In Defense of Bad Games
By:
Micah Seff
|
January 14, 2011, 6:33 pm

Note: Like everything else on GameXplain, this article represents the sole opinion of its author, not the site as a whole. For this latest tirade, we're graced by the presence of Dan Hemsath, who could no longer contain his excitement about a little known (and even littler played) game from last year, Fist of the North Star.

The time is midnight; the day has officially transitioned from November 8th, 2010 to November 9th, 2010. Millions of Xbox 360 owners (and PS3 and PC, to be fair) make a mad trek home from thousands of midnight sales to plunge their annual acquisition deep into the disc tray of their beloved online-ready console. Some tremble with trepidation, some roar in triumph, others quietly let euphoria take them as their quivering hands grip their headsets to their ear, turgidly press the right trigger firmly, and engage in a Call of Duty orgy of headshots and kill streaks.
 
Me, I’m playing Fist of the North Star. It came out last week, and only I and the one other devoted fan of Jagi out there – a character in the game/source material – even pre-ordered it, much less bought it at the place of my employment, I’m sure. I loved the anime growing up, with Mad Max-meets-Bruce Lee over-the-top martial arts and exploding heads, cheeseball lines like “you’re already dead,” and more. The game’s made by those guys who make Dynasty Warriors, Tecmo Koei, and…what do you mean you’ve never heard of it? Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. When Activision Blizzard funnels millions into its annual war-simulator, licenses Eminem to belt out something probably totally unrelated to the actual game because it has a driving beat, and get some glorified pole dancer with no sense of vertigo to perform at the E3 party (and some guys called “Metallica” at the “actual” launch party) I guess Call of Duty hogs the limelight.
But even the ever-so-objective videogame reviewers like IGN and others (and, admittedly, they’re better than movie reviewers…ugh) seem to hate on poor Kenshiro and his quest to defeat his brother Raoh – a man who should theoretically be physically incapable of turning his tree-trunk of a neck. What gives? Sure, the gameplay is nothing “new,” the loading times are greater than six seconds before the start of a thirty-minute stage (the horror!), and it doesn’t use the Unreal Engine, so I can’t see every filthy pore on Ken’s sweaty upper lip! Blasphemy! Sure, I often use simple X-Y-Y combos for crowd control, and sure whole stages are composed of said crowd control; smashing dudes with blue Mohawks until their lungs burst out…over and over. Hey, maybe Fist of the North Star really isn’t the “best game ever made.” Nahhh…
 
Seriously, though, it’s fun. It didn’t take cutting-edge graphics to make Space Invaders a hit. Looking back, some might say, “It looked good at the time.” No, it didn’t! Not unless cataracts were in style alongside denim jackets and Swatches. It looked like big green and white blocks shooting small wavy blocks at vaguely face-like blocks moving back and forth. And yet, this didn’t diminish the sense of enjoyment of clearing the field of the little buggers and competing for a high score. Still, Space Invaders is a member of a time since passed. Not ancient history by normal human terms, but in the realm of videogames, it might as well be.
So how is Space Invaders, perhaps the very progenitor of cover-based shooters like Gears of War, even relevant to a game like Fist of the North Star? Simple: people continue to enjoy games that no longer exceed the ever-skyrocketing bar of graphical excellence, online functionality, and community-based gaming (I’m looking at you, World of Warcraft), but simply satisfy an aesthetic element in its target audience. Like movies, books, and all other forms of art and entertainment.
 
In 1878, James Abbott McNeill Whistler charged art critic John Ruskin with libel for describing his painting, “Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket,” as if the artist were “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Whistler’s defense was that his art (and all art for that matter) had no greater purpose than for its own sake; that it was not isolated to being a forum for portraits and landscapes, but for artistic expression. Some art historians would argue that this idea would form the ethos behind Modern Art as we know it today. Others might say it was the excuse of a subpar painter to peddle his wares without paying credence to the critics’ inflated egos. Either way, Whistler won the case, and Modern Art has paved the way for such revolutionary works as “Starry Night,” Fallingwater, and the Marilyn Diptych (look’ em up). But is it fair to compare Monet with a post-apocalyptic kung-fu game filled with bursting heads? Probably not; that would be like comparing Grandma’s homemade apple pie with a Café Latte: you consume them both, but for different reasons.
 
So, why this game? Well, it’s not just this game, it’s a bunch of games: the underdogs of their field, the second fiddles, the Cleveland Browns to…well, any other football team. They’re not the best, but they have a dedicated fan base willing to overlook the fumbled passes, game-breaking glitches, year-long load times, or corny dialogue (like how I transitioned there?). For every Call of Duty, there’s a Dynasty Warriors/Fist of the North Star I’d rather play. For every Splinter Cell, there’s a Velvet Assassin. For every Gears of War, there exists a Deathsmiles. And so on and so on.
So, all of a sudden, videogame reviews start seeming a whole lot less objective. Again, they’re better than the movie or music ones on popular review aggregation sites, but they all seem to be obsessed with technical points and how swinging a chain and quick-time events (mini-games to some) in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow immediately makes it a God of War clone. That’s like saying Mega Man was a Mario clone because he always moved from left to right and occasionally shot fire. But, I digress. The key sticking point is that so many (not all) of the videogame reviewers out there are under some kind of neurosis – perhaps from being overloaded with so many games these days, perhaps from just being jaded on bald space marines – that they tend to review games based on standardized technical criteria, and rely on referencing genres and previous popular incarnations of similar titles for comparison rather than providing experiential data not often attributed in reviews. Seriously, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is one of the funniest games I’ve played (at times) in a long time. I had no problem with feeling like I’d miss a monkey-parkour jump from ledge to ledge due to sloppy controls, because I was actually enjoying myself playing this.
 
To be fair, it’s not just the reviewers that are to blame. Maybe even more complicit in this crime against smaller games is the “gamers” themselves. By “gamers,” I don’t mean (true) gamers – there’s a difference. At best, gamers appreciate videogames as a medium for artistic expression and entertainment. At worst, they live in their mom’s basement, binging on Doritos and Code Red. The sort of “gamers” I'm talking about buy their Xbox only to play Call of Duty (wow, that’s a $300 game). They get “hooked” on World of Warcraft – reality check: they’re hooked because it’s part of the zeitgeist. WoW’s no better/worse than any other massively multiplayer online role-playing game, except your friends play it, making it harder to diverge from the pack to play something different. Wii Fit – does anyone who scoured the game stores two years ago even use the damn thing? Probably not; everyone’s still fat, despite their Wiis. So why are these games so popular, when technically speaking, they’re really not that far removed to the layman buying the games to begin with? Easy: they’re safe.
Y’know, it’s always been a hard economy. Everyone’s always broke, and no one has any time on their hands. Consumer X (no relation to Racer X, though that would be great) walks into a game store, has only so much to spend on gaming entertainment, and really doesn’t know what to buy. The reviews don’t help, and there’s no point in renting, if you’re just going to buy the thing anyway. So, what does Consumer X buy: Call of Duty or Mirror’s Edge? Well, both are “first-person” games, the clerk tells him – whatever that is – but Call of Duty is “more popular.” Gee, I want to be popular – everybody who was in high school seemed to like it. Sold! Yeah, it’s not that cynical, in reality, but let’s be honest: it’s safe.
 
And so all the forgotten treasures, the guilty pleasures, and the small studio launches get swept into the bargain bin, the Bermuda Triangle of interactive entertainment, and this is a shame. Surely, we’ve all picked up movies that were certainly no Oscar-winners – our Office Spaces, our Big Lebowskis, our Running Mans – that we watch because we love them, not because Roger Ebert includes these amongst his “Great Movies” (which is a good book, by the way), but because they’re popcorn munchers, soda slurpers, and pepperoni pizza fare. It’s the stuff you enjoy because something about it resonates with you, not merely because you keep hearing how great it is. To quote Tom Hulce, as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1988 Oscar-winning film Amadeus, “Who wouldn’t rather listen to his hairdresser than Hercules?” Too true, man. Too true.
 
So, tonight, I engage not in “prestiging” in CoD – whatever that might be – but in delivering Hokuto-style hundred fist strikes, belting out “YATATATAT – YATAAHHH!” as Kenshiro pummels Raoh in martial arts melodrama that could only come from Japan. I won’t be “raiding” in WoW – I’ll be contemplating the horrors and brutality of World War II, conveyed poetically by the dour narration of Violette Summer, based on real British war hero/assassin Violette Szabo, in Velvet Assassin, dodgy targeting and stealth be damned. I won’t be waggling the Wii-mote to “bowling with weebles.” I’ll be Norse techno-deity Balder, dual-wielding laser swords as I lunge at blinding speed into robotic “goblins.” Sound fun? It’s called Too Human. Give it a shot – it’s only ten bucks. Save the other fifty bucks for five other fun games time forgot.
 
See you on the B-List!
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