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The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey

By David Wong April 29, 2008 4,593,060 views
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We are here to condemn Grand Theft Auto IV, and other equally great games, not out of hatred, but out of love. For it does no good to point out the flaws in bad games as bad games by definition cannot be saved.

No, we aim to save gaming from the abyss by pointing out the sins of games like the Elder Scrolls and Half Life series, games made by creators who actually care. It is in that spirit that we proclaim the commandments that they have broken, so that they may be redeemed.

Who are we? Just a bunch of gamers who got really, really bored. What are the consequences for breaking these commands? Well ... we might start reading books or something.

Therefore, we declare ...

#7.
Thou shalt let us play your game with real-life friends.

Violators:
Grand Theft Auto IV, MotorStorm, Shadowrun, etc.

Quick, tell us what the following games all have in common. We'll give you a hint, one thing is that they were all among the top 10 most popular games of 2007:

Wii Sports
Wii Play
Guitar Hero III
Super Mario Galaxy
Madden NFL 08
Guitar Hero II
Mario Party 8

But what else? If you answered, "None of them contain male frontal nudity" then, well, you haven't gotten the 122nd star in Mario Galaxy. If you said that these games all have multiplayer that's intended to be played with friends in the same room, you're right.

Likewise, what's at the top of sales in 2008? Smash Bros. Brawl.

The advantage that consoles have over, say, PCs, is that you can play from your comfy sofa. The reason the sofa is considered the pinnacle of furniture technology is because there's room for other people on it.

Yet, here's Grand Theft Auto IV, boasting about its robust multiplayer, and if you think "multiplayer" means inviting the gang over to play, get drunk, laugh and high-five each other until the break of dawn, too bad. You can't do that. Want to play with friends, they must be kept at arm's length, faceless at the other end of a broadband connection. Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer is a world without hugs.

They'll say that GTA IV's vast open world makes split-screen impossible. OK, what about MotorStorm? It's a goddamned racing game, and they won't let you play a real-life friend on a split screen. A racing game.

Sorry, you know damned well that technical limitations aren't the reason everyone is dropping split screen. Every previous generation had it, in times with much less powerful systems and few widescreen TVs.


This system had 4 MB of RAM.

You're dropping it because four players on a split screen are playing off one $60 copy of the game. Four players playing online need four copies ($240).

And these are the same people who're baffled about how the Nintendo Wii was able to depants the whole industry with its cheap, underpowered little machine. Hey, maybe it's because they're the one company that still seems to realize humans need interaction with other humans. Real interaction, not trash talking over a headset behind fake names.

By the way, some of you are scratching your heads about having the obviously single-player Mario Galaxy up there on the list. Well, it turns out Nintendo included an option so that at any moment, a friend can pick up the second controller and, with the pointer, help the first player collect items and shoot at enemies. It's a small thing, but it means a guy can get his girlfriend in on the action and cut off her complaints that his gaming is taking away from his time with her.


Above: women

So when she comes over, do you think he's going to put on his GTA IV headset, or pop in Mario Galaxy? Here's a hint: The second choice gets him closer to touching boob.

I feel like I have to pipe up in defense of Final Fantasy X. That was before voice acting was the norm in video games (good voice acting now is in games like Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed, where the actors are actual f*****g movie stars), and the whole premise of that clip was that the characters were fake laughing.

Also, the story telling was so good that my girlfriend actually enjoyed watching me play just to see what happened to the characters (except side quests--f**k arbitrary and difficult side quests just to get gear that you need to complete the game). At the end of the game, my girlfriend cried. That's right--cried. And then I got booby.

Your play, Cracked.

11/7/2009 2:35:54 AM
Jeffly777

Nice article, although u missed some very important stuff like making games more user-friendly by for example allowing the player to chose any mission once unlocked instead of making him go through all the boring stuff all over, or letting him change the difficulty level without starting all over since words like normal or hard really don't do it (take for example Far Cry 2, all the difficulty levels are roughly the same). And about the saving checkpoints: Being able to save at any point of the game can ruin it, specially for FPS games where it leads to just saving after a lucky shot and loading when unnecessarily hit. I'm not saying it should be like GTA where you gotta drive 20 minutes just to save(or spend half your f*****g money to buy a closer safehouse)but a quick load/save system will always lead to abuse. You might say you won't use it that much but it's like having a pile of pot on your desk, you will regret it, but hell it's gonna be more fun.

10/31/2009 2:30:29 PM
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9/28/2009 9:06:17 PM
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9/24/2009 9:02:10 AM
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Great article I must say.. but you forgot to mention BurgerTime as the best all-time game in the world. You're forgiven

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9/23/2009 10:46:49 AM
jillaz66

Pretty darned good article if I do say so myself, but I was pondering this the other day and it occured to me: It would be very difficult to make a WW1 shooter, especially a realistic one. Think about it:

Once your commander orders you, you cross a mined no man's land constantly bombed by your side and your enemy's side, once your 75% there, you get shot at by machine guns, if you make it past that, you have barbed wire to contend with , and if you're lucky to survive ALL THAT, you have a pistol, a knife and a single shot rifle with which to kill your enemies, who now thoroughly outnumber you.

I can see A LOT of gamer's getting frusrated with the gameplay and moving on. Escort missions won't seem so bad after that.

9/23/2009 7:36:23 AM
Dez

The Wii wins in sales because it's a family console. Something anyone can play. The DS is even more versatile.

Microsoft and Sony tent to aim at those who want to put days at a time into a game, not minutes.

9/23/2009 4:20:28 AM
Dad

While you could skip them (at the expense of knowing wtf is going on) the cutscenes in metal gear solid 4 were unbearably long, sometimes including a series of cutscenes up to almost an hour long. I always laugh when it records my "play time"

9/22/2009 9:55:22 PM
Ceveron

I disagree with the 'padding' one. I actually like it when games have a lot of similar content. I figure if the game does something I like, I want it to do a heck of a lot of what I like. But, I guess normal people don't think this way :(.

9/22/2009 5:45:17 PM
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9/20/2009 8:38:11 AM
bustedbeauty

You know anymore I only go though the whole thing of buying maybe five or six games a year these days. Usually games that are over a year old and people tell me "dude It's awesome" cause like I'm broke.

But I honestly can't tell if the video game industry is screwing with us since they know that the average person who sells out the cash for these things is over 26. In that people around this age had to deal with a lot of crap in video games our whole lives. Either that or we forgot about having to deal with this kind of crap and now just expect it not to be there.

Screw it I'm gonna go play Contra.

9/17/2009 9:04:22 PM
gplechuckiii

"#2. Thou shalt make sure your game actually works."

I've got an Addendum to add to that:
Easy Disc Errors
(Violators: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 & 2, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

It is frustrating as HELL to have a game where the minute it suffers the TINIEST scratch, it keeps getting a disc read error. Hell, some even do that if they're perfectly clean and have no scratches. Many times you have to restart the game, or in the case of Ultimate Alliance 2, you can't even PLAY the f*****g game until you luck out and start it without a disc error.
It's also bad in that many times you think the console itself is crapping out on you after you've cleaned the disc or see a few weak scratches.

9/17/2009 12:30:09 PM
Darthvoorhees

Wonderful article. Thoroughly enjoyed it man.

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9/15/2009 8:30:35 PM
cherry668

"mirrors edge is the only game ever made that has first person jumping puzzles that work, the only reason for that is that you can see your feet, that is why 99% of first person jumping puzzles don't work. mirrors edge is awesome"

Well, being no good at jumping puzzles, I can say that the rope-climbing/jumping sessions in Dark Messiah of Might & Magic are pretty easy to master. Besides, for a first-person shooter/slasher/kicker/mauler, it's extremely well done, with a good storyline, lots of gore and flying body parts, but packed with enough humour to keep it from becoming just another bloodfest. Killing enemies has rarely been so much fun.

9/15/2009 2:16:09 AM
MajorDSaster

Final Fantasy Crisis Core would have been a great game, but the fact that it has 5 minute long unskippable cutscenes before every boss fight, including the final boss which is very hard to beat, makes it suck for me. Really. The removal of the ability to push start and directly jump into the fight has ruined an otherwise awesome game with great graphics, combat and story.

9/14/2009 5:17:23 AM
Manman20x6

I loved all of your points right on. Except I found the last one a bit odd talking about the crappy endings when not too long ago I saw an article endorsing the elimination of all cut scenes. It mentioned especially long ones but basically wanted them all gone.

For the most part you can just press the [esc] key to end all cut scenes and get back to game play. However I love cut scenes they are usually my favorite part of the game though I would hate to have a 3/hr one in a game like Metal Gear but for games like Resident Evil where the story adds to the zombie killing rather then takes away from it, it's essential not to skimp. Some games after I am done I would almost like to have a movie version of it on a separate disc I could put in and watch. And no not just a youtube vid of me playing it :P

9/13/2009 11:00:34 PM
darthmalius
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