Stay dazzled

Many years ago, when I was just a little kid, my folks used to listen to songs a lot and they had an impressive collection of tapes. Day or night, Monday till Sunday, our house was just full of music. I guess that’s why I’m such an audiophile now, as in the past, no matter what I was doing: building something with small wooden blocks, doing my homework, playing with Matchbox cars... there was music around. Quite a lot of it, in fact.

One day, I believe I was about 10 at that time, my dad showed me one of his recent discoveries, Status Quo: the Greatest Hits locked in an original, double-tape case. He told me this had been one of his favorite bands years before and wanted me to check it out. I took the case, went to my room, put the first tape into my Sony (some coincidence...) audio equipment and pressed ‘play’. I remember sitting down or walking around the room (I like to do that while I’m listening to music, unless I have my headphones on), inhaling the songs pouring out of the speakers, trying to find some positive features which may make me want to go back to them in the future. And believe me, I’ve found enough of them to do so.

Nowadays, while I still like, let’s say... Ol’ Rag Blues or Burning Bridges, I sure as hell cannot conceive how on earth I could ever enjoy crap like Pictures of Matchstick Man or Ice in the Sun. They sound like they were written in ninetieth century, don’t they? That’s the point – today I would probably take the tapes, fast-forward through them in maybe five minutes, then take them right back to my dad. If I had happened to find something interesting, then okay, cool, I’ll maybe listen to it again, if not, then, “here you go, dad, thanks, but it’s not really my type of music”. Back in my young days, however, I would listen to the entire tape back-to-back, thinking that maybe there is something I would like about it. And more often that not, there was. I even liked David Hasselhoff’s “Looking for Freedom”. (What? I still think Lonely is the Night kicks ass... And maybe Sheltered Heart... ... What???)

Exactly the same thing happened with the way I perceive games. While I had Amiga 500, I could play anything, ANYTHING, and like it. Bad games seemed neutral – I could spend some time with them occasionally, if I had nothing better to do, but the good games seemed perfect. They dazzled me so hard, it was sometimes difficult not to hold my breath. I remember Jaguar XJ220, Crazy Cars 2, Swiv, Street Fighter II (oh boy...), Super Cars and Super Cars II, Alien Breed, Lemmings (can you believe one time I actually burst into tears once, watching the little creatures falling to pieces, while there was nothing I could do to save them?)... I also remember Crazy Sue, Rick Dangerous, Apprentice, Logical, Dangerous Streets, Terminator 2, Overlander (the one with a red car) – and just what I liked about them, I don’t know anymore. Better yet, I didn’t play Rise of the Robots on my old Amiga, but if I did, the graphics alone would probably make me call it the best game of all times (today it’s just wasted potential, nothing else).

The world moved on, the computers came and went, off with floppies, in with CDs. Nothing has really changed – there were still bad games and good games. But this time I knew the bad game when I saw one. And if I did, I was angry about having spent money on it. Screw neutrality, I’ll never going to play this piece of crap again! I can still remember some games which even then managed to dazzle me: Half-Life, Resident Evil 2... But more often that not, I would frown playing games: Unreal was too boring, Need for Speed 2 looked sad and empty (and what the hell happened to cops and pursuits?), Virtua Fighter 2 was downright pointless, Lara Croft’s boobs seemed smaller... (just kidding, I actually hated the controls in Tomb Raider – fuck the ledge when I can’t climb it) It got further – I remember being genuinely in love with Blair Witch I – now, I feel my head aching every time I see those endless excursions through the forest and back again. Oh yes, speaking about Resident Evil – I never owned Dreamcast (Fallingstickman does) so I never got to play the original Code Veronica, while I badly wanted to. Later, when I bought a PS2, I got myself a copy of Code Veronica X and tried it. It seemed all but casual – the charm I felt while watching the Dreamcast version was completely gone – and I’ve never even finished it.

This goddamn trend of misery keeps getting worse and worse, as you can see here on this site. It’s hard to find a game I really like, almost impossible to find one I love and even if I do, I sometimes just want to dismiss it as “medium” or downright “bad” like most reviewers do because of all those tiny glitches which we immediately take notice of and, in consequence, effectively erase the smiles off our own faces. I know I did. Many times.

You may think I was just a gullible child and now I’ve simply grown older and wiser. But, is that a good thing? The painful truth is: IT’S NOT. After all, what is gained by playing a game and constantly searching for critical flaws that will turn you off? By forgetting about the creators’ good intentions and constantly reminding yourself about their obvious slackness and lack of skills instead? I know it takes more than intentions to make a good game and pointing out mistakes and things you don’t like may eventually change something in the end if enough reviewers keep doing it, but, for Heaven’s sakes, games are for entertainment, aren’t they?

My message to you: stay dazzled. If you feel you heart beating just a little harder when you see that game IGN has dismissed, Gametrailers has rejected, Gamespot has nothing to say about, then go ahead and get it anyway. Play it. Enjoy it. Remember how you felt when you got your first PC/console and played your first game. Save the emotions before they are killed by reasoning. Save the way you feel about the game before it is killed by all those negative reviews written by sad people called “experts” for whom writing about games is just emotionless, everyday work. Don’t ever get older and wiser. Just stay dazzled. To hell with everything else.