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| Jeff's Gaming Rants; Game makers and fans beware. | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 28 2008, 09:53 PM (626 Views) | |
| Jeff | Jul 28 2008, 09:53 PM Post #1 |
Lord of Pie & BBWs
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First off, let me begin by saying I am, in fact, a gamer. I have been since I was a small child. As a result, some terminology in this article might be unfamiliar to those who are not initiated into the gaming scene, and for that I apologize, but little can be done due to the nature of what I'm about to delve into. To begin, let's talk about the game makers and developers. First about release dates and deadlines, since so many seem to have a hard time with those. In a NORMAL business, or heck, even in high school or college, when one is given a deadline by a superior, failing to meet it is met with a minimum of a stern lecture or mark down, or if it's a really significant project, just being flat-out fired. However, in the realm of video games, missing deadlines isn't only commonplace AND expected, it's actually PRAISED. Miss a deadline? No problem! Kick the project back a couple months - deadlines and expectations be damned. Rather than being fired, we're told they are "Working hard". If you can't meet a deadline, why even set one? However, if you bring this up anywhere and in anyway - and I MEAN anywhere and anyway - you'll be met by legions of ravenous fanboys proclaiming your ignorance and defending the game companies with a fervor unseen since the American civil rights movement. Which is funny, as the game companies more or less admit to not caring a bit about the gamers, so much as their money - and if making the fussy plebs happy lines their pockets, then throw out more of the same, that always works! Unless you happen to work for CapCom, then half the fanbase will bitch because it's too similar to a previous installment. But God help you if you change anything because then the OTHER half will bitch. Speaking of monotony, why do we allow game companies to get away with pretty much re-hashing the same damn game? A good example would be... well, hell, just PICK a first-person shooter with a "2" "3" or whatever alphanumeric number after it, or to select a well-known franchise and game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Oooh! Did you hear that? That's a legion of fanboys preparing to come out of the woodwork. Crikey kids, this could get dangerous! DANGAH, DANGAH!!! No, seriously. OoT is almost an EXACT COPY of the SNES' Zelda: Link to the Past. Don't believe me? LttP starts with Link sleeping, gets summoned to do some stuff, collects three jewels (One green, one blue and one red) to get the Master Sword to stop ebil, then the world itself changes and Link then has to collect 7 seemingly-important items corresponding to 7 people, with the exception of the freebie handed to him right off the bat, then kills Ganon, and the world lives happily ever after. Oops, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to spoil that but it's not much of a plot twist to say "The bad guy dies and the good guy wins". The start of OoT has Link sleeping, gets summoned to do some stuff, collect three jewels (One green, one blue, and one red) to get the Master Sword to stop ebil, then the world itself changes and Link then has to collect 7 seemingly-important items corresponding to 7 people, with the exception of the freebie handed to him right off the bat, then kills Ganon, and the world lives happily ever after. Sure, one could argue the incredibly minute difference in the light world/dark world; kid Link/adult Link system and that Guy Shishio from GaoGaiGar voices adult Link, but that's like arguing that a tortoise is different from a turtle - because no one gives a crap either way. Even though a lot of companies do this, Nintendo is among the few that's allowed to get away with it. It's not to say that these games weren't fun, but even on the first playthru, the feeling of deja vu was undeniable. While I'm harping on Nintendo for a little bit - not to say that I'm not a fan, because I am in spite of my complaints - one particular character they happen to treat a little oddly is one Ms. Samus Aran. While I'm not actually a fan of Metroid at all (except Super Metroid, which kicked ass), I know she starts off as a mute bounty hunter whose first game had the twist of "Oh my God, you've been playing a girl all this time" and became a feminist icon of female empowerment without getting into the "Men are all evil and marriage is slavery" BS. However, in recent times - since the GameBoy Advance generation of games onward - she's fallen to the same self-effacing low as Laura Croft - the only video game to sell on the sole merit of the promise of boobs as opposed to actually being... y'know, a good game - and is now propped up as little more than a sex symbol. In Super Smash Bros Brawl, you can play in her Zero Suit form, a more speedy version of the otherwise bulky, armored form which paradoxically takes the exact same amount of damage from any particular hit, but this form is also basically a skin-tight blue bodysuit. Well, that's not necessarily the problem, the problem is that every pose, every jump, every attack is fashioned so that the viewing public gets the best view of her front and rear if you get my drift. Her victory pose, in fact, is a picture of her, in her Zero Suit form, on all fours with her rear ever so slightly tilted towards the camera - and then Sakurai has the gall to complain about people trying to shoot up skirt screencaps of Peach and Zelda, the only other females in the game who look an awful like porcelain dolls made by someone with a limited grasp on the concepts of human anatomy and physics. Anyways, the fanbases of these companies are often just as bizarre and pathetically predictable as the companies themselves. Some companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Squeenix are given so much slack if they attempted to bungee-jump from a space shuttle they'd STILL hit the planet below, whereas others like CapCom and Sega have fanbases that are virtually inappeasable regardless of what the companies themselves attempt to say or do. The blue blur, Sonic, has hit something of a rough spot after the release of Sonic Heroes, in spite of the hit GBA and DS titles, but for some reason it's become popular to hate one of my favorite childhood icons due to a one or two bad games. I mean, seriously, how many of his games can you REALLY take issue with? Sonic Heroes? Well, kinda. Shadow the Hedgehog, sure. Riders 1, maybe, Riders 2, definitely. Sonic 2006? So I hear. Aaaand... that's it. The rest of the complaints stem from fan opinion and speculation rather than the games themselves, which is sad, because after the awesome that was Sonic Adventure 2 and its GameCube port (Sonic Adventure 2: Battle) I'm willing to cut the little guy some slack. Anyways, more out of me later. Enjoy. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Root | Jul 28 2008, 10:41 PM Post #2 |
The Speaker for the Dead
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Deadlines? In YOUR Gaming Franchise? It's Figures, honestly. One thing that I'd personally add on is the whole shtick that Nintendo is pulling with the Wii. I can expect by the year 2010, maybe. The year I graduate. I think that's a bit of wishful thinking on my part, but probably not too far off from the actual truth. It's been out two years. No store (and there are quite a few around that carry it) has it. For two years. Don't you tell me they're "producing them as fast as they can!" because they're still being bought for full price no problem. Two years now, and you mean to tell me "can't keep up supply with demand!". To me that's total bull-crap and screams "price gouging!" |
Does being the only sane one make me the insane one, in a sort of way? Though my eyes could see, I was still a blind man; Though my mind could think, I still was a madman... "Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run...there's still time to change the road you're on" | |
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| Jeff | Jul 31 2008, 04:55 PM Post #3 |
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Lord of Pie & BBWs
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Earlier today I was playing some Mario Kart Wii on-line. The on-line is well-done and a hell of a lot less cheap as not everyone can summon POW blocks and blue shells out of thin air, so I can actually win from time to time. But I also realized something else I like about the on-line that I hadn't even considered before now. I was, indeed, playing on-line against other human beings from all across the world from every continent shy of Antarctica and I'm sure a day will come when that possibility will crop up, but there was still the strangest aura of peace about me. What could it have been? I mean, I had my own music on... I could make all the comments I wanted... use any character, cart or item I wanted to and felt all the smugger for it. What was it? Because THERE WAS NO WAY FOR THEM TO TALK TO ME. Of course! No chat, no voice chat, no IM's... just a fun and engaging game that I could play with anybody the world over and just enjoy myself. No massacre of my native tongue, no hackers, just peace and fun. People may BMW (Bitch, Moan, and Whine) about Nintendo making on-line anonymous, but after playing on-line games that are NOT anonymous, I've become all the more fond of that invisible layer between them and me. So, why would I be that relieved to not put up with other people when I'm trying to play a game? Well, apart from being an introverted misanthrope, it mostly stems from my on-line experiences through games like Gunbound Revolution, Fly for Fun, Diablo and its sequel. Even though you have some chance of running into some cool people, you're infinitely more likely to meet some little 12-year-old with a vendetta against enjoying the game. A common complaint I'm met with in Gunbound is the fact that my favorite mobile is the Bigfoot. Whereas it's not the only mobile I'm good with, it is my favorite and most-often used one. Apparently, though, to many players of GB use of the Bigfoot is right up there with sleeping with their moms after killing their pets, because they will rage on for HOURS given an opportunity to blame their loss on something other than the fact that they're annoying 12-year-olds with limited grasps of the English language. They get bent mostly because the Bigfoot specializes in blowing the ground away in generous heaping helpings every round - and in a prolonged game this can mean that I've blown away entire maps before and apparently using any strategy beyond dual-whoring is off-limits in the same vein as a Smash Bros. tournytard. One particularly nefarious instance went something like this: Me: *Blows a guy away with my attack* Guy: OMG!!1! n00bfoot! Ur a nub! Me: Mm. Good for me. You're the one who's dead, though. Guy: u didnt kill me!1!! The map was bad! Me: Mm-hmm. Guy: the map was bad! Me: Which is your way of blaming your defeat on something else. Guy: nubfoot is cheap. Me: So, we're back to blaming my mobile rather than the map again? Guy: *Leaves* I have a hard time understanding the mentality that it's somehow bad to use mobiles and items at one's disposal, but what boggles my mind further is how so many people on GB don't get what I mean when I say "The ends justify the means". Maybe I'm just giving them too much credit? On a different note, a lot of MMO's are taking up an "alliance" system, so they aren't ripping off traditional RPG games, they're just ripping off World of Warcraft. The other day I saw a banner ad for a game where you picked an alliance under either a goddess of light or a goddess of darkness, which is fine, in theory, except that a lot of my friends are unreliable pricks. Imagine, if you would that Sean, Root, Rem and I took up this game. Due to my heroic nature, I'd head right for the sign-up table for the light goddess, and I have no doubt Root would be with me. Sean, however, in his perpetual quest to prove... well something, I have no idea what, would go for the goddess of darkness because evil is cool or something silly like that, and attempt to bring Rem with him, but she would join Root and me after I remind her that between the four of us, I'm the best at baking cookies. The problem with making things so utterly blatant is that it's not terribly realistic, but to blur the lines akin to WoW, making its alliances so much like the crusades to be borderline tasteless, only causes people to feel uneasy due to never being able to be a "good" person. Another thing that becomes awkward is most games' guild system. With few exceptions, simply making one is merely an optional ego-inflater, and they're not even exclusive to MMORPGs anymore. Even Gunbound has a guild feature which STILL remains a useless ego-booster for some, and a reason to merely ridicule other players because you "dun liek ur guild" or some such. Unless they have a profound impact on gameplay, including guilds shouldn't even be an issue, so I don't understand why so many games do it. In Gunbound, it changes all of literally NOTHING, so why they include it? I have no idea. Anyways, more out of me later. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Root | Jul 31 2008, 06:01 PM Post #4 |
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The Speaker for the Dead
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This was made on 100% concentrated awesome. Well done! |
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Does being the only sane one make me the insane one, in a sort of way? Though my eyes could see, I was still a blind man; Though my mind could think, I still was a madman... "Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run...there's still time to change the road you're on" | |
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| Sean | Jul 31 2008, 06:37 PM Post #5 |
The ⑥of Four Against Nature
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Yeah, Jeff. You brought up some good points with that rant. Good work. |
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| Jeff | Oct 12 2008, 09:48 PM Post #6 |
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Lord of Pie & BBWs
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It's been a while since I drilled the video game industry and now that they've gotten fat and complacent again, it's time to do what Yngwie Malmsteen said and ATTACK!!! "Difficulty in lieu of innovation" Ho, yay. This one is getting so damn commonplace it makes my head spin. A lot of companies use this crutch. I mean, I Wanna Be The Guy was difficult. It was difficult in a funny way. Funny like a kick to the crotch in that it's funny when it's not you. A lot of games these days are just hard and not funny, even from the sidelines. This can happen for a number of reasons, some being that the game just outright cheats ALA Soul Calibur 3 or any of the Mario Kart games. This is not fun. It is not amusing. It's not innovative. It only PISSES US OFF. A rather egregious example would be Smash Bros Brawl. Yes, I like the game, it's fun as hell, but I still take beef with any game that makes "Hard" the game's "Normal" and tries to act like it's an upgrade by dicing out the "Casual Gaming" demographic which game companies are so badly trying to please. "Fake difficulty makes me a sad panda" At the very heart of gaming, what's the single most important facet to any game, video or otherwise? Well, being able to PLAY IT. Not offering a button customization is just not a good idea. It was a bad idea in the GameCube port of the MegaMan Anniversary Collection, it was a bad idea in Star Fox Command, it's STILL a bad idea in Kirby Superstar Ultra. In some instances, it's forgivable, as it was in the last example I named, but in Star Fox Command, it made the game nearly unplayable and even if you COULD figure it out, you were still clumsily poking and rubbing the screen like you were trying to... well, let's not go there. Also, in the name of fake difficulty would be games where failure is the only option (namely old arcade machines, namely space shooters) and one-hit-point wonders. It's not fun, it's annoying. Anyone who tries to tell me I'm not "OLDSKOOL" can GO TO HELL because I enjoy spending time with the opposite sex too much to be OLDSKOOL. "8-bit is dead, nostalgia is BS" I don't care what anyone says. Making MegaMan 9 8-bit was a bad idea. Now we're going to get a bandwagon effect with game makers attempting to make windfall profits by going "Retro" and "Nostalgic". Well, newsflash. MEGAMAN 8 > MEGAMAN 9 BY FAR. Idiots. Say what you want about the voices, I happened to LIKE the voice acting in MegaMan 8, and a lot of games it's bearable. Look I cede MegaMan X4 was a mistake, but X: Command Mission and X8 more than compensated, fanboiz. 8-bit music may seem quaint and nostalgic, but while playing 8-bit games I just can't shake the thought about how much BETTER it would be with some severe overhaul on a better system, graphics too. I mean we have freaking controllers that are all of a decade or two shy of READING OUR BRAIN WAVES FOR IDENTIFICATION. Why make games where we only use two buttons? What the hell's the point of going backwards? Why is the VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY the only industry that, again, is allowed to pull this nonsense?! If movies did that, there'd be a riot. If computers did it, no one would ever buy them. If TV tried it, the program would be laughed off the air. WHY IS THIS NONSENSE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE?! "Appeal to maturity" On the opposite side of my last argument, as games have evolved and, heck, even before they really did, game developers tried to be "EDGY" and "OMG! PUSHING THE ENVELOPE!" by doing things they knew full well would spark controversy. Cursing, excessive, over-the-top violence and sexuality are used to try and horrify the audience all the more. At this point the video game industry has tried virtually everything they can to make things darker and edgier to the point of absurdity. Tomb Raider is an excellent example. The graphics even for their time were grainy and unappealing, the sound was sub-par and the gameplay was like trying to steer a drunk man on rollerblades who also had no arms... but the games ARE STILL SELLING TODAY. Why? Because Laura Croft has breasts. Big breasts. ... Whoop-die-doo. Way to under-achieve, gamers. Woot. Fuggin' woot. "What? No BBWs? Why not?" Video games these days are so detailed that you can see every detail down to the dirt on the third pore from Solid Snake's ear. As a result, character modeling has advanced all the more, allowing for more and more diverse cast of characters and even character creation programs on the games that actually let you adjust more than just clothing and all of two sliders that barely alter anything *COUGH*SOULCALIBUR*COUGH*. There are characters of all shapes and sizes though. For guys it ranges some "Lanky bishonen who belongs in MegaMan ZX" to "HUGH LIEK XBOX D00D". For women it's "lanky, boyish schoolgirl" to "Schoolgirl attempting to smuggle basketballs under her shirt"... wait, what? Seriously? Yeah, basically. As a general rule, you'll NEVER see a plus-sized woman in a hi-res game (AKA: Something not on a handheld where she'll have a low-res sprite anyway, so who the hell cares?) and if you do... well, she'll never be IMPORTANT in any way, that's for damn sure. The closest thing to a BBW taken seriously at all in a game was the bar maid from Zelda: Twilight Princess. Seeing as how she was plot-pivotal for all of 5 minutes, that hardly seems to counter balance a thing. All I'm saying, is since it's okay to have males of all sizes and still be taken seriously, let's do the same for the women, shall we? Don't make me do EVERYTHING myself, kay? Which translates nicely to my final point. "Lolicon? Up yours, Japan, up yours." *Sigh*. Due to the vast majority of entertainment - in the form of video games and cartoons - come from the Land of the Rising Sun, we also have to put up with all their screwed-up fetishes, the most oft-recurring one being lolicon. For the uninformed, lolicon is a corruption of "Lolita" and some other word I can't recall off-hand, that basically means you have a fetish for underaged girls. This seems disturbingly wide-spread in Japan and I do mean wide-spread. Even to shows that don't have sexuality, per se, the lolicon undertones - or should I say overtones - never seem to evaporate 100%. I mean, the ONLY anime I can think of that lacks them is... that... one... umm... ... ... ... so, yeah. Unfortunately, due to the amazing overlap of anime and video game fanbases, that means a lot of the same minds work on alternative projects, for better or for worse. I don't like younger girls, in fact I tend to gravitate towards older women. It's gross, it's illegal and changing it in the dub from "high school" to "college" DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEAN YOU PERVERT. By the way, Chris Hansen would like a word with you who disagree with me on this one... Okay! More next time! |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Jeff | Oct 21 2008, 06:48 PM Post #7 |
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Lord of Pie & BBWs
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Iiiiiiiiiiit's back! Jeff rants s'more, bitches! Squadala! We're off! "Name one game where weapon durability was a good idea" Because I bet you can't. Fake difficulty in another form, any game where weapons or armor magically degrade for no real reason other than they WANT TO will have instant marks against them in my book. It is never a good idea. Never. It was not a good idea in Diablo, where it added nothing be tedium, it was not a good idea in Fire Emblem, where you basically pick between paying out the nose for more weapons or just spam your main character with cheap crap, and it was most certainly not a good idea in Shadow the Hedgehog - where upon emptying a gun clip, no matter how good the gun is, Shadow would toss the thing aside, and sword-type weapons broke after 3-7 uses after doing all of nothing. It's not a good idea. Never has been. Never will be. It's not innovative. It doesn't add anything to the gaming experience. Stop. Doing. It. Seriously. "Random Number Generator my ass. Try RIGGED number generator." I hate this. I so very much hate this. In a game, usually RPG or strategy or something involving use of an RNG, you can usually notice how it seems to like the computer more than it likes you. In any RPG you'll notice how you will miss a minimum of five times more often than your enemies, in games like Monster Rancher where percentages of success are displayed, you'll notice how any percentage you're given is about half of what it tells for your moves and twice as much for the enemy's moves. It's not fair, it's not fun, it's annoying and makes us want to spam saves and restarting, or quick load, where applicable. Which leads nicely to the next point. "Does anyone know the rules to this game OTHER than us?" Don't you love how your instant-death spells never work on anything except enemies you can dispatch with a normal attack? Or how your CPU enemies can annihilate your entire party one after the other with the same move with a near 100% success rate? Or how in Pokemon, your status-inflicting moves have piss for accuracy, and how your enemies can stop your entire party in their tracks with the same move? I know I don't. Again, it doesn't add anything to the experience except a burning desire to CURB STOMP THE BASTARDS WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA. "Wait... HOW many times can I save?" Limiting the number of times one can save is just asinine. Resident Evil or Omikron being some fairly prevalent and recurring offenders. In some instances, this can lock you in a situation where you want to run a long stretch without saving, and then die, making the game console-stomping frustrating within but a single dick move (IE: those little insufferable things that make us want to turn that nice CD/DVD into a Frisbee). It's, again, fake difficulty by another name. I've never played one, but I've even heard of games where you can save freely, but doing so too many times gives you a bad ending. Just, what the hell? That's not fair. Not all of us have enough time to memorize the entire game and clear it without saving. Okay. That's all this time. More next time around. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Root | Oct 21 2008, 07:14 PM Post #8 |
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The Speaker for the Dead
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Very nicely done, I like your rants...you make some pretty valid points. Though, I've never seen a game that gave you a band ending for saving too much.. |
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Does being the only sane one make me the insane one, in a sort of way? Though my eyes could see, I was still a blind man; Though my mind could think, I still was a madman... "Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run...there's still time to change the road you're on" | |
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| Jeff | Oct 29 2008, 12:49 PM Post #9 |
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Lord of Pie & BBWs
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Today's ranting is a little bit different from the norm. Since we've comfortably past console launch dates, I figured I'd look into the "Then" and "Now" of each of the major contenders in the market. At this point, I figure anyone who was liable to make a decision about their consoles has at this point, so I'm not particularly trying to convince anyone of anything. This is just my opinion and casual observation. --NINTENDO-- The eldest console-maker on the market goes up to bat first. At the end of the GameCube's lifespan, many people suggested Nintendo cease making consoles and focus on game development. Where are they now? -WII- The successor to the 'Cube is this little white box. It's actually smaller than the GameCube, being only about three inches wide and a little less than a foot long. Everyone who sees it for the first time seems to say "That's it?", including myself. I actually waited a full year after it's release date to ask for it for Christmas '07. Even THEN this little guy was selling left and right - I think during that holiday season I saw one in a Target once and it was gone before I left. Suddenly, no one seems to be suggesting Nintendo go to just making games, as the strangely addictive console has attracted ages 1 to 100 and then some. Even nursing homes are investing in these in order to get senior citizens active again. Jeff's Prediction: The Wii has some stuff competition, but even if it doesn't come out on top, it has already made a spectacular showing over the past three years. In the long run, though, I believe the Wii will claim the #1 position for this console generation. -DS- The spiritual successor to the GameBoy Advance, the double-screened handheld has proven to be a big success. The touchscreen interface started off stiff and gimmicky and has been the downfall of more than just one title, but as the developers adapt to its potential, the games have been improving rapidly. I personally have a Generation 1 DS, so mine's a bit larger than the DS Lite or the 3rd revamp coming soon, though I don't know anything about it yet. Jeff's Prediction: Following the success of the GBA, the DS has taken the handheld market by the head since its debut. As things stand now, it seems the DS will come out the superior handheld, but things can possibly change. --SONY-- Sony hit the market with their PlayStation system, being the first of many consoles to utilize CD-ROMs as opposed to the traditional cartridges. Since it hit the market, Sony and their disc-based systems have been tough contenders for Nintendo and, at the start, Sega too. The PS2 dominated during the last console generation, easily holding its own against the GameCube and the first Xbox. How's Sony holding up this time around? -PlayStation 3- The aptly-named follow-up to the PS2 is a behemoth. In terms of pure processor power, the PS3 is the top of the line. The black beast, however, got out of the gate with a rather bad start, being by far the most expensive console and only having two or three games worth mentioning. However, Sony must be given credit, being among the very first to bet it all on Blu-Ray technology and having it pay off. The prices have since dropped, the game catalog has expanded wildly since then, and the PS3 is now easily muscling its way up to the front lines. Jeff's Prediction: I wasn't sure what to think at first. The $599.99 price tag and poor E3 showing discouraged me, as I was a fan of the PS2, but after seeing the beast in action on several titles, both the exclusive and shared variety, I've become a believer. Sony EASILY has the power to take 1st and if not, easily 2nd in the main console market. -PSP- Sony's first go at a handheld meant that a lot of mistakes were inevitably going to be made. The first-gen PSPs suffered many hardware issues, the early games were poor quality and had insufferable load times as if the RAM was dumped each time the screen changed, the PSP-exclusive video discs were a massive failure, resulting in their discontinuation, and even to this day the handheld sells at a loss. HOWEVER! With re-vamps and upgraded models the hardware issues were settled, developers have since found how to best utilize the hardware, resulting in some damn impressive stuff. Jeff's Prediction: As much as I hate to say it, there's no way a console selling at a loss can ever be #1. It's true that the PSP is a more powerful console than the DS, but the damage from a late release, poor showing at E3, higher prices, poor first iteration have already taken their toll. The PSP has a lot of future promise, of course, but in my opinion, there's no way they can catch up now. That's not to say that a PSP2 couldn't muster up the gusto, though... --MICROSOFT-- The third contender in the major console wars only joined the wars just last generation, taking the #2 spot behind the PS2 for most of the ride. How'd they start and how are they doing now? -XBOX 360- As the joke goes - the Xbox did a 360 and wound up right back where they were in the first place. The 360 had a full year's head start on the competition, as well as its personal favorite crack baby, the Halo trilogy, a series of generic 1st-person-shooter titles comparable to Doom in how utterly pointless they were. They were doing a merry jig in the market, with their 360 easily overshadowing the GameCube and PS2 right up until the PS3 and Wii hit the market. The goose that lays the golden eggs, that is to say Bungee Studios, has since gone indie at the end of Halo 3 and now the 360 has to begrudgingly share every title it has apart from Halo with the PS3. In case I didn't make it perfectly clear - I loath the 360. The controller is large and clunky and really inconvenient, it STILL costs more than a Wii at this point, and almost every title it has is now on PS3 in a higher definition and with a better controller to boot. Jeff's Prediction: The game is over. The 360 had it's moment of glory with Halo 3 and now has nothing left after putting all their eggs in one basket that has since fallen through. The PS3 and Wii are doing a merry jig in America, Europe, Japan and Australia, whereas the 360 has a small market in America alone. Combine in the 360's demographic of males in the age range of 16-24 and perhaps Microsoft might realize what a dumb move they had made in comparison. There's no way Microsoft has a shot at the 1 or 2 spots at this point. -MICROSOFT DOES NOT HAVE A HANDHELD CONSOLE- Jeff's Prediction: This will remain unchanged for at least another year, at soonest, assuming they EVER get into the handheld market. --PC-- Perhaps it's not entirely fair to even mention PC gaming at this point. The only games worth mentioning that have come out in the past 3 years are Portal and Spore and pretty much everyone has an opinion on those already. Jeff's Prediction: PC games will remain inferior to console titles as they always have been. 'Nuff said. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Jeff | Nov 2 2008, 11:45 AM Post #10 |
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Lord of Pie & BBWs
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JEFF'S GAMING RANTS: MEGATHON! Over the next couple weeks, I'll be taking you, title-by-title through every MegaMan game available in America - not counting bullshit spin-offs, remakes, cameos and childrens' card games - from Classic MegaMan, MegaMan X, MegaMan Battle Network, MegaMan Star Force, MegaMan Zero, MegaMan ZX and MegaMan Legends! Today's title: MegaMan (1) (NES) The classic title that started the craze - MegaMan is a timeless classic in its own right. The graphics were good (for 1987), the gameplay was solid if not obscenely one-sided (Nintendo Hard, anyone?) and gravity may have been schizophrenic (you fall faster from being dropped than jumping) but we loved it. Okay, so the boss weapons were piss-weak and the ammunition was a joke, but that's okay, since they only worked in 2-3 places each. It was also the only MegaMan title to only include 6 robot master bosses (8 in the PSP remake) and where after clearing the 6 bosses, you were forced into the Dr. Wily stages - the fortress of the series' main bad guy. It was great then, it's great now. Check it out. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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5:03 AM Nov 24
