Bodhesatva said:
It also implies that something like Final Fantasy or Gears of War is intellectually sophisticated, which isn't fair.
The funny thing is that it's the above games that are the mega-budget, highly marketed, action packed fair aimed largely at younger males -- just like Transformers. |
I agree with you that many of the most popular games are often less intellectually. As a general rule, and mind you this is a GENERAL rule, Japanese games are more sophisticated intellectually, which is why I am drawn to Sony consoles rather than MS consoles. I am an English major and a film nut, so I crave something that isn't just mindless dribble. MS has gotten better about making their games smarter, I will say, and I would like to see them improve upon that.
Nintendo first party games, while phenomenal in many cases on a technical level (I am a big fan of the Zelda and Mario proper series), make me feel like I am in the third grade sometimes. The facial expressions and emotional reactions of characters are trite, and sometimes downright annoying. The stories are about as complicated as See Spot Run. I just can't bring myself to fully embrace a console whose "best" or "good" games don't mesh with me on an intellectual level.
People can say what they want about Lair, but I never found the controls to be much of a hindrance and appreciated what the game was trying to say, intellectually and politically. The same applies to the JRPG's I crave as well as the MGS series. I cringe when I see how "kiddy" (not that being kiddy is necessarily bad, cause it isn't) some of the RPG's coming to the Wii are.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
