Game of The Decade! and some 2019 Gems

With 2019 drawing to a close, it presents the perfect opportunity to reflect on the last decade of gaming. When I think about game of the decade it diverges into 2 schools of thought, what is the objectively most important games (sales, etc) or what are people’s personal favorites. Quickly, I’ll say that Fortnite is the objective game of the decade as it solidified and codified the games as service model. It wasn’t the first, but it was most impactful. Fortnite also cemented streaming and influencer culture in gaming. I hate battle royale games but I see the value and influence that Fortnite has had. With that said, I will layout my personal games of the decade and why.

Surprisingly, not this…

2019 was not a banner year of gaming for me. The biggest releases were not very appealing to me. Death Stranding, Control, even Pokemon Sword/Shield just didn’t do much for me. Madden 20 turned out to be weak and I refused to touch NBA 2K20 this year. I played some great games this year but really doubled down my focus on retro gaming and returning to finishing some of my backlog. That said, Street Fighter V came back in a HUGE way this year. I grabbed the Championship Edition upgrade and it opens up the game and makes it feel complete. SFV should be lauded as having the best Arcade modes in fighting game history. The arcade modes are both fun and a nice history lesson of the Street Fighter (and even Final Fight) series. Street Fighter V has reignited my love for fighting games and has me playing online again and watching combo videos on YouTube.

My game of the year 2019- River City Girls (Switch), River City Girl is the continuation of a favorite series by a great developer. Wayforward is money. The graphics are amazing, the music is exceptional and the game has a sense of humor and character that is unmatched. The 2 protagonist in River City Girls are charming and funny and get fleshed out in some really cool ways during the game. The boss fights are a little brutal but that’s par for the genre. River City Girls met expectations which is rare for new games lately. I’ll give a quick shout out to Need For Speed: Heat. It’s an arcade racer that does everything well and has been criminally overlooked.

My game of the decade is a surprise, even to me. I wanted to pick the game that not only holds up to today’s standards but a game that I actually continue to play regularly. Once I laid out that criteria it slimmed down the list pretty drastically. Tis the season for list so this is going to be a top ten list of my favorite games this decade. This is not an objective list, this is just my favorite games. You won’t see Fortnite, Minecraft or any Assassin’s Creeds games on my list but I think any list trying to make an objective best of/most important game of the decade list should include those games. All of the games listed here were played extensively by me and for much longer than their initial release windows.

10. Marvel Puzzle Quest (PC- 2013)- I don’t remember when I fell into this hole but I wanted a Marvel game and they weren’t being made anymore. I grabbed this for free and they had an easily obtainable Juggernaut and I have been hooked since. I have probably spent 20 dollars over 6 years on this game and never felt like I was missing content. They have great single player story content. The stories vary and continue updating. The asynchronous multiplayer events were fun too. The game also is a great way to see some iconic comic book covers and the roster is always updating. For a free game, this one does it right. I’ve also switched accounts and devices multiple times and never lost any progress. It’s the best match-3 game this side of puzzles and dragons, it also might be the best Marvel game of the decade (RIP Heroes).

9. Street Fighter V (PC- 2018)– Street Fighter IV was one of my favorite games of all time and a fighting game I played in tournaments. No game has compelled me to play online or anything since…and then Street Fighter V finally became complete. When I grabbed SFV it was a husk of a game with a bad roster and a survival mode, now it’s a game with the best arcade mode in fighting game history. It also has a fun story mode and every character has a story as well. The single player content alone is worth buying the championship edition for but the multiplayer is solid too. Graphically, the game is great. It runs really well on PC, and has an excellent soundtrack. Everybody talks about the resurrection of No Man’s Sky but Street Fighter V has risen from the ashes in a big way. I also like the V trigger system now, it adds a lot of depth and some really cool animations.

8. Agents of Mayhem (PC- 2017)– This is a perfectly competent Saints Row follow up and compared to Crackdown this game is a masterpiece. I love the Saturday Morning Cartoon aesthetic and the “hero-shooter” quality. Every character has a fun backstory and unique weapons. I like the variety in enemies and the driving is fun. This game feels like the rare situation where expectations were poorly communicated and then reviewers didn’t seem to get into the flow of the game. It’s an interesting flow, you have character missions and then story missions. As you complete you learn about the characters and unlock them all while continuing to progress the A plot with unique bad guys. Like a TV show there is an A plot and B plot. You level up and unlock things as you play. Each character has it’s own leveling tree. It’s a lot of fun but it deviates from Saints Row a lot. I think the graphics are average. Those things combined led to people bouncing off pretty quickly.

7. Sonic Colors (Wii- 2011)– Sonic Colors is the perfect merging of 2D and 3D Sonic. I think it’s one of the best looking Wii games on the system. I finally played it on Dolphin on PC and seeing it in full HDish glory is amazing. I really like the level designs, the wisps were a nice gimmick, and the story was funny enough. This game is peak 3D Sonic for me. The 2D jumping controls are actually a little sluggish for my tastes but they are still very strong. Some of the levels are just breathtaking, when you’re running through space at full speed and the rainbow track is building in front of you barely beating your feet…it’s amazing. Generations takes this formula and runs with it, and Forces keeps the trend going but Colors feels unique and perfectly paced. Forces had levels that were too short, while some of the 2D levels in generations are too long (No Sonic level should be longer than 6 minutes) but Colors hits the sweet spot. The DS Colors game is also a really strong 2D Sonic entry as well. I still hope they revisit Colors proper with a sequel or do a Switch remaster.

6. Forza 4 (Xbox 360- 2011)– I don’t have a ton to day about Forza 4. It’s the perfection of a formula. This game utilized the Top Gear license the best, the graphics were incredible and the pacing of the career progression was fantastic. This game didn’t get bogged down with drivatars or anything like that. It’s a fantastic racing game with an amazing selection of cars.

5. Bioshock Infinite (PC- 2013)– This is the first game I ever purchased a graphics card for. My pre-built gaming PC wasn’t going to be up to spec so I decided it was time to hit that 1060Ti. That experience got me into building my own PCs. Bioshock Infinite had amazing world building and the way they touched upon racism and the ills of society were really powerful for me to see at the time. Th soundtrack was really cool too, they had old-timey covers of 80’s Pop Songs and some older Beach Boys hits. I really liked how they had an NPC with you the entire game but it didn’t feel like a giant escort mission. The ending with the light houses was great too.

4. Borderlands 2 (PC/Xbox 360- 2012)– Borderlands 1 was a lonely, tense game with a dark sense of humor and some great gunplay and looting. It all seemed to take place in bleak deserts and empty building. Borderlands 2 was a colorful looter-shooter with jokes around every corner and varied areas to explore. The visual and tonal jump from Borderlands 1 to 2 is hard to even comprehend now. That coupled with a lot of quality of life changes Borderlands 2 had and it was a recipe for a timeless game. The story in Borderlands 2 is touching when it needs to be and irreverent when it wants to be. The main antagonist is great and the side characters all feel pretty fleshed out. My only gripe with this game is the lack of Roland. I think the cast in Borderlands 1 is better than 2. My favorite character in the 2 was Mechromancer and she was DLC. Borderlands 2 was supported with DLC the entire decade. Even before 3 dropped, they added some story content to bridge the gap between the two games. Borderlands 2 also has incredible co-op gameplay but is balanced enough to feel playable alone.

3. Pokemon Black 2 (DS- 2012)– This game is peak Pokemon. They iterated on a game for the first time with a real full sequel. This isn’t just Pokemon Gold or Platinum, this is a true sequel to Black and White. I love the story in this game, it touches on the weird reality that the entire economy is based on what is effectively dog-fighting. They don’t follow through with the story in a big way but that’s to be expected. Graphically, the game looks amazing. 2D sprites is where Pokemon shine, the 3D models are dull and make a lot of the Pokemon look odd or plastic. There are so many battle animations and idle animations for the Pokemon in this game. The main story is fun but the Battle Tree at the end is amazing. The post-game in this Pokemon is incredible and keeps me coming back even today. There is a fun risk reward system as you progress floors in the tree and it’s just endless strong trainer battles. In my opinion, that’s when Pokemon is at it’s most fun. I love this game. I also got the special edition DSI system with it and the case. Because I’m lame. It was worth it.

2. World of Final Fantasy (Vita- 2016)– I have talked a lot about this game on here before so I won’t rehash it all here. This is the best Pokemon game that’s not full of Pokemon and it’s the best Final Fantasy game. Period. It’s both fan service mixed with a super compelling original story. The post game is great and the graphics are excellent. I also bought this on PC.

Honorable Mentions- NBA 2K10, Madden 10, NBA Live 19, Street Fighter X Tekken, St. Seiya Soldiers Soul, Mafia 3, Sonic Mania, Sonic Generations, Sonic All-Star Racing Transforms, Freedom Planet, Mercenary Kings, Forced Showdown, Fight N’ Rage, Hand of Fate, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland, Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning, Gravel, Remember Me, NBA Playgrounds 2, Sega and Sonic All-Star Racing, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Shovel Knight

The Original

1. NBA Jam On Fire Edition (Xbox 360- 2011)– It feels blasphemous to have a sports title, an arcade sports title at that as my game of the decade. This game captured me the day it came out and never let up. NBA Jam On Fire Edition had an amazing net code at the time. I played the on-line for countless hours They had a leveling system and I maxed it out. I beat all of the single player teams and the Jam-bots. The graphics were amazing. The real faces with context specific reactions coupled with the 3D bodies looked fantastic The courts were reflective and beautifully realized. The crowds were unique, each team had their actual coach and mascot on the sidelines with their cheerleaders. It was such a well done game. The ball physics and movement felt like vintage NBA Jam but the additions didn’t ruin the gameplay.

The biggest additions to On-Fire Edition were the “call for screen (push) button” and “call for alley-oop button”. These made the game have just enough depth to separate it from previous entries. By setting screens you can play with defensive match-ups. It pains me to say this but I went on some epic winning streaks with the Houston Rockets playing on-line. I used the vintage roster of Hakeem Olajuwon and Kenny Smith. Side note- every mode you played helped you earn currency to buy new rosters and players. Every team has their history well represented. Hakeem was great for defense and had a strength rating high enough that he could dunk through anybody and set great picks. Kenny wasn’t the best 3 point shooter in the game but to my eye he was the most clutch. NBA Jam has always been notorious for having hidden stats for players and I think one of the developers was a Kenny Smith fan. What was awesome about playing on-line was that so many rosters were viable. Sometimes I would pick the Sixers and use Dr. J and Darryl Dawkins and power my way to victory. Losses didn’t feel demoralizing because the games were so quick. It was such a well made game. Even today I play it. I keep a 360 hooked up basically for this game and Import Tuner Challenge.

I have NBA Playgrounds 2 in my honorable mentions because it feels great and the single player hook is solid. I love how playgrounds 2 showcases the history of league and jerseys as well. BUT where 2K falls short is the graphics (I don’t love the player models in Playgrounds) and the movement feel. NBA Jam On Fire Edition feels so fluid, and rarely do you feel like you’re fighting against animations. Playgrounds on the other hand is all about timing animations to be successful. If you do a crossover in Playgrounds, you’re locked in and same with pushes. What’s fun that this leads to is certain players have safe animations. For example, Bill Lambeer’s special jump shot animation is a set shot 3. You can’t block it and only he has it. Melo has a turnaround fade that’s unblockable. The animations add a lot of depth but at the expense of feeling stiff. NBA Jam On Fire Edition never has that issue. It feels likes a true arcade game that would have been a worthy sequel to Hangtime in the 90’s. NBA Jam On Fire Edition is my game of the decade. Amen.

2019 was a weird year for gaming and this was a great decade for games. We made so much progress from the Wii to the Xbox One. There were tons of great new series as well some of the best entries from first party titles. From Mario Galaxy 2 to Red Dead 2, it’s been a wild decade. Handheld gaming died and came back better than ever. The consoles were supposed to die but the Series X and PS5 just got announced. Online gaming and free to play games are the biggest things in the world. It’s wild. We are in a new fighting game golden era. It’s been wild but 2019 kind of ended with a “meh”. 2018 was wild with Red Dead and Tetris Effect battling it out for Game of the Year last Year while now we people are debating between Control and…Sekiro? The passion just isn’t there from the reviewers I follow. The craziest thing about the decade for me is just how many games come out now compared to 2010. The volume of games that come out now via steam and on-line only platforms is incredible. It’s never been a better to play video games. Thanks for reading, Happy New Year! Peace.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer- A Relic of a Dead Era in Gaming

One of the most interesting paradigm shifts in gaming in 2019 is the lack of mid-tier AA titles. Every game now is a big budget AAA game or a smaller indy title. With the loss of mid-tier development certain genres have been harder than others. We’ve seen the death of licensed game from Marvel and other companies and what has intrigued me (and hurt me) most is the lack of smaller racing games.

While both of these genres have footholds in the mobile gaming space, they have all but disappeared on consoles. Racing games have hit a fascinating point. It’s basically Forza, Forza Horizon and Grid and Need for Speed constantly reinventing themselves to try and stay relevant. You have a few smaller licensed racing games that iterate yearly like F1, Nascar Heat, and some rally titles but those are getting harder to find too. Juxtapose this with the PS2 era where there were so many options for racing games. Enthusia Racing, TOCA racing, Gran Turismo was still relevant, Need for Speed had multiple concurrent titles like hot pursuit, Test Drive, Midnight Club, Ridge Racer, every licensed porperty you could imagine and so many more. They were mostly licensed with real cars (lots of low budget games had reals cars which isn’t the case now) and some had real tracks. It was a really fun genre that provided lots of different experiences for racing fans of different disciplines. Developers took more risks. Racing games today seemingly have to straddle a perfect line of being all things for everybody like Forza Horizon 4 or Forza 7. Simulation and realistic enough for car buffs but drive able enough for casual fans.

They need to have sim options and the best graphics. Lots of developers don’t really compete anymore. When other games stick their heads in the ring they get destroyed by reviewers and game journalist who lament the days when a Need for Speed release was a big deal. NFS: Heat is a really pretty game that plays well but it’s not Forza Horizon so it gets trashed. The comparison is valid because Need for Speed: Heat decided to be open world for some reason and doesn’t commit completely to being an arcade racer. Same with Grid this year….nobody noticed or cared when it released which is sad because the first Grid game was a big deal and the reboot seems solid. Wreckfest and the Dirt series hover around but they don’t make the impact outside of PC gaming like they would have 10 years ago. The sense I get is that if a company is going to pay for car licenses then they are going to play it safe. That’s not fun.

I say all this as I explore the Tokyo Xtreme Racing series. This game would not be made or brought back in today’s racing game environment. It’s too niche, it’s too obscure, it’s too Japanese. It’s wild because this game feels like “The Dark Souls” of driving games (forgive me for the comparison). Dark Souls and From software have created an environment where even Star Wars games are aping their obscure, niche aesthetic and adherence to difficulty and not making the most accessible game possible. Driving games have gone the opposite route. Tokyo Xtreme Racer is the peak of what racing use to be compared to where the are now.

Have you ever seen Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift? Objectively, the best and most important movie in the franchise, it frames a lot of what Tokyo Xtreme Racer is all about. You’re an outsider in a Japanese car driving the Tokyo streets looking for races, taking down gangs via beating them in races. The game is a dungeon crawler, a fighting game, a racing game, a tuning simulator, all rolled up into one of the most compelling driving experiences you can have. There are only a few cars, basically one track and then you drive. On paper the seems ridiculous, in practice it’s addictive. You buy your first car, go out onto the city corridor/high loop and look for rivals. Flash your headlights and you race. Once a race starts both cars have a life bar. As you fall behind, the life bar goes down. You win when your opponent’s life bar hits 0. You make money when you win. Upgrade your car, buy a new car, drive in circles and race people. Every rival you racer is in a team or gang. If you beat 5 people in a gang (for example) you’ll be challenged by their leader. Beat 2 leaders and a Boss challenges you. That’s the game. The music is Japanese dance music. The graphics are good. The track is rendered fantastically, the game runs smooth and fast and the cars look excellent. Every race takes place at night and the headlight effects are solid. Opponents AI is competitive and varied as well. They dodge traffic and try to stay in front. The driving skews arcade but it speaks a very specific and easy to understand language that makes adjusting and upgrading the car immediately noticeable and effective.

This game is a low budget, narrow game with a singular focus and scope to match. The game does everything it can to maximize it’s playability and replay value within that scope. It’s not a good driving game, but it’s consistent driving model with consistent physics. It’s more Ridge Racer than Gran Turismo. Games like this aren’t really made anymore, certainly not into a series. There are 2 games for Dreamcast, 4 for PS2 and 1 for GameBoy Advance and 1 for the Xbox 360. A middling series like this would never be able to carve out a series like this in today’s landscape. What makes this series so relevant even today is that is does things that modern games are always trying to do and that’s emergent gameplay moments and story telling.

For example, I am in my Nissan Silvia cruising through a dark tunnel and I flash my headlights at “Rolling Guy 5” to race him. He is driving an AE86. I take him down easily, and end up near a hard left turn between between a sedan and a fruit truck. Normally, when races finish you can just continue driving but this time out of nowhere the camera pans out and the leader of the Rolling Guy gang flashes his high beams at me. It’s early in the game so I know my car isn’t faster than this boss. The environment is my advantage because we are on a turn and Rolling Guy Leader is slowing down a lot for turns instead of drifting AND more significantly, we are between traffic. So the race starts and boom Rolling Guy leader rams into the back of the truck buying me time to pull away. I weave through traffic his life bar is going down quickly and I slam into an NPC car and Rolling Guy is catching up to me. I see him coming up in my rear view mirror and block him long enough to railroad him into the back of another car. I keep driving and win the race. A screen pops asking you if you want to go to the garage or keep driving. I choose keep driving and the cycle continues. It’s fantastic. No 2 races are the same and the game encourages to try racing people you lose to because you may just need to do the race in a segment of the track your car is better suited for. What’s amazing is the track is constantly changing, the competition is always an unknown. You battle and race at your own pace. It’s a magical feeling that I haven’t been able to replicate in anything else. That loop I described is the same in every main game in the series (the drift series is a 2 game that spin off that is a little bit different).

Tokyo Xtreme Racer wasn’t a huge seller but it sold well enough to warrant existing. It felt like a window into a subculture and world that is so unique. Japanese tuning culture is captivating and it’s sub cultures like touge racing and drifting have all filtered into US car culture in different ways. We see those influences in the early 2000’s movies and games. Tokyo Xtreme Racing was the Fast and Furious game we always wanted. It was the game that personified the low end Japanese tuner car culture that we fell in love with playing Gran Turismo. New racing games are obsessed with Super Cars and Hyper Cars that nobody can afford and that are really hard to drive. Tuning a Nissan Sylvia or a Honda S2K is where a lot of racing games peak in my opinion. My generation has an adoration for Japanese bubble era cars that seems boundless. That culture is hard to find in the gaming now. Toyota will barely appear in racing games these days, when the Supra used to be every bodies favorite car to buy early in Forza.

It’s weird to lament an era lost of games that could be…well not great but games aren’t just toys or simulations they are also artistic expressions and allow end users to participate in a vision. It’s why I loved the Armored Core series. It was hard and obtuse and not for everybody but it was unabashedly it’s own vision. Those games weren’t cookie cutter open world games. My biggest issue with the new Need for Speed game is that it’s open world and it doesn’t need to be. The world feels dead and the engine doesn’t handle processing the open world well. The game would have been fine with menus and racing segments. Tokyo Xtreme Racer never added tons of cities or hundreds of cars. There were other games for that. Now every game feels like the Assassin’s Creed version of the genre outside of the Dark Souls-like games and the constant rogue-like games. I miss games with AAA budgets that could be different. Check out the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series. Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 and Import Tuner Challenge are the best games to check out, if you don’t want to play them all. If you like one of the, you will absolutely enjoy the entire series. Happy Thanksgiving. Peace

The Problem with Summer Sales (Revisited)

Now that Amazon, Steam, Green Man Gaming, and Humble Bundle have shot their shots with sales this summer I have to say how much I hate summer sales. 

I am all about saving money. For me, this is an issue of value. Game makers being forced to devalue their products. I have harped on this before but I can’t help but bring it up again. Summer Sales/Steam Sales train consumers to wait. I frequent many a gamer web site and inevitably after every review of a game there is the obligatory stream of “wait until it’s on sale” comments.

If you can’t afford a game, and the sale is all you have…I get it.

What frustrates me most about this sale mentality is that it hurts the indie games. I am always waiting for GTA 5 to drop below 30 dollars (I own  it at full price for 360 but want it on PC) but it won’t drop that low. It’s an old game. I am forever amused that a Pokemon game from the DS era is still 35 dollars. Nintendo doesn’t discount their games regularly, or ever. People respect their products and still find ways to buy them. I watch smaller game studios have to cut their price in half after a couple months just to be on the front page of steam for a hot second. It’s so sad to see.

Games have a small window to truly recoup their money and it’s when the game is first released. Waiting for a sale can be the difference between a game being a hit and a game that never sees a sequel. There are games that I bought during the Steam summer sale that I genuinely wish I had paid more for. I don’t buy the idea that a consumer never would have purchased the game at a different price. People work within the options they have (see Nintendo and Rockstar).

Once a game goes on sale, for me, that is the price of the game. Once a game dips to 5 dollars, I will never pay 15 dollars for it again. All that said, I think the deep discount culture of gaming is killing the companies that need the most help. That saddens me.

 

Video games, the White Savior Complex, and Change

After being the only black male at a social justice conference, I am always reminded of the white savior complex. These collegiate social justice trips are supposed to transformative for the people experiencing them (mostly white people) and help the communities they are working with. In reality most of these are white people going to exotic lands or worse forced to “slum” it in diverse areas in America. These white people do tasks, all the while imposing their values for a short period of time on the community and then they go back to college while the community is left to deal with both the cultural invasion and loss of resources.

All that said! Video games have a large amount of white protagonist and some of these narratives parallel the white savior trope seen in movies. “What chu talkin’ bout James?!” I am glad you asked, let me educate you via some on-line resources.

First a basic definition used by Wikipedia to define how this trope looks in film- “The white savior narrative is a cinematic trope in which a white character rescues people of color from their plight. The white savior is portrayed as messianic and often learns something about themselves in the process of rescuing. The trope reflects how media represents race relations by racializing concepts like morality as identifiable with white people over nonwhite people. White saviors are often male and are sometimes out of place in their own society until they lead minorities or foreigners. Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness labels the stories as fantasies that “are essentially grandiose, exhibitionistic, and narcissistic”. Types of stories include white travels to “exotic” Asian locations, white defense against racism in the American South, or white protagonists having “racially diverse” helpers.^“

That relates to games in a more direct level than other versions of the white savior complex. On a larger scale the white savior industrial complex looks at how there is basically an industry in “saving” impoverished communities. The problem is most of these communities were being ruined for years by American foreign policy but we don’t act until the “galvanizing moment” ( I learned that at my conference!). This excerpt from TheAtlantic sums up things well using Haiti as an example,

“Let us begin our activism right here: with the money-driven villainy at the heart of American foreign policy. To do this would be to give up the illusion that the sentimental need to “make a difference” trumps all other considerations. What innocent heroes don’t always understand is that they play a useful role for people who have much more cynical motives. The White Savior Industrial Complex is a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a system built on pillage. We can participate in the economic destruction of Haiti over long years, but when the earthquake strikes it feels good to send $10 each to the rescue fund. I have no opposition, in principle, to such donations (I frequently make them myself), but we must do such things only with awareness of what else is involved. If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/

Real Talk- Helping people and committing to service is great! That service needs to serve the true needs of the populations and long term sustainable solutions should be the focus. A donation to Haiti of 10 dollars is OK for the short term but what about their long term infrastructure? Even if we spend 10 years there rebuilding homes and cleaning up what happens when we leave?

When I think about White Savior complexes I always think about the idea that there is an assumption that the people who are currently in an area can’t take care of themselves. You say, “We made blankets for those black kids so they can stay warm.”, I hear, “Let’s give those black kids blankets because their crappy parents can’t keep them warm and they would never survive without us.” The irony being that the neighborhood wouldn’t be so financially depressed if white people had not left the area, schools weren’t funded via property taxes, and businesses didn’t leave. It’s this idea of cleaning up a mess you made and expecting everyone to thank you for it.  

Video games are a fascinating look into this narrative especially because they normally take place during the galvanizing event and never show the long term plan.

An Example of a White-Savior Narratives in Video games

Mass Effect– For some reason in the vastness of space the human race is the alpha race and as such they represent the white people of space. Sheppard, the protagonist, receives mystic powers from the protheans and is becomes the only person able to save the world! As Commander Sheppard you gather a rag tag crew from around the galaxy to kill off in the second game’s suicide mission only to make sure you live long enough to save the Galaxy from the Reapers. Why is commander Sheppard the chosen one? In a game with more than just white people or black people we are stuck perpetuating the narrative that other cultures can’t take care of themselves.

Humans have a reputation in the Mass Effect Universe of being a little problematic, the main villain in the game is a human. The galvanizing event in the game is the discovery of the Reapers return and from that point Sheppard vs. the world. Sheppard learns about love, and culture and makes lots of tough decisions about the fate of entire species. The universe full of colorful people (see aliens) (colored…colorful…I laughed) is not competent enough and must be carried by commander Sheppard. Meh, he’s the savior…or the Sheppard to get us to prominence.

 

An Example of a White-Savior Subversive Narratives

Sleeping Dogs- Sleeping Dogs is really cool because it is a crime drama where in an effort to stop the crime issues in Hong Kong, authorities found a man from Hong Kong to go in and use his understanding of the culture to try and rectify the crime issues. The protagonist, Wei Shen, realizes that not everything is so cut and dry and maybe a lot of these cultural issues are actually being brought in from an outside factor! This leads to a story that doesn’t moralize racial groups. It’s also not a story that dehumanizes any group, it actually does the opposite. I don’t want to get too detailed because this is an awesome story-driven game but I recommend it to anyone and I think it subverts a lot of tropes.

To sum all this up, white-savior stories aren’t terrible because they exist. They are problematic because for too long they were all that existed in popular media. A lack of representation from other groups is what is really the issue. It’s hard not to think of white men and white race as heroes and look down on others if that’s what you see in your movies and games everyday.

I love Mass Effect. I love Tomb Raider, and I watch Indiana Jones films but I also understand that they can be problematic. A company that is surprisingly good about having strong black and female protagonist is GearBox. Borderlands and Battleborn are all super diverse and deal with the usual tropes of saving the world etc. but always have different representation of the hero.

 

The Sonic Myth or Requiem for a Hedgehog (Sonic Rivals 1 & 2)

Everything you know about Sonic is a lie. Sonic is not about speed or going fast. If you play Sonic 1 after you blow through Green Hill Zone you hit Marble Zone. Marble zone is a slow plodding platforming level that grinds Sonic down to Mario speeds. For a game about speed they slow you down very quickly. The Sega Advertising had a lot to do with this myth (show commercial) but reality shows that Sonic has always been about platforming as well as speed. From this frame, a lot of Sonic outings make more sense (see: Sonic 3D blast, Sonic Unleashed, etc).

What if there was a Sonic game that ACTUALLY about nothing but speed? I have for you that very game series…SONIC RIVALS 1 and 2 for the PSP!

Before I go on about Sonic Rivals 1 and 2, I want to touch on a problem that Sonic has that few other series have to deal with. People are obsessed with the narrative that Sega hasn’t made a good Sonic game since Sonic 3, and frankly that’s a lie. The main Sonic twitter account threw some shade at Mighty No. 9 and immediately everybody was like, “glass house!” “all Sonic games suck!” and no. For one, having one good Sonic game puts them in a better place than Comcept and the dumpster fire they released (it’s not awful but it’s not perfect). There are great Sonic games, there are not great Mighty No. 9 game so Sonic can throw all the shade he wants. Beyond that, people pick and choose which Sonic games count towards the “good game” count. Sonic has had consistently solid handheld outings for decades. The Sonic Advance games are amazing, the Sonic rush series was great, hell even the Sonic Boom handheld game was solid. The Neo Geo Pocket Sonic is one of my favorites but these games don’t support the “Sonic sucks” narrative so they don’t get brought up. Sonic Chronicles: The Dark brotherhood was a really solid RPG (from Bioware!). Sonic Runners for IOS was great and made a lot of thematic sense.

With that rant out of the way, I just want to extol the values of the Sonic Rivals series. They have speed, they have fun boss fights, great level design, and for some reason added battles to the second game but whatever nothings perfect.

What is Sonic Rivals? They are racing platformers where Sonic is pitted in a one on one race through a 2D level. First to the end wins. Each level has loops and moving platforms. There are enemies scattered around, mostly to force you to jump or attack. You can pick up items to attack your rival. You race through 2 acts and on act 3 you reach a boss. Bosses are fun fights where you race in a circle around the boss itself figure out where you can hit it and hit it until it blows up.

How do they look? For a PSP game (pause, take that in…) they look good. Vibrant colors. The stages colors are reminiscent original games with the same themes (casinos, hill zone, caves) and it looks awesome.

What makes these games matter? They are Sonic distilled to the 90’s marketing campaign. You get speed in spades. The levels are made to make you go. Weirdly, the games are made to speed run as if Twitch was a big thing when these games came out. There are little traps and things to slow you down but rarely will they cause you to lose a race. Even with all the different characters, they all basically just run.

I am not trying to say Sonic Rivals is the best Sonic game ever, nor are they the greatest games of all time. BUT they are really fun, and I think they were a good direction for Sonic to take. I would love to see a console version of these games (not Sonic R, or All-Stars Racing). The Rivals games have a fun trading card system rewarding you for completing levels and it adds a nice “gotta catch em’ all” gimmick.

Watching Sonic 4 morph into Colors, then Generations, and Lost World (Sonic Boom was some outsourced trash) it seems like Sonic won’t commit to a direction. I liked all of those game mentioned. I love Colors and think that Lost World is underrated. That said, I think a Sonic Rivals style console game at $19.99 would fill the needs of people clamoring for a fast Sonic, and a 2D Sonic without having to worry about gimmicks. It’s easy to sequel out, just make more stages. Multiplayer is built in. To me it makes sense. Which all but guarantees the next Sonic game will go off the fucking rails and I will be forced to cope by defending Sonic’s past and finding the gems that people forget and then cry myself to sleep while Sonic get trashed on all my favorite podcasts. I really love this fuckin hedgehog.  Peace.

 

Might No.9 and a Nice Alternative (Metagal)

Might No. 9 is the biggest “I told ya so” in gaming. I am sure people at Capcom are like “we told ya Inafune was the issue”, and gamers are chastising other gamers for “supporting a disappointing Kickstarter” and then the group saying, “Mega Man was left to die for a reason”. 

Full disclosure, I fall into the second camp. I hate Kickstarter. It is all risk for the consumer and the reward is not guaranteed. You don’t get the financial windfall of an investor when you fund a project nor is a project guaranteed to be finished and shipped. At some point if the big companies don’t want to incur the risk of these games, then we shouldn’t force consumers to eat that risk either. If I am being honest with myself Mighty No. 9 did not deliver for people. It was delayed constantly, the graphics are basic, and the voice acting is awful. The dev cycle was seemingly a nightmare and Inafune was touting other projects before completing the this one. Might No. 9 is a case study in what not to do for a Kickstarter. I didn’t back it. BUT I did buy it on PC. Here is the plot twist… I like Mighty No. 9.

My first impressions of MNo9 were surprisingly good. I had watched a lot of Youtube videos and read reviews and the game has been getting hammered. On every level. The biggest insult thrown at the game is that it is not Mega Man 2. I grew up playing and loving Mega Man. MM2 was and is one of my favorites games ever. I have re-purchased all of the MM games any chance I get. In my opinion, Mighty No. 9 holds up well. The dash mechanic work, you steal EVERY ONES powers, and the boss battles are epic. I love the level design (im a sucker for levels where you jump on cars.) and the controls feel good. That said, the explosions look awful and the cool character design is lost with the weird 3D cheap looking assets and textures. Also, this is a rare game where I will never watch the cut scenes. I can’t handle them.

The RAY DLC is worth it. Great character, awesome boss fight and fun, challenging game play. 5 dollars well spent.

The real winner in all this is METAGAL! If you are looking for a thinly veiled Mega Man clone with it’s own style and some nice features to make it user friendly then Metagal is perfect.

The pixel art is great, the music is amazing, and the bosses are…sexy…it’s confusing but I like it a lot. Oh and it’s like 3 dollars on steam! For the price, it’s a no brainer. Check it out, Metagal fucked around and made a masterpiece. They did what Inafune couldn’t. And I say that even acknowledging that I like MN9.

Mega Man Fans rejoice! You got 2 good options right here at half the price of a regular retail game. Peace!

 

Moba + Madden = Perfection?

Overwatch has me thinking a lot lately. It has made me become introspective about the type of gamer I am and frankly why I can’t get into these type of games. I played the Overwatch Beta, Smite, Battleborn, and I have dabbled in a few other of these types of games before (and before you say it, I know all 3 of those games are different but they fall into a similar play experience for me).

These games on paper, Overwatch especially, should be perfect me. I like shooters, I love sports games, I like fighting games, and competitive play. Hell, Battleborn even has a single player mode and I LOVE that. What happens though, is when I start playing these games I am lost. There are clocks ticking, a million characters doing things I can’t do. My character just feels lost and in the way. I tell myself, just keep playing and things will make sense.

I recently started playing Splatoon and it made sense immediately! Paint the world, kill the squids. There is nothing intuitive about Overwatch for me. I understand the goals of a given match, protect the thing or destroy the thing and be good. The nuance of getting there is lost on me.

On the Giant Beastcast this morning they gave me a striking idea. Vinny starting talking about having a system to suggest to new players who to use to be most useful during a match. I like this idea but I think I would want to see it fleshed out more. Hence the title of this post, Moba + Madden, I want to see plays you can pick as a team before a match and the play overlay onto the play field ALA every NBA game on the market. You can still deviate from the play but it gives somebody new a framework to follow. It also allows people who don’t use voice chat to still be able to work together in a unified way. Maybe have a play creator for the hardcore.

So here is the Vision– We will call it “Overborn Sportswatch!”- THE NEWEST MOBA FROM EA SPORTS! You watch a snazzy intro cinema and then press the menu button because the start button died for no reason. There is a campaign mode where you can choose a character and play through their career in the Overborn leagues. This mode teaches you the character abilities and lets you learn team plays. These team plays are available to every character and every group of characters. It’s like a smart driving line in a racing game, it tells you when to go, points where you can go, and keeps all the players in sync to complete the goal of this play (in this game to destroy the other teams Sportswatch tower in the touchdown zone!!!!).

+

Now you go to an on-line match. You choose Jim Brown-bot, a balanced character with a special ability to become invincible for a short period of time. Your team votes and selects the play, “Agresive Run 5”. You spawn on the map and there is a line telling you where to go, your teammates are seeing a different line telling them where they need to be. The entire time, the other team is trying to execute their play too and this smart line is telling what the next “best” or most logical move is. As a new player, you know exactly where to go and how to best utilize your character.   

I think that is what I need. The strategy and fun can come from when a play falls apart or when you are good enough to make your own magic on the fly. As a new player, I want more direction if this game is going to be so complex. I don’t have the time to earn 30 characters and counters and stages. I never will. This is my dream folks. Peace.

E-Sports: Why is this so hard to make work?

I am a die hard sports fan. I am a die hard video game fan. So e-sports should be my holy grail of media combinations! Right!?!?! Eh….not so much. ESPN just announced their new e-sports coverage initiative, and Activision just bough MLG so it feels like we are at a fever pitch of e-sports becoming a thing. ESPN is the holy grail of sports media coverage and them taking a sport seriously means it is hear to stay. With that said, why do I not follow e-sports and why has it had such a hard time latching on to societies sports obsession?

1. Regional affiliations are not strong in e-sports (outside of international competitions)- I love the Cleveland Browns. Not the Browns. Not Cleveland. The Cleveland Browns. It matters to me that the Browns are in the midwest. It means a lot to me that these men represent Ohio wherever they go. When the Browns beat the Steelers, it’s more than football. It’s Cleveland beating the city of Pittsburgh. E-Sports doesn’t have that. When you watch a fighting game tournament you are watching Chun-Li and a person controlling Chun-Li. Chun-Li could be fighting another person controlling the same character. The Browns will never play the Browns in the same fight. I think I would enjoy watching the Dayton Drillers League of Legends team play the Chicago Cables team. That gives an affiliation to care about. Or! they need to prop up individuals in the same way tennis and golf do. I think that presents its own challenges. As much as nobody wants to say it, we love Cam Newton and Sue Bird because they represent a peak in physical ability. They look great, they are in great shape and are easy to market. Video games doesn’t seem to have that yet. It’s usually really skinny guys in backwards hats or chunky guys in backwards hats. I like backwards hats.  
2. No major governing body that is easy to follow- You want to watch football? NFL. Basketball? NBA. Golf? PGA. MOBAs (DOTA 2, Heroes of the Storm, League of Legends) on PC? uh….well Twitch.tv, or buy the pass to watch League matches through their separate space. There is no unity on that front. I want to watch the best Street Fighter matches ever! I would watch Evo. Evo is a tournament but there are thousands of tourneys that exist. Which ones matter? Who defines that? MLG tried to be that unifying force but separate games superseded them and made their own platforms to watch and experience their leagues. 
3. No consistent rules or even games- If you have been watching Star Craft or Hearthstone from the beginning as e-sports you know they have changed dramatically through patches and nerfs to characters, etc. At one time Starcraft 2 defined e-sports and now it’s League of Legends. Small rule changes happen a lot in the NFL or NBA but the game is still the same and easy to follow. If I used to love watching Counter Strike but now the new hotness is Hearthstone there is no overlap there. It’s not even obvious what the conditions to win are to an observer. I have a hard investing time and resources into following a game that is an “e-sports game” because it might be obsolete in 3 years or less… what happens the company releases a sequel? If I love Halo 2 and Halo 3 comes out now what? Are the same guys pros? There are just too many questions right now.
4. Do you follow the character or the person controlling the character? Who is the star?- If you are a Ryu fan, do you just cheer for Ryu when he fights regardless of who is controlling him or do you follow Daigo and don’t care who he uses. In other pro sports I follow individuals. I am watching the Super Bowl to see Cam Newton. I don’t care about the Panthers. I would watch Cam play anywhere in the league. That said, I also root the Browns no matter who they have.
5. Too much influence by developers and publishers on the actual sport itself– That’s actually on par with current sports entertainment…. FIX! Moving on…
6. Lack of highlights– What constitutes a highlight in league of legends to an observer? What is their equivalent to the slam dunk or the stiff arm? This is the closest I have seen to an e-sports highlight and it’s not recent… Highlight culture, Vine culture is huge in sports! Few e-sports game lend themselves to these moments. Just some thoughts! Thank for reading! Peace

Freestyle Street Basketball 2 (PC)- Review

I take a lot of medications. I have some health issues. Due to these things, I pee a lot. Not like I pee twice a day and it’s a thing a lot, but I mean I pee basically every 30-45 minutes like clockwork. Regardless of how much I have or have not drank (drunk? Drinken?). This is relevant because on-line gaming cannot be paused. I realized I hit rock bottom with Freestyle Street Basketball 2 (a basketball MMO) when I pee’d into a cup because I couldn’t pause the game and I wasn’t just going to walk away. Rock bottom never felt so good.

What is Freestyle Street Basketball 2?

FSB2 is a massive multiplayer on-line game where you create an avatar and play basketball. This game is a 3 on 3 “street” basketball simulator. You create a baller at the beginning of the game. You can choose from some templates of a Center, Power Forward, Small Forward, Shooting Guard, and a Point Guard. After you create your player you are introduce to a confusing set of menus to show you how to upgrade your player. The game is a basic 3 on 3 basketball simulator that keeps you involved by having lots of customization options to unlock and currency to earn. There are some pay to win items if you choose to go that route but you can be competitive without spending money. I spent 5 dollars to get a pair of sunglasses and a high top fade….. I still have currency left. I felt like it was worth the money for the time. All of the upgrades that improve my performance were bought during the game.

How does it play?

This game is not NBA 2K, nor is it NBA Live. I would say this game plays like an early NBA Street crossed with NBA Jam. The controls are very simple. Pass, Shoot, Screen. Those same buttons double as rebound, block, steal on defense. There is a turbo button ala NBA Jam. The controls can get more complex if you want them to. You have the option to purchase via in-game currency new moves like jukes and v-cuts. The animations are a little choppy but the game is made to run on any PC. The games are high scoring, 3 point shooting, dunking affairs. You have great control of your character and there is basically no lag. Once you play a game or 2 the controls become second nature and that is when things get really fun.

The beauty of this game is in it’s simplicity and sports foundation. You don’t need to mid-mad characters upfront or spend money to have fun. The game of basketball has not changed. If you understand the game and can pick up the simple controls, you can play and win. The game is pure. You build your character as you see fit, you can run with a crew, or fin some randoms to pick up and run with. My level 3 PG is just as effective as a level 12 if I know the game better (and am surrounded by complementing talent).

How is the presentation?

The presentation is really eye-catching but the menu design is very unintuitive and takes some playing around with. There are so many things going on at once. You are constantly being informed of unlocking different things. Earning new nicknames, new icons, access to a wheel to spin, it can be overwhelming. The graphics look really nice. It’s a cel-shaded game. The characters are long and fluid. The game oozes color and style. The females characters are a little too sexy but overall it’s a very appealing game to look at. The courts are all outdoor and they have weather effects.

Another nice touch is that all upgrades are visual. No 2 characters look the same and it makes the entire experience constantly feel fresh.

How is the on-line community?

About as toxic as a real game of pick up basketball, so take that for what it’s worth.

Are there Black people in this game?

Yes! and women! and Asian people! and zombie looking creatures….. and everything in between. This game handles diversity in the best way. You have access to all sexes and races from the jump. Female centers are just as capable as males. The game has a weird cultural feel to it. It’s like this is what I imagine black and hip-hop culture looks like to somebody from Germany…or Japan even. It’s almost hyper-urban and hyper gaudy. It’s like MTV Cribs meets Def Jam crossed with Pokemon. I am not going to lie, the black characters in this game have real suspect lips….but otherwise they do a great job of giving lots of options for hair styles. This is the first game series i remember to have corn rows. It’s truly impressive. It doesn’t flaunt the diversity, and it’s just a great 3 on 3 basketball game that happens to have everyone in it. It’s really cool.

In conclusion, this game is a pleasant surprise. When I was in High School, I discovered the first FreeStyle Street Basketball game I loved it. I was addicted to it. This game represents community and basketball in a way that NBA 2K multiplayer doesn’t. The sequel doesn’t disappoint. The game is still addicting and fun as ever. Every time i log on, i feel like I am walking into a gym hoping to find some guys I gel with so I can keep winning and stay on the court. This game represents the dream for me. I always wanted a sports RPG and while 2K MyPlayer mode is great single-player representation of this, it always failed to capture my interest on-line. This game is special. It’s Free. I downloaded it on Steam. I recommend you do the same! Thanks for reading! peace

Race and Arcade Driving Games- A look at Drift Stage, Daytona USA, Outrun, and Midnight Club

I backed Drift Stage, an arcade racing game on KickStarter. It’s the first game I’ve given money and it got me thinking about Arcade Racers, which ones I have loved and why. It led me down a fascinating (at least to me) journey through my personal gaming automotive history and led me to look at how culture and race intersect in some of these games. Come with me on this journey we will start from the NES to now. (note: sim racers such as Gran Turismo and Forza are not going to be on here. I love those games but they are not arcade racers)

RC Pro AM (NES)- Everybody remembers their first. I have fond memories of playing RC Pro Am. It’s an isometric racing combat game made by Rare. This game obviously was not a large component of my racial development or anything but it was first taste of racing games. I loved it. Think of this as the gateway game.

Outrun (Genesis)- This game is my first true gaming love. I played this game at Uncle Tommy’s apartment. I had no idea I was even playing a Genesis but I always loved playing this game. This game captures driving in a way that few other games can. The focus on cruising and listening to the radio is so powerful. This is the first game I ever saw a human driving. It’s a white man and a white female (his girlfriend, or a date he is trying to impress). I spent hours looking at the back of these white heads driving down ocean vistas in a Ferrari Testarossa. It was the first game that made me wonder, what would it be like if the driver had an afro and looked like me. and Why not?

I think the game also has had a profound way of reinforcing perceptions of who has wealth and what to associate wealth with. Of course there are white people driving a Ferrari Testarosa….. who else can afford one? As a kid, this was the beginning of the implicit associations of white and wealth. This association is reinforced in media outside of video games regularly.

Road Rash 1,2, and 3 (Genesis)- Road Rash started out as a rebellious biker simulation and moved on to become a full on street gang sim by the PS1 era. I grew up playing Road Rash after renting it from Blockbuster with the Dotterwiechs. This game was a revelation. Super fast, super violent, you could knock cops off their bikes and every biker had a name and a personality. You developed rivals. It was such a novel concept for a racing game. We hated cop O’Malley and remembered the bikers who wronged us. For me this really opened up the idea of connecting with these vehicles and characters in a more meaningful way. Also, the economy of buying new bikes really made me feel ownership of the bike.

Daytona USA (Saturn)- This was my first real 3D racer. My friends were getting Cruise’n USA for N64 and I was playing Daytona USA on the Saturn and I could not have been happier. I spent all Christmas day playing Daytona USA and Nights into Dreams with Alex Cohen. It was awesome. Daytona USA was an interesting game in that it was very Japanese but it was seemingly a Japanese interpretation of the movie “Days of Thunder”. It was the most fun way to Stock car race.

This game brings up some interesting conundrums when it comes to race in games. In a Western developed game, it is easier to hold the creator and developers to a standard that they should understand what is offensive or what could be construed poorly. A Japanese developer making a game basically about America, can you get mad about that? If their views of American culture black, white, or any other race come from media then who is really to blame if things might seem offensive.

Sega Rally (Saturn)- It is my favorite Rally game. 3 cars. 3 tracks. Great physics and amazing graphics at the time. It really felt like driving on mud and water. It was a really cool experience. It felt like the Arcade. The Game Over screens, the timers, it was replicating the arcade experience in ways I never thought a console could.

Metropolis Street Racer (Dreamcast)- Kudos! This game introduced the world to the Kudos system that Project Gotham Racing would make famous on the 360. This game was the first sim like game I every really delved into. This is the first game that really started to feel cultural significant to me. The game is all about winning but you have to win with style to earn Kudos. That means drifting turns, and nearly missing other drivers, and taking jumps when possible. It was a beautiful game. I spent a summer playing this game non-stop only putting down the controller to go to summer basketball practice/games. The radio was also very important in this game. Being really into basketball, a big part of the game is putting your style into things. The Kudos really struck a cord with me in that sense.

Vigilante 8 (PS1)- The car combat game. Some people swear by Twisted Metal (2 was the best) but for me that genre lives and dies with Vigilante 8. It was set in the 70’s. The music, characters, and gameplay was awesome. This is where race comes into play in a big way for me.

John “Always bet on black” Torque and Houston “I may be half human, but im all woman” 3. These 2 characters were some of the first black characters I could pick in a car game. I thought John Torque was so cool. His special attack was the bass quake. It’s a sub that causes the Earth to liquefy and shake. He gambles all of his money and lives his life on the edge all while being a hero character in the game! Houston 3 is the blacksploitation woman. She is a cyborg but has a huge afro. She is also seemingly a feminist from the few lines she says. In a world of limited representation these characters were extremely valuable to me (even if in hindsight, they were lazy stereotypes….Shaft and Foxxy Brown).

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (PSX)- Sigh, in a world where Police Violent is a common news story it’s odd how much I love this racing game with a cop chase motif. You are a street racer who competes in illegal races and has to avoid getting busted by the cops. I love the second PSX entry of this game. The cars are exotic and fast, and the cops are super aggressive. I think this game would seem insensitive today but at the time it was a great change of pace. Maybe I only feel lukewarm towards these games in 2015 because i am a black male, but I have a harder time getting excited about the idea of aggressive police ramming civilian cars off the road now then 10 years ago.

Auto Modelista (PS2)- This is a cel shaded arcade racer from Capcom. The fighting game extraordinaire made a racing masterpiece that feels like controlling a work of art. This game doesn’t really add much to the discussion about my racial experience with driving games but I don’t want people to forget this game exist.

Midnight Club series (PS2)- This is the crux of what got me thinking about this topic. Midnight club is all about hip-hop, being black, bling, 22 inch rims, and gaudy fast cars. It’s rap music videos the game (Def Jam ICON might be as well). Midnight Club 1 was a standard arcade racer with some “street” attitude thrown in. They had some characters, you ran from police. The series really took off with Midnight Club 2 Dub Edition. Some of my favorite rap songs are from this series (Big Tymers- Real Big, J MIll- Like Dat). They latched onto MTV cribs and appropriated black culture in a style in a way that was really unique and somehow endearing. What could have been a shameless offensive shuck and jive the driving game actually turned out to be a solid racing game with true style and substance. The fact that real members of the black hip hop community were involved with the soundtrack and some of the cars were based off of their collections it was kind of legitimized in a way. For me in the suburbs, this was as close to seeing a real life donk as I was going to get. Where I lived a Ford Taurus with tinted windows was some scandalous shit.

Flat Out Ultimate Carnage (360, PC)- This is my favorite driving/racing/car game of all time. Bar none. This game has an awesome single player progression, cool mini-games, good humor and a surprisingly deep sound track. You start with demolition derby cars that race and also have demo derby events, and move up to street class and sports cars. The game is interesting because the developer (Bugbear) is British and this game is their take on American “mudding” culture (or redneck culture, but I hate that term). The drivers all have characters and avatars and small personality descriptors. There are confederate flags abound and lots of mud. The game characters almost come off as parody but I don’t know if that’s intentional. Even with all the characters, your personal avatar as a player can only be either a white male or female. This bothered me, because when you crash you see your avatar fly out of the car. As much as I love this game, it would be great to see my black ass flying out the windshield.

Midnight Club LA (360)- J Mills, Kid Kudi, and so much bling. Midnight Club LA was a revelation for me. I love this game. It’s an open world racing game that was too hard for it’s own good but then you reach a zen like place where everything clicks. Every car can be lowered, have huge rims put on, and all seem have incredible sound systems. This game is black to me. It’s all about being in Los Angeles, racing with criminals and running from the law. It’s a very cool experience having a game show off and replicate this culture. I ask myself if it’s problematic that this game is commodifying materialistic aspects of black culture? and yeah on some level it probably is. But when the other options are sterile games such as Gran Turismo or Forza, the culture adds so much to the experience.

I’m not even sure what a “black” car game would be…. this game fills that niche but it’s not a niche I never knew needed filled (that’s what she said?). It’s weird, I love this game but feel like I should be offended by the pandering but because there are no other options I am more OK with it. Leaves me feeling weird…

Forza Horizon 2 (XBONE)- I love this game, I’ve touched on this before but would it have killed them to make it so my driver is black. I see his arms. In convertibles, I can see him. They put the wrist bands on you…it would be nice to have the option.

Ending with Drift Stage, while I have only played the demo for this game, it takes me back to a lot of the experiences above. This game captures the feel of a 90’s arcade game but it’s stylish in a way that has not been seen since Auto Modelista by Capcom. The game uses its cars to harken back to different eras. They have their Trueno 86 clone of Initial D fame, and a car that looks just enough like a Ferrari to remind me of Outrun. They put a mid-80s looking BMW clone and played some Europop. It’s a great use of cultural signifiers to pull together so many different elements of gaming car culture and global music and culture.

The racing games I have always been drawn to are more arcade racers and I think a big part of that is their ability to be culturally relevant in a way that simulation racers can’t touch. Sim racers are an embodiment of a car culture that spans continents and is perpetuated on Top Gear and Velocity or Car Talk on NPR. Midnight Club LA or Dub Edition seem frozen in time in a place that intersects black culture as specific to the early 2000’s but seems relevant even now. The idea of putting a radio in the game basically to simulate cruising. In Midnight club you turn the camera to look at the car sideways and it would drop into its stance and the radio would still be playing. That’s culture. That’s race. Racing games. Rant. End Rant. Thanks for reading. Peace.