04/02/00

A Pat on the Back or A Kick in the Sack

It’s time to deal out kudos to those in the biz who deserve it… and painful, debilitation criticisms, also to they who are deserving. Let’s go!

A big Pat on the Back to Rare, for coming forward and admitting that the removal of the face-mapping feature in Perfect Dark was, indeed, to stave off possible criticism in light of recent kid against kid violence, and not because of technical difficulties, as Nintendo had previously claimed.

On that note, a hearty Kick in the Sack to the people at Nintendo for believing that the proper way to deal with the aforementioned situation was by claiming that Rare didn’t have the programming talent necessary to achieve the face-mapping perfectly, instead of telling the truth and calling attention to the fact that, face-mapping or not, Perfect Dark is still all about shooting your friends in the head with a variety of realistic weapons.

A big, "put all of your strength into it" Kick in the Sack to the bastards at Prima games, who have proven that they’ll put any lie on the cover of their strategy guides just to sell a book. Their Official Dead or Alive 2 guide proudly proclaims "All Secret Characters and Moves Exposed" right on the cover. A look through the guide reveals a bare-bones move guide with absolutely no secrets of any kind included. Uh, you guys ever heard of truth in advertising? Apparently not.

In a lose-lose situation, I have to plant a swift Kick in the Sack on Tecmo as well, for forcing people to resort to Prima’s crappy book because the manual included with Dead or Alive 2 contains approximately 5% of each characters actual repertoire of attacks. Remember the days when game companies actually packed complete instructions with their games? Me too… nowadays they shortchange the gamers so they can get their cut of the strategy guide pie.

Activision and Neversoft deserve a Pat on the Back for their handling of the Tony Hawk sequel, due later this year. They went to the fans for input on what new features should be included… and then they implemented them.

This is off the subject of games, but I think that the Academy of Motion Pictures deserves a nut-busting Kick in the Sack for completely overlooking Star Wars in their yearly ass-kissing contest, er, I mean awards show. Yes, I know that it’s hip to hate Star Wars, but come on, the movie should have gotten Best Achievement in Special Effects – the film was, like, 95% special effects! There probably wasn’t a scene in the thing that wasn’t retouched or enhanced digitally. The Academy saw fit to give the award to The Matrix, a film that had about 2 minutes of really cool special effects, mostly utilizing that already aging Gap commercial freeze frame rotoscoping pan. Whoop-de-doo.

While we’re handing out swifties to the family jewels, I have to throw a Kick in the Sack to Sony for their "we said-we said" news bulletins about PS2. First we hear "It’ll play some DVDs. Then it’s "It’ll play all DVDs." Next they say, "It definitely won’t enhance old Playstation games visually." Now they’ve decided "It will smooth out the graphics and improve load times of some older PS titles." Come on guys; make up your minds, already! And for the love of all that is good, can’t you decide whether the thing should stand vertically or sit horizontally? Is it that hard?

Microsoft deserves a Pat on the Back for finally acknowledging that, yes, the X-Box exists and they are indeed planning to enter the gaming market. Competition breeds better games, I say, and the more competition there is the higher the likelihood that bad games will be weeded out.

Speaking of bad games, let’s deliver a Kick in the Sack to Core and Eidos for continuing to milk the Tomb Raider franchise for every single drop of moolah they can squeeze out of Lara Croft’s disproportioned body. Do we really need a GameBoy Tomb Raider game? Or a movie? Or a comic book? Or a DC version of the super sucktacular Tomb Raider 4? Or a new PC game? Lara was cool… 4 years ago! Stop the madness!

Finally, THQ is either going to get a Pat on the Back or a Kick in the Sack in the near future when they release the first video game based on one of my personal favorite movies – Evil Dead. Too bad THQ is far from my favorite game company. And if they mess up this game, they’ll be on the receiving end of a nad-pounder that’ll have them tasting testes for months.

Cast and Crew   News, Articles and Reviews