Demo Driver 8: Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
And with this I make it amply clear why I chose to round out the month with this out of all my possible “present” games.
In order to talk about Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, I kind of feel like I have to talk about Red Faction: Armageddon, also known as one of the games I got from the Humble THQ Bundle. More specifically, one of the games I didn’t care about but just got along with the titles I did care about, most of which were well worth the price of admission and the others of which are still sitting and waiting for me to give them their due.
Red Faction: Armageddon is a pretty generic third-person shooter. Its central gimmick barely gets to come into play after the early stages, which is a shame if you enjoy tearing apart structures (and you naturally should). None of its other gimmicks get the space to really explore themselves, leaving you with a coverless shooter that’s never terrible but never quite manages to climb up to excitement either. It’s just a bland progression of shooting setpieces that never vary.
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is similar in many ways, with a manheap protagonist unable to take cover facing waves of bug-things and masked enemies. The difference, though, is that this one was pretty fun.
The tiers of remakes
Do the same thing over again, only different and better.
Remake. The term strikes fear into the hearts of all, because you know you’re in for a ride as soon as you hear it, and it might not be a good one. Someone has decided that your favorite movie or game or show needs to be recreated completely, because for whatever reason the original just isn’t good enough any more.
To be utterly fair, if you’re looking at your favorite stuff with a critical eye, this is frequently accurate. Your favorite stuff is not sacrosanct, and there are times when it completely deserves a redo to be more accessible or just plain better. My affection for older games does not render them immune to the ravages of technology, and bringing them up to date both graphically and mechanically could do wonders for several. I’d love to see the original Phantasy Star games brought together into a fully remade form, for example.
Yet for every great remake in any medium, there are some truly atrocious ones. So let’s look at what can be done with remakes, the tiers that can be aspired to, from the worst to the best.
Telling Stories: No repeats
There are times and places where repeats are perfectly fine. A lot of radio stations in Connecticut seem to advertise “no repeats” as a badge of honor, which is slightly less than heartening when you realize that these stations have perhaps ten worthwhile songs in their rotations. Nor do I expect most television shows to provide me with a constant drip of new entertainment year-round. Heck, half of my knowledge of Law & Order comes from catching enough out-of-order repeats that I eventually began to piece together a coherent whole.
Roleplaying is not a medium which is kind to repeats, however. I would go so far as to say that repeats are actively detrimental to roleplaying for a number of reasons. They’re tempting, at times, but in a medium which relies upon your ability to craft an entertaining story with other people, handing over a story people have already seen just feels like going through the motions for no real benefit.
Games for Christmas!
This game doesn’t really have anything to do with Christmas, but I did get it for Christmas one year, which seems apropos as I continue falling in love with its second sequel.
Everyone likes getting video games for Christmas. Probably. I’m sure there are some people not really down with the idea, like your cousin who lost an arm in the Console Wars make in ’93, but everyone else likes getting them. But pretty much all of them are kind of inappropriate for the season. How can you appropriately connect your real life to your love of video games in these conditions?
Sure, you could just accept that not every holiday has a game that corresponds nicely with its setting, but that seems like quitting talk to me.
The fact is that very few games actually do focus around the yuletide season, which proves once again that Halloween is the superior holiday, but there are games wherein you can get your Christmas fix. Leaving aside MMOs that are commercially obligated to feature some sort of Christmas celebration so you can hide from your family while still getting presents, let’s take a look at offline offerings to get in your Christmas fun.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 