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The Hogs of Entropy 1076
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$$ .d""b. .d""b. HOE E'ZINE #1076
[-- $$""b. $$ $$ $$ $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ss$$ "Dynamo Warez"
$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ by Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ 05/15/00
[-- $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
$$ $$ "TssT" "TssT"
Game warez have really come apart lately; I don't know, maybe it's
because I'm so much older now, but the games just don't seem very fun
anymore. For instance, when I was a young warez d00de el1t3 HST c0urier,
the vast majority of the games that I pirated were FUN; now when I pirate
the best I can hope for is an FPS that pretends to be something else.
Half-life or Thief, for example; the reasons these games have been
considered SO GOOD is not because they're GOOD games, but rather because
they're FPS games that pretend to be RPGs. In actually they are not good
games but rather are distinguished by being slightly less mediocre than
all the games around them. They're still crap.
When I first got my computer; the first game I played was Hero's
Quest 1/Quest for Glory 1: So You Want to Be a Hero. I ordered the game
before I got my computer, and when my 386sx/16 came, Hero's Quest turned
out to be every single reason I bought a computer. It was FUN and in
DEPTH and allowed more control than a Genesis or SNES game and there was
more thought placed in the execution of the design and focus. I was
literally obsessed with the game and when I beat it, I realized I had
seen the sequel in radio shack a few months back.
(Before I had a computer I would go to stores that sold comptuer
games and just look at the boxes and wonder what it must be like to play
games that were actually cool. I would read the gaming magazines and be
shocked by the depth of play versus the console gaming with which I was
accustomed. It was a brave new world.)
So I immediately bought part 2, and I played THAT obsessively, and
when I had beaten it, I spent aeons just finding all the little secrets
in the games and being deeply amused by it all. I made up imaginative
secrets for the games that didn't exist. Do you remember that unused
wood shed at the far end of Speilberg? The one by the bar? The one that
you *couldn't* get into? I spent at least 2 months trying. I spent weeks
trying to find a dragon that didn't exist; the manual hinted there might
be one in the game. There wasn't. I don't consider this time misspent.
And somehow, I ended up buying Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge!
And I was addicted to something else; and after I beat *that*, I bought
the first game and played it obsessively.
You might perhaps say that these were abnormal behaviors for a 13
year old, but what else, in all honesty, was there to do? I suppose I
could have gotten into some inept teenage sex or drug use... Perhaps that
would have been a better way to spend my time.
And oh god, there was wing commander, which I couldn't play until
September of that year, becuase I didn't yet own a hard drive. A game
that so burned into my psyche I was later to have erotic dreams about the
hatch doors in the sequel. The doors, which opened by having six or
seven triangular spikes receeding vertically, you see, became assholes...
I had dreams about what I felt the various planned Quest for Glory
sequels were going to be for years. At least until I was well out of
high school. My dreams were cooler than all the sequels, except 4.
At some point everything began to change, and I'd say that point
was when I got Ed Temple to bring me over a copy of the newly released
Quest for Glory 3. It came on seven 1.44 3 1/2" disks. Each disk had a
zip.
I installed it, and sure, it was Quest For Glory, but all the
goods were different and the parser interface I loved was gone. Instead
it was replaced by the first of many sierra point-and-click interfaces.
The interface was based on the idea that there were 4 or so "action"
icons at the top of your screen: The look icon, the walk icon, the
take/touch icon, and the talk icon. You also had an inventory icon. I
think, since the Quest for Glory series had so many special functions,
there was another icon which brought you to a submenu. On this submenu
were functions like WALK/RUN/STEALTH/CAST SPELL, each represented by
their own silly icon.
The idea behind this new interface is that it would improve
gameplay by getting rid of the "clunky" parser interface and replacing it
with a "smooth" mouse driven system. If my description of the interface
sounds complicated, that's because, in a way it was; It was certianly more
time consuming to find the right icon on the submenu if you wanted to run
than it was to type "RUN" on the old parser. The complexity of movement
was increased by the 5th power. And so by destroying a great game with a
crappy interface, Sierra created the opposite effect. I don't know anyone
who likes the games from this period or would consider any one of them
his or her favorite. It was a dark time.
And from there it only got worse. The games got stupider and
stupider and thought there were some brief respites, shelter from the
storm: QFG4, Out of This World, Gettsburg, Syndicate, Grand Theft Auto,
etc., for the most part gaming just went down the shit hole. The games
just stopped being fun.
And then there came Wolfenstein 3D and the whole world exploded. I
don't know what I can say about any of it; we're deluged in FPS games that
all play the same, and when someone makes one that plays ...slightly...
different, everyone has a digigasm and screams for hallelujah. Did you
see the press HALF-LIFE got? Did you see how happy your friends were that
someone had made an "INTELLIGENT" FPS?
We've become so disabused to the idea of quality gaming that we're
willing to assume the roles of dogs eating scraps off the floor from
beneath their master's table.
Fuck you, John Romero. Fuck you, Carmack; Fuck you Lara Croft.
Fuck you all. You've killed the only thing I ever really loved.
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[ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu HOE #1076, BY FPKK! - 5/15/00 ]
