Bears and Birds

Banjo and Kazooie are not really what I remember them to be. I got Banjo-Kazooie on the XBLA yesterday and played a bit with it. I almost fully completed three whole worlds in about two or three hours. Something is wrong here.

It came out originally 10 years ago when I was still a little 10 years old boy with big open eyes in front of the wonders of 3D. In my memories, the worlds were huge and it would take hours just to collect everything in them. Yesterday, I rolled through Mumbo's Mountain in 15 minutes. Now, is it because of the nostalgia that makes everything bigger and better, my memory that fails me, the fact I was young and that 3D was so new, is it because I remember collecting all of those ten years ago, or am I just a better gamer ? I think that there is a little from all of the above that makes the experience different. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the game a lot, but it makes you take some distance and wonder. If a game like this (albeit with better graphics) came out today, what kind of score would it get, what would the critics and reviewers think of it ? What would I think of it ? Would I give it a try or just let it sit there on the shelf and look at the new shooter that just came out. I can't really judge since nostalgia is clouding my judgement, but maybe my opinion would be different about the game.

To para-quote my movie history teacher, Marie-Christine Breault: "The historical context around a movie is very important". The same applies to games. Banjo-Kazooie came out in the last leg of the platformer genre era before it's death around mid 2000, with some of it's last representatives being Super Mario Sunshine and Vexx. It all felt new and shinny, but today it can only appeal to the ones that remember that little twinkle in their eyes they had in their youth playing with a shorts wearing bear with a bird in it's backpack.

I need to write more

I've just (and by just I go back to last weekend maybe) finished: a 12 pages work on narration in video games, a 12 pages work on the of the Dead horror movies, a 13 pages work on the evolution of westerns, a 10 pages work on some stuff about society (the teacher killed what could have been an interesting subject), watched 5 movies of which 2 were fun and studied for 3 exams that I all did between last Wednesday and today.

I am drained. But strangely, doing all this, being proud of my works (I may just translate the narration one and post it here) and performing like I never did, I have a strange envy to write even more. Write about games, write about the gaming culture, anything and from the point of view of both an academic and a fan. Henry Jenkins would be proud.... if he knew about this blog. So my (early) new year resolution is to at least write something once a week. About anything that may grab my attention during the week. Just to keep me writing and keep me motivated. But not this week. Like I said, I am empty, my brain is dead, I'm out of sodas and the week sucked anyway. VGA's were misogynist (from what I've heard) and more people are loosing their jobs in the industry. I will start my weekly routine after I get drunk (this Friday) and hopefully keep it going.

Snow on the city

There's snow on the city and that means the year is coming to an end. And what is happening when the year is coming to an end ? You make lists! A full month is still remaining(too short when you have 4 works due for the middle of the month) so a lot can still happen. A few games are still gonna come out and other events could get my attention.

But before I go into listing I want to say how happy I am right now. I just learned that Bernard Perron is going to be one of my teacher next semester. I'm really thrilled to be in contact with one of the few teacher really interested in video games. Hopefully I'll be able to get more info on the international conference “Thinking After Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games” .

Ok, list time.


GotY: One thing is sure, it's gonna be a sequel. It's kinda sad that a new, innovative game cannot be GotY but I guess it's just the way the market is right now. I am sure that everyone, me included, are missing on the best game this year just because everything else was (over)hyped. All of the contenders have major flaws in my opinion. But then again, can we expect all games to be perfect ? No, we can't. I'm just gonna write down what are the flaws with those games since pretty much everyone knows what they did well.

GTA4: Not as much fun as Saint's Row 2. A shame that a game that have a really deep story, makes an accurate criticism of modern America and let the player makes relevant moral choices, and all while showing me around NYC is, at the end of the day, less "FUN" than a game where you play a morally questionable banger blowing shit up. And this is exactly why it's more fun. But then again, Schindler's List wasn't fun either.

SSBB a.k.a. SSBM.2: Yep, the title says it all. But it justified my Wii and was fun..... for a while. But you know Nintendo fanboys will be pushing this as GotY like it was the Christ's return to earth.

MGS4: Kojima is a great storyteller. Weird stories I will admit but it really was a fitting ending to the fucked up MGS series. Twists, turns and people who are not dead but you were sure they were for the last 3 games. Of course, it would be better if the story wasn't told through cutscenes ONLY. Very few story elements are given interactively. And some cutscenes would just go on forever(I'm thinking of a certain death scene). But, to borrow an expression from Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, criticizing a MGS for long cutscenes is like criticizing a midget for being short.

My prediction for the winner ? I don't know. Really, I don't. I hope it's either MGS4 or GTA4 because well, they are deeper and more relevant than SSBB. Sadly, none of them had the impact Bioshock had on me last year. Maybe I'm just jaded, cynical and stressed beyond the point I can't be moved by a game anymore. Well, Lost Odyssey made me cry twice but since it's pretty niche, I doubt most people will see it as a serious GotY contender. I hope I'm wrong.


Disappointement of the year: Wii would like to play.
My Wii has been gathering dust for the last few months. After having my fun with SSBB, the console lost it's appeal. No game really grabbed my attention. I don't really care for wiifitnessing, wiimusciing or Animal Crossing since I've played the game two times already. The virtual console ? Sure it's fun. But it's hardly new material and your Wii will be filled pretty fast and since Nintendo don't have any solid plan to fix this issue, I kinda stopped caring for it.

But the Wii won't fail. It's still selling like crazy, they make 6$ per unit sold and that strange new beast, the casual crowd, is buying. I tip my hat to them for their brilliant business. The core feels left out but Nintendo still prints money.


Hot subject of the year: You've got casual on my gaming and defining a culture and it's actors.
The first half of '08 saw a boom in casual gaming. Developers found an unexploited market and like in the virgin west, they went digging for gold. And they found it. Now that a majority of people "play games" and almost every households have at least one console, companies decided to court the moms and dads. And the success of the Wii shows it works.

The second half of the year but mostly the last few months saw the rise of discussions about the culture surrounding gaming. The latest talk in town is about the role of reviewers and what they should and shouldn't do. I'm pretty sure that discussions about this and the gap between "us and them", not casual and hardcore but culturists and just plain gamer, will pave the first few months of '09.


Special thanks of the year:
Fallout 3: for making me discover a great series of game. I got my hands on 1 and 2 for a bargain and as soon as I have time(in two weeks maybe) I will make my way through them.

Sarah Palin: for an endless source of lols and MILF porn.

Lost Odyssey: for showing me a game can make me cry.


And at last, to get your groove on for the holidays: MUZIC

ear-cutting brilliant

This, my friends, is one of the most brilliant mix of art and gaming I saw. Honestly, more of that inter-art mixing should be done.

Critic vs. review

From Destructoid:

"However, I'd suggest that all contributors to the specialist games media should err on the side of criticism - they are, after all, writing for gamers, not casual onlookers who happened to have glanced a game review while looking through a newspaper."

I totally agree on that point. The issue here is that most gamers don't make the difference between a review and a critic. A review is simply pointing out the pros and the cons of a game in order to give an idea if I should or not buy the game. A critic may give a quick overview of those points but will rather look at the themes of the game's story, the different gameplay methods used and if it's relevant to the media as an whole, especially to such a young media as gaming. Games like Mirror's Edge needs reviews and critics to look at both side of the issue. One to look at "if gamers are gonna like it" and the other to look if it will leave a mark in the history of the medium which will interest more the academics than the gamers.

It's also a matter of where you're looking. If I want a deep critic of a game, I'll go to the escapist, not Destructoid.

Also @ Cyberxion
"Why does Wario get slammed almost entirely for its lack of innovation, whereas a game like Megaman 9 gets a pass? "

It's because Wario as the pretencion of being a new game but does little to actually do anything new. From a reviewers standpoint, it may not be a bad thing ; don't fix what isn't broken, but from a critic point of view that game isn't really relevant. Megaman 9 on the other was made to be some kind of window to an older era. It gives a glimpse to younger gamer of how it was back in the days. It's like making a movie in black and white in 2008. The style (and gameplay in the case of a game) is the same but they rely on modern technology. You may argue that gameplay evolved since then and you are right but gameplay is also a very important aspect of the medium and had to be the same for the main goal of the game from a critic standpoint "opening a window to the early NES era" to succeed.

Beating the game

I found myself reading a few posts on the Fallout 3 gamefaqs board(that place is pretty horrible) and I was shocked when I discovered a trend in the messages. Everyone seems hell-bent on finding ways to do every quests in the game and not interfere with others in order to get everything in some kind of first round. They ask "did I just fucked up that quest", "will it affect this other quest", "how can I do both and get all rewards", "is it a bug?", etc, etc... . It is as they forgot that, like in real life, some choices needs to be made and opportunities are going to be missed.

But beyond the thematic of the game, I fear that these "over acheiving gamers" are just missing the fun of the game. Instead of enjoying the story the game provides or the stories the players can make for themsleves, they just go from quest to quest, get as much rewards they can, skip unuseful texts, complete the game, get the acheivments if they play on XBox 360 and get to the next. I sadly feels it is more of a symptom of consumerism than anything. I'm not saying they are not having fun. They probably are having fun getting 100% game completion. My problem is that I feel they are missing on other levels of the video games. They miss on the narrative level because for them "story gets in the way of gaming". For them, it's only a game that needs to be beaten, consummed, before getting to the next and repeat the cycle.

Richard Bartle distinguished four types of gamers : killers, acheivers, socializers and explorers. Of course, Bartle was seeing this through the lens of virtual world making the socializer and the killer types a little useless when talking about single player games. Sadly, there's no definitive list of gamer types and it's something I'm sure future gaming theoretician are going to explore. But for now, we see there's a clear opposition between acheivers and explorers. The first wants to get everything out of the game and collect every rewards the game can give, and the second wants to see every little details of the game world and immerse himslef in the fictional universe the game provides.

In the end, it seems like the best thing a game can do if it's goal is to get the widest range of gamer type as possible is to give something interresting to do and choices to make them that will please the most type possible. Games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion did just that. they gave something for both acheivers and explorers. It's important to remember that there is no "better" type of gamers. Altough I might feel like acheivers are missing on the narrative of the game, they can play however they want. I feel like this because I am not an acheiver like them. I am an explorer. In those type of games, I prefer to take my time, get myself involve in the story and universe provided to me, explore large worlds, even if it means I am missing some quests and not getting every rewards I could get. The important is to enjoy a game, no matter what you enjoy in it.

Damnit!

My Ipod Touch was stolen at work. 319$ of technology and musical pleasure was taken away from me and we don't know who did it. I know this has nothing to do with gaming but damn I am angry and need to vent off on the internet.

And in an ironic twist of fate, I am currently listening to one of my favourite artist(Mark Knopfler) in an old interview he did on "Off the record" on CHOM, a radio station in Montreal.

Gonna post something more interesting Monday or Tuesday.

Jack in a box

Remember that very subtle allusion to Jack Thompson in GTA4. Took me time to figure out that was supposed to be a bout him. Well, I just forgot to note it in my review, and it came back to my mind as I replay the game, the mayhem activity next to your starting crib makes a pretty oblivious reference to him and I strangely didn't see a lot of people talking about it around the internet. I guess everybody was too busy to notice or they just don't care about JT anymore, which is a good thing in my opinion.

The boys(or girls) are back in town

I know I have a weird definition of tomorrow but I got busy with a lot of work related stuff and that led me to not have much time to write a proper review for Saint's Row 2 for last thursday. I know it's a lame excuse but damn I wish I could win the lottery so I could just focus on writing and school. But since I doubt it's going to happen, I will just have to try harder. Other then SR2, I also played a bit(and a real short bit) of Dead Space. I won't talk much about it since I gave this game very little time, but I can say that they really did a great job in giving it a scary, survival horror atmosphere. You feel alone, the corridors are dark and creepy, you can hear the monsters walking around you and you're not a beefy space marine. I wish I could play more with it but my october playlist is pretty filled(LBP and Fallout 3, which one of you should I buy?) and it seems I'm not the only one thinking that. But anyways, on to my short Saint's Row 2 review. Note that I haven't touched multiplayer and I won't take it into account.


Coming back to Stillwater after 5 long years feels just like it should. A feeling of familiarity but not without the changes of time. This feeling affects almost all aspects of Volition's crazy "gang simulator". But before going into the obligatory exercise of comparing this game to it's predecessor, let's resume the basic storyline. After five years in coma caused by the explosion of the ship your character was on , you wake up in a prison hospital, your appearance and maybe even your sex changed(I guess the explosion was pretty powerful), and you promptly escape with the help of little Carlos. From then on, you discover that the Saint's are no more and it's up to you to rebuild them. You go through 3 highly colorful gangs, killing your way up and disposing of their respective leaders. And once all that is done, there's always the big evil corporation to go after. As you can see, we are not breaking new grounds of storytelling here but that does not mean there's nothing to enjoy in it. Unlike GTA4, there's no pretension of having an immersive story. It's just the story of a violent gang leader, doing violent things to other violent people. It's still better than the story in the first game where you just have to substitute "gang leader" by "gang thug". Your character have at least some dialogues and emotions in this game. There are some particularly touching scenes in this game(not on the level of Lost Odyssey of course) but I won't spoil them.

To get back to that feeling of familiarity, the city of Stillwater changed but retained the same "out of a comic book" taste. the old areas were redesigned and new areas, almost all west of the original city, were created. A couple of new underground and inside areas were also created to expand even more the game playing field. The activities were also changed. They do not follow the formula of "one of every activity per gang territory" the first game used. All of the activities come in different numbers and they are based on location more than gangs. It forces you more to go around the city to find the different kind of activities as some of the more entertaining won't be near where you start the game. Not that getting around Stillwater was ever that hard. Talking of getting around, the game decided to take the GTA4 road and introduced us a new vehicles to use. You now have bikes, boats, copters and planes. It adds variety but beyond the bikes and the copters, you will rarely use boats outside of missions since getting around Stillwater is still faster with a car and much of the action is not on the coast and planes are just a pain to lift off. You can only use them from the only airport in the game and landing them in the city is well, as easy as it would probably be in real life. The activities themselves are rather entertaining and challenging but some are down right sadistic on higher levels. Missions to tend to follow the old "kill them, blow this" formula but they also try to vary the way you do it and I must say it worked pretty well. I never really felt bored of the missions.

But the feeling of familiarity also comes back with the less loved glitchess. I have seen less glitches in this game than in the first but the game did crash on me a few times and some glitches are really taking the fun out of you. The worst is, they are the exact same ones from the first game. Homies tend to get stuck or idle, civilian's car will try to ram you during missions or activities(and not the activities where they are supposed to like insurance fraud) like they hate you or something and targets will sometime spawn in walls making them very hard to kill without an exploding car at your disposal. At least the hilarious "dude, where's my car" glitch that made your car go suddenly invisible has not been seen yet.

So, what is this game worth ? I know october is going to cost a lot to gamers but I must recommend a buy for this one. If you feel bored of GTA4 and watch "big american titties!" with cousin Roman, just sell back the game and get Saint's Row 2. The fun will probably last you until the next sandbox game comes out.

Pros: Very high fun factor and replayability. Nice customization options.

Cons: Glitches tends to take the fun into the woods and shoot it in the head. And it's the kind of game where, sadly, glitches come as you explore more.

To conclude this short, written between reading a book for school and sleeping, review I will say that this game is the proof that just like movies, television and books, not all games needs to be deep and filled with meaningful themes. Sometimes all we need is some low intellectual entertainment with guns, explosions and tits.

Beginning of the game

My name is Bruno and this is my blog.

The funny thing is, I created this site a long time ago. Like a year I think. But I never had(or took) time to post in here. But for some weird reason I decided, yesterday, after an hard day of essays and exams, that I needed even more work and so I will start a bunch of new things. I will try to write more, both on this blog and on other stuff like game reviews, stories and articles. I will even post some of my works on here so the world can see it and hopefully give helpful critics so I can get better. I also decided to start learning some new things on my own. One of them being Flash. Thankfully, I ordered the book "Beggining game programming with flash" and at the same time Kotaku ran a story about this site. Seems like the stars were aligned.

For right now I won't be posting anything really interesting but starting tomorrow(or maybe even tonight) I will start to post some more. I am currently finishing the first part of a short article about survival horror games and how to make a realistic one, I have a few writing made of stories, character creations and general game designing stuff that I could post and by the end of the week I should have a review of Saint's Row 2, if my brother bought it today while I'm at university. I know it seems crazy to add even more work to my already busy life. I was already juggling between work and school and now I will add self-education. It's like going from juggling two knife to three flaming chainsaws. But hopefully I will make it, cause I'm doing it for my love of games and creation.

Peace out.