As part of the Ambassador Program for the 3DS, (for anyone who bought the system before the price drop), I received ten free games on the 3DS. One of which I have already owned twice, in the legal sense. The Virtual Console series in the 3DS eshop offers up direct ports of existing “classic” Nintendo games, some of which are over twenty-five years old. The 10 free games are just a taste of that. The graphics and interface are all the same as the originals. This means you can play 8-Bit games on your cutting-edge, glasses-free 3D screen, in 2D. The 3DS screen is so near-magic that it’s almost impossible to explain to someone how it works, and they’re using it to play games so embarrassingly outdated that you’d have to take history lesson to learn about them.
With the free games, there’s Super Mario Bros., which I had for my Nintendo, and Super Nintendo. It’s essential to have on any Nintendo system. Except, the version I had on my SNES was better, somehow. They had updated it a little so the graphics were less blocky, and put it in a cartridge that included Super Mario Bros. 2 to 3 and a previously unreleased Japanese sequel to the first game that made more sense than America’s second. The controls for the game, as with all Virtual Console titles, make no use of the touchpad. So I was trying to figure out how to start the game, and I realized I actually had to push the Start button. Do you know how few games use the Start button in any meaningful way anymore? No one even uses it to pause these days. If you’re playing Call of Duty online, there is no pausing. You’re goddamn live. Other games, like Fallout, save so frequently that there’s no point in saving. If a Super Mutant comes up and kills you while you’re peeing, you just restart at the last doorway you went through and get back the ten seconds you lost. In the future, games like Super Mario Bros. will become unplayable because of this kind of button feature. It’d be like taking an inner-city kid and plonking him down in the woods, then expect him to know how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Not only that, but to move the cursor down to select one or two players, you have to push Select. I tapped the down button on the controller about eight times before figuring that out, and I’ve played this game about 10,000 times before in my life.
The other games included Zelda, and the sequel, as well as Donkey Kong Jr.. There was also two Gameboy Colour games, one of which was a golf game featuring Mario. I’ve played golf on handhelds before, but I had no clue what I what I was doing. I picked my club, aimed, set up the shot, hit the power swing on the dot, and still missed every single stinking time. Then there’s a couple of Nintendo games no one remembers ever having played, even if they’ve played them. One of them is Ice Climbers, and the other is Balloon Fighters. It takes about six seconds to get sick of both of them. I pity myself for ever having played games with three lives. How did I survive the 80’s? There’s three kinds of gamers: there’s your grandma (excluding the grandma from “Grandma’s Boy”) who doesn’t know how to play and only does it if you force them to or else they want to fit in, there’s your average gamer who plays recreationally, and there’s kids like the retard in the “Wizard,” who can figure out where the flute is in Super Mario Bros. 3 after having played an unreleased game for about four minutes. If you’re anyone besides the “Wizard,” you’re not going to make it through a whole game in the first sitting without having to restart at the first level by only using three lives. You can be playing conservatively for maybe eight hours, but one fireball or pit will send you back to square one. You’re being punished for playing at all. This is why gamers got this rep for being obsessive nerds in the first place: because it takes an insane amount of dedication and practice to be any good at these games. The higher your score in these games is directly related to how little you score in real life.
I don’t even remember the last time I played Zelda, and I’m running around lost on the world map trying to find the damn dungeons. I’ve died about 35 times and only have one sliver of the Triforce. Dying sets you back to square one, but with all you collectibles intact. Compare that to a modern retro-style difficulty game like Super Meat Boy. Dying sets you back to the beginning of the level, lickity split, not the WORLD.
I also received the Myths and Mavericks downloadable content pack for free on Red Dead Redemption on the 360. Red Dead Redemption is a game I would never consider trading in despite having earned 100% completion in the game. I’ve done everything that can be done, and I’ll still play it. Boycotting trading it in really seemed to pay off, though. Another publisher (Activision) might charge you $15 for the same kind of download features, like new multiplayer levels and playable characters. Rockstar previously released other downloads like this for a fee, but they included new in-game items and game-modes.
And today I beat Halo: Reach on co-op multiplayer campaign on Heroic. Heroic is their version of a “Difficult” setting. It marks the first time I’ve completed an FPS on anything other than Normal, and I had to get an assload of help. It’s not that I couldn’t finish by myself if I wanted too, but the difficulty makes it far too frustrating to be enjoyable, and constantly dying from unkillable alien assassin machines would make it take too long to do. I was paired up with another experience player today for the final level, and it still took about forty minutes more than it should. Beating it, though, meant I unlocked a new helmet in Halo: Waypoint, for use in Halo: Reach. When I play shooters, or any game, I always choose the default “Normal” setting, because to me that’s how a game should be played. If a game is designed correctly it should already be challenging enough without being frustrating. It goes back to the whole Super Mario Bros. aspect, where one too many hits will send you back to the starting gate. If you play Halo: Reach on Legendary, and die, you’re sent back to the start of the level, and the levels take about twenty to forty minutes apiece depending on how you play them. So if you get to the end and die in the final battle six times, there’s three hours of your life gone. Are they wasted? Not necessarily, or any more if you’re playing a different game. It’s all in how you enjoy spending your time.
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