A transcript from me in my groovy pants still looking for my socks
The E3 Trailer Park
A cynic can be described as someone who doesn?t hold out hope that anything in the future will be good. And frankly, I find it harder and harder to understand why any gamer wouldn?t be a cynic at this point. Film starring Morgan Freeman would have you believe that hope is your magical shield against the tribulations of life. But the games industry has collectively taken that shield and shoved it up our ass so many times, it?s probably time we started leaving it at home. To put it in another, less stupid way, if you go by the evidence of the last 10 years and just assume that the new Sonic the Hedgehog is just going to be the usual punnit of snot, then you won?t get you?re heart rebroken.
So an appropriately mediocre E3 has limped past for this mediocre year in gaming. Nintendo have proudly announced their intention to make the Wii do what it was always supposed to anyway. While Microsoft and Sony busily compete to see who can rip off each others consoles the most. And of course, a gaggle of upcoming game trailers were wheeled out to stir up excitement. But since the eventual quality of most games is going to be essentially determined by spinning a roulette wheel where the numbers one through thirty have all been smeared with puss, I thought I?d better fly in and point out that we?re still living in a cruel corporate run society that treats you like a wallet mounted on the back of an entranced magpie. So here?s why all ye should abandon hope for the shiny objects being held up for us to gawp at.
First up Prince of Persia, now I thought the sands of time trilogy was the best game series of the last console generation. I?ll pause for a moment so you can all go find your socks that just blew off. Ok, so the combat in game one was a basket of farts, and game two stumbled a bit when the prince went off his angst medication. But over all the characters were solid and the time controlling game play worked crazy well with the sudden death platforming, to the point that I now feel my fingers unconsciously groping for the rewind button every time my toast lands butter side down. And it seems the new Prince of Persia is going to take all that and piss boiling oil into its eye sockets. Leaving aside for now that the music in the background sounds like someone teased a cat?s bollocks with pliers for a few minutes while throwing ball bearings at a piano keyboard, the setting seems to have shifted from historical Persia to somewhere between Final Fantasy 10 and 12. And by the look of the character design the concept artist has been spending more then a few holidays there himself. Maybe Prince of Persia?s appeal lies in the grounding of reality dusted with the fantastic elements of Arabian myth, but Fuck That! The kids are into anime these days and let?s all jump around on the ceiling dressed like twats.
Speaking of which, Final Fantasy 13 also has a trailer and it looks good. Of course it looks it always Looks good. But my philosophy with game trailers is that footage of prerendered cinematics doesn?t count, so bearing that in mind, the actual length of the FF13 trailer is around point three of a second. The rest consists of androgynous twelve year olds running around being improbably awesome and giving absolutely no hints as to storyline. But as an educated guess I?d say it involves some kind of evil authority, one or more heroes who were once associated with the same, a half baked anti industrial hippy sub text, and all in all will closely resemble what you?d get if George Lucas?s brain fell out and he made a new Star Wars movie with everything that was ever good about it replaced with dodgy CG and laughable angst. Oh wait.
The new Resident Evil 5 footage indicates that Capcom are counteracting the accusations of racism by including an African female sidekick resembling a white woman who?s been dipped in tea. I?m sure the game play will be fine because Resident Evil 4 was fine, and bugger all seems to have changed except now we?ve traded up from infected Spanish peasant village to infected African peasant village, and the dialogue is still going to be so bad that every single line hurls you out of the experience like you?re on a fucking trebuchet.
Now then, Fallout 3. Those of that are paying attention will no doubt notice that all these games are sequels, and for those of you who aren?t paying attention, *clap clap* OI! E3 was very much sequel boulevard this year, which might be partly why it was such a damp squib. What? Is there some kind of virus that attacks creativity going around or something? Twenty years ago, in the eight bit era, games could be about French chefs riding giant stick insects while wielding a gun that shoots velociraptors. These days a game?s considered original if the gritty well armored soldier protagonist has a mustache. Anyway, to rope this wild wandering steer back on topic, Fallout 3 is an RPG about a gritty well armored soldier protagonist exploring a ruined city where everyone is either a mutant or a jerk. I?ll admit that it looks very pretty, but then so did Rudolph Hess. Also it?s by Bethesda developers of Oblivion and patron saints of games that look awesome in screen shots and preview videos but ultimately play like bowls of scummy dish water. Case in point is the demonstrated combat system where the game cuts to a dramatic angle to watch you execute a successful kill, which is groovy pants the first time, but since it seems to happen with every kill, I?m sure repetition will swiftly boil it down to just plain pants.
Finally, a brief mention of Gears of War 2. That was it.
So that concludes this little adventure in sport spoiling. I?d like to clarify that somewhere in the flinty pits of my petrified heart I?m open to the possibility of all these games potentially being fun, except Final Fantasy 13 obviously. But my intention is not to troll for once, but to argue that it makes the most logical sense to be pessimistic. After all if the game?s good, great. But if it?s bad you?ve lost nothing. Plus you get the satisfaction of knowing that you?re cleverer than fan boys, which is right up there with winning a beauty contest again Steve Buscemi, but still, it?s a good overall rule. Never let yourself get excited by trailers, unless it?s the new one for the Watchmen movie. Oh yes, I can never get enough big glowing blue men with their celestial lads hanging out.