Duke Nukem Forever - It should've remained dead

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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.