Wiitirement

November 18, 2012 by 15 Comments

The Wii U is out. This means all that’s left for the original Wii is the typical third-party shovelware that a dead system gets once its successor hits. In the Wii’s case, this is known as the status quo. I’m kidding. Mostly. But this really does mark the end of the Wii’s life cycle, as no major first or third-party titles are left for the system. That makes this a fitting time to look back on a console that alienated hardcore gamers (even slobbering Nintendo fanboys) and ultimately collected more dust than your average Egyptian tomb. And yet, even as sales of the system slowed, it retires having outsold its rivals by nearly thirty-million consoles each, and will go down as one of the most profitable video game consoles in history. Take a bow, Wii. Don’t worry, I won’t wedgie you.

Wii was controversial from the moment its controller was unveiled. It looked silly, gimmicky, and went against everything thirty years worth of convention said gaming controllers should be. People thought Nintendo had lost their fucking minds. I did too, but in retrospect I’m not sure why. Nintendo popularized the D-pad, shoulder-buttons, the analog stick, and rumbling controllers. There have been missteps (Virtual Boy) but otherwise Nintendo tends to get these things right. Then the name came out. Wii. We’ve all heard the jokes and bad puns, which I’m obviously not above doing as indicated by the title of this piece. This irrational hatred all stems from the codename being Revolution, which people got attached to, with no consideration that the word “revolution” is practically taboo in large parts of the world.

And, of course, the Wii was vastly underpowered compared to other consoles of the generation. People moaned that they had only made slight adjustments to the Gamecube and nothing more. As if this is a new practice. The NES was, more or less, a re-purposed Atari 2600. Both consoles had very similar processors, but the NES had access to components and features that were price-prohibitive in 1976 when the Atari was being speced out. I’m not excusing Nintendo for excluding HD though. Then again, I’m not really admonishing them either. This is Nintendo we’re talking about, a company that had an irrational phobia of disc based things and internet connectivity. Do you know what Nintendo is? Nintendo is my father.  Impressed, or possibly obsessed, with “high-tech” inputs, but terrified of actual technological progress.

Punisher makers take note: your game can be difficult AND fun. Donkey Kong Returns proves that.

I’ll be honest: I’m not a fan of the system. It would rank a distant third for me among seventh-generation consoles. Fifth if you include the sublime Nintendo DS and the unsung workhorse that was the Sony PSP. But saying the Wii was the straggler of this generation is like making fun of a bench player on a Super Bowl Champion. This last generation was, and still is as long as the PS3 and Xbox 360 keep chugging along, the greatest generation in gaming history. So I don’t really care if the Wii was the dumping ground of shovelware and half-baked ideas. I wouldn’t really want to play third-party stuff on Wii anyway. I would rather play them on one of the other consoles, with all the bells and whistles those systems provided, instead of on the Wii with gimmicky controls.

Wii gave me what I wanted: high-quality first-party Nintendo games. That’s all I ever want out of a Nintendo console. Anyone who expected otherwise obviously has problems with pattern recognition. The Gamecube wasn’t exactly overflowing with third-party stuff that had a leg up on their PS2 or Xbox counterparts. The Nintendo 64 certainly didn’t. There might be a handful of exceptions, but the only reason any rational gamer would buy a Nintendo system is to play Nintendo games. And the Wii had more quality first-party stuff than previous consoles did. It’s not even close, in fact. So why the hate?

I got into an argument with a friend of mine over this. He felt Nintendo had abandoned “hardcore” fans. This is a very common argument among Nintendo fanboys. My short response: you’re wrong. My long response: you’re all stupid, entitled, butthurt idiots. And I can prove you’re wrong about Nintendo abandoning you. Again, the only reason to own a Nintendo console in this day and age is for the first-party exclusives. I know many of you cling to the era of the NES and SNES where Nintendo was king of the hill and had incredible third-party support. Sorry, but those days are long gone. They ceased to be in 1996 when Nintendo pissed off third-parties by keeping the cart format for the N64. There were almost 800 SNES games released in North America, versus around 250 Nintendo 64 games, and around 400 Gamecube games.

Then the Wii became an unprecedented hit. Nobody saw it coming. It also was cheap to produce games for and Nintendo was much more modest with licensing fees than they had been in previous generations.  Suddenly, Wii is being flooded with hastily produced, low-quality shovelware. This created a fogging effect that made the overall picture appear deluded. Then Nintendo decided to really experiment with things like Wii Fit and Link’s Crossbow Trainer, and suddenly Nintendo fans felt like they were being ignored in favor of gimmicky, mass-market oriented stuff.

Huh?

Quick question to Nintendo fans: how many original Zelda games were on Nintendo 64? Two, right? How many on Gamecube? Two again (three if you count Twilight Princess as a Gamecube game). And how many were on Wii? Um, two?

How many proper Mario games were on Nintendo 64? You had Super Mario 64 and.. um.. that’s it. On Gamecube, you had Mario Sunshine and that’s it. On Wii, you had Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and New Super Mario Bros.

Not all first-party games were worthwhile. Mario Kart 7, Mario Party 8, and Animal Crossing were pretty big steps backwards in my opinion.

How many Metroid games were there on Nintendo 64? Oh that’s right: NONE. How many were on Gamecube? Two. How many were on Wii? Two.

How many Punch-Out games were on Nintendo 64?  Zero. How many were on Gamecube? Zilch. How many were on Wii? One. One really good one.

And talking about over-using gimmicks: how many Donkey Kong Country games were on Gamecube? One, if you count Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, a 2D platformer where the controller was replaced by banging on a fucking BONGO to maneuver Donkey Kong. On the gimmicky Wii, you used standard controls.

There was a very good Paper Mario title, a decent 2D Wario Land title, two pretty good Kirby games, and a pretty good Fire Emblem title. And that’s just the franchised stuff. My friend also complained about the lack of original properties. I guess he missed Wii Sports (fuck all the haters, that game was fun), Endless Ocean, Fortune Street (making its North American debut), Big Brain Academy, the Art Style series on WiiWare, Sin & Punishment (and its Nintendo 64 predecessor that never made it stateside), and the way-overlooked Fluidity on WiiWare.

And for you fans of paying for the same shit you’ve already paid for once and played a million times, you had the Virtual Console, plus “Wii-makes” of previous generation stuff like Pikmin, Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, etc.

This is abandonment?

Look, I’m not going to deny that the Wii was a disappointment, but didn’t most of that stem from ambitious but ultimately shitty third-party games? Madworld, Conduit, Force Unleashed, and Epic Mickey spring to mind. But that ignores some really neat smaller titles, like Elebits or Boom Blox that were a lot of fun. While its true that my mind was never blown by anything third-party on the system, to say it was a wasteland of mediocrity is absurd.

I was quite fond of Zack & Wiki. It’s too bad nobody bought it.

Here’s one last thought on the Wii: if you were ten-years old, how much do you think you would like it? I’m guessing the answer is “a lot more than you would have at age 30.” Is it possible that your expectations were based on what Nintendo meant to you as a child? Because here’s a newsflash: your beloved NES and SNES were overflowing with garbage that you would absolutely detest if you had never played it and it was released today. I certainly would have liked Sonic and the Secret Rings a lot more if I was seven and the Wii had been my first machine, even though the game is not really that good. Just like how I loved Crash Bandicoot at that same age, a game I would loath if I played it today.

No, Nintendo didn’t abandon you, the hardcore gamer. They bent over backwards trying to appease you and keep you interested with the Wii. But Nintendo has competition that can’t be beaten: your own memories. The older you get, the more rosy those memories become, and the more insurmountable they become. So instead of bitching about gimmicks, power, or shovelware that you wouldn’t buy anyway, look at what Nintendo did for you with the Wii and tip your hat to them. Yea, my Wii sat unused for over a year before Skyward Sword showed up to disappoint me. Yea, I probably played it a small fraction as much as my other consoles. Yea, I would rather dive split-eagle on an electric fence than play 95% of the games on it. But despite being a strange, often clunky, underpowered piece of shit, it provided me with many hours of fun. I’ll miss it. You should too.

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My Favorite Games Ever – Part 6: WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!

November 8, 2012 by 17 Comments

This is it. This is the finale. And call me crazy, but I believe the greatest video game I’ve ever played is..

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!

Age I was: 14

Last attempt at playing it: Today

Would I ever play it again: Yes

I thought the idea behind WarioWare sounded dumb. A bunch of one-button “micro-games” that last between 1 to 3 seconds? Utter hogwash. So credit due to Nintendo for one of the most genius uses of “gotcha” marketing in history. You see, back in 2003 Nintendo was struggling to convince gamers to buy third-party titles on its platform instead of just their own first party stuff. My oh my, how times have changed! To try to combat this, Nintendo created their first (and I think only real) demo disc, which was distributed at major retailers. It contained demos of such third-party fare Sonic Adventure DX, Splinter Cell, Viewtiful Joe, Billy Hatcher, and Soul Caliber 2. Good choices, mostly. Sonic Adventure could officially go fuck itself, but I ended up getting all the other games.

But, that’s not why I remember that disc. I’ll remember it because if you hooked your Game Boy Advance to the Gamecube while this disc was going, you could snag a full copy of Dr. Mario (which disappeared as soon as you turned off your GBA) or a demo of WarioWare. By this point, it had been released already. I had heard EGM call it “digital crack” and saw it get 9s from IGN and Gamespot. I also heard it described as “weird”, and at age 14, weird wasn’t on my radar. But hey, free is free! And besides, this would give me a chance to see just how much I would hate it.

An hour later, I was on my way to Best Buy to buy it.

WarioWare is the best game ever made. It strips gaming to its most pure mechanics (one button, directional pad, and high scores) and then weaponizes the addictive potential of what little gameplay is left. It tests a player’s reflexes, concentration, and likelihood of one day landing a stay in the Betty Ford Clinic (Update: years after this was wrote, I ended up in the Betty Ford Clinic! SEE!). Each one of the 200 “microgames” are designed to ruin your life, and they are well designed indeed. Games have “owned” me to a heavier degree, but I never actually liked any of those games as much as this. I’ll take the month I couldn’t put WarioWare down over the almost year I completely threw away on World of Warcraft.

I still haven’t heard a satisfactory explanation for why the boss of 9-Volt’s stage (themed around classic Nintendo games) is a fucking batting cage. Yes, I know Nintendo once did an electromagnetic baseball game. That’s a shitty explanation. It still doesn’t fit the theme or the mood. Jesus Christ, Nintendo! You guys could fuck up a cup of coffee.

Sometimes it’s okay for a game to challenge just yourself. I dread to think how damn addictive WarioWare could have been if I was challenging online leaderboards. When I dusted off my old GBA copy (eschewing the digital copy I got for free because I pissed away money on a launch-window 3DS), I went to check my old scores against the world records. Couldn’t do it, because Twin Galaxies is off to check for gummy substances and their site is on hiatus. It’s just as well, because otherwise I would probably end up clearing my schedule for the month. Who has time for work and eating and boyfriends and shit when you have immortality in the form of a moderately obscure gaming record?

You’ll notice that WarioWare is the one and only game I listed in my all-time gaming top 10 that I say is still worth playing today. There’s more than one reason for that. In all honesty, I would probably have a tough time arguing against stuff like Portal, Red Dead Redemption, or Super Mario Galaxy as the greatest game ever, especially against something as bizarre as WarioWare. But what’s the difference between those games and this one? No actual end, for one thing. A lot of people have chastised me for saying I don’t want to give Banjo or GoldenEye or Shadow of the Colossus another chance, even after I’ve said that I’ve gotten everything possible out of them. It’s like someone saying you waste the cow you just butchered if you don’t eat the eyeballs and suck the marrow out of the bone. But not all games carry the burden of being something that can be finished. Not all games require the type of time investment the nine epics that preceded WarioWare in this feature need. That’s why I’m cool with playing Bejeweled over Final Fantasy VII today. One game requires five minutes of my time while I wait for Jack in the Box to finish my Sourdough Jack. The other requires 70 hours spent at home in front of my TV, time that I could use to play something brand new that still has a chance at surprising me. For those of you who can’t understand why I choose not to play it again, I don’t know how else to articulate it.

That’s what I love about WarioWare. It’s something I can play for 15 minutes, potentially beat a high score in that time frame, put down for a month, and get back to without missing a beat. Let’s put this in perspective: while researching this feature, I went through all the WarioWare games again. For the original game, I shattered my record for Dribble’s stage that had stood for 8 years, going from an 84 to a 90. It’s probably not even that good of a score (though a quick check of this thread at GameFAQs shows I fucking own most of the scores on here and am quite possibly the best WarioWare player ever. Who needs to know how to throw a Dragon Punch when you can play WarioWare?) but I’m proud.

I don’t care to hear where the inspiration for some of the games came from. I can leave it up to my imagination.

Nearly ten years later and WarioWare can still wreck my day. I went to play it for a few minutes, just to see how it feels today. Hours later, with my eyes hurting and my fingers starting to cramp, I did the only sensible thing someone who is highly capable of physically overdosing on a game could do: waited for the battery on my old GBA to die, switched the game to the Game Boy Player on my TV, and kept going. Five-and-a-half hours spent busting scores and zoning out while listening to the catchy tunes and enjoying the trippy visuals. I will never play another game like WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! Prove me wrong, developers.

But let’s not kid ourselves: even Nintendo can’t prove me wrong. They’ve put out a half-dozen spin-offs and sequels and they range from meh-able to absolutely fucking horrid. Since I just went through them, I really want to talk about them.

Mega Party Games: Can’t really comment too much on this one because I didn’t have the required three friends. However, I’ll say that it’s pretty lazy of Nintendo to do straight-ports of all 200 games, even cropping the screen to accommodate them. Why you lazy fucks!

Touched: The Nintendo DS game was the first sequel to hit stateside (Twisted came out first in Japan) and it started the trend of Nintendo using the franchise as a glorified tech-demo for whatever new system their shilling. The problem here is the games were created to emphasize the touch screen capabilities instead of being fun. Plus, not all the games are suited for a series that’s hook is accelerating gameplay. Some of the games (especially Ashley’s) are fucking impossible once the game gets whipping. I’m not being a smart ass there. I mean they literally cannot be beaten. You neither have enough time nor can the system keep up with it. Touched isn’t totally abysmal, but it’s nowhere near the original’s league. And it only got worse from there.

Mike’s stage was just stpuid. One stage requires you to make no noise at all. I find any game that can be mastered by leaving it alone in another room is not a very well made game.

Twisted: Ugh. For some reason, Twisted is held in esteem for being quirky. Well, do you know what else was quirky? The first WarioWare. All future quirkiness from the series is thus redundant. Instead, Twisted relies on a gyroscopic sensor. So did another rightfully forgotten piece of shit, Yoshi Topsy-Turvy. The game has mucho problems with centering, accuracy, and playability. Ultimately, I don’t want to play a game that doesn’t want me to look at the screen. Maybe it’s just me. MetaCritic would have me believe that, because not one person came out and said “this really isn’t very fun.” I obviously didn’t spend a lot of time with it. I beat Super Wario’s stage just once, and my latest shitty score of a 6 on Crygor’s stage was good enough to make my leaderboard. Well, I just did play through it again and I didn’t miss anything.

Smooth Moves: One of the biggest disappointments of my gaming lifetime, yet another game that was inexplicably showered with critical praise. I read a lot of it and I wondered if they played the same game as me. The game they played seemed to do what they wanted it to do. The game I played was broken. As in, it didn’t work. I’ll give you some examples: in Ashley’s stage, one of the games requires you to drop the controller and let it sway from the wrist strap. About half the time I played that stage, I lost because the game didn’t recognize the motion. Even though the only thing the game required you to do was LET GO OF THE CONTROLLER! What the hell, Wiimote? Are you in a fucking coma?

The biggest problem, besides the fact that the famous lightning-speed of the franchise is crippled by the constant shifting of handling positions, is how the motions the game needs don’t match up with the motions it would seem you should use. The motions you would use to swing a bat or operate a crank in Wii Land differ greatly from reality. Part of the problem is the Wiimote wasn’t ready to handle this kind of gameplay at this point of in its lifetime. If they had waited for the Wii Motion Plus, it might have worked. But Nintendo had to get out their latest tech demo and further stomp out the legacy of the original and there is no time like the present. Fuck this game rotten.

Most of the games that required you to “push” something at the screen leaned towards the broken side.

Snapped: Yea! Another shitty, obvious rush-job tech demo! One that uses some of the shittiest hardware Nintendo has done in the last ten years, and that’s really saying something. The DSi camera is so low-resolution that time travelers from the 1960s would laugh at it, but Nintendo decided to go with that instead of charging players an extra $10 and include a camera that you wouldn’t be ashamed to use. But even if they were using space-age technology, WarioWare Snapped is just plain shitty. Let’s start with the total games: 20. That’s 10% of the total games found on the Game Boy Advance. Not that I was expecting a lot from a $5 digital download, but really you’re paying for a glorified expansion for Touched that strips as much core gameplay out of the franchise as possible. You have to sit the DSi on a table to play, stay perfectly still between rounds so that the game doesn’t have a sulk, and the camera can’t recognize you more than half the time anyway! No speed-ups either, or high scores, or boss stages, or fun. The worse game in the series? Nah, that would be Smooth Moves on account of it costing $50, not working, and sucking. Snapped only costs $5, doesn’t work, and sucks. By my math, that makes it suck only 10% as much as Smooth Moves.

DIY: I can’t really say this one sucks, but it certainly wasn’t for me. User-created content and level-editing tools have never been among my favorite features. I loved Little Big Planet, but I am not interested at all in making my own stages, nor am I all that interested in playing the shitty user-made content that is boring and unfinished 90% of the time. I wasn’t really impressed with any of the user content for WarioWare DIY, which mostly looked like stuff drawn in MS Paint. Yea, it’s better than I could do, but that doesn’t make it worth playing. The professional Microgames done by Nintendo are also among the worst the series has, which makes me think this started as a normal game before Nintendo fired the whole staff and decided to let gamers finish it themselves.

Everyone has tried to make their own WarioWare. Sony just put out one on the Vita, the putridly awful Frobisher Says. There’s also been Work Time Fun, the most artificially quirky pile of shit ever. Ha, it’s called “WTF” get it? Hilarious! Funny enough, the best WarioWare Wannabe is on XBLIG:  Minigame Marathon. It’s not perfect, but it actually plays well and more or less “gets it” when it comes to what made WarioWare work. It’s actually better than any of the official Nintendo sequels, and for only $1.

You know what? I don’t expect anything further from this series. Assuming they make any more. The next title, Game & Wario, is dumping microgames in favor of being a mascot-driven version of Wii Play. And it looks fucking horrible. But it doesn’t matter. I have the perfect version of WarioWare already, and it’s still fun to play today. I doubt anyone else in the whole wide world will agree with me, but I think the best game ever made is WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$. Do you know what else? I can’t wait for a game to come along and dethrone it.

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My Ten Favorite Games Ever – Part 5: Portal

November 4, 2012 by 10 Comments

You’ve made it this far.  I’ve gushed over basketball and dudes with enormous swords.  Or enormous enemies and moogles mingling with Donald Duck.  I shed tears reminiscing about the good old days with Goldeneye, and had a glow about me while describing the miracle of Red Dead Redemption.  I talked about my childhood favorite, and a game that made me feel like a child again.  Eight games that shaped my gaming life.  From a technical standpoint, they might not be considered the best games, but they are the games I had the most fun with.  And now it’s time to move to my two favorite games ever.  Games that I’ve gushed about so much that I have to split this into two parts for no explicable reason.  How very Peter Jackson of me.

How do I define what makes a game one of the best ever made?  Superior graphics?  Intelligent level design?  Originality?  Those all factor in, but ultimately, these are the two games that I had the most fun with.  That’s what gaming is about.  Entertainment.  And these are the two games that I personally had the most fun playing.  So when someone asks me “what is the best game ever made?” it should be one of these final two titles.  Starting with..

Portal

Age I was: 18

Last attempt at playing it: A year later when Still Alive was released on XBLA.

Would I ever play it again: No.  Yes, I know there’s a huge modding community doing new Portal stages.  I’m not really into user-created content.  I quite enjoy the Little Big Planet games, but I’m not a big fan of the user-content.  It’s 90% garbage, and not worth the effort of finding the “good stuff” that typically isn’t as good as the real levels.

About halfway through Portal, I came to two realizations.  Number one: I was playing something that will remain special to me for the rest of my life.  Number two: there are going to be so many knock-offs and clones of it that it will render the game retroactively obnoxious.  I was right on both accounts.  I don’t blame Portal for being a landmark game by any means.  I blame developers (indie or otherwise) for allowing it to stunt their growth the way it has.  I’m personally going to stomp a beautiful flower every time I see any variation of “the cake is a lie” joke from here on out.  I mean, really people?  That’s what you took away from Portal?  Not the superb level design?  The amazing hook?  The originality?  The sense of awe?

A lot of gaming culture’s less than charming quirks are beyond my understanding.  The obsession with the cake bit in Portal goes further than that, where I feel the only way I could ever grasp it is by pulling a Mason and taking a power drill to my brain.  Even more annoying is how many people think they are capable of making their own variation of the cake thing funny.  Stop it!  It’s not funny!  You killed the gag years ago and all you’re doing now is desecrating its corpse.  Here’s a thought: come up with your own gag.  Maybe it will be funny and you’ll get to be the one watching in horror as people get in line to run it into the ground.

Honestly, I didn’t find the cake or the companion cube bits funny at all. So of course that’s what people still use in increasingly unfunny jokes to this day.

But I’m not going to let those douchebags spoil my memories of Portal.  You know what?  They can’t, no matter how hard they try.  The really funny part about the whole situation is how much they missed the point of why Portal is special to so many people.  Portal probably shouldn’t have been has good as it is, but the game self-corrected every possible problem that could come up.  The sterile environment should have sucked the energy out the experience.  Solution?  The maniacal, monotone GLaDOS and her increasingly dark running commentary gave players a reason to want to continue.  But GLaDOS by herself wouldn’t have been as iconic.  What tied it together and made it work was the juxtaposition.  It was the polar opposite of the highly structured, professionally scientific setting.  If Portal had a more “trapped against your will” feel to it, like the Saw movies for example, it would be funny but not pantheon of gaming humor funny.  Don’t believe me?  That’s too bad, because Valve themselves proved I’m right with Portal 2.  When removed from the professional test-chamber setting, and with your character unquestionably being tortured for giggles instead of science, GLaDOS is still funny but nowhere near on the same level.

And what about the puzzles?  If there’s just one thing I’ve learned since starting Indie Gamer Chick, it’s that people really dislike it when you hate on Sonic the Hedgehog.  But if there’s two things I’ve learned, it’s that Sonic hate is off-limits and people really aren’t drawn to puzzle games.  Even ones that get high levels of acclaim are tough sells.  What makes Portal different?  At first I figured it was the first-person-shooter thing.  Having a shooter, no matter what kind of shooting is involved, lures in people who otherwise couldn’t identify their own name out of a lineup.  But I don’t think it’s the gun thing.  No, it’s the fact that it doesn’t feel like a puzzle game.  Even if there is only one solution to a room, Portal gives players an artificial sense of freedom.  That, and it doesn’t feel like you’re being given an exam.  Instead, fun is the focus of Portal.  Portal’s Xbox Live Indie Game counterpart Gateways has that feel to it, where fun sometimes is pushed the background in favor of testing a player.  You don’t need to do that, and Portal is the proof.

Yes, like everyone else, I’ve thought about what I would personally do with a Portal gun. The best I could come up with is teleporting a dog across the room and giggling at its befuddled reaction. It’s the sci-fi version of a laser pointer on the floor. Hey, you have to be able to enjoy the simple things in life, like confusing a lower species for your own personal amusement.

Portal is greater than the sum of its parts.  Games have been funnier.  They’ve been smarter.  They’ve made better use of their concepts.  But no game has ever done all the of the above as well.  And just when you think they’ve run out of ideas and things are going to get stale, it’s over.  Has there ever been a better use of brevity in a game?  The quick ending that left you wanting more while still feeling wholly satisfying was the final nudge that pushed Portal past the realm of excellence and into the realm of legends.

But let’s not kid ourselves: Like all the best games, Portal was lightning in a bottle.  Portal 2 was good.  Very good.  One of the best games of this entire generation.  Funny, clever, intelligent, and memorable.  It even avoided overstaying its welcome, which I figured could be a problem.  Portal just barely scraped the three-hour mark.  Portal 2 hung around two to three times longer, but never felt padded.  So why isn’t it as special as the original?  It goes beyond the puzzles being inferior (which they mostly are, quite frankly), or the hook no longer being as awe-inspiring.  Portal felt like a game that was made to see if they could take the concept and make it work.  Portal 2 ultimately felt like a game that was made because it had to be made.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  I’m a business person.  I get it.  I’ll be first in line to get any more sequels that they have to make to, you know, eat and pay the bills and shit.  And I’ll expect continued excellence from the series.  But that once in a lifetime sense of wonder that the first one produced can’t be recreated.  I’m certain more games in the future will stimulate similar reactions in me, but it won’t ever come from a Portal game again.

Continue to the Final Part: WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!

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My Ten Favorite Games Ever – Part 4

November 3, 2012 by 8 Comments

Continuing from Part 3, these are my personal ten favorite games ever.  Not the best games ever made, or even games I want to play again.  But the ten games I had the most fun playing the first time I played them.

Banjo-Kazooie

Age I was: 9

Last attempt at playing it: ten years later at age 19, when it was released on XBLA.

Would I ever play it again: No

Crash Bandicoot and Crash Bandicoot 2. Those were pretty much the definitive games of my formative years as a gamer.  Sure, there were lots of oddball games between those.   The original Rayman I enjoyed.  Bubsy 3D I did not.  At age 7, it was my first clue that not all games are created equal.  But while my experience playing a PlayStation kiosk lured me into asking Santa Claus for one for Christmas, I wasn’t quite to the point of tracking down every new release and having actual anticipation for upcoming titles.  And then I played Banjo-Kazooie at Toys R Us, and everything changed.

July 11, 1998.  My 9th birthday.  A brand new Nintendo 64, a controller that looked like a tumorous raptor-claw, and Banjo-Kazooie.  All mine.  How much did I love Banjo-Kazooie?  I didn’t even open the other game I got that day, Mario Kart 64, until a month later.  Banjo owned the rest of my summer.  I spent hours hunting down every music note, honeycomb, nook, cranny, and just being in awe of how much bigger this was than anything I had played before it.  This wasn’t a roped-off parade route, like Crash.  This was a full-fledged world that was alive and breathing, and it was mine to explore.

Banjo wasn’t the last game to wow me like that.  I had similar feelings the first time I explored Hyrule in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or raced a Killer Whale in Sonic Adventure.  None of which I feel hold up today, but that first time through each will always hold a special place in my heart.  Platformers didn’t become special again for me until long after that.  Super Mario 64, which I played for the first time immediately after finishing Banjo-Kazooie, was hugely disappointing for me.  The world seemed less alive, less vibrant, and duller.  But that made sense.  It came out years before Banjo, and even Shigeru Miyamoto wasn’t totally satisfied with it.  He wanted to keep refining it, until Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi outright told him “it’s good enough, we need to get this into manufacturing!”

Nuts & Bolts was just alright for me. Some of my readers are shocked that I didn’t like it more on account of my childhood love for Banjo. I don’t get the logic of that at all. It’s like saying I like peanuts, and therefore I’ll like peanuts even if they’re fifteen years past the expiration date.

Mario 64 not “doing it for me” was perfectly logical.  So how come Donkey Kong 64 or Banjo-Tooie didn’t “do it for me” either?  Or for that matter, Super Mario Sunshine or Sly Cooper or countless other very good platformers?  Even after experiencing a couple “holy shit, this is amazing!” moments in Sonic Adventure (a game I concede is an atrocious piece of shit, but I was blinded at the time by the shiny new hardware) or my first time playing the Game Boy Advance ports of stuff I missed like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Yoshi’s Island, nothing ever quite approached that month spent playing Banjo-Kazooie.

But let’s not kid ourselves: Isn’t that how it should be?  Those moments of pure gaming nirvana, where you know you’re playing something uniquely special that makes you feel different than all other games do, shouldn’t those be rare?  For you it might have been Mario 3 or Chrono Trigger or Link to the Past.  For me, it was Banjo-Kazooie, and that’s just because of the generation gap.  If I had felt the same way after Tooie, or Mario 64, or Donkey Kong 64, or Blinx, or Vexx, or Billy Hatcher, then that original moment isn’t as special.  I enjoyed all the games I just listed, some very much so.   But only Banjo-Kazooie made me feel awesome in ways that defy description.  And I can’t get that feeling back from playing it again.  I tried not too long after I finished Banjo the first time.  I tried again when Banjo got a nifty HD port to Xbox Live Arcade.  It’s just not the same game for me anymore.  Like Shadow of the Colossus, I have nothing left to get from it.  At one point, I chalked it up to platformers not meaning as much to me as they did when I was a kid.  I still enjoyed them, but my gaming palate had grown and I liked other genres now.  I figured nothing would ever make me feel like Banjo-Kazooie did.  And then I played this..

Super Mario Galaxy

Age I was: 18

Last attempt at playing it: I never went back and played the original again, but the sequel was a glorified expansion pack and it hit when I was 21, so there you go.

Would I ever play it again: No

Mario doesn’t mean the same to me as he does to you.  That doesn’t mean I think Mario games are somehow inferior to your perception of them.  In general, they’re pretty fucking awesome.  But my childhood wasn’t spent counting down the days until the next game with Mario would hit the shelves.  That’s why I can’t get even remotely nostalgic about Super Mario 3, nor can I stand hearing people try to justify The Wizard.  Super Mario World wasn’t a benchmark title for me.  It was just the second game in the series to be ported to Game Boy Advance, and it was really fun.  Mario 64 was that game that let me down after Banzo-Kazooie, but I didn’t hate it or anything.  I just don’t think it’s a game that transcends time.  New Super Mario Bros. was that weird title that felt like the gaming equivalent of a bunch of frat boys trying to recreate their glory days and coming across as sadly quaint and pathetic.  I guess I’m really weird, because my favorite Mario up to this point had been Super Mario Advance.  You know, the remake of Super Mario 2.  The strange one that only became a Mario game because Shigeru Miyamoto went on the rag and decided he wanted humanity to suffer, making the real Mario 2 so brutally difficult that nobody could possibly like it.  Yea, I’m talking about the vegetable pulling one where NOBODY actually used Mario.  They either used Luigi or the Princess, and they probably warped past the ice world because that shit was fucking horrid.

I didn’t have low expectations for Super Mario Galaxy.  I thought it would be fun, just like Mario Sunshine had been, and that I would enjoy it for a couple of days, finish it, and think nothing of it.  So imagine my surprise when I totally melted as I played it.  It was awesome.  And it did what no game had done for me since Banjo: it turned me into a nine-year-old again, and kept me that way the whole play-through.  It was magical.  It really was.

The amazing levels, crazy gravity, fun objectives, and that sense that everything you were experiencing was something new and unique.  You’ve seen stuff like Mario Galaxy before.  It borrowed elements from previous games in the series liberally.  But they had never felt quite like this did.  It was utterly amazing.  The goals were always short and focused, so that they never grew tiresome, and worlds had just enough objectives to feel like they knew exactly how long it would all take to get boring and stopped just short of it.  There were plenty of surprises, legitimate challenges, and moments where you had to sit back and admit that this is as close to perfect as a game can get.  I don’t put Nintendo on a pedestal.  Quite frankly, I think they’re pretty overrated.  That’s mostly because they weren’t single-handedly responsible for my entire catalog of childhood memories like they were for so many gamers.  And while I don’t think the Wii is the abomination that so many hold it to be, it certainly won’t go down as one of my favorite systems ever.

But Mario Galaxy?  It will be special to me forever.

I’m really not a big fan of Yoshi. I don’t see what it adds to a game besides unneeded complexity and annoyance. It doesn’t help that my first encounter with him was Yoshi’s Story for the Nintendo 64. Even at 9 years old, the game was so pitifully easy that I actually spent hours staring at the box trying to figure out where the fine print that says “For Ages 2 – 4” was at.

But let’s not kid ourselves: When Mario Galaxy 2 hit, it was a very good game that simply couldn’t recreate the magic of the original.  The uniqueness had worn off, and the sense of wonder was gone.  It was more of the same.  Which is fine, because the original was so good.  But once the magic is gone, it’s gone.  That happens so much with me.  Even if a sequel is clearly the better game, the originals always stick with me more.  I really enjoyed Arkham City, but my memories of Arkham Asylum are much stronger.  I’ll reminisce about God of War before I think back to that great time I had with God of War III.  And these aren’t even the games that I hold to be the best.  It’s rare when I say a sequel actually is better enough that I’m certain to remember it first.  After discussing it with friends, only two games stuck out: Uncharted 2 and Pikmin 2 (though Assassin’s Creed III might win a spot).  Being 23 years old contributes to that somewhat, because I didn’t play most of the great franchises in chronological order.

I think why Mario Galaxy means so much to me is because it ended the cynic in me who felt that gaming would never get as good as it was when I was 9.  Obviously if playing Banjo-Kazooie on XBLA at age 19 couldn’t make me feel the same way that playing Banjo-Kazooie on Nintendo 64 at age 9 did, nothing would.  That was wrong, and I should have known better.  Of course I could feel that way again.  It just wouldn’t come from the same source.  It came from Mario Galaxy.  And you know what?  Some day I’ll feel that way again.  A game will come along that reverts me back to a smiling, giggling nine-year-old.  Do you know what else I know?  It won’t be Mario Galaxy.

Final part coming next with my two favorite games ever!

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My Ten Favorite Games Ever – Part 3

November 2, 2012 by 8 Comments

Continuing from Part 2, these are my personal ten favorite games ever. Not the best games ever made, or even games I want to play again. But the ten games I had the most fun playing the first time I played them.

Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare

Age I was: 20 and 21

Last attempt at playing it: Played through all the main content and DLC once. Would play some more if more DLC hit, which ain’t happening.

Would I ever play it again: No

I’ve enjoyed games like Grand Theft Auto and Saint’s Row, but the thing about them is, I’m not really all that interested in the life of criminal or a gang banger. Take CJ from San Andreas. Has there ever been a less sympathetic character that is the protagonist of a game? Hell, you can almost feel a little bad for Duke Nukem. With that much machismo and bravado, you know he has to have microscopic pecker. But CJ? What a douche. I think that’s why I disliked San Andreas so much. I kept waiting for a cut scene where he would realize he was a cancer on all those around him and cap himself. Trust me, I was a frequent user of Right, L2, Down, R1, Left, Left, R1, L1, L2, L1.

That’s what I loved about Red Dead Redemption. My buddy Cyril chastised me for short-handing it as “Grand Theft Auto 1910s” when its way more complex than that. But really, that’s sort of what it is. You know what? I find that setting more interesting. That doesn’t matter though. It’s the writing. It’s the fact that main characters John and Jack are complex but have a genuine sense of goodness about them. So when it comes time to take control of them and lead them through their outstanding adventure, the scenarios it puts them through feels like something they should be doing. Whereas the only thing I thought CJ or Vice City’s Tommy should be doing is stuffing their pants with large rocks and hurling themselves into the river.

By all rights, Red Dead Redemption should have been an unmitigated disaster. Six years to make. Over 800 people involved in its production. It went way over budget, suffered numerous delays, apparently was the source of bad working conditions and an unhappy staff, and all that for a sequel to a game that wasn’t really that good to begin with? How was this not another Duke Nukem Forever or Galleon? Even more puzzling, how on Earth did all that create one of the best games ever made? It’s mind-boggling.

Yea, it’s a bit rough around the edges at times, but Red Dead Redemption was really the first game of its kind from Rockstar that felt like it was actually made just for adults. I always thought the Grand Theft Auto games seemed more targeted towards what I call your inner-bastard. Sure, the storylines were “mature” in the sense that they involved swearing and committing crimes. Yet, the games were always cartoonish enough and so over-the-top that I always kind of figured the M rating came with a knowing “wink-wink” and a nod towards the kiddie set. And it worked. Twelve-year-old me wanted Grand Theft Auto III because my parents said no. On the other hand, Red Dead Redemption feels like something that twelve-year-old me wouldn’t, or more accurately couldn’t, appreciate.

And yes, I actually liked Undead Nightmare. While I still say I’m baffled as to why zombies are more popular with the nerd set than free blowjobs, I have to concede that Undead Nightmare is actually better than the main game. Intense as hell, lots of “holy shit” twists, and startling moments that complement an overall sense of dread. For all the unjustified hype surrounding each new Resident Evil release, has any horror title done better than Undead Nightmare over the last ten years? After playing it, all other DLC seems lackluster. The bar is now set so high that you need jet-powered pogo stick to reach it. Then again, this and Black Ops probably should be flogged just for setting off this new “every game needs to have zombies shoehorned into it somehow” trend. I’m officially done with games if they find their way into Reader Rabbit.

But let’s not kid ourselves: After a very good-sized adventure and five installments of DLC, I’m beyond burned out on Red Dead Redemption. Yea, I would certainly play more if they put it out, but I can’t say I’m still wanting more. I’m totally satisfied, and I have no expectations for what the future of this series holds. Like Final Fantasy VII, this felt like lightning in a bottle. What I would like to see is a totally different setting. I’m actually pretty pissed that Assassin’s Creed called dibs on the American Revolution. As much as I’m enjoying Assassin’s Creed III, I would so rather have Rockstar use that as the setting for the next Red Dead game. They could call it Red Dead Red Coats!

GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark

Age I was: 10 and 11.

Last attempt at playing it: at least ten years ago for GoldenEye, last year for Perfect Dark.

Would I ever play it again: Noooooooooooooo!

I can’t properly explain what GoldenEye and Perfect Dark have meant to my life (yes, life), so instead I’ll just tell you a story. I’m sure you all will be rolling your eyes as much as I’m wiping tears from mine.

I have autism. Kids can have a tough time growing up, but growing up like this was at times very isolating. I only went to school through first-grade, and was tutored at home after that. My only social interaction came in the form of a sort of support group that met in San Francisco, where kids all across the autism spectrum could interact and feel as normal as possible. This was mostly done with games and physical activities. Later, a Nintendo 64 with four controllers joined the fray. Then GoldenEye showed up and was hot for two days before the counselors declared it to be inappropriate and banned it. That lasted another couple of days before parents actually requested they let the kids play it, because it was causing such a positive amount of social interaction. Thank God Xbox Live didn’t exist back then, or it would have ended up in a firing barrel.

I was going to complain about how Wikipedia has the European box art instead of the American one, but hey, it actually looks way better than ours. Carry on.

I never actually touched it that whole time. I was firmly in the PlayStation camp at age eight, and only joined in when Mario Kart 64 or Diddy Kong Racing made an appearance. But those moments were rare. It was all GoldenEye, all the time. It wasn’t until two years later that I finally got curious what all the fuss was about. So I started watching the other kids (ranging from ages ten to early twenties) play it. I did that for, oh, about three months. Never daring to actually play, or even try. By that point, I owned a Nintendo 64, but I never thought to buy it. I hadn’t even played any shooter before. With the exception of Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing, every game I owned was a platformer. Then, one day, I worked up the courage to play it with the group. Do I even need to go any further?

I guess I should, because to not do so fails to give GoldenEye the justice it deserves. It was something special. I had played Mario Kart with the group, and yea, great game. I owned it. Spent many hours with it as a kid. But Goldeneye. Wow. License to Kill mode. Proximity mines. The facility with automatics. Hours and hours, and full years spent with it and Perfect Dark. I miss that time. A lot.

But let’s not kid ourselves:I shed many tears sharing that with Brian and reminiscing about the skill levels of each dude I used to play against. But no matter what, those days are gone and I can’t get them back.It will never be the same. The Nintendo 64 originals are downright unplayable today. They’re glitchy, skippy, and Perfect Dark especially chugs at like two frames an hour if you have four players and eight sims going. Stuff you didn’t notice in 2000 when games didn’t play any better. But they do now and I can’t pretend they don’t.

They tried a sequel to Perfect Dark, and I’m still honestly not sure if it’s any good. The problem with it was it was so different from the original. Perfect Dark was awesome because it felt like GoldenEye. Perfect Dark Zero didn’t feel like GoldenEye at all, which is all anyone wanted. They’ve remade GoldenEye a few times since 1997, and it never feels right. It’s actually obnoxious, like someone doing a bad Sean Connery impression. Meanwhile, they brought out a spot-on Perfect Dark port with online play to Xbox Live Arcade. It still wasn’t the same. As much as I cling to Xbox Live today, GoldenEye and Perfect Dark made the leap from great to amazing because of Chris, Matt, Bradley James, OddScott, and Bo. Five guys out there know exactly who I’m talking about. If you guys still live in the Bay Area, send me an e-mail. I would love to play Halo 4 with you next week.

Continue to Part 4: Banzo-Marzooie Galaxy!

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My Ten Favorite Games Ever – Part 2

November 1, 2012 by 5 Comments

Continuing from Part 1, these are my personal ten favorite games ever.  Not the best games ever made, or even games I want to play again.  But the ten games I had the most fun playing the first time I played them.

Shadow of the Colossus

Age I was: 16

Last attempt at playing it: last year when it was re-released on PlayStation 3.  Shadow is one of the rare games that I’ve finished twice.  But there won’t be a third time.

Would I ever play it again: No

Between you and me, I never really liked Ico all that much.  Despite the massive amount of praise it got from pretty much everyone, I hated the combat and I detest escort missions in general.  A game that is all escorting, all the time was like being forced to listen to someone take a nail file to Gilbert Gottfried’s teeth.  So while the artwork was nice (I guess) and the puzzle design was alright (if you’re into that sort of thing), it did nothing for me.  As a result, Shadow of the Colossus was nowhere on my radar.  I had no faith in it.  Thought it would be a piece of shit.  And then I played the demo from the official PlayStation Magazine.  And I had to have it.  Like, right then.

There has never been anything quite like Shadow of the Colossus.  What made it work is how alone you feel in the world you’re in.  With no secondary enemies, treasures to find, caves to explore, fetch-quests, menus, and so on, and so on, everything is focused on intense, rewarding gameplay.  The storyline isn’t exactly deep, but you’re given just enough snippets of what’s going on to be curious exactly what you’re doing and why.  Despite the open-worldness of it, it felt like a dark ride at an amusement park.  You’re pushed from one goal to the next, feeling the exact emotion the developers want you to feel.  Fear from a lake monster.  Apprehension from a twenty-story tall behemoth.  Thrills as you soar through the air on a flying giant.  Even a true sense of loss when your horse seemingly dies.  Then again, I’m not sure they were trying to provoke “how the FUCK did it survive and limp all the way back here?” when it shows up during the final cut scene, which is what I was like.

But let’s not kid ourselves: Shadow of the Colossus is a one-and-done experience.  Yea, there’s a lot of hidden content, like lizards and fruits that increase your abilities.  And yea, they’re special weapons you get for beating the bosses a second time.  But the best parts about Shadow of the Colossus can only be experienced one time.  Those moments when you encounter a boss for the first time, or gaze in awe at a new area of the land to explore.  Once you’ve done that, there’s no turning back the clock.  Not even an HD upgrade of the game made playing through it a totally worthwhile use of my time last year.  I loved Shadow of the Colossus, but I can’t get anymore out of it.

XBLIG equivalent: Ha, right.  One game did try to recreate the whole “fight giant-sized enemies” schtick, Ogre’s Phantasm Sword Quest.  But that wasn’t even trying to be like Shadow of the Colossus.  It’s not an XBLIG, but the closest any game has come to reminding me of it was PlayStation Network hit Journey.  It wasn’t about the slaying of giants or the minimalistic presentation.  It was about the emotional focus.  A game that gives you the illusion of having freedom, but in reality pushes you from point A to point B while evoking specifically targeted reactions in the player.   Lots of games try to do that, but few are smart enough to keep it simple and aim for very specific nerves.

Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II

Age I was: 13 and 16

Last attempt at playing it: I’ve only played them once.

Would I ever play it again: No.  Well, define “again” since every single spinoff and sequel feels like the same fucking game, only increasingly less coherent.

I can’t really defend my love of Kingdom Hearts.  The story was absurd, the camera was unworkable, the characters as they originally stood all had the complexity of a straw, and it was fucking awesome.  It’s a real shame what has become of this series.  It reminds me of what happened to the Matrix series between the original flick and the two sequels, where the creators fell in love just a little bit too much with their own top-heavy mythology.  When it was just about Sora and Riku being separated from their home and their friend and being in a strange world surrounded by cartoon characters, I liked it.  Pitiful me totally melted when I saw a moogle.  “Oh gee, there’s a moogle, in this game that has Donald Duck and Goofy!  Tee hee!”  But as the sequels and spinoffs started adding evil organizations and Nobodys and all the stuff you see is real but maybe it’s not or maybe it’s a dream or maybe you’re remembering it wrong or you know what fuck it.  I wish I had played the original and then had myself hypnotized to get physically ill if I was ever tempted to play another game in the series.

Maybe I’m being hypocritical.  My inner anti-critic is saying “It’s Disney and it’s Square!  Come on, Cathy!  Of course it’s going to sound like raving insane fan-fiction!  Nothing at Disneyland makes sense either, but the rides are still fun!”  I chose to pair Shadow of the Colossus with Kingdom Hearts here because both feel like rides.  They give an artificial sense of being bigger than they really are, when they’re really drawing your attention to very specific things on a linear path that you have almost no control over.  Yet, it never feels like a fan service (see Smash Bros) or pretentious (see Epic Mickey) and remains charming.  At least the two main games do.  All the spinoffs can get in line to kiss my ass.

But let’s not kid ourselves: Even with all the options to change-up combat, with various combos and formations, the limited variety of enemies and ultra-repetitive nature of fights gets old quickly.  Both Kingdom Hearts and its sequel over-stayed their welcome by a good five to ten hours each.  Yes, too much of a good thing can and does happen.  I’m also increasingly uninterested in a possible third proper sequel.  That’s thanks in no small part to several spinoffs with titles that sound like badly translated Japanese.  358/2 Days?  Birth by Sleep??  Dream Drop Distance???  You made these incomprehensible pieces of shit instead  of #3 why?

XBLIG equivalent: Again, I really didn’t think this part out too much.  Seemed like a good idea when I came up with this feature.  Nothing really compares to it on XBLIG, so I’ll just end right here.  But, if you do want to try to make something like this yourself, remember to focus players attentions on very little while making them think there’s a lot more going on then there is.  It sounds absurd, but that’s exactly what Shadow of the Colossus and Kingdom Hearts both did, and did very well.

Continue to Part III: Cowboys and GoldenEye playing Aliens.

And yes I cheated: I’m counting Kingdom Hearts I & II as one game.  Just wait until the next chapter.  I do that twice!  So really this the top 13 games.  Why not?

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My Ten Favorite Games Ever – Part 1

November 1, 2012 by 9 Comments

Sometimes I’ll be in the middle of an Indie Gamer Chick review when, unfortunately, my epilepsy likes the game less than I do.  Such is the case with Demon House.  So while I recover, I figure I’ll answer one of the most common questions I get: “what’s your favorite game ever?” or “what is the best game ever is?”  I don’t think the latter question can accurately be answered, because it involves personal subjective opinions.  If the question being posed is “what’s the most important game ever?” that would be easier.  Pong, or Space Invaders, or Super Mario Bros. would probably rank near the top, with Crackdown 2 being at the very bottom.  That’s right, Crackdown 2 is less important to gaming than anything else in gaming history.  Developer Ruffian Games knew this, which is why they totally half-assed it.

This all seems so familiar. Wait, you didn’t just slap a number two on the original and call it a day, did you?

I don’t know what truly is the best game ever.  All I know is what games I’ve personally enjoyed the most.  And these aren’t necessarily games that I would ever want to play again.  Over half of them I really don’t.  They’re part of my past.  A very awesome, much-loved part of my past, but I’m not interested in trying to recreate the magic.   For me, every time I go back and play a childhood favorite, I cringe at how badly its aged.  While I might have a little fun, it almost never comes close to the sense of awe and joy that I once gained from it.  My most recent example: I dug up Blast Corps last week, one of my favorite Nintendo 64 games.  Stuff I never noticed as a kid, like a stuttering frame-rate and some spotty level design, made the game practically unplayable for me.  I’m spoiled by modern technology, and I can’t force myself to like something just because I liked it as a kid.

When LucasFilm got sold to Disney earlier this week, some extremely thick morons cried about how Disney now “owns their childhood!”  Um, no.  You own your childhood.  You also can’t get your childhood back.  It’s gone.  You either can enjoy your memories of it or you can stick your head in a paint shaker and hope the resulting damage reverts you back to your preteens.  Wait a second.  I know this is off topic but aren’t you Star Wars geeks who are now crying buckets over Disney owning your childhood the same dorks who keep complaining about how George Lucas has raped your childhood with countless re-releases or adding aliens to Indiana Jones?  It just goes to show, you can’t please fanboys.  I would say they need to be segregated away from the rest of the population, but they already self-impose that.

So these are the ten games I had the best time with during my original play of them.  And mind you, I’m 23-years-old and grew up with a PlayStation and Nintendo 64, not an Atari or an NES.  If it’s not on here, feel free to yell at me in the comments.  And just to make sure some of those haters who have told me to quit calling myself an XBLIG site because the 20 non-XBLIG reviews I’ve done somehow cancel out the 293 XBLIG reviews, I’ll talk about what games on my list are comparable to XBLIGs. These are in no particular order.

Final Fantasy VII

Age I was: 13

Last attempt at playing it: A couple of years ago.  Played it for about three hours, turned it off, didn’t miss anything.

Would I ever play it again: No

I started gaming when I was seven, but didn’t get into RPGs until a few years later.  That’s mostly because I wasn’t looking for in-depth storytelling.  I was looking to jump on the heads of living beings and not be sent to juvenile hall for it.  My first crack at one was boring dungeon-crawler Evolution on the Dreamcast, which my confused father got for me because he thought it was a Zelda game.  Gotta love parents.  It wasn’t until I got Skies of Arcadia off a clearance rack that I saw the potential of what an RPG can do.  I started to devour them in short order, hitting all the major titles I missed on the original PlayStation even as the new generation of consoles was starting to make an impact.  It all culminated with Final Fantasy VII.  I knew the hype on it, with a lot of people considering it the best game ever made.  I had played and enjoyed Final Fantasy VIII and IX already, and then was finally able to convince my daddy that nearly $100 for a used game would be a good investment.  By the way, I cringe greatly at that figure today.  Yea, it was awesome, but not $100 awesome.

It was 2002 when I played it for the first time.  I had just turned thirteen.  I had already played Final Fantasy X, and although I was pumped to see what all the fuss was about, I figured there was no way it could live up to expectations.  I was wrong.  Final Fantasy VII often left me shaking my head in disbelief.  No entry in the series, or indeed in any RPG, is so memorable in so many ways.  Characters, scenes, fights, twists, or just “holy shit, this is awesome” moments.  It didn’t change my life or anything.  I think by that point I had grasped that games could be fun and enjoyable.  It was just a damn good time.

But let’s not kid ourselves: I wouldn’t want to play it again.  Hell, if Square-Enix wanted to just cash a check guaranteed to be in the nine-figure range and made Final Fantasy VII-2, I wouldn’t be that interested.  Final Fantasy VII is one of those rare lightning-in-a-bottle games that I wish we all would agree can never happen again.  Like those who hold out hope that Capcom will bring back the magic of Resident Evil 4, we all just need to accept that Final Fantasy VII was a once in a lifetime event.  They’ve done four game spinoffs and a bunch of anime spinoffs of it, and nothing has come even remotely close to grasping what made it so special.  And, let’s face it, as a game it’s not that interesting anymore.  I prefer the combat in Costume Quest or the Paper Mario series to Final Fantasy VII.  And excellent storytelling is no-longer limited to just the RPG universe.  Stuff like L.A. Noire or Grand Theft Auto tell excellent stories in a more exciting, interactive environment.  If Final Fantasy VII had come out in 2012 instead of 1997, with the exact gameplay but modern audio-visuals, it would seem archaic.  Final Fantasy VII was amazing for its time, but its time has come and gone.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.

XBLIG equivalent: There really are no RPGs that can hope to match the scope of Final Fantasy VII, and nothing comes close to telling a story like it.  I probably should have thought this whole “XBLIG equivalent” thing out more.  I suppose you can start with Cthulhu Saves the World.  My advice to would-be developers who want to achieve something similar: don’t focus on being like Final Fantasy or any other game.  Focus on telling the best story you’re capable of telling.  In that sense, I guess All the Bad Parts wins out, because it told the best story on XBLIG.  Sadly, the best story married some of the worst gameplay.

NBA 2K1

Age I was: 11

Last attempt at playing it: Almost ten years ago.

Would I ever play it again: No

It might seem like an oddball choice, but NBA 2K1 was the first game I was ever addicted to.  As in, I probably played it six to eight hours a day, seven days a week, for months.  I attended my first basketball game when I was six years old.  The Warriors beat the Nuggets at home.  Latrell Sprewell had 30 points and was still a year away from trying to strangle his coach.  I was hooked.  Unfortunately, at the time I got into gaming, basketball games really weren’t that good.  The most fun I had with one was NBA Hangtime on the Nintendo 64, which was very entertaining, but not quite the simulation I was looking for.  The PlayStation had NBA Shootout, which was abysmal, and the Nintendo 64 had Kobe Bryant’s NBA Courtside, which was riddled with problems.  There was also NBA In the Zone, which I didn’t get.  As a shallow nine-year-old, I couldn’t get past the fact that the biggest star they could get for the cover was Glen Rice, a guy who is only remembered these days for porking Sarah Palin.

I had so little faith in NBA video games that I skipped the original NBA 2K on the Dreamcast.  I don’t remember why I was compelled to ask Santa Claus for NBA 2K1, but I did, and I’m glad I did.  It wasn’t perfect, but it actually felt like a real basketball game.  Not too real.  For you NBA fans, you’ll remember that my beloved Golden State Warriors had a miserable team during that era that finished dead-last in their division and conference.  A team that I personally guided to 82-0 records and multiple championships.  Of course, it helps that I traded scrubs for Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, and Allen Iverson.  Hey, don’t look at me like that.  It’s scientifically proven that you can’t have fun if your biggest stars are Antawn Jamison and Danny Fortson.

NBA 2K1, like Sega’s NFL 2K series, played like no other sports game before it.  It felt real.  It was real.  As real as any game was capable of being to that point.  But it doesn’t hold a special place in my heart for that reason.  No, the GM mode is what makes it stick with me.  It was my first ever encounter with a gaming time-sink.  Making absurd trades, micro-managing my budget, scouting college players, and trying to figure out the right balance of role players and superstars (try stacking a team with just superstars and you won’t even make the playoffs, a memo the Lakers seemed to have missed this year) completely owned me for nearly a year.  I played for well over 200 seasons and led my Warriors to only 8 championships.  By time NBA2K2 rolled around, I was burned out on video basketball and its barely made a dent in my life since.

But let’s not kid ourselves: I don’t want to play a decades old basketball game anymore.  I know there are some people out there who shun Madden in favor of Tecmo Bowl, and cling to 80s relics like Blades of Steel or Lakers vs. Celtics, but I can’t do it.  I can’t ignore all the advances in gaming just to kill time with a childhood favorite.  I don’t even know how advanced NBA games have gotten, and I’m not even that curious to know.  Part of that is I’m not into the NBA as much as I was as a kid.  It’s the same reason why I wouldn’t be as interested in a Power Rangers game today.  I loved that shit as a kid, and even put up with the atrocious Lightspeed Rescue game because I liked the source material.  Today?  I would rather chew glass.

XBLIG equivalent: Smooth Operators.  Hear me out on this.  There’s not a whole lot of licensed basketball simulators on XBLIG.  At last count, there’s none.  I pick Smooth Operators because NBA 2K1’s GM mode was my introduction to simulators.  Following it, I had love affairs with SimCity 3000, Roller Coaster Tycoon, The Sims, and so on.  Smooth Operators is the best of its breed on XBLIG, and thus it gets the nod.  Of course, I probably would have discovered all those games without NBA 2K1, but I played it first, so it gets all the credit.

Continue to Part 2 with Giants and Disney.

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The Big Tent of Gaming

October 8, 2012 by 21 Comments

People who pride themselves on being “hardcore gamers” befuddle me, and the reason for that is because they like to segregate games like they’re dorky versions of George Wallace. They spend so much time trying to identify what is a game and what is a game that it bleeds into their dreams. And what have they established? As far as I can tell, Demon’s Souls is a game. Bejeweled is a game. Skyrim is a game but Peggle is a game. It’s confusing to me, because last time I played Peggle, it seemed kind of gamish to me. But then it gets really confusing when stuff like Madden or Call of Duty falls into the a game category, apparently on account of them being played by people who spend less than two hours a week on their consoles and occasionally insert their genitalia into the orifice of a member of the opposite sex, as opposed to just telling people they do. I think what it really comes down to is gamers don’t want to share their hobby with others. They don’t mind if something is popular, as long as it’s only popular with their inner circle. The moment it becomes something that the football quarterback, the librarian, or their mother starts to play, it’s not just theirs anymore. It becomes the embodiment of everything wrong with gaming. It becomes, gasp, a casual game.  THUNDER CLASP!

The Angry Birds series has gotten a ton of scorn from guys who claim to be hardcore gamers. I say claim, because I am of the opinion that you can’t be a hardcore gamer if you exclude a series just because it’s popular and your grandmother can play it just as well as you can. Some people think Angry Birds (ironically) represents the canary in the coalmine. The tinfoil hat wearing gamer crowd says that games like Angry Birds will destroy their precious “hardcore” games, because why make something only they like when they can make something everyone likes and make more money. Soon, stuff like Portal or Skyrim will cease to exist just because one series has banked nearly a billion dollars. Of course, in reality things don’t work that way. My Big Fat Greek Wedding made $400,000,000 off a $5,000,000 budget. If the logic of the sky-is-falling gaming crowd were to believed, Hollywood would have phased out big-budget blockbusters in favor of “casual” fare such as Greek Wedding. They didn’t. And Angry Birds is not going to stop your Skyrim sequels from being made.

Rovio made a series so well received that they were able to make nearly a billion dollars in revenue from the game and all related merchandise, spawn off a successful spin-off, and break down mainstream barriers. The fucking nerve of them, am I right?

I don’t care if you have a beef with a game based on how it plays. If you genuinely don’t like Angry Birds because you don’t find it to be a fun game, great. If you say you hate Angry Birds and will never play it because it’s a casual game and ruining the industry, to paraphrase Sarah Silverman: maybe you’re not a hardcore gamer? Maybe you’re a cunt? And the same goes for Madden, and Call of Duty, and 99 cent iPhone games, and Peggle, and every other successful franchise that is too successful for uptight game nerds. Why is it okay for you to love Shadow of the Colossus but not okay for a 65-year-old grandmother to like Wii Sports Bowling? The answer is it is okay for you both, and you’re just being a little bit of a douche.

I’m just as capable of veering off into the hateful “but gaming is my thing” category too. My mother plays Angry Birds now. My mother, who has never played a non-Wii console before. And, get this, she has more achievements and more stars in Angry Birds than I do. My mother, who can’t do math on paper because she can’t grasp the concept of carrying the one, is officially better than me at Angry Birds. When she showed me that she had three-starred an entire section of Angry Birds Seasons, I had two thoughts simultaneously pop into my head. Without exaggeration, there was a tiny voice in my head yelling “Wow, go Mom!” that was being shouted down by another, angrier voice screaming “THAT BITCH!” But, then came the really shameful moment. The one where I was absolutely stuck playing Angry Birds Space, and.. can’t believe I’m admitting this.. my mother beat the level for me. On her first try. And the look of pride on her face was so adorable that I couldn’t even concentrate on trying to figure out where the best place in the house to hang myself from was at.

Madden, a series that provably drives console sales and generates profits that go towards funding such new IPs as Mirror’s Edge, is bad for gaming. Because someone who doesn’t have an Xbox Live Gold account might enjoy it. I don’t get gaming culture sometimes.

That above story? It’s absolutely true. It happened. And it wouldn’t have happened if not for “casual games.” Yea, it’s an embarrassing story, but it’s a great one too. It’s seriously cracking up my boyfriend as we speak. And I am happy that something that is so important to me is now, in whatever small way, part of my mother’s life too. And it’s made her curious what she’s missed in the gaming realm up to this point. She’s 43-years-old, and never once while I was growing up asked to play Banjo Kazooie or Spyro the Dragon with me. So the other day, imagine my surprise when she strolled in and asked what I, as Indie Gamer Chick, was playing next. The fact that she was even curious, or that she called me Indie Gamer Chick, was in all honesty one of the coolest moments of my life. And then I showed her the game about sperm that I’m reviewing this week, and she bolted for the door.

I guess the point of this rant is gaming is a big tent. There’s room for everybody. If someone makes a game that everyone likes, it doesn’t mean games that only you will like will cease to be. I think it’s awesome that we live in era where a game like Angry Birds is enjoyed by 5-year-old girls or 75-year-old retired construction workers. I think it’s awesome that a “casual” platform like the Wii is sitting in the White House right now, occasionally being played by the fucking President of the United States. So when a company like Rovio scores a major hit with Angry Birds, tip your hat to them. They’re bringing people to our big tent, and there’s still plenty of room. And if they can make money by flooding big box stores with so much junk merchandise that it could knock the planet off its orbit, good for them on being able to capitalize on their success. Just because they have toys, t-shirts, and a television series in the works, don’t call them sellouts. I mean, it’s not like they’re George Lucas or anything. Now THAT guy is a sellout. I seriously doubt Rovio would ever, say, join forces with him and create an Angry Birds-Star Wars tie-in game and line of merchandise to complement it.

OH YOU FUCKING SELLOUTS!!

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Introducing the Indie Gamer Chick Seal of Approval

September 16, 2012 by 12 Comments

By popular request, Indie Gamer Chick now offers a Seal of Approval for games that make the Leaderboard.  Well, I suppose there is nothing to really stop anyone from just using it even if their game is a festering turd that attracts all airborne illnesses, but it’s the thought that counts.  No, seriously, this is for Leaderboard games.  Want the Seal?  Make a game that lands a spot on the Leaderboard.

For you Leaderboard game having developers, feel free to use this Seal as you see fit.  Press release, website, blogs, box art, tee shirts, tattoos, cattle branding, crop circles, or fake IDs.  I’m pretty much cool with anything that doesn’t involve a carving knife and a corpse.

I’m not going to go down the list of all 122 (as of this writing) games on the Leaderboard and edit the seal into the review, but I can do so by request if you so wish.  That’s pretty much it.  Carry on.

Huge thanks to DMPDesign for the Seal!  It looks great.

Edit: Yes, I suppose this can also be applied to games on non-XBLIG platforms that are not eligible for the Leaderboard.

Edit 2: And here is one with a transparent background.  People want to know if there’s an official size I want on the box.  There isn’t.  This seal belongs to you guys.  But it probably should be small and in the corner so as to not draw attention away from the art of the box.  Thanks to Andreas Heydeck for the transparent seal!  And thank you to the community for your support.  I’m truly touched at how many of you have said your goal is to earn this seal.  I wish you could all know how awesome you make me feel.

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An Open Letter to the Xbox Live Indie Game Community

September 10, 2012 by 17 Comments

Ours is the old, old story of every uprising race or class or order. The work of elevation must be wrought by ourselves or not at all.

Frances Power Cobbe was talking about women’s suffrage when she wrote the above quote, but her message can apply towards any movement that’s worthwhile.  Even something as trivial as Xbox Live Indie Games.  The third Indies Games Uprising has begun.  Over the next two weeks, nine games will be showcased in the promotion.  Now, while I can’t prematurely vouch for the quality of these games, we should all stand up and cheer for the potential they represent.  The XBLIG scene has struggled to gain an audience since its inception in 2008.  This has been a source of great frustration for some.  Personally, I feel like I’m witness to the beginning of something special.

Xbox Live Indie Games has potential without limits.  I have no doubt about that.  This is a scene that is waiting to explode.  And I feel privileged.  I’ve witnessed the raw enthusiasm of a new generation of game creators as their labors of love are unleashed on a world-wide audience of eager gamers.  Maybe sales figures or press or admiration don’t always live up to their highest dreams or expectations.  But, for the vast majority of them, the satisfaction of a journey completed is a reward they’ve found worth it all.

In my 437 days of being Indie Gamer Chick, I’ve encountered, chatted with, and even befriended dozens of developers.  They’ve all made a hypocrite out of me.  In the early days of my site, I used the slogan “She ain’t no cheerleader.”  But I am.  I cheer for your potential, just as I hurt when it goes unrealized.  Developers have claimed I inspire them to be better, but that’s true of them for me.  We’re on different sides of this community, but on the same page.  We’re in this together.

There is no ceiling in sight for Xbox Live Indie Games.  Our fullest of potential has not yet been realized.  But, like Frances Power Cobbe said, we’ll realize it ourselves or we won’t at all.  It’s up to us to grow together.  Developers, writers, and fans.  It’s all on us, but there’s nothing stopping us.  The time for our community is now.  Let’s come together and, as Alter Bridge said, rise today and change this world.

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook for updates on the Uprising.  You can also follow all my site partners: The Indie Ocean, Armless Octopus, Indie Theory, TheXBLIG.com, The Indie Mine, VVGTV, Clearance Bin Review, and Indie-Love.  If my partners don’t all get a ton of new followers, I’ll be forced to unleash the Puppy of Sadness upon you.  Don’t make me go there. 

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