A Love Letter to THQ

Dear THQ,

We as gamers know you, your work, your achievements and your follies. Many of us such as myself have been raised on your games for over 10 years now and we have seen everything from gangbangers wielding gigantic dildos over their heads to the Horseman of Death taking on a giant golem to seeing our created wrestler win the WWE Championship at Wrestlemania. *More after the break*

It was the year 2000 when I first fell in love with you and I remember the day too, I was out with my mom and saw this game being demoed at a shop that sold fake games (trust me I am sorry about that) and I asked the shopkeep " Sir, What is this  marvelous looking game?" He looked down from his counter smiling, shifting his chest pocket as if he knew he was going to make a sale and he said "Well dear boy, this is the new pro wrestling game WWF Smackdown, it has all your favorite wrestlers like Mankind and the Rock" and me being a silly kid who was also a huge wrestling fan took out a crumpled RM5 bill (trust me I am really sorry for buying fake games) and handed it over to the shopkeeper and ran to my mother who was contemplating what to wear at some wedding that I cared little for.

So I rushed to my room and popped open the disc tray and I was greeted by the Rock, Triple H and the Undertaker doing pain onto each other. I must have spent hours just playing that game pretending I was electrifying the crowd like Dwayne Johnson or giving pain onto my opponent like Mankind, I know first and foremost you guys didn't make the game (that honor goes to Yuke's) but still you guys published it, you guys made it popular, you helped make wrestling games awesome again after it was mistreated by that OTHER publisher Acclaim to which I am NOT a fan of. I played all the WWF Smackdown games for years onwards because I was confident it was being handled brilliantly by some really good people.

This is my childhood. 

Sequel to my childhood.

To make things even sweeter your WWE games still are loved by some of my closest friends and they enjoy the brilliant gameplay, features and overall fun of it just makes them love the franchise consistently year after year. 

So yeah your WWE games were good even the non Smackdown games such as Raw, Day of Reckoning and All Stars were pretty good too. Yeah you guys published WCW games first which in my opinion were pretty bad and I hated it with a passion but you guys should be proud of yourselves for helping making wrestling games fun and accessible again...even though you went with WWE Crush Hour which confused me greatly but in the end that was game was good as well. 

So this is how wrestling has evolved eh? With missiles, machine guns and monster trucks?...it is awe inspiring to say the least.

So enough of the wrestling games you know by now that I love you for it, there is one other game I remember from my childhood and it was this gem. 

This game made GTA3 look like a little kitten. 

Yep the Punisher game from 2005 and designed by Volition, this game had mediocre gameplay, dumb AI, extreme linearity, one dimensional characters and an above average storyline but I loved it. I loved it because it made you feel like you were the Punisher in the flesh killing bad folk by throwing them off a building or crushing them under press or shoving their heads in piranha tanks or...wait...I might as well remind you what was so great about it in the first place.

As previously mentioned the gameplay overall was average at best but as a kid who hardly knew of violent video games you and Volition made a 17 year old (me) really happy and I say that solely as a gamer who enjoys that mechanic and not some guy who enjoys committing violent acts.

Now before I cover your failures there is one more success I want to cover and that is the brilliant game Metro 2033 which was developed by 4A Games. What I loved about Metro 2033 was the combination of its lore, its storyline, the enemy design and its gameplay. In Metro 2033 the gamer was treated well in the sense that he/she was not treated like a blooming idiot. There was very little hand holding in that game and that can be seen in the fact that some enemies in the game are so overpowered that taking them head on is tantamount to suicide and if a player treats Metro 2033 like a Call of Duty game he/she would have their heads handed to them on a silver platter. 

That glowing orb reminds me of something...HEY LISTEN HEY LISTEN HEY LISTEN..

The lore behind Metro 2033 is perhaps one the largest loves I have for this game, it feels so unique when it's placed next to real to life military shooters. I enjoyed the levels where you relax at a bar with a cup of vodka after you killed several dark ones (the name given the monstrous creatures of the game). I also liked how beside fighting these Dark Ones you also fight fascists and communists which in my mind is one of the more random conflicts I ever encountered in video games. 

One of the greatest things about Metro 2033 was the sheer humanity of it all, take for example the levels where you could relax in the strongholds of the Russian Metro. You could walk around and see children playing or see a man crying for his wife who was killed by the Dark Ones and there was one moment in the game where this father was telling his son that his mother would be proud of how much he has grown up. I really love it when a game has the decency to treat its characters in that sort of fashion. 

That level simply known as The Child where you carry this boy known as Sasha on your back was nothing short of genius. I loved the fact that the players are handicapped not by trying to protect some idiot AI who doesn't have the decency to take cover in the middle of a firefight but by the weight of a small child we are carrying. 

The things I didn't like about the game? That damn stealth mechanic, I hated it with a passion of 10 burning suns. The main gripe is that the AI is superhuman in its hearing, sight and its target acquisition of the player. The player has to use every one of his/her cunning in order to remotely beat these stealth levels without being seen or heard. One moment in time I was just crouching behind some boxes in the dark and one enemy heard me from across the map and he was able to target me in less than 3 seconds. I enjoy the challenge of stealth missions as the next gamer but not when the enemy AI has the senses of a god. 

The other thing I loathed? The Librarian aka this guy right here. 

The Librarian =Walking Furry Creature of Doom

At first I thought there was only one of this guy and it took all my ammunition to bring him down and then 10 minutes later I realized there was an entire lair full of them and at the moment I cried out of fear. 

I loathe the Librarians solely because they are hard to kill and deal so much damage in its attacks that it is better to run than it is to fight but in all honesty there was this huge part of me that loved this enemy because of its seemingly overpowered nature. 

Beside the above games I listed above some other precious titles you published that I personally loved were the Red Faction and Saints Row (developed by Volition) and the Darksiders series (developed by Vigil Games). 

I mentioned the major things that made me love you so let me show you the things that I thought brought upon your downfall. Might I attract your attention this compilation below. 

Satan himself shudders at the sight of this collection...

First off what was up with your relationship with Nickelodeon ? I mean did they pay you to sell your soul to them or something? Also what in the world was up with the Bratz influx? Did you want to appeal to the ever expanding market of  Bratz loving tweens who LOVE playing videogames?

I digress, the thing is that this above compilation of demonic proportions does not cover ALL of your shovelware, most of these games scored poor to average scores and I seriously doubt that they sold well because of your current position. You kept up with the shovelware for years but as you know that not even the above collection would come remotely close to that other "thing" that caused your downfall which we will talk about later.

Despite all the hatred I have for this collection you apparently made good money off these kids games but by 2012 you mentioned that you were done with kids games, no more Spongebob, no more Disney, no more Nickelodeon. As a hardcore gamer I welcomed this decision because it made me feel that you were not stretching yourselves thin with all these games. But it was later I realized these games were helping you keep you afloat so despite the arguable quality of these games they made money for you and by cutting them off you were just killing yourselves. 

There were other failures to your downfall like your treatment of Red Faction and Homefront. Red Faction Guerrilla was one of my favorite games ever and to see its sequel Armageddon treated so poorly just made me cry tears of pure sadness for hours on end. 

As for Homefront, what can I say that hasn't been said before? I hated the AI, level design, shooting mechanics, graphics, bugs and overall gameplay. The only thing that enjoyed was the lore and even then I think it could been handled better. 

But despite all the decisions you made there was one in my opinion that sealed your fate and that was this this travesty. 

Don't let their smiles fool you...there is so much misery in this device. 

This unholy object was the final nail in your proverbial coffin. Let me remind you how bad it was. 100 million dollars below your expected sales and 1.4 million devices rotting in the warehouses. This thing sold so poorly it could be placed alongside ET on the Atari 2600 as one of the worst decisions ever made. 

In addition to all these failures you were led by some folk who made bad decision after bad decision and had the gall to retain 6 figure paychecks. I don't want to wear you out by reminding you of your upper echelon's lack of sense but here is a link to a letter from one/several of your employees detailing the shortcomings of their so-called leaders. *credit to Kotaku*

http://kotaku.com/5879436/dont-blame-udraw-blame-yourselves-rankled-staff-tells-thq-executives?tag=thq

Now I still love you THQ, you were there for my childhood, my teen years and my adult life providing me with hours and hours of fun and laughter. To see you go just breaks me heart and to see it done in a manner not befitting of a company that once was at the top its field just make me weep even more. THQ I know right now you're on life support and close to death but know that the world will miss you should your fire be finally extinguished and that despite all your failures you made in your later life you will still be the company that helped me win the World Championship at Wrestlemania. 

                                                                                                                         With much love, 

                                                                                                                         Your Fan.