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Blog Banter: The Art of the Remake

Welcome to the latest installment of Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza created by bs angel and coordinated by Game Couch. Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

Q: Which game would you like to see a modern re-make of and why?

Remakes are very tedious business. It is my belief that fundamentally you are always destined to upset at least one set of people, if not more, by the sheer mention of such an idea. There are those who became fans of the original, and then those purists who, on principle, disagree with the idea of any remake. If, however, you’ve the smarts to discover the correct science behind a worthy remake, then those sub-sets of folk can be weaned to the dark side.

Ideally the first step would be to avoid the classics, be those cult, critical, or otherwise. I have no real desire to sit here and pitch a redux for Ocarnia of Time or Final Fantasy VII, just as the congealed masses of the Hollywood set would never dream of sitting down with a studio and trying to pitch an updated Godfather or Citizen Kane. Those projects are revered by so many that you would merely offend way more than you would enlighten, no matter how accomplished a job you did. No, it is my feeling that a remake must be just as necessary as it is effective. It’s wise to pick a property that perhaps did not quite live up to expectations, one that showed exemplary potential but missed the mark on execution. Surprisingly there are many games of the current generation that fit the title of “underachiever,” but I believe this is as much down to the coverage a game receives as it is a game’s creative or functional lethargy. We survey so much information over the games we anticipate that we expect them to change our lives, but they don’t, because they’re games; they’re not life-threatening situations, they’re not finding our one true love, they’re not witnessing the birth of our children… they’re games. My pick reaches a little further back then contemporary saturated media, back to a time when print was at the forefront of information. The game I think deserves a remake is Blade Runner for the PC.

It’s quite a task to commit one of the most influential sci-fi films of all time to the interactive medium of gaming. There are so many layers open for interpretation that Westwood Studios must have been soiling their collective underpant with potential ideas. The result of this was a game that matched the film’s kinetic, hypnotic visuals. It also nailed the brilliantly artificial, occasionally hollow sounding music and sound effects. There were, however, elements of this game that were lacking. As a gamer looking back you can’t help but feel that with our current crop of systems, we truly have the technology to justify the struggle of the protagonist; where McCoy followed a very linear, point-to-point path in 1997, come 2008, and with the likes of Indigo Prophecy and Mass Effect as a reference, we can now take control of the Blade Runner story. I would love to play a game where my actions as a player, however insignifcant, uncover little artifacts of truth. Do I pursue the notion that McCoy is a replicant, and make some sort of effort to find the truth? Do I try to maintain my own humanity? Do I choose to have a relationship with Rachael, or am I turned away by the truth about her, and how does either option effect me? As an intrinsically beautiful story of an age where we struggle to come to terms with ourselves, let alone the beings walking the streets, Blade Runner is a cinematic classic, and by all means deserves to be an iconic game. The original was a very accomplished effort, for its time. We’re now in an age where we can elaborate, and the story behind Blade Runner is one that needs to be explored.

Participants: Lou Chou Loves You: Blade Runner, Zath!: Sid Meier’s Re-Colonization XboxOZ360: Eternal Darkness, Silvercublogger: Mario Paint, Unfettered Blather: Mech my day, Save in Progress: Earthworm Jim, MasterKitty’s Weblog: Zelda: A Link to the Past, Game Couch: Tass Times in Tone Town, Crazy Kinux: The modern re-make of a game

Blog Banter: Metacritique My Life

Welcome to the latest installment of Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza created by bs angel and coordinated by Game Couch . Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here . Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s Blog Banter question, asking whether every game needs to be a grade-A blockbuster title for you to get playing, begs a few questions. It’s as much an analysis of our generation’s interpretation of quality as it is a personal question addressed to each one of us. I’ll present first my theory on on the former, and then address my own views on the subject.

I can recall a time where the gaming press was a subtle niche market. When I was a kid, probably around eight or nine, there were few gaming publications to turn your attentions to; few to influence your better judgment to any great extent. If I was lucky my parents would buy me a magazine, and just perhaps I’d come across a review of a game which would lead me back to my parents, pleading for the money to purchase the title in question. Of course, the obligatory “I’ll clean the house for a month!” pledges came to light. The kind that carry about as much weight as the promises of a presidential candidate, pre-election (once I get that game you’ll be lucky to see me leave my room once in a month! Suckers!)

I digress. My point, in a roundabout way, is that I had little influence from gaming journalism back then. There would be few times, if any, that a review in a games magazine would pull those glorious, transparent strings above my tiny little mind. Things changed, however. I grew, the world turned many times, and information spread like some sort of virtual epidemic; within a few years we all had access to the world’s thoughts and opinions. It’s as a result of this that my generation in particular (I’m 21 years-old), those that grew parallel to the internet’s own global expansion, have become reliant on information to define their own tastes. There’s less adventure for us now; less reason for adventure. If someone’s already been there, done that, and hated the experience, then why should I be the sucker to do the same? Websites such as Metacritic and Game Rankings have perpetuated this mindset ten-fold; they’ve served to cement the idea that if a game doesn’t reach a certain criterion; a specific ratio of thumbs-up, then it is not worth your time. So many of us rely on these aggregators to judge a game’s relevance to ourselves, which only serves to bunch us together. We’re all loving and hating the exact same games, usually months before anything is even released, because we’ve all read the same preview articles and inherited another person’s opinion of something.

This brings me to my own personal view on the subject, and I know it sounds as if I’m condemning those who use the aforementioned sites to judge games, but in actuality I’m just speaking from experience, as I too am one of those people. Try as I might I can’t help myself. I see scores, and they define my own tastes. But when I take a step back and look at exactly what I’m doing it leaves me questioning just how irrational I am being, as what I’m taking for gospel truth is, at the end of the day, a collective of opinions. The thoughts of human beings; flaky, absurd, egotistical, frightened human beings, just like myself. Who is to say even one of these people know how I get my kicks, let alone the whole bunch?

I’m not saying that reviews are a bad thing, they offer insights and perspectives that could serve to help us enjoy our favourite games even more. But I, like, many others, must learn to use reviews as reference materials. and not just look at the numbers and convince ourselves that we have no further interest. We could just as well convince ourselves that the games outside the grade-A blockbuster bracket are in fact worth our time, and that those titles falling below the 9’s and the 10’s have something to offer us after all.

Blog Banterers!: Zath!, Delayed Responsibility, Silvercublogger, weblog.probablynot.com, Crazy Kinux, Gamer-Unit, Unfettered Blather, MasterKitty, XboxOZ360, Omnivangelist, Lou Chou Loves You, Game Couch