A Tetris Movie?!

Tetris is one of those games that everyone and their dog knows about.  It's one of those games that is almost synonymous with the word "gaming".  Even people who generally dislike video games can get a good kick out of dropping blocks into neat lines for points.  It's simple, fun, puzzle gaming bliss.  

So while I'm doing my usual morning routine of wasting time on the internet I come across some strange news that there is a Tetris movie in development.  Now I understand why people may attempt to make movie adaptations of other games since they have a story to work with but Tetris? Not much to go on there for a film.  

Ah, but wait of course!  Tetris and its development has a sort of rich history. Originally developed by Alexey Pajitnov as a means of testing hardware for the Moscow centre of Computer Science, things got a bit complicated with licensing rights and publishing thanks to the Soviet Union.  With that in mind there is actually a decent idea for a sort of documovie about the history of one of gamings biggest and most beloved titles. 

But it's not about that is it.....? 

Information on this movie is proving to be a little hard to come by but from what I can tell so far it's going to be a 3 part sci-fi epic.  I can't even begin to imagine the levels of retardation that are going to come out of this movie, I'm expecting something on the same level as Pixels at this point.  

Maybe they were inspired by this image from the Amiga version 

But even then fuck knows what they are gonna do with that.  It'll be a standard space story but every time the ships engines fail the engineer has to get 100 line in Tetris? 

Sort of hoping the project falls through and it goes away so this buffoonery can go away. 

Overly Long Games

Right now I'm playing a game called Divine Divinity, you may be aware of the later entry in the series known as Divinity: Original Sin.  Despite the fucking terrible name for this game I'm enjoying it a lot but holy shit is this game LONG.

I've been playing it on and off for what must be a few months at this point and there's just so much to do that it doesn't seem like it's going to ever end.  Every time I find a new town or even as I'm just walking around the world I end up running into about a million side quests.  Of course I want to do them because I'll get rewards and maybe a level or two during the process.  Even if I just progressed with the main story it's so meaty that I still have a good handful of hours left on it, not something I'd be able to do in a single lazy weekend.  Divine Divinity is the one I'm playing right now but other games with insane length come to mind such as The Witcher or Skies of Arcadia.  Both are great games but the length can be a little off putting sometimes, for those titles in particular it's the barrier to a replay.

Some of you may be scratching your head and wondering what I'm complaining about.  We live in an age where a game will cost you like £40, $60 or 7000-odd Yen, so of course we want more money to content ratio right?  Well yeah, you are right about that but there are games that can go on a bit too long.  Take a game like Nier for example.

Nier isn't a short game by any stretch but the difference between this and Divine Divinity is that I didn't have to put it down for a week or so at a time for a break because I was burning out.  I got a good number of fairly lengthy sessions and then it ended which is cool, I feel like I got my value for money.  Divine Divinity on the other hand, despite being an enjoyable title, has me playing a number of lengthy sessions and then burning out with no end in sight.  It sits in my backlog like your fat uncle at Christmas after eating one too many mince pies and wracks me with guilt for not finishing it.  I'm not going to drop it but at this point I do have to work up a fair bit of motivation to progress with it.  When I do work it up it's really fun but eventually I have another one too many sessions with no ending and drop it for another week or so.

Maybe this is a problem exclusive to me and people like me who have backlogs big enough that you could fill the Grand Canyon with it.  You're average person who doesn't buy 50 games at a time probably revels in the idea of a game taking hundreds of hours.  Younger players may also not have this issue because they have more time to play while adult life has all it's shitty jobs and other responsibilities, so suddenly an 80+ hour game feels a bit insurmountable.

None of the games I mentioned in this post are bad, just long as hell and make my backlog feel a little bit impossible.

Tau Plays Discworld Part 18

Resident Evil 7 Demo

So recently I streamed the Resident Evil 7 demo so I thought I'd take a moment to talk about it here since I was too sleepy on stream to really sum up how I felt about it.

The Resident Evil 7 demo feels like it suffers from the same problems that PT did.  The idea being to give us an idea of the plot while trying to freak us out rather than being a demo indicative of the final game.  Or at least I hope that's the case because if the final game plays like this it's going to be a fucking mess.  The Resident Evil 7 demo plays a lot more like one of those walking simulator type games that I fucking hate and while it is somewhat more enjoyable than your average walking simulator, if the final game ends up as a creepy, first person "stealth" horror game, I'm going to be rather miffed.

The demo tries insanely hard to be creepy and scary but fails mainly because we've seen this kind of horror a million times before.  It does look rather nice on PS4 hardware and creates a good atmosphere but ultimately falls flat because you very quickly realize that the scary dude teleports behind you based on certain flags you hit rather than stalking you around the house.  Aside from scary dude the general imagery is too overt for it to be scary and ends up being almost funny instead.

Interestingly enough, the demo has multiple endings which you can discover by taking slightly different paths through the game.  However this has led to something particularly frustrating and thanks to this one item the demo is more of a time vampire than an enjoyable demo of the latest Resident Evil.  The dummy finger, which I pictured above, is an item you can find while exploring and NO ONE can find a use for it.  The devs are also being intentionally douchy about it and not giving us any hints as to why it was included.

My personal theory is that it doesn't actually have a use but the demo will be changed nearer to release and then we will be able to do something with it.  The demo is ultimately a forgettable experience but this mystery gives the devs an excuse to reignite the hype near launch when we are allowed to solve it.

Hopefully the final game will be good and judging from the direction the demo has taken its gearing up to be leagues better than the hot mess that was Resi 6.  Hopefully it'll be more survival horror than walking simulator and we can go back to taking about this series with a sense of excitement and joy rather than disgust.

Sony Slim Woes

I'm not the kind of person who treats my shit badly.  I try to store everything the best I can and my systems will, at worst, get a little dusty.  However for a few years now I've been having constant problems with the slimmed down version of Sony products.  I own a slim PS3, a Vita 2000 model and a slim PS2, so lets work our way through that.

PS3 Slim

To be fair, this one has behaved pretty well.  I bought it in 2011 or so, used, and it's been pretty much perfect.  I've carried it half way across the world from Japan to Sweden and then back to Japan again and it works just fine.  Despite being the "slim" version it's still sort of big and bulky so I guess that's why I'm not having any trouble with it.  I did have an issue where the controller would just randomly start pushing buttons on its own but this just kind of went away on its own.  I have no idea what caused it and no idea what fixed it but I'm just happy I can play my games.  That's more of a controller issue than a system issue anyway.

PS2 Slim

I bought this guy a few years ago when I came back to Japan long term.  Generally speaking it works pretty well but there was one issue about a year ago that pissed me off pretty hard.  My wife fired up the thing to play Kamaitachi no Yoru 2 with her friends where the system just wouldn't make the disc spin.  The fucking thing wasn't recognizing that the drive door was closed so the disc wouldn't spin and therefore you couldn't play the fucking game.  I realized that inside the system there's a little switch that gets pushed down when the door is shut and for some reason this wasn't being pushed.  I put some tape on it which remedied the problem but I had the original PS2 from pretty close to launch and used it all the way up to the end of university with no problems, this thing is just built like shit.

Then there's the issue of the controller which for some reason will just start going right and won't stop until I smack it.  I have a new controller that seems to work well now though and once again that's more of a controller issue than a system issue and could be because I bought it used.

PSP 2000

Now this fucking thing has been a problem since I bought it years and years ago.  I probably should have traded it for a less defective fucking thing but I was too lazy and now I'm paying the price. 

The first issue I had with this thing was dead pixels in the screen.  A red one and a greenish looking one  which should have set off alarm bells in my head but they are in such unimportant parts of the screen that I didn't think anything of them.  While annoying in any part of the game that goes bright white, generally speaking they aren't noticeable but it's frustrating that they are there.

The second issue is a bit more serious.  During game play I will randomly get the grey "Do you want to quit the game" message despite the fact I've not touched the home button.  The button itself isn't sticky and I think it has something to do with a little switch behind the UMD door but I have no idea what the fuck is going on really.

Then a few days ago I went about 10 minutes down the road to a place with my wife, took the thing in my pocket.  I didn't fall down, run or jump on anything and yet when I arrived at the place and took it out for a spin, there were some strange transparent lines going down the left hand side of the screen.  Play it for too long and I get graphical distortion and more lines and a quick google search seems to indicate that the fucking thing is dying.

---

So if I've learned anything from this experience it's that slim type Sony products are a bunch of shit with the exception of maybe the PS3.  I know that when I go and buy a new PSP in a couple of days I'm going right back to the PSP 1000 with its metal frame and bulky ass case.  Reliability over portability from now on.

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken

Yet another strange little indie game provided to me for free by the PS+ service.  Like a lot of these games that I get this way, I wasn't expecting anything at all but ended up with something highly enjoyable and fun to play.

The story of Rocketbirds involves the character Hardboiled fighting his way through an unnamed area of the world that has been occupied by a group of penguins run by their leader Putski.  Hardboiled has a bit of a chip on his shoulder since he was brainwashed and forced to fight for the penguins for a while but defected and is now on a mission to put an end to the penguin regime once and for all.

The game play for Rocketbirds is strangely reminiscent of the Oddworld games.  The levels are 2D and you have to run, jump and shoot your way through to the end.  Along the way you'll have to solve a number of puzzles a lot of which involve throwing a mind control bug at an enemy and moving them around much like Abe's chanting technique.  When you aren't shooting or puzzle solving you get to play these weird jet pack stages where you fly around blasting penguins out of the sky and trying to collect  falling health and ammo packs.  The controls and aiming can be a little wonky on these flying stages but they are short and easy to get used to.  There also also multiple difficulties and a co-op mode but I didn't try the harder levels and none of my friends have Vitas so you'll have to check that out for yourself.

My only real complaint is that when you get hit your character gets sort of juggled like it's Tekken or some shit like that.  This is fine but it can lead to a quick death if you get caught on both sides or an annoying shield penguin is stopping you from picking off the threat on the other side of the screen.  Dying doesn't carry too much of a penalty so it's only a small complaint but it is rather annoying.

If you don't own a Vita then fear not because it is available on Steam for less than £10.  It's nothing ground breaking but if you're looking for something fun to burn a weekend with then this is a good bet.

We Don't Need A Female Link

One of the games that came out of E3 this year that actually sort of surprised me was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  It looks really cool and is sort of giving me weird Souls vibes which is something I would never expect from a Zelda game.  It's definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on in the coming months and I'm looking forward to getting my grubby mitts on it.

So of course, like whenever there is a large piece of gaming news that people are happy about, certain outlets had to run articles crying about a lack of a female link.  These so called "journalists" even got interviews with some people from Nintendo and asked them about it.  They were told that they considered the idea for a while but ultimately scrapped it because it didn't fit in with the game they wanted to make, fair enough?  Well of course not, this idea makes them sexist, women hating misogynists because the cry baby social justice regressives can't get their way and Nintendo will not be bullied on the matter.

Link doesn't need to be a fucking girl anyway, he's already the protagonist of a well established and much loved series, suddenly changing him to female would be just weird.  People have argued that they could at least put in an option but that doesn't work either because this isn't a game where you fucking role play.  You are playing as Link, he is the hero and you join him on his adventure through Hyrule as he breaths on wild things or whatever this game is going to be about.  Link is not you, you do not need to imprint your personality, or lack thereof onto him.  You don't see anyone moaning about how Samus from Metroid should be changed to a man for the exact same reason.  Both Link and Samus are good characters in their respective games and people like them the way there are.  I don't need Samus to be a man for my to sympathize with her quest to save the galaxy because I'm not an overly sensitive little shit stain.

It's not like Zelda is a particularly original or hard concept either.  It's about a character going on an adventure to find a bunch of trinkets to save the world.  This is a concept that is, and has been, easily copied.  If you REALLY wanted a female-led Zelda game, you could quite easily make one. Call it "The Story of Belda: The Whistle of Minutes" or some shit and have a female protagonist wandering around a large world collecting shit in order to save it.  3 of this, 6 or 7 of that and a nice big over world to put it all in and BOOM, there you have it.  Are you seriously telling me that there isn't a single female developer in the industry that can make this happen? Really? Because I'm almost positive there is.  If Clover Studios can do it with a dog, you can do it with a girl.

So fuck all these shitty "journalists" and their whining.  If you don't like playing as male Link, then don't play the fucking game, go find something that suits your tastes or better yet, stop playing fucking video games and put isolate yourself from the rest of the world so that we can have our fun without having to listen to your stupid shit.

Wizorb

Breakout is one of those games that I think everyone has played at some point in their life.  Well this little indie edition from 2011 finally got knocked off my backlog about a week ago so I have to do my obligatory blog post on it.

This is where I'd talk about whatever story the game has, but who gives a fuck?  It's breakout for crying out loud.  There IS a minor story about a wizard who comes to a destroyed town and has to travel across the land to bring their king back and rebuild the town while he's doing it.  You wouldn't be blamed for just skipping your way through the scenes that explain all that though.

Game play is pretty standard breakout stuff.  You control a small stick at the bottom of the screen and you have to bounce the ball into the blocks and enemies and once they are all gone you move to the next stage.  Of course, the main character is a wizard so you can do a little more than just batting the ball back and forth though.  You can use a magic meter to shoot fireballs, change the way the ball is going, enchant it with fire so it doesn't bounce back as it breaks things and you can control it too.  Magic is limited and refills can be hard to get so you really have to use it strategically though so it doesn't make the game a complete push over.

Each level contains 11 stages and these feature bonus rooms to earn gold and lives.  You can use the gold to rebuild the town which will net you certain rewards or to buy power ups if you find a shop mid stage.  Power ups include multi ball, a sticky ball, a long stick and other things that I didn't use but saw available for purchase.  There's also a side quest where you have to collect runes to unlock some extra stages and save some characters but I don't know what finishing this does for the player since I didn't bother after the first 2.

Wizorb isn't some epic game that everyone should try but if you're looking for something cheap and fun this is a good bet.  I mean it's fucking breakout with a wizard, you can't really go wrong here, go play it.

Minimum E3 Fucks

So E3 is happening....or has happened, at time of writing I'm not to sure but that should give you good indication about how I feel regarding E3.  Maybe I've gotten old or maybe I'm just a bit too jaded and cynical at this point but no matter how much I search my inner self I just can't find any fucks to give about this years E3 show.

It's sad really, it used to be such an exciting time.  When I was a young kid, before internet and streams and all this fancy new age shit, E3 was something you could only really read about in a magazine.  It was this amazing event with all these new games and all this excitement and it was the kind of thing I dreamed of going to.  Then as I got older and streams of the show started happening there would be exciting times as we'd all ball into a room with takeout pizza and watch the shit live and chatting about all the announcements.

But with the new generation of games systems came a change in the way E3 was presented.  The fun was taken away and the whole thing is delivered as a sort of business pitch by some dude in a suit telling us about "experiences" and how all these games represent "the future" or some shit.  Buzzwords and professional sounding speeches book ended with cinematic trailers topped off with applause from an audience of industry people who may only be clapping so the dude on stage doesn't feel bad.

The E3 way of presenting games hasn't just become boring to me, it's offensive.  How stupid do these companies think I am where if they write a nice speech and give me 3 minutes of cutscene I'm going to be like "OH YEAH FUCKING WOW, BUYING THAT DAY 1".  All this talk of none-game related features like TV and social media linkage to try and appeal to that mass market because mainstream gaming has become all about safe bets and that huge budget for that sequel that whoever is making is going to go to waste.  Even new IPs that are supposed to get us excited just stink of nothing more than retreading old ground.  The best example I can think of for all this is Days Gone, a game that has so many The Last of Us vibes that I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't start life as a side-story expansion pack.

Not to say it's a complete bust.  There are a number of things at E3 that did pique my interest a little bit and with all the games at the show it'll be hard to call any of them "bad" per se. I bet most of the games that appeared on E3 this year I'll pick up and at least enjoy to some degree but I just want the fun to be put back into this event.  I can't get hype for cutscenes and I especially can't get hype for dudes in suits.

Whatever, interesting games ahead and fun times to be had but I'll be waiting for more detailed news down the road rather than getting excited now.  Thanks for making me aware of the titles.....I guess.....

Day 1 Purchasing

When a new game gets released it can be an exciting thing.  Granted, I'm the kind of person who has become so jaded by disappointing releases over the years that I personally don't get too hyped any more, but I do remember a time when a new release would have me jumping for joy.  

But is it really worth running to the store and grabbing that new game? Or is it better to just wait? 

Well the answer to that question depends on what kind of game it is.  If it's a game with an online focus then maybe it is in your best interest to drop the first day money on it.  This may be doubly true if it's a game that isn't AAA developed or particularly mainstream.  Waiting on the title may mean by the time you get there the title will be dead and that's no fun at all.  

However for everything else?  I'd say it's almost always better to wait it out.  Let's take a sort of old example to illustrate my point.  

Dead Space was a game that I bought day 1 back in my University days for about £35.  It was a good game and I don't regret the purchase as such but looking at the page on Amazon for it it now costs £13 new or used for like £2 

Granted you may be a bit behind the times with this approach and you risk running into spoilers but you'll end up saving so much more money to buy even more games or other things.  Hell, Dead Space is an old example but a lot of titles see a drop in price even after a week or so.  If it's a single player game especially I'm sure it won't kill you to wait a week or 2.  Maybe then you can buy a whole bunch at once and go on a nice binge.

If you're blogging or streaming and you want to build a following then maybe playing the latest games is the best idea but your average joe should probably just wait it out.  Of course, if there's a company you really love then absolutely buy it new to show support but most of the time a little patience could save you a pretty penny.  

24 Hours of Euro Truck Simulator: The Truckening

OH BOY! Remember that laugh a minute 24 hour marathon of Euro Truck Simulator I did?!  You don't?!  Not surprising since it's the only marathon I've done where I've not lasted the full 24 hours.  Unfortunately I got drunk and ended up rage quitting when I managed to barrel roll my truck off a hill 19 hours into the marathon.  Of course, I paid a penalty to the charity but the fact I never completed that marathon has always bugged me.

Then a friend of mine came along and donated £50 to the charity as a way of forcing me into doing it again, so here's the post announcing when that shit is going to go down!  My schedule is actually pretty busy so unfortunately it will be next month and as of right now the date will be July 23rd.

As before, there will be incentives for me to drink heavily (starting a bit later this time) and prizes to be won so watch this space and get ready to go truckin'

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Thanks to region locking bullshit on the 3DS it's taken me a fair while to get around to playing this game but it was worth the wait because it's rather good.

It's hard to talk about Zelda really, everyone already knows whats up.  You play as Link and for some reason Hyrule gets fucked and princess Zelda goes missing.  Go around a bunch of dungeons, get a bunch of items, fight a bunch of bosses and save the world.  At this point we've done it a million times and despite things being a bit predictable at this point, it's a tried and tested formula that works and these adventures are fun to go on. 

However, Link Between Worlds tries to mix things up a little bit when it comes to dungeon progression and items.  In previous Zelda games you would go to a dungeon, do some puzzles and get an item, then use that item to do the second half of the dungeon and kill a boss with it.  However in this game all the items are available from the get go pretty much and you pay to rent them out.  Dungeons are still based around the use of a core item but it means that when you find that big chest with the secret thing in it, it's not something predictable and you end up receiving something actually useful and worth the effort of all that puzzle solving.  The games core mechanic of turning into a wall painting to move around the world is also easy to understand and used in a number of interesting ways that keep things entertaining.

I only have two complaints about this game but neither of these ruin the overall experience.  First, the game feels short.  I played it almost exclusively during my work lunch breaks and train rides and I've managed to beat it in what feels like a very short time.  Granted I didn't get EVERYTHING in the game but scouring for little crab things for unnecessary upgrades to my items and raising enough rupees to buy a golden bee didn't tickle my fancy really. My second complaint is that I feel like the game is too easy, I played through the entire thing, had 0 deaths on my death count on the end screen and didn't even come close to dying even once.  There IS a Hero Mode that unlocks when you beat the game which I've yet to try so I'm hoping that a second playthrough may yield a more challenging experience.

Either way, it's a great little game on the 3DS and you should give it a whirl if you haven't done so already.  Just classic, fun adventuring.   

Tau Plays Dicworld Part 17

Code of Joker 2.0

When I go to the arcade I'm expecting to have a good time except recently my visit was turned into a rage session as a discovered that my favorite digital card game, Code of Joker, got a big update.  Granted it's not all terrible but generally speaking the update has left me disappointed and angry.  

For those that don't know and can't be bothered to search through old posts for the info, let me briefly go over what Code Of Joker is.  Code of Joker is a free to play arcade digital trading card game made by Sega.  Imagine if you smashed Pokemon, Magic and Yu Gi Oh all into one game and you'd get a vague idea of what the game plays like.  It's a lot of fun and the fact that you can play 2 games for free as long as you own the Aime card means that playing a couple of matches every day may just become part of your daily routine. 

So, very recently version 2.0 of the game came out and with that release came A LOT of changes.  Let's first talk about the good shit.  The interface is a lot cleaner and easier to navigate.  The old interface was very busy and while not difficult it looks a lot better now.  There are also 2 new characters each with their own special powers and one of them has even come with entire new color type of card thus raising the monster types to 5. The new color comes with a mechanic where you can fill a gauge to do bullshit OP shit but the fact you need a separate gauge stops the new type from being completely broken.  Code Of Joker has also taken the advance wars approach to gameplay and made all the characters fight in pairs now.  This means that you get 2 special abilities per game and even if you use a Joker mid match, the gauge will keep charging so you can do it again, whereas before you only got 1 joker use per game.  

But now for the bullshit because oh boy did this piss me off really fucking hard.  First, they reset everyone's deck to a new starter that's been rebalanced so that it's not completely fucking useless after all the updates.  This is sort of a good thing but the game didn't tell you that it had happened so I got rocked in my first game due to having a completely changed deck full of shit.  Granted, some of the new starters are really good but some warning would have been nice.  The game also has the currency that you get from playing matches that used to be called RP but now it's been changed to a different currency with the same function but you still earn from playing matches called AC.  The problem arises when it turns out that none of my previously stocked RP was converted, so I just had ALL my in game money taken away and now I can't buy any of the fancy new shit.  It's not my stock was turned into something else, it's just flat out fucking gone, and that's bullshit.  

Now all that is super annoying but not as annoying as having the game just take a bunch of my cards away from me.  When I went to make a new deck a good deal of my cards had been taken away.  Now I can't find online what had happened but I have two guesses.  1 is that due to the balance changes these cards do not exist anymore or the game just decided to take away any card that I earned for free.  I'm leaning towards option 1 but I won't be able to test until my wife tries to make a deck later.  This is complete shit though because imagine you had a Yu Gi Oh deck but some update comes out and some guy comes to your house, shreds a bunch of your old cards and throws you a deck of mishmashed shit cards, you'd be mad. This is the digital equivalent of that.  Once again, my cards weren't converted to anything, just removed from my possession so fuck you Sega 

Despite all this bullshit the game retains its core enjoyability and at the end of the day it's still free so I'm not going to stop playing it.  Just every card played will be filled with bitterness and rage 

Making Games is Hard

So I've been toying with the idea of making a video game for a long LONG time.  I never really knew where to start and I don't know anything about coding so that's always been a big barrier for me.  But nowadays the entry way into game development isn't quite as out of grasp as it used to be. 

There are tons of programs and resources online now for a budding game developer to get him or herself off the ground.  Things like Unity, GameMaker, RPGMaker and a ton of others all provide manageable shit for a complete newbie to get started with.  There are also pages and pages of articles and hours and hours of video tutorials on how to do things so with enough tenacity and patience you could realistically start teaching yourself some basic shit.

Now I said before I've been toying with the idea of making a game but it isn't until recently I decided to get off my arse and actually attempt it.  What's funny is that I've not actually even attempted to make anything playable just yet, I've spent all my time writing all my ideas down and outlining what I want this future masterpiece to play and look like because I feel that otherwise it's all just going to end up being a mess as old ideas leave my memories and new ones enter.  I'm aiming to make the game in Unity but I've not even started messing around with that just yet and the idea of having to learn the ins and outs is a little daunting.  However some quick preliminary searches on how to do certain things has showed that there is a supportive community that are more than happy to help newcomers

While my current work in progress is nothing but a mishmash of documents right now it's that first step which was the hardest.  If you're like me and you feel like you have a good idea for a game then don't just sit on it, download something and start working on it.  It's not easy by any stretch but you may be surprised to see just how much support there is for people who know absolutely nothing to at least get something done.

The Blogger App Sucks Dick

I know this isn't strictly games and I know that no one gives a shit but it's something short and sweet I'm gonna write on a Friday evening because this app is truly a pile of stinking digital shits.

So I usually write all my stuff through the blogger website, which is fine and works pretty well.  I can write a piece, tag it and slam that publish button without many issues.  I can put videos on it and do spell check and all that good stuff too so for a lazy brain dead piece of shit like me, this easy to use platform is pretty good.   The app on the other hand is just weird and crap.

First of all comes the problem of typing on an iPhone.  I'd rather cut off my own hands than write extended pieces of text on that thing because its so small and the auto correct is hot garbage.  It's also deceptive because sometimes I feel like I have written a lot but when I view it on a computer I realise that it's a lot less than my usual article length.  That aside though problems really start to arise when you start fucking with pictures.  Trying to format the documents to make them look nice becomes a fucking a massive pain in the ass and god help you if you want to move an image around.  Also the viewpoint is really weird and writing anything with such a small view of the entire page is really annoying.

There are times when I get busy with work or I'm spending a weekend getting drunk or spending quality time with the wife so I downloaded the blogger app in an attempt to minimize no-post days.  However a no post day would be preferable to the amount of stress this piece of shit causes.  MAYBE if you're only writing short articles or running a blog that posts NOTHING but images it might work, but if you're trying to write anything of substance you'd have better luck hand writing it and mailing it to Google with a post request.

Fuck this app

PS4 Blocked Scenes

You may be aware that the PS4 has an in built streaming feature.  By pressing the "Share" button on the controller you can immediately.  For people like me who are too broke to buy a capture card and too lazy to set it up properly even if I did, this feature is really cool.  As you may also be aware, I've been slowly working my way through the entire Final Fantasy series on my stream.

So one viewer has very kindly been donating to charity for the No Yojimbo donation incentive, which would force me to kill all the secret bosses legit instead of just paying for a Zanmato and this of course sparked a conversation about which version of Final Fantasy X I'm going to run.  The original Japanese release is out of the question because that version didn't have the dark aeon stuff so its either International on PS2 or FFX/X-2 HD for PS4 and I'm leaning towards the latter.

Except there's a problem and that's blocked cut scenes.  The only game I've streamed from my PS4 ever is Bloodborne so I've not encountered this issue but apparently some games have blocked scenes in them.  So when you reach that scene, the PS4 cuts the video feed to your stream and only you can see it.  I think the idea is to prevent spoilers or to get around copyright problems with music or some shit but either way this whole thing is complete bullshit.

Let's take it from the spoilers angle first because this makes no fucking sense.  I get that companies don't want people spoiling a new game because it may ruin the experience or may even lose them a sale if the person who got spoiled decides not to buy the game after hearing them.  But then again, why the fuck would anyone watch a stream for a game that they don't want spoiled?  Are they fucking stupid?  Not only that but it doesn't even come close to solving the spoiler issues because the player still saw those spoilers and there isn't anything stopping him from going on one of the many social media outlets and writing them all over the place for the world to see.

Then there's the issue of copyright which is a little more serious but ultimately still complete bullshit.  Check out my Silent Hill speed run from a while back

 Notice something about this video?  NO FUCKING AUDIO.  That's because there's apparently some kind of copyright issue with the song in the opening which caused Twitch to MUTE THE WHOLE FUCKING THING, yes I'm upset.  Anyway the point is that Twitch does this on an automated system so there isn't any need to block the video footage and disrupt the whole scene because of copyrights on the sound.  If they KNOW there's an issue with copyrighting within a given scene and can block the scene, why can't they just mute the audio.  Tell the PS4 to mute the mic and mute the game sound or something, sure but at least keep the video footage up because subjecting people to a few minutes of black screen for no real reason is complete shit.

Anyway, with that in mind I'm leaning towards playing X-X2 HD on PC instead but I'm a little worried about that because my computer is a great honking piece of shit  and if that version doesn't run properly that means I'm gonna have to buy it AGAIN on PS4 and just have to deal with black screen blocked bullshit during certain scenes.  Nothing is ever fucking easy is it?