Why don't parents play games with their kids?

One of the neighbor kids, the brother of a kid who plays with my oldest son, had been asking me about Rock Band the past week or so. I could tell he was angling to borrow it, but I wasn't receptive to the idea. I guess he'd take decent care of it, but I really didn't want to get in the habit of lending my stuff out to kids.

Today, through his younger brother, he flat out asked to borrow it. I said no at first, but then I started to feel bad. I hadn't played it in over a month, it's actually CraigsListed along with the rest of my 360 stuff. (no one wants to buy a used 360, the console renown for failing...go figure!) I finally conceded to lend it to him, with the caveat that his parents are fully aware that if he breaks anything, they're replacing it.

I brought everything over to their house and set it all up. The parents, who I know pretty well, don't know squat about games. Not only do they know nothing about them, they don't seem to have any interest in playing them with their kids. I just don't get that. They're the same age as me, we're the 2600 generation. How could they not at least look at something like Rock Band and want to play it at least a little, particularly if their kids are asking them to play? Color me flabbergasted.

My oldest son is not quite four yet, and I can't wait until we can play games together. With my recent acquisition of a Wii, we've been playing a little coop Mario Galaxy, some Wii Play/Sports stuff and he's a pretty big fan of the craptastic Cars game. But, we're not really playing games together yet, he's not old enough. I couldn't imagine him being 12, playing something like Rock Band or Halo and not being right there with him. I'm anxious for those days to arrive.

Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff

Who doesn't have a story about Tecmo Bowl? I used to play non-stop in the early 90's when I was in the Army, stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. At any given time there would be 5-10 of us with a season going on. It was fantastic. Games lasted around, what?...5 minutes? We could blow through an entire season in one weeks worth of lunch breaks.

I used to play with the Eagles, Scramblin' Randall Cunningham ran the show. He was so fast that even if you called the play (remember how your defense would just toss the o-line aside?), he could still backpedal fast enough to get a throw off. I never ran the ball, I'd just scramble for ten yards with Randall if no one was open. It was actually this game that got me into football in the first place. Does that happen normally? A sports game turn someone into a fan of that sport?

I remember one season I had a game against another guy who was playing with the Bears. I was going the "normal" way, which is to mean in a single player game you were always going left to right. If you got matched up against a human opponent, you might have to go right to left and it was a little disorienting to play that way. Anyway, I was pretty dominant and I had the "normal" way advantage, so I figured I had it tied up before the kickoff. He crushed me. He'd learned that I never run so he just defended the pass and never let Randall get the yards I was accustom to getting. That was probably the first bruise to my gaming ego. It was devastating at the time. I don't recall playing the game much after that.

I can't wait for this game to drop, I wish it was next week. I wish it was about a month ago, actually. I have at least one friend at work who has a DS and I've pretty much demanded that he start bringing it to work when the game comes out. I have this notion in my head that the guys I hang out with at work are going to latch onto this. We all universally love football, we play in a fantasy football league together, and most of us have played the original game and are somewhat active gamers now (though just the one has a portable system aside from myself). My dream is that my lunches will be filled with 5-10 games of Tecmo Bowl download play games for months to come. My hopes will likely never be realized because most of these guys will probably not think it's cool to be seen playing a DS in public. To them I say, well...not a one of us is cool anyone, so fuck 'em.

The Square Enix tax

The other day I traded in a few games at my local Gamestop and decided to finally pick up Final Fantasy Tactics A2. I'd had my eye on the game since it was announced, having loved the GBA game, but I never could bring myself to pay $40 for the game. I'm sure it's worth it, but it just feels like the Square Enix powers that be are sitting around a boardroom and saying, "Screw our audience...they'll pay what we ask them to pay."

The pricing for games is all over the place, and price is no longer a defining factor of quality, if it ever was. You've got something fantastic and fresh like Patapon released at $20, while Square Enix feels what amounts to a direct port of the decade plus old game, Chrono Trigger, is worth twice that. Frankly, that's bullshit.

Now, I did pay full retail for The World Ends With You, but I felt that game deserved to be bought at that price. Like Patapon, it was a completely new experience which was executed almost flawlessly (could have done without the whole two-screen combat stuff). So, something like that, I'll pay. FFTA2? No. It's just a dressed-up version of a GBA game I could get for a fraction of the price. At this price, they can stuff it.

Well, that was my thought when it came out, but (bringing my tangent back to the original point...maybe) when you're trading in games it feels less like money. So, I got the game. And then it sat unopened for almost a week before I had buyers remorse and realized that there are other much more deserving games out there, waiting to be bought. I've read the reviews and forum opinions of Lock's Quest, and that seems like the kind of game that warrants full retail. New IP, claims of innovation. Sign me up. I returned FFTA2 today and I'll probably pick up Lock's Quest tomorrow. (Why not today?...I don't really like the staff at my local Gamestop, I much prefer the folks who run the one by my work. They can get my business. That's a whole other blog post.)

No doubt I'll be picking up FFTA2 at some point, when I find it cheap used or after a price drop. Those jackals in the Square Enix boardroom can siphon from the wallets of their fanboys, but I'm not one of them. Give me a good game at a fair market price and you can have all of the access to my wallet as you please.

(credit for stamp art found here)

Mario Golf Advance Tour

I've always pined for good GBA games to slot into my DS Lite and just leave there. I love the notion that I can carry two games around in my DS at all times...it's like I'm cheating or something. The problem is GBA games, regardless of how good they are, seldom get played over whatever DS game I have inserted. I think the GBA title I played more than just a bit was Pokemon FireRed. I'm a pokenerd. Ultimately what happens is that I get tired of the GBA game sticking out (it bugs me, can't help it) and replace the little cap.

Not today! Or rather, not starting about three days ago! I got Mario Golf Advance Tour a few weeks back, but never bothered to play it...as I'm want to do with games entirely too often. I decided to really give this game a serious go and I'm glad I did. The first thing that struck me about the game was how much it looks like the Golden Sun games. Reviews revealed it was made by the same folks who did the Golden Sun series and I considered that a good thing.

MGAT (looks like a Microsoft certification acronym) plays a whole hell of a lot like an RPG. It's intended to do just that, but it does a good job of concealing the RPG elements from the player. I suppose any modernish golf game is a bit of an RPG if it has a Tour mode (or whatever golf game X calls it), but this game just has more of an RPG feel. You wander around a (small) world, the courses and mini-games being the dungeons. You gain experience for completing tasks, you find items in random jars and wardrobes (estimation), you're ultimately seeking out bosses to defeat them one-on-one. Sounds like an RPG to me.

The way MGAT does skill progression is kind of interesting. You spend experience to raise attributes, per the norm of any golf game. The caveat is that when you raise some stats, other stats are negatively affected. This mechanic is trying to force the player to have a fairly well-rounded character, I suppose. I didn't pay much mind to this little element of the game until I had somehow terribly shrunk my "sweet spot" (you know, that third-click area in a typical three-click golf game swing). Suddenly, if I wasn't hitting it perfectly, the ball was just careening off into oblivion. Hitting the fairway was a chore by itself. Lesson learn.

So, yeah, I like this 4-5 year old game of golf. Oh, it and taught me one thing about golf games which I didn't realize previously: putting should be easy. It's pretty damn easy in this game and I'm that much happier for it. I can three-putt in real life. I don't need that shit in a golf game. I wanna grip it and rip it, not agonize over a missed 6 footer.

Every end has a beginning

No doubt my blogging end will be sooner than I hope.

This will likely be just another blog from a gamer, about games, including the pretense that it will be in some significant portion about playing games with my kids. Maybe not, but the smart money is on it being just that.

So, let this blog begin with an uproarious thud, because this is all I'm posting from now. The simple fact that I've started the blog and posted on it is an achievement I'm willing allow myself to enjoy. Here's to hoping I do more with it than just this.