Day 23: Nintendo Taking a Break from the Console War

So...I'm taking a little break from regular posts to talk about this ongoing story with Nintendo.

Wii sales have consistently been dropping for about two years now. The Nintendo DS has been doing fairly well but it's been seven years and hundreds of millions of sales by now so it's forgivable that sales aren't astounding every month. The lineup of upcoming, high-profile Wii titles has been dwindling to nothing. This year takes the cake with only a new Zelda and Kirby title to occupy the holiday season and attempt to offset the other 10 months of...nothing.

Adding insult to injury was the ongoing story of Pandora's Tower, Xenoblade, and The Last Story, a trio of new, high-profile JRPGs published exclusively by Nintendo for the Wii in Japan. They have rough UK localization and releases set but no North American release scheduled despite the apparent hunger and anticipation for those titles over here.

It's been almost a slap in the face to us who are getting practically no new Nintendo games this year unless we're willing to buy remakes of N64 games for 3DS. Speaking of which, the 3DS hasn't been selling particularly well either. It's price, $250, is rough and counter-intuitive to Nintendo's practice of launching low priced hardware. However, what sets the 3DS apart from other launches is there's practically no competition for it and the Wii is practically dead already. The PSP is six years old too so it's truly not much competition from a technological standpoint. Plus, the PSP hardly gets any attention over here but in Japan it's consistently selling well due to an abundance of new, high-profile releases.

At E3 Nintendo gave the world the first roundup of details of their new console, the Wii U, which again demonstrated Nintendo's willingness to confuse shoppers by launching new consoles with practically the same names as their predecessors. In addition, Nintendo has shown they've mastered the art of talking about a console at length and leaving everyone in the room completely bewildered. Hell, half the people in the room probably didn't even know Wii U was a console until someone else told them. As a bonus, Nintendo didn't show off any games nor did they actually show off the console itself or what it can do.

Combine all this together and what do you get? The lowest Nintendo stock values since before they unveiled the Wii for the first time. Sales are down across the board. Consumers are hungry, unhappy and skeptical. Anxious investors are more anxious and skeptical than ever. The 3DS and 3DTVs are failures at this point and across the industry everyone is losing faith in 3D's market viability or even if it ever had any...except Sony but they have the most to lose by dropping it. What is Nintendo supposed to do to come back from this hole they've dug themselves into?

Let's start by cutting 3DS prices from $250 to $170 (in North America) and from 25K yen to 15K yen (in Japan). Then, as a sign that we're taking things very seriously, let's cut our executives' salaries by upwards of 30% with Iwata-san taking a 50% cut. Are these executives going to go hungry? Hell no. They're still going to make more every year than we can dream of making. In an ideal world the evils of capitalism wouldn't exist and we wouldn't produce jobs that award absurd amounts of money. But hey, if this actually means that millions more will go towards producing games and software features then I'm all for it. Now if only we can get some of those Sony guys to shed some money...

Is this the beginning of the end for Nintendo? Who knows, but I doubt it. Like Sega before I believe that if worse comes to worst then Nintendo will find a way to stick around in some capacity. Maybe they'll drop out of the home console market and focus on handhelds where they consistently dominate. I'm sure the investors would be ecstatic if Nintendo were able to challenge Apple, even if it's just in the capacity that PSP challenges NDS. Maybe Nintendo will have to regress to a 3rd party publisher. How awesome would a Sony built console with Valve's software and Nintendo's games be? We can only dream...

Small companies can be killed by small mistakes. Big companies can only be killed by big mistakes. Nintendo, however, has the kind of resiliency to withstand many mistakes and still come back and become the most prominent video game company in the world years later. Nintendo, lately, has made a lot of big mistakes consecutively. If Sony or Microsoft had made these kinds of mistakes they'd probably be gone by now. Hell, Sony doesn't need to make games, they make pretty much every other consumer electronic device already as well as publishing music and movies, this video game thing is just a hobby by comparison. Microsoft is, or was, the world's biggest software company and even today they have software on practically every computer in the world, Windows or not. Seeing as Microsoft bullied and marketed their way into PC gaming exclusivity the step into console gaming wasn't a far-fetched one. Hell, even today Xbox games are little more than PC games retrofitted for a more lucrative market.

Is Nintendo gonna come back from this? Most definitely. Maybe it won't be five years, maybe in ten, maybe more or less Nintendo can and will be the biggest video game company in the world because it's all they can do and no one does it better. They're bound to make mistakes and in a capitalist world one mistake can bankrupt you. They'll always be back though.

I think it's going to be rough for Nintendo going forward and they may have to pull out of the console market altogether. Microsoft and Sony's consoles have a lot more potential than they've come to realize. We saw the Kinect and Move appear to challenge Wii's unique capabilities. Imagine what the responses will be for the Wii U or even what the responses would have been if Wii wasn't so disappointing in the first place? If the Wii were capable of games like GTA4, Bioshock and Assassin's Creed then just imagine what the PS3 and 360 would have had to bring to top it and demonstrate their strengths?

Mostly though, I want to see Nintendo humble themselves like Sega did and share their unique catalogs with the rest of the world. Everyone loves their games even if other consoles have more fulfilling lineups. We're not made of money here, Nintendo! Example: LittleBigPlanet lets you create your own levels and content, ya know what levels are usually the most popular? Hint: it involves a guy in a red cap. Anyone else own that Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection, even if just to have all the Sonic games? How great would an NES or even SNES collection be, even if it were just Nintendo games? Oh right...one does exist but the selection is pretty bad and it costs $100's...it's called the Virtual Console. Honestly, most of us buy their consoles just to play their games right? I sure as hell didn't buy a PS3 just to play Sony's games...I'm just saying...

Come on, Nintendo, make it happen!

Min Wage Review: Guitar Hero Vs. Rock Band: Part 1

I figured I'd do something a little different this time, a head to head franchise review. However, this is going to get quite lengthy for a typical review and thus I'm breaking it up into parts. This part will briefly cover the history of Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band completely changed the video game scene overnight, garnering billions of dollars in sales every year. Then they simply disappeared. It was a wild ride while it lasted but why did the plug get pulled so soon?

Guitar Hero was a small title published by Red Octane for under $1 million in 2005 for the PS2. Guitar Hero was a sort of reimagined version of Konami’s GuitarFreaks for a North American audience. RedOctane was a successful 3^rd party peripheral manufacturer specializing in Konami’s Bemani series of titles while Harmonix, the developer, had made several music titles such as Amplitude and Karaoke Revolution. The fit was perfect and Guitar Hero, consisting of 47 rock songs, was a big success selling 1.5 million copies despite sharing a launch year with the Xbox 360. The following year Guitar Hero 2 launched. It improved on the original in every way and hosted a new, larger soundtrack and doubled the sales of the original. After releasing an updated, 80s version of Guitar Hero 2, the Guitar Hero franchise and RedOctane were bought by Activision and Harmonix weren’t part of the deal.

At this point, Activision assigned a new studio to build Guitar Hero 3 and with Activision’s marketing reach and budget it was hoped to be the biggest, best Guitar Hero yet and skyrocket the franchise to the top. Activision accomplished their goal and 2007’s Guitar Hero 3 was the first game to generate over $1 billion in sales. They did this mostly by hype, marketing, licensing more popular songs and celebrity appearances, and by releasing versions of Guitar Hero 3 for every home console on the market for the first time including PC. Meanwhile, Harmonix was bought by MTV Games, a subsidiary of Viacom a relative newcomer to the video game market. In 2007, Harmonix released Rock Band which expanded the Guitar Hero premise to include singing and drumming into a four player co-op experience.

The following year saw the releases of Guitar Hero: World Tour, their first attempt at adding four player co-op like Rock Band, and Rock Band 2, a sequel that improved the nuances of the first much like Guitar Hero 2. By this point, customers had to either pick a franchise and stick with it or maintain a lot more plastic peripherals than they probably had room for. Not only were all these ‘instruments’ bulky but they were quite expensive. In addition, each year would see upgraded, revised instruments hit the shelves alongside new software. Plus, most of the original instruments were quite fragile and couldn’t hold up long for a hardcore player.

While 2010’s Rock Band 3, which hosted new instruments, had an impressive ability to teach players how to play real life instruments it was counter intuitive to the music genre’s biggest problem. Rock Band 3, so far, has been a financial disappointment and Guitar Hero hasn’t fared much better the last few years. Since the revenue streams were unsatisfactory, Guitar Hero production was halted and NeverSoft, the primary developer, was laid off. Similarly, Harmonix was sold back into the indie scene and MTV Games sort of disappeared altogether. The only additions to either franchise since have been the consistent, weekly additions of DLC for Rock Band 3 via the Rock Band Network and Harmonix themselves.

Day 22: Straight Edge My Ass!

I'm a pro wrestling fan, have been since I was a little kid. Last night I saw WWE's Pay Per View which featured CM Punk, a Straight Edge character who has often used his 'lifestyle' to create drama but proposing he is a superior human being to others who don't practice straight edge lifestyles. That's all well and good for entertainment purposes but it got me to thinking about the premise of straight edge.


Straight edge is living a lifestyle refraining from alcohol, tobacco and recreational drugs. Well what are recreational drugs? Recreational drugs are more or less defined by the intent and result of the drug used rather than the drug itself. So...what's a drug then? Drugs are broadly defined as a substance that, when absorbed, alters normal bodily function. There are drugs used for medicine, food and colloquial use. Which drugs fall under which categories is mostly subjective with a little science.


Times change and so does our perceptions of drugs. What used to be a potent medicine is now a narcotic punishable under federal law. What's a potent medicine now can be abused and may be outlawed in the future. Meanwhile, there are drugs in pretty much everything we eat but no one seems to worry about that so much.


Basically, there's no such thing as bad drugs and good drugs, they're only drugs. There are, however, two types of people: drug dealers and drug users. The drug dealer has two goals: attract as many customers as possible; and keep their competition in check. Know what's an effective way to do that? Tell everyone that your drugs are 'good' and the other guys' drugs are 'bad'. That means that everyone trying to judge you for what you consume are either indirectly trying to sell you their drugs or they're brainwashed users.


So, if you're drinking Pepsi or coffee everyday, that's your choice and I won't judge you, but know that they're laced with drugs and they always have been. If you'd rather snort a line of coke in the morning instead of a Red Bull, it's all the same in my book, the only difference between coke and Red Bull is our perception and personal preference and both of those can change. Don't let the dealers make you believe what's good and what's bad. They just want you to stop smoking pot so you can buy their Prozac, it's all the same shit!


Basically, unless you're drinking water and eating home grown produce then you're probably a junkie, and that's perfectly fine if it makes you happy. If you're straight edge you're lying to yourself. I, personally, have no interest in the hardcore psychoactive drugs but I occasionally enjoy a big bacon burger loaded with cheese and BBQ sauce with a Barg's Red Cream Soda. We have enough guilt as human beings without being convinced we're consuming 'evil' substances. Eat, drink, shoot, snort, and be merry...damn it!

Bulletstorm: Min Wage Review

Do you remember that scene from Wayne’s World where Wayne first sees Cassandra Wong? We’ve all had a similar moment where we’ve seen a girl and announced silently to the world, “she will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine!” We’ll pursue this girl to the ends of the Earth until she is indeed ours. However, have you ever pursued this girl and underneath her physical beauty lies a shallow, boring, stupid person? Playing Bulletstorm is just like that, it’s like dating a bimbo.

Bulletstorm is the baby of People Can Fly (Painkiller) and Epic Games and tries to give Epic’s Gears of War style a kick in the ass. The Incredible Hulk sized alpha males are back but the snaillike movements have been replaced with sprints and Sonic the Hedgehog style baseball slides. The speed and fluidity of the controls should make other shooters take notice and think outside the basic ‘run, aim and shoot’ repertoire.

The environments are carnival playgrounds of mayhem constructed out of jagged concrete, sharpened metal, live explosives and vicious local flora. Combined with your arsenal of weapons and abilities, Bulletstorm hosts a buffet of different kills. Bulletstorm plays a lot like Epic Games version of Platinum Games’ MadWorld for the Wii. MadWorld was a brutal beat ‘em up that had you accumulate points by murdering thugs in the cruelest ways possible and relied heavily on humor to offset its cartoonish super violence. Bulletstorm functions similarly with the most complex kills earning huge amounts of points. Except where MadWorld gives you a playground and a score quota to progress, Bulletstorm plays like a typical corridor shooter with the skill points used to buy weapons and ammo rather than advance the game.

Both games suffer from the same problem, the emphasis on over-the-top kills and dirty jokes just isn’t entertaining for very long. For the first couple of hours Bulletstorm is quite fun but after you’ve smashed a thug into a wall of spikes for the hundredth time it loses its edge. The humor in Bulletstorm is lacking due to poorly written dialogue with foul language sprinkled in to try and hide it. For a game that’s supposed to be a light hearted romp the serious, generic redemption and revenge based plot is a real turnoff. The inconsistency in tone is a total buzz kill and there’s no satisfying payoff either for those who stay to the end. The dialogue was written for the Beavis & Butt-Head kids out there who giggle uncontrollably at the mention of anything remotely suggestive or dirty. For those kids this game is a wet dream, for the rest of us it’s just annoying and downright embarrassing to the medium. The opening sequence to Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time is funnier than the entirety of Bulletstorm and there’s not one dirty word in Ratchet. For the record I actually found Duke Nukem Forever pretty funny so it’s not like Bulletstorm is too low brow for me, it’s just poorly written.

Bulletstorm is mind-numbingly repetitive and far too easy. Most of the skillshots (as they’re called) are too complicated to pull off consistently if at all. A lot of skillshots and abilities involve enemies huddling but they rarely do that. Instead they scatter about the room cowering behind chest high walls waiting to get killed effortlessly. The rest of the skillshots are either simple things like ‘headshots’ or rely on environmental props which tend to stick out like beacons and are almost always the fastest, easiest and most lucrative option to clear a room when available. Since most skillshots rarely present themselves as feasible the enemies tend to move to precarious locations where one melee attack will send them to a gruesome death and a decent payoff rather than moving to a tactical position. In addition, you can take a lot of punishment before having to take cover and the enemies can’t hit the broadside of a barn unless you’re standing still or they’re wielding a grenade launcher. Even then it takes several hits for you to be taken down on Normal difficulty. The only situations that become remotely dangerous are when large swarms of melee enemies try to dog pile you in close quarters. In that case you can always sit back and wait for them to charge you one at a time like lemmings while you kick them into spike traps. Meanwhile, if you were a bit more fragile you’d spend more time staring at a rock than killing so either way the game was going to be boring.

The AI isn’t just bad at shooting, it’s bad in general. Bulletstorm relies heavily on scripted events to move the action forward which means killing every enemy in one room before being allowed to move on to the next one. This is all well and good but more often than not I’ve been running around a room without any enemies but the game won’t let me progress. Then a minute later I’ll find the one remaining enemy, cowering behind a rock, refusing to shoot at me at all. Perhaps it’s a smart move seeing as I just booted a dozen of his buddies to death and maybe he’s having second thoughts. Perhaps he’s praying to his god for salvation. Another thing, you usually have one or two squad mates with you to lay down cover fire and trade insults. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of them actually kill any enemies outright. Your squad mates are largely ornamental and serve no purpose other than to spew bad dialogue and open doors and paths you’re not allowed to open for whatever reason. Often your squad will just sit behind the first chest high wall in a room and don’t move or shoot until you’ve finished killing everything. I didn’t expect Bulletstorm to have the squad sophistication of Mass Effect or anything but this is pathetic by comparison.

Let’s talk more about the boring factor. Half of your arsenal is traditional and the other half is terrible and impractical. Your default weapon, which is always equipped, is an assault rifle and you can add two sub weapons at any drop kit which are generously spread through the game. You’ve got an overpowered shotgun, a revolver that can shoot flares, a sniper rifle with remote controlled bullets, the Flail Gun which shoots chain-linked grenades that wrap around necks, the Bouncer which shoots explosive, bouncing cannonballs, a gun that shoots drills, and occasionally you can use a minigun. A few of the guns are fun for a few minutes but mostly impractical. There are very few enemy types and their abilities are limited to your own arsenal which I described except they don’t have your speed or a Leash which you can use to effortlessly toss enemies around like a Final Fantasy boss. Despite the size and scale of the set pieces and creatures you’ll see there’s only one true boss fight in the game and it’s not at the end either. In other words, you’re never going to encounter any surprises unless you consider disappointment a surprise.

Bulletstorm shows a lot of promise at first but once you get deep in the game you realize how shallow, repetitive and boring it is. The controls are a lot better and faster than I’d have expected from Epic but it doesn’t make up for the rest of the game. There are no redeeming qualities about this game beyond that. I actually question whether a pure shooter is viable after playing Bulletstorm. Bulletstorm’s plot sets itself up for a sequel and I hope it never gets one. It doesn’t deserve it and I don’t think anything can save this game from the fundamental problems it faces. Only play this game if you’re starving for another shooter which at this point should be pretty unlikely.

I asked Homer to play Bulletstorm and here's what he had to say.

The Hyrule Times Issue 001: Pranksters Run Amok

Kakariko Village:
Widespread vandalism uncovered in town today. Several wooden signs and clay pots have been destroyed across town and life savings stolen from several homes. Further investigation revealed several graves desecrated in the graveyard behind the town. Guards only have one lead, a scrawny fairy boy last seen wearing a green tunic and claiming to be linked to the royal family. Locals are encouraged to stay indoors whenever possible until the culprit is found.


New Vegas:
The death toll climbs to fifty in an ongoing investigation. All have been killed by grenades hidden in their clothing. Reports suggest that prior to each explosion the culprit yells, "fire in the hole!" The deaths started a week ago with the fiftieth victim found two days ago. No new grenade deaths have been reported since and there are no leads.


Teufort:
No further developments in the ongoing battle for Teufort. Reports say the two factions' Snipers took turns shooting and missing each other. Meanwhile the rest of the team sat in the courtyard having a picnic and playing poker while guarded by sentries. The latest reports say the Pyro is winning due to his indiscernible poker face and ambiguous gender. The Heavy Weapons Guy said, "I not sure if Pyro lady or if should let win" then proceeded to eat another poker chip and shortly thereafter required  medical assistance.

Day 21: Give Credit Where Credit Is Due...Damn It!

I haven't posted in awhile, sorry about the absence. I couldn't decide on anything to review last weekend. I spent most of last week not really playing anything other than TeamFortress 2 again. I'll probably have a new review this weekend though cause I recently finished Bulletstorm. Anyways, to the matter at hand.

Something was brought to my attention today that pisses me off. When you take a look at a video game box do you ever notice something missing? Just looking at the front of a box you'll be able to determine a game's platform, rating and publisher but what about the people who actually made it? A book always has the author on the front, why not video games? Exceptions include games that are developed by the publishers themselves like Valve, Bethesda, Square-Enix, Nintendo, etc. In a lot of cases the studios making games are incidental collections of employees working under an unnamed internal studio in which case the omitting of the studio name is understandable. But in cases where the studio is distinct it deserves credit on the front of the god damned box. Sure, the publisher may have paid to make the game and market it but they didn't work their asses off to develop a product that will most likely generate millions. All they did was reap the rewards and console the investors. So please, give credit where credit is due, put the studio name on the box EVERY time. Hell, you might just sell a few more copies if people outside the know notice a pattern.

Day 20: Sony Takes a Turn For the Worse

Sony:

"We are always evaluating new programs for our online offering, and starting with Resistance 3 this September, we will be instituting a network pass program for PS3 games with online capabilities. This program will be game-specific. Games that are a part of this program will include a single-use registration code that grants the account holder redeeming the code full online access for that title. This is an important initiative as it allows us to accelerate our commitment to enhancing premium online services across our first party game portfolio." 

Me:

I'm disappointed in you Sony. However, I'm willing to reserve my judgement until after this plan gets enacted. After all this could be some positive initiative but most likely this is going to be exactly like EA's Online Pass system. 


What does that mean? When you buy a game you should be able to hop into single player or multiplayer without issue right? Not anymore, now you have to enter a code that comes with the game to attain the credentials to play the damn game you just bought. Now, if you bought it new then you only get one code so only one account can access all of the game. If you bought the game used then you get no code at all and need to purchase a new one online for ~$10. What if you have multiple consoles or multiple accounts on one console but want to play the game on all of them? EA says, "Pay us $10 each or go fuck yourself". THQ is starting to jump on that bandwagon too and now Sony.


DON'T try to rationalize this bullshit. Publishers want more money from the used game market so their first response is to add DRM or limit access to their customers? Bullshit! Don't take your frustration out on the customers who are keeping you motherfuckers in business. Think harder and try to find a method that harms GameStop rather than customers because as it is right now the markup on used games is exactly the same. The only difference is customers pay $60 and get less money back while GameStop will still use the same markup and make just as much profit. Hell, I'm even more tempted to buy games used if you add these 'Online Passes' to games. Why? Because if the game was so fucking special you wouldn't prevent customers from accessing it without paying you twice.


Come on, Sony! You used to be cool!

Day 19: Freedom

Freedom

Min Wage Review: Duke Nukem Forever: So Wrong Yet So Right!

This is the intro movie for Duke Nukem Forever, perhaps the best video game intro movie I've ever seen. By the end of it you'll know whether or not Duke Nukem Forever is a game you want to play.

Let’s address the elephant in the room right now. Duke Nukem 3D was released in 1996. The sequel, Duke Nukem Forever was released in 2011. Over time the development staff and finances dwindled to a short list of enthusiasts working on the game at home. The game was never truly finished but when 3D Realms was shut down it was the closest they were ever going to get. Gearbox took a year to consolidate the progress and tie up some loose ends but only so much could be done with what was there.

Duke Nukem Forever’s gameplay is reminiscent of Half-Life crossed with corridor shooters and a B-movie flair. Some levels require problem solving and exploration. Most levels are narrow in scope with a heavy emphasis on combating waves of enemies. Both complement each other well and the whole experience is refreshing. Tying the game together is a thin narrative, again similar to Half-Life, where aliens invade Earth to kill a lot of people and impregnate women. The plot is about what you’d expect in a B-movie and serves as a parody of other video game shooters. The connotation would be funnier if the sad reality wasn’t that most video game plots are B-movie level at best. With that in mind the plot in Duke Nukem Forever is not so bad.

So what sets Duke Nukem Forever apart from other shooters? Boobs, lots and lots of boobs. I say “boobs” as opposed to “tits” because “tits” has an adult, sexual tone to it while “boobs” is hopelessly immature. Duke Nukem revels in his immaturity because otherwise it wouldn’t work. I’m restating the obvious here but Duke Nukem is an amalgamation of ‘tough guy’ movie characters from the 80s and 90s like those played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. While those characters were intended to be cool Duke is not. Duke was created by geeky action movie fans to be the man they all, nay, we all want to be. We want to be the sole savior of the human race from aliens. We want every woman we meet to cream their pants. We want to have a body of steel and bench press over 600lbs. We want to be rich, famous and own our own strip club, casino and chain of burger joints. Duke is witty, no doubt, but he comes off as more geeky than cool because of all the movie references and the over the top dispositions other people have towards him. I’m cool with him being a geek though because it’s relatable, funny and entertaining.


I think this strip from webcomic, Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, sums up the idea perfectly.

Duke Nukem Forever is the most inconsistent game I’ve ever played. I don’t mean the plot either, I mean everything else. Some of the games’ textures are good but a lot of them are terribly flat, like 10 years old flat. From some angles the Mighty Foot, Duke’s bigfoot truck, looks fair enough but closer inspection you can see inside the truck and notice there’s no engine or anything inside. It’s just a plastic shell with big ass wheels. Call it an oversight that doesn’t affect gameplay, no big deal right? Well, here’s another odd one. Stacks of crates are fairly common and I noticed that if I broke crates they didn’t affect the others so…floating crates! For a game with physics puzzles you would think the physics would be fairly consistent.

There are several technological short comings to be addressed. Old shooters let you carry all the weapons you found and lots of ammo each but you needed to pick your fights wisely because of limited health pickups. Modern shooters either let you carry all weapons with a little ammo each or only two weapons with a lot of ammo each to encourage variety but without restricting abilities. Duke Nukem Forever, however, only lets you carry two at a time with a relatively low amount of ammo a piece. Most of the weapons become impractical to use at all because of this. The aliens also have a lot of health so nothing but a shotgun is likely to last longer than a few aliens even if your aim is good. You’re left with only the weapons that are commonly used by the aliens as your primary equipment as everything else runs out of ammo quickly. That amounts to the Shotgun which you should always be carrying, the Ripper which is a triple barrel assault rifle with a lot of ammo but low damage, the pistol which is fairly weak, and the AT Laser rifle which is terrible due to slow projectiles and a three fire burst. Most of the other weapons are procedurally placed at key spots, like the Rail Gun (a sniper rifle) and Shrink Ray, where they can be of use for a few enemies then you need to discard them. My favorite weapon, the Devastator, is like dual wielding SMGs that shoot rockets. I got to use the Devastator only three times in the whole game against bosses which is a bit disappointing. I spent the majority of the game with the Ripper and Shotgun and I expect most players will do the same.

The animations are all laughably poor. For instance, you can see Duke in a mirror fairly frequently and witness his jump animation. It’s an extraordinarily stiff animation that puts Fallout 3 NPCs to shame. Not every animation is that bad but the animations that stick out they’re all hilariously bad. Also, there are usually only three enemies on the screen at any given time. You’ll kill one and another will respawn until you’ve finished with the waves in a room. It’s only noticeable if you’re paying attention. Since most of the game takes place in tight corridors where three enemies fill a room nicely it’s not that big of a deal for the most part. Plus, the game gets brutally difficult at some parts so I can live with just three enemies at once especially given how many bullets it takes to bring any one of them down. Octobrains are especially annoying because they usually hover at long range, constantly sway back and forth and deal massive damage with thrown objects that are very difficult to dodge. A couple of underwater levels towards the end of the game are completely broken because this difficulty is compounded by the water hindering your movement and improving theirs. You’ll end up dying a lot of times in this game which means you’ll be seeing a long loading screen each time as the game reloads the entire level. On PC the loading screens aren’t so bad, no more than 20-30 seconds a piece and sometimes much shorter. Since the game is broken up into well over 30 stages you’ll be seeing a lot of downtime.

It doesn't get any better than this!


So…is this game great? No, but it doesn’t have to be. In a time where AAA games are released every week there’s no more room for the B-games to find their niche. Even the bargain bins now are filled with games like Bioshock and Grand Theft Auto 4 which blow B-games out of the water. Although blowing up aliens never gets tired, there’s something about Duke Nukem Forever that’s inexplicably fun even if there’s nothing particularly interesting about the game. This is the ultimate B-movie in video game form with a crude charm to it I’ve never seen in other games. The machismo of Duke has soaked the game itself and feels genuinely manly in a strip club, steak and beer, Spike TV sort of way. Where most video games take themselves too seriously it’s refreshing to play one that so adamantly doesn’t. I can appreciate where it’s coming from but I’m even more excited to see where it’s going.

Day 18: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly: Part 3

Alright so this is the 3rd and final part of this series, for now. I was hoping to have three publishers in each list but my rants for two publishers are fairly long and my concerns with a couple others put them far out of the league of a certain two. I'll just make a couple of brief honorable mentions.

Namco Bandai: They don't know where the money is to be made. They make some good JRPGs but refuse to release them in North America where the otaku are starved for decent, console JRPGs. Instead, Namco publishes shitty, 'western' focused titles that are far below the par set by other western publishers. Then Namco gets aggravated at us for not buying their shitty, unadvertised products and says, "now you see why you get no JRPGs, you won't even buy the titles we make specifically for you!" The only thing good to come out of Namco for the west lately has been Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. When you're ready to start making money we'll be waiting Namco but you better bring your A game.

Sega: The thing that worries me about Sega is I never see many popular titles coming from them unless it has Sonic in the name. Even then the Sonic games have mostly been terrible but sell based on the name alone. First off, get Sonic straightened out and a lot more can be forgiven and overlooked. I haven't tried Sonic Colors but I did try the demo for Sonic Generations...I felt like I was being skull fucked. It's like they're deliberately trying to fail. I might be wrong but it seems like all of Sega's franchises, except Sonic, are dead and buried and I worry that without a solid lineup they'll fade away as the western publishers continue to dominate.

Now for the real beefs:

Square Enix: 

Who knows what’s going on over there but whatever it is it can’t be good. We understand that the Tsunami was a horrible disaster and financial loses are to be expected as a result. However, there’s no way SE can attribute their dire financial situation to the Tsunami, it’s a much bigger problem that’s finally snowballed out of control. SE just isn’t releasing any games and they’re hemorrhaging money away. Let’s take a little look back at their development history. 

The PS2 showed up and SE released Final Fantasy X, a grand piece of work in 2001. In 2006 they released Final Fantasy XII. Now, just looking at SE’s developed projects, because they serve as publisher for a lot of other studios home and abroad, between those two titles they released Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy XI Online (for three platforms), Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, and Dirge of Cerberus among other things. That’s quite a lot of projects in 5 years and most of them were highly revered. 

Now, what has SE developed for this console generation? Besides a lot of handheld titles (which I prefer to exclude)…The Last Remnant, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIV…that’s pretty much it. The first was an Xbox 360/PC exclusive that wasn't well liked, the second was popular but divisive, and the third is a turd. FF14 was so bad that as a sign of goodwill SE decided to make the game Free To Play for everyone who bought it until SE is done fixing the game and brings it up to an acceptable quality. I…don’t think that’s ever happened before and how embarrassing must that be? In fact it was so bad that most of the directors of the game got fired outright. As much as I liked FF13, the directors for that probably should have been fired long ago as well. 

Nowadays, SE has a bunch of broken, unfinished games that they won’t release and their pockets are full of holes. To me, this sounds like 3D Realms but much more dangerous because it’s not one game but many. The constant slew of portable titles and their lineup mostly consisting of games published for other studios makes a case that maybe SE should just bow out of the console market altogether if they can't figure out what's wrong. It’s very sad and I hope they can turn it around and deliver like they did in the PS2 era, if not the PS1 era when they were the kings of games and rightfully so.

Nintendo:

Nintendo isn't on this list just because of their focus on casual gaming. All in all Nintendo has been incredibly successful this generation and have climbed to heights they've never reached before. Good for them. However, the success is hallow and it's starting to come apart quickly. Due to Nintendo's practices and the challenges faced for Wii developers there's been no strong 3rd party lineup present on their flagship system the last five years. While the console sales are astronomical Nintendo has missed out on all the most significant titles of this generation, the titles that have been dominating critical and sales charts for years and will probably continue to do so for quite some time. BioShock, Assassin's Creed, a true Call of Duty, Fallout and Elder Scrolls, Left 4 Dead and Portal 2, the list goes on. I'd exclude Grand Theft Auto because while significant it's not a series that couldn't have made a splash on Nintendo's consoles in the past when graphical fidelity was neck and neck with the PS2. These are huge titles that perhaps won't ever see the sales of Wii Fit or New Super Mario Bros but they're culturally significant and affect game design going forward.

The thing that's worrisome about Nintendo is that they're far behind but they don't understand at all how to catch up. The Nintendo DS is the most successful console on the planet, and good for them, but the 3DS launch couldn't have been handled any worse. The price is too high, the games are too poor and the 3D gimmick isn't looking like it'll pay off any time soon, not like Nintendo is giving 3D any room to succeed in the first place though. Even the name, 3DS, was a terrible marketing choice given there's been no less than four versions of Nintendo DS on the market before it and there will probably be at least a revision or two to the 3DS on the market in the future.

So the 3DS isn't selling well at all, the only games coming out are remakes of old N64 titles, and the Wii sales are plummeting because it hasn't had a decent game on it, outside of the holidays, in years. What does Nintendo do to combat this? They announce a new console, the Wii U, and design the conference in such a way where absolutely no one knows exactly what Wii U is supposed to be. Is it a new handheld? Is it a revision of Wii? Is it a whole new thing we need to buy? You can't afford to use the E3 platform and have your audience leave with all those questions. As a bonus they didn't show any game play footage though Ubisoft had something cooked up later.

Seriously, if Nintendo wasn't so beloved in all our hearts they'd be in a world of shit right now. Hell, at the rate they're going it looks like they can only hold off on that inevitability for a little while. We all want you guys to turn it around but you need to understand your mistakes and apply learned knowledge rather than repeat the same mistakes. Do you know what the definition of 'insanity' is?