In anticipation of Halo 3, I thought it might be a hoot to look back on other highly anticipated gaming 3's from the past, and the effect they had on that paticular game series and the world of gaming in general.

On Tuesday we looked at Mega Man 3, a game that taught Capcom that if they half ass a sequel to a popular series every year or so, they will make big money until people get totally sick of them. Wenesday it was Street Fighter 3, a game that taught Capcom that putting tons of time, money and talent into a game wont mean sqwat if they already have three other games out that meet the exact same needs of the player audience. Friday it was Grand Theft Auto 3, the game that made ultra violent sandbox games the flavor of the half decade. Sunday it was Metroid 3, with special focus on why and game with semi-realistic graphics, a masked protagonist, and the sensibility of an American Sci-Fi movie is going to have trouble selling in Japan, be it from Nintendo od Microsoft. Yesterday it was Mother 3, the anti-Halo 3, hugely popular in Japan, not even released in the USA.

And it all leads up to this, the day before Halo 3. What game's famous 3rd entry from days gone by will I profile in this time, and how will I connect it to Halo 3? Resident Evil 3 would make sense, as it was highly anticipated, capped off the main storyline of that series, and was more ore less exactly like the other games in the series except with better graphics, guns, and minor gameplay elements like the Nemesis and the "dodge" feature.

Or I could profile Tomb Raider 3, the last "great" title in that generally over rated series.

Or Parrapa the Rapper 2 (which is technically the 3rd Parappa game counting UmJammer Lammy)

Or Panzer Dragoon Saga (again, technically the 3rd game in the series)

Or Crash Bandicoot 3.

Or Metal Slug 3.

Or probably closest to the mark yet, King of Fighters '96.

All of those would suffice. But no game expresses my opinion of Halo 3 better than the third game in one of the longest running and best selling game series in history, the one, the only...



As some of you may know, I was on a reality show about ten years ago. Obviously, it was a pretty weird experience. But out of all the crazy shit that occured at that time, it's some of the little conversations that had the strongest effect on me.

For one reason or another, we ended up hanging out in a frat house for a few days. I was in Art School at the time, and I had never, ever, ever talked with any regular, sports loving, good looking American alpha male for more time than it took for him to pull an Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds on me.



Yeah, that was about as far as I usually got.

But here I was on this reality show, an alpha male of sorts for a moment. And with the cameras rolling, here's this big, confident football playing jock trying to kiss up to me and look cool on T.V.

We had a conversation sorta like this.

Jock: "So dude, what do you, like, do?"

Me: "Heh. Uh... I don't know. I'm an art student, I guess."

Jock: "Shit, for real? That's cool. Like, do you get to paint real naked chicks and shit?"

Me: "Yeah, actually I do. It's pretty fun."

Jock: "Your school got a football team?"

Me: "Um, no. I tried to start a flag football team once, but the school is mostly rich girls on drugs, so it was hard to get a team going."

Jock: "Cool."

Me: "Yeah."

And here's where it got good.

Jock: "You know, I think football is an art."

Me: "What?"

Jock: "Yeah, totally. It takes skill, it's like... expressive, you know? It's like totally an underappreciated artform".

Me: "Huh. Ok."

Jock: "Yeah man."

Me: "Hey, where's the bathroom?"

Jock: "Shit, I don't know. I don't even live here."

And that was pretty much the end of that.

I've thought about that conversation now for going on ten years. I have really strong, really mixed feelings about it. Of course I though the kid was full of shit, but who am I to say what is art and what isn't? God knows it gets my tits hard with anger every time these elitest idiots in the mainstream entertainment world try to prove that video games aren't art. It I were to claim football weren't art, that it was a sport and that's a different but equal thing, how would I be any different that Ebert?

Well, today I figured it out. I'm not different from Ebert. Ebert was right about video games. At least about some video games. Well, at least two video gamse, video game series that is. Those two video game series would be Madden, and teh Halos.

Football is not art. Football is a sport. Football video games art not art. Football video games are a re-creation of a sport. And the Halo series is not art. It is the re-creation of a sport, that sport being competative paintball, excpet with more killing, making it a bit more like porn. So it's sports/porn.

There is nothing wrong with that. All the above mentioned non-arts are still fun, and that's what counts. But they aren't art. They don't express anything. They don't comment on anything, they don't come from a place of creative inspiration. They don't make you feel any way other than "Oh shit!" or "I kicked your ass!". All they do is provide for us a vehicle to express or instincts to form groups to kill other groups, and to be kings. It's fun. They are fun games, sports games, but they are more like porn than art.

Sure, football uniforms take some level of artistic skill to design. The individual logos for each team took some creativity to make. Same with the graphics of Madden '94 or Halo 3. I respect the artists who were paid to come up with the visual delivery method by which I experience football, Madden, and the Halos. But to say that these details make football, Madden and the Halos art is just plain silly. Is a gunfight between two jet fighters ending in flaming death for one or more pilots "art" just because one of the fighters has a cool Woody Woodpecker logo on it's side, or is it "war"? I'm going with the later.

Is hot lesbian porn "art" just because one of the "actresses" has a cool tramp stamp on her back, or is it porn?

I can't actually post the porn, but this will do.



You could say "Yes, it's art to me, so that makes it art" and I would pretend to respect your opinion. But I would also know that you were just being an oppositional dick, and deep down you knew I was right.

We all know that logos and alien war storylines and uniform designs isn't what football and the Halos are all about. They are both about winning points for our team. We don't care what the other team's logos look like, what they represent, what we look like, what we represent, who we are, or what we're fighting for. We want to finish the fight. We want to win the game, the sports game. We just want to kill those bastards and be the best around.


Nothing's gonna evar keep us down.

Ahem.

Halo's story is like a sports commetation mixed with Sci-Fi porno. No matter how good the writing or acting is, you fastforward to the part where the insertion occurs. For Halo, that insertion in multiplayer.



And no, I don't think this pic is from a "good" Sci-Fi porno. But it sure makes a point.

Back to Madden.

Madden '94 has it's version of "storyline" in form of Madden-banter. This, like the porno's or Halo's (geez, they even rhyme) storylines, could be considered art by some. Virtua-Madden is clearly trying to express some ideas, thoughts and feelings to the player. It's far from poetry, but he's clearly trying. The reason it's not art is there is probably not one un-retarded human being on earth that didn't want to skip over the Madden talking parts in order to get back to the ass-kicking game.



Now, retarded people may really think the Haloes have a very good story. And they may even hate the Halo gameplay and only put up with it in order to see the Halo cut scenes (this is what I do with the Metal Gear Solid games, so I know it's possible). And you know what, some non-retarded people may feel this way too. The Halo story is about as good as your average Sci-Fi channel original apocolypse movie. It's about as good as Alien Apocolypse, or Android Apocolypse, or even Resident Evil Apocolypse. And one of those movies may be your favoraite movie of all time. If so, good for you.

But I'll tell you how the rest of us see these movies. To us they are cheap garbage that's good for a cheap laugh or gross out scare. They are junk food. They are a good fart. It's stuff that's only fun because it meets some animal instinctual need. It's not expressing anything, even if it's trying to. If it's trying then it fails, and therefore fails to be art. Or I guess I should say if most of us don't like it for "artistic" reasons, then it's not art to "most of us"

(See what I did there? I was trying to be nice).




Am I sounding like a giant douche to you? I could see how I could. And if so, I don't think that's ok and I want you to tear me a new asshole in the comments section.

Now to re-cap the week.

The week in 3's, Art, Sport, or Porn?



Mega Man 3, though not half as inspired as it's predicessors, still has some creative spark and inspiration. The dog turning into a submarine is a particularly weird and creative idea. And the platforming puzzles, boss concepts and animations, and story were all creative at times. So I'll say that this one's art, but just barely. It's leaning into the porn side, because a lot of the fun is just comes from a basic "PEW! PEW! PEW! DESTROY!" mentality.



Street Fighter 3's character designs and animation are first and foremost why it remains one of my favoriate games of all time. Many people who didn't appreciate it stuck exclusively with the recycled sprites of the Alpha games, which have questionable artisit value. Especially when they devolve into recylced "Ken vs Ryu" sprite battle fest for years in a row.

"Ken vs Ryu with recyled sprites: The Game" is not art . That again sports 'n porn.




GTA III is an extremely artistic game, fillid with social satire and clever parody of modern society. It's doesn't apply the most subtle means of expression in the world, but art doesn't need ot be subtle if it's genuine and effective. It's porny at times, because it sure is driven by the animal instinct to just blow shit up and take what you want. But other games do that jsut as well as GTA, yet don't end up half as successful. That, in my opinion, is because of GTA's artistic merits.



Super Metroid is an artistic masterpiece, filling the player with a sense of wonder, mystery, fear, issolation, and at the very end, genuine sense of anger, grief, and graditude. Alien Resurrection has wet dreams about being this good of a piece of Sci-Fi art.



Mother 3 is probably the most artisticly sound video game I've ever played. It's almost completely devoid of porn or sports elements. If that book critic jack ass would put one hour into Mother 3, he'd see how depressing a game can be.

And now Madden '94 and Halo.

Madden is all sport, and Halo is sports porn. I've already driven that point home well enough. Capeche?

No? Ok, I'll say it once more, but this time with the help of Roddy Piper.

People will play Madden and Halo for the same reason. They play it like a sport, where proving your skill and winning come before any artistic idea that the game makers may have been trying to express. I call Halo 3 sports porn because of the rampant amount of killing involved. Killing, like sex, is pleasuarble because of our basic animal instinct to do so. Therefore, killing sport = sport porn.

Halo is about the thrill of chewing bubblegum and kicking ass. But that's it. Nothing further.

I will totally take this back if there is more to the game than I know, but as the brief time I speant with the game this weekend, that's how I see it.

One last connection, then I swear I'll shut up.

Halo players and Madden players both commonly say to me "I'd don't really like video games, but I love Halo" or "...I love Madden". What they are trying to tell me is "I'm not a nerd. I don't like games that express something, that try to make me feel anything real. I'm not all geeky trying to escape from my life, because my life is fucking awesome. But I do like to play some virtual paintball" or "...virtual football with my buddies. Nothing wrong with that." The guys who say this kind of crap to me are often my friends at work, and I think they're great people. But they are subtley trying to differentiate themselves from other video game players in a snobby way.

Weak.

But I just speant two hours typing about how some video games (the ones I love) are art and some (the ones I only sort of like) are more like sports or porn, so who am I to judge?

In closing, here are some more pics of alien bukkake and Madden '94. If you don't see the connection yet after that, then there is nothing more I can do for you.

Thank You, and good luck.