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The Following is a blog I left on my wierd ass "10 Year High School reunion" web site, I'm lazy today:
"OK. So now we get down to brass tacks a minute here. Film is your grandpa's entertainment medium. Do you listen to vinyl? no. and if you do then I am hoping that your carrier as a wedding DJ Is coming along nicely.
So let's talk about the entertainment medium that OUR generation will be remembered as embracing well into adulthood. VIDEO GAMES.
that's right I brought it to the table. video games...you people with kids better get used to the idea that as much time as you think they're gonna spend with those finding nemo DVDs they'll spend fifty times the time with the finding nemo VIDEO GAME. and eventually the memories they have will be of BEING nemo...not WATCHING him. think about it...how many of you remember watching bob hoskins mumble his way through the super mario brother's "Film" then you know what I'm talking about...how many of you would rather watch him than BE mario on the NES?
Yeah that's what I thought...and i mean as much as i like milla jovavich in res evil...the games were still WAY better than the movies.
So having established a base from which to expand, let's talk about a game that has caused a lot of waves:
HALO 2.
this game saved christmas for a lot of retailers hurting form hardware shortages...and certainly allowed the XBox to avoid the same fate as the much maligned DreamCast.
But let me let you in on a little secret...Halo 2 isn't a very good game.
now don't get me wrong...it IS the best first person shooter on the XBox (not the PS2 or Gamecube, mind...those honors belong to Medal of Honor Frontline and it's Spiritual Sci-Fi successor Killzone as well as Metroid Prime's genre re-defining action).
The ONLY reason to play Halo 1 or 2 is if you are a drunken frat boy or girl and have a room full of screaming gamers playing a death match...in which case it is a sublime simple visceral experience..
So whole consumingly addictive is this game that most of the guys I work with (outside of the world of warcraft zombies, which is a whole OTHER sad story) still play HALO 1, a game which came out three years ago...
And that is why the hype around the sequel was so HUGE. These frag addled addicts couldn't wait for what was essential an expansion pack of the first game.
The store is the kind of thing that some fifteen year old sci fi club president would scrawl into the back of his trapper keeper during Biology...It is grade B Sci Fi channel late night CRAP. Laden with weak pseudo religious alegory and contrite tristes on HONOR and DUTY and BEING A BAD ASS. so fettered is it in adolescent fan boy psyche that even the computer is a SEXY BABE...I mean think about it...the computer nerd's ultimate fantasy...a completely programable hot chick....gack...
The level design is a confusing mishmash of wide open expanses and been there done that corridors...all the enemy types are the same...there's onlyl FIVE and you see them all within the first few levels....
This game is so lame that If you wrote an abstarct bulleted list of it's features it would seem like a pale sad immitation of Doom, a game that came out almost 10 years before it....
And in the sequel what does bungie give us...
Gorrillas with rocket launchers!!!!
are the kidding me? i mean the "armor" that these things wear look like it was designed by Christopher Lowell...and I'm supposed to be menaced by this...my Aunt Gertrude wears the same color purple...jeez...
Put simply the ONLY reason to play halo is for the mulitplayer...which is solid...but even on the x box there are better single player first person shooters, project: snowblind...(with music by kurt larsen of information society fame...natch) for instance.
So there it is...my first review for you on the subject of our generations entertainment medium...VIDEO GAMES and I tackled a big un...
next time I'll try something a little less mainstream like Grand Theft Auto.
Comments
Keli Young (O'Brien)
Kelly Young (O'Brian) Mar 24, 2005
Although I have to say that I dont get the whole " grown men playing video games thing", If that is what you would rather do than go to strip clubs or develop a bar hopping addiction ( not to mention the alcohol ) then so be it. I do have to say that I am proud of the fact that my 3 1/2 year old son barely knows what video games are and even if given one would not even know where to begin. Not that these things havent been shown to improve hand eye coordination and problem solving skills, but not in my house. :) I do happen to know of someone who would probably STRONGLY disagree with the whole Halo games not being very good ones.....;) but to each his own. Ryan Arnold
on Mar 25, 2005 at 01:36 PM MT
I can understand the public misconception of video games as being something "for kids", It stems mainly from Nintendos (sucessful) attempts in the 80s to market the Nintendo entertainment system as a Toy. They did this to distance themselves from the video game crash of 1983. After Atari had flooded the market with worthless nearly unplayable garbage for six years, no one was interested in VIDEO GAMES...they were a fad that had come and gone. Nintendo, wisely, included a light gun and a toy robot with the original NES and instead of selling them in high end electronic stores they sold them in TOY stores...
The simple FACT is that the average home console user is 28 years old. And 35% of home console users are WOMEN. The average age of a PC video gamer is even older, around 41 years old...although less women play computer games outside of solitare and minesweeper.
Video games, are just as valid a form of entertainment as any other "acceptable" form of entertainment.
It is an unfortunate fact that video games retain a certain stigma amongst the general public as being for kids when they cost millions of dollars to produce and use more hollywood acting and production talent than many films today use.
I played through Silent Hill 3 with my girlfriend and several of our friends...all of whom are AVID horror buffs and we all screamed like little girls...that game was more frightening, more enjoyable and more real than ANY horror movie that I have ever seen...and I imagine that most other people would agree.
Now I am NOT advocating that CHILDREN should play Silent Hill 3. And that is because it is not made FOR children. It is a video game made to be enjoyed by adults...adults who should feel no more "ashamed" to be seen spending hours playing it than they should when watching "the ring 2" or "the grudge" for example.
They are simply different Mediums delivering intellegent, engaging, adult entertainment...
As far as Keli not letting her kids play games...I am totally down with that. what we need are more parents like her willing to take an active ROLE in their children's lives...they are very susceptable to all forms of entertainment. And I would no more expect her to allow her kids to watch Horror Movies or LIsten to Cradle of Filth CDs than I would her to let her kids play games...
and that is becuase Games are now as dynamic a medium as any other and they are not across the board "for kids".
And as a side note: Halo 2 is BORING it is becuase of girlfriends having to endure endless boring repetitive HOURS watching these kind of derivative unimaginative games that there are less girl gamers out there...that's cause girls are smarter than guys...and they aren't as sold on GRAPHICS as innovative gameplay...and any girl who has ever seen DOOM knows that Halo is just a prettier DOOM...a smoothly palying one...but a derivative knock off at it's core just the same. In fact, Bungie's first game was a Mac game that was designed to be a better LOOKING version doom. and it looks like every game they've made since then...jsut better looking versions of Doom...a game that is almost 15 years old...yawn.James Hardwick
what is your opinion of half life2?
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