The Wrongfully Hated

Resident Evil 6, which was just released in October this year, is the latest in the line of wrongfully scrutinized video games. Just like Duke Nukem Forever and Sonic The Hedgehog before it the majority of gamers and so-called professional reviewers are panning it; describing it as the worst instalment of the main series. While this could be true, that does not mean whatsoever that it is a bad game. It's different, but the series has been on this path for a while; turning into an action game. The problem I have with this is that these bad reviews are given not because of the game itself, but situations around it that sometimes have nothing to do with the game itself.

Let's get some back story here. Capcom was getting a lot of good press over the fact they let the fans be heavily involved with the development of Megaman Legends 3 in 2011. They had a forum where fans could discuss and contribute ideas, and weigh in on what the developers posted for the fans to see. A fair amount was changed in the development process for the fans, and all was going well; that is until Capcom announced Megaman Legend 3 had been cancelled on July 18th 2011. This caused an uproar in the gaming community with a lot of fans swearing to boycott anything Capcom ever were to release in the future. This is when the illogical hate rose to a boiling point for all things Capcom. Also during this time, Resident Evil 6 was announced to be in development and would be released in 2012. Plans to boycott the game by outraged fans began to pop up, though they never really took off.

When Resident Evil 6 was released and the reviews started popping up I was not surprised of the ratings given to the game. While I usually desperately try to stay away from reviews until I try a game for myself, my curiosity got the better of me. Initial reviews came in and they were very low, such as: Destructoid giving it a 3/10 and G4 and joystiq giving it a 2.5/5. One would think from these ratings that it is a bad game. After that, more reviews came in; 39/40 from Famitsu magazine, 4.5/5 from Gamespot and 9/10 from PSM. This seems confusing does it not? At first glance you may just think: “Oh its just the varying opinions of reviewers”. A closer glance reveals something else: that misplaced hate I was talking about. Another game that shares this oddity of such a variety of review ratings is another Capcom game: Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City. Now this just sounds like a conspiracy doesn't it?

Before Resident Evil 6, the game that had misplaced hate was Duke Nukem Forever. The reviews were also quite varied for this game, but in general much lower scores. Before that, it was Sonic The Hedgehog games. Most of them really. There is a noticeable discrepancy in all of these game's reviews. With games like Halo or Call of Duty the reviews all seem to be pretty much the same; Top scores across the board. Then you have games where its evenly reviewed at a low rating like Medal of Honor Warfighter. But then where do games like Resident Evil 6, Duke Nukem Forever and Sonic The Hedgehog fit into? These games can't even be called average games because of the extremes of the different ratings. Hence my thought: The reviews are compromised by outside influence.

A game should be measured on the core elements: game play, technical achievements within the game and audio. Another key element in a review is asking yourself; What did the developer try to achieve in making this game? And did the developer achieve their goal? While all of this is taken into account, it needs to also be backed up with facts. A very important thing I seem to not see in these “professional” review sites. Many of the gamers and reviewers seem to not play through the game they are reviewing. Whether they have the time or not doesn’t matter, they need to do the game justice with a good review, be it a bad rating or a good rating. The thing that bugs me the most with reviews is the focus on things that have nothing to do with the core game like downloadable content. This should not effect the game's rating whatsoever and it's insulting when it does. The dismissal of the good points of a game in favour of bad is just plain lying, and is inexcusable in a professional atmosphere.

A lot of other people only judge from a downloaded demo of a game, which in most cases isn't a full and accurate portrayal of a game. In the case of Brutal Legend, the demo lacked a key game play changing feature(the strategy game aspects) that in a sense makes the game extremely different from the demo. While the demo of Resident Evil 6 really shows off the action aspects of the game, it does not however delve deep into the storyline or the elements fans of the series love such as the creepy atmosphere and puzzles.

I've noticed a lot of reviewers are given games that are not in the genre they prefer. An accurate review cannot be given by someone who does not know the game's genre, the game's history or what the developers are trying to achieve with their game. Someone who reviews Resident Evil 6 should be someone who heavily loves the series and the genre. This person would be the most qualified to do the review as he or she would know exactly what to look for and knows what they want from the game. Someone who likes strategy games obviously might not like Resident Evil 6 as it is in a completely different genre of game. A good comparison of this is reviewers in the music industry. A copy of the new Lady Gaga CD will not be given to the Death Metal reviewer, it will be given to the pop reviewer.

What can be done? Not much if these horribly unprofessional reviewers are still given jobs. The best thing we can do as gamers is to do our best to ignore reviews and get out there and try the games we want to try, without any outside influence from critics before we check out what others think. The gaming industry in general is still in its infancy compared to movies and especially music, so maybe one day the reviewers will grow up as well and we'll have a Roger Ebert of video games. Until then we'll be stuck with people who knock off 2 points because they don't like the company who made the game.

Wonder Boy 3 : The Dragon's Trap

Wonder Boy 3 :  The Dragon's Trap Console-Sega Master System Year-1989 Developer-Westone Publisher - Sega Genre-Platform/RPG After a mediocre sequel to the original Wonder Boy in Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, Monster Land needed it's own sequel. What came was the confusingly titled Wonder Boy III: Dragon's Trap. Let's just drop the Wonder Boy title completely and call it Monster Land 2, which it is. To follow the fantastic platformer Monster Land, we were treated to Dragon's Trap, regarded by many to be one of , if not the best game on the Master System. It definitely is a step up from its predecessor, in almost every way and paves the way for the excellent games to come in the series.   GAMEPLAY Taking place directly after Monster Land; akin to Dracula X and Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Dragon's Trap leads off where the last game ended. You traverse the last castle in search of the Mecca Dragon; fortunately you can't get lost in it this time, and it's quite quick to get to the boss, not to mention you'd find yourself hard pressed to die at the boss since your character is damn near immortal. Once you defeat the Dragon, he curses you! You turn into a Dragon yourself, and you can even breath fire! Pretty cool if you ask me. After, you must escape the castle as it is falling apart. Eventually you find yourself in the game's starting town. Right of the bat you'll find yourself with a password save house, which comes in handy. Say what you want about passwords, but at least you CAN continue your game later because of them. In town there are weapons and armor to buy, a hospital to top up your health and various pathways to start your game. You start with one heart piece, but quickly you find yourself a second in town. Throughout the game these heart pieces are hidden in not-very-hard-to-find places and are much needed to progress successfully. There are many shops in the game that have various weapons and armor for you to buy but there is a catch, and it brings upon the most annoying part of the game. To buy higher end equipment, you need what is called “charm points”. Depending on how lucky you are, this can be extremely aggravating as you will need to grind for these points at some point in the game. They drop off of enemies rarely, but also some equipment raises your charm. There was only one point in the game that this gave me trouble, but it caused hours of frustration. As you progress and beat Dragon's, they turn you into various animals; a mouse, a lizard, a lion and an eagle. Each transformation lets you access different paths in the game, or find secrets that only one form can allow. Early in the game you can only stay in the form you're cursed with by the Dragon boss, but later you find transformation pads, and there is one hidden in town. Not finding this hidden transformation room right away also caused a bit of frustration as I thought I literally got myself stuck in the game. You never get to be your hu-man form in the game however, unless you input a special password, or use a secret with a sword you get in the game. The sword however ruins a bit of the puzzles in the game and I don't recommend using it unless you want to just mess around. Dragon's Trap has very solid, fluid controls, I never once had a problem with them. The menu screen can also be accessed by plugging in a second controller and pressing the d-pad any direction. In the menu screen you can select your equipment and magic, and see how much attack, defense and charm points you have currently. I honestly never used any magic during the game, as I found it kind of pointless. I'm sure some sections would have been easier if I had used magic, but I did just find with just my sword. Like Monster Land, learning how to tackle areas by trial and error is key. The game is not too hard, especially if you have upgraded equipment, but has the right amount of challenge to not be too easy. The game is made a bit easier by exploiting the treasure chest, as they usually refill themselves when you enter a new password to continue a game. GRAPHICS Dragon's Trap is not one of the best looking games on the Master System, that title is held by later games that pushed the Master System to the 16-bit breaking point, but for 1989 it sure was pretty. It's a very vibrant, colourful and interesting world. For such a serious story about curses and vampire dragons, it sure is darn cute! All of the characters you turn into are nicely detailed, well animated, and made to look quite huggable, I'm not sure if this was the point but I want to have plushies of each transformation. Most of the enemies have recoloured versions as is common for the time in games, so you'll be seeing a lot of snakes and ogres. Every area of the game has its own style and setting, including a Pyramid level, a sunken ship, and a Japanese temple. These levels are well designed and thought out, although they can be on the repetitive side, and get a bit tedious when you die and have to come back.   SOUND Some of the catchiest tunes of the series make their appearance in Dragon's Trap, especially the brilliant Desert theme that plays on your trip to the Pyramid level to fight the Mummy Dragon. All of the music in the game is quite catchy and will quickly have you humming along. All of the sound effect in the game come through very well, easily letting you know by ear what is happening on the screen. None of them came across annoying or harsh, and fit within the game nicely. CONCLUSION While Dragon's Trap is surely one of the best on the Master System, it's sad that little know of it. Had it been on a Nintendo console, it may have been put along side the likes of Zelda and Mario, but then again the Nintendo probably couldn't of handled Dragon's Trap graphically, and would have been a serious downgrade. It is available on the virtual console, PSN and XBLA, and highly recommended as a must buy. This game is a piece of 8-bit classic history and needs to be played and known.

Operation Rainfall

The Legend of Zelda Chronicles of Link - Season One

For those of you who refuse to watch a full Randgame Fun Time episode, here are all the current Zelda episodes in one compact neat video! Enjoy!

Epic Dump - Moogles, Mario, Sonic and Wonder Boy!

For your dose of cute, scary and weird gaming things!


It's sure been a while but lets see what can be found on google today!




I'd just like to have a real live moogle, not a cat imposter.




Yeah, badass.




I can see it happening.




Reminds me of when Spongebob and friends come out of the water...



This is quite a nice mini-series web comic about Sonic. Very creepy too




Always nice to have a Mario VS Sonic picture.
Check out more great VS pictures here




Ahhh so thats where Mario ends up when he dies...



http://www.geekstir.com/link-the-most-awesome-dog-ever
URL says it all.




..... I wish I could say this was an exaggeration..

Randgame Fun Time Episode 5! Turtles in Time! Again!

After a three month wait, we have finally returned with our longest video yet! Episode 5 of Randgame Fun Time! Our machine actually picked Turtles in Time to celebrate our 50th video and 5th rand game anniversary in style, so we could revisit the game that started Randgame Fun Time. It may seem lame that its an anniversary after only 5 episodes, but it also took 3 years to have them all come out!
This episode is double the length, and features three brand new Zelda skits, all beginning with a swing-ish remix of the theme song! This time we also threw out the scripts and just winged it! Enjoy!

PC Review: The Beast Within - A Gabriel Knight Mystery (Gabriel Knight 2)

Gabriel Knight II
Sierra
Point and Click Adventure
1995

As any retro PC gamer should know the majority of games for a long time were all adventure games. Adventure games went through a number of different trends going from text games, to point and click 2d, to interactive movie games, to pre-rendered 3d, and finally ending up as 3D games. There were a number of amazingly good adventure games over the years but out of the ones I've played Gabriel Knight 2 was easily the most engaging and entertaining. Graphics If you are anything like me you think full-motion video was the stupidest game related fad of all time. The cheesy acting, lack of interactivity and lame effects overall just destroyed the games instead of helping them. Amongst point and click adventures FMV did manage some decent titles such as Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Rose Tattoo, but none of them were really made better by the use of the technology in my opinion. That was at least until I played this game. In Gabriel Knight 2 the FMV actually helps the game come to life and really adds extra definition to the characters and story. For instance one scene involves Gabriel pulling the hair off a wolf in a zoo while the zoo handler is freaking out and I found myself freaking out as well. Another thing can be said about it when you compare the other two Gabriel Knight games to this one. Gabriel Knight 1 was a 2d game similar in quality of graphics to other sierra games, but when you look at Gabriel Knight 3 with its 3d after playing Gabriel Knight 2, it's like a huge step backward. The 1999 3d just looks awful and doesn't come close to the detail you can find in Gabriel Knight 1 or the life of the video in Gabriel Knight 2. Also the voice acting in GK 1 and 3 although decent in quality is sort of cheesy when compared to GK 2. So the FMV nonsense actually makes the game stand out over the other titles in the same series and really did a huge deal to make this game overall more engaging amongst these story heavy adventure games. The only complaint I can make graphic wise is that in some places the video can be a little low in quality like the Chapter 1 opening video in particular. Aside from that everything is easily recognizable and the only things that look silly are the images of Ludwig and the 3d generated werewolves and these don't really hurt the game so much as make you chuckle a little. So really overall don't use the FMV graphics as an excuse to avoid the game like I did. Story and Gameplay The game is fairly amazing when it comes to story, it makes a brilliant mix between history and fiction and this really makes the plot pull you along. Although it is dead obvious who the main bad guy is from the moment you meet him its very hard to tell exactly how the other characters factor in and how the historical references and clues you pick up fit together until you've actually put it together yourself. For most of the game you switch back and forth between Gabriel and his assistant Grace. Gabriel as a Shadow Hunter, spends his time on the hunt for a Werewolf who has taken to murdering people in the Munich area of Germany and ultimately works his way closest to the danger. While Grace on the other hand spends her time doing research into the past and figuring out how it is connected to the present day killings. Aside from that I can't give any more details on the plot without ruining things as I found it extrememly intriguing how things fit together and drove the gameplay along. Puzzles As with any adventure game the game is centered around solving puzzles to advance the game. For most of the game you have a pretty good idea of what you need to accomplish but you usually have to figure out which of your items you need to use where to get the outcome you need. I found that all the puzzles of this game made sense as far as the story and clues you get go, but I do admit there were more than a few that stumped me. I'm pretty bad at figuring out adventure games myself and I'll admit that most older adventure games are too hard for me to enjoy properly. But with this game all the puzzles made sense even if I had to look up the answers for a few of them. I did not find myself lost and clueless as it is usually pretty clear what you have to do even if you don't know how to go about it. The only puzzle I didn't see coming was the tape splicing bit as there's really no cues on when you have to do it as the place you use it isn't ready until you've actually done the tape splice. Sound The sound and music of this game had no problems I can think of. The voice acting was obviously part of the actual acting of the video so it naturally blends with what you see and isn't an issue. I should say out of all three Gabriel Knight titles that this is the one where I found the voices the best, as I don't really care for the protrayal of Gabriel in the other 2 titles. THe other thing I liked about the voices is the approach to dealing with the game's german setting, since the characters don't know german you are stuck not knowing what they say either and it adds a nice touch of realism you tend to miss in other games where everyone everywhere speaks english. The music of the game is particularly well done. Some of the music is rather interesting to hear, but the main thing is that the music in the game plays a huge part of setting the scene. The music in the game perfectly reflects what the game wants you to feel and plays a good role in bringing the game to life. The only sound related complaint I have is that some of the sounds don't really reflect the setting you see. Like when Grace is getting in the car you can hear obvious natural reverb from indoor recording even though the scene is outside. This issue doesn't appear often, but it is pretty obvious when it does and takes a little bit of polish off the game's otherwise great audio. Conclusion Really I couldn't think of a single major complaint to make about the game, it was easily the funnest adventure game I played and I took pride in myself for actually being able to figure out most of the puzzles. There were plenty of really engaging moments that made the game exciting to play which says a lot for an adventure game, and the game's music really set the tone well for what was going on. If you like point and click adventure games in any form I think you are obligated to try this game. It was a near perfect game experience for me, which never happens. It is certainly worth any and all effort. Note: I was going to do a video of this game but I found if I did so I would be giving away much of the plot and the puzzle answers.