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Review A Bad Game: Myst (Nintendo DS Version)

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Image by Flickr User: String Anomaly
Image by Flickr User: String Anomaly

There aren’t a ton of games I’ve played where I thought it was absolutely terrible. Part of it has to do with not being a long time gamer and the other being I’ve based most of my game purchases on reviews and recommendations from trusted friends and family. I did, however, make a newbie mistake in my eagerness to dive straight into the wonderful world of video games.

The one game I made the mistake of purchasing when I was new to the gaming scene and had bought my first portable handheld, the Nintendo DS Lite, was Myst for the DS. The game was originally an adventure puzzle game made for the PC. I heard about the game, but never played it. I never got into PC gaming much. When I was in dire need of a game to play, I looked through the DS section of my local Best Buy, trying to find a game that was fun and affordable.

I saw Myst and read the back of the box. The game has you play as a character who is simply named “Stranger,” who uses a special book to travel to the mysterious island of Myst. You interact with the world to unlock the secrets of the island and its characters. I’m a fan of adventure/fantasy type stories and I thought Myst might be right up my alley. I should have looked up the reviews before purchasing the game.

Fans of the original Myst said their main complaints with the game was the bad transfer from PC to DS. The graphics were smaller, there were too many glitches, and the controls were pretty awkward, considering a lot of the game relies on interacting with the objects you see in the game to gain clues about the mysterious world of Myst.

A lot of the reviewers’ complaints were all correct. While I can’t compare the quality of the graphics between the PC and DS, as I’ve never played the game until the time I purchased it, controlling the game was a nuisance. I didn’t get very far with the game before I left it on my shelf neglected and forgotten. You would think for a point and click PC game, Myst would have translated well for Nintendo’s touch and tap capabilities. It did not.

Reading a book in Myst was annoying. Pages accidentally skipped when I tapped on it, before I had a chance to read the next part of a story or clue. Because the graphics were pretty small, you had to zoom in to read the text in a book. After playing the game for an hour, I didn’t think the world of Myst was as exciting to delve into as I had originally thought. I was instantly bored with the game and stopped playing it after that.

I don’t doubt the original Myst was a better experience on the PC than DS, but I don’t plan on picking up a copy of this game for my computer either. With so many other games to play, I don’t feel inclined to purchase Myst for the PC and play it how it was originally intended to be played––point and click without the graphics being scaled down to fit a small, portable handheld.

I may have wasted about $20 on Myst and have since sold the game back for absolutely nothing, but I did learn a valuable lesson from this experience––always read the reviews before purchasing. Or at least consult trusted friends and family for their recommendations on good games to play.

Console, Game Series, Posts By Active Authors

Review a Bad Game: Alone in the Dark: Inferno

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It’s never been my favorite genre, but I’ll say right here that I absolutely love horror games! The best horror games elicit a real sense of dread and fear. You don’t understand what’s going on, you can’t understand what’s going on. All you can do is try to make it to the next room and hope that there isn’t something waiting for you around the corner.
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Food For Thought, General Commentary, Posts By Active Authors, Widely Read Posts

Everyone Plays Video Games

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Screenshot by Flickr User: faseextra
Screenshot by Flickr User: faseextra

A strange thing has been happening around my workplace: people are playing video games during their free time. Not just the usual two or three of us who bring our DS to work, but everyone seems to be hunched over their phones and computer screens, clicking or swiping away at little stacks of sweets. That’s right folks, Candy Crush fever is at full pandemic levels in our building, and there is no cure in sight (save for upset bosses).

For those who are unfamiliar with Candy Crush Saga (CCS), allow me to brief you on the game. Available as a mobile or Facebook game, CCS is a match-three puzzle title in which a player must clear certain pieces of candy from the screen in a set number of moves. Combos greater than three and chain-moves will provide the player with special candy, which may be used to clear the board more easily, and failing to destroy the target pieces will result in a game over, and the loss of a coin. This is where the game becomes diabolical.

In a given day, each player is given X coins which translate as chances to complete a level. Once the coins are expended, the only way to gain more chances is through the spending of actual money. Like so many free-to-play games before it, Candy Crush makes its money through the unfortunate souls who spend their hard-earned income to buy more coins, and, in essence, pay to keep playing the game.

This is exactly the sort of scheme that many of us “real gamers” will proudly (and loudly) defame, citing that these so-called-games ruin the medium as a whole. With even one listener, we will ramble about a dystopian future where all video games are money traps. All of these casual games are passing fads that have overstayed their welcome, and we scoff at those who play Angry Birds or Words with Friends when they are waiting in line at an overpriced coffee shop. Don’t these people know that the games that are actually fun and worthwhile only exist on consoles and computers?

At an earlier time, I would have taken up the torch right alongside my brethren and blindly marched on these lost souls, ready to push my gaming preferences on each of them. Then it dawned on me: I am living in a time where nearly everyone plays video games. The advent of mobile games and the emphasis on a casual market have brought so many people into the fold, and that effect continues to this day. I have overheard complete strangers telling stories of playing with their relatives over the iPhone. I have watched kids roam around in Minecraft on a tablet at the airport. I witnessed my own mother, who never touched a controller in her life, toss a virtual bowling ball down the lane, score a strike, and trash talk my brother in the process.

When this realization first hit me, I felt pure revulsion. Here was my hobby, being pulled right out from under me by people who didn’t even seem to care about video games. I spent so much of my life being picked on and looked over for being an “inside kid” who played too many video games to have a proper social life. Suddenly, every department store was selling cheap retro gaming t-shirts and belt buckles, fake geeks were coming out of the woodwork, and crappy mobile games were making millions of dollars. But I would not be fooled, no sir. I had the good sense to know real games from these shoddy facsimiles, so I would stay my snobby course and scoff at these fools who were trying to play pretend at my hobby.

Once I had calmed down (it took a while, mind you) and actually tried out some of these games on my wife’s phone, I came to a harsh conclusion. In spite of all the commercialization and monetization at work in so many of these games, there is fun to be had in their play. Angry Birds is so reminiscent of the simple games of my youth, and Candy Crush Saga (at its core) is a competent match-three puzzle game for the masses. There are several other examples of fun “casual” games, and these sorts of titles exist right alongside what I consider more mainstream examples of video games.

So instead of perpetuating the “casual versus hardcore” games argument, why don’t we take joy in the multitudes who are playing video games all around the world? Candy Crush Saga may not be the game for all of us, but it can be a great first step into the deep well that is puzzle gaming, or just the means to have an actual conversation with an otherwise unknown co-worker. After all, everyone likes Tetris and Mario, right? Just go from there and share your hobby with the world.

-Chip, Games I Made My Girlfriend Play

Commentary, General Commentary, Posts By Active Authors

Gimme More – The Urge To Collect More Games

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Screenshot by Flickr User: seamonkeyelephantseal
Screenshot by Flickr User: seamonkeyelephantseal

When I added video games to my many geeky hobbies, I never realized how easy it is to watch your game collection go from one or two games to ten or twenty games piled high in a corner.

My gamer friends have told me there are maybe just a handful of games they completed in full, while the rest are left partially started or not started at all. Despite knowing this, they all can’t resist the urge to buy more games as the newest, hottest titles continue to come out every year.

Collecting games, like you collect baseball cards or a stamp collection, was a foreign concept to me. In my opinion, it made more sense to finish a game you already owned first before buying a new one, or waiting for a price drop so the game is cheaper to purchase. I naively thought how silly it was to keep buying more and more games until you couldn’t keep up. I eventually caught on that the urge to collect more games is a lot stronger than one might think.

Why is that? Why do gamers want to have more games in their possession than they can actually play in a day? A week? Or even a month? What I discovered from my friends and from my own experience is if a game has been reviewed highly and looks cool after watching the game trailers, we will buy it.

We are easily swayed by awesome graphics, a fun or different gameplay system, and the story. It may also be the latest, hottest title everyone is currently playing. You want to be among the cool kids playing what everyone else is currently playing. You want to trade stories of how this boss fight was epic or discuss what that shocking ending meant. It could also be a way of avoiding spoilers faster if you get the game the day of its release.

Personally, I don’t buy too many games the day it’s released. I’m a bargain shopper by nature and I really don’t see the point of throwing down $40 or $50 on a single game, even if it’s one of the best games to come out in a month or year. I also have to really want a game that badly to get it on the first day or week of it coming out (I’m looking at you Dragon Age 3). I’m content with waiting until the price drops a bit or when there’s a sale. Once I do see the game I’ve been dying to get for a while go on sale, there’s no holding me back from buying it straightaway.

This also brings me to another reason why we seem to accumulate so many games––price drops and sales are our best and worse friend in the world. During holiday shopping seasons, I’ve seen a good number of the newly released games go on sale at decent prices from the regular. It calls out to me like a Siren’s song. Before I know it, I’m whipping out my credit card and hitting purchase before I even have a chance to figure out what just happened. It’s also comforting to know a game is in my possession, waiting for me to play it when I’m ready.

I also think we can’t help but collect more games because we want the available option of playing it when we want to. This has happened to me recently when I was trying to figure out what to play, but didn’t feel like playing the current game I’m trying to finish. “You know, I don’t feel like playing anymore Fire Emblem Awakening right now. What should I play instead? Oh, let me start playing Telltale’s The Walking Dead. I haven’t tried it yet and I’m in a story driven game kind of mood.”

If I didn’t have The Walking Dead among my piles of games, and I wanted to play it, there isn’t much I can really do about it other than to choose a game I have already beaten but has a high replay value, like Mass Effect, to satiate my urge for a story based game.

There’s this desire to want to play everything when realistically we can only play so much. For some of us, we have summer vacations from school where you can have a marathon gaming session and reduce your building backlog. For the rest of us who are working adults and have responsibilities in the real world, our time isn’t what it used to be. We’re lucky if we can carve an hour or two of our time to play a level here and there. Backlogs for us is just a reminder that we may never get around to playing everything, despite our best intentions to try.

I think I’m okay with knowing this. As one good friend said to me recently, to comment on his monster size backlog, “When I die, maybe I’ll just have my consoles and games buried with me. I can play them in the afterlife.” Not a bad idea.

Console, Food For Thought, General Commentary, Posts By Active Authors, Retro

Community Post- Which Turtle Are You?

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Screenshot by Flickr User: TheStouffer
Screenshot by Flickr User: TheStouffer

In many modern video games, there is an option to design the main character from the ground up using a robust creation system. For some players, this is an excuse to create the most ridiculous hero ever (eight feet tall and purple hair, yes please), but more often than not, people want to put themselves into the action. It makes sense: video games provide experiences that are wholly unlike real life, so of course you would want an avatar of yourself performing these amazing feats. But the option to create a virtual self is not always available, particularly in the co-op multiplayer games of old.

Back in the saccharine days of the 1990s, when the video arcade was still alive and kicking, huge cabinets provided four players the opportunity to punch and kick their way across cartoon landscapes. Animated shows like The Simpsons and X-Men were riding high, and their arcade counterparts were the featured titles at every gaming establishment across the United States. And at the top of every kid’s playlist sat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game. This show (and its respective games) had it all: ninjas, martial arts, skateboarding, and of course, pizza. There was just one problem when it came to actually playing the game with four people: deciding which turtle to play as.

Oh sure, it may seem like an easy decision (Leonardo, duh), but what happens when you have four kids and all of them identify with a katana-wielding do-gooder? You can’t all be the leader – that just wouldn’t make sense. As with so many other co-op arcade games, hard introspection and tough decisions about one’s character had to be made. Several of my trips to Chuck E. Cheese would progress as follows:

“Okay guys, which turtle are you? I am really nerdy and I like to build with Legos, so I should be Donatello.”
“Wait a minute, I like those things too, and I am wearing a purple shirt, so I should be Don!”
“Fine, fine, fine. Well, Cory should be Leonardo, since it’s his birthday.”
“But I don’t wanna be Leo, I like Michelangelo! He has numb-chucks.”
“It’s nun-chucks, stupid! Fine, then I will be Leonardo, Cory can be Michelangelo, Jeremy can be Donatello, and Corey, you’ll be Raphael.”
“Nuh-uh! I am not gonna be Raph, he sucks!”
“Well someone has to be Raph!”

This would go on for some time, until one of us would just break the argument and pick our favorite character before anyone else had the chance. It seemed like every co-op arcade experience went like this until each of us had settled into our roles. For me, I became the grappler/support of the team. My roster was made up of characters like Haggar, Lisa, Nightcrawler, and Ryan, while my brother would take the leading roles of Cody, Bart, Cyclops, and Alex. We had learned which characters best suited our play styles, but more importantly, we identified with these heroes and our time spent gaming became even more special.

Even though arcades have mostly vanished from the world, the experience of molding yourself to a character is far from extinct. There are several modern co-op games that do not allow players to create an avatar from scratch. When playing Left 4 Dead or Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, my friends and I still have to figure out which character is the best representation of our personalities. Most first-person shooters limit the visual customization options to basic colors and body armor, so players must determine their role in the group using the weapons and tools available. Maybe you are the sniper who stays back and picks off enemies for the team, or perhaps the job of a medic might be a better fit. The choice is yours.

While the arguments and debates over character selection were mostly superficial among my friends, there was a deeper reason for all of it. When you get to the nitty-gritty of co-op gaming, there needs to be less focus on your individual progress and more care put into how you can best help the team. After all, if some jack-ass is stealing all of the pizzas when his/her turtle doesn’t even need health, the rest of the team will suffer. Just like Master Splinter said, “Together, there is nothing your four minds cannot accomplish. Help each other, draw upon one another, and always remember the power that binds you.”

-Chip, Games I Made My Girlfriend Play

Food For Thought, General Commentary, Posts By Active Authors

Community Post: The most important thing

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Screenshot by Flickr User: RT Videojuegos
Screenshot by Flickr User: RT Videojuegos

Note: This post is going to be a bit different from my normal opinion pieces. In fact, it’s not so much an opinion piece as a personal account of my experiences with coop games. In other words, it’s going to be a lot sappier and more personal than you might be used to from me!

In the last few years, I’ve played a lot of games. In fact, since I started freelancing and interning at games magazines and websites, I’ve found that I have little time for anything else these days. For better or worse, gaming has become an integral part of my life and much more than just a hobby to me.  Consequently, I’ve thought a lot about what I look for in a game and my standard is probably much higher than when I was just playing them casually in my spare time. What I most look for in games these days are deep stories, incredible worlds and immersive gameplay. I find myself drawn to games like Far Cry 3 or BioShock Infinite, games that aren’t the easiest to just pick up and put down without getting invested in. Games like this are great, but what I realised was that In the midst of all that playing and analysing and searching for the next best gaming experience, I lost sight of part of the reason I got into gaming in the first place – to have fun. It took playing with other people to take me back to my roots, to remind me of why I love gaming so much. There’s a special magic to coop games that no other type of game has and I really believe everyone should share this kind of experience at least once with someone else.

Gaming with other people has often seemed like more of a hassle than it’s worth. You have to deal with other people’s play styles, competitiveness (because even in a coop game people find a way), differing levels of skill and sometimes, clashing personalities. I’ve seen friendships tested over games and heated words exchanged over as simple a game as New Super Mario Bros. I’ve generally preferred playing on my own, inside my own little bubble. Since I started playing games more regularly (when I was a teenager) gaming has always been a very personal experience for me. Back then it was purely a form of escapism. My favourite games from around that time were Knights of the Republic 1 & 2, the original Fable and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. I was a massive RPG fan. I loved those detailed worlds, involved stories and being able to explore and interact with people in the game to my heart’s content. Since then, I’ve played all manner of games from many different genres, but RPGs will always have a special place in my heart.

However, it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I was young that gaming was an exclusively coop experience or at least one shared with others. When I was a little cheeese toastie, I used to live above my cousin. They had an N64 and NES and I used to go downstairs to play games all the time. Though the memories are already hazy, the feeling it’s left with me has never really died.  I think those times we spent together are still some of my favourite gaming memories to this day and is part of the reason that after so many years and so many things have happened in our lives, we’re still best friends. Obviously we shared a lot of other memories together and had fun in other ways too, but those early days of playing games together and trying to beat games together (like Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers) helped instil a lasting companionship and  a sense of teamwork and togetherness that only grew stronger over time.

Then the gaming scene changed. Graphics got better, there was a higher standard of writing, characters and quests became more involved and games became more akin to interactive blockbusters than the little timewasters of the past. BioShock Infinite isn’t something I would pop in to play for fifteen minutes to half an hour. So, the second stage of my life in gaming life began and while it was in many ways a lot more fulfilling and exciting than gaming was when I was a kid, it was also a lot lonelier, at least for me.

It was only when I started having LAN parties again with friends that I began to rediscover the joy of including other people in your experience and of just slowing down and taking it easy sometimes. I remembered that gaming doesn’t need to be an intense experience all the time. It doesn’t always have to live up to your expectations or fulfil your gaming desires to be a game you enjoy playing. Sometimes, gaming can just be kicking back with your friends and playing a few rounds of New Super Mario Bros. or Left 4 Dead. Gaming together is also a way that I spend time with my boyfriend (the other Sam from our Minecraft videos). While some people might not think it’s the most romantic thing to do, finishing the coop campaign for Portal 2 with him are some of my fondest memories. Also, we’re clearly still doing the Minecraft videos and hopefully the fact that we love it and have fun shines through, because we are. Actually working together to build something is an amazing feeling and one that despite all our ribbing of each other, is something that strengthens us as a team. That sense of fun, companionship and easy going friendship came rushing back to me in moments like those. I started actively seeking these experiences more and more.

The games I found myself coming back to are coop games. PvP can be fun and most people have that competitive streak that makes winning all the sweeter, but coop forces you to work with other people. The sense of accomplishment I get from beating a level while working with other people is unparalleled. Sure, sometimes people still get competitive, especially when there’s scoring involved, but most of the time you have to depend on each other. Personally, I’ve found that I’ve learned a lot of important things along the way – how to be supportive, how to let things go when things don’t go your way, how to carry people, how to be carried, but most of all how to just let go and have fun.

Coop games reminded me of the most important thing – to have fun. It’s sad that there aren’t more coop games coming out at the moment, because I think they’re a central part of the gaming experience. In a world that’s becoming more and more competitive, as well as more isolated (in both games and real life), I think it’s important to find moments like these, moments that you can share with the people you care about, where you can just kick back and laugh and connect with other people. That power to bind people together I think is what makes coop games so special to me and if you haven’t included them in your life yet, I’d suggest finding a game to play online with a friend or better yet, picking up that phone and inviting him/her over right away.

Commentary, General Commentary, Posts By Active Authors

Community Post: Some Games Are Better On Co-op

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Screenshot by Flickr User: jsb31786
Screenshot by Flickr User: jsb31786

Around the time I got my Xbox 360 a few years ago, I didn’t have an Xbox Live Gold subscription. Friends who had an Xbox and a Gold subscription kept telling me I needed to get one. The reason? You can only play with your friends online if you have a subscription. This was also around the time when I was working at a part-time job and my finances were pretty tight.

Paying for a Gold subscription was quite expensive when you factor in the salary I was earning at the time. It wasn’t like I had no intention of getting one. It was just going to take some time for me to get one. The other issue was I didn’t have too many multiplayer games in my possession either. I wasn’t in any rush to get the subscription. Luckily, I’m blessed with good friends and family. My cousin took it upon himself to buy me a Gold subscription card for Christmas and one of my best friends decided to get me Halo Reach to start me on the path of multiplayer games I could play with both of them. Yup, truly blessed.

I generally like playing games by myself. I want the ability to absorb the story, the game environment, and to just have a quiet moment between me and the game. I knew playing online and on co-op with my friends would be fun, but there are times when you just want to be alone without the distraction of having to talk on a headset while you play. I like paying attention to the dialogue being said in a game, and when you have your friends talking at the same time a character in a game is talking, it’s really hard to stay focused on both. But when I do play co-op, I only want to play with people I know rather than random strangers who are paired up with you in a party match game.

I’m not the best player in the world, and I rather be playing in the company of friends who aren’t asses and judgey about how much I suck at first person shooters. From what I have read of people who do play co-op and are matched with total strangers who are playing the same game as you are, not all players are nice and respectful of other players who may not be as good as they are. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, you may be a better player than this person from whateverville USA, and they are a sore player because of it and insult you. That’s a separate issue and a different topic for another time though.

Eventually, I did discover how some games are better to play with friends than alone. Take for instance, Borderlands. When I received the game as a gift, I was told by others who have already played the game and completed it that it’s better to play with someone else than on single-player mode. I never had the chance to try it on single-player, but when I managed to get together with maybe one or three of my friends for a game of Borderlands, they were right about it being an infinitely better experience to play as a group than alone.

Large groups of enemies are easier to take on as a group. Whatever your weaknesses are when you play the game, there’s someone who will have your back. Strategies can be built and agreed upon to take bosses down. One person might say, “You distract him by doing this and then I’ll take him from behind when he’s completely trained on you.” There’s also some silliness and goofing around when you play with friends.

I remember one time when I played Borderlands with my cousin, my best friend, and my best friend’s girlfriend. There were points in the game where you could get a vehicle, and my best friend’s girlfriend loved getting a pink car and trolling her own boyfriend by threatening to run his character over. It was hilarious hearing my best friend shout, “No, don’t run me over!” and you see his character running away from the pink car. I would sit in the gunner seat and watch as this craziness was happening before my eyes.

Another friend who I have been finishing up Borderlands with recently told me she never finished the story mode for the first game alone, but she finished it for Borderlands 2. She found the world of Pandora in the first game a bit drab and depressing while she played by herself. It also didn’t help that enemies got too hard to fight against on her own. By having the two of us play together, it made going through the entire story mode easier to do. There were also some funny moments that happened while we played and weird game glitches we experienced together.

I also think an advantage of playing a game that has co-op in their story modes is it makes you more likely to finish a game than if you played it on your own. I can’t tell you how many times I have started games on my own, only to not finish it because I get distracted by other games that keep coming out.

While I wouldn’t trade those moments where I can sit down and play a game by myself, I do enjoy finding a day and time with friends to play co-op. Not only do you get to experience the game together for the first time (or maybe for the twentieth time), but it gives you some good memories you can reminisce over. It’s also the best way to do stupid things with friends you wouldn’t have done otherwise if you are alone.