Video Games
I find myself the newest owner of a Wii, and it has inspired all sorts of old feelings of childlike excitement. The reason being, the first game I played on it was an emulation of Excite Bike from the original NES; truth be told, in general, a bad game, but one I remember loving from my childhood. There is something amazingly fulfilling about basic games, the graphics almost hurt your eyes compared to what is available nowadays, but they were so much more satisfying. Even this old, pretty bad game had me loving playing video games and more enthralled than I had been in a good while.
I don't accept the argument that I was a kid, and everything was new, and thus, I thought I liked the games better back then. When all you have is 8-bit graphics, and the controls are so primitive, you have no option but to make a GOOD game. You have to a basic desirable premise/plot/story, your controls have to be functional and understandable, and you have to instill it with that spark that makes it a genuinely engaging experience. Most every game I look at nowadays appears to have some team of 30 NASA scientists detailing the particle draw and physics systems, but they seem to only have a single 12 year old on seven red bulls in the back who is trying to pound out the scripts before going into another seizure. I mean really, the games are designed around twitch motor responses, not skill or trained combos, not ingenuity or puzzle solving. The graphics are used to sell games which have nothing more to them; they are just nicely polished turds... but turds none the less. Oh sure, there is a gem here and there, there are staples even through to today, but they are getting fewer and far between.
I got a Playstation 3 a while ago, and was nowhere near as excited for it. It was, as it seems to be marketed as, like buying another component for my home theater. It is functional, and sophisticated, but the games on it either seem to be knock-off's the other systems would bother to purchase, or they are decent in premise and short on delivery. With the Wii games I have played, like sports and play, the graphics are abysmal, but that is quickly forgotten when you start to actually enjoy the game. This principal of simple is better is lost to a lot of the newer games, and the generation now playing them I feel - I mean, does really seeing the entrails of someone you just disemboweled in perfect resolute detail really make that game that much more fun?
I feel a bit odd by the way this letter makes me look like the crotchety old man yelling at all the whipper-snappers and I am just reviewing the difference between games from 15 years ago to today’s, but still, there has been a big shift in the type/style of games being made within just the last generation of consoles out there.
On a last point, and this very well may just be me getting old - but I have noticed myself really losing my stomach for the violence/gore in games recently. I, back in the day, used to be enthralled by countless beat-down’s and shoot-up’s, and other methods of splattering the grey matter of those who opposed me across the screen, but something inside me just cannot do it anymore. I tried watching one friend play Fallout 3, the newest technology in intelligently dismantling your foe - this game allows you to very carefully target specific regions of their anatomy and then devise how you want to obliterate it. For about 5 minutes, I was captivated by the elegance of the interface and the mechanic itself, and how well it was designed; slowly though, it began to sink into me how truly brutal and grotesque the results become from targeting things this way. While I thought it may be a neat way to spice up your game play by trying all different manner of engaging in battle, the people actually doing it used it as a tool to blast off either their head or balls, over, and over again. It had me sitting back and evaluating what, at a base is really what entertains us - and I almost felt sick. I have some games that contain violence, gore, and such, but there are points where I draw limits, and I fear the level of desensitization that I see us going into.
I am not going to say the blanket statement of “games were better back in my day,” but they were different... and I liked them more. In Conclusion, but no particular order, the 10 best video games of all time (and if you disagree, you are wrong, this is non-negotiable):
Castlevania, Symphony of the Night
Street Fighter 2
Final Fantasy 3, English - 6 Japanese
Warcraft 2
Chrono Trigger
Resident Evil 4
Zelda
Metal Gear Solid
Portal
Diablo
With an Honorable mention given to, of course, Tetris.
I don't accept the argument that I was a kid, and everything was new, and thus, I thought I liked the games better back then. When all you have is 8-bit graphics, and the controls are so primitive, you have no option but to make a GOOD game. You have to a basic desirable premise/plot/story, your controls have to be functional and understandable, and you have to instill it with that spark that makes it a genuinely engaging experience. Most every game I look at nowadays appears to have some team of 30 NASA scientists detailing the particle draw and physics systems, but they seem to only have a single 12 year old on seven red bulls in the back who is trying to pound out the scripts before going into another seizure. I mean really, the games are designed around twitch motor responses, not skill or trained combos, not ingenuity or puzzle solving. The graphics are used to sell games which have nothing more to them; they are just nicely polished turds... but turds none the less. Oh sure, there is a gem here and there, there are staples even through to today, but they are getting fewer and far between.
I got a Playstation 3 a while ago, and was nowhere near as excited for it. It was, as it seems to be marketed as, like buying another component for my home theater. It is functional, and sophisticated, but the games on it either seem to be knock-off's the other systems would bother to purchase, or they are decent in premise and short on delivery. With the Wii games I have played, like sports and play, the graphics are abysmal, but that is quickly forgotten when you start to actually enjoy the game. This principal of simple is better is lost to a lot of the newer games, and the generation now playing them I feel - I mean, does really seeing the entrails of someone you just disemboweled in perfect resolute detail really make that game that much more fun?
I feel a bit odd by the way this letter makes me look like the crotchety old man yelling at all the whipper-snappers and I am just reviewing the difference between games from 15 years ago to today’s, but still, there has been a big shift in the type/style of games being made within just the last generation of consoles out there.
On a last point, and this very well may just be me getting old - but I have noticed myself really losing my stomach for the violence/gore in games recently. I, back in the day, used to be enthralled by countless beat-down’s and shoot-up’s, and other methods of splattering the grey matter of those who opposed me across the screen, but something inside me just cannot do it anymore. I tried watching one friend play Fallout 3, the newest technology in intelligently dismantling your foe - this game allows you to very carefully target specific regions of their anatomy and then devise how you want to obliterate it. For about 5 minutes, I was captivated by the elegance of the interface and the mechanic itself, and how well it was designed; slowly though, it began to sink into me how truly brutal and grotesque the results become from targeting things this way. While I thought it may be a neat way to spice up your game play by trying all different manner of engaging in battle, the people actually doing it used it as a tool to blast off either their head or balls, over, and over again. It had me sitting back and evaluating what, at a base is really what entertains us - and I almost felt sick. I have some games that contain violence, gore, and such, but there are points where I draw limits, and I fear the level of desensitization that I see us going into.
I am not going to say the blanket statement of “games were better back in my day,” but they were different... and I liked them more. In Conclusion, but no particular order, the 10 best video games of all time (and if you disagree, you are wrong, this is non-negotiable):
Castlevania, Symphony of the Night
Street Fighter 2
Final Fantasy 3, English - 6 Japanese
Warcraft 2
Chrono Trigger
Resident Evil 4
Zelda
Metal Gear Solid
Portal
Diablo
With an Honorable mention given to, of course, Tetris.