Tau Plays Lone Survivor Part 3

The Walking Dead

Once again I've gone through a bit of a dry period with the blog.  Usually when this happens it's because I get incredibly busy and then by the time I have any free time I'm too exhausted/lazy to write stuff.  This time however, the reason is a lot less legitimate, I've just had all my post-work time gobbled up by The Walking Dead.  I was given a series 1-6 box set and it's basically consumed my life up to now.

It's a series I've ignored for a long time mainly because, and this is a bad habit of mine, the fan base being made up of a herd of wankers.  It's one of those shows that everyone was absolutely creaming their pants over to which I just rolled my eyes and was like "It's a fucking zombie show, it can't be THAT good...".  But, I have to throw my hands up on this one, I was wrong, it IS that good.  What's funny is that I feel like it's all going full circle because people have been saying that it's been slowly getting worse but I'm enjoying it more and more with every season I watch.

Story wise it's a pretty typical zombie affair.  There's an outbreak and then a group of survivors have to get together to help each other not die.  They look for a place to stay and then some other group will come along and fuck things up because of course the big twist is that the real enemies are not the zombies but other people. We've all seen it in things like Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days, Dead Rising and basically any zombie thing ever.  But what makes The Walking Dead so compelling is the drama between the characters and the characters themselves.  Despite the cast being so large the show does a good job about making you care about most of them and when one of them does get chomped on or takes a bullet to the head it is genuinely gut wrenching.  Also when the bad guys do get their just deserts it's always some kind of awesome sequence of events that fills you with that warm sense of satisfaction that a real asshole died that day.

Of course, I have some complaints about things the group does or the insane logics that certain characters decide to follow sometimes.  There's also mad inconstancy with general zombie strength and ability.  Like one moment the zombies will be clawing at a dude for minutes and said dude will take no damage and other moments a zombie will rip open some guys stomach like it's a fucking bag of potato chips.  Also it's a good job the characters are as good as they are because the premise for each couple of seasons is more formulaic than fucking One Piece.  My other final big complaint is that some fucking GENIUS decided to make a box set that ends at season 6.  Season 6 is the absolute DUMBEST place to end anything because the final episode ends with the entire squad getting caught, a new villain turning up, murdering a major character POV so we don't know who it is and then just cutting to credits.  Also Season 2 is dogshit, but there's plenty of videos on YouTube about that.

There's also a bunch of games based on this series that I'm now interested to try.  Well I say "games" but really there's only the Telltale (RIP) one that seems like it's worth a shit.  There's some other FPS one that I don't remember the name of that I remember everyone said was garbage and there's another called Overkills' The Walking Dead but that just looks like a really boring version of Left4Dead so I won't be buying that in a hurry.

If you've not seen it, go watch it, it's REALLY fucking good.  If the posts stop coming again it's because I caved and signed up for Netflix to see seasons 7+, so sorry in advance if that happens.  Also don't worry about spoilers, I had everything spoiled and it only seemed to make it more interesting, jump in!



 

Diablo Immortal: Just let it die quietly

So recently Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal and fans are PISSED.  In case you saw that banner and got excited because you didn't catch the story yet, don't get your hopes up too high because it's only a mobile game.  Here's a trailer

If you view it on YouTube instead of in the blog, HOO BOY that dislike bar.

Now I get it, oh boy do I understand your rage.  A series with such a long and respected pedigree being reduced to yet another cash grab, probably gatcha in some way, premium currency pay to win mobile dogshit.  The fact that it's not just some little extra thing that Blizzard developed on the side but a thing that was shoved in your face at fucking Blizzcon like it's something you should be excited for.  The condescending attitude when an audience member asked "will we get it on PC?" and the guy, when booed for saying no, replied with "What, don't you all have phones?!".  You have every right to be boiling mad but just stop and think for a second.

There are tons of generic shitty hack and slash games on mobile already.  I hate to admit it but I sunk quite a lot of time into a hack and slash RPG on mobile called HIT for a pretty significant amount of time about a year ago.  All that time ended up being wasted though since it's just another deleted free game on my app store account now.  At the very least, we know that Diablo Immortal will have a degree of polish to it, so if you're going to play a shitty mobile hack and slash game at least a Diablo flavored one might be worth keeping on your phone for the occasional fiddle with on a bus or while you're dropping a fat shit.

Plus it's not like Blizzard are dropping everything to focus on this one mobile game.  Diablo 3 just got a Switch release so if Immortal really disgusts you that much but you want portable Diablo anyway, just go play that.  You don't see Final Fantasy fans losing their shit over Record Keeper or Brave Exvius, you can at least be happy that Blizzard are still giving D3 the love it needs to keep going for another console generation at the very least.  If you hate the look of it that much, it really is as easy just not downloading it from the app store.

Booing, disliking videos on raging online won't really do anything.  If no one downloads it though, if that game is dead from day 1, THEN Blizzard will know they cocked up.  I get that your mad but calm down and let it die quietly instead of giving it publicity so that all the know-nothings and curious children with a tablet don't end up keeping the game alive for years to come.

I personally will never play it because it'll never stack up to Dragalia Lost.

The Playstation Classic Isn't THAT Bad

I never thought I'd do a post advocating in favor (sort of) of an overpriced emulator in a box but here I am.  Before I start, in case you don't know, Sony have followed Nintendo's lead of releasing mini classic systems with their own Playstation Classic.  The list of 20 games that are preloaded onto the system were announced and people are NOT happy about it.


There are some really well known titles in the lineup such as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7 and Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey but then there's some slightly less popular/well known games such as Jumping Flash, Intelligence Qube and Mr Driller.  There's no real game on there that's really bad, despite some people telling me that Rainbow Six is dicks but I remember having fun with it (not played in a long time, mind you), so why are people so mad?

From what I can tell it seems to be that people are pissed because games like Puzzle Fighter 2 got put on the system over things like Spyro, Crash, Silent Hill or one of the other many great games in the PS1 library.  These are the 3 big titles I see popping up in every little comment but I don't understand how you can be mad about those because Crash has been remade for PS4, Spyro is about to be remade for PS4 and Silent Hill is owned by a company so inept that they nearly got sued over voice rights for their own remake of 2 and 3 so lord only knows what kind of licensing issue lies in that one.

My problem with people complaining about it in general though is that people only seem to want obvious shit on their classic systems.  For example, the SNES classic is a cool piece of kit but I'll never buy one because it only contains games that I've already played to death.  Obvious picks to keep the fanboys happy, so that people can go on social media and post stupid shit like "erh mah gerd do you remember Mario?!"  At least Sony had the balls to put on some lesser known titles like fucking Jumping Flash or Intelligence Qube, so that maybe once you've had your little nostalgia rush you can explore a few gems of the system that you may have not heard of.

I would have considered buying a SNES classic, for example, if Nintendo had made let's say, only 10 of the games safe bets like Earthbound, Metroid, Zelda, Mario and the rest as things like Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma and Ogre Battle.  Syphon Filter, Wild Arms and Super Puzzle Fighter are good games, why are you so afraid to broaden your horizons a bit?  The only "shit" game on that entire list is Revelations: Persona and that's only because the localization was a complete botch job, not that the game itself is shit.  Maybe its an updated version and then what I said about it being crap isn't even true. 

If you're THAT pissed off about it just go and emulate stuff.  The emulators for PS1 are actually pretty good so just make your own PS1 "Classic" and play the games you like.  Also the list of games in Japan is much different and contains things like Parasite Eve and G Darius.  The lineup here is so good I might even pick one up once the price tag goes down a little bit. 

Play something new, it won't kill you, you might even like that Wild Arms thing.