Mega Derived

You: “Sup beeyatch”

Her: “How much have you spent on games today?”

You: “Well, I just bought a copy of Maximo off eBay ‘cos I saw it going cheap. Then there’s this copy of Evangelion Second Impact that I also got because it was cheap. I can’t play jap Saturn games on my pal machine, but it’s got the spine and reg card all mintey and, hey, I used to watch Evangelion a lot back when I was 13. Isn’t that cool?”

Her: “Don’t you think that’s a waste of money?”

You: “Hell fuckin’ no! What else should I spend it on; presents for you?”

Her: “Yes. How come you never get me anything?”

Busted! I’d like to know she can look at my positively beaming face glowing with news that I have a copy of Maximo for £3.00 (inc postage) and not bask in my own radiant joy and happiness. That’s a present in itself. As for that copy of Evangelion, it’s simple. If it’s on the Saturn, then it should be bought. Sega for life!

I bought the DVD yesterday; hurriedly rushing it home and tearing it out of its shrink wrap with a manic glee. The movie is sublime, but the infuriating (and somewhat embarrassing) piracy thing at the start of the DVD really grates me. The “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR – SO DON’T STEAL A MOVIE” one. I don’t buy DVD’s very often, I’m a still a believer of the cinema, but is sticking that before the movie a common thing now?

I just don’t get it. Anyone that does steal Batman Begins won’t see that bit – if I was going to rip the DVD it would be the first thing I’d cut out. The only people they’re punishing are the people who’ve paid good money for it. Part of me wants to just steal a copy of it anyway now out of pure spite.

Still, what a cracking movie. The bit in the docks where Batman first shows up and grabs that worker – masterful. I used to be a big believer in the comics (it’s really taken a nosedive lately) and the movie made me feel tingly inside.

With the Xbox 360 looming on the horizon like a raging armada of ships, anxiously awaiting their chance to unleash their mighty payload upon the land, I am naturally inclined to pull myself away from the tide of forward-looking majority and instead stand upon a peak inhabited by myself and the elderly; that wonderful mountain of reflection.

Just like anyone who is desperately clawing to the last remains of his once-loved teenage years, dreading his eventual entry into the stereotypically bleak and mundane life of a twenty-something, I am desperate to slow my fall by grabbing hold of any previous vestiges of my former years. This inadvertently leads me towards Sega’s old stuff; I used to be a strict and unwavering obsessive of the once wonderful company. I sit on my uncomfortable computer chair, launch up a copy of Gens and embark on a quest to complete Comix Zone without using any naughty quicksaves. I fail, cuss like an army trooper and give up. Instead of trying again, I switch my focus to another one of these classics – Sonic 3. But, it’s somewhere around the devastated underwater landscape of Hydrocity Zone and the perilously steep hills of the Marble Garden that I am forced – by my own train of thought – to question just how old this game is; nineteen ninety four? That’s… eleven years! I lean back in my chair and sigh as I realize that this game is old and, by association, I am becoming old. This might not be so bad; increased wisdom, the ability to actually flash my ID when asked by barmen instead of having to rapidly concoct some kind of tepid excuse - Uhh….. I’ve left it on my counter. Honest.” - is always nice and, hey, I don’t look so bad with these new glasses anyway. But, hiding around the corner in the shadows is the grim realisation that with age is also death. Retro is becoming an increasingly morbid facet of gaming for me, which is mildly irksome after having spent about three months wages on building up a chunky retro collection earlier in the year. Instead of embracing it with open arms, I am trying to circle around it; not avoid it entirely but, like a co-worker that I have had a rather unsatisfying sexual encounter with, not being able to greet it with the same kind of feverously excited delight that I once did.

But the future is also bleak. The 360, to me, looks like the same kind of thing as the regular – or classic, if you will – Xbox was a few years ago. Shinier versions of Project Gotham and Dead or Alive, yes, but I still don’t quite buy the PR line that certain media individuals are dangling before me, exclaiming that if I am lucky enough to obtain one on launch day then my very quality of life itself will multiply by a thousand times. As much as I loved Project Gotham, I haven’t touched in it years. I’ve moved on. My heart lies with that tasty new Burnout now. It’s so fast, so visceral in its presentation that I, like a butterfly, cannot helped but become captivated by those bright, shiny headlights. Also, if I have a fight with Burnout I can still show up outside the door of Outrun 2 late at night if I fancy some no-strings-attached racing. It’s just not worth that incredible investment up front. Three hundred pounds is an incredible amount of money to spend on a console with but a handful of games.

I’m also angry at Microsoft for abandoning the Xbox in favour of their new console, a move which I consider cheap and dirty. It leaves me with a bitter aftertaste, and the image of a company that will jettison their current hardware into the cold expanse of gaming space in favour of their new model doesn’t exactly inspire me with the kind of confidence to make that leap to the new generation. What am I supposed to play on the Xbox for Christmas? Where’s an impressive first party title? Surely I need something to brag about to anyone I know that doesn’t own their own Xbox! This gesture by Microsoft carries with it a tense air of abandonment and discontent for me.

Sony seems to be more in focus to my tastes. Yes, I could spend a metric crapton of money on a new console and a couple of games or I could buy the new Final Fantasy game – and a new Final Fantasy is always the kind of thing that will cause a cataclysmic shockwave to resonate though the very fibres of my being - at the start of 2006 for thirty quid, enjoy that for sixty hours, wait around for a few months and buy a PS3. Which, they promise, will have a new Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Solid game on it – two powerhouses of modern day gaming. Martin, they call out and say, don’t pre-order that Xbox and put all your faith in Rare - who haven’t done a quality game in donkeys years - instead wait and come with us on a sensual romp through these titan-like figures of gaming joy.

Yes, that seems to be the direction for me. I’ve thought about it long and hard. I will try desperately not to be swayed by the prospect of obtaining tomorrow today. According to movies and that, tomorrow will always be a bleak future as we’ll all be catapulted into some kind of colossal war or forced into a destructive totalitarian state. I don’t need that, that’s for sure. I can’t enjoy the past, either; I don’t need the constant reminder of my own mortality.

I’ll just sit here comfortably in the present, enjoying things quietly in the background.

Oh, i’m sorry, I didn’t see you there Mr Pal Release of Metal Slug 4!

Didn’t they release Metal Slug 4 and 5 together in the states? The European publishers really want fifteen precious Earth pounds for what can – at best – be described as an amazingly tepid game? Especially when considering that I already have Metal Slug 3? I love the Neo Geo, but that is taking the piss.

It’s not worth it. I’ll wait until they’re all over eBay for about a fiver each. Metal Slug 5 comes out for the same price a month after, by the way.

First impressions of ICO: You can identify a quality game when you’re half way through it before you stop and think “boy, the graphics are shitty on this one” only to realise you don’t care because you’re going to save that bloody princess if it kills you.

All hail the internet!

You have 5438 of 5438 known Sega Genesis/Mega Drive/32X ROMS (V2.05)
You have 532 of 532 known Sega Game Gear ROMS (V2.01)
You have 790 of 790 known Sega Master System/SG-1000/SC-3000/SF-7000/Microvision ROMS (V2.01)

Fuckin’ A. Now all I have to do is find all the Mega CD stuff and I’m sorted.

Games like Call of Duty and Brothers in Arms infuriate me. It’s not that they’re bad games, even though Brothers in Arms is a total piece of shit. Call of Duty isn’t that bad. It’s that pissing ‘immersion’ they try and weave into the gameplay. A bunch of greasy computer nerds sitting around in a giant office complex spending six months of their lives trying to make a shit game which hopes to somehow evoke me into feeling that ‘war atmosphere’.

Gee, and what a war atmosphere it is! If I was in charge of one of these games I would make it so the player was constantly shit scared of his own life. You’d have to remove saves, for a start. Then I’d work in some realistic trench warfare by having you stand in one for an hour and put up with being shelled. They wouldn’t be scripted so every now and then you’d get hit and die. I’d also make it so that you had to tidy up all the corpses and stuff littering the trench. Shovel body parts into a bag. That’s evocative shit, right there.

But, no, these piss poor excuses for entertainment forget that war wasn’t great and focus on all that ‘honour’ bollocks. It’s the kind of self-serving American patriotism puke that should make anyone that doesn’t live over there want to reach for the nearest phone and complain to the UN to sort the fuckers out. Having some kind of sentimental war theme banging on in the background doesn’t create any discernable ‘mood’ in your game.

If you’re going to make some kind of war game where you can’t die, then don’t pretend that you’re just playing as ‘one of the troops’. I read somewhere once that every time you died in Day of Defeat you were ‘supposed’ to be a new grunt. That’s some good stuff right there. You’re practically Captain fucking America in Call of Duty and the like, it’s virtually impossible to die. You can’t have a realistic war atmosphere there. The whole game is like an exercise in some kind of vacant attempt at realism. At least if they just made your guy a super soldier you could throw tanks and cool stuff like that.

Back to Burnout today as I’m stuck in a gaming limbo until Monday (I’m going away for a few days and am hesitant to start a new game up before I leave). Which is another one of its strong points; you can pick it up and roll with it.

However, the game can feel hideously like an uphill challenge. There is no casual way to get 100% on this monster. I’m at 43% now, and feeling pretty good about myself – until, that is, I venture towards the ‘stats’ page and see just how few medals I have. It’s like, less than half. Jesus – the ending looks like a tiny, weeny blot on the horizon now. It’s like that documentary where the two mountain climbers run into an accident and one of them cuts himself off from the other, leaving him to fend for himself on a mountain with two broken legs and stuff. I’m the guy that falls to his suspected death, and my friends have fucked off to play World of Warcraft. Still. You’d think eight months would be enough for them to realise just how vapid it is, but no. Anyway, there I am, alone on Mount EA, without any kind of support from my peers, facing certain gaming demise at the hands of the unstoppable natural force of raging Burnout winds and icy takedown weather. My legs, shattered into a million pieces, represent the cars from the game and the uphill struggle represents, well, an uphill struggle.

I’ll get there in the end though, even though it’ll take me months. If I played it for more than 45 minutes a day that would probably help. But I think it works best as a sort of backup game, functioning as some kind of grout; filling in the cracks on the tiles of a gaming bathroom so that the whole structure looks pretty and doesn’t fall down.

And, once again, I realize just how beautiful a steal it was for a mere twenty Earth pounds.

So I moved on to Metal Gear Solid 2 after F.E.A.R. Yeah, I’ll admit it; I never played it when it first came out. What? I’ve only just got a PS2 recently and could never be bothered to get the xbox/pc versions. Besides, I heard it was shit anyway. I do, however, quite like my current trend of buying old games for £3 off eBay and then playing through them in 10-15 hours over a weekend. It’s satisfying, cheap, and you’re left with a nice shelf ornament when you’re done and dusted.

As for MGS2; I didn’t think it was that bad. No, seriously.

It’s a lot easier to digest when you know in advance that 90% of the game you’ll be playing as Raiden. I can see how that rubbed people up the wrong way in 2 and people refused to get over it. I also think it suffers from only having two locations for the entire fucking game. What is going on there? I expect they were under a lot of pressure from Sony to get it out the door as soon as possible.

I also think it is pertinent to note that no game would have been able to meet the extraordinarily huge anticipation order that gamers placed. It’s the same kind of thing as Final Fantasy 8 – the developers are doomed from the start.

Spoilers to follow.

The ‘dream’ aspect of the second is kinda bullshitty. It wasn’t really a dream, but it was, and it wasn’t. I expect Konami can write it out of continuity pretty quickly by stating that it was, but they’d be pulling your leg. It’s also a nice idea to have the bad guys orchestrating the whole event to put Raiden in the kind of scenario that would replicate the production of another Solid Snake. But then, at the same time, I think that’s giving Snake an awful lot of credit. Besides, it’s not the TRUE motive of the bad guys, anyway.

One tall glass of contrived head-fuckery, coming right up!

There’s a good slice of melodrama factored into the equation for good measure also. But it’s no worse than Metal Gear Solid 1’s “You’ve been infected with a virus that has been genetically engineered to wipe you out but you can beat it if you BELIEVE!” ending. I’d go as far as to say that MGS1’s is worse on many levels. 2’s is awfully anticlimactic though, setting up the scene for MGS3 perfectly….

….only MGS3 doesn’t carry on with it. That’s the job of MGS4, which has barely been announced. If I’d been waiting for a continuation of the “Patriots” storyline from MGS2 I would be pretty fucked off right now, but seeing as I’ve only just finished it I don’t mind.

Gameplay? Same old, same old. I wasn’t aware that was what MGS was about.

F.E.A.R is an interesting game to play because of its contradictory nature. I’m sure lots of people who play it will be satisfied and that’s fine for them. I don’t necessarily think it’s worth paying for, for a number of reasons.

There’s a certain promise that Monolith gave everyone. That promise was that FEAR was scary. Lie! Fear feels like a first person Max Payne with a sub-theme of horror hastily tacked on at the last opportunity. The most beautiful irony is that there is no FEAR here whatsoever; you’re given ample warning (your communication thingy starts to go weird) when you will be running into a ‘spooky’ scene, which are never threatening at all. You can’t die in them! The games scary little mental girl just stands there, giggles and leaves. It’s not scary; it’s just a meandering distraction from the rest of the game.

The storyline is boring. You’re a nameless grunt with a mysterious, spooky hidden past and magical super powers that put you at the top of your league. Drab. It’s also your first day on your new job. Dire. And you’re being put straight into the field! Your black commanding officer (yawn) has the right idea when he says something along the lines of “that’s fuckin’ ridiculous!” Surely, surely, horror games have to rely on atmosphere to carry their game along. FEAR falls flat on its arse on this one.

It is fun though. Of course it’s fun; there’s bullet time mode, and it’s a well implemented one at that. You run into a room, flick on your bullet time and take out four or five people at the same time. It’s not done quite as well as Max Payne 2, and neither would I say that FEAR is as good as Max Payne 2, but it’s not a bad attempt. There’s a definite satisfaction in what you’re doing, even if it is done while you’re plodding through a variety of rather uninspired and bland levels. You can’t fault the game on its delicious gun action.

At the end of the day, it’s kind of like fumbling around with a girls bra, finally unhooking it and watching in complete horror as two giant silicone blobs fall out and reveal the nasty flat-chested truth. This feeling metaphorically represents itself in the form of a metaphorical gremlin that’s chewing away at your leg, with you being defenceless to do anything about it. He’s only got tiny teeth, so you’ll soldier on. You go out, you get some work done and you’re having a good day, but there’s always the fact that there’s this tiny gremlin eating away at your leg. You’re still having a good day, but it could just be so much better if that buggering gremlin just fucked off.

It’s better than that sanctimonious piece of atmospherically vapid trash they call Half-Life 2, though.