Death of a Gamer?

What the fuck is going on man?  Why is it just so fucking HARD to enjoy games anymore?  The world has gone fucking topsey turvey. 

A few days ago I posted a story about the whole Zoe Quinn situation and how I didn't give a fuck about it because we all knew just how corrupt the whole gaming "journalism" situation was.  Then some new Anita Sarkeesian video comes out with all its cherry picked retarded arguments made by a woman who knows absolutely diddly dick about video games and between the Zoe situation and that video getting released what can only be described as an all out war has fucking started.

I got to the point where I just accepted that all these agenda pushing "social justice warriors" or SJWs for short were completely off the fucking rails.  None of them knew anything about games and none of them had anything constructive to say.  If you tried to argue with them they throw personal insults and say all sorts of nasty shit to you and they never want a real discussion.

People who play games were never mad at Zoe for cheating on her boyfriend and they were never mad at Anita for making feminist videos.  They were mad because Zoe revealed the corrupt nature of games journalism and Anita showed just how totally bullshit their whole agenda really is.  Problems arise when you have your typical internet twats sending threats and whatnot and just fueling the fire.  For the most part however, gamers were willing to talk about these issues and their willingness for debate was met with hostility and insults.

Today, 5 articles were written by a bunch of so called "journalists" claiming that in the light of recent events we are witnessing the death of the "gamer" identity.  What a bunch of fucking bullshit.  I refuse to link those articles but you can go and look them up but be prepared for some of the most mind numbingly retarded fucking diarrhoea that you have ever read in your life.

When you are writing worse articles than ME! you need to rethink your life.

These articles, written by so called "professionals" are just flat out insulting people who enjoy games.  Lumping them all in the same boat and calling them "toxic" to the industry.  Claiming that anyone who doesn't agree with their immensely fucked up world view on what equates to sexism or bigotry must therefore be a horrible person.  We have all been described as terrorists by these people, just because we try to point out their blatant bullshit in the comments sections of news websites and YouTube videos.

It's fucking disgusting

I don't want to hear it anymore.  I already did a long fucking article on why your race/sexuality DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER when it comes to games but we all know that it's not really about games is it?  It's about making clickbait articles to generate ad revenue for your shitty websites and for people like Anita it's about manufacturing outrage at something that doesn't fucking exist to fill her damn pockets.

I can't fucking MOVE anywhere on the goddamn internet anymore without hearing about this shit and I'm fucking sick of it.  Games are turning to shit and now I can't even fucking ignore it because it doesn't matter where I turn, some cocknugget is claiming how something in a game offends him and it should be censored or pulled or some level of stupid garbage bullshit.  I can't go a single fucking day without someone bringing up "feminism" like women in the industry is even a fucking issue.  Like women in the industry are totally oppressed and it's impossible for them to do anything which is total bullshit.  Like women in the industry get threats way worse than those of men but that's also complete bullshit and anyone willing to look at facts and not just cherry pick tweets from nobodies can realise in about 20 fucking GODDAMN SECONDS.

Gaming and the identity of the "gamer" isn't dead but people have finally had it up to here with all the bullshit and people aren't standing for it anymore!  I won't fucking stand for it anymore!  But I'm not going to join this so called "war" against social justice types, I'm just going to keep enjoying games and ignoring journalists and writing about things that I enjoy.

I get upset about this because I'm passionate about this hobby I have held since the age of 4.  I am not a misogynist, I am not toxic and I am absolutely not a fucking terrorist just because I had fun playing Project Diva F2nd this morning.

Get out of my goddamn hobby and stop pushing your fucking -isms where they don't belong.

Fuck.  

Kuime [喰女]

I know I don't usually do posts about movies but this one was just SO DAMN GOOD that I feel like I have to write something.  Information about this movie is extremely hard to come by on the internet and any sites that do have any entries only have a vague couple of lines and a cast list.

Kuime is a Japanese supernatural horror movie about an actor who is filming some kind of Samurai type looking movie thing.  As far as I understood it he was the main character and his girlfriend was playing the lead female role.  It becomes apparent very early on in the movie that the relationship between our two main characters is not a good one and after filming he's going off and fucking around with another member of the cast.  It's from here that all the weird ghostly shit starts happening and stuff gets all kinds of crazy but if I try and outline any more of the plot I'm worried I might spoil something.

So last night I went to the cinema to see this movie and the majority of the film is spent watching the characters act out this traditional samurai drama thing and then a couple of scary things happen and the movie ends.  When the credits started to roll and the lights in the theatre got brighter our initial reaction was "what the fuck was that?!" Not because the movie was bad but because we had absolutely no clue what had just happened on screen.

Nothing made any goddamn sense to us.  Sure, it was a cool horror movie but it seemed like one of the most non-nonsensical movies ever with all these weird disconnected things happening between a movie production and a haunting.  But then it clicked for one of us and after doing some research I realised that Kuime might just be one of the best horror movies I've ever seen in my goddamn life.

The movie production that is being filmed in the movie is for an old Japanese ghost story called Yotsuya Kaidan.  Yotsuya Kaidan is a story from 1825 about betrayal, murder and ghostly revenge and once you understand that it's not just "some samurai drama" then all the strange shit going on in the movie makes a hell of a lot more sense.  Some understanding of how Japanese ghosts work may also be required to fully "get" the film, but once you do and everything clicks you can truly appreciate it for just how great it is.

I do understand how that last paragraph makes me sound.  It makes me sound like I'm saying "oooh, look at how much *I* understand about Japanese culture and stuff! fnar fnar fnar"  which is not how I want to sound but if I try and go into more detail I'm going to spoil everything and I don't want that.  You just need to see the damn thing first and then you'll understand what I'm getting at.

The only other problem with this film is the language.  I'd say my Japanese is pretty good but a lot of the time people are talking in ye' olde Japanese which makes things a little hard to follow at times.  Even the two native Japanese speakers I saw the movie with came out commenting on just how hard the language was so once again, I'm not trying to show off, shit is genuinely tough to understand.

It's kind of a shame though because I know that if any western critics get a hold of this movie they aren't going to like it.  When people watch a movie they just want to relax and watch a fucking movie.  They don't want to have to take a history lesson and a 1800s Japanese Language course just to enjoy a film.  I just happen to be really into Japanese ghost stories and folk tales so looking all this stuff up and having the movie fall into place for me was an absolute joy.

Kuime is not for everyone but if you like Japanese supernatural horror movies and you're willing to clue yourself in a little bit then it's absolutely fantastic.

Pokken? Are you fucking Serious?

This is a joke right?  It's not serious, is it?  This is some sick joke being played by some cunt with bad taste?! RIGHT?!

Shit

I had a completely different topic planned for this evening, something positive where I was going to praise a game that I've been playing recently but then THIS shit fucking happened and I've swung right back into being an angry shithead on the internet.

Google the term "Pokken" and word going round is that this title has been officially announced.  Now just read that stupid fucking title, "Pokken", you guessed what it is yet?

A TEKKEN GAME WITH FUCKING POKEMON IN IT!

I have never heard anything so bullshit in my entire life.  Is there nothing sacred in this fucking industry.  Is there nothing I can enjoy so much without it turning into complete shit and betrayal?! 

Now why am I so angry?  Well Tekken is a great game and Pokemon is a shit game.  Tekken is a game made for people who enjoy competitive fighters and Pokemon is designed for people with brain damage.  All the depth that can be found in Tekken is going to be stripped out and the game dumbed down so that the title can cater to Pokemon's target audience.

So you might come back at me and say "well if you don't like Pokemon just ignore it and don't play it, it's not like it ruins Tekken as a whole or anything".  Well you may be right there but this game is getting a release in fucking ARCADES so I have every right to be pissed off.  All the space being clogged up by this fucking disgrace of a game is space that could be used for something that doesn't suck...or a vending machine.  Hell, I'd even take a giant 6 foot deep hole in the floor filled with shit than cabinets for this game.

First they come along and piss all over Nobunaga's Ambition with "Pokemon Conquest" which was a total failure as a monster breeding game and a total failure as a historical strategy game.  Not content with shitting over RPGs, Strategy, Dungeon Crawls and other genres they have now turned to fighting games to try and milk this crappy series for more Yen and Dollars.

Fuck Pokemon.

Fuck Off Zoe

In certain parts of the internet there's a topic that many many people are discussing and that's the situation involving someone called Zoe Quinn.

I'm not entirely sure of all the intricate details of all the bullshit flying around but I'll try to fill you in to the best of my understanding. 

Basically, there's a woman called Zoe Quinn who makes a shitty non game called Depression Quest.  This woman cheats on her boyfriend with something like 5 people and the boyfriend who is understandably just a little upset posts a bunch of info about Zoe on a blog.  When I first came across this information a lot of people were just waving it away with a "who gives a shit about someones personal life" but after some digging it turned out to be a bit more than just a gossip story about someone cheating on their boyfriend.

The information that's come to light, which you can look up on your own time because I'm not providing a fucking toilet paper long list of links for you, exposes that Zoe was sleeping with other developers and members of gaming "journalism" in order to get her game green lighted on steam and to drum up publicity and all sorts of other shit.  A lot of the articles being written by various outlets and their hypocrisy by covering this scandal but exposing other (male) members of the industry for far less also exposes the agenda driven bullshit side of the games "journalism" industry.

Now my explanation might not be enough or my understanding might be wrong but I don't give a fuck. 

Anyone with half a working brain has known that games "journalism" has been complete and utter bollocks for YEARS and it's only gotten worse.  I don't follow ANY of these fucking sites because they are all complete garbage run by people who generally speaking don't know diddly shit about anything and it's only gotten worse.

Anyone with a working brain can see that scores are being bought and relationships between publishers and the press are being used to generate buzz for a game so they can generate more sales.  Shit games getting great scores and a bunch of undeserved acclaim because some money changed hands somewhere probably.  All this Zoe Quinn situation is doing is laying it out out bare but we all knew it was going on anyway and we don't need to go on a fucking internet crusade to "take down shitty journalism". 

All you have to do is stop reading the reviews from the sites that you KNOW are bullshit.  Stop giving them clicks, then you stop giving them money and then maybe one day they'll go away.

It's an almost impossible task anyway since the way "gamers" feel is that if you don't conform to the mass opinion then you are some kind of deviant that should be purged.  If I don't agree with the 10/10s for The Last of Us and GTA5 or whatever then I'm just some cunt who doesn't know what I'm on about when really it's the exact opposite and anyone with a lick of taste knows that.  But the problem is that there are so many of these twats that you could lay the whole corrupt state of things completely bare for all to see and these sites would still make money hand over fist because opinionless twats need to see the big fat 10/10 for video game du jour so they have a sense of self validation.

Fuck Zoe and fuck games "journalism".  Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to actually go and PLAY and have some FUN with a game instead of worrying about if some cunt thinks it's worthy of a good score or not.

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae

I don't even know where to begin with this one.

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae is a game that was released this year on Steam developed by Zenith Blue.  It's one of those games that could be compared to something like Devil May Cry but stripped of almost all it's quality.

You play as a school girl with a katana who is some kind of demon slaying warrior.  A classmate of yours has made off with some evil sword of legend that has possessed her and now it's up to you to take her down before she destroys the world or something, I don't know.

You are given a number of attacks such as a slash which drains a sword meter, a punch to recover the meter and a charge attack for a sort of AOE.  As you play you obtain little red balls which are used to buy upgrades such as longer/stronger combos, air attacks, gap closers and so on.   It's quite clear to see why so many people make the connection with a game like Devil May Cry with this title but this game doesn't even come close.

Each level is just one big circular room and enemies are teleported in for you to slaughter.  Considering that this is only a small game there is actually quite a surprising number of different enemy types and they all behave differently and there is actually quite a bit of strategy when it comes to adapting to different combinations.  After a certain number of enemies a boss shows up and these fights range from being stupidly easy to crazy nuts hard.  Maybe I'm just bad but there were parts of the game that I would just breeze though and then my progress would come to a screeching halt because the boss was such bullshit.

However once you work out what you are doing and find an attack pattern that works you can kill the bosses no problem.  But that's one of my complaints with this game since this is a genre where mixing things up and creating combos is part of the fun but here I was just finding a chain of moves that worked and spamming that until the bad thing fell down.

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae is not a bad game by any stretch but it's extremely unpolished.  The problem is that there are so many games like this that are WAY better that it becomes hard to recommend.  It's not good enough on it's own and there is nothing really unique about it that makes it stand out.  However if you like schoolgirls cutting things then maybe you might get a kick out of it for an afternoon.

Child of Light Mini Review

A couple of weeks ago I beat Child of Light so I'm going to do that thing I always do a write a little bit about it.  I made a post previously talking about how the combat was basically a poor mans Grandia and used it as a basis for the idea that games are getting dumber and dumber but I actually quite enjoyed Child of Light.

The game follows Princess Aurora who kinda, maybe but didn't really die and was sent to the land of Leumeria.  There she is thrust into an adventure to rid the world of a dark queen by gathering the sun, the moon and the stars and then shoving a sword into her big ugly face.

You spend the whole game exploring 2D environments and fighting monsters for EXP.  Once you reach the end of an area you will fight a boss and once that's all said and done you get some story.  The exploration is fun since Aurora can fly freely around the map and there is quite a lot to find in each area.  Some areas even have little sub areas that involve traps that could potentially kill you or a special enemy that will drop a nice prize if you manage to kill it.

The combat, while simplistic, is fast and never I never really got bored with it.  You level up at a stupidly fast rate but the monsters remain challenging as long as you keep moving forward.  You could hang back and grind a little but I feel that if you did that then the fun behind the challenge of combat would be diminished somewhat.  Just as a note, I played the game on hard so I can't speak for the lower difficulty levels, but for a game like this playing on anything less than hard is just a bit embarrassing, quite frankly.

I was told going in that the story, while not bad, is annoying because almost all the dialogue is delivered in rhyme.  It would be really annoying if it was voiced but only a small number of key scenes have any voice work and the rest of the story is delivered in text, so I don't really know what people are moaning about.  The story is pretty basic but it's driven by some pretty good characters with well fleshed out personalities.  You get to know your squad pretty well over the course of the game and since each one has a unique function in combat then it's rare for any one character to get truly sidelined and forgotten.

I would recommend Child of Light to fans of the RPG genre.  It's a lighthearted little adventure with some nice characters, interesting art direction and fun game play.  While some of it's features feel underdeveloped such as the skill tree and Oculi stat boost stuff, it's not intrusive enough to ruin the whole experience.  It's also just the right length for this kind of thing wrapping everything up before things start to get stale.

Go give it a go. 

The Positives of PT

If you have me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter you might have noticed that I've been raging about PT (Playable Teaser) for the last few days.  Rightly fucking so too because while PT wasn't terrible it just wasn't Silent Hill.  As a stand alone horror game it was fairly effective but since they slapped Silent Hill on the title then it has to be held to a certain standard which I think right now it doesn't meet.

But maybe I should lower the rage gauge for a few moments and have a bit more of an optimistic outlook on this.  First of all, despite all of the failings of PT it's so much better than basically any Silent Hill game shat out by Konami and the Tomm Hulett retard squad in recent years.  I'd be pretty pissed off if I was Tomm because he spent so many years making failed SH game after failed SH game and now Kojima rolls up and makes a DEMO that everyone is saying is the next best thing.  At the very least PT exposed just how much of a talentless shithead Tomm was.  Good riddance.

Now I raged a little bit about Kojima and how he doesn't get Silent Hill or whatever but if you just back up a moment, it's fucking Kojima!  This man is one of the industry greats who's created some of the best games fucking EVER.  If you just ignore "Silent Hills" for a minute and realise that Kojima is behind this damn thing, at least we are guaranteed something that plays well and looks really good.  Even doing just that will be a damn sight better than everything else we've had up to now.

It's pretty clear to see that Kojima does care about the project too.  If there's one thing Kojima is good at it's emotion and detail which is EXACTLY what Silent Hill needs to be effective.  Kojima is also very much aware of his own weaknesses which is probably why he's teamed up with del Toro who's an extremely talented guy and will be easily able to cook up something pretty effective at the very least.

I've also heard a rumor that Kojima is trying to get members of Team Silent on board or at the very least asking them for advice.  If this is true and the original Team Silent are involved or at least helping Kojima with the project then maybe there is a little bit of room for some excitement.

I desperately want all my rage and anger to be horribly misplaced.  I WANT Kojima to give me a big fat slap in the face, the middle finger and show me just how awesome he can make a Silent Hill game.  PT and all the dicksucking on twitter that went with it had me extremely concerned and upset but I'm going to ignore the idiots and put some faith in the talent behind the project. 

I guess I'm very nervously boarding the hype train.

Silent Hills Anti Hype

I'm not going to lie, after Book of Memories I was kind of hoping we'd never see another Silent Hill game and the series wouldn't have to be ruined by any more brutally bad games.  Alas, that is not the case as Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro have stepped up to the plate to bring us yet another game but guess what.....it looks fucking awful.

I can understand why people WOULD be hyped for this game because on paper the idea sounds awesome.  One of the best game developers in the industry teaming up with a highly talented movie director to bring us a new horror game for the next generation; sounds awesome right?

Well no, first of all there's the problem of the trailer.

Nothing happens in this fucking trailer.  A man who looks like Murphy Pendleton's fucking brother walks down the street, spots a speck of blood and a flickering street lamp and then it's a bunch of fucking logos about the Fox engine and all that stuff.

Now there is another video that I can't be arsed to find but if you type "Silent Hills Playable Teaser" it will come up.  In those videos it shows people walking around a house in first person before being jumped by a dirty woman and the demo ending.

It's like they took the first person apartment sections from Silent Hill 4, which everybody fucking hated and used THAT to showcase their big, scary horror game.  The other problem is that the demo ends with a fucking jump scare which is never what Silent Hill was ever about and to top it all off you get jumped by a fucking person.  People aren't fucking scary because you know what they are.  Sure, a person with a chainsaw or something is threatening but it's not scary.  You can shoot a person in the face and unless it's a zombie (and please god don't bring zombies into Silent Hill) they should fall to the ground.

Look at all the enemies in Silent Hill 2 or 3.  Just these vague shapes that kind of twitch around and they are scary because you know they are going to fuck you up but you aren't quite sure how.  They are scary because they are intimidating and vague but a woman jumping out of a closet and killing you with her bad breath is NOT fucking scary.

Also why the fuck is it called "Silent Hills".  Anyone who has played the games once or twice can tell you that the whole multiple dimension thing is wrong or is it just a case of Kojima being addicted to pluralizing everything like with "Ground Zeroes"

The point is though, we didn't NEED another fucking Silent Hill.  Team Silent said way back after Silent Hill 4 that the series was done, just let it fucking die already.  It's already a steaming pile of shit and betrayal so even if Kojima did produce something decent at the end of the day all he's doing is coating a turd in gold. 


EDIT: It came to my attention via Facebook that some of my information given in this post was wrong and I'm sad to admit that it was.  The playable teaser does not end with a jump scare, oh no, it's just EVEN MORE BULLSHIT THAN I FIRST IMAGINED.

So here's what happens; you walk around a creepy house, see some creepy shit and get jumped by a dirty woman along with some other things.  Then in the ending there's a phone call with some guy on the other side talking about how he's "back with his new toys" or some shit and then it leads into the footage from the initial trailer.

Guess what....BULLSHIT!  I have one HUGE glaring problem with the content in this trailer.  Silent Hill is an ABANDONED TOWN.  It was abandoned because of the influence the of the cult and their drug running and all sorts of other shit you can read in the FUCKING FIRST GAME IT'S NOT HARD.  So from that we can safely assume that the house featured in the trailer is NOT located in Silent Hill.

You could argue that the character has been brought here by someone judging from how it started but who and why would anyone do that?  Also the demo talks about a father gunning down his family  with a shotgun and the foreshadowing is about as subtle as a steel pipe to the head so now I'm assuming it's going to be about a "man battling his demons" which means THE GAME IS BULLSHIT.

Anyway, the reason I make a big deal about the location of the house is because SILENT HILL CAN'T/DOESN'T AT ANY POINT EVER TELEPORT PEOPLE PEOPLE.  So if the house isn't in Silent Hill and he walks through his front door into Silent Hill that means he was teleported there so COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT.

May I suggest to anyone looking to comment via blogger or Facebook to PLAY THE FUCKING GAMES.  The P.T is bullshit and so is anyone defending this nonsense.  Silent Hill Downpour had a similar initial promotional video and look how THAT game turned out

I rest my damned case.

Regarding the Stream and OBON!

I've been very silly

In my last post I made a big rant about how twitch had fucked up with their latest changes to VODs and recorded audio.  I'm not going back on that, what they have done is complete bullshit and it fucks a lot of people over, including me.

Now I made a big song and dance about moving over to Hitbox.tv and after experimenting a bit with Hitbox I can say that it's actually a pretty good service.  The best part about Hitbox is that I can remove the delay from my stream so I can chat with my viewers in real time, which is nice.

However, let's face it, as of right now Twitch is still the best streaming service and considering I'm doing this stream for charity I want to reach as many people as I can because the more people who enjoy my stuff means more potential donations to the Alzheimer's Society.  So I won't be completely moving over to Hitbox, but I do intend to use it from time to time.  Think of it as as a backup stream for when Twitch is down or dropping frames or something.  Imagine Twitch as a Channel 1 and Hitbox as a Channel 2.

So with that in mind, go and give me a follow on Hitbox (www.hitbox.tv/taurinensis) and maybe you'll catch me or maybe even one of my buddies streaming under the Identity Gaming flag.

Also, next week in Japan it's Obon!

Just to fill you all in, Obon is a time in Japan where people remember their dead relatives.  What this really translates to is everyone going back to their home towns, hanging out with their living family and visiting the graves of their dead ones.

It also means I have a week off work.

This is the first genuine bit of downtime I've had in a long, LONG time so my goal for the week is to get as many of the met donation incentives done as I can.  It also means that I'm going to have plenty of time to stream so hopefully we can finally finish Final Fantasy 5 and move on to the really good ones.  You'll also probably see a new speed run of Ys coming out soon once I stop being shit at it and manage to get past the first few bosses.

So keep an eye out next week and get those donations ready!

Twitch Done Fucked Up

Seriously, what the fuck.  Streaming should be so fucking simple, you just play a game live and people get to come and enjoy the experience with you, why did you have to go and fuck it all up?!

I don't know when these changes happened exactly, but that's not really the point.  The point is that these changes did happen and Twitch has become all google-fied (read: total bullshit) and I wouldn't be surprised if the changes made to the twitch service would make people consider moving to other streaming platforms which aren't so focused on fucking you over.

The first change I came across this morning was the change to the Video on Demand thing.  How I understand it is that past broadcasts are going to be saved for 14 days and then deleted.  This part is kind of fair, I guess, since there must be just insane amounts of completely unviewed video just clogging up space.  They then go on to say that if you don't want your shit to be deleted you can save them in a highlight, which I guess is also fair since highlights receive a lot more views than just the raw stream footage.

OH BUT WAIT! THE HIGHLIGHTS CAN ONLY BE TWO HOURS LONG!

What the fuck is this crap, really?!  Why only two hours?!  This doesn't really affect me (right now) since most of the highlights that I make are an hour or less with the longest being the Silent Hill speed runs.  But there are PLENTY of members of the speed running community and other communities being fucked over by this limit.  Just to give you an idea, one of the biggest streamers on the goddamn site (Cosmo) runs The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and that's a 4 and a half hour run.  That  means, that if he wanted to save his run to twitch, he'd have to do it in 3 fucking parts and that's just a pain in the ass.

Even worse for runners who play games like Final Fantasy where the runs can be up to 6 hours or so.  Making highlights for those runs now involves so much busywork that I can't help but feel sorry for them.

But that's not the only thing, oh no, there have been changes to their policy on audio now.  They use some kind of automated software that detects third party content and then mutes that part of the video.  This is complete bullshit because 1) I'm pretty sure that stuff falls under fair use or some crap and 2) IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK

Here is the new Silent Hill time I got last night

http://www.twitch.tv/taurinensis/c/4833834

Nearly HALF THE FUCKING VIDEO has been silenced when it mostly contains ambient noises, Harry's footsteps and my talking.  I'm pretty sure Konami don't own the rights on my fucking voice.  My guess is that it got muted because at the very start part of the Silent Hill theme was playing but even if that was the case, why did TWENTY SIX FUCKING MINUTES of video get muted for that shit?!  Why not the whole video?  It's not like the audio is much different in the second half of the game.

What's even worse is that I can prove this bullshit doesn't work with this

http://www.twitch.tv/taurinensis/c/4580959

Here is a video of an older time I got a while ago.  Notice how NONE OF IT IS FUCKING MUTED but IT'S THE SAME FUCKING GAME!  So much for your fucking audio policy because you suck at enforcing it.

---

So between fucking over speed runners and people who play long game and fucking over everyone else with this audio bullshit, I wouldn't be surprised if people start moving to a new service.  Unless things are solved I imagine twitches days could be numbered.

It's Not Nostalgia Goggles

Sometimes I get into discussions with my friends or on forums and things like that about how older games are better than modern ones.  I'm one of those people who is inclined to agree with that idea because personally I find a lot of modern games to be a bit of a joke.  That doesn't mean I think modern gaming is bad but I just find the older experiences a lot more enjoyable.

At first I thought it was just a case of personal taste or hell, maybe it was really nostalgia goggles but on my long boring train rides I decided to think about it a bit more critically and old games are really just better.

So here's what I'm going to do to illustrate my point.  I'm going to take the first 3 genres that pop into my head and explain why old games in the genre are better than the newer ones.

First Person Shooters

This is a no brainer since if there's any genre that is guilty of being dumbed down for mass consumption its this one.  Take old games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Hexen and many many others.  These games were popular not only because of their ultra violence, but because of their big sprawly labyrinthine levels full of secrets and generally speaking you needed some degree of brain power and strategy to win at these games on higher difficulty levels.

Contrast that with now, where all the exploration and skill that this genre was famous for has been completely stripped out for an experience that people who don't want to spend time learning a title (read: idiots) can handle.  Regenerating health was the first big culprit, then came limited weapon inventories ruining strategy and limiting your play style.  Also every level in a modern shooter is basically a corridor and all you do is hide behind cover and pop heads.

That's right, modern FPS is nothing but the fair ground duck shooting attraction but with a military theme and attached to a roller coaster track.  Finally, don't give me none of that shit about Multiplayer either.  If you think Call of Duty or Halo stack up to something like Unreal Tournament or Quake then you need a slap.

RPGs 

RPGs barely fucking exist nowadays and that's a damn shame.  Just to qualify, when I say RPGs I mean both the J and W type, so don't worry I'm not discriminating between countries.  Western made RPGs used to be such deep and rich experiences.  Things such as Ultima, Baldurs Gate and old school Fallout were such joys to play with so much goddamn content in them that it would probably take a few playthroughs just to notice all the little details about the world you were in.  Japanese RPGs were a little more simplistic but the variety of what was on offer in that genre back in the day was absolutely staggering.  Most western games tended to focus on Tolkien-esque swords and sorcery settings while JRPGs tended to have more outlandish settings and characters.

Contrast that with now, where every Western made RPG just feels like a cheap knockoff of something that came WAY before it.  Most RPGs today have these terrible fucking "morality systems" and stupid branching dialogue trees with only 2 or 3 options on them and the extra tidbits about a worlds lore aren't even half as developed as they are in older games.  Just look at how Elder Scrolls started and look at it now and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Japan on the other hand seems to have forgotten how to produce anything that isn't shallow, moe, otaku pandering bullshit with every game box on a store shelf having some wide eyed anime girl on it doing something cute and the game play is much shallower.

The Point and Click Adventure

 Do I even need to explain this one to you?  Just look at stuff like Monkey Island, Sanitarium, Myst, Grim Fandango and god knows what else.  Then look at what passes off for an "adventure" game nowadays.  Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Serina just to name 3.  A genre once known for it's insane mind bending puzzles and great stories now reduced to walking simulators with barely any game play produced by people who can't make a game worth a shit and can't write for shit either.

Let's just be happy that GoG exists to preserve all the great point and clickers so that people can still experience them and all this modern badly written bullshit can hopefully be forgotten about

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Now I know I've been ranting and it sounds like I hate modern gaming with a passion but that couldn't be further from the truth.  Modern gaming is still great and there are still new titles that come out and I have plenty of fun with.  It's just that gaming has gotten noticeably stupider and I think it's a damn shame.

Also I know I've been talking about "modern gaming" in general terms but there are exceptions to all the above and in all other genres.  Some developers are still trying to capture the magic of the old school shooter with things like Painkiller and The Rise of the Triads remake to varying levels of success.  I've been hearing great things about Divinity: Original Sin and Japan is still producing RPGs of the old quality such as "俺の屍を越えてゆけ２" which looks fucking radical

The point and clicker is still being moderately screwed but an HD remake of Grim Fandango is coming out so I guess it's not all bad, just a shame that the newest thing I can think of in the genre worth a damn is Anna on PC

So to all you devs trying to make intelligent games for the modern age, keep on going.  Finally to all you devs making safe, mass appeal bullshit, try pushing out the boat a little more will ya?   You can still make buckets of money with a smart game, I'm sure it'll be OK.

World Cosplay Summit 2014

The World Cosplay Summit is an event that happens every year right on my doorstep.  A short 10 minute walk from my apartment this weekend led into a huge crowd of people all dressed up as their favorite anime and video game characters for this yearly celebration of nerdyness.

Now I'm not into anime AT ALL with the last thing I watched being Akagi, a show about Mahjong, at university so most of the things that people were dressed as went right over my head but that didn't stop it from being super impressive either way.  However there were plenty of video game characters I was plenty familiar with so I guess there's a little something for everyone.

I would say that even if you aren't into games, anime or cosplay it's still an event worth going to.  Some of the things that people pull off are so outlandish that it's the kind of thing that has to be seen first hand to believe.  It also coincides with the Osu Festival (temple pictured above) so you can wander away from the cosplayers and experience something a bit more traditional and it makes a great weekend.

Unfortunately, I was busy this weekend and didn't get to spend a lot of time there but below I'll share a few snaps I got on my camera with you.  Enjoy!

A really awesome Wander from SotC

Sephiroth

 

A sexy Mario being bombarded by nerds with big cameras

These were all the gaming ones I got, I'll put the anime related ones on twitter or something.

The July Retro Haul

Picture unrelated I guess, but whatever

Here is this months retro haul.  Fuck Front Mission