Gaming-Zone.net

In today’s media driven society videogames can live or die by the review score, but there seems to be more reason for us as gamers to read between the lines and understand that sometimes games just flat out suck.  When reading reviews and skimming metacritic and gamerankings, we should all try to watch out because even though all games tend to lie between ‘9.5 SUPER DUPER AWESOME’ and ‘5.5 pretty averagely good’ there are some really shitty games out there.  Too bad game reviewers for big media companies have to sugar coat their review scores now.

The ten point scale should be done away with.  This whole Too Human review fiasco has got me thinking about why all games tend to fall between 5 and 9 and never (well I shouldn’t say never, perhaps rarely) go below.  Most of the time if you can get to the main menu of a game, and maybe perhaps load the first level without the game crashing, the game is automatically average?  I think it’s time to move away from the comparing the grade school letter grades with the ten point scale.  What game sets out to be complete garbage and no fun?  Vampire Rain? I kid (somewhat), but in school an F is a shitty grade, and like it or not anything in the 5 range on a game review is an ‘F’ and means it’s pretty horrid.  Sorry Too Human- you have a nice niche audience, but for the masses you’ve failed.  Out of the two-hundred-and-fifty or so Xbox 360 games, only about twenty have fallen below the 5.0 range on Gamespot, and let me tell you these games are pretty bad.  It is a shame that when Too Human scored a 5.5 over there that the score is defended by saying it is simply an “average” game.  Let’s call it a niche game that sucks, but some people will love it.  It’s a shame that the 5 has become the excuse in defense of people saying the review was too harsh or unfair.

Jeff Gerstmann is an honest man.  When he reviewed Kane & Lynch: Dead Men nothing was held back.  In my book that makes him a more excellent reviewer.  Is his review right?  Why is he not allowed to say the game was a byproduct of some phlegm buildup in the developer’s throat and give it a 6.0?  Oh, apparently because Gamespot was advertising for the game on the front page, and there was an entire Gamespot Kane & Lynch Theme at the time.  It isn’t great use of the developer’s ad money when the site they are advertising on gives the game a crappy score, but is that Gerstmann’s fault?  I don’t think so- I think it’s the developer’s for making a shitty game and he was simply trying to be objective.  But that’s where the mighty hand of the dollar has come to today.  Gerstmann was out of a job at Gamestop and the review was pulled.  CNET says that he wasn’t fired because of the poor review score, but then why was he locked out of his own office the day the review was pulled down?  I doubt some butt darts went down in the men’s restroom within that small timeframe (or some other sort of sexual harassment problem).  Even Penny-Arcade called CNET out on this fiasco, but it’s too bad that comedy can’t make wrongs right.

So what I am really getting at is when there are so many games on the market, why should gamers have to spend their hard earned cash on shitty games with bought review scores and marketing campaigns.  We have plenty of great games to play, but it is unfortunate that not all game developers are capable of making the Half-Lifes, Starcrafts, and Bioshocks- that and those games wouldn’t be as special if all games were as good.  So what it really comes down to is don’t give into the fanboy-ish nature of the internet.  If there is a demo out- give it a try if you can and don’t bitch about how great a horrid game is after you bought it.  We all read more than one review so most of the time a consensus doesn’t lie.  And above all- Reviewers: You don’t have to defend your scores!  Even though all games set out to be fun, they all just can’t pull it off.  I am more likely to read (and enjoy) a harsh review than a sugar coated one, and I believe almost everyone can now thanks to Zero Punctuation.  It also will help keep gaming fun by not letting developers slack and churn out horrible Wii Sports clones.

Tags: Bioshock, CNET, Gamerankings, Gamespot, Half-Life, Jeff Gerstmann, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, Metacritic, Reviews, Scores, Starcraft, Too Human, Vampire Rain, Zero Punctuation

There is no denying that Blizzard has the most successful online games of all time, and one of the great things about the game is that it plays fairly well on almost every computer out there.  The game certainly doesn’t look bad, but it is definitely starting to show its age.  Fortunately, the people over at Blizzard just let loose in a few interviews that as more expansions come out for the game they are going to be implementing graphical updates.  They said not to expect WoW2 or anything too intensive; at least anything that would keep players from playing the game on their same hardware.  Rob Chilton explained that “usability” has always been more important to Blizzard than how technical they could make the game visually, and even though some players want that sort of an update, Blizzard isn’t going to stop taking money from any players anytime soon.

Tags: Activision, Blizzard, Expansion, Graphics, MMORPG, Rob Chilton, World of Warcraft, WoW, Wrath of Lich King

Too Human was a pretty anticipated game, and for gamers nothing is worse than being excited about a game only for it to let you down.  The only thing worse than this is when you’re then insulted by the game’s developer for apparently not being intelligent enough to understand how innovative it is.  Now I for one was super excited for this game- it looks awesome if you ask me-but this is really out of context for the developer to defend the game in such a way.  If that were the case we would have the developers of most Wii games on gaming forums all over the net calling us n00bs.  How about just putting your effort into creating a game that actually works and make people have fun?  Apparently that’s harder than it looks, but PopCap Games has no problem ripping off everyone else’s game designs and making them real hits.

Now Kevin Pereira was on the net defending Too Human so apparently the game’s only good score comes from the G4 crowd: Kevin Pereira likes it and so does Adam Sessler.  I am glad they both had fun with the game, but that doesn’t necessarily make the gaming community (or Gamespot for that matter) wrong.  We all knew that the game sucked from the demo, and those who decided to buy it before trying the demo, sucks for you.

Gaming seems to becoming to get more subjective, but in fact I think it is just the problem of buyer’s remorse.  Gaming hardware and software have gotten more expensive and not many of us can afford the luxury of owning all the consoles and all the games so when one person makes the single purchase they need to feel like they made the correct purchase by defending it against others who decided against it or for the other platform.  I think the same thing applies here.  At $60 a pop, Xbox 360 games are not cheap and when you do find out that a game does suck and that Gamestop will only give you 30% of what you paid for it, the only thing you have left to do is bitch on forums about how everyone else is wrong and you are right.

So the moral of the story for Pereira is simply this: try renting the game before you disagree with all of the games reviews.  Dyack?  I’m sorry it took so long to make your game and you didn’t want to have to announce it for the Xbox 720, but suck it up, bite your lip and hire Jonathan Blow (the developer of Braid), because he knows what he’s doing.  Oh, and shut up if you can’t take the shit.

Tags: Buyer's Remorse, Dennis Dyack, Fanboy, Gamespot, Gamestop, Johnathan Blow, Kevin Pereira, Too Human, Xbox 360

Over the years the Tomb Raider series has been at the forefront of PC gaming. From great hits like Tomb Raider 1 and 2, to disappointments like Chronicles, no other game has seen such a surprising rise back to success after becoming a complete failure.

Part of this reinvigoration of the series is because of new developer now responsible for the series, Crystal Dynamics and their ability to take what was fun about the original games and simply make it work without clumsy controls and the need to walk to the edge and jump back every time you need to make a long jump. Lara Croft has also gone through an evolution herself as can be seen in the graphical enhancements that have been made to her look, and it’s no surprise that the sexy-female-Indiana-Jones selling point was genius, as well as the provocative use of her bosoms on the box art to snatch up the dollars of the male demographic. But not only have male audiences been captivated by Lara Croft; female players too like the rogue and independent personality of Lara, which makes the game very empowering for women.

As the development of Tomb Raider continued it seems like Core Design got tired of developing the series. Puzzles got obscure and complicated, controls remained clunky, and Angel of Darkness was filled with so many bugs and problems that it was hard for most reviewers to get past the first level. Frustration is never quite a good thing for a player. However the series could not be forgotten, the feature film was in production with Angelina Jolie and there was too much money to be made in the videogame side of the franchise to let it simply die off. Here is where Crystal Dynamics steps in, and I can only praise them for the beautiful job they have done at capturing the essence of what the original game was about and getting it to all work right!

The redesign of Tomb Raider 1 in the Anniversary game was a very smart move for the more nostalgic gamers like myself which were sick of trying to have to configure an old DOS computer to play Tomb Raider 1, because I was never quite convinced to purchase the glidos glide emulator (no matter how impressive it might be, the price didn’t ever really justify the few moments of nostalgia I would have gotten from playing the game again). However Anniversary was a beautiful and captivating recreation of the original done with modern mechanics, which eliminated the walking up to the edge and having to align every jump in the game.

With the new release of Underworld on the horizon, it’s hard not to get excited about where Crystal Dynamics has taking the Tomb Raider series. It is comforting to know that games that received horrifying sequels still have some hope, but I think that perhaps in this case Tomb Raider was given a chance simply because of how good Lara’s bosoms look dripping after she gets out of an underwater puzzle. I can’t wait to see how they look on the next generation of gaming hardware.

On another note, the new model for Lara Croft, Alison Carroll was announced and doesn’t she ever look the part.  This babe will be doing the promotional work for the new Underworld game.  Here are a few promo shots.

Tags: Angel of Darkness, Angelina Jolie, Anniversary, Bosoms, Chronicles, Core Design, Crystal Dynamics, Lara Croft, Sexuality, Tomb Raider, Underworld

The Wii is currently the best selling console of this current generation of gaming hardware, but for some it is hard to understand how this has become more than the expected gimmick it was thought to be at launch. Nintendo is a company that knows how to make gaming hardware, and we all know that for them games like Pokémon and the got-to-have DS simply print money for them. However, most gamers will agree that their primary game platform is not the Wii, but then why is this system still so hard to find after almost two years into its lifespan. Are there really millions of dusty Wiis all over?

The most obvious mistake that Nintendo made with the Wii was its lack of high-definition support. Sure you can all argue that 480p is technically considered a high resolution image, but compared to the competition it is simply a muddy mess when viewed on an HDTV. Nintendo argued at launch that there were not enough high definition TVs in homes for this to be important but most gamers who know that other game platforms exist probably already own an HDTV considering that 2007 was the year of the HDTV and most electronics stores rarely carry any standard definition televisions that aren’t smaller than 21” or so. As the years pass and developers try to get more out of the Wii hardware to keep up with the look of videogames of this new era, it is going to be hard to see the Wii living much longer when faced with a direct comparison to the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. The Wii is simply a Gamecube in a small package with a magic wand. Because of the lack of hardware power in the Wii it will continue to be a wasteland of PlayStation 2 ports and gimmick motion control games.

Another problem with the Wii is that there are not many games made by third party developers that are worth playing. Most people who buy the Wii, these ‘casual’ gamers simply want to get their hands on Wii Sports, and then let the system collect dust. Sure there are a few really good games on the system by Nintendo, but Zack and Wiki cannot hold Wii owners at bay against the onslaught of Wii Sports knockoffs like Deca Sports, the ever so popular Wii Play (ie Wii Remote with a game), Big Beach Sports, and I am sure the list goes on. The DS had this problem in the first year until developers started to catch on, but we are now in the second year of the Wii’s development cycle and I cannot even name one game not made by Nintendo that is even remotely exciting.

The Wii has this very cool remote. Yes, it is darn fun to play Wii Sports and it was probably Nintendo’s smartest move to pack that game in the box, but there are only a few random games where I can see this control scheme as being an advantage for a game. Game developers want to make one game and port it to all three platforms, but when they get to the Wii they have to come up with some funky motion control scheme to smack into it at the last minute in order to make the game simply work on the system, and most have controls that would be considered barely working. Any first person shooter will never be comparable to the counterpart on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, and even games like Mario Kart Wii and that Wii wheel seem to not stand up to the likes of the Gamecube controller or Classic.

The online functionality is a joke. Seriously Nintendo… Friend codes? They couldn’t have made playing with someone you know more of a hassle, and I don’t know where they get off defending this decision by saying it has to do with protecting the children. It isn’t like we can really have a chat with anyone online either. On top of this the Wii’s online store is filled with games we have already played before and at a ridiculous price. Why should I pay $10 for Mario Kart N64 when I can find a copy on eBay for much cheaper, or better yet emulate it on a PC or an original Xbox console with superior graphics?

Nintendo has gotten away with too much in this console cycle for it to be considered good for the industry. They say they are the innovators but they seem to be holding the industry back by not giving the ‘casual gamer’ what they could be receiving from the competition. The Wii does have it’s place for fun; staying up late drinking with buddies and playing ridiculous games like Boom Blox, Smash Bros. Brawl, or perhaps playing Wii Sports with grandma, but that’s about the limit to the fun that can be had in the Wii. The flooding of mediocrity in the Wii’s software will inevitably be it’s downfall because we simply can’t keep playing Wii Sports over and over or holding out for the next big title from Nintendo. I am sure I could be wrong on many fronts, but I know I won’t be getting my main gaming fun out of my little old dusty Wii.

Tags: Boom Blox, Deca Sports, Dust, HDTV, Mario Kart, Nintendo, PlayStation 3, Pokémon, Wii, Wii Sports, Xbox 360