These Games Are So Bad, It's Not Funny
It was barely 15 minutes into the game, and already I was having a thoroughly wretched time.
I had decided to try out DMZ: North Korea, a recent military shoot-em-up that is easily one of the worst games I've ever played. Where to begin? The environments were so murky and ill-designed I got constantly lost. The physics were tanklike: The "jump" couldn't propel me over a knee-high object, and I regularly became stuck between obstacles.
The artificial intelligence of my enemies was staggeringly dumb -- they'd race around like purposeless, headless chickens, yet nonetheless moved so fast they were still hard to hit. And every so often the antediluvian graphics would malfunction in some surrealistic fashion: After I killed a soldier, his limbs would briefly stretch like taffy before he winked eerily out of existence.
Like I said: Unplayable.
And it wasn't the only bad game I suffered through last week. I actually forced myself to play a dozen other of the most heinous titles released in the last few months. I slogged through the new Fantastic Four (ridiculously unchallenging), Hour of Victory (laden with bugs and loopy A.I.) and one RPG where the camera was so broken I've blocked the game from my memory.
Why precisely was I doing this? Because I wanted to ponder an interesting question: Why isn't there such a thing as "B game" -- a game so bad it's good?
Certainly, the phenomenon exists in every other form of entertainment. Everyone loves B movies -- films that are so atrociously acted and scripted that they become perversely enjoyable. There's also plenty of B television. (For two seasons I religiously followed Pam Anderson's show V.I.P., mostly for the odd joy of tallying up the clich?s and acting so wooden it was nearly Brechtian.) The pleasure of B entertainment is pure, narcotic-level irony -- the peculiar joy that comes from seeing something that is trying to be good but failing on every level.
Bad games never produce this pleasure. Gamers never sit around and fondly recall games that were so ludicrous they circled back and arrived at greatness. There is no game analog to, say, Sid and Marty Kroft children's show, or Plan Nine From Outer Space. When a game is bad, it's just ... bad.
I think this tells us a lot about the nature of play. B games don't exist because a game isn't something you watch; it's something you do. It's impossible to distance yourself from the badness. It's not like chuckling while watching an actor screw things up; it's like being forced to screw up yourself.
Or think of it this way: A bad game is like being stuck in traffic. You've got goals, you've got places you're trying to get to, but the system won't let you. So you just sit there grinding your teeth. Lousy art can sometimes cause joy; lousy games can only cause stress.
When I found myself stuck in one of the monotonously identical battle rooms of Fantastic Four, unable to figure out how to escape because the crack-addict designers hadn't put any vaguely intuitive clues in place, I wasn't, you know, giggling over my predicament. I was trying to keep from throwing my controller out the window.
Now, I'm not talking about games that start off fun but become dull after two hours of play. Those are one-trick ponies, but at least they've got one trick; they produce a focused blast of fun, however brief. No, I'm talking about no-trick ponies -- games that mess everything up, that wantonly violate every principle of game design. I'm not bitter. I won't name names. (Oh, hell, yes I will: Whoever developed Pimp My Ride on the PSP, Mini RC Rally on the DS or Over G Fighters on the Xbox 360? You people owe me hours of my life back.)
What I'm getting at, really, is that play is a curiously all-or-nothing affair. You're either having fun or you're not. I think this is why gamers are so viciously Manichean -- why they make such snap judgments, proclaiming, after playing a game for only a few minutes, whether it "sucks" or "rocks". (And those are the only two possible verdicts.) Gamers aren't just being juvenile. Fun really is a digital bit-flip, either fully on or fully off. And a company cannot lie or PR-massage us into believing a game is good when we know it isn't. Like pornography, we know fun when we see it.
B movies exist because it's possible to stand apart from crappy art, to laugh at it ironically. But it's impossible to play ironically. Play is the most earnest form of culture we've got. In the end, it's yet another reason why games, for all their surface resemblances, have very little in common with movies.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some trash I need to throw out.
ou love licensed games, don't you? Of course you do! We had a chance to play Crave's upcoming games in a Pre-E3 media event. Games like Napoleon Dynamite and Crayola Adventures were on display, and we played every single thing we could grab our hands on. There was one good game on display ... but which one will it be? The George of the Jungle game ... or the spelling game? Read on to find out.
Dave Mirra's BMX Challenge What do you do when you create the worst PSP game of all time? You put it on Wii.
Gallery: Dave Mirra BMX Challenge (Wii)
Brunswick Pro Bowling What do you call a bowling game for the Wii that's: a) uglier than Wii Sports, b) controls worse than Wii Sports, and c) isn't free? A bad idea. Brunswick Pro Bowling for Wii makes Wii Sports look like Gears of War. The characters look lifeless, and the textures simply don't have the sheen of Nintendo's pack-in. The wood looks dull, and the pins look like they're from an early PS2 game. Honestly ... is it that hard to render bowling pins? The controls are far less natural than its Nintendo counterpart. The bowling animation is so slow, that it's unclear when you're supposed to release. The game is supposed to be a far more accurate replication of the sport, with different balls and a focus on how a lane is oiled (seriously). After a few rounds of Brunswick, we have a new appreciation for Wii Sports.
Gallery: Brunswick Pro Bowling
Crayola Treasure Adventures If I were two years old, Crayola Treasure Adventures would be a blast. Crayola offers all the drawing fun of Pictochat, without the fear that some stranger join your room and start drawing penises. The included adventure mode is cute, but is so repetitive that only the truly masochistic will find any substantial enjoyment out of it. With a budget price of $20, it looks like Crayola will be a nice, cheap way of quieting the younger DS players.
Gallery: Crayola Treasure Adventures
George of the Jungle Based on the upcoming Cartoon Network revival series, George of the Jungle looks like it'll offer everything that other generic cartoon platformers do. And nothing more. The PS2 version we played had stiff controls, and lackluster graphics. It wasn't bad ... but it certainly didn't keep our attention. Like other licensed games, expect this game to arrive on a variety of platforms: Wii, DS and PS2.
Gallery: George of the Jungle (DS)
Napoleon Dynamite How does one make a game based on Napoleon Dynamite? A good question. It's simple: turn it into a series of random minigames. Dance, dance Napoleon Dynamite style ... or fling mud at a donkey. A serious issue that gamers will face in this licensed title will be its production values: each mini-game feels like a poor Flash game. The game is as humorous as the movie its based on (so it's not funny at all). The PSP version will feature more games than the DS version, due to UMD capacity, but don't expect brilliant gameplay from either.
Pinball Hall of Fame This isn't a Virtual Console game? Honestly, looking at the textures, you'd think you were thrown back into the N64 days, where 320x240 gaming was all the rage. It's a decent game of pinball; we certainly loved the dynamic camera. But the control mechanics have us confused: why do you need the Nunchuck? Certainly, having the Wii Remote turned on its side would have been far more efficient. Then, you could tilt the Wii Remote to tilt the machine. Brilliant! Where's my paycheck?
Gallery: Pinball Hall of Fame
Spelling Challenges and More! Honestly, this was the best game available at the event. And, it's not the best bad game. No, it's actually pretty good. Taking a page from Brain Age, this "learning" game has you participating in a spelling challenge. And more! There's hangman, and other language games that'll make your English teacher proud. The game is presented as a game show, and the host is a lot of fun. The game has a great progression in challenge, and its easy to navigate. The PSP version has audio definitions of words, which makes for a far more natural game (the DS version, instead, flashes the word quickly). However, the DS version allows you to use the stylus for input. Either way, these games are going to be a ton of fun for the casual market ... who knew spelling could be so entertaining?
I had decided to try out DMZ: North Korea, a recent military shoot-em-up that is easily one of the worst games I've ever played. Where to begin? The environments were so murky and ill-designed I got constantly lost. The physics were tanklike: The "jump" couldn't propel me over a knee-high object, and I regularly became stuck between obstacles.
The artificial intelligence of my enemies was staggeringly dumb -- they'd race around like purposeless, headless chickens, yet nonetheless moved so fast they were still hard to hit. And every so often the antediluvian graphics would malfunction in some surrealistic fashion: After I killed a soldier, his limbs would briefly stretch like taffy before he winked eerily out of existence.
Like I said: Unplayable.
And it wasn't the only bad game I suffered through last week. I actually forced myself to play a dozen other of the most heinous titles released in the last few months. I slogged through the new Fantastic Four (ridiculously unchallenging), Hour of Victory (laden with bugs and loopy A.I.) and one RPG where the camera was so broken I've blocked the game from my memory.
Why precisely was I doing this? Because I wanted to ponder an interesting question: Why isn't there such a thing as "B game" -- a game so bad it's good?
Certainly, the phenomenon exists in every other form of entertainment. Everyone loves B movies -- films that are so atrociously acted and scripted that they become perversely enjoyable. There's also plenty of B television. (For two seasons I religiously followed Pam Anderson's show V.I.P., mostly for the odd joy of tallying up the clich?s and acting so wooden it was nearly Brechtian.) The pleasure of B entertainment is pure, narcotic-level irony -- the peculiar joy that comes from seeing something that is trying to be good but failing on every level.
Bad games never produce this pleasure. Gamers never sit around and fondly recall games that were so ludicrous they circled back and arrived at greatness. There is no game analog to, say, Sid and Marty Kroft children's show, or Plan Nine From Outer Space. When a game is bad, it's just ... bad.
I think this tells us a lot about the nature of play. B games don't exist because a game isn't something you watch; it's something you do. It's impossible to distance yourself from the badness. It's not like chuckling while watching an actor screw things up; it's like being forced to screw up yourself.
Or think of it this way: A bad game is like being stuck in traffic. You've got goals, you've got places you're trying to get to, but the system won't let you. So you just sit there grinding your teeth. Lousy art can sometimes cause joy; lousy games can only cause stress.
When I found myself stuck in one of the monotonously identical battle rooms of Fantastic Four, unable to figure out how to escape because the crack-addict designers hadn't put any vaguely intuitive clues in place, I wasn't, you know, giggling over my predicament. I was trying to keep from throwing my controller out the window.
Now, I'm not talking about games that start off fun but become dull after two hours of play. Those are one-trick ponies, but at least they've got one trick; they produce a focused blast of fun, however brief. No, I'm talking about no-trick ponies -- games that mess everything up, that wantonly violate every principle of game design. I'm not bitter. I won't name names. (Oh, hell, yes I will: Whoever developed Pimp My Ride on the PSP, Mini RC Rally on the DS or Over G Fighters on the Xbox 360? You people owe me hours of my life back.)
What I'm getting at, really, is that play is a curiously all-or-nothing affair. You're either having fun or you're not. I think this is why gamers are so viciously Manichean -- why they make such snap judgments, proclaiming, after playing a game for only a few minutes, whether it "sucks" or "rocks". (And those are the only two possible verdicts.) Gamers aren't just being juvenile. Fun really is a digital bit-flip, either fully on or fully off. And a company cannot lie or PR-massage us into believing a game is good when we know it isn't. Like pornography, we know fun when we see it.
B movies exist because it's possible to stand apart from crappy art, to laugh at it ironically. But it's impossible to play ironically. Play is the most earnest form of culture we've got. In the end, it's yet another reason why games, for all their surface resemblances, have very little in common with movies.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some trash I need to throw out.
ou love licensed games, don't you? Of course you do! We had a chance to play Crave's upcoming games in a Pre-E3 media event. Games like Napoleon Dynamite and Crayola Adventures were on display, and we played every single thing we could grab our hands on. There was one good game on display ... but which one will it be? The George of the Jungle game ... or the spelling game? Read on to find out.
Dave Mirra's BMX Challenge What do you do when you create the worst PSP game of all time? You put it on Wii.
Gallery: Dave Mirra BMX Challenge (Wii)
Brunswick Pro Bowling What do you call a bowling game for the Wii that's: a) uglier than Wii Sports, b) controls worse than Wii Sports, and c) isn't free? A bad idea. Brunswick Pro Bowling for Wii makes Wii Sports look like Gears of War. The characters look lifeless, and the textures simply don't have the sheen of Nintendo's pack-in. The wood looks dull, and the pins look like they're from an early PS2 game. Honestly ... is it that hard to render bowling pins? The controls are far less natural than its Nintendo counterpart. The bowling animation is so slow, that it's unclear when you're supposed to release. The game is supposed to be a far more accurate replication of the sport, with different balls and a focus on how a lane is oiled (seriously). After a few rounds of Brunswick, we have a new appreciation for Wii Sports.
Gallery: Brunswick Pro Bowling
Crayola Treasure Adventures If I were two years old, Crayola Treasure Adventures would be a blast. Crayola offers all the drawing fun of Pictochat, without the fear that some stranger join your room and start drawing penises. The included adventure mode is cute, but is so repetitive that only the truly masochistic will find any substantial enjoyment out of it. With a budget price of $20, it looks like Crayola will be a nice, cheap way of quieting the younger DS players.
Gallery: Crayola Treasure Adventures
George of the Jungle Based on the upcoming Cartoon Network revival series, George of the Jungle looks like it'll offer everything that other generic cartoon platformers do. And nothing more. The PS2 version we played had stiff controls, and lackluster graphics. It wasn't bad ... but it certainly didn't keep our attention. Like other licensed games, expect this game to arrive on a variety of platforms: Wii, DS and PS2.
Gallery: George of the Jungle (DS)
Napoleon Dynamite How does one make a game based on Napoleon Dynamite? A good question. It's simple: turn it into a series of random minigames. Dance, dance Napoleon Dynamite style ... or fling mud at a donkey. A serious issue that gamers will face in this licensed title will be its production values: each mini-game feels like a poor Flash game. The game is as humorous as the movie its based on (so it's not funny at all). The PSP version will feature more games than the DS version, due to UMD capacity, but don't expect brilliant gameplay from either.
Pinball Hall of Fame This isn't a Virtual Console game? Honestly, looking at the textures, you'd think you were thrown back into the N64 days, where 320x240 gaming was all the rage. It's a decent game of pinball; we certainly loved the dynamic camera. But the control mechanics have us confused: why do you need the Nunchuck? Certainly, having the Wii Remote turned on its side would have been far more efficient. Then, you could tilt the Wii Remote to tilt the machine. Brilliant! Where's my paycheck?
Gallery: Pinball Hall of Fame
Spelling Challenges and More! Honestly, this was the best game available at the event. And, it's not the best bad game. No, it's actually pretty good. Taking a page from Brain Age, this "learning" game has you participating in a spelling challenge. And more! There's hangman, and other language games that'll make your English teacher proud. The game is presented as a game show, and the host is a lot of fun. The game has a great progression in challenge, and its easy to navigate. The PSP version has audio definitions of words, which makes for a far more natural game (the DS version, instead, flashes the word quickly). However, the DS version allows you to use the stylus for input. Either way, these games are going to be a ton of fun for the casual market ... who knew spelling could be so entertaining?