Setting Up Let it Die

I've been very busy recently with a family visit to Japan so content has been a little thin on the ground but for Halloween I tried to do a little stream of Let it Die for the PS4.  If you've not heard of this game it's a sort of free to play hack and slash game made by Grasshopper Manufacture which plays a little like a Souls game and I think it has perma-death.  I've not really had much of a chance to play it however just setting it up was complete bullshit so I want to share my experience.

First of all just getting the game was bullshit.  I hopped onto the Playstation store and found it in the free to play section.  However, there was no download available that was free and I discovered that on the Japanese store the only option for you is one that comes with 2 units of the premium currency which I think is called Death Metals.  This means that the game was 108 yen which granted is only £0.70 but after being told that it was a free to play game I was a little pissed off about being forced to spend money on some in game shit I don't even know the purpose for.  While it was downloading I went and looked up Let it Die on the US and UK Playstation stores to find that on there the game IS actually free.  So really it's only the Japanese getting fucked over but it's still really annoying.

Anyway, the game loads up and the tutorial starts and I'm having a grand old time.  The game looks really nice, plays solidly and Death is a pretty interesting and funny character.  I'll talk more about the game itself once I manage to play it a bit more.  Once I finished the tutorial I was presented with another title screen and once I tried to hit go on that I got a big download message stuffed in my face.  Turns out the game only downloads the tutorial when you buy it and then downloads the rest later which resulted in me falling asleep while I was waiting and now I've not been able to play because I've been busy with family and work.

It looks like a really good game but the whole experience is a true testament to the really shitty side of modern gaming.

Games aren't made by one person...

So when I finished The Evil Within I sent a message to my friend saying "I just finish The Evil Within and it was fucking awful".  His response was "God, if Mikami can't make a good horror game what is the world coming to?"

I know what he means by that and obviously my friend and everyone with a working brain knows that but there is this habit in gaming to attribute a successful or shitty game entirely to one guy.  I don't know why this kind of irks me and it shouldn't because I know people aren't that stupid really but it's just something that I don't like.

Take the games from Grasshopper Manufacture, games like Killer7, No More Heroes and more recently Killer is Dead.  When people talk about these games they don't say "Oh, it's that game from Grasshopper" they say "oh it's that game made by Suda51".  Even if you look at the Steam page for Killer is Dead on Steam it says "Get ready for some seriously stylish action from renowned designer SUDA51" 

When it comes to games like this you only ever hear about how awesome Suda is and there isn't ever really any mention of anyone else at Grasshopper.  It's the same with Bayonetta where the ONLY name I ever hear when people talk about that game is Hideki Kamiya. It seems like all the other people who worked on that game, all those names in that credits list you didn't read are completely ignored and all the glory is given to one or two people.

Granted that I don't explore news sites for games too often because I have a lot of distaste for current games media so maybe if I did do some digging I could find an interview with some of the other members of the teams for these games.  That said, the only game that I can think of off the top of my head that isn't typically attributed to a single person is Silent Hill.  The people responsible for that game are always referred to as "Team Silent" and while there are still a lot more people responsible for those games at least they acknowledge that there was more than one mind for the production of that game.

Also before anyone gets on my case, I'm aware that there are some games that WERE made by a single person and that is rad.  Still, not a big deal but it just annoys me a little bit when a games quality is attributed to a single person.  I'm also aware that it would be unreasonable to expect games media to interview and have chats with every single member of a games development but it's just the way the phrase it.  If they said "Get ready for some seriously stylish action from the incredibly skilled staff at Grasshopper Manufacture led by SUDA51" it would be better.

Still, I'm just griping about bullshit, I'm sure all the programmers, artists and everything else reap the rewards regardless of their mentions and that's all that really matters.