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