Somewhere along the way though, it seems like they got lazy, and maybe we gamers are to blame. How many “Imagine:” games or “Petz” games are being released, just about every day for the Wii? How many add-ons for the Wiimote are there? A dongle that makes it work? A case that makes it look like a gun that shoots Nerf darts? A bathroom scale? These aren’t games, these are gimmicks. And this is where someone chimes in and says “But Eliot, those are for the casual gamers, and they have their place in gaming too.” Well, I say, screw the old lady who wants to play video games (not in that manner, unless that’s your thing). Why should video games pander to the masses? Do we really need another animal simulator or minigame compilation? Just so Gary Suburb can join in the fun? So Nintendo gave up on us on that front.

But here’s where the meat of my thought comes into play. We bickered and argued that there were no games for us, the loyal fans. So Nintendo threw us a few bones. Have you guys played New Super Mario Bros Wii? I hope you have. It’s awesome. Simple sidescrolling action, run and jump gameplay with a few new weapons. It’s just like playing Super Mario on the NES again. But that’s kinda my beef. I feel like Nintendo is just pandering to its fanbase. “Oh, you want games that don’t involve waggling a Wiimote to nurse a baby? Ok, here’s Mario, with updated graphics, but little else added. That not enough? Ok, then here’s Punch-Out again. Want more? Here’s another Zelda.” Nothing innovative, nothing mindblowing, just more of the same. They basically gave Mario a spinny hat and called it a day.

I suppose that’s alright, for the most part, and maybe I’m just angry about this because I thought Mario Galaxy was awesome as hell, and I also think that the original NES games were best left back in the 80s and early 90s. With Galaxy getting a sequel (which they admit is just more of the same, almost like an expansion pack), I just wish Nintendo would take more risks with their franchise characters. Mario has more going for him than Kart racing and sidescrolling, and I thought Galaxy was a great addition to the lineup. Say what you will about Mario Sunshine, but it was worth the attempt at something new. I’d argue that the last big risk they took was going first-person for Metroid, and that changed the series for good, and for the better. Going back to the well is fine, every now and then, but copy and paste just feels cheap.

The flipside to all this is what Sega’s been doing to Sonic. Werehog, really? First of all, let’s assess that situation, not that it hasn’t been done to death. Werehog technically translates to Man-hog, which is not what he was turning into in that game. More like a hedgewolf, with rubbery arms of death, but I digress. Those portions of that Sonic game did nothing but slow you down and force you to fight. Really? HIS NAME IS SONIC! He should be flying down the road at full speed. Along the way, Sega managed to created a werehog, a hedgehog with a gun, a black knight, and a bunch of other gimmicky things to rejuvenate the character. Meanwhile, he’s been doing just fine on the DS, because his games on that system have been all about running. Here’s a tip for Sega: rip off Tony Hawk. The old Tony Hawk, not the Tony Hawk that requires you to be sober to play (that board is ass). Sonic should be about finding the best line to get through a level in the fastest amount of time. And yes, it sucks to be a level designer knowing that all your work is going to go blazing by and no one will appreciate your precious bump-mapping or hi-def shrubbery, but tough. You’re working on a game called Sonic. Quit changing things and accept that fact.

So really, I’m torn on the state of classic characters, and maybe this rant really was just that: a rant, but I’m sure there are some people who will agree with me, some will disagree, and some will try to post Viagra ads. But what do you guys think? Is this a double standard? Are we to blame for wanting old things updated rather than new things?

He's Just As Disappointed As I Am

This game was a combination platformer/shooter/driving game that tried to recreate the story of the movie. However, in a ballsy turn, the makers of the game decided to do all that without giving any context for why you’re doing what you’re doing at any given point. They assume that you’ve already seen and digested the movie, so little things like explanations or logic don’t really matter. Flimsy objectives flash on the screen and if I had no clue who Miles Dyson was before I played this game, I’d assume I was just busting into some black guy’s house and raiding it. But I digress…

The first thing you see when you start the game is this:

Seal of Approval, or Death Sentence?

Right off the bat, you know you’re in for a treat. For those not in the know, LJN is responsible for such ‘epics’ and the Friday the 13th game and Back to the Future, neither of which are remotely enjoyable. With that mindset, let’s plunge into the game.

The first level is the bar from the movie where the T-800 starts asking for clothes. Let’s talk graphics here. This is the bare minimum you could do to call this a 16 bit game. The Terminator looks like one of the Blues Brothers and he constantly walks with one arm forward, a sign of sheer laziness so that his arm wouldn’t have to be animated every time you fire, but then there are little things like a crouching animation that has unnecessary frames of animation that just slow things down. He also does this weird jump where his head looks downward as he does it. The Terminator should not be jumping. In fact, I’m almost positive that the only reason he does is because he walks so damned slowly that they added that in as a way to speed up your movement. But back to the bar…

Bouncy...

Remember that scene in T2 when Arnold went around ramming his knee into everyone’s balls? No? Me neither. Or how about that scene where he skipped around a whole lot? Stumped on that one too? Hmm. Maybe LJN got their hands on some deleted scenes because I sure as hell don’t remember the scene at the bar where Arnold had to kick 60+ bikers and find futuristic items. But hey, benefit of the doubt, I guess.

Annnnd....KICK

Let’s talk about these futuristic objects for a second. In an effort to pad out the gameplay, LJN decided that you should have to find these weird objects thrown about the levels. Apparently, these boxes with rave lights on top contain Terminator heads, which you have to crouch over to pick up after blowing up the box. I’m going to call time out right here and point out the weirdness behind this concept. Did John Connor send these things into the past? I’d presume not, since he’s all about preserving the future and himself, so things from the future would distort the time line. So did Skynet send these things? It’s possible, but only organic stuff can travel through time – which is why all the time travelers are naked. So what are these things and where did they come from? Things to make you go “Hmm.”

Behold, a box from the future

After you complete your objectives at the bar, you’re treated to a driving level to break things up and whoa, these are the worst driving controls ever. What ever happened to making the left button make you turn left? For this game, you need your Y button to help you turn around corners, but that’s only if it recognizes that you’re at an intersection. Otherwise, be prepared to spin around a whole hell of a lot. I was seriously at this one crossroad for about 2 minutes, spinning around, trying to get him to make a left, or as the case may be, get him to turn South West. See, up in the corner, there are cardinal directions to help you get to your destination, but when the directions are North/South/East/West, but all the streets are diagonal, you’re forced to zig zag your way through the map. Way to turn something as easy as a driving minigame into a chore. Thanks LJN.

Also, I had to push up to steer downwards. Intuitive….

Action packed...?

So here in the mall, you have to find John Connor. If you shoot the cops, they get all riled up and come after you, which is understandable, but for some reason, everyone at the mall is freaking out, regardless of whether you’ve fired a gun or not. Either there’s a major sale or there’s a discount for manic teens. When you find John, he’s busy playing an arcade game, but at this point, the T-1000 has already found me and him, so it was up to me to get him to follow me to safety. John was having none of it. I tried every button – hell, I even tried shooting the damn kid – but no. The way to get John to follow you is hidden away in the Pause menu.

Let’s just take a brief moment to dissect how ridiculous this is. A lot of games would’ve gone the easy route of just having the character follow you when you meet up with him. But not this game. The command to get the kid to follow you is in the Terminator’s menu. That means that the Terminator has an option in his programming to get people to follow him? That doesn’t make any kind of sense. If these machines had an option to get people to follow them, there would have been no resistance in the future. Just select “Follow” and lead humanity to its doom. Skynet really dropped the ball.

Follow me, whether you like it or not

It was here that I really started to notice the music. This music is god-awful. If Battletoads music and Doom music fucked and had a baby, and then that baby grew up and shagged Kid Chameleon, that music would find its home in T2. It’s that annoying. Also, it’s the only song in the game. Hope you love horrible MIDI rock.

After another painful driving sequence in which I demolished a truck by driving into it with my motorcycle, I was off to the institution where Sarah was being held. I’ve got to assume that this is a faithful recreation of the institution from the movie. There are just way too many empty rooms in this place with absolutely nothing in them, and I had to check every single one because of those damned Future Objects.

The T-1000 in this game is a weird kind of enemy. He doesn’t really do much more than your average cop enemy, but his AI is ridiculously dumb. He pops out at random, occasionally melding through the wall in the background, sometimes resembling a plant or a water fountain, but mostly, he just does a sit up out of the floor, shoots or kinda stabs toward you, and then sits back down on the floor. You can shoot at him, but the pistol doesn’t do anything and the shotgun just makes him sit back on the floor again, like he’s having a time-out. He’s not really a huge threat – more of an inconvenience – just like the movie, only not.

That blob? That's your nemesis.

The game does try to make it more like the movie by making the Terminator a non-lethal entity, per John’s request. However, I just want to point out that when you’re shooting orderlies in the face with a shotgun, I have a hard time believing that was a non-lethal attack.

Pictured Above: Non-Lethal Attack, With A Shotgun

There’s another point in the game where Sarah refuses to follow you until she sees John. I just want to point out how much that irritated me. I knew where Sarah was and figured that I’d get all the future objects, the last one being on the ground floor before heading up to the 6th floor to get her. After about 20 minutes of dodging gunfire to get all the objects and then get to her, she refused to come with me, even though I used my Terminator “Follow me” command. So I had to trek all the way back to the garage to get John, to trek back to the top floor, to get Sarah, to trek back to the beginning. I guess I can’t fault the game for using movie logic for this, but maybe a hint to this at the beginning of the level or some consistency in what got carried over to the game from the movie would help this whole thing.

The funniest part (and I use that word sarcastically) is that once I actually did get Sarah and John to follow me to the exit, the T-1000 didn’t show up once. Seriously. I didn’t outrun him or even see him pop into view. He totally dropped the ball on the whole “Kill John Connor” thing.

There’s one portion of the institute where the hallway ends, but there’s a door to get to the dead end. What? What was the point of that door? Also, the elevator is terrible. I remember the elevator in the movie being a particularly tense area where the T-1000 posed a credible threat and the danger was in making sure that the heroes made it to the garage before they were obliterated. Here? The elevator goes up and down and the T-1000 can’t go in. So it’s kinda the same thing, except not fun.

After the institute, there’s a throwaway level at Enrique’s place and then off to Dyson’s home. When you get to Dyson, you need to find the security key and destroy his research, but when I went to find the key, I saw a fully built Terminator endoskeleton in the den. “Wow,” I thought. “A new enemy.” Nope. Turns out that’s his research. He built a whole fucking terminator and just left it in his study. Research at its finest, I guess. After I destroyed the research and got the security card, I went back upstairs and shot Dyson with no penalty. Don’t know why. Maybe to save myself from the awkward breathing when he blows up Cyberdyne.

Cyberdyne is pure chaos, both in amount of firepower and in terms of how little information the game provides. The objectives here are to find the T-800 parts and then destroy the building. So I found the room where they kept the parts, but there was no way in. So I continued searching the building, trying to find a keycard or something. About an hour (in real time) later, I wandered back to that vault. John had been incapacitated about 6 times at this point, so I thought I’d leave Sarah and John waiting for me, while I kept searching. When I selected to leave them there, guess what? JOHN OPENED THE FUCKING DOOR! He couldn’t do that while he was following me?! He was right there! So I grabbed the parts and now I had to find the weakest point in the building to blow it up. I found it, but it wouldn’t let me set the charges because the building was still too structurally sound. Now I had to go around and blow everything up. Another half hour later, I was set to blow the building, but I couldn’t find the spot again. I thought I knew where it was, but I just could not find it. There were no hints, no signs, and no flashing boxes reminding me of where it was. Dear reader, I shit you not, I spent 2 days looking for a missing room or crevice that I may have overlooked (thank god for save states). I left John and Sarah in random places throughout the level, thinking maybe they’d mysteriously find the ability to blow up a major building, but to no avail. It pained me to do it, but I had to check GameFAQs for help, and you know what? Here’s what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to walk John and Sarah outside, leave them there, go back into the building, destroy the supports, and then plant the charges. How, in the ever loving name of Babe the Blue Ox, was I supposed to know to do that? That means, for two days, all I had to do was select “Don’t Follow” and I would’ve been done with that level. Facepalm, big time.

I did just what GameFAQs said I should. I went outside, dropped off the Connors, went back in, made sure I had enough damage done to the building, went to the area where I was supposed to plant the charges, pressed Down, and…. Nothing. Not a thing. I really couldn’t beat the game because it wouldn’t let me set the charge. At this point, I threw my hands up and started typing because this game was broken. Now, someone might chime in and say that I missed something, but by all accounts, I had destroyed 93% of the building. That fucker should’ve come down if I hiccupped.

LJN’s record with games is astounding, in that every single one of their games was a licensed piece of crap that didn’t really work. A quick Wiki search would show you that they’ve never really done anything to win the rights to continue producing licensed product, and this game is proof of that. It’s broken, poorly and inconsistently references the source material, and it’s just messy. Playing as the Terminator, even the neutered “Don’t kill anyone” Terminator, should have been awesome. Instead, we got a weak tie-in to cash in on the movie’s release, which is horrible, considering the movie was release in 1991 but this game was released in 1993. What were they doing in those two years? Perfecting the ONE SONG in the entire game? Much like the most recent Terminator film, this game’s sole purpose is to make money off of the love of familiar characters, so just follow this easy rule of thumb – if it’s based on a movie, just watch the movie; if it’s made by LJN, burn it.

Technorati Tags: Cyberdyne, Dyson, John Connor, LJN, SNES, T-1000, T2, Terminator

Pictured Above: Debatable

As with most things nerds love - video games, computers, Battlestar Galactica - things went mainstream and served to a new generation of people, adding brighter colors, “charming” characters, and bigger explosions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about bigger explosions, but games are a billion dollar industry now. They’re the next Hollywood, so it’s a little weird to see what used to be this thing that was so down key and almost hush hush become a global phenomenon.

But when you take away all the award shows, the glitz, the glamor, the Mountain Dew fuel, you can see who still runs the show. Not the movie studios, though you might think that with all the horrible tie in games, not the major corporations, though they’re the ones profiting.

Who runs the show?

Nerds.

Know how I can tell?

Physics.

WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, in no other medium is physics held with such high regard. And the only reason this even came to mind is because I was playing through Half-Life 2 and realized that some guy thought the gravity gun was the greatest weapon one could use in a game. The ability to lift things and prop them up to create levers was considered amazing gameplay. And, in reality, it is. It’s innovative, intuitive, and enjoyable because it mimics the real world as well as it does. Here are some examples:

I love that no number of space marines can match the awe-inspiring mysticism of watermelons rolling, or boxes shattering realistically. Physics - gotta love it.

PS - also, on the same token, the other way you can tell nerds run things is by noticing that only in one of the world’s best selling games is a scientist with a crowbar considered a hero. Just saying…

Our Savior, Through Research

Technorati Tags: Dick Tracy, Gordon Freeman, Half Life, Half Life 2, Physics

Also, as a game, I’ve missed Jet Grind Radio. I may have to dust off the ol’ Dreamcast and suffer through the loud disc spinning to play it a bit.

Technorati Tags: Dreamcast, Jet Grind Radio, Sega

I want to point out a few things here. 1) I love the alien sporting the Don King hair. 2) I also love that Tyson’s suffered one loss - I don’t know what the game is referencing exactly, but it’s cool to think that it’s talking about Little Mac. 3) Check out :43, where Don King goes Super Saiyan. 4) Ever notice that when a series or franchise goes stale, they either send the characters into space or through time? Gilligan’s Island did it, Happy Days did it, and now Tyson.

The best part of this (if the video didn’t turn you off from playing the game) is that the game is available for download as a free ROM here. It’s worth it just to say you’ve played a flavor of garbage that not many other people have played before.

Technorati Tags: mike tyson, NES, punch out

Truer words, my friends.

Host Master and the Conquest of Humor

Technorati Tags: Double Fine, GDC, Monkey Island, Point and Click, Psychonauts, Tim Schafer

Technorati Tags: Earthworm Jim, Game Music, Lorenzen, Tallarico

Bad Mickey!

Fine...I didn't want to be him anyway

Technorati Tags: Disney, Magic Kingdom, NES

We miss you, buddy

From his party-time hat to his expressive shirt, everything about B.D. Joe says that one should hold on to his or her butt once they get into his slightly psychotic transport. His gung-ho attitude about getting his fares to their destinations by any means necessary, be it via jumping over buildings or possibly even traversing the ocean, he’s a dedicated individual, getting you where you need to go no matter the color of the icon hovering over your head.

Sure, he may not have the cool hair of Axel, the vivaciousness of Gena, or even the stubble of Gus, but he had style and, according to wikipedia, “the fastest floored speed, but least controllability.” Sure, he had to be firm sometimes, suggesting that his passengers both shut up and move their butts, but he was kind enough to pick up people who lived in the ocean and expected taxis to take them to KFC.

B.D. Joe, we miss you, man.

Technorati Tags: BD Joe, Crazy Taxi, Dreamcast, KFC

How Appropriate. You Make Pottery Like a Cow!

Lucasarts really needs to consider turning Ghost into a point-and-click adventure. Use Sam Wheat on Whoopi. Pick Up Penny. Give Cigarettes to Crazy Train Guy. This thing practically puts itself together.

Technorati Tags: Ghost, Lucasarts, Monkey Island, Whoopi