Mersey Remakes

Found at Top Man by friend of MR, Rich - this T-shirt is nothing but a massive Geek trap. I’m sure it serves no other purpose than to completely out the hidden retro nerd. Go on, try and resist its completely incorrect lure.

Of course, I’m not really here tonight to talk about T-shirts, even if RR are just about to launch their very own Cafepress store with some tasty designs for you to indulge in (+100 whore points), no - I’m more interested in the geek factor.

One of my favourite magazine columns of recent months has been Stu Campbell’s rather excellent contributions to Total PC Gaming, one of the more readable and enjoyable of recent PC magazine fare (it’s like Retrogamer but for the now, hip kids). The column, for those who have never indulged themselves, is entitled “Why I hate PC gamers”. The “gamers” is an important distinction to make here, fact fans. Not games, no - Stu hates the gamers. Whilst a lot of the articles are quite clearly tongue in cheek, there is more often than not a fairly decent reason for the invective contents of each installment And I fear, audience of mine, I’m generally inclined to agree with a lot of his conclusions.

I’m sure more enlightened readers will already be aware of how much colour the good Reverend can introduce into a discussion (see the recent Bruce Everiss saga as a prime example, 7 days, 211 comments and an unceasingly amazing read) and love or loathe the guy, there’s no denying that the guy can present a very convincing argument. Scarily, he’s right far, far more often than he’s wrong.

I’ve never really been able to gel too well with commercial PC games. It took me a long time to come to terms with this having been an avid gamer since the age of 7. To suddenly find myself in possession of a machine with so much power and the ability to make things appear on screen that the younger version of myself would have murdered a passer by to see still amazes me. Then why is it that I find it so difficult to find games that I actually want to play? It’s partly the reason I began writing my own games or remakes. After all, if you can’t trust someone else to make it - then fuck it, may as well do it yourself. The rise of the Indie over the past few years has tempered this somewhat, the infiltration of the Indie developer into the mainstream markets even more so. But why?

It’s taking PC gaming out of the hands of the PC gaming nerds, that’s why. This is the core argument of the good Mr Campbell in his column. Those folks who are more interested in games as some sort of life/work substitute, grinding or revelling in the generica of the PC gaming world. They kill games with their acceptance of the mundane, the bland and the derivative. Month in, month out PC gaming magazines are filled with the same old fare. Another RTS that looks like the last RTS, another MMO with fucking orcs and magical fairies, another FPS with a butch soldier or space marine - it’s boring. Perhaps that’s why when something like 18 Wheels Of Steel comes along, you can’t help but nod sagely at it receiving a 70 odd percent mark. Like Juggernaut oh so many years ago, it may be an entire world of wrong wrapped up in gaming form but at least it’s something different. No orcs, no fucking space marines, nada.

Aside from shmups, dear readers, I love a good arcade racer. I still hold a soft spot for the bright blue skies of Virtua Racing (despite being primitive, it still looks fucking lovely) as up until recent years , racing games lost me as a consumer of their wares after it. With only Ridge Racer, F-Zero and the Mario Kart games for racing sustenance, things were looking ever so slightly grim for the kind of racing game I enjoyed playing. I have no interest in taking an ingame driving test, I don’t care how many realistic models are crammed in or how realistic the suspension is in a game. Heck, I don’t even really want to race around a real city with realistic weather conditions and I most certainly don’t want to endure a tedious plotline tagged onto a game that some marketing goit considers “down-with-tha-kids” (EA - I’m looking at you here)

Then Outrun 2 toddled along onto the Xbox and renewed my love in all its blue sky red Ferrari glory. And oh the grins at Outrun: Coast To Coast providing bigger, better, more Outrun 2 love. And to compound the glory of a racing game renaissance, along trots Excite Truck for the Wii. A game seemingly designed for nothing more than shit eating grinnery. Arcade racers on consoles were back in my life again, and lo - happiness prevailed.

But what about the PC?

Now, I’d heard many good things about a PC racer of sorts. One classed by many an internet pundit as “fun”. Yes kids, I’m talking Trackmania here. Sadly, due to the inclusion of Starforce (something that I still swear murdered a previous DVD writer of mine) I never got to sample the game for myself. So, with the now Starforce free release of a free version of the game I felt compelled to check out the game I’d heard so many good things about.

On paper Trackmania Nations Forever sounds a glorious proposition. Bitesize racing, lots and lots of tracks, a level editor, online racing, silly stunt tracks, a generous amount of stuff for nothing but your time and bandwidth spent downloading the thing… yup, it sounds like a damn fine proposition. No doubt more astute readers will have already worked out the punchline though.

PC Gamers killed the racing game.

TNF is the arcade racer ran through a complete nerd filter. I’m suprised they didn’t include a bonus orc mode just to wind me up a little bit more. What could have been a must have game and an easy sell up to the $30+ full version instead left this reporter with a sad face and the ever present feeling that he’s just been cheated.

It would seem the developers have attempted to cram all the worst trappings of the PC gaming world (heck, fuck it - the entire gaming spectrum but with some serious emphasis on the PC gamer wet dream) into this game.

90% of the game is locked off from the moment you begin. It may well come with the promise of 60+ tracks included, but damn it - you’re going to have to work for them. My hats off to Nadeo here. Congratulations - you’ve brought grinding into the racing genre. Not content with having the bizarrely obligatory “you must have x medals to unlock this track”, Nadeo saw fit to include such wonderful tasks as “build one level with the level editor to unlock this track”. Why? What in shits name does that have to do with the game? But no friends, it doesn’t stop there - one of the unlockables insists that you have to tell a friend about the game, one insists that you must have a friend in your buddy list as well as x amount of medals in order to unlock a track, one insists that you must have challenged a friend to a game in order to unlock a track and so it goes on.

In order to release parts of the game you have to complete arbitrary tasks that have absolutely fuck all to do with the main elements of the game. Surely I’m not the only person on the planet who finds this reprehensible? It’s bad enough having to grind through tracks to unlock the others, but to then attach such utterly random bullshit to them also? Get to fucking fuck. The extra stuff you get with TNF would be reasonably compelling if optional, but to tie it so crucially to the player experience is nothing but fuckwittery. And yet, PC gamers, yes you… you accept this?

Judging by the additional features in the full $ware version of the game, yes, yes, you do. Man, I’ve always wanted the ability to swap different car customisations and earn not real money for it.

It’s more saddening given the quality of the rest of TNF. It’s a glorious looking game when the settings are pushed up to max. It is also, as alleged by a number of fine folk across the internet, actually quite fun. But whilst being bogged down in some of the worst trappings in gaming history I find it a frustrating and annoying end user experience first and a good game second. And that’s a great shame.

But hey, the developers are evidently only playing to market demands here. They’re obviously not stupid. It’s depressing though that we’ve got a market so ensconced in shallow empty reward systems like virtual currency and who are more than happy to replace skill with grind. The fact that it’s considered acceptable to design a game even for free around the task set that Nadeo have done with Trackmania Nations Forever saddens me. They’ve fallen into the geek trap and found out that it sells.

Suddenly, I don’t feel so bad about being able to spot the mistakes on a Space Invaders t-shirt.