Tuesday 30 April 2013

Doing DRM Right

While I was staring at my Facebook last night I came across an article on the PCGamer website talking about a little trick that the developer of a game called Game Dev Tycoon played on it's user base.

For those that want to read the whole thing, you can find it here http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/29/indie-development-sim-game-dev-tycoon-gives-pirates-a-taste-of-their-own-torrenting/

For those that just want a quick summary, the deal is that in this game you run a team of game developers.  The idea is that your supposed to make games and make money to build a decent game development company.  At least I think that's how it works, I've not actually played it.  Anyway, the developer released a cracked version of the game to torrent sites where if you had torrented the game, after reaching a certain point all your releases would be pirated, you would make no money and go out of business.

This is fucking DRM done properly, it's not fucking over any legitimate players are is giving hilarious results to those that did pirate the game.  My personal favourite quote from that article was a screen cap of a guy saying "Can I research DRM or something?"

The other awesome anti-piracy measures mentioned in that article was Serious Sam 3s immortal scorpion that will chase you for eternity if it recognises a pirated version.

Although my personal favourite subtle DRM comes from Earthbound on the SNES, where if you were playing a bootleg cartridge it would ramp up the encounter rate and then crash and delete your save if you managed to get to the end.  Hell, even Metal Gear Solids "Meryls codec number is on the back of the box" was fucking genius.

Whats NOT cool is shit like Sim City and other crap "always online" DRM that does more harm to the paying customer than good.  Just look round the internet and see all the people raging at the "always online" rumours that were going around about the next generation systems.  People aren't mad about developers protecting their games from pirates, it makes sense that they want to be paid for their work.  What people get mad about is when we do support them and get fucked over anyway.

So try using these imaginative ways to stop piracy rather than just fucking over entire user bases of people because of paranoia about pirates.  Also, even if something does go wrong and paying customers for Serious Sam 3 somehow got the scorpion, at least you have a hilarious story to tell as you get it fixed rather than just being locked out of the game you paid full price for. 

Monday 29 April 2013

Ao Oni Finale

Right, it is done!  Ao Oni and all its cryptic dogshit is finished!  So, I forgot to mention the charity thing in the final part because I was too busy faffing with that fucking SOUTHPARK thing, so if you enjoyed the playthrough go hit that JustGiving link off to the right hand side and throw a donation to the Alzheimers Society! 

VIDEO!



Sunday 28 April 2013

Ao Oni Part 8

There is only one more part to upload after this, so tune in tomorrow for the Ao Oni finale.

VIDEO

Friday 26 April 2013

I thought Patches were to make things better, not worse

Sim City is just the shit gift that keeps on giving, goddamn.

So, while I was browsing round the net on Thursday morning I came across an article about Sim City patch 2.0.  What does patch 2.0 do exactly? well it breaks your fucking game is what it does.  Go and give it a google search but this patch has caused all sorts of weird things like small making all your sims shit absolutely everywhere and causing trees to make car noises along with much more.

I'm hoping that as I write this post that it's been fixed because a patch breaking your game is bullshit.  A while ago I made a post about how people need to stop finished unfinished fucking games.  If you're going to put something on the shelf and charge £40+ for it, then at least make sure the fucking thing works was the general gist of that post.

Now I'm a reasonable guy, I'm not expecting the developer to iron out 100% of the problems, a couple of little bugs aren't too bad providing they don't break the game, but shit like this is just fucking everything up and ruining it for everyone.

What makes it worse is that these aren't release bugs, the game was PATCHED to do this.  The whole point of a fucking patch is to make bugs that you missed go away, yet when EA patched this mess of a game it went and broke it even harder, what the fuck.

EA isn't the only one guilty of this shit because Silent Hill HD did the same fucking thing.  But in that case the patches just did nothing rather than break it.  You couldn't really break that game any harder.

Fucking stop this shit, indie games made by 3 or 4 people have less bugs than these huge budget games with massive teams.  What sense does that fucking make? you'd think with all these people working on it, it'd be easier to spot something going wrong.  Just make sure your game fucking works before you start selling it in the first place.  Fuck your deadline, I'm sure fans would appreciate a delay for a product that works out the goddamn box, pricks.

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Please Games Journalism, fucking stop

Fuck.....it's almost impossible to enjoy this hobby when I'm surrounded on all side by whiny, thin skinned little pricks who don't have anything better to do with their time than complain about things.

So here is the deal, I wake up this morning and I'm looking around the internet when my attention is brought to an article on Gamasutra.  Now before I go on, for those that don't know, Gamasutra is a gaming news website that is quite well known for being read by developers and people in the industry.  I don't go on it very often but most of the stuff I have read from there has been good or if it hasn't been good at least it's about games.

So at the time of writing this article (24th April 7:25 in Japan) I can see a lot of game stuff on there, but there is something else there that pisses me off.  The TOP story is about fucking feminism, a few stories down from that is some drivel about race in games and a few posts down from THAT is some writer not worth his salt moaning about some Japanese artist implied that some other guy was gay because he said his art was no good.

JESUS. FUCKING. CHRIST.  Shut the hell up already

The article I read in the most detail was the one about the Japanese artist, so let me sum that up for you.  Some games journalist who isn't very good at his job looks at the above picture and then says that the artist isn't very good or some such crap.  The artist, in response to this posts a picture of a load of fat naked men from the same game and says "maybe you'd like this instead"  So then this OTHER guy makes a post on gamasutra about how the Japanese guy is being homophobic and feels "betrayed" and all other such crap.

You know what this isn't? FUCKING. VIDEOGAMES!  If you can't handle reading some dudes schoolyard insult about how maybe someone likes men then maybe you should just climb back into your little care bubble and never fucking leave.  Someone implying someone else is gay isn't damaging to the gay community.  He isn't rallying the rest of the Dragons Crown development team against gay rights, he just made a fucking schoolboy comment to a guy on twitter or facebook or whatever the fuck it was because the guy irritated him a bit.  Grow a backbone and write about something worth fucking writing about.

But you know what?  I don't see this in Japan and I don't see it on Japanese websites.  I can look at a Japanese gaming website and read about fucking games.  I can talk to Japanese people on the internet and in forums about fucking video games and subjects like feminism, racism or homophobia aren't even the in same fucking realm as that shit.  It's a lot easier to enjoy games over here because people are more focused on good games and less focused on filling slow news days with fucking garbage like this.

I'm not offended by burly, over sexualised men in video games.  I'm not offended when a villan has a British accent and I certainly wasn't offended when Lara Croft killed god knows how many men in Tomb Raider because I was too busy having fun with the fucking VIDEO GAME.  You don't have a real cause to fight for so you just make up controversy so you can feel way more important than you actually are.

Bottom Line: Shut up and write about fucking games

Tuesday 23 April 2013

More Rise of the Triad-esque Shooters Please

I made a post quite a while back about how I want there to be significantly less shooters on the market because the whole genre is fucking boring now.  Then videos of the now in production Rise of the Traid game come along and slap me in the face and tell me to shut up and do a rocket jump for joy.

For those that don't know, Rise of the Traid is a fuck old PC shareware FPS game released in 1994 and it was one of those shooters that sort of looks like Doom to the uneducated masses but is actually a pretty unique game to anyone who actually played the damn thing.

Anyway, the old game isn't really relevant here, but if you want to play it you can grab it off GoG, but the game is getting a reboot for the new age.  The first time I heard this I just ignored it, I imagined that they were just going to pull a Syndicate and turn it into yet another garbage shooter to throw on the pile.  But one day I got linked to an 18 minute video of the multilayer and holy shit does it look fun! Check this shit out! 



FUCKING. YES! It's like Quake and Unreal Tournament and shit like that.  None of this boring military "erh mah gerd killstreak" campfest semi realistic dogshit.  This is people running at the speed of sound, picking up floating guns, rocket jumping and just generally being nuts.

Bottom line, if shooters are here to stay, then more like THIS and less of this Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Medal of....whatever you get the idea.  Less slow crap, more good, fun shooters like we used to have.

Monday 22 April 2013

Ao Oni Part 7

We are now entering what I assume is the final stretch.  Doll puzzles are bullshit.

VIDEO!



Sunday 21 April 2013

Ao Oni Part 6

I've not posted anything in about two days due to trying to fill my body with more beer and spirits than it can probably handle, but with all of that out of the way I can get back to playing some damn games.  Here have a video of me being a moron





Thursday 18 April 2013

Don't Lock the Difficulty

A while ago you may remember me having a bit of a gush about Metal Gear Rising, I thought it was great.  If you don't remember me having a gush about Rising, have a flick through the archive and dig out my "review".

Anyway, Rising, along with many other games did something that I really can't fucking stand.  In the game there are 5 difficulty levels.  Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Revengeance.  I'm not trying to sound big or anything like that, but if you're like me then you want the biggest challenge you can get out of a game, so I always play on the hardest settings when possible.  However Rising doesn't let me do that, I have to beat the game fucking TWICE to unlock revengeance mode. 

I just want to challenge myself with the toughest thing that game has to offer, why does the game feel the need to make me prove my worth before it'll even let me fucking try.  That said though, Rising is a bad example because it turns out you can put in the Konami code to unlock them all from the start, but who's going to go looking for cheat codes on a first playthrough?! It's still bullshit.

Still, Rising isn't the only game that does this whole locked difficulty thing, in fact most games do and I seriously wish they would fucking stop.  Games today are pretty fucking easy to begin with, so don't make me play through the snoozefest easy modes before I can even attempt what sorry excuse for a hard mode you came up with.

Bottom line, make all difficulties available from the start of the goddamn game! No cheat codes! No having to play the game multiple times! No any other bullshit you can think of to make me work for bullshit that should be there anyway!  Just let me play the game on the difficulty I want to play it at, arsebag.

Wednesday 17 April 2013

The Neverhood

Usually when I write about a specific game title, it's something I'm playing or I've just completed, but today I'm going to talk about a game I beat about 4 years ago.

So chances are, you have never heard of The Neverhood.  I know when I first was introduced to this game by a friend at university I had never heard of this fucking thing before but holy shit I'm glad I found out.

The Neverhood is a old point and click adventure game that was released in 1996 and from what I understand on the Wikipedia page it wasn't released in Europe which explains why I had never heard of the damn thing, but it could be wrong.

Anyway, the whole thing that made this game different from every other PC point and click adventure game is that the whole thing was done in claymation, and it was really good claymation too.  Everything from the settings to the characters and animations were completely done in clay, I dread to think how long it took to record all that shit for the game.

At this point I'd talk about the story but sadly it has been too long since I last played this game so I don't really remember it, at all.  I do remember enjoying it but I can't remember what the fuck happened.  It's not the kind of story that people would get their games as arts hat out for, but it was a competently written little adventure.  There is a complete plot summary on the wiki page if you care that much.

The gameplay was pretty standard point and click stuff, but the puzzles were pretty good.  They weren't the stupid moon logic puzzles that you would see in some point and click games on the PC (Necronomicon is a game like that which sticks out in my mind) but they were challenging enough so that you felt satisfied about solving them.  The only really annoying thing about the game play is that there is a part where you have to find tapes, and to get one of the tapes you have to pass through a 38 screen corridor filled with game lore on the wall.  You don't have to read it (I didn't read all of it to be honest) but you absolutely HAVE to get the tape at the end, and it's a little tedious.

Finally the absolute best part of this game, the thing that triggered my memory and made me want to write a big gushy post on it is the music.  But I'm not going to tell you how good the music, I'm just going to post a track and have you judge it for yourself.

Anyway if you can find this game, give it a go, it's fucking amazing.  No amount of gushing I do will do it justice, just go find it.

Tuesday 16 April 2013

If it aint broken, don't fix it!

I have a YouTube channel where I upload playthroughs and other stuff for your viewing pleasure.  In case you didn't notice the link to the channel on the side of the blog, here it is again.

www.youtube.com/user/taurinensis

Now I have a problem.  Since the start of this blog, this YouTube channel was name "The Identity Gaming Video Channel", it wasn't particularly catchy but it was exactly what it said on the tin.  Now it's been changed to just "Taurinensis", my fucking user name.

I mean this is fine, it's not that much of a big deal but the only reason this shit happened is because YouTube felt that I would just LOVE to use fucking Google+ and made me sync my G+ user name with my YouTube channel user name.

Why do I need to do this? Why do I need to change the name? It was fine the way it fucking was!  On top of that I don't have any intention to ever use fucking Google+ because I don't know 1 single other person that does.

It was 100% fine before, why did you have to go and fuck with it?! Jesus christ

Just to make it blog relevant as well, this is true for games as well.  If you have a formula that works and it's not stale, don't go fucking with it because you'll end up pulling a Google and just pissing everyone that fuck off.

Anyway at the end of the day all the videos are still there, so go watch them.  If you like them, please donate something and if you don't like them, call me something nasty in the comments and donate something anyway.  

Monday 15 April 2013

Saturday 13 April 2013

Used Games in Japan (With video examples!)

I've had some bad experiences buying used games in the UK.  For example I once bought a copy of Pool of Radiance, and when I got it home there was a completely different game in the box.  Another time I once bought a copy of Shadow of Memories on the PS2 only to take it home and discover fucking Jam on the CD and despite my best cleaning efforts, that shit just would not work.

In Japan however, I've had the reverse of that.  Every used game I have bought has come in pristine condition with all inlays and extra bits and bobs that came with it when it was new.  I have a friend who got the PS1 version of Metal Gear Solid that came with a load of collectors stickers or something, it was pretty neat.

It also had a Suikoden Demo

So while I was up in Kawagoe doing a bit of a retro game hunt with previously mentioned friend, we came across a copy of Final Fantasy 2 and 3 in a junk pile in a Hard Off.  Book Off is a used book store type deal in Japan that also takes stuff like Video Games and DVDs, Hard Off is like that but for things like old VHS players and TVs, but Hard Off also stocks games.

So for about 200 yen each we took these things back to my buddies place, slammed them in his Famulator and turned it on.  First it didn't work and got a load of gunk inside his system, which we had to clean out before trying again, and then when we did make it work, the sound was a bit.....off.  Take a look!

This is the first time I have ever seen this happen, but it was pretty funny.  Usually used games on carts come with all its save slots full of 100% completed games, this one was just messed up.  Still, for only 200 yen it's not like you can really complain.

Friday 12 April 2013

Steam Marketplace! Free Games (With some luck and patience)

I'm surprised this is something I was not made aware of sooner, because it's fucking awesome!

So, Steam have had this service for a while where you can buy and sell in-game items for real life dosh.  When I first saw this I laughed thinking it was a load of shit, and while I was half right after fucking around with it for an evening I ended up making £7.50 which is enough to buy a game off the store.

So how does it work?  Well the only games that are supported are Team Fortress 2 and DotA2, and even then you can't just sell all the shit in your steam inventory willy nilly, only certain things at the moment are marketable.  So I had a bunch of chests from DotA, and some items on TF2 and I put them up for like, 20p (or a penny for the DotA chests)

After waiting for what has now been about 24 hours, I know have enough money in my steam funds for a cheap game.  You know, if you ask me this idea is pretty fucking amazing.  Granted your selling stuff for basically nothing, like I said chests and crates go for about a penny, but if your big on DotA or TF2 and you make some sales, then do it long enough and you'll have enough for a free game.

Steam do take a percentage of the sale for themselves which I've seen some people complain about, but you are getting money for shit that you earned in game and didn't pay for, so really you have nothing to lose by selling all those crappy chests.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my spare pocket change, probably save it until I have about a tenner then buy something on the next sale, who knows?  Either way, it's a cool service and gives me that incentive to sink a couple more hours into DotA and TF2.

Thursday 11 April 2013

Dark Souls 2 Gameplay Demo!

So today I watched the Dark Souls 2 game play reveal, here is the video for you so you can too!

So basically the video is 12 minutes of a character running around some environments and doing things while a guy talks over it.  I think it is safe to say that Dark Souls 2 is in good hands here folks and it is perfectly safe to go and get all hyped.

Some people have been complaining about the health and stamina gauges being high and enemies not doing all that much damage but do keep in mind that it was a game play trailer to show off the game, so they were probably just playing with a levelled guy so that they aren't getting destroyed while trying to show you the game.

The enemies are doing cooler things now too, like in that scene where he shoots a dude in a cage and he busts out or that guy who uses his curved armour to roll on you if you get behind him.  It'll be great on the first play through when you have no idea just how a certain enemy is going to ruin your shit even when you may think you have the upper hand.  Also deflecting projectiles with your weapon is fucking RAD.

There are a couple of things I would say are a little concerning, like the environments being a little empty, but it's hard to make any kind of solid comment yet because it is just a specially designed game play demo to give us an idea of what it's going to look like.

From Software do good work, I don't think they will let us down.

Wednesday 10 April 2013

OK Square Enix, time for you to leave

If you told me 5 or 10 years ago that I would not be hyped for upcoming Final Fantasy titles, then I would have slapped you in the face and called you a filthy liar.  The sad thing is that you would have been totally right.

But then again, I'm not making this post to complain about how Final Fantasy has turned into complete shit, I'm here to talk about how much of a massive gaping arsehole square enix is.  Fairly recently Square Enix published Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and Hitman Absolution.  These games have done pretty good, with Hitman Absolution selling around 3.6 million copies world wide according to a thing a read on Destructoid a while back.

But Square Enix has deemed these games failures.  3.6 million copies on Hitman and it's a failure?! A similar figure for Tomb Raider too and THAT'S a failure as well?!  I've not played these games yet so I don't know if they are a load of shit, but that's not the point, they sold a shit ton.

How fucked up must your sales projections be if 3.6 million copies sold on fucking reboots of old franchises counts as failure.  How fucking greedy do you have to be to expect sales figures more than that?! To be perfectly honest with you as well, when developers make a game that nets you 3.6 million sales and you go and say their game was a failure, that's disrespectful and if I was them I'd go find another fucking publisher and tell Square Enix to go shove it up their arse.

But this isn't the worst of it, Square Enix isn't exactly doing a good job with their own games either.  Final Fantasy hasn't been good since 9 really.  10 had some good side quests but the story was complete crap and Tidus may be one of the most annoying "lead" roles in any RPG.  12 wasn't great either but at least it felt like a Final Fantasy but then 13 came along and just shat all over everything.

Square released Final Fantasy XIII 2 in Japan at the end of 2011, and at the start of 2012 everywhere else and it's made about 3 million in sales.  Tomb Raider was released on the 5th March this year and it's already topped that. It's these "failures" that are making you all your money you morons.

So Square, I think it's about time you either start to realise that it's only your western developed stuff which is actually selling OR you can fuck off forever and take your stagnant shitty RPGs with you.  Preferably the latter so I don't have to hear any more shit about Lightning returning for more lack luster auto play anime dogshit.

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Ao Oni 4! The Return!

Well, after getting back from Tokyo I couldn't be arsed to make a proper post and after a long day at work I can't really be bothered to write anything of any particular length, so today you can watch a video of me doing pretty much everything wrong for 20 minutes.

I'm pretty sure the talking I'm doing is distracting me because I pretty much realised what to do with that doll as soon as I shut down the game after this session.  It's not like being distracted and looking stupid is going to stop me though. ENJOY!





Monday 8 April 2013

I'm not dead!

This is just a little post to explain why there haven't been any posts for the last couple days.

I've been in Kawagoe, and not had access to the internet, that is all.

Friday 5 April 2013

Dreadout Demo (With Video)

First of all watch the video of me playing the Demo

Right, now to discuss some of my thoughts.

First of all, I was really impressed by the graphics, it looks real slick considering that we're dealing with an indie developed horror game.  The last indie developed horror game I played was Lone Survivor and that had fucking pixel art, so it's nice to see a small developer going the extra mile with the graphics.

Mechanically it works very well, the controls are nice and slick and easy to figure out without looking at the tutorial.  Basically if you have played a game on the PC ever, you will instantly be able to figure out how to control your character.

The puzzles in this game I both enjoy, but have sort of a problem with.  For example there is a bit near the start of the video where I get stuck for a short while because I wasn't able to figure out right away that I had to walk through the wall.  One thing I am glad about is that the game didn't tell me what to do, it let me work it out for myself.  That said I feel what it should have done is maybe made the hole in the wall pop out a bit, like having vines growing out from around the edges or something to indicate that it's something you can walk through.

The other problem I had, puzzle wise, was the candles.  There is an edit where I wasted a shit ton of time trying to figure out what to do, and this is because I think the objective was badly put forward.  What I was doing was trying to use my camera to light the other candles.  I was clicking around, pressing buttons on my keyboard to try and activate the flash and all sorts of shit.  I was even convinced at one point that there was something in the sky I had to snap in order to make the puzzle work.  At the end of the day it wasn't a puzzle, it was trying to make me go back and fight some enemies.

You see the problem is that a blue border pops up when you get near the candles, which means something important is there, so I was convinced for a long time that the key to those candles was in that area.  You could argue that the music was an indication of something being there that I had to go kill, but I thought the music was playing because of the big hangy dude.  If they had just played a sound of something crawling out of one of the nearby graves or ANYTHING.

Finally, is it scary?  Well to me, no, not really, but the potential is there.  The scene with the ghost facing the wall in the room was quite effective as you can probably tell from my reaction in the video, but I find there is no tension in the combat music when you fight the dudes in the graveyard.  The dudes are slow and crap, probably because they are there to teach you about combat, but the sound design for these encounters is a little weak.  Take Silent Hill for example, where the monsters sound truly horrible and the music that plays does a good job of making you panic. 

It's a good demo worth checking out and there is the potential for something really good here I think,  With it just being a demo and no release date in sight, I'm hoping that they will be able to put out a finish product that will rock our socks and fill our pants with large volumes of wee.


Thursday 4 April 2013

Confusion is the worst

So I've been playing quite a lot of a game called Grandia on the PS1 recently.  It's pretty fucking good and made me realise that I didn't lose interest in RPGs but modern RPGs just became a bit shit. 

Anyway! Before that statement causes some kind of shit storm as I get people trying to tell me stuff like Ni no Kuni is actually worth a damn, I want to talk about one of the most annoying things in any RPG that can possibly happen.  That thing is the confuse status effect.

RPGs tend to have lots of status ailments that do a pretty good job of fucking you over if you're not prepared but confuse really does just take the fucking cake.  For those of you who maybe aren't into RPGs, confuse is a status that causes your own party members to just attack characters at random.  If you are lucky they will go and attack the enemy and all is fine, but if you're like me and you're not lucky then chances are your party member is going to flat out murder another team mate.

It's just so fucking annoying when your strongest physical attacker gets confused and then spins round and decides to shove whatever weapon he or she is holding right up the arse of your spell caster or healer.  The outright worst offender for annoying confusion ailments though, in my experience, is the Pokemon games.

I've not played any of the later Pokemon games because I think they are a load of shit, but I remember quite early into Pokemon Blue there was a cave full of Zubats.  Zubats had a skill that could confuse your pokemon, and when that happened shit would really get ugly.  You see in normal RPGs, there is a team of people, so confuse makes one dude hit his friend, but in Pokemon its 1on1 battles so being confused makes your pokemon hit himself.  Not only is this fucking stupid as a concept but the damage for hitting yourself in confusion is fucking massive, and if you are really unlucky your pokemon will keep punching himself in the face until he dies.

Still, for all my ranting about how much I hate confusion effects, if they weren't there I'd be complaining about RPGs being too easy or some shit.  Also this post does not apply to the Shin Megami Tensei series, because in those games, the lead character being petrified results in a game over, so in those games THAT can go fuck itself just as hard.


Wednesday 3 April 2013

Stop HDing Things

You know I don't really have a problem with HD collections, at least not most of them.  It's sort of nice to be able to get one disc and have all the Devil May Cry games available so that I don't have to change discs if I want to play DMC 1 instead of DMC 3 for example.

That said, I do think they are a little bit unneeded.  It's not like I was sat here thinking "oh, Shadow of the Colossus is a really good game but it looks like shit and I can't play it anymore".  The game looks fine on the PS2, and playing it now is just as much fun as playing it when it first came out.  Sure the HD collection made it look a bit nicer but at the end of the day it's still the same fucking game.

It's not like all HD collections have been successful either, with Silent Hill basically ruining whatever legacy Silent Hill 2 and 3 had by convincing all new users that the game is a load of arse.  Some HD collections even seem a little pointless, like God of War since it's not like original PS2 copies of those games are hard to find.

Well the reason I'm moaning so much about HD releases is because I'd rather see the money spent on that put into something new.  One of my biggest problems with this industry is that there are too many sequels to things and some things are getting a little stale.  Instead of pumping money into HD remakes of old games, why not try and create a new IP.  Something new and exciting that we can all point and go "holy shit look at that!" instead of "oh....another Assassins Creed" or "oh.....more Call of Duty"

Even something like Metal Gear Rising would be fine where your making a new game within an established series universe.  We get more of the story and characters we like but a fresh new way to play with them, which at least prevents me from being bored.

Basically, money should be going towards new stuff, not making old stuff prettier.  Give me something new and not just an up scaled version of a game I played less than 10 years ago, goddamn it.



Tuesday 2 April 2013

Ao Oni! Part the Third!

Meh, wasn't really happy with how this one turned out.  I filmed it after a long day at work because I was worried about forgetting where I was and looking like a right silly bugger if I left it any longer.  Won't be doing that again! But it's not all bad, so check it out anyway



Monday 1 April 2013

Dreamkiller

Oh man, why did I play this all the way through, what a piece of shit.

So, Dreamkiller (or Mouse 1: The Game as I like to call it) is about a woman who cures people of their phobias by delving into their dreams and shooting them up with a minigun.  Once she has shot enough dream monsters the person is cured.  While doing this she comes across the "Dreamkillers", an organisation of Demons that steal peoples dreams or something, its all really stupid, just ignore it and shoot stuff.

But here is the problem though, shooting stuff is boring.  When I saw the game I was sort of expecting something like Doom, but it somehow ends up being more boring then the most bottom of the barrel corridor shooter you can think of.  Basically, every level is a series of rooms and in each room you get attacked by a horde of dudes.  Once you clear out that horde of dudes, you move onto the next room and kill another horde of dudes.  Rinse and repeat this until the boss and then you beat the stage.

The other problem is the weapons, they are all really boring and most of them are totally ineffective.  The only two weapons worth a damn are the minigun with its alt fire missile that clears enemies out and the laser gun that is just super strong, everything else is crap.  But it's not like you can even carry the other weapons to experiment with them because the game does that stupid modern FPS thing and only lets you carry two at a time.

It's here where I would post a comment about the multiplayer, but from what I can tell no servers seem to exist so that can go fuck itself as well.

Long story short, this is a with a good idea behind it plot wise but with fucking terrible, repetitive gameplay, it's not even worth looking at.