Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, X-Factor USA being won by a WGWG (white guy with guitar), if Steve Nash is truly a difference-maker for the Los Angeles Lakers, or Flipboard for Android tablets finally not sucking, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
Thankfully, I didn’t play many bad games in 2012. That’s one of the few benefits of being forgotten by PR people. That said, there was one game that I found tremendously disappointing. You see, I love George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books and I love the HBO show, Game of Thrones, that’s based on them. The former is one of the most entertaining series of fantasy novels I’ve read and the latter is one of the best television shows ever made. With all of that in mind, the Game of Thrones videogame was a terrible letdown.
The game wasn’t on the level of Superman 64 or anything. It was less-than-mediocre rather than wretched. Aside from an interesting story, practically every aspect of the game was bad. The combat was boring and repetitive, the graphics were woefully outdated, the sound design was basic, and it just felt like a sluggish experience. Take away the story, familiar settings, familiar happenings, and familiar characters and you’d have a budget fantasy RPG that isn’t very good. From a pure gaming standpoint, it simply doesn’t stand on its own. Rumor has it that the game caused several fans of the books and TV show to “take the black.”
Now it’s your turn! What was your biggest gaming disappointment of the year?
I didn’t buy too many new games in 2012. I did play Skyrim and Dead Island in 2012 and both were complete ass.
Dead Island: Stupid ideas, horrible coding, poor UI. Playing with 3 other friends didn’t help the experience any. Thankfully it was less than $10 on Steam.
Skyrim: I’ve played this game since I was in grammar school with DaggerFall. I feel that I am able to judge it due to that fact alone. Seriously the combat or names haven’t changed in 20 years. After playing MMOs this type of game takes a serious nose dive as far as exploration is concerned. Nothing this game presented compelled me to keep going. Thankfully $0 spent.
Honorable mention: iOS games that have virtual buttons. This can be any genre. Seriously if I have to press buttons on both sides of the screen of a 3.5 or 4 inch phone it is analogous of me holding a controller in front of my face while playing an Xbox or PS. It is just plain horrible. Games like Theatrhythm handle this nicely and thus should be emulated.
The worst game I played this year was Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. A bandmate of mine lent it to me and I returned it to him as soon as I could to get it out of my sight.
I feel fairly confident that I’m done with the entire RE franchise for good. Sorry Capcom, it was a good run, but it’s time we part ways. It’s not you… it’s me. I need more space in my life. I feel we should both try other games. I’m just too busy for a survival horror game right now. You can do better than me. I hope we can still be friends.
That’s the problem with RE; it’s not “survival horror” anymore. It’s slowly morphed into “action shooter.” Unfortunately, they had to evolve because their “design choices” that made RE popular with our generation were actually cleverly-disguised technological constraints. Today, those technical limitations are obsolete, so they have to change their games accordingly.
But instead of making creative, new design choices, they decided to imitate whatever sells today which is action and shooting, so that’s what we have now. And, believe it or not, the kids that never played RE2 or Nemesis actually like the new stuff because they don’t have a basis for comparison. These are the same kids that will tell you that the older RE titles are absolute crap because of the controls and aforementioned technical limitations. They will find it boring and unplayable.
What Capcom SHOULD have done (to appease both audiences old and new) is to come up with another “line” loosely associated in the RE universe. Think of this as the “Resident Evil Expanded Universe.” Their original series will be the ones we know and love with the classic “tank” controls, limited ammo, and lots of slow-moving zombies. I think RE4 should be the benchmark for this traditional series. Simultaneously, Capcom would have yearly releases of their second line that could be called “Umbrella Chronicles” and then a sub-title for the different iterations. These will be more “Call of Duty” oriented. This series could involve a crack team of Umbrella-paid mercenaries that go around the world carrying out dastardly deeds and putting the seeds in place for another massive outbreak. Their enemies could be police, military, and/or civilians trying to stop them from accessing key parts of some city to spread some zombie virus. The beauty of this is that it lends itself to the perfect set-up for the future “core” RE games. For example; “Umbrella Chronicles game #6 could see the mercenaries fighting through and infecting some town in Russia. Then, in RE game #7, you could have Chris Redfield or Leon Kennedy (or whoever) go into the town that was infected by the mercenaries and clear out all of the zombies and deal with whatever creative aftermath that was left in the wake of the previous “Umbrella Chronicles” game complete with traditional RE controls and atmosphere. This will perpetual cycle of bi-lateral games will appease both types of fans and will be able to work in tandem to continue the cycle of infection/clean-up giving people a choice between action shooter or survival horror.
-M
P.S. Dear, Capcom, please hire me. This is more for your benefit than mine. Also, I have a couple of ideas for Mega Man that will blow you away.
The “CoD type shooter” is almost what Operation Raccoon City is, except it’s more “co-op third person horde mode”. It’s actually more of a Gears type game. However, it just sucked. I’ve been playing shooters since Goldeneye and there have been SEVERAL of those games per year, every year since Goldeneye. I’m burned out, I truly am. Games like that have to venture fairly far outside the box to capture my interest anymore.
My parents paid $300 for the PS1 in it’s first year to give it to me for Christmas. At the time, it was ridiculous to pay that much for a console, yet they did. I think I was in 10th grade. I got 3 games with it too. Ultimate MK3 (which was pretty much the sole reason why I wanted the PS1 over the Sega Saturn), a game called Loaded which was a Gauntlet/Ikari Warriors type game (yeah, I’m old), and Resident mother fu*kin’ Evil. I played MK3 with other people until my fingers bled. Loaded… was alright. RE… there was nothing I had ever seen like it. Perfectly gory and enthralling at the same time. I was hooked. After about 9 months, I couldn’t play anything on that launch PS1 without flipping it upside down or putting it on it’s side. 8 months after that, it was bricked.
The reason I still never got tired of those games was because they never overdid them until relatively recently. I skipped RE5 until PS+ gave it away free last month. I got to maybe the 3rd or 4th level before it just frustrated me too much. For the obvious, known reasons of course. My main complaint though was “What kind of special tactics unit doesn’t train their agents to aim a gun while moving?” If I could at least do that, I’d overlook the fact that Sheeva is a total moron.
All that said, I’m done… moving on.
Oh, man, you have to get to the end fight. I don’t want to ruin it for you, but the last boss fight has one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen in a video game. It is so awesomely incredulous that it’s sparked internet memes and long-running inside jokes. Going through the entire game is worth it just to see it.
I guess it was easier for me to get through the game because I had my wife play as Sheeva. Mind you, she has had absolutely no gaming experience up to that point, and she kept dying, and getting me killed, and she wouldn’t do what I wanted her to do in a timely manner, but I gotta say that even with all of that, having her play was WAAAAAY better than letting the A.I. control Sheeva. In my case, I just learned to utilize my wife’s particular gaming skill set, which was to be the decoy. She would run into some dangerous area leading a conga-line’s worth of monsters and then I would come in from behind, clean up and then rescue her. (See how well marriages work out when you “Know your role?”)
If you had the game on Xbox, I’d would have gone through with it with you and it would have been a lot better. Oh well.
-M
I bumped into a friend that worked at Tecmo and mentioned that I miss Fatal Frame. Unlike many other survival-horror series, that one stayed true to genre by not adding uzis.
Also, did you see Cliff’s tweet to the RE team about wanting to work on the games? I think he has a leg up on you.
That is exactly what happened with the Dead Space series. The first game was just brilliant and then the 2nd had to add multiplayer to a survival horror experience and thus made the game more of an action shooter.
If you want survival horror at its finest, download the demo for Amnesia on PC. If you can make it through the demo, buy the game. It’s $10 I think. By far the creepiest game I’ve ever played.
check out Amnesia: The Dark Descent on the App Store. There is a free demo on Steam as well. I’m not sure if Steam has the OSX demo or not. The demo was difficult for me to get through due to how creepy it is. Best survival horror since the early PS2 days.
I’m not stupid enough to play Amnesia. Every “Top Ten Scary Video Games of All Time” list always has Amnesia at the top or near the top of the list on a bunch of gaming websites.
I, unfortunately, like the ability to go to sleep in peace at night and I’m not willing to risk that.
-M
In terms of the game with the worst community, LoL is still waaaaaaaay ahead of all the competition. And really, who didn’t expect that?
The all-around worst game I played this year would probably go to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. Now, don’t get me wrong – I love the AC series altogether, and its position on the list is more due to how good the other games were in comparison. While Revelations had some good moments (ie zip-line through a cave system), they were greatly outshone by the flaws. The game has too much in common with its predecessors in terms of missions and combat, and the story was pretty bland overall. I had fun with the title, but after I finished it a couple months ago I never felt the urge to go back.