Games Media Is Busted

I've mentioned on this blog a number of times that I think games media is a giant steaming pile of horse crap.  I've commented on individual things, events or articles that have pissed me off but never on why I think games media as a whole is so bad.  This is A LOT wrong with this side of the industry so if I tried to go in too great detail then this blog post would never fucking end but to me there are 2 big reasons why games media sucks so bad so I'll talk about those.

1.  The Way They Make Money

So almost every games media site that I'm aware of make money via advertising sponsorships and then clicks on their page.  This in and of itself is not a terrible thing and I'm sure there are plenty of websites that do this without being crap.  The danger of a business model like this though is that your people are going to write things in order to generate those clicks that bring in the big bucks. 

I don't mind people writing articles for clicks if it is relevant to gaming.  You can hype up the newest Call of Duty all you fucking like, lots of people enjoy that series and if writing about that game brings in the money, then by all means.  But we have had a trend in the industry for the couple of years where writers are turning not only to huge titles but to outrage in order to generate the site traffic.

All these fucking articles that have popped up complaining about certain aspects of games that the writers have probably never played or all these idiots moaning about violence and sexism that is apparently rampant in the industry.  I'm almost 100% certain that there is at least a good handful of writers on these sites that don't actually believe this crap, but writing it is what brings the people to the site which in turns brings home the pay check.

It's all well and good complaining about this side of things but I'm no fucking businessman, I don't know how you could fix this side of things.  Like I said it's not a bad model on its own so I guess the only real solution is to hire writers who actually have a sense of pride in their work and aren't willing to write stupid drivel for traffic.  This of course leads me nicely into my second point which is

2.  The Writers

This is my biggest problem with games media, more so than wanking over AAA and stupid Buzzfeed style clickbait journalism.  The writers who are currently employed by games media are fucking trash, for the most part not in terms of writing ability but in knowledge about the industry they are writing about.  This has seemed to be the case for a very VERY long time with writers shamelessly praising certain aspects of big releases for doing shit that other games did fucking YEARS ago. 

This realization came to me a long time ago with the release of the first Halo.  After getting over my disgust for the fan base and all the fucking praise that the game got Halo is actually an enjoyable series.  But every single member of the games media writing about how it was "revolutionary"?  Holy shit are you crazy?  Before Halo, first person shooters were awesome with things like Doom, Duke and Quake.  They had puzzle solving, exploration, great weapon load outs and then Halo comes along and puts everything in a grey corridor with set piece battles and that's seen as a fucking step forward?!  Are you insane?  Halo did do a couple of things for the console FPS genre but it did more to ruin it than revolutionize it.

I think if you are a fan of the horror genre then the weakness in the knowledge of these people becomes most apparent.  ANYONE who gave The Evil Within or Silent Hill Downpour a positive review is a fucking idiot who doesn't understand what they are talking about.  Just look at the IGN review in particular of The Evil Within.  "Terrifying enemies" and "convoluted story".  Most of the enemies in that game are just fucking dudes and the story is only convoluted in the sense that it seems to have been writing by a fucking 6 year old who watched too many slasher movies.

All these writers who gave The Last of Us and fucking 10/10 are either pandering or fucking stupid.  I quite like that game really but it is in no way a fucking 10 on 10 game.  Hell, it's a fucking 3rd person, over the shoulder action game and I saw numerous people praising the games originality.  It's about as unoriginal as it gets but it's very well crafted, polished and is ultimately fun to play so a good 8 or 9 I could handle but a 10?!  You really want to claim that shit is perfect? 

This isn't to say that 100% of the writers in games media are clueless.  Hell, it'd be a little harsh to call most of them "clueless" but their expertise are not enough to be writing about certain things.  This is why small time YouTube reviewers have become so popular because instead of having some idiot chatting about a series or game that you really enjoy, you can go somewhere and get the specialist knowledge.

I think what I'm trying to say in a very long winded and stupid way is that the writers for games media write for money and to echo popular opinion rather than for the benefit of the consumer.

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There are many more issues than this with games media but these are the big 2 for me and they are very closely linked.  I'm too much of a huge dumbass to know how to fix it but really we live in an age where games media isn't really needed anyway.  If you want info on a game, go lookup some passionate youtuber or twitch streamer who will give you an honest and informed opinion because they love the games rather than because they want to make some money, it's that easy.

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.

The Evil Within Sucks

This game fucking sucks and I'm so goddamn mad about it.  It sucks on almost every goddamn level and it saddens me.  I saw the screenshots and trailers before this thing came out, I saw who was working on it and for the first time in AGES I got a little bit excited for a modern horror game.  Of course, I shouldn't have let me guard down because The Evil Within is a steaming piece of shit with very few redeeming qualities.

Just for the record, I'm not writing this article as someone who gave up on it and came to come rage.  I played this festering pile all the way through just so I'd have more shit to say when I eventually came to my little blog to tear it a new asshole.

So let's start with the Story because it fucking sucks.  You play as a dude called Sebastian, a cop who is called to come and investigate some fucked up shit going down at Beacon Mental Hospital.  You arrive with your two idiot friends, Joseph and Kidman and you all immediately get jumped by some teleporting fuckwit in a white robe called Ruvik.  He stabs you in the face and you wake up upside down in some kind of butcher with a crazy dude ready to hack you up and the game begins in earnest.

My problem with the story is that the whole point of what's going on is that you are basically inside the villains head.  As a result of this you have no idea where you are, how you are or why you are where you are and there is no real sense of progress to beating a stage.  It doesn't matter how far you traversed the evil village of zombie people or how many traps in the industrial looking place you managed to avoid because the next scene will probably have the world spazzing out and changing locale because Ruvik said so.

There is also some other side plot type thing with Sebastian losing his daughter and wife but the whole thing is told through documents and by the end of the game I didn't give enough of a shit to pay attention to it.  Also Kidman is doing some bullshit and isn't actually a cop or something but none of that really matters because the whole game culminates in a boss fight where you blow Ruvik's brains out anyway.

The game spends so much time harping on about all this research that the villain and his shitty doctor friend was doing but none of it was engaging enough for me to care.  You see, as bad as the plot is in games like Resident Evil, its still interesting enough for me to give a shit about the goings on at Umbrella.  With The Evil Within I just don't give any fucks about what kind of dumb ass research was going on or why Ruvik was so upset, it's just dull.

Oh, there was also some shit about a woman in a hospital who went missing but ends up inside Ruviks head as the save point.  No idea what was going on there, don't care.

So the story sucks, but what about the game play?  Well that sucks too.  It's kind of like Resident Evil 4 but really shitty.  Sebastian just feels a bit....floaty and he's kind of hard to control when you need to do precise movements.  Most of the guns you get are bollocks with the Shotgun being the only weapon that feels any kind of useful.  The Agony Crossbow is cool at first but it's too fiddly when you're under a lot of pressure and you'll end up either missing shots or using the wrong bolt type.

That's just my opinion regarding the guns though, what REALLY sucks about the game play is that it tricks you into thinking you're playing a stealth game and then just totally changing after the third chapter.  The first chapter you are trying to escape from a chainsaw man without being seen.  The second chapter you are sneaking round a village then every chapter after that has ambush after ambush after ambush.  Why establish all this sneaking and then just throwing it out of the window?!  There are a few moments where it comes back but it's only short segments of certain chapters, most of it just turns into shooting monsters.

The game also goes fucking crazy with the whole "survival" aspect giving you very little ammo for anything.  However once you get a feel for the game almost every encounter is completely piss easy and you'll have no trouble with anything after the 4th chapter or so.  You still might die to a trap or a 1 hit kill enemy but the checkpoints are so forgiving and save points so frequent that it doesn't really matter.

Worst of all though, this game just isn't scary at all.  It's trying SO VERY HARD to be scary but it's like whoever was in charge didn't really know how to do horror.  They just seem to take a lot of horror imagery and ideas and just throw them all together but it doesn't really work.  By the end of the game it's trying so damn hard that it comes off as just funny with giant eyeballs and walls covered in brain tissue.  The traps that are supposed to be used to keep you on edge are Tom and Jerry levels of comical are some of the death animations are more hilarious that brutal.

I don't care how much you like horror games, just avoid this pile of shit.  Save your money and wait for Silent Hills or something, maybe they'll get it right next time.

Why Did Horror Get So Loud?

The Evil Within
Any Resident Evil after 4
Silent Hill Downpour
Alone in the Dark (new one)
Dying Light (maybe)
Outlast

What do these games and many others have in common?  Well of course, they are all horror games but they are also all very loud, frenetic and not very scary.  The game that inspired this post in particular was The Evil Within and my experience with Dying Light is a little limited but the point still stands.

So think way back to the days of Resident Evil and Silent Hill.  These were the big motherfuckers that made survival horror popular.  There were similar games such as Clock Tower and Alone in the Dark that did the whole horror thing too but I didn't know too many people who were even aware of those games back in the day.

What all these games had in common was that in order to put their horror forward they would try to build atmosphere.  A lot of this was achieved in the audio design, especially for Silent Hill and it was effective.  There are a lot of moments in a game like Resident Evil where the soundtrack is completely cut and all you have is a quiet room, some distant shuffling and an occasional moan.  That shit was effective for building tension as to what was round the next corner.  When shit got real the music would pick up and help generate that sense of panicked fear rather than the more subtle tense fear to be found in other parts of the game.

But it seems that the genre has lost that sense of subtlety and it suffers as a result.  I'm not saying that something like Resident Evil 4 is bad but it's not scary anymore.  When I play games like Silent Hill, old Resident Evil and Project Zero, there is still a little bit of uneasiness that creeps in and that adds to the enjoyment.

Silent Hill Downpour is probably one of the best examples of this.  Old Silent Hill builds up a shit ton of creepy atmosphere then hits you with the panicky stuff in the world shift.  However even when in the nightmare you'll find a room or a section where the panic lets up for a while but the horror still lasts because you know what's behind that door that you need to go through for your next key item.  Silent Hill 2 was an exception to this because the whole game is just drenched in that heavy, oppressive atmosphere that actually makes it quite uncomfortable to play.  It speaks volumes about the developers talent that they can make a game like that but still have it be enjoyable to the point where people want to keep on going.

Silent Hill Downpour on the other hand is all in your face all the time.  It tries to build the atmosphere with it's big empty streets but for the most part, that is just what they are and are therefore uninteresting or scary.  When the world shifts into the nightmare, the whole thing is over designed, too well lit and in certain sections looks more like something out of Alice: Madness Returns than a Silent Hill game.  It's the same for The Evil Within.  The game never lets up and after a while it becomes tiresome.

Imagine if you came home one day and one of your friends jumps out from around the corner in a dark room in a big scary mask and screams at you.  Of course you're going to jump and be a little frightened right?  But then imagine that instead of stopping he just keeps screaming and rolling around on the floor after you have turned on the lights, it would just be ridiculous.

That about sums up new horror games for me.  A cheap prank that goes on way too long and gets very old very fast

My Thoughts on Tokyo Game Show 2014

This post is a little overdue since I had to travel across half the country, start a new job and because of the national holiday I was quite drunk and my time for making blog posts was a little low.  However things have sort of normalised now and I can finally talk about TGS.

Just before I get into it, I wanted to have a lot more pictures but I stupidly left my camera in my buddies apartment, so when I get it back I'll upload all the TGS stuff as a gallery post.  Also I'm not going to talk about the games so much as I'm going to describe my experience with the event, I'll do the games on an individual basis later.

I've never really been to any big organized gaming events like this before so TGS was pretty crazy.  It's hosted in a big hall in Tokyo called Makuhari Messe and despite being fucking massive the crowds are so big that it's hard to navigate ones way round all the booths.  Games are also not the only thing on display here with there being another massive cosplay section going on somewhere a short distance from the main floors but still part of the show.  I got some really cool pictures of a few of the people so look forward to seeing that shit when I get my camera back.

If I was to try and sum up my TGS experience in one word it would be "unprepared".  I sorely underestimated the crowds and as a result it was almost impossible to get a hands on with anything.  There was an indie booth where I managed to play a couple of really interesting games but all the big titles like Bloodborne were not only rammed out but I think you needed advance tickets or something.

I was actually really looking forward to seeing all the stuff for The Evil Within but when we arrived at the booth the wait was over an hour long so we just said "fuck it" and moved on.  There were also a number of things happening with developers going on stage and talking about their games but because of my lack of preparation we missed most of them.  We did get to see the demo Resident Evil Revelations 2 being played and we caught the Silent Hills stuff about half way through but that shit was so hard to hear we just gave up on it in the end.

Despite that, TGS was fucking amazing and I'm probably going to go again next year but next time I'll ready myself appropriately so I don't have to make shitty nothing posts like this in the future.  Like I said, my thoughts on individual titles will come later because if I did that here it would take me all evening to type out so watch this space and the pictures should be uploaded around Saturday.