This week on Hit or Miss: Nintendo announces some release dates or something (is that a big deal?); Doritos tries to convince us that lending their brand to a "Pro-Gamer Combine" can make the idea of a "Pro-Gamer Combine" not-absurd; Tecmo tries to convince us any pornographic undertones in Dead or Alive: Paradise were totally "unintentional" (large, obvious wink); and Electronic Arts suggests the new Medal of Honor may — gasp! — actually be a thoughtful and empathetic examination of real-life combat in a big-budget shooter.
Where the hell do they get off, right?
Nintendo Announces Ass-Ton of Release Dates
I have to believe Nintendo is run by fucking magicians. Not, like, fornicating magicians. Magicians who are so magical they need explicit language for introduction.
How else to describe their ability to do this every few years? Allow me to run you through the cycle.
1) People love Nintendo for all the amazing new entries they just released in their favorite franchises.
2) Life goes on, and few amazing new games in all their favorite franchises are now on the horizon.
3) These holes are filled with experimental insanity like Wii Fit and Wii Music and people start to hate Nintendo for abandoning them for soccer moms.
4) Nintendo announces new entries in their favorite franchises, but release dates are hazy. Meanwhile, people still hate them for all the weird games they're releasing in the moment, and they question if Nintendo lost their touch and those new franchise games will end up sucking anyway.
5) Blind hatred stops people from perceiving the passage of time, until suddenly Nintendo announces all those games they want are releasing in just a few months. It's officially Second Christmas. People love Nintendo for all the amazing new entries in their favorite franchises.
Go back to 1), repeat indefinitely. Wizard.
"You! Shall! Totally love us and shit!"
Doritos Partners with MLG to Take 'Pro-Gamer Dreams into Reality'
First, if your dream is to become a pro-gamer, I would gently suggest upgrading your dreams. Not that you shouldn't pursue whatever stupid and insane goal you want in life (hell, look what I'm doing), but just saying. In terms of the dignity of the skill involved, "pro-gaming" is an activity that ranks just above "competitive eating" and slightly below "amateur acoustic guitar playing at open-mic nights."
But hell, if that's what you want, then here is Doritos's "pro-gamer combine" to prove your worth. This also, by the way, breaks intriguing new ground in the realm of sponsorships, in that I believe this is the first time the putrid death-substance sponsoring a "sporting" event is actually what these "athletes" really eat while training for it.
And I put "sporting" in quotes because professional gaming is not a sport. Competition, fine, but not sport. You can put "Major League" in front of the word as much as you want, but you're never going to see Unreal Tournament 2024 being played in the Olympics. For one thing, the IOC would have to decide whether it's technically a summer or winter event, which should tell you something right there.
Isn't that right, weirdly random 2010 Vancouver Olympics guest J.R. Celski?
Hell yeah.
Tecmo Denies DoA: Paradise is Pornographic or Demeaning to Women
Dead or Alive: Paradise is a PSP title where DoA characters compete in beach-themed mini-games. That's one way to describe it. Another would be DoA: Paradise is a thinly veiled excuse to show scantily clad and almost superhumanly-curved women rolling in sand.
I don't know if that officially constitutes as softcore pornography by international pornography-judging standards, but I do know "thinly veiled excuse to show hot women being hot" is the definition of every porn movie I've ever seen. The only thing this game is missing is one pizza delivery man, one cable guy, and a much more obvious title (maybe "Dead or Alive: Sandy Passions").
Tecmo, naturally, totally disagrees: "That's certainly not something we're intentionally going for," said director Yoshinori Ueda. "It's not that we were trying to make softcore porn. That's definitely not the goal."
No, they weren't trying to. It just ended up that way! It's just like how this issue is totally only intended to be about, um…let's say sports?
Above: A game that's not pornographic at all.
EA Doesn't Want Medal of Honor to be a "Propaganda Piece"
And finally, a real Hit of approval: Speaking about the danger of appearing to exploit a war that's still being waged, EA's Sean Decker said earlier this week that the Afghanistan-set Medal of Honor won't be a "propaganda piece" and compared it to The Hurt Locker.
"It has nothing to do with the war in Iraq and why it started, or anything else — it's just about the men on the ground, what they go through on a day-to-day basis, and their emotions," Decker said. "[Medal of Honor] is not going to be a big propaganda piece where we wave the flag, or anything like that. It's literally about the people that're on the ground."
Well…Kathryn Bigelow has gone on record to say her film "definitely takes a very specific position" on the Iraq War, but as someone who has literally asked for the Hurt Locker equivalent of a video game before, I appreciate Decker's point.
And it's an important step: First, prove big-budget action games can be about something in a mature and meaningful way. Then you can prove they can be about something with a more specific agenda, which, in the end, should be the goal of all art.
Or, they can just keep making big-budget shooters about blowing shit the hell up all cool like and shit. Honestly, we're never really going to complain with that much.