Rob's Rants: What The West Really Wants
Filed in archive Features on January 27, 2008
Matt Casamassina of IGN.com wrote a blog this week, defending his buddy Mark Bozon over his No More Heroes review. Why? Because Bozon had the temerity to give it a 7.8.
As usual, the response from the mind numbed message board set was predictable. Personal attacks, lame brained arguments, and general ill will were voiced to the IGN review staff.
I should premise this with the usual fine print about not having played No More Heroes. But to be honest, the more I hear about it, the less interested I am in it, at least as something I might pay full retail price for. Why?
Suda51, the famed developer behind the game, specifically designed this game for "The West." Meaning basically America. So what does a game designed for us entail?
Apparently huge gouts of blood, liberal uses of f-bombs and swear words, and potty humor.
Thanks, but no thanks.
I would like to think that making a game for Americans means that you have unbroken gameplay. Is that too much to ask?
It's really too bad that No More Heroes goes down the path it does, because the fighting mechanics sound outrageously fun. Now, being a gamer, I can handle a little violence. I'm not a pacifist. Yet it is the whole package that has me turned off. If you just had the gouts of blood, and you didn't have the language issues, I might have tried the game, for instance.
Gamers have the mindset that everything should be A-OK in terms of games like this because the gamers commenting on message boards are usually young and single. Though I was never really that way even when I was young, I will tell you that as a husband and father I do care about these issues more.
No More Heroes has a right to be in the marketplace. Yet I'm going to withhold my dollars (which is my right), because I for one don't like being stereotyped in terms of what I want to play. Make a great game, not a decent game with an M rating. IGN's Mark Bozon should be congratulated for delivering an honest review, when IGN was one of the main outlets promoting the game all of last year.
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Tags: No More Heroes No More Heroes Review on IGN Mark Bozons No More Heroes Review Third Party Games on W
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Rating: 9.00 out of 4 vote(s) cast.
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Response from:
Josh Pollard
(01/27/08 6:22am)
Response from:
Rob Howard
(01/27/08 10:27am)
It is true that I played Gears, but I hated the language aspect. It's partly why I gave it a B+ over at the videogamecritic.net forums (for which I was lambasted by the elitest, core gamer die hards).
It's tough to make good decisions on M rates titles sometimes. Resident Evil 4 is M, yet I would consider the language tastefully done.
I'm less concerned with the violence generally than all the f-bombs.
Basically what I'm trying to say I think is that I don't want to be pandered to. If you need to use the "M" rated "toolset" to make your game, fine, but it is exceedingly obvious, in my opinion, that sometimes these tools are used for shock value and not organically. I definitely thought that was the case with Gears.
It's tough to make good decisions on M rates titles sometimes. Resident Evil 4 is M, yet I would consider the language tastefully done.
I'm less concerned with the violence generally than all the f-bombs.
Basically what I'm trying to say I think is that I don't want to be pandered to. If you need to use the "M" rated "toolset" to make your game, fine, but it is exceedingly obvious, in my opinion, that sometimes these tools are used for shock value and not organically. I definitely thought that was the case with Gears.
Response from:
J.B.
(01/27/08 1:35pm)
I really do want to play this game since, at its core, it sounds like it's a pretty satisfying beat-em-up! And a 7.8 score shouldn't be enough to flat-out drive anyone away... if this game "needs to succeed" for the Wii to do well, I'd be OK with an IGN score like that! But I understand... it *does* drive me crazy when I encounter game elements (particularly language) that seem to have been thrown in just because "Western gamers would like it". Wow, I'm impressed. Let me tell my friends that I like Game X, because that will definitely help me broadcast my overall machismo factor. Also, hot chicks dig it ;-) Hot naked chicks. That want me.
Response from:
Rob Howard
(01/27/08 5:21pm)
I might be a little harsh with No More Heroes, I admit that. I want to give it a rental.
I've been a little more terse on this topic, probably from my daughter like, never sleeping *ever* (which makes me more terse about everything) (-: But one of my long term philsophical goals is to lightly nudge the industry in the direction of caring about the culture in which we live, and the impact we have on it.
I do, in fact, appreciate that Suda sought to make a game specifically for Wii when so many other companies are raining down ports on us.
And while I'll continue to lightly nudge on these issues, rest assured that it is hard to decide sometimes what is appropriate and what is not, when it comes to cultural stuff. But I think the answer is to at least care, as opposed to not care at all.
Excellent debate, guys.
I've been a little more terse on this topic, probably from my daughter like, never sleeping *ever* (which makes me more terse about everything) (-: But one of my long term philsophical goals is to lightly nudge the industry in the direction of caring about the culture in which we live, and the impact we have on it.
I do, in fact, appreciate that Suda sought to make a game specifically for Wii when so many other companies are raining down ports on us.
And while I'll continue to lightly nudge on these issues, rest assured that it is hard to decide sometimes what is appropriate and what is not, when it comes to cultural stuff. But I think the answer is to at least care, as opposed to not care at all.
Excellent debate, guys.
Response from:
Josh Pollard
(01/28/08 7:00am)
I'm not sure that I very adequately described my view on this issue in yesterday morning's comment. That's what I get for posting right after waking up I guess :-) Anyway, I do agree with you Rob about language. Its really pretty unnecessary in most games. I'm fine with a small amount of bad language. That is the world we live in, but I would prefer that it be minimized in games, instead of maximized.
Response from:
Josh Baltzell
(01/29/08 9:30am)
Let's say you tried to make a normal R rated action movie in to a game. The movie has a standard amount of cussing, nothing you would not expect. What would that game be like?
It would seem to have 10 times the amount of cussing because games are not fun unless you are playing the action scenes (except for Mass Effect, I could chat with NPCs all afternoon.)
Action scenes are just by nature full of expletives. I would laugh a little if someone said "Darn it!" when a bullet ricochets by their head.
I don't NEED cussing in a game, but I do wish that game ratings were made on equal footing with other entertainment. A "Basic Instinct" game would get an AO rating for Icepick killing and female genitals. But it gets an R in the theater. And that is a tame R! (See Saw and Hostel for less tame R's.)
It would seem to have 10 times the amount of cussing because games are not fun unless you are playing the action scenes (except for Mass Effect, I could chat with NPCs all afternoon.)
Action scenes are just by nature full of expletives. I would laugh a little if someone said "Darn it!" when a bullet ricochets by their head.
I don't NEED cussing in a game, but I do wish that game ratings were made on equal footing with other entertainment. A "Basic Instinct" game would get an AO rating for Icepick killing and female genitals. But it gets an R in the theater. And that is a tame R! (See Saw and Hostel for less tame R's.)
Response from:
Josh Baltzell
(01/29/08 9:31am)
Is there anything you can do about these comments? Being able to have paragraphs would be nice.
Response from:
Rob Howard
(01/30/08 8:27pm)
let me test this
let me this this
let me this this
Response from:
Andy
(01/31/08 5:14pm)
Interesting. So the Wii finally gets a third party game that is aimed squarely at non-casual gamers, is full of action and style, and tastefully incorporates Wii-specific functonality -- and Wii fans - like those on this site - don't want it? This frustrates me, and does not bode well for those whom insist the Wii is for anyone other than casual gamers and dyed in the wool Mario fans.
Response from:
Rob Howard
(01/31/08 6:54pm)
You know what bodes well for the Wii, as well as the Xbox 360, PS3, DS, and PSP?
Games with great gameplay.
Being "adult" (whatever that means) does not mean your game has it.
Maybe No More Heroes is all that you say it is. That would make it no less disappointing than the sales to Zak and Wiki, which was decidly "un-adult," (but had terrific gameplay) at least by the game media's standards of what constitutes an "adult" game (highly questionable).
Yet the reason why Zak and Wiki failed is because Capcom decided not to promote it, and sold very few copies of it to retailers here in the U.S.
Truth told, this is probably the case with NMH. It did terribly in Japan, and Ubisoft didn't seem to promote it very much. I've heard on NeoGaf that retailers don't have many copies, which is assurance that Ubisoft didn't try very hard.
In any event, stop trying to make the Wii out to be something it isn't. A console can't be everything to everybody. That's why there is competition, and more than one console on the market today.
Games with great gameplay.
Being "adult" (whatever that means) does not mean your game has it.
Maybe No More Heroes is all that you say it is. That would make it no less disappointing than the sales to Zak and Wiki, which was decidly "un-adult," (but had terrific gameplay) at least by the game media's standards of what constitutes an "adult" game (highly questionable).
Yet the reason why Zak and Wiki failed is because Capcom decided not to promote it, and sold very few copies of it to retailers here in the U.S.
Truth told, this is probably the case with NMH. It did terribly in Japan, and Ubisoft didn't seem to promote it very much. I've heard on NeoGaf that retailers don't have many copies, which is assurance that Ubisoft didn't try very hard.
In any event, stop trying to make the Wii out to be something it isn't. A console can't be everything to everybody. That's why there is competition, and more than one console on the market today.
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That said, I think I understand what you're saying. That lots of blood and tons of bad language are not the ONLY things we want in our games on this side of the pond.