Not symmetrical

Nintendo’s been going on and on for about a year now about the “asymmetrical gameplay” experiences that the Wii U will foster. It does look neat, and I think the little demos that they’ve provided seem like they’ll be fun for a while, but I wonder if there are any long-term applications for this style? Having an extra player play a support role in games like New Super Mario Bros U and Rayman Legends is a decent way to start, but I hope that somebody can do something really compelling with this bold new idea.

Oh, did I say “new”? I meant “thing that Nintendo has been doing intermittently and nobody cares about.”

Asymmetrical gameplay isn’t a new concept. It’s not even just a Nintendo thing. All it really means is that the two (or more) people are playing the same game and doing a different thing. Mario Party alone has been doing it for over a decade with the 3-vs-1 mini-games. Hell, Gyromite on the NES can be (and works considerably better as) an asymmetrical multiplayer game if you ditch ROB and have a friend use his controller instead. And that’s all the way from the 80’s.

I suppose those ones kind of make a point for the style though. Referencing the “nobody cares about” part of my statement earlier, let’s take a look at Super Mario Galaxy‘s multiplayer mode. Well, multiplayer in the sense that two people have controllers in their hands, anyway. All the second person does is wave around the pointer to collect star bits and stun enemies. Sure, you can point novice players in the right direction, but there’s a hole on my face that could accomplish the same thing more efficiently. New Super Mario Bros U’s “Boost Mode” is pretty much the same thing, and I can’t imagine it’s going to be much more compelling.

Why this is one of the big selling points of the Wii U, I don’t know. I suppose it’s because of the GamePad and the ability to give opposing players different views of what’s going on. That is what makes it truly asymmetrical, after all. But even that”s not new. Do you remember connectivity? That Nintendo buzzword from 2003 that never took off?

I may be misremembering, but the first example of GameCube-GameBoy Advance connectivity was Pac-Man Vs. This was a great idea. One player is Pac-Man, and he sees the entire maze on his GBA. The other players are the ghosts, and can only see a small area around themselves on the TV screen. So what you have is a multiplayer Pac-Man, but in a way that the ghost team doesn’t have such an overwhelming advantage. It’s brilliant, but was unfortunately much too hard to actually find, because it was given away as a limited free sample. It was also included in the GC versions of a handful of Namco games, but they weren’t of much interest to me and Pac-Man Vs, despite its brilliance, was not worth the price of a full retail game.

On the other hand, you have The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It featured a really cool multiplayer mode that most people probably didn’t even know existed. When you encounter Tingle in the game, he gives you a device called the Tingle Tuner, which you can use to summon him through a GBA. Here, a second player (using said GBA) is given a radar and several actions that they can use to help or hinder Link. The problem is that once the Tingle player gets bored of dropping bombs on Link, the whole experience is pretty shallow. Maybe some people like watching a radar and occasionally telling Link where a secret is hidden, but I sure couldn’t get my brother to commit to the role. I usually just had my GBA connected and sitting next to me so I could find the hidden items that are only visible through the GBA.

This mode can also become infuriating for the Link player, because every one of Tingle’s actions costs rupees, and those rupees come straight out of Link’s wallet. It’s especially bad in The Wind Waker, because it’s easily the most commerce-driven Zelda game. Also, the bomb thing.

If you really want to stretch, you could probably consider the first Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles to have asymmetrical gameplay. Not because each player had a different radar on their GBA screen or anything, but because the game sucked for whoever had to be the Bucket Bitch and was fun for everyone else.

I’ve never used them, but a couple of the Wii Guitar Hero games have a mode called “Roadie Battle” where two guitarists compete. Each of those guitarists is paired with another player who has a DS that allows them to send power-ups to their teammate or try to sabotage the opposing guitarist. It’s a spin on the “support player” idea that Wind Waker and Mario Galaxy use, but they do it right by keeping that support player engaged at all times, whereas the other games end up leaving the support player with nothing to do quite often. Maybe the game itself isn’t as compelling as a Mario or Zelda title, but at least you’re not bored.

So yeah. I’ve got just a few examples here (and most of them are a stretch at best), but I think I’ve made a decent case that asymmetrical game experiences probably won’t hold up as a Wii U back-of-the-box bullet point. Developers are really going to have to step up if they want to make asymmetrical experiences that will matter. Nintendo Land has at least two variants on Pac-Man Vs, but you’re going to need something with a little more depth than that if you want people to care.

Monster Hunting LIVE

Okay, well not “live” but at least in a format where I’m not just typing words about my gameplay experiences. I really didn’t imagine that I would keep doing this Let’s Play thing past the MegaMan X experiment, but I picked up a bunch of YouTube subscribers during the Super Talking Time Bros 2 LP, so I figured I might as well subject them to some more terrible videos of me playing games and talking about them.

 
This one, about monsters and hunting them, is going to be extra terrible. My PC is strong enough to run the PS2 emulator fairly smoothly, but it’s not happy when I ask it to record the screen while that PS2 emulator is doing it’s thang. Also these things eat up a huge amount of memory and the sound goes kerblooey after so long. That means I have to keep the vids pretty short for this one, and even then I sometimes still have to chop off some footage.

It’s a project subject to technical difficulties and just being a bad idea overall, but I’mma press forward at least until I get bored with it. As it stands, a (mostly) complete Monster Hunter series is going to be like a million videos of me running the same hunts over and over again. Hopefully someone out there is dying to live the experience though YouTube.

Also subscribe to my YouTube channel. It makes me feel important.

CD Review: The Greatest Video Game Music

Foreword: Just so nobody gets the wrong impression, I really like this CD. I just want to share my thoughts on it. Not all of them are nice. Thanks for understanding.

Among the many, many wonderful things Stephanie bought me that were amalgamated into my wedding gift (that girl spoils me rotten) was a compact disc entitled The Greatest Video Game Music. I can’t help but feel like maybe the London Philharmonic Orchestra was trying to start something with me there.

Calling your compilation The Greatest Video Game Music is setting the bar pretty high, as we video game nerds love us some video game musics. A cursory glance at the back of the cover confirmed my suspicions that it was something more akin to The Most Marketable Video Game Music. More evidence of this is that the image on the cover is a soldier with a cello on fire and a helicopter in the background. VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT ALL CALL OF DUTY. Goddammit. Stupid Sony and Activision ruined everything.

Anyway, that’s starting to deviate from my point. Or is it? I don’t know, I’m confused about where I was taking this. I guess something about how many games are represented on here that I didn’t even know had music, nevermind music that anybody bight consider to be the greatest. Oh, sure, you’ve got representation for the mainstays like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy. There are a few you might not not think of off the cuff but definitely belong there, like the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Tetris themes (more on the latter in a bit). Then there’s… the rest.

“I didn’t even know ____ had music.” You can fill in that blank with any of the following games that are represented on this CD: Splinter Cell: Conviction, Fallout 3, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, and Battlefield 2. There are a couple others in there that puzzled me, most notably Bioshock, Oblivion, and Mass Effect. I know that all of these games had music, but none of them had memorable music. Chalk that up to the games being so immersive that I didn’t notice music in the background if you must, but I couldn’t hum you a single tune from any of those titles. The tracks from these games didn’t even seem familiar to me when I listened to them, so that.

Back to that contingent of FPSs though. Is it really necessary to include tracks from both Modern Warfares and Battlefield 2? I can’t imagine that anyone who plays those games cares at all about the music in them. Same thing with Splinter Cell. They probably could have replaced at least two of those entries with something a little more fitting, say a track each from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and MegaMan 2? You know, games with music that people actually care about. Maybe even too much in some cases. Halo 3‘s inclusion I give a pass because it’s just not a personal interest; I’ve heard many people laud the Halo soundtracks.

The two that really make me scratch my head are the tracks from Advent Rising and Angry Birds. I’ve never even heard of Advent Rising. And Angry Birds. Angry. Birds. Nobody but nobody who is going to buy this particular CD is in the Angry Birds demographic. Yes, I played it. But that was before I downloaded real games onto my phone. Is there even any music in Angry Birds past the title screen?

Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto IV, and World of Warcraft also seemed a little out of place to me. But at least those are gamers’ games and not paint-by-numbers FPSs.

So maybe I think the track selection could have used a little fine tuning. Of course I do. Every single (real) gamer who looks at this CD will have a whole lotta corrections to make. There are so many games out there with fantastic music that it would be impossible to pare it down to a mere 20ish tracks, even if you didn’t double-dip for a few franchises. The real question here is if the compilation that the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose works. The short answer is “Yes.”

The long answer, if you’re up for a few more paragraphs, is just a lot more music/game nerd over-analysis and picking. And the first thing that I want to say is that I hit the nail on the nose: the two Modern Warfare tracks and the Battlefield 2 theme are ultimately forgettable. Generic war-sounding tunes, mainly to a marching drum beat with some technoey stuff thrown in to try to differentiate them. Sorry, LPO, you shot too wide. Reign it in and play for the people who love video games, not the people who play shooting games because that’s the fad right now. Gamers love video game music, Bros do not. Not a single Bro will buy this album, and that is the hard truth of it.

The Advent Rising, Oblivion, Splinter Cell, Fallout 3 and Uncharted tracks didn’t make a mark on me. Its not that they were bad, it’s just that they didn’t stand out in any special way. They sound nice in my ears, but not so much that I’m ever going to have them buzzing through my head when my earbuds are out. The track included from Bioshock made me wonder why it was there, because it was more moody ambiance, and not actual music you might listen to independently. I can see why fans of the games might get into any of these tracks though.

You know, what? No. The Splinter Cell track wasn’t forgettable, it actually sounded kind of like it came out of Metal Gear Solid, just less grandiose. I consider that a compliment; MGS games usually have pretty solid soundtracks.

I was impressed by how much I enjoyed the Grand Theft Auto IV and World of Warcraft tracks. The GTAIV inclusion (“Soviet Connection”) isn’t particularly elaborate, but it’s got a punchy percussion line and some beautifully deep horns. The strings throughout lend the piece a real sense of gravitas and tie the whole thing tegether in a neat little bow. The WOW track (“Seasons of War”) works in a strong but not overstated vocal group, and works up from a very slow, somber start into an almost victorious melody before rolling back down into more of a battle theme that makes brief use of an almost tribal-sounding drum phrase. Again, it’s not big and flashy, but that’s probably what makes it so great.

The MGS2 theme is practically untouched, which is great because that track’s official form is perfect. The same goes for “Liberi Fatali” from Final Fantasy VIII. I guess the orchestral version varies a bit, but it hews quite closely to the original and that is just the way I like it. I was honestly a little disappointed that they didn’t do much in the was of arranging for Super Mario Galaxy‘s “Gusty Garden Galaxy,” because since it was recorded by an orchestra to begin with, a more elaborate arrangement would have been the best way to make it stand out. I love the song though; the string chorus alone is enough to put a big smile on my face.

That brings me to the set of songs that sit in a strange limbo between my opinion poles. “Super Mario Bros Themes”, “The Legend of Zelda Suite” and “Final Fantasy Main Theme” are all fantastic songs. So why was I kind of disappointed with their showing here? These are where the legacy of video game music really begins. These are the big three. It is not my place to question them.

I don’t know why, but I have a hard time appreciating hi-fi versions of the SMB theme. It just sounds wrong when played on anything more advanced than maybe a SNES sound chip. The LPO does a fine job with what they’ve got, but I guess I’d just rather they’d taken a piece from a more recent game. Nintendo doesn’t even re-use the original Mario theme all that often (in the main series), and when they do it’s in its natural state or heavily arranged so that it sounds okay without the blippity-bloopities. The underwater part sounds beautiful on strings, but the rest of the song was not meant for real instruments.

I’ve heard this particular Legend of Zelda suite before. I was sad because I wasn’t expecting a repeat. It’s still great though!

The Final Fantasy theme is a stirring string-based piece with some faint horns to give it a little body. It is the most beautiful track on the album. It is so deeply ingrained in my soul that sometimes I get a little misty-eyes when I hear it in a new FF game. What could I possibly have against it? I was secretly hoping it would be the Final Fantasy IV version of “Prelude”, which I like just a little bit more.

The most surprising tracks on the disc, I found, were those from Halo 3 and Mass Effect. Mass Effect especially because I’ve played through the game twice and never noticed the music at all. But if “Suicide Mission” can speak for the rest of the soundtrack, it must be amazing! The track starts of with a fairly simple beat, and then layers on instruments one by one, until it builds into an incredible “here we go to save the world” kind of thing. It’s deathly serious, but keeps your spirits up by mixing in some uplifting phrases into the generally foreboding melody. It’s perfectly suited to the atmosphere of Mass Effect, and I feel like I should give the game another round so that I can stop to appreciate its musical accompaniment.

As I said before, I expected pretty good things from the Halo 3 song, “One Final Effort,” and I was not at all disappointed. I thought it was really weird how much praise the Halo soundtracks get, but if the rest is as good as this single example, I might have to look into actually listening to the full soundtracks.

The brightest spot on this disc, however, comes totally out of left field both in the fact that I wasn’t expecting it to be my favourite track, and also because it starts way off from the source material. The Tetris theme, of all things, is apparently where the LPO decided to really show their stuff. It opens up with a peppy drum line, onto which other instruments gradually join, and then finally launches into a brief piano solo of the main riff. A horn comes in, and the drums return, then things just go out of control with the melodies and beats changing almost as much as the instrumentation. About three quarters of the way it slows down into a horn-driven waltz, and gradually picks up steam again in layered repetitions of the tune until the end.

Oddly enough, it kind of ends up sounding like it was arranged to fit into the Kirby’s Air Ride soundtrack.

Understandably, you kind of have to work with the Tetris theme to make it compelling. In its natural state, it’s repetitive and basic, not unlike Tetris itself. So it stands to reason that if you were going to have an orchestra play it, they’d probably want to do a little arranging. And this is great! The end product is marvelous! I’m just a little disappointed that the rest of the CD (or at least what I’m familiar with) didn’t take nearly as much creative license as this single song did. Granted, you might also argue that gamers want to hear the music they love in a format that they recognize, but there are entire communities based around remixing video game music. I really think it could work.

Anyway, I’ll stop talking about how this CD could be “better” now. It’s great the way it is. Maybe I haven’t gotten that through enough. It’s wonderful. I really like it. Big props to the London Philharmonic Orchestra for this one. If you’re going to buy an album of video game music as played by a major orchestra… well, I’ve never seen another one, but I’m sure this one measures up nicely to any others that could theoretically exist. There are certainly far worse ways to spend twentyish bucks.

I think if I’d seen it live I would have complained a lot less.

“Enough is enough!” Or “MF green stars on MF green plane”

It’s over, they’re done. I have captured all 120 green stars in Super Mario Galaxy 2, and I’m not all that happy about it. Considering how perfect the first half of the game is, it’s a real shame the Nintendo went back and boondoggled the back half. I mean, really, a game-spanning fetch quest isn’t entirely new for the developer (See The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker), but man, there’s never been one quite this intense. If you’ve forgotten between here and the last time I talked about it, once you complete Galaxy 2, each level’s star count is doubled by two or three green stars that are somewhat arbitrarily hidden around somewhere. They don’t have hints or names or anything; it’s all you can to do prowl around every corner of every level until you find them all.

At first, they’re usually just tucked behind a wall or something, and this trend persists right to the end. Eventually some are placed off the edge of the stage boundary, so that if you manage to miss it after hopping off the ledge, you die. The last kind are the ones that are way, way out of the stage boundaries, and require some amazing jumps or powerup use to get. These are obviously the most fulfilling to earn, but it’s still a matter of “you miss and you die”. Not a great design hook.

Anyway, once you haul in the fun 120 power stars and the stupid 120 green stars, you’re awarded with one final special stage called the Grandmaster Galaxy. It’s a big, long gauntlet of most of the obstacles you’ve had to overcome to get this far. And it’s pretty fun! It took me a while to make it to the end, but I did it! I was satisfied with my accomplishment, but a little taken aback that there was no more than the standard “Star GET!” fanfare once I’d won. I was expecting maybe a picture of a cake and a “thank you for playing”, maybe?

Nope. Instead, there’s more game. A little birdie informed me that if you collect and bank 9,999 star bits, you gain access to the Daredevil version of Grandmaster Galaxy. For those who don’t speak video game: one-hit death, no checkpoints. I threw up my hands and declared it a wash. I’m fairly sure that I could do it, but I don’t really have the patience to try yet. After hunting down all those green stars, I’m over the bullspit. I have like 9,500 star bits banked too, so it’s not like I have to grind my way there or anything. Ten years ago I would have been on this challenge like it was nobody’s business, but these days I just don’t have it in me.

I never finished the super-secret final stage in Super Mario 3D Land either. To think people used to identify me by my video game prowess. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

PS: Guy who designed Rolling Coaster Galaxy? We hate you, please die.

Seeing green

I’ve recently knocked off two more to-dos from my 2011 video game backlog/wishlist. At the expense of playing new games, I’ve managed to complete the solo guitar career in Guitar Hero: Van Halen. I was going to go back in to dig out a few more achievements and up my cheevo/gamerscore ratios, but someone at Activision decided that you don’t deserve achievements unless you’re playing in a full band of people who are experts at the game. So maybe I’ll just let this one go.

I also hunkered down and played through the entirety of MegaMan Legends again. Well, the entire story anyway. I wrote off the objective of collecting and upgrading all the special weapons before I started because who has the time to grind that much money? I was shooting for the Shining Laser, at least, but the stupid race game that you need to win to get a part for it is too dumb and hard so I gave up and just beat the game with the buster. Whatever. The charm of MegaMan Legends is in its characters and world design, not collecting everything.

I’ve decided that now I’m going to clean up the rest of the green stars in Super Mario Galaxy 2 – a task I thought would be much less annoying than it is. The green stars are just tedious filler to begin with, but some of them are placed in incredibly frustrating locations. I wrestled with the Whomp King for almost ten minutes, trying to get on top of him so that I could collect the star floating above the fortress in Throwback Galaxy. Once I decided it was impossible, it took me another few minutes to get a good enough wall jump off of his face to grab the star. I know they won’t get any easier from this point on, but if they get any harder, I may just give up on this fool’s errand.

TE on E3

I haven’t really been into E3 the last few years. Less free time is probably a factor, but also I no longer spend every day with a group of people who are also interested (re: the high school clique). I find myself considerably less excited about video game things when I don’t have people to be excited about video game things with.

That said, I’ve generally just followed Nintendo’s E3 stuff this year, which should surprise nobody. I read about the Xbox SmartGlass thingy and couldn’t care less, and I have no idea what Sony’s up to besides that half-hearted Super Smash Bros rip-off. I really couldn’t care either. I play video games because I like Mario and Zelda. I used to like MegaMan too, but they don’t make those anymore.

I managed to get myself pretty pumped up for the big Nintendo press conference, so much so that I actually took a really early lunch break so I could watch it live on my phone. It wasn’t a terribly exciting show overall, but it served it’s purpose: I want to buy a Wii U more now than I did last week. I love the things they’re doing with the GamePad. Asymmetrical gameplay is neat, but not really new for dedicated Nintendo fans (that’s yet another story). I’m much more interested in the way it’s going to be used as a physical inventory manager or sniper scope or TV remote.

Regarding the most controversial part of the presentation, I’m not really that excited about Nintendo Land. Sure, it looks neat, but I’m more of a solo gamer. If it’s packed in with the Wii U I’ll spend time with it, but if it’s sold separately I’ll likely pass. Wii Sports was revolutionary enough that I would have purchased a copy, this seems less so. And Nintendo already has a great game that unites their franchises: it’s called Super Smash Bros.

Obviously I’m going to buy Zombi U. I bought Dead Island, didn’t I?

For some reason, I just don’t feel the passion for new 2D Marios anymore, but I’ll definitely get New Super Mario Bros U. At the very least, I’ll be able to get Stephanie to play with me, and we had an absolute blast with NSMB Wii. I’m less sold on NSMB2, but it’s Mario, so it’s going to be good and I’m going to buy it. Might be a little disappointing after the stellar Super Talking Time Bros 2 though.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star looks great, and I’m sure I’ll adore it when it launches, but I’m just not really interested yet. Maybe I’ll have to go back and play The Thousand Year Door again to remind me how good these are.

Project P-100 and Tank! Tank! Tank! both look like a ton of fun, but seem as if they might wear thin pretty quickly (much like Custom Robo). Online multiplayer would probably be necessary to justify a purchase. We’ll have to see how robust they are before making any real judgement.

Bit.Trip Runner 2? EXCITED!

I really wanted to, but couldn’t really get into Epic Mickey, so I’ll likely pass on the sequels. Sorry, Warren Spector. I know you did your best, and I respect that. It just didn’t click for me. Goes for Scribblenauts Unlimited. I am behind these games 100% in theory, but I just didn’t have enough fun with them to back that up with dollars.

I’ve been sold on Darksiders II since before it was announced. I enjoyed the first one enough to play it twice in a row – a very rare occurrence. Luigi’s Mansion is another game to bear that distinction. It may be because it was the only GameCube game I owned for about a month, but I also really liked it! I hope the sequel launches before Christmas.

I like the idea that the new Tomb Raider might release on Wii U, because I like what I’ve read about it so far. As for any other 3rd party offerings I haven’t mentioned yet? I probably don’t care about them. Although Assassin’s Creed III may be the first game in the series that I play because I dig the American Revolution setting.

The two big games for me are the ones that led the two big Nintendo shows. On Wii U, it’s Pikmin 3. I could play Pikmin over and over again forever if there weren’t so many other games that deserve my attention. It’s a short game, but who cares? It’s super fun! My secret shame is that I still haven’t finished Pikmin 2… the perfectionist in me won’t accept Pikmin losses to anything but boss monsters, and so I inevitably lose focus while trying to savescum my way through its deadly, deadly caverns. I’ll get there some day. There isn’t enough information on Pikmin 3 yet to be excited about it for any reason other than it’s Pikmin 3 and its beautiful HD graphics. I really would love to type more words about it, but there’s not much else to say. Maybe a speculative post in the near future.

In my 3DS’ future is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate. The title could use a little pruning, but the game looks amazing! Lords of Shadow combat and story with Symphony of the Night exploration? Assuming it plays as nicely as it sounds, this could very well be the perfect video game for me. If you’ve played those two games and aren’t excited about what looks like a mash-up of the two, there’s something seriously wrong with you. You really should get that checked out ASAP. It’s probably cancer eating the “good taste” part of your brain. Seriously, talk to your doctor.

If there’s one thing I’m sad I didn’t see, it’s either of the Monster Hunter games for 3DS. I will be broken-hearted if they are destined to remain exclusive to Japan. If the 3DS weren’t so damn region-locked, I would import them and learn Japanese so I could play them. That’s how much I love Monster Hunter. Then again, MH4 isn’t even out in Japan yet, so we’re going to be playing the waiting game for a while anyway.

That’s about it. I’m sure there’s something I forgot to mention, but if I forgot it, it probably wasn’t that impressive in the first place. Now the real question is how I’m going to be able to afford (in both time and dollars) to play all of these games.

Gamers suck

Kay, so I don’t know if you’ve been following E3 at all this year, but it’s really making me sick of the internet. I’ve only really been keeping up with Nintendo World Report ‘s coverage of the Nintendo side of things, and if this wasn’t something I’m so deeply invested into, I probably would have buggered off right after their press conference on Tuesday.

Here’s the issue: I was happy looking at new media for games and a new console that I will be enjoying later this year. Nearly everyone who posted comments on the site was there to whine about how the presentations weren’t good enough or about how much the games shown are going to suck. What? I thought this was a Nintendo fansite? Also, you haven’t played these games yet!

Most comments are pretty similar to this: “Nintendo did a crappy show because they didn’t tell me about every single game that’s in development. Give me more. I am entitled to more. Everything you showed sucks because I already knew about it. Nintendo Land sucks and New Super Mario Bros sucks and I don’t care about Pikmin 3. Show me what Retro is doing!”

It’s a little exhausting. I guess this is more or less the status quo for the internet though, and I just never paid that much attention before now. I suppose that maybe I was on this ridiculous bandwagon back in the day in some capacity, but mostly I just remeber being happy to digest all the new previews and videos provided to me, and not just bitch about how there should be more.

It’s kind of the same thing that happened with Xenoblade Chronicles. You had this game that wasn’t going to be released in North America, and gamers desperately worked to get it brought over. Operation Rainfall was ultimatley two-thirds successful (Xenoblade and The Last Story are go, Pandora’s Tower is still absent). This was a movement of gamers who unrelentingly demanded these games for themselves. Then when Xenoblade was released, half of them turned around and bitched about how the graphics aren’t good enough instead of savouring the hard-fought victory and enjoying the best game available on the Wii.

MegaMan Legends 3 had kind of the opposite story, but the same outcome. The game was announced, and the developers were kind enough to actually set up a website where fans could submit their thoughts on character designs and other aspects of the game. Then Capcom decided to can it because they didn’t think it’d be profitable enough. I was heartbroken of course, but the other nerds flew into an absolute rage, demanding that Capcom continue development because they deserved the game. Why? What did you do to deserve it? What makes you think you’re so special?

I’ll talk more about my personal opinion on Nintendo’s E3 showing in another post, but for now I just want to distance myself from these other gamers who feel they deserve so much more than the game makers are giving them. Yes, E3 could have been more exciting, but stop whining about it. You’re lucky these people are putting so much money and effort into trying to entertain you in the first place. If you don’t like it, go do a better job yourself. It seems like all anyone can do anymore is complain.