Working Title 01.22.10: Working Rant Vol. 6 - Witches and Wiis

Posted by Jordan Williams on 01.22.2010

Without any real ideas to write about, I go back to the tried and true method of just ranting. Why am I not totally in love with Bayonetta? Why do I think Nintendo should quit while they are ahead? Read and you'll find out.

Welcome to the #1 Column to be voiced by Nolan North, WORKING TITLE. Seriously, why is this man so awesome? I am pretty sure he is a normal dude in real life but HOLY FUCK THE MAN IS IN FUCKING EVERYTHING. It's like he is the Samuel L. Jackson of the video game world. When you see Sammy L in a movie, you don't see Sammy's character: you just see Samuel L. Fucking Jackson in a costume. It's hitting that point, I was playing Army of Two 2 and within the first 10 minutes I was like "HOLY FUCK, SALEM IS NOLAN NORTH" and now I can't NOT picture him as just being Nolan North.

Now we need a game that has Samuel L. Jackson, Nolan North, and Keith David all in it. Someone heed my call. Make it fucking happen.


I'm waiting.



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Okay, so you've found me out. I have NOTHING to fucking talk about this week. Yeah, the Army of Two Movie column happened and I am probably going to do another one next week...but I couldn't think of a video game that I haven't done already. That and work is a bitch...and...Nolan North ate my homework.


....

Have I hit 8 MS Word pages yet?


....


Nope.


Damn.

Wait...I got an idea.



WORKING RANT!!!


When all else fails, it's time to just type about whatever the fuck pops into my feeble little human mind. So what is on my mind nowadays that relates to the world of video games...hmmm...let's see.



Working Rant: Vol. 6 – Witches and Wiis


Bayonetta - I wish I knew how to get you



Lame attempt at a movie line pun aside, this is not another one of those "I hate games that are popular" type things like I do when I bag on Zelda. There is just something I am not getting when it comes to Bayonetta. Now this might be from the fact that I am not the biggest fan of Devil May Cry, but I just feel that Bayonetta is getting this metric fuckton of praise because of being such a great ass game, and I admit that the game is great and all...but is it really deserving of all of these 9s and 10s it is getting? It's a fast-paced, action-packed, frantic game, but personally I don't think I like the feeling of flying through a game not knowing what in the fresh hell I am doing. The game seems like it just moves TOO fast in the sense that I found myself a lot of times just mashing buttons at whatever moved and waiting for the chaos to stop.


So...I guess this might be one of those situations where everyone and their mommas love a game and I am just not seeing what the big hubbub is. I will say that the fan service didn't annoy me as much as most fan service does. Bayonetta is overly sexual and what not, but it's nice to see that it's not in a way that's like, "HAHA, SEE?! SHE GETS NAKED AND THE BOSSES ARE HYPNOTIZED BY HER TITS SO THATS WHY THEY DON'T ATTACK!" like they could've easily done. It's more in the line of thought of, "Yeah, this game was probably made up by Itagaki's Best Wet Dreams...and that's it." I will, however, say that it's time for games to stop pussying out when it comes to nudity. If you are going to go for it, then just go for it! God of War and Dante's Inferno can get away with titties, and so can you!

So the more I play it, the more I am conflicted. I dig the game...but when I play it outside of the look and the better 3D aspect to it...all I am seeing is a Rated M Viewtiful Joe.



See? You see it now, too. This is, after all, a lot of the ex-members of Clover Studios who were responsible for the VJ series. As I play it, I am seeing the similarities between Viewtiful Joe (specifically Sexy Sylvia) and Bayonetta. Hell, even some of the moves have the EXACT SAME animations as some of the VJ moves. Now this isn't a bad thing in the least, but I think what I am trying to say is...if people are expecting this to usher in a new era for action games and to somehow bring the Devil May Cry clone back to the forefront, they are going to be mistaken. This game will be forgotten by July this year. Hell, if BioWare has its way, it'll be forgotten by the end of this MONTH. And to be completely honest, I don't think that's such a bad thing.



Nintendo - Quit while you're ahead

As a Nintendo Fanboy who hates to look back at his first gaming love to see what it has become, I bash on Nintendo a lot. A LOT lot. A FUCKING LOT. But I liken it to tough love. I really like Nintendo and I really want them to succeed because, in my eyes, they are some of the things that are still right with gaming. Unlike Microsoft and Sony—who arguably see video games as just another avenue of income in the much larger conglomerate they are a part of—Nintendo has ALWAYS been about video games. If the Playstation or the Xbox fails, Microsoft and Sony can always go "Oh well" and go back to making computer hardware, TVs, cell phones, etc. If things go tits up for Nintendo in the video game venture, then they are just fucking screwed. Nintendo makes no bones about it; they are here to make games. And only games.

The thing is...we don't know who they are making games FOR.

Yes, it's the same old "Casual vs. Hardcore" argument that has been going on for years, but the fact of the matter is that it's still a valid argument. I was one of the biggest haters of the argument because (perhaps in a bit of denial) I figured that all gamers are gamers. People are going to play and buy good games no matter what console it is on and no matter what type of game it is. But as sales figures and company figureheads have showed us, this isn't really the case anymore.

The Nintendo Wii has stalled out in prices; the games have stalled out in sales. And now some third party companies are flat-out saying they will not make Rated M games for the console because they are not getting a return on the investment they are putting into the console. I am not trying to say games like MadWorld, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Dead Space: Extraction, and No More Heroes were great gaming paragons of their time and should be bought right now. But when games that are tailored to the lowest common denominators in gaming (Rated M games that have lots of bloodshed and over the top violence) don't sell much if at ALL on your console, then something is DEFINITELY wrong.

Yes, Nintendo is still making money hand over fist when it comes to their casual market games; there is no doubt about it. But even then, that whole market is collapsing upon itself. Eventually these people are going to realize they are shelling out more money for the same content in a different package. While that can be said for tons of games in different genres, with Sony and Microsoft the fact is they can better mask that package with things like online play, HD graphics, longer and more detailed games, and—probably the most important one—not having to be tied down to what many see as a hard control scheme to program for.

So what can Nintendo do to stem what might be a fall of Icarus-like proportions?

Quit trying to reinvent the goddamn wheel every time you make something new.

One of the biggest things that I hate about the commentary on the games industry and games themselves is how quickly the word "innovative" has to be thrown around to validate something as good. Every game, every console, every...everything has to somehow bring not only new ideas to the table but also completely new mechanics as well. This is where Nintendo always ends up kicking themselves in the ass. At face value, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 is pretty much the exact same console. You'd be hard pressed to tell the games apart from each other with the naked eye. Most of the perks that one console holds over the other are things that merely end up as bullet points on the back of the box. Of course, seeing two big dog consoles out there with nearly the exact same quality, you of course are going to want to do something different.

And it worked...for a bit. Let's just call a spade a spade here. The Wii itself was a gimmick, a gimmick that worked, but still a gimmick nonetheless. The truth is that the Wii has that one critical flaw that will keep it in its stalled state until they do something different. There is no escape plan with the Wii.

Look at another Nintendo product, the Nintendo DS. It has two screens, one of which is a touch screen. It uses that touch screen on a majority of its games, and—surprise!—a majority of its touch screen games are garbage. But the majority of DS games aren't garbage. Why is this? It's because the DS has an escape plan: it's still a Gameboy at heart. If the touch screen games sucked and everything went horribly for them in that avenue, they could have (and in most cases actually HAVE) gone back, made better traditional games, and use the DS's two screens and its stronger hardware to make them better. Thus, even though it originally failed in what it set out to do, the DS is still a success.

The Wii doesn't have this plan. Its entire identity and existence is based around its motion control. Yes, there are games that don't use that motion control; however, since the Wii is NOT HD compatible, it does NOT use Blu-Ray and does NOT have the power of the PS3 or the 360. In other words, they have stripped away ANY reason to play a non-motion control-based game on it.

So the idea now is to quit. Quit trying to reinvent the goddamn wheel every time to do something, Nintendo. It nibbled on your ass with the N64, it BIT you in the ass with the GameCube, and right now the money might be kissing your ass with the Wii, but soon it's going to take a giant CHUNK out of your ass. Make a new console; we all know you have the money to do it, and we all know people WILL buy a console if you make enough promises. (Hi, 600 dollar PS3!) Does it have to be the mythical Wii HD? No! It can be whatever you want! It can still have motion control, too! Just make sure you have an escape plan for it this time.

NATAL and SMC are going to be out VERY soon, and they will take away all of the bank Nintendo is doing with its motion control games. And even without playing a single SECOND of NATAL or SMC games, I can tell you they will end up faring better. Why? Because NATAL and SMC themselves are escape plans. What if they tank? Oh well, let's go back to making games people actually buy.



You know...the ones that don't say "Nintendo Wii 3rd Party Exclusive" next to them.

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Now that I got that Nintendo Rant out of the way, I am hereby stating now that I will never post another critical rant about the Wii until after E3 of this year.
This is usually where I would say something else in relation to the rants above, but I think they speak for themselves…so…

Working Question
Here's a two-parter for you all out there. The first part of the question is: do you think that there is too much of a precedence set on ‘innovation' these days vs. making something that works? And the second is: 3D TVs and Gaming…is it REALLY going to work in the next 5 years?
I answer Yes and No respectively. Your turn.

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams….and I'm lookin' like a fool with my pants on the ground.