Week in Review - 01/06/03

     The second week of the new year has gone by and the industry is starting to heat up. I managed to cram my week full of gaming for the first time in awhile. I am also back up at school as well, so no more dealing with the evil that is AOL Broadband. Although many announcements came this week, everyone is still eagerly anticipating Nintendo's "Megaton" announcement. All I have to say is that it better live up to all the hype it's generating. So let's get down to business and take a look back at the week in review.

     Nintendo announced the upcoming release of the Game Boy Advance SP. It's about damned time that Nintendo did something to fix the debacle that is the GBA. Everyone knows how bad the lack of backlighting on the GBA is, so I don't really need to go off in a rant about it. The GBA SP looks slick. It looks damn slick. I give Nintendo a lot of credit for this bad boy. At the same time I have a problem though. Didn't Nintendo spend all this time and energy turning the GBA sideways to look like a Lynx or GameGear? Now it's back to up and down again, like the original Gameboy. If you look at the GBA SP when it's open it oddly resembles…. an original Gameboy.

     Impossible Creatures was released earlier this week. Many of you probably saw my post in the news about it. I promised a review of it, but I'm not going to do one. Here is why. When you first start playing IC it seems like it is going to be great, something that could possibly turn into an obsession. After a few hours though you start to wonder why you're still playing it. Those of you who have ever played State of Emergency know what I am talking about. It's just so monotonous it made me want to bang my head on the wall. First off the graphics are a major flaw in this game. The default view actually looks pretty nice, but the camera is too close and you can't really see what's going on. To correct this problem you tend to want to zoom out the camera a bit, which makes everything look like specks off in the distance. The games major draw is the ability to customize your army by mix and matching different animals. In concept it's a really cool idea, but many of the animals look similar. A wolf and a mountain lion merged together don't really look like anything special. After awhile all the creatures start looking the same, its odd but play for a while and you'll know what I mean. Every single unit can attack air units, so there really isn't any advantage to using them. The thing that finally pushed me over the edge was you start off with your unit capacity completely full; meaning that you don't have to build farms, supply depots or whatever. In my book that is half the strategy involved in every R TS. IC is not anywhere near being on par with Warcraft III, which I consider to be the Mecca of RTS games. So since I couldn't stomach this game for more than four hours I don't think it would be possible to give it a thorough review.

     I made the fatal mistake of posting some news about Animal Crossing 2 in the forums earlier this week and not giving a link. I know, it's my bad and now I'm getting hammered with email asking about where I found out about it. So here's the link, I haven't found an official report or press release yet though. I'll get you guys some more information as I get it.

     Pickle and I picked up Hunter the Reckoning for the cube this week. Other than Halo it may be the best reason to have three friends. If done correctly, hacking up zombies is one of the best video game activities known to man. It also sparked a debate between Pickle and myself. Are zombies strictly confined to the undead category, or do they have their own classification? It seems like most zombies are just undead, but what about zombies who are just brainwashed by TV or something? And why do they always want to eat brains? I mean it has to be really difficult to bite through a skull to get at the brains. Couldn't they eat something simpler, like intestines?

     A city councilman in Los Angeles called for an investigation of Internet cafés following an incident during a Counter-Strike tournament. I have personally witnessed near fistfights involving CS, but never anything like this. A brawl broke out and witnesses said that the players were wielding metal chairs and pipes. In addition to that a teenager was shot outside the café. This is just fantastic news for gamers everywhere. Every little incident that happens for the next six months is going to get blamed on violence in video games. Although I think that it is a cop-out to blame video games for children being demented and shooting people, my opinion on this particular subject may be a bit different than many in the gaming community. I am 22 years old now, and I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Just because I shoot at people in CS or other first person shooters doesn't mean that I am going to be desensitized and warped by it. But when I think but to how I may have reacted at 10, I don't know. I grew up stomping on creature's heads in Super Mario Bros., throwing papers into people's mailboxes in Paperboy, and occasionally punching around a fat guy in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. We didn't have CS, Quake, Doom or any games like that when we were young. Looking back, the first time I can remember actually shooting someone that looked realistic was maybe Wolfenstein 3D. I hear the statement a lot, "Well I play games and I'm not out killing people!" Well yes, because you are an adult. People around my age and above were never exposed to the type of realistic violence that kids now are. I'm sure that one could make a case that games like Metal Gear, Contra, and GunSmoke were just like the games now, you ran around and shot at people. Honestly though, if you think about it, 8-bit graphics don't really give intense detail to a head explosion or something like that. It was different, and a sane person would realize that. There is so much gore and violence in video games, and without fail these games always end up in children's hands. When I was 10 it was fun to play outside and pretend like I was Mario trying to save the princess from Bowser. But what do kids now do? Go outside and pretend that there are killing massive amounts of Nazis from Medal of Honor? I think everyone gets my point. We don't know what these games are doing to kids because we don't have first hand knowledge. In no way should video game companies EVER be blamed for tragic events like school shootings. I do not side with people who try to shove that crap down my throat and politicians who try to get ridiculous censorship laws passed. Personally I really enjoy some violent video games, CS is an all-time great. Being an adult I have a right to play things like that though. If you want to blame someone blame the damn parents. It's your fucking job to pay attention to your damn kids. An Xbox is not a babysitter, and there are plenty of games out that are totally suitable for younger children. Why isn't there anyone trying to pass legislation that if your kid shoots up a school your ass goes to jail? That would make much more sense to me and maybe parents would actually pay attention to the things their kids are doing.

     That pretty much covers everything for this week. I want to thank Tito from lordsofpain.net for the link that brought many of you here and the phat articles that he has been writing for us. I also want to give some love to Snowcone. Some people have been wondering why he hasn't been getting that many articles written, but the dude has been damn busy. He wrote the entire backend for this site and it's a constant work in progress. We're doing a lot of things to improve the site and we're still trying to finish everything up since we only launched 2 weeks ago. Some of the things that we are doing with this site are things that I've never seen before and I've been in the business for over 6 years. We're doing everything in our power to make this site the best for our readers. Speaking of which, I always try and give you guys a little love every week. The forums have been buzzing with activity and it's been a lot of fun debating and spazzing out over games with you guys. Keep up the good work you guys have been doing with spreading the word. And I can never give enough props to the guys at EBGames. You guys have been so awesome in helping us get this site going. I'll have Pickle take you guys out to dinner or something. That's all for this week, Soda out.

Jan 14, 2003 - 12:00 am
Shane Quast