Different Perspectives: A look at the ideas of Gaming today.
Posted by: Marcus
Before I get started, I just want to say thank you to anyone who has read this blog up to this point. If you've enjoyed yourself, good for you.
Anyway, this week I've got my spur of what I want to rant about from a different source than usual. To give you a little background, I've been a subscriber to a dude who calls himself Moviebob. Moviebob is also known as the Game Overthinker, recent winner of the "My Vids Don't Suck" contest over at Screwattack.com, which is a great website, and he's very deserving of that honor. With that said, this post is a quasi-response to some of his videos on Youtube, particularly the idea of gaming today lacking the goofy, yet creative spark of the retro days.
Before I get started, I'd like to give a message to Bob specifically. Bob, if you read this, I do want you to know that I'm also a gamer who remembers, and loved the old days of getting frustrated at Castlevania and nearly throwing my controller through a wall, and beating Mario Brothers for the first time. I miss those days, and still enjoy the sounds of E1M1 as much as I did the first time I heard it.
With that said, I have to say that I disagree that gaming has lost its creative spark when it comes to "out-there" ideas. However, I do think that too much emphasis has been put on the "serious business" side, and I partially blame the Spaz gamers that I outlined in my previous entry, and the MLG fad. When it comes to "serious games" and "serious gamers" they enjoy games that take themselves far too seriously. The first two games that come to mind are Halo 3 and Call of Duty: World at War.
Halo 3 is supposed to be a game about the Earth fighting a war against an interstellar cult, but it doesn't feel like it, and World at War just sucks. I'm not even going to go into detail. Neither have anything inside of them that are inspired, and neither of them are fun without friends to play with, making them damn near worthless. However, the "serious" gamer has decided that these games are the cream of the crop, and they've become much more popular than they would have, say, ten years ago, or from my prediction, ten years from now.
Anyway, I can't say that the crazy concepts of the old days are completely gone. Let's take a look at a few games from the here and now, and break down their core concepts.
Gears of War is a third person shooter where your main enemies are oversized lizards with asthma. You're playing as a group of soldiers with armor that looks like it was inspired by Soundwave the Decepticon, and using crazy weapons like grenades with a bolo attachment, a futuristic take on the Tek Bow from Turok 2, and an assault rifle with a CHAINSAW attached to it! Those are all neat ideas, and they're tied together with a solid storyline that is dark and engrossing, but never takes itself too seriously, with the Carmine of the game setting in for what seems to be their "Kenny."
Madworld is an attempt to return to the old beat-em-up stylings of a Final Fight or a Streets of Rage with a crazy storyline that could only come from the fucked up mind of the man who created Devil May Cry. It's Frank Miller meets Hideo Yamamoto, and it's downright awesome.
The list goes on, and I don't really want to spend too much time on naming games, and more on the ideas. I think the big problem is that the games that want to be taken "seriously" in this day and age still don't want to get rid of the crazy ideas, and I don't really understand why these developers keep trying to make games that will be taken seriously. Call of Duty 4, while a really solid game, had a storyline that really sat on the fence of whether it was trying to be a war story, or a Hollywood style action flick turned video game. Same goes with Bionic Commando. GRIN evidently didn't realize that the elements they were trying to put together with that level of downward feel only works for Metal Gear Solid, namely because Hideo Kojima is a goddamn genius.
What I do think is that different people should work on different titles. I enjoyed Bionic Commando for what it was, but the entire time it felt like they were trying too hard to blur the lines between military shooter and science-fiction based action game. If they had a different writer for that game, and didn't try and make it seem so serious, it could have been much more enjoyable, and a lot more fun. Let's face it. The one thing that game did incredibly well was the feeling of swinging through that city, and (for me anyway) it got the adrenaline pumping.
Then again, maybe part of the problem for some of these games is the immersion factor. Games like Gears of War, Metal Gear Solid, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and their ilk do an excellent job of getting the player to care about their respective universes, and don't try to tie themselves that hard to the modern day, unlike your atypical FPS game nowadays.
To conclude, I do have to say that the fun absurdity of the retro gaming era isn't gone, but it certainly isn't getting the spotlight that it truly deserves, because it's what set Video Gaming apart from other forms of media in the first place. Now, we just have to wait and see if the games that are still in those old series can still live up to the name. Mario is pulling it off, but I'm really hoping to see Castlevania: Lords of Shadow get that series back to the grandeur it once had.
Introductions and Gears of War franchise talk
- Posted by: Marcus
Hey there, kiddies. I've posted two blogs thus far, and before I get into my subject for today, I'd just like to point out that I'm not the only member of The Cynic's Corner. The other two brains behind this little project are Clarity and Raziel. Clarity is a student at the University of Paris Island, and Raziel is a cool dude from Australia. I hope you look forward to hearing from these two in the future, due to Raziel's love for Anime and Game Reviews, and Clarity's MMA know-how and similar game love.
Anyway, I want to talk today about Gears of War, which is probably more than obvious due to the image to the left.
Gears, for me, came out of left field. It was the video game equivalent of the quasi-famous "throw-back" scene from the movie Rookie of the Year. When this game came out, and a friend brought it over on release day, I was utterly shocked by everything that was in the game. The first thing that hit me, first and foremost, was that the game was not only wearing an M rating, but really embraced the rating and used it as an accurate branding of the content. It was dark, gritty, down to earth, violent, and made no bones about it. In the time of the Halo's and Call of Duty's, an M rating seemed like a joke on a killer app. Not so with Gears.
Aside from that, I found myself being sucked into the campaign's co-op mode, not so much because of how good the action was, how cool the weapons were, or how different the combat was. I was absolutely loving how teamwork was so integral to the experience. In every fight, I found myself relying on my friend that I was playing with completely and utterly. It was so different from anything I had played in so long, that I could not believe that those mechanics made it into a killer app.
Multiplayer shocked me in the same method. Every single mode was Team Deathmatch, but with a different twist (this is before Annex was added). I loved the simplicity, and I loved how Epic was essentially shouting at the gamers, "THIS GAME IS ABOUT TEAMWORK!"
You see, this is what Epic gets right and Bungie and Infinity Ward don't. Call of Duty and Halo are about these nameless, faceless, undeveloped characters of soldiers walking out against glorified cannon fodder and slaughtering them wholesale. It's like Colonel Sanders against an army of chickens. Gears of War, though it has its figurehead, makes you realize from the get-go that you are by no way, shape, or form a one man army. It's you and your squad against an enemy that is highly trained, willing to kill, and willing to fight so they don't die. Completely different ballgame.
Anywho, when it came time for the sequel, I found myself enjoying the game just as much, but here is where I started to see some kinks in the armor when it comes to this series, bringing me to what I want to call the Gripe section. Essentially, Gears of War 2 is still an excellent game. It's probably the best of what I call the Big 3 of XBL online play (the other two being Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3). It's quality is bar none superior, but the problem is that though it is great, the game could be mind-blowing if done right.
So, I've decided to organize these into what Epic can fix, and what they can't fix.
[UNFIXABLE]
- The Remaining Networking Problems -
Let's face it. You can't fix the problems of people bridging connections or lag switching. It's unavoidable. Those things are easy to make, but they're also easy for the XBL staff to pick out and ban people. Gears fans, please stop blaming Epic for this. For some odd reason, these pricks gravitate toward Gears, and Epic can't do anything about it. On that note, Epic should never apologize for the actions of these jerks who do this. They're not responsible. If people want to act like little kids, then they have that ability, but they'll learn the lesson that there are repercussions.
- The Cheaters -
This is the big thing that Epic cannot solve. Sturgeon's Law applies to people too. 90% of them are crappy human beings, and most of them have decided that XBL is a great place to be, which sucks for those of us who are sporting people who like a fair game, and don't mind losing provided the playing field was level. These morons will always exist, but keep in mind that at the end of the day how people on the outside looking in view fair fighters against cheap douche bags.
[FIXABLE]
- The Game Setup -
Gears of War's online and campaign setup is far too cookie cutter for such a great game. Gears multiplayer doesn't need matchmaking, and it doesn't need to take rank into account. I say set up the Multiplayer like Call of Duty. Keep the ranks there simply as a badge of honor, and then just throw a bunch of guys in it and let them throw down. Another idea would be to have an option of setting up your own room, or using Matchmaking. Merging the two games' multiplayer styles for the next installment wouldn't be a bad idea. Single player wise, every single moment of the campaign needs to be just as good as the opening. The first game had this down, but it was too short. Gears 2 has the length and pacing of the campaign right, but Skorge was a puss, and the final boss was lackluster. There was nothing that compared to the fight with RAAM.
- The Storyline -
Gears of War 2 has one of the most heart-wrenching moments in a video game that I've seen in a long while, and had really solid dialogue for what dialogue there was. Truth be told, Epic really knows how to nail soldier to soldier interactions, add tidbits of humor in dark situations, and give a real feeling of pressure and confusion. The only problem here is that there are still far too many blanks to be filled. To put it simply, we know Marcus, and we know Dom. Give us a little on Baird, a little on Cole, then explain the Locust, and the game's universe will be wholly fleshed out. Though I'm excited about what's next for the story, and jazzed about the next book, there's so much room for failure.
- Books for Storytelling -
Though I know I just said that I'm jazzed about the next book, I really don't want Gears to fall into the same slump that Halo did, relying on third party media to tell backstory so you don't have to try as hard with your narrative. Gears should not allow itself to go and get itself into that funk when it comes to the story. Use books to tell history, side stories, and other fun extra stuff. Don't use them to try and fill in the blanks, because we all know that half the base audience won't read the books, no matter how good they are.
At the end of the day, I could actually come up with other things I'd like to see the series do different, but those don't come from the idea of fixing something. Gears of War, as a franchise, is incredibly solid in its format and what it tries to accomplish, and all I wanted to do is simply point out the flaws, not ask for a reinvention of the formula. Gears of War is a fantastic franchise, and will probably continue to do things that Infinity Ward can't do, and Bungie will blatantly rip off.
Wait, what's this about Bungie ripping off of Epic, Marcus?
That's coming soon, kiddies...............
