I don't think anyone I know personally has heard of this game, let alone played it so let me tell you about a brilliant little Japanese indie gem called Yume Nikki.
Yumi Nikki (meaning Dream Diary) is a surreal horror adventure game where you have to wander round some girls dreams and find items. Finding items grants powers but what you really have to do is drop these items (known as effects) into a big room to reach the ending. This game is so strange, so surreal that any attempt I make to describe it won't put across just how cooked out the whole thing is. It's a free download so just google it and give it a play, you will not regret it.
Yesterday it was a countdown timer, and the cynical side of me wanted to just forget about the whole thing because after The World Ends With You countdown I now think that every countdown timer will just lead to disappointment.
Luckily, I was wrong and while we didn't get a new game or a Steam version or anything like that, I met the announcement with a smile. For those that can't read the Japanese in the above picture, it's basically saying that there is some kind of book adaptation of the Yume Nikki game coming out.
If you look at the website, the box in the middle is talking about a web manga, which I'm pretty sure is separate from the whole book thing since to my knowledge there is a clear distinction between "Novel" and "Manga". Finally, the bottom box mentions some kind of soundtrack called "A waltz for Yume Nikki"
Given how the games were I'm super interested to see how these adaptations turn out. Hopefully they'll get released before I have to return to the UK so I can have something to translate on the plane.
With the PS4 and the Nextbox (because 720 is a dumb name) on the horizon, I've started to notice more and more fan boys popping up to defend their favourite system, and this is annoying and it should stop.
Above is an old advert for the Megadrive (Genesis if you're American and WRONG) basically slagging off Nintendo in order to try and drum up sales for the system. Now I owned a Mega Drive back in the day, I thought that shit was the bees knees, but I never slagged off a Nintendo system.
Sure, I would have arguments with my Super Nintendo owning school yard friends over which shit was better, but that wouldn't deter me from heading to their house after school sometimes and playing some of the old SNES greats. In the same way, when they would come to my house they would be really hyped to hop on a bit of Sonic 2 or Golden Axe or whatever.
The debates and the sharing of systems continued for years and years, when all of a sudden the debates around which system was better changed. No longer would people argue the pros and cons of a system, it all just devolved into "MY SYSTEM IS BETTER AND YOU'RE DUMB!", but the language was much harsher. It's basically been the same since that switch, where trying to debate systems on most forums will just land you a load of personal attacks rather than any decent discussion. It died down for a while but the whole Microsoft Vs Nintendo Vs Sony thing is starting to rear its ugly head again.
So why did this shit even start? When did people get so defensive about their system of choice? Well I'm going to make an uneducated guess and say it was when Halo came out.
As fun as Halo was, it was released on a system that basically had nothing else going for it. There weren't all that many great games on the Xbox, at least not compared to the PS2 or whatever, but it had a few. This is where I think it all started though. People would buy an Xbox for Halo, then realise that there were maybe, 2 or 3 other games worth playing and then feel that they had to justify the big money splurge.
In trying so desperately hard to justify their purchase, they brainwashed themselves into having a sense of brand loyalty and that is how the "rabid" fan boy was born. Then again, I'm probably talking out of my ass but fuck Halo it wrecked FPS (I just want my Doom-esque shooters to be popular again)
Still, it's not like fan boys are going to stop me from buying all 3 systems in the end and enjoying everything the next generation has to offer, but I wish I could have a decent discussion without having my sexuality brought into question just because I think the WiiU looks promising. Your loss morons
You remember that PS4 thing about a week ago? It was pretty good, we got some insight into the upcoming hardware, we got to see some new games everything was great. You know what didn't cross my mind? The gender of the fucking people on stage, but Patricia Hernandez and a bunch of idiots on twitter think that this is some kind of issue.
I'm aware Patricia Hernandez is a hack who doesn't deserve what's shes being paid (Charity link is on the side if you see this post Patricia) but her, and everyone who posted about it on twitter is just making an issue out of nothing. Just because there were no women on stage at that event doesn't make Sony or any of the game developers sexist. It just means that the people that those companies felt were best to give the presentations HAPPENED to be male, they were not excluding women, just no women within those various departments had enough knowledge and expertese on hand to deliver talks at the event.
Here is the worst thing though, I didn't give a fuck about feminism before this whole topic came up some time during the last year. As someone who has experienced nothing but feminists complaining about sexism in games and other non-issue garbage, I'm now completely sour to the concept. I've learned by reading articles and watching forum conversations that feminists don't want equality, but they just want to demonise everything men do and put themselves above.
I'm aware this probably isn't true, but as someone who has only really seen feminist arguments via video games, this is the impression I get. Not only are these people being sexist in their complaints, but they are making their "cause" look extremely bad.
But at the end of the day, I don't give a fuck about feminism, why is this even a thing? All I want to do is enjoy fucking video games and I'm sick of seeing shit like this day in day out. Video games aren't oppressing you so why not go find some ACTUAL issues to moan about? Idiots
So we have done it! All the worlds with cages have been cleared! Unfortunately, this is not the end of the game and now I have to rescue the remaining electoons before I can start filming the final area, hooray......
OK, I didn't make a post yesterday because I spent all day in a free play game centre and then followed it up with some heavy drinking, but I'm back now and ready to talk about more weird shit from Japan.
A long long time ago, when this blog was still in its infancy I talked about Pachinko and Slot machines being strange based on the fact that a lot of them seemed to be themed around anime and video games, but I never really explain WHY that shit is weird, although it should be pretty obvious anyway.
Understand that gambling in Japan is illegal, when you play slots or pachinko you spend money to acquire balls/tokens and then you can trade those tokens in for prizes. I have heard rumours that you can take your balls and tokens to some geezer round the back of the various pachikno/slot halls and he will give you cash money if that's what you're after but this has to be done on the sly.
This is what makes the whole thing so weird, because despite being so dodgy and under the table, the whole pachinko scene is overflowing with large amounts of nerd shit. When I think about people who are gambling, I imagine one of two groups. Tourists having a bit of careful fun in a casino, or dudes in suits gambling large sums of money for kicks. Neither of these groups, the second especially I'd expect to be the sort of people who kick back after a hard day of gambling and watch their favourite anime.
That's how it seems to be though, people fuckin' love this shit. The picture above is a new Gundam themed pachinko machine and while usually new machine announcements are limited to posters on the front of parlours, this machine is being advertised out the ass on youtube. Every other video I watch I get a Japanese dude screaming in my face to come play the new Gundam pachinko machine.
It's a world I would love to be a part of for a short time, but unfortunately I don't have enough disposable income to sit there for hours on end playing the worlds most boring version of Pinball, I'll stick to the game centres.
This generation we have had a lot of first person shooter games, and I do mean A LOT. To be honest, I wish this shit would fucking stop.
Before I go on, I don't have anything against FPS games, I actually quite enjoy them but I'm sick to death of going to a game store and just seeing FPS games fucking everywhere. New Call of Duty, new Medal of Honour, new Crysis. Good lord, don't people get bored of playing the same kind of game day in day out?
I mean we've just had the PS4 thing from Sony which I mentioned yesterday and already we've had fucking Destiny and Killzone. Keeping in mind that the other games were Knack and inFamous (and I'm not counting that "announcement" from Square as a thing, fuck off) that's half the line up so far as fucking FPS games. If there were more games than that I don't care, 2 is too many.
I'm a big fan of Rhythm games, I enjoy all sorts of shit from Voltex to DDR to Beatmania, it's great. But if I just played rhythm games every time I went to the game centre and every time I came home then I probably would have quit gaming by now, that shit would be stale.
I wouldn't even be so annoyed about it if the styles were varied. If we had some more Doom/Quake-esque FPS games at least there would be some variation on the theme. I know it's probably not going to happen because this shit sells like hot cakes but I've got my fingers crossed on there being significantly less semi realistic military shooters in the upcoming generation.
Note: I know Destiny isn't quite a "military" FPS but it's still the same kind of game play that I'm bored of.
With me living in Japan and time differences being what they are, I didn't see this conference thing which was Sony giving a little talk on the upcoming PS4. That said I've done some reading and poking around and here is what I've discovered.
1. It's going to be really quite pretty
Well it better fucking had be. It'd be a bit of a shock if the PS4 came out and it looked WORSE than a PS3 somehow, this isn't news.
2. It has integration with Facebook and UStream
OK, the UStream thing is kind of cool. Apparently the controller has a "share" button, where you can upload shit to Ustream for all your friends to watch, which is a potentially cool feature. Facebook however, needs to fuck off. Granted that I fucking hate facebook and use it as no more than a glorified chat service to keep in touch with buddies in different countries, but I don't need to broadcast every fucking game I'm playing to my news feed. Fucking stupid, Facebook and video games should NOT mix.
3. The controller has some kind of funky sensor thing in it and a touch pad.
I don't see the big deal here, it's a fucking controller. As long as I push buttons and the game does things I want it to, then I'm happy. The light bar and the touch pad are all great and stuff but I don't know how these are going to be used yet, so whatever. At least this one has a mic jack so you don't have to use those fucking blue tooth headsets.
4. You can use your Vita as a screen.
As someone who owns a Vita, I'm quite happy that I can now take a shit and continue whatever game I will be playing on my PS4 if and when I get one.
5. You can resume play right away after turning "off" the system
This isn't news either, PSP has been able to do this for yonks, who cares?
6. Something to do with Gaikai cloud gaming
I didn't give a fuck about OnLive and I sure as hell don't give a fuck about this thing. Maybe it'll be cool but I'm just not interested when I still have a PS1, PS2 and PS3 with plenty of games sitting around. A feature I don't need, but I'm sure some people will be happy to have.
Obviously I have not mentioned the games but Diablo 3 being announced was quite possibly one of the most disappointing things I heard. But still, the features I'm aware of so far sound good enough. I wouldn't say that I'm particularly hyped for the next Playstation, but things are shaping up to be pretty good at least. Hopefully more will be revealed at E3.
Also I'm aware I probably missed some things, but I'm gonna keep reading around for more info.
Above is not a picture of a PS1 like you might think. Well, it sort of is, but not really.
What you are looking at up there is something called the Net Yaroze (as in Japanese やろぜ, as in "lets do it") which was basically a mail order development kit where fans could make their own games for the playstation.
I never had one of these, but according to wikipedia these things at the time would set you back $750 and on top of that you had to provide your own PC to actually code the games on. Still, you bet your ass that coding hobbyists at the time got a kick out of this bit of kit.
So how did one get their games out? Well back in the day, before you could hook a system up to the internet, demos used to come taped to the front of magazines. The Official Playstation Magazine would have a demo disc every month, and bundled in with the demos was a couple of Net Yaroze games. I would get excited for these demo discs because even though the games were kind of ass, these were full games and the prospect of getting video games to play at that age would make my head spin with excitement.
The games were actually sort of ass but they did have a sort of charm about them that made them fun to play. The first Yaroze which I remember playing was something called Pushy2b
A little puzzle game where you had to push blocks on to X's to clear the level. The sound effects were sort of annoying but it was pretty fun, and it was nice to get a free game inside a demo.
So what I've decided is that when I get some time I'll record some footage of these games and put them up on youtube so you can get a feel of what I experienced in my younger days, so keep an eye out for that!
I've seen some pretty bad movies in my time. I've also seen some really bad video game movies in my time, but this, THIS takes the cake. When you make a movie of a video game SO BAD that you make Uwe Boll look like a cinematic genius, you have huge problems.
If I was to try and list off all the things that were wrong with this movie I'd probably end up with a list so large that if you printed it on toilet paper the entire city of London would be able to wipe their arses for a week on that one roll. But the problems can be summed up with bad characters, nonsensical plot and an abundance of "why?" syndrome.
Lets start with the bad characters thing. The movie claimed that it was going to sort of follow Silent Hill 3, so you have characters like Heather, Harry, Vincent etc. but the problem is that NONE of these characters, NOT ONE! are how they are in the games. Heather acts like a fucking arsehole 100% of the time, Harry isn't dead, and Vincent has been reduced to a pretty boy love interest for Heather. There are way more problems with the characters than just that, but those three make up the unholy trinity.
The problem is that this movie is so NOT Silent Hill in any way, shape or form that these characters are just reduced to name drops just to give this piece of shit some kind of tenuous link to the Silent Hill. Even the monsters in this thing are a load of shit with not a single one being remotely scary and whats even worse is that you barely fucking see them. As shit as the first Silent Hill movie was at least Colin the toilet guy was sort of Silent Hill-esque and Pyramid Head wasn't just acting as evil fairground operator (although he really shouldn't be there at all)
So next is the plot, and I swear to god this is going to be the hardest thing I've ever written on this blog because the plot basically doesn't exist. The premise for the movie is that Harry and Heather are on the run from the cult because the cult want Heather back to do....something......so they kidnap Harry and Heather goes to Silent Hill and then some shit happens for some reason involving Not Leonard so she can get a magic quest item to do.......things........then she hugs her evil half to death and Pyramid Head has a fight with a monster from The Suffering. The End.
There is the chance I missed a few things because I was to busy making notes of everything in this film that pissed me off, but I know 3 or 4 other people who have seen this movie and they all say that the plot is all over the place and makes zero sense. It's actually rather hard to explain why it just doesn't work, like at all. It's like the narrative just spins its wheels in place for 1 hour and 20 mins then jets off and does doughnuts for about 5 mins and then spins and crashes into your favourite pet shop where you were going to buy that cute little puppy dog, so then you go home and cry into a bottle of whiskey until eventually you have no choice but fellate a gun barrel but your spirit lingers just long enough for you to realise that no one bothered to come to your funeral because they all disowned you after watching this FUCKING GODDAMN CRAP MOVIE
Sorry, went off on my own nonsensical tangents.
This has already gotten pretty long but the final point is the whole "Why?" syndrome thing I was talking about. Throughout this film, pretty much the only thing you will be thinking is "Why?"
Why is Pyramid Head operating a merry-go-round?
Why did they bother to reference this, that and the other?
Why is Heather so fucking stupid and unlikable?
Why did they have that pants on head retarded nurse scene?
Why did Pyramid Head suddenly start being a good guy? Why? Why? Why? Why? FUCKING. GODDAMN. WHY?!
The list goes on, but these aren't little nitpicks that can be ignored in the face of an enjoyable movie, they are big glaring problems in the writing that detract from an already shit film and I didn't even mention the bigger problems in the above list.
So yeah, that's it, I'm done. Remembering this movie just makes me upset, and I didn't even touch upon the thing in the ending that made me want to jump off my 4 storey apartment building. Just don't watch it, ever. If you did watch it and you thought it was good, you are wrong. Please give all your money to my charity and remove yourself from life.
I'm aware this is a long one, so here is a too long; didn't read version on YouTube
While Gundam is a pretty big thing here in Japan, I've never been too much of a fan. That said, one thing that has always sparked my interest is Gundam: Bonds of the Battlefield. Most people probably don't even know it's called that because it's usually written like 機動戦士ガンダム 戦場の絆, but it's most famously known for its huge pods that the player must sit in to play.
So as far as I understand it, you get in that giant pod and pilot a Gundam to blow the shit out of other Gundams and fulfil objectives. You can customise your giant robot so it can do all sorts of fancy shit, and as far as I know you can play online against other people all over Japan.
Sounds fuckin' awesome right? Well you'd probably be correct but there is a problem with this game, and that's the pricing. Gundam: Bonds of the Battlefield is not the kind of game where you can just hop in and start playing.
Before you even think about playing you have to drop 300 yen on a stat card. This used to be called a pilots licence but I think it was recently changed to some generic stat card that works with other games. Then on top of that you have to drop another 300 yen...for ONE CREDIT! 300 yen for a single play is pretty steep considering I can play regular games for 100, and older ones for anything between 10 and 50 yen.
Not only that but you have to wade through all sorts of menus to set yourself up and then read absolute shit tons of Japanese so you know what your doing, how to play, the objectives etc etc. it's head spinning. It's the kind of game that you have to study, and I don't really want to have to do a crash course in giant robot related kanji to enjoy game about blowing shit up.
In something like Sengoku Taisen, the card battle game I've mentioned a few times on here, there is lots to read but you can do it at your own pace. Also you can generally figure out what each new card does just by giving it a spin, and on top of that for 600 yen I can get anything between 3-5 plays depending on which game centre I go to.
Not to say that this Gundam game is bad, it's probably really fucking good, but it's not the sort of time/money investment I want to make when I know my time in Japan is limited right now. Maybe when I make a return (and trust me, I will), I'll whip out the dictionary and give it a spin, but until then I'll stick to my trading cards.
(If someone wants to e-mail me a crash course, the address is on the side)
So thanks to you fine people, £200 has been raised for the Alzheimer's Society! That's double what it was last time I posted a little thank you message to the donators!
I'll post another one once it doubles again, so keep them rolling in. A donation of any value makes me really happy so even if it's only something small like £1, do it anyway because if everyone gave just £1 we'd probably be even nearer our first target.
It's a shame I don't really have anything I can do right now to incentivise donations, but if you want to see a specific Youtube playthrough, or you want a certain game on the stream, send in a donation and make your request in the comment, I'll do my best to get it done.
What is this shit? It's Mythic Entertainment dragging a relic of PC gamings past to try and squeeze money out of its legacy.
For those that don't know, Ultima is a big long line of old school RPGs that were created by a crazy dude known as Richard Garriot who went by the name of Lord British. Quest for the Avatar was the 4th game in the Ultima series and it was pretty revolutionary for its time. It did away with a big bad, and instead had the player focus on trying to become "The Avatar", which in the games world basically amounts to being like Jesus.
So what is Ultima Forever? From what I can tell in the trailer, it's a dungeon crawl hack n' slash. WRONG! FUCKING, SO GODDAMN WRONG! Ultima always had its fair share of combat but it was never a hack n' slash dungeon crawl. It was the fucking opposite, where I think it was the virtue of honor meant that you had to leave fleeing foes and allow them to live because stabbing a dude in the back while he's running away crying is about as dishonourable as it gets.
But this trailer just has a guy smashing the fuck out of everything on screen, and all the depth and brilliant design to be found in the original Ultima 4 appears to be gone. This leads to another problem I have with the gaming industry.
Stop dragging up old names just to make sales on new games. X-Com got lucky as that game ended up being pretty good. But Syndicate took it right in the ass, going from an awesome tactics game to a shit first person shooter. Now Ultima is ready to put its ass in the air and get fucked but the problem here is that Ultima already took it pretty hard after 9. So Quest for the Avatar, a great game, is now going to have its legacy shit on by turning into an ARPG.
Ultima Forever may actually end up being a really good Action RPG, but there is no reason it should carry Ultimas name, fuck off Mythic.
So apparently this story was being spread all over the place, it's even on the fucking BBC. I was far too absorbed in doing more important shit, like video games or folding my laundry, but this highlights a really creepy side of a certain sub culture in Japan.
The girl in the above picture is called Minami Minegishi, and she is a member of a "band" called AKB48. AKB48 is a incredibly shit band that make incredibly catchy music, so no matter how much you want to get mad at their incredibly dumb tunes, you'll still end up humming it down the street/singing it at karaoke.
So the reason for the whole head shave thing is that she was caught spending a night with her boyfriend. It sounds weird but this is what fans of AKB48 are like. They are put forward as this all girl group full of innocence and whatnot and there is quite a large group of fans that feel way more connected to the girls than they really should.
We are talking about kinds of people who will buy multiple copies (and this can be way more than 10 sometimes) to get invites to "hand shaking events" as well as multitudes of other weird shit. I get mad at AKB48 gaming CD sales like this, because it basically means that the Japanese charts are a load of shit, and I'm barely made aware of good artists because the charts are clogged with this garbage.
Anyway I got way off point here. The whole deal is that the girls in this group have to maintain the whole "innocence" thing so that the thousands of forever alones who make up the fan base don't get upset and their imaginary wife "cheating" on them. Of course she broke the rules and shaved her noggin but the whole thing is incredibly stupid.
So to sum up the whole thing
Shit band with catchy music and strange rules
Overly attached, creepy as fuck fans numbering in the thousands
Member tries to do something that every other normal human being would do, and it backfires hard.
She's an idiot
Which reminds me I should really give that AKB48 video game a go some time.......
Before I start, let me tell you about something called D.I.C.E.
This is basically an event where a bunch of gaming bigwigs sit around and discuss that state of the industry as well as other things. So now with that out of the way, I can tell you about a guy who spoke at DICE 2013 and pissed me off.
In the above VG24/7 article lies a video of a man called Jesse Schell giving a speech at DICE. I'm not really pissed off at him in the same way I'm pissed off at someone like Tomm Hulett, but he still rubbed me up the wrong way.
As part of his speech he talks about the sales figures of games with demos, and games without demos, and he backs it up with a graph too, take a look
So, if you watch the video he explains it, but the four lines are four different types of games. The bottom line is a game with no demo or trailer. Next up is a game with a demo only, and a game with a trailer only. The top line is games that only have a trailer.
Wow, OK, seems pretty solid right? Well he's pretty vague about what these "types of games" are. His graph really gives no thought to the quality of said games. His argument is that the more curious people are, the more likely they are to buy something, which is fine I guess, but it's still complete dog shit.
The guy knows his stuff, I'll give him that, but just because a game has a demo doesn't mean it's going to cut your sale. I'm going to be quite blunt here, and say that there is a lot of shit on the market right now. I can't move in a games shop for shit games just clogging up the shelf, and THIS is why sales on certain titles are poor.
If your game is ass, and you release a demo, people then know its ass and they won't buy it, but at least you don't piss them off. If you take away the demo and release a shit game, all you are going to do is anger people and potentially lose sales down the road because they will lose any way of testing your game and may just end up assuming that everything developer X produces is crap after wasting money on the demo less piece of garbage that you first put out.
I remember back when demo discs used to come on the front of fucking magazines and up until this guys speech, I've never even heard the idea that having a demo is going to kill your sales, if anything it would cause the opposite if you ask me, providing that the game is actually good.
Games with demos lose sales because the game is ass, not because of the demo. If you are seriously suggesting that demos are to blame for poor sales, and the only way to increase sales is to leave gamers in the dark regarding the quality of upcoming titles, you are nothing but a greedy fuck stain hoping to earn a quick buck by shovelling shit into the mouth of consumers. Still, that's about the state of video games today really, isn't it?
I'm Scared: A Pixelated Nightmare is a game that was suggested to me a few days ago by a friend, and today I finally got round to playing it.
I'm Scared is a horror game that attempts to fuck with the player in all sorts of strange and fantastic way, and while it's not a super scary game that'll give you nightmares, it is scary enough to make you uncomfortable and send a shiver or two through your body.
It's hard to talk about it at any length since that would spoil things if you were intending to play it, which you can here
If you can't be arsed to play it yourself, or you're just not good with horror, I played through the whole thing and put it on Youtube, so you can watch me get freaked here instead.
Well tonight I was messing around with Sonic 1 on Master System. I ended up attempting to stream again since one of my buddies is a big old school Sonic fan, and it worked like a charm!
So the Identity Gaming Livestream begins here! Basically, whenever I play something worth streaming, I will. Come at laugh at me as I die at things or share in my joy when I win at something.
Don't forget, if you're enjoying all the content don't forget to throw something to the Alzheimer's Society, because as fun as all this is, I am trying to raise money for a good cause after all
Usually when video games pop up on the news, it's something bad. Either someone has been killed or horribly injured and "these horrible violent video games are to blame", but not this time! Check this shit out!
This was a news report I came across last month, about an 80 something year old woman who enjoys the shit out of some video games. You'll have to forgive the BBC for talking about tablet and phone games like they matter, but it's nice to hear some good news for once.
One of the reasons she enjoys playing games so damn much is because she claims they keep her mentally active so this little news video is especially relevant to this blog since I'm trying to raise money for the Alzheimer's Society.
Finally, before anyone asks, yes, that is Disgaea she is playing in the picture. This old woman has really good taste if you ask me, we need more old people like this. So if you're worried about losing your marbles in your old age, grab a controller because it sure as hell works for this lady.
Well, I have to go and be out all day so the Sunday episode of Rayman is coming a lot earlier than usual this week since I don't know when I'll be home.
This episode is a lot shorter due to dying an absolute fuckton of times and my recording software just crapping out on me, but at least I look semi competent for once.
It's been a crazy couple of days and I've been a little bit too busy to actually post something of note, so instead I'm giving a short post on upcoming content just so the folks know I'm not dead
So of course, there will be new Rayman episodes. I have two sitting on my desktop ready to be uploaded over the course of Saturday and Sunday, so you'll have something to watch this weekend. Also I've been meaning to do another "Japan Purchases" vlog type thing, since I've got my 2 cents to throw in on my opinion of the Vita
Longer term, the next playthrough I already have lined up, and as you can probably tell from the above picture, it will be Cry Of Fear. Cry of Fear is a mod for Half Life that a lot of people tell me is really good, and considering it's supposed to be scary I thought I'd give it a go on camera.
Finally I'm planning to do a short series of videos of the whole "living in Japan" thing, since I figure my experience with the Working Holiday Visa scheme may help someone down the line, so look out for that whenever I can be arsed to film it.
DmC: Devil May Cry is still a game I have yet to play, so I will not be commenting on how good it actually is, but as far as I'm concerned, it still LOOKS like a piece of shit.
ANYWAY! The point here, is that DmC is not selling as well as Capcom hoped it would as they have now gone and halved the sales expectations from this title. While to me, this is neither good or bad, I came across an article that royally pissed me the fuck off.
This article, written by Ben Parfitt basically just outlines what is going on with the sales figures for the game. But he doesn't just say that, he's saying that fans are destroying this games sales figures out of spite, because they changed Dante's hair colour.
Never in my life have I seen a more ignorant prick write things on the internet about video games, and this is coming from ME who writes plenty of garbage on this blog. He agrees with the notion that "Devil May Cry fans destroy brand out of spite", which is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
People aren't buying the game because its vastly different GAME PLAY WISE to what they are used to. But it's not just different, it's been heavily dumbed down compared to past games, so the whole reason people enjoyed Devil May Cry has basically been removed from DmC. Couple that with some of the juvenile writing I've ever seen and it's a good recipe for making people turn away.
Not one person gave a fuck about Dante's design once some game play came out, NOT ONE, but this doesn't matter. Newsflash for you Ben, players don't owe Capcom or Ninja Theory anything. People aren't buying the game because it looks ass, not out of spite. Ben Parfitt isn't the only idiot to say stuff like this though, I have seen a couple of articles now calling the fans a bunch of whiny babies for not buying DmC.
But here is the thing, the Devil May Cry HD Collection, to my knowledge, is actually doing pretty fuckin' good. THAT should be an indication of why DmC isn't fucking selling. Fans don't want your easy mode "FUCK YOU" garbage, they want more of stuff like Devil May Cry 3/4.
I can't wait to find a pre owned copy of DmC so I can really tear it apart but there is no way I'm giving a penny to Ninja Theory or Capcom for this shoddy excuse of a Devil May Cry game. Also one more thing! When I was raging about the game play to my friends on steam and such, they would just say to me "if you don't like the look of it, then don't buy it", which makes sense right, but apparently all fans who don't buy things that they don't like the look of are now all spiteful babies
Fuck you Ben Parfitt and fuck all the "journalists" that posted articles with similar themes. I suggest that you take those pay cheques and give them to my Charity, because you sure as fuck don't deserve it for the type of drivel that comes out of your head.
I'm not usually in the market for 2 posts in one day, but after slaving over Rayman for the last 2 hours, I need a bit of a vent.
I fucking hate these goddamn things. The stages are already pretty tough being filled with spikes, pitfalls and the most obnoxiously placed enemies in the universe but on top of having to avoid all that I have to free these little boxes of garbage as well?!
This would be fine if they weren't so goddamn hidden as well. Some of the shit I have had to do to reach a few of these goddamn cages has almost made me pull my own hair out. What makes it even worse is that even if you know where they are, it doesn't mean that reaching it is going to be easy.
But no, that's not all, some of these fucking things aren't even visible, and you have to go and trigger them, which adds another layer of bullshit to the whole process.
I wouldn't even be that annoyed if I didn't need to get them, but to reach the last world and have a crack at the final boss, these things are fucking required, so if I want to beat the game I have no choice but to go back and do all this shit. I'm doing all this shit off camera though so you don't have to sit for hours at a time and watch me fumble about all the levels again failing to find things.
Look at that shitty fuckin' box, look at it! It's like one of the developers kids drew that shit. Good job the game is so damn good!
If you remember a while ago I made a post on a shitty master system game called ALF. Well, in order to get that bad taste out of my mouth, I went and discovered this gem. The plot of The Ninja is super simple; ninjas have kidnapped a princess, so go wreck their shit.
The game has about 12 or so levels, and in each one you move through, throw knives or shurikens at oncoming ninjas and kill a boss at the end. Hidden in the stages are some scrolls you need to find so that you actually know where the princess is being kept, and when you do that, you get a shit ending. The game also likes to mix things up with some levels that involve shit like moving logs on water or stampeding horses and shit like that.
Despite what I said about the ending and box art being a load of shit, the game itself is actually pretty fun. So go find a copy, it's a good way to kill an hour or two.
Survival Horror has been a bit dead for a long long time.
Konami, with the help of Tomm Hulett, has been ruining Silent Hill
Resident Evil turned into a series of bland action games with grotesque monsters
Project Zero (Or Fatal Frame if you're American) hasn't had a main series game outside of Japan since 2005, and nothing since 2008 in Japan
Alone in the Dark was murdered and no one gave a fuck
the list goes on and on...
But then some good things have been happening. ZombieU came out on the WiiU, which I have yet to play, and while it doesn't look particularly scary, it looks plenty survivaly and with permadeath hanging over you I imagine it would keep you at least somewhat on edge.
On top of that, we have Tomm Hulett leaving Konami, so he's not going to be making any more fucking awful Silent Hill games, so maybe the next person to step up will breathe some life back into things.
Which is basically a big article of Masachika Kawata saying that Resident Evil needs to go back and stop sucking ass, read it.
Well, nothing concrete has happened yet, but these are good signs if you ask me. In the meantime we have the Amnesia sequel to look forward too, so maybe after that we can get decent horror games once again
Borderlands 2 is a game that has yet to be played. I own a copy and it's been added to my eternal backlog, but as I'm writing this post, I've yet to play it. Luckily, I'm not commenting on the quality of the game, but more the idiocy of certain people on twitter.
While browsing the internet I was made aware of this article.
For those that don't want to read, some idiots on Twitter are claiming the character of Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2 is racist because she talks in black slang. Yes, I am totally serious, the link above contains the story in more detail and the twitter conversation.
This is quite possibly one of the dumbest things I have ever heard and I can't believe that people have gotten to the point where they are being offended by the way a character speaks. I've heard white people speak like this all the damn time, and a dialect like that isn't limited to just one group of people, any prick can talk like that, it's not a hard speech pattern to imitate.
The character of Tiny Tina, from what I looked up on youtube, is super annoying but not racist. You would have to be some kind of drooling turbo idiot to think that speaking a certain way makes you a racist. It pisses me off that there are all these people that are on a crusade to try and ban everything that may be even SLIGHTLY offensive to someone.
NEWSFLASH! Probably every game/movie/book has something that offends SOMEONE, so if you start trying to change things so that no one will be offended, the only thing you can possibly do is just stop making things. Example, I find these people on Twitter to be offensive, so I think they should stop posting, but they wont. These people think characters like Tiny Tina are offensive and want them to stop being written that way, but they wont, so shut up.
If anything, I'd say that the dudes making the argument that the character is racist, are racist themselves since they are making the implication that the only kind of people who talk in low class black slang, are black people. Maybe these people should think before they chat shit.
For the longest time, I didn't give a rats ass about the WiiU, and then I saw this. Get on that hype train once again, because this is one of the most fantastically strange crossovers I've ever seen.
Crossovers aren't a new thing in games, we have things like Marvel Vs Capcom, Capcom Vs SNK and it even happens in RPGs with things like Trinity Universe, but all those games, and the characters from those games are from the same genre.
For those that don't know, Shin Megami Tensei is the series that has given us stuff like Lucifers Call, Digital Devil Saga and Persona. They are basically like Pokemon, but meant to be played by people who actually have some taste.
Fire Emblem is a series of strategy RPGs where you take a bunch of dudes on adventures to save lands and whatnot. As you fight things on a big grid map, you level up your characters and make them advance classes so that the next big bad guy in the plot wont ruin your shit.
They are basically two completely different kinds of game, but somehow they are being crossed over. I'm aware Shin Megami Tensei has had a "tactics" version on the DS and 3DS, so it could be based on that, but then it should have "Devil Survivor" in the title and not just "Shin Megami Tensei"
There is a trailer which I will provide at the bottom but there is 0 information about what they are doing with this thing. It's basically saying "This is a thing, get hype", and oh boy did it work. Check it!
