Now that's some bullshit #2: Palette Swaps!

God.....

Oh god....

I just want it to end...........

But seriously, the reason I come with another rant about video game bullshit is because of R-Type Tactics AGAIN!  Fuck this goddamn game, it's so fucking boring but I'm too far in to just fucking quit, it has to be over soon anyway.

More to the point, I'm gonna be talking about palette swaps in games and why they're a load of shit.  Basically, look at the picture at the top, every single one of those are DIFFERENT FUCKING CHARACTERS in Mortal Kombat.  Now don't get me wrong, I like Mortal Kombat, but that is a load of ass right there.

You see, my problem with palette swaps is that it's just fucking lazy.  Sure, OK, maybe I'm being a bit harsh using Mortal Kombat as an example, they were trying to do the whole digitised thing and I guess they just didn't have the money to hire 6 different dudes as well as pay for 6 differently coloured outfits.  That said, this is still something that goes on TODAY! fucking palette swapping lazy bullshit.

In fact, while I'm ranting I'm thinking I can maybe forgive it in most fighters because a palette swap there is just a different outfit or whatever, but this goes on all the time in shit like RPG's.  If your going to make an RPG, the whole point is to have an interesting world to explore, and of course, in a big world of adventure every area is going to have its own species of monsters to battle, right? 

FUCKING! WRONG! Lots of RPG's do it but the worst offender I can think off the top of my damn head is the Final Fantasy series.  Now before anyone gets all upset that I'm ripping on Final Fantasy, I like the series.  Hell, despite being pretty stupid I did enjoy playing XIII and I've played pretty much every one to the end despite the heavily retarded stories in some of the later ones.  The one exception to this is 8...but that's another post for another time.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, RPG palette swap lazy bullshit.

 This little blue wanker here is a Flan, a common enemy in pretty much every Final Fantasy and this little bastard represents everything that's wrong with some design choices in RPG's.   These guys pop up in pretty much every single area but they change colour depending on what the area looks like (E.g Red ones in a fire area, blue ones in an ice area etc.) and it's just a stock, shitty enemy so that Square doesn't have to put that extra bit of effort designing an actual interesting fucking enemy.

But it's not just Final Fantasy that has a shit enemy like this that the devs can just lazily slap a new coat of paint on, it's pretty much every RPG ever.  But you know what? I wouldn't mind it so much if it was just the same enemy, but I'm supposed to accept that putting a new lick of paint on an old enemy makes it a new one?! yeah, fuck that!  But you know what? it's not RPGs that really bother me that much.  Sure, I'm ranting here but I don't foam at the mouth whenever I see an RPG palette swap monster really, what pissed me off today, was a boss in R-Type Tactics.

First of all, this boss pops up in the final stage of the 2nd chapter of the game.

First of all, all these fucking levels are the same.  Long boring tunnels filled with the same enemies and you can get through them by using the same strategy every goddamn time.  But the boring level design isn't what annoys me, that just puts me to sleep.

No what annoys me, is this!

That alien, is the iconic R-Type enemy.  I mean a quick google image search of "R-Type" brings up that guy, people recognise this boss quite easily.  So yeah, it was cool to fight him once near the start of the game as the first major boss battle in Tactics.

But then he turns up again, but purple.  Same attacks, same fucking stats, same EVERYTHING, he's just fucking purple, and this is what really got me.  So I did a wiki search, here is a list of the games in the R-Type series

• R-Type II (1989)
• Armed Police Unit Gallop (1991)
• Super R-Type (1991)
• R-Type Leo (1992)
• R-Type III: The Third Lightning (1993)
• R-Type Delta (1998) / US version (1999)
• R-Type Final (2003)
• R-Type Command (2007)
• R-Type Dimensions (2009)
• R-Type Tactics II: Operation Bitter Chocolate (2009)

(Good old wikipedia)

LOOK AT ALL THOSE FUCKING GAMES! Are you seriously telling me, that they couldn't have picked ANY of those games from the series and put a different boss at the end of that boring warp tunnel segment?! 

So they round off one of the most boring sections of any video ever with a boss recolour, well fucking done IREM, you're officially more boring than watching grey paint dry.

Oh and before I finish this stupid little rant, I can't believe R-Type tactics got a sequel, I feel compelled to track it down and play it just to see how they can further ruin a awesome shooter series by turning it into a shitty turn based strategy game.