More Gaming Annoyances

Some more gaming vitriol. Enjoy!

#6 – People on TV playing games

Television never never gets gaming right. Any time characters on TV are gathered around playing games, they press every button possible in as short a space of time as you can imagine like some sort of spasticated monkey. There is no game on Earth that requires you to press that many buttons that quickly (well, maybe some mental Japanese one, but no game I’ve ever played.) I understand that they want to make a scene as exciting (or whatever) as possible, and having a person slumped on the sofa in their underwear, with empty Coke cans and crisp packets scattered about, barely moving their hands, like real gamers do, wouldn’t look all that great. But if you don’t take the time to do it right, don’t do it at all.

But please don’t have your character hammering the controller like a mentalist.

#7 – the cardboard box in Metal Gear Solid.

Metal Gear Solid is a stealthy game; sneaking around military bases, taking out guards, and uncovering massive (usually boring) secrets. Occasionally though, when stealth fails you, you have to run and hide. Sometimes however, there are no good hiding places. So what does Snake do? He whips out his trusty cardboard box, that’s what. Never mind that this whole charade feels completely out of place, it’s the physics of it I can’t wrap my head around. There’s no way Snake could fit in that tiny little thing. I don’t care how good a spy he is.

Also, it never worked as a hiding place. Not for me anyway. The guards always came round the corner, and lifted up the box, no matter how well concealed I was, and shot me to death because it’s pretty bloody obvious that there shouldn’t be some random cardboard box sitting about a military base.

However, it did work once when I was fighting a helicopter. Odd.

#8 – Post-Mega Drive Sonic games

They have all been awful. Even the ones I tried to pretend weren’t, like Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Heroes. Sonic just doesn’t work in 3D. And they’ve added so many characters, it has become almost like a soap opera; there’s Big the (retarded) cat, Amy Rose (Sonic’s girlfriend apparently), as well as some shadowy government organisation called G.U.N. but worst of all is that they’ve changed Dr Robotnik’s name to Dr Eggman. That is sacrilege. I mean there's even a game where Sonic turns into a werewolf FFS.

Sorry, werehog.

Bring back the simple days of ‘Sonic wants to free his friends by running really fast.’ That was awesome in the 90’s, when every problem could be solved by running really fast.

Or so I’m told.

#9 – Giant spiders

I’m fairly certain that 1 in 3 new games released will have a giant spider in there somewhere. They’ve become the new zombies. Although unlike zombies, giant spiders freak me the fuck out. Seriously. After a battle with one in Skyrim my skin crawls for like ten minutes. They’ve been freaking me the fuck out since Abe’s Oddysee in 1998 and that game’s Paramites (more or less giant spiders) and no doubt will continue to do so for some time.

I mean just look at that! It’s horrible.

#10 – Movie tie-ins

Big blockbuster movies are big business. The games industry in an attempt to cash in on the hype fires out a licensed game with the same title. I’m not talking about your Arkham Asylum’s or even your Force Unleashed’s here; I mean rushed games that are released a month or so before the movie and hope to get people excited enough to buy them. Or get their parents too. Because most of these games are designed for kids who want to be Iron Man, or Harry Potter. I swear there has been one Harry Potter game churned out per film, and they always come down rapidly in price. Why? Well, because they’re god awful is why.

Although the exception to the rule is the actually far better than it has any right to be X-Men Origins: Wolverine game. Maybe the rule is terrible movie, great game.

Anyway, that's enough for now.

JC