First-Person: Seeing Through the Eyes of a Gamer

Persistent Progression - So noobs can feel better about themselves

2012-02-07T02:26:00.000-08:00

A lot of updates recently, mainly because so many stupid shit is happening at once. What is persistent progression? Persistent progression is when the more you play the more achievements or unlocks or progress you get. For example, TF2 and its million of hats. This is different than experience points for MMOs. This is literally, the more hours you log into a game, the bigger your penis gets. A lot of people swear by it while others hate it. If they don't have any kind of progress whats the point of playing right? Whether its for unlocking that spiffy avatar or getting runes for LoL, its something that people can look forward to. A carrot in front of their head basically.

These can be done right, or they can be done wrong, most of the time though its done wrong. When you play a game, what is the most important thing when playing multiplayer? Fairness. Sure you can argue that skill is superior to progression but sometimes the advantage gets so big theres no point in trying. Its like fighting a max level guy as a brand new guy in a MMO. No matter how skilled you are, if you have to hit him 2000 times to kill him and he can kill you in 1 hit from across the map, you're fucked. An extreme example but unfortunately its not that far off. Look at something like League of Legends. A free to play dota-like made by the creators of the original dota. They wanted to innovate the game and added in persistent progression. The more you play, the more summoner (player) levels you can gain. Each time you gain a level you unlock a rune slot to add in permanent stats for all your champions and talent points to boost your champions. The more you play you can buy runes from the shop from points earned from playing the game. With these both you have a huge advantage over someone new, someone who didn't play as much as you. So high that they can literally kill you in 2 hits 20 seconds into the game while he can shrug off all your hits from the massive runes and talents he has. This makes it impossible to win.

What is the point of that? Why not have a skill based game rather than a MMO. If I want a game where I get more powerful the longer I play then I'll play a fucking MMO. Even FPS nowadays add shit like 10% more damage to guns or other retarded upgrades. Even if you think it looks tiny and insignificant, it can easily skew the game in your favor. Hell I talked about how Bloodline Champions completely fucked themselves over by adding persistent progression. It was a game where it advertised skill based arena style gameplay with no RNG. But they caved to the people begging on the forums. After adding that patch and milking money, most of the people quit. When the advantage is that big what can you possibly do to fight people that have already played for so long? All it does is alienate new players. What if tomorrow SC2 added a new talent tree that gives you permanent +2 damage +2 armor with 10% move speed for all your units for people who played over a year. Then double that bonus for people who played for two. How in the fuck do new people compete? By playing more? Eventually catching up them?

Another thing people insist on having is achievements. These are also part of persistent progression. The more you play the more you unlock these achievements to feel good about yourself. It may be something to do when you're bored, other times it unlocks items, but the biggest reason is to show off to all your friends. A bigger achievement completion means you have a bigger penis. This is what it all comes down to, E-Peen. People like persistent progression because it makes them look pro. It lures them into a false sense of superiority. And to reward them with a false sense of superiority are achievements that congratulate you every time you do something correctly like an aide for a retard. Each time the achievement pops up your friends and everyone around you go "congratulations!" and clap for you. Why? They're mocking you. You're a big fucking retard and you don't even know it yourself. And every time you do this they'll give you a little toy. A better toy than the other kids because you're special.

Ubisoft - Biggest supporters of piracy

2012-02-04T16:28:00.000-08:00

Remember Ubisoft's awesome idea of always online gaming?

http://theorycrafting.blogspot.com/2011/11/ubisoft-pc-pirating-no-more-releasing.html

Remember how they hate PC gamers because they're all pirates? Remember how proud they are when they showed the world their always online policy? Guess what? They decided to move around some servers so their games will NOT be available for the next week or more. This includes both multiplayer and singleplayer games. Why don't they make a backup server or something so people can keep playing? Why? Because fuck them thats why. Why the fuck should they care about their customers. They should be lucky they get to rent Ubisoft games for 60 bucks. Those thieving fuckers even invite friends over to play with them. Thats fucking stealing. Assholes steal their games and they don't even have to pay 60 bucks to rent it! Such assholery needs to be punished the only way possible. By shitting on the servers for as long as possible. This should teach those shit ass customers not to steal Ubisoft games. They should feel happy Ubisoft is even letting them play whenever they want.

When a series start becoming unpopular, Ubisoft can just shut it down. Oh people still wanna play? Fuck you why you playing old shit! Go buy the next Ubisoft game, wait no my mistake, go rent the next Ubisoft game for 60 bucks! Customers are so stupid they'll just keep shoving money in Ubisoft's face right? Ubisoft is so smart they should go around publishing all the good games and drive them to the ground. Milk as much money as they can and then leave them to die. If people complain then they'll just blame the pirates. Thats whats causing problems anyways. Its the pirates fault. So all the customers should be mad at the pirates for this inconvenience. Never mind the fact that only pirates are able to play the game now. See how much as an asshole they are? Playing the game while you can't. Now you're forced to download cracks and pirate the games so you can play too. Ubisoft is the only company in the world where its easier to pirate a game from them than to buy it.

But why! Because by fucking over the customers will they earn the most money. A kid finished his game and he wants to resell it? NOPE. Don't think about doing that you little fucking piece of shit. Trying to sell the 60 dollar game you rented. RENTED. This shit doesn't belong to you asshole. You fucking leave Ubisoft's fucking property alone. Ubisoft doesn't take shit from assholes trying to resell. What else also stops resell? CD-Keys? WELL FUCK THAT SHIT! Why the fuck do they wanna waste their time making CD-Keys when they can fucking milk as much money out of the next person all while pissing them off and blaming the pirates. Because they need to make the customers mad at the pirates while milking their money for maximum effect. Pirates are the assholes here. Fuck them.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/28/ubisoft-our-drm-is-a-success/

Look at how fucking successful they are! Those fucker pirates can't touch the game with their grubby pirate hands now that they have the best DRM ever made.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/07/opinion-ubisoft-piracy-and-the-death-of-reason/

Sales down 90%? Well those fucker pirates must have done something about it then! Ubisoft's DRM is foolproof. There is no way those fucker pirates got past! It must be a conspiracy the other companies must have roused up the pirates to fuck over the paying customers. Those assholes pirates are the cause of everything. Better not release games for PC anymore! Too many fucker pirates there. What about the PC gamers? Fuck them. There are no PC gamers there are only pirates. If their DRM causes people to pirate more then that just proves their point. Pirates are ruining games! Look at Ubisoft. Such a sad pitiful way to die. Get ripped to shred by the pirates they are so desperately trying to protect their customers from. Now these pirates will rape their customers with their illegal copies. Then infect the world with cracks and hacks. Oh the humanity. We're all lucky a company is trying this hard to fight the pirates.

http://kotaku.com/5881867/some-of-ubisofts-pc-games-wont-work-next-week-not-even-singleplayer

A small price to pay to beat the pirates!

CDs, Boxes, Manuals & More - Digital distribution's impact on physical copies

2012-02-02T03:33:00.000-08:00

I like boxed copies. If I am doing a day one purchase then I exclusively buy physical copies. Theres something about holding a box in your hand and digging your fingernail into the tape and cutting it open. Then you stick your finger into the cardboard skeleton and pull out the inside but not before placing the opening to your nose and giving yourself a sniff of the new game smell. After you flip over the contents inside on the carpet and see a paper sleeve and a piece of paper, you remember why no one buy physical copies anymore.

What happened? I remember in the past you would get a huge box and inside you get a CD case with a mini manual and the game CD. Then you get a thick book of a manual, some of the even older ones are in leather and had a nice smooth touch and smell to it. There would also be non important things included like art, catalogs, and other useless stuff. I'm not old enough to know about the floppy disk games but aren't those in big huge thick plastic cases with a bunch of stuff? Even those are better than today's boxes. Nowadays you're lucky to even get a flippy cover on your box. Inside is a paper slip with your DVD shivering inside from exposure. A piece of paper called a manual and a catalog thats at least 10x bigger than the manual. Thats fucking it? You can totally see the effort they took.

Nowadays everyone is using digital distribution. Its fast, its easy, and you will never have the risk of losing your shit. Why drive down to your local store wait in line and buy a physical copy. Then you'd have to pull the DVD out and install. Digital distribution you can predownload it before the day it is released and you just wait until the clock hits midnight and start playing. I can see why its so popular. But for people like me who likes the feel and the looks of the boxes, we're willing to put up with having to drive down to the store. But with the game companies desperately trying to get as much money as they can, the boxes end up suffering.

I have never been a fan of collector editions. I don't know why but they just never really appealed to me. I can see why people would want them. Theres a lot of stuff in them that are pretty cool. Walking out the store while everyone is holding a tiny box and you are carrying a huge beast of a box makes you feel like either a huge dork or the king of nerds. But unfortunately, what is found inside the box are usually not worth the big price increase. Some exceptions like Witcher 2 and a few others give a ton of shit and their collector edition boxes are twice as big as the next. The rest like all the other lazy companies give a slightly bigger box with exclusive ingame items! Why the fuck do I want these retarded ingame items when they can either be modded in if its single player or in an online game be completely useless because they are nothing but vanity items.

Another thing about ingame items are preorder bonuses. Seems like every company is adapting that model. Preorder and you can get in our exclusive beta! You'll get garbage that no one gives a shit about! Honestly, the reason 90% of the people preorder is because of early beta access. Why? Because betas are nothing more than a marketing tool now. I mentioned it in my beta post before, betas are now used as demos and way to get preorders. They don't fix shit, they don't test shit, and theres no stress testing. Half the time betas keep what progress you did giving people who preorder a huge advantage. One game seems to take this to the next level. Tera a new action MMO coming out has preorders giving beta access. A beta that is 15 days long over a series of 6 weekends. Each weekend is 60 hour long of beta and after every weekend all progress is wiped and a new set of 1000 people are allowed in. What could they possibly test in that limited amount of time? Nothing. Its used for nothing but hype and to suck in preorders.

To make things worse. they even add a 10 dollar "mini preorder" which gives you beta access but not the game itself. Its deducted once you purchase the full game. Those who preorder get to get in all betas and allow you to keep all progress during the beta. And at the very end there is a 5 day head start where people who preorder can play. Is this what gaming has been reduced to? What happened to the boxes? What happened to the cool shit. Now its just ingame items and beta access. Even Blizzard is doing it. Buy 12 months of WoW subscription and get into Diablo 3 beta!

Then theres the digital collector editions. Those are laughable. You get more exclusive ingame items and digital artbooks and digital novels. Yes, those are very nice indeed. So nice I'm going to sit here and laugh at everyone who bought them.

Consoles on the other hand, haven't changed too much. In fact I think they gotten better. Before you get a box with a cartridge inside with a manual, then it changed to a tiny plastic CD case after the introduction of CD games, but now its a big plastic case with a bigger manual and cover art. Size isn't everything though, but at least they feel superior to the lame PS2 plastic cases. I like to admire cover art. Its getting rarer these days for nice cover art. Most games are just a big lameass title front and center with a bland single color background. Then there are those that are beautifully and artistically created. And of course there are the retarded ones that gives you second hand embarrassment just being in the vicinity of. Scariest part of that is where is says partial nudity. It could be anything from prepubescent girls naked or a hairy ogre ass.

I don't hate digital distribution, in fact I find it very convenient. It fits perfectly with today's fast paced world. I'm afraid after a few more years, these video game boxes might disappear completely. Never again will we be able to breathe in that new game smell, run your fingers through the pages of the manuals, or admire the visual art on the cover. Consoles might live on but digital distribution might be winning the fight for PCs.

Indie Games - Doing gaming right

2012-01-31T01:34:00.000-08:00

I really like Indie games. I don't know whats about them that draws me to them. I spent more time playing games like Aquaria, Dungeons of Dredmore, Recettear, Dungeon Defenders or World of Goo than any of the recent AAA titles minus a few. I had more fun playing a 5 to 15 dollar game than a 60 dollar AAA title. What is it about these games that make them so freaking fun? Maybe because they have a niche audience and can cater specifically to them? Maybe they're a little old school but manage to make it new? Maybe because they listen to their fans? Who knows really. All I know is more developers need to start paying more attention to their fans, because it pays off in the end.

With the recent increase of digital distribution, more and more indie games are popping up. Some of you may be asking what are these mysterious "indie games" that are getting more and more popular.

"There is no exact widely-accepted definition of what constitutes an "indie game". However, generally indie games share certain commonalities. Indie games are developed by individuals, small teams, or small independent companies. And, typically, indie games are smaller than mainstream titles. Indie game developers are not financially backed by publishers and usually have little to no budget available."

What this means is, they are in control of everything. They can change everything on a whim, granted that the whole team agrees, if they wish to. Instead of having to appeal to a broad audience and dumbing down games or mechanics they can make their games as unforgiving as they want. There is an audience for that. They're called roguelikes where the gameplay is so frustrating and unforgiving but just the right amount that make masochists crawl back to play over and over again.

The only problem is that there is almost no marketing for these games. Most travel from person to person on forums and gaming sites. I read around on a gaming forum quite a bit always on the lookout for new games and information. What I noticed is how many indie developers hang around there. They post about their games show a little and then constantly change or update things based on feedback. That is where I find most of my games. I've already talked about Carpe Fulgur and their successes and they are just one of many. A recent one caught my attention as I was reading about an upcoming old school dungeon crawler game called Legend of Grimrock.

What exactly happened was a fan asked why there weren't any clickable arrow icons for movement like many of the old school games. When asked why, he replied that he was disabled. The developers upon hearing that spent a couple hours and added optional clickable arrow icons into the game. Just for one person. When this happened, a random guy on the forums decided to send this story to reddit and various gaming sites and soon it exploded out of proportion. Their website went down from massive traffic overload and their email were flooded.

To quote one of the developers

"It's a bit sad to find out that even such a small gesture toward fans gets so much attention, because it says that there's a huge gap between the game creators and the audience in general, and people just aren't used to this kind of interaction,"

What he says is true. Its sad how many companies don't give a shit about their customers. Hell even some indie developers start drifting away from the community. Trendy Entertainment of Dungeon Defenders for one started going on a downhill slope. For one they decided that alienating their console players is a good idea. They stopped updating for consoles entirely. Next they started drifting away from their playerbase. They used to talk to their players often and update often. Now everyone is left in the dark then a patch comes out of nowhere with nerfs and bugs. People's characters get deleted, items are lost, and other things happen. When people sent emails for help it came back with a reply more than 3 weeks later saying they'll give them 10 million mana (not even worth 1 item) so they can start over. Really? Wait 3 weeks just for that?

I think what really attracts me to indie games is how approachable and human they are. I think thats what it comes down to. Love for their work, their fans, and their own game and it shows in the end product.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/27/indie-studio-almost-human-is-more-human-than-most/

Katawa Shoujo - What is a Visual Novel?

2012-01-16T15:49:00.000-08:00

What is Katawa Shoujo you ask? Well it basically means Disability Girl or something of that sort. Its what people call a Visual Novel. Now what in the fuck is that you ask? Well, its like reading a book, but with stupid pictures moving around. Don't get me wrong, I love to read. But why is this categorized into a game? Seems like theres not much difference than those pick your own adventure books you read as a kid in the library, with assholes writing down the answers at the side or having to keep your finger on like 5 different sections in case you miss something or need to do backtrack and its a huge pain in the ass. Then eventually you go fuck this and skip to the end since losers already written down the page where you go for the ending read it and close it and go finally. But really, its nothing like that.

I first found this game, story, novel, whatever the shit you wanna call it while reading about Fortune Summoners and Carpe Fulgur. I have mentioned them before, they brought over games like Recettear and Chantelise by Easy Game Station for the western market. Now they are translating their latest game, Fortune Summoners by Lizsoft. But this isn't about that so we'll skip to the end. There were some mention about a game called Katawa Shoujo on the discussion about Fortune Summoners while I was looking for information about that game. Links were passed around and it was highly recommended. I checked it out downloaded and forgotten about it. Its a completely free game and you can download however you want. What interested me though was that it was made by a group of 20-22 individuals from all walks of life working on a visual novel on their free time. Some were adults, some were married, some were as young as 14. The only thing is common was that they went to the same forums and hung out around there. I love these stories, it was the reason I even paid attention to Carpe Fulgur as they were nothing but two individuals who couldn't find jobs and decide to make one for themselves.

The game took five years to make. Yes, five years. However they have said that the development took longer than that, more to a decade before finally starting it five years ago. They released the game free to download on their 5th anniversary just recently. Its a sorta westernized Visual Novel that takes place in Japan. Yes I know you're going, "well fuck that sounds retarded as shit! I hate anime! I hate Anime that take place in the west because they don't know shit and always fuck it up so horrifyingly because its a Japanized west." Exactly my thoughts. I hate anime but I used to watch it as a kid. It was fine back then when we were immature as shit. I ask my friends for recommendations and I get retarded shit like some dumb fuck loser guy with a harem of girls. Everything in anime has their own type of characters which pissed me off immensely. You get the dumb people who talk like they're lifeless, super cheerful airheads, super shy retarded assholes and the worst of all, tsundere. Holy fuck do I wanna choke anyone who mentions anything tsundere. I know you're reading this Cent and I know you're going to open your MSN and bitch at me but fuck you and read on first.

At first I thought it was going to be like that but I was strangely surprised. Its not my first Visual Novel, I've read/played/whatevered Tsukihime, Fate/Stay Night, and Utawarerumono(fucking mouthful) all on recommendation by Cent. Sure its wasn't bad but it taught me a few things. I understand Utawarerumono is played like a tactics game, but why the fuck are the other two considered games? And why the fuck is it all high school bullshit like anime? Fate/Stay Night could have been adults going around blasting people with servants like a real game but instead its just dumb kids running around being all whiny and annoying. And if Tsukihime taught me anything is save before a choice because vampire girls will kill you out of love, and if you piss her off she'll kill you out of anger. Its a lose-lose situation. Thankfully Katawa Shoujo doesn't have vampire girls killing you. But it does have "bad endings." I like to think of Visual Novels as, writers that are too good for games, but not good enough for actual novels so they're stuck in some kind of limbo writing this shit. Of course thats not true because after reading this it changed my mind but I still like to consider these Visual Novels as a story other than a game.

I've been talking a lot and none of it has been about this game/novel. So after reading about this and leaving it somewhere at the back of my mind I found it again sitting on my desktop waiting to be installed. I was bored as shit so I gave it a go. I installed it and started playing. I gotta say the music and the art were kinda nice but what I enjoyed most was the writing. Its very well written, something you wouldn't expect from people on a forum known for their immaturity and trolling. The story focuses on a kid named Hisao who had an attack of arrhythmia when being confessed to by a girl he liked. Afterwards he was hospitalized and then had to enroll in a school for the disabled. There he meets the five main characters and how the story unfolds is up to the path you take. Each main character is written by a different writer. The novel itself is split into one main act where it can split into five different acts. Each act focuses on one character by one writer and that character has three acts of their own which equals to four acts per character. Its fairly long and I know I'm a fast reader. It still took me awhile to finish a character. Maybe because I didn't want it to end so fast. Maybe I was dreading it as I made it closer to the end and subconsciously slowed down.

The characters are as follows.

Emi - She's the always cheerful girl with amputated legs below the knee. She loves to run and will continue to run dispite her disability. She is considered the first path to take because its almost impossible to not be guided towards her path.

Hanako - Shes a disfigured girl who is suffering from extreme anxiety and shyness. She has almost no friends and has problems talking to anyone so she is ignored by everyone.

Lilly - Shes a blind Scottish girl. Shes sophisticated, calm and very friendly. She is the only one who talks to Hanako.

Rin - Shes a girl born with no arms. She is eccentric and talks in circles or asks very weird questions from time to time. Other than that shes an artist and is best friends with Emi

Shizune - She is a deaf and mute girl. Shes the class representitive and also head of the student council. She's strong and determined.

The first time I read through it I accidentally landed in Emi's route. I was going "Oh god not those super cheerful annoying cliches in anime." It wasn't as bad as I expected. One thing I noticed is Hisao changed between each route probably because of different writers. The reasoning for that was because if one person were to leave the team (common) then they wouldn't need to scrap the whole thing just scrap the route they worked on. Emi is cheerful and she's friendly with everyone but she has a secret. You first meet her because the nurse orders you to get exercise for your heart. If you wanna slowly kill yourself you don't do it but if you do you are locked onto her route. She runs with you every morning and you slowly see her more than just a friend. She's stubborn as hell and she refuses any help. I particularly like the banter between the two, its very realistic and cute. However as you get to know her more and more she pushes herself away further. The story focuses on your health and your relationship with Emi. You fight, you get together, you fight again, and you get back together again. She is stubborn, but so are you and you keep pushing forward when she pushes you back until you realize she has PTSD from her accident and cannot get close to people for fear of losing them. Even the bad endings are realistic, it brings back memories. Two people talking together normally, having fun dreading the inevitability that is coming. Then at the end, neither can look at each other in the eye and said goodbye for the last time. Just like that. Painless but painful all at once.

Its an emotional roller coaster from when she tells you to "Get the fuck out" of her house to the confession scene where she tells you every tiny little thing about her before breaking down. I like to point out that not every problem is solvable. Unlike Bioware writers, these people don't write stories where everyone has emotional baggage that gets magically fixed by a penis or someone with a penis. They have problems and you cannot solve them, but you can stand by them as they work through it. The endings are just the beginning of a story for our protagonists. Its bittersweet and I like it that way. Its even more evident in Hanako's route where you are protecting her and trying to fix her. If you do that then you fail and get the bad ending. I did the first time, I fell into the trap and I tried to help her but instead I failed to realize that she herself is strong and doesn't need you to help her. Shes quiet, and she avoids people because because her scars have traumatized her. She enjoys games like pool and chess, she enjoys reading in the library and she doesn't need you to watch her everywhere she goes. Hanako's route is written by a far superior writer in my opinion.

In Hanako's route it focuses more about the disabilities. Your weaknesses and your disabilities and also Hanako's. If you stop being her protector and worry about your own future, your own life, Hanako starts approaching you more and more. You share your disabilities, your hardships and then you make love. I like to point out it was probably one of the most disturbing scenes for obvious reasons you find out at the end of the route. She made love to you because she wanted you to see her as more than an object to be protected. She doesn't want a knight in shining armor, she wanted a friend, a lover who would see her as an equal. Thats why she liked to play chess with you, because when the two of you are playing you are equal. Even the title for the act, Castling, is a move in chess where the king (one to be protected) and the rook (a powerful piece in chess) moves so they stand beside each other. Its symbolism for Hisao and Hanako moving together standing side by side and Hisao becoming even more protective. At the climax you realized everything and stop being her knight. The route ends there but the story is just beginning. You sit there tears streaming down your cheeks with a pile of tissue paper on your desk as the credits slowly roll. You then realize, "fuck this shit is good."

In high school, I had a few perverted friends who would talk about Japanese porn games where you click buttons endlessly though stories for porn to appear. They go "its so boring you just click click click then you jack off." Yeah, maybe thats what made me want to avoid this like a plague. But I was wrong. Its not porn. If anyone can masturbate to it they should chop off their dicks.

I haven't read the other stories but I finished two of the five and I can say its good already. Just don't finish it all at once like a sad drama. Its a love-hate thing for me. I love watching sad dramas and reading sad stories but I also hate it because once its over and I see the bittersweet ending, you know your week is ruined. You'll lie in bed thinking about it, it'll ruin your day as your in class. It'll fuck you over but you're glad you watched it. Thats what this visual novel is. I know its not a game, and I know I'm not bitching about how terrible a game is but I'm just talking about mostly what a Visual Novel is. It shouldn't be labeled as a game as theres no game play, yet it shouldn't be overlooked because its not a real novel. Give it a chance it might change your mind. It sure changed mine.

The Binding of Issac - One big dead baby joke

2012-01-11T15:25:00.000-08:00

You're probably asking why I'm bitching about an indie game. An indie game may have niche audiences but it doesn't mean it can't suck shit. The Binding of Issac is made by the same people who made Super Meat Boy. I have never played that game but I've heard praises of people who have played it. Having no idea what that is and no idea what this is I gave this a try. All I could say after all this was what the fuck. The story consists of you, Issac a 8 year old boy with a crazy religious mother. One day your mother hears the voice of God telling her to shelter you from the outside evils. You are then locked away naked in your room. Then she hears the voice of God telling her to kill you and you escape through the basement. That is the whole story. Inside the basement you meet a bunch of different creatures such as eyeless bleeding babies, babies with head filled with flies, headless babies, floating dead baby heads, zombie babies, maggots, giant vaginas, and more.

Edgy huh? I think the game focused too much on being edgy than to make the game better. The game isn't entirely bad. Its a rogue-like inspired Zeldaesque game. Basically you go around the dungeon shooting everything with tears and you find upgrades and you slowly mutate into some fucked up shit. The amount of blood puts Dragon Age to shame. Its grotesque but the replayability is there. The only problem is, why is this 5 bucks? Seems like this game is no different than those flash games you can play for free. A couple of years ago without steam and all these digital distribution sites it would be just another flash game forgotten somewhere. The game is made in flash and when the screen is filled with a bunch of shit (literally sometimes), it slows down and you start sliding around making the game difficult and impossible to play. Its more annoying than Odin Sphere's massive slowdown. The game is all about luck. Its like solitaire, you don't play to win instead you play for a chance to win.

When people wanted joystick support, what did these guys do? They make you google another program of course! There are more and more shit like if you leave the game on for long periods of time it automatically assumes you aren't playing and closes the game for you. The only reason they could get away with this kind of shit is because its an indie game. For 5 bucks you can get something better, something like Dungeons of Dredmor another rogue-like. Even Dungeon Defenders is cheap as shit and worth way more than this piece of shit. It has a few levels and the game doesn't last very long. The only reason replayability is high is the first few tries you'll end up dying a few minutes into the game. Its not bad becuase its hard, its bad because of how unoptimized it is and how its just a game where they shove as many dead babies and internet memes they can into it.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Finale - Biggest waste of fucking time

2011-12-15T19:15:00.000-08:00

This is a continuation of my previous part found here.

So you beat the game and you found the endings unacceptable. You want to know what the fuck happened and don't wanna end with those pitiful excuses for endings. There are four more endings. The true endings for either characters. And two alternate secret endings. For example in Momohime's ending Kongiku was punished for helping Junkuro and turned back into a normal fox and Junkuro died and sacrificed himself to save Momohime. Then Momohime wakes up with no memory and lives with an elderly couple until Oni's come and attack and she fucked them over with her Oboro style. She goes "what is this scary power" and goes around searching for the answer with Kongiku who is a normal fox. The end. WHAT THE FUCK. For Kisuke's ending you randomly meet Momohime out of nowhere and kill Junkuro's spirit and saves her. Then Torahime is like do me one last favor before I die and makes Kisuke Momohime's servant because Kisuke is madly in love with Torahime. Then Momohime goes "Lets go around and collect all the Muramasas!" The end.

You're thinking "Ok maybe the super secret super ending is better!" Nope! Its in fact worse. Worse than you can possibly imagine. First of all to get the ending you must first, beat the game with both characters. Then you must beat the White Monster Lairs which are only available after you beat the game with both characters. In here you fight series of challenges. You are rewarded with secret swords. Then you must equip two very specific swords and go fight the last boss with your two characters. Here you will find your true ending. Then after beating both you must get to maximum level wear the best sword in the game and fight again for the alternate ending. You must be going this is a lot of work. MORE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE.

How would you like a game where you have to grind over and over again to reach the maximum level just so you can have a real ending. Because the regular endings go "this is not the end..." and tease you while giving you no fucking conclusion. To level you go fight challenge bosses. Theres one boss who is the easiest boss in the game but gives 12x the exp of every single boss in the game combined. So what you do is endlessly fight this guy until you level. Kill, save repeat. Kill, save repeat. I have to ask. Why do you need to level up to equip a sword? What is the point. If I got it just let me use it. The problem is, even after equipping it, it does nothing to help. Everything in the game scales to your level. A shitty ass boss does 7k damage a hit. What in the fuck is that? I thought the boss is level 35. How the fuck he do 95% of my health in a single hit when I'm max level.

Then you have fucking retarded pointless random encounters. I never pointed this out before but I'll point it out now because of how tedious it became when I realized how much running around there are. For example, Momohime's final dungeon will take at least five minutes to walk from beginning to the end without anything in your way. With random encounters this goes up to like an hour. Not exactly but it sure feels like it. Every four steps you take you fight enemies. I got a item from a challenge boss which says "greatly reduces random encounters." That item is a lie. Instead of fighting every four steps, you fight every six steps. Hardly any help. I did not notice any fucking difference with or without the item. You cannot run from combat either and while shit scales with your level you can't blow through them all instantly and move on. You're forced to fight and fight and fight. Why bother when you're max level? Nothing. You already wasted an hour grinding the boss so you can wear your fucking sword now you have to waste another hour walking to the last boss again.

So there I am pissed as fucking hell reach the final boss again make sure I have the final sword equipped, fight the guy. Notice he's scaled to fucking hell, beat his face in easily and then wait for the alternate ending. ONLY TO FIND OUT ITS A PIECE OF SHIT. Instead of Junkuro being killed by Fudoo-Mudoo, Buddha's bodyguard, you managed to kill him with your sword. Now you go back in time. You're Junkuro in human form and you see Momohime and her fiancée running from the castle that should have killed her. Instead of killing her and taking over her body like you did before. You let her go and walk away. Then you go into the future where its Momohime getting married with her fiancee and its hinted that Junkuro has taken over his body and is marrying you instead but since you went back in time Momohime never knew about Junkuro. Then the ending goes "It is said Momohime given birth three times and lived to be over 100. You have reached the end of The Pandemonium of the Oboro Sword."

WHAT IN THE FUCKING SHIT. I fucking did all that and this was what I got? WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY THINK THIS WOULD SATISFY ANYONE. First of all. Junkuro is like 60 years old and Momohime is 12. Fucking her finacee is like 35 years old. The worst part is that if I want to see Kisuke's alternate ending which would probably be just as fucking shitty, I would have to do all this again. But why would I? I would rather fucking play HoN, LoL, and DotA at the same time with 4 feeders on my team in each game while playing Persona 3 and 4 on the TVs while blasting Friday by Rebecca Black on repeat and having my dick sawed off by a chainsaw while cutting my stomach open with a knife. That is less painful that fucking playing this game again.

DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME.

EVER.

Save yourself from the years of nightmare and torture you get from playing this game.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Part 2 - More filler content than actual gameplay

2011-12-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

This is a continuation of my previous one found here.

Now that I went back and finished Kisuke's route, the only thing I can say is what the fuck. At first I thought Kisuke's story would be related to Momohime's story but no. These two are completely irrelevant. They don't cross over except you see them in hot springs and say one word to each other. A lot of games do the finish the game with two or more characters to have the full story shit. I always hated those. You are already attached to your first character. Why do I have to beat the game again to see the full story? Why not have multiple paths and endings so we can discuss with others and see what we got differently? Instead we get one confusing half of a story with no ending and no fucking answers. Until you play the other half you're in the dark. When you play the other character you notice that he or she is a giant dipshit and you don't feel like playing it again.

For example something like Mana Khemia 2 where you have to pick between the slave guy or the country bumpkin. I started off with the slave and you are forced into school by this girl who is your master and she literally drags you around everywhere. You reluctantly do whatever she says because hey she owns your life. Basically the whole half of the game is how you hate Manas and how she has a crush on you but you are oblivious as all fuck. If you play the country bumpkin you are this dipshit chick who is a giant airhead and pisses you off every opportunity she gets. Her story is about raising a Mana egg. The stories cross over a lot as both of these teams are rivals at school and you often fight against or with each other. Their team often joins your party as a guest and you are often helping the other team in quests or stuff. Thats alright. I get the majority of the story and each team has their own individual storyline.

Something similar but a little different is Arc the Lad where you play the story of two brother separated at birth. You have to play both of them at the same time as the storyline switches between them from chapter to chapter. One goes from one side of the world the other goes from the other. They never meet and just barely miss each other. One person is fighting for the monsters one person is fighting for the humans and they all hate each other. Until finally at the climax you both meet for the first time and then find out whose behind all that shit and team up brother with brother and fuck them up. That game had a nice story and combat was fun as heck.

But I'm getting carried away from the main point. Muramasa is neither of those. Its two confusing halves of two confusing stories with no ending no climax no character development. Hell the fucking filler content is more than the actual gameplay. You spend more time walking to the next location than actual storyline or boss fights. I finished Kisuke's route in a little over three hours. THREE FUCKING HOURS. And funny part is, over 75% of the game was walking from one side of the world to the other. The storyline is pathetically short. You must be asking, how do you develop characters in an RPG in three hours? The answer is you don't.

I liked Momohime's route a lot more than Kisuke's mainly because Momohime is always travelling with Junkuro who taken over her body and using it to kill gods and demons. Then theres the foxgirl Kongiku the servant of Junkuro and her fox friends who faithfully does everything Junkuro says. Basically her story is Junkuro is out to find the evil sword to gain unlimited power and fuck the world. You actually get travel companions with you and actual dialogue. Kisuke's route is you are this dipshit ninja who lost his memory. How cliche. You're this loner who travels around trying to find your memory and beating up the wrong people like a retard because you're being tricked. Following you is the foxgirl Yuzuruha who tells you that her master sent her over to help you by giving you swords to collect souls of the slain and forge demon blades. Yuzuruha is way better than Kongiku. First of all Yuzuruha doesn't talk like a dumbass, have breasts exploding out her clothes, and doesn't refer to you as master. She does do the little spin-around thing while holding her paper umbrella which is a little distracting but its forgivable. She doesn't really help you or do anything to aid you really. Shes hardly even in the story and only appears to say something then disappear. Kisuke is always and forever alone.

Kisuke's story is mainly about Torahime, Momohime's elder sister who died and was resurrected for 49 days. In those 49 days she's looking for revenge for the death of her entire family and clan. What I found retarded is Torahime is related to Momohime and Kisuke is related to Junkuro yet neither of their stories overlap at all. You would think its perfect to come together eventually but no. Its just two stories doing their own shit. The worst part is it still gives you half a story. So in total you get a quarter of the game in each route. Fuck this game.

One thing I have to point out is this game lets you forge a ton of swords. These names are all impossible to remember you just have to look at the stats. Each sword has a different secret art, basically skills unique to that sword. They also have a special stat such as +1 strength, +10% more damage to all swords, 50% fire resistance. Then theres the attack power of the sword itself. As cool as that sound, most swords you get and use for less than five minutes before you toss them for a better one. You might consider keeping one for their stats or secret art but no you rarely ever need to use them. Normal random mobs are too easy to need it. You might use it once or twice to wipe them out fast but your normal hits can kill them just as fast. For bosses you don't use the secret arts because you need to keep your sword power to block attacks. You can carry three swords with you at a time and you can switch at anytime during combat. Each sword has its individual health bar which is drained by blocking or from using their secret arts. Once a sword breaks your damage is neutered and you cannot block. When you sheathe a sword, it will slowly recover their health. A broken sword needs to wait until it gets full health before its fixed. Therefor the only reason you get a sword is for their attack power. Then you slash the boss until it breaks and switch to another.

Another thing is cooking. I pointed out how slow and tedious it is to make food. But there are actually two types of food. One type of food is shit that you can carry like rice balls you can make out of a pot and then gently knead it in your hands, baked potato by cooking yams under leaves, and grilled squid by sticking a fucking squid into the fire. These take forever to make but are cheap easy healing when needed. You can carry them with you into battle. The other type are hotpots. You cook them but you have to eat them right away. These are pure shit. You cannot cook in combat so the only reason to use them is if you are low on health from random mobs and you wanna heal up. They are also expensive a shit to make so you're better off eating a squid or something. However unlike the other type of food, hotpots always gives buffs. These buffs only last like 30 seconds so if you use it then fight a boss it wears off by the time it actually starts. Using it to clear random mobs are pointless because how easy they are. So what are the use of these? Nothing. Just for the food porn where you watch it get eaten away bite by tiny bite and comments on how good it taste. Fuck just go to a restaurant instead. At least you get to taste it.

Most good games you don't want the story to end yet, while shitty games you can't wait for it to actually end. For this game I'm torn between the two. I want the game to end but since theres no story or real ending I want it to keep going so it can actually give me something. I think even Blade Kitten has more story and depth to the game than this. You should just think of this game as a side scrolling action platformer than an RPG. The combat is fun. Yes its easy but its fun. Some people may find it a bit difficult but I was around 9-18 levels below the recommended levels the entire game and I managed to beat it fine. I was like level 23 by the time I finished the game on Kisuke's route. I couldn't even use half the swords I got from bosses because I was so underleveled. Funny thing is this is supposed to be the "hard mode." The real hard mode is unlocked by beating a game on either character.

There was some confusion from what I said before. When you start a new save, you automatically have two saves on your one save. One is Momohime's one is Kisuke's. By selecting your save you are able to pick between the two. The time spent and swords collected in either save gets totalled into your main save. If you wish to play the hardest mode you must start over after you beaten either Momohime or Kisuke. That is complete bullshit. Why fucking tease us with a mode we will never play. Should just enable it so on your second playthrough you can feel challenged. And after beating the game on both characters you can finally unlock the blocked monster lairs. All fucking three of them. In there you fight the same bosses as you fought in the main game but this time you fight more than one at a time! Gasp! Fucking too lazy to make real content and have to resort to repeating content into filler content. This game is pathetic and I take back anything good I said about it in part one of my review.

One last thing about this game before I'm done. When you play this game you'll learn that all Japanese women can't or refuse to fight and will whine at every opportunity they get. Seriously when you first meet Torahime you tell her that a woman wearing armor and going off into battle is stupid and should stay home. Then you kick her ass. Momohime cannot fight and will whine at every opportunity. In Momohime's route you fight a thunder god which you would think would be powerful as fuck but no. You just smack her then she falls down from the sky and reveals her ass and you have to spank her while she moans for maximum damage. Then she loses and the other lightning god is like stop being stupid or I'll stop liking you and she's all like what thats mean waaaah whineee whineeee. Fucking horrible portrayal of women in this game. Then again this is Vanillaware, known for their extreme sexism.

Gender Inequality - Character Gender Roles

2011-12-04T06:34:00.001-08:00

Video games have always been male dominated as I have already said before in another post. Its pretty chauvinistic but its nothing like the pure shit that is anime. Its the most misogynistic shit ever and anyone should be ashamed for watching it. But moving on from that video games seems to be doing better and better. Maybe more women started picking up games or maybe more women are developing games. There are always talk about how badly women are portrayed in video games yet no one really knows what makes a strong character. Not even the developers that made the character.

Men in video games have more variations. You have the hyper masculine tough guy like Duke Nukem and any other action game. You have the suave smart guy in like L.A. Noire, fat bald angry guy NPCs, feminine wimpy main males in JRPGs, and even homosexual guys like in Shadow Hearts. Theres a huge variation from main characters to NPCs. There are a lot more that I haven't said but then we get to women in video games. They all have one thing in common. They are always attractive first, then you add whatever else next. This holds true in all forms of media too. Watch a movie, watch the TV, look at a magazine. Anything. Just like how minorities aren't properly portrayed, women aren't properly portrayed either. You don't see many minorities in video games. Whens the last time you saw an Asian in a video game outside an Asian themed game that wasn't a martial artist or old wise man? What about a Hispanic that wasn't a gang banger? Like women, when is the last time you saw a non attractive women in a video game outside of background characters?

Women are used for sex appeal for the gamer. You see chain mail bikinis on women who somehow magically have more defense than a man wearing a full plate armor. Yet somehow those swords that stab her exposed flesh are magically deflected. Impractical? Fuck that show more cleavage. Zoom in on that ass. Put on some bondage gear. I already said a lot about this before. There is no need to go into more detail. Sure you get the occasional shirtless male with ripped abs but those are uncommon because they don't want the player base to start feeling insecure about their sexuality.

Men are usually the main characters and women are usually forced into the supportive role in games. Sometimes women are the main characters and men are the support but a lot of developers say they don't like to make games with a female main character because their fans complain about having to play a girl. But that is mostly because anything meant to appeal to both genders are male. A girl can be a tomboy an be socially accepted but as soon as a parent finds out their son is doing or watching anything girly they automatically assume he caught the gay and will put an end to it right away. Society says men have to be manly. And because of that, we have mostly male leads in video games. And since the lead is a male, the support roles are shoved onto females. Then you have the love interest role and the damsel in distress role.

A few games let you play as either gender. For example in Mass Effect you are able to choose a male or female Commander Shepard. People argue that the female Shepard is nothing more than a chick with a dick and shouldn't even be considered in any discussion about characters. Why? I thought feminism was all about equality. If both the male and female versions are doing exactly 100% the same thing minus the romance whats wrong with it really? But Mass Effect also has the worst portrayal of women in gaming. The Asari, an all female race of prostitutes and sluts. Then theres Jack a crazy psycho angry bitch you have to cure her broken life with your penis. Miranda who is the genetically engineered superhuman perfect sex doll who you cure her of her insecurities with your penis. And Tali the naive waif who you cure her of her shyness with your penis. Then Kelly your secretary who you can sexually harass and then molest with your penis. Basically everything else was badly done in the game.

Then there are the "great female characters" like Alyx Vance from Half Life 2 that men claim to be the best. However almost all women agree she is terrible. I have never played that game so I cannot comment but most agree that shes completely dependent on the main character and she just magically falls in love with him without any development. She also becomes a damsel in distress. Just because its a supportive character doesn't mean that she is automatically bad. Just because she plays the role of a damsel in distress doesn't mean shes bad. They don't need to be non feminine to be a good character either. What they need is character depth.

As long as they don't go into this.

Lets take a look at Aveline from Dragon Age 2. Yes I know the game is a piece of shit but she isn't. She is probably one of the most likable female characters in video games. She is well developed, she is a strong female character. She has her own life, her husband died early in the game but that doesn't stop her. She does what she feels is right and isn't afraid to voice her opinions and do what she sets out to do. Eventually she becomes the captain of the guard. She watches over you like a guardian would but at the same time she isn't without flaw. She has a crush on a subordinate but doesn't have the courage to do it even though she is strong when it comes to anything but love. It becomes downright embarrassing yet a little cute at the same time. Eventually she overcomes that hurdle and captures her love. I also like to point out she cannot be romanced by the main character. People go "oh shes ugly she looks manly she doesn't show any cleavage blah blah blah." So what? Do they have to be attractive to be female? Because of that she is overlooked a lot.

Just because it is a damsel in distress or even a supportive character, it doesn't mean they should be devoid of any personality or development. A lot of JRPG's do this. You get weak girls as casters and the males are hotheaded fighters. Most characters are one dimensional and are basically defined by one particular trait. Persona 4 I thought did a good job on the main characters. Yes the game was terrible like Dragon Age 2 but the main characters grow, they have their own lives they do their own shit. They have their own goals and own opinions. Which I thought was quite progressive for a JRPG. But outside the main characters its just horrible.

Games like Skyrim have both men and women in all roles. Gender does not stop you from doing anything. There are Jarls that are women. They can lead, they don't whine in their keeps waiting for a man to do their job. Despite what feminist may or may not agree, you don't have to be ugly, you don't have to be doing a usually male dominated role, and you don't have to be devoid of any sexual attraction to the main character to be a strong female character. One example is Fall-From-Grace from Planescape Torment. She's a succubus, and right away alarm bells go off your head. But she isn't.as bad as you would think. She's a chaste succubus who owns a brothel for intellectual lust over physical lust. She has a dairy that she always holds which you cannot read or get rid of.

There are motherly female characters to female characters who relies on the male lead. That is fine. She can be a prostitute, a mother, a warrior, an independent woman anything you want and still be a strong character. It's not that she has to fulfill these roles to be a good character, it's that she is a good character who doesn't sacrifice these roles in order to appear interesting. It bolsters her character, not defines it. Roles don't make a difference in character. Hell Bayonetta is like the epitome of everything wrong in a video character and she's a strong character. Sure I find her annoying as shit and over the top but I won't deny that she is a strong character.

So why all the fuss about strong female characters in video games? There are tons of weak male characters right? Yes but there are also a ton of strong male characters. Strong female characters are a rare breed and when people see it they notice it. And when its lacking people don't bat an eyelash.

Ubisoft - PC pirating = no more releasing PC games

2011-11-26T18:00:00.001-08:00

Ubisoft recently announced they weren't porting games onto the PC because of piracy. They claim that 90% of the players are playing pirated copies of their games which is ironic because when they implemented the always online DRM they claimed that it was working and helped their sales and that was the reason they kept their DRM. Who are Ubisoft anyways? They're a publisher that is known for their hatred for PC gamers and their use of draconian DRMs in their games. DRMs that break people's cd/dvd drives and other stupid shit making paying customers suffer. Why? All because of their irrational fear of pirates.

PC games must be completely horrible and a dying industry right? Everyone should stick to consoles! Nope. In fact PC games seems to be higher than ever right now. Especially with the release of games like Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. You don't see them whining that their games are being pirated. Why? Because they're still making money even after they got pirated. The problem isn't piracy itself, its if they can still make money. Its about turning pirates into potential buyers. Have you ever heard stories of pirates pirating a game then finding out that game is the best shit they ever played and decided to buy a real copy? Perhaps not now but later in the future for their future games? Yes you have because its not as uncommon as developers like to think.

To quote Gabe Newall, the co-founder of Valve and Steam:

"In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty.

Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company. For example, prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe."

Full article can be found here.

That sounds familiar. Didn't my last post on piracy mention something like that? Oh yeah! CD Projeckt Red and Witcher 2. Guess what? Witcher 2 is the most pirated game in history because they don't have DRM and yet they managed to sell over a million copies. How? I thought no DRM means no profit because everyone would pirate it! Not everyone is a cheap ass. People want to support you guys but when you make it hard for them they don't. Your DRM encourages pirating. The problem isn't to stop people from playing your game for free, the goal is to make money in the end isn't it? Would crazy ass DRM really help?

Look at GoG, a niche digital distribution company like Steam except for one distinction. THERE ARE NO DRM FOR ANY OF THEIR GAMES. Re-read that a couple of times. Read it again. Done yet? Ok one more time. THERE ARE NO DRM FOR ANY OF THEIR GAMES. Now you're probably going HOLY SHIT NO DRM THEY MUST HAVE FUCKED UP THE ENTIRE GAME INDUSTRY THEN PEOPLE WOULD BUY A COPY AND PUT IT UP ON TORRENTS FOR EVERYONE. Yes they do, but guess what? Its successful. They sell old games for cheap without DRM but now more and more developers want to put their newer games up there for sale as well and they had to change their policy of selling old games. Games like the Witcher 2 were on there and was the first to get pirated but it didn't hurt their sales. Infact CD Projekt Red said they were swimming in money and is able to take more risks on new games.

How were they a success? They didn't have DRM they have the highest piracy rate ever in history yet they're making money. How do they do it? They are very dedicated to their fans. They take what they say to heart and change things based on popular opinion. They said DRM was lowering frame rates? Fuck it take it out. Shit was unbalanced and make the game less challenging? Fuck change it. There was not enough content? Fuck it more free DLCs.

According to GoG.

"If you make the whole gaming experience more complicated and more frustrating for people who buy the game; if it's easier to play a game that is pirated because they removed all the technical restraints, then I think there is a big issue on the plate now. It should be easier to play a game that you bought legally than play a game that you pirated."

You hear that Ubisoft? Maybe your game sucks thats why its failing. No other company seems to be having a problem. The biggest mistake that developers are making are that they refuse to let anyone play their game for free. Why do they get to play it for free for the time and money we spent in making this? Thats why there are no demos because they don't like to give shit out for free. Instead of trying to find a way for people to not play your game, why don't you find a way for people to pay for your game instead? You know how many games are now Free-to-Play these days? That concept single handedly killed the majority of piracy in Asian countries where piracy rates were skyrocketing.

Because people are able to play a game they can decide if they want to pay for the full game or for other content. Its something that works and is proven to work. PC gaming right now is shifting and Ubisoft is one of those that refuse to change. It will be one of those that will eventually collapse and fall because of their stubborness and they won't be missed. Another company will rise and take their place. The PC game industry is growing at an alarming rate afterall. Its at an all time high right now. Some companies just can't see it.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/07/opinion-ubisoft-piracy-and-the-death-of-reason/

"In fact, the decline of sales even calls into question the decline in piracy rates."

Your games are so bad even pirates don't want to touch it.

Bloodline Champions - How to ruin a perfectly balanced game with greed

2011-11-26T04:47:00.000-08:00

I played this game when it was in beta. I don't know how or why I got an invite but I found one in my email one day and I was like lets give it a shot. They called themselves an Arena game where everything is skill based with no levels or luck involved. The game wasn't bad. There was 16 champions for you to pick. There are four champions for each role which are Healer, Tank, Melee, Ranged. Healers don't deal a lot of damage and they can heal. Tank don't do a lot but they can take a lot of punishment as well as have a lot of disables at their disposal. Melee deals a lot of damage but they have to get close to deal it. Ranged have paper thin defense but can deal the damage melee does from a distance. Some champions are more offensive some are more mobile they are all different and they are very fun.

Its an Arena type Moba. In other words, imagine dota without the lanes the farming the towers the shopping. Strip it down to its bare bones and put champions inside an arena with 3v3 to 5v5 fights. There are no levels, there are no RNG. Everything is skill shot based, in other words everything must be aimed. You can miss a heal, you can miss a melee swing, and you can even block a player from reaching your ally by standing in front of them. Its fun going into a game and immediately starting the action rather than farming for 30 minutes like other Mobas. You just jump right in and fight to the death. Rounds are short. If the rounds get dragged on too long sudden death starts and the map gets smaller and smaller and everyone standing outside the shrinking map instantly dies. The game was balanced, the game was fun. Then beta ended and I stopped playing the game.

An year later I decide to check out where the game has gone. What the fuck happened I have to ask. How do you ruin a game like this? When the game came out it was a 1 champion per role rotation per week. Which was pretty dumb because everyone plays the same shit every game. You can unlock champions with real money or the in game currency. The in game currency can also be used to buy skins, titles, avatars, and even gender swapped champions. After I came back I noticed that all those are changed to real cash only. The only thing you can buy with in game currency is the champions themselves. Then they added a new system where you can buy and unlock permanent stat boosts. Wait but I thought the game was all skill based and not about RNG and levels and other shit? Yeah thats what they claimed but after realizing they don't earn enough money from shitty skins they adapted to pay to win.

When I jumped into the game I found that people were going around 2 shotting me because I don't have any of the stats. Thats bullshit. And looking around I found they completely killed any reason to make custom games. Using the automatic matchmaker gives you bonus in game currency for every game you play. But this automatic matchmaker is bad at balancing anything. You can have a couple brand new rank 1 players match up against a whole team of veteran rank 15 players who played for an year. You will get demolished. Custom games let you balance the team yourselves so people who are new to the game can set up games to play only newbies. However there is no incentive to make custom games and I see 0 games in there when I check. Which is ironic because back in beta no one used the automatic matchmaker because it was slow as shit and every game was custom.

Then I did some research, looked around, listen to what people say about the game and I realized the game is dying. Not just me but everyone knew the game was dying. New players jump into the game and get slaughtered by veterans. Its a pay to win game so theres basically no way for them to learn anything. Its still 1 champion per role every week so they can never try to see what they like. Rotation systems are retarded. Why milk money out of them buying champions or playing a billion games to unlock a champion? It does nothing but piss off new players and make them want to play the game less. Theres no custom games you don't know who is a noob and where to learn and practice. Basically its a noobie unfriendly game. Its worse than Dota where if you jump into a game and turned out to be a noobie everyone will flame you and banlist you with an illegal wc3 program locking you out from any dota game hosted with that program. Somehow Bloodline Champions went from a decent well balanced game where you can join a game and finish in a couple of minutes into a boring noobie unfriendly unbalanced piece of shit. All in the name of making more money.

The best part is that there were more people playing in the closed beta than the free to play release of the game after 1 year. Maybe thats not true but it definitely feels like there are less people playing. Perhaps the community was more vocal because there were less of us. Perhaps without custom games you can't really judge how many games are being hosted and how many people are playing. The UI is bad as ever outside of the game. The lobby is a terrible mash of garbage on your screen. You would think it would be the first thing they fix after beta. Its the first thing new players see and if they can't even navigate it then what are the chances they'll keep playing after joining automatic matchmaking game and getting their shit fucked up the ass? First impressions are lasting impressions. They also have the worst friend/chat/party system with horrible chatrooms that open up to nowhere when you are in a party and having random people sitting in a lobby while they are in a game and party systems where you are not even sure you're in a party or not. Its a guessing game. During beta it was acceptable because we gave feedback on its shittyness. Guess it wasn't enough to get them to change.

Way to go Funcom. Lets milk as much money as possible and alienate new players. Thats going to help make more money because who needs new players right!? The existing players will keep playing and paying forever for new shit right? Thats why the game is successful right? Its alright Funcom, we know you're greedy. Just keep staying delusional and do nothing about this game.

Portal 2 - I like it when you hurt me

2011-10-21T17:09:00.000-07:00

I have to say this game isn't bad. I liked it. While I enjoyed it, there was something missing. Portal is a side project for Half-Life. It was popular enough to get its own sequel. I always wondered why Portal was this popular? Most people say its the portal gun with its unique and fun puzzles while others say GLaDOS with her black humor and sarcasm that made the game. I found the first one ok. It didn't stand out that much while I thought GLaDOS was amazingly well done she wasn't that memorable because of how short the game was. When Portal 2 was announced I was skeptical. Though I never played the first of the series when I heard about it, I knew what the game was about. How could they possibly expand on the game?

When I first started Portal 2, I was surprised by another character, Wheatly. He's entertaining enough but he's no GLaDOS. Have no fear though, after awhile you meet up with your nemesis GLaDOS and start doing the puzzles again. I have to say I was disappointed. I'm glad people kept telling me to continue playing or I would've just stopped after the first few stages. It starts off slow, very slow. The puzzles are stupidly easy and doesn't give any sort of challenge at all. I suppose it was because I played Portal 1 about a week before Portal 2 came out. I found puzzles to be more challenging in the first game than in the sequel. Like someone said, once you add more elements to the game it becomes easier because there is only one specific easy to see way to get past. While I like puzzle games, the puzzles in Portal 2 didn't entertain me that much.

The biggest reason I liked the game was the quirkyness of it all. You have a psychopathic AI(I don't think AI's have empathy so it would probably apply to all AI) out to kill you who wants to test you in the name of science all while spouting off insults and sarcastic remarks. I love GLaDOS, she may be one of my favorite video game characters. I guess I have a thing for abuse or people trying to kill you but say what you want GLaDOS is as likable as she is entertaining. There has been some debate about her amongst feminists but I won't get into that but I'll leave a quote here.

He added that Chell and GLaDOS serve as opposing sides of femininity; where Chell is "dutiful and does every task assigned of her", GLaDOS is "aggressive and seemingly dangerous to the order of a male-dominated society". He also described Chell as a "domestic icon" while he described GLaDOS as a "progressive, intelligent working woman" and that by killing her, "Chell can be seen as the dutiful “safe” woman conquering the “dangerous” feminist"

Its funny though, the more abusive she becomes the more people like her. Or that goes for me at least.

Halfway though the game you find out more about the real story. Like the first one it starts after the tests "end." I liked these parts way more than the standard tests. I felt like the standard tests were "filler content" while these free puzzles to be more entertaining. The constant fear of the unknown and/or death was what the puzzle rooms were severely lacking. You start finding about how Aperature Science came to be and more backstory to GLaDOS. She becomes more and more uh, human? While at the same time you are introduced to two new characters, Cave Johnson and Caroline.

But as quickly as it started, it ended. The game itself is short and the free puzzle sections were even shorter. The atmosphere and ambience of the place itself is amazingly well done. It actually feels like its in terrible shape with broken rails and overgrowth everywhere. But the puzzle rooms are all perfectly constructed. I suppose its because GLaDOS puts testing people in puzzle rooms above the welfare of the laboratory. I like the ability to explore and wander around there but to annoy you more you have to do more puzzle rooms again after you get back to Wheatly after the free puzzles.

Overall its fun but I felt it lacked a lot of meat on the bones. Its a good game I wouldn't argue against that but if there were just a bit more content outside the puzzle rooms I would be more content. I don't know why it has this much praise. Maybe it was because everyone telling me its the best thing since sliced bread that I would be a little disappointed after playing it. Too much hype can do this to a game I suppose.

Titan Quest - An endurance test on your sanity

2011-10-14T16:47:00.000-07:00

First off I want to say my index finger is fucking sore right now and if I can avoid typing this shit out I would but the world must know of this piece of shit called Titan Quest. First of all its a Diablo clone. It would mean that you go around left clicking everything until it dies. While Diablo has a simple game play design, every single clone I met seem to fuck it up. Titan Quest over complicates things for the sake of over complicating.

There are huge trees you can pick skills from and mix and match with two trees into different classes. Each character can pick two trees and learn skills from either. But most of the skills are filler talents or garbage. So the best ones are the passives which effectively boils down to holding your left mouse button as its the most effective and the only way to get through the game. Your right mouse button will be hot keyed with the potion button for simplicity's sake. These skills do nothing to help you in your battle, so all you need is your mouse. Fuck the keyboard it does crap.

The difficulty is horrendous. I don't mind games with a challenge but if the challenge and difficulty of this game is how fast you can click your potion button then its a piece of shit. Whenever you go into town just go ahead and buy 300-600 potions. You will be hitting your right mouse button every 5 seconds or whatever amount of time the potions cools off. You'll burn through those potions in 20 minutes. Some monsters are so weak they do literally no damage then suddenly you meet a monster that can do 50% of your health in one shot and they come in packs. If you miss the potion by just one second you will die. Then you get asshole monsters that stun you for 1-2 seconds and if they stun you right when its time to hit your potion you die. This is Titan Quest.

The game started out fine, but as it progressed it just dragged on and on. What you seen in the first act is basically the same as the rest. The map is never randomized so every time you come back its exactly the same. This holds true for the multi player as well. Why no randomization? Too much work? The maps are long, tedious, and boring. Every map looks exactly the same. Some trees a large area with one exit and 2-3 minor caves you can explore for nothing. Quests are mindless and easily missed. As you reach further and further it gets more and more stupid. Once you reach act three you'll notice all the monsters moving at super speed and doing half your health in a single shot. Once you reach the final act the difficulty ramps up to asshole levels. Everything stuns you and you're standing there stun locked for five and up to ten seconds at a time. Its fucking frustrating to stand around doing nothing. If I wasn't on co-op I would be dead the second I got stunned.

Multi player in this game is shit as well. You go online with your single player character so if you want to be an asshole you can just hack all your gear. The problem with this game is the areas are so far apart theres basically no way to play with others unless they start at the same time as you. Going through one area for a minor part of the main quest would take thirty minutes to an hour. The way point portals are so far apart that if you're looking to group up for a quest its going to eat half your day. And the most grating part is chatting. HOW HARD IS IT TO DESIGN A FUCKING CHATBOX. To type you press T to bring up the chatbox. You type then press enter to send the message. When you hit enter the chatbox grays out so you can close it again by pressing T. If you want to talk more you press enter again. BUT if your trying to use skills or close it and it keeps trying to type out 1111111tttttttttttt11ttttt1t1t1t1t11t22ttt in your chatbox. Just to add salt to the wound you can't hold down backspace to clear it so you have to hit backspace 50x or just go fuck it and send it out because whose going to fucking break their fingers more.

The game started out fine, but its way too repetitive. As soon as you're done the four acts. You get to repeat the game in nightmare and hell mode. But they're called different names. Are you so fucking lazy to resort to redoing the game in another difficulty? And the game isn't difficult. I don't find clicking potion buttons over and over difficult. I find it tedious and stupid. Going through the game once is an ordeal already. The maps are too big, the way points are too far apart, the side quests are impossible to find, there are too many pointless monsters while traveling, and scenery are exactly the same. These things make the game longer than it should be. Only thing decent I can say about the game is the BGM is nicely done. But the BGM doesn't really appear that often only whenever the fuck it wants to. Theres are options to "decrease the rate it appears," "normal," and "increase the rate it appears." What the fuck? Why so ambiguous? Why can't we just have ON and OFF. Seems like the easiest options but whatever. Its not like you'll hear it over the grunting sounds of dying tigermen or mantises. Isn't the game about mythology? Why are the monster designs so bad. And why the difficulty inconsistencies on these monsters.

Of all the Diablo clones, this one is not the worst. But anything can be better than Torchlight so its not saying much. My fingers are still hurting and I'm done talking about this shit.

Dota-likes

2011-10-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

Dota type games are referred to usually as MOBA or ARTS. MOBA stands for multiplayer online battle arena while ARTS stands for action real time strategy. Both means the same thing, Dota clones. No one is sure how it got so popular or why the worst self-entitled degenerates of society congregate to these types of games and ruin the community into a seething pile of rancid shit. But every game has these people you will say. No, the amount of assholes in these type of games are legendary.

Everyone thinks they're better than the others and every time something goes wrong its their fault. Why? Thats like playing basketball and when you miss a shot your team starts yelling at you for letting the other team get the ball. Then they go on and on for 50 fucking minutes about how the game was lost because you missed that ball and that you should drown in the fucking ocean for sucking so badly at a harmless game of basket ball and how he is going to quit and never play with you again because you are the worst type of scum for missing a fucking ball in the fucking basket. Does that even fucking make sense? Why do people act this way in Dota-likes?

Then there are the so called "trolls" who find it funny to ruin the game for your team. How about people who call out a role and then proceed to bitch and moan when he doesn't get it? Or thinks its funny to keep suiciding and calling out your locations in all chat? Lets go back to basketball again. Imagine a guy on your team keeps calling for you to pass the ball to him and you can't because he's being blocked to shit. He then gets mad and goes "what the fuck man if you're not going to pass me the ball I'm going to ruin the game," then proceeds to taking the ball from your team, checking your own team, and giving the ball to the other team and or throwing the ball into your own basket. Is that fun for either team? No? Yeah you'll get thrown off the court. Not here you don't. They just join another game and repeat it until they log off and come back the next day.

If you play Dota-likes this will happen. I don't know why its so concentrated in these games. Is it because its free? Is it because its a team game and you can't pick your own teams? Has it always been there for every game but you just can't see it? Why do people even play this? Its like the abusive boyfriend you keep crawling back to. He doesn't give a shit because he knows you'll keep coming back. You know he's an asshole but you just can't help yourself. Why are these games so popular?

I am never touching another F2P and Dota-like game again.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Part 1 - Food porn and hot springs galore

2011-10-09T11:09:00.001-07:00

Muramasa is a Vanillaware game. Its not bad, the combat is fun but like all Vanillaware games there are huge flaws. The first and biggest flaw is that there is basically no story. You start in the middle of nowhere where stuff has already happened and theres no conclusion at all. This game is similar to Odin Sphere but the combat is greatly improved. The story however is much weaker. There are two characters you can play as, Momohime or Kisuke, and it takes place in the feudal Japan era. It has so much potential but they blew it.

Like other Vanillaware games, the graphics are great. Since this one is on the Wii its much better than the PS2 titles. Character designs are decently done, some are a little stupid like Momohime is basically running around with no pants and the fox girl Kongiku on Momohime's path has breasts almost bursting out of her clothes. The background is nicely done but there is a minor flaw. Sometimes you can't tell what is in the background and what is in the foreground. Sometimes you're not really sure what you can step on and what you can't. For a platforming game this can be annoying. But the maps almost all use the same background for laziness so once you see it once you won't get that problem again.

Combat is amazingly fun. Its fluid and its fast paced. Its a side scrolling brawler with a variety of combos and special skills based on the sword you picked. There is a normal blade which is fast and the combos are usually fast mini hits. The long blade is slower but it does multiple mini hits in a single swing. The long blade has a bug however that I abused a bit. If you jump in the air and use a long sword combo you have this gravitational pull when you hit something that pulls them towards you even if the enemy is in the air behind you. When you do this they cannot perform any action and with a long blade you can chain about 4-5 combos in the air before you finally reach the ground. Doing so on enemies that can leap in the air can combo upwards to 200-300 hits and kill them before you reach the ground.

However fun the combat is the difficulty is incredibly easy. Most monsters you can just spam your A button and kill them all. Monster lairs and Bosses provide a bit of a challenge but they are not that difficult either. When you first start a game it it lets you pick between two difficulties, Muso for people who suck horribly at gaming, or Shura the normal mode for average players. Once you beat either story once on Shura mode Shigurui mode is enabled. HOWEVER! You must start a brand new game instead of starting on new game+ which is continuing your story with the second character. The game lets you play either character at either time. You can play them both at once or finish one first. It is entirely up to you. Note that both characters can use swords unlocked by either character so its beneficial to play both at once. You may not have the amount of souls needed though. This game also pulls the same bullshit as other Vanillaware games though. To get the second ending of either character you must first complete both character's first ending and equip a secret sword you get after getting both of the first endings then beating the respective final bosses. To get the true ending you must equip the secret sword after getting both secondary endings then beating the respective final bosses. A pain in the fucking ass.

The characters are entertaining and you really want to get to know them a bit better but it never really expands on it. Momohime's route you're a princess whose spirit was forced out of her own body by a criminal called Junkuro. Who is he? What is he trying to acomplish? Nothing really is explained. All you know is he knows the Obouro style sword fighting. To keep it for himself he killed his master and all the other disciples. He's a badass who takes no shit from no one and travels to hell and heaven to get a sword back. Along the way you hear Momohime whine at every possible stop about how evil he is being. You get a few sentences of what happened such as Momohime's family being killed and overthrown, some guy who appears for like 2 minutes and gets his ass kicked by Junkuro, random monk who tries so hard to punish Junkuro and then gets a epiphany at the end of the game and turns "good" and travels around the land with Momohime following him because of Junkuro's fucking sacrifice to save Momohime.

The story is short. I finished Momohime's route in a little over 6 hours. Thats pathetically short especially with me dicking around in monster lairs, hot springs, and engaging in food porn every chance I got. I also left the game on for long periods of time while I did other shit. Theres more hidden content after you beat both stories but still. Another thing in this game is the hot springs. How fucking common are hot springs in Japan? Every 10 maps you see a new hot spring and even after beating a boss you all get into the hot spring together. You see a barely naked Momohime walking around. She looks like shes 12 for fucks sake. Its a free heal and sometimes you get to talk to people. Then theres the food porn. You can go into restaurants and order food and it will be placed on the table in front of you. You have to click A repeatedly to eat the item. It eats it bite by bite and Momohime will keep commenting on how nice the food is, etc etc. Cooking isn't much different. Sometimes I wanna bake a bunch of potatoes for the boss and its taking fucking forever because you have to dig a hole place the potato in the hole and cover it with leaves then set it on fire then pull it out. FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL POTATO. There no auto cook, you have to keep hitting the A button. It was cool seeing it for the first time but seeing it time after time is tedious.

This is it for now.

Greed filled DLCs

2011-10-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

What is a DLC? If you played anything in the past decade you would know. DLC stands for Downloadable Content. In other words content that is not included in the main game and you have to pay extra money to get. Doesn't sound too bad does it. Pay a little and you can play more of the game you love. WRONG. DLCs are nothing but an attempt to milk every last drop of money from a game. Whatever happened to paying 60 bucks and getting a full game? Nowadays you pay 60 bucks get half a game with 3 release day DLCs where you have to pay 15 bucks each for if you want all the stuff. Then release a new DLC every 3 months for 15 bucks each that has like 20 minutes of content. Fuck you.

My biggest gripe is how stupidly short and how overpriced these DLC are. DLCs are never worth their money. Never. Every company has adapted DLCs into their marketing strategy. Release a game but purposely leave out content. When the game is shipped include DLCs to preorders and those that didn't preorder because they want to wait for reviews to know if the game is a piece of shit or not have to pay 45 bucks for more DLCs! Why the fuck are there release day DLCs? Why is it not included into the game?

"Oh we wanted to include it but we wanted to ship the game out so the game went gold already and so we decided to charge you 15 bucks for each DLC instead of letting you download it for free! Enjoy dipshits."

I like CD Projekt Red's marketing strategy. No DRM because it hinders paying customers and free DLCs because charging their customers 15 bucks for no content is bullshit. They just recently released another patch that added a brand new mode, balances, and an arena system for The Witcher 2.

Lets take a look at a DLC that I tried. Dragon Age Origins for one. Return to Ostagar. You get a new area on your map. You walk over and you appear in the same Ostagar you were in at the start of the game. Wander around you see the dead king then kill an Ogre and you get the king's armor. Then you leave the area in about 5 minutes. That was the DLC. Was it worth 15 bucks? No. Was it worth 5 bucks? No. Was it worth 1 buck? No. Would it be worth it if it was free? No. This fucking shit isn't even worth the time and bandwith to download. You have got to be the greediest fucking shits to release something like that. There was no effort in it. Thats not the worst part. The worst part is there are a shitload of even more terrible DLCs out there.

To make things worse DLCs are tied to your account so if you were to buy a preowned game then you wouldn't get any of this shit. They want to counteract piracy and resales with DLCs as well as milk more money. This was the reason why so many companies have release day DLCs. Like 60 bucks isn't too much for a piece of shit game already why drive up the price even more. If they could charge 100 bucks for their game they would but for now they'll stick to their 60 bucks game with release day DLCs.

Release day DLCs are the most stupidest shit since the horse armor DLC for oblivion for like what 15 bucks? All it gave you was horse armor. HORSE FUCKING ARMOR. Stop buying low quality bullshit. If you do they'll get off their asses and put some work into them. Maybe then we would get something worth downloading.

CRAB FUCKING ARMOR

Word Cloud of Gaming

2011-09-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

I played Dead Island and it was incredibly boring and shitty. I didn't wanna finish it because I just can't stand it anymore so I decided to make a word cloud to summarize all the games on this blog.

Vanillaware - What the fuck yet again

2011-09-18T03:53:00.001-07:00

Having just finished my previous post, I found something something to add to it. Rather than add to it I'll add to the rest of the Vanillaware games. They made the games Odin Sphere and Grimgrimoire that I reviewed. They are sexist and their designs while are unique and colourful, are sexist as fuck. Like in Odin Sphere, the last boss of the first character arc is Odette which I have linked a video of in my review.

Here is a picture

Is there any reason for her breasts to be bigger than her head? While I have not played Muramasa since I don't own a Wii, the character designs seem to be good and proportional minus a few. Now the newest Vanillaware game is coming out for ps3.

Dragon's Crown

HOLY FUCK Look at the fucking breasts on the sorceress. Not only is it so massive that she needs the dead skeleton of her slain enemies to hold it up or she'll topple over onto the ground. Her ass is so huge she needs to stick her staff in between it or it'll collapse into a black hole from its sheer mass. Look at the combat animations. The breasts flop around in all direction as if they're jell-o. I know Vanillaware's, mostly Odin Sphere, art is ultra exaggerated on purpose. With an enormous giant upper body and muscles that are the weight of an entire high rise building. While the Amazon also has that but she is scantily clad like all fantasy women in art and games. What would be next? A guy with a giant bulge in his pants and a penis so large he needs to hire a slave to hold it while he goes off in battle? Unfortunately, that wouldn't happen because what are exaggerated in men are strength, and whats exaggerated in women is sexuality. It would never happen, but for once I like to see the opposite.

Men and Women in Video Games

2011-09-16T05:10:00.000-07:00

Some feminists were complaining about how video games are male dominated. They claim that the reason for it is because games are made to cater to male audiences. Which is true I wouldn't argue against that. But their suggestions for it is completely retarded. They want a character where it uses "femininity" instead of "masculinity" to get things done. How? To paraphrase:

Instead of a woman with a penis, she could use her charm to get things done. Without fighting since aggression is a masculine trait.

What? What kind of shit is that? Would girl gamers want to play this fucking shit? No? Yes? I don't fucking know. What I know is I know a lot of girl gamers and I'm fucking sure as hell they wouldn't want to play that shit. Why do people have to use the label "girl gamers." Are they any different? Misogynistic male gamers would like to make you believe they are. I haven't always been a gamer. From what statistics show though that 54% of gamers are female. What games I'm not sure but that probably doesn't seem too off to me. I even heard of Starcraft championships for girls in Korea. I found that a little odd because if you're good enough, whats stopping you from stomping the boys as a girl? Because you lack a penis and your aggression isn't your main trait so its a huge handicap? Fuck that. Its because some men are scared of being emasculated by losing to a woman. Because of that they will purposely not acknowledge girl gamers.

Girl gamers are not rare at all. Growing up, I didn't have a lot of male friends, I got my first male friend at like grade 4. We all played a bit of video games because video games were the new thing. But mostly we just did stupid shit like run around in the backyard while our friend's older sisters spray us with the hose. Which is really fucked up now I think about it. But honestly, I don't get how a lot of people go "there are no girls that play this game." Then act all surprised when a girl plays and stalk them. "Oh wow a girl plays a video game she must be ugly or a fat Asian!" Of course a girl who plays video games must be ugly or fat or Asian. *rollseyes* I don't get the Asian thing though. One thing I really notice is the hostility between girl gamers. Playing around in different games I noticed there are two types of girl gamers. I don't like to generalize but this is what a girl gamer from my guild on WoW told me.

"I don't like to play with girls because they suck at games. They(the other group) think they can get away with anything because they are a girl. Me and my sister plays all the time and we never do any of the shit they do"

When I first heard that I shrugged and moved on. It was much later that I noticed a lot of other girl gamers shared her view. Granted I stuck more with their group since my guilds were usually on the more hardcore side. One particular event stuck with me. One experience I had was playing WoW and there was a "girl" in the group who went around rolling need on everything and randomly pulling. I don't like to call out people for being a retard but she was being a retard. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and tried to teach her since I was on an alt and it might be one of her first few time partying. Then I get a "Lol, I'm a girl I don't know how to play." Before anyone could say anything, the main tank calls out "I'm a fucking girl too and I know how to play. Its people like you that makes guys think we can't play games." And proceeds to kick her. It was a great moment. Some people say girls don't like to play video games because of the way they are treated. Its very hostile against women online. I never really cared who I play with. It doesn't matter if its a girl or a guy, if they are fun to play with and they don't piss you off, then it sounds like you have a good person to friendlist. My friends tell me I'm very equal at treating anyone regardless of gender in real life. I always ask them, "should men and women be treated any differently?" Really ask this question, should men and women be treated differently? This is the root of the problem of men and women in video games. Women are viewed as inferior a lot of the time. When a man is being made fun of he gets called a woman. When a woman is being praised she is compared to a man.

I hear claims that girls don't play video games because when they were growing up they were told video games were for guys and they should play with dolls and shit. I'm going what the fuck are you talking about? They also say the same about women in engineering or other programs of study. I don't know anything about that but I agree that women aren't properly portrayed in video games. They are either the chicks with dicks (femme fatales) or the damsel in distress. Who does feminists think is the perfect female character in video games? Bayonetta. I am not making this shit up. They think she is the perfect woman. She is empowering, she makes men uncomfortable, and she kicks ass while being sexy. To quote.

To prohibit a character like Bayonetta, and rush to cover her up in disapproval, is a rejection of her particular brand of femininity. Why do that? Because she makes men uncomfortable? If men feel uncomfortable with Bayonetta, maybe that means she succeeds.

As a woman, I haven't often been satisfied by female character options that effectively boil down to "the same thing as a man, just with breasts and a ponytail." Thanks to its innovative approach to the idea of female power, Bayonetta is the first action game heroine that's made me directly conscious of how cool it is to be a girl.

Yeah, she is about as cool as Dante from Devil May Cry. The creator of both those characters are the one and same guy. And by cool I mean over the top embarrassing. I might find them "cool" if I was maybe 14. I played the beginning of Bayonetta. While its a fun action game with nice game play the fucking characters and over the top retardation makes me wanna smash my head into the table. The first scene was Bayonetta going around shooting shit while some guy tosses her guns with fly me to the moon playing in the background. The fucking shit drags on for like 10 hours. By the time you're finally done you don't feel like playing anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Uya32CHF8&feature=fvsr

Watch at your own discretion.

She's not much different than Dante. Is Dante a good portrayal of men? Fuck no. There are plenty of women in video games, why would you pick the most over the top one? Its not like theres none of them. Off the top of my head I can think of a bunch. April Ryan from The Longest Journey, Faith from Mirror's Edge, Alice from American Mcgee's Alice, the main girls from Persona 4 (OH GOD). These are games where its only the main character. There are plenty of great secondary characters too which I'm too lazy to think of. Anything is better than a character that uses her hair as her clothes and as you build up more and more combos she gets more and more revealing until shes fighting in the nude. Again, I'm not making any of this shit up. You can play for yourself or even youtube it. Women in video games are highly sexualized. Sure men are sexualized too but there are so many different types of men. Women are all big breasts skinny waist hourglass body. Thats it. There are barely any variation. Its stupid. I have however been told that women like the women in video games. "I don't want to play an ugly character," is the most common response, "women like it as much as men." I don't really know but feminists seem to be saying the opposite.

While sex appeal is one thing, another thing is the roles they are usually fit into. I played a lot of JRPGs, A LOT. They are culturally different so I will not go into details. But long story short they are very sexualized and are very subservient. I do not wish to go into another discussion of subservient Asian women. I had enough of that shit I don't want to talk about it again. Most games, women are the damsel in distress. This is because the main character is usually male given its target audience. So obviously you have to rescue the women with your manliness. In fantasy games, women are usually spell casters or supportive spell casters because they are fragile(I don't fucking know) but apparently the femme fatales are exempt. Women are usually support roles in those games. I like how blatant some of the sexism is for example in Xenogears, the main female character (high ranking officer) was forced to stay home because she's a woman. At first she's pissed but she then said this quote to another female character, "Men like someone to watch the home when they are fighting. They can't fight if they don't have the peace of mind that they will have somewhere to return to." You can't imagine the amount of blood I puked up. They don't even try to hide it.

However the opposite is true, in games like Witcher 2, sexism is all over the place. But it fits the story and world of the game. Its a sexist, racist, dark, grim world. Everyone is flawed, everyone is an asshole, and everyone would stab you in the back given half the chance. It fits but in a game like Xenogears it doesn't. Look at games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect. Bioware games where theres "romance!" Look at how some of the characters are developed. Holy fuck are the women sexualized. Look at Miranda from Mass Effect 2. She has ass-pants for fucks sake. There are games that overly girlify things like Final Fantasy X-2. They turned the original characters from FFX into stupid bimbos. For what? Sex appeal. I couldn't finish that game ever. Most of the time the sexism begins before you even play the game. It is the games that are made for women. Yes it exists. They're games like Cooking Mama, Bratz, The Little Mermaid and My Little Pony. They have giant signs and stickers that go, "Games 4 girls." Why? Do women need to be singled out and then pigeon holed into buying shitty games? The fuck. Some people have no idea how to market their shit.

This blog post brings up a good point. There is a reason why sex is so taboo in western culture while violence is completely fine, as long as its a man getting hurt. It is because people view women as weaker than men, which isn't true. Same reason I get a lot of shit because I treat women the same way I would treat a man, and my male friends squirm to it. Why? Because they think women can't hear some of the shit men talk about because they're fragile. Fuck you. I grew up with a bunch of female friends who talk more openly about this shit than you. Plus chivalry is stupid, it was fine back in the middle ages but its the modern age people, women are equals theres no need for this condescending behavior. I don't want this to become another argument on feminism so I'm stopping here.

Every once in awhile you near something nice. Recently there was a step forward. Although small but a small step makes a big difference. For the first time you are able to create female avatars in NHL games. It might be small but small steps add up. Then you get bullshit that takes a step backwards. People are like "its hidden for a reason." Being hidden doesn't change the fact that its offensive. If they see it they have the right to get pissed. Thats like stealing something and then getting caught and go "Oh I was hiding it from you. If you didn't see me stealing it you wouldn't get pissed. Therefor you shouldn't get pissed when you caught me stealing so I will be going now." Way to go.

Women can play the same games men can play. Women can do better in the same games men can play. But fuck the majority of the men are too insecure to acknowledge that. I got my ass kicked by girls in games before. Do I feel bad? No. Does she being a girl have any sort of handicap? No. Stop making a big deal out of this. The games that overly sexualize women are usually the games that sexualize the men as well. The men are usually big strong silent types doing all sorts of bad-assery. When a male character is brought out thats less masculine he's automatically hated by everyone. Waaahhh he's not manly enough, he's a faggot, give us back Commander Kickass! Yet everyone loves it when a strong female character turns into a bimbo and starts giving fanservice, see FFX-2. Unfortunately thats the way things will go. Sex sells. Game companies take advantage of that and sell sell sell. Its not likely going to change but every so often you'll get a nice game where the women aren't sexualized. Just don't hold your breath waiting, it might be awhile.

Bitching about Bitching about Bitching

2011-09-06T02:30:00.000-07:00

There are a few that are bitching about me bitching about every game. When I am playing a game they'll go "well time to get started on a new review on your blog." I don't hate every game! It just so happens that this blog is made for the purpose of bitching about shitty games and shitty decisions in the gaming industry. I don't hate every game, I don't hate all jrpgs. What I like may differ from someone. My likes and dislikes differ from Cent and he shares the blog. Some games I like, some I am indifferent, and the ones that suck shit are posted here.

Here are some of the games I like. They are not in any specific order and they are games I have recently played in the past few years that I can remember. Click the name for a clip.

Witcher Series - I was skeptical at first of this game. I thought it was just another fantasy sword and magic RPG. How surprised was I to find this gem. This is what Dragon Age wanted to be, should have been, and could have been. You're a witcher, you're not super human you're just a mutant. You have some special powers but mages can blow your shit up if they're pissy and people can tear you new assholes if you are not careful. You fight with a bunch of tools like traps, bombs, potions, and other stuff to give you an advantage. The game itself is dark, the decisions you make can come back and bite you in the ass, and it has one of the best storytelling in any game. Though it doesn't have flashy magic skills or impossible to fight with weapons and armour the graphics are amazing but then again its just another sword and magic RPG. The story and setting is what sets it apart. Its a jumbled mess of politics. Kings fighting kings and you're just a nobody getting caught up in it. You have your own goals. The only negative part about this game is once you play it, you'll ruin gaming because no other game comes close to it.

Aquaria - Its an indie game you can get off steam for cheap. Two developers got together and collaborated on this game then afterwards split up and did their own thing. Which was a shame because this game is amazing. The graphics are clean and crisp and it has probably one of the best BGM I have heard in a game. The atmosphere fits very well with the music. Its soothing and relaxing. The world is designed well and the marine life is accurate. The game itself reminds me of Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Its a huge world where you can go anywhere you like. Until you get powers though most of the places are impassable. But once you get it you'll remember where you met those strong currents and go back there with a new form. There are lots of secrets, some puzzle solving, and a sing system. Its like Zelda Ocarina of time where you have to play notes for special songs that do special effects. Loads of fun.

Mirror's Edge - Its a first person parkour game. The game itself isn't that great near the end and the story is shitty but the parkour is amazing. The design and the atmosphere is great. Its has extremely clean contrasting colours and tall buildings that reaches the skies, which makes things awesome to jump from. Basically you run from rooftop to rooftop while people are shooting at you. You have to go fast or you get shot and die or you lose your momentum and miss your jumps. You have to go fast and you want to go fast. When you're going as fast as you can with your heart beating from the adrenaline and then you see nowhere to go so you take a leap of faith then grab onto a helicoptor. That is the most amazing feeling in a game. After each stage you have to take a breather from all the adrenaline. However there are parts where its more puzzle solving and you're forced to stop and solve it. I don't want to solve puzzles you fuckers I want to keep moving. The game starts sucking near the end because of the combat, which doesn't really fit in the game. Overall this is a good game if just for the adrenaline alone.

Mana Khemia - Yeah its a JRPG. First impressions you go, this game looks like a piece of shit. The graphics are terrible I agree but after playing for a little while it doesn't look so bad anymore. Its a school simulator? Is it like persona? Yes it is exactly like persona but its not fucking stupid where you have to go to school and actually do all that shit. Classes are simple and straight forward, alchemy class you mix stuff, combat class you fight stuff, collecting class you find items in dungeons. You can pick whatever classes you like after you finish the first few chapters. If you get A's and high marks you can take less classes. Every chapter moves the story forward a bit. Its a bit light hearted with enough comedy without sounding forced or repetitive. The best part though is the combat. It reminds me of Grandia where you can knock the target's action back but turn based instead. However, you can have 6 people in your party at all times, 3 as the vanguard 3 as the support. These are interchangable at anytime during combat, especially when the boss is about to do a super attack you just hit your switch button then bam your active target switches with a support and he takes the damage for you. When you switch you cast special effects too and you can also use them to chain combos for you. Another great part of the game is the alchemy system where you mix things you find together to make other stuff. For example adding king crab and blue steel will turn into a crabarmor with spikes and crab shells all over it. Adding devil panties and other stuff will give you a dominatrix suit. You know now that you think about it the game itself is pretty fucked up. You go around beating up angel girls, devil girls, dragon girls, sword girls, fairy girls, tree girls, koala girls, girl girls, etc etc. Basically you go around beating up semi nude loli girls and collect their drops that range from underwear to hair. The story itself is good though. Whatever you do, don't play the second one. I have nearly a whole review typed out and never finished writing it.

King's Bounty Series - If you played Heroes of Might and Magic you'll notice the similarities. But that game was based on the original King's Bounty. This is a remake of the old King's Bounty with a completely different story. I'm not that big of a fan of HoMM but I have cherished childhood memories of friends, cousins, everyone getting together on the computer and playing "Hotseat" version of the game. So when King's Bounty came out I gave it a go. The graphics are amazingly well done. The music is superb. Just listen to that BGM in the video. The story itself is quirky but entertaining. However not everyone will like this game as its a little slow paced and the difficulty is all over the place. You need a lot of strategy to clear battles. The sequel which is not as good as the first one is still a good game. Basically you travel around fighting randomly generated enemies and finding randomly generated items while hiring randomly generated creatures. Did I mention all this is randomly generated when you start a game? So no playthrough is exactly the same. You might have a hard time in one game and your friend finds a phoenix spell for his mage from the first shop in the game and starts blazing through the game like a fucker bird on fire. This is King's Bounty.

Okami - This is an action platformer similar to the Zelda series. You play as a goddess in the form of a wolf and you go around vanquishing evil and performing miracles with your celestial brush. The design is unique and very well made. The music also fits perfectly. You have multiple spells and weapons and other stuff similar to Zelda where you find them and then you can backtrack to open up new areas. The story is a little repetitive at times and they got extremely lazy near the end. But any fan of the Zelda series should give this game a go. The combat is fun, the characters are all a little eccentric but memorable and likable. It was the second highest rated game on the PS2 when it came out but unfortunately, Clover said their sales were pretty bad (The fuck!?) so they won't be making a sequel. And to make things worse Capcom shut them down due to petty personal arguments. Okamiden was eventually released as a sequel on the DS. I haven't played that to know what its like.

Recettear - A Japanese indie game. A long time ago two guys on a game forum decided to go into the game translating business. We followed along as they struggled to find a game company that trusts two nameless losers on a game forum that can bring their game overseas, translate it, then sell it. We followed along as they updated us with information and we followed along as they were looking for people to distribute for them. Then we followed along as they made six figures and a massively successful game. We followed along as they moved across the country to work together in their "office" and bring over new games. This was the game that started it all. And honestly I wouldn't have tried if it wasn't for what was said above. When I first heard about this it was still in translating stages. But when it was finally released I found that it was way better than I could have ever imagined. Its a item shop simulator as well as a dungeon crawler. Its extremely addictive and charmingly fun. If you like dungeon crawling with randomly generated dungeons/monsters than this is the game for you. If you like to play item shop and be a huge asshole to people by overpricing shit then this is also the game for you. Try it out you won't be disappointed. Just don't pay attention to the terrible song in the video.

Rhapsody: A musical adventure - I keep talking about this because well, its really cute and memorable. Its incredibly funny and so cute you'll die from cuteness diabetes overload. The story is about you, a girl called Cornet with a magical horn that when you play it dolls come to life. Anyways you enter a contest where the best girl gets to marry the prince. This is probably the best and funniest scene in the game. During the contest the evil witch Marjorly comes and kidnaps the prince so you're on a quest to rescue and eventually marry the prince. No bitch is going to steal your man from you. The combat is tactical based but its so easy theres basically no point. Your party members consists of the dolls you collect on your adventure. If you level them up long enough in your party there is a cutscene of them reaching an epiphany and leaving your party. There are cutscenes in the game but instead of showing off graphics and stuff its all musical. Yes its a musical adventure so obviously theres a lot of singing, a lot of friendship, and a lot of cuteness. Luckily you can change to japanese so the music itself isn't that bad. Though its still overly cute that you'll have to secretly play incase your roommate you're gay just like watching my little ponies. It was rereleased on the nintendo DS.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - Ok the trailer looks like shit but what do you expect from a game this old? The graphics are not that great compared to today's games but the atmosphere is still there. You feel like its really downtown LA or Santa Monica. Incredibly well designed. The gameplay is a third person stealth RPG. You're a vampire you can't let people know your a vampire or you break the masquerade. Break it enough and you get hunted down by vampire hunters or your fellow vampires. Its basically a secret society and a power struggle for control of the cities. Combat consists of stealthing around or just running in with all sorts of weapons like knives, steel pipes, guns, flame throwers, your hands. You'll fight humans, vampires, and other supernatural beings. The most fun about this game is the side quests and the ability to explore. The characters you meet are all unique and they all have their own distinct personality and quirks. The dungeon designs are generally good, with the exception of the asshole sewer level. Its a very well made RPG and even to this day there are many people still playing this. Too bad though, the company went bankrupt while making this game so it was never really completed. A lot of stuff was cut from the game including additional endings and different clan quests/skills.

This is getting too long and I'm getting bored typing about stuff thats good. Usually I type everything out while in a rage after I'm done a game so things just fly by. There are more games like Mass Effect, Bioshock etc etc but theres really no need to say more. These examples are enough of some nice games. If you're bitching that I have nothing good to say about games then try one of these.

DRM and Piracy

2011-09-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

Remember the good old days where all you had was a cd-key or even one of those "enter the password on row and whatever column" to play? Nowadays people are going lunatic over the idea that their shit is getting pirated that they put in retarded DRMs to stop pirates. Newsflash, pirates don't have problems getting past the DRM. Its the people who buy it that suffer. Really when has there been a game that DRM worked in stopping pirating? Answer is none. The only people who suffer from this is the people they want. The actual paying customers.

Pirates aren't hurting sales as much as big game companies like to believe. You always hear them bitch and moan that 60% of their "potential" sales or even upwards to 90% of them were lost to piracy. No. It didn't. If they couldn't pirate they wouldn't play it. End of story. Would you rather people not play your game at all? Probably out of spite. But even pirates, if they never paid for your games, can give positive word of mouth and spread the game more. Yet if you made a game which is unplayable unless you pirate it then the people who would actually buy it wouldn't. You'll lose more. Obviously this isn't how it works but this is what I personally feel. Pirates don't like spending money. Lets face it, they wouldn't pirate if they had the money to throw on these games. Especially when you have no idea if a game was good or bad. Yeah people say you can watch videos online and/or read reviews, but those are biased to shit. Companies pay money to have them give a good review. EA themselves say review sites get bonuses if the game rating was 8.0 or higher. Put a demo out, if people like it they'd buy it. Look at Recettear, a nameless indie game on steam. They put out a demo people flocked to play it found it was amazingly addictive and spread the news. Turned out they had massive sales on the game. And it was easy to pirate as well as having no DRM. Google it and you can pirate it. They didn't have some kind of retarded DRM where you get penalized for being a good gamer.

A good article that I agree with is here.

They point out a lot of good things. You'll have to ask yourself. Why are there so many pirated copies of games. Is it because they're out of control? No, almost all games share the same amount of pirates. Some get pirated more some less, but in the end they wouldn't have bought your game anyways even if they can't pirate. Maybe because your game sucks? Maybe because they're boycotting your DRM? Maybe because a better game of the same kind is out on the market? There are a ton of variables yet the one that gets blamed the most is piracy. There is an example, in Witcher 2. They said they weren't going to put in any kind of DRM. When the game was shipped they added in DRM saying, it wasn't going to hurt the game if it was we wouldn't use it. In the end people were getting 10-30% less fps and other annoying issues because of this. What did CD Project Red do? Honored what they said and removed it.

"CD Projekt’s approach to countering piracy is to incorporate superior value in the legal version. This means it has to be superior in every respect: less troublesome to use and install, with full support, and with access to additional content and services.

We felt keeping the DRM would mainly hurt our legitimate users.”

Isn't that the best way to counter piracy? People nowadays wants games, and they want it now. If it was easy to download a game at a click of a button then more people would do it. Look at something like iTunes. In a click of a button you can download music. They're making money so obviously music pirating isn't killing them. People are lazy if you can find a way to make it easier to play than to pirate then it might lessen the piracy rate. I'm sure its not that easy but at least its an attempt at a better solution. Look at Steam. Its easy to use, it organizes all your games and you can download it at will without having to go to a torrent site with billions of leechers slowing the torrent down to shit to download and then crack it. It zooms fast, it auto patches, and it does everything for you. Digital distribution is the future of game distribution.

Bottom line is stop making your game suck. Game developers hate making games on the PC because of the fear of piracy. Consoles get games pirated all the time too. Sure not as much as the PC but its still there. They claim they don't get enough profit from PC because of piracy. No dipshits. Its not piracy its because of all the stupid little things you do.

Things like these.

Recently though, everyone seems to be jumping onto the Always Online bandwagon. If your internet has a hiccup you get kicked from the game. Even in offline single player mode. Too bad, get better internet. Is this necessary? Blizzard's SC2 did it. Yet soon after its release, single player offline mode was cracked and people could pirate it. Guess that didn't help after all. Its less of a pain to just crack your legit copies of the games so you can play offline to save yourself the hassle. People are crying that D3 wouldn't have offline mode but I would have to agree with blizzard on this one. D3 plays more like an MMO. Like WOW it would be a better game online. You're missing out on so much of the game playing single player. Rather than making a single player mode they should just focus on the multiplayer aspect of the game. You can't play WOW offline, neither should D3. But for games that only have single player and be forced to be "always online" then its bullshit. Theres no way to justify that except they're paranoid of pirates.

Thats it. That the root of the problem. Paranoia. Because of this gigantic "fear" of pirates, PC games will forever be shittier than their console counterparts. It will always treat the buyer as a criminal. And it will always be the same. Nothing will change. Pirate are out there they're unstoppable. Its as easy going to piratebay and typing in a name of a game. When Piratebay was sued what happened? Nothing. Nothing at all. Even if they die, theres a million other torrent sites where you can pirate shit. When Napster was shut down did that stop music pirating? No. Its not going to stop them now its not going to stop them ever.

Developers needs to stop using piracy as a scapegoat for their shitty games. If it sucks its not because of pirates, its because your game sucks. Stop blaming pirates. Every game has their share of pirates. And if we finally get to the point where we have a way to stop pirates then you'll find something else to blame it on. When you release a game go, is this game worth 60 bucks? Is there a way where people would know if this game is good or not? Chances are if its not a AAA title or a franchise series then people won't know. Thats why you have to give out demos. Put some gameplay videos anything. Holy shit I don't get why games don't do this. You get a significantly higher % of buyers with a demo than without. Unless you are so unconfident that you assume your game sucks horse balls and you hope that people will stupidly blind buy your game and find out its a piece of shit you barely spent time on because you had to rush it out before the next WoW title came out so they'll buy yours instead of the WoW expansion. Oh wait a lot of games already did that. Guess what? They failed. First impressions are lasting impressions. Spend some time on a demo and its going to make people want to buy your shit.

"One new idea a year..."

2011-08-31T19:59:00.000-07:00

So there's a game company out there that has been shamelessly and blatantly copying popular ~~game concepts~~ games for their own sale and distribution. Bet you can't guess what country this developer belongs to. China? South Korea? Russia?

It's France.
Wait what? Yep! A French company, Gameloft, has been replicating popular PC/console titles on mobile devices, such as Android and iPhone. It's copied Gran Turismo (GT), Midnight Club (Asphalt), World of Warcraft (Order and Chaos Online), Halo (NOVA), Assassins Creed (they ported AC, but they also released Backstab), Sunset Riders (Cowboys and Aliens), Uncharted (Shadow Guardian), God of War (Hero of Sparta), GTA4 (Gangsta: Miami Vindication), and Starcraft (Starfront). And that's just for Android!

Hard to believe that they've cloned some of these games on the phone... But just look: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.gameloft.android.ANMP.GloftMMHM

That's nearly 1:1 identical to WoW. How they don't have lawsuits crash onto their ass like a ton of bricks, I don't know. Of course, we've seen shameless game copying before, so why would I talk about it now?

Well, there have been many before me to call Gameloft a copycat, and their CEO has actually responded.

"The video game industry has always played around a limited number of themes. There is maybe one new idea a year. If a type of game is not available, then you should make it. The damaging thing is if you do a bad expression of a good idea."
- Michel Guillemot

Bold statement, buddy. Even if Guillemot's claim of a singular unique idea per year was true, that is not a flattering situation. Nor is it an excuse. It makes us wonder what is happening in the game industry that is causing this stagnation of ideas. Could it be in part that upper management like Guillemot himself is too focused on mimicking popular titles rather than reaching out with daring concepts, leading game designers to hesitate when proposing and promoting new game concepts like back in the gaming golden age of the late 80's and 90's? Could it be that Guillemot is right about the lack of ideas, but yet ironically he is the plague that is pervading it?

Guillemot is a disgusting worm. He's not just copying to make a quick buck like some Asian game developers do... But he doesn't even think it's copying or setting back the development of the industry and propagating more development studios with FEWER original ideas. In fact, his narcissism allows him to believe that he's doing us a favor by paying homage to leading titles. You have to be pretty twisted to say that.

Assassin's Creed: Boringhood

2011-08-31T19:33:00.001-07:00

Although not a fan of the series, I nevertheless find myself drawn towards the enigma that is the Assassin's Creed series. I enjoy it's scenic environments and am ever curious about how exceedingly farfetched its historical, conspiracy-laced tale can go. Unfortunately, the last time I played AC:Brotherhood was 6 months ago, and I find it impossible to bring myself back to playing it. As I described with AC2, the game is a test of endurance, and I am simply out of steam.

In AC, it's never made too clear how much you are missing out on if you don't complete the bonus objectives or side missions with perfect results, and so you would be compelled to get it right, or have to forcibly reload by restarting the mission entirely. In AC1, it didn't make a difference, as long as you beat it. In AC2, you would completely miss out on solving the ending sequence, and basically fail to understand a majority of the plot and backstory. In AC:B, you have to complete all optional objectives perfectly, and also complete the main objectives in a predetermined method. This means when I assassinate a target, it has to be with a specific weapon, and with a specific result. So sometimes, I must murder a target, but with a sabre, and throw him into some scaffolding. What frustrates me is that I don't understand why I must do it this way to get full points. I'm an ASSASSIN. What matters is that I am undetected. In AC:B, what matters is superficial requirements that don't make any sense. You'd think I was trying to frame someone or something, but no. Who cares if my target is thrown off the wall when I'm surrounded by 20 guards who are witnesses of my identity? Emphasis has been misplaced on meaningless stipulations, and should you somehow not complete the mission as exactly specified, then you must redo the entire mission, usually involving riding across half the country to reach your mission-start location, then tailing a target for ten minutes, then slowly peeling away layers of vulnerable guards, then sneaking in barely any time left. In short, it is tedious work that balances on the edge of a blade that drags on for 20 minutes, until you wonder why it is so difficult to do something as menial as finding a backalley pickpocket.

The checkpoint and saving systems don't help either. You can only save outside of a mission, and loading the game doesn't take you back to where you were last. It merely saves the progression of your game, but usually spawns you at your HQ (in a very isolated part of the country). Automatic checkpoints are rarely interspersed throughout 20-30 minute long missions, but can only be restored upon your death, so you'll frequently beg for the guards to impale quickly you so that you won't have to replay the mission's stalking sequence. Should you choose to complete the mission, despite not completing all the bonus criteria, you can retry it later, but death no longer restores the previous checkpoint, instead exits you out of the replay mission, and back to where you are currently. You can thank console gaming for the trend of lacking genuine, robust save systems. Replayed missions also restore the equipment, abilities and progression you had when you completed the mission the first time, so once you beat it with terrible equipment, it will never get any easier, no matter how long you delay it. Completing a mission is a commitment, and the results will not likely be changed. Any sane player would choose the order of missions wisely, and not attempt to rush through any of the mission sets unless they complete them perfectly first try. You'll do a lot less loading and dying if you just do it right the first time.

The tediousness of it all really takes the fun out of the missions, even if they weren't as cookie-cutter as they are. I feel more sneaky and cunning playing Fallout or Deus Ex. In AC:B, I find myself using stupidly effective combat or assassination techniques in sequence to blast through how stunningly boring it is, which of course, doesn't help me get those super-special bonuses needed to unlock VITAL parts of the game. =_=. Dear developers, it isn't a bonus if it is needed to understand what the fuck is going on in your twisted universe which otherwise seems like a floundering excuse for a plot. Of course, it's marketed as a complex interwoven net of conspiracies and history, but really, it's more like peeling the countless layers of an onion, and having your eyes tear all the while.

Duke Nukem ForNever

2011-08-31T18:47:00.000-07:00

Although in some instances we have strayed, the original intent of this blog was to discuss the trends and lessons in gaming and the development of games. This was because I do not expect readers to have played EVERY game. Nor for them to be too interested in the game we have to discuss as a case study, but rather for them to understand the concept at hand and filter it through their own previous experiences and then apply it towards future experiences, hopefully for the betterment of all gaming, and potentially, humanity. In this way, I'm not interested in telling you all the ways Duke Nukem Forever was terrible as a game, but rather, to tell you why it was bad as a concept of a modern game, or anything marketable.

Last year, when I heard about the impending arrival of DNF (and not the dozens of false alarms before), I was unimpressed. DNF was a zombie, being raised from the dead to prove a point: that what could not be made, finally was. But the highlights end there. I knew that this game would be hollow and incapable of impressing from that instant onwards. As I discussed with my friends that they shouldn't look for a blown-away experience, they responded that they sought nothing more than to own the legendary, nay, mythical title for its posterity.

It's unreasonable to expect that this shoddy production was to achieve little more than to end one of the greatest vaporware jokes in history, but what was reasonable? When I reflect back on my childhood, Duke wasn't even a big deal to me then. He was badass, but rather thin in terms of personality beyond that. I played him as an Apogee sidescroller, where he carried tons of guns and killed all sorts of aliens. Who really cared beyond that anyway? Then he got a FPS game, but honestly, people loved it because of how ridiculously wacky and broken it was (and perhaps the way it pushed the limits of censorship, or lack thereof). At least the gameplay was smooth and the controls were crisp though, which was a lot more than what I could say for DNF, which tried too hard to give that realistic clunkiness feeling. DNF shouldn't have tried at all to be like that, since it was NEVER like that. It was more in line with Serious Sam, which was an acceptable game, but the developers obviously wanted to accomplish more with the franchise, including the part where they make a ton of money and spawn a new set of sequels.

I'm not sure how to break it to them... But Duke wasn't really that great back then either. We just had a poor frame of reference. Surely, we'll find that Modern Warfare won't be so hot in another 15 years... Oh wait, I already feel that way 3 months after it released. =_= Sometimes, we have to take a good hard look at games we feel nostalgic about, and really consider if they were actually genuinely good experiences that can stand the test of time. Only then can they be true classics, and only then, can they be considered reviving.

There will always be fools who guide the blind.

2011-08-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

There are many trends in gaming in the new decade: the resurgence of the console era, albeit somewhat different than in the late 80's; developers becoming more conservative and restrictive; the catering and spoonfeeding to a more casual crowd; the over-saturation of worthless DLC; the lack of real support and updates in an effort to perfect released games. But for now, I'll elaborate on a trend, nay, an illness that pervades the industry to the point of becoming commonplace and acceptable. Oh wait, that goes for everything above... What about bringing inevitable oblivion? Nope, that too. Forget it, let's move on and talk about the downfall of FORUM SUPPORT.

It used to be that online forums were a great place to ask others for help on similar software or hardware. It was a communal place to share ideas, solutions and experiences. Even the most eccentric of users could post their strange setups and discuss their troubleshooting methods. Even if lost in a sea of other more popular posts, one day, his journal will become the foundation of established how-to-guide sticky thread.

But alas, those days are no more. The modern forum consists of relentless torrents of needlessly defensive fanboys, overeager to defend their latest possession of novelty, despite their believed attacker having never spoken a word of negative criticism. Asking if others have tried to resolution-hack, modify game files, remove headbob or mouse acceleration, or adjust field of vision or depth of field results in your first five responses ranging from "I don't hav dis problem. Why r u complaining about it?" to "Why would you want to change that?" Welcome to the counteractive gaming generation. Instead of trying to search for a solution, people instead pretend that there was no problem to start with, and try to convince others the same. Unfortunately, this method, because of it's overwhelming popularity successfully converts more and more gamers. Ultimately, due to peer pressure, we'll all be suckered into believing that games are perfect and any problems are inherent to ourselves.

I recall having sought advice from the internet for almost every game I've played, but it has been almost entirely the past few years when the internet stopped helping me with my problems. When I queried the mouse acceleration problems in Dead Space 2, I found only a few posts of gamers still grasping for hope of online help. They were barraged by comments of others who BELIEVED they never experienced the issue, and then told to suck it up and deal with it. Or when I looked up how awkward the combat and cover was in Mass Effect 1, a game based on the normally-smooth and easily modifiable UT engine, I also received no help. Just 5 years ago, I'd have gotten a set of console commands in a flash to modify whatever I wanted. If not that, then at least a consolidated community voice asking for a standard of quality to be delivered.

What's appalling is the level that this self-degrading stupidity has developed. Case in point: a reply to a thread created to address FOV and motion sickness issues with Minecraft.

I don't understand why people get motion sickness from games.

I don't understand why people get motion sickness.

Come to think of it, I don't know what people mean by vertigo.

Crazy heights and movement have never bothered me... Well, you know, unless there weren't something to keep me from falling.

Source

Wow. Well I don't understand why people don't understand things. I guess that means it is nonsensical and thus, impossible for people not to understand, right? Fucking retard. How does his lack of understanding contribute ANYTHING to the thread, other than to derail another man's plight and curb common interest into attacking the original poster's vulnerabilities? Worse, Minecraft is an independently developed game, and supports many mods, so the game is quite customizable, even as an understatement. For this sort of narrow-minded egocentricism to even be not immediate grounds for disbarment is insulting. Here's a Dead Space 2 thread, where I criticized some of these dumbasses for their misinformation. Same sort of deal. Only a minority realise the problem, while others blindly tout their false beliefs.

This sort of limited perspective cripples the industry, causing the developers to cut corners, knowing that the lobotomized fanbase will serve as a self-defensive mechanism to defend the games from any shortcomings of the developers. Thus, they become even more careless, leading to further infection of gamers with this false belief. Imagine if I walked into a wine-enthusiasts fair and told them that everything there was amazing and without even the slightest flaw or possibility of improvement. I'd be wrong, but if there were enough voices like mine, we'd be able to pressure everyone else into succumbing to this new lowered standard. We'd set back development and progress for decades with terribly flawed opinions.

Alas, these people are fools, and in the perfect world, they'd be obliterated, but unfortunately, we'll have to settle with ignoring their short-sighted pacification while we are consciously dragged into the ruin of gaming.

Guide to becoming the best gamer

2011-08-31T01:17:00.000-07:00

Ever feel non-confident in a new game? Ever feel like everyone thinks you're a huge noob? Then look no further. With this guide everyone will be at your feet begging to play with you because you are such an awesome player. They wish to bask in the glory that is your pro-ness.

1) Blame others

It is never your fault! This is the most important rule! If you are playing a team game and you're getting your ass handed to you, blame your teammates. They obviously are sucking so bad they can't be bothered to help you. Why do you have to carry the whole team by yourself? Such nooblords need to be cussed out. Remember when blaming your team to talk in all chat so the enemy will know that it is their fault and not yours. If your team bitches back at you claim how great you are in other games and it is only this game that you are doing badly so its obviously them. This will shut them up because they can't comprehend the greatness that is your skill. You are always the best player on your team.

2) Playing on a handicap

You are always playing on a handicap. The character, race, hero, gun, anything you picked is automatically always underpowered. Whoever beats you is obviously overpowered. If you do beat them though, make sure you rub it in their face that they are a noob. Anyone who loses to you is a noob because you have such a great handicap. If they claim that your shit isn't underpowered just drown out everything they say with repeated attacks on their sexuality. They are obviously faggots because they suck at a video game. If they were good they'd automatically be straight but of course not as good as you because you are the pinnacle of straightness. Since you are so skilled if they ask for a rematch just say no because you'll own them again. Its better to let them walk away knowing they might have had a chance than to get creamed again by you. You are such a considerate awesome 1337 gamer.

3) Lag

You are always lagging. The game admins are obviously cheating or the game is working against you to stop you from winning. When you miss the guy and he shoots you to death then it was lag. You obviously were aiming at him how would it have missed? Be sure to yell at them saying they were lucky you were lagging. Because how else would they have known? They might possibly have thought you actually missed and was a noob! If they say your ping is better than theirs claim that they are hacking. Say they're using speed hack or aim hack. If you get banned its obviously because you caught onto their scheme of owning oblivious players. You are so talented aren't you.

4) Advice sucks

Why are you taking advice from noobs? If someone tells you that its impossible to do something then call them a faglord and that you've done it 20 times before and you were doing it before he even knew what this shit was. If everyone still claims that you can't tank a heroic dungeon as a mage then say you'll show them. If the group dies its their fault. Obviously they are so shitty they can't keep you up. Make sure you bitch about them on world chat before leaving your party and continue doing this for the next 20 minutes. You are always right. If you're losing to someone and they're telling you mass zealots is weak against mass mutalisks refer to rule number 2. Obviously mutalisks are overpowered. Why would the enemy be giving me advice! He's obviously trying to trick me. Call him a fag a few times then call him a noob hacker. You are so smart no one can pull a quick one on you.

5) Don't help your team

If you're playing a team game and your team asks for assistance. Lash out at them. Tell them to shut the fuck up then throw in a few nooblords and faglords for good measure. Why do you have to stop what you are doing to help them? You are the team not them. They can go fuck themselves. They only exist to remind you how bad all the other players are in this game. Those guys might try to pull a number 1 on you. Don't be fooled. They're only pretending to be pro. Make sure you call them out so that the other team can hear you. If you do miraculously win with a team of noobshits make sure you cuss out the enemy team and say how badly they are doing. If they or your teammates point out that you are the weakest member on your team then say you single handedly carried a bunch of noobs to victory. Your time is so precious you can't be bothered with noobs, even if they are on your team.

6) E-Peen > All

When your team is missing something crucial don't pick it. Always pick the job that scores you the most kills or highest points. Because why bother playing with others if you can't wave your colossus E-Peen in front of their face? Always be nearby to take the credit for everything. If someone is fighting come up from behind and shoot them in the head taking their kill. If your team bitches at you for kill stealing call them a noob because your score is better than theirs and they are obviously a shitty player. If you are getting owned by more than one person make sure you tell them enemy that you are so good they need their whole team to beat you. If they remind you its a team game, call them out for a 1 on 1. If they don't come call them a pussy. Keep waiting at that spot all game even if your team is telling you to help on a objective. No they are coming. If you leave now they'll think you're some kind of pansy fag. If they claim they are a support hero and you are a carry then say they're scared. Your pro-ness makes the noobs leave the game in shame.

7) Bitch at the game company

When something is not your liking make sure you go on the forums and bitch about it. Make multiple posts to nerf this or that because they beat you. They are obviously so overpowered they can own a pro like you. Also to improve the game for the better make sure you bitch about how shitty the game is and how you are going to quit if they don't do this and that. Then proceed to tell everyone that you are quitting and posting info about a new game you wish to join. Come back every hour to check on your post to reply to the flamers. A few words of shut the fuck up noob or suck more (insert game company) cock faggots will make them stop. What is the point of quitting if no one knows you are quitting? The game will miss your presence and all the noobs can finally enjoy the game once you leave because you aren't there to own their sorry asses. If you don't quit the game or come back to the game, make sure you make a new post saying how the game didn't bother to fix anything and they are the worst company ever for being so slow on updates. You were able to play a new game own those noobs and come back. In that time the company should've realized their mistake and changed the game so you can enjoy it. Because why make a game if there are no super pros playing it right? For the noobs? Psh yeah right. Who fucking cares about noobs. You are the center of the universe and everything revolves around you.

8) If you can't beat it the game sucks

If you're playing a game and you're getting your ass handed to you by the AI go on their game forums and bitch about how stupid the game is. If someone tries to teach you how to do it then refer to number 4. Join in on discussions about the game and insert remarks about how bad the game is. If people tell you to shut up tell them anyone who likes this game is gay since you don't like it. Then go on every website that has a review of that game and post how badly this game is and flame everyone who says its a good game. Who else going to stop the world from being filled with noob faglords? If people are having a hard time on something make sure you tell them how easy it was for you and how they are a nooblord even if you never got that far. If they say you are talking out of your ass tell them you beat the game like 10 times already even if the game came out for only a day. You are so good you can finish the game 10 times in the time those noobs finish once.

9) Get a witty name

Your name is your persona. Why create an original gay name that fits the game? When you make a name like NoobKilla or GanstaStabz then they'll know not to mess with you because you'll own their ass. If they name is taken then make sure you add a lot of x's to the name or mispell the name like XxxxXxSephirothxXxxxX. All pros think alike so adding more x's will show how pro your name is. If you're not witty enough to think of the name first then make sure you mispell it or use ascii letters so it looks like the name but it isn't and no one can whisper you because its impossible to tell if that is an l or an i or alt+141. If someone calls you a 12 year old for having that name then make sure you tell them how successful you are at life and how you have a supermodel girlfriend that fucks you every night and you make millions of dollars a year. Then proceed to call them a fag because not being successful in life means you're a homosexual.

10) Play with pros only

Get a group of friends, most likely ones that share your wit like in number 9. Proceed to join games as a group and start doing whatever the shit you want. Then start calling the "pub" that you are with a noob. Everyone should abuse that guy because he's not a part of your circle. If something drops that you want have all your friends roll on it so if you don't get it at least your friends will get it. If they complain threaten to kick them out of the group if you are the admin or leader which you should always be. Pros get priority over noobs. Make sure you crack jokes and have your friends back you up. Start spewing bullshit until you get a reply and then have everyone flame them at once. If your friends suck and die make sure you call them a noob and find a new group of friends. If no one wants to be your friend its because they're jealous of your pro skills.

11) Get girls to secure masculinity

Make a big deal when you see a girl gamer even though they are pretty common. Make sure you keep harassing them and following them around wherever they go. Because how else can you prove your straightness without a online girlfriend! Give them free items to make sure they know you are an awesome rich 1337 guy. Then proceed to go into a flying rage when they don't like you or already have a boyfriend. Make sure you keep harassing them and calling them sluts for not realizing your greatness. If you are a girl gamer you have a get out of jail free card that never expires. Make sure you keep throwing out that you're a girl out there. When you make a mistake go "teehee I don't know any better I'm a girl." The guys will all forgive you but if you're with another girl and she tells you to fuck off make sure to put that bitch down by amassing the 12 year old horny boys against her and getting her tossed out. This also needs to be done on any fags that are immune to your sly charms. You are the most popular person in the game and your army of 12 year old slaves prove it.

12) Don't tell people you are leaving

When you gotta go you gotta go. Fuck your team they're a bunch of noobs anyways. When you gotta go take a shit or jerk off to porn or take a shit while jerking off to porn. Don't tell your team. Who are they your mom? They don't need to know everything you do. If they see you standing around doing nothing they should know you aren't there and shouldn't proceed with the objective. Assuming someone is there behind the computer the whole time is stupid. Who the fuck has time to waste. I got shit to do or shit to shit to be precise. If I gotta leave for school or work then fuck that shit I leave the game and ditch the rest. I don't give a fuck if I only have 10 minutes to play and the objective takes an half hour. Who the fuck has that time. They should be looking around making sure you're there before doing anything. Your time is more valuable than theirs so tell them to fuck off.

13) Rage quit

When you are with a team of losers and they are making you lose then rage quit on them. Make sure you announce in all chat so the enemy team can hear you rage at your team then proceed to purposely feed or AFK. This would hide the fact that your stats are so bad because your team sucked so badly. Also don't really go AFK. Keep coming back every few minutes to remind everyone how badly the game is going and call them nooblords. If the enemy calls you a noob then blame your team. You wouldn't have forgotten rule 1 would you? If they keep insisting you suck then call them faggots. Attacking their sexual orientation will totally throw them off guard. If they still won't shut up then just leave the game. But remember if you can rejoin, do it 5 minutes afterwards then yell at them some more before going AFK. The game just isn't the same without your presence in it.

With these simple rules, you'll be the best player ever. Remember games are made for your enjoyment not the enjoyment of others. If someone tells you otherwise tell them you paid for your game and that you play however the fuck you want to. You are the best player anyways so he should shut the fuck up and learn from you instead.

F2P vs P2P MMO Games

2011-08-25T02:32:00.000-07:00

One thing I see over and over again are the F2P vs P2P arguments. People want F2P because they're cheap as shit. People want P2P because the quality of the game is better. Who is right? Who is wrong? I don't know. But I would prefer P2P. Why? Because P2P means you get everything in the game and all that money is used to help server stability, gms, customer support, everything to make your game a better experience. Of course thats not always the case. F2P games mean you get most of the game but the goodies are all locked out and you'll have to pay individually for them. They also limit your gameplay in some way to force you to pay for little things or be frustrated to hell. Like for example, one of the most popular things to limit are bag spaces. These games are assholes to limit you to 10% of the available bag space then force you to pay 5-10 bucks per additional bag. Thats almost more than a subscription fee. That doesn't even add in the other shit you need to pay. Yeah yeah I don't have to pay for it, which I don't because paying for bags are bullshit, but that doesn't even add in the limited content you need to buy or additional stuff like letting you see health bars and the ability to customize your skills/character.

The people who play F2P games are dominated by people who don't pay. Those who pay have a huge advantage. Those who pay spend hundreds of dollars a month for shit just to get ahead of others or to feel good about themselves. A lot of F2P games are doing this lately. Pay to win. You'll never be as good as the people who pay if you play for free. P2P games everyone is equal. You won't be a second class citizen because your wallet isn't filled with cash. I would gladly pay 15 bucks a month if the game is of high quality and that money is used to bring me better servers, gameplay, gms, customer support. Exactly what you notice lacking in most F2P games. Of course not all of them are but some are especially bad (NEXON) while a few others are acceptable.

Then there are people who are casual and don't play all that much for a subscription based game. Then F2P games might appeal more to them. They are the type of people would buy gold in a P2P game. Their argument is, "It takes more time to grind all that gold than to work and buy the gold." I agree. I don't buy gold, I don't approve of buying gold, but hey its your money. Only problem with that is the company themselves don't earn anything. However they cannot give others an advantage in a P2P game. Therefore there are people who don't play a lot for F2P games and are willing to shell out huge money to progress faster. But I have to ask you, if you can't even play for an hour a day then perhaps MMO's aren't for you. Perhaps sticking to single player games. MMO's are all about playing with others and taking your time in the game. Because hey if you finish too fast whose going to keep paying right?

I would gladly pay 15 bucks to be entertained for a month than to pay 60 bucks for a shitty game like Fable 3 where you finish in 3 hours. Even the longest single player game you'd probably be entertained for a month at most. 15 bucks versus 60 bucks? But then I hear people go "But you can go back and play it anytime!" While that is true, how many times can you replay a game? You might go back and replay it years from now yeah but thats still 30 bucks worth of a game if you spend 2 months on it. Then you'll go "what about starcraft 2 or teamfortress 2 or maybe even Guild Wars?" What about them. You buy the initial game and then you can play for free. While that is very good, the thing is for these games you are hosting the games, they don't need to pay huge server fees compared to games like WoW or any other MMORPG. Guild Wars is all instance based like Diablo 2 where you have a major hub for everyone to hang out in (town) and you leave and everything is instanced. This cuts down on fees significantly. The main part of making a game is making money. They can't make money you can't play their game.

15 bucks a month isn't a lot of money. The problem is if the game is worth the 15 bucks a month. If the game sucks more balls than duke nukem forever then you can guarantee no one would pay it. I don't like how people keep spouting out "15 bucks is a lot of money! I can't afford that I want free to play." If you can't afford 15 bucks a month to game then stop gaming. 15 bucks a month equals to 50 cents a day. You can find 50 cents on the street in the time it takes to read this. Watch one less movie a month, don't eat subway for a couple days, smoke a pack of cigarette less, take a bus instead of driving for a couple days. If you can pay your electricity bill you can pay for a game. If you're arguing the game sucks and its not worth the 15 bucks I can understand. Just don't whine that 15 bucks is too much to pay and it should be free instead. If the game sucks then you wouldn't want to play it for free anyways.

Nowadays most games are adapting a hybrid kind of payment. Most games that are P2P eventually become F2P. The game is free but you can pay a monthly fee to become a premium member for bonus shit. Or they can pay for individual shit in the cash shop. One thing I hate with a passion about F2P games are the massive influx of goldspammers, botters, and whiners. You ban one they sign right back up with a new email. Whiners would all congregate at the newest MMO then bitch and moan about every little thing then when it doesn't go their way they leave for the next one. I know P2P have those too but there are significantly less whiners. Maybe because the whiners are kids who can't afford a monthly subscription. Or maybe because they can make a new account if they get banned for greifing or going around swearing or spamming racial slurs at everyone they meet. I don't know but from experience, this is how it works.

We all know who is the king of P2P. Its WoW. Nothing can ever come close to the mammoth that it is. P2P games are usually not that big. The amount of people you find in it is only a fraction of a F2P game. But that doesn't mean its impossible to find people to play with. On the contrary its easier because people sort of become a tight knit community. Very rarely do we hear about big F2P games. Yeah theres Maplestory (asshole Nexon) and League of Legends is huge. LoL is a Moba game (think dota) where you can pay money to unlock champions or runes earlier and even unique skins. If your game is good, and being free to play doesn't limit you to shit then you can make big money. P2P and F2P neither is better than the other. I play P2P games and I play F2P games. What do I prefer? P2P. Does that make it better? No. Its because the games that I enjoyed most happen to be P2P for the reasons I mentioned.

Fable 3 - Taking away features is innovative

2011-08-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

First of all, I played the PC version which was vastly inferior to the console version. Not only it is it over an year late but even Peter Molyneux said, "We don't care about the PC version, any money we earn is extra money but we don't expect to earn anything because of pirates." I'm not making this up. Its not exactly his words but he basically said the same thing. The PC version is filled with slow downs and horrible controls. Everything shitty about a console port to PC is in here. I first became aware of this game when Cent wanted to play coop on it. When we realized PC version was delayed for over an year. Was it worth it? No. It was horrible. The reviews were horrible. Peter Molyneux even stated he was disappointed at the reviews of this game. He made a horrible horrible game and he should be ashamed of himself.

The Fable series are always known for its casualness. Hardcore RPG fans probably wouldn't like the game. Even though they wanted a "mature game" it was filled with juvenile humor like farting in people's faces. The storyline in fable is terrible as well. Its always the same. You are a nobody that rises to become a hero then the real bad guy appears 10 minutes before the end of the game then you kill him and the game is over. Then you can do whatever you want afterwards. Yes the boss appears literally appears out of nowhere with no back story and is only evil for the sake of being evil. Yet in Fable 3 theres a guy called Reaver who went around shooting people killing people and having a game room where he kills people as party entertainment. Yet he's not killed or thrown in jail or anything. He's going around building shit for you. If they didn't fuck him up the first half of the game he would be more likable in the second half when he's helping you raise money. He's an entrepreneur, he doesn't care about the little people. Thats what you need when you are a ruler. You can't please everyone. When you need to raise 6.5 million before the end of the game or everyone dies. Then you need to make sacrifices. But that doesn't excuse the first half when you're fucking rioting because of his labor laws.

Morality also makes no sense in this game. Everyone is expected to be good. You are overthrowing a tyrant then saving the world from the evil that appears 10 minutes before the end of the game. I went down the path of evil. I'm going around blasting the shit out of everything I see with flaming blizzards. Guards come and I blast their face in. Then I break down their doors and try to steal their shit only to realize. YOU CAN'T! The only way you can steal shit is:

1) If the owner is still alive.

Unlikely if you go around murdering the whole town

2) If there is no guards around

Guards are automatically alerted and endlessly respawn when you break the law

3) At night after you break down the doors

Breaking down doors will automatically summon guards to your location to arrest you

4) The ruler of albion

You are 10 minutes from finishing the game, anything you steal has no effect on the game anymore

So stealing is basically out of the question until the end of the game. Or if you're lucky and fast enough, able to run in and grab an item before the guards reach you. Afterwards its impossible to go back to that town without guards swarming you. It is the worst theft system I have ever seen.

Now for the worst part of the game. WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO TAKE AWAY FEATURES FROM THE GAME. Oh wait, I know it was that fucking loser Peter Molyneux. According to him, he removed everything that people "didn't use enough of." He doesn't want to design a game for 10% of the population. So he thought it was a good idea to remove health bars, remove experience, remove item descriptions so you'll never know what your spells or weapons do and a whole fuckload more stuff. Stripping a game to its bare bones is not innovative. Why hide the fucking things from the players? Is this sword better than this mace? I don't know. Theres no damage indicator when you hit an enemy so you can never tell. Does this upgrade for +7 damage on a sword better than this sword with +25% damage? I don't know. Why hide this from the players? Are people so fucking ADHD that they can't read two numbers? Or is the game deliberately being a jackass to fucking piss people off. Why no health bars? Because people don't watch their health? Potion buttons automatically pop up when you are low on health so you can drink them. Otherwise theres nothing on your screen. You have no idea how much damage you're doing, if you're hurting them at all. Just spam spam spam spam eventually they drop and die. Great game huh? THEN BAM GAME FREEZES. YOU HAVE TO GO IN THE PORTAL TO LEVEL UP!? Wait I thought theres no exp! Yes there isn't. Everytime you complete something part of the main storyline the whole world freezes and you have to walk into this portal into the "road to rule." This is basically the level up screen but instead of adding the skills in normally you have to walk over talk to the chest pick the chest of the upgrade you want then leave the road. You can go back to the road at anytime but newer gates are closed until you finish something in the storyline.

Worst part of the game? Theres no fucking menu button. When you click esc you get ported into your "sanctuary" where you can walk around into different rooms. Walk into the weapon room to see all your weapons on the wall and you walk up to each one individually to look at it and pick it up and equip it. Of course theres no descriptions so you won't know what they do or how much it hurts. Theres also a dressing room to change your clothes/armor. A treasury room to see how much money you have in a huge fucking gold pile along with trophies for completing side quests. The last room is the room you go to to connect with other people. Of course if you want to save or quit you have to first hit esc. Walk to the wall and talk to it then pick the option to save your game then walk to the statue which is your save then talk to the statue it will ask if you want to overwrite the game you click yes and it will save. Then you quit by doing the same thing press esc talk to the wall pick quit to windows then it quits. WHY MAKE THIS SO DIFFICULT. HOW DO YOU FUCKING FAIL AT MAKING A FUCKING MENU? Do we want to fucking walk around to click shit in 3d? Why can't we have a list like normal. Waste more time and effort to do the simplest of things. And just to fucking piss you off even more every time you want to do something you need to hold down the button for a few seconds then release it before it works. Why? Is it because people are so stupid they misclick opening a door? You're standing next to it why do we need to hold down the E button for 3 seconds to open the door? If you release it too fast before the circle fully forms around the Hold button then you have to start over. You have to wait until the Hold button's circle fully forms and become the Release button.

Theres no minimap theres no quest interface theres no nothing. Theres a glowing trail leading you from point A to point B. There no reason to go off the path. It will always lead you to your next quest. Just follow it until the game is over. But don't worry, the game isn't that long you can finish it in a few hours. Thank God.

The only way to make any real money in this game is buying houses and renting them out. I wanted a game not a fucking landlord simulator. If you don't make enough money by the end of the game everyone dies. I'm too fucking lazy to do that so I let everyone in my kingdom die. Does that affect the game in any way? No. Not really. Is the ending even satisfying? No. Not really. Did we even get to fight the boss? No. Not really. The storyline at least made sense right? No. Not really. What does the second half of the game do anyways? Nothing really. The first half you are overthrowing your brother the tyrant king. Then becoming the ruler. Then all of a sudden your brother reveals that an evil is coming! DUN DUN DUN. He was doing all this because the evil is coming. The end justifies the means. If he pleases everyone then the kingdom is doomed. Then you execute him because you're evil like that. Then you fuck up the kingdom by giving people a temporary happiness. The evil wipes out all 6.5 million people in the kingdom and the end! You win the battle but lost the war! The boss never really appears he's some weird shit that talks like an asshole. He sends like a few shadows at you then takes command of your friend then you kill him and they both die. The end. Game over.

Fuck you Peter Molyneux. Thats all I have to say. Plus I swear he's insane or something. Check out the interview here.

Nexon - Millions of haters since maplestory

2011-08-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

I never played maplestory other than the first 5 minutes when my sis asked me to play. It sucked and I quit. Then years later a friend asked me to play. I played for 5 mins then quit again. It was a bad game it was a terrible game and it was boring. How did it get so huge? I don't know I guess people like those endless poke games where you grind endlessly. Theres no quests theres no nothing. It was a piece of shit.

What does Nexon have to do with it? Well from what I hear Nexon got rich off of that game and decided to purchase and managed a bunch of games. They ran those games to the ground with their shitty customer support and don't give a fuck attitude. Yet people keep going back and handing them money. Nexon are greedy fuckers who care more about their cash shop than running a good game. Because why bother? Every retard goes "oh cool a mount in a box! with a 2% chance of dropping and 10 bucks to purchase a gamble box!?" Then scream on the forums they spent 300 bucks and didn't get a mount from the mount box. Are you fucking retarded? If you stop paying for that stupid shit then they would change it. Its people like this that are ruining the free to play games. Some people are rich, and they don't give a shit and is willing to shell out big dollars to get ahead or look pretty.

Then Nexon makes events for their games where you have to purchase cash shop items to participate. Isn't that nice? Let only 20% of the population enjoy events while the other 80% can't do shit. Sure they can buy with ingame money from the rich fuckers who bought them with real money but every time we do that Nexon gets a little richer. Why can't they make event where we don't need to do this shit? In Maplestory, once you reach a certain level, the quest tells you to go to the cash shop and buy an item to continue or you can't level up more. Free to play my ass. They need to have a way to get money I know that but there are better ways. Lets take a look at some other free to play games I played. LoL, HoN, BLC, all have a cash shop to buy alternate costumes and unlocking other stuff for hereoes. Champions Online you have to pay a monthly fee to enjoy the game as well. But at least most of the game is free for you to play. Mostly.

Their newest game is Dragon Nest. Now this game is like a ticking time bomb waiting to blow. Open beta first started three weeks ago. Since then the community has spiraled out of control. I was one of those that went, "fuck we shouldn't bitch its in open beta they'll listen and fix shit." No, I was wrong. They don't give a shit. The forums were drowned out by whine posts and Nexon barely spoke one word on their forum except randomly silent locking or posts promising stuff when Beta is over. Well, guess what? They extended the beta now its hanging in limbo because according to Nexon "We haven't finished translating." Really now? PvP takes that long to translate eh? So what do they do, they give the population a new dungeon that you can run seven times a week, and severly nerfed the drops to around 1% of what Korean, Japanese, Chinese versions are. People went crazy. They also nerfed dungeon drops. Then they finally admitted to nerfing the drops when all the evidence piled up going "We don't want people getting geared so fast." They are expecting a dungeon that we can do in ten minutes to keep us busy for a month?

The best part is its not even beta anymore. Its release already. They just say its indefinite beta because they promised pvp, arena, and extended level cap. But there was no content, you can fly through the game in 3 days. Then what do you do? Grind gear for the rest of the month? Its pathetic how little content there is.

Just to add salt to our wounds, they opened a cash shop to let people buy stuff. What do they sell? Inventory space of course! They severely reduced the bag space from the other versions and expect us to pay 15 bucks for every bag. Then started selling skill reset scrolls for 20 bucks for everyone that messed up their build! Really? 20 fucking bucks? Like no one at Nexon thought that was overpriced? Guess rich little shits would buy them and in the next game Nexon would put them up for 50 bucks each.

The worst part about Nexon is its lack of customer support. Tickets are left unanswered for months at a time. These guys will copy paste generic responses. I know they got the money to hire GMs. They're earning a lot from their cash shop. GMs are complete douchbags who go "Yeah we can't do anything, maybe if you used the cash shop more we'd have a money trail to help us find the hacker." Then there was the corrupt GM scandal where GMs started hacking players. It took a long time and some other legit GMs to find out what the hell was going on. On the forums is the same retarded and clueless CMs. These CMs are shared among games and they will go from forum to forum posting about things. They average about one post every 2-3 weeks and the rest of the time the forums go unmoderated. People spam random stuff even porn sites that stay up for days until it was finally locked and deleted.

The SEA version is coming out soon, most of the population is willing to put up with the lag to move over there to play that version. What would you do next Nexon? The ball is in your court.

Beta Testing and You

2011-07-28T03:56:00.000-07:00

I think people today are mistaking beta testing as a free demo or early release. Every time a beta comes out you have the same people bitching and moaning that the game is down and that shit isn't going their way. Isn't that the point of a beta? To test shit out so things will go their way in release? What is the exact definition of beta anyways?

Developers release either a closed beta or an open beta; closed beta versions are released to a select group of individuals for a user test and are invitation only, while open betas are to a larger group from the general public and anyone interested. The testers report any bugs that they find, and sometimes suggest additional features they think should be available in the final version. Open betas serve the dual purpose of demonstrating a product to potential consumers, and testing among an extremely wide user base likely to bring to light obscure errors that a much smaller testing team may not find.

Well, basically it means we're free guinea pigs. It doesn't mean everything you see in the beta will appear in release it means everyone can stop freaking out. What is annoying though, is widely reported things in beta making it to release then having an emergency patch fix it hours to days after release. Its those things that piss me off. Why bother having a beta if you're not going to do shit about it. Are you just using it for marketing purposes? One big thing in open beta is stress testing. They want to know if they can handle the amount of people. This means you don't go on the forums and post 500 posts about how you can't log in and the company is fail or a piece of shit. This is beta, expect this shit. Don't join if you can't handle it. Don't post threats of quitting because no one gives a shit.

Then theres the hardcore players who grind shit and or play the hell out of beta and when the release comes out they wipe everything in beta. These people will bitch and moan and whine. Why? Because the time they spent there is wasted. Do you really think they would let people in closed beta get a month head start on the rest of the player base? Those are probably the same people to whine theres not enough content in release because they played it all through in beta.

Beta is about you, the testers, trying out the game and finding bugs, problems, and or suggesting things. The company will take in those ideas and weed out the problems until they feel its good enough for release.

Yeah... in a perfect world.

What you get instead is a unmoderated mess filled with whiny babies who bitch about every bug ruining their game play and how the game is a failing piece of shit. Every so often something good is posted and it gets drowned out by the whine. The developers all turn a blind eye to everything and expect their game to be well received instead of the bitching and therefor ignore everything until release and watch everything crash and burn. Then ask themselves what went wrong. I'm honestly appalled by games with glaring bugs or errors when there is a beta and it was widely reported. Its like they don't even give a shit. And probably because of that, people don't give a shit about beta anymore.

Nowadays beta are used more as a free demo, and as a marketing tool. Pre-ordering or buying games will let you in betas. They are nothing more than the demos they placed with games in the old days. When you buy a game it would come with a 10-15 min demo of other games they had made. Is this what beta has become? Probably.

Item customization makes everything better.

2011-06-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I played the latest Red Faction game, Armageddon, but found it to not be as fun as its predecessor, RF: Guerrilla. At first, I couldn't quite understand why. It was changed from an open world, quest/exploration/mini-challenge experience to a linear path one, yet I wasn't really too disappointed in that. I've had a lot of fun playing games in that category as well, such as Dead Space. The plot was rather plain, but not unexpected. The characters were thin, but generally had little representation anyway. The mechanics and weapons were neat enough and thoroughly utilized... So it took me a while to realise why I couldn't come to love the game.

RFA lacks customization. It only lets you have 4 weapons at a time like RFG, which was fine, but you can't customize your guns and upgrade them like you could before. I think for me, an easy seller in games is the ability to customize your guns like a talent tree. I agree that not every game has to be like an RPG with stats and skills, but I think weapon customization makes a lot of sense. It means you can put your upgrades and money towards an immediate and visibly effective cause, and you can easily define how your character plays without locking yourself in to a permanent character, as you can just swap weapons.

Meaningful customization (non aesthetic) over your items is great since it puts you in control, and any game where you maximize your control and are rewarded by utilizing it against your enemies becomes great. Perhaps it triggers the release of endomorphins or some shit, but it is goddamn sacred as an aspect of gaming.

Duke Nukem Forever - It should've remained dead

2011-06-22T23:27:00.000-07:00

Back in the day there were a few games called Duke Nukem. I didn't really play much of it, I played a bit, knew people that played and didn't get too far. From what I remember you pretty much go around spouting one liners and giving money to hookers and shooting chicks. It may be wrong but whatever. Then the game Duke Nukem Forever was announce and everyone shit their pants. Fourteen years later the game came out. Yes fourteen fucking years later. For once I'm not exaggerating. I'm not going to go into this but long story short, it was finished, it was released, and the sound of 20000 Duke fanboys cried out in unison at the same time

The game itself received massive amounts of negative reviews. So bad that I have to try real hard to find a game with a review just as bad.

Clicky

Ok that was unnecessary torture on your eyes. But at least that game was hilariously bad. Duke Nukem Forever wasn't even hilariously bad, it was horrendously bad. No ones laughing at your jokes. Its not funny so stop it. Its like watching a 40 year old trying to look 19 with a horrible tan, lip gloss and fake breasts. Its not working, you're trying too hard, and you're not fooling anyone but yourself. This is what this game is like. Its nothing but a old aging wrinkly piece of shit that desperately try to look new and fresh with "better" graphics and game play. A lot of people go "The graphics was nice so I don't care if the game sucks." Those are the same type of people the 40 year olds go for. Those are the same type of people that should stop gaming and watch a movie filled with CGI.

This game is filled with terrible one liners and voice actors that sound like they're having a constipation or filled with 2 gallons of helium in their lungs. Theres no emotion in Duke's voice. Some say he doesn't need emotion and he's a tough motherfucker going around blowing up shit. When Duke's two whiny fucking helium filled twin pop-star fuckbuddies called Mary and Kate Holsom gets kidnapped Duke got mad and started yelling angrily in monotone. It was pathetic. No words can describe it. So we're moving on.

The game is filled with stupid boring unavoidable mini games. It also contains the worst fucking controls for driving anything that I have ever played. You have to do stupid shit like piss in a fucking urinal to gain bonus ego. Health in this game is called Ego. Instead of recovering health through health packs, all you have to do is stand behind cover and it recovers like any of the modern FPS. Theres dumb shit like playing pinball and slot machines and other boring stuff. Why is this even in the game? Whats the point? Is it fun? No. If I wanted to play fucking pinball I would. Plus the pinball in this game is stupid. The flippers are unresponsive the balls get stuck and half the time you can't see where the hell it is. You might be going "Yeah you're bitching about the small shit you're forgetting the game play." Then I will respond, "What fucking game play?"

That question is on everyone's mind when they play this game. Where the fuck is the game play? It looks like they spent most of their time on juvenile "humor" and fucking mini games instead of focusing on the game play. You first start the game shooting some giant fucking shit with rocket launchers then you pull out its eye and kick it across the football field that you just happen to be fighting in. Then it turns into a TV screen where you're playing on your Duke Nukem XBox and the Holsom twins comment on how awesome you are in bed and in playing the game. Then Duke makes a stupid joke about how it took 14 fucking years to make and it better be good. Yeah the first scene in the game is foreshadowing how shitty the game is going to be. Then you start walking around the fucking place for 5 minutes. Then you talk and then walk around for another 5 minutes. Then you walk around more and talk some more then the fucker tells you to go back to where you started and you spend another 15 mins backtracking. This whole time with no action. And then finally like 2 hours later you meet your first enemy you walk over punch him in the face get a gun then you walk around through vents for another 20 minutes. WHAT THE FUCK?

Finally like 5 hours into the game you get to some reactor where you have to get power cores. Then you walk around shoot some stuff for like 10 seconds and then wander around for a few minutes until you see a fucking controller for a fucking race car. You then move it around with shit ass controls to push the core out of the bottom of the door and get it and put it into the reactor. Then you go wander around for another 2 hours. Then you are sitting on a turret holding the fire button shooting ships. You blow it up it shoots at you blowing you up and you fall down the shaft while giving it the middle finger. Then you go wander around for another 50 fucking hours and turn tiny and start riding around in the race car for fucking 16 more days. Playing through what is probably the most boring level in a video game you turn big and the two twins start making out and gets kidnapped and then nothing happens for the next 3 months. Then I stopped.

I know what you're saying. I only played the beginning, but do you really want me to torture myself that much? I know I'm a masochist and I like to fucking torture myself with this shit but theres a limit. I like pain but I don't like to eat away 14 years of my life from playing through this game. This game should never have been completed. The only reason people would buy this game is because it has the name Duke Nukem Forever and it was notorious for its vaporware title. Like someone once said, "It doesn't matter how good or how bad the game is. It could just be Duke taking a shit. All you have to do is make a game slap on Duke Nukem Forever and everyone would buy it just to say they finally got Duke Nukem Forever."

Well, you won. You made the worst game in existence and everyone is buying it up like retards. You showed the world that it doesn't have to be a good game as long as it has the franchise name on it. But unlike Final Fantasy and its countless carbon copies of shit, this will be the last Duke Nukem game. Some think thats a shame, I think its for the better. Duke was classic. Every kid growing up back then knew Duke's cheesy one liners. It doesn't work here anymore. This was a insult. Its defamation. And I don't even like Duke. But I feel second hand embarrassment playing this shit. Some things should have remained dead and this was one of them

Castle Shikigami 2 - Mute the game

2011-04-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

I don't know the first one or any other castle shikigami game but since this was on the PS2 I decided to give it a try. Its a vertical scrolling shoot em up that manages to suck pretty badly. How can a shoot em up suck? You just have shit flying around with bullets and stuff like that. Pretty hard to fail that but yeah they did it. Apparently theres a "story" to the game but all I can learn about it from wikipedia is "In the beginning of the story, a giant castle appeared from above the city of Tokyo. At 40 km, the ship-shaped castle was known as Nejireta castle. The battle of mankind and gods is about to begin." Really? What kind of shit is that. Ship-shaped castle? or castle-shaped ship? Why is it called a castle when its shaped like a ship. Call it a ship. The game is english dubbed with horrible voice acting and dialogue.
You start by picking the difficulty and then choosing one of a dozen possible characters. There seems to be a lot of characters for some reason and they're all a bit unique. They have a primary fire button that shoot your "bullets." The secondary fire depends on your character but they're usually slower melee weapons and or special weapons like throwing a cat. You are a person just flying around and robots and shit starts shooting bullets all over the place. You dodge, you shoot back, you nearly get hit by a bullet then see your shots go fucking crazy. Yes when you nearly get hit by a bullet your shots go into rapid fire mode with bigger bullets. The strategy is to stay close to enemy bullets while shooting back. Now you're asking this doesn't sound so bad. It isn't its just so bland.
A story isn't really needed for a shoot em up. Its nice but its not necessary. Its like fighting games. If the combat is nice then a story isn't really needed. But it has to add the worst sounding dialogue I have ever heard in a game. How did the makers of this game play it and go "ok this sounds good lets put it up for sale."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTQOTpSnuRw
Thats the final stage and the hardest stage in the game. Theres not much background in the game either it kinda feels like Ikaruga with the 3d backgrounds and box breaking stages and shit like that. Just inferior in graphics, gameplay, sounds, everything. Its not that hard of a game but its just boring. I can't stress that enough. It just feels like something is lacking in the game. The bosses itself are easy as well they have a health bar that you can see and everytime it reaches a section it changes attack styles. The first few bars are there just as an endurance fight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuLnvJ6wopA
That is a video of mushihimesama my favorite shoot em up I've played so far. Its hard as fuck, the music is nice the explosions are awesome and who doesn't like blowing up bugs while dodging a clusterfuck of bullets? Theres not much of a story and theres nothing you need to know other than you're riding on a giant beetle shooting bullets at bugs on the search for the god beetle or something or another. I'm too lazy to look up on wikipedia on something unrelated to the game I'm talking about. I seem to have gone off topic.
Back onto castle shikigami 2. Theres nothing that stands out for that game. Its just a mediocre shoot em up. If you're really that bored and have no other alternatives (unlikely) then go ahead and play that game. Just have it muted when you reach bosses. Or keep it muted since your characters will speak too. I know shoot em ups is not a very popular genre of games. Just look at Valkyrie sky, the only shmupmmorpg ever made and it ended up sinking into oblivion. Its a great game other than the fucking stamina system in every korean mmo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOE52sLowJM
Its unique, nice graphics, very nice music, and you can play with 4 people at once online with others. Kill bosses collect gear, pvp etc etc. But really most people just can't stand the difficulty of the game. While others can't stand shoot em ups in general. Its a shame. Once again I have gone off topic. Castle shikigami 2 is just so boring that you just wander off into something else.
Theres not a lot of variety in bullet styles, robot creatures, even the bosses feel the same. The dozen characters you can pick is probably the only saving grace to the game. Its fun to try out new styles of shooting but some characters are just so gay you can't help but skip them. There is also the annoying stage where you have to keep breaking blocks. It was fun in ikaruga but complete shit here because the blocks just come out of nowhere and its pretty much the same as every stage except they fucking cut the walls into one small fucking passage where if you touch the block walls you die. The boss is also the most brainless drawn out boss ever. Its the stage from hell. Not because its hard but because its annoying as shit.
The dialogue differs between characters you picked so you can always hear a new aural cancer filled dialogue everytime you try out new characters. And for shits and giggles they decided that when playing two players depending on the two different characters picked dialogues differ! Now you have even more shit to listen to if you ever decide to murder someone with bad dialogue. There really isn't much else to say about this but its mediocre. Its not complete crap, it doesn't stand out. Its like the kid at school that no one knows. He stands in the back with no friends and never talks to anyone and no one notices him and only know him by his name. That is Castle Shikigami 2. The game sold for $10 bucks on release. And many people just overlooked it based on the price alone. Perhaps it is for the better.

Dragon Age 2 - More wrist cutting than a room full of emos

2011-03-16T17:16:00.001-07:00

Here we are again, back to reviewing shitty games. For those not familiar with the first game its about picking an origin and then becoming a gray warden then eventually becoming the hero of Feraldan and saving the world from the blight. Dragon Age 2 takes place over a period of ten years. The game starts before the events of the first game and ends many years after the events of the first game. You're a completely different person. In the second game you start off as a human. You can only be a human and your romances can only be humans or elves because according to the lead writer, "dwarves are ugly and I don't like dwarves."

So the story basically starts off with you, your younger brother and sister and your mother running away from the darkspawn in Feraldan. And within five minutes of the game you notice they fucked up something. In the first game templars are chaste. But here you meet a warrior woman with a templar husband. Midway through the game you also help a templar find her daughter. Whatever, moving on we continue fighting darkspawn and then an ogre comes and kills either your sister Bethanny or brother Carver depending on your class. If you are a mage your sister dies and if your a warrior or rogue your brother dies. Like the first game I was a mage and so my sister got her face smashed in after speaking no more than two lines. I like to point out that you and your sister are closer and are more friendly while your brother looks at you as a rival who he can never be. He also has a deep inferiority complex and is extremely jealous of you. Unfortunately I have to keep Carver but the good thing is he disappears very early in the game to join the Templars. The warrior woman is called Aveline and is a companion throughout the game. Anyways she stabs her husband and he dies and you all move on. Then you become servants for either a group of thieves or mercenaries.

However as soon as that happens it goes "one year later" and you're suddenly walking around the town trying to get into a caravan into the deep roads. What? The game just skips through that shit? So basically the entire game takes place in the city of Kirkwall. In the ten years, all the npcs stand around in the same exact spots, say the same exact thing and wear the same exact clothes no matter what happens. While walking around you get assholes that jump out and try to kill you. Random thugs or slavers or people like that and you have to murder them all and leave their bodies to rot on the streets. The people at the side just walk around and continue talking like this is everyday shit and they don't give a flying fuck what just happened. This is probably the most annoying part of the game. I'm trying to get somewhere to turn in a stupid quest only to have assholes jump me at every corner. I don't want to fight them they do nothing but make it take longer to get to my destination. All creatures scale with your level so you don't need to level in this game. And even when you do level they grow with you so that basically offset whatever stats you gained. Basically the whole game takes place in about five maps. Lowtown, Hightown, Darktown, Gallows, Docks. Then they made it even more lazy by splitting the game into daytime and nighttime. The places are exactly the same daytime or nighttime but theres different quests and shit during the day or night and some quests require you to go to the docks at night or go to the gallows in the day. They add little mini dungeons which are about five minutes long for quests outside the city and there are "gather" spots where you can find stuff in dungeons. So say you want to brew some poison and potions you'll have to go out of your way into a random small dungeon and kill a bunch of stupid spiders and skeletons or whatever the shit is in your way grab like ONE FUCKING LEAF from a plant and it stops letting you harvest and you have to go to THREE OTHER DUNGEONS to grab more leaves. Finally you go back and make ONE FUCKING VIAL OF POISON. Why? Does this make the game more deep? You have to go out of your way to pick a leaf off a plant to brew a potion?

You might be thinking "Thats not so bad, games like the Witcher takes place in just a few area too and its a dark RPG." Yes but the Witcher the town actually grows and changes in each act. By the way the game is split into acts. The first act is after the first year of servitude. Each act has a goal with a clear antagonist. The first act is pretty simple your goal is to collect enough money to get into the caravan. To do that you must walk around town and talk to every asshole racist who hates Feraldans to do small quests for gold. During this time you can also start meeting your potential companions. For some odd reason, I failed to get Fenris the elf slave but its alright from what I hear he's bipolar because the writers fucked up. According to the developers, every companion and major character have their own writers. And the lead writer will fit it into the main story. From companion quests Fenris is apparently nice and friendly but during the main story he's an angsty mage-hating broken down husk of an elf. Then again I never gotten him so I don't know what he's like. For the most part the companions you can get are alright. Some of them you can romance like all Bioware games. The companions are generic. You always get the evil guy in your group, the pathetic chick with no common sense, the bro guy, the hero wannabe, guy with the tragic past, the slut. Seriously every companion you can get will fit into those. Of course the best written characters are the ones who can't be romanced. Which is a shame because if I could have a choice to romance them instead of the choices I had then I'd pick that. Whats funny is you don't even realize you've romanced them and all of a sudden the two of you are fucking in your bed. I'm like WHAT THE FUCK? So I kicked her out and shes all like "I'm gonna go" and leaves. The writing is bad, the voice acting is bad.

Here's a "tragic" death scene which happens barely five minutes into the game.

Click

Who gives a shit about someone you don't know? I swear half the people in the game you meet and talk to for five lines before dying by the hands of someone or getting their heads blown off by your fireball. But back to act 1 before I start getting off topic. After finishing act 1, it goes "three years later." Suddenly you're richer, you own a mansion, and people know your name as the refugee Feraldan who got rich. Now you walk out the mansion and start doing quests from the same people that gave you quests from act 1. Yes, they recycle characters and quest areas. Remember that mine you cleared the dragons from? Yeah they're back! Go back kill them again and collect your gold! Quests are marked as Main quests, Secondary quests, Companion quests, and Side quests. Clearing all the main quests finishes your act. Doing secondary quests open up main quests. Companion quests improves your relationship with companions, and side quests serves no purpose and theres very few of them. In other words, you have to do nearly every boring stupid quest to finish the act. It gets really repetitive. What I don't like is how they introduce the antagonist and then kill them right away. Theres no build up or suspense. In the first game you knew the antagonists from the start and when you finally catch up to him you heave a sigh of relief and go "finally I can smash his face for all the shit he's given me." But here you just walk around and the bad guy is like "rwar I'm the bad guy gonna attack!" then you fight and he dies you're like "oh he's dead oh well lets move on to the next act."

The story of Dragon Age 2 is all about your life as a refugee into the champion of the city. Theres no darkspawn, no blight, no gray wardens. How is this the same game as the first one? Each act is discontinued and feels like its been written by different people. Each act ends with solving every problem in that act except the final one. The ending is the biggest pile of shit ever. Lets just say the whole game you're waiting for the climax. You keep waiting and waiting and it never comes then it slaps you in the face and tells you "its over but the game will continue in Dragon Age 3." Yes the developers want you to play the third game to finish the story of the second game. Its pathetic. Why are games doing this so much nowadays? I can understand leaving it and letting people guess whats happening afterwards but this is like they have a story and cut it in half and put it into two different games so they can milk the most money. Thats exactly what this game is about. Milking money off people who liked Dragon Age. I didn't like the first one but this one is an insult to the first one. Even I feel ashamed to call it Dragon Age 2. Theres almost no one memorable in the game. No one you give a shit about. Infact the first game they wanted it to be a "dark RPG" but it failed. This time I think they knew they couldn't deliver so they changed it. Theres no BLOOD AND TITS marketing. I found the game to be very tame. Even WoW feels darker than Dragon Age 2. Which is fine. The story itself has a lot of potential they just tried to fit so much into one story that it crashed and burned. Thats like sending in twelve different trains into one area and praying they'll all miss each other but ends up in a pile.

The best part of the game is probably the companions. Well the best part is the credits because you can stop playing this shit. Your companions grow in the ten years. Some of them get married, some of them move on. Some of them ends in tragedy. But this is Dragon Age we're talking about so of course it just ends with no follow up after the climax.

"Varric, Garrus, Aveline, Wrex, Mordin, and Minsc ( and I think a few more BG characters? ) are all written by the same man.

Surprisingly, Bioware consider him on the lower end of their "writers" spectrum.

I think it says something about Biowares writing team that the guy who wrote all those characters, and was the lead writer for Jade Empire is someone nobody has ever heard of ( and is part of the Bioware C-Team ), while the guy who writes the romances and clingy terrible female love interests and the lovely stories like DA2 is LEAD WRITER OF ALL TIMES, DAVID GAIDER."

Funny thing Varric and Aveline were the two most well written characters of Dragon Age 2.

By now you're probably going "Well I read through all this shit and I still don't know what the hell the title is supposed to mean." But don't worry, we're there now. The biggest pile of shit in this game is how they ruined blood mages. In the first game blood magic was rare because the only way to learn it was to make a deal with a demon. Thus it leads to eventual corruption and transforming into an abomination. Now in the second game everyone is a fucking blood mage. If you meet a mage in the game theres a 90% chance he's a blood mage and he's going to die before the end of the quest. But now instead of making a contract with demon all you have to do is cut your wrists and then blood explodes out of your body and you can summon demons and explode people. Is it really necessary to ruin Dragon Age Origins? Blood magic is so common now and the funniest part is how they do it. They pull a knife out of nowhere hold out their wrist cut and its like a fucking explosion of blood that torrents out of their body. Yes Dragon Age is all about blood so of course they shower the fucking area in a rain of blood from a slit wrist. Its so over the top and embarrassing I can't believe they did this. The worst part is the final battle where the chick with the frostmourne controlling her brain starts jumping 50 feet into the air and landing onto the stone floor and stabs the sword into the ground with red lasers and then shooting lasers onto brass statues that come to life and fights you then when you break them they split into two and shoots cannons from their bodies and then the sword explodes and she turns into stone and you stand there looking like your tough shit and everyone stares at you as you walk off into the distance and then the credits roll. Oh if you haven't played the game theres spoilers.

Combat between the first game and the second game was changed and it was the only part of the game that I felt was improved since the first game. The first game has the most boring and ridiculous combat I have ever seen. I don't like to pause and issue orders and do all that shit. In the second game you can pretty much play it like if you were playing any mmorpg. You have three others going around smacking others while you spam all your magic. Like Mass Effect 2 they try to make it more "actiony" and over the top. And like Mass Effect they did the whole dialogue wheel with blue for nice, red for angry and purple for sarcastic. I don't like that change. It makes things really simple. Take a game like Witcher for example. Theres a ton of choices. Some don't show up until you talk a bit and others disappear if you ask too much. But basically you never know whats going to happen until you say something. And most of the time the decisions come back and bite you in the ass many acts later but usually only a little bit later. Everything you pick or choose is laid out for you in Dragon Age 2. I just keep picking the angry one and killing everyone that I could. Mindless really.

Overall, people who liked the first game didn't like this one. While Dragon Age 2 sucked it was a lot more polished than the first. It wasn't as choppy and combat/movement/character/cut scenes were much more fluid. The story line sucked bad, the world was a step backwards and the characters were less memorable. There wasn't enough time to develop them in the little time they had in the short acts. Its an alright RPG if you enjoy running around doing odd jobs. It does have a "save the world" theme though so its still there but you just have a ton of filler quests where you collect items or help nameless people that die within five minutes of meeting them.

Command and Conquer 4 and what it can teach us.

2011-03-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

This post is, as usual with me, as late as your first date. But in that same way, it eventually showed up, grinning stupidly, oblivious to all its faults.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So Command and Conquer 4 flopped like everyone predicted. Not a surprise. The game is bland, stank of foul betrayal, and is a momumental insult to fans of CNC and RTS gamers everywhere. I wrote about it here last year (ed: now 2 years ago).

I would like to take a moment to spit in the faces of every single person who tried to defend CNC4 pre-release. Every single EA fanboy who said "the new style needs a chance, shouldn't be written off", and every EA moderator (under contractual requirements) who said "don't judge the game before you've played it". Those flimsy veiled excuses don't hold up anymore now, eh? Too bad the bombardment of criticism might have actually curbed the game from ending up such a disaster, but no, instead, we had to not stomp on EA's pathetic marketing campaign for this abomination, only so that we could expose it for being a laughing stock later. Unfortunately, since now it's 'too little, too late', CNC fans got screwed out of a proper sequel (and conclusion) and EA's like 'herpy-derp, we couldn't have forseen this, lawl'. Except for the fact that if they listened to us, instead of hiring moderators to lock/close/hide threads of criticism on their forums, they wouldn't have gotten so badly reamed by every single reviewer. The true, loyal CNC fans did their part. It is EA, and the EA fanboys have no one else to blame but themselves.

However, I'm not here to relive every moment of the nightmare that is CNC4, but rather to educate you on its history, from which, we all may yet learn something. Perhaps this is indeed CNC4's only redeeming quality: it acts as a beacon of tragedies for others to beware.

After CNC4 was released, it's review scores submitted, and it's initial wave of buyers suckered in (about ten people total), CNC4 developers, some of them now ex-employees, were freed from contractual stipulations and revealed the asinine development processes behind the game. In the following link, Greg Black, ex-EA, tells us some of the ugly truths behind CNC4 that fans were forbidden to know before the game's release date. Additionally, Sam Bass, lead designer of all EALA's CNC games, divulges more information about his own power struggle with EA management over the game's direction.

Since I don't expect you to want to sift through it all, I've summarized the major points for how it became such a disaster.

1. As CNC4 was nearing its release date, the number of remaining developers dwindled. EA was trying to cut costs for the project and removed non-essential staff from it's payrolls as the game neared a releasable state. It was also known well ahead of time that ALL of its developers would be terminated by release date. As you can imagine, this didn't promote company atmosphere or enthusiasm. The developers went to get their uninspired game out the door and collect their final paychecks, all while already looking for new employment elsewhere. It didn't help any that the release date was pushed forwards and that CNC4 was expected to be a rushed project since Starcraft 2 was creeping on the horizon.

2. CNC4 was originally designed as a multiplayer online browser game to be marketed in Asia, with very loose ties to the CNC universe, and no singleplayer inclusion, nor any plot advancement. Since it was a lightweight browser game, there was no base-building, macromanagement, nor harvesting of resources. EA management later decided that it would be wiser to repackage the game with a shoddy, cheap singleplayer and as an entire game, cramming a game that was never designed to fit the mold into something else. The designers didn't like it, but they didn't have a choice. Once the fans learned about it, they weren't satisfied either, but the damage was done and EA had no intention of reversing it.

3. In the backlash caused by the poor writing in both CNC3 and Kane's Wrath (CNC3's expansion), Sam Bass, somewhat tired of working on CNC, promised fans that the next main title in the franchise would be an epic conclusion to the story, and resolve most major plot holes and finally answer the fan's questions on the enigmatic Kane, the primary antagonist since the original Command and Conquer. This would release him from working on yet another title in the foreseeable future (up to this point, EA has forced EALA to produce a new CNC title every 6 months), and would allow him to appease the fans he's had to apologize publicly to so many times before. Unfortunately for Bass, EA's intervention demanded that a game that almost entirely contradicted the lore had to be bent and reshaped to fit back into the CNC universe. Worse, EA uncovered Bass' intention of concluding the main plot and revealing one of its greatest mysteries, and promptly forbade it. In the disagreement that followed, Bass retracted the original plot for CNC4, removed the information about Kane, and closed the saga leaving more questions and plot holes than before. At first, it seemed that Sam Bass had lied to the fans. With his admission post-release, Sam Bass has indisputably betrayed and misled fans with misinformation under stipulations of his contract. Even though EA drove the project into the wall, Bass is not entirely blameless for continually oiling the wheels.

4. Following the rather lackluster (but at least palatable) titles of Red Alert 3 and Kane's Wrath, the fans were issued public apologies and promises of better feedback methods pre-release as well as consistent patch support post-release. So for CNC4, they had an invitational pre-screening, gathering pros, prominent players and CNC-fansite reporters to a convention in Germany. The feedback was almost entirely negative, but the developers expected this for the reasons above (which at the time they couldn't disclose). Knowing that EA would never let them alter the game, they curbed the criticism with excuses, claiming that the product was still unfinished, and that it would be much more acceptable by release, even though the main criticisms were with the game fundamentals which were already set in stone. Following the pre-release convention, a multiplayer beta was issued, but as accurately confessed by Greg Black in the above interview, there was insufficient time to have a meaningful beta where feedback could be evaluated and used to further develop the game. Beta and release were practically the same, which is unsurprising, considering all EA betas are like this now. See: Need For Speed World, Medal of Honor, Dead Space 2 betas.

Overall, no one's surprised that EA released a terrible title. No one's surprised that EA management was at fault for leading the trainwreck either. At one point I thought EA had sensibly canceled Tiberium (the CNC FPS game), but then for them to promptly lead this project into disaster makes me think their judgment is spotty at best. EA is never going to learn from its mistakes, but other developers can. And while EA has a lot of buffer room when making such errors, others don't. Learn from EA. Don't be a shit stain on gaming.

Fan service - Milking every last drop of dignity from games!

2010-12-24T12:39:00.001-08:00

There is one thing that I hate and its fan service. It does nothing to help the game except to attract horny 12 year olds to play the game. A lot of games I played did this shit. Like you're able to unlock maid uniforms, bondage outfits, revealing clothes for your 12 year old female characters. Remember Square-Enix? Remember Final Fantasy? Remember FFX-2? For those who never played or never heard of it, its a sequel of FFX. Yes a sequel to a Final Fantasy game. The games which has the same copy and paste boring storyline and characters. How the fuck do they make a sequel? Easy! You control the main female character along with the other female characters and play dress up! Yes you heard me, dress up. When you go into combat you can change your class using the "dress spheres" and your clothes disappear and then clothes pop onto you like Sailor Moon. Then you do a pose like going Berserker you turn into a cat girl and you go meow with your hands. The whole game you walk around doing stupid shit acting all girly-girly swinging arms around doing dog paddles.

To make things worse, it has one of the better combat systems in a FF game. But it isn't enough to keep me playing. But that wasn't the first time they milked a game for money. There was also a spinoff game called Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy 7. Thats the whole name. Its also about a character in the FF7 series who goes around shooting in a third person shooter. I heard the game was the biggest pile of shit ever shitted out by Square-Enix. Is square that out of ideas? Are they that broke from making shitty games? Hell they even tried to milk more money out of FF7 by making a movie. It was the biggest pile of shit ever made. Its made for closet homosexual fan boys who want to watch Sephiroth fight, then strip down and have hot naked sex with Cloud. Whats so special about Sephiroth anyways? Why is he so popular? Why is he so special? I never liked him. Then again I never liked FF7 that much. It was one of the first ps games I played and one of the first FF games that I touched so there was never much to compare it to. But I'm going off track. Now Square is milking another game, Parasite Eve. Its a post-apocalyptic survival-horror RPG. It has a sequel as well. Now many years after the game left off a new game appeared! Fans rejoice? No. Never. If theres anything you need to watch out for is sequels by Square-Enix. They fucked up Valkyrie Profile into a fucking fan service game. What do they do now? FUCKING FAN SERVICE OF COURSE.

You might be going, "it can't be that bad a little fan service isn't going to kill you." You're able to unlock costumes and wear stuff like a maid outfit. Thats not it. The game changed from a RPG into a post-apocalyptic survival-horror third person shooter. These genres are getting longer and longer to type. Now whenever you take damage your clothes start exploding and ripping off, kinda like Vindictus.

"Art Director Isaumu Kamikokuryo says that the game's costumes were designed by someone other than himself. However, he gave precise orders about the quality and color of Aya's base underwear. After trial and error, they determined that black underwear was best."

What the fuck? Now for a legendary quote.

"The best part of that quote is "trial and error."

Like Kamikokuryo (man, that's a mouthful) took a bunch of different portraits of Aya wearing different-colored underwear and went, "I will go to my office and evaluate these. I may be some time."

God, this game's going to be a trainwreck."

Is this really necessary? Clothes don't explode off people when you get smacked in the face by a giant mutated rat or something. Vindictus did the same shit. Jumping from a cliff would break your clothes from the damage taken. How does that even work? Imagine walking down the street and you bump into someone and then a suitcase falls onto your toe and your clothes explode from your body. And they say it like they're really proud of it. In fact they have stupid reason to justify all this retarded shit.

"Due to her special powers, she still has the body of a woman in her 20s, although in terms of age she should actually be 40 years old. Motomu Toriyama, the scenario director, feels that it is rare to be able to focus on a woman in her 30s in a game and is taking the opportunity to properly depict the thinking and lifestyle of a cool woman."

Yes taking the rare opportunity to properly depict a woman in her 30's by turning her into a 20 year old clothes exploding maid outfit wearing crybaby bitch. The game itself doesn't look too bad why do they need to do all this? I'd like it if the Japanese stopped making their characters look 12.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7B493uMog4

If I had to talk about every game that has fan service then I would never stop so I'm just going to talk about this one.

Video game romances

2010-11-25T23:08:00.000-08:00

Romances in games nowadays is something we expect, no demand. Look at the recent Bioware games. When Mass Effect first came out there was a character called Tali. Shes this female alien that wears a environmental suit because anything outside of her suit would kill her immediately. People complained that you could only fuck the blue alien and the human chick and wanted to fuck her too. So what did they do next game? In Mass Effect 2 you can fuck her. Yeah it somehow doesn't kill her. Bioware games seem to be really into this whole romance thing. Even during a Bioware interview the writer said something along the lines of, when people think Bioware they think engaging storylines and realistic romances. Realistic? You mean the poorly written few lines dialogue by talking with your companions and then all of a sudden she falls in love with you with terrible terrible terrible lines. Did I mention terrible?

Romance can be done good and it could be done terribly. Its like reading a book. You know which is written well and written bad. A game shouldn't be any different. Lets take some lines from a very terribly written Bioware game, Dragon Age Origins.

"I...have I ever told you I really like the way you wear your hair?"

In which you must respond with

"My hair? Thank you."

If you do not pick it right she will think of you as just friends. Since my Mass Effect character was a male, I decided to try out a female for Dragon Age Origins just to see what its like. Well luckily for you, you can still romance the bisexual red headed French chick as female. She says more creepy things like she likes to watch your eyelashes flutter. You have to keep initiating to a point where she starts falling for you and everything that comes out of her mouth makes you vomit a little in your mouth. Who wrote this shit? Then for some reason this guy Alistar started trying to romance me. I didn't notice at first until I realized how pushy he was being. Like wow keep your dick in your pants asshole. Quit asking about me, I already rejected you so many times you don't have to keep crawling back like a lost puppy. But you know he was actually better written. Unfortunately to pick between a red headed French chick and a virgin man child who won't stop crying about his life and how everything in his life sucks. I would pick the former, but unfortunately the former is this chick who was locked up in a dungeon for weeks getting gang raped with blood shooting out her vagina. I'm serious look it up on youtube. I don't know about you but did this really need to be included in the game? This is what romance means for Bioware.

Is this the path games are going nowadays? Lets look at console games for a second. Japanese console games to be exact. I grew up playing console games and I played through my share of bad console JRPGs. I seen a lot of bad romances. Most console games come with stock cliche characters. The main character is almost always male and come in a few types. The first type is the hot headed guy who thinks with his penis. He would rush into danger going "we have to save her!" when you know its a trap or something and/or hand over the thing that will destroy the world to get the girl back. Unfortunately it never works. The second type is the quiet guy who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets dragged along an adventure, usually by your best friend which usually happens to be the main female interest or jealous female interest. The last one is the apathetic guy who gets bullied by everyone including the female interest. Sometimes the types mix together as well making some sort of hybrid but these are the main ones.

The main female love interest will be known right away at the start of the game. They are also cliche stock characters. The first type is the soft spoken mysterious girl who happens to be from some weird civilization, the last of an ancient race, or something mysterious. She also happens to be chased by things that want her because she holds the key to destroying and/or ruling the world. This may be an object on her. She is usually paired up with the first type of guy the hot headed guy. They will meet suddenly and the guy will want to fuck her and so chases after her and saves her from the "Evil empire" or monsters. He will keep following her until she gets kidnapped and trades the object that will end the world to get her! The second type is the childhood friend or sister or mother figure. Yes sister and mother figure. These are usually the less annoying types as they don't act like a scared pussy where you have to be a big huge retard and chase after her all game long. But unfortunately they're not great either. It is usually painfully obvious the girl has feelings for the guy but the guy never knows and ends up chasing the first type of girl if the guy if the first type. These are usually matched with the second type of guy. The girl will drag the guy around. If its a sister character she'll usually be a younger sister who you must protect and theres a lot of suppressed incest flying around until you two finally realizes each other's feelings. A childhood friend would be really jealous and/or violent. She'd always be extremely pouty until she finally confesses her feelings and becomes all lovey dovey. The last type is the bitchy dominatrix who is usually paired with the third type of guy. She'll be like a rich princess type who wants you to lick her feet and blushes thinking about it and have wild fantasies about torturing you and turning you into some kind of love slave.

Sounds familiar? If you're a JRPG console gamer I assure you that you've seen at least one of each type. Just being cliche doesn't mean that they're bad. Its the combination of bad writing that makes it horrible to sit through. RPGs are the most story driven games. Combat in RPGs are not innovative. Its the same for almost every JRPG. You have fighters and mages and you have fire ice lightning magic with heals and turned based combat. The typical. If its an action game you can have a shitty story but if they combat is engaging and fun its not so bad. Unfortunately for a JRPG, getting the girl is pretty much the whole story. Every story starts with a kid who meets a girl and then the whole game is spent on trying to get the girl. And probably just as important, save the world while getting her. Square games are notorious for doing this. Every single square game has the same stock characters, same exact spells and same exact summons. All that is different is the graphics. Everything is filled with cutscenes and useless chatter among your companions. With the hot headed guy going "WE HAVE TO SAVE HER!" and the soft spoken girl going "I believe in so and so we shouldn't do this! I will walk foolishly into a trap and then wait for you guys to come save me!" Worst part is they try to innovate the combat but not the story itself. Isn't an RPG's most important part the storyline? However the opposite is true. Like Xenosaga if a game is just all story and 90% cutscenes, then you would fail hopelessly too. A game should be a game it shouldn't be a fucking movie.

The one with the second type of guy, the wrong place at the wrong time guy usually has a more save the world oriented story as the girl is with you all along. You'll go on a errand for your mom or something with your best friend the main female love interest going "hey lets do so and so!" Then something mysterious happens and all of a sudden you're on a quest to save the world! Now the final one is rarer. Usually JRPGs are the first or second or a mixture. The last one is still popular but not as much as the others. You're a pathetic guy with girls walking over you. One big example for it is Okage. I don't think I can find a better example. Its more of a fairytale type game. You're a guy with a bratty sister. No she's not the love interest. At the start of the game your sister falls under a curse and to save her you give up your shadow for the evil shadow king. After getting the shadow king your "girlfriend" breaks up with you because to quote "I don't like what you have become. Going around showing off. I want a guy who would eat whatever I make without question and stand around holding my bags while I go shopping." The whole game you can drag your feet around. You're the slave of the shadow king and then you meet the runaway princess who you accidentally crashed into and she gets pissed off and turns you into her slave. 70% of you belong to her and 30% belong to the shadow king. Anyways as the game goes on you get abused more and more. The game itself isn't so bad, the combat sucks but the story is entertaining.

What if the main character is female!? Yeah those are rare but its generally either reversed or no romance at all. Lets face it most guys don't want to go around hitting on guys as a girl. Lets look at Valkyrie Profile Silmeria. Its another square game. The main female is a 12 year old girl. You're this soft spoken pussy princess with a bitching dominating spirit of a valkyrie inside of you. The main love interest is some like 30 year old looking guy. He's the wrong place at the wrong time guy and gets dragged along by you. Then shit hits the fan and somehow you have to like save each other. I don't know the game is pretty much a final fantasy clone and its fucked up and I don't want to go into detail. Pretty much its the same story but told in the point of view as the female. You're getting chased by shit and the guy is protecting you the whole time. Then theres games like Rhapsody: A musical adventure. You're a little girl who has the ability to talk to dolls and your dream is to marry a prince and one day you meet a prince who saves you from a dragon. Then the queen holds a contest for all the prettiest girls to compete for a chance to marry the prince. Blah blah then the witch kidnaps the prince and its your job to save him! Its a complete role reversal. The characters aren't stock because well. Its pretty hard to make a stock character from something so weird. Its funny, its cute, its very...ahem...girly?

Western games and Japanese games have very different views on romancing. JRPGs usually focus the entire story on getting the girl while westerns usually have a story with shitty romance tacked onto it. Which would you prefer? Which do people like? Looking at Japan's dying game industry, I'm thinking people are starting to get sick of these. But they really can't be compared as JRPGs are targeted towards the 12-18 age range. You can tell by the age of the characters really, most of them are 12-16 with some stretching as far as 18. Western RPGs are usually targeted towards the 17-20+ range. So I want to ask. Do people relate to the main characters? Do people like the female love interests? Back in high school there was a group of us that liked to play console JRPGs. I don't think any of the guys liked the main character. Everyone thought he was a dumbass. But some thought that the female love interest is good. Why? "Because they look hot." Guys don't care about the character as long as they look hot. Like one guy liked Tifa because she had huge breasts. Another liked Rikku because he's a fucking pedophile. But for the girls they don't like the guy characters or the females in the game. They're like "the guy is a moron he just rushes in and acts like a stupid kid all the time. The girls are pathetic." I remember asking someone what kind of guy she wanted for a main character and she responded with something like "a strong guy, someone the opposite of you." I remember responding to something along the lines of "it'll be hard to find someone stronger than you" and I got smacked on the arm. Ouch tomboys. Stop giving us stock characters.

The question is. Is romance really that important in games? JRPGs focuses the entire game on romance, Western games focuses on a specific task and you as the player can choose to romance the person. The romance here is usually different. I know there are some better romances out there but I'm not here to tell you the good stuff, I'm here to share the terrible. For JRPGs we don't need to be told who loves who so painfully obvious. We shouldn't be able to expect what happens. Good romances you don't need someone holding your hand telling you so and so. You just know. The chemistry would fly. Western RPGs compress everything and you are the one who is out searching for whoever you like. Bad romances would be awkward, be out of place, and completely irrelevant to the story that you can take it out without any consequences. Its a kind of bonus for the gamers. Perhaps I watched too many romance dramas. My expectation for romances are too high? Maybe they should make characters we care about?

How about something fucked up like this? I never played that game but if thats the romance dialogue then what the fuck? I'm pretty sure that was made purposely because nothing can be that funny and stupid by accident.

I went and looked up on top video game romances on google and all I find are like Mario and Zelda and other stupid shit. What the fuck? Thats good romance? I don't know anymore. Maybe I should stop gaming.

Torchlight - Outdated buggy index finger trainer

2010-11-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

Remember the good old days where games all suck? Well now you can with Torchlight. Its made by the same people who made Diablo. So if you played Diablo you pretty much can expect everything in it in Torchlight. There are scrolls of town portal and identify. Also healing and mana potions and skill spamming with health and mana leeching. Pretty much everything that made Diablo is in Torchlight. Including the boring one town system and left clicking everything to death. What you will possibly gain from playing this game is a broken index finger or one that is so fucking powerful you can click 500 times a minute.

Back then when Diablo came out the idea was new. Everyone played it and went "Woahhhhhhhhhh." It was still pretty boring but when Diablo 2 came out that was when it really became popular. Multiplayer play really changes the game. But Torchlight is more like the first Diablo than the second. I haven't gotten very far but I can assure you its boring. Like Diablo your left click if your main attack. Left clicking a target will make you walk over and attack it, unless you have a ranged weapon like a bow then you will shoot at them. Your right click is a shortcut for skills/spells. There is a talent tree for every class. I use tree loosely here because its not much of a tree when there are no prerequisites you need to add. Pretty much a bunch of scattered senseless talents you wouldn't pick up or have no effect on the specific weapon or style you choose to play as. There is the warrior the rogue and the mage pretty much. It doesn't matter what class you choose you would be able to wear anything and use any weapon. You wanna be a gunner mage? Go ahead. A wand wielding warrior. Sure thing. Either way you would be spamming your potion key.

Before starting the game you can pick a difficulty and a pet. Looking around I see a Very Hard mode so I moused over it and it said, "Masochists only!" FUCK YEAH! A game that fucking caters to me! So I picked the rogue. I picked up a bow and started firing my bouncy arrow skill. It was pretty neat it pierces through the enemy and hits a wall or obstacle then bounces in an entirely new direction. It bounces like three times or something with a maximum range of some sort. Unfortunately the other skills in the game are underwhelming or senseless. You have talents to "reduce the requirement of armor by 1!" Oh wow. Why don't I just add a point into defense or strength and put that talent point in something better? The fuck are they thinking. Then you have shit like "lunge towards your enemies with a dagger" Which uses both melee and range damage to calculate the final skill damage. Why do I want that when I can spam the living shit out of the bouncy arrow. By the way, ranged weapons have a maximum range which is like only three characters away. The bouncy arrow can reach like 20 letting you kite indefinitely with it as long as you can outrun your target. It also doesn't have the shooting animation delay and weapon speed limitation of your regular attack locking you in place and letting the boss cast a ice fissure on you dealing 90% of your damage in one shot.

The stats make no sense. You have strength which adds 1% of melee damage per point and it will help you carry heavier items. Dexterity adds 1% of ranged damage per point. Health adds hit points per point. Defense which adds defense per point and is required for better armor. Ok what the fuck. I'm spamming the shit out of dexterity then all of a sudden I need like 16 defense for an armor. I ignore the shit out of that and then a new item drops, I need like 30 strength to put on a leather cowboy hat but I don't need any strength to hold the massive fucking cannon in my hand. WHAT THE FUCK.

Back then when Diablo 2 came out everyone was excited and played the pointless grinding game. Now our standards are higher, looking back at Diablo 2 we can see what a terrible game it is. There are people who enjoy these kinds of games but think carefully for a moment. What is it that you liked? Randomly generated dungeons? The ablility to see your character get stronger? Taking out waves and waves of monsters? I don't know. But I can tell you that this game doesn't get any respawns at all. You can go down a floor and go back up a floor and all the chests would respawn with rare loot but none of the creatures are there. What? Also want to point out that going to a different floor would take up to 30 seconds in load time. Nothing you can do but twiddle your fingers/toes/hair/mouse wire/cat's tail while slamming your head into the back of your seat going "COME ONNNNNN COME ONNNNNNNNNN WHAT THE FUCK IS TAKING SO LONG!" After the fucking hour it takes to load you meet a mob of monsters then you just spam the living shit out of your bouncy arrow and they all explode into oblivion. Then you take the next set of stairs down and repeat the process.

It also has stupid shit named mobs like in Diablo 2. These giant differently colored mobs with unique names. They all have dumb shit like Versusius the Vile who has a poison attack, Hamrock the Cold with a freezing attack, Cocknballs the Hard with stone skin. They die just as fast and they don't respawn. Yeah it adds fame for you when you kill them. But what does fame do? I DON'T KNOW! Do you have anyone to play with? No? Do you have quests that need fame? The fuck do I know! This game doesn't explain anything.

What about quests? Isn't there a story or something of some sort? Yeah, if you only like one town with a boring shit ass story. Like this magician chick you meet right out of town with a buff warrior dude beating the shit out of everything. This dude rushes off and the chick stays behind and tells you to help him before he gets into trouble. Obviously this is foreshadowing the horrible death he is about to incur. Isn't this a great way to start off a game? A scantily dressed mage girl and another stronger man that might threaten your alpha male authority. Then he suffers a horrible death by the master of the mage girl who was "turned evil!!!!!" by corruption of some sort and the girl goes "boo hoo my friend is dead please kill my master for me!" Then she stands around in town the whole time while you go back down slaughtering everything. In the end you probably kill the guy and the girl swoons over you and you wander off into the distance carrying her in your gigantic tree arms like Tarzan. Luckily before I could get there I hit a horrible bug where I can't go further.

I was stuck and couldn't move forward. The lever I pulled did nothing and checking on the forums sometimes doors and shit would get stuck if you don't open them in the right position. You'll need to reload the game or other stupid shit. I did that and it didn't work. So I just went fuck it because I don't want to start over again. I kept reading around and noticed how many bugs there were. Its already patch 1.5 or something which is at least 5 patches and they still have these bugs? Why did I even play this? I didn't really want to but hearing people talk about "the best thing while you wait for Diablo 3" I just had to see what the buzz is about. Its shit. Plain dirty smelling shit. You're better off waiting for Diablo 3. I don't really get Diablo 3 either. Its either going to hit or miss. It might piss off the "true Diablo" gamers or make them happy but lose the new players with a boring game. I personally is not looking forward to that game. If you want to play a dungeon crawler why don't you play something like Recettear? Its a short game on steam you can purchase for cheap and you spend your time paying money back to a fairy as a shopkeeper and you can hire adventurers to go dungeon crawling with you fighting bosses and picking up loot.

That game was fun. I didn't mind the grind because it was actually entertaining. You had more shit to do than walk down and left click everything and watch it walk over and swing and spam the shit out of potions. The left clicking games should be banned. Nothing has sucked this hard for me for a long time. Not even Persona can reach this level of suckness. Its a whole new level of suck. And the worst part is enough people liked it that they are making a sequel. Who the fuck liked this game? People who have a time machine from the 1997? The worst part is I can't even review the whole fucking game. My character is trapped by a bug that wouldn't fix itself. After playing the game I went and read the reviews laughing at every single bullshit line they typed out and then at the side I see "Games like Torchlight you might like... The Last Remnant. " That speaks for itself.

Fallout: New Vegas - Finishing games before release is a thing of the past.

2010-11-12T22:38:00.001-08:00

Again, little late for this, but I guess I'm catching up on some overdue homework.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you've heard anything at all about Fallout: New Vegas, then you've heard about how buggy the game is. For the uninitiated, here's a taste: Quests break constantly and cannot be continued; NPCs disappear when you leave the area and come back, making quest hand-ins impossible; World entities such as items or even characters get jammed or lost or clipped about a mile below the ground. You NEED the developer console and the respective commands to just PLAY the game. If you're playing on the PS3 or the Xbox, you are fucked. Fortunately, the story is alright, and the setting and events fit together well. You'd expect that the major unification faction of the West (developed in previous Fallout games) the NCR, would eventually make its push eastward and encounter resistance. And the location matters: an invaluable energy source post-apocalypse, the Hoover Dam, and the blast furnace of a new economy, the casinos and resorts of Vegas. Trading companies from all over struggle for control in the area, but are considered insignificant in the highly discerning eyes of Vegas. However, the city needs power (the dam), and the power needs the city (money to operate and maintain it), and everything in FNV seems to fall into the balance in the same way. Fallout 3 wasn't quite as good in terms of seeking that balance in setting and lore, but felt like it had more content and hours of fun regardless. In fact, a lot of my experience in FNV was spent retreading old territory because of the bugs and the constant need to replay a segment to avoid it. Statistically, I made a total of fifty saves in FO3. FNV was near 800.

Bugs aside though, I was also a little disappointed by the lack of a climactic super weapon at the end of the game ala Liberty Prime and the FEV. While Helios One was a very very very cool location, it didn't have the significance and impact I wanted on the outcome of the story. The Boomers and their carpet bombing is pretty awesome though, but was unfortunately just a short fly by and a result of an isolated sidequest.

Hoover Dam, the final battle site, and also the major location talked about from beginning to end, is a popular topic in our reality for conspiracy theorists, who believe it was constructed to house a top secret American weapon. What better location than to put something awesome in an alternate universe storyline where America has plenty of money, no ethical boundaries, tons of robotics and is willing to pulverize their communist enemies in any manner? Disappointingly, FNV doesn't try to explore that at all, and the Dam is just a regular hydroelectric plant. After all that build up, that's all we get? Really? I was really hoping for a result or weapon that would have consequences on the world, not just the west coast, like you know, when in previous Fallouts they were developing viruses to turn EVERY human into a mutant, or maybe in Van Buren, where they were going to control all the nukes stored in the orbital bombardment satellites. That's heavy stuff.

FNV was good enough overall, but next time I really hope the developers actually finish their game before releasing it next time. The industry is already starting to copy their style of 'release first, finish later'. Just look at Age of Conan, or perhaps worse, Magicka.

A MMO for consoles? Disaster meets Final Fantasy 14

2010-11-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

Upon reading Kittydog's most recent post, regarding experience caps in MMOs, I was reminded of the appalling experience of FF14 that I had hidden in the far corners of my mind... I can't help but introduce the rest of you to this gem.

MMOs are generally considered to be immune to being plausible ports from PC to consoles, but FF14 reaches out to test this boundary. There have been some console based MMOs like Phantasy Star Online, but that one is not even close to being as pitifully laughable as this.

The YOGSCAST duo has beautifully captured this game in a series of youtube videos, and I won't spoil the surprises this game has in store for potential players/viewers.
You can find the first part here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF7vrQ04_q4

Just for a few highlights, some of my favorite parts involve:
The fishing 'mini-game' in part 3
The map navigation in part 6
The quests and combat in part 7
The hideously painful main quest line that spans parts 9-10 and culminates in a head-bashing journey in part 11.
Part 14 is pretty hilarious at some points too, a strange highlight of everything wrong with the game, all at once: crashes, non-existent navigation, useless skills, and boring uneventful travels to reach quest destinations.

Go check it out; it's way better than anything I could have written here.

Vindictus and limiting game time for mmo gamers

2010-11-08T00:48:00.000-08:00

One question I like to ask is. Why? There's always things implemented to limit game time for free to play MMOs. Whether its a fatigue system that limits a person from running dungeons or something like stamina in Valkyrie Sky. These MMOs all call themselves "free to play MMO's" and they limit your game play to like an hour or two a day before you hit your cap. And if you are doing farming runs it can be as short as 30 minutes. The only way is to do pointlessly boring things like fishing which takes like three or four hours just to get one more extra hour. I don't fish. I don't do shitty pointless stuff. So what about those that don't wanna waste their time fishing. Well there's a cash shop where you can buy more game time! Wow! What kind of bullshit is that.

In countries like Korea and China game time is limited by law so there are systems implemented to decrease game time. For example some games will stop your exp gain and drop your stats to 0. You'll have to log off for example, three consecutive hours before it is reset. But hardcore gamers would just make a new account and play while the first one is on cooldown. It just pisses people off in places where you're allowed to ruin your health playing games for five hours straight. If I wanna play for five hours straight after class or work then its my decision fuckers. Plus if you're fishing for five hours whats the difference? You're still letting your kid starve to death.

Lets take a look at Vindictus. It recently came out from beta a month or so ago. So whats it about. Well its a 3d beat em up type of game. It feels like a toned down God of War with up to 4-6 players in a single dungeon beating the shit out of stuff. There are three classes. A rogue with dual swords, a warrior chick with a sword and shield like Sophitia from Soul Calibur, and a mage who can be, instead of standing at the back lobbing magic like a pussy, go melee with an over sized scythe and battlemage it up. The customization of characters itself is pretty big. There are a dozen hairstyles and hair colors, eye colors, eyebrow types etc etc etc. You pretty much have to try real hard to find someone who looks like you. Then there are breast sizes for female characters. The classes are gender locked and my mage is female so there's a slider for height and breast size. Not wanting to be some short person holding an over sized scythe, I pulled the height slider up to like 75% which is taller than the default 50%. Now the default breast size is 30% and it starts at large. Not wanting gigantic ones I lowered it to 20% thinking who the hell would pull it to the right. Well when I logged in I had a friend who was making his sword and shield chick thinking, "breast size? Well then I'll just click the slider hold it down and drag it to the right." Well he has a character with gigantic breasts. Was I surprised? Not really. You should see how huge most of them are in the game.

The game itself is a pretty fun until you realize how lazy they are. The game has boats where you can go to dungeons at. Each boat has about 10ish dungeons. Each dungeon is set on the same map. Yes same map. Its the biggest slack job I ever seen. Each map is split into different sections. Each dungeon is a different pattern of sections with a different end boss with occasional mini bosses and secret bosses in between the start and the end. Now here's the big shitter. Every dungeon after the first boat takes two tokens a run. You get a maximum of fifty tokens which reset every Monday Thursday and Saturday. After seven runs the tokens cost three per run and thirteen runs the tokens cost four per run. You can use up all your tokens in a few hours if you're questing and 30 minutes if you're just farming. Then you wouldn't be able to play. But after looking up some stuff I realized. Who would want to keep playing? Because after the third boat the game ends. The maximum level is 38 and the level of the third boat ends at around 31. Which means you can beat the game in four days pretty much.

There are two types of levels. Your regular exp gives you levels where you can get more quests and learn more skills and get items. Then there are the AP which is exp for your skills. AP has no cap so you can technically farm it endlessly and max all your skills. That is a huge time sink and there is no point to max it all. Stats are gained from skills or from gear. Then there are titles which gives permanent bonuses to your stats such as doing a quest. Killing a boss in a specific way such as smashing it on the head with a broken pillar column or kicking 100 gnolls to death. A quest title can give up to like 30 stats each while kicking gnolls and other pointless ones may give one or two stats at most.

Combat is mostly button mashing. Left clicking on your mouse does a hit and each consecutive click does a combo up to a maximum of four hits. Hitting the right button at any part of your combo does a smash attack that uses up your stamina and deal bonus damage. Smash also adds up more damage to the stun counter on bosses making them get stunned faster. Classes like the sword and shield chick have bonus stun chances. Hitting space is a dodge move and you can see who sucks at this game by how often they hit their space bar. The dodge gets you pretty far away with the exception of the mage who can't really dodge very far but her dodge doesn't cost stamina so there is no reason to not be spamming that when you feel the boss is going to swing at your direction. Bosses can take down someone with a few swings of their paws or weapons. There are also secondary weapons that suck shit with their aim. You go into like a semi first person view of a spear in your hand and you let go and it flies nowhere near where you "aimed." You can throw spears that does damage and sometimes stun, bombs that bomb stuff, and chain hooks. You can hook stuff over or hook a boss and make them trip. Or get dragged by them.

Here's some combat of difficult bosses in Korea that we haven't gotten yet. Clicky

However, outside of combat there is nothing. And the game limits you to a few hours every three to four days. So half the time you have no reason to log in. You can't farm AP in the earlier dungeons. You can farm exp if you want. But why do you want to farm exp when you can just stay off for a few days then log in and quest and get MASSIVE amounts of exp for questing.

Overall the game itself isn't bad if you can overlook the repetitive dungeons but it can't hold your attention long enough. I hear the Korean version has 6 boats of dungeons. Which means the maximum level is somewhere about 60-70? Its still a pretty short game.

Divinity 2 - Charging at the speed of light

2010-10-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

Divinity 2 is a game that uses the gamebryo engine, which the same games oblivion and fallout 3 is on. Its another obscure German game. German RPGs are usually known for their "hardcore" RPG games and their extreme difficulty curve. This is one of them. I didn't really care about this game but hearing people talk about it and hearing that an expansion is coming out for it I decided to check it out. Reviews were mixed, word of mouth was mixed. This was a game that some enjoyed immensely and others hated. Divinity 1 was a Diablo 2 clone and was considered a good game by many. Then I read on IGN giving it a 4.8/10 saying "I can't recommend this game to anyone." Now you know you're in deep shit. If Fallout New Vegas was as bad as people say and it scored a 8.5 going "A few technical problems aren't enough to sully this enjoyable and sophisticated adventure through the western wastes" then what the fuck did Divinity 2 do!? Well it sucked that's what.

You start off the game as a dragon slayer initiate and first thing you notice is the terrible lag. After fumbling around in the options for a bit you lower the resolution and lower quality to low you notice that everything looks like huge ugly blocks that are uglier than a 10 year old game. If this game makes Diablo 2 graphics look good then something is fucked up. Either way it still lags so giving up I just went and played on. I am using a welfare computer from many years ago but I can run most of the recent games without having to lower the default visual quality. The controls are terrible the jump is awkward and doesn't feel smooth at all. I can't explain it but it feels very wonky. You also need to jump a lot in this game to solve "puzzles" which makes it even more unbearable. You go around talking to people and do your "test to become a full fledged dragon slayer" by erasing your memories and training. What the fuck? Then you can focus on what class you want to start as. You can pick skills from any class you want but they give you three out of four to choose from. You can be the warrior the archer or the mage. Then there's the priest which is a summoner.

So I picked a warrior since I was lazy to run around waiting for mana and stuff. So you go around wacking stuff with clubs or slashing with swords. The typical hack and slash RPG stuff. One thing that was funny was a skill called Charge Attack. Instead of walking around like a snail you click charge and fly halfway across the map at the speed of light. The first time I clicked it I was laughing my ass off. Its so ridiculous that its funny. You can fly over rocks obstacles rivers everything. Its pretty much the warrior charge in World of Warcraft on steroids and crack. All other skills are pretty lame. You get a skill like whirlwind where you spin and do 1 + weapon damage on a 5 second cooldown. Lame. Skills that doesn't scale will be useless at late game. Skills that do scale will be useless early game. Skills like whirlwind are useless forever because it sucks even when fully upgraded. You can pick up caster skills like fireball and magic missle and stuff. But as a warrior you won't have much mana until you learn the mana leech talent. Yes this is like Diablo 2 shit. One point in mana leech would give you endless mana. You have a 80% on dealing a physical melee attack/skill to leech 4% of your damage as mana. Even so the game is hard as shit. Not literally.

This game has an insane difficulty curve that I'm not used to. The quest giver tells you that the dragon memories are going to kill you and you have to "quickly" head to the graveyard and kill some undead for some odd reason that its going to save you. So you go there and realize you're getting the shit beaten out of you from the first skeleton you see. Then you meet a boss of some sort like five steps in that one shots you. So you go what the fuck? Again. Here's what you do. Don't give a shit about what the quest giver says. Fuck your commander. You go outside of the town and start killing boars and goblins. Get some exp. Note that you have the ability to read minds but this also costs like 33-300exp per person depending on how strong their mind is. Yes costs exp to read their mind for useless shit like "oh i think so and so is a bitch" or stuff like "my dick hurts from fucking that whore in the stable." Sometimes you get some extra info but that doesn't do much. Anyways all this exp is taxed. As in you kill a boar for 18exp and it will deduct it from your tax until it is gone then you can start actually gaining levels. Monsters don't ever respawn in this game so you're fucked if you don't hunt down every single boar in existence.

So I'm going around wacking boars and goblins and eating the occasional food and drinking the potions when I walk accidentally into a goblin chief that looks like every other goblin. Not knowing that it was the chief I flew towards it at the speed of light and got two shotted in the process. So now I lost all the time I wasted on killing boars and goblins. I have no idea how to brew potions, it never tells you. I wanted to get more potions so I went on gamefaqs and found that it was down. So I went and downloaded a trainer then turned on invincibility then went around seeking revenge on everything that shit on me earlier. Going around like a god I met a wounded dragon knight, human servants of the dragons that you were trained to kill. Anyways she shows you some kind of weird vision then you got turned into a dragon knight and she appears in your conscious kinda like Xana from Dark Messiah except shes not cool like Xana. And you don't have conversations with her. She will comment on stuff throughout the game. Then you meet your old commander who sees the "taint" in you and decides that you should die so instead of killing you herself she leaves three untrained losers to fight you and you kill them all and take their gear. Then the main bad guy comes and kicks you down and steps on your face and goes "I'm letting you go this time blah blah blah" then laughs and disappears into the distance. Then you go around killing more dragons and dragon slayers and necromancers and spirits and other shit and the main bad guy comes back and goes "You are being annoying I should have killed you earlier." So he walks away and sends a few bad guys at you that you kill easily. What the fuck is wrong with the villains? Can they act more retarded and cliche?

Anyways I turned off the game and uninstalled it at that point because it just became a pointless walk around in circles listening to stupid idiotic conversations with skills that doesn't make sense like single weapon mastery where you get bonus damage if you are ONLY holding one weapon. If you are only holding one weapon why not use a two handed weapon for longer range, bigger splash, and more damage? Or dual wielding for even more single target damage? Or a weapon and shield combo for MASSIVE damage bonus and a shield? Single weapon master adds like what 30% more damage while a sword and shield adds 86%. Why? How does that work? If you think you can play this game be my guest.

"Instead of rewarding player skill in terms of the abilities you've selected, combat is often more about exploiting AI glitches and slamming potions as rapidly as possible to stay alive until you're at a decent enough level to steamroll everything in your way."

"Even worse, at one point a door disappeared from the environment so I couldn’t actually exit and had to reload a previous save (which didn’t solve the issue), and in multiple instances save files I overwrote multiple times didn’t load correctly"

I'll end it with those two quotes. This is what to expect when you play this shit.

Blade Kitten - I told you so

2010-10-15T16:35:00.001-07:00

Well most games I play people tell me is good so I get my hopes up and play it and it turns out shitty. Well this game is pretty shitty and people say its shitty and I played it expecting to be shitty and it turned out shitty. Should I feel disappointed that it was shitty or should I have expected it to be this shitty. Well, its shitty so there's no point in arguing if it was as shitty as I thought it would be. What is Blade Kitten? The name itself would tell you it has something to do with cats and probably a blade, so we can come to the conclusion that it might be something like a cat cutting simulator or some cat getting revenge on people tossing cats into bins and shit and going around beheading people. If you thought those then you'd be mighty disappointed. Its a game based on a web comic. What the fuck? I didn't know that when I started.

I don't read web comics, I don't read Blade Kitten, but from what the game tells me you're playing as Kit Ballard some pink cat girl who goes around chopping people with a blade. The game doesn't tell you much. Characters come and go with lame jokes and lame dialogue. Its kinda like a web comic I suppose. I saw the game as a 2.5D side scrolling platformer game and I immediately wanted to play it since I was craving side scrolling platformers. The blade flies around near you and you can use it as a boomerang which costs stamina or just swing your sword around for a melee attack which doesn't cost any. So your typical enemies are dumb red soldiers called the Sollers who shoots laser or run at you with swords swinging. You get occasional dinosaurs and robots and stuff but the majority are the Sollers. They don't get upgrades or anything so the game is incredibly easy. There's a shop where you can buy stuff from money you found throughout the stages. What I find weird is there are four different blades. The one you start with and three others that you can buy. So on the second stage you just buy the best blade and you go around one shotting everything through the game. I don't see a reason to buy any other blade but I bought it anyways since they're cheap.

Think of the game as a tree branch. There's only one finger that reaches the end of the branch and a million that doesn't. This is what the game is like. You have a straight linear path and a billion dead ends with secrets that you get treasure boxes from. Whats treasure boxes for? Well you get money, and you also get completion %. If you collect every single treasure box and other shit like that you get to unlock a special costume. Yeah you can also buy costumes like the flying cat suit, pajamas, dresses, goth dresses, etc etc. You're a cat girl so you are super agile you can jump across stuff, climb up walls, do backflips. You're pretty agile which is fun, but the controls are shitty so you're always flying or having seizures all over the place. I even had a bug where I dash leaped and I missed my landing and went through a wall then started flying around through the sky and towards the end of the stage. I skipped half the content of the level and it was buggy as hell.

The story itself is confusing, makes no sense and you meet people that disappear and come back and you're going "who the fuck is this again?" So shit happens and then you go around chopping people and you're not even given any background or anything. You go "Oh the magasse sisters? I hope they're not still mad at what happened" WHAT HAPPENED? I shouldn't even be complaining since its obviously made for people who read the web comic or wants to read the web comic but no I'm not one of those. Instead I wander around confused and then the game ends suddenly, "continued in part 2" WHAT THE HELL!? THERE'S A PART 2 FOR THIS SHIT?

I am already haunted by the constant "I TOLD YOU SO!" I had enough of the shitty controls, annoying characters, lame dialogue, and dumb jokes. Like "This is is fishier than tentacle pr0n!"The fuck! Who uses Pr0n? Game sucks.

Dying Japanese video game industry

2010-09-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

I'm hardly surprised looking at the things they pump out month after month. Its the same shit over and over.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/technology/20game.html?_r=2

From the article we can see how they are trying to westernize their games. Yeah you can tell from games like The Last Remnant that Cent ripped apart. Even games like NIER that I never played and just read about. Apparently there is a she-male but that has nothing to do with it. The thing is in the Japanese version you get a girlyboy but in the English version you get a muscleman.

The problem is not the characters, the problem is that over the years there isn't much change in game play or storyline. That's not the biggest reason though, the biggest reason would be that Japan just can't compete with the amount of games coming out of the west. Even if sales of Xbox360 sucks balls over in Japan there is a huge market of games in the west. That's why the market for Japanese games seems small.

Overall many Japanese game companies are seeing loss of sales in their games. Maybe if they stop making games with some spiky haired anime boy trying to save the world and get the girl then people would be more interested in playing them. You get lame dialogue stories and two dimensional characters with a cliched plot. At one time pumping those games out one after another worked but the gamers of today has higher standards for their games. Western gamers pump out similar games over and over too, just look at the sports titles. But since I don't play sports games I can't really comment on those. The games I play are action games, RPGs and Shoot em ups mostly. So those are the games I will talk about.

How many times have you seen a Japanese RPG main character save a world? I started gaming playing those games and now I can barely touch one without puking with blood as you can see from the posts I posted. There are games that try new things like Persona and a lot of people seemed to like it. I didn't. I felt it was a step forward from the cliched RPGs but it included many new horrible things. The western market isn't so full of RPGs. You see a lot more FPS, hell I don't think I even seen a Japanese FPS. They really need to expand on their games, they need more online play, they need a lot more. The old Nintendo and Playstation days are over. Competition has arrived, you can't pump out the same crap and expect to sell when better games are coming out everyday. Most hardcore gamers today are older now. I grew up playing SNES and Playstation. I don't want to play the same shit I played so many years ago.

Here's another article on Japanese gaming clicky!

In 2009, Japanese games have dropped 24% in sales. The western market is huge. They can't really make games that the Japanese want to play and westerners want to play as well. Its just too different. Japanese gamers seem to be closed off from the world. You might not agree with my views and I may sound pretty biased but we'll see in the coming years. The gaming industry is still rapidly changing.

Kuon - Pissing off English gamers with Japanese puzzles

2010-07-30T17:47:00.001-07:00

Kuon is an obscure horror game. Its not exactly bad, but there are a lot of things that does nothing but piss you off. To quote wikipedia, "Kuon is based on an ancient type of Japanese horror story called Kwaidan." In other words its an old fashioned horror story. The game takes place in a mansion during the Heian Period of ancient Japan. The game in split into phases. You can either pick the Yin or Yang phase. Both phases of the story goes on at the same time but each centers around on a different character.

I picked the Yin phase which centers around a girl named Utsuki who went to the mansion with her sister to find her father an exorcist. If you picked the Yang phase you are Sakuya an exorcist who is the disciple of the father of Utsuki. If you picked the Yang phase it'll teach you how to play but since I picked the Yin phase I was wandering around blindly for the first part of the game. Different places that are locked off for certain characters are open in the other phases and other places that are open are locked off. If you beat both you open the Kuon phase. I haven't finished the game but so far the story is a little confusing.

This game is somehow oddly familiar with Rule of Rose. Most of my gripes with that game can be found here as well.

http://theorycrafting.blogspot.com/search/label/Rule%20of%20Rose

This game you run around blindly searching for stuff. Its almost another virtual scavenger hunt. There's no horror. Occasionally Gakis will come and start attacking you. Then you pull out your trusty knife and stab it. Not exactly stab, you awkwardly wave it around like you're scared and they sorta fidget around. When they do that they can't really attack so you keep tapping the X button until either they die or you get attacked. When you get hit you have to keep tapping the X button to push them off. After you push them off you keep tapping the X button to hit them and kill them. That's basically your combat for this game. Sometimes you meet enemies that kill you in two hits and come in packs. These ones you need to fight with range. Of course the first time fighting them you wouldn't know so you run in and get killed and turn the PS2 off in a rage as you wasted all your time. There are spells which uses magical paper with a drawing of a spell on it. There's your usual fireballs and summoning spiders and demon hands and the puppet lady and other bloody magical ghosts and shit like that. After a single use the paper is gone so spending it on regular gaki aren't very wise. You save it for bosses and then spam the shit out of them because you'll get killed in two hits. One thing I hate is you're allowed to use both the square and triangle for these paper but if you put both on you can't use your knife. You can only equip one if you want to use your knife.

About taking hits, you don't have a health bar. Why? I don't know. You have to listen to the heartbeat of the character. If you're scared it goes up, if you're hurt it goes up, and if there's gaki around it goes up. So what the fuck!? If your screen starts to blur it means the next hit will kill you. So eat up some medicinal powders or elixirs. You can meditate to recover your health, but that takes like 10-15 seconds so you can't do that in combat. One thing that annoys me is if you get scared by something you lose health. If you run you lose health. Yes if you run you lose health. Running also alerts gaki so they'll come out of nowhere and kill you. So do you want to waste your health or waste your time? Here's a trick though, if you keep tapping the O, which is the run button, you'll be able to run while walking. You don't move as fast as running but you don't lose health and won't attract gaki. You sorta have a seizure while moving. This really tires out your thumb though.

The good thing about this game those is the ambiance of the game. The mansion is dark, there are a lot of scratching and crying and sounds everywhere. There's also enough blood to make Dragon Age Origins jealous. When you see shit you can't help but wonder when something will finally come out and attack you. But, it rarely comes.

Now the most annoying part of this game is translation. It's not that bad, occasionally you have errors such as "you shouldn't believe everything you here." The characters never move their mouth when talking and the voices are all in Japanese. Some parts are never translated at all. Suddenly you run around and hear Utsuki going "Nee-sama! Nee-sama! Random Japanese shit" and you don't see any translations and you're there going what the hell is happening. Then you realize its probably something but you're never really sure. Then there are parts where Japanese were never translated and they are part of a cryptic puzzle. That's just brutal. You have a puzzle that you must do to get an item to continue on the game but you have puzzles that's entirely in Japanese? Fuck you. Something like something something in the East something something. Luckily for me I can read a bit of Chinese so I sorta got it. Unfortunately I still didn't get it, so off to Gamefaqs I go. There I found out you can keep randomly clicking until you hear the right sound and then you finish the puzzle. Great. Thank god for Gamefaqs!

Overall, this game isn't that bad but there are much better horror games out there. If you like the old style Japanese horror games with body crawling around like an upside-down crab with their heads twisted back and second faces popping out of their necks then you might enjoy the game. Don't expect a lot of horror though, and the storyline itself isn't that great. The ambiance is awesome.

Pros and Progression, Starcraft 2

2010-07-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

I've been playing Starcraft 2 for a few months now, and while I was more excited near the early phases of beta, I became more and more disheartened by the trend of behavior exhibited by pro gamers and their feedback. Their influence has caused Blizzard to revert many of the new innovative interface features in SC2, and returned the game to a more clunky and primitive state. I've made many posts here before about the pitfalls of catering to the casual players, but sometimes even pro gamers are ignorant and misguided.

In the beta relaunch patch, the rally system was changed to move, rather than attack move. This is already on top of a slew of other intentional interface deadweights in SC2, such as the 1 second delay before off-screen alerts are audibly sounded. I know the arguments on both sides for this, but ultimately, this is a game built to test a specific set of skills, namely strategy and tactics. While pro players will demand for a higher skill ceiling to separate themselves from the common group of players and to make their territory more well-suited to their niche, I feel that they are misguided and... frankly, they don't even know what they want.

A well designed program, or game, or any function that has an interface, seeks to minimize the distance between the user's will and the effective outcome. A car with good handling does exactly that: delivering the driver's intent to the vehicle's movement. But would sports racing be more competitive if all drivers were forced to drive vehicles with staggeringly poor handling and had to wear goggles that only allowed them to look backwards? Does intentionally impeding controls and the intentions of the user exhibit meaningful skill?

If it was true, then why do we not see highly competitive and skill-dominant sports where chains were shackled to the feet of the players? Funny that a game like a three-legged-race where poor control is an established feature is not considered to be competitive or impressively skillful at all. In fact, the opposite is true: competitive sports at a globally-presentable level involve attitudes that continually strive to decrease the gap between user will and outcome. Simply put, intentional flaws of the interface are not a characteristic of professional sports (or sports with high skill ceilings, whatever).

Taken to either extreme, there can be problems: a sport with perfect control interpretation would be purely a thinking game (although that's what TBS are); a sport with poor control interpretation would be as tedious as having to move every individual component yourself. But in former, you have competitive, strategic play, and in the latter, you'll have no one willing to play, and nobody to consider it skillful.

Pro players and Blizzard alike need to realise that the skill of the game is beyond the ability to sift through the muddled controls and interface disabilities. The objective is to always design a system that enhances the players intent as much as possible, and then allow players to flourish in their ability from there. If the game is truly one of skill and mastery, then champion players will only have their abilities further maximized by the new capabilities at their hands.

Pros want a game that requires constant immediate attention to even menial tasks that are repetitive and simplistic in nature, and have instead a continued sequence of commands inputted by the player, when one simple constant command would have sufficed. (Specifically about the Rally Attack Move.) Pros are misguided in their reasoning, as a game with tedious manual controls in every facet is unreasonable, unrewarding, and never seen as 'skillful', and thus, unworthy of reaching a grand level. If Pros want to give SC2, or any game, a higher skill ceiling and more global acclaim, they would not choose to impede the improvement of game interfaces.

Alpha Protocol - Making nerdy kids cry with no Sis romance

2010-06-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

Been awhile since I posted something, first of all I want to start off with. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE. I finished the game and I checked around on the internet to see what would be new with a new veteran play through but all I find is people whining that they can't romance Sis. First of all, you already can romance four other people already. You have the redhead reporter, the German big breasted masochistic chick that loves it when you call her a bitch, treat her like shit and gets horny when she remembers the scars you gave her when you shot at her, some dumb blond, and a transsexual chick. Why the fuck do you wanna bang the 16 year old mute chick. Pedos, all of them.

So what is Alpha Protocol? Well if you haven't seen the millions of commercials on TV, you're a secret agent out to discover a huge global conspiracy and save the world. Whats funny is the commercials keep going "pre-order and you get more guns! You need more guns to save the world!" No you don't. You just need a pistol. I've been using the same gear at the start of the game and at the end of the game and there are no difference. You just need to learn talents and learn the overpowered abilities. You can also abuse glitches and other things.

Remember Velvet Assassin with its broken stealth system? Well, this is a billion times worse. Stealth is based on sound, and vision. With talents into stealth you learn concealment, which reduces the chance of enemies seeing you. And if you wear stealth armor you make less sound. Therefore, if you were to sneak up to someone in broad daylight stand in front of them just inches to touching them, pull out a gun point at their head and fire it off, they won't see you. And with a silencer, no one else will near you. Which is funny because enemies don't give a shit about their allies. When you see two people stand beside each other with rifles in their hand staring at you. You pull out your trusty pistol shoot one in the head, the other would stand there while his buddy drops on the ground and dies. Then you shoot him on the head and both guards are dead and you can "sneak" into the base.

However sometimes the opposite is true. You're sneaking behind an obstacle and from 50 yards away a guy sees you. What the hell did he see? Do I have a shoot me sign glowing above my head? One thing you need to watch out for is ladders. If you are near a ladder and you're running from enemy gunfire and you touch it accidentally, you'll spend 3 seconds to position yourself and start climbing. To get off and back into the gunfire it takes you 3 seconds to get off the ladder and reposition yourself to pull out a gun. During that time if you're not dead you'll probably lose all your health. And you want to know what the most stupidest glitch I've seen is? The game is a third person shooter, which means your camera is always behind your dude. So I pulled out my pistol and aimed at an enemy in the head and just when I was about to fire a guy walked behind me blocked the screen with the cross hair on his back. When I fired, the bullet magically appeared behind me and shot the guy behind me and killed my ally causing people to be pissed off. WTF happened? If you position yourself where you are behind an obstacle and your crosshair can still see and you fire it off. You can shoot through rocks, walls, crates, computers and more while all their bullets get blocked. However, if you're shooting a target behind an obstacle and his head pops up no matter how many shots you take at the head, it will always be blocked by the obstacle.

And for the worst glitch possibly made, if you were to die and you hit reload. None of the objectives will appear and you'll be stuck in limbo waiting for it to spawn. You'll have to hit load game, load last auto save and then all the objectives will load. What is the point of that? Just to piss you off more. The game is horrible with balance too. First of all why are all the enemies completely retarded? When an alarm goes off and you run over to turn off the system all the enemies immediately go "Oh alarm is off lets stop looking for him and head back to our positions and start jerking off." Yeah that's probably what they're all doing anyways. All the stationary targets do nothing but wait for you to kill them. The patrol targets aren't much smarter if you shoot one and another walks by they'll run over to the body to check if its alive and then you can shoot him in the head. Repeat that until you get a pile of bodies and all the patrol are dead then sneak in and silent kill the stationary targets. If they were the Russian mafia they MIGHT be that stupid but come on most of the enemies aren't mafias they're the CIA, KGB, Chinese Secret Police, Interpol, and Alpha Protocol secret agents. Really? Can't they find someone smarter than a 5 year old to join their team? This is an insult, a disgrace.

If you want to be an asshole, you'll be a spy type character. With high stealth levels you can learn "Shadow Operative" A talent that you can use every 2 minutes which gives you permanent invisibility for 30 seconds. When you hit that you can start running and walking over and silent killing everyone with a knife. In 30 seconds you can clear the whole room and no one would know you're there. This works for bosses as well. They can't see you but you can't silent kill. That's where you pull out your pistol and use "Chain Shot." With a pistol you can learn a talent for critical shot which gives you like 2.5x more damage. You can do a critical shot if you hold your cross hair on a enemy for a few seconds. After that the cross hair becomes red and you know that your next hit will do 2.5x damage so a critical head shot would be a silent kill with a silencer. with chain shot time stops for 30 seconds. You can queue 6 shots and then time will resume. So you can shadow operative over to the boss kill all his lackeys and then point the pistol to his head chain shot load 6 critical head shots and the boss dies instantly.

Of course they also give you retarded fights like the helicopter that fires endless missiles and you have to hit it with like 5 direct hits of the RPG and like 30 rounds of bullets from your pistol to finally get it to crash. If you were to shoot it behind an obstacle the RPG explodes for some reason and you die. Fuck that shit.

Glitches aside there's also the annoying framerate stutter and mouse issues. Which can easily be fixed by using this in APEngine.ini (Documents\Alpha Protocol\APGame\Config)

MinSmoothedFrameRate=20
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=30
OneFrameThreadLag=false
UseBackgroundLevelStreaming=false
OnlyStreamInTextures=true

That should solve a bunch of the stutter making it a bit more playable.

The story for the game itself isn't that bad. Think of it as a international super spy movie and your the main character. You can act out your character differently however you want it to. All actions carry consequences. You can be sauve, you can be professional, you can headbutt people and break wine bottles over their head, or you can just shoot everyone you see. The game changes, the ending changes, you lose out on guns/quests/stuff or enemies get stronger, new allies etc etc. If you're into that kind of stuff I would advise you to try out this game, just don't expect much out of the combat. Overall decent story, shitty game play.

Assassin's Creed 2

2010-06-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

The best thing I can say about Assassin's Creed 2? It's longer.
The worst thing I can say about Assassin's Creed 2? It's longer.

Depending on whether or not you found Assassin's Creed 1 either enjoyable or tediously repetitive, AC2 can be either awesome and a direct improvement, or an even more arduous test of endurance.

The AC series has always been about nebulous answers to paranormal/sci-fi questions put into a backdrop of cinematic parkour through a historic urban landscape. In achieving this, AC2 does excellently, and I think it can be universally accepted that Renaissance Italy was much more appealing than the grime and dirt of feudal France presented in its predecessor. AC2 is a sight seeing adventure, but when it comes to completing missions, the same worn path from AC1 awaits you.

Again, many missions are simply run in and assassinate, either detected or undetected. I found myself planning an attack even less than before, simply using an elevated pounce or a quick dash from a concealed area to close the distance between the target and myself, ending in a quick kill before I'm noticed. Unfortunately, it still doesn't feel very 'assassin-like', as I alert every guard in the city right as soon as I murder the target.

You'd think the developers would want you to assassinate without EVER being revealed, but it's not the case in AC2, as the pounce/dash-kills are astonishingly easy to accomplish, and getting away from the guards are simply a matter of time. It's simply not worth spending time planning a perfect assassination, even if there was such a possibility. (There is no such possibility by the way, most kills will auto-trigger an alert, and it is part of the mission to escape capture after a kill. Sometimes, the kill will end the mission and warp you out, even though you see thousands of guards swarming you after your less-than-covert tactics.

There's a lot more content than before, and definitely more areas to explore than before, and sidequests and items to collect along the way. However, I feel that they took a rather bland approach at extending the replayability of the game, since the sidequests are shallow and often the same thing: beat up a philandering husband, or win a race. 20 hours of those sort of quests are rather mindnumbing... You keep hoping that the next sidequests will be more fulfilling, but they never are. Yet you can't see the next quest until the previous ones have been completed, despite them have no relation in the slightest.

This time, Ubisoft actually progresses the story in a meaningful manner. You have a rather boring and predictable vengeance story told from the perspective of Ezio Auditore, but it is overlaid over the real story: (spoilers) impending cosmic doom foretold by extinct, malicious deities. Unfortunately, the latter portion is told through riddles picked up by exploring optional areas of the game, so a casual playthrough would unveil literally nothing until the final cutscene of the game. That is the worst storytelling: not telling anything at all. I think it is nice to have extra tidbits the player can get by going the extra mile, but the ACTUAL story shouldn't be entirely concealed.

Bottom line: AC2 is okay, it is an adequate sequel, but it won't turn any heads for anyone who wasn't impressed by the first game. It quite a faithful (if not unoriginal) sequel that doesn't try to deviate much from the original formula. While that sounds like a negative connotation, it isn't. That's pretty good praise considering the franchise in question here.

Sakura Wars - Hit on the underaged girl!

2010-04-25T12:37:00.001-07:00

What kind of shit name is Sakura Wars? What does it even mean? Whatever it means, it still sounds horrible. This is the newest game for the PS2, and it had pretty good reviews. Like if it scores higher than Okami then it must be very good right? Well, Persona 3 was the "best game of PS2." So why do I trust those reviewers again? Its the fifth of the series so it can't be that bad right? Well back in high school I had a friend tell me that she really likes to watch Sakura Wars anime. I was going what the hell is that shit. Now I know. And now I know how terrible it must have been.

Lets get this out. This game is for Japanese anime-loving boys who have a fetish for American chicks. Can you blame them? Yes. And we can also judge them too. Lets start off by what this game is. Well its not anything you know, and I would call it a girl molesting simulator. You must be thinking what the fuck right? Well, yeah that's what came out of my mouth every other line in this game. This game you're some military guy from Japan who got transferred to New York's division. You ride giant robots to fight each other. Its a game for anime-loving Japanese boys so go figure it has giant robots with chicks piloting them. There you meet a bunch of chicks and you have to go around spending time and molesting them. Here's a list of the main characters.

Shinjiro Taiga aka Lt. Taiga, Shin, Shiny, Child Molester, Pedophile, Rapist. This is you. You're this pussy guy who goes around being all mopey because your uncle sent you over to New York and they were all expecting him to come and not his stupid pussy nephew. You think of yourself as a Samurai and you must "show your samurai spirit" to all the Americans. You use the excuse of not knowing how to act in America to molest girls.

Gemini Sunrise. This is some red haired farm chick from Texas. She has a Japanese fetish so lucky for you! She loves anything Japanese and wishes to be a samurai so she rides a horse across town and attacks bank robbers with samurai swords. Yeah... She also happens to be in the same "Star Division" as you.

Mr Sunnyside. He's the Commander of the Star division. He likes to speak in poor English (playing the version with Japanese voices.) He also has a Japanese fetish.

Ratchet Altair. She's the Captain of the Star division. She's a blond haired chick where you start stroking her hair and staring at her breasts for no reason. She also sucks horribly and gets her face punched in and you save her and become the vice captain. Go you I guess.

Subaru. "She's" the hermaphrodite of the group. "She" talks in third person all the time and is the only other Japanese. Lucky for you "she" doesn't give a crap about you. You're always wondering if "she" is a guy or not. I haven't gotten to molesting "her" yet so I don't know how "she" will react. Luckily, I won't be getting that far.

Sagiitta Weinberg. Shes the black chick from harlem. She's a super bitch and does nothing but bitch at your face. And after the show you walk in on her changing and she goes into ultra bitch mode. Like twice the bitchiness. When you go to harlem to find her you get your ass chased out by punks. Great going Vice Captain!

Rikariitta Aries. Whats with all the double I's and double T's. Anyways she's 11 years old and you go around hitting on her. She gets major pissed off at you and other shit. She's a "bounty hunter from mexico." Yeah she runs around with two pistols shooting shit. I don't know I haven't gotten that far yet but I sure hope to god you don't see her naked or start molesting her. But then again, this is Japan (uhh Japanized New York) so you'll probably have to at some point.

Diana Caprice. I don't know I found this online apparently shes the last chick you get. She's a "a local birdwatcher and nurse who had given up all hope to live." Well fuck. Leave the worst for last.

5 year old bunny girl. She's the main bad guy. She's a girl that has bunny ears on her head who holds a scythe and can fly and walk through walls. She sends giant robots that try to destroy the statue of liberty and other shit.

So how do you play this game? You're a rapist walking around talking to people and occasionally you get an option to do stuff. Like for example you arrived at New York, walked into the Office of the Star Division (not very cleverly disguised as a theater. Like seriously the whole thing lifts up and giant robots come flying out of it at night. I'm pretty sure people have already noticed what the fuck is happening there but no apparently not. Its just an excuse for you to watch girls dress up in costumes and perform and walk in on them changing.) Anyways as I was saying, you walked into the office and you meet Ratchet and three options appear you can either say for example. 1. Lt. Taiga reporting for duty 2. uh... hello? 3. I didn't expect someone so beautiful. What would you choose. Obviously not 2. And obviously not 1 because you need to hit on chicks for them to like you and when they do you apparently get super powers to do combination moves. Seems like every game is doing this nowadays. Sakura Wars, Persona.... Well just these two I guess.

When these options appear you have about 5-20 seconds depending to pick something. Sometimes you need to save someone and you get 5 seconds to push them aside or longer if you have to hit on them. Your face changes and different people like how you act differently. Sometimes its just one option and you can move the bar up or down to speak louder. For example your in the library and you see the 11 year old for shits and giggles I pulled the bar to the top and yelled on top of my lungs at the chick and she ran off embarrassed and majorly pissed off. If you don't hit anything within the time frame you automatically forfeit a chance to talk and you piss people off. Then you get to parts where you can take pictures of chicks and areas by hitting the triangle button. And occasionally (I don't know how often) you get parts where its just a chick and you have a magnifying glass that you can move around the screen. You can move to any part of their body and hit the X button and you think something or do something. For example you see Ratchet and you move your magnifying glass across their eyes and hit x he comments on her eyes and so on. I have no idea how to cancel this stupid shit or do anything so I move across her hair and he comments on her blond hair and how awesome it is and then strokes it and she got pissed off. "People in America don't like people stroking their hair? Everyone likes it when I do it in Japan." Wow fuck off you molester.

The game just keeps going on and on and you can barely save because the dude is too busy running around being a pussy or molesting chicks. Until finally you get to the giant robot battles. But no, you have to sit through like 20 minutes of gearing up and the chicks showing off their robots with moves and shit. They have the dumbest weapons and say the dumbest shit. Like Subaru uses fans for her robot and you use samurai swords. Sagiitta uses whips and since she is a lawyer she keeps going "you are guilty!" LIKE SHUT UP AND STOP POSING AROUND I WANNA BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THEIR ROBOTS YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES. Then giant robots come from the sky and you must "transform into airplanes" to shoot them down. Great, transforming robots. Anyways you turn into planes and shoot missles and they explode and yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay chapter over. Then you turn off the PS2, take out the disc and then snap it in half and toss it out the window.

This is the most terrible shit I ever played. My stomache haven't hurt so much from puking at every other sentence because all the shit they say are retarded. "Oh in America we do so and so." "I swear on my Samurai Spirit I will beat the enemy." "Your hair is so silky." "I would like to stick my penis into your vagina." "Can I touch your breasts?" Yeah I made up most of these but I wouldn't be surprised if they do appear in the game.

Gii-mmicks.

2010-04-22T16:30:00.001-07:00

This is another article I had unfinished for a long time. Originally intended for publishing in early January, 2010.

About a month ago, I had the opportunity to try out the latest Wii gimmick, the Wii Motion Plus and its associated bundled tech-demo game, Wii Sports Resort on my friend's home console.

Now, before I start off, I have to mention that I've always been pretty negative about the Wii, and I'm sure glad as hell I never purchased one. It was and still clearly is, a casual gamer console that catered to the family audience, and its weak library of games relied far too heavily on the gimmicky aspect of their control scheme to ascend their games to the forefronts of publishing.

Regardless, the addition of a new motion sensor has generally improved on the accuracy on the Wii-mote, but feels like a feature that a consumer would have justifiably expected as a standard with the release of the Wii. After all, isn't this the console that designed from the bottom up with the accuracy of Wii-mote gyroscopic movement, spatial location and fine angular changes in mind? Pushing out a product now that says "Oh hey, we didn't make it right the first time, here's a tack on upgrade" really seems to cheapen the design ideals of which the console is wholly based on.

Additionally, despite the improvement, it still doesn't feel like it does enough. You can still feel that the Wii has certain specific situations and movements that aren't being detected as well as other types. For example, thrusting or pulling motions seem to be poorly registered, often incorrectly recognizing a pulling movement when you thrust forward and vice versa.

More and more, the Wii feels like a console selling off a gimmick aspect, not all that much different from how Apple products sell nowadays. While new, unorthodox control schemes are interesting and add dynamic to gaming, I think the least frustrating designs have been those that ease in the incorporation of new control functionality without abandoning old ones. Essentially, the best designs that face the least amount of resistance are those that 'upgrade' the most practical controller design of the previous generation. The SNES controller was a sleeker, more powerful version of the NES one, and one of the best controllers at the time, leaving a legacy for even modern controllers to follow. The PS1 controller too was upgraded with analog sticks and pressure-sensitive button functionality, becoming the PS2 controller. Yet the directional pad was not abandoned, and at the choice of the user, continued to be the primary method of control for many games.

One of the issues inherent with Nintendo is that they have always been trying to innovate in the most bizarre methods. From Power Gloves, to Virtual Boys, to Pistols and Bazookas, Nintendo's Wii really doesn't seem to be the odd one out of the box, relatively speaking. However, because of this characteristic, I find that it's difficult to have balanced games designed for long term mastery or competitive play when it is based off such strange, unpredictable control schemes. We still have competitive iterations Mario or Street Fighter, which use traditional control schemes, but have you ever seen competitive Duck Hunt? Or Power Ball? Or Wii Tennis? The fact that it is impossible to make these games competitive stems from it's unreliable control schemes, and as such, no one cares to be competitive at them, as the element of luck or device-specific accuracy varies too greatly. This makes gimmick consoles unlikely to accomplish anything but create a 10 minute mass of flailing limbs.

Seeing other consoles or developers who backed traditional long-term games abandon their principles to jump on the gimmick market is a devastating shame. It is fine to have a few esoteric companies develop bizarre creations, but without the core companies sticking with the practical methods, gaming as a whole deteriorates as the long-term competitive games that we hold dear will dissipate, as more is instead invested to the 10 minute drivel that gimmick-developers churn out. Gimmicks are like poison, recreationally fine in small dosages but too much will kill off what makes true dedicated gaming great and memorable.

Dumb it down for me please.

2010-04-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

God I hate Casual Gamers.

Currently America is suffering from the 'Super Size Me' epidemic. But at least they're conscious of that one. The epidemics that are truly devastating are those they're not even aware about, like the 'Dumb It Down For Me' epidemic. I refer you to exhibit A, in particular, the associated news post, a summation of symptoms in the afflicted:

http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/285

For your ease, the focal, frustrating statement has been quoted for posterity:

You can button-mash in Street Fighter, or you can go W+1 pyro in TF2. While the efficiency of these options is arguable, they work, to an extent. Not on Starcraft.

Here, we have a casual gamer, frustrated by the challenge of particular games he could possibly incorporate into his sphere of enjoyment, demand that an 'easy mode' be implemented, one that would enable him, with minimal practice or strategy be able to evenly compete with a veteran. His name is Jo, and he writes an unintelligent webcomic to herd his flock of imbeciles. Did I mention that he likes to play the Pyro in TF2? Strange coincidence that he plays the same class that everyone writes as being a skilless, useless and inept class created for the purpose of facilitating the handicapped.

Jo's folly is in asking for an I win button as a casual player with inadequate skill or experience. A method that enables him to compete, despite being obviously undeserving of that ability. Akin to believing that one deserves to be able to pass an exam without studying, or brilliant without learning. It is this spoiled attitude of self-entitlement that has been corrupting gaming into a casual cesspool of talentless rejects. Games should be ACCESSIBLE and teach you the basics and guide you, but trying to have a shortcut at mastery is undeserved and lowly.

Grim Grimoire - Fuck Dragons

2010-04-11T01:39:00.000-07:00

I like to point out this is probably one of my favorite games, but really fuck dragons.

Its from the same creators as Odin Sphere, Vanilla Ware. So you can expect the same shitty English voices and beautiful graphics. Luckily this game also lets you change voices. It doesn't make it any better but at least you don't have to understand the squeaking of the characters. Anyways the story is about a girl called Lillet Blan (everyone is named after wines) who goes to a magic tower school to learn magic. Its fairly lighthearted and the characters grow on you as you try and solve the mystery.

As you first enter the school you get acquainted to some characters. You start learning magic and the headmaster Gammel Dore, teaches you Glamour, magic of natural order. Fairies and life. You get thrown into combat and stuff. Get to that later as that's where the main gripes of this game comes from. You eventually move on and start getting to know the Necromancy professor. While talking to her, the two of you notice the Sorcery professor, a devil, sneaking around the room. After learning a bit of Necromancy from her later that night you realize the soul container of the archmage of the tower was stolen from the Necromancy professor's room and she was killed. The archmage was released and killed everyone in the tower. But before you were killed, when the bell rang on the 5th day you were sent back in time to the first day. Oh shit.

Oh shit indeed. Now you run off to Gammel Dore and he listens to your story, but the Sorcery professor dismisses all the accusations and he tests you to see if he believes your story. When you were transported back in time, you managed to keep everything you learned and held onto all the grimoires you accquired. After passing his test, he lets a remark slip about "how the archmage's apprentice the Alchemy professor feels about him being locked up in a soul container." So now you have a new suspect. You go talk to him and learn about the archmage who tells you about the archmage making a deal with the devil Grimlet and had to be sealed. While Gammel Dore and the Necromancy professor try to seal the archmage, they failed and was killed. The devil grimlet appeared and took the archmage's soul and killed everyone in the tower. The Sorcery professor saves you and keeps you alive long enough until the bell of the 5th night and once again you get transported back.

Now you have to keep figuring out what happened, who is the real enemy, why time keeps going back, etc. There are a lot of twists and turns and the story is very enjoyable. The conversations usually involve huge pictures of the characters talking amongst each other on the screen. The character designs are amazing. Here's a short list of the characters you'll meet.

Lillet Blan - That's you! You're the main character and you are out to solve the mystery of the tower. You are named after the french wine, Lillet Blanc.

Margarita Surprise - Shes your first friend, and one that eventually betrays you in one of the many time loops. She was rescued by Chartreuse and brought to the tower. She's named after the cocktail, Margarita.

Bartido Ballentyne - An Alchemy student learning after Chartreuse. He's not very important to the story but Lillet sorta has a crush on him at first but loses it pretty quickly. He is named after the whisky, Ballentine's.

Hiram Menthe - He is a Necromancy student and friends with Bartido. He's not very important to the story but he's a goody-two-shoes that keeps running off to tell the professors when you do something secretive in one of the time loops and you have to keep kicking his butt over and over.
He is named after the french wine, Hiram Walker.

Amoretta Virgine - She's one of those dead sounding chicks in every game. She's supposedly the "niece" of Advocat, and when you first meet her, shes being molested by him and you save her. She goes "Thank you, I really hate it when he does that." THE FUCK? Anyways its only mentioned once that shes his niece but shes not. She's actually a homunculus with the soul of an angel created by Chartreuse. Her existing tempts every devil in the tower. In the game you develop a lesbian relationship with her. She's named after Amaretto.

Gammel Dore - Headmaster and Galmour professor. He was the one who sealed the archmage Calvaros and the devil Grimlet inside the tower. He dies in almost every time loop and is a pretty shitty magician despite all his achievements in the past. Aging sucks I guess. He's named after Gammel Dansk.

Opalneria Rain - Necromancy professor. She is the keeper of Calvaros' soul container. She has a one sided love for Chartreuse. She is named after Opal Nera.

Advocat - Sorcery professor. He is a devil summoned by Gammel Dore. Even though he acts like a good guy, he doesn't actively help people which he claims because he is a devil. He is named after Advocaat.

Chartreuse Grande - Alchemy Professor. Nothing much about him. He is named after Chartreuse.

Calvaros - The archmage sealed in the tower. Named after Calvados.

Whew glad to get all that out. So yes most characters are pretty important as you find out about stuff. Sometimes you think you're doing alright in your time loop then all of a sudden someone dies and something gets mixed up. So you try again. But each time you go back you learn a little more and get a few grimoires. But because you managed to keep the grimoires other characters who needed it to do things in the previous time loops couldn't and thus changes your future time loops forever. Its fun and interesting to play.

And now we get to the biggest flaw in the game. Combat. The game has a lot of potential, but pretty much failed hardcore. Its an RTS game, you mine mana crystals to summon runes and familiars from your grimoires. As you learn more grimoires you learn more familiars and more power ups. Each school of magic counters one school and is weak to another. So its like rock paper scissors, except for dragons which is like a gun.

Glamour is natural order and life. Its probably the weakest of the four schools of magic. Your workers are elves which can heal. Fairies costs a lot of mana compared to how easily they die. They are ranged and flying but they travel so slow that you can't really run and shoot and they end up dying all the time. Unicorns are fairly good tanks but their mana cost is so high that you're better off getting something like demons which is nearly the same price but twice as powerful. The super unit is the Morning Star. Its fairy cheap and it a flying unit. Its an astral which means most units can't hit them and when they do they do reduced damage. This is strongest astral unit in the game with a huge aoe splash attack. But everytime they attack they need to create stars. Each star costs 10 mana so the price for this unit quickly becomes expensive. They're like reavers in SC. The advantage of Glamour is all their units can hit astrals and they don't do any reduced damage to them. Glamour is strong against Necromancy because it is life.

Necromancy are all spirits and undead. Almost every unit are astrals. Its as weak as Glamour but has the advantage of being astral and having a few strong units. They have the cheapest workers and they are able to fly so mining crystals for them is easier. Their starting unit are the phantoms. They are sword wielding spirits that have a decent attack and defense. These can mow down masses of enemies if they can't hit astrals. But if they can these drop like flies. They're kinda like dark templars of SC. Their mid tier is skull mages. They can only hit astrals and they hit like a truck. But they can only hit astrals so they're useless the this game. The super unit is Charon, a unit transporter that flies very fast. Necromancy sucks. Necromancy is good against Sorcery because they don't have flesh and temptations for the devils to pick on.

Sorcery is devils and demons. This is the best school of magic. Imps are your workers. They are able to fight and they're cheap to make. They are like ghouls of WC3. The first tier of units are demons. These are probably the strongest non super unit in the game. They have high defense high attack high movement speed. They can fight claw to claw against most super units in the game and they're not that expensive to make at all. The next tier up is Grimalkins. They are cat familiars that casts sleep and mana burn. They don't have any attacks but sleep can take out most super units in one click. When slept they cannot act for about 30 seconds and can still take damage until they die. Mana burn would almost instantly kill any caster in a single click. A very powerful unit. Then the super unit. Dragons. These don't cost a lot about the price of two and a half demons, but can take on about 6-7 demons at a time. They have a huge aoe breath attack that does damage all around them. Anything caught in the aoe would die almost instantly. They have the highest hp, defense, attack. Sorcery is good against Alchemy for reasons I cannot remember.

Alchemy are homunculus and unnatural order. Alchemy is fairly weak but they are very annoying. Their workers are blobs that can cast a stacking slow. The first tier are homunculus which has two skills. Flare which allows all physical attacks to hit astrals in the area for the duration. The second skill is psychic storm. This is like Psionic wave from SC, except there are no friendly fire and more than one storm stacks. There was a dragon coming at me and I was alchemy with no units. So I tried my luck and sent about 5 homunculus and spammed psychic storm on the dragon. It was dead in literally 3 seconds. Luckily the NPC doesn't abuse this. Golem is the next tier up. Its slow it has a long range that out ranges towers. It sucks. Chimera is their super unit. Its almost exactly like the dragon. Same price but lower damage defense and health. It also loses health every second when its summoned until it dies. It sucks compared to the dragon. Alchemy is good against Glamour because it is unnatural order.

It looks good and has high potential but the problem is, that you can make dragons as your first unit, send them in and wipe out the enemy. A dragon is unkillable. And sending 2-3 means you beat the level. Why would you want to make anything else but dragons? As long as you have a few homunculus casting flare they can take on astrals no problem. Sometimes for the hell of it I don't use any super units and I have to spend 3x as long to beat a level. Each level is exactly the same. I know I complained about Odin Sphere being repetitive, but this literally is the same every battle. There is only one map in the game. You will fight on that map for many many times. Each time you fight you will start off with 1 mana crystal mine and 1 rune. The enemy has runes scattered all over the map and the don't need to mine mana to summon units. Units appear in 3 ways. First way is over time they will come and attack you. Second way is when you attack one of their runes a wave of enemies will appear if you don't kill that wave they will attack your base. The last way is when you are attacking their rune, they will attack your base. So, if you attack right when they are attacking and your attack fails you will get 3 waves of enemies and lose the game.

But that won't happen because dragons don't die. Here's the strategy for almost every game. As soon as the game starts you'll usually have couple hundred if not thousand mana to start off. A dragon spawn rune costs 200 to make 100 to upgrade and a dragon costs 500. As soon as the game starts summon a rune summon a dragon and send it out to attack. As your dragon is heading off use the mana you mined to summon a second dragon. By the time your dragon is tearing up their base your second one will spawn and wipe out the wave that attacks your base. Then you send that one out and summon another. By the time you have your third dragon you should have taken out most of their runes. Just keep repeating that and the game is over. Just watch out for Grimalkins sleeping your dragon. They usually can't kill it within 30 seconds but just in case your dragon might die.

Its a good game, but the combat portion of it is completely horrible. It has a lot of potential to be good, but instead it just uses the same boring battle every time as a filler between events. If the combat can be tied into the events like Odin Sphere then it would be a good game. Look at SC. All the combat has something to do with the events. Why can't this game do it as well? Its not like its too much work. Look how small and short the game is. You can probably finish this in a few days, and most people can finish within a week. My play through took about 8 hours total.Overall, story is good, combat sucks. If you can overlook the shitty combat the game itself is very fun. Too short though but the characters really grow on you.

Dragon Age Origins Awakening - As half-assed as the new Joining ritual

2010-04-07T02:08:00.001-07:00

Dragon Age Origins itself isn't that bad of a game. Lots of flaws but overall its decently fun to play. Not one of my favorites but its fun enough for me to finish the game without much bitching. Now Awakening is the expansion to this game. I know its an expansion and I know its not that expensive, but that doesn't justify its shittyness. Lets start from the beginning with Dragon Age Origins. Origins when it was first announced changed from a grim RPG into a over the top bloody "dark" RPG. They tried to cater to the God of War players but failed. If they stuck to like a Witcher style RPG then it might be a bit better. Overall, it just another over the top cliche RPG with swords and magic. Nothing more, nothing less.

So the story is pretty much darkspawns are attacking and a blight appears. Blight are when an archdemon appears and lead all the darkspawn. Without an archdemon they are all mindless. They sorta have an hive mind. The game starts depending on your origins you can start as human, elf, dwarf. Noble, commoner, mage, etc. Each one has a different story and affects the game ranging from npc interactions, endings, storyline changes. As soon as you do that, shit hits the fan and you get recruited by the gray wardens after something happens, for example mages you are about to get tossed into mage jail and "rescued" by the gray wardens. Elf commoner you kill the lord for raping your wife and your cousin and friends and is "rescued" by the gray wardens. Shit like that.

So you go around blight appears and the king gets backstabbed by his father's best friend and most trusted person who was also the queen's father. And the king and almost all the gray wardens die. Now you survive and is pissed off for what that asshole did so the whole story is you going around recruiting an army and then going off to a landsmeet with him and chopping off his head and imprisoning the queen for treason. Ok you could technically let them live and let the queen rule or marry the queen etc etc. Or kill them and become king/queen yourself. Anyways game ends with you killing the archdemon and everyone calls you the Hero of Fereldan. Then the game ends.

Awakening starts pretty much months after where Origins left off. You're now the warden commander of the gray wardens and you have the land where one of the traitors had and when you start walking to the keep you realize the darkspawn had killed everyone. Those assholes. Also I want to point out that people who purchased DLC and has DLC items will be unable to use them in Awakening. When I ported my character over to Awakening, the game started with me walking naked beside some armored chick. I was going "where is my shit?" Turns out you lose everything that you picked up during any DLC content. Surprise! Continuing on in your underwear you go around killing all the darkspawn and finding out one of them can talk. So once again all the gray wardens are dead and its up to you, the Warden Commander, the Hero of Fereldan, to save Fereldan once again, but this time only in a small area around Amarthine.

Its like the world isn't small enough they have to make it even smaller. The expansion itself is pretty small. Three missions, one defend the keep or defend the city mission and the final mission. You get an extra class specialization point in the expansion and two new class specializations for each main class (mage, rogue, warrior). Also around eight new talents for every class. These are mostly useless because combat got turned extremely easy. You get new items that are completely overpowered. For my mage, I killed a boss and got a amulet that increases arcane damage by 100% and a glove to increase my arcane damage by 30% and a staff that adds 20 spell power. What does that mean? It means all I have to do is cast a single spell and a whole mob of darkspawn dies instantly. The only downside is with friendly fire I keep killing my own tanks or bringing them to near death. But that doesn't really matter because they automatically resurrect after every battle, and battle ends in three seconds at most.

One thing that annoys me is that you get stupid quests that makes "godly items" but to make these items you need materials from Origins. Which means, unless you transferred one of those items you can't make your stupid shield or staff or whatever the shit you want. But the biggest thing is the Joining ritual. In Origins, the Joining ritual is all hush-hush and secretive. No one knows exactly how its done except for the older gray wardens and some mages. You basically take darkspawn blood and use magical shit and mages to make some kind of drink where you drink it. If you survive you get tainted but keep your mind and you become a gray warden. If you don't survive you fall on the floor and die. In Awakening, you get a bunch of people and when they join the gray wardens you just whip out a cup out of nowhere and they drink it and everything is fine. No risk at all. That's not all though, most of the characters you get you get a tiny little minor story about them which takes about five minutes and is like ten lines of text on what their background is and what they are planning to do. After that they just sit around in the keep, content, waiting for you to use them.

So you go around kill more darkspawn and then the game is over as soon as the game started. There are almost nothing linking the two games together. The game feels like they didn't even put any effort into it. They simplified everything and changed elements around so it "fits" the expansion. If the expansion felt more like an expansion then it would be more tolerable. What it feels like is more of a side story than a continuation of the main game.

Tom Clancy's EndWar: A RTS for the lobotomized.

2010-03-27T02:28:00.000-07:00

This is a very old article I've had on the backburner, and have only recently decided to fully write up... Perhaps to just divert attention away from the newly lambasted behemoth of a disgrace, Command and Conquer 4. I wonder if that game is worth writing about though, considering that the outrageous fan retaliation is more drama and lulz-worthy than speaking of the game itself.

Ubisoft's attempt to foray into the RTS genre was a careful one, intending to utilize the popularity of the titular series as a brand of excellence and to garner a sizable playerbase with relatively small investments in advertising. Ultimately, the plan flopped, as RTS veterans and Tom Clancy fans alike recognized the amateur level of design put into EndWar.

In EndWar, you have 2 factions, but the faction differences are purely superficial. The units either possess are the same in utility and function, and are equally few in number. You have 3 units to control in this game. Yep. THREE. Be careful counting them, it's quite a hefty number to wrap your mind around. You can control engineers (ground infantry), gunships (choppers), or ground armor (usually something between BMPs to Light tanks). You order in these units via menu reinforcement support, but once they're in, the headaches begin, despite the game being simple enough for a toddler. I think that is actually the problem: you cannot play this game if you are a RTS veteran who likes to be in control. Immediately lop off all your fingers and just run your face over the keyboard to succeed and prosper.

You'll find immediately that despite being limited by a crippling population cap, 12 units to be precise (infantry squads count as 1 unit), you will be sympathetic towards the reasoning behind the design, as EndWar is a RTS created with console players in mind and their problems stem from this foundation. Official reviewers, such as IGN/Gamespot/Gametrailers rate the product from a console viewpoint, and absolutely adore the game, lavishing at the brilliance of a voice-command interface, streamlined action, and the vivid closeup visuals. But of course they'd fawn over it, as being console players, they are unable to appreciate a game with sustenance, depth and a respectable skill ceiling. Instead, with terrible standard control schemes with analog sticks and a very limited set of command hotkeys, they'd see Ubisoft's latest 'voice command' gimmick as a godsend. Using voice command, a player can issue orders to their units, like 'Squad 4, attack Hostile 3'. Perhaps this puts into perspective why there is such a limited number of units to control, as well as actions to assign. Just imagine trying to say 'Rifleman squad #654, utilize grenade launcher upgrade and lay suppressive fire on hostile infantry #352, 366, 775 until hostile light armored vehicle #445 arrives, then switch to mortars and armor piercing rounds, but individually retreat to LZ positon #34 before your health is diminished below 10 units.' Just imagine trying to issue micro commands with your voice on the fly. With fewer units to control, and a very limited set of possible commands to issue, it makes it easier for console players and their retarded voice command interface. It has all the problems of that AVGN listed about the Konami Laser Scope. Your mouth gets tired, everyone around you finds you annoying, and you feel like a total dork. And you should, for playing this piece of crap.

But you can still choose to turn off the voice command interface, and resort to conventional controls, but you're still severely crippled by absurd command limitations I briefly mentioned above. This is the first RTS I've played where your units cannot be told to move to a location. You did not misread. Selecting your units and right clicking an open area in the map... And nothing will happen. In catering to console players, who do not have the freedom of clicking all over the map like PC players can with their mice, EndWar forces players to move units by either tying it to specific targetable areas or units. That is, if I want to move my gunships anywhere, I have to give it an order to attack something. If there's nothing there, I won't be able to send it anywhere, except for specific 'capture' locations on the map. Just imagine playing Starcraft, but you cant move your tanks unless you have something to attack, or if there's a map object like a mineral to target, yet any of the terrain ANYWHERE are not possible movement zones. It's like playing World of Warcraft, but you cant click anything, or use WASD. You have to use tab to cycle to something you want then type /attack and watch your character auto-path its way to the target. Seriously? Who fucking thought this was a good idea in a RTS? So Gunships don't move anywhere without a valid target. Neither do vehicles. Squads of infantry can take cover behind specific map entities like bunkers (they're a part of the map... You don't build them.) but otherwise can only move in the same way the other units can. How are you supposed to employ strategy when the movements and pathing of your units are so limited? EndWar is literally a RTS on rails, and IF they had rally points, that would already conquer what minuscule challenge exists in this game.

The camera is also terrible, and again, unsuprisingly a fault of trying to cater to console players. Staring at a mass of small individual units is understandably tough on a console player's eyes, who could be trying to squint at their TV across the room. To compensate, Ubisoft places you nearly at street level, with an individual tank taking a massive amount of the screen real estate, which is compounded by the fact that it's no longer a birds eye view camera angle, but a forced tilted angle that's useful for nothing but scenic photography. Pictures explain better than words, so I'd like you to analyze this:

EndWar... This is with the camera zoomed out and tilted as much as possible.

Now, the tanks in the distance don't look huge, but look at your workspace... A thin strip of screen real estate on the lower quarter of the screen, yet above the UI. And with this tilted angle, you can see how impossible it is to select one unit from another. Anything further in the distance is too small to manage, so you need to continually move your screen just to see whats going on in a single skirmish. Why must they have such a stupid ineffective camera angle? Is it a strategy game or a I-like-staring-into-the-sunsets-lulz game?

Barely recognizable as a RTS, EndWar attempts to solidify its position by laying its groundwork with a supremely basic rock-paper-scissor counter system. It is hard to stress how basic the counter system is, but considering that there are only 3 units in the game, it's pretty easy to guess that tanks counter infantry, infantry counter gunships, and gunships counter tanks. There is absolutely no strategy either, you just radio the counter units to what your enemy possesses the most of, issue an attack command and then repeat. If you're slow with your reflexes, there's no need to fret! The counter units take an ETERNITY to kill an opponent, even if you outnumber the target or flank them. I could go take a piss and come back and STILL have enough time to reinforce the squad with units that can counter whatever I'm being attacked by. I get bored idling around watching the battle unfold predictably, seeing a whole set of health bars slowly diminish. Want to be pro at this game? Have an Actions Per Minute of 3. If that wasn't slow and shallow enough for you, there's no need to construct a supportive unit or use skills with cooldowns or even micro your existing units. More accurately, there's no way to do that even if you wanted to. There are no supportive units, there are no unit skills, and you can't issue movement commands, which basically kills any of the usual things you'd expect in a RTS.

EndWar turns extremely aggravating in about 5 minutes of play as you realize, the more effort you invest to manage your units, the more futile and infuriating it becomes. I best describe EndWar as a Chinese fingertrap; don't bother trying to overcome it's crippling mechanics, just put hot irons in your retinas and sign up for a lobotomy, then sit down and enjoy. It's not even close to being acceptable as a RTS; I find a children's Fit-The-Shapes-Into-The-Slots game more strategic.

Heroes of Newerth - Ripoff of Dota

2010-01-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

Lets start off with a quote:

"Heroes of Newerth is a game by S2 Games which is heavily based upon the Warcraft III scenario Defense of the Ancients"

Alright, it is not heavily based upon Dota, it is Dota. Its plain plagiarism. They didn't even attempt to change it. You have the same heroes, same map layout, same skills, same items, same creeps, same everything. With the exception of adding a few new items removing some items and removing/adding heroes. That's like photocopying a picture drawing a smiley face on it and say its a new drawing.

"Heroes of Newerth has been in development for around 3 months. The first 13 months consisted of further developing S2's K2 Engine used by previous projects for Heroes of Newerth, while the remaining time was spent replicating DotA mechanics and content as correctly as possible, re-skinning the game with new art, and developing a small amount of new content in the form of maps, items, heroes and hero tweaks."

Like Dota, it also attracts the most horrible and retarded player base. Thankfully, they added a rating system so if people rage quit early they get penalized. Dota had that problem and people could just make new accounts when they get ban listed. Here, you can't make a new account and/or avoid a drop in rating. If you leave too many games you'll automatically get banned from games that require a low leave rating. HOWEVER! HoN has a feature called concede. Like what the word means, its pretty much surrendering. If the full team concedes then the game is over. What happens usually is people die a few times rage and spam the concede button and everyone eventually clicks and then the game is over in 15 minutes. You can't concede before 15 minutes and people ensure that you concede by reminding you of how much of a failure the team is at life itself, false claims of everyone's sexual orientation, and repeated accusations of how everyone's mom may or may not have slept with many men.

There is also a huge flaw in the rating system. Even if you're great you have a team of morons who doesn't know the right end of a sword, you're going to get your ass handed to you. And no one likes to receive their own ass. This also makes people host games that require you to have a certain rating to play. You automatically assume that your allies won't be completely retarded but you find out that they're just as stupid as someone at 1300 rating because they've been carried the whole way. They also added an auto balance tool that automatically balances the game based on rating so its as close as 50/50 as possible. However, you always get loser hosts that sneakily stack his own team right before game starts so its like 80/20.

Like Dota, the same modes are there, all pick, all random, easy mode, single draft, random draft, banning draft, etc etc. Like Dota, you get morons who can't play non easy mode. In easy mode money and level is gained at an increased rate so people who like to play carry can reach late game easier. There are different types of heroes like tank heroes, support heroes, carry heroes, and the super carry heroes. Tank heroes usually run in first and initiate the fight, they usually also have lots of stuns letting them do a lot of ganking early and mid game forcing the carry heroes to stay low while your carry heroes gain lots of exp/gold. Support is support with usually lot of disables and nukes. This means they're the best assist/ganking hero. Carry heroes suck shit at early and mid game and start to shine at late game. During late game they get so powerful they can carry the entire team. These heroes usually have no stuns or nukes and rely heavily on gear and level. They are extremely vulnerable early and mid game.

What does all this mean? It means everyone would pick a carry hero suck at it and then get ganked repeatedly until they rage quit. In easy mode games this is doable, but in non easy mode you're going to have to work very hard to farm up without tankers and support. The game itself isn't bad, but the player base itself for public games pretty much ruin this game. Player base problems aside there is also the problem with balance. There are new heroes that S2Games added and or "rebalanced." These heroes are completely overpowered and can dominate anyone if played by anyone would a positive IQ. This also means every retard spams the button on those heroes the second the game starts and picks them asap.

Overall, Heroes of Newerth is nothing new, just a re-skinned Dota with blaring balance issues. It suffers from the same player base problems that Dota has and S2Games even duplicated bugs in Dota which was caused by Warcraft 3's Engine. Biggest issue I have with this game is that they didn't even attempt to change anything. Half the people still refer to the heroes, items, creeps, skills, and everything in Dota terms. They layout is the same the combat is the same even the UI is the same. Everything is the same, even the recipes. They used almost the same UI, there are some flaws that I really dislike about it but its not much different from Warcraft 3. I still prefer Wacraft 3's any day. Whats funny is they're not copying the whole game, they're copying a game, within a game. Its like you made a game off of Final Fantasy 7's chocobo racing and sell it and made money off it but called it "Giant Bird Racer." The worst part is Dota is free, they don't make money from it. These guys decided to rip it right off and make money off it. Fucking assholes.

Fallout 3 - A Haiku

2009-11-07T01:48:00.000-08:00

Fucking boring game
Deleted in an hour
Best decision made

Eternal Poison - Gothic Fetishists Beware!

2009-10-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

Well to start things off. Its another Atlus game, not that Atlus games are bad but it just happens that they have a lot of shitty games. This game isn't very well known and I don't even know why I bothered with it. I found it by accident and I thought that if they made Disgea it couldn't be that bad right? They can't screw up tactic games that bad right? Its like valve making a shitty fps. Oh wait. Well the game itself isn't that bad but extremely frustrating at times. Hey don't take it from me, the only guide I managed to find online to beat this shitty game happens to have an introduction from the writer. To quote her.

You know, I'd love to do one of those introductions that says "This is such a
great game, I love it, blah, blah, blah" but I can't.  This game drove me
absolutely crazy.  The only reason I finished was because I was writing this
FAQ for it.  It's not the worst game out there, the story and characters are
good, but it's really the same thing OVER and OVER and OVER.  Maybe this FAQ
will make it so the game drives all you reading it less crazy than it drove me.

Yeah sounds kinda familiar. It sounds like me! Except I'm not finishing to write a guide I'm finishing so I can bitch about it here. Well, I didn't finish but I don't plan on finishing. Its just way too repetitive and boring.

You start off the game with an introduction where this chick is running away from majins (demons) and then this wolf jumps out of nowhere and saves her. Then the screen shifts and you see some Gothic chick in black frilly clothing. Then its over. That was disappointing. Well get used to it. Well you start with some "training stage" where you play as the wolf, Raki, and Thage the Gothic witch. When you start playing you'll notice how fucking long the combat takes. I know I constantly complain how much time is wasted on loading for some games, this one takes the cake. Every time you go into combat with an enemy the screen goes black for about 10-15 seconds then you load your characters in 3d and higher graphics and if it happens to be the first time you meet this specific target on the map he/she will often sing if its a majin or talk if its a human, then the combat animation begins. You run over and wack them on the head with a book and the damage shows and then you wait another 10-15 seconds of blackout before you go back onto the tactic screen. Every single time.

That is not all. You can hit the button and cancel the combat animation but you have no indication of how much damage you did or took. But that doesn't stop the blackout you have to sit though. It may save 10-15 seconds of the combat animation but not the loading. So what do you want, to sit and wait 10-15 seconds to see the damage or hit the button save 10-15 seconds and have no idea what happened. Fortunately I found that you can set an option to turn off all this shit. THANK GOD. Because half the time you're waiting for loading during combat. The other half is useless stupid bullshit being spoken by your characters. Here is an example of the combat chatter you are forced to listen to.

Thage: Where is the eternal poison?
Majin: Die humans!
Raki: Be careful these majin are stronger than the ones we fought before
Thage: Don't worry I'll trap them all in my librum and then grind them into dust
Majin: eieieieieieieieie give me the book
Majin2: eeieieieiei you die human
Majin3: eieieie book
Retica: Why do they go crazy when they see Thage's book?
Majin: eieieiei die heretic

What the hell? Every battle has stupid boring talks like this. Most of the time its even worse. Well after the "training stage" you go into the main start up screen again and now you can start a new game, which lets you pick three out of the five possible characters. The first three that are open are Thage, which you saw already some knight named Olifen and the priestess Ashley. After you beat one, the legendary hero Rondenimium is open and after that the asshole guy. So I picked Thage just to continue where the training left me off at and they started talking in terrible voice acting. Some are decent, most are retarded. Luckily, Thage's route has some nice voice actors. Can't say the same for Olifen though but we'll get to that later. The story all takes place in Besek which is kinda like Castlevania. Its the homeland of the majin which appears randomly in the world and every time it appears its different.

Well to start off Thage's route, you (Thage) and Raki (wolf) are wandering around when you see a boy. What do you do when you see a boy? Obviously you fucking cast a spell of servitude and make him your slave. Just to show off your dominance over him you nearly break his skull and send into into a shivering pile of pain. I wanna point out that Thage is one of the cooler characters in any game. Its not often you see in a Jrpg, a female caster that's not soft spoken. In fact, her ego is bigger than the moon. She goes around acting all high and mighty and doesn't take shit from no one. If someone tries to go against her she fucking locks them into the Librium then takes them into a giant grinding pot and release them in there and listen to their screams.

So you start walking around in Besek capturing every majin you see. This leads to another thing. In combat, you will often be forced to capture majin. How do you do this? By overkilling them. This is a very annoying thing to do. Half the time when you try to overkill you fail and when you don't want to overkill you do. This is how it works. Say a majin with 100 health for simplicity has an overkill amount of 30. This means if you do over 130 damage its an overkill but if you do 100-129 its not. Say you bring it down to 20. The next hit you do 60 damage that's a 40 damage overkill. You've captured it. But it doesn't just get captured no it gets impaled onto a pink cross on the tactic map. You have to waste a characters turn by walking next to it and hitting capture. If you did say 30 damage instead of 60 damage that's only a 10 damage overkill and it disappears instead of being captured.

I have a few complaints about this overkill thing but I'll start with the most basic one. Not letting us decide if we want to overkill it or not. Say you overkilled it, and you end your turn. But another enemy's turn happens to be next what does he do? He walks over and frees the captured majin healing him to full health. What the shit is that about? If I knew his turn was next then I wouldn't have overkilled the shitty majin. But here is the problem, try as you might, but your damage is way too high that you cannot kill it without possibly overkilling. What do you do? Leave it alive until you are sure your party member can finish it off and let it deal damage to you? Also I like to point out that enemy damage in this game is ridiculously high. You don't get many healers or healing skills and if you die you're dead for the entire fight. That's pretty normal in a tactic game, but when two hits from two different majins kill you that's not normal. If you blindly charge in half your party will die. If you stay back and pick them off one by one then your melee don't get exp and end up being completely useless in the end.

Magic in this game is ridiculously powerful. Compare it to other tactic games. Whats magic like? Usually medium-high damage multi-target but a long cast time or slow moving mages. In this game though casters are fast, high damage usually single handily killing or over killing majins in one single shot. Lets take the common tactic characters.

-Slow moving heavily armored melee that hits like a truck but at the speed of a snail
-Fast moving lightly armored melee that packs a punch but takes hits like a wet paper bag
-Horribly overpowered archers that can shoot down enemies from range without ever getting hit
-Mages that suck because by the time the spells cast the enemies are already dead or nearly dead.

In this games mages are the best followed by light melee then archers than the heavy melee. Why? Because melee don't get skills/spells so they can only normal attack for around say 40-50 damage and they are also going to take many hits. Heavy ones can probably do 60-70 damage but good luck getting them over being being blasted to death by mages. Archers do pitiful 10-20 damage and they cannot shoot diagonally only in a straight line but they also get magic but that magic also does a pitiful 20-30 damage. Now mages, they do around 200-300 damage a hit and can hit up to 5 targets at once. They also have high magic defense so they don't get blasted to death by enemy mages and could also heal themselves with magical spells. Even with the massive health pool that a slow ass heavy melee has the magic will completely destroy them in a single hit because they don't have any magic defense at all making them completely useless except for maps which is heavily melee oriented. But good luck getting them to a high level for those maps.

Leveling is bullshit. To gain exp you must do one of the following, hit something, kill something, capture something, heal someone. Hitting an enemy may give you a dinky 5 exp, while healing an ally gives you 15 exp. Capturing gives you maybe 20 exp. Now killing something gives you like 200 exp. Which happens to be all your mages. So near the end of the game, I was purposely sending all my melee in to get slaughtered while my mages picked them off one by one and my archers were my healers and buffers since they were low level and couldn't do anything. Its not like you can pick and choose a bunch of mages and have many heroes to call into battle. No for every route all the heros you can get are exactly the same. All the things they say are nearly exactly the same and all the skills are nearly the same(will get into that). There are around ten heroes in the game that you can hire. You may only bring a maximum of eight heroes into combat, which includes your main story characters for example Thage's route is Thage, Raki and Reticus the slave boy, this gives you five slots to pick characters from.

Horrible combat, horrible leveling, horrible character interactions. What else could be next. A lot. Lets get back to the story. Thage's route you are on a quest of world domination with your two slaves. Every time you finish a map you go back to town to talk to people, play mini games and other useless shit. Buy your gear and get out. When you leave the town you go into the map selection screen. I like to point out that you can only keep going forward and can never backtrack or repeat a stage. This means that if some characters are too low leveled they are screwed forever because they cannot get exp. Besek is split into three stratum's. The first stratum varies from the chosen storyline hero. The first stratum changes based on the memories of the hero. Which helps introduce the character a bit. Then you reach the second stratum which is the same for every hero. The second stratum is divided into three large branching paths each leading to a gate. Each path is laid out like a column and you can jump from column to column at specific maps on the paths. Jumping usually doesn't do anything so there is no reason to do that. Once you pick it stick with it to the end. The last stratum is two columns leading into two different gates. Behind that is the ending. I thought it was pretty cool at first being able to pick and choose the path you want to take. Until I realized you cannot beat the game without the good ending. The gate on the third stratum will remain closed and you game over and start all over from the beginning.

Yes at the beginning as in you lose everything and it automatically saves you to New Game+. Now start climbing and pick another path because the one you took before is wrong! Here's the kick in the crotch. To get the good ending you must follow a very very specific path AND satisfy some very specific criteria. No point spoiling it or explaining it because its too specific and hard to understand. In other words, if you don't have a guide you'd be playing the same character over and over again just to find out what that path is. There is no clear indication telling you where to go which path to take as there are way too many maps. There are say about two-three smaller in every large column. So if there are three columns in the second stratum threes around maybe 20-26 maps in total. You probably take 5-6 maps to get to a gate. To walk in the correct order to the end is fucking impossible. That's not all. On some maps the only way to summon the "secret" boss is to satisfy some conditions. The first condition is actually calling them out. For example one boss you must capture both golems on the map. This means if you accidentally killed one instead of overkilling then the boss failed to get called out and if that boss is needed for your route then you get locked into going to the bad end. Some of them are ridiculously hard to satisfy as well. Like one you have to capture a jade sylph and a thiefler but every time you overkill the enemies will kill them when they are impaled so you can never capture them. While others you must kill every enemy and leave a specific one alive. That is hard as hell because it'll keep running towards you blasting you with magic.

Now that we got all that covered its onto the inventory! Your characters can equip up to three weapons an armor and two accessories. What is the point of equipping those weapons? Not much. You can use a slash weapon, a pierce weapon, a blunt weapon but most characters can't equip more than one so its wasted. You can equip skills that's drawn out from grinding up majin in the grinder but that's locked onto your weapon. I still don't get how it works and the game never bothered to explain it. Neither did they explain how to summon a majin and it wasn't until my second play though and searching online that I found out how to do that. Sometimes one character from one hero's route can wear some equipment and then suddenly they can't. For example there was a light fighter, Ares who in Thage's route was one of the stronger melee. Shes fast and can run twice as far as anyone and has could use a spear which has a two cell range and could hit two targets at once by piercing them. But in Olifen's route she can only use a sword which sucks. Nena from Thage's route is a massive spellcaster but in Olifen's route her magic can't do anything. Infact, everyone in Olifen's route sucks. Olifen sucks too.

Now if you equip three weapons and say you want to use a combo. The combo won't let you select what weapon to use. Say a majin is weak to strike but resistant to pierce. If you have a spear and a hammer and you used a spear on another majin earlier using the combo will force you to use the last weapon you used. Also for characters that can use say a book and a sword. The book adds int and the sword adds damage. If you use the sword you are locked into using the sword until you hit with a book. This means if you use magic the damage is severely reduced. I think. I don't even fucking know because the game never explains it to you. Even with a book the magic of a melee fighter does nothing. Is it better to equip three books? No your stats never increase more than your first book. The levels of the gear are too far apart as well. Say you buy a sword for a lv 8. The next sword is at say lv 14. The sword does decent damage at 8, start sucking at 9 and at 10 you can barely kill anything and you're stuck at lv 11 while the mages are lv 25. Great.

Magic also sucks shit. There are a few elements, Fire, Dark, Earth, Holy, Wind, and Water. The only ones that matter are Fire, Dark, and Wind. These are the three elements that actually do damage and your characters have the "mastery" to use. Mastery as in, even if you equip a spell that you have extracted from a Majin say a water magic attack may still only do 50 damage even if it was Water4 and you're using Dark1. If it doesn't fit your character its garbage. Unfortunatly the only mages you seem to get are Fire, Dark and Wind. And the skills the enemies cast are that as well. Then you get the deal with the bosses. They start off with a "Demon Aura" that you have to break. This is completely random. Some are easy like "hit it with a strike attack" even though he has no weakness to strike. Until you hit it with a strike attack it is immune to damage. Then there are the more annoying ones like "Use skill from boss that you captured many maps back. Oh wait you didn't overkill him? Well too bad its game over start new game+." Then you get annoying bosses that need "earth magic" to break. The hell? You barely even get earth magic in this game.

I like to point out that this game has a really gothic feel to it. You get people in black frilly clothes, too much mascara and guys that look like chicks and chicks that look like guys and all that shit. And everyone talks all twisted and evil or incredibly cheery. The english dub doesn't help because its just terrible. This is getting very long and there is much more to say about this game but since I haven't finished I can't really judge them yet. Maybe if I finish it one day. But that day probably won't be happening in this lifetime. Maybe in the future someone will dig up this CD from some ancient dig site from the past, find a playstation, a TV and put this in. Then the whole civilization collapses because everyone commits mass suicide. So until then, this will be the last you hear of this shit. Game sucks, if you want to play tactic games theres way more. Try Disgaea by Atlus its not that good but its decent. Lets end it with one more quote from our FAQ writer.

For some reason I don't understand, to clear the first story you need to see
both the good and bad endings, but after that a story is cleared by seeing
either the good or bad ending.  This game just keeps making up rules as it goes
along...

There you go this game cheats

Persona 4 - The cure for insomnia

2009-09-04T00:06:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read my Persona 3 post its right here:

http://theorycrafting.blogspot.com/2009/04/persona-3-destroying-world-with-apathy.html

First thing you are wondering is. If I hated persona 3 so much, why the hell would I want to play persona 4? Well, I'm asking the same question. I guess I'm just a masochist or I'm messed up and like to torture myself. I wasn't lied to this time to play this game. Where did I hear of this game? Well, I was telling someone about the horrible game that is Persona 3 when I saw Persona 4. I was laughing going what kind of horrible game has a sequel. Read the review saw a 9/10 and I was like what the hell? Well, if it makes you feel better, everyone who wrote that review is dead. They died of cancer from playing the game. Good going Persona 4.

Well it starts off just like Persona 3, in fact the whole game is exactly like Persona 3. It has the same cut-scenes, a whole new interface layout but very nicely done as usual. Probably the only good thing about Persona is the interface layout. Very artistic. Since I already have a Persona 3 post up and there is a lot of similarities I will not go into too much detail. The start is about the same you have someone sign a contract with you and you end up in the velvet room when you dream and you blah blah blah. Typical Persona stuff. One major thing you will notice at the very start of the game is that there is no lunar cycle for the calendar, instead its replaced with a forecast of the week. NOW THIS FORECAST THIS IS COMPLETELY RETARDED. Its confusing, It doesn't follow any pattern. They say when it rains, and you don't save the person in the midnight channel, they die and the game is over. Well it rains. A LOT. So what the hell? Do they die or not die? Well apparently, its only if it rains THROUGH THE NIGHT. which you have no idea of because in the afternoon/night you go out its still raining but once you go to sleep the rain suddenly stops? What?

Yeah about the story, you're this kid who came from the big city into a small town and you meet your uncle (detective) and cousin (elementary schooler) who you have to live with for an year for some unknown reason other than your uncle saying your mother insisted he take you in. There you meet a few people, Youske, which is like Junpei from persona 3. The comic relief guy. He happens to have a habit of getting hit in the balls. Ouch. Probably won't be having any kids in the future. Then you meet the two girls, Chie the tomboy who has a habit of kicking people in the balls, usually Youske, and Yukiko the quiet girl. And like Yukari in Persona 4, while everyone is wearing black school uniform these two wear red and green. So they really really stand out. No one else is wearing another color just those two. Why the inconsistencies?

Anyways right away you get thrown into a murder mystery. Wow! Isn't that great! A good story! Well, to tell you the truth. Yeah the story isn't half bad. MUCH better than Persona 3 and there aren't any emo things in the game at all. The whole game you're trying to solve a murder mystery while saving the victims and going to school at the same time. Unlike Persona 3 there isn't a tartarus or a big dungeon where there is like 300 floors to climb with 50 bosses. That's a major improvement because you won't have stupid stuff like going inside a dungeon dying and having to re-climb 20 floors and waste an hour of grinding. Instead you get small dungeon where you can leave and continue at where you left off anytime. Big improvement. The combat also is much better. Instead of you only controlling the main character, you can control your whole party now like any other jrpg.

Although combat is way better than in Persona 3 and the story is way better, the focus on the story and combat is less than in Persona 3. It seems like you have so much more free time to do whatever you want. Usually that means social links and raising your stats, (which there is 5 now instead of 3 by the way). This means you rescue someone early you will have like 20 more days until the next event. The date varies but its usually less than a month like persona 3 which is every 30 days on the spot. You will get a event and for the next few days you'll find another victim and you have to rescue them before they get murdered. While at the same time you're looking for clues to pinpoint the motive and the murderer. There are lots of fake clues and stuff and near the end if you pick the wrong choices you'll go into a bad ending.

Its a shame that they left so much free time. Like persona 3 you are just skipping days go to school come home go to sleep repeat for the week. Like come on, that's not playing the game. I know I just want to get to the end but is it so repetitive. Its like real life. Hell you know what I feel like when I play this game? I feel like if I was sitting in my Accounting class first thing in the morning. I can't keep my eyes open and I want to fall asleep so bad. THIS GAME IS THE CURE FOR INSOMNIA!

Instead of buying items this time, you get the shitty system of finding items drops from creatures and selling it to the shop to forge items with. Why the hell are all the games doing this nowadays? What happened to just going to a shop and buying an item? And who the hell sells swords, steel fans, metal claws, daggers, guns, metal chairs, steel boots to kids? And what kind of weapon is a fan? And how the hell do you make say a gun out of wooden parts you found from a table monster. Or a snake monster dropping body parts which turns into a giant katana. What the hell? Next time I'm going to a metalwork store and handing them chopped giant beetle parts and asking them to make a steel fan for me.

The characters are way better than Persona 3. Better development, no annoying voices and everything but there also seems to be a lot less focus on the characters. They did a better job but why do they have to keep everything to social links. I know a part of the game is to "date" people but half the time its annoying trying to find the right persona to have with you to gain better points and finding the right day so you can see that guy. One positive thing in Persona 4 though, is that the girls are much more aggressive. Good, I like aggressive girls. But they also don't give a crap when you date more than one girl at a time. Really? In persona 3 just talking to another girl while you're dating pisses them off to hell, but here you can be dating one girl and another girl invades on your date and chases the other one off and force you to go on a date with her instead. Damn, what a bitch. Anyways its pretty dumb and they focused on that way too much instead of the main game. The guys though, like persona 3 don't give a crap about anything.

Like persona 3, there is also some gay innuendo for your male social links. There's no guy telling you he dreams of you when he goes to sleep and when he closes his eyes its you he sees. What he hell, it reminds me of that Michelle Branch song. Anyways they seem to have changed it around. Now you get a "gay" guy (party memeber) running in a bath towel in a steamy bathhouse (dungeon) with lots of guys making gay sounds in the back and muscle men doing very gay poses with weird moaning. You know I think the Japanese has some kind of fetish of moaning muscle men. In Godhand you had to fight a pair of gay muscle men on your way into Elvis' club. These guys they seemed weak at the start but holy hell are they tough. Butt slam you and then crotch hump the air. And when you kick them in the balls they don't go apeshit like other male mobs they just continue beating you. Assholes. Back to persona 4, there is also a cross dressing contest. Yeah...

Sigh, it has the stupid school system and tests and quizzes and everything. Its exactly like persona 3. The questions are just as hard and you'll still need google to get the right answers. But just to turn up the shittiness, they decide that you will have annoying quests and cooking! Cooking isn't that hard if its something easy. Like for example Croquettes, and California rolls. You pretty much have to pick the right order on how to do things that's pretty easy. But once you get a food that's pure gibberish in Japanese you know you're fucked. Quests are annoying. Most quests involve, talking to someone who only shows up on certain days at certain places so you usually forget you have that quest unless you wander around the town EVERY SINGLE DAY talking to everyone. Then you have the collection quests where they want something but they can't find it. So they ask you who happens to be able to go into the other world and collect items from magical places. For example, a guy wants a crystal ball. Why? who knows. He will also say, "You might find one from some statue maybe in an area with an adult atmosphere?" Ok so you know where it is. It must be from the relic statues in Markuyu Stiptease. Yeah a striptease, I won't get into it so just use your imagination. So you go back and fight endless monsters until it appears and kill it hoping it'll drop. You go back give it to the guy now what. "Oh I want some blah blah blah you might find it from a table, maybe in a secret base?" WELL? HOW ABOUT FUCK YOU? Stupid quests.

One thing I also like to point out is a lot of options you can't pick because you don't have the stats to on your first play through. Like for example, you get to ask Chie and Yukiko for their numbers if you have a high enough courage if you started a second play through. But on your first you can't. WHY NOT!? Geez how much courage do you need to ask for their number. Not like it makes a difference because you can get their numbers from Youske later anyways. All you get is them being shy and then they give you. Another thing. Whats the deal with your cousin. She's like being modeled into a freaking housewife. I hate housewives. Freaking scary people.

Last but not least, you have riddle quests. These riddle quests are completely retarded. You get two groups, group a and group b. and the guy will give you 2 items in each group and give you a 5th item where you must guess which group it goes into and why.

Protractor is in group A
Alarm Clock is in group B

Basketball is in group A
Eggbeater is in group B

What group does Running shoes go into? and why?

Obviously this isn't the riddle but its similar. The answer is A and its human motion. What!?

Other than that its pretty much the same game repackaged into Persona 4. The persona are almost exactly the same. Some have different skills, some got rebalanced some changed Arcana entirely but 90% of them are exactly the same. Also they use the same creatures you find in Persona 3 in Persona 4. Exactly the same sprites but different names and colors. And some mini bosses are repeated as well. You fight the exact same boss in Persona 3 in Persona 4. The annoying table boss that does shit loads of damage. Except this time its way easier because of the better AI. Talking about difficulty, Persona 4 is MUCH easier than Persona 3. MUCH easier. Boss battles may be annoying but unlike Persona 3 there really isn't much strategy than keep your 3 turn defense/attack/hit/dodge buffs up the whole time and heal when low. Really? I know Persona 3 is hard but they made Persona 4 into a time wasting joke. But the thing is it may be easy but the fight isn't any shorter. It takes like half an hour each time you fight a boss. Annoying as all hell.

Don't get me started on the last boss. Its a joke in Persona 4. It doesn't do anything but spam the same moves over and over and over. Unlike Persona 3, it only took about an hour-ish to finally kill it. And it has 2 forms? Persona 3 you had to fight through like 13 forms before you reach the real one and each form has different skills and weakness/immunity and strategies. Took hours to kill that guy. I know it wasn't worth it but do they have to drag it on forever? Also they went WAY overboard with instant death in Persona 4. There is one dungeon where every mob spams instant death you enter combat you see 6 mobs each of them spams instant death. It works 100% of the time as well and once your main character dies its game over. So I kept dying and dying the second I get into combat. Also you can't just escape from combat. When you click escape, they go "ok let me find you an exit," and by the time you can escape, you are dead or your enemies are dead already so what is the point? So I ran past every single creature and went directly for the boss. I was 10 levels under the recommended level and I still beat him after many many tries. God. That place makes me sick. Heaven my ass, more like hell. Yeah the dungeon was Heaven.

Anyways, to summarize everything. This game sucks. Its like persona 3. It did better than persona 3 but that's not saying much. Anything can be better than persona 3. This is the type of game you should be ashamed of playing. Like you secretly play it alone without letting people know and people ask if you heard of persona you go "huh whats persona?" Yeah one of those games. Rhapsody: A musical adventure was one of those but unlike that, this game isn't cute, it isn't funny, it isn't fun at all! Once you play it you're infected with cancer as well! The end and I hope the cancer kills me fast.

Dark Messiah - Conveniently placed spiked walls and ledges

2009-08-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

When you see a swarm of enemies come towards you what is your first reaction? Blast them with magic? Shoot them with your bow? Stab them in the face with your sword or daggers? NO! You kick them. The kick isn't like the wimpy stomp in Dead Space. When you kick someone they fly back 20 feet as if they got rammed by a truck usually into a conveniently placed spiked wall or ledge. What the hell? Yes, exactly. Dark Messiah is an action game by Ubisoft. You follow the adventures of Sareth, the orphan apprentice to the mage Phenrig to uncover your past and fulfill the prophecy of the dark messiah.

Here is a trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegsGlGvtAU

Doesn't sound too bad. We'll get there. First of all. Why the hell would there be so many spiked walls? Do people actually put spiked walls in their garden, their study, the streets of a city, the sides of a boat, even the sides of a mountain. Who would build spiked walls everywhere. If it was me I'd probably hold back on building all those just in case some crazed guy walks over and kicks you towards it instantly impaling you to death. And you don't need to send them flying with a kick to impale them, its as if they have some sort of magnetic pull against flesh and bone that you just get near and BAM your head is on the spikes.

The whole game involves doing some crazy platforming jumps, solving riddles, and murdering hordes of enemies. These jumps are frustrating. Its not hard to do a jump yeah, you can do it, but what you don't realize is some kind of trap that sends you over the ledge. A enemy you didn't see that kills you in two hits because you picked an assassin. Yeah that's another thing. If you don't want to suffer while playing this game, don't pick an assassin. Its fun when you're able to stealth and do some back stab instant kills and silent kills with arrows. The thing is 80% of the time you are unable to stealth. Most of the time I'm just running in and strafing around hitting my mouse key as fast as I can to cut stuff up.

Another part of the platforming jumps is that you have to use something called the "Rope Bow." Its a bow where you shoot an arrow with a rope attached. A rope will drop from the arrow towards the ground until it hits something then swings back and forth for a few seconds. DO NO JUMP ONTO THE ROPE WHILE IT SWINGS. I've got my character stuck in so many things because I was impatient. And how the hell does a full grown man hang on a rope attached to an arrow attached to a piece of wood? And how does the Rope Bow have unlimited ammunition? You can get endless ammunition for your normal bow if you find the secret item the unlimited quiver but that is besides the point. I guess they don't want you stuck because you're shooting it everywhere like a dumb ass because there is no clear indication on where you have to go.

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE A LOT. And whenever you load your last save, your character does an attack and most likely it'll hit something alerting all the guards and kicking your ass because you can't sneak up on them to do a back stab. Not only this, auto saving while fighting a enemy will cause your weapons to lock up. In other words, your weapons turn invisible and you cannot open your item menu or use your hot keys or even switch weapons. Even doing a load back to your last save will continue to have this bug since that was where the bug occurred. So the only way is to load back another save earlier.

Some creatures to kill are inconsistent as well. Kicking a human down like 5 feet will cause them to die, but some creatures don't. For example spiders. You'll be seeing these A LOT. Now you don't fuck with giant spiders. These things will kick your ass. They have a poisonous bite that will drain your health unless you use an antidote. Its not like oh 1 heath per few seconds. No, it drains like 10% of your health per second. Second they come in swarms. And when you try to kick them off a huge ass cliff they just land on their backs and start climbing the cliff back. I kicked them off over and over and they kept climbing up. Eventually they got pissed or something and started crawling through the ground. I was getting bit I looked around saw nothing moved back and a spider was crawling out of the bricks. One thing I learned about spiders. Don't kick them off cliffs or they get angry. And you won't like it when they get angry.

Here is an example of the kicks - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg8h0VAhnYw

As hard as it is to do the crazy jumps and fight impossible creatures. The bosses are incredibly easy. Most bosses can be exploited or they have some kind of event where they just die instantly if you do so and so. For example, you're wandering around the temple and a Pao Kai (dragon) flies down and starts breathing lightning on you. You run to a tunnel and he sticks his head in. You hit the lever and the gate falls down and kills him. Its not like its hard either. Leanna (the bitch) even tells you to run over there and hit the switch while she stands in the center in clear line of sight of the dragon and watches the dragon chase you. What the hell? Even the last boss, you are able to back stab him while he's busy looking away instantly killing him. At first I didn't even realize he was the last boss until the events started to happen.

Last boss, that leads me to something else. The story is terrible. The only saving grace is Xana who accompanies you since the beginning adding jealous comments against Leanna or evil whisperings to congratulate you on what you have done or telling you what you should do. The storyline automatically points you towards the good ending, and you have to constantly do the opposite just to get the bad ending. Sareth automatically chose to not listen to Xana and listen to Leanna. Xana was annoying at the start but gets a bit likable. The ending is terrible. Its about 20 seconds of cut scenes and its over. Pretty much showing you either, banishing the evil demon lord or saving the evil demon lord. With no explanation of what is going on or whats going to happen or whatever.

You can also be an asshole and start abusing things with your bow. If you can't beat them, shoot a rope arrow climb up and start shooting at them out of melee range. This is what usually happens....
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Help me!" - bad guy
*bad guy starts running away*
*fires arrow*
*bad guy dies*

This works on bosses as well. I just stand there lobbing arrows with my endless quiver until they die. Not because I wanted to be cheap but because I can't do any damage to them. I chose not to learn magic or to wear heavy armor with a huge sword. I wanted to be an assassin, and this is what I got. As long as they are dead, the job is done right? Who cares about honor or cheapness. I guess they did do a good job on designing the assassin after all. Worked out pretty well.

To sum it all up, this game is short, but frustrating as hell. Its shitty but hilarious at the same time. If you like say, oblivion then you wouldn't like this game. It reminded me of oblivion when I started but holy hell the stages just keep going on and on and on and on. It takes forever and how many freaking jumps are there? Well If I said it was completely horrible I'd be lying. It was still decently fun. Still "fun" enough to finish the game I suppose. Its not like Persona 3 where I was only finishing the game to get the ending and to see how much torture I can give myself.

By the way here's Xana for you - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DYm8j3cAxk

In German so you don't get spoiled. No there's no hot succubus sex you fucking pervert.

Monkey Island - Take a Caribbean cruise away from the shitty games

2009-08-14T00:12:00.001-07:00

Lets take a break from the shit. Think back to when it was 1990 and a brand new lucasarts game came out. That game was called Monkey Island. Its an adventure game where you follow Guybrush Threepwood on his quest to become a mighty pirate. Really nothing more I can elaborate on. Whats special is its humor and witty comments and choices. Many of them also break the fourth wall. If you really want to know you can check up on youtube.

Why am I writing this? Well it is because Telltale games and Lucasarts are making a sequel called "Tales of Monkey Island." It will be released in parts each month. The first part is out but I've yet to check it out. I'll wait until all of them are out before I'll play them. But from what people are saying, it looks promising and the gameplay trailer looks decent enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP5uDNhOiPg

I like how it uses a mouse again. The first three used a mouse, until the fourth of the series which suddenly changed to keyboard/controller. It made things difficult as hell but the game itself was still fun to play. How will Telltale games do on Monkey Island? Better be damn good.

I Fucking Knew It.

2009-08-13T01:48:00.000-07:00

http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jforum/posts/list/19892.page

http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jforum/posts/list/19952.page

So, EA admitted that they stole their innovative RTS ideas from other games. I kind of already went over all that bullshit a few posts back here though, so I'm really not surprised in any way. The EA boards probably has more skeptics than fanboys, but the naive defiance of the latter generally makes the atmosphere too stifling to follow.

First you have fanboys who fiercely defend the franchise for being innovative, but then change gears when evidence says otherwise. Now they're justifying the borrowing of gameplay ideas, claiming that many games borrow inspiration from the others before them, but they heavily gloss over the fact that the 'borrowed' ideas aside, CNC4 has nothing innovative of its own. As the PC gamer podcast (second link) says, EA's 'first ever RTS with mobile bases' appeal is ridiculous, as they must have never played another RTS in their life. It makes sense though, EA has always been a company lagging behind their competitive developers, with blinders over their eyes and plugs in their ears.