Insert Credits

My misfortune can be your salvation, readers. Due to unforeseen complications in trying to obtain my passport to attend the first ever Penny Arcade Expo on the East Coast in Boston (PAX East) this year I have a 3-day pass and no way to use it.

So instead of fueling my depression over missing such an incredible event by taking the pass out for a night on the town, where both of us drink so much we can’t remember the night before and wake up in an embarrassing situation for both of us I’ve decided to hold a contest!

Hit our new Facebook fan page, become a fan, and tell Insert Credits why you want or need a 3-day PAX Pass. We’ll say the contest runs from this very moment until Thursday, March 18th. Be sure to leave a valid email with your comment, otherwise we can’t get ahold of you to grab your address to FedEx this. Don’t forget to follow the Insert Credits staff on twitter!

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Team Teamwork has released their mash-up of various rap artists and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time entitled The Ocarina of Rhyme, and it can be found here. Head on over, give it a listen, download it if you like it and toss a few dollars their way for a job well done.

If DJ Hero had songs like this I bet it would have killed at launch, eh?

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I’m not a fan of action games. While I don’t dislike them as much as say, driving sims, I actively avoid them just the same. There is something about a game that when it is boiled down is just boss battle after boss battle with cannon fodder in between that absolutely turns me away. A game needs a little something more to hold my attention.

I’ve never beaten Final Fantasy VII. I disliked everything unique about that game, and suddenly without story to push me along it became boss battle after boss battle — with cannon fodder in between.

Bayonetta has even less appeal. With almost every element stripped clean and all the focus aimed squarely at how ridiculous the game is, it is as if Bayonetta only exists for the sake of existing. It would be like a book that only contained the phrase “I am a book, look at me.” over and over again. The difference is that nobody would lavish praise on the book because it lacked substance, and it would quickly be forgotten. Sure, it might be referenced down the line as a literary experiment, but it wouldn’t win any awards or receive critical acclaim; it would be a curiosity, a novelty. Nothing more.

People remember “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy” because of how disturbing the scene is, not because the author Jack Torrance has unleashed a masterpiece of writing on to paper from his typewriter. If his writing of the same line over and over had been earnest, he would have been laughed out of the publishing office.

What drew me to Bayonetta was the supposed greatness despite a totally nonsensical story. Here was a game that was (supposedly) so outlandish that is simply must be experienced. She wears her hair as clothing, and when she casts spells her hair turn into demons and she almost gets naked! She is designed to be the perfect woman, with long legs and a shapely bottom and she would be fifteen feet tall if she actually existed.

What I expected was a game that would both amuse and shock me and instead I found a mediocre experience with no lasting impressions. Bayonetta is not sexy. She looks to me how I assume I look to the majority of other people — freakishly tall. Her near nakedness isn’t shocking; why should it be? Is it simply because she gets almost naked in an action game as opposed to something more risque like a JRPG? Why is this so shocking when we routinely see females in games with breasts larger than their heads; or a specific example in Fran, the rabbit-eared, leather-and-lace fetish gear clad, sultry speaking female from Final Fantasy 12? Is it because of how self-aware it is that suddenly it is a huge deal?

What disappointed me most of all about Bayonetta was that is actually has a story that is easy enough to follow for anybody who has sunk enough time into the JRPG genre. Protagonist is the last of an ancient and powerful clan/ tribe/ race, suffers from amnesia and goes on a journey to regain memories and discover their place in the world they inhabit. A story so cliche that normally it could be ignored, but the self-referential nature of Bayonetta makes it shine in a different light — it is the most generic story they could have, and so it is simply another facet of the game screaming “I AM A GAME” at you.

Yes, Bayonetta. You are a video game; just not a very good one.

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Looking back at 2009 I’m glad that I put together my unofficial official game of the year list when I did. Dragon Age: Origins sounded like it should have been a contender from all the hype, and as it moved on to pick up honorable mentions and awards from other websites and publications I thought to myself, “You know, I probably should play this.”

I think I could have done without.

Bioware used up their free pass on Mass Effect when they released a game that had enough story to drag me towards the end, but no gameplay to support itself. Mass Effect suffered from terrible controls, long load times and a plethora of graphical problems. While Dragon Age doesn’t seem to struggle with load times as often as you might expect, it definitely has some serious problems in the other two areas. Collision detection is abysmal. Moving towards an enemy and pressing the attack button will work as often as not, depending on if you are faster than your party members. If they get there first expect to watch your team bump into each other as they try to move up to the enemy, getting stuck on each other in what is reminiscent of a bunch of angry shoppers pushing and shoving each other to get the final few items on sale.

Dragon Age has a nice touch when it comes to slaughtering big evil things. Every now and then when you strike the killing blow on something bigger than yourself it cuts to a slow motion sequence where you kick back and watch your hero decapitate or eviscerate an enemy in true badass style. Beware, then, of pressing the action button when this happens. Having accidentally mashed the “attack” button as it started my hero promptly engaged in conversation with another party member, leaving the character frozen in place and the slow motion effect active long after the enemy fell to the ground. I lost track of how many times the camera would focus in on a wall when I spoke to one of my party members, leading to abruptly ending conversations out of annoyance and eventually not bothering with conversations at all. Twice while speaking to a member of the party the voice acting simply didn’t cut in right away, so I was treated to several seconds of mouth animation — and then several more seconds of the speech I should have already heard.

The saving grace of Dragon Age is the sheer size of it. A story of epic proportions, Dragon Age offers you six unique origin stories as well as three customizable classes to culminate in an experience that might only be rivaled by Fallout 3 in terms of length. Writing and voice acting are one of Bioware’s specialties and it’s almost enough to make me want to go back and play through a second time.

Almost, but not quite enough.

Dragon Age: Origins is one of those games that probably would have gotten away with a lot more if I hadn’t gone into it expecting something fantastic. Much in the same way that I don’t like Fight Club because it had been hyped up far beyond what it actually is by the time I saw it, Dragon Age falls far short of the mark because of the hype.

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Happy 2010, everybody.

Being unable to continue my solitary process of deciding where some of the best games to grace 2009 should fit in a Top 10 List I decided to cut it back to a Top Five. Then, after waking up this morning and staring at the list it dawned on me. Who needs a list when it’s all about one game?

Assassin’s Creed 2 wins it, and here’s why.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves wasn’t in the running because I haven’t played it yet. When faced with the choice of what game I plan on purchasing at any given moment I actively avoid picking up a sequel to a game I haven’t given a shot. Since I haven’t played the first Uncharted I haven’t played the sequel, and so it didn’t make the list.

Batman: Arkham Asylum got knocked out of the first place spot because for as much as I enjoyed playing it, all that game came down to was repeating the same process over and over. Hide, grab dude, kill. Hide, grab dude, kill. Was it fun? Yes. Was it Game of the Year fun? No.

Borderlands would have taken the award if we were trying to pick Social Experience of the Year. As a game Borderlands didn’t really do it for me. I never felt the urge to play it for hours at a time, or found myself thinking about it while I was at work. After the two extended play sessions I put in the only thing I came out with was the enjoyment of having played it with friends, and I could get that from any multiplayer game.

Speaking of multiplayer games, Modern Warfare 2 didn’t make it because I made a point to avoid it. I’m not a fan of the first person shooter genre on consoles, and as I do all of my gaming there I had next to no interest in picking it up at full price. I’ll grab it when it’s sitting around the $20 or $30 dollar mark, play through the story and be done with it.

Demon’s Souls was too difficult for me to consider it as Game of the Year. That isn’t a personal statement, it’s fact. The difficulty in Demon’s Souls is what makes the game fantastic, but it’s also a barrier that keeps far too many people from enjoying it, or even playing it.

Assassin’s Creed 2 has the perfect blend of elements. Drab, uninspired scenery taking place in the present day contrast wonderfully with the vibrant world of Renaissance Italy. A soundtrack that blends with the game in such a way that if you take the time to listen to it you can enjoy the music, but also holds back enough that you aren’t focusing on the music over the action of the game. Gameplay that is simple enough that even the worst gamer can pick it up and have fun, but with enough extra elements that anybody who really wants to dive into the combat an get that much more out of the experience. A story that is interesting enough, and well written enough that it catches your attention almost instantly and keeps you engaged until the very end.

I can’t heap enough praise on Assassin’s Creed 2, but I can make it the Insert Credits 2009 Game of the Year.

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It seems like a lot of the big names in games journalism are putting together some sort of Game of the Decade lists, using overly complicated means to achieve a result. Lists of all shapes and sizes are appearing or getting ready to appear and all of them sound like a lot of needless work.

My thought is that one could apply Occam’s Razor to the concept — the simplest strategy in my mind would be to pick any place that has been covering games for the last decade, take their Games of the Year and go from there. It seems insane to me that because it’s Game of the Decade suddenly people think they need to include every game that has come out in the past ten years.

If it didn’t win Game of the Year the year it came out why would it win Game of the Decade?

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Demon’s Souls is one of those rare games that is built around decent (but not amazing) controls and offers up decent (but not amazing) graphics, on top of what can only be considered a generic story and suffers from a distinct lack of immersion but still manages to elicit an almost subconscious response from players, something modern games seem to have trouble accomplishing.

It’s almost like the title serves a double meaning to anybody who grew up through the past ages of consoles. The first is the most obvious and least important; the actual souls you collect as currency inside the game. The more obscure meaning seems like a reference to the legions of fans trying over and over to accomplish the near impossible — defeating one incredibly difficult challenge after another. When you fail in Demon’s Souls it isn’t because of bad controls or bad AI, but because of your own error.

Demon’s Souls manages to cause a reaction in its install base that draws them back in and keeps them repeating the same tasks over and over in an effort to finally best them — the fight on the treadmills in Double Dragon, passing every Rainbow Road stage in Super Mario World, even getting past the first twenty minutes of Mischief Makers.

The game manages to evoke an emotional response. It manages to dig its nails in because it can make you feel regret at having given up and a determination to push through to the end. There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground. You are either somebody who loves the game and find that the above sentiment applies to you, or you put the game down and will never touch it again. Neither choice is right or wrong, but the fact that the choice exists outside of technical issues is something special to consider.

Demon’s Souls is on the Insert Credits Game of the Year list because despite almost being an average game, it has that special something that turns it into a fantastic choice for any gamer, especially the ones who feel their games lack a real driving force, not just a story driven one.

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I’m going to preface this blurb by saying that I’m not that big of a UFC fan. If a group of friends are going out to make a night of hitting up one of the local sports bars to catch a UFC pay-per-view I have no issue tagging along, having a few beers and some wings, betting quarters on the outcome of any given match (hint: I always pick the guy who looks the most ridiculous) and having a good time in the process. But I’m not a hardcore fan. I probably couldn’t list a dozen different fighters. It was this pack mentality earlier this year that drove me to purchase a copy of 2009’s UFC game — it was a game that a large enough number of my friends wanted to play, but couldn’t afford and so I picked it up.

UFC 2009 is in the Insert Credits Game of the Year list because it’s actually a pretty great game. It looks good and plays very well, not to mention the excitement in the room when having discarded the manual immediately we first learned how to move from just standing and fighting, to taking an opponent to the ground and learning how to fight on the ground, to learning how to utilize the different ground positions, and finally learning how to perform a submission move and complete it to win a match was so incredibly alive that you could see it in the eyes of everybody playing and everybody else watching.

The game caters to anybody who happens to be a UFC fan, sporting a nearly complete roster so a participant can play as their favorite fighter in any given weight class, but more importantly showcasing gameplay unique enough and addictive enough to bring in people who aren’t and need not be a fan of the actual sport.

Simply taken as a fighting game UFC managed to catch a good number of people completely off guard and managed to secure itself an illustrious spot as a standby game — it’s one of the rare few that a group of gamers can consistently return to and have a good time. Street Fighter and Tekken cover the angle of fantasy based fighting games, but UFC 2009 stands alone this year to represent great reality based fighting.

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Check it out, our very own Liveblog starring the 2009 Spike VGAs.

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The year is finally winding down.

We’re past the deluge of game releases that is November, and already coming up on the Christmas season. The Spike Video Game Awards are tonight, and following the hours of unintended hilarity they promise to provide we’re going to be looking at Insert Credits’ Game of the Year nominations. So kick back and get ready for Monday, where we’ll be doing a quick look at every game that made the list and chime in if you’d like.

Update: It took four bundles of coaxial cable and five cable splitters, but I officially have cable television in my room. All set for the Spike VGAs.

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