I had some trouble getting my light gun to register shots even after calibrating it (it wouldn't register anything about an inch and a half from any edge of the screen), but I was using a Nyko's "Cobra" light gun, and while it never got good, the hit recognition did seem to improve when I used Sega's Stunner.  It's a pretty short game - I think it was 6 levels, though I could be off with that - but it's actually a fair bit of fun when the light gun decides to cooperate.  You get a variety of weapons in the game, by far my favorite of which was the exploding shotgun.  It's really more like an RPG.  I was killing two or three enemies at a time if they were close enough together and I aimed my shot well enough.  The MP5 was also a good gun, though, since it gave the rapid fire helpful in taking out a group of enemies before they shot you.

Game 3 - Die Hard with a Vengeance

This game REALLY pushed the limits of how disappointing a game can be.  It seems cool at first - a fast paced driving game - until you get into the nitty-gritty of the game.  Most of the objectives in each level (of which there are roughly 16, I think) are to find bombs as quickly as you can, usually hidden in idle cars or telephone booths.  Occasionally, though, you'll have to chase a bomb car and hit it enough times to destroy it before time runs out and the bomb detonates.  That's where the game gets, at least for me, too difficult to be fun, especially the last level.  What really makes this game suck, though, is the border glitches.  Extra lives are fairly hard to come by in this game, and each time you fail to find a bomb or destroy a bomb car in the allotted time costs you a life.  There are three main stages on which you play (excluding the brief race levels) - city, park, and pier.  On the city levels, the only real difficulty is avoiding traffic and making turns quickly enough to get to your objective in time.  On the park levels, ponds are introduced, and driving into the water, even a little bit, costs you a life and puts you back at the beginning of whatever objective you were doing (it usually happened to me chasing bomb cars).  The pier, however, is where shit really hits the fan.  As you can imagine from being on a pier, there's water.  Everywhere.  But you've got wooden railing surrounding the pier, so you should be safe, right?  Well, maybe if the game were well made.  Unfortunately, this game is FULL of border glitches on this level.  You get snagged by invisible forces around boxes, you get caught in black holes hiding in buildings, and you get warped off of the pier and into the ocean if you get too close.  The first pier level took me literally an hour and a half of trial, error, epic failure, and eventual lucky success to get past because I kept glitching into the ocean and losing lives.


I haven't played the Playstation version (which a Racketboy forum member threw in an extra gift when I bought my two Saturn light guns and Virtua Cop 2) enough to be able to say much about whether or not it's better or worse than the Saturn port.  Maybe I'll play through that version in the future and write a follow up blog talking about any version differences I notice.

Why Shitty Games Suck So Good

Anyone who knows me knows that I have an affinity for shitty video games.  Hell, look at the last entry I posted.  There were few offerings of the fourth/fifth generation shittier than Corpse Killer.  But why do I love shitty games so much?  Wouldn't it be so much more fun to play good games?  Well, yes and no.  For the same reason that Mystery Science Theater 3000 was such a great television show, trainwrecks of video games can also offer a great deal of enjoyment.

I'm sure many of you have seen James Rolf, better known as the Angry Video Game Nerd.  Well, aside from being the person who inspired me to begin collecting video games, he's also the one who inspired me to buy shitty video games.  Ask yourself the following: What's more fun to show to/play with your friends, even if only for ten or twenty minutes, an incredibly average game like Bubsy, or a hilariously shitty game like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?  Now, I know I was leading a bit with that question, but honestly, if we break video games down into three basic categories - the great games, the shit games, and the average in-between games, which ones are most fun to play with friends?  The good ones and the awful ones, but because they're good, your friends have probably played the good ones.

When I want to have some fun and laughs playing my NES with my friends, they've probably all played Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  You know what NONE of them have played, though?  Bible Adventures.  You know what is probably the crappiest NES game I own (aside from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which has cemented itself as "Worst NES Game Ever")?  Bible Adventures.  I've tried this, and it's true; Bible Adventures offered more laughs than just about any other NES game I have.  Don't get me wrong, playing great games like Battletoads and Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is a lot of fun, too, and will stay fun for longer, so I'm not advocating buying bad games instead of good games.  What I'm saying is that you should have some of both.  No one watches American Idol for the good singers; people watch is for the nails-on-a-chalkboard singers.  Games follow the same principle.

So, I'm going to give my Top 10 suggestions for crappy games to play with friends based on what I own or have played a considerable amount.

10. Dragon's Lair (Nintendo Entertainment System)

Angry Video Game Nerd did a great video about this game, and he's actually the only reason I know about it.  It's brutally difficult, but that's not what makes it bad - after all, Battletoads is amazing, and it's one of the hardest games ever made.  What makes Dragon's Lair truly craptastic is the controls.  Seriously, if you drank an entire gallon of Everclear and tried to drive in Grand Theft Auto III, it would STILL be better than trying to play Dragon's Lair completely sober.


9. Corpse Killer (Sega Saturn)

I don't think I need to say too much about this game since I just wrote a blog about it a week ago.  The quality of the acting in the FMV is just TERRIBLE, but it's a LOT of fun to play with friends.


8. Super Troll Islands (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)

This is one of the most bizarre platformers I've EVER played.  You're a troll (the creepy naked ones with funky hair), and you have paint a colorless world to purge it of evil.  Seriously.  That's the whole damn game.  It's fantastically stoneriffic.


7. Bible Adventure (Nintendo Entertainment System)

Wisdom Tree must be a giant video game producing anus, because the only thing that ever comes from it is crap.  Bible Adventures is another game about which I know because of Angry Video Game Nerd, and I actually managed to get it for $5 at a flea market a few years ago.  Want to teach kids about God?  Why not make the crappiest game most of them will ever play?  There are actually three games on this cartridge, by far the best of which is Noah's Ark.  You're a guy who's GOT to be like 70 at least, and you can stack two cows, two oxen, two pigs, and two horses, lift them up over your head, and still sprint so fast that you outrun the screen.  PLAY IT.  If you have any religiously cynical friends (-ahem- Grant -ahem-), make sure they're there when you play this; they'll enjoy it even more than you will.


6. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

This game was actually the subject of the first AVGN video I ever saw.  The line from his theme song "Why don't the weapons do anything?" is about this game.  You play as Dr. Jekyll initially, whose cane weapon LITERALLY does nothing to any enemy in the game, until you take enough damage to turn into Mr. Hyde.  AVGN dubbed this the worst Nintendo game ever made, and I certainly agree, hence why I had to buy it as soon as I saw that video.  It really is a terrible game, and you have no clue what to do.


5. Shaq Fu (Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Sega Genesis)

 

Why?  That's all I can say.  Why?  I've read numerous "Worst Fighting Game Ever" lists, and Shaq Fu is almost almost number one.  The controls are dreadful, but seriously?  A Shaquille O'Neil fighting game, let alone one that takes place in a spirit world where you fight demons?  Yeah, although this isn't number one on this list because there are games that suck more, this might just be the most fun game to play with friends if you're going on the basis of Crap Factor.


4. Pac-man (Atari 2600)

I know what you're all thinking.  "But Pac-man's awesome!!"  No, the arcade Pac-man is awesome.  The 2600 version is that game's bastard red headed step child.  The controls are terrible, the graphics flicker so that you always think the game's messing up, and it's just...awful.  It really does ruin Pac-man just a little bit.


3. Cool World (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)

Don't let the name fool you.  There's nothing cool about this game.  It's based on a movie (I haven't seen it, but I'm scared to if it's anything remotely like the game).  I've played a lot of games that didn't make the least bit of sense, but this game is right near the top of that list.  I honestly don't have too much to say about the game; I couldn't figure out how to get past the first screen, so I haven't seen too much of it.  It makes that little sense.


2. Superman (Nintendo 64)

Ah yes, Superman (or Superman 64 as it's more commonly known, even though "64" was never actually anywhere in the title), my generation's standard for crap.  It was by far the most infamous game of the 1990s, and for good reason.  Hell, I've seen site give "Superman 64 Awards" for especially terrible games.  Plagued by some of the most horrendous controls in gaming history and some of the most absurdly pointless and difficult stages ever, it's a miracle this game wasn't banned by Congress for crimes against humanity.  But in all honestly, that honor should be saved for the last game on this list.


1. E.T. (Atari 2600)

Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at what it widely accepted to be the single worst video game ever made.  It is frequently blamed for being the "point of no return" or the "straw that broke the camel's back" of the Video Game Crash of 1982.  In the developer's defense (who honestly was an amazing programmer and made some fantastic games), it did go from concept to store shelves in five weeks.  That's barely enough time to do a final project for a class, much less make a video game based on a HUGE blockbuster movie.  The quality was SO bad, though, that a lot of people already pissed off at Atari's lack of quality control finally snapped.  The aforementioned crash sent the video game industry from (correct me if my numbers are wrong) a $2 billion per year industry to a $10 million per year industry.  Adjusted for inflation, that's a drop from almost $5 billion per year to less than $24 million per year.  Although ET didn't cause that by itself, I do think it's fair to say that it finally kicked the plunge into motion.


HONORABLE MENTION

There is one game that, while not bad enough to be worthy of this list, was just an absolute crap heap.  That game is Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for Playstation 2.

This is the only version that I've played since I'm not a big fan of these games, and I've heard that the Xbox 360 version is much better, but this is just painful to play.  It's on the best selling console in history and in the 6th generation of gaming when dual analog was standard, but you know what?  You can only move in four directions.  No diagonal movement even though there were games that had that in the 1980's.  I think the controls really do single handedly kill this game.  It's not bad enough to be on my list, but I had to give it a sidenote.

Corpse Killer: Graveyard Edition - Sega Saturn

So you just bought a Sega Saturn, and you want a kick ass zombie game.  Corpse Killer?  That's GOT to be awesome!  Yeah, no.  The cover does say that it's "One of the top 20 games of the year," though.  I shudder to think what the "bad" Saturn games of 1995 were...

Corpse Killer - also released for Sega CD and Sega CD32x, 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, Windows, and Macintosh - is a rail shooter that displays the early and mid 90's obsession with Full Motion Video (FMV).  Impossible before the dawn of CD based gaming, FMV was all the crazy for the early disc based systems.  Some games went to extreme of being advertised as "interactive movies" instead of actual video games.  Now, Corpse Killer didn't go that far, but it does have a LOT of FMV clips that display acting that would make Sylverster Stalone look like a good actor.

The backstory is that a "necrobiologist" named Dr. Hellman has gone to some Caribbean island to raise an army of the undead.  You're part of a five man Navy SEAL team sent in to shut down Hellman's operation, but everyone except you gets captured.  You meet up with a hyper-stereotypical Jamaican named Winston and an American reporter named Julie, and you end up running errands for them; Winston wants to go treasure hunting so he can buy a Hummer (he obsesses over Hummers throughout the entire game), and Julie wants to get photos proving that Hellman had funding from the Pentagon.

I'll provide examples of how ridiculous the FMV acting is.  It starts with the opening scene and some screwing around on the menu (I didn't make this video), but the truly ridiculous part starts at about 1:50, and at about 2:45, you can see some actual gameplay from the first actual part of the game.

As you can see, my less-than-positive opinion of the acting quality is not hyperbole.  It's an interesting game, though, and it's worth playing through once.  It's an important part of the development of video games. I wouldn't spent too much time on this game, though; there are more fun things to do like splitting hairs or watching paint dry.

Televisions - The Crux of the Gaming Experience

Every gamer knows that the foundation if any gaming experience is the television.  For modern gamers, who wants to play a PS3 on a 30 year old TV that doesn't even support composite A/V hook ups?  For retro gamers, though, an LCD HDTV can pose even more of a problem.  Sure, playing an HD console on an SDTV via an RF Adapter would suck, but at least you can play that way.  For the pan-generational gamer like me, one TV simply isn't enough.

Who doesn't want a huge 72 inch 1080p 3D plasma screen TV?  I mean, I'd LOVE to have Pong take up six feet of my wall (I'm not even kidding, that would kick ass).  But that alone wouldn't work for me.  I'm using a 32 inch LCD HDTV, and I can't play Duck Hunt or Lethal Enforcers on it.  Why?  Those are light gun games, and light guns only work on old CRT TVs.  I'm not sure exactly why - something about the nature of a cathode ray tube - but it won't work.  Granted, I do have a 24 inch SD CRT TV beside it into which I usually keep my NES plugged, but until I buy a longer composite cable, my Genesis won't reach that far.

Gamers who don't just play new games or old games need two TVs side by side.  Normally, I like having my NES connected to my widescreen LCD TV.  If I want to play Duck Hunt, though, that HDTV is useless.  I've got to dust off the old CRT.  For an example, here is my set-up.

As you can see, I have my big HDTV in the middle of things as the centerpiece of my set up, but I also have the CRT TV right beside it so I (once I get a longer cable from my A/V hub) can play games on it, too.  This is what I suggest for all gamers who play both newer and older games if you can afford it and have room for it.

Do Video Games Constitute Art?

I've been fighting an uphill battle in arguments for some time now.  Are video games art?  Of course not!  They're just ways to suck parents' and kids' money, rot our children's brains, and corrupt the youth of America with sinful games like Grand Theft Auto and Leisure Suit Larry.  Right?

Well, I've argued to the contrary for years, and the Smithsonian is finally backing those who agree with me.  Video games do constitute art.  Games frequently cited to the contrary like Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Gears of War, etc. are exceptions to the rule, not the rule itself.  I would argue that even those constitute art, but I'll address that later.  Let's take photography.  That's art, is it not?  Of course it is.  Almost no one would argue otherwise.  Film is the same.  Anyone who's seen The Godfather or Sparticus knows that film is an artform.  What about pornography, though?  I mean straight up hardcore porn.  Is that art?  Because art is such an ambiguous term, there will always be those who argue that it is, but most people would say no, it's not.  Porn is the exception to film and photography, not proof that those media aren't art.  Video games is just another, much newer, medium of art.

If you really look at it, video games, like film, is an artform that is actually a compilation of other artforms.

The Legend of Zelda games have, in my opinion, the most remarkable, breathtaking musical scores of any game series, and it's better than most movies.  The Song of Time alone proves that.

In the realm of visual art, Mass Effect 2's image of the Illusive Man at the Cerberus headquarters with the red giant out his window is a haunting but beautiful image.

The literary art portion of video games is simply telling a story.  The two series I've already mentioned - Mass Effect and Legend of Zelda - do this wonderfully, but for this example, I'm going to choose a game that never got the attention it deserved and tells its story in such detail that it's almost too in-depth.

Shenmue was a Dreamcast title that, at the time of development, was the most costly video game ever produced.  Its lead developer intended it to be an "interactive movie" with its depth.  You can interact with almost everything, you have to wait for time to pass as it would in a real day, and there are no in-game clues or tutorials to help you solve the mystery of your father's murder.  Shenmue took video game storytelling to a depth rarely seen before or since.  It's a shame that America never gave it the popularity this masterpiece deserved.

Video games have also incorporated a style of art rarely ever recognized - the work of the developers.  Game developers, aside from the story, graphics, and audio in a game, often do a lot of work to work around system limitations.

Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System is an early example of this.  The developers of Phantasy Star, by manipulating the cartridge's capacity, were able to fit significantly more data on a single cartridge than most developers knew was possible for the Master System.  Phantasy Star is the Master System game with the largest amount of data on a cartridge because of the unique solution these developers formulated.

Another example of this same sort of ingenuity, this time in the realm of graphics, is Conduit 2 for the Nintendo Wii.  The Conduit, during its early alpha stages, was mistaken at E3 for an Xbox 360 game being developed.  It didn't live up to its graphical hype upon release, but Conduit 2 did.  Obviously, given the Wii's hardware, it was never truly possible for the finished product to resemble an Xbox 360 game, but the developers at High Voltage did more with the Wii's graphical hardware than most gamers thought possible, proving that even without powerful hardware and high definition graphics, some effort and creative thinking can still produce beautiful visuals.

Also sporting graphics that no one thought possible for the system was Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.  Although released for both Wii and Gamecube, the game - graphics included - were developed on and for the Gamecube.  The Wii version is an exact port with added motion controls.  The Gamecube, whose true capabilities were rarely used despite being the second most powerful system of its generation, went out with a bang by delivering the most beautiful graphics that the system had ever seen.  Most people don't believe me when I tell them that Twilight Princess, even the Wii version, uses Gamecube graphics.

I've made my case for video games' being art.  So what is art?  Webster defines art as "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects."  Let's take Starcraft 2 for our example this time.  Starcraft was released in 1998; Starcraft 2 was released in 2010, and development began in 2003.  Spending seven years developing one game?  I would definitely call that "conscious use of skill and creative imagination," especially since Halo, one of the most successful FPS series, is based on Starcraft.


Art is always a subjective thing; it has no objective criteria or qualifications.  What is art to one person may be garbage to another, so the question posed by the this blog is, if we want to get technical, unanswerable.  If we want to get philosophical, anything man-made is art.  Let's keep is less complex, though; do video games meet the basic, widely accepted definitions of art?  I think I've made the case that it does.  Especially since the Smithsonian has open acknowledged it as an artform, I think that this argument will soon disappear.

First Person Shooters - The Devolution of a Genre

Right now, first person shooters are all the rage in America.  Call of Duty is the stereotype video game these days, and for good reason; the past five titles have easily surpassed 10 million units sold.  So there couldn't possibly be anything intrinsically wrong with the genre, right?  Well, that's a matter of opinion.  I'm going to pose an idea here, and you're free to take it or leave it.  I propose that the first person shooter genre is broken, and that each subsequent title that furthers this brokenness serves only to make it less likely that it will be redeemed any time soon.  Allow me to make my case before you flame me, if you please.

Bioshock.  Halo.  Halo 2.  Halo 3.  Halo Reach.  Red Steel 2.  The Conduit.  Conduit 2.  Mass Effect.  Mass Effect 2.  Mass Effect 3.  Metroid Prime.  Metroid Prime 2.  Metroid Prime 3.  Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force.  Fallout: New Vegas.  Half-life.  Half-life 2.  Perfect Dark.  F.E.A.R.  Call of Duty.  Call of Duty 2.  Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.

I just listed 23 games.  What do they all have in common?  They're all first person shooters (we'll argue definitions in a minute) that have at least "pretty good" storylines, and those are just the games that I've ever personally played or seen enough of to get an idea.  Some, like The Conduit, are cliche, but they are executed well.  Some, like Call of Duty 1 and 2 and Medal of Honor: AA, are based on parts of history everyone knows.  What makes them eligible in my eyes to be on this list is that their campaigns are good.  The way they tell their stories is good.  When it all comes down to it, true originality doesn't really exist anymore; just about everything is a rehash of something else.  What makes a game good is if they do that rehash well.

Now, let's briefly talk definitions.  What does "FPS" mean?  First person shooter.  I will admit, Mass Effect is not a traditional FPS; it's an RPG.  Metroid Prime is not a traditional FPS; it's an adventure game.  However, in both series, the perspective is first person (at least in combat, Mass Effect is, and Fallout has an optional first person perspective), and you shoot things.  Ergo, first person shooter.  Both series are, at least in my opinion, FPS by virtue of a "secondary" genre.  Think "unofficial" tertiary types in Pokemon, if you will; Charizard and Gyarados as "unofficial" Dragon-types, or Blaziken as an "unofficial" Flying-type.

Now that I've pre-emptively defended myself against the flames that I knew would come from including Metroid Prime and Mass Effect, let's go back to what I mean when I say that the genre is broken.  Look at the single players for every Call of Duty game from Modern Warfare on.  They're terrible.  The storylines are horribly written, the dialogue is terrible, and it just feels like Activision didn't put any effort into it.  To a small extent, Black Ops got away from this with the way they structured their campaign, but the actual missions still felt just as lifeless.  Battlefield isn't much better.

People tell me all the time, "Call of Duty is about the multiplayer, not the single player."  That's all fine and well, but if that were the case, do what Valve did with Counter-Strike: Source; make it exclusively multi-player.  I, personally, think that the single player should be the crux of the game with any multiplayer, local or online, as a bonus, but I won't nitpick that much here.  Valve set out to make an amazing multiplayer game, and that's what they did.  They didn't insult us by throwing some crap together at the last minute and calling it a campaign.

Now this doesn't mean that you can't enjoy these "subpar" FPS games.  I absolutely ADORE Unreal Tournament, but its single player is even more insulting than the recent Call of Duty games'.  My point is not to bash people who play Call of Duty.  I myself am guilty of putting Modern Warfare or World at War into my Wii from time to time.  The point I'm trying to make is that these games are stifling what past precedent has proven can be a WONDERFUL genre.  First person shooters don't have to be all online play devoid of any respectable storyline, but so often they are.  I love that Ubisoft made Red Steel 2 the way they did.  There's not multiplayer, local or online, but the single player is SO fully and completely satisfying that it doesn't need it.  Now, I'm not saying that a truly good game shouldn't have multiplayer.  On the contrary, I think most games should.  What I like is that Red Steel 2 didn't need multiplayer, and whether it was intentional or accidental, Ubisoft proved that point.

Retro RPGs - The Lost Great Art

Being on the verge of finally completing Final Fantasy for NES, in the midst of Final Fantasy VII for Playstation, and having just finished Mass Effect 3 for PC, I've been thinking recently about how RPGs have developed over time.  Having played RPGs from pretty much every gaming generation, I can safely and adamantly claim that (in my opinion) old RPGs are by far the best.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the exploration involved in Fallout: New Vegas and Mass Effect 2 (yeah, Mass Effect 3, too, but it wasn't nearly as good), but older RPGs are just more...I don't know.  They just feel better to me.  Those in the middle - 5th and 6th generation RPGs - are sort of in that middle area.  Don't get me wrong, I love them and all (who WOULDN'T love Final Fantasy VII?), but they don't quite have that special "something" that old RPGs have and haven't quite developed the epic depth of new RPGs.

I insist that this is one of the greatest RPGs of all time.  It made my Master System great in a way that I never expected.  What makes Phantasy Star stand out from the other greats of the 3rd generation like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior was the way they did dungeons.

Each dungeon in Phantasy Star was a first person labyrinth like that.  For an 8-bit cartridge that could only hold about half of one megabyte, it's incredible, and it gave the dungeons a depth that you really didn't see until the 3D polygon graphic style of the Nintendo 64 and Playstation.  This game, more so than any other that I've ever played, truly showed off how much stronger the Master System's hardware was than that of the NES.  Let's not forget about the giant of that generation that kicked off a series that is still alive and well over a quarter century later.

Final Fantasy - the quintessential fantasy RPG series.  It has seen no rival in popularity, and for good reason.  This game threw you into a world about which you knew almost nothing and gave you nothing.  You had to search and work for every clue as to what to do next and where to go.  I'll admit it up front; I couldn't do it without a strategy guide.  At the time that I'm writing this, I'm still stuck on the last dungeon.  Square really got it right with this game.  There are a lot of bugs in it that showed how desperate the company was at the time, but when push came to shove for Square financially, they shoved back with a force not seen again until the Wii turned around Nintendo's bad luck streak with consoles.

But let's get back to the real topic of this - retro RPGs as a lost art.  I can't put my finger on what it is that made them so much better to me.  Maybe it's because they were so much more brutally difficult than most RPGs today.  They had to be; with such limited cartridge capacity, the only way to make a game last long enough to be worth the $50 you paid for it was to make it brutally difficult, hence the slang difficulty description "Nintendo hard."  But is that really it?  Perhaps is that they left so much up to the imagination.  They only had 8-bit graphics, so you really had to imagine the details of each character and enemy.  What voice capabilities were there were extremely limited and poor quality, so you had to imagine what dialogue would sound like.  Perhaps it's that, because of that limited cartridge size, developers didn't flesh out a story as much as modern games do, again leaving it up to the imagination.  Or maybe I'm just being nostalgic.

Don't get me wrong; modern RPGs deliver a story in a way more beautifully crafted and executed than most movies can.  They give you a way to be whoever you want whenever you want in beautiful HD detail.  I'm sure that there is no small group who would disagree with just about everything I've said, but I really do feel that retro RPGs had a certain magic that newer games have lost.

Wii U - Is Nintendo "Pulling a Dreamcast"?

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a HUGE Nintendo fanboy.  Not to the point that I irrationally and automatically hate any non-Nintendo system, but I have an incredibly strong and unyielding preference for Nintendo's products.  That's why the Gamecube's lackluster performance depressed me so much, and why I'm getting a little nervous about the Wii U.

Now, I'm not too worried just yet about the Wii U's physical power.  Sure, a lot of people are saying "Herp derp, it's just a 360 with motion control and tablet controller," but let's be real for a minute.  I'd like to point out a couple of facts that show that the aforementioned statement simply can't be made yet.

1. Nintendo has not released the system's full specs, and Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, has said on multiple occasions that the current plan for the system IS subject to change.  They've publicly announced that they're entertaining the idea of changing the name, so hardware specs are fair game, too.

2. Nintendo isn't stupid.  The Wii, while brutally dominating the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in global unit sales, has failed to capture most "hardcore" gamers.  Nintendo knows this.  Nintendo admits this.  Nintendo learns from its mistakes.

Look at a few failures from its past from which it learned.

When the PowerGlove for the NES was released, it was a great idea.  Motion control in games?  Holy crap, it's amazing!  But it didn't work.  So what did they do?  Pocketed the idea for 15 or 20 years and brought it back in the form of the most successful product in the company's history.

Look at the Virtual Boy.  3D gaming?  Sweet!  But it sucked.  So they trashed that and, again, held on to the idea for 15 years.  That idea later became the 3DS, which had the strongest launch and first year sales of any of their handhelds to date.  They failed to capture the hardcore gamers and the graphics-whores with the Wii.  I think they've learned from their mistakes.  You don't need the strongest graphics to win over the gaming masses; except for the Dreamcast, the Playstation 2 had by far the weakest graphics of the 6th gen systems, but it's the best selling gaming system in history.  You do need to be able to compete, though.

Now let's look at some of their less significant mistakes.  For instance, the Nintendo 64's use of cartridges rather than CDs.

I, personally, am glad that Nintendo held true to cartridges for as long as they could.  Sure, it held less data and cost a little more, but they're much more durable than CDs, they don't have loading times (which were HORRIBLE in the 90s), and they look nicer on shelves.  I was in a minority, however.  CDs were the way to go, and although I applaud Nintendo for making a stand, that stand was gaming's Alamo.  It was CDs that let Sony's Playstation secure exclusive third party support, and that was what gave Sony the edge it needed to dethrone the gaming king for the first time in over a decade.  That fatal flaw continued to haunt Nintendo; Sony's relationship with third party developers carried over into the 6th generation, allowing the Playstation 2 to embarrass brutally the much more powerful Gamecube and Xbox.  Nintendo saw from the Nintendo 64 that cartridges had gone the way of the dodo, and finally moved to DVDs, but they used Mini DVDs for the Gamecube - another mistake.  Like the N64's cartridges, they couldn't hold as much data as the competition's game media.  They finally got the software medium right by using full sized DVDs with the Wii.

Let's come back my original point, the title of my post; is Nintendo pulling a Dreamcast with the Wii U?  I'll explain what I mean for those who don't get the reference.  The Dreamcast, Sega's last console, was a truly incredible machine.  When it was released in 1998 (1999 for everywhere other than Japan), it was far and away the most powerful, most advanced gaming system that the world had ever seen.  It was the first system to include a modem for online play and web browsing (sorry, Microsoft fanboys; the Xbox doesn't get to claim that).  However, it was released too soon.  When the Gamecube, Playstation 2, and Xbox were released a few years later, they ate the Dreamcast alive.  Because its competition had stayed in development for those extra few years, Sega's Dreamcast ended up being stuck in an awkward "inter-generational" place.  It was absurdly more powerful than the Playstation, the Nintendo 64, the Sega Saturn, and the Atari Jaguar; but, by the same token, it was significantly weaker than the Gamecube, the Playstation 2, and Xbox.  In addition to the hardware disparity, the Dreamcast used modified CDs whereas its competition used DVDs; Dreamcast disks just couldn't hold the data that its competitors' disks could.  All of these things mixed to result in the untimely demise of what truly was an incredible system and its company's complete exit from the hardware arena.

So, what about the Wii U?  Is Nintendo making Sega's mistake?

I certainly don't think Nintendo's existence as a player in the hardware market is at stake, but I think that, depending on how these next six or seven months play out, they might suffer a similar commercial debacle.  The Wii U was announced long before its competition.  Hell, it's set to launch at the end of the year, and, if I'm not mistaken, Sony and Microsoft said that they aren't planning to announce a new system at E3 this year.  It's looking like the Wii U will hit shelves before the PS4 and Xbox 720 (as they're being called online for the time being) are even officially announced.  The way I see it, this could play out one of two ways.  Either Nintendo's Wii U will suffer the same fate as the Dreamcast and be just physically unable to compete with Sony's and Microsoft's offerings, or it will play out the way the 3DS seems to have and build up enough of a customer base early on to make up for any hardware inferiority.

This picture captures what I've been saying pretty well.

Because Nintendo never truly finalizes anything until practically the day before launch (hyperbole, of course), it's too early to tell, no matter what Kotaku or IGN tell you.  Nintendo has already announced that they are developing their own integrated online service, so the Wii U (and later on, the 3DS) won't suffer from the online play drawbacks with which the current Nintendo Wifi Connection has plagued the Wii and DS, and that's certainly a step in the right direction.  I haven't even touched on the issue of price, which will be another big factor in its success or failure.  For now, there really are too many unknown variables to make any concrete predictions.  I'll give my guess as the overall situation in which the Wii U will end up, but like I said, no one except Nintendo's executives really know what's going to be in that console, and they might not even know for sure.

So here's my guess.  The Wii U will launch at $350, and it will enjoy a fairly successful launch.  The price will drop to $250 once the next Sony and Microsoft consoles hit the market.  By the time the competition launches, Nintendo will have fully implemented and fixed the major bugs in their new online network.  The Wii U will have weaker hardware than its competition, but not as great a disparity as the Wii has with the PS3 and 360.  Depending on how 3rd party support plays out (there seems to be overwhelming support for the Wii U's new controller at this point), I think, the major determining factor in who falls where in the sales ratings.  I think the Wii U will have no problem competing, but I don't think Nintendo can expect another blow-out win like the Wii gave them.

Again, that's all just my personal speculation, undoubtedly with some wishful thinking.  Only time will tell what hardware the Wii U will boast and how the public will react to it.  I'm nervous, I won't lie, but I'm holding on to anxious hope that Nintendo has learned its lesson about foregoing graphics.  There are just too many noobs in the world for that type of strategy to work.

I Used to Be a Respectable Game Developer Like You; Then I Wrote Mass Effect 3's Ending

WARNING
This blog contains minor spoilers about the ending of Mass Effect 3. Read at your own risk.

Mass Effect, arguably the greatest futuristic RPG series ever made.  The first one captured your imagination and sucked you into a galaxy on the precipice of its own annihilation.  The second one struck back at the agents of that dreaded foe.  Now we have third and final installment, the last great battle with the Reapers where humanity is saved and the Reapers are finally defeated.  Right?  Isn't that how it ended?

No.  That's how everyone WISHED it had ended.  I'm not sure what Bioware was thinking when they hired a class of third graders to write the script for that game's finale, but they done goofed.  I have quite literally never been disappointed with any ending in any game, book, movie, or television show in my life as I was with Mass Effect 3's ending.  Don't get the wrong; the first two games, beginning to end, were utterly and breathtakingly astounding in their quality, and the first 98% of Mass Effect 3 was a lot the same way.  All of Mass Effect 3 suffered from sub-par writing quality in my opinion, but the action was great and the story was still good....but that ending, oh God, that ending....

I'd never felt physical pain from sheer disappointment before, but after finishing Mass Effect 3, I did.  That game's ending disappointed me more than ET for Atari 2600.  More than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for NES.  Almost as much as Superman for Nintendo 64.  The game overall was still great, but that ending honestly cheapened the entire series for me a little bit.  Part of me sometimes wishes that I hadn't ever played it.  Obviously that's a bit of hyperbole, but still, the ending really did lower my opinion of the entire series a little bit.  Bioware says that they're releasing DLC next month to "fix" the ending.  Great, so I have to give you even more money for an ending that doesn't suck my balls?  And what about that DLC (called like, From the Ashes or something like that) that they released THE DAY AFTER the game launched?  Seriously, guys, this is why I hate the entire principle of downloadable content. FINISH THE DAMN GAME BEFORE YOU SELL IT.  There is literally not a single valid excuse in the world aside from "We're greedy ass holes and you idiots will pay whatever we charge" for releasing DLC even within the first month after launch.  If it weren't for the fact that we're all demanding a halfway decent ending, I'd be pissed over this April DLC, too (well, angrier than I am just in general).

I've got a friend who is so distraught about the ending of Mass Effect 3 that he's talked about boycotting all future Bioware games out of anger.  I think that might be a bit extreme, but I definitely understand where he's coming from.  I don't want to talk too much more about this - my blood pressure is starting to rise - but I had to say SOMETHING about that ending.  It truly is unrivaled among otherwise amazing games in poor quality.

Welcome to Last Gen Gaming

To the few of you who will read this, hello!  I'm Stephen, though in games, I usually go by Church.  I figured I'd start this opening post by introducing myself a little bit.  I'm 20 years old and a sophomore at Appalachian State University.  I've been collecting video games for about four years now, and while it's not as impressive as most of the collections you might see posted somewhere like Racketboy's forums, I'm quite proud of what I've amassed.

Although I titled my blog "Last Gen Gaming," that title is not entirely accurate.  I am a general gamer, playing everything from 1977's Atari 2600 to the Nintendo 3DS, barely even a year old.  My primary focus, however, is older gaming (specifically 3rd and 4th generation), so that's why I chose the title I did.  If any of you were hoping for a blog strictly about older games, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint; this is going to be a general gaming blog.

Having just gotten out of an almost three year long relationship in which my collection was largely put on the back burner (with the exception of a few addiction episodes), I've recently (just this past month) begun seeking out more gamers like me.  I've become a relatively active poster on Racketboy's forums and have downloaded several gaming news applications for my phone.  After being inspired by other posts, I made a post showing my collection on the Racketboy forums.  My reason for starting this blog was similar inspiration (mainly backwardscompatibleblog.blogspot.com).  This is actually my second gaming blog, but my first one was started during my junior and somewhat into my senior years of high school, and as such, it's a rather awkward period of time I'd rather just forget.  I currently have it hidden, though if anyone expresses any interest in reading the dozen or so posts that I made there, I might restore it.

I don't know how often I'll be posting.  It will really depend on how often something gaming-related happens to me that I feel like sharing.  If anyone wants to look up my collection thread on Racketboy's forums, my username on there is ElkinFencer10.  I've also got a Backloggery page that I always keep up to date with my gaming collection should anyone want to see what I have (www.backloggery.com/elkinfencer10).  I think that's more or less all of the introducing I need to do.  I'll try to post something actually interesting tomorrow or Friday.  I'll also be uploading my Dashboard, so if anyone actually looks at it, it's probably horribly embarrassing and out of date; forgive me and grant me a little patience.