I was going through some old entries I had written in my now defunct video games blog hosted at blogger, which I was pretty devoted to from 2003 through 2006. One of those posts, which I originally wrote late in 2003, was about Beyond Good & Evil, a game which I had just completed at the time. Of course a sequel has just been announced recently (thank the gaming gods), so I figured it would be a good time to post up this old article containing my thoughts, at the time, regarding BG&E:

"I would like to say a few words about Beyond Good & Evil. I think it's one of the best games of 2003 and sadly it was undermarketed and very much a sleeper. I myself had never heard of it until a coworker recommended I play it. I found one copy of it at Best Buy and picked it up for $20 brand new. I was wondering what the big deal was? I mean, it was only $20 brand new. That means the developers knew it was a steaming heap of crap and priced it as a budget title, right?

Wrong.Totally wrong!

Beyond Good and Evil, while only good for 10-12 hours, is worth playing through at least twice in a row and features riveting gameplay, amazing graphics, awesome music and sound, and above decent voice acting. At $20 it's a steal. It's also uniquely genre defying and contains gameplay elements such as stealth, action, puzzle solving, exploration, customization, racing, etc.

Beyond Good and Evil is one of those games you'll keep forever and come back to re-play occasionally. If you happen across this game anywhere and you want a damn fine budget game, it doesn't get any better than this. It's a shame so few people know about this game, but I'm sure those who have played it absolutely love it."

And my opinion remains the same to this day. Folks, if you haven't played Beyond Good & Evil already, do yourself a huge favor and try to find a copy of this game. You won't be let down. It was available on PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and PC so you have no excuse for not playing it. Hopefully the sequel will be just as great!

If I went back in time 5 years to 2003 I could make two observations:

1) The popularity of mixed martial arts and events such as the UFC weren't nearly as insanely popular as they are today, and

2) The last UFC game in a very long time was released this year, in 2003.

Which brings me to my topic: somebody missed out on a lot of money. The popularity of MMA, ironically, exploded massively around 2004 and has gained more and more popularity ever since. It's not uncommon to flip through channels and see WEC and UFC fights (among others) on popular channels such as Spike. A few years ago, that would've been unheard of. There's just no denying that MMA is one of the fastest growing sports in this country, if not the fastest. It seems like it literally exploded overnight. It's just sensational. Four or five years ago you'd ask somebody if they ever watch the UFC and their answer would be "what's that?". Today that same person would answer "hell yeah! (insert random MMA figher name here ) is my favorite fighter!" (Forrest Griffin happens to be one of mine currently).

So where are the games?

I realize there's one in development currently, but somebody missed out on a lot of money between 2004 and today. People would eat these games up whether they got a 4 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. I'm guessing developers stopped making them because they didn't get their return on investment, which is understandable as the sport just wasn't that popular a few years ago. Times have changed. Big time. Investors will tell you to "strike while the iron is hot". The iron is so hot it's about to explode like a nose being violently introduced to a knee in the octagon.

I guessing there's a lot gamers, hardcore or casual, who are also fans of MMA, that would shell out $50 - $60 for a UFC game without reading a single review. Not that I'm hoping any forthcoming MMA games would be medioocre, but a quick search for reviews reveals that most of them were. My point is that, given how popular the sport is today, they would sell no matter what. Hell, I'm the kind of gamer who generally won't invest my time or money in a game if it doesn't get really good reviews consistently from a variety of magazines and websites, unless it deals with a subject I'm really passionate about. With that said, I'd buy a mediocre rated UFC game. And so would millions of other gamers.

I'm no video games market analyst, but I do like to think I possess common sense, and my common sense tells me that millions of dollars, if not billions, were not earned in the last four years by some lucky developer who owns the rights to a UFC game.

The sport has come a long way since UFC 1 debuted live from Denver, Colorado on Pay Per View. So has video game technology. I ask again, where are the MMA games?

I finally picked up Bioshock this weekend for PC. At $29.99 the price was just right. I've been playing it in small chunks since Sunday and it's....interesting. The graphics are phenomenal, and I have the luxury of a high end gaming PC so I can turn up all the bells and whistles, and the audio is outstanding as well. Weapon and abilities augmentation is semi-deep and the level design is delicious and somewhat non-linear. I'm still getting used to the game's difficulty curve (I'm playing on medium), and learning to use my weapons and plasmids to their full potential, especially against some of the harder enemies, is something that I probably won't come close to mastering on the first time through. So that's my little mini review. As far as shooters go, I've never played anything quite like it, and I've played a lot of them.

But here's the thing: The game is demented. Not in a Doom 3 scary way, but in a bad acid trip at a carnival way. Like I said, it's interesting. If you're anything like me you might want to avoid playing Bioshock before bedtime. If I play a video game for a pretty good chunk of time before bed I will almost always dream about either playing it, or actually being in the game, which was the case with last night's dream. And I have really bizarre dreams as it is. I could be reading a car magazine in bed, turn off the light and fall asleep, then dream about an alien planet slowly growing larger and larger in the sky, until it's 50 times larger than the full moon and I can make out continents and large landmarks, and the entire thing is pulsing with massive forks of electricity. That was actually an awesome dream.

I don't remember any of the details of my Bioshock dream as the details have all but faded from memory, as they tend to do, but it was strange enough that I woke up and muttered "what the f*ck?!". It may have involved being chased, through dark glass tubes underneath the ocean, pursued by the game's crazy vending machines, with their low-fi clown voices and creepy carnival music.

As a side note, I fully intend on taking advantage of the fact that former Xbox 360 exclusives are being ported to the PC. I've heard Gears of War is short and sweet. Maybe I can fit it in before Mass Effect comes out?

Chances are, if you were born after 1990 you probably have no concept of what a real video arcade is. I was driving to work this morning thinking about how a lot of my cherished childhood memories involve video arcades. Then it dawned on me that I really miss these dank, dark, dirty, nacho cheese sauce stained, popcorn scented, quarter robbing establishments.

Occasionally I'll go to Dave and Busters to try and recapture that magical childhood arcade experience, but they just aren't the same. Sure, I've grown up and am now an adult, but they just don't count as arcades in my opinion. They are a good representation of arcades of the past, I will give them that, but if there's no Street Fighter 2, Contra, Shinobi, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade cabinets, it's not an arcade. If I can't pinch my palm on a Marble Madness roller ball, evade swarms of bees in 720, or serve up knuckle sandwiches in Bad Dudes, it's not an arcade. Here's a good rule of thumb: If you don't remember ever playing an arcade cabinet that only charged a quarter (or token equivalent), you probably missed the golden age of arcades.

My first experience with arcades was at one of the many 'Family Fun Centers' locations peppered throughout California in the 80's. These types of places are all but extinct nowadays so let me describe them. Imagine being 8-10 years old and begging your parents to take you to a place where you could glide down waterslides, drive go carts, swing at baseballs in batting cages, play miniature golf, jump on enormous trampolines, and play in massive arcades with columns of quarter-munchers as far as the eye can see? Okay, so maybe they weren't that massive, but when you're that young it's enormous, it's magical, and about the only thing better than that is going to Disneyland.

If you don't believe me that places like this used to exist, one was immortalized in the excellent film 'The Karate Kid'. Every time I watch that part of the film I'm filled with a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia. I was there!

The father of my best childhood friend managed one of these Family Fun Center locations, and one night he took us in after closing hours where he raided the token machines and loaded us up with sacks of tokens, and we basically got to play any game we wanted for free, until the wee hours of the morning. If you're my age (30) and you grew up a gamer and spent a lot of times in arcades, you'll agree with me that this scenario is heaven on earth as a child. That was probably the best experiece I ever had with arcades, as well as being one of my best childhood memories.

There was just something magical about them, these darkened rooms with bright flashing screens and a symphony of digital music and sound effects assaulting your senses; walking around in wonderment, fingering the quarters in my pocket while trying to decide which game looked cool enough to try first. I remember my parents going to the mall on weekends and giving me 5 bucks in front of the arcade, explaining to me that they would be back in an hour to pick me up. That $5 damn near lasted me an hour every time, and even if I ran out of money it was still a blast to watch other people play.

Then there were the big, unforgettable moments. I'm talking about the first time I saw Street Fighter 2 in action. The first time I played Contra. That time I beat Golden Axe. Seeing, for the first time, digitzed humans in a game. No, it wasn't Mortal Kombat, it was some game called Pit Fighter and it drew huge crowds of people, all of them amazed at how realistic it looked. But speaking of Mortal Kombat, that game also drew huge crowds and blew people away with it's shocking fatalities and excessive blood. In my high school years, I remember walking into an arcade and seeing Mortal Kombat 2 and it was the coolest thing ever. You see, in the early/mid nineties the internet wasn't a household thing like it is today. I knew MK2 was on its way, as I read magazines like EGM and GamePro, but I didn't know when and had no gaming internet websites to check for news every day. So you can imagine just how awesome it was to walk into the arcade, see this huge crowd of people crowded around a game, only to discover that it was Mortal Kombat 2!

I don't regret for one moment the day that video game consoles became more powerful than arcade hardware, thus beginning the eventual downfall of the video arcade, but I can say that if time travel ever becomes a possibility, the first thing I'm going to do is go back to 1985 and hit up the closest arcade. There's just something raw and primal about feeding quarters into a machine and punching large, round plastic buttons, while starting a a screen a foot away from your face. It's a world away from sitting on a couch with a controller that weights a couple grams. Hell, I even miss skateboarding to 7-Eleven and playing Altered Beast. Today, the only thing resembling an arcade cabinet in my local 7-Eleven is the ATM machine.

I was THAT guy. The guy who said "I'll never play an MMO because I know I'll get addicted to it". I managed to avoid EverQuest, even though a PC I bought back in 2000 or 2001 came with it pre-installed. I managed to avoid many other MMOs that appealed to me, the biggest one being World of Warcraft, which was hard to do as I was a pretty big fan of Warcraft 2 and 3. But I avoided it. Until about eight months ago.

Major kudos to Blizzard's marketing department for doing a good job, because a WoW commercial advertising a free 10 day trial was what finally cracked me. What's the harm?, I thought to myself, May as well see what all the hype is about...

I believe I was watching an NFL football game at the time the life changing commercial aired. WAS. I spent the rest of the day quickly becoming addicted to this new, colorful world. I also swore to myself that I woulndn't continue beyond the 10 day trial, but after I hit the level 20 cap that the trial limited me to, I went out and bought the game well before the 10 day trial expired.

The game came with a free 30 day trial. I once again swore to myself, fully realizing I was probably being naive, that I wouldn't play beyond that. All I wanted to do was see how far I could level my Human Warrior, and how many cool items I could collect, before the 30 day trial expired. Little did I know that this need to level up quickly, and this desire to have awesome gear, is what becomes an addiction to so many World of Warcraft players.

I simply don't believe in paying monthly fees for online gaming. That's why I own a PS3 and not a 360. Said the guy who has spent over $100 in World of Warcraft subscription fees.

Not all hope is lost. I'm still eating, sleeping, going to work on time, and hanging out with friends occasionally. As in flesh and blood friends, not guildies. It does seem like I've lost weight though.

What's the harm? May as well see what all the hype is about...

I wonder how many addictions, chemical or electronic, start with those same sentiments?

The phrase "next gen" gets tossed around so much but what does it actually mean? Well obviously it applies to games that are playable on the current generation of consoles, but what makes a game 'next gen'? What makes it better than games from two years ago? Well seeing as how artifical intelligence, physics, and human emotion havn't evolved much in the last few years, I'd have to say that 'Next Gen' simply means better graphics. Nothing more, nothing less.

Is this all we have to look forward to in the future? Will we get a new batch of consoles every five years offering better graphics and higher resolutions, while details like unrealistic physics, stiff animation, and expressionless human emotion remain unevolved? Will we be playing photorealistic games in the future, starring main characters that animate non-seamlessly while clipping through walls, with facial emotions that can best be described as a robot trying to pass as a human being? When will we play a Tom Clancy first person shooter where shooting a terrorist with a silenced pistol actually alerts his buddy standing just 5 feet away? And where's the originality in today's video games? Are we doomed to play sequel after unoriginal sequel?

When are we going to see more than just graphical improvements? Because until we do, all we're doing is playing last generation games with better graphics. Having better graphics doesn't make for a new experience, it just makes for a prettier one.

Facial expressions in video games are more human-like than ever, (see Uncharted, Mass Effect, etc.) but still seem eerily detached from any sort of genuine human emotion. I've yet to look at a character in a video game and think for a second that it resembles a realistic portrait of emotions. It's like looking at one of those old child's dolls. The face resembles a human, but it's devoid of any expression. I know it's possible to emulate human expression. I've seen some amazing human expressions in Pixar films. What about Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy films? Amazing. Do today's consoles just lack the raw power needed to emulate realistic human emotion?

Artificial intelligence in today's video games is STILL horrible. I'm utterly disappointed in what appears to just be game developer apathy toward developing good AI. If you develop a game with multiple difficulty levels, and I start a game on the hardest difficulty, I want to go up against enemies who are smarter, more aware of their environments, and more reactive, NOT enemies who can kill me with less bullets while being able to absorb more themselves. You can be the dumbest fool on earth, or the smartest of the smart. Either way you're going to die if you get shot once in the head. Game developers, if this sounds like you, and this is how you scale your artificial "intelligence" then, for the sake of not making yourselves look dumb, don't give the user the option to select difficulties. OR, instead of calling the option "difficulty" call it "cheapness" and have the user select a numerical value: 1 being slightly cheap and 5 being ridiculously cheap (aka the actual intelligence of the enemies in the game is the exact same as cheapness value1, but you have to take on five times as many guys and they have 500% more health, but you can only take 10% damage compared to what you could on value 1). Developers have been doing this same BS for years. Do they really think we haven't caught on?

On to physics. Admittedly there have been some improvements in physics since the ragdoll days, but there is still a long way to go. And I believe that the best way to improve video game physics is to start with the basics. Ignore the explosions for now. We're good to go when it comes to explosions and debris flying every which way.

So what are the basics? Well here's a crazy idea! If I'm making a character run down some steps, how about making it so his feet actually touch each step instead of basically using the same animation as if my character were running down a completely flat grade?! Also, and I've never actually been shot to verify this, but I'm pretty sure when you take a bullet to your shoulder or arm, or any extremity really, said extremity will actually jerk and twist in the same direction the bullet was traveling before it struck you! Imagine that! Bullets travel hundreds if not thousands of feet per second. When that momentum meets meat, the meat moves. Remember punching your buddy in the shoulder in high school, and how his upper body and shoulder jerked back and twisted slightly with the force of the punch? Same thing with bullets, only magnified. Also, as bullets travel at such a tremendous rate of speed, they sometimes will go completely through a human body. What they don't do is take the body with them for a 15 foot trip through the air. And I'm pretty sure that when a human body crumples lifelessly, the limbs don't clip into eachother as if they are made of air, and crumple in ways that would twist and break bones. Is it impossible to program joints to only move in certain ways? No.

And would it hurt to exercise a bit of originality, game developers? I'll give you a freebie. Take an action platforming game like, say, a Tomb Raider type game. One that has you shimmying up on surfaces and climbing up ledges, etc. Now, along with your health meter, how about a heart rate meter? Your character just ran 150 yards through a humid jungle, and fought off 10 enemies in hand-to-hand combat with skyrocketing adrenline. Hey guess what? You can't climb that slick granite surface to reach the treasure chest because your heart rate is way up, you've been sweating profusely, and your arms and palms are slick with sweat. You'll have to find another way or wait until you're calm and dry. Or you could try to climb it but you risk falling and possibly twisting your ankle or knee. Now you have to hobble through the rest of the level. Nice going, captain sweaty. The heart rate meter could also be applied to driving scenarios. A particularly stressful scenario in which you're trying to outrun the cops (think GTA here) has your character's hands sweaty and his grip on the steering wheel isn't as good as it would be with dry hands, making it harder for the player to steer the on-screen vehicle. Maybe there could be a little button pressing mini game, just like in God of War, where you have to quickly and frantically wipe your hands off on your shirt or pants to dry them, while still having to drive the car. Obviously it would have to use buttons that aren't normally mapped to driving controls. Okay, so that's probably not the most groundbreaking idea in the world, but it took me all of 20 seconds to come up with just now.

Until the above things are improved, I guess we'll just have to enjoy the ever improving graphics while continuing to put up with half-assed artificial intellingence and stale game play ideas. At least the Wii figured this out and went with creativity and interaction over making just another console with raw graphics processing power. Which brings me to another point. Do gamers care only about graphics? Is it our fault that the standard for AI, physics, and innovation hasn't been raised beyond where it is now?