Freedom of the press - November 23, 2001 - Nich Maragos
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.
My ideal RPG stars Janeane Garofalo as the heroine who doesn't care ...
Don't say we didn't warn you.
Well, the mix of a free topic plus post-Thanksgiving holidays sleepiness plus your already-beloved Erin's absence meant I could (and did) post every letter I got today.
| Mmm, holiday leftovers |
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Since I was busy yesterday adding twelve pounds to my weight in West
Virginia (read: The Land that the Internet Forgot) yesterday, here's my
top five games (the ones that I've actually beaten, anyways):
5. King of Fighters '98. Pending my inevitable purchase of Capcom vs.
SNK 2, this is the most rediculously entertaining 2D fighters I've ever
played. The character list is massive, and most of the characters
(*cough*U.S.Team*cough*) have some damned good play mechanics. The
graphics are beautiful, the sound is bliss, and it's just damned fun. I
shall forever mourn the day when SNK closed its doors.
4. Uplink. Yeah, it's a PC game. And if you weren't reading Penny
arcade about a month-and-a-half ago, you probably have absolutely no idea
what it is. Simply put, it's a hacking game, and it's damned fun. I'm
not going to bother explaining it; just go to www.introversion.co.uk,
download the demo, and watch $25 just disappear out of you wallet. It's
that good.
3. Dance Dance Revolution. Nowhere else in the world is it fun to flail
about like a maniac. The game has the kind of music that you would
normally classify as utter crap if only they would stick it under some
crappy pop brand, but you put in on your playlist because its just.
That. Addictive.
2. Ico. Dear sweet Jebus, this game is utter perfection. Graphics,
puzzles, mechanics, perfection. Characters, perfection. The ending
theme, also perfection. Funny how nobody ever touches on the fact that,
despite being utterly incomprehensible, the voice acting was (again)
perfection. Even if I could write the whole script on an index card...
1. Chrono Trigger. Perfection plus sentimental favoritism. First RPG I
ever played, if my memory serves me correctly, and still the best.
Honorable metion goes to Lunar 2. Not for any particular aspect of the game proper, but for the out takes. There are very few things in the
world which rival the sheer humor potential of hearing the phrase, "I AM
ZOPHAR, MASTER OF SH[foghorn noise]!"
-An'Desha, waiting for his birthday on Wednesday because he's dead broke
and still two discs away from owning Vision of Escaflowne in its
entirety.
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Out of curiosity, why do so many people now reference Jebus instead of Jesus? Did I miss something? Was my back turned when they decided it would be more clever to substitute the "b" instead of just going for the gusto, blasphemically speaking?
Anyway. I was thinking of writing in to Erin's "top 5" topic myself, but I couldn't manage to rank my favorites across such disparate genres. Even within, say, the rhythm action category, it was a tough call to pick Samba de Amigo over Gitaroo-Man or vice versa, because they're such different games even though they're both "rhythm" titles. Add to that the lip-biting that comes in when you have to figure out whether Gitaroo-Man, Final Fantasy VIII, or Metal Gear Solid are "better" than each other, and I couldn't go through with it.
It's funny, though, how I doubt a single game from before the 32-bit era would make even my top 5 list, should I manage to put one together. (Though some might sneak onto my top 10.) And yet, I'm no newcomer to the gaming world. Am I the only one out there who thinks games are actually getting better, not worse?
| Spoiled rotten |
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Nich:
Nij here. I apologize for my letter of today not being on-topic but there's
something I'm concerned about in Double Agent; and if you could pass the word
to the other Agents I'd appreciate it. ;)
If you read the column yesterday, "Frank" wrote in to give his opinion on
why he liked Metal Gear Solid so much. To augment his argument, he included
major spoilers from Metal Gear Solid 2, right up to the ending. For whatever
reason, the letter was printed, unedited, with no spoiler warning. Metal Gear
Solid 2 was just released last week, and not everyone has played through it
yet. I know I haven't; I've been absorbed in Halo.
Now I'm probably not the only one writing in about this, so I also apologize
if this letter is redundant in the face of other letters which you might
receive. But I would appreciate it if, in the future, Double Agent makes sure
to mark spoiler-filled letters as spoiler-filled letters, so that those who
would be spoiled can skip over the letter.
Thanks,
-Nij
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Actually, you were the only one who wrote in about that. But come on, I know you've been reading this column long enough to know that generally, we do mark our spoilers quite clearly in Double Agent land. Fair enough to remind Erin about it this once, since she's new here ... but don't act like it's been a problem in the past, cause that's just not so.
| Low pain threshold |
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Nich-
Wednesday's column (on battle systems) certainly added weight to the cliche
- you can't please everyone - even among a small population of RPG fanatics.
Game designers would do well to read columns like Wednesday's, though.
Anyway.
This semester, we had to write a paper on an electroacoustic music composer.
Being the devout, Square-fearing gamer that I am, I wrote it on Uematsu,
and to my surprise, I got an A. Also, back in my first year at university,
I wrote an essay on FFVII for a general art theory course, and picked up a
B+ on that.
So, the questions I have for everyone else are (obviously)
a) what school projects have you encorporated games into?
and
b) how have said projects been received?
Lastly, in response to the question posed yesterday - why would you finish a
game you don't like? - well, with any 30+ hour RPG, there's going to be a
certain amount of crap to be put up with. Take Xenogears - sure, the first
30 hours are shit, and the last 20 hours are crap, but there are 10 good
hours sandwiched between those parts. Perhaps that's a bad example. In my
case, given the dismal amount of time I have to play games these days, I
only buy the games that everyone is raving about, so I feel that I should
play them through - there must be something in them that other people
enjoyed.
-CS
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Personally, I give a game 5 hours to get good before it gets tossed in favor of either the next one on my plate or an old favorite, and it takes a lot of wheedling from people I know and trust before I'll give it a second chance. I don't have much patience for slow-starting games--a lot of it was eroded during the glut of 32-bit RPGs, the most mediocre of which seemed to have a lot more padding at the beginning than I remember in the 16-bit days.
| Nomadic lifestyles |
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Nich-
Dude, if you havn't played Golden Sun, I place it high on the sugestions list.
Drew once chided me saying that he would not put a GBA ahead of a PS2 on the
to get list, but I've been pondering.
A large amount of us who consider ourselves "gamers" or whatnot started
playing when we were young, but now a great deal of us are HS and college
aged. I think portable gaming is going to become larger and larger as the
gamers become more on the move. I chose a GBA to a PS2 because I simply do
not have the time for hardcore console gaming like way back when.
Whatever, just a thought, and since I havn't had one for a few years, I
figured I would be polite and share. We DO live in a narco-sindacist commune
after all, and I guess that would make you the actine executive officer of
the week.
Peace,
-Ray Stryker, who's eyes hurt from so much focusing on so small a screen....
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I also think portable gaming is going to become a bigger deal, but not for the same reasons as you do--I think the games are just getting better. What does being college-age have to do with becoming "more on the move"? I've carried my GBA around in my booksack for the past month going around classes, and never took it out to play except when I was in the confines of my own dorm room--where I also had a passel of regular consoles as well. The only place I've really ever taken advantage of handheld gaming is on airplane trips, both en route and during downtime at the gates. You might have something there, but I'll want to see some figures on heightened sales of handheld games and some hard proof that people are more mobile these days before I'll let it to so easily.
| But no one thinks it's odd that one fighter plane can destroy the whole alien army |
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Nich,
Have you ever noticed that the people who work at Square are not very
good at how numbers affect people's looks? I'm sure you've (as well as
every single human ever to play the damn game) noticed that Cid in Final
Fantasy Seven is considered 'old' at age thirty-five. In games I'm
playing the main character, usually being the same age as I (Or younger
than you), saving the world with angst that matches that of a middle-aged
Walmart clerk, while we sit and play with computer toys. And while it may
be true that we shallow gamers don't want to save an obese princess,
there's just something unholy about playing as a scantily clad,
six-foot-tall, ninety-nine pound anorexic girl.
-Lee, "Play Chrono Cross again if you're not quite sure what I mean by
that last part"
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Yeah, well, welcome to anime influences. In the case of Chrono Cross and its squad of superkids, Square is probably going with the (not entirely implausible) theory that a evoking a sense of wonder works better when you're not parading around a bunch of battle-hardened veterans. And as for Cid, well, maybe it's just that I haven't played the game in some time, but I don't remember him coming off or being presented as particularly old. Not in the way that, say, VI portrayed the 40-year-old Cyan and the 60-year-old Strago as older men.
| You've got questions, we've got zilch |
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Nich,
I have a question. A couple weeks ago, I read (I forget which magazine it
was in) that Joe Liberman and other satanists of the like are now taking
more serious steps with the whole sensorship jig on games. Enlighten us.
How serious is it now? How close to completion is this most evil plot?
When will I have to gather my weapons, band of best friends, and glowing
orbs that contain certain mystical powers in order to stop this?
-Frank
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I have no idea. And since I keep a pretty close ear to the ground where these things are concerned, the fact that I have no idea should tell you that it's not very close at all. Remember that we're dealing with the world of politics here, where victory comes about pretty much when you say it does, regardless of the actual situation at hand.
Closing Comments:
Well, let's see if we can get some more mail tomorrow. How about this: I've posted the odd review here and there recently for some pretty heavily anticipated games, and found myself catching flak for two reasons:
1) I gave a middling review to a very popular game, and was accused of just saying those things to look like I was rebelling against the hype.
2) I gave a positive review to a very popular game, and was accused of just saying those things because I couldn't look past the hype.
Do game reviews matter at all anymore? Is the possibility still open for a reviewer to simply say what's on his mind about a given game, and have his or her comments taken at face value? Does anyone out there still read reviews before purchasing games, or are people really after some kind of "official" validation of their own already-formed opinion? Honestly, the second possibility is the only way I can understand some of the mail I get, but let me know.
-Nich Maragos, holiday specter
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