Is Mario break-dancing at Club Shroom?

I just read a feature on GamePro.com, "The 10 biggest flops in video games." Under #9 they talk about how great, innovative games like Psychonauts and Beyond Good & Evil are on the decline because of bad sales. Now anyone who has played either of these games, including the big gaming magazines & web sites, will tell you to pick up these games right away. I picked up both of them (together) myself for $50 + tax. You can't even get a good new release for that price. But because (apparently) the general gaming public is too chicken to drop a 20 on a game that didn't get advertised during the Superbowl, innovation is losing the war to sequels and clones. Don't get me wrong. I am guilty of buying Ratchet & Clank 2-Deadlocked and all of the 3D Mortal Kombat games. I also plan to buy Heavenly Sword (God of War clone) when I get a PS3. Does this mean I won't check out LittleBigPlanet? No! I am not alone in saying that I am sick & tired of WWII first person shooters. Heck, I'm tired of shooters in general. How many have hit the 360 since it's launch? What's that? Game of the year is....A SHOOTER!!! I for one am shocked! Of course there wasn't much else to choose from. So I guess what I'm saying is.....TAKE A CHANCE PEOPLE!!!!! On the rare occasion that a great game that isn't just like the last 3 you played is released, at least go rent it!! Money spent supporting innovation is money well spent.

Just read an article on GamePolitics.com about a new game coming out on PC. BCFX. Black College Football: The Xperience. Now many (mostly white people I would assume) are in an uproar over a game that apparently only features black people. Well guess what? There IS a double standard. SO WHAT!!! That's just the way it is in the U.S. History is history. Some rehash the old argument that if someone made an all white football game there would be a riot. It's true. SO WHAT!!! Latin Grammys, BET, not for everyone. Do I think that making a game like this is in slightly poor taste or even asking for trouble? Yes. Does it really bother me? No. To me it's comparable to children making a no girls/boys allowed club. It's likely that it's all just a ploy to get attention. It's also likely that this game will not even be very good and it's media attention will out do it's sales. I generally don't even like football or football games but due to undue controversy I have heard about this game. I think it's time for us to mature as a society and stop complaining about things that don't even affect us. It's a video game, not affirmative action. Let's get some perspective here! Sometimes it's cool just to have something just for you. White people have had their turn.

Make no assumptions about my race.

Here's a link to the story. http://gamepolitics.com/2007/09/15/philly-games-writer-bugged-by-racial-comments/

Warning!!! Possible Spoilers!!! Just watched the DOA movie. (LEGALLY) Not nearly as bad as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation or the Street Fighter live action movie. Not as good as the first Mortal Kombat or Silent Hill. I new it was gonna be stupid & I don't like the DOA games but as a gamer I had to see it anyway. At least it wasn't directed by Uwe Boll!!!! It was kinda like the Resident Evil movies. Not boring but not worth buying either. The fights weren't bad but they were kinda short. They also eliminated a lot of characters right away. The acting is predictably bad but not soap opera bad. And it's kinda hard to believe Eric Roberts as a Boss. The biggest waste of great game-to-movie potential is still Doom.

Been reading some other blogs & I see that a lot of people think that video games are not as great overall as they used to be. I have to disagree. I can understand the p.o.v. since many gamers are older than me & therefore were more patient, coordinated, dedicated & perhaps bored than I. But with the growth of games as a true art, how can anyone let blurry nostalgia blind them?

POINT 1: Games ARE an art form & IMAO anyone who can't see that has either never played one or defines art in a way that really doesn't stack up to argument. Some people say that art must not be open to interpretation & must precisely reflect the composers feelings & intent to make the viewer react a certain way. If this is true Aeon Flux must not be art. Peter Chung, the shows creator & director of many of the episodes, specifically says in the director commentaries on the DVDs that the show is supposed to be open to interpretation. Heck, if this is true, people that say Jackson Pollock was in this mood or that when he threw paint at a canvas are out of a job. Some say that video games cannot be art because the observer is at least partially in control of the experience. Remember the "choose your own adventure" books? Is racing a car well not an art? What would Dale Jr say. The examples go on and on. Video games are just as much art as a great story or a beautiful car. Maybe more so. Not only are video games visually appealing but they often contain puzzles & complicated upgrade and point systems that many people could never conceive. I also believe very strongly that keeping gameplay balanced is definitely an art. One of the reasons that Street Fighter 2 was so popular was that because the interaction between the characters was like a well performed ballet. Ask any game developer whether they think that all of their time spent tweaking collision detection or hit points to make a game both fun and fair wasn't an art. Anyhoo, my point is that video games are more of an art now than ever before.

POINT 2: With the widespread decline in arcades in the U.S. many people miss the social aspect of old school gaming. I personally am glad that I don't have to pump quarters to play someone who is gonna slaughter me in front of a crowd because I'm a noob. Who misses sticky and/or broken buttons & joysticks or dealing with some zit faced punk because a machine ate your hard earned allowance? With the on-line age we can now pay a flat monthly or annual fee and play against people our own skill level in the comfort of our own homes. Sometimes there's no fee at all! I'm looking forward to playing with my best friend without having to spend time & gas on driving to his house. With voice chat you can even exercise your right to trash talk the fool you just pwnd without the threat of being jumped in the parking lot. How else would you be able to test your might against the best in the world instead of the best in the building? We are now bonding with people from other countries!

POINT 3: The reason that I never beat any of my NES games without a Game Genie was the fact that they were severely unforgiving. If the game didn't have passwords or secret codes you were forced to play the same levels over and over until you either mastered them or got bored and stopped playing. I usually did the latter. Super Mario Bros. was really cool but I didn't want to spend my time as a young child trying to get 87 1ups. Limited lives/continues + frequently difficult objectives + trial and error gameplay didn't and still doesn't swing with me. How 'bout you? That's why developers invented difficulty settings. Now we have MMORPGs & games like Ratchet & Clank that fairly re-spawn you in a convenient spot that maintains your progress instead of throwing it out the window. If I die in a game and have to re-earn everything I already worked so hard for I am not having fun. I can't be alone in saying that I play most single player video games for the experience not the difficulty. Frustration cancels immersion. Halo. Bioshock. Fun because they found the balance between hard and forgiving. And I don't even like first person shooters. I absolutely love Strider 2 on PS1. If I turned off infinite continues I would never have had the patience to beat it 10 times. CAPCOM knew this.

POINT 4: One word. CUSTOMIZATION. Not only can we tweak our "OPTIONS" but we can change the way our characters, cars, plains, trains & even entire cities look. Don't like yellow? Make it blue. Don't have short hair? Make it long. Want a ranch in the middle of Metropolis? Fresh beef for everyone! My favorite aspect of Soul Calibur 3 and Mortal Kombat Armageddon were the character creation modes. I don't like the Sims but put me in front of the color edit from CAPCOM vs SNK on Dreamcast & I'll give you characters that look like they're made of ice or stone. I can even make Ryu look like Akira from Virtua Fighter. (JK) Who hasn't spent hours on that RX7 or Jetta in Need 4 Speed and maybe learned a little more about cars in the process? It may be a low tech comparison but we are learning programing. Besides, how many old school games would let you pimp out your hooptie?

POINT 5: Ahh, the Wiimote. I just played Metroid Prime 3 for the first time a couple of days ago and it was just cool. Point at the screen & shoot. Makes sense doesn't it? I loved the control scheme for the first two Prime games and this blew them out of the water. It was my first time even holding a Wii remote & I took to it like a fish to water. Wanna look somewhere? Just point. Part of the reason that I don't like most first person shooters is that my hands shake. SO. I can't get a headshot with my right thumb giving me artificial recoil. I don't do PC games but I can see the Wii giving me a chance to love a whole new genre. Haven't used the Sixaxis yet but once developers learn from the mistake that was "Lair," racing games at least could become a lot more intuitive.

All in all I'm having more good times now with scratch resistant BluRay discs than I ever did blowing on rental cartridges.

THNX

:P Wow! Didn't realize that when I posted a message on my "blog" that it would show up on all of the other cnet sites.

Hey everybody! Just getting started on this whole "Gamespot account" thing.