And since I have so much time on my hands, I get the chance to try weird new shit like this:
After the so-so original All Stars Racing, Sega finally managed to put at least some interesting franchises into their new game. The Golden Axe music (at the end of the video) as well as Gillius Thunderhead himself, are welcome additions to this kart racer. The first time I heard parts of the original Panzer Dragoon soundtrack on this game, I grew a major nostalgic boner. You should have seen it and you would have been proud. While I'm generally not in favour of techno remixes, I'm fully aware that an unaltered version of that old game's OST simply isn't very suitable for racing, so they did the right thing.
That said, the other 50% of the game are still plain meh. Football Manager? Super Monkeyball? Samba de Amigo? Does anyone in the US and Europe give a shit about any of these games? Do we really want to race a fucking football manager?
I was born and raised an orthodox Segan, but even I know that the guys at Nintendo are so much more aware of their own franchises and how popular they are. They know how to milk that shit. Dear Sega, why does Ristar only get a cameo appearance? Why are Toejam & Earl and Vectorman only considered for possible future updates? And what the fuck happened to James Pond and Rocket Knight Adventures? I understand that you have to put that annoying Alex Kidd in there, even though everybody hates him, but the way you blatantly ignore Phantasy Star and Shining Force hurts my inner child more than Michael Jackson ever could.
Oh, speaking of retro - I've recorded a few moments of Ragnarok Online 2 noob gameplay, just in case you're somewhat familiar with Ragnarok:
Alas, the game comes at least 5 years too late. In absolutely every way. It was supposed to be released well over a half decade ago, technically it's close to WoW classic and the gameplay, well... WoW classic at best. I really wanted to fight my way up to knighthood, have a go at Baphomet, do all the cool shit I loved about the first Ragnarok, but after the first 100 or so "Kill 5 X" quests and the usual amount of FedEx, I just couldn't take it anymore.
It's the kind of shit that drives me away from all MMORPGs. Even if the quest system was a bit more active and engaging like it's done in Guild Wars 2, I just don't have the patience to spend several weeks leveling up a single character, only to spend the next couple of months hanging out with raid guilds to farm a set full of stupid purple items. One might argue that all RPGs are about progress and building a character. Thing is, one should enjoy the way there, not loathe it and hate how time-consuming it is. If you've ever played P&P RPGs, I'm pretty sure you've done so for the fun of it, the stories, the company and not just suffered through the whole thing because you were hoping for some phat lewt at the end of the night. But that's exactly how MMORPGs feel to me today. I repeat stuff I hate to get items I want. And once I have these items, well... it's fun to parade around town for a day or two, until you realize that everyone already owns the same shit and people don't really care about your gear, anyway. Unless your gear is shit, of course. They'll care about that, trust me.
Of course what I'm doing on Mass Effect right now makes me a bit of a hypocrite. It all started with this:
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| I soloed gold difficulty. Twice. |
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| And got this fun new "Lone Wolf" banner as a reward. |
Well. It's almost the most difficult one to obtain. There is one more title, 'Best of the Best', which requires you to obtain Lone Wolf and every single other title out there. So I'm going for that one now, because of everything I said in the first paragraph.
So, doesn't that mean I'm just repeating shit I hate over and over again, just to get a stupid title? Maybe a little bit. But it's not really like running the same old raid instance for weeks until I throw up. In order to get this thing done, I need to master a huge amount of characters and guns. Finish X amount of matches with this character, survive X waves with that character, score X points with a certain gun, you get the idea. I have all classes and weapons unlocked, there is no lengthy leveling treadmill like on an MMO, so all I have to do now is play the game with different toons and gear each day, reach the requirement and move on to the next one. It's utterly pointless, but it's fun. Every idiot can be good with their one favourite character, set of skills and items, but it's a lot tougher to get good with all of them. Besides, there simply isn't a very large amount of players with that title around, so there are bragging rights involved. Yay!
I don't think we've ever geeked out over a game so much. I mean, look at this shit:
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| "I wanna move to Mass Effect!" |
Good science fiction is so much harder, because it needs to be plausible. You're working with technology, which is entirely fictional, but based on theories and physics, which make the entire thing somewhat believable and understandable. Shit has to make sense. I've known nerds, who could easily hold hour-long speeches on how the Enterprise's fucking warp drive works. It's not fucking space magic, it's matter and antimatter and a what have you. Okay, Mass Effect rarely gets that detailed and technical, but it's original, unique and plausible. It's just more inventive than, "Let's mix bloodthirsty orcs, steampunk dwarves and furries and call them Charr!" There, I said it. They're furry orcs, who build steam tanks. It's simply not that innovative.
Anyhow, enough bitching. I'm running out of precious Sunday. More gaming needs to be done! Onward!
-Cat
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