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Freaking Play This

by Alex Yusupov March 12th 2008 8:18 PM CDT4 Comments

I can’t bear it anymore, a whole city full of novice gamers with idiotic opinions and incorrect facts (if facts are incorrect, they’re not facts anymore though, are they?). Alright let me get to the point here, all of the fanboy gamers can go shove it. I’m so sick of listening to people babble about the one game they played for the past three years and somehow comparing it to every single other title in the industry.

Hell, I remember a friend of mine going on a tangent a few weeks ago comparing the Halo series to the Final Fantasy series. Now this guy plays Halo 3 day in and day out. The only other game he has played in the past three months is Skate, with which he also compared Halo. Apparently, there is so much in common between shooting oddly colored aliens and rolling down a hill using a plank of wood and four small wheels. But wait till you hear what my buddy had to say about Final Fantasy.

Now to those of you who live under a rock and somehow don’t know what Final Fantasy or Halo is, they’re both videogames (no way!). The former is, for the most part, a turn-based role-playing game. The latter, Halo, is a sci-fi first-person shooter. The two could not be more radically different in their content. From game play to story, the series share nothing in common. They’re not even available on the same platforms.

And yet my friend (whom we shall call Bugle, for kicks), rants on and on about how the Halo series kicks Final Fantasy’s ass. I asked him why, and I swear to you the response I got was “because Halo sold more copies.”

Dumbfounded, I decided to do some research. Final Fantasy has been out three times as long as Halo, there was simply no way Halo was doing better. I compared my results, and Final Fantasy outsold the “competitor” four-to-one. Now of course, anybody with half of a brain knows that sales say little about a game’s quality. We all remember the Halo 3 hype, and how it wasn’t even close to living up to it. And Final Fantasy had been out for twenty-something years, so sales figures no longer meant a damned thing.

I reported the results to back to our buddy, Bugle, who was furious with my findings. I told him exactly what I told you, that sales didn’t matter. For some reason, that only enraged him further. “Final Fantasy is just a boring RPG,” was his main argument. Granted, Bugle used a more colorful word choice, but for our sakes I cleaned it up.

Something hit me, as if out of nowhere. “Have you ever even played Final Fantasy?” I said. The answer was “no.” Here we were, arguing about two games for over a week, and Bugle hadn’t ever even touched a Final Fantasy game. At least I played both of the series to death.

After a long conversation, I realized it would not end in any significant result. I mean this guy didn’t even know stuff about his own all-time favorite game. He was befuddled by my usage of “Bungie” (makers of Halo), for example.

I know and agree people have got plenty of better things to do than sit on their asses all day and find information about games, or anything for that matter. Bugle is an exception though. He belongs to the cult of idiots that play a certain game(s) for hours a day, but know nothing about it. They’re the guys that would die before using common sense, logic, or an ounce of their brain matter.

Suffice to say, Bugle and I are no longer friends. It seems like a harsh punishment, but would you hi-five anybody who is determined that Nintendo is a subsidiary of Microsoft (again, his language lacked word’s beyond two consonants, so I paraphrased)?

Tip of advice, fellow gamers, don’t compare RPG with FPS, and maybe look on the loading screen when you startup a game to see what company made it. You have no idea how easy it is to avoid getting embarrassed like Bugle. Oh Bugle…don’t procreate.