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20 Things That Piss Me Off

Videogames

There are lots of things that I’m generally pissed off about. Like how we elected a man as our president who, even with millions of dollars, couldn’t find oil in Texas, or that I’m still not convinced that its Chicken in the Chicken Chow Main. But in the reality of a world where people get mad at celebrities that don’t want to have babies, I have to go off and play some games to release some stress. So it really pisses me off when I can’t sit down and play a game that doesn’t do something stupid that twenty thousand games before it haven’t done as well. So here, for my viewing pleasure are 20 things that just piss me off about games:

1. The fact that any super secret soldier can have 15 lights on him, and still be “invisible” at night. Agreed, it looks cool, but unless the enemy isn’t expecting to be attacked by a Christmas tree, I think that we can leave all of the Halogens at home.

2. The first person to come up with a game that has a mascot that jumps around on mushrooms, shoots fireballs from their mouth to rescue a princess from an evil turtle is considered “a genius” not “a possible crack addict”.

3. Why is it that every soldier can carry 15 different types of guns, ammo for all of them, a PDA, a backpack, two tickets to Monday Night Football, a few keycards for doors, and still jump around like Jackie Chan? No wonder you’re the hero, you can carry the entire US arsenal on your back. Hey here’s a tip: Put all that crap down and just punch the daemons of hell to death.

4. In the advent of next generation games that can faithfully reproduce the snot flying off the nose of a German soldier with complete historical accuracy, why am I still playing Role-playing games where the good guys stand on one side, the bad guys stand on the other, and they take turns beating on each other? Imagine if wars were fought this way. Most of the soldiers would die of old age before they ever got to their turn.

5. From my own survey, the average mental age of an MMO player seems to be about 12 years old. I swear, if another matureless brat follows me around for half an hour telling me how great my Night Elf’s “obobs” are, I’m going to test my real life PVP skills on them.

6. How long is it going to take before developers realize that movie to game adaptations, well, suck. What I would suggest is that they take all the movie to game adaptations, incase them in a hard plastic, and sell them as $45 commemorative coasters. People who liked the move (which was good) will by the coasters, and they won’t feel compelled to play the game (which sucked).

7. When did the Sonic the Hedgehog game Series turn into a game Armada? In the past year there’s been, I think at least 50 Sonic games released and/or re-released. Give the poor guy a break. He runs really fast, he jumps on stuff, gets missiles, spikes and all sorts of “owie”-inducing things thrown at him. Let him have a vacation where he just sits in a lawn chair, drinks margaritas, and watches Tails work his ass of taking down Dr. Robotnik.

8. Stop turning stuff into mascots for games. It is official, every noun in the known universe has been a character in a game. Mushrooms? Check. Rat? Check. Weasel? Check. A pile of poop with corn for teeth? Check. Mark my words, one day you’ll be playing a game as a Vienna Sausage.

9. Rainbow Six 3. Shouldn’t that be Rainbow 18?

10. Why do zombies come out of rooms that I’ve already been in, that are in a car on the end of a train that’s moving. Where the hell are they coming from? Scotty beaming them in?

11. Criminals must be the source of Extra-dimensional travel. That’s the only reason I can see being able to fit 12 behind a cash register.

12. People need to stop making “Retro gaming” out to be some sort of noble cause. First of all, its not feeding Africa. Second, the only reason you’re playing Centipede instead of Halo is that the Xbox won’t make long distance calls.

13. What is it with Health Packs? They’re in every game now, even car games. The only reason you need to put an Ace Bandage on your car is if your a redneck and need something to hold your bumper on for your big date tonight.

14. Does anyone besides me not get Pro Wrestling games? Let me get this straight: You’re a person pretending to be a character that represents a person that is pretending to be a character that pretends to fight. I hope that I’m missing something.

15. NASCAR games. Really, how many times do you have to go around the track before you realize “Hey, I could be stabbing my eyes out with hot pokers right now.” Sure it’d hurt, but at least you’d have a better story for work the next morning than “I sat on my ass at home alone and drove a pretend car around a pretend track for 2 hours.”

16. What the hell is a “Realistic Damage Model”? And how would you make a car game with Unrealistic Damage Models? One car hits another car and they turn into 15,000 ping-pong balls?

17. People that insist on telling me about a gaming experience. If I wanted to know how you got the Ice Sword of Gibraltar from the Holy Fire Caverns when you were only level 12 and you forgot to restock your arrows, then I’d ask you to shoot me, because I’d never ever want to know that.

18. The main character can be beaten up, thrown around, blown up, shot, and stabbed, and somehow live, yet his girlfriend can be stabbed once, and she dies instantly.

19. When after twenty minutes of playing a new game, I realize I’ve just been swindled out of fifty dollars by an impressive Ad campaign.

20. Every soldier in every game can pitch like Nolan Ryan. Hurtling a grenade at 30 miles per hour over 300 yards? No problem! The man shouldn’t be fighting in a war, he should be pitching for the Mets.

Breaking Down the System War

We Like Buttons

The console war is here, and fan boys everywhere are getting their panties in a wad. All you hear is “Wii is a dum namb it 2 sux!” “PS3 is knot 4 teh poorR iTsuxorz” and “XbOOx iz mades bi M$ that means it sux!” And while I don’t mind idiots expressing their opinion, I would like it if I could kill whoever decided it would be a good idea to get them a computer. Nothing personal.

You see, ever since the advent of the TV, one thing about humans has become painfully clear: We like buttons. The monkey in us has to have buttons strapped to waists on phones and pagers. We have to have them in our backpacks on PDAs, and Laptops. We have them in our cars in GPSs, cruise Control and radios. The monkey in all of us is a button whore.

If you’re still not convinced of this, lets map the acquisition of buttons in an typical adult’s life:

First, we buy a house or apartment, which has breakers, light switches, faucets and other buttons that we flip, push, and even sometimes snap constantly.

But this isn’t enough buttons. We need more buttons. So we buy things to put in our domicile that have buttons themselves: Microwaves, dildos, refrigerators, electric butt-plugs, hairdryers, vibrating sex dolls, computers, or my favorite: the TV.

Now the TV, of course, doesn’t seem have enough buttons itself, so we buy more things to add to it to get EVEN MORE buttons. We buy VCRs, DVD players, Universal remotes, and the subject of today’s little talk: the gaming system.*

And then for this system, what do you have to have? A controller, a light gun, a glove, and a headset. All with TONS of buttons!

We are literally paying thousands of dollars to have these buttons. So the question arises: How do we tell which buttons to purchase CJ? Help us!

And because that’s all I’m here to do, help you, I spent almost minutes compiling data and building my ATBR (Awesomeness-To-Button-Ratio) Theorem to help you decide which console to purchase so you can get the buttons you want and need. Also I’ve added in some one-liner launch game reviews and an overview of each system. You’re welcome.

Theorem Breakdown:
The scale for the ATBR Theorem is 1-100% depending on the theoretical maximum amount of awesome that a button could potentially contain. The scale ranges between:

100% - After pressing the button it spawns a naked supermodel who cleans my house, makes me dinner, and then proceeds to give me a blowjob.

0% - When I press the button it burns down my house, reports me to the RIAA, and implants a small chip in my head that feeds a constant stream of Nora Roberts directly into my brain.

To arrive at an overall percentage, we take all the awesomeness ratings for each button, average all of the buttons together and divide by a number that I pick at random. Then that number is run through a dehydrator, sealed in a plastic bag, and shipped to NASA for further testing. Then the number is returned in an official envelope marked “RETURN TO SENDER – Please stop sending these to us CJ” where the number is compared to various fruits. Or alternately, if I have to get this posted before my connection flakes out again, I just make up a number.

The Systems:

Nintendo Wii

Overview:
The Wii, sporting an awfully goofy name, looks to be built off of Ipod technology and the “We hate lots of buttons” mentality. I haven’t actually seen a Wii (snicker) but from all the screenshots I’ve seen it looks to be about 500 ft. tall and made of porcelain. But, despite this seemingly expensive construction it’s retailing for the low price of $250 USD or about $3,867 Canadian.

Launch Games:
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Nintendo remembers that we never asked for a gay little cartoon Link.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Stars a videogame girl that doesn’t take her clothes off; bor-ring.
Wii Sports

Not to be confused with “Water Sports” (search for that in Limewire and you’ll get that joke).
Madden NFL 2007

In case you can’t get off your butt to play the real thing.
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors

As an acronym is extremely fucking long.
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

-10 points for bad pun referring to an even worse TV show.
Elebits

Nintendo forgets that we never asked for a Pikimin clone.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab

Yet more proof that there isn’t a god.
Disney/Pixar’s Cars

Another movie to game adaptation that I’m sure will rock like all the others before it.

ATBR: 3% – The Wii will have to spread its thin veil of awesomeness over about 12 buttons, which doesn’t bode well for the system. If it didn’t launch with a Spongebob game, it would have scored around a 23%.

Playstation 3
Overview:
Capitalizing mostly on name, and the confusion that there are enough losers with enough free money to buy it, the PS3 will sport the super-powerful CELL processor. It’s not all rosy news about a low-low $600 (that’s 5 billion Canadian) price tag since according to my 5th grade science book, only living things have cells. This knowledge coupled with my intimate familiarity with the Terminator series leads me to the conclusion that the PS3 will become self-aware and destroy humanity as we know it. By my calculations this won’t be a big loss, though it may make tech support hold times unusually long.

Launch Games:
Resistance: Fall of Man

Some guy gets sick and goes around shooting things.
NBA 07

Now you can see the guy in the third row hurl his hotdogs and beer at 1080p.
Genji: Days of the Blade

Run around and hit things with a sword. (Not to be confused with the Final Fantasy Series)
Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII

A completely original game that’s also available on the Xbox, Xbox 360, PC, and the Wii (snicker).
Call of Duty 3

Good thing they’re releasing another World War II first-person shooter. There just aren’t enough of them.
Fight Night Round 3

Just what you want to see: Two sweaty guys in boxers beating each other’s meat.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

About as fun as golf, but with a sword. Come to think of it, golf with a sword would be pretty damn fun.
Need For Speed Carbon

Carbon’s atomic symbol is C, which is what I give this game.
Sonic the Hedgehog

The camera will drive you bat-shit insane.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas

At least they stopped numbering these. What is Rainbow Six 2? Rainbow 12?

ATBR: 4% – While the PS3 has anywhere in the vicinity of 12-14 buttons, it has some real issues with its look. Ignoring that it looks to be impossible to stack something on top of it, it has chrome trim on the premium version. Chrome trim on your PS3 is like chrome trim on your car from Wal-Mart. You might as well cover it in Christmas lights because it looks stupid.

Xbox360
Overview:
Microsoft decided to skip 358 other iterations of Xbox and jumped straight to this one. It features an HD-DVD player add-on, a controller that you can get some great distance with, and a lot of the color green. It comes in two versions:

The Premium version, the more expensive one, which comes with a remote, a Hard Drive, a Wireless Controller, Xbox Live Silver, a Headset, Component HD AV Cable and the cure for Cancer.

The Core system, the cheaper of the two, comes with an “I.O.U. 1 Worthwhile Game System” and some dust. Oh, and a 360-themed cardboard box.

Launch Games:
Amped 3

Any game with commercials this dumb can’t be worth anyone’s time.
Kameo: Elements of Power

A game about turning into fluffy cute things.
The Outfit

Probably some sort of Barbie game.
Project Gotham Racing 3

Between Project Gotham and the Xbox, it’s becoming apparent that Microsoft doesn’t understand the phrase “Working Title”
Quake 4

A completely original game about aliens who come to earth to do mean things to us.
Ridge Racer 6

The sixth in a series of racing games that probably has ridges in it somewhere.
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland

Another Tony Hawk game that ties up some of the loose ends from the previous games.

ATBR 2%: The 360 has 13 buttons but doesn’t pack enough punch for them. In fact, the only thing that keeps the 360 from earning even less is that it has Xbox Live which allows you to get online and talk to people just as uninteresting as yourself. That aside lets hope that I don’t need 2 Service Packs and 70-something updates before my console will read my sound card.

Conclusion:
Buy a Dreamcast.

*I have it on very good authority that the first video gaming system was just a mass of buttons and levers. I believe it was called “The Saxophone”.