Creatively Bankrupt at Capcom

Capcom used to be one of the biggest and best companies out there.  Street Fighter, Megaman, Dead Rising, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, the list goes on forever of great franchises under their belt.  While some of their stuff has gone a bit stale like Megaman, recent releases like Resident Evil 7 show the company clearly still has it somewhere.

Recently they released news that they were remaking Resident Evil 2.  This remake not just being like the RE1 remake on the Gamecube back in those days, but a full on remastering where it's all new fangled over the shoulder stuff now and basically nothing like Resident Evil 2 at all.  Sarcasm aside it doesn't look too bad, even if it's not the remake I wanted or hoped for, it'll probably still be, at the very least, a good game.  However the hype surrounding the remake has set off some money alarms at Capcom headquarters and they have realized that remaking old games=BIG BUCKS.  They have said they are going to "explore" the idea of remaking more of their older games.

This may be exciting for some people that we may be getting nice shiny new versions of Dino Crisis or whatever but to me this news screams that they now have an excuse to be lazy.  Now that they know that remaking old games will generate hype AND dollars, why bother trying to make anything new?  If you google "upcoming Capcom games" the three titles that appear at the top of the search are Devil May Cry 5, Megaman 11 and Deep Down.  So two sequels and Souls-looking dungeon crawl.  Google that in six months and it'll probably just be a list of remakes and a tweak to Street Fighter.

Maybe I'm just mad and cynical because I'm sick of seeing remakes and sequels EVERYWHERE.  Of course, gaming isn't devoid of it's original IPs, there's plenty of indie devs and other companies putting out original stuff but I just feel that it's a shame that a big lad like Capcom isn't using the piles of money it has to try something different.  Let's at least hope that if they do start churning out remakes, they are at least of good quality.

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.

The Importance of Game Feel

A few days ago I had a bit of a gush about Killer is Dead and there is one thing I forgot to talk about in that post that I'll take about right now instead.

Killer is Dead has quite simplistic combat.  It only really uses two buttons and their aren't complex combos to learn or complicated weapon switching mix up stuff or even jumping, but the games combat still succeeds because it FEELS really good.  Everything Mondo does in that game has this weight to it that makes beating up on bad guys really fun.  Not only that, but there are lots of visual cues that tell you when your being a badass.  For example, dodging an enemy attack at just the right time will make everything go black and red for a second and you can do this crazy over the top slice thing that just involves mashing the square button on your controller.

This kind of extreme visual feedback makes you feel like your being some kind of amazing bad ass despite the simplistic combat and it really helps to carry the game.  One of the reasons that Devil May Cry (not DmC) is so popular is that you have that amazing game feel AND really deep combat so it's satisfying on multiple levels once you get really good at it.

On the flip side, a lack of this game feel can really ruin the experience on some games.  The best example I can think of right now for this is Aliens: Colonial Marines.  Ignoring the fact that pretty much everything about the game is a pile of shit, the general feel of this game just makes it awful to play.  The gun play isn't fun and visual and audio effects on hitting and killing enemies is just the absolute worst and as a result the game just feels like an absolute chore.  Pile that on with all the other problems the game has and well......just go and look at the results for yourself.

If a game feels good there is a lot people can look past and it'll motivate them to keep playing.  This is really the case with me and Dead Space, a game I can't stand for it's pseudo horror monster closet filled bullshit but killing enemies and stomping them with your giant boots feels so good I can't help but enjoy myself when I play it.

So yeah, game feel, it's important, get it right.

Stop HDing Things

You know I don't really have a problem with HD collections, at least not most of them.  It's sort of nice to be able to get one disc and have all the Devil May Cry games available so that I don't have to change discs if I want to play DMC 1 instead of DMC 3 for example.

That said, I do think they are a little bit unneeded.  It's not like I was sat here thinking "oh, Shadow of the Colossus is a really good game but it looks like shit and I can't play it anymore".  The game looks fine on the PS2, and playing it now is just as much fun as playing it when it first came out.  Sure the HD collection made it look a bit nicer but at the end of the day it's still the same fucking game.

It's not like all HD collections have been successful either, with Silent Hill basically ruining whatever legacy Silent Hill 2 and 3 had by convincing all new users that the game is a load of arse.  Some HD collections even seem a little pointless, like God of War since it's not like original PS2 copies of those games are hard to find.

Well the reason I'm moaning so much about HD releases is because I'd rather see the money spent on that put into something new.  One of my biggest problems with this industry is that there are too many sequels to things and some things are getting a little stale.  Instead of pumping money into HD remakes of old games, why not try and create a new IP.  Something new and exciting that we can all point and go "holy shit look at that!" instead of "oh....another Assassins Creed" or "oh.....more Call of Duty"

Even something like Metal Gear Rising would be fine where your making a new game within an established series universe.  We get more of the story and characters we like but a fresh new way to play with them, which at least prevents me from being bored.

Basically, money should be going towards new stuff, not making old stuff prettier.  Give me something new and not just an up scaled version of a game I played less than 10 years ago, goddamn it.

The Height of Idiocy

DmC: Devil May Cry is still a game I have yet to play, so I will not be commenting on how good it actually is, but as far as I'm concerned, it still LOOKS like a piece of shit.

ANYWAY! The point here, is that DmC is not selling as well as Capcom hoped it would as they have now gone and halved the sales expectations from this title.  While to me, this is neither good or bad, I came across an article that royally pissed me the fuck off.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/capcom-almost-halves-dmc-sales-expectations/0110372

This article, written by Ben Parfitt basically just outlines what is going on with the sales figures for the game.  But he doesn't just say that, he's saying that fans are destroying this games sales figures out of spite, because they changed Dante's hair colour.

Never in my life have I seen a more ignorant prick write things on the internet about video games, and this is coming from ME who writes plenty of garbage on this blog.  He agrees with the notion that "Devil May Cry fans destroy brand out of spite", which is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

People aren't buying the game because its vastly different GAME PLAY WISE to what they are used to.  But it's not just different, it's been heavily dumbed down compared to past games, so the whole reason people enjoyed Devil May Cry has basically been removed from DmC.  Couple that with some of the juvenile writing I've ever seen and it's a good recipe for making people turn away.

Not one person gave a fuck about Dante's design once some game play came out, NOT ONE, but this doesn't matter.  Newsflash for you Ben, players don't owe Capcom or Ninja Theory anything.  People aren't buying the game because it looks ass, not out of spite.  Ben Parfitt isn't the only idiot to say stuff like this though, I have seen a couple of articles now calling the fans a bunch of whiny babies for not buying DmC.

But here is the thing, the Devil May Cry HD Collection, to my knowledge, is actually doing pretty fuckin' good.  THAT should be an indication of why DmC isn't fucking selling.  Fans don't want your easy mode "FUCK YOU" garbage, they want more of stuff like Devil May Cry 3/4.

I can't wait to find a pre owned copy of DmC so I can really tear it apart but there is no way I'm giving a penny to Ninja Theory or Capcom for this shoddy excuse of a Devil May Cry game.  Also one more thing!  When I was raging about the game play to my friends on steam and such, they would just say to me "if you don't like the look of it, then don't buy it", which makes sense right, but apparently all fans who don't buy things that they don't like the look of are now all spiteful babies

Fuck you Ben Parfitt and fuck all the "journalists" that posted articles with similar themes.  I suggest that you take those pay cheques and give them to my Charity, because you sure as fuck don't deserve it for the type of drivel that comes out of your head.

DmC: Devil May Cry Impressions

So I've not bought this game yet, nor have I played it, so everything I'm about to say is based on stuff I've seen so far, and it ain't good.

Let me start out by saying, no, it's not the redesign of Dante and it's not his goddamn hair colour.  I hate that whenever someone brings up some legitimate problems with this game, the first thing people start shouting is "well you just don't like his new hair!"  This is bullshit, and I'm pretty sure the people who spent hours upon hours learning combos in Devil May Cry 3 and 4 don't give all that much of a fuck about the way he looks.

Speaking of fucks, the thing I really don't like about this game is the writing and cutscenes.  If you want an example of what I'm talking about, go on Youtube and look up something called the "Secret Ingredient boss cutscene"  This scene literally has Dante and the boss exchange a few "Fuck you"s before the battle starts.  Who approved this kind of writing?  I mean the whole story seems bad enough with "corrupt government/corporations erh mah gerd" but adding excessive amounts of swearing just makes matters worse.  Game writing should be getting better, not regressing into the same kind of lines that teenage boys spout in a schoolyard argument.

Then there is the combat itself, which seems a damn sight less involved than the earlier games.  It looks functional, hell, even fun, but it seems way too easy to get those SSS combat ranks which you had to previously be really good to get.  Take a look at what I mean

Granted this is from some demo play I think, but if it's not been changed then....what the hell?.  If you look up combo videos for Devil May Cry 3 or 4, people do this crazy impressive shit, and even then the SSS isn't a guarantee.  But here it's done with one attack, on one weapon....not good.

Despite all my bitching, I still have yet to actually sit down and play the damn thing.  I'll pick it up one day, when I can find it pre owned because I'm sure as hell not giving Capcom any money for this ruination of Devil May Cry.  But you know what? I'll probably have fun with it, I'll probably even enjoy it despite all it's glaring flaws and crap writing.  One thing I can say in it's favour is that it looks like a very well made game in a general sense, and people would have probably been less annoyed about it if you just didn't slap Devil May Cry's name all over the damn thing.

I really wish companies would stop abusing a big name title just for sales, you could have made this a new IP and it would have sold just fine, you didn't have to spit into the DMC fan bases face on this one.