Monday, May 21, 2012

It's Not Paranoia If They Really Are Watching You

If it's one thing that video games have taught me, it's that you can't trust the "computer" anytime you play video games against a computer controlled character.  Let's break this down so that there's some semblance of planning and cohesion.

Board Games: (Monopoly, Dokapon Journey):  I don't trust computer controlled characters.  Now way about it.  Sure there could be a logarithm that actually has the "die" roll by any player be purely random, I just don't believe it.  
I've played Monopoly enough times on the NES and SNES against the computer to feel cheated every time, especially in the die roll department.  I don't have any empirical evidence that actually says that the game cheats, I just used to feel that I was fighting an uphill battle when it came to 1 player Monopoly.  Like how their Thimble or Car piece will magically move over my properties while I will frequently land on theirs.

Dokapon Journey on the other hand, sigh.  Penny Arcade does a great job of summing up the "theory" behind the game, but the game's execution isn't all there.  Imagine you're playing Dragon Warrior, but you're playing with three other people and you're able to get in the other players' way while everyone tries to complete the same tasks.  There's plenty of online forum bantering about how the computer characters will spin the exact number they need to get to a specific place (say, a weapon shop so you don't die in every battle and have to spend 3 turns at the church being resurrected).  The main problem I have with the computer in this game, is that it knows where to go.  Let's say a King's mission is something like "Go to the cave to find the treasure that was taken from me by the bandits."  There are 4 possible caves on the map, (and to enter a cave you have to "land" on it with the exact spin/roll number) and the computer knows exactly which ones to go to.  Anyway, don't trust the computer here.

Fighting Games:  (Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, Primal Rage)  Yes, I know there're a ton of fighting games out there, I just chose to list those three just because and put them in no particular order.  My distrust of fighting games stems from my awesome ability to get the shit kicked out of me 60% of the time.  The thing with a lot of these types of games is that you have to learn the moves for either a particular character or any number of characters (like games that use tag-teaming).  This has always been a personal problem for me in these games, which I know isn't universal.  Mainly for me it's about remembering the combination of buttons to press while trying not to get the shit kicked out of me.  And I just don't trust the computer (when the game's on "easy" settings) to accidentally screw up a combo move or to not know all the moves that that one character knows.  Although, I did like that in Killer Instinct, the AI would learn the moves that you would frequently perform, forcing the player to continually alternate their attack strategy or nothing would work.  Kind of like the Borg.

Poker/Card Games:  I learned this lesson very early on in my video gaming life.  One of the first video games that I played was Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack on the Intellivision.  All I'm going off is my memory, but I recall that I could do alright playing against the computer, but I was often convinced that the dealer would deal themselves better cards in any of four available games (5 or 7 Card Stud, 5 Card Draw or Blackjack).  Inevitably I would always end up bankrupt and then play either Astrosmash, Star Strike or Golf.
Then there were the little handheld poker and slot machine LCD games from Tiger that I would always seem to loose all my "money" on.  Tiny little hand held balls of cheating madness is what I call them.

This then brings me to Poker/Slot Machines in video games.  I don't trust them at all; like that's a shocker.  Especially in games where money or game tokens may be hard to come by (Pokemon, Dragon Quest V, Bioshock, Chrono Cross).  I always seem to play a couple of games to get the feel of them, realize that I'm not going to spend a couple of hours just in the casino when I could be out in the world map earning gold at a probably faster rate.  And I'll feel less cheated.

And now this brings me to real world video poker.  I personally don't trust the computers who control the outcomes.  I've played video poker a couple of times during a single venture while out with former employees on a unit moral building outing.  The whole time though I felt I was inside of Fear & Loathing.  I did manage to win $15 from the $5 that I was playing with, and like any person who just won, I kept playing and ended up with $0.  Which was fine with me.  I called it up to the computers winning and taking their first step in taking over the world.  


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Well Played Skynet

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