Overrated Games Are Overrated. Or Are They Just Overhyped?

Earthbound. Final Fantasy VII. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. HALO et al.

These games annoy me to no end, and I hate them.

STOP! Please! Put the pitchforks down, and let's talk about this reasonably, okay?

Games come in a wide variety of genres, graphical and gameplay styles, and levels of quality. Some games are known for being so bad they're legendary, while there are some -- perhaps more, perhaps less -- that have earned legend status for how good they are. Nay, not good, but absolute gaming perfection in cartridge or disk form. Games that transcend being mere games and become cultural icons.

But do they deserve it?

My story starts on a chilly Christmas eve in the mid 90's. On this Christmas, I received a PlayStation. With the PlayStation came two games: Crusader: No Remorse (a very UNDERrated game in modern times, but we'll get to that some other article,) and Final Fantasy VII. The console did NOT come with a memory card.

To be fair, this would not be my first experience with the world of Final Fantasy. That had come at the hands of the original a couple of years before thanks to a fiver and a lucky yard sale find. Nevertheless, I booted up both games as soon as I had them attached to a television. The jump from the two-button NES pad to the PlayStation's myriad buttons was overwhelming at first, but I managed to complete the first zone of Crusader eventually, and thanks to its password support I happily closed the game and moved on to the bigger, blander case next to it.

I fought with the controller. I couldn't press the button at the same time as my party members, leaving me stuck on the button puzzle minutes into the game for near a quarter of an hour. The game's pre-rendered backgrounds were fuzzy and oftentimes hard to figure out just where I could go and where I couldn't. The combat was slow-paced and uninteresting, feeling at once too overpowered and too feeble compared to my good old vintage Final Fantasy.

And then I tried to save the game.

Needless to say, my first experiences with FFVII did little to enthuse me. With the eventual acquisition of a memory card I did learn to enjoy the game, but in my mind it sits not as one of the reigning champions of the series, but near the bottom of my personal list.

Imagine my surprise, then, when we eventually gained internet access, and I learned that everyone in the entire world ever completely disagreed with me. Not only that, but should anyone ever so much as suggest that the title was anything other than JRPG perfection whose only competition was Earthbound they would be violently ridiculed until they left, the attitudes of many denizens of the internet being quite poor even in those halcyon days of yore.

That's not to say I truly hate the game. In fact, I do appreciate what it's done for the genre, and the gateway it opened for many western audiences to the world of JRPGs in general, making the genre one of the strongest of the 32- and 128-bit eras. I even enjoy playing it myself nowadays, though it still pales in comparison to other entries even on the PS1. All that said, though, I DO hate seeing the constant praise and nostalgia-blind devotion people lay on the game, because as good as it is, it isn't so great as everyone claims.

My experience with the original Halo was sadly similar. As a player who had grown up with a mixture of console and PC games, by the time the sixth generation of consoles rolled around I was already well versed in the world of FPS gaming, from DOOM to Quake 3. Despite this, I became caught up in the hype for Microsoft's big Killer App as much as anyone else, waiting anxiously for the day I could play it. Not long after it came out one of my friends obtained an Xbox and the game, and when I sat down to experience the godlike vision I was expecting....

I was underwhelmed. What did this do that Half Life hadn't done before it, with better controls? What could this offer that I hadn't already seen in countless other games? My friend sat enthralled by the game, himself a console gamer through and through whose experience with FPSes had previously been limited to Goldeneye and TWINE on the PS1, but I found myself wading through the horrendous be-Duke'd controls and longing to pull out the disk and go back to Tony Hawk 2X instead. Later entries in the series would do little to improve my opinion -- some, such as Halo 2, going so far as to make it much worse. Yet to speak to everyone else the games were masterpieces of the purest kind, fun single- and multi-player and the epitome of what FPS gaming could be.

As for Ocarina of Time? I loved the original Zelda, Link's Awakening, and STILL adore A Link to the Past. Ocarina of Time, while worthy of the Zelda name, just never played well to me (clunky controls with no sense of flow, featureless world, etc.,) and to see people consistently praise it as the series' high-water-mark then bash Wind Waker continues to baffle me.

Earthbound is, and always has been/will be, Earthbound: a rather lackluster JRPG with shite graphics and shallow gameplay wrapped in a quirky-dark storyline that for some reason people can't get enough of.

Let's get the obvious point out of the way first. These are all good games, GREAT even in some cases, especially for the console they were released on. All of them have had a significant impact on games since, and all of them deserve to be played by anyone serious about understanding the development of games so that their impact can be more fully respected. Halo revolutionized console FPSes much like FFVII did for the western interest in JRPGs some five years earlier, and Ocarina of Time changed the very way most people look at action/adventure games. Earthbound is Earthbound; no more, no less. They all deserve respect, and appreciation for what they are.

None of them, however, deserve to be treated as infallible examples of their form.

No game is perfect, which is why Game Academy will never grant a perfect score. (Rumor has it we're reworking things to get rid of numbers, but that might not happen so shhhhhh!) Likewise, opinions are just that: opinions. Good, bad, everyone sees every game differently, and as much as reviews might strive to be objective as possible there will always be some subjectivity contained within.

All that said... look at your games, both your favorites and your least, without nostalgia glasses, and tell me: can you really still say that Final Fantasy VII is the pinnacle of the JRPG when even within its own generation it was up against competition like FF IV, Legend of Dragoon, Dragon Quest VII, and even Paper Mario?

Editorial: Why I Won't Be Buying A Steam Machine

Why I Won't Be Buying A Steam Machine

There are a lot of things I love about games consoles. They're simple to set up, easy to figure out how to use, and often offer a simple gaming experience free of the hassles that PC gaming can sometimes force on its fans.

There are also plenty of things I love about PC gaming. I love the customizable experience, the ability to mod games, and the increased graphical and physics capabilities of the hardware.

Because I love both of these things, you would think that a Steam machine would be a natural fit for me.

Unfortunately, it is anything but.

When Valve first started their Steam machine initiative I had high hopes for it. Sure, there were issues that were visible from space with the concept of using numerous manufacturers and variable hardware, and with the fact that a large number of PC games still don't support Linux, but I felt that Valve had plenty of time to fix these issues or circumvent them, and if any company could do so, it would be the creators of Steam itself, the number one digital distribution platform for games in the world.

Then the prototypes started coming out.

Brands like Alienware. iBuyPower. Phoenix. And they were wanting to sell underpowered hardware at premium rates, or overpowered hardware at even MORE premium rates, all shoved into tiny ITX cases.

Steam machines have a simple goal: to allow gaming PCs to compete with the console market for living room space.

So far, every Steam machine fails miserably at this. The question is: why?

The simple answer is that rather than taking the advantages of each platform -- simplicity and low expense of consoles, adaptability and massive library of PC -- they have opted to take the disadvantages of each platform instead -- the limited adaptability and library restrictions of a console combined with the expense and opaqueness of setup of a PC, creating a perfect storm of bad concept.

The goal of the Steam machine is to compete with the consoles, no matter what anyone else might claim. If the goal was to expand the reach of home theater PC's, then there are cheaper methods; if the goal was to build pure gaming PC's, then there was no need for the Steam machine initiative. As such, Steam machines have to tackle 3 core elements where consoles succeed that gaming PCs are typically seen to fail: simplicity of understanding the platform's capabilities, affordability, and user friendliness.

Let's look at the first of these three areas: simplicity of understanding the platform's capabilities.

Consoles are simple. You plug them in, and you play games. There isn't any need to understand cores this or RAM that; you hook it to your TV and go. Some have different games, some look a bit better, but for the average user the graphics really aren't the most important part; it's the games library that draws you in.

Steam machines have the capability of having a massive library, but that can be both a blessing and a curse. Navigating digital PC releases means scouring through going on three decades worth of software, and not every PC can run every game. Heck, not every Steam machine will be capable of running every game, and not just because of hardware limitations: the Steam OS itself, while commendable (and a worthwhile push for Linux compatibility in games, something more developers need to embrace,) naturally restricts many of the big AAA titles from being playable on the platform. People who are considering a Steam machine versus a console will in many cases be swayed by the simplest of arguments, and the fact that your console can play the next Arkham game and your three times more expensive Steam machine can't is a worthy one to consider.

Steam machines as a platform are opaque in terms of what you can do with that whirring box you spent all your money on.

Which brings us to issue two: affordability.

Consoles are cheap. There are many reasons for this, of course. Consoles typically have custom OSes that allow them to do more with their limited hardware than a more complicated computer could, and are built to such strict standards that they can push what they have more easily and consistently, giving the end user a very good cost to performance ratio.

PC's, on the other hand....

A gaming PC doesn't have to be expensive. For less than 600 USD a savvy shopper can build a gaming PC that trounces even the most powerful console hardware peripherals and all. On top of that the system will also let them do their taxes, edit home movies, and just about anything else they want to do on it. So, if a PC can be built like that so cheaply, why are so many of the Steam boxes pushing well north of the 1k mark in price?

The problem comes when you consider the difference between competitive hardware and POWERFUL hardware. In the PC gaming world, there's always something better around the corner, and hardware manufacturers are naturally going to want to go for the part that gives them an edge over the competition. Combine that with the need to fit it all into a small form factor, console-style, and you're looking at the price for Steam machines increasing terribly. On top of THAT is Steam OS's continued preference for Intel and nVidia hardware, which are typically more expensive than AMD alternatives, further inflating costs. Even FURTHER hurting the cost is the fact that the variable hardware means parts typically can't just be bulk ordered: if a part can be changed, it can't be standardized, hurting the systems when they try to balance capability versus compact design and end up losing out in overall price.

Steam machines are simply too expensive for their own good, and so long as they try to dictate their specifications for a PC gamer market rather than orienting toward an entry-level or console enthusiast market, they'll remain too expensive. Even then, they'll never have the same value/performance ratio of consoles due to manufacturers not being able to rely on software sales and mass produced units to subsidize costs.

Finally, the last issue: user friendliness.

Consoles have a controller. This controller may or may not have doodads that are unique to it, but every controller can be expected to have certain features, namely a smattering of face buttons, one or more methods to move your avatar or icon in games around, and that's basically it. Controllers haven't changed much, if at all, since the PlayStation DualShock came out, with the 4 face buttons, two function buttons, four shoulder buttons, and even clicking control sticks being the standard that every console gamer expects and can adapt to from one platform to the next.

The Steam machines have that. They also have Valve's very cool but somewhat strange controller. And keyboards. And mice. And bluetooth sync for a whole variety of other things, and unique peripherals that have appeared over the last 20 years that users still have lying around, and new types coming out.

Consoles have set hardware, with little in the way of visual customization, and games say clearly if they are for that system or not.

Steam machines have a marketplace where MOST of the games will work, but not all of them. Tweaks, edits, and more will have to be made. Nothing will work ideally right out of the box (or off the page, as it were,) and your performance will vary depending on which machine you have. Plus, unlike consoles, those peripherals you have might not always work for every last game, either.

These elements combine to make Steam machines less user-friendly than consoles too. Heck, in a lot of ways less user-friendly than the average laptop or desktop PC, because the implications of the Steam machine are that it SHOULD be simple and user-friendly to use.

Add all of this together, and you have a product that is going to be slaughtered in the marketplace due to a lack of standardization or even unification of concept.

I love consoles.

I love PCs.

I don't care at all for what the Steam machine, their love child, is shaping up to be.

And that saddens me greatly.

Console Review: @Games Colecovision Flashback

Console Review: AtGames Colecovision Flashback

By N. Ezell

The last fifteen years have seen a huge resurgence in the popularity of old consoles and vintage video games. Cashing in on this surge of popularity is the "plug and play" console market, where interested players without the funds or time to invest in the original hardware or tracking down classic cartridges can indulge their hunger for retro games.

Today we will be covering one of the systems that have been released with this mindset: the Colecovision Flashback console from AtGames.

Before we start, though, a quick lesson on the Colecovision is, perhaps, in order.

Released by the Connecticut Leather Company in 1982, the Colecovision was a powerhouse console for its time. Featuring a processor with a clock speed comparable to the much-later SNES, the Colecovision was the console you wanted if you were looking for accurate arcade ports. The Colecovision's expansion port even allowed for some unprecedented extensions on the system's capabilities, including such features as an arcade-style racing wheel and even an Atari 2600 expansion unit, giving it access to most of the library of its leading competitor. Sadly, the Colecovision was one of the many victims of the great game crash of 1983, and despite its relatively high power and solid ports, the console is mostly forgotten by modern audiences.

That is, until now.

HARDWARE: Colecovision Flashback

PRODUCED BY: AtGames

AVAILABILITY: Various Retailers (Dollar General release reviewed)

PRICE: Variable by Retailer ($40 at Dollar General, $80+ through Finger Hut/Other)

Enter the Colecovision Flashback console. The unit shares many similarities with AtGames' other major releases, namely the Intellivision and Atari 2600 Flashback units, with a design echoing the aesthetics of the original console. The console foregoes cartridge access in favor of internal storage, and boasts a whopping 61 titles available.

So, how does the Colecovision fare in its conversion to plug and play? Surprisingly well, actually.

For game players who remember the original Colecovision, there are a few immediately obvious differences between the original and the Flashback unit. In addition to the removal of the cartridge slot, the Flashback unit is smaller, and significantly lighter, as is typical of these kinds of units. Likewise, two other significant alterations have been made to the design: the removal of the original's storage bay (used to hold the controllers in the top of the unit,) as well as the removal of the original's expansion slot. Neither of these features is a significant drawback to the unit, however: removal of the storage slot is necessary due to the more modern unit's smaller size, and with the necessity of moving the controller ports to the front rather than top of the unit the expansion port would have been not only useless to include, but impractical ti implement as well.

Construction is far more lightweight than the original. Gone is the ten-pound brick of a power supply as well, replaced with a sleek cell-phone-styled unit, and both the console and controllers have been constructed with a textured black plastic. The materials feel cheap and unimpressive when compared to the original, but overall construction is quite solid, with both the unit and its controllers having a light but relatively sturdy feel to them.

The controllers have been downsized somewhat, much like the unit itself, and here the unit starts to show some of the signs of its second-tier status. While the controller is responsive enough for most games, it takes some time to really get the controllers broken in, with controls being somewhat unresponsive until you do. After two hours of continuous play the unit begins to show its strengths, and what limitations the controller has begin to fade away, but the immediate response one might expect is not there out of the box. For modern gamers, the controller can also feel somewhat clunky as well: no changes have been made to the ergonomics of the unit beyond its slightly smaller size, and as a result hand fatigue can be a definite issue.

Controller (left) with 3DS (right) for size comparison.

Overall, first appearances for the unit are quite nice for a plug and play style console. The packaging the unit itself comes in is eye-catching and does a good job of holding the electronics within secure, meaning that damage due to mishandling of the unit's packaging is unlikely. The lines and design of the unit and its controllers is clean and functional, and everything feels good for its price point.

Now comes the most important part: how well the console plays.

The Colecovision, like the Bally AstroCade, was best known for its arcade ports, and the Colecovision Flashback doesn't disappoint, with a good selection of classic arcade games making the transition, including Frenzy, Choplifter, and even Jungle Hunt, among a handful of others. The non-arcade ports featured are great as well, with Gateway to Apshai being a stand-out title that showcases how well even early consoles could handle role-playing games. The games run well for the most part (Choplifter, ironically, is probably the most crash-prone title on the unit,) and once the controller's initial stiffness is overcome they are typically responsive and fun to play. 

If the Colecovision Flashback has one drawback, it is the lack of inclusion of insert cards for the controller for some games. While the box advertises "limited edition overlays inside," the included inserts are only for about five of the sixty games in the package, quite a few of which -- Gateway to Apshai, for instance -- could have benefitted from having inserts available. Those included are decently made, but a punch-out sheet of cheaper inserts, or even a sheet of paper with the inserts ready to be cut out, would have been of more benefit.

The real surprise of the Colecovision Flashback are the handful of more modern games on the console. Mecha-8 alone, a vertically scrolling mech shooter, is a surprisingly fun inclusion that showcases what the Colecovision could have been capable of if it had only not fallen victim to the crash of the games market, and Princess Quest offers a solid side-scrolling action title for the collection, too. Not every more modern game is a good one -- Shunting Puzzle and Monster Masher being the best to emphasize this -- but given AtGames' tendency to include a number of highly questionable filler titles in their collections to help flesh out the total game count, the games available on the Colecovision Flashback hold a good level of quality almost across the board.

Anyone who is familiar with AtGames' other retro reproduction consoles -- such as the line of Genesis consoles they have produced with the aid of Fireaxis -- will know that they have a tendency to underperform in terms of audio output compared to the consoles they are based on. The Colecovision Flashback, luckily, manages to avoid this pitfall. The console outputs via composite for a crisp video experience and has good-quality mono audio output as well, helping the experience of playing the games stay true to the experience of the original console.

Final Rating: 8 out of 10

For its price point (our review copy was obtained for a mere $30 on sale,) the Colecovision Flashback offers an impressive amount of entertainment and an above-average level of quality in terms of construction and aesthetics. With a solid collection of games, good design, and a smart eye for what features were beneficial to include and what could be safely removed, the unit makes playing Colecovision games an absolute joy. Even for serious collectors, the Colecovision Flashback offers an attactive alternative to keeping your original Colecovision out and hooked up, and the unit is highly recommended for anyone looking to experience an often forgotten corner of console history.

Good job, AtGames. Good job.

Shortly after finishing this article, the author's television was eaten by Evil Otto.

Mordekai's Original Games, Pt. 2

By Mordekai

In the last installment, I looked at some of the early computers I worked with.  It occurs to me that I failed to mention the Radio Shack Science Fair Digital Computer Kit.  While this was mostly a toy, using it as a kid taught me about logic circuits, program algorithms and program flow.  However, I digress.  In this installment, I’ll look back at some more computers from the early days.

TRS-80 Model 100

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A

Commodore VIC 20

Commodore 64

Apple IIe

Tandy TRS-80 Model 100

I picked up a TRS-80 Model 100 from Radio Shack when I was in-between desktop models.  The Model 100 was quite the machine for its time, having a built in address book and word processing software.  It also had Model 100 BASIC in ROM and 16kb of RAM.  Biggest thrill of all for this little laptop was a built in 300 baud modem.  I used the Model 100 for my first on-line experience by calling up Compuserve and using my free subscription for 30 days.  As the payment for Compuserve was almost as much as my payment for the Model 100, I opted not to continue to use Compuserve.  That’s when I discovered the Bulletin Board Systems.  Programming the Model 100 was more involved and difficult than the old Model I.  I created some short-run text adventures.  It turned out to be mostly a novelty item as I started doing all my programming on a TI-99/4A.

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A

Texas Instruments busted into the home PC market in 1979 with the TI-99/4, which was the first 16-bit home PC.  It sold for a whopping $1,150 and featured a wide range of peripherals and TI’s “solid state software,” which was ROM cartridges, like an Atari.  The TI-99/4 was a giant flop and was replaced in the early 80’s by the TI-99/4A, which sold for half the price and had twice the features.  TI made several mistakes with the 99/4 series, the most serious of which was to disregard hobbyists and hackers as a source of ideas and information; the second was not allowing third-party resources such as game cartridges and peripherals.  TI suffered hundreds of millions in losses, mainly because of those mistakes. 

I purchased my TI-99/4A brand new, in late 1983, from a Target store in Rapid City, SD, for $50.  At the end of 1983, TI was unable to compete with Commodore, Apple and IBM, so they dumped their systems, dropped all support functions and got out of the microcomputer business until the early ‘90s. Even though it tended to look like a toy, the 99/4A was a fairly powerful machine for its time.  I programmed my first graphical game on the 99/4A -- a rudimentary joystick-controlled Space Invaders wannabe.  The 99/4A also featured the ability to produce musical tones.  The programming book had a list of notes and frequencies.  I had a guitar-playing friend, Scott Aldrich, ask me if I could program the notes for Freebird into the computer.  I can’t play a single lick of music -- but I can program.  Scott told me what notes to program and I hot-keyed them from 1 to 9.  Using the 99/4A as organ, we laid the background tracks for the Skynyrd classic.  Scott played the rhythm guitar and would nod at me each time I needed to change notes.  We recorded the background track on a stereo cassette tape recorder.  We then played the background music on my home stereo as Scott played the lead guitar and I kept rhythm with a Michelob bottle filled with popcorn kernels.  We recorded the whole song, minus vocals.  It was my coolest use of the TI-99/4A.

Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore-64

I never owned either of these machines.  My main activity regarding the Commodore computers was to make fun of them because I owned an Apple //e.  However, I have a short story.  When I was in Rapid City, I lived in military housing.  My neighbor to the north had a VIC-20 and my neighbor to the south had a Commodore 64.  We all had chess programs for our respective computers.  I had a program for the Apple called Sargon III.  It was a great chess program for its time.  One day, after we’d lost a chess match to his computer, my neighbor with the VIC-20 (his name was John Hancock -- I am not making that up -- true story) said, “I bet my VIC can beat your Apple.”  I said, “No way.” We brought the VIC to my house and played the computers against each other, giving each the same amount of “think” time.  Sargon slaughtered the VIC-20.  I don’t recall the name of the VIC chess program, but it was not even a challenge for the Apple with Sargon III installed.  So then, the neighbor to the south challenged my Apple with his Commodore 64.  After my victory over the VIC, I wasn’t too concerned about the 64 as I knew they were pretty much the same machine.  I wasn’t wrong.  Sargon III humiliated the Commodore and they never challenged me again.

Apple //e

I bought my Apple //e, with a single disk drive and green-screen monitor, in 1984.  I used it for everything from writing as a military journalist to evaluation of demographic data for magazine readership using the Appleworks Spreadsheet.  Mostly, I played games.  By the time I gave up the Apple in 1994, I had well over 1000 disks, almost all games, as well as 5 floppy drives, two external modems, and a color printer.  I produced three issues of The Reformer Magazine using the //e.  I ran a Bulletin Board System using floppy drives and a RAM disk card.  I even wrote my first paid program for the Apple //e.

In 1994 a friend of mine, Tim Johnson, had a master’s degree project in electrical engineering to calculate the efficiency of a solar cell based on several adjustable parameters.  It was a challenge.  He said, “I thought I’d just show you the math and you could make a program.”  He showed me the math involved and I said, “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”  Once I understood what the math meant, I actually had to write subroutines to calculate hyperbolic trig functions because they weren’t built into Applesoft BASIC.  The end product would ask for parameter inputs, then perform the calculations to determine the efficiency of the cell as a percentage of solar energy converted to electricity.  In addition, the program would screen plot and print a wave graph showing the ramp and peak of the cell.  It took it 36 minutes to run on my Apple //e.  Tim said he couldn’t wait that long for the number of results he had to produce and wanted to know if I could put it on his IBM 386-50.  So, I re-programmed it on the 386 using Q-BASIC.  It would run in under 3 minutes.  At that point, I realized I’d have to upgrade.  But I was sad.

So I upgraded.  Next time, we’ll talk about my first IBM compatible and an original Intel 286 processor computer I built from scraps on a piece of plywood.

John Smith (AKA Mordekai) on Google Plus

PSN Review: Zombie Racers

The PlayStation Minis line of games are all small in size and in price, but that doesn't necessarily mean small in content or fun. Unfortunately, Zombie Racers is far from the best example of the Minis library: with its terrible AI, high difficulty, and wonky controls, the game manages to justify its super-low-budget title.

At first glance Zombie Racers looks, and even sounds promising. A top-down racing game in the style of classics like Off-Road and RC Pro Am, Zombie Racers gives players two simple tasks: beat your opponents, and kill zombies. The concept is a simple one, but the game presents it well, and the first race is a pleasant blend of the two, though the game quickly loses its fun factor as the difficulty spikes.

Let's look at what Zombie Racers does right first. The visual presentation of the game is quite nice, with colorful 2D sprites for all on-screen action that give a good, clear indication of where you can and cannot drive, and never get too muddy whether playing on the PSP's screen or a TV (for the purposes of this review all gameplay was on the PSP.) The game has a good, if small, selection of punk music backing up your time running over zombies, and the controls are responsive for a top-down racer. The game even offers multiple game modes including arena-style combat with weaponry where your goal is not to beat your opponents in a race but instead to slay more zombies than them in a given amount of time, or reach a kill goal first. With eight core tracks, at least three arena tracks, and a collection of about 12 cars to choose from (all with a selection of speed, handling, and acceleration upgrades that can be purchased) there is a lot of game here for your dollar.

It really is a pity that playing the game just isn't fun.

What starts out promising quickly escalates into an exercise in abject frustration as the game's difficulty is unforgiving in the extreme. Players will likely have little trouble at all coming in first on the first course of the racing mode, but without the right upgrades the second race is near impossible, with each race afterward jumping the difficulty substantially and requiring a steady pace of new upgrades and, soon, new cars, to keep up with your opponents. Money is gained at the end of a race based on how many zombies you killed on your trip around the track, but money is ONLY earned from races you come in first on, with no other way to earn money outside of races. What this means is that each trip around the track is not only a race against opponents who are almost inevitably faster and more maneuverable than you, but that you are forced into having to veer constantly to take out as many zombies as possible just to secure what funding you can, and if you don't manage to excel at either one then the game quickly becomes next to impossible. Every race requires incremental increases to your vehicle's capabilities, but vehicles also have caps to their maximum capabilities. Combining these limitations with exorbitant pricing on new vehicles and upgrade costs that rise every race and you have a game that can easily bring your progress to a grinding halt on the grounds of inflation alone.

Next is the enemy AI. Racing games are not known for their excellence in the AI department on general principle (with a few exceptions, like Forza or Gran Turismo,) but Zombie Racers' AI is nothing if not a joke. Rather than giving each opponent a semblance of autonomy the game relies on the classic tactics of rubber banding and the AI working together to create its difficulty. Call it a personal quirk, but one of the things that has always gotten my goat in racing games is AI that doesn't actually treat its indiviual racers as competitors but, instead, as a team whose sole goal is to prevent you from winning, yet this is what Zombie Racers relies on. This would be a little more balanced if the rubber banding the game applies worked both ways, giving players a chance to catch up when they fall behind, but it seems to only apply to the AI racers, making every race either a barely-squeaked-by victory or a defeat that leaves you laps behind your opponents. Opponents will never make mistakes, never compete or jockey for position with one another, and even in the arena battles will always know exactly where the biggest groups of zombies and power-ups are, rendering any sense of fair play or balance that might have remained after the upgrade issues moot.

This difficulty is only made that much more frustrating by the game's un-intuitive controls. Gas is square and brake is triangle, with no options to change these controls and no tutorial to teach them to you. During the combat stages X fires your vehicle's picked up weapons. Why the developers chose to implement a control scheme so completely counter-intuitive is anyone's guess, but it hardly helps to curb the game's difficulty.

Final Rating: 3 out of 10

Despite a promising first impression with its solid collection of content and rock-bottom pricing, Zombie Racers quickly destroys any sense of fun with its terrible AI and difficulty balancing. With a little work the game could be something truly special, namely lower cost for upgrades/cars and a more shallow difficulty curve, but as it stands the game forsakes fun in the name of punishing difficulty and controls. Fans of super-hardcore racing games or gluttons for punishment may find some worthwhile gameplay here, but for anyone else the return on time invested is negligible, and with the price of PSP games right now there are other, better racing games available for not too terribly much more than this will run you.

Retro Review: Final Fantasy IX (PS1, PSN)

Image unashamedly borrowed from IGN

Last month Final Fantasy IX turned 14 years old. Fourteen years old. In video game terms, that's positively ancient. That is, quite literally, the period of time between the release of the original Game Boy and the Nintendo DS. That's longer than the lifespan of the original Ataricorp. In terms of anniversaries it is, perhaps, not as illustrious a number as ten years, or the fast-approaching fifteen, but it is still, by and large, quite significant.

And, thus, I have chosen Final Fantasy IX for Game Academy HRO's very first Retro Review.

The 1990s were an illustrious era for the JRPG, bringing the genre to a pinnacle of popularity and quality that it has, unfortunately, not been able to maintain in the current millennium. It was a decade that saw companies like Squaresoft, Enix, and even an already-popular Capcom skyrocket into being household names with players discussing Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Breath of Fire almost as much as names like Mario and Sonic. Of the three big series in JRPGs, though, none captured western audiences' imaginations like the Final Fantasy games.

Throughout the 90's Square saw massive popularity with their western releases of the Final Fantasy series, especially on Sony's fledgling PlayStation console. Throughout the PlayStation's lifespan the console netted western releases of every Final Fantasy game with the exception of III, and still to this day holds probably the most impressive western library of JRPGs of any console ever. Squaresoft embraced the console to the fullest, and when the PlayStation 2 was announced audiences were eager to see what the company would release on the new, far superior hardware. Before that happened, though, Squaresoft had one last triumphant new Fnal Fantasy title to bring to the aging PS1, a swansong like no other: Final Fantasy IX.

Final Fantasy IX is in many ways a love letter from Squaresoft to the series that rescued it from the depths of obscurity (though we'll get into that in another, future post.) For several releases prior to IX the Final Fantasy series had been moving more and more toward science fantasy themes, but with IX came a hard about-face, returning the series to its epic fantasy roots. It is a tribute to everything that made early eight and sixteen-bit games great, all wrapped up in one of the most impressive visual presentations the original PlayStation ever managed to see.

While it is not without its flaws, Final Fantasy IX is a showcase for everything Squaresoft had accomplished as a company to the point of its release, and is, to date, one of the most solid standalone JRPGs ever made.

First thing that becomes evident upon booting Final Fantasy IX up on the PlayStation (or PS2, or even PS3, PSP, or Vita, now that the title is available on PSN) is the care that has gone into the game's graphical presentation. Squaresoft was hailed as an innovator for their combination of 2D and 3D elements in Final Fantasy VII when it first came out, and Final Fantasy IX takes that visual style and pushes it further than any title before. When it comes to PS1 games there are few that push the system to its technological limits in terms of graphical fidelity like Final Fantasy IX: the game has textures that were better than many early PS2 games managed, fluid animation, and a great sense of style throughout.

In fact, the graphics are in some places too much for the PS1's rather tame hardware, and in no place is this more evident than in battle sequences. While the animations are often fluid, and the textures are incredible for the time, there is a limit to what the PS1 can manage, and battles will often suffer from a great amount of slowdown any time magic or summons are used. The hardware often struggles to keep up with the number of polygons and effects the game asks it to push, and even with what is most likely the lowest on-screen enemy count of any game in the series, it quickly becomes obvious (and the evidence increases with the flashier spells and effects later in the game) that Final Fantasy IX is almost too much for the PlayStation to support.

Even with these problems, the overall presentation of the game remains stunning. The game is colorful, and the pre-rendered backgrounds are all beautiful, many of them featuring touches of animation to help bring them to life. The improved textures on 3D objects over previous games help them to fit into the 2D backdrops far better than in games like Final Fantasy VII, helping to keep the world's look cohesive despite the combination of its two disparate design elements.

When it comes to gameplay, Final Fantasy IX, for the most part, shines as well. With the series' two prior PlayStation-centric releases (Final Fantasy VII and VIII) character class was almost a non-issue, since nearly every character could excel at nearly anything else depending on what summons and spells they were equipped with. Not so with Final Fantasy IX: every character has their own unique class and capabilities, making character choice an important decision as every character fills a specific role in the game. This gives the gameplay a lot of depth, as every party combination requires a slightly different style of play. On top of that, abilities are learned from equipment, rather than simply earned over time. Since many accessories or armor pieces can be equipped by multiple party members, balancing who has what equipment -- and therefore is learning or has access to which abilities -- makes a significant impact on party management.

Or at least it would, if the game's difficulty curve were higher.

If Final Fantasy IX has one significant flaw, it is that gameplay during turn-based battles is quite slow. This lack of urgency is likely fully intentional as it helps to alleviate some of the issues that could otherwise arise from the game's slowdown during spell and summon effects, but it still results in battles that, while fun and interesting, also trudge along at about two-thirds the speed they should. On top of that, while the ability system is creative, every ability a character can access can be permanently learned with enough dedication of time. This is not a bad thing, but the game is not balanced for players dedicating their time to the pursuit of these abilities, meaning that any player who takes their time grinding to master abilities will almost assuredly be significantly higher in level than they are intended to be at any given point.

To balance out this difficulty (or lack thereof,) Final Fantasy IX features a wonderful story. The tale told in Final Fantasy IX references the stories of games of old, as do many of the characters, but it does so without falling into the trap of simply copy-pasting its influences into a new setting. There are references to the elemental crystals that have had such an impact on so many past titles in the series, and constant graphical throwbacks to older games in characters like Vivi and the Moogles (represented here in their cute chibi form as opposed to the more weaselly look they took on in later installments.) The story is equal parts heartbreaking and uplifting, but never pulls its punches when it comes to portraying the drama that is the world of Gaia's impending demise.

Of course, the game's epic story would be far less impressive if it lacked inspiring characters, and luckily Final Fantasy IX has these in spades. Zidane is a solid, if sometimes understated, leading man, while characters like Dagger, Vivi, and even Eiko are all infused with tons of personality and their own, unique back stories that drive their journey, giving the game plenty of subplots to unravel for the various characters as you play through. Though there are a couple of characters whose personalities are far less developed than others (Quina the Blue Mage, for instance,) even the least involved team members in Final Fantasy IX have more going for them personality-wise in both design and role in the game than some of the most revered characters from past installments.

The balance is that the story does, on occasion, interfere with actual gameplay. The ability to explore the world and change one's own party to suit their taste is a long-standing tradition in the Final Fantasy series, yet in IX both of these features are nearly completely absent until around the last quarter of the game, severely limiting players' interactions with the world at large. This also occasionally has a hendrance on the game's side quests: though there are several of them present in the game, many of them are limited in scope and very much easy to accomplish with little, if any, deviation from the linear path of the story; the two big exceptions to this are collecting all the Tetra Master cards and finding the friendly monsters, but even these quests serve as only minor distractions and offer little in the way of real reward to the player for taking the time to complete.

It may seem that this review is delving more into the game's issues than its positives, but the issues need to be addressed specifically because of how great the overall product is.

Full disclosure time here: Final Fantasy IX is, by far, my favorite title in the series. Not only does it return to the series' fantasy roots (for the last time in the core series outside of the MMOs,) but it does so with panache and a sense of style all its own, making it one of the sharpest, best designed games in the series' long run. Despite its flaws, it still manages to combine a sense of tradition with a lot of creativity to become one of the strongest JRPGs ever released, on the PlayStation or any other platform.

Final Rating: 9 out of 10

Even with everything Final Fantasy IX gets right, it still fails to reach the level of being a perfect game. While Square's desire to push the limits of the original PlayStation as far as they could is admirable, it causes too many slowdown issues in what is already a somewhat slow-paced game. Combined with the game's more limited exploration and side quest structure in comparison to older titles in the series, and Final Fantasy IX, while a great game and (in this individual's opinion) the pinnacle of the Final Fantasy series as a whole, still has room to improve.

Final Fantasy X followed close on Final Fantasy IX's heels, and being a featured title for the newer and more powerful PlayStation 2 helped to close the coffin on Final Fantasy IX's legacy far sooner than the game deserved. It also marked Squaresoft's -- soon to be Square Enix's -- departure from many of the core tenets of the series that had defined the games for many of the players who had grown up with them. These ideals would make a brief return in the ill-received Final Fantasy X-2, but with the series navigating to a new team and the movement of western markets away from JRPGs on major consoles Final Fantasy IX will likely hold a place for a long time to come as one of the greats of the genre, from the time when it was at its peak.

Do you agree with my review? Do you think it's nothing but bologna? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

The Movie Tie-in Game Done Right

Screenshot courtesy Brandon Smith (Mordie the Felifox)

In the world of video games, there are few products more universally maligned than the movie tie-in title. Games tied to Hollywood blockbusters are typified as being shallow and rushed, with little value as stand-alone products. Sadly, in many cases this hate is well warranted: often movie tie-ins, or games designed as product placement in general, are build on slimmer budgets and much more stringent guidelines than standalone releases face. Games of these types are not typically seen as art or entertainment with their own merit, but rather as advertisement platforms for the product they are tied to, and therefore are often deemed expendable.

Keep that word expendable in mind: it will be important later on.

There are exceptions, of course. Goldeneye, the legendary FPS for the N64, is often cited as the best example available for a movie tie-in handled well. Unfortunately, Goldeneye is successful specifically because it fails to follow the typical movie tie-in path; being released several years after the eponymous movie meant the game had plenty of development time for concept, presentation, and gameplay. On top of that, the game's lack of drive as a marketing tool opened the developers up to being able to incorporate elements of the James Bond universe as they saw fit rather than being constrained by the film itself, allowing them much more freedom to express what they wanted in the game rather than what any marketing department wished for. Likewise, many of the other games that are usually used as examples of positive movie tie-ins -- Alien Versus Predator, many of the Lego games, or even titles like Telltale's Back to the Future adventure games -- serve more as the exceptions that prove the rule than as truly great tie-ins: they are developed outside the typical effective marketing times for their respective franchises, and with much more developer freedom than the typical tie-in receives because of that.

With so much going against them, can a movie tie-in really be done right?

Yes, yes it can, and for proof of that fact you need look no further than The Expendabros on Steam.

At first glance The Expendabros looks as though it has very little going for it. For one thing, the game is completely free: that's right, free. For another, rather than being a scene for scene retelling of the movie, The Expendabros, which is intended as an advertisement for The Expendables 3, chooses to embrace its game nature and do its own thing, referencing characters and concepts from the film rather than trying to represent the movie's contents in a more dedicated manner. Lastly, the game is done quite clearly on the cheap: rather than being a brand-new game The Expendabros is instead presented as more of a modified version of Free Lives and Devolver Digital's creative shooter Broforce, with a handful of sprites and cutscenes being the only things that distinguish the product as its own thing.

All of these elements sound like negatives at first, but in truth, it is in these elements that the game finds its greatest strengths as a marketing tool, and as a game.

Let's start by discussing the price tag. Perhaps one of the greatest atrocities many licensed games commit is not their rushed production times or general lack of creativity in design, but rather in how much they expect players to pay. If a product is, in essence, intended for promotion of another product the company expects to make the real money off of, then it stands to reason to offer the promotional product at a discounted rate. Despite this, licensed games are often on an even keel price-wise with AAA console releases, making the flaws they often exhibit -- which many would overlook more easily in a more modestly-priced product -- that much more of an issue.

This pricing issue is not a problem for Expendabros. By being free, the game offers even the most lackadaisical viewer a hard to ignore opportunity to experience a small part of the Expendables franchise. This makes it an ideal marketing tool for the movies, and even for Free Lives' game Broforce, which Expendabros is based on. By offering the tie-in for free, players have little reason to be disappointed or turned off by the product's content based on financial input, and are therefore more likely to view its fun elements in a positive way, reflecting on the franchise as a whole.

Now we'll move on to the game's deviation from the movie's core. Often times licensed games rely on following a movie's storyline as closely as possible in order to appeal to the movie's target audience as much as they can. This is meant to serve to reinforce both the impetus to watch the movie if you've played the game and the drive to convince moviegoers to delve into the game if they like the movie, since they are typically two different ways to experience the same overall story.

Unfortunately, doing this doesn't really work for games, primarily due to the difference in narrative devices needed to properly carry a game story as opposed to a film. Games based on film or TV franchises too often stick players on a set path with little room to deviate from it; rather than embracing the idea that the story is being told as a game, instead it wants you to watch a CGI rendered version of the movie with occasional inputs into actions that have little impact on the actual events at play.

Expendabros manages to avoid these pitfalls by placing its emphasis less on trying to duplicate the film and more on trying to emulate the attitudes of the source material. By emphasizing the idea of being a game about the Expendables rather than a direct tie-in to the movie, the game frees itself to have fun with its contents in a way most licensed games don't or aren't allowed to.

Part of the reason this works is due to the game's existence as more of a mod or total conversion than a fully original title on its own.

I know, I know; I hear people complaining now that if the game doesn't do its own thing then it lacks artistic merit and value. Here is where the core concepts behind a licensed game will differ from the goals of the typical game, however, and that is that the goal with a licensed game is not for the game to stand out on its own at all, but to serve as effective promotional material for the franchise it is based on. What this means is that, when it comes to licensed games, by focusing on using an appropriate system that is already in place, developers can more effectively advertise the product they are supporting.

Notice I said appropriate system.

What makes Expendabros stand out from many other licensed titles is that the genre the game embraces fits its license perfectly. The Expendables franchise is intended to be the distillation of every cheesy action movie ever, so by choosing Broforce's explosion-filled bullet-hell gameplay to represent its game-world presence Lion's Gate chose amazingly well. By choosing a genre that represents the game equivalent of what The Expendables represent in film, the game has a much higher chance of not only appealing to gamers on a purely game-based level, but also targeting the portion of the gaming market that is most likely to be interested in the movie itself. This is a key element many licensed games miss, and why we have a tendency to see generic adventure and platform titles released for most franchises: these are often the simplest concepts to work into the narrative of the film's story, but will often times not truly fit with the type of game the target audience for the film would enjoy.

So, in The Expendabros we have a game that A) is marketed at a price point that will appeal to gamers and non-gamers without setting any kind of expectations regarding content or quality, making it an effective marketing tool for the film franchise, B) lets itself deviate from the film's core story, allowing both the game and the film to operate as separate entities with their own elements while still sharing many elements, and C) embraces a genre that works to represent the same core ideals and philosophies as the film does, helping the game to appeal to the same market as the film targets.

All together, these elements combine to make The Expendabros an ideal example of a movie tie-in game done right, even before we get to the single most important element of all: the game is FUN. The game finds merit even without its film tie-in elements through simply being a blast to play and offering players a good amount of options to build on their experience when doing so, and through this further improves its ability to advertise the film franchise it is based on. A good game, no matter how little connection it might actually have with its franchsie source material, will always serve as a better draw for audiences than a game that stays true to its material but fails to be an enjoyable experience. Look at products like the Lego games for a great example of this: often, the Lego games will deviate wildly on story elements form their source material, and the worlds are always far different from those represented in film, yet the games still serve to draw players due to their accessibility and enjoyability. In turn, players then associate that enjoyable experience with the franchise as a whole.

In the long run, isn't that what any promotional material aims to do, is emphasize the enjoyment one can draw from the product being advertised?

What movie tie-in games have you played in the past? What have you thought they did right, or wrong, and do you think they served their purpose as promotional materials for the franchise they were tied to? Let us know.