Best Games of 2020 (That I played)

 Its New Years goddamn Day and therefore it's time to look back at all the stuff I played last year and pick a few games to say a short few things about.  Before I get into it though let me just make clear that this is not a "best games of 2020 list", this is a random assortment of shit of games that I PLAYED LAST YEAR.  Meaning stuff I talk about might not be from 2020, I just played it in 2020

Got it?

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Lets go!

Best Game of 2020

 Looking back at the list of games I beat last year, I didn't actually beat that many games from 2020 so I really have no choice but to give it to Final Fantasy 7 Remake.  While it's sort of annoying that it's being split up into a trilogy, the things they have done with the game play and story are, so far, good enough to have me wanting more.  I'm looking forward to seeing where they go with parts 2 and 3 after the ending of the first one and I'm even more looking forward to seeing more of High Definition Tifa Midriff

Runner up goes to Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD Remaster.  I might have put it in my best game slot but its a remake of a game that came out in 2003 so even though I love it, it can fuck right off. 

Best non-2020 Game wot I played in 2020 (for the first time)

This award is for a game that I played this year, that was a first playthrough but didn't come out in 2020, and the winner is 

Challenging yet satisfying game play? Check

Killer soundtrack? Check

Built in counters for hitless/deathless challenge runs? Double check

Furi was easily one of the best games I played this year with its easy to understand yet hard to master game play and it's quirky bosses it pulls you in pretty quick.  Even after you beat it though, the extra difficulty level that comes with new attack patterns to deal with makes a second playthrough even more fun than the first.  It does an annoying thing where during the story you have to slow-walk between each stages but after the first play you can just select bosses off a list and avoid all of that so I guess it can be forgiven.  If you haven't played Furi yet, do it

Most Pleasant Surprise

When I first fired up Illbleed during the (still ongoing at time of writing) Horror Gauntlet, I'll be honest, I kind of hated it.  It has a weird brand of game play where damage can quickly spiral out of control and you can be left completely fucked and hidden traps that have to be marked before passing them can mean that at first, you'll be blundering into game overs constantly, but once Illbleed clicks, it becomes a really enjoyable experience.  With its absolutely bonkers plot about a killer theme park and terrible voice acting you're not only in for a challenging "horror" game but an absolute laugh riot to boot 

Worst Game of 2020

2020 was a special year for me, because Outlast 2 wasn't just the worst game I played that year, it was the worst game I have ever played IN. MY. LIFE.  

Takeshis Challenge, Super/Virtual Hydlide, Action 52 or any other shitty game you care to mention PALE in comparison to the absolute train wreck that is Outlast 2.  I plan to do a longer article about this absolute shit show but to summarize, Outlast 2 is a poorly written, poorly designed "horror" game that relies on nothing more than cheap shock value which will leave you frustrated and angry rather than terrified.  The first game was already a gigantic pile of shit and Red Barrels really outdid themselves on this one.  

Do no play Outlast 2, stay well away.  I could write a dissertation on everything that's wrong with this one and that's what I plan to do but until then just don't play it, don't even think about it.  Some people say that playing video games is a waste of life, and while I don't agree with that sentiment at all, I think that they may have a point when it comes to this one.

Runner up goes to shitty, generic open world zombie game Days Gone for being a boring buggy mess, but still leagues better than Outlast 2

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter HD

 

Recently I finished Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter and I wasn't really planning to write anything about it because who gives a shit about Serious Sam in 2020?  But upon putting the game up on my Twitter as part of a tweet train tracking my game clears over the course of the coming year, it got a bunch of positive feedback on it.  People saying how much they remember enjoying playing the game and I'm nothing short of completely baffled by the comments.

To start off, I enjoyed First Encounter quite a bit.  It wasn't anything special but it was fun, fast paced, had fun weapons and some decent-ish level design.  The kind of game that you can just fire up, switch your brain off and shoot things.  When I finished the first game I quickly jumped into the follow up expecting more of the same and while it is sort of more of the same the game is just kind of lacking and ended up feeling like a boring slog more than a fun murder romp though fantastical settings.  

At its core, it really is just more of the same thing as the first game.  Lot's of running around, shooting monsters and finding trinkets to open doors that lead to more monsters for you to shoot with your fun array of weapons.  But The Second Encounter is extremely lacking in its level design and it has exactly one trick up its sleeve to try and kill you that it uses over and over and over again for it's entire playtime 

Every single level in The Second Encounter is just a big room, usually square, sometimes rectangular and if the developers were feeling particularly mean they might put you in a corridor.  Upon entering the room, you will quickly notice an exit on the other side and as you are crossing it the game will spawn in enemies for you to shoot and the door will not open, in most cases, until all those enemies are dead.  Now when I say the game spawns in enemies, I mean A LOT of enemies, it can easily feel like hundreds per area depending on the type of enemy they decide to use too and with every room being a flat box this kind of encounter gets very boring very quickly.  

There are a few exceptions to this rule, for example there is one room that sticks out in my memory where Sam and the enemies are bouncing off the walls like crazy and shooting shit while things are flying all over the place sounds like fun, the whole thing actually just makes aiming anything a massive pain in the dick and it becomes a test of patience and frustration instead.

It wouldn't be fair to call The Second Encounter a "bad" game per se, it's still a competently made shooter with fun weapons and interesting enemies but after the first episode of the games content, the game feels like a slog.  More flat rooms with more endless waves of enemies for you to kill ad nauseum  until you either see the ending or get bored and turn it off.  It crossed the brainless threshold JUST enough to go from cathartic to boring, and it's a damn shame

Imagine If... Shin Megami Tensei AR Game

 

I remember when Shin Megami Tensei Dx2 Liberation was announced.  It was around the time that Pokemon Go was still riding a wave of popularity and I got the (mistaken) idea that Dx2 was going to be that kind of game but when it came time to download I was sorely disappointing.

 When I spoke about Dx2 on the blog I had a few nice things to say about it.  Despite the awful gatcha system and some legendary amounts of grinding that needed to be done, for a shitty little mobile RPG it wasn't actually that bad.  There was even a mode available to some phones where you could use an AR thing to take pictures with your demons in the real world but it didn't really have anything to do with the game itself.  So I'm going to use this post to sort of dream up what I think a proper Shin Megami Tensei AR game would be like and hopefully someone at ATLUS will stumble on this page and steal the idea.  Probably not but a mans gotta dream.

Your phone in this hypothetical game would take the place of the COMP or maybe the gauntlet from SMT IV.  In fact the gauntlet from SMT IV makes a little more sense because in that game you buy "apps" with "app points" as you level up allowing you to store more demons, get more skills or make various features cheaper.  From your phone then you'd manage your team, manage your items, buy player focused skills and you could probably put the Cathedral of Shadows in the main menu too.

The main meat of the game I suppose would be the same thing as Pokemon Go.  You would go outside, walk around and get into encounters on the map where you would fight demons. In those fights you could kill the enemies for EXP or you could do demon negotiation to recruit them into your party.  That of course isn't enough to hold an entire game by itself so you'd have to lift some things from Pokemon Go, mainly the raid system.  Instead of calling them raids though you could take a page from the Nocturne book at have "Fiend" battles where groups of players would fight a single enemy.  For the 6 people in the world that have played Dragon Quest Walk, sort of similar to how raid battles work in that.  When you beat a raid in Pokemon Go you are granted a chance to catch the rare monster but that wouldn't really work in a game like this, so pulling from the SMT3 book once again, a Fiend could drop a menorah that you could use to access a dungeon.  These dungeons would be separate from the walking around and be done in a first person view, a nod to the classic games for the long term fans, and in these dungeons you'd have a chance to get rare items and recruit strong demons.  Although it would be unfair to lock out players from this side of the game if they aren't strong enough to do the fiend encounters so randomly around the map you could spawn "Amala Terminals" or something like that.  Players could walk to these and take part in a sort of mini dungeon-crawl  and these areas would have their own loot and demons to gather.

Of course, this is just my personal dream of what an SMT AR Game would look like, I'm sure some actual game designer with many years experience over me could put something better together but it's nice to dream about something that could be.  Although, being really honest, I'd rather ATLUS just get SMT 5 out rather than focus on side projects like this.

 

Days Gone

 

Does anyone actually give a fuck about zombies any more?  The zombie genre, for both games and movies is so played out that whenever I see something that features zombies in it I now reflexively groan and roll my eyes.

Now the big mother-fucker of zombie fiction is The Walking Dead.  While it's not so popular now, just a few years ago people were going fucking CRAZY for that show.  One of the most popular characters in that show was Daryl, a rough and tumble biker type with a lone-wolf type attitude and the kind of guy to not take no shit from nobody, no sir.  So one day a bunch of stupid wankers had the brilliant idea of making a zombie survival game where all the characters were Daryl and everyone behaved like they had fallen off their motorcycles and landed on their heads one too many times.

I'm going to skip a real description of the story to this game because it's very long and very stupid but I'll do my best to give you a cliff notes version.  You play as Deacon St John, the most Daryl-like of all the people in the land, and while riding around the zombie infested mountains you get jumped by a bunch of cultists and your friend, Bald-Daryl, gets his arm messed up by a blow torch.  You then gotta help him out, help out a bunch of camps, kill the cultists, join the army, find your wife and then murder the army before they start an outright holy war on all the people of the land.  The game ends with the army dead and nothing solved as you ride off into the sunset.

But who really gives a shit about the story when its such an obvious "the real monsters are us humans" kind of tale so what we are really here for is the game play.  Well sadly, the game play is simple, generic over the shoulder 3rd person action bullshit like you've played a million times.  The enemies are daft, the zombies are stupid and easy to kill and every mission is basically go somewhere and shoot shit or go somewhere and chase shit on your bike.  The survival elements are non existent because the getting camp money is easy as fuck and even if for some reason your run your supplies down, almost every car, building and bush is bursting at the seams with supplies for you to craft stuff.  

 The games big draw, the one thing that anyone remembers from the E3 demo that they showcased that one year, is the zombie hordes.  Dotted around the map are HUGE numbers of zombies that will all aggro you at once if you alert them.  The problem with the hordes is that throughout my entire play through I couldn't find a reason to give a shit about them.  There's a few missions throughout the campaign where you HAVE to fight a horde but outside of that you just very easily avoid them as you do all your other shit.  The horde fights aren't even interesting either, you just let them chase you around and when they bunch up around something explosive you shoot it.  Throw molotovs or napalm while your being chased and once the numbers thin out finish the job with your gun.  It's a test of patience rather than a test of skill or preparation.  A lot of hype for a non-feature.

But the absolute worst aspect of this game is the bugs, there are, SO MANY bugs in Days Gone that it's actually embarrassing.  I didn't bother to update the game upon first putting the disc in and before the 28gb patch I was getting hard frame rate drops, textures not working, AI bugging out, missions not working, the whole shabang.  There was one mission in particular where I had to rescue a guy from a camp.  Upon arrival one guy took the guy into a back room and I had to gun my way through the other guys.   What was supposed to happen is that when I killed the guys outside, I would jimmy open the door, kill the leader and rescue the dude inside.  What actually happened is that the game bugged out and it would not recognize the henchmen as being dead so I would go to the door and it would just throw up a message saying "clear the area of enemies to rescue to hostage".  The problem is that this was a main story mission and despite many attempts at restarting the game, reloading save files, resetting the mission the thing WOULD NOT PROGRESS at all.  

 That's when I caved and installed the 28gb patch that it was pestering me for on my Playstation menu and that fixed that mission bug but the game still suffered from constant broken textures, crap AI, crashes and there was one mission near the end of the game where collision with the floor just crapped out and I couldn't progress for a while AGAIN because I kept falling into the abyss under the world.  

This game really is the whole package of long, tedious, broken and predictable.  If you saw the E3 trailer all those years ago and were thinking about picking it up, just don't.  Save your money and use it to buy something better than this such as Dying Light. 

December Events and Incentive Changes

 

The year is coming to a close so its time to run down some events and updates for the blog and the stream

First thing I want to announce is that thanks to some extremely kind donations to the charity the Celeste 2  players 1 controller event has been met.  Things are still being planned but due to scheduling this is more than likely to become a bit that will be run at weekends once a month rather than just a one off marathon.  Once things have been finalized I'll be doing a separate post with more details.  

Next is the main December event which I am planning for the 19th which I'm dubbing The December Derust.  I've not really been doing any speedruns of any game for a long time so I thought in the coming year I'd like to get a bit more into it again.  So for the December long stream I will run through all of my current speed games AND one extra game which I've been meaning to learn for a while in order to set some new splits.  There's quite an array of games in my speed list so I'm sure there will be something for you to check out at some point no matter what

 I'm also changing the way the incentives page works from now on.  This is due to the fact that I'm funneling money from Twitch bits and subs into the charity so I'm now using an "incentive score" system.  This means that from now, there will only be 1 incentive at a time, with a fairly high "score" that you have to meet in order to make it happen.  To add points to the score you can do things like cheer bits in the stream, sub in the stream or donate directly to the charity, here's how it works.

100 Twitch bits = 1 point (I'll keep track, and add a point for every cumulative 100)

1 Twitch sub = 5 points (10 tier 2, 25 tier 3)

Just Giving Direct Donation = Donation value x2 (e.g donate $10 = 20 incentive score)

This way, people can still cheer and donate for things like wheel spins, game requests or any other stream specific things while at the same time helping to reach a goal for a fun event.  Incentives that currently have money put into them will be started at their current value, so the progress you already made won't go to waste!

I will also be adding some new prizes to the wheel of prizes in the coming few days so keep an eye on that page to see what's up for grabs

How About Get It Right the First Time?

 I'm almost certain I've written things on this topic before but very recently I had a very bad experience with some game bugs so I'm going to talk about it again.  

So if you've been watching the stream you know I've been playing a game called Days Gone and while I have a lot of bile to spill about that game one of the things that really sticks out about it is the number of bugs, glitches and hiccups the game has.

I've had textures not loading in, glitching through geometry, audio bugging out, frame rate stutters when its trying to load the world, escort characters just forgetting what they are doing along with a few other things.  The worst however came during a story critical mission where I had to clear a camp of dudes and then rescue a guy behind a locked door.  What was SUPPOSED to happen is that you kill the dudes and then you use your boot knife to jimmy open the door and save the guy.  What was happening to me was I'd kill the dudes, go to the door and then the game would pop up a message saying "Clear the area of enemies to rescue the hostage".  What I think was happening was that the guy in the room who had the guy at gunpoint that you're supposed to kill last after entering was being recognized as an enemy in the previous area and because he was alive it wasn't allowing me to open the door.  The problem with this, is that if I didn't clear this mission, the story WOULD NOT PROGRESS, I was essentially locked out of finishing the game.

The fix came in the form of a 28 gigabyte patch that I had been putting off downloading because space on my PS4 was running rather low.  In a desperate attempt to not have my time wasted by this shitty game I downloaded the patch, reset the mission and THEN thankfully it worked and while I'm happy about that, I can't help be mad about why the fuck it just didn't work in the first place.

This is a pretty big problem with games nowadays where companies will hype a game up, get it out as soon as they can and then fix shit later which is probably one of the shittiest practices I can think of along side gouging money out of idiots with loot boxes.  When we got the ability to download patches and fixes for our games it was a GOOD thing initially because it allowed developers to fix something unforeseen or missed during development but now its being used as a crutch by shitty companies so they can get your money out of you as soon as possible and then MAYBE fix any easily missed issues down the line.

Now when I've moaned about this shit in the past there's always some half-brained bellend who likes to open his stupid halitosis mouth at me with the comment "But game development is really hard! there's always going to be bugs and glitches in software this complex". and you know what? to some degree they are correct.

What I'm not saying is that I expect every game to be perfect on release, they are complex beasts worked on by many people and a few bugs here and there are probably going to slip through the cracks when being play tested.  This is especially true for small indie teams putting out games as passion projects where they just don't have the time or budget for long, drawn out play tests and they just want to put their labor of love out into the world.  But I'm not talking about those guys, I'm talking about big developers like the gigantic sacks of shit who developed days gone or the gaggle of sad fucks that work at Bethesda putting out AAA, full price games that are so badly broken that they suck to play and in some cases can't even be finished.

Even in those games, especially big open world ones I'm willing to let some shit slide.  Things that don't happen often like path finding going wrong or the occasional fall through the floor I can just deal with but HOW THE FUCK did main-plot, progression critical mission bugging out get missed in the initial launch batch?  A full price AAA game, unbeatable at launch, embarrassing.

Like I said, games are complex and bugs are inevitable but if you're going to charge me $60-80 to play a new game on the latest hardware then you better make sure it at the very least fucking works from start to finish.  But if you're attitude is anything like the likes of Bethesda or SIE Bend Studio then I sincerely hope that you studio goes under and every sandwich you have from this day forward is a bit dry and always has slightly stale bread.

Mobile Rhythm Game Bullshit

 

Recently I started playing a game on my phone called Project Sekai: Colorful Stage and despite the bile I'm about to dispense under this introduction, I'm having quite a good time with it.  It's a rhythm game sort of similar to Chunithm in the arcade but watered down and all of its songs are Vocaloid tunes.  Being the huge Vocaloid weeb boy that I am I downloaded it straight away and I'm actually quite pleased, for a game that I fiddle with for a couple of minutes at a time while dropping a log it's actually a lot of fun 

However there's something that Project Sekai does, as well as many other mobile rhythm games, that pisses me off to absolutely no end and that's song grading.  When you clear a song in basically any rhythm game the game spits out a results screen to tell you how did you, how many points you got and how accurate you were, things like that.  Usually taking front and center on these results screen is an overall grade for your performance.  For example in DDR if you fail a song you get an E and if you do nearly everything perfectly you get a AAA. While in every normal rhythm game this is based entirely on your skill as a player, in Project Sekai and many others it's based on something entirely different.

Like every mobile game and it's dog, Project Sekai has a "gatcha" system where you spend some in-game currency to get characters of varying rarity.  With those characters you build a team and in the context of a rhythm game like this they will have skills in order to boost your score or recover lost life bar under certain conditions.  Each of these characters also has a "power" level which increases as they level up and their power dictates how many points per note hit you get and I'm sure you can see at this point why this is a problem.

So when I play Project Sekai and I Full Combo a song on Expert or Master difficulty do you know what rank I get? A fucking B.  Not because I made any mistakes, not because my accuracy was off or anything like that, but I just haven't done the pre-requisite grinding for an S rank so I'm not allowed one.  While this doesn't seem like a big deal, in game rewards, especially timed event rewards, are tied to your song grading so I'm just missing out on a whole bunch of shit because my party just isn't generating the score I need for it.

Now you would think that this would only be a problem for new players, that after a while you'd build a team and start getting ranks no problem right? Well no, because of course there's a bunch of other bullshit that gives passive score buffs to certain characters or certain TYPES of character that you also need in order to get the grades that you actually deserve which of course means, more fucking grinding.

I know that complaining about grinding in a mobile game is akin to pissing in the ocean but there's something about its inclusion in a rhythm game of all thing that really irks me.  There's no reason it couldn't have just been a standard rhythm game and premium currency used to unlock songs or videos or other cosmetic features like note skins or whatever, I mean it's a Vocaloid game for mobile for fucks sake, it's basically a money printing machine in a market like Japan.

Anyway like I said, Project Sekai isn't the only game that has been guilty of this shit.  Idolmaster did it and Bang Dreamin' did it just to name two others.  Truth be told I'm actually sort of impressed at just how little Project Sekai seems to be pushing the premium currency side of things, they constantly shower you with it and the button for the premium store is a TINY thing in the bottom left of the main menu, much better than what I've seen for other titles.  Plus this game has the benefit of being 100% Vocaloid music which means that it could break down my door and murder my family and I'd still probably play it.

Moral of the story: Tie ranks to player skill, not to my fucking waifu collection, goddamn it!

I miss GameTrailers

 Usually I like to give game news websites a lot of shit and rightly so.  Most game news sites and most of the people who write for them are inept, braindead twats who gladly bow down at the grand alter of AAA development and suck the many cocks that rest upon it.  There was one website though, back in the day that I actually used to quite enjoy and that was GameTrailers.com

It was a simple website.  You'd load it up and you'd be given a list of videos which ranged from, expectedly, game trailers, news bits, top lists and little bits from various content creators.  In fact, The Angry Video Game Nerd was hosted pretty much exclusively on here in the early days.  He was with some group called Screwattack which was made of of two twats who made nothing but lists and him.

This used to be the main way I followed latest releases.  I think I liked it because I didn't have to listen to some idiot give their opinion on anything if I didn't want to.  I'd just load it up, watch some gameplay footage of something I was interested in, and piss off again, it was bliss.  YouTube could probably give me the same kind of experience I'm sure but I never really tend to venture outside of my recommended list of pretentious video essayists and Vocaloid music.

Unfortunately though, the site has since gone and has been relegated to a YouTube channel that I refuse to sub to because it's now owned by IGN, possibly the largest hive of talentless cocksuckers that exists in the entire games writing sphere.  I have the Steam recommended queue I guess but it's just not the same.

Mirrors Edge: Catalyst

 

Sometimes I like to over-emphasize my opinion on certain games.  Like for example, if I'm feeling particularly mischievous I'll say something like "Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a shit game for twats" and while I don't like BotW personally, I do actually understand why its so popular and why people like it so much.  However I feel like maybe I should stop doing this because it does a disservice to games that actually do deserve it such as Mirrors Edge: Catalyst, a truly shit game for twats.

I remember the first Mirrors Edge coming out for the Xbox 360 when I was in University and I remember liking it quite a lot.  I beat it multiple times, would sometimes listen to the OST while studying and even tried to sort of speed run it.  Not in any serious way but I'd spend quite a few hours finding the optimal route through a stage just to see the little time trial numbers go down.  Mirrors Edge: Catalyst however pissed me off within the first 30 minutes or so of playing and finishing it was one of the biggest chores I have ever undertaken in the 26 years of my gaming life.

I don't even know what it really is.  I thought it was a sequel but it seems more like a sort of reboot more than anything else.  I'd love to tell you about the story at this point in the article but I hated the dialogue in this game so much that I played most of it with my TV muted and just switched my brain off and followed the little red noodle to my mission destinations.

What I can tell you though is that the parkour gameplay isn't actually all that bad.  As far as running around, jumping over, on and around things is fairly functional.  The downside is that it's marred by one of the most boring open worlds in the universe.  The world of Mirrors Edge has nothing in it, nothing to explore or see or experience outside of the set pieces in the main missions.  The only thing the open world is good for is getting from point A to point B and watching a cutscene which means that it doesn't matter how good your parkour gameplay is when you don't fucking do anything with it.

That's not to say that the world is completely void of things to do, it's just that the things to do in that world are pointless bullshit busywork made to prey on 100% wierdos like me.  There are delivery missions when you run from point A to point B, these tower things that you blow up and then run away from and a bunch of random crap to collect throughout the various areas of the world map.  None of this does anything though outside of giving you experience.  However I did a couple of these side shows at the start and quickly gave up yet still managed to max out the skill tree by the end of the game.  It's all literally just pointless bullshit to pad out the game

But let's talk about the skill tree quickly shall we?  One thing I wish games in general would stop doing is including bullshit systems just because it's the "in" thing to do.  The skill tree in ME:C is the most needless token addition to a game I've ever seen.  The developers were so starved for ideas for this token skill tree that one of the skills you unlock is fucking QUICK. TURN.  A feature present in most games as a standard bit of control has been slapped inside a fucking skill tree because whatever gimp decided it was a good idea to have it couldn't think of enough things to fill it.  You may find at that start that certain delivery missions are kind of challenging but NOT because you aren't good enough, it's because the game wont let you move fast enough.  Delivery missions are a breeze once you have quick turn, fast climb, tuck jump and extended slide but until you get these skills the missions are borderline impossible.  If I'm failing something in a game I want it to be because I need to "git gud" not because the dozy idiot I'm controlling hasn't earned the arbitrary amount of points in order for her to "git gud".

Although I'm not saying anything new or controversial with this post, people have been calling it shit since 2008 and rightly so.  I was just late to the party and didn't want to believe it going in so at the end of the day I'm the one with egg on my face.

The 2020 Horror Game Gauntlet

 

For October this year I'm doing something a little insane.  I'm planning to try and finish 31 games before the end of October on Stream.  Last night we decided the play order so I'm making this post for people to be able to see what's done and what's coming.  The games are as follows 

1. Cry of Fear

2. Mad Father

3. Sanitarium 

4. White Day 

5. Distraint 

6. Illbleed 

7. Tamashii 

8. FNAF2

9. Resident Evil Gaiden

10. Clock Tower 3 

11. Man of Medan 

12. Metro Last Light 

13. SOMA

14. Days Gone 

15. Mizurna Falls 

16. Outlast 2 

17. Pathalogic HD 

18. Call of Cthulu 

19. Little Nightmares 

20. Dead Space 

21. Galerians 

22. Yuppy Psycho 

23. Inside 

24. Enemy Zero 

25. Slenderman: The Arrival 

26. System Shock 2 

27. Penumbra Overture 

28. Nosferatu 

29. Bendy and the Ink Machine 

30. Alien Isolation 

31. Detention 

Follow me on Twitch and lets get spooky! 

Independence Day (PS1)

 There are some games which have a bit of a reputation that are a bit undeserved in my opinion.  The ones that spring directly into my mind are Nightmare on Elm Street and Silver Surfer on NES.  Given the reputation unfairly due to YouTubers like AVGN making videos on these games and then large numbers of twats not being able to think for themselves piggy-backing the opinion despite having never tried the games for themselves.

Sometimes however the hate a game gets is completely deserved and Independence Day on the Playstation is one of those games.  A truly cursed title that I hate so much that I'm hoping that everyone involved in its development are now suffering from mild back problems.

The first thing I don't get about it is that other people and the game itself refer to itself as "ID4", which despite making a little bit of sense once it was explained to me, still manages to simultaneously still make utterly no sense.  The I stands for "Independence" and the D stands for "Day", seems obvious but the 4 stands for "4th of July" which I know is the American holiday of the same name but that's got nothing to do with the title of the movie...right?

Well doing a quick google search for the movie poster I found this fucking thing.  So does that mean that the ACTUAL title of the movie is ID4: Independence Day? In which case that's a stupid fucking title and however came up with it should be ashamed

Anyway I'm talking about complete and utter bollocks just to fill post space so lets talk about the actual fucking game.  It's a dime a dozen flying game, sort of like those free-fly missions from Lylat Wars. The game gives you a couple of things to blow up and then you get in your plane and you go blow them up, easy, right? No

The first few missions aren't so bad but then the game just bombards you with enemies and dodging anything becomes an actual impossibility.  When you do get hit, in addition to losing HP you also get shunted around like a puck on an air hockey table so you're probably going to take some additional damage from smacking the floor or a nearby building.  The game tells you when an enemy has a lock on you but there are so many enemies on the map at any given point that even if you shake one, the next one is just going to lock you right away, there's basically no point in time when you aren't being bullied by some alien bastards wanting to shove lasers up your arse.  Also your bullet weapon appears to do fuck all of nothing.  I can fire bullets until the town underneath is flooded with shell casings and it would have maybe done about 1 point of damage to an enemy ship.  The only effective weapon is missiles and you only get 20 of those and once you're out and you've picked up all the refills on the map, you can get fucked sonny jim.

At first I thought it was because I was trying to be a big-dick "pro gamer" and playing on Hard.  So I turned it down and still got equally wanked on with Normal mode.  After I stopped the stream I thought I'd see what easy mode was like since that's what the game defaults to when it starts and it didn't change diddly jack shit and I still got wrecked.  I thought maybe there was something fundamental about the game I wasn't understanding so I took to YouTube to find some videos of people playing it.  I found one group of people who struggled with easy mode only to get to the exact level I was stuck on and then they just started cheating! Don't blame them but that's not the solution to the problem I was hoping for.

It's a viewer request so I WILL beat it, even if I have to wear down the skin on my fingers to dust to get there but holy good lord Jesus Christ the internet was not joking about this one, this really is a stinker.

Sonic Adventure

 

Nostalgia can be a strange thing.  I remember owning Sonic Adventure for my Dreamcast back in my younger days and I remember it being quite good.  At least I remember the Sonic sections being quite good and then the rest of a game was sort of a blur.  After finishing it on stream recently I can safely say that while I did have a bit of fun with the Sonic sections it was considerably more jank than I ever remember it being.

In my head Sonic didn't really get completely screwed until Sonic 06 and before that, Adventure and Adventure 2 while not the best games in the world were still solid attempts at making a 3D sonic game.  But I can safely say now that Sonic Adventure is just as broken and also suffers from being really really fucking boring.

When the game starts out and you only have Sonic to play with things are sort of OK.  You run very fast down a path, dash at enemies and then watch a badly voice acted cutscene and everything is great.  But once you finish his stages, in order to see the real ending of the game, you have to play as all of Sonic's stupid fucking friends.  Tails is sort of the same as Sonic, Knuckles is stupid McGuffin hunting, Amy is boring, Gamma has a cool idea that is over the moment it starts to get going and Big the Cat's campaign houses the worst gameplay segment of any game on the system and I say that as someone who loves Sega Bass Fishing.

What really surprised me though is all the weird buggy type things.  Often at points in the game the characters would get stuck on...the floor? I'm not entirely sure what was going on but often I'd being trying to navigate the hub world into the next stage and my character would just start flailing around, unable to move as the game struggled to work out how floors work.  The other big thing that I could have sworn wasn't a problem back in my teen years was loops.  Whenever a character had to go through a loop they would get half way and the forget how their legs worked and they would just stop dead.  This would cause them to fall off and usually result in a death.  Thankfully the game is piss easy and showers you with 1 ups but its still horribly annoying to have to play the same segment 4 or 5 times while the game works out how to get the character around a 360 degree piece of terrain.

So while we all like to rag (rightly so) on Sonic 06 for being a glitchy mess, let's not forget that Sega were practicing those techniques here first, because I sure as hell did.  

The N64 Was A Bit Crap

 I still remember the Christmas I got the N64 from my parents.  I ran downstairs, hooked that shit up and spent my entire morning playing Mario 64 and having a grand old time.  Later I was given copies of Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye and Zelda: Ocarina of Time and I remember playing these games with friends and having quite a bit of fun.  However, despite the fond memories, looking at the N64 now and even thinking back to how it was back then, the system was actually just a bit shit.

First of all the hardware itself was just a bit shit.  The N64 is home to what is probably one of the worst controllers I've ever had to use to play a game with.  Sure, we all got used to it and in the end it was fine but that doesn't change the fact that it's clearly designed for a weird species of Octopus people that live on the ocean floor.  Plus the addons can also suck a fat one the expansion pack can suck an especially large fat one.  I remember my friend coming to my house after school and bringing Majoras Mask with him but he forgot his expansion pack so we were just up shit creek and I had to wait another 2 weeks for him to come over again before I got a chance to play it.  

Which leads nicely into the next issue which was pricing of the damn games.  Literally nobody that I knew growing up who also had an N64 had more than about 3 or 4 games because the carts were quite literally DOUBLE the price of anything else at the time.  You would walk into a game store and all the new games were about 30 Pounds and then there were the N64 games in their stupid ugly rectangular cardboard boxes demanding that you fork out 50 or 60 Pounds.  On a side note, the SNES boxes can also suck a fat one but that system was actually good so I'm not as bitter about it.

But all of that shit is in the past, all that REALLY matters are the games.  Well, it's not much better in this department.  The lifespan of the N64 according to Wikipedia was 6 years and whenever anyone talks about the system the same games always come up; Zelda: OoT, Goldeneye, Banjo, Mario 64, Lylat Wars (sometimes Mario Kart, sometimes Mario Party) and that's fucking IT.  6 years of life and the number of games people actually give a shit about can be counted on one hand.  There are a few more games than that, but not many and even of those most of them feel like utter shit to play now.  Have you tried actually playing Goldeneye 64 today? It's grueling.  Granted it was cool as all hell at the time but playing it now is the gaming equivalent of putting toothpicks under your fingernails.  The Dreamcast, again according to  Wikipedia, had half the lifespan of the N64 and yet there are significantly more games on that system that were good and still feel good to play even today.  

I understand people having fond memories of the thing and I have to admit that despite it's absolutely embarrassing library the games that were good were VERY good (except Goldeneye, fuck off) but lets stop looking back on the system like it was some overall landmark of gaming quality.  It was an overpriced piece of shit that mad a fat man in overalls go "wa-hoo" and that's all it was ever good for 

2020 Console Wars

 Console wars were a thing back in the day that users and companies used to partake in to try and push sales of their own systems. Sega did what Nintendidn't, Atari were doing the math and people would froth at the mouth about the number of "bits" a system had despite that fact that no one knew what a "bit" actually was.  It was a bit of fun back then to argue with your friends on the playground between Mario or Sonic being better and it was sort of funny to see companies do a bit of shit-slinging in their adverts but in the modern day of the PS5 and the Xbox Series X it all feels a little pointless.

Back then systems felt quite different to play and their libraries were pretty drastically different too.  The type of games and the way those games felt to play felt worlds apart back when were were arguing over the SNES and the Megadrive or the Saturn and the PS1.  The Xbox and the PS5 are far too similar for anyone to really give a shit anymore and from both of those systems most games are getting PC releases too so owning one or the other is irrelevant in the face of a user with a beefy rig.

But whenever Sony or Microsoft put out a tweet about their new systems, there go all the twats in the replies arguing about CPU speed or graphical capabilities like anyone REALLY gives a shit.  Just get the thing your friends are getting so that you can all play together and if you have no friends just get the thing that has a game on it that you like the look of.  If you're into Souls, get a PS5, if you're into Halo, get an Xbox, you really don't have to think that deeply about it.

Luckily for me, I've always managed to avoid this tiresome console warring dogshit since I've always managed to maintain a social circle where all my bases have been covered.  When I was very young I was lucky enough to have both a SNES and a Megadrive, a bit further on I had a Saturn and my buddy had a PS1 (which I later bought off him) and then I had a DC, that same guy had a Xbox and another buddy had a PS2.  We weren't so much arguing over who had the better thing but rather just enjoying each others libraries when we hung out, it was cool.  After that point I was old enough where it stopped mattering since I'd buy my own shit anyway.

So quit yelling over poly-counts and FPS values, you're games aren't distinct enough any more for anyone to care.  Just buy a PC because everything will come out for that anyway at this point.

Struggling To Care About The PS5 (for now)

 

The new collaborative console effort between Netgear and Sony is around the corner and my social media has recently exploded with people pre-ordering the new PS5 system.  Also before I get into the meat of this post, let me take a quick moment to give a big "fuck you" to all the scalpers I've seen, trying to make a ton of pre orders and then putting those on e-bay for $1000+.  You're a bunch of scumbags and if it was up to me you'd spend the rest of your life having to walk around with shoes filled with Lego.

So of course, excited to see what the new system has to offer I start doing some research and....oh dear, how boring the entire thing seems to be.  I did a quick google search for "PS5 launch games" to see what I'd be able to play and there is essentially NOTHING on the list of launch games that piques my interesting even a little bit.  Assassins' Creed, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty, some Little Big Planet thing, Spiderman, I'm sure all these games appeal to somebody but they sure as fuck do not appeal to me.

The only thing that looks sort of interesting is the Demons' Soul remaster and while it does look very shiny I'm not about to drop $600 on an entirely new system plus another $70 for the game just so I can play something that I've already played to absolute death.  I still have my copy of Demons' Souls, I still have my PS3, if I wanna play it, I'll just play that and save my money.

But you may have noticed in the title the little "(for now)" and that's because I know for an absolute fact that I'm going to end up buying one maybe about a year or so from it's launch date.  This is just the reaction I have to most systems upon launch.  It's how I felt about the PS3, it's how I felt about the PS4, it's how I felt about the Switch and now all of those systems and currently in my possession and get A LOT of use.  It's a shame the launch lineup is so lack luster, but I'm sure there will be some waifu filled RPG or some new FromSoftware game that will make me use an entire paycheck picking it up the day those titles launch.

I'm excited to see what it will offer us in the future, but for now I'm happy to kick back and attempt to catch up with my backlog

Super Mario 3D All Stars Can Piss Right Off

 

Since I know how much Nintendo fans will froth at the mouth at the sight of anyone badmouthing their fat, mushroom addicted mascot allow me to start with a clarifying statement.  I like all these games.  Mario 64, despite it's wonky camera is still a ton of fun to play, I've always loved Sunshine despite what everyone else says about it and playing Galaxy the day it came out is still a fond memory of mine from my university days.  The games included in this collection are not the problem.

Ironically, despite the title saying that 3D All Stars can piss off, it's the pissing off which is the problem.  When Nintendo announced this collection of 3D Mario classics for the Switch they also dropped the fact that this game comes with a time limited purchase window.  It is scheduled for a September 18th release date but then it is only available until March 2021.  By that, I don't mean it's a limited run release and you you can only get a physical copy until March 2021, I mean it's vanishing from store shelves AND from the online store in March.

I cannot for the life of me imagine why this would be the case and quite frankly it is one of the dumbest decisions I've ever seen for a game in my entire life.

The first problem that this is going to cause is that scalpers are going to be just scooping up physical copies like crazy and selling them at inflated prices.  Hell, it's not "going" to cause, it already has caused scalpers to start going nuts.  Just google "3D All Stars Scalpers" and the top results are stories of people pre ordering copies of the game for $60 and selling THE. PRE. ORDER for anything between $90 to $120.  It's a disgusting practice that takes advantage of people who aren't fast or tech savvy enough and anyone who participates in scalping deserves a big fat slap

The other problem, the one that scares me a little more than scalpers, is the message that this release is going to send out to other companies and will maybe inspire them to do the same thing.  Companies are going to realize that by doing something like this they can force consumers to pay top dollar for their games in and around launch and the people who can't afford or like to wait are going to get completely screwed.  If you're lacking in money, especially in the current corona ravaged climate and you need to prioritize things like food or family expenses, well you better get your sorry ass on your feet because whatever game you were excited for might just vanish from existence if you're not fast enough.  Do you have a massive backlog and want to hold off buying games?  Do you like to wait for a sale so that you can save what little money you have? Are you the kind of person who likes to finish the current game before buying the next one and that playthrough of the Witcher 3 you're doing right now is taking YEARS because you don't have that much time?

Well fuck all of you, either get the game in 12-16 months or deal with it you stupid nerd.  Obvious sarcasm but that's what this feels like

This is the exact reason I hate brands like Supreme.  There's no reason Supreme cant just make more products to meet the demand but they want to keep this image of "exclusivity" and "rarity" so they under-produce and that's why you get droves of twats lining up outside these stores to snap up whatever gaudy bullshit is on sale that week.  That's pretty much what Nintendo is doing with Mario, get in fast or get fucked.

I'm hoping, and the more likely outcome, is that every game suddenly having a limited release window will not happen and this bullshit will only be limited to this stupid little collection title.   

October Horror Challenge and 500 Follower Special!

 There are two big events coming to the stream in October and I'll be outlining them in this post

The first is the October Horror Game Challenge.  This involves me making a list of 31 horror games and then attempting to finish all of them before the end of the month.  I'm currently making the list and we will be deciding the play order for these games on September 27th 

The list for these games isn't complete at time of writing this article so feel free to DM me on twitter or twitch if you have suggestions for cool horror games.  If you suggest a game and I don't pick it then fear not, because you can always request it through the usual channels for the stream OR if it's interesting enough I might just decide to play it for myself during a chill stream.

The second big event is a 24 hour marathon of the above horror game challenge during October that will take place on the 17th (subject to change).  This is to celebrate the 500 follower mark for the Twitch channel!  This is a huge mile stone and I'm supremely grateful to all of the people who have watched/followed/supported the stream during all this time.  I feel super lucky to have a community of genuinely interesting and funny people to talk to while I stream and I hope you will all continue to support me and the charity while we creep towards the next milestone of 1000.

Book the dates in your calendar and come join me next month because things are about to get SPOOKAY 

Snake Rattle and Roll

 

When you think of "the worst NES games" what usually comes to mind?

Silver Surfer?

Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde?

Action 52?

Yeah, screw all that, THIS is the worst game to ever curse the NES.

Snake Rattle and Roll is a game where you have to slither around eating balls in order to make yourself heavy enough to hit a bell attached to a High Striker in order to open a door to progress to the next stage.  There are a couple of stages that don't do this and instead opt for straight platforming challenges and all in all you've got to get through 10 levels of the stuff before you can see the ending.

There are 2 problems with this game, one minor and one major.  The minor problem is the perspective.  The game has this sort of isometric camera that was probably really cool to see on the NES back in the day but in a game that needs precision platforming, the camera makes it sort of hard to judge where you are in relation to platforms and enemies at certain points.  I call this a minor issue though because it's the sort of thing you can just get used to after a short amount of play time.  The major issue though is the ice physics, probably the dumbest, most obnoxious ice physics in all of video games and I say this without hyperbole.

The last 2 levels are these icy gauntlets that are full of one hit kill rocks coming at you and the balls you must put in your mouth to reach the end of the stage are flying, so while you're slipping around trying to eat them you're liable to fall of the stage A LOT.  The game also has a garbage respawning system so more than once I would die only to respawn off the ledge again and fall right to my death.  The big problem though is the ice itself because you never EVER get a break from it pulling you all over the place, meaning that the ice physics are working on your snake EVEN WHEN YOU'RE IN MID-AIR.  So if there's a small platform you need to hit, you'll always either undershoot it and slide back down whatever hell mountain you were climbing or you'll over shoot it and fall to an instant death.

The game only has a handful of continues too so if you mess up too often on those ice stages, enjoy being knocked back to stage one every time.  Also don't give me any shit about the stage 8 warp because actually hitting that is a pain in the ass as well.

Sometimes playing shit games is fun because having a nice controlled rage at something obviously shit can be cathartic.  Sometimes they can be so jank that they sort of come full circle and become weirdly entertaining in their shitness.  Snake Rattle and Roll isn't cathartic to yell at and it isn't jank enough to be fun, it's just shit.  Shit in it's purest form, unfiltered and untainted by any traces of quality game design, just a massive pile of doo doo.

There is a version on the Mega Drive too but I've not played that, so I dont know if it's any better.  But to be honest, after the experience I had with the NES one, that version can suck at a fat one.  Don't play this game, it's not good

Foray Into Fall Guys

 

A little while back a game called Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout came out and as a member of Playstation + I was able to get a copy of the game for free!  The internet is going crazy for it, it's the next big thing so I just HAD to try it

I don't think I have ever lost interest in an online game so quickly in my life.

For anyone living under a rock and doesn't know what I'm talking about, I'll give a brief intro.  Fall Guys is an online sort of "Battle Royale" type game.  You play matches that start with 60 people only instead of shooting and looting each stage will involve something like an obstacle course or some sort of team game where you have to roll a ball or collect eggs or something.  You keep doing these games until there's only about 8 people left where you make a mad dash for a crown and the first one to grab it wins.  Rinse and repeat for all eternity.  If you remember that TV show called Takeshi's Castle, it's basically that but as a bright online game with cartoon bean creatures 

Now you might be thinking that I'm about to go off on a long rant about how much the game sucks considering how fast I claimed to have lost interest but actually it's pretty fun and well put together.  Games are quick, the characters are cute, the art is nice and vibrant and when you do start doing well it gets really exciting, it's a game where I can totally understand the appeal.  There's something about it however, for me, that made me lose interest incredibly fast and I can't quite place my finger on it.

Maybe it's the sort of monotonous music and really irritating sound effects the little dudes make as they tumble over each other.  Maybe it's the repetitive nature of the game play.  Maybe its the abundance of annoying as fuck team games where, once you get used to playing them a bit, losses start to feel like they weren't entirely your fault and having to restart a match just because you were unluckily placed on a team with a bunch of twats feels unfair in a game like this.  Maybe it's the fact that the number of stages is pretty limited so every game starts to feel samey and uninteresting after about 6 matches.  I'm sure its a combination of all these things 

When I played my first few games my initial reaction was "Goodness golly me! Isn't this a barrel of laughs, I just HAVE to play more of it" which was quickly followed by "yeah it's aite, maybe a game or two before I play something else" which was then quickly followed by "I never want to touch this boring sack of shit ever again"

But like I said, the game isn't clicking particularly well for me and on this one I know very much that it's a me problem rather than the game being bad.  I can think of a handful of people just off the top of my head that I would happily recommend this game to and I'm really glad that such a neat little idea is getting so much traction.  It's absolutely worth checking out if the idea of Takeshi's Castle: Online appeals to you even a little bit.  I, however, will be uninstalling and going back to my weird, obscure weebshit.  

2021: A Year For Extreme MegaTen Hype

I'm a bit of a cynical bugger when it comes to new releases, I sort of just assume that everything that's coming out is shit so that when I buy it and it ends up being shit I don't feel too put out.  As a result of this cynicism I tend to ignore things like Nintendo Directs because I don't give a shit about anything they have to say and if something interesting does happen either someone will tell me or I'll just see it on a shelf at some point after release day.  But good lord do I regret not checking out the Nintendo Direct last night because HO-LY SHIT there was some good news to come out of that one.

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne was a game on PS2 that came out in 2003 and as quite frankly one of the best games on the system.  For the completely uninitiated the game is sort of like grim-dark Pokémon only the goal of a Shin Megami Tensei game isn't so much to collect them all but to survive whatever apocalypse is going on and maybe punch some Gods in the face.  You negotiate with and collect demons to put them in your party and fight with them in a sort of Pokémon-esque way but that's pretty much where the similarities end.

One of the reasons I personally am so happy about this news is because Nocturne is a game that's stupidly expensive to buy here in Japan.  Over here there were 3 versions of the game released, a standard version, a 'Maniax' edition and a third one that featured Raidou from the Devil Summoner series instead of Dante from Devil May Cry.  The standard edition is pretty fairly priced but it's lacking a lot of the features that the Maniax one does.  The Maniax edition, the one we got over in the west, costs about $200 and the one with Raidou costs even more than that.  This remake version is going to apparently cost $60 and is the Raidou version of the game which means that my wallet is just as happy as I am.

But that's not all!  Shin Megami Tensei 5 also got another trailer and it's extremely exciting to see that the game hasn't been forgotten about despite not hearing anything about it for a VERY long time.  The first announcement for SMT5 was the only reason I bought a Switch in the first place.  I don't give a flying rat fuck about Zelda or Mario or whatever tired Nintendo IP is being churned out but I care very much about being able to play SMT5 on the day it comes out.

Not only is this news extremely exciting but it's also extremely funny.  One quick look at Twitter and the amount of crying from various parties had me giggling all throughout my day.  Nintendo fans were butthurt because it wasn't Smash news or something, despite the fact they very clearly stated it was a partner presentation and Persona fans (an SMT spinoff series designed for braindead twats, myself included) were EXTRA butthurt because they have been clamoring for a Switch port of Persona 5 for a good while now.  There was even a small group of butthurt Persona fans crying about how P5Scramble, a Dynasty Warrriors knockoff set in the Persona 5 universe hasn't been localized yet.

July 21st was an extremely good day for MegaTen fans and we can only hope that the success of SMT3 remake will maybe trigger a remake of Digital Devil Saga or maybe, the best game in the franchise, Jack Brothers.  We can dream

Cuphead 200% Deathless Run Stream Highlight

Review Scores and Mainstream Games Writing

I make no effort to hide my disdain for "games writers" or "games journalists".  The crap that these people churn out, whether it be a poorly written review or some crappy clickbait opinion piece about how something (usually from a Japanese developer) is offensive just isn't worth the time of day.  Also the fact that almost every writer I encounter on Twitter or on some other facet of social media just seems to suck massively at games just boggles my mind.  It's OK to be a less skilled player and we all have our weak spots (mine is RTS!) but these are people who are being PAID to tell you about games and they can barely muster the ability to finish a game on Normal.

Imagine the show Top Gear

One of the reasons that show is so compelling even for people like me who aren't really into cars is that the three presenters for that show are very knowledgeable and passionate about the topic and listening to them talk motoring is really interesting.  It's true for anything, I am a HUGE fan going onto YouTube and firing up some video about musical theory or musical production and despite the fact that I know diddly jack shit about music theory but just listening to people who know SO MUCH about it I find really interesting.

But now, imagine Top Gear but replace the presenters with people who know NOTHING about cars.  3 people who can't drive, know nothing about the topic of cars or motoring and then they are paraded around on TV trying to tell you which car is good or what manufacturer you should pay attention to.  I'd bet you'd change the channel pretty god damn fast and I imagine the show wouldn't last very long.  That nightmare scenario of a TV show is what is currently happening in the games writing scene and it's an absolute joke.  To put it another way, imagine a movie critic trying to tell you what makes a movie good or bad but they only thing they ever watch are Marvel super hero movies, you wouldn't give it the time of day

"Sekiro is too hard", the guy who couldn't clear the Cuphead tutorial, the Astral Chain incident and so much more are just a few examples of just how there is a group of people that don't know all that much about gaming, aren't very good at it and in some cases I imagine they don't even really care that much, trying to get you to respect their opinion on a given title.  Granted in 2020 with the likes of YouTube and Twitch games writers have become somewhat irrelevant but its still mind numbingly frustrating when some trumped up Twitter addict comes along and tries to tell you what's good or not.

Although the people involved in the actual writing is sort of only half the problem, it's the way in which reviews are presented which is also shitty and dumb.  Most review sites will use a 1-10 scale; the writer will do MAYBE one playthrough of the game, write a couple of paragraphs about the mechanics and the story and then slap a number on the end.  When it comes the scale itself 9 and 10 usually mean a good game, 8 means an OK game, 7 is mediocre and anything below a 7 is complete garbage that isn't worth your money.

I can't help but feel that trying to boil down a complex opinion about a game or any piece of media for that matter into a number is an incredible waste of time.  People can't even decide on what certain numbers mean for certain titles, most recently evidenced by The Last of Us 2.  The game got many 10/10s and I saw many twitter threads of people arguing not only about if that score was deserved but what even "10/10" means.  Seeing someone unironically tweet "10/10 doesn't mean it's perfect" made me put my phone down and walk away from Twitter for a while because I cannot believe the stupidity of some people on that website.

The solution to this problem? Don't put so much pressure on the games press to churn out a review as fast as possible.  Make the standard for a review two playthroughs and go into A LOT more detail on various aspects of the game.  I know I was being mean to games writers in the above paragraphs but you don't even have to replace them. If it takes them a long time to get a review out because they found the game hard is a legit point that may help people make a more informed purchase in the end.  They don't have to be good at the game but the writers skill level should be taken into account so that a reader can find a writer who somewhat matches them and get an opinion similar to where they stand.  Also dump the number, with the extra detail given to the review you don't need the number, the writer has more space to properly articulate what individual aspects they like and didn't like

To basically sum up what I mean you should look to a channel on YouTube called Joseph Anderson.  This guy may be a little overboard in the other direction (his latest video on The Witcher 1 is over 4 hours) but even if you don't agree with what he says he is clearly a dude who knows what he is talking about and puts a lot of effort into these pieces.  If HE tells me a game is good I'm more likely to take an interest rather than some dude who rushed through the game once or maybe didn't even get to the end just so he could write 500 words with a 8/10 on the end.

What I'm saying in a very long, poorly put together way is don't get your games info from places like IGN, go find someone who actually gives a shit

Game Gear Micro: Tiny System, Massive Piece of Shit

I have very limited experience with actual Game Gear hardware but quite fond memories of the system.  I remember when I was very young, my auntie had this huge house in the Lake District that I would visit with my family from time to time.  There was some sort of gathering going on at the house one time and all the adults were standing around talking and drinking, the usual fare for that kind of thing.  I however, unable to drink at that young and age, got talking to these two slightly older kids and to pass the time we sat in a hallway, on top of my aunties large refrigerator unit playing some kind of Sonic game on the Game Gear.  I was a big fan of the Sonic games on the Mega Drive at the time so when I saw these guys that had a version of it that could be played on the go, it blew my damn mind.  Thinking back, these first experience with the Game Gear might have been my first experience with a portable console.

Anyway, childhood stories aside, Sega have recently announced a Game Gear Micro, yet another mini version of an old system that has a collection of games for you to enjoy.  I've never been a big fan of these mini systems really but I do see the appeal.  The collection of games is usually pretty good (unless its the western PS1 mini) and they sort of look nice on a shelf as a collectors piece.  Being able to play these games with the actual controllers that come packaged is cool as well.

The first problem with the Game Gear Micro is that it's, as the name would suggest, tiny.  I always hated the Game Boy Micro for being just a tad too small and I'm fairly sure that this thing is even smaller than that.  I get that it's kind of a novelty but even Sega realized that the size of this thing is fucking stupid because if you pre-order the system then you can also get a magnifying glass which may make the thing slightly playable.

The games are the other problem with this thing but not the actual titles themselves.  The selection of games is actually pretty good, a bunch of Sonic games, some RPGs, some puzzle games, the standard array of popular titles and genres you'd expect to see on a system like this.  In total there are 16 games but this is where the bullshit starts to creep in.  There are 4 color variants of the Game Gear Micro; black, blue, red and yellow.  Each one of these systems has 4 DIFFERENT games on them which means if you want to play all 16 micro versions of these Game Gear classics, you have to buy ALL of them.

Which leads us into the third problem of the price.  They are announced to be roughly 5000 yen (About $45) each, which means if you want all of the games available you have to drop a whopping 20,000 yen, which is just fucking extortionate.  If I remember correctly the SNES mini, which had about 20 games packaged in, was 8000 yen at launch.  The PlayStation mini, for all the controversy over its game list in the west at the very least was $60 for 20 games.  For what you get bundled in a single unit the asking price is INSANE.

If they were asking for $20 per system then I'd be down.  Not only would I be down but I'd probably be OK with buying all 4 of them at once but for that much it feels a bit steep.  If you're a huge fan of the Game Gear and you like the idea of having one or all of these things on a shelf to look nice in your collection, go crazy.   But if you're just looking to experience games from a system you might have not played much or maybe even at all, I'd say its probably just better to look for.....alternative methods.

Skyrim Grandma Vs VG247

When games writers aren't spending every minute of their day sucking at absolutely every single game they play they like to pass the time by just making shit up.  This story isn't exactly big news or anything but having and excuse to point and laugh at these people is something I don't want to pass up.

Website VG247 posted an article with the headline "YouTuber Skyrim Grandma announces she is scaling back streams for the sake of her health after receiving onslaught of patronizing comments"  which sounds terrible right? I didn't actually read the article in the end because very soon after it was posted, the woman herself (@ShirleyScurry on Twitter)  tweeted at VG247 directly asking them to delete the article because it's bullshit.  Apparently the fact that she is scaling back streams because of her health is true but she claims that most of the people on her channel are actually very nice.

This has of course led to VG247 getting a good grilling on social media for a laugh but I can't help but wonder why this was even posted in the first place?  Just some sad little idiot putting out some nonsense in order to generate clicks for a crap website.

I have no real interest in Skyrim but Scurry's fans seem to enjoy her content a fair bit so if you're a fan of Bethesda games she might be worth checking out.  Maybe a nice change of pace from the content creators that clog up YouTube? It's always nice to see people on the older side of things enjoying the medium just as much as everyone else!

Its Giveaway Time!

Are you ready for some giveaways?  I sure as hell am!

The grand prize that I am offering at this moment in time is the above Final Fantasy 14 wristwatch!  I won it using my raw skill and willpower at a claw machine a while ago and I screwed the box a little bit when I removed the plastic ring the claw grabbed on to but the watch itself is unused!

So how do you go about winning this highly coveted collectors item?  Through watching my stream at www.twitch.tv/taurinensis! That's how!

I have set up a prize wheel that I will spin under certain conditions and if you are lucky enough then you can have a chance at winning this illustrious watch.  To play, all you have to do is make a 2GPB donation to the charity directly or cheer for 200 bits during the stream and we will spin the wheel!  You can also sub to my channel for 2! Yes 2! spins of the wheel.  Money made from the twitch channel will be funneled into either the charity directly or to improving the content.

"But Tau, I can't donate or cheer OR sub! What can I do?!"

Well fear not young one because there is one other way to play!  By watching the channel when I am live you will accumulate Twitch Points.  For the low-low price of 5000 points you can spin the wheel for absolutely free!  So potentially, just by watching the stream, you can have a chance at winning the grand prize!

But this isn't the only thing available on the wheel! Here is a list of things you can land on when you spin

1) The Grand Prize (will change as people win)
2) A Free Game Request: You can make a request for the Tuesday segment FOR FREE!
3) A charity donation in your name: I will donate 2GPB to the charity of my own money, win yourself that sweet good deed for the day
4) A free channel point reward: Want a song request? want me to speak Japanese? curb my potty mouth? well you can if you land on that space (excludes donation and game request)
5) Absolutely nothing: Better luck next time!

Follow the stream to play and follow me on twitter @Taurinensis to know when I'm going live!

Good luck!