"M" is for Mature

When I’m playing Left for Dead or Halo I expect to find a well rounded bunch of players (mostly boys) who are ready to kick some bad butt, not a screaming nine-year-old.

Both of the games mentioned are rated “M” for mature (or immature, depends how you look at it) players due to sex, violence or language. I understand the video game industry has some of the most stringent guidelines in ratings, but I think it’s better safe than sorry, especially when you consider how sue happy people are.

However, it is very unsavory to me to find a nine-year-old playing online at one a.m. on a school night. Sure they may be home schooled, but it still isn’t healthy for them to keep such irregular sleeping hours.

I understand some fathers buy games for themselves and want to enjoy it and let their children enjoy the fun, but at the same time it frightens me knowing children are shown such adult themes and violence. It may not be real, but why expose a child to it in the first place, especially when they may not understand what is happening.



I feel like the parent is being shellfish or downright irresponsible when they buy or let their children play mature games. I know kids games can be boring, but your parents suffered through endless board games with you.

I do feel that children’s games have become a bland mix of un-adventure and ground down plot, but there are still a few games out there appropriate for kids and fun for adults. It may take more work to find these games, but it’s the responsibility of the parent, not the gaming companies, to guide the child to appropriate games.


There is also a lack of knowledge to what these games hold within their boxes. I advise parents to buy a gaming magazine and read the reviews for upcoming games their children may want. Of course they may wine and complain, but you are the influential adult, so just say no.

I do believe this world is trying to make children grow up too fast and this has made the gaming industry loose touch with their child like side. Kids buy games too, but it doesn’t mean they have to be bland or boring, everyone was a kid once, just try to remember what excited you then and make a game out of it.



It’s hard to find games appropriate for Timmy, especially when he reaches the pree-teen age, where being a child is questionable, but being an adult is impossible. Gaming industries seem to have forgotten how to tell a good story and go for shock value.

For me, this has made games a little more than grotesque at times. There is a large difference between pushing the envelope and plainly for the sake of gore. I wouldn’t say Left 4 Dead or Halo have crossed this line, but games like Dante’s Inferno have crossed it, mainly with the excuse, “we’re in Hell”.

Parents, it’s time for you to just say no and tell video game companies what you want. There are games for kids, adults and families, the gaming industry has tried to accommodate but. we are the power consumer, we control what our children buy, take advantage of that power and give your child a healthy happy life.




Games I Recommend for Kids:
A Boy and His Blob: Wii
Legend of Zelda: Windwaker: Gamecube
Any of the Lego Adventures (Batman, Indiana Jones, Star Wars): Multiple Consoles
Any of the Super Mario games (I really liked Mario Galaxy): Wii, Gamecube, ect
Banjo Kazooie: Nintendo 64, New game on X-Box 360 (You can download it on the X-Box)
Pokemon Snap (or any of the Pokemon series, this is just my favorite): Nintendo 64 (Downloadable on Wii)
Spore: PC
Zoo/Roller Coaster ect...: PC



Little Big Planet: PS3
Viewful Joe: Gamecube
Pacman: Multiple consoles
Dance, Dance, Revolution: Multiple Consoles (and different versions, or plain rip-offs)


These are just a few of the games I grew up with and played (and still play), but don’t be afraid to explore yourself. I find these games are the least lame children’s games available.

Remember NiGHTS?

Quickie: Don’t Buy

Remember Nights, on the Sega Saturn? I used to spend hours at Sears playing the game and having no idea what I was doing, but it was fun to have the almost unlimited freedom to roam a beautifully mystical world with a character that looked like a jester in a purple leotard. Well it’s back on the Wii…

BORING!

I just wanted to fly, I loved flying in the game, but you have to play as a pre-teen running around collecting her Ideya…sounds like idiot to me…

But even when you have the chance to fly you have to Dualize with NiGHTS…it sounds like a sex term and instantly looses its innocent charm.

When you do have to play as the human they walk around like ducks and are horrible to look at. Your only weapons are the Blue Chips and it’s all timed so you can’t focus on the games beauty at all…and there isn’t very much, because the landscapes look like they took a Picasso painting and put it through a shredder.

I found myself pressing (+) at every cut scene, unfortunately you can’t skip. I don’t need all of the whiny drama or storyline to make the game better, it actually made it worse because the characters were as thin as paper.

Personally I can do without the story altogether and fly, by jamming the nunchuck stick to the right…yes…they even ruined the enjoyment of flight by making it as restrictive as a nunnery.

What is the point of having flight in a game if there is no freedom in it? It’s like giving a child a bike with flat tires; too much effort to ride, so they just leave it to rot in the sun and rain. It’s the same with NiGHTS, no freedom equals no enjoyable play.

It was repetitive and felt like a never ending torture flying through loops and chasing down keys for a pointless mission from the horrible storyline. The freedom was lost from the Sega Saturn I’d experienced and turned into a suppression via Nintendo.

One boss, Bomamba, was such a pain in the butt I just gave up on the game. You had to roll all the kitty heads…that’s right heads…into little holes in a certain amount of time…and there were many stages of ulcer causing pain.



I must have tried for two hours to complete this boss, but those kitty balls just wouldn’t fall in, especially if there was a hill to roll over.

The developers were trying too hard to add sense to the NiGHTS universe. Honestly I would have been satisfied with a little prologue and a simple storyline of saving children’s dreams or something but instead the player was given flat character children, boring levels, complicated bosses and limited flying, which killed the game ultimately.

Don’t try, don’t buy, it will just make you cry.

The Wii is Losing Hardcore Gamers

When my father bought the Wii for the family, I was ecstatic to try out the motion sensor gameplay.

He bought all the right games: “Mario Galaxy”, “Twilight Princess”, “Mario Party”, it was great, wonderful, until I started playing.

I played “Twilight Princess” on the Gamecube and enjoyed the plot twisting, interactive and tear wrenching gameplay which was all completely lost because of the flippin Wii mote.


Swinging your arm to wield a sword is a novel idea, but once my arm became tired, the immersion was lost. I knew I wasn’t a reincarnated warrior saving Hyrule, but I didn’t need to be reminded with a cramp.

I blame parents who blame video games for causing obesity in children. It’s your child, take the game away, throw out the junk food, but OH NO, that’s asking you, an adult, to change your habits for the betterment of your child.

I fell sorry for Nintendo, because they have almost defeated the purpose of playing a game by attempting to make it healthy.

The Wii does well when focusing on ideas like “Wii Sports”, because it’s short, simple, and doesn’t need hours of play to complete. Furthermore, most of these types of games provide little to no emersion for the player so there is nothing lost when you feel the real pain in your arm from bowling.

Let’s be specific, the Wii is losing their serious fanbase and gaining the casual gamer; a player lost to Xbox and the Playstation. So, despite attempts to make classics new on the Wii, I believe it has seriously backfired because of the lost emersion of the player in the game.

However, Nintendo is far from dead to a serious gamer, mainly because of the option to download old classics and play with an actual controller. This is only a slight saving point for the Wii, because if a game is not enjoyable with the featured controller why bother playing the game? Also, when you have to play old games to enjoy a new system, it defeats the purpose of buying it.



I think they found their error and are attempting to fix it slightly by letting gamers play with a normal controller, but if they continue to turn out tired classics, they will still loose their oldies and just have casual gamers left.

Nintendo needs to try something new with their old classics because goombas are only so impressive and finding temple weapons, like in “Twilight Princess” is a tired collecting strategy dying hard and fast. If they don’t, I guess us fans will have to convert to the X-Box.

The Finish Line

Finishing a video game should be a honor for both player and game because it is an accomplishment shared by both programmer and player when a game is worth the gameplay.

I will admit I do not finish the majority of games because I come to the moment where the game looses its sense of immersion and the game and becomes grinding.


In “Fable” there was a little bit of this, but the fact I could kill everyone in the
entire town and own it kept me very entertained, along with the witty sense of humor and sick plot. But in games like “Chrono Trigger” and most of the “Final Fantasy” games I come to a point where I have to level up to progress further.

My opinion is a game should flow in a way where the character should be able to progress with little to no grinding, like “Prince of Persia: Warrior Within” a game I loved for it’s storytelling, amazing visuals and the slow-mo sequences when heads would fly.

I also hate games which have a good premise and decide to interject another game. For example “Thief: Deadly Shadows” had a nice concept of rob everybody and fence their stuff, with a little bit of a mission until you were blasted to the past.

I lost interest immediately, not only because it was creepy, but why did they have to add a time paradox to a thief game? It was downright moronic.

So, I don’t like playing games that grind you to level up and games that try to sneak in different games. These types are at the top of my crappy, other than ones that generally just suck, like “The Sims”.

Sims Castaway: Please stay away!

Quickie: Don't Buy




I’ve been playing one version of the Sims or another since it was conceived by the sadistic minds at EA Games. Unfortunately my dying laptop could barley handle basic Word functions, so I had to stay away and sighed at the loss.

Finally the Sims started to release on X-Box, PlayStation and Gamecube, and the Wii and I gladly regained my god powers making my sims burn in their own kitchens and die in small dark rooms.

But time after time I have been disappointed with the console versions of the game. For example, when the Sims 2 appeared for the X-Box I found out that you could not have children within the game. You were stuck as a sterile sim only out to complete goals and climb the Simcorp ladder.

The Sims: Castaway seemed like a fun buy and if I didn’t like it I could return it in 7 days. Thank goodness for the liberal return policy.

You create a character at the beginning of the game, very similar to the original standbys: clothing, skin tone and occupation. Also, you can create other crewmembers to help you with chores and tasks.

At first you are alone on an island and it’s okay at fist, but if you decided to be completely alone, it turns into the forever Castaway movie.

EA attempted to make Sims more like a RPG. But walking to different zones to collect certain materials rather then just moving about the world omnisciently and assigning tasks becomes very tedious.

One of the largest design flaws I found was when you build a shelter and make a mistake, you cannot simply delete it. You have to go into “GRAB” mode, trash it a and if you do dismantle it, you still loose all your precious supplies. It’s annoying and time consuming.

If you did decide to create additional characters the next step in the game is to find them. When you do, hope you didn’t make a lazy sim, because they are entirely useless, especially when the concept of a multi-sim game is to eventually make a thriving tribe. GOOD LUCK!

Everything is more difficult with this RPG style. Talking to sims is impossible because you have to constantly move around and catch up with the other sim. You also have no control over the other sims unless they are in your tribe. And how do you build a tribe? By talking. UGH!

Everything about this game is difficult to achieve because of the basic game flaws EA overlooked. These could have been altered and the game could have been very enjoyable, but in short the game sucks.

I’m still waiting EA, when are the Sims going to have a decent game to play on a console? Playstation, X-Box and the Wii are all online now, so why not develop a Sims 2 and also have expansions available to download online? This would allow players to have the feel of Sims 2 they want and they can expand their world with a click.

I spent too much time playing this game looking for a promising development, but the graphics were average, the third-person play made everything harder, deleting became a bureaucratic process, relationships were hard to develop and the goals were very tedious.

Same ol Zelda Just Prettier

Quickie: Buy



When I purchased my Nintendo 64 at the age of twelve, I had no idea I would enter into a love affair with the Legend of Zelda series. But after twelve years of battling evil in the land of Hyrule I can only scream, LOVE YAH LINK!

Gamers have been longing for a Legend of Zelda title as impressive as the Ocarina of Time. To be honest Windwaker was fun and had a wonderful plot, but it was not what people expected to find on the Gamecube.

Finally advertisements for Twilight Princess appeared and I believed the second Ocarina of Time had come.

After waiting six long months I brought the Gamecube version of the game home and played until my eyes were red from exhaustion.

Honestly I can’t say I love the game. I played it through once and never returned for a rerun.

This is because I believe the game was too short and almost too easy. Perhaps it was to adapt to the Wii system controls or because I knew what to expect from a Legend of Zelda game, but it still held to the lasting themes in the series.

When we did eventually obtain a Wii my father did buy a copy of Twilight Princess.

My father would sometimes play Twilight Princess until midnight. Frustrated and tired he would often ask me or one of his grandchildren for help.

But it seems that he just becomes upset when we explain how to conquer an enemy or solve a puzzle, so usually I leave him to figure it out.

One day he said, “I lost my sword, and now I’m a wolf. Is that supposed to happen?”

My sister and I giggled, “YES! There is a wolf on the cover dad, come on!”

I love how they designed the wolf. They bring it to life by using very small details like when the wolf finds an item, he sniffs at it. I also like how the attack system of the

The landscapes between shadow and light realms are dramatic and add intensity to the game play. One instance of this is when you are on Hyrule castle as a wolf and you fight these one-red-eyed-black-birds that trumpet eerie sounds when they attack.

I’ve fallen down so many times from the castle heights, the noise still haunts me from beyond the game to the point where I feel like I’ve entered Hyrule’s version of The Birds.

All the traditional themes from past games were present in Twilight Princess: the puzzles, the elementally inspired dungeons, many lovely ladies Link can’t have and new twists. Personally I love the transformation from and the new history reveled with the introduction of Midna from the Twilight Realm. It’s a unique twist, especially because my first thought was Hyrule was being attacked by aliens. I had no idea the creators would open and close a new world so quickly however.

When Midna becomes her true self and breaks the portal to the Twilight Realm, I cried. Yet again Link looses one of his loves. Is this a tragic effect of fate and reincarnation? Is Link stuck in a soap opera where he never can find happiness in any woman he meets? They either become Sages, or are too old, too young or are truly his sister.

Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing a game where Link breaks against fate and could even choose to become a villain. I understand it sounds a little too like Fable, but if there was an added future motif, it would give the game series new legs to run on.

Honestly the collecting items-dungeon slumming-saving the princess RPGs are outdated and need a revamp. Fable was just the beginning and I’m sure other RPG genres are fighting to keep up. This was the game we were waiting for since Windwaker. Windwaker is a cute game, and I developed a love for it, but I wanted the realistic showdown released as a demo video for the Gamecube.

Every game I’ve played in the Zelda line has been great. I have no qualms and hope to see the hits keep on coming and expanding to new horizons on the Wii system. But I will be extremely disappointed if Nintendo fails to come out with another Zelda game for the Wii, because honestly Twilight Princess was for both the Gamecube and Wii. They need to make a unique game just for the Wii, show off a little and add a little more modern element in order for this series to honestly survive to their next console.

Sim Animals Massacre

Quickie:
Don't Buy

There are so many games I would like to review, but I’m going to begin with my most recent purchase, Sims Animals.

The Sims games have always been entertaining, but after controlling every bowl movement for a week, I realize there is a real life to live. What is even sadder is I keep coming back to the many Sims spin-offs, like Castaway, forgetting my former disappointment.

Sims Animals features you in a forest under distress and you have to make friends with animals and save the forest from, humans I guess. From how you move around you are more like a god, like in Black and White, and I have to say it wasn’t very easy to move around.

The controls are overly complicated and sensitive, one of the Wiis downsides, and for some reason god, you, needs a backpack where you can hold small animals. That’s right you can carry a animal with you as well as nuts, seeds and other crap.

It’s almost like “Harvest Moon” another game where you care for animals and plant seeds, run a farm, but it’s much more fun for about the same amount of time for any Sims game.

There is also a multilayer feature, not really, especially when one player continuously moves around and disturbs what you are doing, often making situations worse. Even if you zoom out to allow more play room, you still can’t see anything.

Also it has a strong environmental message, humans are bad and only a godlike figure, with a backpack, "Dora the Explorer"?, can save them. However it encourages children to interact with nature...through a video game...honestly just take the kids on a hike, it will cost about the same with gas prices.

In the short run it’s fun for kids, but even my niece completed it in less than a week and was board with it. So really it’s not a repeatable buy, especially for fifty bucks.

I really do believe that the Sims franchise is tapped out because there are only so many ways you can manipulate reality with accessories simulating life. And I will say Sims 2 simulates the most mundane life ever very well, but it’s only fun for about a week and it leaves you depressed because you just drained fifty dollars of your gas money and twenty hours of World of Warcraft playtime where you are at least playing with actual people.

Introdution

I'm female, I play video games. Right now I currently have a Wii, but I had a N64, PS2, X-Box and Gamecube. I've been playing video games since I was a child and one of the first was 'Beneath the Root' a very old game full of pixels and a complex story line.

I hope you enjoy my game reviews and I'm sorry if some of them may be a few years late, but I'm a poor student working on a BA degree.