This is the second part of a two-part series. Read “Part 1: Discovery”

I started thinking about writing full length reviews of video games in late 2001. I was still at University. I was going to make a website and came up with some generic name I thought was edgy and reflective of what I wanted to accomplish. It was going to cover more than video games. I had some things to say about popular culture.

After talking to some friends at school about my vision, there was some interest in this collaborative effort. There was already a zine floating around our faculty, but it was horrible. It was a soapbox for people frustrated with school and mostly contained their annoyingly priveleged views on an “oppressive” society. Instead of being provocative or insightful it was lampooning popular culture with pedestrian observations and half-baked philosophy. I could do better.

Of course, when you rely on friends to produce something for free, it doesn’t happen unless you get on their case about it. And I wanted to keep my friends. Plus, the whole “trying to graduate from University with a degree” thing. The project died on the vine, and I gave up the dream. For the time being, anyway.

I graduated from school the next spring, and started playing video games while I looked for work. My comptuer was getting old, and at this point the most it could muster was Unreal Tournament and Civilization III. I read the issues of PC Gamer that were mailed to me to keep up with the industry and the hobby I loved. I hung out on the internet a lot, and read too many terrible reviews that people actually got paid to write. My head started filling with ideas again. I could do better.

I started thinking about another website. Something that would capture my love of video games and provide an outlet for my brand of scathing commentary. I would call it “Tales of a Scorched Earth”, because I am an insufferable Smashing Pumpkins fan. I would adopt the handle of “Gatmog”, because it sounded cool and it provided the mystery any good internet handle should have^[1].

During this time, I started playing and thinking about video games as if it were research. I built a new desktop PC after I got a job and some money. I had a new purpose: I would record my thoughts on video games, write some reviews and share them with others. The availability and ease of use of self-publishing tools made this easier than I expected. I thought I would be doing something different than the typical weblog, and I used that as inspiration.

I wrote a lot of reviews and embarrassing posts during that time^[2]. I published most of them. It was a start.

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I played a bit of vs. battle F-Zero GX on the weekend. It’s probably the first time in at least two months that I’ve even turned the Gamecube on. Thinking about having to start a battle over again in Path of Radiance because I’ve permanently lost a party member is enough to get the bile ducts flowing. But I assure you I’m coming to a point here.

When I first got my Gamecube, F-Zero GX was the first game I “reviewed” for the platform. I say that with a smile on my face because in hindisight I completely missed the fucking point of the game. Focusing on things like “story mode” and getting pissy over it being hard to unlock more vehicles (a trend that has sadly continued in every racer I’ve played since) is really not important. I would happily play the game with the default four racers, the ones that were introduced in the original F-Zero. It wouldn’t make a difference. Because F-Zero GX is not about pulling stunts or rewinding time or launching red shells or realistic physics. It is about winning a race. Crossing the finish line is the only goal that could ever matter as the landscape blasts past you at 1200 km/h with the siren blazing that you need repairs badly.

F-Zero GX is about going fast at all costs. It is a racing game in its purest, most concentrated form. And that’s why I still love it.

“You are Dead,” Resident Evil 4 tells me as my avatar gets fried for the fourth time by the trap with erratically moving laser beams. It’s this type of hamfisted advice that seems to be the undercurrent of the entire experience. The game isn’t content to set up a rustic, chilling atmosphere for you to cautiously explore, and instead offers you many, many reasons on why you should be killing the things on screen, as if the player couldn’t figure it out for themselves. If Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer had made a game, I’m pretty sure this is how it would turn out. Only with less plot.

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I got together with some very good friends on the weekend to catch up with each other and play video games. Collectively we decided that the centerpiece of our evening with an XBox would be X-Men Legends, allowing us to avoid the embarassing multiplayer gameplay of old standbys Hunter: The Reckoning and the infinite brown-ness of Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes. Halo is never considered because my friends know well enough that in order for me to play multiplayer FPS it must involve several computers.

The initial assessment of Legends’ combat is still correct: aside from removing a group of adversaries from around a teammate with your mutant power, the game requires fists to be flying through the air at all times. Though where I’m beginning to see the game’s long lasting appeal is in the development of the roster of characters – there really is a time and place for all of them. Levelling characters and selecting new abilities becomes a group activity, and not nearly as invasive as I would have thought. Though despite my Iceman and Juan’s Storm being elemental magic users, we always found ourselves on the front lines taking bullets for Wolverine and Cyclops. Yes, Wolverine, with the healing factor. Cyclops, for some reason, found pleasure in picking up explosive cannisters and throwing them into groups of people (often our own ranks). This is not how you win the game.

Even with four players, the game gets extremely difficult, and will almost always punish you for trying to plow through its lengthy missions. I may have been a bit harsh in saying that there’s no strategy; on the contrary, Legends makes you take the same approach as you would in games like Diablo or RTS titles. Lead smaller, manageable groups of the enemy into a controllable environment where they can be dealt with efficiently. The lack of healing potions was a scenario that was completely avoidable; we just couldn’t seem to convince someone that the “heal” button need only be pressed once to deliver a potion.

Although I had already experienced multiplay during my review, it was only with two players, which required the control of two characters per player. With everyone in control of their own character, it convinced me of two things: firstly, that X-Men Legends is actually a very well rounded multiplayer experience, and secondly, it shared more in common with Konami’s X-Men arcade game than I first realized.

I doubt that Raven used Konami’s X-Men as a stencil, but I find it odd that the first boss that you encounter in both games is Pyro. Furthermore, in Legends there is a throwback to 70s era X-Men in a flashback mission where they do battle with Sentinels on the streets of New York, which is almost word for word the first level of the arcade game. It brought back a lot of fond memories of sitting on a wobbly stool in Canada’s Wonderland’s Crystal Palace, playing through the game with complete strangers and getting into arguments over who got to be Wolverine. Reminiscing about days spent in arcades suppressed by a heavy fog of B.O. was enough to make me want to relive past glories with MAME. Though I quickly came to the conclusion that my opinion of the X-Men arcade game in hindsight was grossly optimistic.

I always found the introduction to the game to be quite short. Abrupt, even, when compared to the multi-layered and overly complicated backstories you might see in a 2D fighter at the time. Facing Magneto was clearly your ultimate goal, but why did he have an army of Sentinels at his disposal? Weren’t they built to eliminate mutantkind, of which Magneto was clearly a member? The selection of playable mutants was also puzzling. Though the four player version of the arcade game was more common, the six player version had Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Storm, and Dazzler as playable characters. Dazzler? Clearly a product of the 70s, Dazzler’s “power” is to turn sound into light energy. The game designers were evidently unfamiliar with the comic books. Or more accurately, completely out of touch with what fans wanted to see in an X-Men game.

The X-Men arcade game attempted to recreate the beat ‘em up action of Final Fight and Captain Commando, but the enemies in the game were boring and repetitive. Indeed, it was difficult, but you didn’t get to fight things that weren’t robots until you got to the Savage Land where you fought a bunch of Lizard look-alikes and robots. The special abilities, though brutally efficient in clearing the screen, were equally trite. Wolverine probably had the best power, even though it didn’t make any sense. Cyclops was limited to exploding, which I can only assume was an uncontrolled optical blast. Wolverine had his claws to fight with, but everyone else was limited to punching. I understand that technology was probably a factor (this was, after all, 1992) but it seems to me Konami’s interpretation of a multiplayer X-Men adventure was simply lazy and uncreative. Compared against this low-fi predecessor, Legends seems a much more palatable recreation of Marvel’s superhero team.

sitting still was never enough

I’ve been playing Resident Evil 4 almost exclusively since the weekend. See, I’ve been trying to figure out why these high scores keep popping up. I can’t help but reminisce about the early days of Doom 3, to be honest, because it doesn’t seem to be going away.

I’m not really a fan of the series, but when I’ve read numerous reviews (and received personal recommendations) that wax poetic about this game’s quality, eventually I have to give in. Yes, the game is indeed beautiful, and probably the best looking game I’ve seen on a console next to the Metroid Prime series and Crystal Chronicles. However, judgement of this game seems to be obsessively focused on its previous incarnations, and not other games in its genre. Am I missing something? If the fact that this is a Resident Evil game was removed from the equation, would it still be considered good?

When I hear the words “survival horror”, I assume an implicit agreement between the player and the developer. I should be scared. I concede that the game did a great job of setting the mood. A creepy, dilapidated remote village populated by grizzled looking farmers deftly establishes the tone. I freaked out the first time I saw a zombie shambling towards me even after I had just blown his head clean off. But the story, as detailed as it may be, just doesn’t seem that compelling to warrant an expedient playthrough of the remainder of the game. I feel like a tourist. Resident Evil 4 feels like Metal Gear Solid. Lots of story, action on rails. I have no control. Why should I be scared?

Maybe it was the annoying “interactive cutscenes” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) that switched up button combinations between tries, or the completely annoying controls that are almost useless during boss battles.

For me, I think what finally sealed Resident Evil 4’s fate was babysitting the president’s daughter. She can climb up a ladder with the best of them. But if I wander away after climbing down, she’s completely fucking helpless. Maybe if she would just pick up a god damned pistol when I’m about to get my head chainsawed off, I wouldn’t be so bitter.

the currents have their say