Black Sheep, Hidden Dragon -
June 7, 2001 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot.
Ok, it's all sheep and no dragons today, I admit it. Sorry.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
Somebody assumed that my rant yesterday about fans was a metaphor for console systems, and I came to the realization that you guys give me way, way too much credit. Which is why I won't talk about what a pain in the ass it is to uninstall service pack 4 for Visual Studio, lest somebody else take it as a meditation about weaning games back to 2D.
Onward.
| V gets the V |
| I'll avoid the obvious Mystic Quest, as you said and leap to Final Fantasy V.
Maybe it was the awful translation that had some to do with it but the main
thing that bothered me about FFV was the lack of characters. Yes there were
all the different costumes but with five (bland) personalities, I just didn't
care. FFIV, despite the iffy translation had a lot of heart and that had a
lot to do with the mass of different characters with different stories and
backgrounds. FFV just felt like a vehicle to show off that the costume
abilities thing and the story took a back seat. And that just sucks.
- Purple Monkey Dishwasher
|
When I played through V in the Anthology, I had the same concern about characters, and about gameplay. The problem is though, I'll never know how I would have felt about it had FFV been released when it was supposed to, rather than being held back for years on end. I imported FFV in early '93, when it was clear it wasn't coming out in the US at the time, and was blown away by what I could see of it... but thanks to the language barrier, I never got very far. By the time I learned of the ROM patch, I'd already played through 6 and 7, and my emulator was running slow anyway, and by the time the Anthology came out, 5's job system couldn't help but look anemic compared to Tactics. Still, because I never saw it in context, I can't quite condemn it without thinking of what might have been.
| Letdown of Mana |
| Legend of Mana... seriously one of the biggest disappointments I can
remember in my life. I quite enjoyed the first three Seiken games, and
had been awaiting that particular game for something like a year... my
friends and I went off to pick up our reserved copies and returned to
play, and found multiplayer aspects quite castrated... the story a
shuffled deck of cards... the battle system even further simplified...
after a few days we pretty much gave up on it, and comparisons to
Legend of Mana when we speak of something awful are not uncommon. The
closest a game ever came to making me cry. "I waited years, and got
this. Et tu, Square?"
Joshua Slone
|
Truthfully, I think LoM was a letdown for nearly everyone who played it. On its own terms, the game's pretty good: it's absolutely beautiful to look at and listen to, and as pure exploration and messing around go, it's pretty fun. But SD 2 and 3 weren't just chock full of great gameplay and quirky designs, they were epic in a way that adventure RPGs don't often manage to be. Compared to that legacy, Legend had nowhere to go but down.
| 3 stage evolution (paging William Blake) |
| In the same vein as Zelda II, I've got a question:
Why did all NES sequels seem to deviate from the norm for the second
game, then went back to an original formula for the third?
Look at these -
Zelda
Final Fantasy (meaning ff2j... not 4)
Castlevania
Super Mario (even though the japanese got a carbon copy of the original game,
while we got a revamped Doki Doki Panic)
There might be others ( I think Metal Gear qualifies too, but I can't
remember) but they're escaping my brain at the moment. So what's up with
that, hombre?
-Dibo
|
That's arguably true of a lot of series, though, not just the NES games. The NES Final Fantasies are a little hard to categorize this way, but the 3 SNES and PSX games both fit the pattern of "system prototype", "experimental", and "classic revisited". My personal take on it is that the developers are finding out what's possible in the first few games, before figuring out what they really want to do. Castlevania's a good example of this, as is Zelda: the second games were fairly large departures from the first games, while the third games were everything that was great about the first game, but moreso. On the other hand, Mega Man and the Japanese Mario games were fairly linear in their development, so it's not everybody who takes big risks with their series... which may not be a good thing, comparatively speaking.
| Size issues |
| Chris,
Here's a problem with game reviews that wasn't mentioned yesterday: they're
too long.
Print magazines usually handle this well; since paper actually costs money,
they keep reviews at a manageable length. I like the approach of Next Gen
and OPM: 200-500 words on most games, with a little extra space for high
profile or high quality titles. It's quite enough room to convey a game's
worth.
But reviews on gaming websites often drone on needlessly. IGNPS2 ran a
2,500-word review of Madden 2001. Gamespot went on for 1,800 words on Red
Faction. And IGNPSX felt the need to fire off 1,200 words on Blast
Lacrosse. Blast Lacrosse!
It's not that I have a short attention span. It's just that with so many
games released, there's not enough time to wade through a wordy treatise on
the merits of World's Scariest Police Chases. Criticism should be dense and
precise. Overlong reviews encourage readers to just glance at the rating
and ignore the text. Most of the time, that's what I end up doing.
--Nick W.
|
I dunno... a lot of people complain about this (not in yesterday's col, but in general) but my take on it is this: the web lends itself to skimming a lot more than printed reviews do, so you have the option of just getting the gist of a net review, if you think it's worth reading at all. On the other hand, there are certain games that you want to read a lot about: when a major gaming site reviews a title days or weeks before the game's actually released, you want to know as much as possible about it, and the net takes away any pesky length restrictions.
Of course, it'd be nice if everybody could realize that while DQ7 deserves an in depth review, the latest kart racer probably doesn't. Not much that can be done about it, tho.
| Bad assumption |
| Chris,
Oh boy. Well, as a hardcore Mario fan, it does sort of pain me to say it...
but... "Mario Is Missing," that Carmen Sandiego knockoff? Holy cow. I mean,
it's not like anybody should have expected an edutainment title to be fun to
play, but jeez... you simply ASSUME that a Super Nintendo game with Mario on
the cover is going to be at least playable. Instead, anyone unfortunate
enough to buy it got a thrown-together, numbingly repetitive, brainless game
that didn't even bother to make Luigi's walking animation look right.
Even worse, they decided to follow it up with a whole pile of sequels.
"Mario's Time Machine," "Mario's Early Years: Fun With Numbers," "Mario's
Early Years: Fun With Stuff Under The Sink," whatever. They should have
published "Mario's Early Teen Years: Fun With Yourself." Now, that would
have been edutainment.
Chris.
|
Way, way back, when Mike Tyson's Punchout was newly released and a friend recognized Mario as the referee, we made a list of all the games Mario had been in: about 14, at the time, only a handful of which were actually worth playing. If it was like that back in 1987, then I can only imagine how much worse it's gotten in the decade plus since; needless to say, assuming that anything with Mario's picture on it is worth playing is a bad assumption.
| This letter is written like a book report |
| Chris,
When I think about games that failed to live up to the quality found in other
games in their series, two come to mind.
The first is Actraiser 2. When I got my Super Nintendo in 1991, it came with
Actraiser, which is still one of my all-time favorite games. It had a great
mix of action and simulation, and was incredibly fun to play. Then, a few
years later, I played its sequel. Actraiser 2 took everything that was good
about the first game and ruined it. Actraiser's simulation section, in which
you interacted with the people and viewed the plot of the game, was missing
entirely. The action sequences, while enjoyable in the first game, comprised
all of the gameplay in the sequel. In addition, the control was often
unresponsive, and the difficulty level was so high, I don't think I've ever
made it past the second level. However, based on what I did play, that's
not necessarily a bad thing.
Another game that didn't live up to its history is Star Control III for
the PC. Star Control II is, in my opinion, one of the top five computer
games ever made. Its sequel, on the other hand, is one of the worst. Long
after the original authors of StarCon II had left Accolade, the company that
owned the rights to the game, Accolade decided to make a sequel. They
farmed out the development to another company who didn't seem to have a
grasp of what made the previous game great. The bulk of StarCon II was
based around exploring the galaxy and interacting with the two dozen or so
unique races; many of these interactions led to some incredibly hilarious
encounters. You also had to solve the mystery of an ancient race, and put
an end to a war that threatened the galaxy. The story of StarCon III, on
the other hand, was laughable, and the new aliens created for the game
lacked the unique personalities of the creatures from the original game.
The exploration aspects of the first game were tedious in the second, and
a new colonization section that was added was never fully developed.
Both of these games had problems that made them mediocre and unexceptional,
and were huge disappointments to fans of the originals.
Brian Sebby
|
Say what you will about reviews, but they kept me from getting either of the aobve two games. On the other hand, lame followups shouldn't tarnish a series forever - how about a Gamecube installment of Actraiser, Enix? Or an XBox translation of a new Star Control title, with combat done the old fashioned way?
| Games teach me to buy the most expensive weapons and drink lots of potions |
| Chris, an idea.
What do games really teach us? I mean, we all know
there's something that they do to you. But really,
deep down, what are you learning? (Confused? I know I
am. Here's an example.)
Time Crisis 2. OK, to play this game effectively, you
are 99% of the time "out" and shooting. There's a
clock ticking down to reinforce this. You *have* to be
constantly up, on the go, aggressive, moving forward.
If you hide, to think, catch your breath, play turtle
- you lose. So in some way, it's teaching you to be a
forward-moving aggressive person...to what extent that
takes hold, depends on how much you play it and your
personality, I suppose.
But what other games have influence like this? I'm not
saying that since I played it for 2 hours today I'm
going to be a secret agent who kills rogue
nuclear-satellite-launching evil masterminds, but in
some way, if you played it long enough, maybe you
would start always thinking "aggressive, forward,
forward, foreward, never hide, never retreat, keep
going" ... without ever knowing it.
I guess what this boils down to is what do the game
mechanics of a game say about their fans, about
what is "good" and what is "bad"? If you're a
fast-moving person do you like fast-moving games?
Slow, methodical people turn ATB off in Chrono Trigger
and plan out their attacks? Stuff like that. What do
you think? Connection? Or am I just crazy?
=====
Peter
|
The thing is, most games are so painfully unrealistic there's very little difficulty in keeping the two realities separate. Did your village burn down when you were a boy? Did your father vanish under mysterious circumstances? Do weapons or ammo pop up when you destroy random objects? Are all the women in your life exceedingly well endowed, with green, purple or pink hair? Do random monsters roam the streets as you walk to school, and do people not mind when you walk into their houses and steal their valuables from large, unlocked treasure chests?
No? Then maybe common sense dictates that what works in games shouldn't be applied to real life, eh? Not to be overly critical or anything, but in light of Columbine, people are already wondering if gamers can keep reality separate from fantasy - let's not add fuel to the fire.
| Remember what I said about giving me too much credit? |
| I recently got a reply from squaresoft that final fantasy chronicles will
not use the analog sticks on the dual shock. If there is any way that you
could persuade them to program the two games in dual shock and or analog I
and millions of other fans would appreciate this. Thanks.
|
See letter title.
| This man scares me |
| Which series installment was disappointing? That's an easy one. For me, Grandia II, while a decent game, was totally missing the boyish, idealistic and down right scrappy fun of the original.
Ryudo was like the anti-Justin with all his brooding and preoccupation with a troubled childhood. Justin was just plain fun and funny. Now, there's nothing wrong with a more mature focus (like Lunar 2 compared to Lunar,) but Grandia II took everything that was great about Grandia and turned it on its head, smacked it in the face and pissed all over it.
Hopefully Grandia X will be more like the original and less like its sequel.
-- Ur, who's actually been able to convince his wife to name their future daughter Feena.
|
Again, reviews kept me away from Grandia II (that, and I still had Lunar 2, FF9 and Skies of Arcadia on my plate)... but are you really going to name your kid Feena? Dude, being an RPG fanatic is one thing, but think of your child's well being... or more importantly, think of the massive therapy bills you'll have to pay when she discovers she was named after a half-naked green haired amazon who falls in love with a boy apparently half her age.
| I think he may be trying to make a point here |
| Man Zelda 2 sucked! It was totally different than Zelda 1 so it
sucked. And Man FFVIII sucked because it was different and the battle
system sucked. And man FFVII used to suck but now it is sort of old
school so it doesn't suck. And Phantasy Star III sucked because I
haven't played it but I heard it sucked. And man Metroid Prime is going
to suck even though we know next to nothing about it because it is going
to be different than the old Metroids. Actually all games have sucked
since FFII.
--
BeerGoggles_FromMARS
Daniel Kaszor
|
Wow, deep. You ought to write those little messages inside greeting cards, or something.
Closing Comments:
Do I have to say it? Free topic day tomorrow, see you then.
-Chris Jones, could make Square put analog control in FFIV, if he really wanted. No, really!
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