Games Noir Hates (Part TWO!)

And without further ado.....



5.) Big Bird's Hide and Speak (NES)


How many words can you make, before the sun goes down?

I can think of a whole lot of words, Mr. Bird. Too bad they can only be three letter words..

This isn't a game I had the privilege of playing. It was purchased for my sisters way back when they were wee tykes. Purchased for MY NES. I was enraged at the sheer audacity my parents had to purchase this for them to play on MY system. But I got over it, only to rage at the repetitive garbage coming out of our TV's speakers.

Now, don't get me wrong, edutainment is edutainment. The game did exactly what it set out to do. It gave you until the sun (arbitrary timer!) went down to spell as many three letter words as you could. Why when the sun goes down? Maybe it's to avoid being drained by the Count, or tied to a chair and tortured by Grover. Who knows.

The real demon in this game is Big Bird. This game was the first NES game I know of to feature digitized voices, and our friend Mr. Bird sure loved to talk. His voice is iconic, and was delivered in lines so slow, you could fall asleep mid sentence. And that was all I heard. All the time. And it was insanity inducing.

And if anyone thought of that Surfin' Bird song once while reading this, please punch yourself. Thank you.



4.) Demon Sword (NES)

This was the first NES game my Mother purchased for me. And like most surprise video games your parents buy you, this game was a total garbage fire.

If you've ever played Legend of Kage, also for the NES, you've played this. The premise is simple; run from left to right as the stage infinitely loops, killing jumping guys until the level arbitrarily decides to let you finish. The main character looks to be some sort of super athletic drag queen, which is a bit different from the burly Fabioesque warrior hulk on the cover. But that was pretty standard for box art back then.

So is this game an exact shameless ripoff of Kage? Yes. Yes it is. It's a little better looking, I suppose, but running around in an infinite loop killing the same flying skeleton men gets old in a hurry. And this was pretty much the only video game I owned. The best way to equate that would be to say its like the only book you own being the Yellow Pages. Yeah. It's that boring. It's five levels of boring. If I ever meet a man claiming he had the patience to beat this game, I'd call him a liar.




3.)EverQuest(PC)

Yes, that's right. I'm picking on Everquest, the first MMO that people actually PLAYED. I'm aware of games like Ultima Online, but nobody gave a damn about them.

What is there to say about this game? It lacked quests, leveling was terrifyingly slow, and it was ugly. But it was made ages ago. It was before World of Warcraft, which was far superior.

No, I'm going to talk about Dyllin. Dyllin Starsine. My roommate camped this asshole for 16 hours, just to get his hands on a page for a book. And after 16 hours, his lame ass didn't drop the page. So...another 16 hours of camping later, he kills Dyllin again, and he doesn't drop the page. That's 32 hours. Of camping. He waits ANOTHER 16 hours, and luckily Dyllin finally gives it up. TWO FULL DAYS OF SITTING AT A COMPUTER SCREEN for a page of a book that gives you a minimal stat boost. How is that game balance?

Oh wait, it's not. Screw you Everquest.



2.) Final Fantasy XII (PS2)

Speaking of MMOs, here's a sad excuse at a wannabe if I've ever seen one. Squaresoft got into this mode of thinking, and decided that since MMOs were so popular, they'd not only make one of their own, (Final Fantasy XI,) they'd also style their next mainstream game as a sort of "offline MMO." And this was an unmitigated disaster.

The ability to control your party? Gone in favor of micromanaging your character's AI, also known as "Gambits." There is nothing lamer than this. Exploration also became more MMO like, favoring big open areas full of roaming enemies. While this might not sound SO awful, all it takes is two steps in the wrong direction for your entire party to get wiped by a monster ten times your level. Fun!

I'd comment on the characters in the game, but I didn't play long enough to get to know them. Vaan, the main character, is annoying as hell.

The sad thing is, this bullshit has continued on in the forms of Final Fantasy XIII and XIV. Another "Offline MMO" and another actual MMO. Way to suck, Square.





1.) Halo: Combat Evolved (XBOX)

Really. Say you were surprised.

Halo was, at its core, a mediocre shooter. But what it lacked in gameplay, it made up for in multiplayer wackiness. It ushered in a whole new era of online play, and brought a lot of people into the world of gaming.

People like these fine gentlemen:



Yes, Halo brought douchebags to gaming. And they never left. No matter what game you play online today, it's more than likely that 90% of the guys you playing come from Camp Douchebag. And I'm not about to whine that gaming was always a nerd's sport, but I will say that they're not the ones teabagging your corpse, calling you "fag", or talking about how they know how to play shooters because they are/were in the military.

It's these guys who make it hard to even go into a game store on a release date. There was a whole crowd of people like these guys waiting outside of Gamestop to buy Call of Duty last week, all giving us looks as we wandered in to buy our non-shooter game. That's the funny part about these guys; they play games, but they judge those who play anything but Madden and shooters. I don't give a crap if you like Haloz, but you don't have to be a dick about it.

Halo is like that one woman in a zombie movie who thinks she sees her dog or loved one outside, and throws the doors open to let them in, only to flood the place with death and chaos.

And there you have it. There's my list. Maybe I'll do one of games I love next time, just to prove that there's some things out there I don't hate.

Or not. Whatever I feel like.

Games Noir Hates. (part one)

So, I've done a lot of complaining about games. And it never seems like I enjoy any game whatsoever. And this assumption would be true! Okay, it's not completely true. But there are some games I hate far more than others, and instead of griping about genres, I thought I'd just touch on a few specific games. These may not be the worst games of all time, but they fill me with hatred nonetheless. Without further ado...





10.) Two Worlds (Xbox 360)

I'll be completely honest. I spent about a half hour with this game before writing it off as one of the worst abortions gaming could jettison from its loins. It all starts with the incredibly generic fantasy world, and goes screaming downhill from there. It's like the creators wanted to make a game that was as bad, creepy and immature as possible. Just within the first few minutes, you get implied incest between the main character and his sister, as well as the hilarity of him running around asking people where he can find "The Taint." I don't know what the Taint is in this world, but I know what it is in mine, and I certainly wouldn't walk around talking about it.

Not only is the setting idiotic, the gameplay is worse. It's glitched beyond belief, with such fun moments as your character suddenly becoming stuck in midair after a jump. And combat? Well it's frustratingly random and void of any strategy. No matter what weapon you equip, your character flails it in front of him like an extra from a bad kung fu flick. Aside from magic, you have to get right in your enemy's face and flail on the attack button until either you kill him, or he kills you. And speaking of enemies, there are maybe five unique foes in the game, and all the monsters are pretty much just recolored versions of the core five.

So yes, I hate this game. But it's probably because I don't have brain damage. All the positive reviews I've seen for the game are rife with misspellings and god awful grammar. So maybe this game is for them?

SPECIAL BONUS! The Two Worlds official strategy guide actually misspells the title right on the front cover and spine. That's hilarious. The game also comes with a pen and paper role playing book based on itself, so you can bring your misery to your friends!



9.)The Adventures of Batman and Robin (Sega Genesis)

Oh Batman. I want to tell you this game is bad. It really isn't, but its so damned difficult it borders on unplayable. The difficulty starts right out of the gate, and doesn't let up for a second. The entire game is essentially a boss rush mode, with each boss having about 100 "hp." That doesn't seem like much, but when you have to hit the boss twenty times to deal 1HP worth of damage, the fights can drag on forever. And you're fragile enough to go down with a hit or two. GOOD LUCK!




8.) Koudelka (PS1)

Oh my god. This game. This freaking game. This game is the fusion of a grid based RPG game and a survival horror game. You basically stumble around a house of horrors, killing monsters and trying to make sense out of the game's ridiculous plot. And stumble is the right word for it, because most of the house of horrors is open to you from the start. You can find weapons, like lead pipes and such, but their placement is random every time you play, as is their elemental attributes. That's right, you can pick up a lead pipe with a water attribute. And that randomness really kicks you in the ass when you go up against a boss that's immune to all but a certain element, and the game decides not to give you a weapon with that element. This means you're boned and you have to start over from the beginning. And this will happen frequently, so you're going to have to pray luck is on your side. But it's not. The gods of fortune hate you.

As you explore, you'll get into random encounters. The enemies can be hilariously easy, or absurdly hard, even right from the beginning. In the first area of the game, I encountered a random encounter enemy that was harder than the final boss! Again, luck plays a factor here. And as I've stated before, the gods of fortune have forsaken you.

SPECIAL BONUS! The screenshot I found for the game shows that very same super difficult enemy! Upside-down gun-toting zombie man!




7.) Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (PS2)

I'll put it out there right away. Breath of Fire is god. This is my all-time favorite RPG series, and I hungrily absorb any new game that comes out. That being said, this game is so rage inducing that I'm likely to forget my manners and tell the whole series to die in a fire.

Why? You can't win. The game is cleverly designed in a way where you can't even beat the first boss. You WILL die. And when you do, the game asks you if you want to start a new game. When you die, SOME of your stats and acquired monies carry over to the new game, meaning that you'll need to restart the game from scratch multiple times to be able to advance. They do throw in extra scenes and other plot bits that pop up each time you do so, but there's no fun in replaying the game over and over again just to beat it.



6.)DragonBall Z: Budokai (PS2)

Hey look! A DragonBall Z game! The first one released in America no less! This is gonna be AWESOME! Wait...why can't the characters fly? Why can't they shoot big death beams? Why am I only pushing the punch button? Why does this game suck?

I just listed the games horrible flaws. You expect to fly in a Dragonball Z game. This is not heard of here. You can knock an opponent into the air, but then the two of you wind up awkwardly standing on the air as if it were ground. This is especially hilarious when you beat a guy down and he just sort of..lies on his back in midair. And big destructive energy blasts? No. The only way to do a Kamehameha is to push the energy button while you're mashing the punch button for a combo. All energy attacks are tied into combos, which eliminates the beam throwing antics from the show in favor of a ridiculous game of "who can push punch the fastest."

Granted, later games in the series actually let you throw your energy attacks independent of the punch button, they still had the same overall gameplay. And that overall gameplay was a GIGANTIC disappointment for me, seeing as how I had been eagerly anticipating a DBZ game for years.



5.) Megaman Legends 3

(Edit. This game got cancelled. It doesn't exist. So I hate it for not even coming out. Capcom done goofed here.)

I hate video games.

Look at the top games today. They're all bland, uninspired crap that we've seen a hundred times before. It's a field that's been sliced open and stuffed full of pure trash. It's really hard for me to go into a store and settle on a game these days, and even harder to go home and get some enjoyment out of whatever I do decide to buy. Out of the dozen or so games I've probably purchased this year, I can say I've maybe enjoyed oh..maybe two or three of them?

Today, I'm going to talk about what kinds of games you can find out there, and what pisses me off about them. ENJOY.

Here are the offenders, categorized by genre:


1.) First Person Shooters.
Biggest Offenders: Call of Duty, Halo, Singularity, Medal of Honor

Oh first person shooters. You are the ultimate in uninspired bullshit design. No matter what gimmick you toss into the game, it will always boil down to you looking down the gun barrel at a Nazi, foreigner, Russian, zombie or alien. That's it. Find a first person shooter that doesn't use any of these antagonists. Please, I DARE you.  I do understand that these games are typically designed for multiplayer, but that doesn't make them any less derivative. If I'm going to spend 60 dollars on a game, it damned well better have a single player campaign that lasts more than 4 hours.

Point gun, shoot bad guy. Points for getting the head. Rinse and repeat until the next edition of Halo comes out. There's a new Halo or Call of Duty every year it seems, and none of them seem to do anything more than add a handful of guns and maps. I'm not paying 60 bucks for a new in game map.

I am aware that there are also third person shooters out there, which are essentially the same as all of the first person shooters out there, except you can see your grunting loaf of a man's ass as you play.


2.) Brawlers
Biggest Offenders: God of War, Castlevania: Lords of Shadows, Bayonetta, Dante's Inferno, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Oh. My. God. Here's another horrible group. The common brawler. And we have God of War to thank/blame for just about all of it. Rampage through hordes of the same bad guys, flail on your controller buttons until they beg for mercy, repeat until the game is over. Toss in a few quick time events, and you've got the makings of game of the year!

The biggest problem today is that all brawlers ARE God of War. Kill baddies, push the button the game tells you to, and watch gruesome death scenes. Oh, the gruesome death scenes. They're typically ridiculously over the top and unnecessary. All of these games are typically headed by a bulky, angry protagonist whose only weak spots are their dead families. At least four of the games I mentioned above have this kind of protagonist.

And the puzzles. Oh god, the puzzles. I understand that they exist to provide a kind of breather from the mutilation of mythological figures, but they happen so frequently that you just want to skip them and get on with the murdering. If you're going to integrate a puzzle into a game, it should make some logical sense. Kratos stacking blocks Tetris style DOES NOT make logical sense.

3.) Sandbox Games
Biggest Offenders: Grand Theft Auto, Saint's Row, Mafia, Red Dead Redemption. Any open-world Spiderman game.

I don't have a lot of particularly negative things to say about this genre. The problem with open world sandbox gaming is that its so damned open world. I like having stuff to do, but cripes, sometimes there's just too much to do. And why the hell does there always need to be a race in these games? The driving controls are usually awful and don't lend themselves at all to difficult racing sequences.

You'd believe everyone in LA, New York, and the old west wants you to kill and race. All the time. Hell, even Ultimate Spider-Man had a race sequence every couple of minutes.

(Edit: Here we are ten years later and well...some of these are really rad now. Sony's Spiderman is amazing, and Saint's Row got really awesome as it took a hard left right into parody and humor. But there's still TOO MUCH TO DO!)

4.) Sports Games
Biggest Offenders: Madden, NBA, NHL, FIFA, most racing games.

Same junk every year, with only marginal additions or features added. If you like spending 60 bucks yearly on the same game, be my guest.

5.) Music Games
Biggest Offenders: Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero

Note that I didn't mention Rock Band. There's a reason for that. let's take a look at the release list for Guitar Hero and Rock Band, shall we?

Guitar Hero:

Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero II
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Guitar Hero World Tour
Guitar Hero 5
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's
Guitar Hero Smash Hits
Guitar Hero On Tour
Guitar Hero On Tour Decades
Guitar Hero On Tour Modern Hits
Band Hero

Rock Band

Rock Band
Rock Band 2
Rock Band 3
Beatles Rock Band
Green Day Rock Band
Lego Rock Band
Rock Band Unplugged

Rock Band has half the games out that Guitar Hero does. Even if you got rid of the band-centric and portable releases, you're looking at three core Rock Band games to six Guitar Heroes. Guitar Hero releases multiple titles every year, while Rock Band takes its time. This is, of course, because people eat it up, and because Activision has questionable business ethics.

But however you break it down, you can't walk into a store without being assaulted by millions of plastic guitars and band kits. And it's a lottery to see if the one you buy even WORKS out of the box.

I'm not mentioning karaoke games, because they're way too niche in comparison.

6.) The next evolution of RPGs.
Biggest Offenders: Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Final Fantasy XII and XIII.

One day, someone decided that making a turn-based game that had an adventuring party would be lots of fun. And it was. Japan REALLY loved them some turn-based RPGs.

But then, people got tired of them. So they looked to MMOs for a new way to play, which led to the Final Fantasy XII devolving into an uncontrollable mess of a game, where party control was thrown aside in favor of AI controlled party members. This trend continued into the incredibly linear Final Fantasy XIII. Which I'm told was made to appeal to more "western" gamers.

Western gamers. Huh. America tried its hand at new RPGs too, given us the same testosterone laden gunfests we get from our shooters. Fallout 3 is an RPG? noo...it's a first person shooter. Not a bad game, but not an RPG. Mass Effect is more of a third person shooter with stats as well. America likes its shooters. But they're still NOT RPGs.

7.) Anything on a Nintendo System.
Biggest Offenders: Wii, DS.

The Wii is a cesspool of horrid shovelware games. The best games are rather obscure and sell poorly, in favor of trash like Dancing with the Stars, The Biggest Loser, and any of the twenty five million Mario sports titles. Games based on TV shows are the norm, and they're all terrible. I own a DS, and there are a good couple of games on it, but the rest are all awful games that should have never have seen the light of day. I'm looking at you Petz.


I could mention casual games, and Facebook games, but I don't so much consider these games as anything more than social dalliances. That would be like badmouthing Clue or Monopoly I think. These are games that are meant to be played with other people, love them or hate them. But Facebook games are nothing more than ways to leech people's money on supposedly "free" games.


But. There is a saving grace. Digital Downloads. Almost all of the good games I've played this year have been downloadable titles. Scott Pilgrim, Trine, Costume Quest, DeathSpank, these are quirky and interesting titles that may have their shortcomings, but they're charming and original enough to overlook them.

Not that all downloadable games are good. I'm looking at you Blade Kitten.


That's all I can think of right now. I'm not saying that these games are all terrible, just that it doesn't seem like there's any variety anymore. Unique games don't make money, so companies don't like to make them. It's a business, where the things I think are stale are considered "standard" by gamers of today. So if you have as difficult a time as I do finding good games, take a hard look at the guy in the store spending three hundred dollars on a copy of Call of Duty that comes with night vision goggles. Then beat him to death, because no man who buys those goggles is planning to do something wholesome.

I'm reviewing Banquet's Fruit Pies!

Oh lord. It tasted like vomit! I'd like to try to the apple flavored pie, but somehow I fear that it could be worse. Stay away, unless you like the taste of vomit. And if you do like that particular taste, what the hell is wrong with you?