Past few weeks have been one heck of a ride in gamerland hasn't it? You know what im talking about, Gamer Gate. While I can't say that I've been active in the movement in any significant way (it boils down to some twitter comment's mostly), it's still been a good read. And as with the whole Anita Sarkeesian shitstorm, I've discovered new worthwile things to spend my internet time on.
But all good things must come to an end, and as I look at the direction everythings going, I feel I should say what's on my mind.
As of now, it seems that big media sites are finally listening to what gamers want. And it has gone as far as The Escapist making a new ethics policy. But does any of this mean anything? Right now they're sucking up to us because there is a real threat of them losing their jobs, what happens when that threat goes away? Do you expect them to stop calling you misogynists? Are you sure they said those things solely for money and that none of them actually believe this?
The reality is that if these actions are enough to end this movement, it has been for nothing.
I understand that the opposing side of this storm is also human and needs these jobs to feed themselfs,
but the heart of the matter is, these are terrible sites with terrible writers and a simple ethics policy isn't going to fix a thing. This movement should end with the carsh and burn of these big websites.
Why? Because trying to reform these sites is a hopeless cause and better alternatives have recieved more attention as a result of all this.
Personal note: You should still avoid Escapist
Give the sites listed a go, GameNosh and NicheGamer are at least by people who genuinely value gaming.
A Short while ago I had a run in with someone on twitter with an SJW who thinks that you can have an educated opinion about a game without actually playing it.
@Deadagent A little bit of research and watching a neckbeard play it on YouTube, probably. Or a Google search.
— Anthony (@Anthagiox) August 27, 2014
While any gamer understands that you can only get the full context of a game by playing it.
I think a little challenge is in place to make some others to understand this.
So here is what I want you to do.
1. Watch a bunch of of videos about any fighting game
While the question is simple, the answer to this question very ambiguous and at times it's hard to argue one way or the other. While some argue that games are fun, others argue that this definiton limits the artform. This side is the one who's usually quick to defend games like
Gone Home, Dear Esther, etc.
While I'm not myself sure how I'd fall on that debate, on one hand there is a case to be be made for games with minimal interaction, on the other hand at what point does that minimalism go too far?
So while I dont intend to label something as "not a game", I do want to ask the question: Why is this a game? I think it's an important question because it focuses to the strentghs of the medium.
Here are some examples
Heavy Rain
So this might suprise some but the claim that Heavy Rain does not have a failure state, is false. The real difference between Heavy Rains fail state and regular fail states is that it really isn't announced.
You can think of the characters you have as lives and when you run out you
get the worst possible ending and fail.
All the others are just endings are just ranks on how well you did.
But more to the point, why is it a game?
Well, you can't make it into a movie, because a movie has it's story set in stone,
and Heavy Rain dosen't.
How about choose your own adventure books? That has the problem of only including branching choices but not including player skill driven results. You could potentially do this with dice but that relies solely on luck and thats not what Quantic dream was going for. Also books lack music and animation to set the mood in the way they wanted. The only medium that can let them do this is video games, so I think It has a valid reason to exsist as one
Ace Attorney series
While most agree that they are games, I think it should be acknowledged that the gameplay is minimal. The gameplay consists of puzzles in the form of murder mysteries,
and you can fail this task.
By the token old point and click adventure games also have the same minimal gameplay going for them but they are indeed. So yes, puzzles are enough of a reason to justify a games exsistence for me anyway.
The Path
This one is a bit tricky, on the one hand you barely have any interaction with anything in the game and only one interaction actually changes the course of the game in anyway (finding the "wolf"). On the other hand the branching path is not possible in a movie and again, the athmosphere would be lost on a book, also books might not be able to carry such a vague narrative. I'd say This one just barely has a reason to be a game.
The Graveyard
The stated idea of this is to be a interactive painting. Honestly the branchin outcome in this one is so weak that I dont think this needs to be a game. An animation that had 2 differing versions that were shown randomly would have about the same effect without the hassle of having someone push a stick to move an old lady foward.
Gone Home
So, how does the SJW aproved critically acclaimed indie darling stack up. Not very well. Since the narrative is linear and there are no puzzles to solve, there is no reason why
Gone Home couldn't be a book or a movie.
Heck they could have made a visual novel if they wanted to keep it digital.
Also slightly offtopic here. While all visual novels are not necessarily games, visual novels can be games, given that they have puzzles in them or branching paths.
Dear Esther
Same thing as Gone Home, there simply is no reason for this to be a game. This could all be accomplished trough other mediums.
In Closing
Thats a couple of examples of my tought processes as of late. I do have to admit that this is ONLY my toughts and nothing more. I did not comment on certain games (like Beyond: Two souls) because I don't think I have a good enough understanding of that game (or I havent heard about it, thats a possibility too). Hopefully these scribblings will spark some discussion.
So ever since the talk about WiiU started, so did the talk about mircosoft and sonys new line ups.
While at first it didnt seem too likely, now it will probably be
at the very least be accouned by the next E3.
Some seem to be exited, im really not. In fact as far as consoles go I havent been too impressed by the current gen at all. So this is gonna be a longwinded explanation
to my negativity towards one of my beloved hobbies.
One reason I'm not too intersted in new console lineup is that console launched have sucked in the last few years. PS Vita, 3DS and WiiU have all launched with barely any games worth playing, even PS3 had this same issue but at least companies were kinda holding up. Not recently though.
Another big issue is market demand for rather dull games. Im sorry but in no way can I say with any kinda honesty, that I find any enjoyment in most western developed games.
For example the "western" approach to RPGs seems to be to give you a big sandbox with a dialogue system that uses a bland flowchart to determine wheter you're a pure innocent angel or a wittle naughty boy, oh and throw those stats there somewhere. That same flowchart morality mechanic is in many many other western developed games, the reasons why this bothers me should be another post on its own, but for now it helps to know that I dont like binary moral systems.
Also, Military FPS's just have never ever been my thing but even for those who like this stuff, do you really find yearly installment of every game THAT enjoyable? They're not that different.
Also talking about games that are pretty much the same fucking game every year, Nintendo.
Before you hang me as a youngster who just dosent understand the ways on ye olde. Know that I still wish I had my old NES around. But even when I wish that, I cant help but to question why would anyone buy Zelda games anymore, theyre the EXACT SAME GAME EACH TIME.
No really, just count the differences, and you find that there are maybe a few new characters here and there, and the central gameplay gimmick is different, and by that I mean you use some mcguffin to solve your way trough certain problems.
Also the death of certain franchises is just downright sad, though it isnt suprising since horror games have pretty much all become pc exclusive facecam let's play fuel, DMC style games are alive only with Bayonetta (and that WiiU exclusivity for Bayonetta 2 still sucks altough, I understand why it's happening), all the while the actual DMC franchise gets rebooted by a bunch of british idiots that dont know a fuck about gameplay. Tomb Raider has been a dead franchise for good decade now (In my opinion anyway). So, if most of the major franchises are either not my thing at all, and most the old big franchises are dead in my eyes, what is there left for me to be exited about the new generation? The answer is nothing. The big question is what do you think, yes you, who found this by accident or I linked this to, Seriously I want some input on this. Agree, Disagree, Call me a douchebag, whatever, I just want to hear discussion.
So, the trainwreck that is DmC has come out,
judging by the demo I played it's exactly as I perdicted.
An average game completely overshadowed by the much better predecessors in the franchise. and in honor of the release of the bleh game, I stared playing DMC3 on the HD collection and man oh man does that game still hold up.
CHURAAAAAZEE!!!!
Its kinda sad how completely Ninja Theory misunderstood the desing of Devil May Cry and action games in general for that matter. 60 fps of those games isnt just for show you know, its important for reaction time based manuevers such as doging. Oh and while were at it,
HAVE A FUCKING LOCK ON BUTTON.
Ninja theorys response to lock on button request
The Metacritic page for this game kinda saddens me as well, It clearly shows that the people who review these games are truly incompetent. Or paid off but I still truly question that notion, because I don't wear a tinfoil hat while I'm sleeping.
But not to worry because there is another action game in horizon that looks really impressive so far,
Metal Gear Rising: Revengance.
Despite it's ridiculous name, the actual game (judging by the demo again) is really impressive.
Playing this after DmC's 30fps slugfest feels so goood. One thing that took me by suprise was that the game does still allow for stealth gameplay, altough the enemy AI is kinda dumb so sneaking by them isnt exactly a challenge. Still, it's a viable option to take enemies out since Raiden dies VERY easily.
I'm really exited to hopefully get my hands on the full product
And after all of that I leave you with what everyone remembers from the demo:
So as some of you may very well know, PS3 has changed a little bit in the last few months.
The funny thing is it hasnt chaned the same way everywhere and as someone who has multiple accounts for different regions, I'd like to compare these changes.
First off, in Europe, we got a Singstar app that has been plastered right below the disc game.
I say in Europe because this fucking thing cannot be seen in my Japan or US accounts.
Second the store, oh how I hate that thing. The original PSN store was kinda bad in its own right.
Everything wasnt organized properly so there might have been stuff you didnt know existed until you searched for them. However there were pretty solid caterories. Now half of those categories is gone.
Not only that but if you have a widescreen sd tv the store will default to 4:3 regardless of your system settings, and ofc it has to use Pan & Scan to fit the fucking thing properly.
US got it worse since they have even less categories, and PS2 and PS1 games are all under the same Classics label, unlike before where they were seperate.
And Japan.....well, japanese store remains exactly the same. Yeah there are no changes at all.
Hello there, if you stumbled on this blog you might have the following questions:
Who is this guy?
What is this blog about?
Why does this guy have a blog?
The answers are fairly simple. I'm a random unemployed european asshat, who should have started a blog long ago, due to the fact that twitters character limitation is always a deal breaker and facebook is visible for my friends only. This blog is gonna be primarily me sharing my tought's on random stuff, mostly gaming but probably other stuff as well.
Other things you should know, im not always keen to talk about the hot new topic since I'm rather lazy and read this kinda stuff every now and then. I might also read alot of old stuff and have some toughts so expect blasts from the past.
With all that out of the way, let's get started with something that got me thinking:
Yes, this again. Apparently Capcom never gets tired of watching their fans cry in angry tears.
I found this while browsing articles at Blistered Thumbs and my first tought was: "Oh boy, time to get dissappointed and read all the idiotic comments about how they never liked the old dante and this game is gonna be way better .etc"
And to be honest, after watching this it seems to me that Ninja Theory is slowly starting to get the gameplay down.
Why do I think this? allow me to walk you trhough the older trailers and my toughts
Up first we have the trailer that started it all, well as far as I know anyway.
The first time I saw this trailer was on facebook, when one of my friends expressed his displeasure with the trailer since he is a huge fan of the series.
After witnessing this I started to look for fan reactions and reading comments on this video, etc. After a quick look it seemed to come down to the hair color and the "emo look". But after reading longer there were other complaints that popped up wich were far more valid, such as Dante smoking since that was originally avoided for a purpose, the game looking gritty and sluggish (compared to the other games). The second one is the biggest one for me personally, in this trailer the combat looks very very sluggish and bland. Where did all the style and fast pace go? So this trailers was an absolute disaster.
Then I saw the first gameplay trailer:
Well, this looks much better already, I mean the attacks seem to actually have some power behind them instead of the half assed attacks of the first trailer. But still theres something missing isn't there?
Yup, it still isnt good enough, there are barely any enemies on the screen and they all seem to wait until you beat them one by one. Also why is Dante pulling the enemies toward himself? Isnt he supposed to use a sword and guns? While all that is a little better, it's not up to the quality that would make me or anyone else who actually liked original Devil May Cry games buy it. Also the tone of the game is way too serious.
And then we come to the trailer at the beginning, wich has improved the impact of the attacks alot and overall it looks more fun. However the complaints about the serious tone are still there wich IS a major downer.
After seeing that last trailer I searched for a Devil may cry 3 gameplay video and realized what this whole thing reminded me of.
Yeah, this game. Why?
Well, this is a pretty ok game on it's own, but compared to what came before it, it feels very lackluster. The animation has way too many frames and moves at snails pace compared to the original 3 games on the PSOne. Also it just dosen't have the charm of the original games intact anymore.
So my toughts on the whole scenario right now as it stands, is that at best the game will be another Wrath of the Cortex. Aka technically not a bad game, but very dissapointing when compared to any of it's predecessors.
