Ways to Show Immaturity as a Video Game Journalist

If anyone has paid attention to the internet following E3, they have probably seen a number of articles deconstructing the recent announcements from the Big 3 and beyond. If you have looked for an article from me about E3, don't. I've decided no to make any comment beyond a long sigh. So, just go ahead and let one out for yourself, lasting about twenty seconds, and move on.

The other thing that is common are articles that just show how far the "video game journalist" has to come before they will have any level of acceptance as writers. And while I'm not here to defend my hobby, because it's not real journalism folks, I will say that we could at least act like professionals. This means that we need to let things take their course before we say that something doesn't work. Sure, we can speculate, and post our speculations. I've done that myself, saying that Microsoft has something to prove with their next generation. No console has blown everyone's minds out the gae on the third generation, so there is some history to the statement. That doesn't mean that Durango is going to be awful, or that it will have growing pains. It's a statment, based on history. Okay, let's move on.

1. "Franchises that Need to Die" lists:

This one is just immature. I've seen countless articles on N4G saying that various game series need to end. There are often some positive reasons for their statements, such as putting the spotlight on other franchises, or that some games over saturate certain markets. More often than not, it's a cheap ploy for page views by writers who want to make money off of site advertisement. We all want that, but writing unique content for your page helps more for this, or breaking a story before anyone else. Instead, we get frequent pieces about how Call of Duty has too many games, and that Final Fantasy is garbage now. Some go as far as to say that Halo should never have had sequels. Well, let me break it down for you folks. The video game industry runs on money. A lot of it. Millions of dollars go into these productions, and it's a nightmare trying to recoup the costs. Franchises help this more than it hurts. A new Call of Duty every year doesn't mean anything more than Activision grabs a quick million seller, and they even have enough of a creative soul to make it different. That can't be said for EA who could pretty much copy one set of Madden code into the next year and add whatever cheap new feature they have left to try, and shove that thing onto store shelves. But that's a different conversation. Final Fantasy is one of the most important role playing games on consoles, and to end that has dangerous repercussions. Taking away Final Fantasy would bring Square Enix to it's knees, and possibly mean a lot of lost jobs for a big named studio. As for Halo, gamers should be so lucky that there is a studio that cares as much about it's IP as 343 Industries, and Bungie before them. Halo has a rich, well crafted lore that is about to be explored in the games themselves. The single player campaigns have always been brilliantly crafted, and have even been the blueprint for FPS games since the series reached the public in 2001. Not to mention, the console shooter is now a standard because of Halo. Without it, we probably wouldn't have gotten The Elder Scrolls franchise on consoles. That's just the short version. I've seen a lot of other games hit lists like this.

2. "Why X-Console/X-Idea is Going to Fail"

I'm slightly to blame here, considering that I never had any faith in the Playstation Move. But hey, let's face it, Sony hasn't ever had that much push for their peripherals (remember the Pocketstation). So, take what I'm going to say with a grain of salt if you must.

There are dozens of naysayer articles about the WiiU and the tablet controller, and people have every right to believe that Nintendo is nuts for doing this. However, none of us own the WiiU yet, and not even the mightiest of crystal ball will tell us the fate of this device in gaming. Obviously, someone thinks this is a good idea. Look at Microsoft's Smart Glass technology that is going to be launched on the X-Box 360 this generation. That is Microsoft experimenting with a similar concept to Nintendo, doing a preemptive take on what could be their own tablet control. If Nintendo pulls it off, expect Sony to rush their way into some overly complex design of the exact same thing that may somehow involve shoving a Playstation Eye into the box because they still have warehouses full of the stupid things years after that toy died on the PS2.

In reality, there is no way to determine how successful a product is going to be at an early stage in its life. If we did that, then we wouldn't be looking forward to new 3DS games right now. The PSP wouldn't have...had...an...acceptable run. The PS3 definitely wouldn't be the giant it is in the industry. Speculate, but be realistic. Some things work out, and the rest fall by the wayside and end up on the shelf of a collector who likes weird obscure things. The WiiU is a risk, taken by Nintendo. As a business, they believe in it. Microsoft believes in Smart Glass, and they believed in the Kinect. Sure, I hate the Kinect, but I'm glad it has panned out for them. It puts revenue in their pockets, and keeps them in R&D to prepare for the next move.

3. "Top 10 Best Games Ever."

People have been playing home video games for almost forty years. That's a lot of games. When you factor the amount of consoles, iterations of home computers, hand held consoles, cell phones and tablets, you have an enormous library to pick games out of. These might be your favorite games, but that doesn't mean that you should toot your horn on the internet with a blog about it, post it to N4G to get attention, and, at times I have seen this phenomena, get angry when someone points out that you putting Super Mario Bros. in your list means you haven't played anything.

Opinions are just opinions, and fighting about them doesn't really get you anywhere. State it, be prepared to back it up, but it doesn't mean that someone is wrong when they say you haven't played enough games. It's disgusting how people act when they are trying to put themselves out there as professional writers. Sure, if this piece gets circulated on N4G I'm going to probably see two year old blog posts of mine brought up where I may have said something that contradicts this article, but who cares. That was two years ago. I've changed since then, and so has my opinion. Just like the opinions of those ten best games out of the thousands that exist, it's flexible.

As for why it's detrimental to your writing career, it's just not creative. If you break out your top ten games, then you are writing a piece about yourself, and you don't have anything else to talk about. It's filler. Your top ten NES games? Equally weak. Everyone has a pretty good idea about the best titles in the NES library, and even the best obscure ones. Web celebrities can get away with this because we are already interested in their opinions anyway, but even then, it's a quick thing. Screw Attack does decent top tens, but they also put a comedic spin on things. Top Ten Games that Make you Want to Bone? That's a brilliant list to put out on Valentines Day!

People do enjoy a good list, and maybe they will even enjoy this rant on the poor state of content generation for blogs on my website that has an incredibly small amount of entertaining content on it. I understand why people do it, and I even think that I will stick some of my favorites on a list some day just for the fun of it. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to run that list right over to N4G so I can pick up some views of it. N4G is a great resource for up and coming writers and websites to build a viewer base. Don't exploit it for your Top Ten Genesis games not Starring Sonic the Hedgehog. The five viewers you pick up is not worth as much as the review of Pier Solar, which is a recent homebrew Genesis game actually programmed onto a Genesis cartridge.

If you disagree, fine, but I'm tired of the cheap shots made on video game websites. I've been watching the Vita not do so well, but even I know that I will pick one up if they ever get some games I care about on it. I don't see it crashing and burning, and even if I did, I have the intelligence to realize that spilling a list of reasons why it's doomed is counterproductive. Think forward, to what's coming, or just write retro columns. Negativity in the gaming community is part of why we all seem to have so much trouble getting along. I exist in a great spot in the middle. I'm well played on many genres, even thundering my way through most of those Call of Duty games that it's fun to hate these days. I've got a few Madden titles, but only one per console at maximum. My JRPG collection contains some obscure titles, and my interest in shmups is only hindered by my inability to drop several hundred dollars on Saturn imports. Just think before you crack open that WordPress editing screen to show why you think Nintendo is mad to put money in something for kids again. Remember, you were a kid once. Didn't you have enough fun to still be playing games twenty years later?

And now for some...

words...

Yes, it's time to sit down and make my little word count meters move. I decided I'd warm up with a little bit of conversation on how I've spent my morning. It was a little bit productive, you might even say.

I have just bugged a few more editors about getting paid work, including another shout into the ear of the kind editor of The Escapist. I'm hoping that this will garner some attention, and get me a shot, or at least the bloody bullet. The last pitch I sent to Escapist warranted another rejection, but I'm not disappointed. It's just a rejection letter, friends, and if you write, you will see many of them.

In other news--The podcast seems to be doing okay for a hardly advertised bit of rambling about the state of the video game industry. I'd like to see more listeners, but then again, I'd also like to see more readers for this blog, which has a feature that I have spoken of, but have yet to introduce, which leads me to...

PAST GENERATIONS! I have two articles in the can, awaiting editing. I'm just looking for the right time to post them, and this just isn't it. Besides, I've only got five 32X games so far, and that's not enough to really launch this thing off in style. Perhaps I will find a few more in good time, and not go broke in the process.

Alright, enough babbling. I think I need to blindfold myself now, and see which of the giant manuscripts I will stab with it's pointy business end. Wish me luck.

Recent Acquisitions

Just added two complete Sega CD games to my collection, Sonic CD and MegaRace. Also, the beautiful girlfriend added Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow to my collection, which has eaten up my attention for the past four days. It is quite fun, but the story is inconsequential to my experience, and the touch screen stuff is pretty pointless, and breaks the flow of gameplay. I am about half through the game.

Tomorrow is the $1 Box Sale, and I can't wait. Maybe I can put a hurting on those near-complete runs that I have been building for the past two years. Maybe I'll add to the Sandman collection a bit? Any of these things will be exciting. If you are somehow reading this, come down to Fanboy Comics in the morning an check it out.

Alright...bye.

Yes, you are reading correctly.

Along with my run of 32X reviews, I'm going to be doing a podcast on video games. There will probably be some comic and music talk in there as well, depending on the episode. I'm looking at one installment a month, with a second being added when there is time. Keep an eye on this page over the next week for the first episode. Since I'm on spring break, I figure I've got time to take care of such little things as talking about video games for thirty minutes. Anyway, there are two 32X reviews coming down the pipe, as I'm ready to discuss Star Wars Arcade and Doom. Corpse Killer has made it into the disc tray of my Sega CD, and the 32X powered it, so there will be a review on that eventually as well. All plans to do video reviews are currently moot, as my Sega isn't cooperating with my video capture card. However, all of my other systems are working, so I may just try to squeeze something in at some point in the near future. I've got raw footage for a Rebel Assault II review, so maybe I'll do something with that. Who knows.

Okay...you can leave now.

Coming soon

Alright, so I've been hinting at this in the drafts for blogs that I'm writing, so I'm cutting to the chase to announce...



I'm going to start with Star Wars Arcade and Doom. God help me...

That said, it's not going to happen tommorow or next week. It's going to be a bit. I'm playing with the format, and considering video. I'll let you know as it develops. Oh well. I hope you come back for the reviews regardless.

My Case for Rebel Assault

I can clearly recall sitting in the living room of a childhood friend, jerking a cheap joystick back and forth trying not to crash into a corridor of spikes in what was supposed to be a training mission, dying, loading and repeating ad nauseum until I about wanted to launch the disc out of the window. So, one could be completely understood in asking "why would you want to play a game as absolutely horrible as Rebel Assault?" Well, allow me to explain.

A mixture of nostalgia and curiosity brought me back to the forgotten PC FMV-Shooter series about three years ago when a copy of Rebel Assault II for PS1 popped into a local shop for a rather reasonable six dollars. I threw down my cash, went home, and fought the PS3 to play it. About twenty minutes later, I gave up and dug out the PS1. Then it started. Two solid hours of cheesy cut scenes, abysmal writing and acting, and quite possibly the most unsatisfying ending this side of Final Fantasy VII, and I had the game finished.

It was about this time that I realized that my childhood self had about as much intelligence about the way the game is built as I did about nuclear physics, sex, or even that big bloody yellow thing hanging in the sky. I had no idea then what an FMV shooter was, nor what an FMV was. The PC was this odd little thing to play video games on, and I thought that all of the flight based Star Wars games were supposed to control like X-Wing or Tie Fighter.

Having fulfilled the need to finish the game, I remembered those spikes sticking out in the third level of the first Rebel Assault, and my interest in playing through the CD dinosaur emerged. I hunted for a cheap copy of the PC version, and was met with insane prices and a lack of availability through Steam and it's competitors. As a result, it fell to the back seat.

Until I picked up a Sega Genesis with all of the lovely trimmings. Back in November, I plopped twenty bucks into the cash register of the same store where I bought my copy of RAII, and hunted for the port of the first. Thankfully, the port was a bit more accessible, and probably easier to deal with than the awkward backwards compatibility with older windows games that Vista 64-bit has. It was time to play through once again and put aside my grudge with ye olde spike canyons.

Little did I know that FMV flight became easier from the first game to the second, and the controls would do the same. I don't know how I actually make it through the flight run on Beggar's Canyon on Rebel Assault, but it was extremely frustrating on every try. The Genesis control doesn't exactly seem suited for flight games, and this fact unfortunately carries over to the only other Star Wars game on the console, SW Arcade for 32x. No, I'm not counting the chess game, because it's still chess.

Well, practice made suitable, and I trekked my way straight through to the third level. The second was a fair bit easier.

What I found in the third level was the same spiky mess that I fought tooth and nail against in my youth.

And I finished it on the first try.

After that, I shot through the game, only getting hung up on a single level (which is insane in it's own right). I've since attempted a run at a higher difficulty, and am almost finished, thanks to the lovely set of passwords that I'm storing in my blackberry as I play through.

Now, onto the part of the Rebel Assault series that confuses me; enemy attacks. In addition to the odd laser blast hitting you for no other reason than you can't drag the cursor over fast enough, when a ship you didn't kill passes you by, you take damage. Immediately. There isn't a break to suggest "there is a ship on your tail and you took damage from a shot". It's odd, awkward, and completely unfair during a small selection of the missions. There is a difference between knowing the pattern after dying once or twice, and just having too many targets to take out in a small period of time due to the oddity of shooting sprites on an FMV background. The touches of latency between shot and kill are in place to allow that little bit of breathing room in the actual difficulty of the game, and I am thankful for it. But there is only so little you can do in some scenarios. Case in point, there is a stage at the beginning of the Death Star attack run where not-Luke Skywalker has to take out an entire Star Destroyer worth of Tie Fighters. The level of memorization required is strikingly high, and this is easily the most difficult level in the game for two reasons: the first is that on any difficulty but easy, you take enough damage from the ships you miss to make getting through the level an incredible challenge, the other is the trio of Ties, flying underneath the range of vision you are given from your cockpit, that attack one of your wing mates. The death of this pilot restarts the level. Allow me to make this clear--you get about ten seconds to kill three fighters. In order to pull off this herculean feat, you have to start firing before they even come into view, and even then you have to have a massive amount of luck in order to take out the three fighters. Not to mention if you have any damage and do succeed, the remainder of the level is a touch difficult. Not insane, like the wave you have to take out here, but pretty hairy nonetheless. Past this level, the entire game is extremely easy in my opinion. Of course, I haven't finished it on normal because of the Tie Attack level that is barring me from completing my Normal run. If I do surpass this run-in with evil game design, I will probably shoot through the other three levels without even breathing because the preceding levels were so easy on the normal run through because they weren't that much difficult from the Easy mode. Either I got pretty good at the game my first try out, or it's just not that varied in terms of difficult, IE, increased damage and nothing else, that I can handle Hard when the time comes.

So, dated game play, design, and video, awkward controls on both version, and a wholly bizarre experience aside, I love Rebel Assault. I know that everyone considers these games to be a mess, and they are, but they are such a lovely little mess that I don't know what I'd do without them. They are fun, and they feel like Star Wars. That's all I can ask for.

Alright, good day everyone.