Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant...well, part of it

I just read about this panel today, and while a lot of it was interesting, I found myself insulted by one speaker, and befuddled by another. Unfortunately, I can't find a transcript of it, so I won't even bother linking to anywhere that talks about it. It's out there, you can find it easily enough.

Let's first start with the speaker who insulted me. Heather Chaplin is her name, and I don't care to ever hear it again. I don't know anything about her, and I've never read anything she's written before. But from all the lengthy quotes I did read from her, I just don't care to ever read something by her ever again. Sorry. Her whole schtick was about how the industry is full of adolescent man-children who only use games as a way of acting out power fantasies. Apparently, men who make games aren't men, because they make games with violence and sex. While I'll agree that I'd like to see some of our focus trained on other, different kinds of games, the fact still remains that other, different kinds of games exist. They're there, whether or not Heather Chaplin wants to, or is able to, see them. What about Shadow of the Colossus and ICO? What about Braid? Bioshock? Heavy Rain? I guess they don't count.

And she says we don't have our Citizen Kane. Um, ok. There's several problems with that statement. First - and I've said this before - games aren't movies. There are fundamental differences between the mediums that, while some valid comparisons can be made, make shit like spouting off about games not having a Citizen Kane sound just plain idiotic. For every Citizen Kane that a studio produces, how many 12 Rounds do we have to put up with? It's a shitty comparison, plain and simple. I could argue that games journalism doesn't have their Walter Cronkite, but I would see that as discrediting the loads of people who go to work every day to report about the games industry. I actually do think that games journalists need to figure out some way to stop relying on publishers and PR departments to get all their information, because, I would imagine, and it's been talked about before, they have to meet certain criteria to gain access to a game. That's bullshit. You see what Heather has done to me? I'm going all over the place now.

The focus of my anger is with her babble about developers "not being men." Who is she comparing them to, first of all? Secondly, who is she to make that comparison? She talks about neoteny, which, according to Wikipedia, is "the retention, by adults in a species, of traits previously seen only in juveniles (a kind of pedomorphosis), and is a subject studied in the field of developmental biology." Now, I don't need to be an expert in neoteny to understand what she's getting at. Man-children. She's not just attacking the games that developers make, but them as people. And by extension, she's attacking the people who buy and play said games. I don't think I should be made to apologize for playing and enjoying Gears of War. And I also don't think my enjoyment has anything to do with her so-called "power fantasies." I play the game because it's fun. Period. That's what games are all about, or did she forget that in all her serious, world-changing journalism classes? I also happen to read a lot on subjects such as religion, politics and philosophy. But we'll just ignore all that because I like to play shooters. Whatever. And by the way, nice job calling out immature men on their infantile ego-stroking power fantasies, and then ending your rant by saying "What do you want to be, a Chihuahua or a wolf?" Durrrhhh.

David Jaffe has a fantastic response on his blog.

Another speaker on the panel was Adam Sessler, and I have to preface this with the fact that I think he's great. Sessler's Soapbox is the greatest thing on television. That being said, his talk was about Metacritic and why people rely on it so much. Again, I don't have a transcript, but I'm pretty sure I understand what he was talking about. Basically, either Metacritic should stop using scores to aggregate rankings, or people should stop using Metacritic as a barometer. Either way, the problem honestly comes down to people like him, and every other magazine and t.v. show that ranks games. If there were no scores on reviews, there would be no Metacritic. It's that simple. There's not really much else to say about that, because it really is that easy to figure out. If you would stop putting scores on games, Metacritic would just go away. So let's get that train moving, if you would.

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Shadow of the Colossus is going to be made into a movie.

I was going to just make a post that said Sony can go fuck themselves, but I've now thought better of it. Instead, I'm going to tell them exactly why their ape brains are apparently venting too many nutrients, because this is fucking retarded.

According to Variety, Sony is readying a film version of Shadow of the Colossus, to be written by Justin Marks. Who is Justin Marks, you ask? Let me tell you. He wrote the fantastically deep and thoughtful Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Sony, let me ask you a question. What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you fucking serious? What, from the long list of, I'm sure, excellent films this dude has written, has given you the impression he could pen a story for Shadow of the Colossus? Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. What makes you think Shadow of the Colossus could, in any conceivable way, be turned into a film that resembles something other than a freshly-laid loaf?

You see, there is a very important thing that a lot of industry leaders seem to just not realize, or not give a shit about:

Games, as a medium, is way different than film. Something that works well in a game won't necessarily work at all in a movie. I have the same problem with Bioshock being fucked over, but this right here goes above and beyond the call of duty (and no, that shouldn't be made into a movie, either). There is absolutely nothing in Shadow of the Colossus that would lead anyone to believe a film should be made about it. First off, what would it be about? The game had a story, but it was pretty much all subtext and inference; you got out as much as you put in. The genius and beauty about it was the journey, not the dialogue or cutscenes. If I were a betting man, I'd lay a sizeable chunk down on there being a fucking sappy, drawn-out love story between a couple of asshats I hate looking at. I'll say this much, though - if I had any sort of confidence in a movie studio to at least try their best to keep every single thing about the game that made it special intact, then I would only be, on a mad-as-piss scale of 10, at about a 10. But my confidence levels being what they are, I'm now at about a 35, give or take.

Face it, Sony, you're not going to keep its spirit intact, you're not going to have minimal dialogue, you're not going to have it be ten hours long, you're not even going to keep the story the same, and you're sure as fuck not going to get me to go see this god damned debacle.

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Rockstar has a few things to learn about "their" genre.

Because Saints Row 2 is, in every important way, vastly superior to GTA 4. Let me first admit that I was on the anti-Saints Row bandwagon. I never played the original, and from a few early screenshots, I thought the sequel looked like shit. This just goes to show you that a well-informed opinion can't come from stuff like that. So, at the behest of a friend, I picked up Saints Row 2, and I can now say that I enjoyed it so much more than Niko Belic's disjointed and confused adventure.

Since there are so many things this game does better, I've decided to just make a list of everything, in no particular order, and I'll elaborate on a few points later.

• Features a garage where you can store any car you want, and here's the sticker: you can dump the cars from your garage anywhere in the world, and they'll always be available for you to take out again from any owned garage in the game.
• Missions have a lot more variety. Sure, a lot of them just involve going somewhere and shooting someone, but most of the time, the story and situations the game puts you in make them far more interesting.
• Once you complete certain activities, infinite ammo is unlocked for specific sets of guns. This makes everything a lot more fun, and the game doesn't take itself seriously enough to warrant any gripes about it ruining the realism or any such nonsense.
• The entire game - missions, activities, diversions, everything - can be played co-op. Obvious plus. Roughly half of my overall playtime was with a friend.
• Vehicles are fully customizable. You can upgrade them with nitrous, improved tires and overall durability, etc. It makes the garage feature that much more awesome when you know you have a pimped-out, bad ass ride waiting for you wherever you want it.
• Almost everything you accomplish in the game has a tangible gameplay reward attached to it. Finishing certain activities, for example, will give you the ability to have more homies ride with you while on missions, or increase your health or stamina. Basically, you're working towards a goal even when you're lighting people on fire with a friend.
• Fully customizable avatar. Once again, the game lets you decide how you want your game to look. Your character can be male or female, and the range of options available for changing their appearance is pretty great. If you want to have a 19-year-old skinny chick that sounds like a 50-year-old guy working in a mine, go right ahead.
• The story is flat-out better and more entertaining. I'll go into more detail below.
• You can actually, for the most part, accomplish missions and objectives the way you want to. One big problem I had with GTA 4 was the fact that Rockstar had a specific vision for how a lot of the missions played out, and if you deviated from the way they wanted them to, it was game over. In Saints Row 2, if you want to jack someone's car to chase the guys on motorcycles that you're after, you're free to do so. You don't have to take the vehicle they provide you with.
  
• Humor. it ties in with the story, which again, I'll go into further down. But it's a lot funnier than you'd think.
• Cribs. For whatever reason, GTA 4 didn't want to let you feel like you owned the city. Saints Row 2 does. There are about a dozen houses for you to buy, and you can - yet again - upgrade them and pimp them out.
• You can replay any story-related mission in the game as many times as you want. Durh, that's awesome. The same goes for all the activities as well.
• One of the perks of co-op is that if you die, your friend has 15 seconds (on hardcore difficulty) to revive you. Extremely welcome, especially when you have a five-star wanted level.
• You can carry way more weapons on your person at all times, including an SMG, rocket launcher, shotgun, dual pistols, samurai sword and satchel charges.

All of those examples are off the top of my head, so there's probably other stuff that I forgot to mention. Of course, the game isn't perfect, and Rockstar probably has more money and staff to polish their games a bit more than Volition does. Graphically, GTA 4 is superior, but it really doesn't matter. Saints Row 2 looks just fine. On the other hand, the game can be a little buggy at times, and clipping is a common occurence. But again, it doesn't hamper the fun in any meaningful way.

That's the thing about this game - I had way more fun with it than I ever thought I would. Even before I played Saints Row 2, I was disappointed with GTA 4 in a lot of big ways. After playing it, my disappointments with GTA 4 stand out even more, in stark contrast to what Volition has accomplished. I think sometimes Rockstar is more concerned with being "mature" and controversial than they are with making a cohesive story. With GTA 4, they set out to tell a tale of sin and redemption, but ended up with a pile of shit. Niko's motivations were explained as being forced into violence by outside forces, when all he wants is to lead a better life. Fair enough. But his actions showed a totally different person. He doesn't want to kill people anymore, yet if you were to flash a twenty in his direction, he'd probably shoot everyone in the room and snatch it from your cold, lifeless hand. The whole thing doesn't make a damn bit of sense in that regard, and I just got turned off about half-way through the game. Not to mention the fact that you commit countless random acts of violence and murder while you're driving around aimlessly, but that's more of an inherent problem with trying to tell any kind of realistic story when the player is allowed to do whatever they want.

Saints Row 2 isn't trying to tell a realistic story at all. It's instantly recognized as ridiculous and over-the-top, and that's exactly what I liked about it. In a game where I can use rocket launchers to blow up helicopters while someone is driving me around, I expect to see the same shit happen in the cutscenes, and it delivers just that. A lot of crazy shit happens in the story, in fact, and I found myself laughing out loud at the insane stunts the main character pulls off. Speaking of cutscenes, they were suprisingly well-directed. A lot of them had a great kind of movie quality to them, and it was nice to see Volition take the time to make such a non-serious story at least look awesome. Overall, the story is really just the standard get out of jail, start up your gang again kind of thing, but it works because there are no pretenses of being gritty or serious. Make no mistake, there are a lot of fucked up things that happen, and I would say it's on the same level of hardcore that GTA 4 was on, but the big difference is the non-contradictory way it all played out.

Look, if you were left wanting after you finished GTA 4, then this is a no-brainer. Get this game, you'll love it. If you can get someone else to play it with you - holy shit - the satisfaction is increased by a factor of about a billion. Rockstar should look at this game and weep in their feathery-soft pillows.


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