Goodbye Demon’s Souls…
Many years ago, it seems like it now, a little known game was released. Demon’s Souls. After the gaming press pooped their pants with excitement, and hearing about it for many months I decided it was time to actually invest in an annoying RPG.
I say annoying because of something I decided to do around the start of 2009. I wanted to actually give some genres a chance instead of just ignoring them and playing counter-strike or rainbow six. Following that I bought Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Borderlands, and eventually Demon’s Souls. I was intrigued by ME, but it was a bit underwhelming when the ending rolled around. I was a bit interesting in how a gigantic barren field could hold my interest in fallout. I was pissed off that I spent 40+ hours playing borderlands, because it was a useless waste of time that I want back. Then came Demon’s Souls.
I spent the first night messing about the first level. Impressed at how I had unlocked two gates as a means to keep track of my progress for future playthroughs of the level, and I sat and stared at a gigantic door for 3 minutes deciding if I was going to open it. It was late, I was tired, and I had to get up for work in the morning. I decided I would give it a go and if I came into trouble turn it off and that would be the end of it for the night. I destroyed Phalanx by figuring out what I had to do, running around and avoiding damage, and needless to say I had impressed myself with actually being able to beat a boss first go around.
I thought about the game the entire day at work, couldn’t get past how much the ambiance of the world had sucked me in, had interested me, and I wanted another taste of it as soon as possible. I spent that night running around some hub world, trying to find some “monumental” who was supposed to explain how it all works. After finding an image of them online I had actually walked right past them at least 10 times. Listened to the story bit, leveled up, and awaited my next play.
That continued for a month, I would think about the game constantly, having it nag at me in the back of my mind, working through ways to get around the world and replaying the game in my head over and over. It wasn’t an obsession, it was lust. That game had something about it, something I wanted, something that brought out the best of me, the worst of me, and made me realize a lot about myself as a gamer.
I had gotten to the second boss, probably stared at the third, and I had decided to move on to a second character. I flew through the first level, got to the same spot, and tried another character. It was getting to the point where the game had little room for my tomfoolery and I had to return to my starting character.
I sat down one day, Beep… Beep… Beep…, Black. “Ugh, what now” I thought. I looked at the ps3 as I turned it on, green, yellow…. Fuck. I spent the next month waiting for the RMA to get to my door, boxing it up, calling Sony and explaining shit for the 4th time. Apparently it was going to be $150 dollars to fix my 60 gb ps3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4CASA0vlXk). My UK friend had the same thing happen a month ago to him.
Well, no worries, everything was backed up to a spare drive, I had everything in waiting, I would soon play again. I get the box, start to import the data, but apparently some of it is “protected” to stop me from stealing trophies or something. Oh great, every single game with trophies is not allowed to be imported, it is there, but I can’t import it. Thanks, Sony. Fine, I’ll just redownload every single game from psn again, patch the games, restart everything, and enjoy my Demon’s Souls.
Good, back at Phalanx and done with the first world. I even tried to remake my characters, but it wasn’t the same. I decided to just stick with my main, get as far as possible. A few months later…. Bleep Bleep Bleep, flashing red. SERIOUSLY! Alright Sony, I’m not paying you money to fix this, you obviously can’t, let me just go buy a slim and be done with heat issues. I beg my dad to take me to the store, the one that actually has it in stock, and have access to my stuff again. I spent a week redownloading all of my psn stuff, repatching every disc I had, what a wonderful “feature”. Made me miss steam, just doing shit for me.
Things got busy with school, I had gotten to the bridge again, with that stupid dragon, but I wanted to level up a bit and try to take it down. I tried for weeks, barely doing anything, magic, bows, nothing…. Oh well. I pushed on, got to the second half of the first world, practically cleared it, messed around with just about every world, and finally gotten to explore the entirety of the game it seemed. I looked into special weapons, world tendency, and I even managed to get some cool stuff during events that unlocked them. I would intentionally die on the first world in order to cause tendency, just to unlock a gate on the left side. Man that lady was hard, oh well.
I went to work that day, seemed like any other day. I got a call, little brother, “The house was broken into, they took your ps3.” WHAT! FFS, it wasn’t…. Are you serious? Hold on… I walked outside, got the details. My mom was having knee surgery, what a great time for this to happen. “It’s weird,” my brother said, “they left flowers and candy in mom’s room.” Heh, no man, those were from me. Alright, I’ll see it when I get home.
Just like that, a year long journey to enjoy a simple game was destroyed. Some asshole had taken everything, my ps3, some cables, thankfully he didn’t touch my rig. It seemed like a year and a half before insurance paid me for it…. A whopping 150 dollars, it was the 250 gb version.
I spent the next few years on steam, waiting for the time to buy a ps3 again, waiting for that moment when I would get a chance to try my hand at playing the game again. It’s been 2 years. Now I get news that there will be a sequel. Cool, but it won’t be the same. I wonder if there will be a pc port? Anyways, I wish I had my ps3 back. Back to Counter-Strike…
I spent many months, years it seems just wanting to buy the system, buy the piece of crap that died twice, that has all the shit I wanted as long as I pay them for “fixing their broken shit”. Piracy my ass, thanks Sony. I even bought Gran Turismo Collector’s edition, a strategy guide for dark souls, just to get a taste. I had to borrow a friend’s ps3 just to redeem the dlc code for GT5, so that it didn’t expire.
Annoying…
It’s strange how you can spend so much time, more time thinking about a game then actually playing it. The only reason I wrote this is because those thoughts, those experiences, that game, is changed forever. The servers are going down, it will be playable, but it won’t be the same. It has survived all this time on sheer fans dragging it to the front of people’s faces, forcing them to give it attention. Hardly any other game has done that. Heck, even got myself a PC port on the way of Dark Souls, that will be nice, but it isn’t the same, it is the original, it isn’t where it all started, not even the same company.
I guess the only way to end this is to say thanks, thanks Demon’s Souls. I’m sorry some people saw you as just a “difficult game” or something where you are “hardcore” because they play you. I’m sorry I never got the chance to find out what happens on 1-4, or at 5-2, but thanks for the memories. Thanks for taking the time to show me what some of the world has to offer, that even though the game may be an RPG, it isn’t. Even though the game has online integration, it’s something so much more. There isn’t too much I can say, except you are probably the best game this generation, probably the most important one since half-life, but no one will ever admit it. One day I’ll have a ps3, probably right after Sony decides to pull its head out of its ass, but for now… Keep enjoying the shelf. Thanks for everything…
-nabokovfan87
Mass Effect 2: 2nd Playthrough Thoughts
In the past, I have played slightly more than zero RPGs. Feel free to view the “Hi, I’m Nabokov” blog for more info on that, but the point here is that RPGs have been a relatively new thing for me, starting with Demon’s Souls, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Earthbound when I was very young. I was intrigued by the ME universe ever since I stepped foot into it, and quite honestly I couldn’t wait for a second game in the series.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one, and seeing what happened with Dragon Age 2 had me vehemently expecting a dramatic letdown. This isn’t the point of the post where I tell you how awesome it ended up, but you would expect it to be wouldn’t you? When I finished the second game I was extremely disappointed at what I had played. Moreover, I was confused at what to even think about my experience. I made a thread over on another forum, and the summary of the thread is simply the following; The first game had dramatic experiences, encounters, and stories that were compelling simply because it was all new and because the world had so much tension, but with the second game, there was hardly any tension, and players of the first knew what to expect. The shooting was worse, the story was horrible, and the ending mission was a joke.
After that, I wanted to play the game again after I had time to remove it from my subconscious and play the game for what it did rather than basing my opinion on anything I had played before. I also was able to play the game with the DLC. I wanted to know if the game itself had simply removed the good stuff, or whether I was simply out of it for my first playthrough. So I bought 35 dollars of DLC for the game I had paid 20 dollar for a year ago and booted it up. 25 hours later I was finished, I had done all of the loyalty stuff, all of the DLC, all of the upgrades, and touched just about every aspect of the game that was remotely possible.
Did I enjoy it? Well, I think I have right around the same opinion, I have no idea what to think about this game. I think that the design of the game is broken. The video cutscenes are at such low resolution and severely distorted on PC that they bring you out of the experience, the FOV of the game is severely broken, especially considering the constant battles inside complexes and cave buildings, and the ending should have been something along the lines of the lair of the shadow broker ship mission, which parallels the citadel end mission from the first game very well. I really dislike how cookie-cutter the ending of the game actually is. If you want to play it correctly then you have to get the IFF at the very end, and instead of being about something interesting, the survival of your squad ultimately relies on how many bullshit loyalty missions you ended up playing. Moreover, the developers have Mordin set to die first beyond all other crewmembers, even though he is a scientist, not a fighter, right? I broke down the other DLC on the latest episode of the Damnit Slam Show, feel free to listen if you want to hear more (http://www.damnitslam.com).
I guess the summary of my experience is that the game isn’t finished, and the only reason I played it again was to get the right character and decisions for the third game. I am invested, but I don’t feel like paying double for DLC that should be in the game especially considering how empty the experience feels compared to the first game. Every building, area, and aspect of the game feels much smaller than the first. The citadel feels like a shopping mall, rather than a hub, and places like Illium are so poorly designed that you spend the majority of the time walking to where you want to go, then actually doing something interesting. For a franchise and developer that automatically receives 10’s whenever someone things they are coming out with a new game, it is a big letdown. It isn’t as shit at Dragon Age II, but it is pretty bad.
-nabokovfan87
Kickstarter, PC Gaming, Petitions, and Gamers vs. Publishers SOLVED!
Kickstarter double fine stuff happened, I listened to podtoid, and a lot of thoughts have been going through my head. Let me elaborate, I am a PC gamer. I am told constantly that games are going to be 60 dollars instead of 20-40, ports are impossible to make, and that my platform of choice has been dead for the past 10 years.
It makes me laugh to consider those things as truth, but you get the idea. PC gamers exist in a world where no one wants them and it is by the grace of pure passion and love of the craft that anyone enjoys it. I don’t know how many times I have heard the media say they hate playing things with 10 year olds on Xbox live, only to tell them that it is far better on PC because of moderators and maturity of the player base, but they just keep paying for online because they think that is where everything cool happens and they can have their cool t-shirts and cool games and everyone else is stupid for not joining them. OK, obviously some background behind that, but let’s just move on.
There have been hundreds of indie games on Kickstarter in the past. It is amazing that this is getting press because double fine did it, but by all means I am glad that it has. Immediately my mind spinned towards what could be possible, and what SHOULD be happening right now.
So, imagine a world where (this would be far better in the movie guy voice, but…) the next time someone tries to petition for a port, the HD remake everyone wants doesn’t happen, a developer takes a shit, or your favorite developer just doesn’t want to localize that brilliant title from somewhere on the other side of the globe, it was actually possible for you to do something about it. The people purchasing the products themselves were ACTUALLY given what they wanted. Fucking brilliant right? Yeah, but it will take 10 years for this to actually happen, and I know 5 companies right away that simply could do it right now and have a bazillion buyers. Let’s see.
1. Demon’s Souls PC Port
2. THQ games… (Metro 2033: Last Light, SR4. etc.)
3. GR/RS HD remakes on PC
4. RARE being bought out by the fans
5. Psyconauts 2
6. Earthbound 2
7. Pokemon Fully 3D PC RPG with super HD graphics (not fucking cell shading)
8. Red Dead: Redemption PC
9. MvC3 PC
Obviously I can keep going, but that isn’t the point or the question I am going to even discuss. The reason all of these will never happen is because the developers are in the assholes of publishers who want to make a piss-ton of money. They don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves, and they will literally step on babies just to make a dollar. Maybe not, but I think you know they would deeply consider it.
All I am saying is imagine a world where the stupid bitches making decisions now, weren’t. It would be amazing as a gamer, specifically a PC gamer, if we were all a little more open to the idea of some 14 and 17-year-olds making a game have having someone help them out to get it released (Side note, please support the 14 and 17-year-old who are trying to make a survival horror PC game that has a bitching soundtrack).
I really wish less publishers owned great companies and licenses like MvC, RAREs games, Demon’s Souls, etc. which all will take either a long time or hardly ever exist on expanded platforms simply because people want to sit on them and not do a damn thing with them. I would love to see Super Mario World 2 exactly in the SNES style, or an actual DKC4 SNES port exist in today’s world, but because someone at wherever doesn’t want to even give it a shot, it won’t happen.
Here is my idea…
A website that isn’t called Kickstarter, where gamers and companies can actually discuss things and gamers can propose ideas to developers (not publishers). Gamers can back it, the developers post a number of sales they must require to work on it, once it is reached it goes to the approved section, and then the developers go to whomever and get it made. It isn’t a perfect system and I am sure there are some tweaks to fix it, but in all honesty, something like that needs to happen.
Thanks for hearing my rant, please post your thoughts below!
-nabokovfan87
Training: Tutorial vs. Experience
There are literally millions of games, a plethora of genres and a bazillion different typed of gamers. Obviously one of those folks is going to come across something that he or she hasn’t played before, therefore they have to learn how to play it.
The first issue most people come across is understanding the rules of the game. Let’s take a turn based strategy game, say magic the gathering, when you first boot it up the first thing that you are given is a tutorial on how to play the game in question deeply going over the rules and actually showing you step by step how to play the game in question. Action based games have taken these to show you “the rules” by laying out the controls. Half-Life: Opposing Force did this by having the player go through an obstacle course.
Modern games, Witcher 2 for instance, show you some of the controls, but not all of them. This brought tons of criticism and personally I am still stuck on the final “tutorial” level since the first week of release. It is ridiculous to think that simply not understanding the basics of a game can have such a drastic impact on player enjoyment, but it does happen and it is a true statement.
So, how do you fix this? Let us use Counter-Strike: Source as an example. CS:S is an extremely competitive game and that alone puts many gamers off from even attempting to play it. The basic way to “learn” CS:S is to simply do the following…
PLAY IT!
Ok, this may seem a bit simple, but in all honesty there are games out there that you can only learn by doing. CS:S has a mode called “gun game”, you may have heard of this in other popular FPS games on the consoles, but this is the original form of that game. Being so, it has been adapted for easy mode and to present more difficult challenge for higher skilled players. The first mode that is available in other popular shooters is simply gun game. You start with the pistol, get the next best pistol, then the SMG, etc. The second is called reverse gun game, where you start with the strongest weapons and get weaker and weaker ones, giving the advantage to players whom don’t know exactly what they are doing, or joined late. It is a brilliant solution to a problem that has plagued many attempting to get into CS:S.
What you don’t realize is the amount of hours it takes to get comfortable with the different weapons, with the mouse you are using (ensure it is set up correctly, see note at end), even the keyboard can take some getting used to. Try playing with lower sensitivity to reduce twitchy mouse movements and provide more fluidness to your shots, remove mouse filters that introduce lag, try shooting the chest and let recoil result in the headshot. As you can see there are vast differences between playing a game and expecting to be good, and actually learning how to play a game.
Once you get the weapons down, and you know your rig, you will have to put time into each map, to learn the intricacies of the layout and learn the choke points, statistical likelihood of someone going a direction, how to tap fire instead of spraying, crouching to avoid being hit, and just where and when to expect to get shot at. Again, it isn’t as simple as starting up a game and being good because you know the controls, or have played a shooter before, if you want to be great at anything in life you must put time into it.
What about other games, like non-competitive or single player experiences? Let’s take a look at Serious Sam, a game whereby you have dozens of enemies coming from every which direction and level design is going to be rapidly changing. You need to know how many shots it takes to get an enemy down, you need to know how they attack, the ins and outs of the combat itself, but everything else is secondary.
If we put those two together, CS:S and Serious Sam, you need to know what it takes to kill someone, not only the aspects of the gun itself, but the damage model of the game, and give the game a chance to teach us these things. This isn’t something that can be put into a tutorial, it isn’t something that can be explained, it is something that every CS:S player has put hours upon hours into learning, mastering, and perfecting.
Granted there are dozens of games that you start knowing nothing at all and have to resort to the folded sheet of paper with the controls, somehow they call that a manual, and attempt to interpret everything about the game based on a controller layout picture. It is amazing that some games release half-broken, unfinished, or simply bad, but it is far worse in my opinion to have a great game hindered by lack of understanding because the developer didn’t explain the rules or the basics of the game. That being said, for some games there is no tutorial, but it isn’t as easy as stating the controls and saying blatantly obvious things the player can do in the game world. It may take time to understand completely and it will take time to adapt at each different game, even ones in the same genre or by the same developer all have different feels to them. But, if you approach it with an open mind and actually give the game a shot rather then simply rushing into it and being pissed that you died a lot, then you will be surprised at how compelling an experience it and many other games you overlooked can become.
Something like Demon’s Souls? Yeah… Go give it a shot!
-nabokovfan87
Improvement: Take Pride in Design!
Patching games to fix issues is nothing new. It started in the arcades with ROMs, which were updated to fix exploits, revise difficulty, and improve the overall experience for the players. This legacy continued on the PC platform, where the internet connectivity made it the perfect place to easily update games. Now we live in a console centric world where platforms like Steam are seen as useless because “PC gaming is dead” and the normal routine is to pay Microsoft and Sony for the pleasure of removing annoyingness from their broken systems. Be it cheating, exploits, game breaking bugs, or even the all encompassing “security update,” most modern patches revolve around 2 things, piracy or laziness.
Any gamer on the PS3 has experienced the following, and gotten shit from Xbox gamers because their particular platform is “far superior” to PSN. After unboxing a game, put it in the system, turn on system, install firmware update, wait 30 minutes for that to finish, launch game, new patch notice, begin patch process, 20 minutes later the patch utility restarts and installs the patch for 10 minutes. By the time this process is completed, what little time some people have for gaming is gone and “fun” must wait for the next opportunity. It is an asinine system that is built to ensure people will more than likely purchase the proprietary “subscription” service for either console in order to not put up with bullshit.
Xbox gamers can say Xbox live is better, but let us all stop pretending. When I play my games on PC I turn the PC on, check my email, check the news, and I more often than not immediately get a popup indicating that a few of my games were patched. Imagine that, a system where developers use the internet to send things to their consumers easily, quickly, and without someone else prohibiting what used to be a seamless exchange. There is no need for a long and drawn out “approval process.” Those hardly ever improve anything and are only intended to make console gamers wait for shit and pad Microsoft and Sony’s bottom line demonstrating how “useful” they are to developers. Microsoft’s uselessness has even found its way onto PC, in the form of GFWL. It is amazing how the same games can come out on entirely different platforms, no matter the audience size, and how much bullshit one group will put up with. That is the passion the designers should have.
Console games used to be designed for cartridges, where the fabrication of the games themselves was expensive and final. Games had to be perfect, if they were not, there was no going back, no revision, and no way to “fix” lazy mistakes. As a child, those were just bad games, now we see popular games like Street Fighter IV and others with revisions on release day awaiting the player.
I used to be on the PS3 side of things, but after having my 6th one stolen and being told by Sony I had to wait a year to play my games because “I had previously deauthorized my accounts in the past year.” #4 and #5 were YLODs and #2 and #3 were shipped incorrectly during the RMA process, which damaged them. That is on top of losing my saves more than three times for extremely difficult games like Demon’s Souls, all thanks to hardware encryption rules which are used to “prevent piracy” or as I like to call it, “more bullshit.” Needless to say I have enjoyed being forced to only play my games on the PC side of things, it has made me appreciate the ease of use with the interface and not having to put up with categories or blades, but being able to sort things easily as I see fit.
I enjoy picking what server I want to join, what map, game type, and rules I want to play with in Counter-Strike. If CS had the same setup as Halo and Gears, all that would be played is Dust2, nothing else. No gun game would exist, no zombie mode, no surf, no anti-Awp/Auto servers, no beginner servers, no servers with different player limits, no arena servers, no standard map only servers, and more importantly everyone would have to put up with stupid amounts of lag because they never get to choose which region their server exists in, that being if they were even given the option of having a server at all. It is a luxurious experience to simply have things work the way they should, and while Steam has many issues, it is a vast improvement over PSN patching and paying for half the game over in Xbox land.
This is not just an issue for the provider, it is an issue for the development of games as well. Skyrim has had quests that have been broken and would lead to the loss of saves, loss of quest completion, loot, ability to progress further in the game, as well as many others. TF2 has been practically remade in a different light, patched over 250 times into a game that is now about hats rather than strategy. It is standard practice to release a game, and day of release require an initial patch before actually playing the game. I am sure anyone could Google some form of “most broken game, worst patch, or release day woes” and find hundreds of thousands of pages filled with users complaining about that very subject. These all occur because patches are no longer about improving the user experience, or adding to the game, it is about fixing what is broken, and was released in half-playable condition. The best way to improve a game, franchise, series, and platform is to hold the people making the game responsible. If you take pride in your work, if you do it to the best of your ability, it will result in amazing user experiences like Demon’s Souls, Half Life, and F.E.A.R.
Now we move to the all important topic of the month it seems, piracy. Sopa and Pipa, Oh… Pipa, popularized the whole anti-antipiracy sentiment because consumers were against a system whereby some overseer was able to dictate whether or not they had access to something. Sound familiar Mr. Microsoft and Sony? It is funny how consumers cannot hack devices to put free games on them, fix broken firmware, or just flat out improve the functionality of a device, but it is OK for the same group demanding the previous activity be stopped to lock users out of basic fixes and flat out hold them out of multiplayer for an entire platform unless they pay a fee. I am going to guess you can see where this is going, you think I am going to rant about how piracy is not evil and how the world should simply allow it to exist?
Well, no, I have been living in a world of piracy for many decades now. One currently where it is easiest to simply Google a game name and have an ISO download link immediately, that works for every console, not just PC games folks. While you can blame PCs for all of the piracy, it is quite clear that torrent websites have been attacked by trojans, congressmen, angry developer letters, and police raids all of which have more than curbed piracy of large files like games. The addition of digital download platforms has put the nail in the coffin for the common gamer as well. The rest of those whom pirate PC games are simply the hardcore hackers, pirates, and vermin that will never pay for anything if they can get it for free, it is a psychological barrier, not one that software and hardware based DRM will help to break. Again, I am not vouching for it, I am simply stating facts.
These both culminate with what amounts to two separate platforms where the driving force for updating is to stop piracy or fix bugs that should have been caught by anyone who actually played the game prior to release. Instead, games are designed to a deadline, an insane deadline that encourages the “we will fix it later” mindset. The single best way to improve the gaming experience, simply stop being lazy and stop being all about prohibiting users. As Jim pointed out, the best way to fix piracy is to simply provide a better experience. Steam has done this. Indie titles like Beat Hazard, blockbusters like Demon’s Souls, user supported games like Frozen Synapse, and even Kickstarter projects like Abandoned all put the game above any sort of anti-piracy or laziness. Fans have directly supported all of these things with community feedback, monetary support, word of mouth, and in some cases direct design discussions with users. These games may take a bit of extra time, but there is nothing better than word of mouth and customers doing the marketing to sell a game.
It is all about making the single best possible experience available to the player. I think many game developers, platform holders, and even gamers forgot about that a long time ago. It is not about making something for money, fame, or to be better than the person next to you, the reason certain games will always be considered good, and the reason games are around today, is because those games have the heart and soul of every person that worked on it and every time you launch the game you can see the passion on the screen.
Hello, I’m nabokov
Hi. Most of you probably don’t know me and those that do probably don’t know me all that well in the first place. So I wanted to start off by giving some background into my gaming habits and explain a bit about why I think the way I do.
I started playing games as a child, going to grandma’s house, playing Tetris on her NES and Game Boy. I spent weeks of the summer at my uncle’s place on his NES playing Super Spike V’Ball and World Cup Soccer. My parents owned an Atari 2600. My siblings and I would beg for it to be brought out and hooked up when we have time off from school. My childhood friends had a Sega Genesis that we would play sonic on and another had a PC that we would play DOOM II on. My more personal gaming memories started when I got my own Game Boy from my Grandma and later when I got a lime green Game Boy Color years later. I enjoyed playing NHL 97 (Yes, I even remember the year), Tetris, Pokémon, Metroid, and a glut of others. Years later, my siblings and I were given a Super Nintendo with Donkey Kong Country 3. Since then I was hooked on games. I came home and had to fight the urge to ignore my homework, just to get a few more laps in Super Mario Kart. Trips to Grandma’s house were never complete without a round of Mario Paint and a few hours of Super Mario World. As you can see I have had a diverse gaming history, playing many genres on many platforms.
Over the middle and high school years I spent weekends playing Tony Hawk and Vigilante 8, Madden, etc… Things really changed for me, however, when we finally got a PC in the house. I spent hours upon hours playing Math Blaster and Reading Blaster along with Lemmings, and NHL 2001. One year I even got Half-Life and Rainbow Six as a gift from my other uncle, the preacher. They became the games that I couldn’t get enough of. I played the sequels, spent hours watching that 10 minute long behind-the-scenes video for Ghost Recon. Eventually, I got the game on a PlayStation 2 that I had received for Christmas.
During high school, I met a friend introduced me to Counter-Strike, foremost amongst other games and I was hooked again. With my rekindled excitement for PC gaming, I built my first PC for graduation. I have since built a second and am waiting anxiously to spend more hard earned money on the upcoming ATI Radeon 7970 to finish off that build. A few years into college I was finally got a PlayStation 3, my first personal console purchase. I’ll never forget that experience, the enjoyment and the sheer shock in my mother’s eyes when she asked the question, “It costs how much!?” Needless to say, the PS3 has been a long and rough ride, one that has shaped every future buying decision for consoles, and I will eventually get to writing that out for everyone to enjoy. I later got a PSP for use on my way to and from college. I’ve used it on a daily basis since the day I got it.
While attending college, though, gaming has been reduced to a weekend enjoyment. I spent many years with my PS3, all seven of them (units, not years), and got to play some very cool games. From Gravity Crash to Uno, I enjoyed the hell out that system, but more to come on that later. Eventually I was able to get my uncle’s NES from him as a gift, and went on an EBay buying spree, getting games for it, as well as repurchased an SNES, a Game Boy Advance, an N64, and eventually, a PS2. I am nearly out of school and looking forward to enjoying those systems in the future. Currently I spend time recording my own podcast about gaming and hardware. I play when I’m not working on homework or traveling back and forth to school and work.
You may ask yourself, why did I just dribble on for the last 5 paragraphs going system by system and make it seem like I was trying to prove something? Well, truth is that I have some pretty extreme opinions, some have told me. You may have heard how terrible Lair is as a game, but I don’t even remotely think so. You may have heard how fantastic the Left 4 Dead series is, but I view it as a ripoff of an extremely popular mod called Zombie Master and as far inferior to its inspiration. You may have heard how brilliant BF3, Portal and Skyrim are, but I would argue otherwise.
These opinions are not just to get attention, page views, or contrive a conversation and get satisfaction out of putting others down. These thoughts came from years of having the very nature of my own beliefs molded, shaped, and matured through life experiences. I also spend a majority of my time listening to others thoughts on podcasts, many hours a day. I have had personal beliefs and things challenged and formed when I took a multitude of philosophy courses at college. Along with those there is one other major factor to consider. I don’t scour the news, blogs, or reviews. I play games completely on my own. No one, be it near me or in my house, enjoys gaming apart from talking to friends whom have moved and those I have met over the many years of online gaming about their thoughts. It more than likely all started 4 or 5 years ago when I decided that my goal for the year was to play genres I had never played before. Prior to 2005 I spent my years in shooters, strategy, sim, sports, and SNES games. In 2006 I played RPGs, JRPGs, League of Legends, MMOs, RTS games, Rhythm and Music games, and many other genres for the first time that I would traditionally avoid.
While review methods and systems can change and come into question, I have found that I take a very different approach when I play games. I do not look for others to confirm or deny my opinions. I play the game and see the game for what it actually contains, not crowding my own experiences and opinions with the majority or basing them on what others feel. Simply put, I am able to base my thoughts and reviews on circumstances that happened during gameplay and not those whereby I bring outside influences and experiences to shape and mold those thoughts. If Half-Life 5 came out and I was responsible for reviewing it, I would look at the game on its own before I considered ranking it in terms of the franchise.
Moreover, I believe any game can be artistically and critically compared to any other game as long as you have the proper understanding of the genre. For instance, I can compare Madden to Witcher 2 as long as I understand the background of each genre, the difference between a game like Blitz and Madden, as well as something like Dragon Age: Origins and Witcher. This is very similar to when you hear someone in the games press proclaim that one game is like another for their own genre. Perhaps something like “they tried to create a game with the controls of Mario, but the visuals of Crysis.” It may seem out of place, but when you compare sound design, graphics, visual style, controls, and other factors it is a lot easier to say that one game does one particular aspect much better than the other.
To explain this you need to understand the context of when I first thought this. As you know, I play sports games. I have since I was 10 or so years old. I have heard over the years from reviewers and media explain to their readers and listeners that “they aren’t the sports guy” or “I don’t cover/play those kinds of games.” It is all a load of bullshit. We all consider them, compare then, and rank them when we make our game of the year lists, or our “Best Games Ever Made” lists. I do not play one genre, I play racing, sports, strategy, shooters, RPGs, arcade games, platformers, and I know what makes a game good. I know what makes each genre different and what the design criteria for each game are. In complete honesty, it’s asinine. Consider the same argument for movies or books, and imagine telling a critic they can only like horror films or romantic comedies.
I guess at this point I should cut myself off. I will end by listing my top 20 or so games of all time, look out for more from me, and by all means feel free to ask me anything in the comments.
My Personal Top 20
1. F.E.A.R.
2. Evil Genius (PC)
3. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (ARCADE)
4. Demon’s Souls
5. Counter-Strike: Source
6. Pokémon (GB/GBC)
7. Max Payne Series
8. Donkey Kong Country 3
9. Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear / Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm
10. SWAT 4
11. Half-Life
12. Super Mario Bros.
13. F.E.A.R. 2
14. Gran Turismo Series
15. R.U.S.E.
16. Heavy Rain
17. World Cup Soccer (NES)
18. Lair
19. Dragon Age: Origins
20. Civilization V
21. Super Mario Kart
