Here it is, if you want to see it. Comments and ratings are included on most of them.

You know Jack Thompson, enemy number one in the eyes of the world's videogamers at the moment? Well, there's a radio interview with him here, and discussion of it here. Take a look at these posts in particular: 1, 2

The thing is, there are actually some things in that interview that I agree with him about. Whatever effect violence in videogames has on people's minds, it's sure to be far more pronounced than the effects of violence in films, comic books, rock songs or other scapegoats, especially as graphics become more advanced. Also, age-based rating systems are far more intuitive than letter-based ones, and should preferably be used alongside additional information, like the "Language/Violence/Sex/Other" descriptions on the back of most recent UK videos and DVDs. It is important that a useful rating system is actually enforced.

Unfortunately, his sensationalistic fervour to "destroy Rockstar" and to claim that EA is in collaboration with the porn industry gets in the way of any balanced discussion with him about what is an important issue. The hordes of immature and venomous emails, blogs and forum posts directed at him probably aren't helping his impressions of gamers, but even those who have tried sending intelligent e-mails to him, rationally defending The Industry, have received nothing but abuse in return. Allegedly, anyway.

He seems intent on going for the developers above all else. They're not the problem. No one wants censorship of any artform (which videogames are - Rez proved that, as we all know ), and developers should be allowed to create games with whatever content they wish (even Rockstar's controversy-baiting, though unhelpful, is generally backed up by good games). So who should be responsible?

• It's the responsibility of the rating organisations to classify games appropriately. They also need to ensure that gaming-illiterate parents understand why the system's there and how to interpret those funny little numbers and symbols on the boxes.
  
  
• It's the responsibility of the parents to decide whether their child is mature enough to "handle" (for want of a better word) the content of a particiular game. However, they can only do this if (a) they are a responsible parent and (b) they understand the rating systems in the first place.
  
  
• It's the responsibility of the retailers to ensure that they perform the right age checks when selling adult games. Even if the child tries to buy a game and gets rejected, it seems that as long as the parent is the one to actually pay for it then it'll be sold - even if it's obvious that they'll put it into the child's hands before they even leave the shop! I've read stories about people seeing parents with kids no more than 10 trying to buy GTA, and even when the child tells them eagerly that "it's the one where you beat up prostitutes!" and even when the shop assistant points out the age rating, the parent still buys it, just saying "he knows not to copy what he sees in it".
  
  It just demonstrates the uselessness of the present systems, and why it's important that the content of games is explained to parents, preferably in more informative ways than this!
  
  
• It's the responsibility of the advertisers to market their games to the appropriate age groups.


That last one is important, even though it can obviously be overridden by the power of playground word-of-mouth. The best discussion I've seen about this is RedEye's column in issue 129 of Edge magazine (November 2003):



...we could make some effort to stop individual publishers targeting inappropriate games at young audiences. Such as Take 2, for example.

Videogame magazines are, by and large, for kids. In fact, Edge is the only videogame magazine for adults, yet it's one of the few that hasn't run a Grand Theft Auto cover. Many, if not most, magazine covers will have been put together with the blessing and aid of Take 2's PR department. They are, to all intents and purposes, full colour front-page adverts for an 18-rated product, aimed directly at under 18s.



He suggests:



...a campaign funded by the industry as a whole, aimd at a global audience who don't yet understand that videogames can be intelligent, emotional, mature, exciting, dangerous and, above all, for adults. We could run a smart series of adverts - print, posters, TV and radio spots, evrything - that not only convince people to think twice before buying kids in the early teens Rape and Murder II: Go Get 'Em but also promote the idea of videogames as an appreciable form of entertainment for someone out of their teenage years. Hell, it might actually increase sales, marketing guys!




And with that I agree wholeheartedly. Something like that really would benefit the game industry and its consumers.

Mature subject matter in videogames is an important issue. But it seems that fair discussion and solutions won't come from Jack Thompson.

No, really, it is. Go and see for yourself.

And even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the above, if you haven't seen this yet, do so now. It's quite possibly the most amazing moment in videogame playing of all time, surpassing even this piece of ridiclously brave (and stupid) GoldenEye time attacking.

Oh, yeah, and God is back, too!

Um, we, hello! This is my first time using this journal thingy, and I thought I'd use this one to reproduce a post I made on GameFAQs about my thoughts on one of the most popular games ever: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which I finished around last September, just before I came to University.

While it's not as in-depth as one my full "proper" reviews of GoldenEye and NiGHTS, it sums up my opinions on the game pretty well. So, read it, agree, disagree, whatever.




Ocarina of Time is definitely a very, very well-made game. However, its few flaws, while not particularly major, bothered me more than they annoy most other people. I mostly enjoyed the in-dungeon puzzles because no matter how challenging they got, they were almost always interesting, and battling the enemies was almost always fun; but when it came to going outside again there were many times when I had absolutely no idea where to go. The most obscure bit for me was finding the message in a bottle hidden at the bottom of the lake - in such a huge gameworld, with so few clues about where to go next (apart from playing Saria's song and choosing to talk to Navi), how are you meant to find that without some walkthrough/hint file? Similarly, there were many puzzles that I thought would be optional but weren't (like the Sun puzzle to acquire the fire arrows that you need to break a cobweb in Ganon's castle at the end of the game), and the fact I didn't know about the extended magic meter made some parts of the game unnecessarily hard. I confess I (reluctantly) resorted to an FAQ numerous times during the adventure.

I prefer the style of puzzles in point-and click adventures; they do have a lot of wandering around and tedious experimenting, but at least they usually have a lot of jokes to keep it interesting (although I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount of humour in Zelda).

There's an interesting article about OOT's design here:

[link] ¹

Unfortunately, one of the points it makes is one of the parts of the game I found least enjoyable:

In most dungeons, there is a short path from the dungeon entrance to the boss room. This is closed to start with, but in the course of completing the dungeon the player opens it up; it might be a passage that has to be opened by solving some puzzle (like the cobwebs across the floor in the Deku Tree) or a route that becomes available when the dungeon’s new tool is acquired (like the longshot in the Water Temple). This quick route means that a player who dies in the course of fighting the boss (which is likely to happen several times) and is therefore sent back to the entrance doesn’t have a long slog to get back to the boss.

The Shadow Temple is the sole exception to this rule.

The Shadow Temple annoyed me because of that, more so than the Water Temple. I kept dying at the hands (literally!) of the boss (mostly because of the awkward lock-on camera), so if I didn't want to have to go through the whole long level over again (including the unskippable ship sequence) every time I died, I'd have to place one of those green magic warp points before the last room. Doing that used up the magic energy I needed to fight the boss (I had no idea about the extended magic bar at the time), so every so often I'd have to either go outside and find some more green magic bottle thingies, or reset the N64 and reload an earlier save when I had more magic (and when you want to resort to do that, something's not right).

BTW, I belive my death count was somewhere in the 60s when I finished the game. Pathetic, I know, but it was mostly because of the damn Fire, Water and Shadow Temple bosses!

Believe me, despite me focusing on the negatives here, I did enjoy the game on the whole - especially the last battle against Ganon - and people who give it 10/10 (including Edge magazine) are perfectly justified to do so, even if I didn't enjoy it quite that much.

An 8/10 game, for me - about as good as Mega Drive's The Story of Thor/Beyond Oasis (which in some ways is a similar game).


There, rant over.


¹ The site also contains an incredibly informative "making of GoldenEye" article by one of its main designers, which I highly recommend - it can be found at [link]