Hey there ya silly bastages. I’m back with a new Morgue, with two parts. The first will be the review scoring system I have worked out, and the second part is a review. Sort of. Here’s the scoring system:

These are games that truly suck. If I can’t find an inventive way to ridicule these, I am either extremely ill, or I didn’t run into enough morons that week to get the rage flowing properly. The rating of 1 will only be given to games that are so tremendously bad that you should probably buy them just so you know how to never, ever make a game, should you decide to join the industry. Also, I like to pick up a really cheap, horrible game now and then and subject myself to it just so that Virtua Fighter is that much more fun to play.

These games also suck, but not so much. The top end of this bracket (9, 10) are games that I peobably wouldn’t melt in my oven, but seriously doubt I would ever bother to play past the half-way point.

If I smack a game with one of these numbers, you can rest assured that your money was pretty well spent. Decent titles can be found in this range, but don’t grab these babies unless you’ve already exhausted the titles available in the next rating bracket, which brings us to...

‘And lo, the heavens gifted us with treasures untold.’ A game in this range is a work of the gods. Remember, the only titles that will even get a review score here in the morgue are, by necessity of Rule #4 of Morgue Conduct, $20 or less. Getting your hands on a game like this is as close to being a thief as you can get without having to pay guild dues, (that was a shout to all you RPG freakers out there...you know who you are) so if you don’t buy one of these, I’ll have to assume that your parents were related before the marriage.

As you may have guessed (or perhaps not...I’m not known for the crystal clarity with which I express ideas) the ratings are essentially based on the Morgue Price cap. If you ever have any trouble figuring out why a game got a score, the general rule of thumb I plan to use is ‘How many dollars am I willing to spend in order to own this game?’ Therefore, for those more intellectually inclined, (why are you here reading this?) the relationship can be expressed as follows:

Review score = Number of dollars I am willing to spend minus the current unemployment rate, divided by the number of decent Bond films (this is a fluctuating variable, in order to represent the concept of chaos and stupidity inherent in the world) and multiply the result by the number of years you have lost forever to the demonic, soul-sucking powers of your television and console game systems combined, and you will have the exact level of experience you would have achieved in real life if you were able to apply the hundreds of hours you spent developing your Dark Elf with both the Giant Stick of Wood and sixteen various spells that all seem to turn small, furry creatures into videotaped Hee-Haw episodes...QED.

Now let’s stop pretending there’s a reason I do anything, and get over to the Gaming Showdown Stadium!

In the Arena we have three racing games, F-Zero, Star Wars Episode 1: Racer and Wipeout 64. The pre-battle favorite seems to be Wipeout 64, with the history of visual and technical excellence the series has demonstrated to consumers and the press giving this game a substantial boost.

F-Zero is no slouch in this match-up though, with legions of ‘hardcore’ gamers trapped in the glories of years gone by, clamoring almost as loudly about this game as they have their snobbish insistence that developers have ‘forgotten’ how great games are made. Anyone wishing to join this group should meet in the computer lab at your local high school this Friday, where they will be showing Japanese Animation pornography and badmouthing Transformers as Robotech...oops, I mean ‘Macrosse’ rip-offs. Don’t forget to bring your Rurouni Kenshin figures!

Bringing up the rear is Star Wars, which is no surprise to anyone, since the latest Episode 1 entries in the Gaming Showdown League have more than soured most people to anything that even sounds like ‘Anakin’. Thus far, only ‘Mannequin’ has been found phonetically similar, which is unfortunate for both Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall, but we’re pretty sure they figured out that movie sucked years ago.

At the starting line we see each contender eyeing the others with not a little bit of wary respect. It should be noted that not a single one of these games has even the suggestion of a tire anywhere in sight, which I feel has leveled the playing field significantly. Nothing’s cooler than shit that floats for no reason.

The contestants take their places.

The signalman readies...the flag is up...and they’re off!

Immediately, Star Wars takes a surprising lead, but it must be noted that this is due to the fact that the first impression of any game is usually the ‘Graphics’. Clearly Star Wars takes an edge here with expansive levels that actually capture a small essence of the film they were inspired by. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on the level of sophistication of the fan, with only the painfully incompetent actually enjoying the Phantom Menace, but nonetheless it looks good.

At this point, F-Zero drops to a solid third, with gallingly poor visuals. The fact that the lack of surroundings and limited textures allow for a decent draw-distance and up to thirty vehicles on the track at once does little to gloss over the utter ugliness of the game. It actually looked better on the SNES, if you squint a little.

Wipeout now edges up, and begins to ‘draft’ Star Wars as they come around the second turn. I learned about ‘drafting’ from Days of Thunder, or maybe it was Gleaming the Cube. Either way, I probably shouldn’t have admitted I’ve seen one of those films, let alone both. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of ‘drafting’ I can tell you that I am not referring to the drawing of many small, straight lines on large sheets of paper, eventually to be used in the construction of a house you could never afford. Instead I mean the vacuum created by any object traveling through atmosphere. Wipeout uses the draft created by the gritty, futuristic visual style of Star Wars to propel itself closer to the lead position with it’s own similarly styled appearance that has proven so appealing to the masses. It is unable to overtake the Episode 1 racer due to it’s excessive use of colored lighting that gives each of the levels a rather clichéd ‘gritty, futuristic’ look. The fact that the Wipeout series pioneered this look in the arena of games is a big fat slice of irony pie that I, without a hint of remorse or hesitation, love dishing out. The scenery found in Wipeout is only slightly less inept than F-Zero at conveying a feeling of life, which is also sad.

But in the straightway, all bets are off. Here, there’s nothing to detract from the actual gameplay presented by each contender and things are changing quickly. Just as the long run of track begins, F-Zero slingshots past Wipeout and now Star Wars is putting every effort into maintaining it’s slight lead. F-Zero is breathing down it’s neck though, with tight controls and straightforward action. The simple control scheme is also working to it’s advantage.

Unfortunately for Wipeout, it doesn’t have a chance. It appears to actually be suffering from some of it’s own design flaws on the Gaming Stadium track here today, as it constantly overcorrects it’s steering, and even minor brushes with the walls bring it to almost a complete halt. Someone if getting their revenge today.

All of a sudden, F-Zero takes the lead as Star Wars crashes into the wall at the slight turn ending the straightway! How could that happen?

Well, sports fans, let’s go to the tape. You see, Episode 1: Racer has an excellent upgrading system that lets you develop your vehicle as you progress through the courses. Parts can be bought, sold or repaired that improve around ten different and often extraneous features of your pod racer (yay!). You can even buy used (read: nearly dead) parts and have your little robots repair them after each race, so you can get a more powerful part early, but at the risk of losing it entirely by receiving too much damage in a race. This all sounds great right? Well it is, until you discover that the single feature everyone wants to upgrade to maximum in a racing game – speed – can actually reach a level significantly faster than you can possibly control. A pod racer can be made so fast, it can’t take a corner. One can only wonder who put that in the design doc.

As our contestants make their way into the next part of the course, Star Wars falls to a distant third as it tries to recoup after that devastating set-back. The track designs come into play here as we discover which racer has enough experience with varied track design to handle the massive turns and twists at this end of the race. F-zero does moderately well, with it’s insane corkscrews and high-flying leaps. In fact, it does quite a bit better than the closest competitor, Wipeout, who seems to grasp the concept of ridiculously tight turns, but little else.

Star Wars begins to gain some ground here, with it’s incredible levels that give an impression of the tracks having actually been built to accommodate the landscape they inhabit. Inching up on Wipeout, it looks like the competition may once again get stiff.

But suddenly, F-Zero pulls a rabbit out of it’s hat, and tears through the track using the skills gleaned from it’s random track generator. Truly a masterful addition, and while it doesn’t always pay off, when it does, you see it in spades.

F-Zero pulls definitively ahead, just as we enter the last stretch of this Gaming Showdown event.

Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion! (Don’t you hate when that happens?)