Roger Ward

I love eBay. Sure it’s a place where one can ripped off and it’s a place where you can buy pretty much anything like someone’s soul or even an old Russian submarine! My needs are a little less grandiose or odd. I’m a fan of old games. You remember those don’t you? The games where you got a massive 200 page manual, reference card, map posters and numerous floppy discs all in a 5 kilo box. But the most important thing included was an actual good game!

Sadly those days are far behind us. Now our lucky if you get a manual in a crappy DVD case and the game is usually some derivative piece of shit that is a rehash of some other derivative piece of shit where you shoot people in the head many times over because that’s what the average ritalin fuelled gamer wants these days.

So I suppose eBay is somewhat of a saviour of mine in that it allows me to still get my hands on some classics that I might have missed the first time around. So what’s my point? Nothing really, I just got Taskforce 1942 today and now I’m happy.

2008 was another big year for games. There were a lot of sequels (Resistance 2/Gears Of War 2) and spin offs, many overrated games (Spore/GTAIV) and many bad games too. 2008 though will be seen by these eyes as a year where some companies were willing to take a few risks, but the payoff for us the consumer was excellent. Here are my top games of 2008:

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Yesterday I went through my list of the worst games of the year. Now I’m going to focus on the most disappointing games of the year. While they are are from the worst seen this year, they are definitely not the best seen either. They may have had potential, but failed miserably for one reason or another.

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While this maybe a primarily personal blog, I still like to chuck a little bit of other content on it especially if I’m feeling creative. Games are just one of the things that I like to play in my personal time. BAH! Games I hear some of your say. Well, yes! 20 years ago games were just in there infancy, but as I’m one of the generation who grew up them when I was young they are as normal an entertainment past time as going to the movies is to an older person.

Being at the mature end of the gaming spectrum, I find that most games today are useless copies or re-hashes of previous games, after all if it ain’t broke don’t fix it hey? Sadly though a lot of creativity is missing from the games industry now just like the movie industry.  But that doesn’t really matter as most of the target market are ritalin fuelled morons who accept mediocrity willingly. The vast amounts of money that are being spent on titles basically stifles any creative endevours on the whole, but occasionally an original one sneaks out on the market. Sadly is wasn’t many this year, just rehashes of older games with tarted up graphics primarily. Regardless, here are my top 5 worst, best & disappointing games of the year.

Lets start with the worst shall we?

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Bungie software has presented the World with several new teaser images from there new game. Most likely this is for the new game “Halo Recon” which was originally supposed to be announced at E3 earlier in the year but was at the last minute pulled from announcement.

If this image is from a new Halo game as is expected, the only question I have to ask is: Will the new Halo game be something original and exciting, or will it be a turgid piece of derivative unoriginal shit like the previous two Halo games or will they take a risk and create something different?

Somehow I think not.

Well, another game has fallen foul of our OFLC ratings board. This time it’s Silent Hill 5: Homecoming. The game was banned by the OFLC due to the use of “copious blood spray in the game, decapitations, partially dismembered corpses, and numerous scenes of attacks, fights, torture, and death.” Now many of your average Australian gamers are of course going to cry foul about how there rights to play a game have been infringed, etc, etc, etc.

I can really see there complaints now. “The other games were violent.” “Movies are more violent.” “We need an R rating.” I could go on ad infinum. Amongst all the reasons that the OFLC have mentioned, I think the the biggest problem they have is the torture aspect of the game. And really, do we really need to play a game where we torture someone? Not really. At least the OFLC are being consistent with it’s decision. After all Manhunt was banned for the same reasons.

15 years ago, banning issues with regards to games were few and far between for one main reason. Games didn’t need gimmicks to sell themselves. Games were somewhat original back then. Today though, the games industry is really an industry with zero originality. So much money is being spent on titles today that most game developers decide to play it safe. All the developers really have going for them is the gimmick. Something that will add that shock or WOW factor.

Silent Hill had this originality in the early games without going overboard on the violence detail. Now that originality is gone and all Konami have going for them is the shock factor. So do we really need to play another tired retread that uses a pretty repugnant gimmick to sell games. NO. The OFLC have done us a favour here. They were right about Fallout 3 and stood up to the developers, and they’re right about this.

If we ever needed anymore proof that your average gamers of today are uninformed idiots, here it is. News surfaced a few days ago about what was being changed with regards to Fallout 3’s release. As you’re no doubt aware, a storm in a teacup brewed over here in Australia about the banning and the unbanning of Fallout 3 due to the use of drugs which exceeded our OFLC MA15+ rating. (The maximum for games in Australia.)

All over Australia uninformed gamers (mostly kids under 30 probably) were crying fowl about how our ratings board were too harsh and don’t understand games, blah, blah, blah and that we don’t have a high enough ratings system here in Australia. Those uninformed Idiots!

So then, Aussie gamers were going to protest and import an uncut version because they didn’t want a cut up version of the game to be released in Australia. This is all well and good, if they wish to do so they have got all right too. But the level of hypocracy and lack of knowledge about this issue really was no surprise to these eyes when reading forum posts and gaming websites around the interweb. Gamer’s, like most young people just shot from the hip without actually being informed about the issue.

I wrote in one of my blogs at gamespot on August 30th, that compared to the rest of the World, Australia’s ratings system is very liberal compared to a lot of other countries, if Fallout 3 had fallen fowl of out MA15+ rating, it must have been for good reason. Click here if you wish to read my post. The fact that we don’t have an R rating for games here has nothing to do with the issue.

Now Bethesda has given gamers and Aussie gamers in particular details of what is to modified in the game, and it turns out that this modification is now World-Wide, not just here in Australia, and it’s as simple as a name. Click here to see the story at Joystiq. It turns out that the OFLC had issue with the use of the drug morphine in the game. And it turns out that the concerns were justified as other countries also had concerns about the use of the drug also.

It looks like the OFLC though were the only ones who had the guts to stand up to anyone on this subject matter though. Now Bethesda agrees and has changed the name of the drug in game, not just for Australia, but the whole World! See, one little change makes all the difference. This decision by the developer effectively justifies the OFLC’s original decision to ban the game originally and modify the offending problem.

But does you average gamer realize that they’ve made fools of themselves with their uniformed, spiteful and quite frankly stupid comments. No, of course not. Because it’s easier to go along with the sheep and jump off a cliff than actually think about something rationally and have an informed opinion these days. The average gaming community just showed with this situation how immature it really is when it comes to issues like this. It won’t be the first time and it won’t be the last.

Let it never be said that nerds can’t be funny. Okay sure, they’re not funny much, but when they are it’s pure gold! In this case it’s the games blog Joystiq and this post.  All you need to know to be familiar with the joke is that in the video game half life, video game character Gordon Freeman is the man present when the World effectively ends as we know it!

There was a time when games were as hard as nails, the graphics were average and they were actually good! Those days are long gone sadly. Today games are all spoon fed to the average gamer, sure the graphics are great, but because of this need to create games that look good just to impress a core demographic that accepts mediocrity so willingly, the core element of the game suffers. The gameplay. Why am I banging the today’s games are rubbish today drum? Well, it’s been announced the one of the classic flight simulations from the golden age of gaming is getting a revival of sorts; Red Baron.

For those of you who are old enough and therefore, smarter, wiser, less munted and know how to speak and type English correctly will remember Red Baron as one of the seminal PC flight simulations. By today’s standards it looks decidedly terrible, but in it’s day this was THE BEST flight sim you could get. It was damn hard, if you died, you died and had to restart from the beginning. NO CONTINUES!

Now news comes through that the game is being given a contemporary makeover with Red Baron: Arcade. To me it’s the subtitle of the game that concerns me the most, “ARCADE” uh oh. Already it sounds like the game has already been dumbed down for today’s audiences. I hope I’m wrong about Red Baron, I really do. I hope that I get a nice surprise when this is released onto the PSN in September. Who knows, lightening could strike twice after the nice surprise that was Bionic Commando!

In this World of what is old is new again, Capcom have decided to remake the original game. Ugh! The biggest problem to me when it comes to remakes, be it movies or games is that a remake gets stuffed because the maker wants to re-invent the wheel. Thankfully in this case the developer haven’t decided to re-invent the wheel,  Just give the wheel a new lick of paint. The result? A great game!

Well color me impressed, here’s a remake of a classic game that is actually good. Even though it’s been 20 years since the original game, there are still a lot of gamers (older ones mainly) who remember this game fondly. I’m one of them. And now I can enjoy it again without pulling out my old Nintendo console when I’m feeling all nostalgic.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed with it’s old school game play and challenging levels is breath of fresh air, but we all know that this is only a precursor for Bionic Commando 3D which is a modern day re imagining that will wreck, sorry, bring the franchise into the 21st century.  Let the wheel re-invention begin.