I’ve come to a conclusion about something that’s bothered me for a while. This may seem obvious to most people once I talk about it, but I don’t this comes up enough when the gaming media talks about games.
It all stems from how the gaming press reviews and avaluates games, by using a simple scoring method. This is all well in grate on the surface only if used properly. Just because a game receives a 9/10 does not mean you will like said game. And that comes down to taste, same with movies, same with music, same with anything creative. A game could be from the same genre as another but not have the same goals as the previous. One may strive for high flying action that never stops, and the other could be trying to tell a story. I could go on about the diffrent goals of various games but I think you get the picture. Lets simplify this by comparing to major gaming types, American games and Japanese games.
I find that American games try to emerse you in their world in someway, to escape and forget that your some joe smoe in your basement sucking down on a bottle of coke. They try as hard as possible to give you lots of choices, to make you feel like you’re in control of what your character is doing and who your character is. You are on this adventure, You are the Hero.
Opposite to that is the Japanese game style, which instead of making it an escape makes it more about Story telling, about Characters that would never exsist in real life about characters that have to struggled so hard any real person would be driven to madness. Heavy emotions, stylish costumes, beatiful women, and every type of character you could imagine.
I’ve found that different types of people will enjoy either one or the other, some will enjoy both (like myself)
Some people will like games for the epicness, some people will like games for their design or art. The point I’m trying to make is that just because you don’t like a game does not mean it’s shit. It very well may be bad game. But somebody out there likes it.
Well the reviews are in for Haze, the PS3 exclusive shooter that releases this week. This is not a review at all but a comment on the reviews the developers and free radical have received. On Metacritic Haze is currently sitting at a 54. Yikes indeed. So what happend? What went wrong in the development?
I see this happen so many times, where a great developer puts out a sub-par game. Did they loose some members on staff that made everything click in previous games? Or did they simply not have enough time?
A few reviewers mention the fact that Haze came out AFTER Call of Duty 4. So is that it? in order to be a good game you have to one up the other guy? The industry is pretty saturated with shooters right now, maybe we’re all sufering from gun fatigue. Wait wait wait, what am I doing? Why am I defending a game I haven’t played? If the media says it’s bad, then it must be bad right? I do ask a lot of questions.
So maybe the moral of the story here is don’t make an FPS game, unless you’re Bungie or Valve or Infinityward. Hear that developers? you can stop now. There’s no need to bother…except you Killzone 2 team…you keep trucking.
Anyway I’ll probably give Haze a rent when it comes out, and I’ll let you know what I think.
Until then keep on fighting the good fight.
Just a heads up on a great deal through best buy. A friend pointed this out to me last week. Sadly I didn’t take advantage of it. But it’s still a pretty sweet deal if you have yet to pick up a Dual Shock 3. (It’s a very nice controller btw) Oh and this is a Canada only thing, sorry!
http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/dept.asp?logon=&langid=EN&catid=24334&ILC-Top_Links
Enjoy!
Finally GT5p arrives (on the PSN store) I was contemplating picking up the Blu-Ray version and I may still tomorrow. Either way this shows a huge shift in how games are delivered to the masses. No longer is it a Brick and Mortar world to Gamestop’s sorrow (i.e. Ebgames). The ability to download your favorite games is becoming more common. With Steam, and now the PSN Network (as well as Xbox Live) it’s a piece of cake as long as you have a decent highspeed line and the hard drive space to hold it.
What’s special about GT5p is that it’s actually a “demo” of the final product. Now most people would scoff at a $39.99 Demo. But please keep in mind that there’s a lot more in the package then what you would normally see in a free Demo, A LOT more. Here’s the list.
- 70 Cars
- 6 Tracks
- Online play
- GT TV, The selling point is episodes of Top Gear
- Online Ranking for the various single player modes (Drift, Time trial etc)
So is all of that worth $39.99? Totally. The validation comes when you think of it this way. GT5 has been in production for a very long time, and I’m sure that production costs have skyrocketed with the PS3. Polyphonic Digital being the perfectionists that they are, aren’t going to just release a finished product. So in order to take the string out of those production costs they release a small taste of the final product. Make sure it’s free of bugs and such and release it for $39.99. I also would like to think that they are using this as a Beta test for the online play in the final game. See what works and what doesn’t. PD hasn’t have any experience with online so I’m guessing they’d need to catch up.
I’m really looking forward to playing this, and I’ll give my impressions later (Though take it with a grain of salt, I’m no Car geek 
). If you’re looking to race online, hit me up @ Xebius.
Hello and welcome,
To what I hope is a great blog that you’ll enjoy. For the longest time I’ve had the dream of starting my own blog site. It started way back with a podcast called the Canadian Perspective Podcast. That died after first year in collage. It was fun, but I just got to busy to really have the time to even think about what to talk about.
Now with this blog I have the freedom to really put out some great content that’s…well..Geekish from a Canadian perspective. (Like how I brought that back eh?) To often I’ll look around the net and I see so many blogs and sites based around the stuff I love, but there’s not a lot that’s written by Canadians (Ars Techica being the exception). That doesn’t mean that this site won’t have any international content just that it will be from the Canadian point of view.
So sit back and enjoy, and if you’re a Canadian who would like to contribute to the blog, give me a shout
Jonathan
jon (at) cangeek.ca
