I did not always suck at video games, although I surely do now. My cousin says it is because I'm getting old. ^_^. I suppose if I were 12 again, I would find some modern games easier. But here is what I think about (most) modern games... generalisations ahoy!

-They're too hard. Because technology has come along in leaps and bounds, the games reflect that. Every game is some kind of spectacular multimedia experience. There's nothing wrong with that in itself. But it seems that games these days can't just be simple and straightforward - they have to have about fourteen different attacks and combinations of buttons to hit, they have to involve some kind of epic quest, or training period, some kind of ongoing game that takes ages to complete.

-Oh, so many games seem disgusting. You look at the PC games section of a store and there are about a dozen games that even look presentable - all the rest are plastered with pictures of horrible fanged monsters, or demonic-looking things, or twisted-looking, possessed people, or... well, you get the idea. So many of the games look truly appalling and sick.

I think the attitude of gamers annoys me a little too. I mean, take Banjo-Kazooie. That's one of the few modern games I really enjoyed. I couldn't finish it - I got all but one jiggy (couldn't be bothered getting that one behind the underwater propellors in Rusty Bucket Bay) and just couldn't beat the witch. I'm not a patient person. But when I read reviews of that game, there's all these comments that it's "too easy".

Now, is it too much to ask that there be some games that people can play without gaining high blood pressure, without everyone labelling it "too easy"? When Banjo-Tooie came out, everyone raved over that, but I thought it wasn't a patch on the original. They tried to make it too complicated - the worlds were too big. What I liked about the old game is that you can get a good idea of where everything in the world is after about half an hour, and then look into each area in more detail, completing the cool mini-game tasks and so on. In Banjo-Tooie, you wandered around and around and I couldn't even figure out how to get most of the Jinjos etc on the *first* level, and even after wandering for ages in Glitter Gulch Mine I still didn't have much idea where everything was.

Also annoying about Banjo-Tooie was so many new moves... I mean... there's a limit to how many moves you should have before it gets ridiculous and awkward and impossible to remember them all easily. Banjo-Tooie was too big and too hard and too uninteresting for my liking. I couldn't even stand to play it for more than a couple of hours, while Banjo-Kazooie gave me at least 25 hours of enjoyment. And yet this is the game that everyone else seemed to think was a lot better. It lacked the enjoyment and originality of the first one, I think - and too complicated, as I said.

Another example was Kirby and the Crystal Shards. You know, when Mega Drive was popular, I rented games quite regularly, and it wasn't unusual for me to finish a game before I had to give it back. This is partly because I was a better and more patient player then, but you know... it's satisfying to be able to finish a game. But people were saying that Kirby was *incredibly* and *far too* easy. I agree it wasn't too difficult - even I finished it, in a fashion - but I thought it was quite challenging at some parts, and it was challenging enough to be enjoyable without frustrating.

I just wish there were more games for the modern player that weren't so enormously involved and complicated. I understand that you don't want to fork out a lot of money for something you can finish in one day, but they could, I don't know, put a few simpler games on one cartridge rather than one huge and unpleasant game. Most of the games I played on Master System or Mega Drive were of a fairly simple sort - you are a character, you move around, killing and avoiding things, completing levels and then go to the next level until you've finished the game. I'm not saying there isn't room for deviations from this model - there are loads of good ideas for gameplay and stuff that aren't platformers - but I do kind of miss the simpler platformer-style games that didn't take weeks of continuing one game* to complete it.

*By that I mean... well, with the older games, most of them didn't have a save function, so you had to play them over and over, each time progressing a little further, until you beat them. So when I say "continuing one game", I mean that you have a saved game, and you keep going back to that and continuing on from where you last left off. Like, the older games might have taken you weeks to beat because you needed to practice and keep getting better and advancing further each time, until you beat it. But a lot of modern games take you weeks to beat because that's how big they are... you can't just sit down and idly play it for a little while - it's like you make no real progress unless you play for hours at a time.

I still maintain that the best computer games I've ever played were on the old Commodore 64. That didn't have great graphics or sound at *all* - they had to make good, enjoyable gameplay to compensate. Swiss Family Robinson, Mickey's Space Adventure, Winnie the Pooh, The Lost World, dozens of platformers, lots of little, interesting games full of interesting snippets and funny activities and all sorts of things.

After two years, I'm still only at the Forest Temple on Zelda 64. When a game is that long, I don't understand how they expect you to maintain your interest in it for long enough to complete the thing. Well, no... it's not that I'm not interested, exactly, it's just that it's hard. Even with a walkthrough, I find it too daunting. Zelda 64's a good game though, but it's kind of an example of what I mean... all these moves, everything is kind of complicated and involved, it takes hours and hours to make progress, there is a lot of teeth-gnashing and irritation involved.

[Update: it's now a year or two later and modern games have moved on still more, where N64s and Playstations are outdated. I think the principles are still the same. I was watching my cousin play Mario Island or whatever it's called, and man - what a huge game. And it looked like there were over 40 moves. I think this is overkill but he seemed to be handling it okay. I'm showing my age. ^_^.]

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go play some more ToeJam and Earl on the ol' Mega Drive. Jammin'! ^_^.

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