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Satisfied following a thorough whipping of Gradius V, I strolled around the Konami booth, where I found Chris Woodard. He said that Silent Hill 3 was the one game of the show that was better as a trailer than as a game. He'd showed me the faces in the trailer -- there's a guy with stubble, and his lips move mostly realistically. Chris Woodard remarked that such perfect real-time cinemas made him yearn for Shenmue 3. I said about the same thing. I award Silent Hill 3, then, the first annual Chris Woodard award -- or, playable game that's better as a demo.
Arm-in-arm like rosy-faced schoolgirls, Chris Woodard and I then sat on the carpet beneath a loud jumbo television and watched some Konami preview trailers with freakish delight. Silent Hill 3 was looking good, and Metal Gear Solid 3 was looking good again. Firefighter FD18, also for PS2, intrigued us, mostly because it doesn't look bad at all. With a story involving a troubled firefighter, the woman he loves, a mad bomber, and gameplay that boasts your ability to "RESCUE TERRIFIED SOULS," Firefighter FD18 looks like both a smooth enough movie-game and a collection of some original ideas. I probably won't play it much, if at all -- that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it. It, and the next couple games I'll detail below, collectively win the first-annual tim rogers award for games I can appreciate without ever playing.
Konami's Cy Girls (PS2) is an interesting case, as well. The trailer boasted lots of full-motion video and plenty of story. You can play as a female gun-wielding assassin or a female ninja or a female . . . something else. The trailer made the game look infinitely more interesting than any of the slew of recent movies about dueling professional killers. Was it because I knew Cy Girls was a game I could play, or because of something else?
I actually did play the game at one point; it's got some neat little tricks to it, such as letting you fire at enemies from the ground as you lie on your back -- and it's pumped full of bullet-time slow-mo effects for people still amazed by that sort of thing. I didn't get to play as the ninja girl. I might not play this game further. Still, I can appreciate it.
It's a good thing, I believe, for me to appreciate these games I don't particularly like. The industry needs more like this -- more small-subject games with storylines of movies I don't care to see. As long as everything is of high quality, and as long as good, fresh ideas pop up every once or twice in a while, I'm better than good to go. This will show people that games mean business.
Likewise, Sega's Headhunter, for PS2, was something movie-like that I probably won't play, yet can appreciate. It's cyberpunk-y enough to remind me of Shadowrun, and that's a better than good thing. It's nice to see this kind of diversity floating around, even if I'll probably never get around to playing it.
There's a game with Jet Li in it, too. I don't know the title. I can appreciate it, though. We need more people like Jet Li willing to help out on shit, unless it's as bad as that fucking Bruce Lee game that came out last year.
Sega's Altered Beast, of which I only saw clips, makes me a little sad. It wins the when one series becomes another, and makes me think, 'what the hell?' award.
Sure, it looks polished nicely enough. It has monsters, and transforming characters. It has some kind of story involving secret agents and werewolves and a giant corrupt company. It reminds me a little of a less-inspired Resident Evil, and it puzzles me at the same time. This is an old game -- one of the oldest -- being brought back in a new genre, with new graphics, new sound. It feels like one of those movie remakes of an old, old, old television series. Seeing Altered Beast in demonic, dark, detailed 3D made me see a rift between the games of today and the games of yesterday. It's an ambiguous rift. For one thing, it looks like today's Altered Beast belongs to a different -- not merely "changed" -- medium. It's like comparing the Charlie's Angels TV show of the 1960s to the too-recent Charlie's Angels movie. They belong both to slightly different media, and slightly different times.
In this regard, and many others, Sonic Pinball Party is another ballpark, another league, and another sport. It takes familiar characters from actual videogames, puts them into a different medium -- pinball -- and then puts that medium onto the medium belonging to the characters in the first place. I've played better pinball before -- hell, I've played better pinball games involving NiGHTS before. I've played pinball with better physics before -- bumping the machine causes too drastic a jump -- and I've even played better pinball on Gameboy Advance before. I'd stick with Pokémon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire. And not just because it has Pokémon in it. Or maybe I'll just keep playing with unlimited balls on Devil's Crush.
[next: Technique For Technique's Sake]
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