Today is the Day! Computer Issues

Well, today is the day that I leave for Japan!  Just a quick post to say that because I have to spend a lot of time doing a lot of different things pretty much from the moment I touch down, you might not see a post in 2 or 3 days.  So don't panic, I'm not dead, I just need some time.

Of course though, my computer picks today as the day it wants to start dying on me.  Due to the fact I travel around so much, I do most of my PC gaming on a laptop.  This isn't ideal but I've not had problems running anything and the mobility is perfect for me right now. 

Anyway, the fan on this piece of shit is starting to crap out and I can't clean it/replace it because HP Laptops are built in the most frustratingly possible way you can imagine.  My best bet is blowing compressed air into the vents, which is working so far but really it's only a matter of time before this thing just dies on me.

This isn't really going to affect anything right now, but I'm going to assume the worst and say that the October play list I had planned isn't really for October anymore, just think of that list as the next 6 games I'll be doing.

Anyway, the next post I make will be from Japan, so watch this space.

Glitches and Cheating: A Short Speed Run Rant

Never would I have thought in my life that idiots on the internet would get to me as much as they have with this one, here we go!

Speed Running is a thing I have enjoyed watching for a pretty long time, but only very recently have I got into trying to do them myself.  If you look a few posts down from this one you'll be able to see the first full run I've put on They Bleed Pixels.

Anyway, no matter if you're into speed running or not, as long as you're into games like Half Life and stuff, chances are you have seen the insane runs from a group of people going under the banner of Sourceruns on YouTube.  Their Half Life 2 and Portal speed runs are insanely good and between them they have managed to produce some really good times.

Now if you hop on YouTube and watch these runs, you may noticed that they are glitched to shit.  Lot's of accelerated jumping round levels, going out of bounds and all sorts of funky stuff that allows them to beat the game as fast as they do, but this is where the problem lies. 

It's not just these Half Life runs, it's basically ever speed run that involves glitches ever but there is always some moron in a comments section complaining about how "the run isn't legit! they used so many glitches!  They are just cheating!"  This is complete horseshit and I'm going to explain to you people why.

First of all, what's the point of a Speed Run?  Well it's to get to the end of the game as fast as you possibly can without cheating or modifying the game in any way.  This has of course evolved over time so generally speaking, what's known as "any%" runs will be extremely glitched out in a lot of cases while "100%" may not be as glitchy, or glitches will be used to make certain goals faster rather than skipping huge chunks of the game.  This is not the same as cheating, such as using codes or other tools like game shark to give yourself an advantage in order to beat the game.

A good example of this difference really, is with Sonic speed runs.  If you've ever watched a Sonic run you'll see the runner zipping his way through the walls of the levels to reach the end of the stage as fast as possible.  This is NOT the same as using a level select code or level skip code or a no clip in a game genie password or some shit because you still have to actually PLAY the level.  There is a degree of skill required to shove yourself inside a wall at just the right pixel and at just the right speed in order to make the zip happen, and the only thing making is happen is you and the controller.  THAT'S the difference between cheating and glitching.

So bottom line really is if you're going to pass judgements on people's Speed Runs, clue yourself in on how fucking Speed Running works before you start slamming the keyboard with your stupid hands.  A lot of work goes into these runs and its infuriating to see people dismiss them for such a stupid fucking reason.  If you don't like Speed Running, then fine, but don't shit on other people just because people are enjoying games in a way that you couldn't even begin to understand.

Goddamnit

The October Playthrough Playlist and Other Announcements

Well it's coming up to October and that means it's also coming up to Halloween which means it's time to play a bunch of scary games for the YouTube channel!

I've put together a 6 game playlist that I hope to get through within a month but with all the stuff going on right now it might bleed into November, but that's OK because the games are fun anyway. 

So what are the games?  Well I've split the 6 games into 3 categories and they are as follows

Scary Bad (Games that cost about £1 on Steam and were gifted to me to play because they're shit)
-Dinner Date
-Fortix

Classic Scary
-Silent Hill
-Resident Evil

New School Scary
-Outlast
-Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

So you have all that to look foward to, I hope you'll enjoy me suffering/cowering for your entertainment.  But that's not all! If you were wondering why there is a big fat Japanese flag at the top of the post, it's because I'm moving back to Japan in a couple of days so you may see a return of all sorts of Japan related posts and coverage of arcade games once again!

So keep your eyes peeled for all the content, it should be a good month!

Podcasty Thing! Violence, Video Games and Bad Parenting

With the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, this debate has popped up and all manner of idiots who don't know anything about games are throwing in their opinion.

I go on a 7 minute rant on how it's not really violent games that cause violent people, but a lack of proper upbringing.  Enjoy!

I streamed a Speed Run! and filmed it!

Well I just finished streaming a run of They Bleed Pixels.  I managed to do the whole game in 43 minutes 21 seconds.  Doesn't quite match my personal best time but I'm glad to finally have a speed run up on YouTube. 

You can view it here

Enjoy!

Race the Sun and Indie Whining

Race the Sun is a strange game I was told about last night so let me give you the story.

I was sat in my room playing Ultima 1 yesterday and while I was moving around the lands of Sosaria trying to vanquish Mondain and his orb of immortality, I heard my facebook chat go off.  I go to check it and it's a good friend of mine saying that he had discovered this game called Race the Sun and it was really good.

So I go and check the trailer and it's this cool looking infinite running game where you control a ship dodging all sorts of stuff at high speed, collecting power ups and trying to stay alive long enough to beat your high score.  The cool thing about this game though, at least the way I understand it, is that every 24 hours a world is randomly generated and the leader boards are reset.  From there you have 1 day to get really good at the stage and top the daily leader boards.  It's a cool idea and would definitely keep me coming back, factor in the hard mode that comes with the full version of the game and you've got something pretty good.  A little different from every other infinite running game on the market and a good way to try and kill some time during lazy afternoons by the sounds of things, right?

But then my friend messaged me again this morning telling me that Flippfly, the company who made the game are in a spot of bother.  They can't get green lit on Steam.  So while looking around the website for the game I came across this article written by one of the developers.

http://flippfly.com/news/race-the-sun-a-month-after-launch-losing-steam/

Now I get they are upset about their game not doing very well (2 copies sold last week) but there seems to be a lot of finger pointing and whining in this post.  Whining about how they can't share the same success as Mojang, whining about how the interest for it on Steam Greenlight isn't all that good and whining about how Indiecade basically dismissed it as a mobile game.

My problem with this article is they don't really have any place to whine like this; the lack of success of Race the Sun is entirely their own fault.  Yes, the game looks cool and yes, they managed to get me interested but just by watching the trailer and playing the demo on Kongregate, it's nothing more than a bog standard infinite runner.  The problem with your game being one of those is that there are already loads of those damn things on the mobile market and almost ALL of them are free.  So why would I throw down $10 for your game when I can just pick up my iPod and play Temple Run for nothing? 

Now judging from my friends reaction to the game, it's better than your standard mobile runner game, and I'm willing to believe him.  If it doesn't get a Steam release soon, I'll pick it up off their website and show some support, because it looks they have made something that's pretty fun, so show some love.

But really, drop that whiny "wahh, our game is so good why won't it sell?!" and re work your trailer and make sure people KNOW what sets it apart from every other game in the genre, because there are reasons to want this thing, just no one can tell from what you've put out already.

Go give them a thumbs up on Steam Greenlight too, I'd like to buy this using my steam credit.

Don't Starve

Well this was a pleasant surprise.  Yet another game I got during a steam sale for absolutely no money thanks to the sale of DotA2 items and my only regret with this purchase is that I didn't install it and start playing it sooner.

Don't Starve was released in April of 2013 by Klei Entertainment and I'm sad to say that when I first saw the game I turned my nose up at it.  I saw a dude running around a randomly generated world picking up things and using those things to build stuff and straight away thought that this was another shallow indie game trying to ride the coat tails of Minecraft with it's gimmick being a proper art style rather than block graphics.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Don't Starve is a game where you run around randomly generated worlds picking things up and using them to build other things, that much is true, but really it's more than that.  It's a game of survival where there isn't really an end goal but you're aiming to survive for as long as possible in an extremely harsh environment.  There are 4 really obvious ways to die in this game but only 1 of them involve actually starving.  The others involve being mauled by monsters, going insane and being killed by some strange thing in the pitch black darkness of the night.

The game play is simple point and click stuff, you click on the thing you want to collect or use and item on and it does it.  You can use WSAD or clicking to move your guy and the Q or E keys to move the camera.  From there you are told absolutely nothing and you basically have to fend for yourself, which in my opinion is great.  On the side there is a big list of stuff you can create and it tells you what you need to make them so you can set yourself a target for that gadget you want and then go exploring.

Really it's best to build yourself up a base of operations with the science machines and a fireplace and explore outwards from there and build yourself up over a long period of time.  As you explore you'll discover all sorts of weird shit that even after sinking a few hours into the game I've still not found a use for.  I found a strange gold ring surrounded by evil plants and a gnome doll that both have no immediate use and I know that I'm only scratching the surface of weird collectibles in that game.

When you do die (and you will die eventually) your character is deleted and you will be forced to start again completely from scratch.  This gives you more incentive to really work hard for your survival and not just give up the ghost but dying also gives you experience which is used to unlock other characters all with unique perks that will alter the game play a bit so that surviving with just basic guy doesn't get too stale.

Really I can't say more than that but I've not really even begun to experience all the content.  There is a lot of stuff here and it's being updated frequently.  In fact, I think there is about 6 or 7 days until the next Don't Starve update.  Seriously though, play this game, it's fucking great.

Tau's 10 Minutes of Yaroze! Cat Game!

Jesus christ......just watch.....

Gunpoint

Gunpoint is a game about rewiring things and punching people according to the developer website and it's a game I picked up on steam for basically no money thanks to a combination of steam sales and selling stuff on the marketplace.

Gunpoint is a game about a freelance spy called Richard Conway who uses his techno trousers to infiltrate buildings and do all sorts of other spy stuff.  He gets caught up in a murder mystery as well as a tale of espionage between two rival gun companies as he tries to clear his name for a murder he didn't commit.  They story isn't exactly the deepest thing in the world and it's made up entirely of text conversations between Conway and his clients that are completely skipable and sometimes a little bit stupid, but there is enough there to keep the player entertained between missions.

Game play is a mix of stealth and puzzling where you have to rewire building electronics to get to your target all while trying to avoid being seen and shot in the face by the various guards that patrol the corridors.  Each level is a building presented in 2D and you are free to scope it out as much as you want so that you can plan a route through the level.  Flicking the mouse wheel will activate your PDA thing where you can see the buildings electronic devices and how they are all wired up.  From here you can change them round so that a security camera might open a door or a light switch might send a power surge through a socket to shock a patrolling guard.  It's a cool system of game play and when you combine it with the various upgrades you can get throughout the game there are a few ways which you could tackle a single level.

The only problem for me is that the game is little too easy and a bit short.  I basically blasted through the whole thing in an afternoon and I managed to get most of the side objectives and an A grade or higher on the majority of the stages.  I'm not going to pass myself off as some kind of super genius but I don't think the majority of people would have much problem with this game and it's sort of a shame in a way.  There's such a great amount of potential in this game for some real head scratchers and while it's a shame that there was nothing brain busting in the core content, there is a level editor so you can share and play user designed levels that might really test you.

I suggest that anyone reading this article go and play Gunpoint.  It's pretty cheap anyway but if you don't want to pay £7 for a game that is a little on the short side, just wait for a steam sale again and you'll be able to pick it up for basically nothing.  Fun game worth checking out and a great way to kill an afternoon when there isn't much going on.

Alice: Madness Returns

Alice: Madness Returns is a game that came out ages ago that I only really just got round to playing because steam made it available in the last sale for basically no money.

So, back in the year 2000 a game was released called American McGee's Alice.  Acting as a sort of sequel to the books according to wikipedia, the player had to control Alice and her adventures through Wonderland while she went nuts in the real world.  I never beat the first one but I had a buddy with a copy that I sunk a couple hours into.

Anyway in 2011 the sequel to that game was released and it's basically about the same thing.  Alice's family was killed in a house fire and thanks to this tragic event she's going a bit crazy.  As you go through her adventure through Wonderland she starts to piece together what really happened and slowly beings to realise that basically 100% of the people around her are pieces of shit.

Game play wise we have a standard action platforming game.  You jump through lots of different areas, stopping in certain places on each level to shove your knife inside somethings face and you rinse and repeat this process until the end of the game.  This does sometimes get a little bit boring but the game does try to mix up it's game play with something different on every stage.  For example, in the underwater level there is a 2D side scrolling shooter section where you control a boat shooting a wooden sharks.  In another stage you drink a potion and control a giant Alice as she stomps all over various enemies while being shot at by cannons.  These sections are a bit few and far between though, so sometimes the platforming can get a little bit boring.

The level design is both pretty good and pretty bad at the same time.  Everything looks really cool and each world is unique with lots of cool stuff to look at but from a gameplay standpoint it's all a bit samey.  Jump on the floating platforms and if something is too far look for a switch to summon a air vent that'll give you some extra distance.  There are collectibles peppered around each level but it's kind of hard to miss most of them unless you're just blinding running towards the goal of each stage.

The one thing I absolutely cannot forgive about this game is the inclusion of sliding puzzles.

Sliding puzzles are dogshit and I don't know a single person that enjoys doing them.  What makes this even worse is that all of them in Madness Returns are really fucking easy so it just feels like a massive waste of time because not only do you have to do the puzzle but you have to find the pieces for it beforehand too.

Still, even with it's shortcomings, Alice: Madness returns is a good bit of fun with some solid voice acting and visuals so if you can pick it up on the cheap it's worth a play through.  Although you won't be wanting to go back and 100% it any time soon I don't think.

I Don't Understand Midnight Launches

Recently Grand Theft Auto 5 got released and the release of this game is easily one of the biggest things to happen in gaming this year.  The amount of hype people have for this game is astounding and while I don't share quite the same amount of excitement, I am looking forward to eventually picking it up and playing it through.

So I'm not here to pass judgement on the quality of the game but I really don't understand this whole midnight release stuff.  I went to a midnight release once, for Modern Warfare 2, and it was shit.  I went down to the local GAME store with my buddies from university and we were surrounded on all sides by idiots and there was a thick smell of weed in the air, it was most unpleasant.  Even then when I eventually got it home I thought that I couldn't really enjoy it all that much because I was tired so I ended up playing it in the morning anyway and if I was going to do that I didn't need to go to the midnight release at all.

It's not like the stores are going to run out of pre order copies anyway, they realise how much of these big title games they need to get in and how many orders they need to meet so it's not like your pre order is just going to vanish over the course of 2 hours at midnight and they aren't going to sell it off either if the store is any good.

Also GTA5 was released on a Tuesday which makes the whole thing even more confusing to me.  Sure, if it's a Friday midnight release at least you can stay up all night and recover on Saturday, but surely a great deal of people who went to go grab GTA as early as possible have jobs or school or some kind of mid week responsibility?  So wouldn't that mean one wouldn't have all that much time to play it anyway?  I don't get why these people can't just wait a few days or whatever and then really sink their teeth into it.  With a game with this much hype you'd think that's what people would want to do.

Still, who am I to judge? I'm sure there were plenty of happy customers that day and a great majority are enjoying the game right now.  For me, if GTA5 turns out to be anything like GTA4 I'm going to be underwhelmed and disappointed but like I said, no judgement until I have a copy.

Yet Another Change to the Stream Times

Right well, things have escalated a bit quickly on my end.

I'm currently in the process of making big changes to my personal life, which I may or may not explain at some point in the near future but all you need to know is that this whole thing makes my days busy and kills my enthusiasm to stream.  Doesn't help that Final Fantasy 4 is a piece of shit as well.

So basically the stream schedule has changed from its previous form to simply "when I can".  Once things have settled down I'll get something more concrete up again

Thanks for understanding and keep donating!

Tau's 10 Minutes of Yaroze! Blitter Boy!

Well, here is another episode of the old Net Yaroze stuff.  This time we have Blitter Boy Operation: Monster Hall, enjoy!

Boring is Worse than Bad

I'm really struggeling with Final Fantasy 4, the game is just dull.  This made me realise something and that is that a boring game is way WAY worse than a bad one.

Let's take a truly shitty example of a game

It's pretty much accepted by anyone with any kind of taste in anything ever that Silent Hill: Homecoming is an absolutely shitty game.  This game truly has nothing good going for it to the point where it becomes offensively bad but when a game reaches this level of shittyness there is still some entertainment to be had.

Get a friend round and play a shitty game together and you can both sit there just raging at it and that can be sort of fun in a strange kind of way.  Then when you're done you can hop onto your computer and have a giant bitching session with thousands of people about how much Tomm Hulett is a piece of shit.  Then when you're done with that, you can go to YouTube and be entertained by other people that you don't know raging about how shitty the game is, all with this smug sense of satisfaction because there are literally thousands of people who agree with you about how shitty this game is.

But then you have something like Final Fantasy 4.  Final Fantasy 4 is fine, it's not mechanically broken in any way and nothing about it really sticks out and just sucks.  The graphics are fine, the story is fine and the gameplay is fine, but at the same time it's not really all that fun either and that's the problem.  Final Fantasy 4 is BORING and this is way worse than being shitty.  At least with Silent Hill I can go on a tirade but I can't rage about FF4 because it's fine, it's just dull.

A bad game can almost be fun to play because sometimes you really want to see just how shitty it really gets (E.g. Heavy Rain) but a boring game really is just an absolute chore to play.  If I wasn't streaming it for charity I would have put it down by now.

Come enjoy the FF stream tonight!
www.twitch.tv/taurinensis

10 Minutes of Yaroze! Terra Incognita!

Back again with some more Yaroze goodness (?)

This time we have Action Adventure Zelda knockoff, Terra Incognita.  It's not great

The Importance of Game Feel

A few days ago I had a bit of a gush about Killer is Dead and there is one thing I forgot to talk about in that post that I'll take about right now instead.

Killer is Dead has quite simplistic combat.  It only really uses two buttons and their aren't complex combos to learn or complicated weapon switching mix up stuff or even jumping, but the games combat still succeeds because it FEELS really good.  Everything Mondo does in that game has this weight to it that makes beating up on bad guys really fun.  Not only that, but there are lots of visual cues that tell you when your being a badass.  For example, dodging an enemy attack at just the right time will make everything go black and red for a second and you can do this crazy over the top slice thing that just involves mashing the square button on your controller.

This kind of extreme visual feedback makes you feel like your being some kind of amazing bad ass despite the simplistic combat and it really helps to carry the game.  One of the reasons that Devil May Cry (not DmC) is so popular is that you have that amazing game feel AND really deep combat so it's satisfying on multiple levels once you get really good at it.

On the flip side, a lack of this game feel can really ruin the experience on some games.  The best example I can think of right now for this is Aliens: Colonial Marines.  Ignoring the fact that pretty much everything about the game is a pile of shit, the general feel of this game just makes it awful to play.  The gun play isn't fun and visual and audio effects on hitting and killing enemies is just the absolute worst and as a result the game just feels like an absolute chore.  Pile that on with all the other problems the game has and well......just go and look at the results for yourself.

If a game feels good there is a lot people can look past and it'll motivate them to keep playing.  This is really the case with me and Dead Space, a game I can't stand for it's pseudo horror monster closet filled bullshit but killing enemies and stomping them with your giant boots feels so good I can't help but enjoy myself when I play it.

So yeah, game feel, it's important, get it right.

Stop Cheating!!!

OK, I don't know the ins and outs of this story but the sentiment of this post remains the same.

So according to the website Cinema Blend, Microsoft have been gaming the numbers in an online twitter poll in order to make the Xbox One seem more popular that it actual is in America.  You can read the article right here.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Xbox-One-Caught-Cheating-Twitter-Poll-Gains-60-Votes-With-Bots-58927.html

You can see in that article there is a bunch of dummy accounts spamming votes for the Xbox One to make it look more popular than it really is.  Now it's not really a big deal, it's just a an online poll, but that's exactly the point.  Instead of focusing on fixing the massive fuckup that is the Xbox One, they are spending resources on having people set up a bunch of bots to spam hash tags on twitter.  If they spent more time on actually making a good system and less time trying to damage control their shitty piece of hardware then the votes would come naturally anyway.

Xbox isn't the only one potentially doing shit like this though.  There is a number of rumours flying around the internet that Riot Games are padding out their Twitch TV viewer numbers with bots sitting around various channels just so that the numbers look higher than that of their competitors.

Rather than trying to cheat people and game numbers, why not just make a quality product that people would enjoy?  Hell, in the case of Riot games they don't NEED to game numbers on twitch because there are already shit tons of people who love the game, who cares if there are more people viewing on twitch compared to DotA or whatever?

Just stop it! Twitch viewer counts don't matter! Twitch polls don't matter! Stop it and focus on making things good!

Stop Making MOBA Games

If there is something which could quite easily be described as pointless, it would be making a new MOBA game right now.

So we have DotA2 which is the big one, one of the most played games on steam and has a massive user base that includes people who have been playing since the days of the old Warcraft 3 mod and people who have recently picked it up.  On the other side of that you have League of Legends, a similar game with simpler mechanics and a more newbie friendly approach to things and this game also has a massive userbase.

Before that we had Heroes of Newerth, which was a game that was basically trying to be DotA but with it's muddy art style, crap characters and awkward transition into a free to play model, it was quickly forgotten.  Then on top of that there have been quite a few other titles which have been trying to take the crowns from DotA and League.  Stuff like Bloodline Champions, SMITE and a few others are all there and available to play but very rarely do you see anyone talking about them.

So you would think at this point people would be like "well shit, guess we're not taking them down anytime soon, guess we better go make a different kind of game" but you'd be wrong.  There has been talk for fucking ages of "Blizzard DotA" although I have no idea what that's going to be like and then more recently we have this thing called Strife made by the same guys who did Heroes of Newerth.

This is a terrible idea because what do you expect happen, really?  These games will get released, be played for a few hours by a small group of people before being binned and ignored for League or DotA.  These developers should be channelling their efforts into making something different, something new or original, but instead we're just getting shit games that'll be forgotten within a few months.

We've seen this exact same thing happen with MMO's thanks to World of Warcraft, and it's happening again now with this shit.  Stop making these games because getting people to switch or even just take interest isn't really worth the time or money.  Maybe in the future, once DotA and League have lost some steam, but doing it now is the epitome of pointless.

Tau's 10 Minutes of Yaroze!

Well here we are, the new feature for this blog!  Basically how this works is that I fire up an old Net Yaroze game and play it for 10 minutes while sharing my thoughts about it and maybe any memories that I had associated with it.

After 10 minutes I'll cut the video and if you want to see more then you just have to go try it for yourself.

Today I'm bringing you my first Net Yaroze experience, Pushy11b, a puzzle game about pushing things.  Enjoy!

Stop it and Grow Up

Twitter is cool, I don't use it but I can see why people like it so much.  It's a good way to have a direct line to certain people and have a platform to send them short messages or questions and it kind of brings people together.  That said, it's also a place for a lot of needless internet drama and despite it being really funny when it happens, it kind of needs to stop.

The above picture was a tweet made by Halo designer David Ellis commenting on a redesign of a Metal Gear Solid 5 character, here is what they came up with.

Now this isn't an issue about sexism or anything like that because I'm sure there are tons of morons already arguing about that shit, I have a problem with Mr Ellis's tweets regarding this design.

As far as I know, Kojima changed the design of this character to be "more erotic" to promote cosplaying.  Kojima isn't an idiot, he knows who he is designing this game for and that demographic like skimpy outfits on females.  He also knows that there are a large amount of female cosplayers in Japan who will jump at the opportunity to recreate this outfit so really he's just pleasing two fairly large groups of people.

Now you can criticise it all you want and no doubt there is definitely stuff to criticise with this design no matter how much I quite like it personally but calling Kojima a "man baby" on twitter is unprofessional, stupid and it kind of shows that you have no idea what you're talking about so you resort to petty insults because you feel like this should offend you for some stupid reason.

(As a side note, I don't think the man who's involved in making generic robot soldiers really has the right to be commenting on anything, get a clue)

David Ellis isn't the only person guilty of doing this shit though.  Phil Fish, a man who I have ranted about before was notorious for just insulting people on twitter and generally starting web drama because of his lack of tact and professionalism.  So you may be thinking "But Tau! You insult industry figures on your blog all the time!" and you would be completely right.  However the difference between me and them is that I'm a fucking nobody on Blogger writing for a small audience of people and I have absolutely no power in anything.  These people are industry leaders who should be setting a fucking example and going around twitter insulting people is not the example you should be setting. 

If it ever came to a point where I started having some kind of serious impact on anything, I would damn well make sure that I wasn't spouting the same rage filled nonsense that I do here.  If I was doing posts on let say, Tom Hulett for a proper website, they would be well constructed and thought out pieces on why his decisions are bad for the Silent Hill series.  Instead I can just down a bunch of caffeine drinks and smash my keyboard so that swear words appear around his name on the screen, but in this day an age I'm sure that would acceptable in a "professional" environment as well.

So basically, get a fucking clue and stop bringing school yard insults to twitter if your trying to criticise other professionals in your field.  It's childish, stupid and it sets a bad example and sends the wrong message.

Grow up and stop pretending to be offended by things for the sake of seeming "progressive" to morons on the internet.

Killer Is Dead

Killer is Dead is a game I have not finished yet, but due to it being fucking amazing I just had to talk about it right now.

The game follows one very smartly dressed assassin known as Mondo Zappa and his adventures doing work for an orginisation that involves killing an array of downright weird targets with the help of his happy go lucky school girl friend.  He has a big robot arm and a tormented past and he gets caught up having to deal with some guy called David doing all sorts of evil stuff from his base of operations on the moon.  Keep in mind though that this plot was written by non other than Suda51 of Killer7 fame and isn't scared to go right off the handle at basically any point during the game.

The gameplay revolves around hacking and slashing your way through levels of strange robot zombie things called Wires before eventually fighting one of the games strange and incredibly intresting boss characters.  On the way you'll find pickups to improve your weaponry, health and blood gauges that will help make the killing of extremely dangerous criminals a lot easier.

On top of all that there are a ton of side missions that involve all sorts of varied and interesting goals such as securing a bonsai tree or making laps of a Kyoto village while running over Wires.  If you need a break from the killing there are the games Gigolo Missions which involve hitting on attractive women and giving them presents so that their mutual feelings result in them giving you an upgrade of some description.  I could rant for an entire post about the press's reaction to Gigolo mode but instead of that I'll just say that the content off these missions has been grossly exagerated.

The graphics are also really slick with cool looking character models and interesting levels that are varied enough to stop you from being bored visually speaking.  The music is also pretty good and the game comes with both Japanese and English voice audio if you're the kind of person that wanted to hear the script delivered by the Japanese cast.  The English voice actors did a good job of delivering the lines though so it would be worth switching between the two for the full experience.

That said the game isn't perfect and the biggest thing they fucked up with this one was the difficulty.  Hard Mode was obviously designed to be played on a new game+ (assuming there is one) and playing it on your first time round can seem a little unmanageable at certain points, especially the side missions.  The problem with this is that normal mode is way too easy and I have no idea what the challenge is like on easy mode but judging from my current experience you could probably beat the game with one hand there.

The game also has a few bugs of which I shall share two stories with.  On one level, after performing a special kill on an enemy I just fell through the floor and had to restart the mission from a check point which was rather annoying because sometimes the checkpoints can put you quite a ways back.  On a side mission involving a gun turret one of my targets glitched behind a wall that I could not shoot through which resulted in me having to start the whole thing over from the beggining which pissed me off to no end.

Still, difficulty problems aren't game breaking as you can still enjoy the experience on any setting and game bugs are infrequent if a little annoying so Killer is Dead is still worth picking up and blasting through just for it's truly unique brand of Suda51 strangeness.

The Blue Bomber Returns!.....Kind of....not really

Remember Megaman?! I sure as hell do because it was only a few days ago during a boring part of my afternoon that I sat down and blasted Megaman 4 on NES.

Anyway, Capcom hasn't been treating it's little blue robot very well recently.  The closest thing we have had to a Megaman game was Street Fighter X Megaman, which is fine but it's a fan game and didn't really have anything to do with Capcom from a development standpoint.  I think we also had that Megaman XOver thing or whatever it was called which was a auto scrolling game that bascially played itself for the iPad.  Not to mention Megaman Legends 3 getting cancelled which a lot of people were upset about, so let's just say that the poor guy hasn't been having a good run.

So, what I can only imagine was a case of people being sick of Capcom's shit, Keiji Inafune and a bunch of other people have taken to the internet to crowd fund their upcoming project "Mighty No9", a Megaman game in everything but name.  Basically they took Megaman and changed everything just a little bit to avoid being sued, but not enough so that people won't know what's going on.

I'm not going to talk about the game itself here because one google search will get you a wealth of information on that, so go look up their kickstarter page which has already met it's goal.  The only thing I'm going to say is that I'm hype as hell and I'm glad this has happened.  It's been far far too long since we had a good Megaman game and even though this isn't QUITE the same, it's close enough to qualify.  Capcom sure as hell aren't going to do it so let's hope Inafune and his buddies can bring back the magic.

Final Fantasy 3

Right, last night I took down Final Fantasy 3 on the stream so now it's time to do a post about it.

Final Fantasy 3 was the last of the NES part of the series and the first to use the famous Job System that a few titles in the series have become quite well known for.  The story follows 4 youths on their grand adventure through the lands to restore 4 crystals and save the world.

Now I like Final Fantasy 3, but fucking hell is it a really annoying game.  The game itself is fine, it's basically the same as Final Fantasy 1 and 2 but it plays a lot smoother and looks a bit nicer compared to it's other 8 bit counterparts.  The problems with Final Fantasy 3 really only come in when the game starts forcing jobs on you.

You can tell that Square were really proud of this system that they had implemented it and they sure as hell were going to make sure you used it.  Sure, you can use a normal job setup of fighter, utility, black mage, white mage, but there are certain parts of the game where that shit just won't fly.

The one part of that game that I will never forget is the two dungeons with the monsters that multiply on hit unless you one shot them or use magic.  They are found in a long dungeon and and if you let the multiplication get out of hand then you are just fucked.  What you were supposed to do was change everyones job to Dark Knight and just physical attack your way through all the enemies.  So not only did the dungeon take me ages because I was being hard headed about my party, but the solution to my problem was fucking boring.

The same goes for other areas of the game that will just shove a handicap on you for absolutely no reason such as any section that involves turning your party into frogs or mini people.  Still, despite all my complaining about the game being a bit annoying Final Fantasy 3 is great.

The DS version is a hell of a lot easier than the NES version so really you only want to give this one a go if you're looking for a bit of a challenge.  The things that I have complained about above I don't remember being an issue at all in that one.

Well, onto Final Fantasy 4, view it here
www.twitch.tv/taurinensis

Stream Week!

Right, last night I missed my stream day due to being at fancy dinner parties and drinking way too much.

Anyway, my personal life aside, I've been thinking it's about time I made a ton more progress into this final fantasy thing, only 3 games in and there is still a lot to do so this every other day stream schedule just ain't cutting it.

So, from today until next sunday I'll be streaming every day from 9PM CEST until at least midnight and probably longer as long as some stupid bullshit doesn't end up making me want to quit.  So get hype and get your donations ready, I'll try and think up some incentives for the upcoming Final Fantasy 4 as well as the other games.

Tune in here
http://www.twitch.tv/taurinensis