I’ve never been into new year’s resolutions, mainly because the idea of starting plans for self-improvement based on a completely arbitrary calendar date always struck me as silly (and is probably the main reason they fail so quickly). But since I don’t celebrate the holiday season in any meaningful way anymore and honestly don’t have a whole lot of other better things to do, I figure I can knock off something I’ve put off for way too long.
If you’ve followed my posts in the Game Room for the past, say, four years or so, you know that I’ve griped about video games. A lot. A whole damn lot. Thing is, this was one of the very few things about my childhood that was fun, beautiful, or thrilling, much less all three. While the adult figures in my life constantly tried to force-feed me Shakespeare, geezer music, hypercompetitive sports, and Yosemite National Park, I found true inspiration in the arcades. And when the mushbrains in Washington made Mortal Kombat a scapegoat, I dug in my heels like everyone else. So it wasn’t easy to admit that something that used to be so positive now generates almost nothing but complaints. And I’ve come to realize that the time has come to give up the ghost. The joy isn’t coming back; the industry isn’t going to “become good again”. I also realize that a lot of you are really into this medium, and yeah, I probably shouldn’t keep harshing your collective buzzes.
So effective 2020, I will never again gripe about video games on this or any other online forum. No more tirades about way too hard, way too complicated, broken, had horrible bugs that ruined the experience, gave me motion sickness, was a complete ripoff, had a completely impenetrable section, imposed way too many restrictions, really wasn’t fun at all, gave me nightmares, was a goddam crime against decency, etc. I’ve pounded that drum, I’ve said my piece, I’ve taken my stand, enough is enough. Men like him are better at that sort of thing, anyway.
With that in mind, I’d like to take a few parting blasts at some absolute turds from the past:
Sid Meier’s Pirates - Remember how much nearly everyone whined and moaned about Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag because you didn’t spend every single nanosecond sacking ships and guzzling rum? Oh my god, the game actually has a story, and there are places to explore, puzzles to solve, important tasks to complete! The horror! Well, if they were around in the late 80’s, they could’ve played this instead and spent every single nanosecond getting a cutlass shoved up their assholes. First off, you are always on the clock. Your crew is getting more and more unhappy, town defenses are getting stronger, merchants are getting more erratic literally constantly. Davy Jones help you if you try to make a living by trading; given the extreme distance between towns and the paltry profits under the best of circumstances, it’s mainly a question of whether mutiny, starvation, or wrecking on the roughly 25,000 fucking shoals is going to do you in first. Let’s not forget this “Spanish Trade Law” bullshit which reduces your profits to roughly that of a fairly successful lemonade stand. Which leaves attacking ships, where you’ll learn the joys of enemy ships either 1. turning tail and escaping upwind or 2. not turning tail and blasting your ship into matchwood, then blasting the matchwood into sawdust. Attacking towns is theoretically more rewarding, and I say “theoretically” because if you succeed you learn that the townsfolk hid about 95% of their stuff, meaning that, yep, your crew of useless slackers who couldn’t fight their way out of a canvas sack is still Unhappy! Oh yeah, that’s the other thing: You ALWAYS have either too many or too few crewmen, and the all-or-nothing nature of recruiting only makes this even worse. Oh right, fencing, which is so goddam clumsy and clunky it’ll make you pine for the elegance of a Guybrush Threepwood duel. And ever notice that every fucking opponent can take about five times as much damage as you? Trying to accomplish anything meaningful in this game is like keeping 50 plates spinning at once while you have a bomb strapped to your chest. I have never been happier with this game than when I was running a lowly cargo fluyt in 1640, schlepping goods between three closely-spaced towns, and blithely ignoring every sail I saw. That’s how bad it got. And just for a finishing touch, if you do not do freakishly well by the time you retire, the game will actually insult you in the wrap-up screen. My first few careers, I could not believe how much wealth I had to acquire to avoid getting spat in my face. And then a couple years later Ultra games got in on the act with the NES port, in the process accomplishing something I didn’t think possible: They took out everything in it that was satisfying. Simply finding anything satisfying to begin with was impressive enough, but they did, and we got getting constantly blown around by the wind, and even more incomprehensible fencing system, starting from a dead stop after every ship encounter, and towns not becoming economically stronger and getting higher prices when you sold to them, making trading even more foolhardy than it was. I liked Defender of the Crown a lot better than this. Fucking Defender of the Crown. Don’t get me started on Pirates Gold, which added about 200 more plates and put an earthquake machine in the room. Gah. I can honestly say that this is the first ever pirate game which faithfully recreated the constant misery and hardship the typical pirate of the day lived under. Everyone involved in creating these abominations can kiss my undistinguished penniless pauper ASS.
Ultima 3 and 5 - Ultima 3 was the only game where I mangled the 5 1/2” disk in rage. Three times. I have never been so utterly vexed by a game before or since. The problem is that I proceed at a nice pace, levelling up, discovering things (remember, pre-Internet, so there was a lot to figure out on my own), and otherwise making progress, and then completely out of the blue a fucking dragon spawns, or a fucking devil spawns, or the whirlpool decides to pay a visit to where I parked all the ships. And when I finally got to that damn Exodus (an utter nightmare every step of the way), I got wiped out because I didn’t remember the exact order to put in the cards, the book I read about them was at the library, and again, no Internet. Apparently Origin learned from this and in the future decided to cut out the cockteasing bullshit by making the entire game an exercise in agony. The thing that always strikes me about Ultima 5 is how meager it was. Scrabbling and scrounging for every gold piece, having to defeat hordes of foes while wielding dinky little main-gauches and clubs, scraping together enough reagents for a feeble magic missile, clinging to every last key because they broke like toothpicks, and on, and on. Oh, and I got killed all the fucking time. Not fun either. Never figured out that “virtue” garbage. And fuck the Shadowlords sideways for a thousand years.
Pro Wrestling - Proof that a game will be revered as one of the console’s best so long as it only has a few titanic, monstrous game-breaking flaws. To wit: 1. No health meters (and it say something that nobody’s even trying to make the usual half-assed mealy-mouthed excuses for this). 2. The grappling system is completely random (ditto). 3. You have to win 10 title defenses in a row to reach Great Puma. 4. The opponents take more and more and more (and more…and more…and more…) damage the further you go, which means that if you lose before winning the title you’re pretty much fucked, and if you lose after you win the title you’re absolutely fucked. Goofydlyan8 and Bryan Evans are pretty much the only two people who’ve gotten anywhere with this trainwreck of a game.
Wishbringer - Wow, what a brilliant idea! A text adventure that’s like the Zork games, but it’s much simpler and more reasonable, with every problem solvable with a little thought instead of massive doses of insane troll logic and dumb luck, and it’s actually fun to play…and then it hides the one absolutely critical item in a place absolutely no one would think to look and give no clues whatsoever throughout the entire game as to where it is, so I always get hopelessly stuck one step from the finish! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha FUCK YOU.
Puzzle Bobble (a.k.a. Bust-A-Move) - The first ever game in memory which perfectly blends vein-bursting frustration with nerve-shredding creeping panic. In a nutshell, every game vacillated between “never getting what you need”, “getting what you need but never in sufficient quantity”, “missing”, and “that fucking descending ceiling squashing you flat”. I never understood why Puzzle De Pon wasn’t more popular. One of those eternal mysteries.
Dance Dance Revolution - HOW the fuck do you ruin a concept like this?? That’s like burning down a brick wall or clapping with one finger; it shouldn’t be possible. Leave it to Konami, though, to put in a completely nonsensical “battle” system which, of course, grossly favors the opponent, then make impossible modifiers mandatory in the third XBOX 360 version, and then throw in tons of different impossible modifier crap in the PS3 version. Oh, right, mustn’t forget that galactically irritating, obnoxious announcer you want to punch in the face 10 million times, graft on another face, and punch it 10 million times, which CANNOT BE SHUT OFF. Nice to know Konami understands what really matters, huh? :mad: How the hell isn’t Pump it Up doing better?
Gradius 2 - Hey, the first game was actually a fairly decent challenge! Can’t have that! Let’s ramp the difficulty to the thermosphere for no goddam reason! And if anyone complains…uh…tell them that it’s going to be peanuts compared to the third game! Yeah, that’s the ticket! :rolleyes:
The Wii…all of it - All right, let’s get one thing out of the way: I do not give one solitary fuck about sales figures. Sales are not and never have been an indicator of quality. There are many examples of good products that simply didn’t find their market or were ahead of their time and utter crap that hit it big due to slick marketing and gullible customers. The Wii was lightning in a bottle. It came around at a time when video games were seriously under fire, and there were plenty of players and would-be players who were ready for a system that didn’t have any of that icky language or scary violence, and if it got people off their butts and moving, so much the better. Nintendo, despite a few small missteps, had an outstanding overall record with consoles and never had a flop other than the Virtual Boy (which hardly anyone knew even existed), so customers were more than willing to support its new venture. First person shooters and fighting games too rich for your blood? We have a plethora of nice casual selections that won’t stress you at all. So yeah, everyone and their grandmother got one. I got one (from my parents). And was promptly introduced to imprecise, clunky analog controls that often didn’t even register at all, and when they did register often either registered too much or too little. I have never had a system where simply getting your guy to do what you want him to do was such a gigantic headache. Some games were flat-out impossible despite repeated attempts, like basketball. I’ll admit it was a great system for shooting games, though…at least it would have been if it didn’t make me sit like ten fucking feet away from the screen and give nearly every arcade port screaming bullshit like reload delays. Good god, how the hell do you make The House of The Dead 3 even more aggravating?? Ever notice that Nintendo is now two consoles removed from this system and we’re seeing zero nostalgia for any specific game that was on it? Think there might be a reason for that?
Dead or Alive Xtreme - Girls! Bikinis! Volleyball! Never having enough money! Slot machines that can actually rob you blind! Contests that make no sense and are nearly impossible to develop any winning strategy for! A maddeningly chancy gift-giving system which as often as not is just a titanic waste of money! Completely randomly appearing events! Needing two fucking spreadsheets just to keep track of everything! Sheesh, when did fanservice become so tedious? I mean, you’ve already got nasty publicity from day one due to the content; can’t you even be arsed to make it enjoyable for the people paying money for it? Seriously, why does this still exist??
Gran Turismo 4 - Over 100 years of automotive history! Every one of which slips around on the track like it’s covered in ice! Heaven help you when you get to the actual ice tracks! “Extremely low friction coefficients” are never low enough, am I right? Let me put it this way…when running the fucking F1 car on the fucking oval is a painful, aggravating experience, it’s time to throw in the towel.
Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame - As the saying goes, it only takes one bad apple to ruin the batch. In this case, it was the rejiggered jumping system, which frequently resulted in the poor prince either jumping too soon or not at all. This one bafflingly moronic decision resulted in hundreds of botched jumps for me, leading directly to dozens of restarts and hundreds of enemies I had to kill all over again, wasting way too many hours of my life and guaranteeing that it would be a thousand years before I gave one fuck about this franchise ever again.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - Steal cars! Shoot people! Rob stores! Participate in a hideously rigged street race that you have essentially zero chance of winning! Wait, what? Uh…Get into fights! Buy sleazy businesses! Fly a ridiculously unmaneuverable toy airplane and try really hard to drop unguided bombs from it on boats! Er, ah, um, ahhhh…blow up a cargo ship! Take over a drug lord’s mansion! Become the baddest, meanest, nastiest mofo on the east coast and earn the ultimate reward, a mission flying an airplane with slightly less power and stability than the one used by the Wright Brothers! This despite the fact that you have a perfectly servicable helicopter! (Don’t worry, though, because according to one GameFAQs writer, it’s marginally better than the fucking worst airplane in any fucking PS2 game ever!) Like seriously, isn’t the whole appeal of being bad that you don’t have to accept pointless irritating bullshit?
The Neo Geo - Hey, SNK, remember how the reviewers said this was obscenely overpriced and had lots of crap games, and I defended you? I did that because Nintendo sold out to numbnut reactionaries with the SNES and the Sega Genesis was underpowered and had an unimpressive selection. Well, guess what? It was obscenely overpriced and had lots of crap games. Sorry. Not sorry.
Lots and lots and lots of online flash games - See my bitter, miserable journey here. There were actually plenty of flash games I liked, but the websites all either took them down or went belly-up. Just an unfortunate coincidence, I’m sure.
Time Crisis 4 - When I first got this, my biggest fear was that I’d eventually run into an FPS section which was too intense and I could never clear even after repeated attempts. Well, that didn’t happen…mainly because I never made it past the first FPS section. Seriously, killed all the enemies and just couldn’t find anywhere to go. No indication of where to go, either. Brilliant idea, Namco! And can someone kindly explain why console light guns are so fucking unreliable?? I think the Guncon Whichever lasted about four months before it crapped out forever. Probably just as well, as being forced to stand 10 feet back and barely being able to see the fucking screen as a result really isn’t my style.
WWE games - Folks, it’s time to face facts. With few exceptions (first SNES game was super-clunky but overall not a terrible first effort; second SNES game was great), these games are flat-out horrendous. You can thank the eternally screwball grappling systems and the utterly unforgiving reversal system for that (along with the occasional mutant abomination like Wrestlemania for the NES). Ever notice how you’ve never seen a dominating victory in one of these games on YouTube? That just shows you that skill only plays a small part and it’s largely the luck of the draw. Don’t even get me started on the tidal wave of bugs that’s plaguing 2K20.
Flower - Somehow, even the tiny, breezy games are never tiny or breezy enough. I don’t mind not being able to get all the achievements…it’s ridiculous, but I can live with it…but not even knowing where to go in the final level? I kept getting blown all around and recovering old territory. And this after nearly giving up in the third level, too. I’m not blind, dammit. It should not be this hard.
There were plenty more, but you get the picture. Yes, I’ve had issues for some time. Seriously, Wishbringer.
I give up. I’m done. Beaten. Crushed. Eliminated. This hobby’s passed me by and there’s no sense yelling about it anymore. At some point I just have to walk away and chill out, so I’m going to do just that.
Whew! Glad I was able to finally get all that out of my system. Eh, I’ve always had more fun watching others play these things anyway. Speaking of which, can’t recommend TASvideos enough.
(No guarantees about American Ninja Warrior, but I’ll do my best.)