Video Games → 10 Reasons I’m Glad Video Games Aren’t Real
Master Chief is pretty cool. Along with Armitage, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, and Lacey Chabert’s underwear. In fact, I wouldn’t mind being any of those. Well, except Armitage. Robot babies from the future really isn’t my thing*.
But especially Master Chief, since that would automatically bring me the “badass” title. Being able to fly around the galaxy shooting things has a grandeur about it that is only matched by flying around the universe shooting things.
However, as awesome as it might be, it’s probably a good thing that it isn’t real. For one thing, I’m not willing to have my DNA altered just so I can wear some clunky, puke-green battle armor. Also, I’m not a big fan of getting shot at. Bullets whizzing over my head only mean one of two things:
A) I’m in a war.
B) Uncle Jim is drunk again.
Neither of which is very appealing. But this still doesn’t make me stop thinking “Damn that is cool”. I sympathize with anyone who feels the same about any number of fictional videogame characters, but this doesn’t stop me from realizing how incredibly infantile the whole process is. It also doesn’t stop me from making fun of it.
So in the interests of not keeping the peace, I give you 10 reasons why I’m glad videogames aren’t real. Enjoy or else.
10. Big Boobs
I’m not going to argue with you about the fact that big boobs turn any hot woman into an even hotter woman, or any ugly woman into an ugly woman with big boobs. I do take issue with the absurd assumption we would want this in the real world. Boobs are great and all, but when they’re so big that tiny dwarves can hide behind them, it’s a sign it’s time to get some surgery. Besides, there could be tiny dwarves stalking you right now and you wouldn’t even know it. And that’s scary.
9. Guns, Bullets, Bad
I don’t know if you know this, so I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Bullet wounds hurt. A lot. If indeed FPSs were real and we could take twenty pistol shots to the chest, we’d all still be writhing in pain for much longer than would be acceptable to kill the next room full of DeathGuards.
8. NPCs
When most of us picture ourselves in a videogame we immediately assume that we’re going to be the hero, running around saving people, shooting aliens and being a general “Ninja with a Gun”. What most fail to note is that most games are FILLED with characters whose only job is to spout one line of dialogue or sell wooden shields. So unless your idea of a dream job is one where you stand on a corner and say “WELCOME TO GOFGAVILLE ADVENTURER!” for the rest of your natural life, I think it’s better that we at least get to do other things once in a while, like selling wooden shields.
7. Ancients
If there’s one thing that game characters must get sick of, it’s having to constantly fight some “ancient” something. In battle after battle, game after game, it’s an ancient evil that’s been around for centuries, and for some reason just now decided to become p****d off. We should count our lucky stars that Abraham Lincoln doesn’t come back from the dead every hundred years just to pick a fight with some teenager and lose.
6. Clothing
If there’s one thing I think everyone who’s done any cosplay (read: loser) can appreciate is that it’s a good thing that clothing in videogames aren’t catching on. They’re always needlessly complicated with straps that don’t do anything, hoodies with no sleeves, or some other nonsense that make Snoop Dogg look like a French fashion designer. Don’t even get me started on whatever the heck Rinoa is wearing in Final Fantasy 8. Her dress is the illegitimate child of a pair of gym shorts and a sweater.
5. Super Evil Job Market
Excluding Republicans, we really don’t have to worry about any great big bad guy coming along and screwing it all up for us. There isn’t much of a market in the real world for a Mad Scientist, and giant robots are hard to hide from UN inspections. The closest we’ve ever gotten was Hitler all he did was bomb a bunch of people and kill himself in a bunker. Not quite The Covenant Armada.
4. Sequels
You don’t have to worry about Konami coming along two decades after your death, resurrecting you, and making a crappy spinoff called Your : Act Zero, and then selling overpriced copies of your pitifully remade self. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Game Over.
3. Amnesia
I can’t count the number of characters in video games who wake up one day and don’t remember who they are. It’s a big plus that here in reality the majority of us can remember the little things like our names and that this isn’t our bed we’re peeing in. And we can accomplish this even after consuming copious amounts of alcohol the previous night. In the videogame world, amnesia has reached epidemic proportions, and nobody seems interested in curing it. This isn’t surprising since the all the scientists in games are either evil or have been eaten by zombies.
2. Boss Battles
Almost every videogame has some big bad dude that you have to kill in order to progress any further. While I’m not arguing that boss battles, say on your way to work every day, wouldn’t liven up your life, I’m just a bit skeptical that the following lawsuits would be worth the trouble. I can see it now:
Judge: You, CJ, are charged with assaulting your Shift Leader at Denny’s with a deadly weapon, first degree murder, and theft. Is this correct?
CJ: Yes, your honor.
Judge: You plead, and I quote, “He had the Archangel’s Boxer Shorts of Protection, which I needed to fight the Lich King. After I defeated him I was awarded with three dollars and twenty-five cents.”
1. Save Points
While initially this sounds like a good idea, since you can replay that night that you banged one of your sister’s friends over and over again, do realize that everyone will have it too. All humans will have the ability to do everything as many times as they want with no penalties attached. We’d all be living in a world that was about 2 days long, where nothing bad happened, and everyone simultaneously picks the winning lottery numbers. You could never really die and Shatner will be able to make as many albums as he wants, for eternity. Sounds like hell to me.
-cjdaweasel
*If you get that joke add +1 to your YOU RULE attribute.
The first thing that comes to mind when I play games like Hydlide isn’t “What a horrible game this is.” or even “What the heck is this piece of crap doing with a Nintendo Seal of Quality on it?” in fact, it isn’t even “I’d like to burn this game in the flames of Hades where it was forged.” Usually, my first thought is simply “Who thought this would be a good idea?”. Who thought that there was a serious deficiency of Nintendo games with purple elves running around attacking different colored blobs with white nightsticks? These questions then usually result in the second thought that comes into my mind “How much acid would you have to drop to make this game seem fun?”** and of course the logical third thought “Is there that much acid in the universe?”.
The game opens with some purple stuff that looks like a dragon shooting a girl and turning her into three fairies. At first I thought it was a pretty neat menu animation, but its not. That 4 seconds of uninformative mind-blistering back-story is the entire intro and plot for the game. Who is the dragon? What does he want? What is my characters name? Why did he turn the girl into fairies? Why am I asking you? After giving the game far too much credit by attempting to define philosophical dimensions to the dragon as just a metaphor for modern man and the fairies merely representing his struggle against an over-abundance of information in an ever-changing technology-driven world I gave up and decided to do what I do best. I called a few of my friends and we just pulled something out of our collective asses.
Movie: An Aggregation of Death (3.2 MB)
Apparently Gilgamar, with his multitude of butt-plugs and fairies, wants to make the world a lot gayer than it was, but unfortunately the developers beat him to it. First of all, the interface is purple. And we’re not talking an ambiguous deep-blue-couldbe-maroon purple, this is a vibrant eye-burning Barney purple. Plus, your main character who isn’t ever really named (I called him Rastafar the Fabulous)* is an elf that dons purple armor, runs around and pokes things with an Old Spice Deodorant bar until he (usually) dies.
Usually you’ll die because of the way you fight, or don’t rather. Similar to Fatal Labyrinth, you run up to an enemy and slam into them until one of you wins. The only twist is that in Hydlide you have to press the A button to attack and the B button to use magic/defend. This is about as complex as the game can get since most battles only last a few seconds. After you engage an enemy hold the button and press towards them until one of you dies. You have to make sure that you are directly in front of and facing the enemy that you wish to fight. If you are even slightly off you will take damage but be unable to deal damage. This interesting feature makes the battle system a little less fun than sticking your genitals in a juicer.
The sound effects are stellar as well, in the same way that cow s*** is stellar fertilizer. There are about seven sound effects six of which are the same ones either played backwards or at a different pitch. Every time you interact with one of the game’s amorphous blobs be prepared to be assaulted by a “boop” a “beep” or a “Doodley-do”. Because as everyone knows, that’s the sound that swords make.
I normally start out these articles with “Heroes of the Lance” is a game about _____.” But unfortunately I don’t have much to put in that blank. Heroes of the Lance (Hereafter referred to as Hot-L) isn’t really about anything. If however, by some chance I’m wrong (and honestly what are the chances of THAT?) and it does have a story, then it’s a thrilling narrative about eight warriors wandering around dungeons getting kicked in the knees by blue-underweared midgets.
You start the game with 8 warriors including: Flint, a dwarf who has the superpower of being too short for any attacks to hit him; Goldmoon, a human fighter who runs like she stuck a curling iron up her butt and plugged it in; Strum, your average D&D, long haired, I-don’t-care-how -stupid-this-hat- makes-me- look-it-gives- me-plus-one- protection-from- Normal-Meatballs human fighter; Riverwind, an elf (I guess) who looks like the bastard child of Hercules and Aquaman; Tanis, an archer of some sort who was rejected from ZZ Top; Tasslehoff seems to be a human wizard who is expertly skilled at being unable to hit anything smaller than the Moon; Caramon another human fighter who looks just like Strum, seriously, this guy is totally cramping Strum’s style; and finally Raistlin another absolutely worthless wizard, except he has blue cuffs and a magic broom. And when their powers combine they form a team worthy of the Special Olympics.
You’ll die almost always due to the combat system or lack thereof. The battle “system” involves running up to an enemy and pressing the B button till either you or your opponent dies. Usually you’ll be the one to die since every fight is based entirely on chance. Meaning that if in some other dimensional plane you manage to play the game exactly as it’s meant to be played getting every spell, potion and weapon there’s still a 50% chance that a dwarf is going to shin-kick you to death.
What the hell does the “Lance” part of Heroes of the Lance have to do with anything? No one in the game is named Lance, or even uses a Lance. There is a serious deficiency of lancing going on. If you know the answer feel free to tell me, but don’t expect me to pretend I care. I’m sorry but I’m not going to hunt down and read a novel to understand a crappy-ass game. It isn’t happening.
Blaze and Blade : Eternal Quest is a thrilling epic about some people who go somewhere to do some stuff. I can’t tell who made the games since THQ, Southpeak, T&Esoft, and Conspiracy Entertainment are all listed on the box, and luckily I don’t care. It is a good thing that they worked together on this project, since individually they would have released 4 games of lesser caliber than Blaze and Blade. I don’t think that there’s enough Pepto-Bismol in the universe.
After you’ve talked to everyone, some twelve or thirteen times, you learn that after leaving the hotel you must venture with your friends to a place far away and do some things. The more astute of you will notice that this is the same plot as Yahoo! Maps. There’s a place called the Forbidden Land, to which you must go for no other reason than the intro said so. There’s no real explanation as to what the Forbidden Land is, why you’re going, or who the h*ll is talking, but as any horror film will teach you, it’s usually bad to argue with disembodied voices.
In time, you will give up trying to control the camera and get on with playing the game. This brings up some pretty frustrating problems, not the least of which is the inventory system. Let’s imagine for a bit that you pick up an item. Let’s say it’s a penny, and let’s also imagine that you’re not broke as h*ll and you don’t need a penny. Your friend comes up and says “Hey! I have MASTERY OF PENNIES +9. I could use that!” You would say something to the effect of “Here’s the penny.” or “You’re a freak.” Either way, the other person would get the penny because you don’t need it. Right?
All of this might be forgivable if the AI controlled characters were even a LITTLE smarter than a pile of cucumbers. About a third of the way into your first battle you’ll realize that most, if not all, of the NPCs have the combined tactical genius of a yield sign. Unless an enemy comes up and pokes an AI controlled member of your party, they won’t fight. And if by some miracle they decide to hit back, they won’t cast any spells. Instead, your Wizards, in all of their vast knowledge, will opt to run up and whack the enemy with their stick. If you’ve ever played any RPG for longer than twelve seconds then you know that a Wizard fighting an Orc with a stick is equal to a janitor fighting King Kong with a Road Cone. It isn’t pretty.
Pain-O-Meter: 2 Valium, a shot of morphine, and a tube sock. I’m not sure why they gave me a tube sock, but after the Valium and morphine I didn’t seem to care.
In Fatal Labyrinth, a game made by People Who Hate You(tm), the object is to guide your character, Trykaar, to the end of a maze and defeat a dragon that is terrorizing your hometown. Most of you will recognize this as RPG storyline B-384, substituting an Evil Dragon for an Evil Mage.
If you’ve ever read the Engrish (sic) on the back of a Hong Kong VCD you’ll appreciate the script for Fatal Labyrinth. No two sentences that are put together make any sense. Take for example exhibit A from a villager: “I HEARD THAT A BRAVE SWORDSMAN DEFEATED THE DRAGON A LONG TIME AGO.”, followed immediately by “I WONDER IF I HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL TOMORROW.”
Even if we didn’t have the human sorting ability, this would still put our verbal skills one notch on the Stupid-o-meter above the AI for the enemies in Fatal Labyrinth. In fact if you attempt to get into a brawl with one, there’s a very good chance that you’ll just end up dancing around each other like idiots until you back them into a wall or corner. Bad guys in this game just don’t grasp the concept of walls on two sides of them.
After you’ve backed several baddies into a corner and beaten them into submission with your toy of destruction, you’ll eventually level. The first level you’ll gain will be “Valet” which is, according to my underground sources, a parking attendant. The next level after that is a “Ranger”. That is probably short for “Park Ranger”. It seems clear to me that the leveling system is based on jobs that require little to no training. This can only lead you to the conclusion that level 98 and 99 are probably “Street Sweeper” and “Denny’s Manager” respectively.
You know, I feel kind of bad putting two PS2 RPGs in a row on this list.
Of course boobs are just about as mature as this game gets. The story in Ephemeral Fantasia is just a series of sex related jokes from start to finish. Under normal circumstances I’d be all for a bunch of sex jokes but none of them are funny. Not even slightly. In fact, most of the jokes in EF don’t make any damn sense. If you take the joke part out of a “sex joke” your just left with sex. Sex where no one gets naked. Like a lap dance where the stripper wears a spacesuit. Not any fun, and a waste of a good 50 dollars.
You’d have to be a retard to begin with just to deal with the in-game timer anyway. The timer does a pretty good job of controlling day and night, what day of the week it is, and also how little fun you’re going to have waiting for things to happen. Plot events, such as getting a new character, or furthering the dumba** plot happen at certain times and only at those times. If you miss something like picking up Granny Olphemire’s Basket of Happiness +2 from the store on Monday at 2PM you’ll have to wait an entire game based week to try again. God help your controller if you miss the deadline a second time.
Pain-O-Meter:
Let’s play pretend. Let’s pretend that you’re 10, and Disney is about to release another one of its blockbuster animated films. Now, let’s pretend that when you go to see this movie you find out that only 1 in 7 sentences are voice acted and that the entire movie was animated in Flash. You’d be pissed, and you’d have a pretty good idea what it felt like to all the people who were hyped over Unlimited Saga, bought it new, and brought it home to play.
Immediately I was taken into a battle with a ninja bug who I had to defeat with kicks, punches, throws and a spinning wheel of peanuts. Since there was no tutorial, and I’m way to lazy to read the manual, I killed the samurai insect by pressing the X button until the game declared me the winner. I truly felt a sense of accomplishment.
Movie: My First Unlimited Saga Battle
Next I was attacked by what was labeled as a Vegeplast. It looks like a tree with an eyeball and a bunch of roses sticking out of the top. When I actually got into battle though, it had morphed into a floating green crab. Fantastic! My first real battle was off to a psychotic start.
When you get hit, you lose HP, LP, and probably seven other stats I can’t figure out how to get to. I have yet to figure out how the HP/LP thing works. HP seems to act as kind of a buffer for LP, but it’s inconsistent. I can do 320 HP damage to an enemy and do no LP damage, yet they can do 80 HP damage to me and 2 LP damage. So from what I gather, the strategy for fighting an enemy seems to be: Hit them. Hit them a lot.
Pain-O-Meter: 1 Valium. The game was just slightly boring up until I had to fight. I use the term fight loosely because battles usually just degraded into me hitting buttons and watching what happened.
Everyone makes mistakes. Like the Hindenburg, Vietnam, or that time that I was so drunk that I sh*t in my girlfriends sink because I thought it was a giant toilet. Since companies are just big groups of people all trying to screw each other, it seems natural that these corporations make mistakes too. Big mistakes. Costly Mistakes. Qwest DSL, When Strangers Call, and Atari Jaguar are all great examples of millions of dollars spent on confusing people, ripping them off, and then ripping them off again, this time for tech support.
In order to do any of this scientifically, I’m going to need a system. So I’ve created the following manner in which I’ll approach the review, or as it will be referred to from now on, the Pain Information System Overview of Facts and Figures or PISOFF.
Timing is everything. And Location. Timing and Location are everything. And boobs. Okay, Timing is most of everything, Boobs and Location run a close second. At the time that Quest 64 was released it was the first true RPG to hit the N64 system and it fought head to head against Sony’s RPG giant FFVII. Go into any game store and ask as many people as you can how many have played Quest 64, and how many have played FFVII. You’ll get a pretty good idea of how Quest 64 fared.
In the first town, you’ll meet a group of children trying to kill wear-rabbits with dild*s. It is clear that there is evil here. I tried to kill them with my brownish turd-stick, but every time I told Brian to do something he shook his head. I figured that this was probably one of those games where your character starts off bad and then becomes good as the story progresses. I’ll be back for those kids later.
Of course to get to any of the uninteresting places to meet the even more uninteresting people do the yet-even-more uninteresting quests, you’ll need to fight at some point. Your first couple of battles will consist of running around getting your ass kicked by rejected Super Mario characters while you vainly try to determine why you keep skipping your turn. Since all the training budget was spent on the fifteen tutorials within the castle, there won’t be any fighting instruction readily available. You’ll pretty much have to figure the clumsy fighting scheme out on your own or use the fantastically useless manual.
Pain-O-Meter: 5 Aspirin. I really didn’t have as much trouble sleeping after this one as I did the other 9, but my dreams were still filled with fanny packs and purple Hell Hounds.![[Click Here for Solution]](http://www.cjdaweasel.com/Stories/GS/10WorstRPGsEver/board/flpuzzlesolution.JPG){kind=link}
