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MAD's 10 Worst Things about Gaming
Deuce Magnum writes "GamePro's got up a story that was apparently designed by the guys at MAD magazine. It details the lows of video gaming, from big boobs to MMO patches. From the article: "8. Mind-numbingly dull 'cinema sequences' -- as if we really needed to interrupt the game with ten minutes of bad acting and cliche'd dialogue to explain the deep motives and back story of why Ratchet and Clank are running and jumping. 9. Choppy, second-rate video games designed for cell phones. Was text messaging not a useless enough way to drain battery power? "
"10. Video game magazines that spend months hyping a game as the second coming, lavishing it with praise and eagerly counting down to its release date, only to dismiss it when it comes out as third-rate, over-hyped crap."
How true.
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...really went down in quality after Gaines died. It's been pretty much bad since 1992. I picked one up in the supermarket not too long ago and to my horror I saw that now they actually have advertisements. It really threw me off, since before whenever I saw an advertisement in MAD it was a parody. I looked and looked for the joke but it just wasn't there. Plus now they've gone to color.
The big landmark in MAD history where I saw it becoming crap was when that comic with the kid with bad hair and the slutty mom started appearing... "Monroe".
Plus when the guy who did Spy vs. Spy died and now the new ones are horrible and in this awful spraypaint sort of drawing style.
Ok, when you bought the MMO, it was a finished product. When you "subscribed", obviously you were getting a "subscription" -- to something. Why not more content?
And if you have dialup, why are you playing an MMO? If you're playing an MMO, why are you on dialup? If you're not on dialup, why do you care about patches?
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1) Boobies = No women gamers
A good point, but they don't seem to get to the root of the issue. It's not just the shabby treatment of women in games that turns them off. It's or the violence, or the language either. The fact is, your average "mature" title these days is dripping with pure unadulterated testosterone. Developers are too busy trying to grab their current target audience (males 17 to 25) to cultivate new audiences.
The biggest games- the ones that sell millions of copies to non-traditional gamers- are almost all aimed at a wider audience. Halo 2 was big, there's no denying that- but it pales in comparison to The Sims or Rollercoaster Tycoon in raw staying power- they're practically cultural phenomena. The same can be said for Nintendogs in Japan, which helped the DS steamroll Sony's entire console family in May (haven't seen sales figures since then). That's the kind of stuff that will bring gaming to the masses, not a game designed to appeal to some 19 year-old trying to look cool sitting alone in his parents' basement.
2) Peripheral gouging
I'll concede the memory card point (despite it being pretty much moot for the Xbox and the upcoming 360 and Revolution consoles), since it's pretty much required to use the system. The second controller, on the other hand, isn't necessary at all. There are plenty of people who don't need them, so why require them to pay for something they won't even use? Not to mention that the console manufacturers are selling the hardware at a loss- they're not gouging, just trying to hit a price point with the basic system.
3) The Sims branched out into the realm of fantasy.
Kinda like a humor magazine that branches out into totally unfunny "worst of" lists... Wha? Oh, sorry I tend to ramble sometimes. Seriously, they're EXPANSIONS. If you don't want them, don't buy them- the basic game is fine on its own. Secondly, games are all about escapism. If gamers don't mind it being unrealistic (obviously they don't), then so be it.
4) Sega consoles fail.
Um, this point would've been relevant almost 5 years ago.
5) The play timer proves what a loser you are.
See today's article about speed runs. I'll leave whether or not that proves loserdom or not up to you.
6) Unlockables suck!
Unlockables can really lengthen the life of a game. A great example of this is Super Smash Bros. Melee: collecting trophies, and unlocking stages and characters kept me playing the single player element of the game much longer than if I would've otherwise (the multiplayer STILL gets a ton of play in my circle of friends too). When used with a good game, it just makes for an even more addictive experience.
7) Downloading patches sucks.
Would you rather they just leave it broken? Games are complicated, ESPECIALLY ones as big as MMOs. Bugs are pretty much inevitable, and getting them fixed improves the player's experience. They also fail to mention that a lot of said MMOG patches include content updates. Would you rather eschew all that new material just to save a few minutes logging on every month? I didn't think so.
8) Cutscenes are boring!
I think it's time to take your Ritalin.
9) Sub-par cell phone games
For all the choppy cell phone games out there, there are also a lot of great ones. Popcap makes a veritable treasure trove of great phone games, and pretty much every smartphone platform on earth has a Worms port. And these are just a few examples.
10) Hype
Good point, though it's ironic to see it on Gamepro.com.
"And if you have dialup, why are you playing an MMO?"
I'll bite. Where did the game say on the box that you need broadband to play the game?
"If you're playing an MMO, why are you on dialup?"
I don't even understand that question. Does subscribing to a MMO also give you a broadband subscription, or even just a broadband provider in your area? Or wth is the if-then relationship there?
"If you're not on dialup, why do you care about patches?"
I'm on DSL, and it seems to me like download times _are_ a problem even if you're not on Dialup. (In fact, are such a pain in the butt on DSL, that the mere thought of someone getting those on dialup makes me cringe.)
I got into WoW in July 2005. I had to let Blizzard's sucky slow downloader run over night before I could even create a character.
I also reinstalled City Of Heroes recently. There goes another couple of hours of just downloading patches.
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"I know gamers love to bitch about games, but how about instead of the Worst Of lists we see a Things We Like the Most About Gaming list? Just a thought."
Well, I don't know if it's actually been put in a numbered list yet, but, eh, just go read a review from any major site. They'll spend _pages_ telling you what they loved about a game. (And it's usually the same things. "Whoa, this time it has 5% more polygons per character!")
Then give everything a score between 90% and 100%. (Doubly so if it's one of those sites/magazines which blatantly tries to please EA's and Vivendi's marketting. It doesn't pay to give their games a bad score, because then they'll cut your ads, you know.)
Now think about it. On a scale of 0% to 100%, then 50% would mean average. A 100% score would mean so utter perfection that even God Himself couldn't improve it. So a site where most scores are between 90% and 100%, and no game since Daikatana dipped under 80%, is trying to tell me... what? That _all_ games are way above average? Then how is it an average?
The problem is the whole focus on what's good and perfect, and barely touching (if at all) what's sub-par. Everyone concentrates on telling me the same half the news: what's good.
Unfortunately, we're not talking about praising the neighbour's kid or making smalltalk to your co-workers, or anything else where "if you can't say anything good, better not say anything" might apply. We're talking blowing some 40 to 60 Euro for a game. But I damn well like to know the _whole_ story, including what's _bad_, when I choose one.
So I like reading a good "bitching". It gives me that much-needed insight into that other half of the story. What's bad, what's been done better in another game, what becomes boring at level 40, what doesn't live up to the massive hype that the publisher spewed.
And if someone's feelings are hurt by that "bitching", well, they could just keep their marketting on a leash next time. If the hype squad didn't promise the moon and the stars for 2-3 years straight, you wouldn't get people "bitching" when its released with half the stars missing and the moon being just a painted frisbee on a pole.
But in the meantime, that's just the kind of thing I'd like to know when I buy a game. If it takes wading through someone's "bitching" to get to that info, so be it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball: Is not a game about "World Class Volleyball Players." It's a game about the Dead or Alive girls playing beach volleyball. It would be like if Maxim magazine made a Maxim Volleyball issue. Do the people who wrote this think that the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is about swimsuits?
Tomb Raider: Hailed as the second coming when it was created, Tomb Raider has steadily become more and more irrelevant. The only thing that has kept the series going at all is... Lara Croft, the lead character. This character was so successful that she was ripped off for a syndicated TV series (Relic Hunter starring Tia Carrera) and appeared in numerous magazines. Interestingly, the original game was almost universally popular when it came out, and had more crossover appeal then most Playstation games.
GTA (Series): Oh, they are upset with GTA for being objectionable? I'm sure over at R* they are saying, "Cool, we made another 'objectionable' list. Oh wait, it's only MAD magazine and Gamepro, bleh."
If these are why girls don't play games, then why haven't girls stopped watching movies? I notice a lot of prominent advertising for -shudder- Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo, and yet girls still go to movies.
SEGA: To paraphrase Agnes (from The Simpsons), "SEGA is gone, Mad, long gone. You're SEGA." Picking on SEGA's "legacy of failure" is beating a dead horse. No, it's more like if a big, stong person you were afraid of was brought down and then you go over to kick them when they are safely unconscious. It's ugly behaviour, especially from Gamepro. Video games are less fun now than when SEGA was around.
The Sims: When were the Sims realistic? I didn't play it very long, but I remember my character chose the "Life of Crime" career path. This was in the first game with no supplements.
Well, that's enough. It sure doesn't belong in the "it's funny, laugh" section.
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