Weekly Opinion - Double pack - Used Video Games

Like other sources of entertainment, there is a market for used video games. Unlike used books and music, however, it is somewhat hampered by Digital Rights Management attempts, but all the same, there is a small industry for it.

I Liked This Game, You Can Do

There are a few reasons as to why a person can resell their game to one of a few stores. One is that they didn't like the game and enough time has passed that they aren't able to return it to get their money back. Another is that the game is quite old, for much the same reason. Yet another is that people sometimes want to share the games, or just want to make room if they have a ton. And some just see it as a way to make a quick buck (as I did once).

There are a few places one can look. eBay and Amazon.com are good places, though one must be careful for bootlegs and the like. A place like Gamestop will often buy back games, but be warned there, they do not buy back older games (I recall hearing recently they stopped buying back Playstation 2's) and often shortchange a person, or find some minuscule reason to not buy back a game or system.

Finally there is Play N Trade. I haven't been to one yet myself, but I have heard good things, and it would appear that they even have games going back to the old Sega Genesis and Nintendo days. Excellent!

Bargain Bin Hunting and Buried Treasures
There's two other good reasons to go shopping for used games. First, you can often find a game for quite a low price. Though, be careful that the game is not damaged in some way.

But the main reason, in my eyes, is to find that diamond in the rough. Though you can sometimes find them in mainstream retailers (I found previously reviewed game Tribes at Best Buy for all of $20 or so, if memory serves), you're far better off in the backwater stores.

Go Digging

So go and find your nearest used game store. You may be surprised by what you find.

Weekly Opinion - Game Ratings

Previously, I touched upon the game rating system by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, or ESRB. Mostly it was in relation to the Adults Only rating and how games with that label essentially become lepers to retailers.

Now, though, I wish to touch upon the ratings in general.

Favorable

For the most part, I don't mind the ratings. As I have been a gamer for most of my life, I've seen it grow and know most of it by heart. To me, they're as clear as the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings (G, PG, etc). If there is any rating system that is not really clear, the TV Parental Guideline are the confusing ones (TV-Y, TV-14 DLV, etc).

Enough of that, though. I feel that the ratings, for the most part, are apt. Generally, E games are good for everyone, T has action and some violence, but not as much as M, and so on. I do feel that AO ratings get a bad rap, and that they should be allowed (just through specific venues).

The problem is, it doesn't always seem as though people get it.

Parents

Parents, it seems, are often the ones who don't understand the ratings, and sadly, they are often the most vocal, complaining about how lil' Timmy bought Grand Theft Auto 4. The thing is, if anyone actually looks into it, they'll find that the parents didn't pay any attention to what game the kid was buying, and it is clearly rated M for mature.

I feel, as a society, people are becomming more prone to blame others for their own shortcomings. If something goes wrong, it isn't their fault, especially as a parent. If their kid messes up, the fault belongs to the teacher. If the kid kills someone, a violent video game warped their fragile little mind. If they buy a violent video game, its the fault of the retailer and not their own for just rubber stamping lil' Timmy's purchase.

It is really annoying.

Reaction

I'll grant you, I only started buying M games after I turned 18, and became more interested in them. I've only been carded once, which surprised me, but I felt it was a good thing. But it seems that many others don't. This does surprise me a bit, but at the same time it doesn't. I know I don't get carded often when I am supposed to (I was taught while working at Harris Teeter when I was 17 that a license needed to be seen when a credit card was used, yet I rarely see this happen).

Not much can be done, I think. Society can only do so much for the parents, though. The parents need to pick up the slack.

World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King in China update

Previously, I made mention of how Blizzard's World of Warcraft expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, has hit a few potholes in its attempt to be brought to China. The9, the company who handles World of Warcraft, is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy because the game has been rejected a number of times, due to depictions of skeletons and a "city raid" (both of which, apparently, would cause...something, in China. Your guess is as good as mine).

Well, there's been a bit of an update.

Rumormongering

Though it seems to be a rumor at this point, given the direction things are going in China with World of Warcraft, I honestly would not be surprised.

WoW Insider reports that The9 may very well lose the license to handle WoW in China and the company Netease may take it up. What's even more painful? Netease, apparently, will have to pay around $22 million for the license, while The9 had to pay $73 million. Quite the slap in the face.

Easy Fix

The author of the article, Mike Schramm, mentions that the handing over of the license to Netease (or, perhaps, some other company) may help Chinese players get WotLK that much faster. That is a possibility, but at the same time, one has to wonder just how much did The9 had a hand in WotLK getting rejected for release. Although little has been released, from what I've been able to gather, they edited what they could and changed things around in several dire attempts to get it passed. What could Netease do that The9 didn't?

Time will tell.

Weekly Opinion - Gimmicks in Gaming

Games and gimmicks often go hand in hand. They are often a way to make a game at least somewhat memorable, as gimmicks can make a game stand out.

For some games, the gimmick is a way to transform the controller into a gun of sorts. Others require you to purchase (either with it or as an addition) special controller-instruments. Still others require a certain game, and some platforms have the gimmick built right in.

Gimmicks can be beneficial to a game, though the problem lies in that developers sometimes just include gimmicks for the sake of it having a gimmick. I'll go into some examples below.

Wii and Mii

The Wii can be seen as a console built almost entirely around a gimmick. The whole Wiimote with the motion sensing abilities allows for some interesting games, and can be fun (or so I hear, I myself have never touched a Wii), but at the same time is a bit odd, at least in choice. Nintendo did suffer some backlash for this design, as when the Wii took off, the wristbands for it often broke and had a person launching a Wiimote into their TV.



But ok, for the most part, the Wiimote is ok. You can hold it and pretend you're using a gun or Lightsaber. Yay for imagination! Only...Nintendo has created some peripherals to make the gimmicky Wiimote even more of a gimmick. They have a plastic holder that turns it into a gun (something one can do without it just as well), and a steering wheel case to make it a steering wheel (again, something easily done by people with...oh, I don't know, imagination).

Still, its ok, gimmick aside. Sometimes Nintendo seems to be going for the gimmick for gimmicks sake route, but it works well enough for now.

Touch Me, Feel Me

Nintendo makes my small list again, this time with the Nintendo DS. The DS, coming from Dual Screen, has...well, two screens, heh. The bottom one is actually touch sensitive, and games often make use of this. In truth, the fault for gimmickry does not lie with Nintendo here. It lies with developers. The touch screen can be quite useful and, when utilized well, can make a good game great.

But the problem is that some developers tend to forget that they can use it. I mentioned this in my Pokemon Pearl and Diamond review a while ago, but that's a good example. I can use the touch screen to do a few things, issue commands (but I can use the directional pad and regular buttons for that too), sort my bag, and change modes on my character's watch, but...that's it.

RAWK OUT!

The final one I'll bring up is Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Both are essentially the same. You play through a DDR-esque game where you hit the right colored button at the right time. In this case, your controllers are music instruments (Guitar, Drum, Mic/Tamberine or whatever, etc). Though I dislike the games (it seemed to just get popular all of a sudden. I can't tell you the amount of times I groaned when someone coming through the airport I work at was bringing a Guitar Hero guitar with their ON BOARD LUGGAGE. What, you think that you can play mid-flight? Ugh), the idea is good, and actually seems fun at times. Instead of air guitar or drums, you can let loose, and it doesn't require that much practice to use.



Conclusions

Gimmicks can make or break a game at times. But it can also cheapen a game, too. Developers and the companies behind the consoles need to learn how to balance a gimmick.

April Fool's Day and Gaming

As a gamer, I come to both welcome and dread April Fool's Day. While many go out and perform some sort of prank (such as YouTube and their flipping their videos upside down), I feel that those in the gaming industry are the ones that go all out.

Kotaku compiled a list and sorted it by how they felt the pranks were for this year. I'll go into a few that I remember and came across, as well as some from the past. I'll also delve into my own opinion near the end.

Out in the Cold

One of the kings of April Fool's Day, I feel (and am not really alone in feeling, either) are the guys working for Blizzard. Every year they've put out a prank of some sort. Some years the prank is quite detailed, even going so far as to fool some people (for example, they convinced some people that two-player controlled two-headed ogres were going to be playable in World of Warcraft).

This year it seems like they went even more all out than usual. Not one, not two, but FOUR pranks. On the American WoW page, they put forward their Dance Battle System (also probably poking fun at their promise of users being able to customize new dance moves in game but, thus far, being unable to code it in). On their European page came P1mp My Mount. Their Starcraft 2 page showed the Terra-Tron. And finally, their Diablo 3 page had the introduction of the Archivist class.

Truly, I think Blizzard is in a class all its own when it comes to April 1st.

Turning the Valve

Valve also did a good job this year. They've been releasing updates to each class in their popular Team Fortress 2 game, and they made it seem that the Sniper's turn was up (it actually is, but this was a fake update all the same). The page reads for itself, I think.

Not Even Trying

I didn't come across any news items this year that made my blood boil, but the Kotaku list I linked to has a list of a few at the bottom. Go check those out.

Thoughts

As a gamer, I've come to expect things like this to come out on April 1st. Pretty much any gaming news I hear that day I take with a large grain of salt. Still, it is a good day for some fun. And I think the more po'ed I get over some news (well, over prank news that's actually done well), the better the prank.

I do wonder how many people fall for some of this stuff. The fallout from the fake ogre announcement really had me wondering a while ago.

Weekly Opinion - Double pack - Movie Tie-ins

As Summer approaches, so too comes the glut of Summer movies. And along with Summer movies (and really, any movie that's connected to a comic, book, or something for kids, so it doesn't have to happen during Summer), so too comes the glut of game tie-ins.

I've been told of a few that don't suck, but as a general rule, I avoid them like the plague. There's a reason for that.

If you LOVE [Blank] - The Movie, You'll LOVE [Blank] - The Movie - The Game!

What I titled above is pretty much one of the main reasons why I hate movie tie-ins. The majority are put out to capitalize on all the free publicity that the movie generates. Game companies can generally slap a title like Spider-Man on a game, add a 1, 2, or 3 as it needs to so it fits with the movie, have some general plot points the movie has, and ship it out. Even if the game blows, hordes of people will buy it.

These games tend to be loaded down with bugs and gameplay issues. But the developers and companies behind it all don't truly care. They put it out as quickly as possible to make money, money, money. And if you think about it, most movies are just out for the money nowadays too.
I'm Batman

Interestingly, there was one movie that didn't have a game tie-in that I expected would. Batman: The Dark Knight did not have any such game. As we all know by now, The Dark Knight was pretty much a license to print money. Surely a game, even an astoundingly crappy one, would've been expected.

According to The Escapist, who link to an article from Kotaku Australia, there was an attempt, but it never came to fruition. I suggest reading both, as they talk about it far better than I ever could (and check out their sites, especially The Escapist. Quite good guys there).

Final Thoughts

I'm keeping this brief due to a headache, and that this is mostly opinion instead of fact. Movie tie-ins blow. There are a few diamonds in the rough, but generally there is just the rough. Until such time as developers and the movie industry that demands games decide that they want to put out a game that's good instead of just advertisement for the movie, and until such time as the hordes of Walmart shoppers stop buying this crap, there will always be shelf space for such games.

Weekly Opinion - Sequels

Sequels are a common thing in just about any story-driven media. Books, TV shows, movies, and one could argue that music fits in too (an artist putting out several albums, one could argue that the other albums are sequels to the first, and then there are artists who tell a story that may branch out over several albums....it happens). Games are no exception.

Just like the aforementioned media forms, game sequels can be both good, bad, and mediocre. The reasons for this can vary as wildly as possible, so I won't delve too deep into that (I have neither the time nor the space to possibly cover every reason why a sequel could be any of the three). Instead, I will give some examples of good, bad, and mediocre, along with some games that I feel fit the categories.

I also want to warn, I may touch upon some plot points, so spoiler warning ahead.

The Good...

A good sequel builds upon an already established world in some way. Sometimes a sequel will have a large visual improvement (Warcraft 1-2-3-World of Warcraft; Half Life-Half Life 2). Sometimes they'll expand the world (Warcraft again, Half Life again). And sometimes they'll introduce new ways of playing (Wa-...just read the previous examples).

I've talked quite a bit about WoW so I'll put that aside for now and focus instead on the Half Life series.

Half Life, developed by Valve, is notorious in the gaming world for a number of reasons. It was one of the first First Person Shooter games that allowed for extreme modifications to be made to the game engine. Thanks to this, fans were able to create endless mods. One such mod I mentioned previously, the popular Counter-Strike.

But this is about Half Life, not it is easy to modify. Half Life's story was fairly simply. You're Doctor Gordon Freeman, a rather low leveled scientist in a top secret facility in Black Mesa, Arizona. Due to a mishap (which you learn in HL2 isn't quite a mishap), you tear open multiple portals to a "world" (in the loosest sense of the world) of Xen, unleashing countless creatures upon your scientist buddies. You now have to escape. At the end you suddenly find yourself in a tram car hurtling through space. A bland looking man, the G-Man, as he is known, is before you, offering you two choices. Stay and do nothing, or go through the door, accept his proposal of a job. You really only have one choice to end the game, go through the door. As you do so, the game ends.

Half Life 2 took quite a while to come out, but it did, and it, thankfully, picked up where things left off. In a sense. Freeman has been in a sort of stasis for about 20 years in the game, so he comes out to a world that's quite a bit different. There he learns much of what truly happened while he pushed the crystal sample under the laser and unleashed hell on Earth. Though some questions are answered, more are asked, and HL2 (and its sequels too) are weaving a great storyline.

That, I think, is a good, even great, sequel. It uses the previous game(s) as a foundation.

The Bad...

I previously wrote a review about the game Tribes. Tribes is a cult classic, and finally spawned a game, Tribes 2. People, such as myself, were quite happy. The game wasn't that hard to emulate, all we wanted was better graphics, more modes to play, the ability to modify it like the first game.

We didn't get much. Graphics were better, yeah. But the game blew otherwise. It tried to have a story. A story for a game whose predecessor was renowned for its multiplayer. It also clamped down on the speed of players, which was a bad move. Tribes players loved the original because you could go extremely fast at times. That's why you had jetpacks, for Pete's sake!

And while mods in the original Tribes had various vehicles, they weren't the main focus. Tribes 2 changed that. And most of the vehicles sucked.

Some say it got better. But for me, I left it.

And the Meh...

Another game I went into previously was Homeworld. In the case of Homeworld 2, it was an expansion that was ok in some regards, meh in others. Story-wise, it was pretty good, expanding upon the story of the Hiigarans and their homeworld, as well as expanding upon the background of their Mothership, the friendly alien Bentusi, and the origins of the warp cores.

However, in my experience anyway, the game kind of failed in the Real Time Strategy portion. Some RTS games are renowned for their need of micromanagement. Homeworld didn't need it, outside of needing to keep track of your ships' fuel amounts (removed in Cataclysm, thank god). Homeworld 2 required a lot of micromanagement and you had to go through various bars to research things.

It wasn't a bad game, by any means, but it wasn't a good game either. There was potential, but it failed.

Final Thoughts
It can be hard to create a sequel. I think the creators have to truly be a part of the game, to love it to create a good sequel. That's not to say there couldn't be flukes. I'm sure there are some awful games created by lovers of the game itself. I couldn't name one as I don't know of one, but I'm sure there's one or two out there.