Working Title 4.17.08: Blowin' Up

Posted by Jordan Williams on 04.17.2008

Things are getting blown out way out of porportion. Is Resident Evil 5 REALLY racist or is it just a bunch people being way too sensitive? Is EA REALLY as evil as it is made out to be for trying to buy out Take-Two? Are we just reading too deep into everything?

Welcome back to the #1 Column to be back from Spring Break, WORKING TITLE. It's good to be back in the land of the vidya and not to have sunburn. Contrary to popular belief black people CAN sunburn. Fucking weird, eh?

Anyway, it seems I didn't miss too much. Just the usual stuff like people thinking Resident Evil 5 is racist, EA being the devil, and more GTA4 hype. Seems like a pretty normal week.

It's sad that THIS is what is considered a normal week. Why in the hell does most of this stuff matter at the end of the day? What happened to the good ole days where everyone got along and we didn't have tons of epic controversy to fill up Gamespot?

Well, those days never DID really exist. But is all of this controversy really worth it? In the end of the day will anything really change due to all of the bitching?

I think not.


Working Rant: Blowin' Up

There are a lot of controversial things out there. We have The War in Iraq, Stem Cells, and Abortion. But I'm not going to talk about any of that stuff. It's not my place to do so. I'm going to talk about pressing matters like people getting offended that Chris Redfield is shooting black zombies, or fanboys around the world thinking EA is going to ass rape Take-Two because they are run by the devil.

Or how about casual gamers being the cancer that is killing video games? There are just a lot of things here that are being blown WAY out of proportion and it's about time we just look at them for what they are.


Resident Evil 5: Black Power

Note: N'Gai is cool with me

For all six of you who don't know, I'm black. As a black gamer, no matter HOW hard I squint and turn on my racism radar I just simply CAN'T find this so-called racism in Resident Evil 5. I mean if it was Chris running around and screaming "DIE NIGGA ZOMBIE DIE" and blowing their brains out and spouting racial slurs, I'd completely understand. But how is a guy fighting zombieoids, who happen to be black, in AFRICA racist!?

And YES N'Gai, I'm going to use the Resident Evil 4 defense. Not a single fucking person was up in arms when blonde haired blue-eyed Leon Kennedy was rampaging through Spain killing everything in sight to save the President's Daughter. Are you saying now simply because of the admittedly fucked up history blacks have had in the Western World that it makes some sort of pecking order over everything else? That we should be offered some immunity because of what our ancestors had to go through?

As a black man, I say HELL NO.



Oh wait, it's not about having black zombies? What IS it about then? Imagery?

What the lily-pad fuck are you talking about? The only link you gave was music from Black Hawk Down. Who the hell watched the trailer and went "...Wait a second!" when they heard that music and instantly went into a racist rage?

It seems like you can't do anything nowadays in ANY form of media without stepping on someone's toes. No one can simply sit back and go "Wow, a new twist on the zombie story". They don't see that, they simply see the ensuing media blitz that it's going to cause. No one can simply look at the Mass Effect as a space opera, they just see "Oh man. There's a sex scene with 4 seconds of ASS."

People (myself included) always wonder why videogames always end up having to be the whiny victim with stuff like this, and this is why. It seems like everything they do is held under a giant magnifying glass. You can have Hostel: Part II playing the whole time and be find and dandy. Hook that up to a controller and you have a world wide controversy. I assure if you this same premise was made into a movie we wouldn't have everyone bitching and moaning over this. I assure if you this Resident Evil had a black protagonist shooting white zombies we wouldn't be hearing any of this.

I think a quote taken from a response to N'Gai summed it up best:

I think Croal has some valid points, but I'd say he's being a little hypersensitive here. This is an industry that evolves around Mario, one of the most blatant ethnic caricatures imaginable. For whatever confluence of reasons, political correctness hasn't been able to penetrate the video game realm as much as it has other media, and whatever racism you find is largely due to innocent ignorance rather than any calculated agenda. ~Phil Villarreal

Mario. Fucking MARIO. A fat Italian plumber who's the most recognized video game character in the WORLD never catches this sort of flack. There isn't some giant mass agenda to put out a racist video game. There isn't some sick Japanese head honcho wringing his hands going "Yes! Give them bigger lips...and make them poor, too!" There isn't some Neo Nazi punk at GameSpot right now reserving this game because it's target practice.

It's already complex, a Japanese company making an American video game that takes place in Africa. This is the same Japan that gave us Mr. Popo. This is the same Japan that gave us racial stereotypes like Guile and every other blonde American character. Is it racism? No. It's ignorance. After all we are the same America who can't tell a Chinese person from a Japanese person and automatically assumes that all Asians are good at math and know martial arts.

Where the hell were all of you at when GTA: SA was perpetuating every negative black stereotype of the last decade? Oh yeah. You were all sippin' on Hot Coffee. Funny how that worked out, huh?



Why all the hostility?

Incase you've been living under a rock...or don't really care...it should be old news that EA wants to buy Take-Two the people behind Rockstar and everyone's favorite controversy whore, Grand Theft Auto. EA has already gotten a pretty bad rap due to how it runs its first party titles and for the emphasis on Madden and what not, but they have recently started buying up whatever company doesn't run from them in a mass spree of near-monopoly.

But is this REALLY that big of a deal? I'm actually going to say that it IS.

No, I'm not some Anti-EA fanboy, nor am I someone who's going to bend over and take Madden 09 in the ass. But I am someone who gets concerned when I see large companies like EA begin to buy out companies that could easily survive on their own. I'm sure EA won't do anything to jeopardize their money, but some of their business decisions can be...iffy at best.



Just go ahead and read the wikipedia for a quick refresher about the apparent long hours, lack of support, and rushed games. Of course taking anything put on Wikipedia as a fact is a sin, but when its stuff we've seen first hand you're sort of inclined to agree.

EA seems to not know a good thing when it has it, this is evidenced by them pulling a Nintendo and trying to re-invent the wheel every time they put out a game. The only difference here is that Nintendo actually succeeds in doing this MOST of the time. Metroid Prime, depending on who you ask, was a success. Meanwhile NFL On Tour, Def Jam Icon, and SSX On Tour just failed horrifically.

Will EA end up doing this to Bioware and Rockstar? I highly doubt it. But don't you think it IS a bit odd that EA all of the sudden wants to buy out Take-Two right before they release arguably the biggest game for the company, if not the biggest game of the YEAR?



It looks like EA is sniffing the money and is ready to pounce of yet another giant payday, and the sad thing is that Rockstar can't stop them from doing it. This time next year EA will have yet another studio under its wing. If it ends up killing it's game has yet to be determined, especially now that they are 'allegedly' trying to create new IPs and titles to try to stem the ever growing trend of Sequelitis.

We'll just have to wait and see if we get Mass Effect On Tour and Grand Theft Auto X.

Now that's all I really have for me in the ways of ranting on topic, but the week before last I got an INSANELY good rant as part of my Working Feedback. It was so good that I decided to go ahead and just post it as is as an extra part of the column. It's a rant, it's not on topic with what I wrote but it's a damn good rant nonetheless.

Guest Rant: Phil Watts, Jr vs. Street Fighter IV


STREET FIGHTER 4: When the first trailer came out, many people thought "Hey, that looks cool...but is the actual game going to look this MUDDY?" Then Capcom revealed that it was going to be 2D. People cheered. Then Capcom revealed that it was going to be 2D...but with 3D graphics. People...got worried. "2D with 3D graphics" was the exact setup of the Street Fighter EX series from Arika, which people didn't have any fond memories of. Me? I didn't mind the SF-EX games as much, as there were some redeeming qualities to it (Zangief was FUN to play, and I actually LIKED Skullo! Plus, EXPERT MODE should be a requirement in every SF game.) There were also some not-so-redeemable qualities, like the fact that everyone looked like marionettes and the play was kinda sluggish.

SF4 is an improvement from it, but not by a lot, as it still looks relatively sluggish. While the graphics look better, they still have a ways to go if they want to divert people's attention away from Yoda and Vader. Characterwise, and probably my biggest beef with this game thus far, they decided to carry over 10 out of the 12 SF2 cast members (excluding Bison and Vega...but they'd probably be shoehorned in here, too). Now the people in charge of this game decided to go that route to bring back that 'classic' feel with characters everyone is familiar with...which would've been fine and dandy, if not for the fact that we have already seen these same characters in countless games fighting the same way they've fought for over a decade or more. The fact that Guile still only has the same two moves he has had since 1992 is inexcusable! If you're going to bring in the same ol' same ol' characters, the least you could do is change them up just a little bit. I don't mean OVERHAUL them, but at least show that they've learned some new tricks through all these years fighting in tournaments (like they did with Ryu, Ken, Akuma & Chun Li in the SF3 games. Unfortunately, most of the moves, like Ryu's High Blade Kick and ShinShoryuken have been REMOVED!)



Then there are the new characters. On one hand, it's good to see a little variety. After all, if they can have more than one shoto character (Ryu, Ken, etc.) in every SF related game in existence, why not have more than one grappler (Abel & El Fuerte). However, the character designs are pathetic. Even I could've made up better character designs than this...IN MY SLEEP! Take Crimson Viper for instance. Just take Vanessa of KOF, put her in dorky yellow-tinted glasses and put red PLAY-DOH on her head and a tacky rat-tail! Yeah, she has some nifty moves, but damn...they seriously need to go back to the drawing board as far as her look goes.

Now granted, this is still in development, and hopefully there will be lots of changes by the time the official version hits the market...because as it is, Soul Caliber 4 would have no problem squashing them in the arcades and even the upcoming King Of Fighters 12 makes this look half-assed in comparison.

With any other feedback, I'd chime in between parts and drop my two cents. But I'm not even going to do it on this. I'd rather see what you all have to say about it. Thanks for the awesome space filler rant, Phil. Also, Phil writes for 411 so check out his stuff HERE.

Working Question: Working Confessions

Everyone has their skeletons in their closet. What are yours? What's a video game confession that you have that you've never told anyone? Did you actually LIKE Superman 64? Never played a game that you say you have? Go ahead and let it all out. We're not here to judge.

Well, we are...but it's the internet. That's all we CAN do.

As for me? Well...I've never beaten Chrono Trigger. Yep. That's right. I've never beaten that game. I've seen other people beat it, I've seen the endings but I have physically never beaten it. The farthest I ever got was to the Tower of Zeal near (I presume) the end of the game and I ended up getting sidetracked and never returning to it. To this day I have yet to play it.

Whew. That felt better. Your turn.


Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and I've never played Earthbound either!