So I was flipping through gamesradar and I found a few articles I thought were interesting.  First was a modern review of Sonic 2 and Super Mario World (here).  PC Gamer has been doing a similar thing in the past few issues (btw PCG, if you’re listening, I still haven’t gotten my latest issue even though I saw it on news stands over the weekend.  What gives?).  Gamesradar claims to judge it by today’s standards, but lets face it, SMW is NOT a 10 out of 10 today.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s an excellent game, I loved it on my SNES, and I think it would still be fun to play to today.  But a perfect 10 it is not.  The reviewer himself points out that some of the secrets in the ghost houses are rather obtuse and difficult, and that is certainly true.  But the more important point is that the controls are somewhat “squishy” and imprecise.  This is no small criticisim for any game of any era.  If your controls lack the precision needed for their task, the player is being set up for undue frustration.  I would give the game a 9 based on Gamesradar’s own review, not a 10.  And Sonic 2 being rated by today’s standards would probably rate lower than 7.  Great in its day, probably a 9 by the standards of the time.  But today, his own point on the unneccesary frustration caused by the devs placement of enemies is too much to ignore.  I remember that being a pain in the balls when I played it as a kid, and it often made stop playing (what we today call a “rage quit,” though I don’t think the term existed then). 

As previously stated, PC Gamer has also done a similar feature, and while I appreciate it to some extent, I was upset by a recent article on Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight.  I don’t have the magazine in front of me, so I can’t quote the editor or the issue date (I’m not home, so sue me), but one of the writers indicated the game needs to have its status as a classic revoked.  Um, excuse me?  Look, if you want to review a game and judge it by present day standards, that’s fine.  Most games won’t stand the test of time, especially if they don’t have some sort of stylized graphics that’s universally appealing (like Curse of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, or perhaps even the Secret of Mana).  But lets face it, when that game came out the (admittably overly) complex level design was impressive, you got to fight with a light saber and the force for the first time, the sound was impressive (the first time I played it I remember being blown away that the sound of my footsteps changed when transition to different surfaces.  This was the first time I ever noticed it in a game), and the crashing spaceship level was incredibly unique and generally awesome.  It also had a morality system of sorts, which was certainly uncommon for shooters of the age if not altogether innovative.  Yeah, the full motion cutscenes were horrendous even then, but hey, I’m not saying the game was perfect then.  It was however impressive in its age.  So we come to what truly defines a “classic.”  Is it something we recall with fondness, something amazing in its day even if it doesn’t hold up to modern standards?  Or do we redefine classic over time simply because our own tastes have changed with age (and better video games)?  My personal take is that a classic is a classic, no matter what.  Doom and Quake are atrocious by modern standards, but we don’t revoke their status as classic icons of PC gaming simply because we no longer like pixelated sprites, limited color palettes, or (in the case of Doom, anyway) the inability to actually aim up or down.  You’re free to say the game would suck if made today, but don’t say that it wasn’t great in its age.  That’s just wrong.  Ignorant, you might say.

So, on to another Gamesradar article that irritated me a bit.  This one is about developer closures and general saddness.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a cold hearted bastard who wishes unemployment on anyone.  But I sometimes find it hard to get all teary-eyed about some of these studios, at least for the reasons the editor here mentions.  My first issue is with 3D Realms.  Sorry buddy, but frankly I don’t give two shits about a dev that touts a product for a decade and never delivers it.  Not only they, they seldom even delivered screens or significant updates that the game was still even being worked on.  And then they expect us all to cry for them because they leak some screens after their closure is announced?  Nuh uh.  They took a gamble that this product would keep the money coming in and the publishers finally had enough.  They gamed the system and lost.  According to that repository of truthitudes that is Wikipedia, 3D Realms (the former Apogee; how many of you are actually old enough to remember them and their shareware?) hasn’t release a game they’ve developed on their own since 1997.  That’s 12 years, folks.  Their last release a publisher was 3 years ago, and that was Prey, which was in development for something like 11 years.  That’s just a bad business decision, which is why 3D Realms themselves are gone now.   Someone realized that they were a bad business decision and decided to cut their losses.  Other than Prey, the only non-Duke Nukem releases they published were the Max Payne games.  Good games, to be sure, but we’re still reaching back 6 years to the most recent one.  3D Realms has only themselves to blame for their closure.

The next one that bothered me a bit was the entry on Grin.  Grin, you may recall, made the Advanced Warfighter games in the Ghost Recon franchise.  For those of you that are old enough to remember where that series began, it was nothing like those games.  GRAW 1 was stupidly difficult and GRAW 2 was just mediocre.  And the multiplayer code for both was terrible.  They weren’t awful games, but they certainly didn’t do justice to their progenitor, which also spawned two incredible expansions for the original product.

I’m sometimes surprised by the games people find good enough to cry over when something happens to the franchise.  GRAW, as I said, was decent, but far from great.  I’m surprised Grin had to close, but as the writer of the article mentions, it was for cash flow problems which likely means their publishers were screwing them in some way.  I want to know why they didn’t get TARP funds for the government.  How many jobs could have been saved or created?!  3D Realms scammed the system and lost.  I have zero sympathy for them, just as I had zero sympathy for Daikatana back in the day.  If you make bad business decisions, your company goes under, end of story.  They should have released a mediocre Duke Nukem 8 years ago and they could have continued making marginal products in that franchise and people would have bought it for the name (hmm… sounds a bit like IW doesn’t it?).