No, the real story in 2009 is that the PC single player RPG began to re-emerge from being long dominated by the MMO variety. For years, good RPGs required internet connections and a willingness to go multiplayer; the single player RPG was a dying breed. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against MMORPGs. But I am also a major fan of the single player, stand alone style game. And, finally, it appears to be making a strong come back.
No matter how amazing or successful online RPGs get, it is important for developers to keep in mind that there some things a MMO simply will never do as well as a title designed for the single player experience. And at the top of the list is storytelling. With a single player game, there is no question (from the developers point of view) of how to present important moments and progress the story further. MMOs have to deal conundrums of single- vs multi-player content, changing the world for some and not for all, and how to add difficulty with locking key story elements away from the many. Solo focused games can do just about anything they want. The player can safely be allowed to face the baddest of bad guys, save the world, destroy the world, be made king, marry the king, or just about anything else necessary to the telling of the story. None of the MMO issues appear. A single player RPG can stick the story exactly where it should be for any great RPG, secondly only to gameplay experience on the list of developer priorities.
This past weekend I visited a good PC gaming aisle and counted about half a dozen single player RPGs that had been released or had updates released within the past year. Granted, not all the titles featured in this solo resurgence are high quality acquisitions. Some of them may just suck. That's ok. They exist, and existence is the important thing. The PC needs its single player RPGs just as much as it needs its MMOs, strategy titles, or mice.
Hopefully, one of these days, some smart developer destined to make a mint will find a way to seamlessly meld the offline solo experience with the online social experience in The One RPG To Rule Them All. Until that day comes, I'm content to celebrate the return of the single player RPG to the PC game aisle. With any luck, it will never become so scarce again.
Think for a minute if you had two choices to provide for your family and that paid equally as well: Play an MMO for hours, or become a coal miner? If you’re on this website I’m pretty sure playing an MMO is definitely the more viable option, unless you think it’s cool to look like Ben Stiller in the mine scene from Zoolander every single day.
Movie references aside, there are some people in Eastern Europe and in Asia that do have to make this choice. From what I’ve seen, the MMO farmers get a hell of a better deal than the coal miners and how can anyone really blame them? The farmers get to work in a clean, dorm style hall where everyone is sitting down playing video games while the coal miners are getting down and dirty and risking their health.
Just like you and I, these farmers are real people. The difference is that they happened to be born in a country that doesn’t always have very promising economic prospects. Skilled labor, such as engineers, are as affordable as McDonald’s workers are in the US. What are the options for the uneducated, then? That’s where the MMO farms come in. It gives these people a chance at life and gives them an opportunity to work in a safe and clean environment. It’s much better deal than being a coal miner or factory worker.
Everyone loves to hate MMO currency farmers, mostly because it’s easy group-think. “They ruined the economy of the game,” “Damn Chinese farmers taking my mobs,” or, my favorite, “He’s probably a farmer!”, always unleashed on the party member that doesn’t respond to chat.
Personally, I don’t think that the farmers ruin the economy of the games. Things get more expensive because players get higher levels and there’s more money going around. On top of that no one aside from the hardcore faithful wants to go to a low level zone just to farm things they need to level a craft. For those Warcraft players out there, you know how much it sucks to level blacksmithing or jewelcrafting if you had to go out and mine every single ore. How much would you spend in gold to do the same? Probably a lot, and the farmers could save you time if you’re willing to part with a little cash.
They offer a service and if you’re like myself and don’t have many hours to play a game, what they have is pretty compelling. I don’t have the time or will to sit down for hours and hours just to get some gold to buy the things I want. My downtime is better spent having fun, not grinding out something so I can have fun later. Buying currency is no different than going to a movie or a bar. If I go to a bar I can drop $50 easily in one night and only enjoy it for a few hours. On the other hand if I spent $50 to buy some World of Warcraft gold I’d have days of fun rather than just a few hours. It makes economic sense to me to buy the gold if you don’t have the time to play as others do.
Now don’t get me wrong, if a farmer cheats, that’s not condonable. Those people should be banned because their money is not earned legitimately. However, the ones that do farm it just like you and I do deserve to be treated with some respect because let’s face it; it’s either they do this or work at a crappy job.
The next time you see a farmer, respect them as a fellow human being. All their trying to do is provide for themselves or their family. If you still feel strongly against the farmers, gank them. There’s nothing that says you can’t and it might even add a little fun to their day. Either way their getting paid the same but let them have some dignity.
What can I say? I am in heaven. Why, you ask? Because the stars have aligned and given us one of the best, retro multiplayer games in history. And it’s free! Yes, Free! What game could I be talking about? What game could be considered one of the best multiplayer games of all time? Mario Bros? Double Dragon? Goldeneye? Are you kidding?
Four words, “Multiple Use Labor Equipment”. Or what is better known as M.U.L.E. Now if you are of the younger generation of gamers these initials probably don’t mean squat to you. But if you happen to have grown up at the dawn of gaming, then you will more than likely know MULE as one of the best, if not the best, multiplayer video games of all freakin’ time.
MULE was created in 1983 by Ozark Softscape and published through EA. Ya, that EA. MULE was an epic adventure where you and three of your friends each chose a competing alien race. The alien races ranged from Pac Man like creatures, to a long necked E.T. looking creature and everything in between. Once everyone chose their alien race you were then dropped on a new, barren undeveloped Martian landscape with the goal of out producing your alien “friends” while at the same time contributing to the “whole” of your new society and surviving. Games take place over twelve “turns” and usually took two to three hours to complete.
Once the game starts a swift moving land marker moves across the alien landscape, which is a randomly generated screen with flatlands, rivers & mountains. Players would “click” on the land square they want to inhabit and develop. Once all players picked their land plot the real fun begins. Now each player, while timed, has to pick a MULE, outfit it for one of three duties: farming, mining or energy and quickly lead their MULE to their plot of land where they let it go so it can start producing. After the MULE is placed in the plot a quick return to the pub is needed to score some cool cash. Generally the faster you outfit and place your MULE on your plot and return to the pub, the more money you will win.
Generally, to be successful at MULE you need to diversify your MULES and produce equal amounts of energy & food, while also amassing some mining wealth. If you neglect any of these you will pay for it in the end. After all four players take their “turn” by outfitting and placing their MULES the game takes over and randomly generates crops (needed to fuel the MULES), energy (needed to fuel the MULES), and either Smithore and/or Crystite. Food and Energy are required to keep your MULES top producers. Fall short of either of these and you plots stop producing and you fall behind in the game. Smithore and Crystite can be sold to the “store” for big money. After this “development” stage is over there is yet another new aspect to this game – a live “auction”.
The auction is where you get the chance to buy or sell food, energy, Smithore and Crystite from your competitors. The auction is handled ingeniously by each player choosing if they want to buy or sell each of the individual commodities. If you choose to sell, you simple move your player to the top of the screen. Players that want to buy stay at the bottom of the screen. Once the auction starts a timer starts and then players move up or down trying to set a price for said commodities. This is now a game of supply and demand at its essence. If you need energy and two of the other players have a surplus of energy they will compete to sell to you. They can drive the price up or sell to you for less. If there is more than one seller you can expect to buy cheaper than if there is one seller asking enormous prices for the valuable energy or food. Players go back and forth through the four auctions (food, energy, smithore & crystite). After the auction phase is over the screen goes to a tabulation screen and the four players emerge in order of their wealth, one x one to the top of the screen. Then the cycle starts over again by players choosing another plot of land. Choosing plots of land adjacent to each other is recommended. The games sees this as better than dividing your attention among scattered plots. Rivers are better for farming. Flatlands are good for energy and mountains obviously good for mining. So picking correct plots is important to exceeding in MULE.
To mix things up even more the developers throw in random events prior to each players “turn” that can either add to your wealth (your MULE won first place in the colonies talent contest and you won $200) or take from your wealth (your MULES require fixing and will cost you $100/MULE). The randomness of each game insures that no two games will ever be the same.
So where can you find this great game? And should you play it if you have never heard of it or played it before? To answer the second part of this question, “Yes!”. You need to play this game at least once to appreciate one of the best multiplayer games of all time. And thanks to the team at http://www.planetmule.com you can now play this game free of charge. And best of all there are always people in the lobby so you can experience this game as it was intended, with others.
MULE originated on the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit computers but was later released for the Nitnendo NES. Whether you hunt down an original game or play it through the newly released version so graciously served up on PlanetMule, do yourself a favor and log some time with one of the greatest multiplayer games of all freakin’ time.
Will your race win out and will your colony survive? Play and find out now.
- GameGavel.com Writer – So Cal Mike
With huge franchises such as Final Fantasy, is the Japanese role playing game (JRPG) going the way of Nintendo’s Virtual Boy? Sadly, it seems so.
While there were plenty of incredible hits earlier in the 2000s and 1990s, JRPGS are slowly declining in popularity. Think about it, which RPG are you excited for in 2010 that’s Japanese other than Final Fantasy XIII? As far as I know, other than FFXIII, there’s nothing too thrilling about the JRPG genre coming out this year.
First, let’s take an in-depth look at why JRPGs are doing so poorly right now. Ever since FFVII every JRPG has been pretty much the same. Somewhat spiky haircut? Check. Character is wielding some sort of over-the-top blade? Check. Everyone else has guns? You got it. How about an annoying little girl for your party? It’s there (even in FFXIII).
And the storylines? Don’t get me started. While some are genuinely well done all we’re getting is more of the same. In fact it’s so easy you’ll see a new one born right in front of you eyes:
Pick a character name, perhaps the name of a geological feature or an animal. For instance, we’ll name the protagonist, Suchi Rukara (literally robot in Japanese) and name her two sidekicks. One will be Mikazuki (a Japanese female name) and the other will be James (we can’t forget our token European name in the game).
The story is set in a futuristic medieval-ish world that includes transforming aircraft that shoot lasers and perhaps a group of peasants that still mine with pick axes instead of super awesome futuristic precision razors.
The peasants aren’t too thrilled about how these transformer planes treat them and Rukara, Mikazuki and James are all peasants. Their enraged and want to fight back the airplanes. Throughout the game you’ll be fighting endless battles because you took a wrong turn or happened to be on the world map, and they happened to be there as well for no apparent reason.
Once you’re done fighting thousands of random battles you may encounter a glimpse of the story line in a cutscene that’ll last for an hour. During the scene it reveals that Mikazuki is actually an airplane in disguise of a little girl and she betrays you. She turns into a massive pink airplane with thousands of razors and you’re forced to fight her with your token European named member and an animal (we’ll call him Bear).
After that fight there’s so many different plot twists that you’re so insanely lost and you’ll have no clue about what the hell is going on. Then finally the player gets an ending finding out that their character was actually half-human, half-airplane (surprise!) and that she is in an identity crisis.
So there you have it, a JRPG written in about 15 minutes.
A quick storyline aside however, that’s how most JRPGs go; plot twists that make no sense, some really annoying characters and a predictable ending.
What’s really been gaining some ground is American RPGs. In the 2000’s and starting this year we’re really getting a sweet deal. We had Knights of the Old Republic, KOTOR 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, ME 2 and loads of others. Most (key word most not all) of them have just been fantastic.
Am I saying JRPGs suck? Not always. But are they getting a little bit more, generic? Absolutely, and the trend seems to be continuing. Hopefully Japanese developers learn that the whole world isn’t Japanese. It’s fine to have their culture and their own tidbits in the game, just don’t make them so damn generic.
We have orcs, trolls, gnomes and elves and most stories containing those creatures turns out different, the Japanese can certainly do the same.
“Just got the Venus Sigil! Gonna go post a rant on Craiglist about it! LOL! Oh, btw, please kill me.”
This comes in at number ten because in theory, you can simply forget about it and move on with the game, avoiding any broken controllers and strokes… but if you are a complete hardcore gamer YOU ABSOLUTLEY NEED TO DO THIS FOR THE VENUS SIGIL because all the rest of your life depends on it. For those who need reminding, the Thunder Plains are a place in the game where you must dodge lightning strikes by quickly pressing the X button. The more you dodge, the better your reward. At 200 dodges, you get the Venus Sigil which enables you to brag to your online friends that you did, indeed, somehow, waste the time to dodge lightening 200 times. Good job. You win.
9. Everquest – Dying
Brunette: “did you HAVE to aggro you dumass?!” Blonde: “brb leeroy jenkins”
This is more of a ‘kick your keyboard and then go to the bathroom to care for your bedsores and weep about wasted hours’ kind of moment. We all know it’s frustrating to die in your MMORPG, but for you WoW players who never grew up playing EQ, maybe you should try to imagine what it feels like to have your brain whipped with a cat o’ nine tails. After accidently aggro-ing one creature that follows you FOREVER and then KILLS you, you lose a crap load of experience you’ve spent days or even weeks earning. If that wasn’t enough, you then have to go back to your corpse to retrieve your equipment, and if you don’t do it in the allotted time, you lose all the equipment you’ve probably spent months getting. Playing Everquest was very similar to putting sea urchins in your pants.
8. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out – Mike Tyson
Mike Tyson: f*cking scary even in 8-bit pixels
Sure, most of us could figure out the patterns of all the other boxers and get to Tyson (or we just used the infamous 007-373-5963 code, because we loved to cheat), but then when we actually got to him we realized just how ‘little’ Little Mac really was. How many times did you try this fight before ol’ Mike knocked you out one too many times or you ended up throwing your boxy NES controller against the wall and went for the Game Genie? I think I tried once… because I am a real champ.
7. Ninja Gaiden – Act 6
Five seconds later, they were killed by an eagle.
Ah, if the game wasn’t sadistic enough, when you finally reach the last level, you not only have to battle through four or five stages (I don’t recall, so don’t kill me), but you have to defeat three bosses… the kicker… you have to do it all without dying or you start over again from the very beginning of Act 6. At the age of ten I actually started balding because of this game.
6. License Tests– any Gran Turismo
Just another day of working on those damn Gran Turismo licenses.
Ah, who didn’t love spending hours and hours of their time trying to complete a course in a set amount of time, or drive really, really fast and slam the breaks to stop your car between certain distances? Some of you may have liked this, but I sure didn’t. I just wanted new cars… and a new Playstation controller after I whipped the sucker against the wall using the cord in pure video gaming rage. Hey man, getting that A license was vital to my existence.
5. GTA: San Andreas – Final mission
Why couldn’t this have been the final mission of GTA:SA? Dear God.
If the R.C. missions weren’t enough to destroy your brain and boil your blood, the last mission will serious cause some controller breaking reactions. After about twenty minutes you’ll remember you’re playing a GTA game and you’ll just throw in some cheat codes (as if you weren’t using them already, you cheater)
4. Super Metriod – Wall Jumping
Screw you hot-shot monkey things that can wall jump perfectly.
See if I save you when Zebes friggin’ explodes. Some of you may have mastered this, but I never did, and I am still pissed off to this day… and I am sure there are others who feel the same way… yep… that’s all I gotta say… stupid wall jump… so much easier to do in real life (see below).
3. Mega Man 9 – All of it
“Kiss my ass, fish! Load State! Oh wai-“
Not that I assume playing any Mega Man game would be a walk in the park, but geez! I have never felt like such an epic failure of a video gamer after playing a few levels of Mega Man 9. It is possible I just suck at video games… too many RPGs have softened my reflexes up? Too many save states? Maybe Mega Man 9 is just real freakin’ hard. And it’s such a great game, I just… sometimes I crawl under my bed and cry… because it won’t play nice… and I want it to.
2. Getting your character muddled or confused in any RPG
Cloud would later claim he was suffering from Confuse status at the time.
There you are…. floors past the last save state, maybe even several bosses after the last save crystal… you get into some ultimate ridiculous epic fight, and it’s going YOUR WAY. Way to go partner! You are about to kill the ultimate beast… the ultimate enemy that if defeated, will get you the boyfriend or girlfriend you’ve always wanted (what?) and then you realize you forgot to recast your protection spell.. Or forgot to equip your most powerful character with some kind of relic… and suddenly… your own hero is killing your entire party with one swing of his sword. OMFG WHAT THE HELL ARGRGRGHGHGEdjewdkwkfhekfrhejhhrrr….. Pardon me… I think I just saw my chest hair go gray from thinking about this. That’s right… I’m a hairy guy… so what? Chicks love it. Shut up.
1. T.M.N.T. - Defusing bombs underwater
Urge. To kill. Rising.
This comes in at #1 because if I ever think back to one moment that just utterly chapped my ass for years on end, it was this. Your goal was to diffuse a certain amount of bombs while swimming around killer seaweed and do it in a certain amount of time. Sound easy? Give it a shot and report back to me. After ten minutes you will be back to your world of God-modes and save states.
Runner up for #1:
Losing to your mom at Wii It happens. We don’t know how. You’ve been playing video games all your life, every hour you can, and well, your mom hasn’t. In fact, she didn’t even glance at a video game until Wii became the staple of family hipness. Still, you should be able to win… no matter what… and yet… maybe it was a bad day… maybe you burned yourself out on L4D2… either way… your mom beat you… and that should never happen. Go throw your controller at the wall. It’s okay. I won’t tell anybody.
I will end this blogging with my two favorite classic lines of a frustrated gamer:
Sure, he’s not much to look at and he might end up tearing you to shreds. But as far as a guard dog for your yard, used car lot, junkyard, daycare, or whatever, he will never falter, except against a well placed shotgun round.
Good Uses: Protecting beer supplies, fighting terrorism, doggie kisses.
Evil Uses: Sending out into shopping malls, Lady Gaga concerts, marching band events or other large crowds to destroy.
9. Yoshi from Super Mario Bros.
You’d never know this guy could eat you, then fart you out as a egg.
He’s a dinosaur you can ride on and he won’t try to kill you. You also don’t need to take the time to train him and modify with thousands of dollars worth of armor. He also wears boots. I mean, isn’t that enough? Sure he has a lot of strange fanboys/girls out there, but if they get in your way, you can command Yoshi to eat them. Amirite?
Good Uses: Charity parades, educational petting zoos, beer delivery runs.
Evil Uses: Eating just about anybody or anything upon command.
8. Chocobo from Final Fantasy
Take a wild guess what he tastes like.
There isn’t much to say about a chocobo other than after years of playing Final Fantasy, you just gotta have one. Sure, he may not do much but run really fast (unless you find a rare flying one), but who wouldn’t want to mount up on a giant two-legged bird and run circles around their friends?
Good Uses: Delivering messages in a timely matter, saving people from floods (if flying), finding and reporting news about good deals on beer across town before it sells out.
Evil Uses: Commanding it to kick people in the face, putting it in fights for gambling purposes
7. Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog
It’s ok Tails, there’s always gonzo porn.
Tails? Seriously? The little whiney twerp from Sonic? Yeah… because, if you are a guy, you can train him to shut up and not talk and then put him on a leash and the ladies will DIG it. A two tailed fox? OMG KAWAII !!!! Oh yeah, the furries will dig it to, if you’re into that kinda thing.
Good Uses: uh….
Evil Uses: Impressing ladies, tormenting furries.
6. Donkey Kong
Hi kids. This is what’s called a “shit-eating grin”.
Let’s face it, having an intelligent ape who won’t punch you to death is pretty damn awesome. This is all about strength and intelligence.
Good Uses: Lifting kegs of beer, defending the helpless, chasing down bad guys and punching them to death, opening up stuck jars
Evil Uses: punching people to death.
5. Spyro the Dragon
Spyro obviously knows that purple = pimp.
He’s cute and he’s deadly. Best of all, he’s compact so you can take him on airplanes and into little snooty cafes in Beverly Hills.
Good Uses: heating up food, melting ice so children can go to school (debatable whether this is good or evil), warming up your hands with a gentle flame after you have dranken too many cold beers
Evil Uses: Burn! BURN MY PRETTY!! MWHAHAHAAA *cough*
4. Dragon from Panzer Dragoon
RARRR! That’s it, just “rarr!”.
Another mount pet… many of us born in the early 80s might have dreamed of riding that freaky Luck Dragon from Never Ending Story. Those of you born past 1995 have no idea WTF I am talking about. Needless to say, having a dragon that can breathe fire, is loyal to you, and can fly, is pretty damn sweet.
Good Uses: Anti-terrorism operations, burning poppy fields, flying you home safety after beers with your friends.
Evil Uses: More burning, more evil.
3. Ecco the Dolphin
That’s not really Ecco, but I bet you couldn’t tell the difference anyway.
Of course Ecco had to make our list because he is like… a super dolphin... Not only does he have some kind of weird super sonar that will kill just about anything, but he can swim REALLY fast. Hitch a ride on this guys fin and he can take you anywhere. Okay, maybe he doesn’t belong at number three, but he is just so classic!
Good Uses: Bringing imported beer across foreign waters, destroying poachers with sonar, saving manatees and other marine life.
Evil Uses: Destroying intercontinental underwater internet cables so people can’t download porn or twitter anymore (evil?)
2. Amaterasu from Okami
Yep, rad as hell.
She’s a wolf God. She can fight like it’s nobody’s business. And she looks rad as hell. She also can command the celestial brush to make shit happen. I’m talking, like, anything.
Good Uses: drawing up more beer when it runs out, keeping your feet warm on a cold winters night, bring to schools to educate children about demi-gods.
Evil Uses: drawing doors on people’s houses so you can sneak in, the ability to destroy anything with a metaphysical paintbrush actually brings a lot of things to mind.
1. Rush
Can your dog turn into a submarine? No, so shut up.
Rush, simply put, is a kick-ass dog. Let’s start with the fact that other than some (probably expensive) maintenance, you don’t have to feed him or walk him. Hell, you might not even have to pretend to love him since he is pretty much idiotically loyal. But let’s look at what he can do: he can turn into a flying jet sled, a trampoline, a pogo-stick thing, a submarine, some kind of super strength armor, a jet pack, a motorcycle, and who knows what else… I mean, if that isn’t rad, I don’t know what is.
Good Uses: Thousands of uses, in fact, Rush could probably turn into a micro-brewery too.
Evil Uses: Don’t get me started. I’m the kind of guy who would take The One Ring and use it for evil, imagine if I had Rush.
Ever wonder why Sony dived into the gaming industry suddenly in the 1990s? The major reason: Nintendo’s third party licensing sucks.
Ironically, Nintendo came into the spot light by developing games as a third party publisher party to begin with. In the early 1980s, Shigeru Miyamoto, created Nintendo’s two stars, Donkey Kong and Mario, and began porting their classic arcade games to home systems at the time, which profited the company enormously.
Eventually this led to the creation of the NES later in the decade and the rise of video game fascism would begin. According to David Sheff, author of “Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children,” Nintendo had strict guidelines for its third party publishers, such as:
· Licensees were not permitted to release the same game for a competing console until two years had passed.
· Nintendo would decide how many cartridges would be supplied to the licensee.
· Nintendo would decide how much space would be dedicated for articles, advertising, etc. in Nintendo Power.
· There was a minimum number of cartridges which had to be ordered by the licensee from Nintendo.
· There was a yearly limit of five games that a licensee may produce for a Nintendo console. This rule was made due to caution of over saturation which caused the North American video game crash of 1983.
Simply put: If you didn’t salute the führer of video games of the 1980s and early 1990s your company was out of luck.
Companies such as Konami formed two companies, Ultra and Palcom to get around Nintendo’s rules so that they could publish more games. To me this is ludicrous because if a company can consistently produce quality games why limit them? That’s just outrageous.
Think of the possibilities that could have happened if Square-Enix or Konami wasn’t limited at the time. How many more games would we have to remember? How much more profit would they have made? It just doesn’t make sense to me to put in so many rules and regulations on third party developers.
Earlier in the 1990’s, Sony tried to reach a deal with Nintendo trying to add a CD drive to the SNES that would be attached to the bottom of it. If you don’t believe me, check the bottom of your SNES. See that port on the bottom? That’s where Sony’s CD drive would have gone had Nintendo had their way.
Thankfully, Sony stood up to them and created the Playstation, which many of us have fond memories of.
With increased competition from Sony in the 1990’s to the present Nintendo still hasn’t learned its lessons after being pummeled by Sony and Microsoft over the years. It still has strict rules about what can and can’t be published. In fact, it’s the main reason why Final Fantasy 7 was published on the Playstation rather than the Nintendo 64. Square-Enix was tired of all the red tape and decided to move on.
Fast-forward today and take a look at Nintendo’s Wii. Is there a Final Fantasy on it? Nope. A Metal Gear on the Wii? Won’t happen. Third party publishers are tired of Nintendo’s unflinching desire to just let go of the rules. As a result, the Wii is just a novelity to most serious gamers. It’s something you play when you have your grandma over and that’s pretty much it (excluding a solid game that comes out once a year which is rare).
Nintendo: Either loosen up your third party rules or join the graveyard along with Sega. This isn’t the 1990’s or 1980’s anymore. People are so over Donkey Kong and Mario (including myself, who grew up with them). Get rid of the garbage rules or Microsoft will dominate yet another aspect of our lives.
You’ve seen it, you’ve heard about it on the news and you’ve probably had a friend talk about it. Yes, the gory “No Russian” mission of Modern Warfare 2.
For those who haven’t experienced it, check it out here (warning graphic content):
The first time I went through this mission I was just utterly shocked, to the say the least. I remember hearing the guns cocking, the men zipping on their Kevlar and the elevator opening and the final quote “remember, no Russian,” before seeing a bunch of people lined up outside of a security clearance.
I thought “This can’t be happening, is it what I think it is,” and I saw the four men around me raise their guns and fire at all the people in line. “Wow, I just felt like what it feel likes to be a real terrorist,” and really feeling horrible at the carnage that was unleashed on my screen.
After walking through the airport for what seemed like hours, executing people left and right, encountering the Russian police and finally getting shot and killed the end; shot right in the face.
So has Infinity Ward gone too far with MW2? My answer: No, they haven’t and here’s why.
Whenever an action movie or a horror film comes out does the media ever criticize it for being too gory or too sexual? In most cases, they don’t. In fact you’ll often see quotes from popular movie critics about the movie being “visually stunning” and what not. But when it comes to video games? Oh, no we can’t have that!
MW2 simply allows you to view things from the eyes of a person who has been murdered or is a terrorist. It’s an action movie that the player gets to control. Can a movie really simulate your own death or having you pull the trigger on innocent people? Maybe, but no one has done it so far and it wouldn’t be as entertaining as a video game.
How is that any different than any other movie out there? There are ratings on the games so parents can know who the target audience is just like movies and yet video games are treated differently. Hypocrisy if you ask me.
Other video games have been put on the cross in the media. Bioware’s Mass Effect is perfect example. It wasn’t as “violent” or “gory” as MW2 but it did include a “romance” scene. The media (Fox News in particular) erupted with criticism about the game’s scenes.
Bioware and the creators of the game were taken back from the out lash that Fox News gave them and decided to further instigate it in their latest game Dragon Age: Origins. Simply put, they added more “romance” scenes including a gay scene for some hot man on man action. Take that Fox News.
I digress however and should get back to MW2. Before the game was released the “No Russian” scene was leaked. In my opinion, this was a smart tactical move by Infinity Ward and it had to be a controlled leak. Here’s why:
They knew that the media would go ballistic over such a scene like the “No Russian” one. This would get the media into a flurry of activity and create free publicity for the game, and you know what they say about publicity: Any publicity is good publicity.
So has this scene gone too far? Certainly not, it’s an interactive action game. How often do you get to be put into a situation where you get to murder people and actually feel how horrible about it? If anything it would remind players that life is precious and shouldn’t be taken for granted. It also shows that all of us, no matter how much of a hard-ass we think we are, we do have morals for what is right and wrong. It shows just how truly evil terrorism is.
I must have been seven or eight years old, and I remember when my brother and I received that very first Legend of Zelda NES cart. We tore apart the plastic cellophane and opened up the box to reveal… a gold cart.
We, along with millions of other kids, then spent their every waking hour on the first Zelda game released in the United States. Video game magazines then were hardly available (most having died off in the Video Game Crash of ‘83), there was no internet, let alone a GameFaqs.com, with easy-to-access information… everything was word of mouth. So when we put the cart it, we didn’t know what to expect… hell, we didn’t even know what to do. But we loved it.
When we found the first dungeon, walked inside, and the music turned to ominous (keep in mind, in those days we were used to only one or two music scores for an entire console game) we all looked to one another and wondered “Just where the hell were we?”. I think we may even have gotten scared and ran out of the dungeon, fearing that Link’s three measly hearts wouldn’t cut what we were about to face (which would end up being a few measly bats and a pretty weak boss).
We spent hours trying to figure our way through dungeons, hand drawing maps, not knowing where to go, finding items we had no idea what the hell they did. We fought through bad engrish, and we didn’t have one single walkthrough to help us. We had to rely on friends of friends whose friends had parents who would let them call the Nintendo hint helpline, or who had an older brother that had figured it out on their own.
I remember dungeon eight could only be found on the map by blowing a whistle at a certain fairy pond. Mind you there were no hints to lead you here. We spent close to a year trying to figure this out, and nobody we knew had even gotten that far. Lo and behold, one day my brother’s friend was goofing off, and blowing the whistle in every screen, and when he got to that particular fairy pond, blew the whistle, the pond dried up and the staircase appeared. We all looked at each other as our mouths dropped and just sat speechless for minutes.
In the end, I think it took us two years or so to complete Zelda… not that it was a hard game, not that it was we were dumb (maybe we were a little dumb) but because there was nothing that would tell us where to go or what did what (especially if you were one to lose the instruction manual, as we children so often did). Now you can onto the net, and in two clicks your answer is solved.
But back then, there were very few complex adventure games (console wise that is… if you were into Sierra dominated PC gaming back then, you were screwed and destined to log onto sierra BBS’ or buying hint books), so it was possible to take a year or two to solve and beat one game.
Into the future
Now every month (sometimes, every week) epic games that take hundreds of hours to complete are released, with complex gameplay and complicated puzzles, and lots of extra content… yet, it seems it only takes a couple weeks to a month of heavy playing (okay, sometimes two, max) to beat these games. I wonder how many of us (me included) can sit at one RPG or adventure game, get stuck on an area and then feel the itchy fingers and desire to head onto the internet to check for the answer.
But why waste time when the next best game is coming out tomorrow, or sitting on your shelf ready to play?
There is definitively something gone from the classic feeling of gaming in the retro era, but it’s a double edged sword. I would rather have the selection of games now than the selection I had back then, because if we had the same selection back then, we probably wouldn’t have spent two years playing Zelda.
But if you ever find yourself wondering… just wondering…what the hell it was like to be us back in the mid to late 80’s, go ahead, put in (or ROM up, or virtual console it up) a NES game you’ve never played (give Castlevania 2: Simons Quest a go!) and try to get through it without anything other than the manual it came with…hours of brain numbing exploration…trial and error…maybe a good ol' pen and paper.
The good, the bad, and the hope for a better tomorrow; all these are wrapped up in this week.
First, the bad. The XBox 360 turned 4. I'm not questioning the status of the 360 as the Ultimate Console Force in the Universe. I'm merely pointing out that, after four years, Microsoft still has issues ensuring the 360 remains Fully Operational, which in turn has left their XBox empire Vulnerable to Sony and Nintendo. Those of you reading this will likely fall into one of two camps: "Wow, fours years and no red ring of death yet!" or "Aargh! Four years and two 360s later, maybe this one will work." Sadly, for all the awesome brought to us by Halo, Assassin's Creed, and Madden, the 360 may always be remembered as much for its hardware issues as its gaming successes. And that's the bad side of the 360's birthday.
On the good side, we have the 5 year anniversary of World of Warcraft. The giant empire that sucked away the spare time of much of the free world has only been around for five years. Really, only five. Meanwhile, the origins of the Warcraft franchise are 15 years old. While I would love to join the masses celebrating a long Thanksgiving holiday with twenty hour marathon sessions in Azeroth... my internet connection at my current address makes WoW totally unplayable. I might have to stick with Orcs and Humans. And I'm ok with that.
And as for the hopes of a better tomorrow: Black Friday, meet the recessed gaming industry. Across the country, studios are showing a reluctance to hire. It is an understandable reluctance. Until we know for sure that the economy has stabilized and that the average consumer will open the wallet for a $50 title, development studios have to play conservatively. This holiday season is the perfect opportunity for consumers to provide that encouragement to the gaming industry.
So this weekend, do your part for the global economic recovery. Buy lots and lots of video games thus encouraging studios to invest in new workers, driving down unemployment and providing enjoyment and entertainment for all. Remember, only you can spark the gaming industry!
By now you've no doubt heard that Nintendo's last quarterly fiscal report was not as awesome as we have come to expect from Nintendo. Depending on where you get your financial news, you may be half convinced that the lower Wii numbers are a sign of doom for the company and an indicator of a tragic collapse in the gaming industry. In reality, it is no big deal. In fact, it might actually be good for gamers.
Yes, the PS3 has passed the Wii in monthly sales. There is an excellent reason for that. Two of them. Sony finally brought the PS3 price down to reality and the Wii, it seems, has just about saturated the market. With no equivalent of the Red Ring of Death to encourage repeat customers and help pad sales, once the Wii market is saturated the sales numbers will drop. That doesn't mean the death of the Wii. It simply means Nintendo's game has changed.
Now, more than at any other time since the release of the Wii, Nintendo will rely on software to drive revenue. If they want to continue to rake in a cool billion a quarter, they will have to sell games to all those millions of people who bought a Wii. That means Nintendo will have to find some good games for the Wii. And that could be a challenge, and that is why this is good for us.
For a very long time, the Wii has been flooded with crapware and cheap, ugly ports. Crapware and cheap, ugly ports do not make for happy accountants. We will only get burned by shoddy Wii titles so many times before we as gamers start to write off the Wii... and the Wii has been largely written off as a serious gaming platform. Nintendo's own franchise titles (New Super Mario Bros. Wii, for example) will continue to fly off the shelves in swarms... but Nintendo will have to do better. The occasional awesome Mario or Zelda title will not be enough to refill the corporate cash pipeline. Nintendo will have to come up with high quality, third party titles somewhere.
The result of rapidly declining Nintendo revenues, then, should be an increase in the number of high quality titles for us millions to play on our Wiis. Now that Nintendo will have to rely on software sales and has admitted they have dropped the ball in release good quality games, I think the company will focus more on what is published for the Wii. Better Wii games will mean more money for Nintendo.
From abysmal 8-bit graphics to fully 3D worlds on your cell phone, gaming has gone where just about nothing (except maybe Linux) has gone before. And that would be everywhere.
But no sooner does the gaming industry roll over the cell phone market than a brand new challenge appears. Coming soon, I have no doubt, to a website near you... triple A titles for ebook readers. At this stage, thanks to Barnes and Noble, it is inevitable.
A quick recap on the dedicated eBook market as it stands today (and ignoring the legacy devices still sold by some publishers). There are basically three players: Amazon, Sony, and now Barnes and Noble. The interesting thing is that Barnes and Noble has decided to base their new entry into the race on Google's Android OS. Android, as I'm sure you know, is largely Google's answer to the iPhone and the iPod Touch, which are now being hailed by Apple as gaming devices on the same level as the PSP. In short, that means we now have an eBook reader that is backed by a somewhat open operating system that will no doubt become a significant focus of mobile game developers. The only problem is that screen.
Ebook reader screens are not exactly high performance, color drenched devices. They focus on battery life and being easy on the eyes, not accurate renderings of oozing alien guts. So, how will game developers adapt to low refresh rate, black and white screens? Excellent question. Other than text-based and puzzle games, I haven't a clue. But someone will do it. And when one studio goes there successfully, other will follow. And, in time, if the eBook reader succeeds on the market, gaming will adapt and the ebook space will become as saturated and competitive as the cell phone game market is now. This newest evolution of the video game might be the most interesting and creatively demanding one yet. It should be fun to watch.
No doubt, if any studio announced they were working on a Starship Troopers title, the vast majority of the media would assume a movie spin-off. Huge amounts of venom would be spewed on the company making a cheap Halo clone. Meanwhile, the original Starship Troopers, the Heinlein novel version, is languishing in the shadows... waiting.
Someone needs to bring it out of the shadows. I see this game primarily as an RPG. Character development primarily comes via promotion within the ranks of the military. In the novel, as a soldier moves up the ranks within the military, they still make the drop from orbiting spacecraft to planetary surface. The highest ranking general drops alongside the lowest rookie trooper. In the game, this would mean that as you move up the ranks, complexity and depth is only added. Little is taken away. There would not be a point at which you would stop shooting insects and concentrate on conducting a battle strategy. No, you would be conducting the battle, monitoring your units, watching for strategic opportunities, while doing your job as the Ultimate Orkin Man. Imagine trying to fight in WoW style cmbat while managing a Medieval 2 style battle strategy. Unless you're the poor soul who has to come up with the interface for such a game, that's probably an attractive idea... assuming it can be made fun.
And in between insect smashing action maps, as you visit various bases and stations for training or rest, you will be gradually exposed to the culture and backstory behind the war you are fighting, similar to how you are gradually enlightened in Half Life 2. Story is one factor that seperate great games from simply good ones, and the story in the novel can be easily adopted for the single player campaign of the game, no matter what choices you make.
In addition, the diverse ways to play would add both replay value and depth. Playing through the game without allowing yourself to promote past trooper should not be boring. But working up the ranks to general or admiral of the fleet should be equally interesting, for different reasons. Starship Troopers, faithfully rendered from the novel, should allow for an unprecedented level of depth and diversity within the game outside of the storyline. And that is before we consider the diversity of maps types, ranging from large planetary occupations to ultra small-scale raids.
Bottom line, ignore the movie and read the novel. Just about every location in the book, from boot camp to scorching a planet, can be imagined as part of an engaging and deep RPG. There is a real diamond of a game buried in that book, and I hope someone brings it to light soon.
Just played Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood recently, and it was good stuff; a decent McShooter dripping with pure, unadulterated "western", a theme I've always enjoyed. The guns are modest, dusty Winchesters and Colt Single Action Armies, rather than the usual modern guns and doofus sci-fi weapons. The dialogue is all hardboiled hick from the 188os ("AHM A CALLIN' YU OUT.") The Unwritten Law of the Size of Your Cowboy Hat, as Yahtzee so brilliantly pointed out, is in full effect. The music is classic western ragtime, and the gunshot sound effects straight out of the old movies and serials. And most important of all, that moral quagmire you find in the best of tales from the Old West shines through; the bad guys are vicious and brutal (worst of them a renegade a-hole Confederate colonel who vows to "return the darkies to bondage") while the goodies not much better (the poor Navajo learn this lesson quite the hard way). Bound in Blood was polished and enjoyable enough to intrigue passers-by as I played it, including my fiance M, who then asked why isn't "The Western" more often of a theme in videogames. After all, many games are about shootin' shit, and many westerns are also about shootin' shit, and there's no shortage of tough guy tropes in either for children and man-children of all ages to roleplay as. The answers to that is 1) the videogame industry right now is fixated on McShooters, the gameplay of which doesn't always lend well to westerns (or, "the guns are shite", as Yahtzee phrases it), and 2) the western HAD in fact been a fairly common theme in videogames prior to these times, even right at the very beginning, such as Nintendo's very first game (Sheriff), the very first Japanese arcade game to be brought to the United States (Taito's Western Gun, via Midway), and as one of the first light gun games for both arcade and home console (Atari's Outlaw and the extremely rudimentary Shootout for the original Magnavox Odyssey). And without further ado, here's six more Western-themed videogames of note.
6. Mad Dog McCree
In the early days of gaming, Laserdisc/FMV games allowed many a company to dive into the videogame market using Old Media methods (such as Z-grade actors and cheesy props) without any of the fuss of dealing with the newer technologies videogames relied on. The drawback was, of course, that's little interactivity involved in a "game" that's basically a movie which runs on Quick Time Events. That didn't stop now-defunct American Laser Games from churning out a slew of these types of games, including this one.
In Mad Dog McCree you play the part of a nameless stranger who has obviously encountered the cowpoke equivalent of Caracas, Venezuela, being that he is shot at within half a minute of arriving into town. Seems that Mad Dog McCree and his gang are running wild, inflicting the town to such violence and humiliation as the imprisonment of its own sheriff at 2:24, the bad acting of the sheriff at 4:41, and the hilariously insane murder of the sheriff at 5:11. Fortunately, McCree's crew are complete dumbasses, as can be seen at 3:31; unfortunately however, the deliciously vicious cruelty of Mad Dog himself knows no bounds, as can be seen at 6:17 when he casually tries to blow up your grizzled friend with tens of pounds of dynamite.
While McCree was able to inspire a couple sequels, and the campy cowboy charm enduring (love the town mortician's various commentary that plays when you are killed), the title was obviously not a worthy pricey purchase then or now, as the "game" isn't much of one and requires at least a light gun of some sort to be remotely decent. But thanks to the unique interfaces of newer gaming platforms, Mad Dog McCree has encountered a renaissance as part of an affordable Wii bundle and even an iPhone release, where you'll be poking those outlaws to death with your finger. Make sure to use the middle one for Mad Dog, he deserves it for all this trouble.
5. Gun.Smoke
If the town in Mad Dog McCreetakes place in Caracas, Venezuela, then the events in this game must occur during the Siege of Sarajevo. Ain't no wussy Z-grade actors in costume here in Gun.Smoke (sic, likely to avoid legal trouble with the show of the same name); cowboy hero Billy Bob, in his quest to free the town of Hicksville from the grasp of a family of robber barons known as the Wingates, will be taking on an endless horde of desperadoes, killers, Indians, snipers, bombers, ninjas, and a madman who's so obsessed with dynamite, it's literally on his mind. As in, lashed to his forehead. Fortunately, Billy Bob is armed with what could only be described as twin nineteenth-century RC-P90's. The tagline for this game reads: "RAIN OF BULLETS WITH THE TWO DEATH-DELIVERING GUNS". They aren't kidding.
The NES release of Gun.Smoke is a triumph from a musical standpoint. Despite the technical limitations, composers Ayako Mori and Junko Tamiya crafted a wonderful MIDI soundtrack that successfully evokes memories of Ennio Morricone, Luis Bacalov, and Vaughn Monroe. It was one of the earliest examples of videogame music achieving art and legitimacy. Not bad for bleeps and bloops.
4. Sunset Riders
Sunset Riders was, I believe, the last title directed by one of Konami's great arcade gurus, H. Tsujimoto of Super Contra fame. Sunset Riders was certainly one of his best, and ranks right up there with the other Konami arcade greats of this period such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons; addictive gameplay that supports 4 players (!!), allowing a group of friends to blast their way through a very Wild West. Click the video to meet your heroes: bounty hunters Steve, Billy, Bob, and Cormano.
Believe it or not, Cormano, with his pink poncho and sombrero, is NOT the gay one. That would be Billy, who can be seen here sulking while his compadres wolf whistle at a showgirl revue. Who says Brokeback Mountain was groundbreaking?
Anyway, the plot is incidental: the four gunslingers come across a bright idea for a payday, which is kill all the worst outlaws in the Wild West and collect their bounties. This puts them in the crosshairs for every scoundrel out there, and believe me, if you are in a four-player posse, there will be a lot of them. At the end of level you track down your quarry, who's always a memorable boss character, including the vaudeville scumbag twins The Smith Bros., the preening Briton Richard Rose, and my favorite, a gracious thug named "El Greco", who's armed with a whip and hoplon shield and who, upon death, bequeaths his blood red sombrero to Cormano so that the latter doesn't have to look so gay anymore. Gracias, El Greco!
Humorous Old West antics aside, the game is classic, hectic arcade fun, as four friends fight off armies of killers firing at them from all angles while traveling through wild set pieces such as trains, horse chases, even across the backs of a buffalo herd. When is this one coming to XBLA?
3. Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist
There's actually been several different Western entries into the adventure game genre, but this somewhat little-known entry from Sierra's Al Lowe is a favorite. It was in fact a favorite of Al Lowe himself, over the rest of his other creations, and that includes the popular Leisure Suit Larry series. The game had, aside from the expected Sierra-style adventure gaming, an entertaining, joke-packed storyline starring a charming, bittersweet character who is classic Old West knight errant, as the game's memorable prologue ballad tells you below (or, you can listen to Lowe himself warbling it).
So Pharkas was once a gunfightin' prodigy who retired (very) early when outlaw Kenny the Kid humbled him. Now a candy ass pharmacist, Pharkas finds his past coming back to haunt him when he's embroiled in a town conspiracy, and may need to dust off those six shooters when trouble threatens those he loves. The game's puzzles and exploration, more so than most of Sierra's games and certainly others in the genre, intertwine well with Pharkas' humor and storyline, even contributing a bit of deconstruction to the Old West hero trope (Pharkas' self-discovery gets bittersweet when the player helps him track down his old gunslinger paraphernalia). Frankly, it was one of the best adventure games of that period, and if you have any sort of interest in the genre (especially since it's poised for a comeback these days), be sure to check this out somehow, or at least hope for a re-release soon.
2. GUN
If there was any type of theme that lends to the sandbox genre, it's clearly the western. Ride around small towns, committing mayhem, hunting for treasure or bounty on the side, gambling parlors, drunken fights with whores at bordellos...all that screams "GTA clone". Hell, plenty of the Old West frontier, the Chihuahuan Desert for example, is LITERALLY a sandbox.
There's been a few western-themed sandbox games (including one on the horizon for next year, Red Dead Redemption), but the best of them was arguably Neversoft's GUN. Although short (which, in my view, these days merely means its filler-free), GUN was much more truer to the elements of the genre that makes it fun to play: very open-ended, plenty of sidequests, and lots of crazy offbeat activities to distract yourself with, including scalping dead bodies and sticking hapless citizens with "dynamite arrows" (see below).
Also featuring an all-star voice cast including Kris Kristofferson, Thomas Jane (of Hung fame, who does great VA work as anyone who's played The Punisher on the original Xbox can tell you), Brad Douriff (yay, the Doctor from Deadwood!), Ron Perlman (yay, period!), and Lance Henrikson (fuck yes, period!), GUN is a great choice if you enjoy the sandbox genre (particularly before the genre drowned in linear, filler-humping GTA xeroxes) , and if you like a good western, then you've struck gold.
1. Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive
This is the one that managed to addict even M, despite all the quality of the others (er, well whatever quality Mad Dog McCree has). M is at best a (highly) casual gamer and, while interested in games with western themes, couldn't be arsed with dealing with the gaming stuff that comes along with it. That's where Infograme's execellent Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive comes in.
It's hard to describe just what the heck genre Desperados is for the uninitiated, but the best would be a "tactical puzzler"; think Police Quest: SWAT 2 with a touch of The Lost Vikings. You play as hired gun John Cooper, brought aboard by a railroad tycoon to stop a vicious train bandit in hopes that one thief could catch another. Cooper labors to assemble a gang to catch the desperado (and boy does he; if only human resource schmoes in our industry were as committed), only for them all to discover just how deep the banditry runs.
Each of Cooper's gang has advantages and disadvantages they can ply; Cooper for example has stealthy throwing knives but his spurs make a ruckus when he walks about, while freed plantation worker Sam has access to explosives and even a bag with a rattlesnake in it, and on and on for a total of seven or so different allies. The game then tosses however many of your posse the narrative currently gives you access to into a sprawling map, where you guide your allies via mouse-and-hotkey to mission success by any means you wish, or in M's case, any means necessary. In other words, I was quite surprised M's method of sneaking around a large female plantation worker in the second level. The woman, busily working a cauldron outside a shack, is overlooking much of the area leading to the exit for Cooper and Sam to escape from, and killing innocents is not an option the game allows. So what's M's solution? Distract the lady with Cooper's chiming pocket watch? Crawl through the cotton fields out of sight? Slip through and over nearby buildings? Nah. M settled for punching her in the back of the head, then beating her while she's down on the ground so that the poor lady stayed KO'd for the rest of the level. Argued M: "Hey! It's not like she died!" Classic western-style moral ambiguity that Sergio Leone would've no doubt appreciated.
