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By: scott posted Jan 19th, 2011 - 6:28 pm
Your mom is going to hate Dead Space 2. At least, that's what the marketing people for EA have to say in a ballsy new ad campaign that put a genuine smile on my face. The premise was simple. Register a domain name and then create a hidden camera short that stars normal mothers from the heartland of America. Show them the goriest, darkest, most disgusting footage from Dead Space 2 and film their reactions.
In a word: brilliant.
I couldn't help but experience an intense feeling of schadenfreude at the reactions of those women. One of them seemed to think that Dead Space 2 was some sort of demonic training program. As ridiculous as that is, it can't help but make most of us remember the good old days of hiding copies of Doom from our parents because they thought the same thing.
It's no wonder that this particular marketing works. It plays on the age old, tried and true, method of making parents hate something. Honestly, they are always going to hate something. If they can be persuaded to hate your particular product you are going to make millions. That's something you can bank on.
The whole incident made me reflect on the many things over the years, video game related and not, that my parents hated with a passion. They all had one thing in common. They were awesome! I admit that I was already excited about Dead Space 2 before I ever even caught a whiff of this marketing campaign. I pre-ordered the collector's edition from Amazon quite a while back. After I saw these videos it made me want my copy to come right now.
Bravo EA. Bravo.
By: scott posted Jan 10th, 2011 - 10:38 pm
This week I've been re-playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past. While I own a Super Nintendo and cartridge, I find I get a much better experience by playing it on my computer with an Xbox 360 USB controller.
I've tried to remain true to my nostalgia but I've noticed something during this play-through that I've never noticed before. Grinding. Zelda had it.
No, not grinding in the MMORPG World of Warcraft sense. I mean rupee farming. I hate to say it, but a good portion of the time required to beat that game is spent collecting rupees from dead enemies. Run around, kill monsters, repeat.
Being an adult with adult responsibilities, I found that I didn't have the patience for doing that this time so I cheated. I used a code to give me infinite rupees and, you know what? The game was more fun this way.
It got me thinking about modern video games. What if modern video games got rid of all the "grinding"? Hear me out. I am talking about everything: pointless and redundant side-quests, mineral farming, money harvesting, and any other mechanism that developers use to make the game seem longer.
Honestly, I'd take an eight hour game that was fun the entire time over a twenty hour game that only has eight real hours of play in it anyway. Why add the time vampires into games that target adults like me?
I won't feel cheated by not having had to do mindless and repetitive tasks just to advance the story by a tiny bit. I will appreciate having my time back and having the opportunity to enjoy a game completely without having to dedicate weeks of my free time to it.
I can understand games marketed to a younger audience needing to have some of those mechanics built in. Let's face it, kids have lots of free time for video games and most of them don't mind going through a little bit of monotony to feel like they've accomplished something.
Me? That is a good way to make me put a game down. If it is sucking all my spare evening hours and I'm not going anywhere, I'm going to be done with it. Oh sure, I might pick it up again from time to time, but the point is that you've lost my heart at that point.
Perhaps a good solution for developers to take note of would be to allow for "grinding" to be optional. Make it a setting. Put it in the game as a choice somehow. I don't care how you do it, just don't make me waste my valuable time mining for minerals in the asshole of the galaxy. Better still, don't make me run around collecting junk to sell just so I can reload my gun a few times.
Oh I know that there is pressure on devs to deliver a X hour video game. I know that you are told by empty suits all the time that "the game isn't long enough" and you have no choice but to contrive some time wasting mechanism to make them happy. I know it isn't easy to stand up to your bosses, but isn't it about time that somebody clued them in on how we feel about such transparent and insulting methods for artificially extending the play time of a video game?
I'd certainly thank you. Really, I would. I might even have time to buy you a beer since I am not chopping down bushes for hours hoping to find a few coins...
By: scott posted Jan 9th, 2011 - 8:58 pm
Last week on our podcast we got into a conversation about how, despite it's many amazing qualities, Red Dead Redemption suffered from the same issues that many of Rockstar's games usually do.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like Rockstar and I loved Red Dead. It was an amazing accomplishment and the development team has every right to be incredibly proud of their achievement. It took what I love about western movies and put it into a video game. The writing was superb, the environment breathtaking, and much of the gameplay was top-notch. The horses handled quite well and you never felt limited by them despite having gotten used to racing with cars everywhere in the GTA series.
With that out of the way, I do have a few suggestions for Rockstar for their future gaming endeavors.
1. If you have a level where the player must race someone else for some arbitrary reason, please allow me to skip that level after a few failed attempts. For that matter, allow me to skip any level at all when I've failed a few times. Nothing is more frustrating than having to re-start a scene and a challenge over and over again with no way to utltimately bypass it. It made me abandon your game in frustration. I watched the rest of the story on Youtube.
2. Don't allow the computer to "cheat" during a race. If I pull ahead by a considerable amount, don't allow the computer a supernatural burst of speed just so that the race might be more "exciting". This is complete bullshit and it pisses me off. Especially when I make one small mistake at the end of a race that costs me my completion despite the fact that I would have had time to recover had you not cheated to make it more "exciting" for me.
3. I know you like your stories to be linear, but it would feel less disjointed if your sandbox-style world allowed for dialog choices like in Mass Effect. I'd love to have not only the freedom to explore, but the freedom to shape the story how I see fit. This isn't a criticism as much as it is a request. :)
4. Please remove annoying characters that I am not allowed to kill, bitch-slap, or maim. I want to play as a ruthless prick and nothing frustrates me more than not being able to remove annoyances with a solid "renegade-punch".
But hey, no game is perfect and Red Dead was amazing. Rockstar did a brilliant job and I am glad I picked up the game as a new release. If I could go back in time, I would do it again. Now... time to kill some zombies in the old west!
By: mrjones posted Dec 7th, 2010 - 9:22 pm
Our latest GameFret podcast is now live!
Don't forget to subscribe via iTunes to get the latest episode every week.
By: mrjones posted Nov 29th, 2010 - 9:13 pm
Hey everyone. Just wanted to let you know the new podcast is out and it is of course, better than ever! Be sure to download it today. Also, we've got a ton of great new edits lined up for GameFret which will be coming back to the live site very soon, so stay with us!
