Oldschool Hard

No, that is not a typo. Welcome to Australia(n pricing).

As I mentioned in my post pondering about what to take with me when (if) I move, PS2 games are locked to a geographical region, split by technology and language into three regions: NTSC-J, NTSC-US, and PAL (Europe/Aus), with other countries being bundled into one of these regions. This can be circumvented, but requires a combination of a chip or chips and a lot of fly leads, making it quite complicated.

Region locking is nothing new, going back to at least the NES, and possibly before. Ostensibly it was about the differences between PAL and NTSC, that scanline differences and different speeds (50Hz vs. 60Hz) would create problems displaying foreign games on your TV. While there were issues with black bars, and slower gameplay and sound, most TVs, once a system had been chipped, or a cartridge put onto a region converter, were fine. Although you had to create a large, precarious stack on top of your machine (DON’T MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS!), foreign games usually worked, without any damage to TVs, game cartridges, or systems. So, more likely, it was instead about being able to control pricing of games in any particular region.

Now, handheld systems have always been happy to deal with multiple regions of games, both as a benefit to travellers, and because there was no ability to make claims about compatibility with TVs, PC games have also always been region-free, thanks to the (relatively) open nature of PCs, and things are changing somewhat in consoles, with the PS3 region free for games (although not for Blu-rays), the XBox 360 leaving region locking up to publishers, so some games are locked and some aren’t, and only the Wii still being locked down tighter than a nun’s proverbial. While a lot of people still use standard definition TVs, most standard-def TVs are, and have been for many years, both PAL/NTSC and 50/60Hz compatible, and HDTVs certainly remove any issues involving scanlines and refresh rates.

Still, you won’t find any overt advertising about the PS3 and its lack of region locking, and the only way to know if a 360 game will work in an overseas system is to either try it and hope, or refer to a range of lists maintained on the internet – the game boxes certainly won’t tell you. Most galling of all, games are still locked into a regional pricing model, with retailers sometimes prevented from shipping overseas or between countries, a patently absurd way to go in the day of ubiquitous internet. While, admittedly, exchange rates fluctuate, it doesn’t always explain the difference in pricing between countries. I laugh bitterly when US gamers complain about games being $60 USD. Considering the standard RRP of a game in Australia is $100-110 AUD, and the Australian dollar has been above 90c US for quite some time, we currently pay the equivalent of $90-100 USD for new games. As a result, I tend to buy most of my games on sale, the only time they’re worth buying locally. Any recent game I want to buy, I buy from either the UK, due to the exchange rate and guarantee of compatibility (for a 360 game) or through Play Asia, set the option to ‘English’ in the menu, and enjoy the extra 50 dollars in my pocket.

At least with a physical product, you can argue about localisation costs, shipping costs, and so on being contributors to an increased price in certain markets. The difference in regional pricing for some games and occasional locking out of sales for certain regions on download services like Steam shows an utter contempt for the consumer, and there is absolutely no technical reason why the prices can’t be the same. The only reason is price gouging. Again, a lot of these issues can be worked around, using VPNs, and false addresses, but with the digital download model, it’s not a stretch to think that if you’re discovered, you’ll lose access to the games you paid for – and you shouldn’t have to be forced into doing this just to get the IMO reasonable option of paying the same price as the US market.

(PS. I’m still waiting for the local release of Demon’s Souls in June, or at least I would be, if, you know, I hadn’t bought it from Play Asia A FUCKING YEAR AGO, like most of the Aussies really interested in this game. What are the odds on it being a flop here and Atlus blaming anything but their own tardiness?)

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This is not my pile of games, but if all my digital games were boxed copies, this would be about right, if not too small.

I did a clean out this week, for the dual benefit of making a little bit of cash out of what I have lying around, and clearing some clutter. I’ve got an apartment’s worth of stuff crammed into a room, and the saying about square pegs and round holes comes to mind – I can move it around as much as I like, but it still doesn’t fit properly. I have a remarkably hard time getting rid of certain things. I’ll buy, sell, and trade computer equipment without a second thought, but when it comes to games, books and magazines, I just can’t seem to let go. I find it very difficult to part with 3-year-old Custom PC magazines that are, with the rapid advance of technology, now practically useless, full of outdated information about hardware no longer being sold. I keep car magazines talking about cars I will never buy and workshops that have shut down. I have books from my childhood that I will never read again. Perhaps I can justify that by saying that they’re for my children, but I don’t have any of those and am not likely to for quite some time, if ever.

I still have my DS phat from 2004, despite its wrist-breaking weight and size and tiny screens, because I won’t dispose of something that works, and being video-game related, I won’t sell it. The only games I’ve sold in years are games where I picked up another, improved, version, or I picked up another copy in a steam multi-pack and thus have no use for the boxed version anymore. The one exception is Saints Row 2, which I bought on 360 in a one-day sale, played through, and sold for pretty much the same price as I originally paid. And I only sold that because I intended to buy another copy when it got cheaper. And eventually I did, in a roundabout way, buying the THQ complete pack on steam, of which SR 2 was one of the included games. Even when I was a kid I was hesitant to sell games. Before Saints Row 2, the last game I can remember selling was Jet Force Gemini on the N64, and before that, NBA Jam Tournament Edition on Gameboy. Otherwise, I’d trade in systems and my whole collection on that system, towards the new latest and greatest, but only the whole collection, because the endorphin rush of getting something new overcame the regret at selling games, and losing the whole collection at once left no reminder of what I had previously owned.

Now, I keep all my games. If I get a new system, it joins the collection, and I don’t trade an older system to get it. Some games I continue to own just to say I own them – I liked playing through them, but there’s no real reason to keep them other than that they’re rare and it increases my e-peen, like the two Space Channel 5 games and Gitaroo Man on PS2. Or I can use them to say that I own ‘x’ amount of games on ‘y’ system, even if I don’t particularly care about them individually once they’ve been played through. There are some games that are worth keeping, because of multiplayer or that I can go back and replay them – I can play Ico or Rez again and again and still enjoy them, and I like playing Team Fortress 2 or Left4Dead multiplayer, because I’m big into cooperative team games where I can play a part in the success of the team while still being a terrible aimer (and I am atrocious).

It also means I have a number of games of shame that I’ve picked up, through competitions, clearance (and thus being cheap), or just not doing my research before picking the games up. I not only own the first Getaway game, I own the second one, Black Monday, too. I expected them to learn from their mistakes. I was wrong. Driver, and Driv3r. Still hadn’t learnt my lesson on sequels to crappy games. Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, although in my defence, Allied Assault was a good game. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. I thought I couldn’t get enough GTA, at the time. After an hour or two of this game, I could get quite enough, thanks very much. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I liked the first Enemy Territory, being a team-based multiplayer game. I think what I liked most about it, in hindsight, is that it was free. Mission Impossible: Operation Surma. I stand by that one, because I liked the Mission Impossible game on the N64, even though it looked like someone had smeared vaseline all over the screen.

Perhaps the crappiest game I own is Die Hard: Vendetta, the PS2 version. There was a 3/$40 deal going on at the time, and it was one of those circumstances where I definitely wanted 2 of the games on offer, but it was a crapshoot for the third. I played about an hour of it before putting it back in the case, never to come out again. The textures were worse than an N64 game, the mission triggers were buggy, all the faces looked like masks and the level design was stupid. It might get better from that point, but I’m not brave/stupid enough to find out. It’s things like this that let me make posts on this blog with a clear conscience. I’m aware that I’m negative about a lot of games, but, hell, I’ve played enough games to have formed my beliefs through experience. I make bad choices, too, but I’m also prepared to accept any criticism I get.

Now, anyone want to buy some magazines?

Image from EZ-Mode Unlocked, resized.

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Mmm, River City Ransom. “BARF!”

My last post probably gave you some idea of what sort of games I like.

So you can get even more idea of where I’m coming from, and can decide now if we’ll never agree and you can thus make a graceful exit (door opens outwards), here is a list of my top 25 favourite games. There’s a few that are stiff to miss out, but this is basically it. I originally drew up a huge list of my favourite games on each platform, it was long and boring, and I won’t subject you to it.

Bear in mind a few things: I keep both a literal stack of unplayed games that I get cheaply, and a figurative stack of digital files from steam weekend discounts, impulse sales, and so on, and the pile is currently up to about 80 games. Also, I could only own one console per generation before becoming an adult and being able to buy as many systems as I want, so I may have missed your particular favourite. My exposure in particular to non-RPG PS1 games, XBOX games, and Sega games post-Megadrive is limited, because I never owned the systems. Lastly, these are my personal favourites. I may have played -better- games, but sometimes something about a game just sticks with you.

River City Ransom
Crystalis
Mutant League Football
Shining Force 2
Snatcher
Shadowrun (SNES)
Super Mario Kart
Zelda: A Link to the Past
Planetfall
Wasteland
System Shock 2
Knights of the Old Republic
Vampire: Bloodlines
Planescape: Torment
Deus Ex
Fallout 3
Grim Fandango
Psychonauts
Baldur’s Gate/2
World of Warcraft
Super Mario 64
Shadow of the Colossus
ICO
Rez

Why yes, I do like cyberpunk, post-apoc, Tim Schafer, and Bioware. Why do you ask? I generally like moody FPS games, western RPGs, quirky adventure games, the unique, and anything with some form of experience and/or loot grind. Mmm, purplz.

This month, all going to plan, I will sit down with Brutal Legend, and Dragon Age: Origins, both of which have the potential to be in there, based on my usual preferences. Something like Diablo 2, Mass Effect, Majora’s Mask, Okami, Metal Gear Solid 3, Half-Life 2 or any of a host of other Infocom text adventures could be in there if I wrote this on a different day.

But I didn’t.

So they aren’t.

What about my least favourite games? Well, I don’t really have the patience to tackle JRPGs anymore, unless they review very, very highly. It’s not active hate, I just don’t love them the way I did as a kid, when the longer the game, the more the value.

Real Time Strategy is another genre I don’t have much love for – I enjoyed Company of Heroes and World in Conflict, but I tried to play through Warcraft 3 to get more of the World of Warcraft background story, and I just couldn’t do it. The style of play seems foreign to my gaming skill set and just not enjoyable to me.

I don’t like 1 on 1 fighting games, either. I don’t want to remember a million moves, I don’t enjoy the blocking techniques, and I don’t like getting my shit fucked up by a guy hitting an 80-hit combo that I can’t do anything about.

Perhaps my biggest pet hate crosses genre lines: aggressively mediocre games. I’m not talking about the truly crappy like Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust, E.T. or Altered Beast, but the games like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, that have a framework of competency that leads you to believe they could have been something good, but have all the life sucked out of them.

My least favourite game? Halo. I’m not fond of FPS on a console at the best of times, so take this with a grain of salt, but I found this game massively uninspired. It had a colour palette like it was CGA all over again. Its way of ‘extending’ the game (and thus the value) was to make you run back through the levels, in reverse. And this was the company that made Marathon. They had a good track record. They knew better. Of course, it sold by the truckload and has a devoted team of fanboys. The series sells massively. It rated well. What do I know?

Picture shamelessly ripped off from IGN.com. If it makes you feel any better, I cropped it myself.

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