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Sunday, December 11, 2005
Gaming roundup
Reader D turned us onto this Slate article reviewing the new Blitz: The League. It's a cartoonish (if you think Adult Swim rather than Hanna Barbera) take on football. I haven't played the new version, but the prior incarnations were fast, fun, violent, and infectiously anti-sportsmanship. For example, you earned extra points and power ups by taunting your opponent during a play. But, what struck me about the article was this early paragraph:
Before Tecmo Bowl, the best sports games weren't licensed by sports leagues and didn't include authentic team or player names. Some games, such as Konami's Double Dribble, featured teams that were obvious imitations of their real-world counterparts. Then there were games such as SNK's Baseball Stars, which included the Lovely Ladies, the Ghoulish Monsters, and the aptly named Ninja Blacksox, whose roster featured nothing but ninjas. Once Tecmo Bowl came along, these unlicensed games seemed exceedingly lame. Who wants to play with a team full of girls when you can make Bo Jackson rip off 80-yard runs?
SNK Baseball Stars was -- and is -- a great game. You ignore the old tymey graphics and sounds and are easily immersed in the great, intuitive, responsive game play. Slate misses a number of other great, unlicensed sports game, primarily the Mutant League series. Mutant League hockey and football were -- and are -- great games. Again, it's the great, responsive game play. What's more fun than defending your goal with a chain saw or throwing an intentional interception with an exploding football? (The answer, of course, is it's more fun to send a linebacker to dismember "Scary Ice" or "Bones Jackson" in the first half.)
These are all reasons why my next video console will be Nintendo's. Again. There are great titles for the Xbox and the PS2, and will be great titles for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Provided, however, that the Xbox 360 doesn't melt while playing it. While the Xbox and the PS3 are aimed at mature gamers (and each other), Nintendo seems content catering to a younger audience. The new console is reportedlyaffordable and only twice was powerful as the current GameCube. While the Xbox and PS3 slug it out to make creepier versions of hot celebrities, the Nintendo world is still populated by adorable, cartoonish characters which, paradoxically, appear more real than their realistic counterparts.
The focus on polygons, rendering, lighting, and shading -- all elements of an immersive gaming experience -- too often detract from the actual game play. It can be fun to throw a 2-D fireball at a 2-D, 3-colored turtle. It's not necessarily more fun in a 3-D, richly textured world.
So long as Nintendo focuses on game play (and the new controller is interesting, to say the least) and carries games that won't turn my children into zombie-slaughtering zombies, the Hammer household will be happily having Mario Parties into the wee hours of 8 o'clock.
