Driver Renegade sucks

Ohh man... I knew I would wring the fun out of Driver Renegade sooner rather than later, and like whatever car I use in the game, I've basically slammed into a brick wall of frustration.

I just can't get over how badly the cars handle and the game plays. I am SO ANGRY at the developers, I personally want to go up to whoever programmed this game and KICK THEM IN THE NUTS. It's *that bad*.

Everyone involved in the gameplay of this title should NEVER be allowed to work in the video game industry ever again. This was made from pure apathy and cutting corners. It's a complete travesty & an embarrassment.

There is no sense of speed. You have this turbo boost-- apparently it is a Rage Meter-- that's supposed to give you a nitro-like burst of speed. It does NOTHING. I've literally been neck & neck with the last place AI car and holding down the nitro doesn't vault me forward one bit. It makes no difference.

If you clip something, you WILL spin out. There's no way not to, no matter what you do. Because players LOVE having NO CONTROL over their gameplay. That alone should have had everyone involved with this game fired and their work scrapped well before it hit the shelf.


I remember when I finished Driver '76, I wanted to thank the developers for the game. It was published by Ubisoft but developed by Sumo Digital. Sure it was a blatant rip-off of Grand Theft Auto, but it was still fun despite its' flaws. But the developers of Driver Renegade should be fired, and whatever ins-house studio disbanded. As far as I can tell Driver Renegade was developed in-house by Ubisoft. Does Ubisoft have NO pride, they just skate by on the bare minimum when they develop games themselves? They've published some awesome handheld games, Lumines for PSP being a notable example. But I think that most, if not all,  of the best ones were developed by outside companies.


I hate you whoever programmed Driver Renegade, put together this shit game. I hate myself for buying it and supporting this kind of shovelware.




later
don

Die Videogame Industry, Die! Part 6 - Entitlement

Part 6 of a 10 part series about why I want the video game industry to implode, causing massive layoffs & putting most devs out of business so that the industry can come back much better than it currently is.

I'd say since 2004, a disturbing trend has emerged in the video game industry. I peg it starting around 2004 because that's when Nintendo released the DS handheld. It featured a new control scheme unseen before in video games: touch interaction (as well as the oft-forgotten microphone)

What Nintendo said to third-party developers is, "here's a new control set... now get used to it."

Sony's first handheld, the PSP may look a lot more traditional in comparison, but it too featured an altered control layout: the infamous missing 2nd analogue nub. Again, it echoed Nintendo's message to third party game developers: "here's a new control set... now get used to it."

I guess I got into video games during the Xbox/PS2/GameCube generation. All those systems had nearly identical controls & button placement.... yet games still suffered when ported from one console to another. But since then, we've been seeing even more divergent control layouts & systems.... and for the most part developers still haven't caught up-- years later now....

The first parties Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft take the attitude that "if we build it they will come"... it seems like all they do is come up with a new control-- be it Balance Board, or whatever... and expect game companies to immediately support it.

But clearly we're seeing that most game companies are NOT supporting control schemes that veer away from the "traditional" controller of the Xbox/PS2/GameCube generation. Yes, there are noteable exceptions of games that have gotten the Wii's controls just right, but those are relatively few & far between.

The problem is, with Project Natel & Playstation Move on the way... and Nintendo just announcing a new 3-D handheld.... these new control schemes are coming out of the woodwork. If companies can't implement controls properly on the Wii which has been around for over 2 years now.... how/when will they be able to handle all these new controls??

There's this major disconnect between the first-party console/hardware makers & third-party game makers. The first-party companies almost show a sense of ENTITLEMENT that third-party companies will just follow lock-in-step behind any hardware they produce-- or that they'll do the R&D *for* the first-party company by improving the understanding & programming of these new controls in their games. The DISCONNECT is third-party companies don't think that way at all (judging by what we've seen already over the past 2+ years on the Wii and PSP) .

This is a really messed up system. Sure, first-party console makers can come up with new controls & maybe develop a few games that support them really well (Wii Sports for example) but the way it is now, we consumers just have to hope that some game will come out where the devs actually understand how to program for the controls, and it's like trying to win the lottery.

Do first-party companies even talk to major third-party game makers at all? Nintendo is most guilty of seeming to release a new control peripheral leaving game companies to go "Huh? This is the first we've heard of it..." but despite the "2 dozen" or whatever number of companies supposedly developing games for Playstation Move, I seriously doubt there's much support going into it other than "we made it, here it is, now YOU figure it out"..... same goes for Natel.

This is such a major problem, and I don't really know how to solve it. I *do* like innovative control systems-- that's one of the reasons I bought a Wii in the first place. It was the promise that such a neat motion control system could bring some great, interesting games. Yes, there have been a few, but for the most part we've seen games just avoid the Wii or are ported badly to it because of the different controls.

Playstation Move & Natel may be "safe bets" in that they are accessories-- if worse comes to worst, they fail-- the PS3 & Xbox 360 still have their core functionality. But it all puts us, the consumers, in the position of being guinea pigs for the video game industry, and paying steep prices to be such.....



later
don

Die Videogame Industry, Die! Part 5 - "Tradition"

Part 5 of a 10 part series about why I want the video game industry to implode, causing massive layoffs & putting most devs out of business so that the industry can come back much better than it currently is.

Today my nephew was playing Super Mario Galaxy on my Wii, reading through the "Story Book" chapters.... and my sister asks, "Why isn't this part voice-over??"

My response was: "Ummm... because it's Nintendo. They don't do voice-overs."

The entire game has only onscreen text, you can probably count on one hand how many voiced lines there are in the entire 20+ hour game.

I wasn't really a hardcore gamer back when the NES & Super NES were out, but I've realized that a lot of Nintendo games don't have voice work in them. Maybe back in the 80's-90's, it made sense not to include that because of cartridge space?

But as far as I can tell, Nintendo first-party GameCube games don't have much voice work in them either. Especially first-party Mario games. And now, with Wii's full-sized disc-- more than capable of holding lots of voice work-- but the "tradition" continues.

So-called "hardcore gamers" have come to accept that Nintendo just don't do that.... and there are so many conventions like that, where a company like Square Enix will keep outdated & tired gameplay mechanics or production values... or Capcom's Resident Evil series control scheme: Let's face it; you're NEVER going to be able to move & shoot at the same time. They will always use the same control scheme from 15 years ago. All this is done in the name of "TRADITION".

It has always been this way. It will always be this way. AND YOU WILL LOVE IT.

How STUPID is that??? We're talking video games, which can be programmed & improved with each iteration of a series. I know that games sometimes DO improve on previous versions, that's why [HOT GAME] 2 can be better than [HOT GAME] 1... sometimes they'll fix what was wrong in the first game & keep what was good about it, making an improved package.

Nintendo, Square Enix, Capcom, etc.... all those big companies, they make improvements to their games. But paradoxically, they are also fixated on keeping OBVIOUSLY BROKEN aspects of a series just because... hell, I don't even know why! "Tradition" is the only "reason" I can think of...

"It has always been this way. It will always be this way. AND YOU WILL LOVE IT."

We reward their laziness by buying their products by the truckload, which in their mind says, "see we didn't have to fix what was broken 'cause they're buying it anyway!"

Now, maybe... just maybe... that huge audience, that are mistakenly called "casual gamers"... maybe they aren't already brainwashed into accepting that these things aren't "just the way it's always been". So maybe they're TURNED OFF by some of these lazy production shortcuts.... and the industry wonders why titles aren't selling better......

Come on.


later
don

Die Videogame industry, Die! - part 4 - movie videogames

Part 4 of a 10 part series about why I want the video game industry to implode, causing massive layoffs & putting most devs out of business so that the industry can come back much better than it currently is.

It's common knowledge to gamers that "movie-based videogames suck".

To quote Battlestar Galactica: All this has happened before and all this will happen again....

Here's a bit of history of comic books: In the late 70's Marvel Comics published comic book adaptations of Star Wars & Empire Strikes Back. They were pretty successful, spawning an ongoing monthly Star Wars title. Followed by comic adaptations of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Bladerunner, etc. These adaptations tried to be exact to the movie, basically in comic book form. Sometimes they showed scenes cut from the final version of the movie. Way before DVD, this was the only way you'd ever get to see these scenes.

When they first started, the comic adaptations were fairly good... they had really good art that looked like the characters, and the dialogue was all lifted straight from the script. But by the late 80's through the 90's, Marvel and other comic companies had really worn out the "comic adaptation of the movie" formula. Fans were tired of picking up a comic that was supposed to "be the movie", but instead was just a tired, cheap, quick cash-grab.

Does any of this sound familiar to gamers?

I can't figure out what game was the FIRST based on a movie, but one of the earliest I can think of is GoldenEye for the N64. I've never played it, but it's highly-regarded for it's FPS format & dual-wielding gameplay.

Fast forward to the present, and movie-based video games clog the shelves. Most--hell, ALMOST ALL of them-- are considered to be shovelware.




I don't consider games like Star Wars: Battlefront or games like that to be "movie games", because they're not meant to be straight adaptations where you're "playing the movie". Star Wars: Battlefront is more like a game that sets itself in the universe of the movies. That's different. It wasn't timed to release right before a movie, nor did it seem like a quick cash-in. It felt like the devs thought, "Hey, I have an idea for a twist on the Star Wars universe...." Which is how games SHOULD be made: based upon GREAT IDEAS FOR A GAME. That's probably how GoldenEye was made.

Movie games are more like, "if we have a game to go along with this upcoming movie it'll act as advertising for it". A lot of movie games come out weeks before the movie does. It's pretty obvious that the deadlines are tight, because they have to coincide with the movie release. Is it a surprise then, that the games seem like they're rushed through development? To get it done in time, publishers like EA Games, THQ, Ubisoft, etc. probably use a basic game engine, and wrap it with the "feel" of the movie they're adapting. So movie games all feel generic & the same.


What really pisses me off is that it seems like most of the games scheduled to come out are games based on movies. It's true that the Wii has some of the saddest video game offerings of all the consoles, but even for the others, I'm sure movie games make up the bulk of their releases. It's just that anyone who's bought & played games for a time has learned to ignore them.

Look, I'm not against the idea of games based on movies. But the genesis of them has to be "here's a great idea for a game based on this movie". Instead, what we're getting is, "Ok, we need a [movie of the week] game, and we need it in 6 months". There's so much money being made from videogames, and people who make that crap have no business being in the biznizz of making videogames. From companies on down to the individual creators of this junk, they need to be disolved/fired/whatever and find something other to do-- NOT create videogames.



later
don

Die Videogame industry, Die! - part 3 - respect for handhelds

Part 3 of a 10 part series about why I want the video game industry to implode, causing massive layoffs & putting most devs out of business so that the industry can come back much better than it currently is.

So many things are wrong with the video game industry right now... one of them has to be the sheer lack or respect for handheld gaming.

Handheld consoles have been around for a long time, mostly Nintendo's market-dominating Game Boy line. Traditionally, Game Boy and handheld gaming in general has been seen as for little kids or an accessory for the completist, hardcore gamer. Even though there are some involved & "deeper" Game Boy games, overall they're always seen as automatically on a lower tier of importance to full-sized console gaming.



Which was fair enough.... Game Boy Advance graphics & production couldn't reach the level of the home consoles at the time: PS2, GameCube, Xbox. Unfortunately, the way the devs/pubs think about handhelds was maybe true over 5 years ago. They're stuck in the past, to a way of thinking that hasn't been relevant for the last 3-4 years. Since the release of the DS and PSP, handheld gaming consoles have evolved to a new level. I don't deny that it's still a different level than home consoles, even those older ones listed above. They can't/shouldn't be compared directly in terms of production values. What really bugs me is that no one in the industry is really taking seriously the huge sales & ownership bases of the portable consoles-- their sales are rivaling and SURPASSING home consoles.

I could *maybe* understand the lack of respect for the PSP; there's always the "declining sales/piracy/just not as popular as the DS" excuse that too many use to dismiss it, even though the PSP is currently Sony's best selling console, outselling the PS3 and PS2. But the DS often tops the list of consoles--both portable & home-- sold. Yet it *still* doesn't get its due from reviewers/bloggers/developers/publishers... it's just seen as a nice bonus or something. #1 and it still can't get any notice from creative-minded game developers? What does a handheld need to do?

The so-called hardcore just doesn't get it, and neither do game devs & publishers... that portable gaming is a new beast, that's growing by leaps & bounds DESPITE their (lack of) efforts not because of it. They blame it on "casual gamers"... because that's a convenient term that can be slotted anywhere yet doesn't have to mean anything. Developers & publishers think there are 2 kinds of gamers, to them hardcore=no money, and casual=stupid. Since they think casuals are driving the handheld gaming boom, they release tons & tons of DS shovelware (and used to release tons & tons of lame PS2-to-PSP ports)... when you throw a wall of crap at a successful selling system, of course there's some money that's going to be made. It doesn't mean that we DON'T want good games though. Games that play to the strengths of the system they're made for, and are DIFFERENT than all the other generic trendy games that keep coming out.

It's nice to have some connection between them, but handhelds are NOT an accessory item to a larger console. Lots of people have a handheld system as their ONLY system. These owners still count. And they're growing. The industry needs to push the production quality of their handheld games with the same fervor they apply to the full-sized console games.... or just give up and die.

Just show some respect & understanding already.



later
don

Die Videogame industry, Die! Part 2 - Videogame advertising

Part 2 of a 10 part series about why I want the video game industry to implode, causing massive layoffs & putting most devs out of business so that the industry can come back much better than it currently is.

I was going to put the sum of this post into my previous one about the Canada Plays PSP ad, but I thought I should keep each one of these Die Videogame industry, Die! posts separate. But the gist of what I said then, that video game advertising largely SUCKS, still stands. Mostly the tv ads, which must be the most costly ones for them.

Seriously, what is the MATTER with these companies (especially Sony)... Sony has a PS3 ad on tv, and it's awful. The one with the images being projected onto the sides of buildings.... it doesn't even show the PS3. Nothing about it makes me interested in a PS3, nor do I learn anything about PS3 games. It's just supposed to be "cool" imagery in and of itself I suppose....

When was the last time you saw a videogame commercial where the majority of that ad showed ACTUAL GAMEPLAY? Only the stuff that you SPEND 99% of the time seeing when you play said game? Most game ads show junk that has little/nothing to do with the game.

Think of how much money it costs to make and run these ads on tv, and how much of a waste it is. Yes, it's Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony's money, but it was OUR money before we gave it to THEM to waste on this crap rather than them putting it towards creating new IP (intellectual property, new game ideas basically)

That's just another reason why the videogame industry needs to die & be reborn, because if companies suddenly find they don't have all these big bucks to waste on useless ads that don't tell us anything, maybe they will learn to focus on the things that ACTUALLY matter in the videogame industry: making fun, compelling games.



later
don

Die Videogame industry, Die! Part 1 - MarioKart Wii

Part 1 of a 10 part series about why I want the video game industry to implode, causing massive layoffs & putting most devs out of business so that the industry can come back much better than it currently is.


I've been playing Mario Kart Wii for awhile, and I have to say.... it's one of the most overrated games ever. There are things to like about the game, but there are so many things about it that makes it crap.

It's so incredibly cheap. How fun is it to randomly be knocked from 1st to 12th right at the end of a race, when there is nothing you can do about it? It takes the choice away from the player & leaves it up to just dumb luck.

The number of races is obscenely small. There's supposedly "32 stages". What it REALLY is is there are 8 Grand Prix races, each consisting of 4 races. Same diff, right? Wrong. Those 4 races can only be raced in a Grand Prix, so once you pick one, not only do you have to race all 4, but in that order. So in reality it feels more like only 8 actual races are available to choose from. 8 races? In any other racing game, who'd think that was enough variety?

Checking out the reviews for it, overall it gets glowing ratings. But if you actually read most of the reviews, they basically go like this: "Mario Kart Wii is one of the best racing games ever because... because I've loved the Mario Kart franchise since [insert whatever old Nintendo system here] that's why!!" What does any past Mario Kart game have to do with THIS one, that's no way to judge this game, it should be evaluated on its own merits alone.

This comes to the crux of why the video game industry, as it is, needs to basically die off: There's so many mediocre/crap games where the developers/publishers rely on past franchise success, and they sleepwalk their way through each iteration of the franchise. Mario Kart Wii is such a conservative game. It's the first Mario Kart game I've played, but has it changed/added ANYTHING of note since past versions? I doubt it-- it doesn't take the slightest bit of risk with the formula.

There are some advantages to that; the core gameplay is what people enjoy, so why mess with it.... except sequel games should improve on past versions. And the Wii wheel control seems fairly well tweaked, they must've spent a lot of time working on making it a smooth experience.

Mario Kart Wii should be an experience that a new gamer can come into, without having to rely on nostalgia for past versions, and enjoy the current game as is, on its own. But the price they charge for it compared to the content makes it a rip-off. Nintendo first party games hardly ever drop in price, even years after they first come out. Add to that the idiot reviewers & so-called "hardcore gamers" that allow companies to coast their way through latest versions of franchise games because they're too busy tripping over themselves remembering their nostalgic childhood/adolescence experience to do their jobs.


later
don