You just got done experimenting with boys in Bully, adopting an African baby against his will, and dancing to K-Fed's newest album. It sounds like you just barely survived another month of 2006! Who thought October would be so crazy? It's the month that brought us Final Fantasy XII, the death of Habeas Corpus, and a Project Runway winner. But just because you blew up a nuclear device, Kim Jong Il, it doesn't mean you have to completely forget about all of the good things that happened in October! This is Defunct Games RECAPPED!!, your monthly guide to the best and worst of the last 31 days. This is all the stuff you missed, all the stuff you forgot about and all the stuff you can't wait to see again! So just because you brought sexy back, Justin Timberlake, it doesn't mean you have to miss a damn thing. Who cares that Sony shut down Lik-Sang when you have a month of solid stories from your pals at Defunct Games? Find out now what we thought of this month's best (and worst) articles!
Why This Article?
Talk about a hard decision, with two completely different video presentations this month we had an extremely hard time choosing the top slot. It came down to a choice between a video about Gears of War and a video about Silent Hill; we ended up choosing Silent Hill ... but by the narrowest margin possible. With Halloween this week we figured it would be more appropriate to look at a scary game, but that's not the only reason we opted for an episode of After Thoughts instead of Gears of War. There was just something about the clips found in this episode of After Thoughts that sealed the deal, we felt that this was a much stronger episode than the one that came before it, and that's why it's at the top slot.
After Thoughts: Silent Hill is overflowing with great clips culled from all around the internet. This month we took a look at a Test Drive Unlimited tournament, GameSpot's Tony Hawk Retrospective, Michael Madsen, 1up.com using the Wii control, and an angry call about Castle Crashers. And if that's not enough for you, we also crack jokes about the newest PlayStation 3 TV commercial. If you somehow missed this 20 minute episode of After Thoughts: Silent Hill, then it's time for you to see for yourself why we think this is our best article of October 2006!
Post-Article Thoughts:
"Maybe it's just me, but I personally love putting together these After Thought episodes. I go through hours of footage each week to find just a few minutes of funny, sad and awkward video put out by GameSpot, 1up and all of those other websites. I love how much internet video the game sites are starting to produce, and some of it is actually really cool. I'm a big fan of GameSpot's crazy video game tournaments, even if a lot of them are hard to sit through and feature people battling it out on stupid games. Hopefully all video game websites will start giving us fodder for future After Thoughts episodes. I'm waiting for IGN to give us something good to work with. The ball is in your court IGN, don't let us down!"
-Cyril Lachel
Why This Article?
When we saw the newest trailer for Gears of War there was only one thing that popped into our heads: "28 days ... six hours ... 42 minutes ... 12 seconds. That ... is when the world ... will end." We knew we had to do something; we couldn't let Microsoft get away with using one of the most memorable songs from Donnie Darko to promote their biggest game of the year. After much thought we decided to make a film showing you some of the rejected songs they wanted to use before deciding on Gary Jules' Mad World. After writing down a list of some of the most memorable movie songs of all time, we settled on about 20 tracks that we could easily toss onto the advert for affect. Some songs fit perfectly (Psycho), while others definitely shouldn't have been put to Gears of War (Pulp Fiction). All in all we find this to be a fascinating look at what could have been had Microsoft not secured the rights to the music from Donnie Darko. And that is just one of the reasons we consider this to be our second best article of October 2006!
Post-Article Thoughts:
"If it wasn't for the After Thoughts: Silent Hill video, this look at the newest Gears of War trailer would have been at the top. There are some Defunct Games staff members who actually consider this episode of DGC On Demand to be superior to that of After Thoughts, but after much debate we opted to keep this show at number two. But don't think that's because it's a bad show, I had a lot of fun making it and I think you're going to have a lot of fun watching it. Best of all, after I posted it last Friday I was inundated with tons of email asking why their favorite movie song wasn't included. Some people complained that I lacked anything from Danny Elfman, others thought I should have included the theme from Requiem for a Dream (which we use in our After Thoughts videos), and we got a couple requests for the Mission: Impossible theme. The truth is that I just couldn't include everything; if the show ran too long people would get bored. And for the last time, the reason there's no music in The Passion of Joan of Arc segment is because it's a silent film!"
-Cyril Lachel
Why This Article?
Fans of The Cover Critic have noticed that over the years the show's focus has changed quite a bit. We started the show to look at some of the best and worst covers of the current generation, then we did some theme shows, but now we seem to be focusing all of our attention on the worst covers of all time. This episode, The Cover Critic's Religious Awakening, is no exception. But this episode
is more than just us making fun of five different covers; it's also a theme show that has us making fun of five covers of religious games. And it's not all games about "God" (not to be confused with Populous and other god games), we also look at things that people consider to be religions but really aren't (like Golf). If you've been waiting for a controversial episode of The Cover Critic then you have come to the right place, and that's one of the reasons this show ranks so high on our best-of list!
Post-Article Thoughts:
"This was yet another article this month that riled people up; I ended up receiving countless emails all with pretty much the same text. There were a lot of people who considered the idea of religion to be out of place when it came to an article about video games. A few people wrote in to let me know that unless I was religious (which I am not) I have no room to make fun of other people's faith. But these people missed the point, I was not making fun of their faith, I was simply pointing out how stupid the covers were. Just because one is religious it doesn't mean that they must enjoy everything that has a religious theme, just like not all gamers like all game related things (I personally hate movies based off of games). When you look at a game like Bible Buffet it's hard not to laugh at the stupidity of the project, even if it wasn't a religious game I would still rip it apart simply because it's sending the wrong message to our kids. How can you not make fun of a game that substitutes French fries for grass? Oddly enough this article didn't piss off the golfing community; this makes me wonder if I did my job correctly."
-Cyril Lachel
Why This Article?
If we're going to feature an episode of The Cover Critic on this list then by law we have to mention an episode of the beloved Commercial Break. This month we had two to choose from, but we opted for Daisy
Does Bad Advertising. After 28 episodes you would think we would have run out of terrible advertisements to make fun of, but we haven't ... and Dasy Does Bad Advertising is a testament of that. This episode of Commercial Break features a mix of new and old, including an advert for ESPN's new game website, Atomic Punk, the Sega Seal of Quality and something called Palamedes. If you've seen earlier episodes of Commercial Break then you know what to expect, and that should be enough to convince you that this deserves to be on our list of the best games of October!
Post-Article Thoughts:
"Even though the Commercial Break is wildly popular, the only email I get seems to come from people that want to know what the title means. As you have probably noticed, all of Commercial Break episodes are parodies of some sort of television show, be it the name of a show or an episode. It seems like a lot of our readers thought that we were making fun of the old school porno, Debbie Does Dallas. That is just not the case; the name of this episode is a parody of the show Daisy Does America, which is on the TBS network. I understand why some people would get confused, after all nobody actually watched the TBS network. But I assure you, we have a lot of TV shows to make fun of before we start using the names of pornos."
-Cyril Lachel
Why This Article?
We chose this article because some of us like profanity! Oh sure, that may not be a popular opinion, but when it comes to gangsters it only makes sense to hear people drop an F-bomb from time to time. But Gangs of London, Sony's newest GTA clone for the PSP, has none of the profanity
you might expect. Instead they bleep out all of the naughty words to keep this from being too outrageous. But why? This is an M-rated game after all, nobody is going to complain about four letter words when there are people killing to think about. In this On Running Feud we try to get to the bottom of this debate, but since there is no real answer we walk away sad and disillusioned. Had we received some sort of reasoning from Sony we might have put this article a little closer to the top of the list, but as it is we consider this to be our fifth best story of the month!
Post-Article Thoughts:
"You would simply not believe the amount of crazy email I received after venting at Gangs of London for refusing to include profanity. I had dozens of people write in to let me know that they appreciated Sony's self-censorship. Almost every one of them said that they hated profanity and hated how many video games were starting to use these words. I can certainly appreciate these people's point of view, but I still stand by my statement that it seems wrong to play a game with murderers and gangsters and have their language edited out. I simply cannot understand how these people can be so offended at a four letter word but not care that they are controlling violent criminals who spend much of the game brutally murdering people. They are, after all, just words. I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to profanity there's a right way to use it and a wrong way to use it, but to simply edit it out of an M-rated game seems crazy to me. If you don't want to hear people use four-letter words, then maybe you should stay away from movies and games that represent criminals, lowlifes, and murderers."
-Cyril Lachel
