I am going to go out on a limb here and state outright that I assume no developers set out to make a mediocre game on purpose.  This is a bold claim, I know, but I’m going to stick by it.  The thing is, there are many choices a designer can make that, individually, don’t seem very critical, but when added together as a whole can water down an entire experience.  Add to this the comfortable ease in sticking with the tropes well-established in a particular genre, and before you know you end up with a final product that doesn’t really excel at anything it does, but doesn’t do anything that poorly, either.

When Suikoden Tierkreis was released a few months ago, I was a little trepeditious about picking it up, having no past experience with the series.  Sure, I could do some light reading on the internet to try and catch up, but that’s really not the same.  The thing is, I kept hearing good things about the game, from the general buzz of lots of people playing it, to a lot of very positive reviews (including Famitsu, who stated it was “a game with no noticeable flaws”).  Deciding to give it a closer look, it turned out that Tierkreis was a Suikoden spin-off, as opposed to a sequel, and had almost nothing to do with the core series itself.  Intrigued enough, I picked up a copy.

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One of the nice things about games is that, unlike in real life, you can usually pretend that the world revolves around you.  I mean, I have tried on occasion in real life to take the view that I am the most important person in the world, but damn if the world doesn’t agree with me.

In games, however, there is no question as to who is in charge.  Mother Brain will patiently wait deep underground in Zebes for me to show up, those zombies will linger calmly outside the window for me to pass by before crashing through, and the Combine wouldn’t even think about attacking the rocket site until I am fully prepared. 

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Being born in 1979, I had the good fortune to be growing up during the heyday of Saturday Morning cartoons: The 1980s. Every Saturday brought with it the promise of exciting new adventures, from the early days of He-Man to the latter days of The Pirates of Dark Water.  Lion robots would assemble into giant fighting machines, weather satellites threatened the world, and pizza was consumed in mass quantities by reptilian lifeforms.

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Destructoid reports that Square-Enix has issued the dread Cease & Desist order on the fan-made Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes.  The project, set to fill in the gaps between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, seemed quite robust, and was due to be released for free at the end of the month.

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Though it’s history is long and storied, with the announcement that 3d Realms is closing, it seems Duke Nukem Forever may be officially dead and buried.

Yet, something tells me that this shambling zombie may yet live again someday, painfully lurching forward to remain the target of mockery it has long endured as.  Time will tell.

There is no doubt in my mind that there are many games I recall with far more kindness than they deserve.  Were I actually to go back and play them, it is entirely possible the experience would wipe away my cherished memories and replace them with bitter truth – it is for that reason that they remain untouched in the far recesses of time.

The question this raises to me is:  If I remember some games too fondly, am I perhaps also remembering some games too harshly?  If that is the case, then there is no other game better to check that theory against than Final Fantasy VII.

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