There are a lot of “meh” games in the XBLA Indie Games section, but they aren’t all complete doodie.  Some of them have boring gameplay but awesome features, like the soundtrack.

Like this:

It’s from I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1, from the same guy that made The Dishwasher.  He did the game, and the music.  The entire thing, from the gameplay to the controls to the zombie content to the song, is a self-parody of the whole genre, with lyrics in the background to drive the point home.

It’s only a dollar.  It knows what it is and is unashamed.  It’s A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1

That is all.

That was what ThinkGeek claimed when they started selling BRAND NEW DREAMCASTS recently, that they found a spare warehouse full of ‘em in California.  They still have the black ones, in fact, for $99.99, if you’re interested.

But this story sounds familiar…

Oh yeah.  EGM.  April 2001.  “Warehouse full of new, sealed Sega Neptunes found!”  When you clicked on the link to buy one for $399, it brought you to a page that said APRIL FOOL’S and had a counter at the bottom letting you know just how many people had been tricked.

The Neptune, if you haven’t heard, was the Sega Genesis and 32X combined into one unit.  They thought the poor 32X sales were due to the fact that the add-on system made it seem so compartmentalized (which it soooo was, but maybe the fact that only 34 games were ever produced for the thing hurt sales a wee bit more).  By the time a Neptune prototype was finally created, the Saturn was all set to release in a few months.  So the Neptune was scrapped, although there is at least one working console in existence.  Wouldn’t that be a cool collector’s item?

But anyway… it was just funny to see an April Fool’s joke turn into reality a few years later.  Makes me wonder when we’ll finally see a release of Mushroom Kingdom Hearts and Valkyrie Wilde.  Neither seem out of the realm of possibility, now.  Maybe there’s a warehouse somewhere with all the money Sega used to have too?

Look what I found at Barnes & Noble.  It’s Jenga, but you also have to make Mario scale the tower to conquer DK and rescue his beautiful lady Pauline.  They’re out of stock online, but you can probably find one at your local B&N for the whopping licensed board game price of $24.99.

I’d definitely buy one if I had friends!  Who wants to come over?

EDIT: Found one for you guys at Amazon, only $16.95.  Here ya go, buddies!

Games are a form of creative expression.  “Games are art” is a whole other debate, but my first sentence can be safely agreed with by most everyone.  The game industry is also funded.  Funded by money, to make more money.  That said, it is sooooo much easier to simply reuse old assets to create something new.  Lots of games use the Unreal engine, even to this day, despite the fact that it is many years old.  If companies had to re-create the wheel with each successive game, games would take even longer to come out, and costs would skyrocket.

Sequels are a necessary evil, but they are also terrific.  A sequel to a million-seller is almost guaranteed to do well at retail just based on its pedigree.  But the best sequels take what worked in the original game and improve on it tenfold.  A game like Grand Theft Auto 4 would not be crafted out of nothing.  Rockstar took their experiences with other games to see what aspects of gameplay really captured the gamer and used more of them, while adding a few tweaks to the formula to keep it interesting even though the “Drive/steal/kill” basis of the game remained largely unchanged.

Likewise, Rock Band 2 (the height of the music game genre, and the last music game to really be relevant before the GH over-saturation) would never have been perfected without Harmonix’s experiences with Guitar Hero and, even before that, Frequency and Amplitude on the PS2.  Now, many bands are falling over themselves to be in the games because they know that their music will reach hundreds/thousands/millions of people that would have otherwise never heard of them.

Metal Gear Solid 4 perfected the stealth formula started back in the 80’s.  Each successive Ratchet & Clank is better than the last.  Even Final Fantasy, despite a few missteps, has remained relevant and enticing for over TWO DECADES.  Why?  It builds on the past with an eye on the future.

Many developers, conversely, realize that an over-hyped sequel will automatically sell and make the minutest of changes before churning out their yearly sequel (Madden, Guitar Hero spin-offs) or, even worse, forget what made the franchise beloved in the first place (Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Sonic the Hedgehog).

Many gamers may be turned off from buying sequels because they didn’t play the first game(s).  They won’t understand the storyline and their enjoyment of the game will be greatly diminished by jumping into the middle of the game’s mythology.  This can be solved by a simple “Last time in Odessa…” type of recap, but developers tend to ignore those as well – although the resources are usually available – alienating potential fans.

With original intellectual properties (IP’s), every game is an origin story.  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end (like the original Matrix movie before the sequels messed it up), if only because developers really can’t be sure if a game will sell well enough to justify a sequel at the time of release.

Final Fantasy on the NES was SquareSoft’s last chance to make it big before bankruptcy.  Mirror’s Edge and Okami, two critical darlings, sold like hotcakes… if you in fact mean moldy old coldcakes.  Ico took huge risks both creatively and gameplay-wise, and the cult following has allowed Sony to keep producing games like it with “good enough” sales.  Even while the game wasn’t a direct sequel, Shadow of the Colossus shared Ico’s style, creative vision, and development team.  It appealed to gamers who liked the first while drawing in enough new fans for it to eventually attain Greatest Hits status.

Sequels have more resources and experience at their disposal, but it’s up to the developers to keep their gamers happy with something new every once in a while as well.  We don’t want our once-loved franchises to have their memory soiled by years of abuse.  Why, Destroy All Humans, why?!  I used to love you, but now you suck!  Time to go find some freshness somewhere else.

Sorry the picture is dark; every time I tried to edit the colors with GIMP the program closed.

Anyway, I got this sweet new Mega Man shirt at Hot Topic.  Not just for goth wannabes anymore!  It’s for geeks now too!  Sure, I could wait two years and find it at K-Mart for half the price, but I’ll have it worn out by then.

Oh, Gutsman.  What an awful name.  PEW PEW!  Mega busted.

After reading Grahame’s “The Girls Who Game” article, I thought of something: NOBODY HAS HEARD OF THE FRAG DOLLS!  It’s weird; they are the most popular competitive gaming team in the world, male or female.  They have a weekly feature on the Xbox Dashboard.  They even win major video game tournaments occasionally.

Yet, out of the four Gamer Girls interviewed, only two of them had heard of the Frag Dolls.  Yes, competitive gaming is not, and may never be, as popular as other professional sports.  But these girls are immersed in gaming culture.  Guess it just goes to show how far gaming has to go on its way to becoming a serious hobby.  Even game journalists haven’t heard of the most popular team in their sport.  A lot of gamers reading this probably haven’t heard of Fatal1ty, either.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a single ESPN sportscaster that hasn’t heard of Brett Favre.  Why is gaming, another largely male-centric hobby, so much less documented, understood, and profitable?  If our own hardcore gaming journalists and fans don’t know the stars of competitive gaming, how can we ever expect the sport to infiltrate the mainstream?  How can someone actually take themselves seriously as a pro gamer and expect to make a living without any of the fame associated with other pro athletes?  Sure, you’d be a “pro,” but who will know, and who will care?

Ahh a two month wait?  Was it worth it?  Check it out below!  Only two more to go!  Let’s see if I can finish this post without using any periods!  I think I can!  Yay!  Also, don’t mind the ad; it will be over soon!

Final Fantasy VII.  A landmark game for the original Sony PlayStation, to be sure, and still on many gamers “favorite games of all time” lists.  It was a huge departure from past games in the series, and the first on a non-Nintendo system.  It utilized multiple CD’s and showcased exactly what the format was capable of achieving.

Now, thanks to the PlayStation Network, it has been resurrected again.  For only $9.99, a fraction of the price you’d pay for a used copy off eBay or your local mall game kiosk, you too can re-experience the magic of one of gaming’s least-hidden gems.  You can download to your PS3 or pop it onto your PSP to take it to go.

However… Final Fantasy VII is not a PSP game.  It wasn’t made for the system.  It doesn’t respect the system’s high points and shortcomings.

Personally, I play PSP (and the DS, as well) in two places: in bed right before I fall asleep for the night, and on the can.  It relaxes me, and helps take my mind off the rigors of my oft-monotonous day-to-day.  I like that they are handheld systems.  In bed, I can just shut it off, set it on the bedstand, and fall asleep.  On the pooper, it’s a good substitute for a magazine.

The PSP is a handheld game console.  It’s made for on-the-go-ness.  Twenty minutes here, twenty minutes there.  When games are designed for the PSP, the best ones take this into consideration.  GTA had shorter missions (DS’s Chinatown Wars perfected this even further), games like Daxter had more frequent save points, and PSP games in general are much more pick-up-and-play.  You can play a quick mission on the john, or the bus, or before bed, and not feel like you’re being forced to play longer than you want (*cough*Left4Dead*cough*).

But not Final Fantasy VII.  The game is still just great, even though I know everything that’s happening and going to happen.  The characters are still wonderful, and I still keep hoping that Cloud and Tifa will hook up.  But this is not a PSP game.  You can’t just play thins game for twenty minutes.  It’s too addictive and there’s a long time (often more than half-an-hour) between save points.

You sit on the toilet that long, and your legs will fall asleep.

FF7 wasn’t made  for this.  It’s a game that you need to be able to sit on your couch and drift away to a fantasy land for the whole afternoon.  These twenty-minute bite-sized segments are an injustice to both the player and the game.

It all comes down to catering a game to not just the audience, but the console as well.  If a game is on Wii, it should have motion controls.  I don’t care how well Little King’s Story turned out without them.  There is so much untapped innovative potential for the Wii that is ignored with every new standard-control game released.  If a DS game comes out, it should use the touch screen in a meaningful way.  If you don’t want to use the system in the way it was meant to be used, there are other options.

But I guess a good game is a good game, no matter when, where, or how you enjoy it.  I just want a little more respect paid to the format, is all.

There are girls that game.  Obviously.  But the majority of gamers are, and probably always will be, guys.  Why?  Marketing, the abundance of competitive and testosterone-based  games, males’ inbred love of explosions… all sorts of reasons.

I played Halo 3 with a girl the other day.  As soon as she got on the microphone, first question: “Are you a girl?”

Her response, “Last time I checked.”

His next words: “Girls don’t play Halo!”

It’s true.  Not many girls do.  And it may be because of attitudes like that.

Many gamers dream of finding “the gaming girlfriend.”  You know, the girl that you can take out to eat, then catch a movie, then run home and play a round of Left 4 Dead before a round of short, sweaty, nerdy love-making.  In fact, a handful of writers on this very site are married to gamer girls who not only tolerate their hobby, but embrace it.

But… some girls can get too into games, to the point of obsession.  You know the ones.  Otaku, YouTubers, bloggers (heh), 29-year-olds with Mario sheets on their twin beds.  Obsession knows no gender lines.  The problem is that guys that are way too into games are much more socially accepted than girls with the same problem.  “What are we doin’ later, dude?”  “Drinkin’, Halo, and Rock Band!”  “Oh yeah!”

Despite all the equality, guys and girls are still raised to act and think a certain way in America.  Men are still expected to be the breadwinners.  Women, whether they like it or not, are still the stay-at-home moms.  With college being more attainable by everyone nowadays (well, everyone that doesn’t mind a decades-long student loan repayment), women are getting in the workplace, making more money, and getting more power.

But… Obama recently bought a Wii, and that’s okay.  That’s socially acceptable.  Our techie president is just gettin’ with the times and fitting in with us common folk.  Could you imagine German Chancellor Angela Merkel (the most powerful woman in the world according to Forbes) laying down suppressing fire in Call of Duty 4?  Have you even heard of her before now?

My point exactly.

It’s true.  I wrote the Gamer Limit review for Trials HD (check it out here).  Afterwards, I went on to MetaCritic to check out other reviews of it, just to check if I missed any major points.

As it turns out, I really didn’t.  All game reviews are the same.

There were a few points on some reviews that varied, sure.  IGN pointed out the weak level-sharing yet still gave it a 9.0 for “lasting appeal” because of all the medals to earn.  Nearly every review likened it to Excitebike except Gamers Daily News, which made a Uniracers reference.  The scores are all basically the same too, within 1.1 points of each other.  I’m the black sheep with the low score on Game Rankings.  Bad me!

In my opinion, it was ALMOST an 8.  It was just too hard.  Every review agreed.  But a lot of games get an 8 (or better).  There is only so much money people can spend on games; how can they choose when everything gets a B or better?

This is the reason people got so bent out of shape over the 7.5/10 Prototype review score on IGN.  It’s not 8.  Because so many games are at or above an 8/10, anything less is not even worth your time.  And that’s sad, because a lot of underappreciated gems are right under that cusp.

Just on MetaCritic, some games that are acclaimed in some circles are not even able to muster an 80/100: Mirror’s Edge, Penny Arcade Episode 1, Undertow, Lost Planet, Wolverine.   But that’s the trouble with aggregate scores – one low score on a seldom-reviewed game can crush its average.  But that’s not usually an issue.

Game reviews are all looking for the same things: graphics, sound, playability, controls, replay value, fun factor.  When you reach a level in the video game journalism world where you can review games in a manner in which other people will read them, you know what makes a game good.  Unfortunately (or fortunately?), so do developers.  They make better games, so we have to increase our expectations of them, or pretty soon all games will receive a 9/10 and we’ll never know what we should buy.

Since all game reviewers are (presumably) good writers, the only thing separating one review from the next is the writer’s wit.  Some have it.  Some don’t.  It keeps people reading that words you churn out even when there isn’t much to say because you say nothing, well.  I had a comment on my review from  someone who appreciated that I called it Trials and Errors HD.  I didn’t really plan that before I wrote it.  It just came to me as I was spitting out 40 words per minute onto the page.  It worked well.  I have wit.  I guess.

Without little quips like that, there seems to be no reason to read more than one review when the review scores are the same.  They’ll say the same thing, so why not just read the one review by the funny guy?  At least you’ll be entertained.  Maybe you’ll even spit milk all over your keyboard in a fit of LOLZ.  And that’s something we can all enjoy.