Holy Crap! It's amazing what passes for a game these days! Transplant the body of Snake into a puzzle game like Boxxle or Chip's Challenge and you might get some idea of what it is like to play VR Missions. Dale wasn't kidding when he said he felt like a lab rat in a maze. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was the subject of a sick experiment to see if I could be 'conditioned' to tolerate poor excuses for a gaming like this one. The game imposes maze after maze upon you with only the notion that there would be a proverbial cheese reward in the end. In this case, the reward takes on the form of trailers, bonus stages, and the possibility of (are you ready for this?) conducting photo shoots with the digital babes of Metal Gear Solid!
Rarely, however, completing several stages was actually fun, but the sheer amount of time, effort, and repetition it took to beat the remaining hundreds was simply mind-numbing work. And after hearing that infernal, overly dramatic music for the thirtieth time on a particularly difficult stage, I was almost driven to insanity. Besides that, there's not much else for me to say about VR Missions. If you thought those training missions in MGS was a little slice of gaming heaven, then you'll love VR Missions. I am damn-near appalled that anyone would want to lay down hard-earned money to be taunted by a game that promises reward only if you work your butt off for it. I, for one, believe that the reward should be in the actual gameplay, not in the cheesy rewards.
Somewhere between all the gaming, Chi some how managed to finish high school and get into the New York Institute of Technology. At the same time, Chi also interned at Virtual Frontiers, an Internet software consultancy where he learned the ways of HTML. Soon after acquiring his BFA, Chi went on to become the lead Web designer of the Anti-Defamation League. During his tenure there, Chi was instrumental in redesigning and relaunching the non-profit organization's Web site.
Today, Chi is the webmaster of the American Red Cross in Greater New York and somehow managed to work through the tragic events of September 11th without losing his sanity. Chi considers GameCritics.com his life's work and continues to be amazed that the web site is still standing after the recent dotcom fallout. It is his dream that GameCritics.com will accomplish two things: 1) Redefine the grammar of videogames much the same way French film critic Andre Bazin did for the art of cinema and 2) bring game criticism to the forefront of mainstream culture much the same way Siskel & Ebert did for film criticism.
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- Observations from PAX East 2012: Are video game gimmicks finally maturing? - April 11, 2012
