"Cutesy Crap" vs. So-Called "Mature" Games

Hello, everyone...

I've got something to get off my chest, and judging from a lot of your views, I could count on you to "hear" me out.

I think today's "gamers" and the gaming industry has changed... and not for the better. Nobody cares about games anymore. Programmers are more interested in pushing the envelope with more "awesome visuals," more blood, more gore, more cussing, more "attitude" and more busty (fictional) babes than with making a game with good gameplay and addictiveness.

Take a look at the epitome of overrated game franchises: TOMB RAIDER! Watch a busty babe with tight shorts, bouncing mammary glands and big guns run around muddled, and bland scenery, fight sparse, uninspired enemies, all to find levers to open a door that's five miles away-all while suffering through an arduous control system that takes simple tasks and turns them into frustrating chores!!!! How this !@#$! excuse for a game has gotten so popular is a complete mystery to me...but then again, that's what you get when you cater to the lowest common denominator (which, sadly, describes the vast majority of people here in the U.S.) and expecting them to have good taste is like teaching them GREEK! For instance, I tried to get my friends to listen to more fun hip-hop groups like Jurassic 5 and Ugly Duckling-yet the only reaction I get from them is "What!? These guys smile too much! They're always happy!! Where's the cussin'? Where's the Drug stories? Where's the Thug stories? Where's the Pimp stories? Man-these guys are $!$!@#$#! And since this is the audience the record companies are playing to, it's no surprise to have more "THUG" garbage being shoved down are throats repeatedly!!!!! And the video game industry is no different with its so-called "mature" crap, because nobody wants cutesy crap like Mario or Sonic anymore:"Man, it's on some Crayola, Kindergarden #@!$! Where's the guns? Where's the Babes? Where's the blood? Where's the cussin'? Where's the Mature rating? Mario sucks @!#!!" (never mind the fact that if not for this "cutesy crap", the video game industry would not exist-but that's beside the point...)

Then there are the "awesome visuals". The video game industry is repeating a mistake that's killing the comic book industry: focusing more on visuals and less on everything else. You got a whole mess of comics that look cool-but as for story? What story? What's even worse, artists are so focused on awesome visuals that they have no idea how to properly make their art portray a story --- meaning stories that could have been told in 2-3 pages take 2-3 ISSUES to be told!!! Squaresoft is more guilty of this than anyone! Look at Chrono Trigger. A very good, simple, and addictive game with good graphics that did it's job (plus no random enemies, no fighting in straight rows, no 5-minute summon spells...). Now look at everything that Squaresoft has been giving us for the past 3-4 years!!!

Gotta go. I think I said enough. For now...

. the next day

I had to go watch some RAW (Steve Austin and Vince McMahon seem to be hugging each other a lot lately...hmmm...), so I didn't to finish my rant.

When I left off, I was talking about the "next generation games" that emphasize grandiose, flashy visuals and pays little to no attention to actual gameplay. Squaresoft is the most guilty of this. They are so drunk with the vast space in PSX that they totally forgot how to make a good game. Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 were (are) awesome games; these are games that all future RPG's are judged by. Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy 8 are overwrought, over hyped piles of Grade A monkey crap! Everything I loved about their predecessors are absent in these games. Both had irritating gameplay, horrible, angst ridden characters (not to mention, too many characters to keep up with), terrible stories with all the over-wordiness of a current Chris Clarmont X-Men comic (word balloons will fill an entire page to the point where it will take 30 minutes just to read one page-Zenogears anyone?).

All these games have going for them are the awesome visuals (just like the only good thing about those X-men comics is the fact that Jim Lee, Adam Kubert, and Joe Maderara [sp] drew them) and that's enough for Squaresoft's personal shills (almost all the gaming magazines) to constantly sing its praises. One magazine in particular, Game Informer, went so far as to say that any one who doesn't like FF8 (their best RPG of 1999) is a @!#$@' crybaby!!!! Needless to say, that magazine no longer gets my money. What's even more @##@! is the fact that today's so-called gamers only care about a game if it has a blazin' intro or millions of CGI cut-scenes. That means when Chrono Trigger gets re-released this weekend, no one will care because it looks like a 16-bit game.

I have no problem with a game with awesome graphics, but if awesome graphics are all that a game has, it's not a game. Period. End of rant.

This rant was written by NinpuchuJubei.