Epic Default Productions

I’ve been noticing a trend lately.

As one of my previous posts states, I was out of gaming for a long time, so this has probably been a problem for a while now, and it might be too late to fix. But that’s not going to stop me from bitching about it.

What happened to Multiplayer? No, I’m not talking about online gaming, I enjoy that. I think it’s an awesome innovation (for consoles, I realize it’s been around for a while on PCs). What I’m talking about is the invite your friends over to your place for an all out, split screen battle royal. Where did that go?

Oops, I said a dirty word, split screen. I can hear all of you shiver at the thought. You’re the people I’m looking at while I pound the keys to oblivion writing this. Most “multiplayer” games out there now require you to have an Internet connection, and your only interaction with your opponents outside of the physical game is through an earpiece and, in rare cases, a camera.

I’m probably going to catch a lot of flak for this, but that form of interaction disinterests me. I’d much rather have someone sitting next to me who I can beat with my controller when they are sniping me from some hidden location, or fucking up the drums on “Still Alive.”

Yes, I still play Halo, because it has split screen. The game itself is very meh, but the multiplayer aspect, be it online or in person, is still great to this day. Especially when you play “Drunken Halo”, the drinking game the other Fanboys and I came up with one night. If you’re looking for a quick way to get smashed, try it. I have yet to play Call of Duty 4 (it’s in my Game Q, relax) and Rock Band (I’m as pissed as you are), but I’m sure they would inspire the same joy that Halo does in me.

When GTAIV came out, and I heard it had a multiplayer, I was ecstatic. I envisioned my friends and I reeking havoc together within Liberty City. Needless to say, I was rather disappointed when I found it’s only online. However, that I can understand. The world is pretty damn big; so it would probably be a lot of searching for each other, followed by 10 seconds of a good firefight, then back to searching again.

You probably saw Anthony’s review on Mario Kart Wii, in which he asked Nintendo “What the Fuck?” when describing their multiplayer aspect. No longer can you have an all for one battle to see who is supreme. You now need teams, and I have to say, I agree with Anthony. I’m not even going to go into how much Brawl’s multiplayer sucked. I will say this though; cool your jets on the wide-angle lens.

I’m excited reading about Quantum of Solace, the next game in the 007 series. I think we all can agree that Goldeneye was the forerunner to multiplayer gaming on consoles. In turn we all can agree that, every other Bond game after that should probably be thrown into the same dump that ET is in. So when I hear that the same guys who did CoD4 are putting this game together, I get a little giddy.

So here’s an open request to Treyarch. Please, please, PLEASE keep the multiplayer on a single game. Don’t make me have to get on Xbox Live to play with others as Bond. Let’s be honest, the campaign mode, more than likely, will be underwhelming at best. And if that’s the case, it will be hard for me to get my friends to buy it, just to play online. Please, let me, this one last time, invite my friends over, order a pizza, let the beverages flow, and have a fun night of actual, social gaming.

I’ll get off my knees now.

Where it really ticked me off was Burnout Paradise. The Burnout franchise is screaming for multiplayer. The split screen driving on the previous games were just a schizophrenic joyride through the streets looking for your next target. Paradise moved that online, too. So now I have to get my friends to get the game, just to have some sort of multiplayer fun with it.

I think I may have just found the reasoning behind this. Like most things, it’s the almighty dollar. Why put a decent multiplayer system for home gaming in a game, when, if you take that out, more people with have to buy the game in order to play with each other? Then, more than likely, you’ll have to spend more money to get the Internet connection, and, in Microsatan’s case, more money to be able to use that connection to play your game with others.

And people wonder why the game prices are so high. It’s not the cost of production, packaging, shipping, whatever. It’s the fact that we are willing to pay that much, simply out of necessity. The sad part is I have no ideas as to how to fix it. They snuck this under our nose and we allowed them to do it. Now, it’s such a nail in the gaming universe, that the only way to stop it, is to give up gaming all together. That’s a situation that has a zero to nil chance of ever happening.

Jesus, time to schedule another Drunken Halo night.

Please digg this

On the premier episode of Fanboys, Jonny becomes an assassin, Anthony questions their friendship, Iron Man and Jenga for the Wii are reviewed at epic length, Mario Kart for the Wii is more compact, and we ask Olivia Munn the eternal question of…Really?

If you go to fanboys.blip.tv…you can actually subscribe to the video feed in itunes

So here’s the deal. I’m going to take some time away from my busy schedule of blowing up people in space (although I swore under oath to Congress that Columbus was not my fault) and doing whatever menial tasks Dr. Wily can come up with (he writes the spec sheet on the robot or else he … well you don’t want to know) and give out a written version of a rant I’ve been boiling over like a bad English dish.

The issue at hand is the Wii Fit, though my complaints don’t lie with the system itself. Seeing as I don’t own the damn thing, that makes it particularly hard to critique the Wii Fit/balance board/most expensive scale you’ll ever own unless you’re a Hollywood actress and you have to have the one blessed by Tibetan monks because it’ll make you feel that much better and that will actually equate to losing fucking weight. In the end you just throw up or get surgery so fuck it.

But let’s get back on track before this becomes something completely different and very scary. The real beef I have with the Wii Fit are with the producers and the consumers. Yes, you, Shigeru Miyamoto, aka god to some (Tim Curry?), and yes you, the people that are actually reading this because you can (hopefully) find humor while turning your inner eye towards the proverbial mirror to look at one’s self with an unbiased point of view. For all you others, I’ll let you stir over the concept that I might actually critique the people that would read this rant of mine while I go on to the aforementioned.

Shigeru Miyamoto is the game designer whose crackpot idea it was to create a white piece of plastic for people to stand on as they play a game. When talk first started about the Wii Fit, all Miyamoto would tell gamers, in a nut shell, is that Fit is great and that you should own it. What? Who are your frackin’ advertising writers and why the frack are they not fired already?! You completely missed the biggest frackin’ selling point of Wii Fit. This is a system that utilizes weight balancing so that in combination with motion sensoring from the game controllers, you can utilize your full body to play a game to the extent that 80’s to early 90’s movies and the gaming glove had us dreaming over all those years ago without the bulky as hell suits to wear, though I’m still waiting to be able to be scanned into my games (thank you, Tron).

Nintendo completely missed the point that they have created an accessory to the Wii that makes it fully interactive. Like full body interactive (let the vibration and sensory feedback jokes commence). If you want to ski or snowboard but live in Houston, Texas (sigh), then you can pick up a Wii Fit and Wii Ski all for about a quarter of the price of plane tickets to Keystone, equipment rental costs, lift tickets, and a collection of earmuffs and mittens that will only serve to compete with socks for drawer space once you get back home. Not to mention that you don’t have to deal with waiting in lines and if you epically fail, which you will, you don’t have to worry about the inevitable group of 20 something girls skiing past you and giggling as you’re sprawled frame writhes across the slope in agony (this is not autobiographical… I swear). Miyamoto and Nintendo, in their infinite and questionable wisdom, instead decide to cock tease us with the point of how the game will make people get off their fat asses when they game and learn how to exercise on a regular basis, which, don’t get me wrong, is great. But if that’s your goal, then just go ahead and fucking say it. Don’t make these blanket statements for the sake of not being sued later that the Wii Fit will not make you fit. Of course it won’t if you don’t work at it. Buying a gym membership doesn’t mean you will lose twenty pounds.

At the same time I’m not saying that the Wii Fit is going to be a miracle sent down from the heavens to cure obesity across America (although I figure that if I try hard enough I could be the next ‘Jered’ for Wii Fit). All I’m saying is that if you want to put “Fit” in the name but you are saying it doesn’t make people fit then just call it the Wii white plastic board of fun (iBoard and iFun were already taken and iWhite was deemed not PC).

This leads me to the second partition of this Wii rant. I’m talking to you gamers. Yes you, the people that sit around drinking Balls and Game Fuel and yelling about how stupid the Wii Fit is. What the hell is wrong with getting up and doing some yoga or stretching or running in place? Are you really that afraid that it will lead to the eventual and horribly despised regular workout routine, trips outside, hiking, biking, or the like? Even if you want to stick to your house, at least you are moving the atrophied arms AND legs a bit and getting your heart beating beyond 90 bpm for something other than walking across the room for a Mountain Dew or yelling at the fucked up and overly sensitive controls for Mario Kart Wii (see my review to come in our first episode of Fanboys). Revel in the concept that if you really want, you can be a Fanboy (or Fangirl, but I’m going to make the vastly short leap of logic that this does not apply so much to them) and be somewhat healthy without having to choose between one state of being and the other.

Also, this is a gaming system to be used by everyone. I’m sure we’ve all met with a group at someone’s house to play some Wii Sports. It’s fun. This makes it even more fun, which then equates to the greater chance of interaction with other peoples. And no, Xbox Live is not interaction. Sitting around with a headset for hours on end yelling obscenities and digitally tea bagging people is not interaction. And I’m not going to even get started on the god damn teenie-bopper, gamer hybrid wannabies that are out there for the sole purpose of annoying the crap out of me and making my times on Xbox Live a living fucking hell.

What the Wii Fit does is give you an even greater opportunity to invite some friends (that you can actually touch and aren’t made of plastic) and others over to have a few drinks and continue to enjoy the Wii. Hell, you could get social kudos for owning this damn thing from people besides your group of gaming buddies that you meet at Taco Bell to eat all but confirmed artificially flavored Styrofoam and discuss strategies with. Use it to start a conversation. Meet women. For gosh sakes you guys, meet some god damn women before you turn 35 and you miss out on the good times because at that point it pretty much becomes socially mandatory to marry someone and you end up getting women that either walk all over you, you don’t really get along with, or you mom ends up giving you the hookup with (once again, not autobiographical). There is nothing wrong with inviting members of the opposite sex to your place, particularly if you have a Wii Fit to entice them. You should be thanking Nintendo for inventing gaming that all people can enjoy. Just don’t get so involved with the damn games that you shun the women away.

So now that this monstrous dish has cooled to a semi-edible temperature level (290 degrees Kelvin?), I’ll put my soapbox back into my closet. Other issues warrant my attention and I need to get back to accomplishing my quasi-evil and utterly meaningless deeds.

Have a great weekend.

Because of errors with the digg system, please digg here instead. Thank you.