Dead Rising

Last weekend I streamed Dead Rising from start to finish and oh boy was it fun.  It took just a little over 9 hours and the last hour of that was pretty grueling but generally speaking this game is pretty fantastic.

If somehow you have never heard of this game I'll take a quick moment to explain.  Originally released back in 2006 for Xbox 360, Dead Rising follows the adventures of Frank West, a photojournalist who gets trapped in a mall full of zombies.  The game was interesting because you only had 72 in game hours to play with and the story segments happened at specific times which, if you missed, would lock you out of the plot for the rest of the game.  What really made this game popular though was that the mall setting allowed for the player to use a whole crazy array of weaponry against the undead.  You could opt for more traditional stuff from a hardware store like a sledgehammer or go nab a gun from a zombie police office OR you could get silly and use gumball machines, shopping carts or children's toys to try and beat the undead back to death.  There are also human boss characters the game calls psychopaths which you must kill to rescue people or to progress the game.  There was a colorful cast of lunatics which made each encounter interesting and you would really have the think on your feet the first time playing if you wanted to win.

I love this game personally, it's one of those titles that is not only fun but sort of doubles up as a stress relieving tool.  If you want to uncover the zombie mystery of the mall, then play the story but if you just want to beat the fuck out of some zombies then ignore that timer and just go crazy.  Once you beat the game there is an Overtime mode which gives a bit of extra story and and endless mode if you want all the zombie killing with none of the pressure.

I only really have two problems with this game.  The first being is that it's too fucking easy.  I said above  that the first time you play you really have to think on your feet with the bosses but once you learn that an early boss unlocks a sort of pocket chainsaw in infinite supply the game becomes super easy.  The pocket chainsaw is SO strong that I think that there's only two bosses in the game that aren't insta killed by it in like 3 very quick hits.  Once you fill up your inventory with chainsaws the game becomes LAUGHABLY easy and the need to have any other weapon sort of goes away.

My other problem comes in the third day of the game.  You end up finishing all the games "case file" missions and then you are left to just sort of wait for your ride to arrive.  The lack of things to do of substance sort of makes the last hour of the game quite dull.  Even the zombie killing comes to a screeching halt as the mall fills up with dudes with machine guns which is a damn shame really.

However don't let my two complaints about the game deter you, if you haven't already played it then you absolutely should go and try.  Oh yeah, finally, don't try to rescue survivors because the AI for this game sucks dick.

The series seems to have taken a bit of a downturn with 3 and 4 since it's trying to be all gritty now from what I can tell but the first game is a ton of fun and fantastically dumb story and dialogue will leave you with a huge grin on your face.  Play it.

Less Zombies Please

I'm so sick of fucking Zombies, why are there so many god damn Zombie games?!

Zombies have been a pretty important part of gaming, a lot of great games have zombies in them.  From Resident Evil on PS1 to Dead Rising 3 for our next gen systems, Zombies have been a big part of our gaming lives for a long long time.  However, it's starting to get to the point where I'm sick of seeing the fucking things.  I DARE you to go on Steam and count the number of cheap indie games that are about zombies, the number is fucking staggering.

I refuse to believe that there is a single developer around right now who could do something new or interesting with zombies.  I'm not saying that developers aren't talented enough or anything like that, but there's only so much you can do with a zombie.  Make em slow, make em fast, make 'em transform in the night time etc etc.  it's all been done multiple times.

There's so many fucking zombie games that if I wanted to do a special blog segment on games with zombies in it, I could take about a different title every day for over a year EASILY.  There are A LOT of fucking goddamn zombie games and it's now gotten to the point where whenever I see one I just roll my eyes.

I think the games industry needs some kind of new fixation to make games about.  There are plenty of other things that one could make a game about that are way more interesting than zombies.  There are so many countries that have really cool and interesting folk tales about various monsters and things that go bump in the night that would make for a really cool game idea. 

Like check this bastard out, it's called a Baku and it's some kind of Japanese spirit thingy that eats dreams.  I mean you could make a game along the lines of some guy who's stuck inside his own dream world as it gets devoured by a Baku and he has to find a way to beat it or die.  I'd play the shit out of a game like that and I'm sure someone who's better at making games than I am could come up with a better idea.

So drop the zombies and use your imagination a bit will ya?

3 Game Concepts That Need To Fuck Off

I've spent a while doing playthroughs and streams now and there are certain things about certain games that really really piss me the hell off.  So today, since I came home late from work and feel like having a vent about some stupid bullshit on the internet, I'm going to share with you 3 things about games that especially piss me off.

NUMBER 1! THE SEWER LEVEL!

You may have gathered from the image at the top of the page that I dislike sewers a lot.  I'm not the only one to have this view on sewer levels, it's an opinion held by any person who has enjoyed games for any amount of time, these things are the fucking worst.  But why are they the worst? 

Is it because they are hard? No
Is it because that they are full of bullshit puzzles involving levers and keys and other crap? A little but not really, we can deal.

It's because that when you include a sewer level in your game it screams "WE RAN OUT OF IDEAS!".  Every sewer level ever made is the same brown or gray series of bland corridors with a stretch of water running down the middle.  It's always the point in any given game where the fun comes screeching to a halt and you have to just deal with a shit boring area for anything between 10 minutes to an hour.

Silent Hill does it kind of right by keeping it short and simple but there are games like Legend of Lagaia 2 that have really long and stupid sewer sections that make me want to kill myself.  Doesn't matter if you do it "right" or not, the sewer level needs to fuck off out of gaming forever.

NUMBER 2! ESCORT QUESTS!

Can anyone on Earth name a single game that has an enjoyable escort quest?  Every single time one of these things pops up it makes people just want to put down the controller and never touch that damn game again.  Doesn't matter how good the game is, an escort quest WILL make people rage quit as they just don't want to have to deal with terribly programmed AI and having to restart because your partner walked themselves into a group of enemies and got their dopey arse killed.

The worst game for this example off the top of my head is Dead Rising

Famous for it's terrible partner AI but most hated because you weren't tasked with just one escort, you had to take large groups of brain dead twats around a zombie infested mall.  Luckily it was mostly optional so it didn't ruin the overall game but it was still really annoying. 

The game that did it "best" was Resident Evil 4 because Ashley had the decency to sit in a bin for long stretches of time, but this just made the whole thing feel pointless and was just a stupid preparatory step you had to take before engaging in combat.  Either way, escort quests need to just fuck off forever.

NUMBER 3! EXCESSIVE BACK TRACKING!

There are two kinds of back tracking to be found in games.  The first kind is the kind found in games like Metroid.

This is the good or acceptable kind of back tracking.  As you progress through a level bits of it are cut off since you don't have the right tools to get through, then when you have those tools you go back so that you can go see what was behind that locked door or small hole or whatever.

This is an OK form of back tracking because it's kind of exciting.  You get your new toy and then you get all this build up as you make your way back through because you know for a fact that there's going to be something new after making the short trip.

But then there is the terrible kind of back tracking, forced and samey.

Silent Hill 4 is a great example of what I mean.  You play through 4 levels of the game and then after that you have to play through them AGAIN but with a stupid escort quest tacked on and bullshit ghosts trying to kill you.  Nothing new to look forward to, just pain and suffering as you fight your way through the same subway, prison, forest and town, it's garbage.

Devil May Cry 4 did the same kind of thing, where you played through a bunch of levels are Nero and then AGAIN with Dante but backwards.  It was crap but at least the game was good so we could focus on that but there are plenty of games that have this kind of thing but not the good gameplay to make it worth suffering through.

Give a decent reward for having to back track or don't include it.  Making me replay through half a game I already played is a thing that absolutely needs to fuck off.

So yeah, 3 things that piss me off about games and that ain't all of them so maybe I'll do another one of these another day.

Trophies and Achievements Need to Stop

I still remember my first experience with achievements on the Xbox 360 back when I first played Dead Rising.  I remember that for one of those things, you had to escort 7 or so people at the same time back to safety.  That shit was fucking HARD, and you felt good when the little message popped up.

This was originally a cool idea because all the extra stuff that you would challenge yourself to, you were now being given something for.  Secret bosses in RPGs, for example, and just generally hard things to do were no longer just stories you told your friends, you could display that shit and anyone who gave your profile a glance over could see what you had achieved.

But then something changed.

I don't know when exactly it happened by now achievements and trophies are a fucking joke.  We're now being given trophies and points for doing things like watching cut scenes or killing main story bosses.  These aren't achievements, you're just being given a nice message to make you feel good for doing something you were supposed to do anyway.

Take the Dark Souls achievements for example, pretty much all of them boil down to "Kill X boss", "Upgrade X Weapon" or "Join a covenant".  The worst offenders are things like "light a bonfire" because that's something you HAVE to do in order to progress.  A real achievement in that game would be something like "Kill X boss without taking any damage" or "beat the game with no weapons", you know, something that requires effort and skill on part of the player, not just something you were going to do as part of the main fucking game.

What was once originally a cool idea has been ruined by developers pandering to people with ADD and people who just flat out aren't good at games and want to get some sense of satisfaction for turning on the machine.  I wish they would just fuck off but unfortunately they are here to stay.