Free Indie Game Roundup

 Recently I did a event on my stream that I titled "Free Indie Game Dumpster Diving" and despite the word dumpster in the title, most of the games I played during that stream were actually really good.  Here's a quite roundup of those games 

1) Gun Devil 

Gun Devil, avaliable for free on Steam, is a 2D side scrolling platformer.  It starts with a story sequence about your characters wife being kidnapped and its full of semi-edgy early Newgrounds tier writing that's a little bit cringeworthy but once the game gets going its a rather enjoyable experience.  It has tight controls, some very nice pixel art and despite being a quite a short game has some replay value after you are finished because you can get these giant coins at the end of each stage for doing it no hit and killing all the enemies.  I would have happily paid a few bucks for this one but you can play it right now, for free. 

2) The Backrooms: Lost and Found

The Backrooms are some creepy-pasta thing that I dont fully understand but there seems to be a lot of media surrounding it.  This game involves navigating through the backrooms looking for wooden giraffes while you are on the hunt for an exit.  Depending on how much you explore you can get one of SEVEN endings which I have to admit is quite a lot for a free game.  However, the game has a really stupid stamina system that makes running around sort of tedious and after the first run I can't really see myself ever going back to see what those other 6 endings were.  Not terrible by any means but you can do a lot better in terms of free indie horror

3) Freight Hopper

There was a game that came out a while ago on Steam that cost money called Clustertruck (I think) that involved free running across the tops of trucks as they sped down the stages.  It's the kind of game that's made for speedrunning with its emphasis on clearly levels quickly and movement mechanics.  Well this is just a free version of that.  Not many levels and the controls are sort of floaty and weird but once I got used to them I had a pretty good time.  If you liked Clustertruck and you need some more of it in your life, play this one I guess.

4) Workaholic

A first person shooter about shooting your co-workers in the face with finger guns.  There isn't really much more to it than that, you just blast your way through 4 stages that have sort of random layouts and then your done.  The art is cool and the gameplay is fast but its way too short and is just begging for some kind of endless mode which I don't think would have been too hard to implement given that the levels are procedurally generated anyway.  There's a fairly impressive selection of weapons for you to find which is cool but picking up a life steal, super kick or dual weild powerup puts a weird filter over the graphics that make it borderline unplayble.  Pretty good as long as you avoid those items, would play again .

5) Ghost Trap 

Very basic precision platformer that doesn't go too crazy with the difficulty.  My only real complaint is that there's a lot of waiting around for the games 2 bosses that make them quite annoying.  Comes with a cool speedrun mode which lets you play all the levels back to back without having to go through the annoying menu every time.  

6) Resonance of the Ocean 

Some kind of art game about a person on a island trying to communicate with someone by copying strange noises that come from another nearby island.  You have to go around picking up and combining items to make the right sound and then take them to a big megaphone to end the stage.  Very basic, very easy and very much has its head shoved up its own ass.  Nice art though

7) The Night that Speaks

When someone in my chat told me about this game they described it as "a game where you fight monsters by giving them the finger" which got me very excited.  Upon playing it though it's just a bland and boring horror game and giving the baddie the finger to make it go away isn't awesome like I thought it would be and it isn't even really all that funny.  Also the game was made to look like it was on Game Boy, which sounds cool but it just makes all the graphics murky and its hard to make anything out.  I got it for free and felt ripped off

8) Self

A interesting platformer where instead of jumping you sort of expand a big rubber band and use it to flick yourself around the level.  Not much more to it than that but its short, sweet and has some really good music.  Comes with some bonus challenge levels that are actually really hard and its very satisfying to clear them after some practice

10) Grippy

A Pico-8 game where you play as a piece of chewing gum that has to grab its way around a bunch of stages.  Its interesting because you play it by using the arrow keys to direct your fists and then you have to hold and release either Z or X for each hand in order to swing around.  Takes a while to get used to but really fun once you get the hang of it.  Also has multiple routes through each section with the harder ones being shorter so the more skilled player can get a faster clear time, which is a nice touch.  Will probably play again some time to get my time down.  

11) 13 Gates

A very basic first person platforming game.  You play the 13 levels, have a sort of good time and then never play it again 

12) Guardian Sphere

The game I chose for this posts header image because it was EASILY the best one I played in the entire 14 hour stream.  A top down shooter that has the cool gimmick of your life points also being your shot power AND a form of currency.  There are 5 stages and each stage has a couple of shops in them where you can spend your HP for various upgrades creating a sort of risk/reward system that can be really satisfying when you gamble all your HP for a sick upgrade and then survive long enough to collect a few more hit points again.  The game also has 8 playable characters to choose from each with there own shot type and 3 difficulty settings.  I did a 1cc run of the game on my first try on normal but that's because I'm an actual shmup God rather than the game being overly easy, I think for your average player this game may be kind tough depending on how lucky you are with the RNG shops.  You coulda put that on Steam for $10 and I woulda been happy but giving it away for free on Itch is just Godlike  

13) Plead with the Mountain God

A PS1-like platforming game which rips off the story of Shadow of the Collossus almost enitirely.  Only instead of having epic battles with giant monsters, you're very clunkily jumping up a tower.  Gameplay gets very dull very fast, has no music and at once point I glitched through the floor but not an awful experience by any stretch.  A forgettable game

14) Ashes 2063

A full, stand alone Doom conversion that I didnt finish during the marathon but happily added to my "now playing" list as it was a ton of fun.  Adds a bunch of stuff that base Doom doesn't have like towns, dialouge and shopping.  Quite challenging as well but there's a chance that I thought that because I was 12 hours deep when I started it.  Will post more about it in the future

15) Mini-Doom

A Doom fan game that I played for about 20 minutes but that seems really good.  A 2D platforming version of Doom that has a Mario 3 style world map and elements of a Metroidvania.  Didn't play enough to form a proper opinion but at a glance it seems very interesting indeed

That was all the games I played during the marathon and overall I had a damn good time.  If we get enough channel points via the stream at www.twitch.tv/taurinensis then we'll do another one!

Doom 3

I’ve been playing through the Doom games recently in a sort of slow preparation for when Doom Eternal comes out, a game for which I am quite looking forward to.  The first couple of games are about what you’d would expect from titles that old, dated and kind of clunky but solidly made and still a ton of fun to play.  I got around some of that old DOS game clunkiness by using something called ZDoom which is a sort of mod that makes it look pretty and controls in a way that makes sense (mouse to move forward are you MAD?!) and Doom 2 on Ultraviolence in particular feels like a first person Bullet Hell game at times.  
But then there’s Doom 3, the weird black sheep of the family
Talking to people about Doom 3 it seems like it’s remembered rather fondly.  Hell, if I’m being really honest I myself has fond memories playing it up until the point I finished it last week.  But having replayed it I can’t help but feel that it’s just a bit shit.  It’s not because of its fancy graphics getting in the way for my DOS brand nostalgia goggles or anything like that, it just doesn’t feel like “Doom”, you know?
Sure it’s got “Doom” on the cover and it’s about a man on mars fighting soldiers, imps and other iconic monsters as well as a few new additions but it feels wrong.  Doom levels are maze like and sprawling while Doom 3s levels are claustrophobic and linear.  The “puzzles” in Doom 1 and 2 are about finding keys and navigating the various mazes while Doom 3 has you clearing poison barrels with a UFO Catcher and repairing bridges and doors.  Doom 3 isn’t Doom, it’s Half Life with a Doom lick of paint and the spookiness turned ALL the way up. 
What I’m not saying is that Doom 3 is a bad game.  It’s a fun little spookfest with competently made, satisfying gun play, great atmosphere and great enemy variety, it’s a great game that I would probably be talking about a lot more positively if it wasn’t for the title. 
Hindsight is a wonderful thing too because clearly when they came back to make New Doom they went BACK to big open areas full of monsters to rip and tear on.  Arguably they went a little TOO much the other way but I’d rather have it wide, fast and violent than slow, spooky and.....Half Lifey?
Anyway if you’ve not played Doom 3 I would still recommend checking it out, like I said it’s not a bad game by any stretch.  Do be warned though that if you’ve come off the back of new Doom or the re releases of the old ones, you are in for an extremely different experience. 
Here’s hoping that Doom Eternal is going to be an absolute banger!

Quake

A while ago I decided to replay Quake so I'll take a moment to blog about it.  It's a short and simple game so this will be a short and simple post.

I don't really feel like I need to introduce Quake in any sort of way.  If you're interested in games and you've not at least heard of Quake then you must have been living under a rock this entire time because this is one of the big bad granddaddies of FPS games.  It's basically Doom but with proper 3D which isn't really surprising since they are both made by the same people.

As fun as Quake is, and it still is a ton of fun to play even today, this game is really, REALLY ugly.  The level design itself is up to the usual id standard for these kind of games at the time but the graphics are all just brown, ugly castles full of swamp water.  Doom, by contrast, while still sort full of dingy corridors on space stations at least had some variation to its color palate.  The levels in Doom manage to maintain some kind of visual interest while Quake just looks like you're staring into a pool of sewer water the whole time.

Complaints about the old, brown graphics aside, the core gameplay is still really fun and the game itself is a classic.  You can actually get the collection of Quake games on Steam for about 5 pounds and with that there's all sorts of mods you can apply to make it look nicer/play a little better than it used to.  So if for some reason you've NOT played Quake in 2019, go ahead, pick it up and give it a spin.  They don't make 'em like this anymore

The Journalist Skill Debate Again

Cuphead is an upcoming run and gun game coming out soon that I'm fucking excited for.  It looks like a cartoon from yesteryear and mixes that with challenging game play similar to things like Contra.  It looks awesome and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

However controversy has once again reared its ugly head however this time it has nothing to do with the game itself and more to do with the people playing it.  If you remember when DOOM was coming out and a dude called Arthur Gies played it and sucked massive cocks at it?  Well it's that AGAIN.  People are pissed off (rightly so) that so called industry professionals can't handle a fucking tutorial level and of course gaming press is shooting back by claiming people are over reacting.

I would recommend at this point to go look up the video, it's easy to find but I'm not linking it here because I don't want to give any of the idiots at Venture Beat views on their shit, embarrassing video.

Let me start by saying that I have ZERO respect for games journalism.  It seems to be entirely populated by fucking morons who don't know anything about games and are more interested in writing clickbait or sucking corporate cock rather than ACTUALLY helping consumers in any meaningful way.  I'm not the only one who holds this view either, go find any thread about the state of video game journalism on social media and you'll see a lot of people repeating that sentiment.

So big question of the day, do video game journalists have to be good at video games?

The quick answer is yes, of course they fucking do.  The job of a reviewer or someone reporting on industry goings on is to assist the consumer.  Therefore, you MUST know what the fuck your on about or your failing at the most basic facet of your job.  No one is asking journalists to be pro gamers winning The International every year or speedrunners with 5 or 6 world records under their belt but we ask that you at least know how to finish the tutorial of any game that you might come across. 

Imagine if you were trying to buy a car so you look up reviews of various vehicles.  Imagine then you find out that the person reviewing the cars CAN'T FUCKING DRIVE.  This is what the Cuphead/DOOM debate is basically all about. 

If you are an individual and you make a YouTube video or write a thing for a personal site, it's OK to suck at games or suck at just that one game.  For example I don't know shit about sports games  so if I gave a scathing awful review or did a terrible gameplay video of the new Fifa and then called it shit, it's clear that it's just one tossers opinion on the sea of piss that is the internet.  HOWEVER, if I was writing for a PROFESSIONAL news website in a PROFESSIONAL capacity and then couldn't even finish the most basic stage of a game with like, 2 button controls, of course people are going to question my ability to do the job.  In the case of Cuphead it brings into question everything that Dean Takahashi has EVER said because clearly the man lacks the basic motor function to hold a controller properly.

Which leads me to my other point about this.  Arthur Gies and Dean Takahashi didn't just show "bad" performances.  People can have an off day or just be not particularly geared towards a certain genre, that's fine.  These performances were INCOMPETENT.  The kind of game play I'd expect from a child who has never touched a game before.  No word of a lie, I could give my mother a copy of Cuphead and within 26 minutes she would finish the tutorial level.  Even my wife, who doesn't game and who has put in some FANTASTICALLY embarrassing attempts at certain titles would probably finish the fucking TUTORIAL of Cuphead in 26 minutes. 

You couple this with all the problems that games journalism has had over the years and now we're at a point where people have a problem trusting these websites.  One stupid prick writing for some stupid website Game Revolution said "If one plumber fucks up your taps, do you never hire another plumber?"  Which is a fair point in a way but he's missing the bigger picture and generally being an apologetic little bitch.  If a plumber fucked up my taps, I'd hire a different plumber FROM A DIFFERENT COMPANY.  So we now know that Venture Beat can't be trusted to pick up a control pad without probably choking on it, where am I going to go?  Gamespot? IGN? Kotaku?  Well these websites are also full of complete bullshit.  People are mad because, if we're using the plumber analogy, that ALL the plumbing companies in the towns are staffed ENTIRELY by inept wankers.

You want game news?  You want game reviews?  There are plenty of enthusiastic individuals on sites like YouTube/Twitch or various blogs and personal websites that you can get your info from?  This is ESPECIALLY important if you are into a niche series or niche genre.  If you're into dungeon crawling who are you going to trust?  Some cunt on IGN who played Grimrock once for 20 minutes and gave it an 8/10 or someone who has been playing games in that genre for fucking YEARS. 

Sort your shit games journalism.  Maybe if you hired some actual passionate people who aren't borderline brain dead, people wouldn't hate you.  Stick to writing about "social issues" for easy clicks and leave the games, to the gamers.

Children and Video Games

Let's talk about the relationship between video games and children shall we?  This is a topic that tends to fill me full of large amounts of rage because every so often an article is brought to my attention about how games are terrible and are "corrupting the youth" and all that shit.  More often than not these articles have two main points which are either games and too violent for kids OR that kids are playing games too much and they have some kind of addiction.  Well let's address those two points.

1) Violence

There is a large portion of gaming which you could quite easily consider violent and there's probably a portion of those violent games that you wouldn't want a child to see.  Take the above picture for example which is a scene from Dead Space 2 where failure results in the hero taking a large metal tube through the face via his eye socket, that's something that maybe you wouldn't want a young child to see.

However, not all violence in video games in made equal.  Take something like Street Fighter for example, it's violent sure but not overly so to the point where a younger audience should be banned from viewing or playing it.  You can't just make a blanket statement that all games are too violent for kids and just ban them from everything, it depends on the game and it also depends very much on the child.  When I was a young lad I was playing Doom on the Sega Saturn, a game FAMOUS for it's high violence levels but now I'm 26 and I've still never shoved a chainsaw through a persons abdomen.

The problem is that people look at a game with it's guns or fighting or whatever and without knowing anything about the games actual content start ragging on it as "unsafe" for a younger audience.  Let's take something like Left4Dead, you can look at that and go "oh well it's full of guns, zombies and death there's no way that it's an appropriate game for kids".  Well I'd argue that Left4Dead is all about team work, resource management and group planning which are skills that would be quite beneficial to pick up at a young age, no?

All games nowadays also have age ratings and guidelines to tell you what sort of audience it's appropriate for and even a vague overview of what some of the themes might be in that title.

 With these clearly labelled on the box you have no fucking excuse.  This is a decent guideline for a parent to get a good idea of what they are buying for their children.  So if they know and trust their child can handle certain themes then maybe they could turn a blind eye to the age guideline and buy a certain title.  However if your child is begging for something like GTA, you ignore the guidelines and then get all shocked when there's guns, sex and gambling in it then you have only yourself to blame.

That's ultimately what it comes down to, the parenting.  If you're raising your kids right, guiding them through every aspect of their lives and helping them grow then there won't be much of a problem even if they do end up seeing or experiencing something a little over their head.  However if you're the kind of shit parent who buys your kid Mortal Kombat and then let them plop in front of it as a distraction so that you can take 5 then don't go acting all surprised when little Jimmy gets set home from school for trying to gouge a kids eyes out with his thumbs.  That's not MKs fault, that's YOUR fault for not helping your kid understand the basics of fantasy and reality, it's not like the box or download page didn't warn you.

2) Addiction

Video game addiction is another stupid topic written by people who usually have no fucking clue but let's just address video game addiction in kids.  It kind of goes hand in hand with what I said in the last paragraph where it all ultimately comes down to the parenting.

Kids are sort of stupid but it's stupid due to a lack of life experience rather than just being uneducated.  You put a kid in front of a video game and they start playing it and having a good time then OF COURSE they are going to want to do just that for the rest of time.  I work with kids and I've been in situations where I'll be playing a classroom game which involves nothing more than a ball and a box and sometimes the younger kids would be more than happy just to play that one thing all fucking day so imagine how intense playing something like a video game must be.  You tell a kid that they have to do their homework or something and of course they are going to be upset when the alternative to crushing boredom is video game fun.

That's why the parents role here is very important.  When I was a child I didn't have any sort of time limits placed on me like the whole "2 hours a day" which is what I've seen some websites argue.  For my parents it was all about helping me understand priorities.  Sure, I didn't WANT to do my homework but if I didn't do it then I'd get in trouble which may lead to detention which may lead to a greater deficit of gaming time so I knew that if I wanted to enjoy myself then I had to get the important shit done first.  "Business before pleasure" is what my mother always used to say and if your kid isn't getting their priorities straight then that's on you as a parent for not teaching that to them.

But you could argue that even if they do get all their important shit done and the ONLY thing they are doing is video games then that's just as bad.  Well once again that's also a parenting issue because like I said before, kids are dumb, they don't know where to go looking for things that pique their interest, they are completely reliant on you as a parent for that.  Sure, video games were my main thing growing up and even now but my parents were constantly poking me with suggestions for other things to do.  All sorts of suggestions, most of which didn't take till later and some didn't take at all but the point is they were TRYING.  While you as a parent shouldn't rely on games for this it can happen where the content of a game may inspire some kind of other interest.  For example the initial reason for me wanting to learn Japanese was because my dad bought me a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga and I was exposed to this other language that I thought was cool and now I can speak Japanese, live in Japan and have a nice job.  Like I said before, you can't just slam them in front of the TV and expect that stupid box to do all the work.

---

The bottom line is that it comes down to parenting.  If you're a good parent who can teach your kid to live like a normal human being then they will turn out OK.  Even if they aren't massively successful in later life, but at least as people they will be OK which means they probably won't be completely fucked even if they do grow up to be lazy or whatever.

Any parent who blames ANY medium be it games, movies, books or TV for some kind of adverse effect on their kid is essentially admitting they have failed as parents.  If your kid is violent it's YOUR fault for not properly teaching them how to respect other people.  If your kid is "addicted" to gaming then it's YOUR fault for not teaching them how to have a sense of self control and understand moderation and trying to scapegoat just shows how irresponsible and how unready you were to have that child.  Don't rag on my hobby because YOU suck at life.

Git Gud or Go Home

So the new Doom got released and despite the less than satisfied reaction with the multiplayer demo, things seems to be going well for it.  I've not played it yet but there's a chance that despite a previous post I made about how its probably going to be shit, it's looking like I was somewhat wrong and that's not a bad thing.  In particular, after watching the first impressions video from TotalBuscuit I'm actually quite excited to get my hands on a copy.  Sure it's a bit modern and streamlined but it seems like the core elements of what made Doom Doom are there so thank god for that.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the quality of Doom, I'm here to bitch about games media some more when it comes to the reviews of the game.  Specifically a video review from video game shitrag Polygon.  Apparently they released a review video where the person playing the game absolutely sucked at the game which of course prompted many people in comment sections to laugh heartily and tell the sorry sack of shit that filmed it to "git gud".  Of course, Polygon being staffed almost exclusively by braindead crybabies they took issue with this and started moaning about the response.  This prompted other shitrags like Paste Magazine and Rock Paper Shotgun to write articles saying things like "git gud" is why people don't take gaming seriously or that "you don't need to be good at games to enjoy them"

Well you know what, partly they are right in that sense that you DON'T need to be good at games in order to enjoy them......if you're just a consumer having buying a title for the express purpose of having a good time.  But no, these aren't consumers these are professionals in the industry trying to critique a game and quite frankly you can't do that properly unless you have at least SOME skill at gaming in general.  These are people who GET PAID to give you information on games and you can't give consumers a good amount of information if you suck massive horse cocks at playing games.  It's probably the reason why Polygon likes to harp on about sexism and other non-issues in games because they aren't good enough to make enough progress in a given title to write a proper review.

Let's say you are looking to buy a new car and you go to a car dealer in order to get information on what the best car for you might be.  You arrive at the dealership and start asking the guy questions and he responds with things like "it has pedals and goes forward if you put petrol in it".  You'd probably leave without buying anything and be a little pissed off that he wasted your time.  We're not asking the salesman to be a pro racer but we're asking him to have a degree of knowledge that allows us to make an informed purchase.  Now I know these "journalists" aren't salesmen per se but a review of a game is what a lot of people will base their decision to purchase on so if these people aren't doing their job properly then they aren't helping the consumer make an informed purchase which is what they are PAID TO FUCKING DO.

I'm not asking these people to be pro gamers in the running to win tournaments or top tier speed running gods, just good enough to not be worse than my mum after I cut off her hands and stapled her eyes shut, that's all.  The whole "git gud" mentality that some gamers have is a GOOD thing because as long as it persists then some developers will continue to make challenging games.  Games are easy enough as it is and what we don't need is shit bag games "journalists" complaining on their big websites and making developers think that the market needs even easier shit.

I'd suggest that these idiots take up an easier, more relaxing hobby like Origami but then again they'd probably start publishing articles about how folding in straight lines is homophobic and paper cranes are racist.

You Thought DOOM Would Be Good?

I'm so glad this happened because I knew it would.  A new Doom game being developed in the modern day and you didn't expected it to be anything more than another shitty generic FPS where you go around shooting demons instead of people from the Middle East? Please

The story is that the upcoming DOOM game released an open beta on Steam and so far user reviews of the beta have been pretty negative.  People are claiming it's basically not Doom and plays something more like Halo but with a vaguely Doomish coat of paint.  The kind of people who enjoy shooters like Doom, Quake and Unreal Tournament are of course upset that one of their most treasured franchises is being turned into another generic, console-esque arena shooter with experience points and character customization because that's never what this shit was about.

But hold on, you might say, it's just a beta and it's only the multiplayer component.  Even if that sucks surely the single player will be good right?!  If that's actually how you feel then I feel nothing but pity for you.  The only people who might think that new Doom might turn out decent now are either idiots or people who haven't been gaming long enough to have everything they love ruined.

I can promise you that the single player mode will be no different.  It will be linear, story driven and might even have some really stupid bullshit like levelling up or something.  The open beta of the Doom multiplayer is revealing exactly what the current development team think Doom is and clearly they are wrong.  The fact that there's already a season pass available for this title proves as well that they don't give a shit about Doom or it's legacy, they are beating an old horse to make a quick buck based on false hype and nostalgia. 

Let's face it, what we are really looking at here is the next Duke Nukem Forever but more serious and with less time and probably less effort going into the development.  Do NOT buy this game when it gets released and show these fucking idiots that preying on our nostalgia and abusing the legacy of one gaming's most classic titles will not fucking fly.

Absolutely disgusting

FPS Used To Be Better

FPS is one of the biggest genres in the industry and always kind of has been.  A long long time ago we had Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D among many many others and now the big players in the genre are things like CoD, Battlefield and other more realistic military type shooters.

But that's kind of my problem with the modern FPS game.  Most of them are sort of realistic type military shooters like Call of Duty.  The only other thing we have aside from that are things like Halo but that's just a military shooter with a sci-fi coat of paint.  These games aren't bad by any stretch but they don't come nearly as close to the thrill of the old school FPS.  The fast paced, acrobatic, labyrinthine and colorful shooters of days passed has been replaced with gritty, realistic yet unchallenging games and I can't help but feel things are significantly worse off as a result.

Most people who hold this kind of opinion of older games are accused of having rose tinted nostalgia goggles but this is one of those cases where those games were just better.  I've recently been playing Serious Sam HD: First Encounter off Steam and I'm having so much more fun with this than I have with any other modern FPS title.  I can have more than two weapons, my health doesn't regenerate for free, equipment and enemies are colourful and interesting, there are secrets everywhere and so much more.  I felt a similar thing when playing Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition a few months ago too.

Even multiplayer FPS was better back then.  It used to be all about speed, skill, knowledge of the map both for layouts and pick ups and that was just the tip of the iceberg.  Things like Quake which used a lot of rocket jumping had all sorts of weird shit in play that I can't even begin to wrap my head around.  Granted things are a lot more accessible now but it's a damn shame that the games just aren't quite as fun.

Still, this is just me and I don't want to completely disregard modern FPS games just because I feel the old ones are more fun.  I have a lot of fond memories playing Modern Warfare 1 and 2 online with buddies and sometimes I find myself getting tempted to try out  the latest version of Call of Duty.  Let's not forget the new Star Wars Battlefront which looks cool as shit.  That said, I'd much rather play some Doom, Serious Sam or Quake than CoD or Battlefield.  Luckily the genre isn't completely devoid of old style games and things like Painkiller and that new Rise of the Triad game are keeping things geared more towards fun than realism and prestige bragging.

Well, I was wrong about E3

A few days ago I made a post about how I didn't really give two shits about E3 2015 and that the magic of the show had kind of been lost.  If there is a God he read that post and then decided to smack me down with some of the best announcements I've heard in gaming for a long long time.

At first I thought I was on the right track when the only thing I had caught wind of was Fallout 4.  I understand there are a lot of people who enjoy those games but I'm not a huge fan of modern Fallout but that's another post for another time.  After that though, it was just heavy hit after heavy hit after HEAVY HIT!

Doom, South Park: Fractured But Whole, Shenmue 3 kickstarter (that has already met the goal), Final Fantasy 7 Remake, The Last Guardian are just a few to name off the top of my head and I'm sure the show will deliver more and more awesomeness soon.  Hell, Shenmue 3 alone was enough excitement to have me bouncing up and down like a 10 year old at Christmas but along side all this other stuff it's almost too much to contain.

This is all news I've had given to me by friends watching the streams and keeping up with the news as it hits while I'm at work so I've not had a chance to start digging through all the stuff yet.  I'm sure that once I start looking through there will be some new IP for me to get excited over too so this weekend is going to be very exciting.

The only way E3 could get more exciting at this point would be if someone announced Half Life 3 or some shit.  Fingers crossed for more gaming greatness.

It's Not Nostalgia Goggles

Sometimes I get into discussions with my friends or on forums and things like that about how older games are better than modern ones.  I'm one of those people who is inclined to agree with that idea because personally I find a lot of modern games to be a bit of a joke.  That doesn't mean I think modern gaming is bad but I just find the older experiences a lot more enjoyable.

At first I thought it was just a case of personal taste or hell, maybe it was really nostalgia goggles but on my long boring train rides I decided to think about it a bit more critically and old games are really just better.

So here's what I'm going to do to illustrate my point.  I'm going to take the first 3 genres that pop into my head and explain why old games in the genre are better than the newer ones.

First Person Shooters

This is a no brainer since if there's any genre that is guilty of being dumbed down for mass consumption its this one.  Take old games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Hexen and many many others.  These games were popular not only because of their ultra violence, but because of their big sprawly labyrinthine levels full of secrets and generally speaking you needed some degree of brain power and strategy to win at these games on higher difficulty levels.

Contrast that with now, where all the exploration and skill that this genre was famous for has been completely stripped out for an experience that people who don't want to spend time learning a title (read: idiots) can handle.  Regenerating health was the first big culprit, then came limited weapon inventories ruining strategy and limiting your play style.  Also every level in a modern shooter is basically a corridor and all you do is hide behind cover and pop heads.

That's right, modern FPS is nothing but the fair ground duck shooting attraction but with a military theme and attached to a roller coaster track.  Finally, don't give me none of that shit about Multiplayer either.  If you think Call of Duty or Halo stack up to something like Unreal Tournament or Quake then you need a slap.

RPGs 

RPGs barely fucking exist nowadays and that's a damn shame.  Just to qualify, when I say RPGs I mean both the J and W type, so don't worry I'm not discriminating between countries.  Western made RPGs used to be such deep and rich experiences.  Things such as Ultima, Baldurs Gate and old school Fallout were such joys to play with so much goddamn content in them that it would probably take a few playthroughs just to notice all the little details about the world you were in.  Japanese RPGs were a little more simplistic but the variety of what was on offer in that genre back in the day was absolutely staggering.  Most western games tended to focus on Tolkien-esque swords and sorcery settings while JRPGs tended to have more outlandish settings and characters.

Contrast that with now, where every Western made RPG just feels like a cheap knockoff of something that came WAY before it.  Most RPGs today have these terrible fucking "morality systems" and stupid branching dialogue trees with only 2 or 3 options on them and the extra tidbits about a worlds lore aren't even half as developed as they are in older games.  Just look at how Elder Scrolls started and look at it now and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Japan on the other hand seems to have forgotten how to produce anything that isn't shallow, moe, otaku pandering bullshit with every game box on a store shelf having some wide eyed anime girl on it doing something cute and the game play is much shallower.

The Point and Click Adventure

 Do I even need to explain this one to you?  Just look at stuff like Monkey Island, Sanitarium, Myst, Grim Fandango and god knows what else.  Then look at what passes off for an "adventure" game nowadays.  Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Serina just to name 3.  A genre once known for it's insane mind bending puzzles and great stories now reduced to walking simulators with barely any game play produced by people who can't make a game worth a shit and can't write for shit either.

Let's just be happy that GoG exists to preserve all the great point and clickers so that people can still experience them and all this modern badly written bullshit can hopefully be forgotten about

---

Now I know I've been ranting and it sounds like I hate modern gaming with a passion but that couldn't be further from the truth.  Modern gaming is still great and there are still new titles that come out and I have plenty of fun with.  It's just that gaming has gotten noticeably stupider and I think it's a damn shame.

Also I know I've been talking about "modern gaming" in general terms but there are exceptions to all the above and in all other genres.  Some developers are still trying to capture the magic of the old school shooter with things like Painkiller and The Rise of the Triads remake to varying levels of success.  I've been hearing great things about Divinity: Original Sin and Japan is still producing RPGs of the old quality such as "俺の屍を越えてゆけ２" which looks fucking radical

The point and clicker is still being moderately screwed but an HD remake of Grim Fandango is coming out so I guess it's not all bad, just a shame that the newest thing I can think of in the genre worth a damn is Anna on PC

So to all you devs trying to make intelligent games for the modern age, keep on going.  Finally to all you devs making safe, mass appeal bullshit, try pushing out the boat a little more will ya?   You can still make buckets of money with a smart game, I'm sure it'll be OK.

The Dumbing Down of Games

The dumbing down of games is something that I feel has been going on for a good while now.  However it's sort of difficult to point out exactly where.  I mean there's the general things that everyone knows about like regenerating health or some games not punishing you for dying whatsoever.  Recently I started playing Child of Light and I think this game really does hammer home just how dumbed down games have really become.

Just as a disclaimer I am enjoying Child of Light quite a bit actually.  I'm not too far in but it's definitely one of the more interesting RPGs I've played in recent memory.  However, the problem with Child of Light is that while I'm playing it there's one other game sitting at the back of my mind and gnawing away.

Every time I enter a fight in Child of Light, I keep thinking about fucking Grandia and just how much better that games combat was.

On a very basic level, Grandia and Child of Light have the same system. Check it out

At the bottom of both those screens there's a bar.  The bar is split up into a waiting part and an acting part.  Basic attacks are pretty quick but doing spells require some charge time and getting hit during that charge time may cause an interrupt.  This adds some strategy to timing attacks and such on your enemies to interrupt their shit while protecting your own casting characters so they can get their big moves off.

But here's where the dumbing down is, Grandia's combat had SO MUCH MORE than Child of Light.  In Grandia things like positioning, equipment, what magic to use and when, what skills to use and when, which characters are on interrupt duty and all sorts of other things were important.  While in Child of Light all that shit goes out the window and it's just a case of "hit them in the cast zone to interrupt" and combat becomes kind of monotonous as a result.

Not to mention that the number of enemies is different because it CoL it seems to be a max of 3 while in Grandia you could get absolute clusterfucks which had to be dealt with in a different way to smaller groups of enemies.  The choice of spells and skills was also much wider which gave much more room to create a strategy but in CoL I'm always doing the same fucking thing for guaranteed success.

Child of Light isn't a bad game by any stretch but it's such a shame because I was under the impression that as gaming grew as an entertainment medium it would get smarter, not dumber, so it's a shame to see a title do significantly less than a game from 1997.

Child of Light is just one example but it's a damn good one.  Another good example would be to compare any modern FPS title to Doom and fucking Doom will win out basically 100% of the time in pretty much all fields.

I'm not saying modern gaming is bad, it's just noticeably stupider and I don't like it. 

The BBC: Masters of the fucking Obvious

The whole video games and violence thing is the kind of issue that has been talked about since gaming was even a thing.  Doom, Postal, Grand Theft Auto and many more have come under the fire of retards who don't know what they are talking about for their graphic content.

For the longest time people have claimed that because these games show violent imagery the people who play them become violent and will eventually hurt someone or shoot up a school or whatever stupid bullshit.  Usually when they say this, they mean impressionable kids but if you let your kid go around hurting others just because he/she saw it on a video game, then you're just a shit parent and that's all there is to it.

But then, the BBC come along with this article

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26921743

Now I'm being unfair to the BBC because it's not really them that did the research but whatever, it wouldn't be as snappy if I put "The University of Rochester" now, would it?

Anyway, some twats in the UK apparently did some "research" and discovered that aggression is linked to bad game design rather than the content itself.....

NO FUCKING SHIT

Have you ever bought a thing like a microwave, toaster or flat packed shelf unit?  You go home and take it out of the box and you THINK it's going to be easy to set up but it's not.  The piece of shit wont work properly or fit together properly or it's too big or some other bullshit and it makes you mad.  You start cursing at everything in the house and cursing the very life of the person who came up with this monstrosity you're trying to make work, the very thing that was supposed to make your life easier.

Games are the same.

The very thing that you were supposed to be able to just sit down and chill out with doesn't fucking work properly and ends up making you frustrated in the same way.  Having a character not do what their supposed to do or having the game just crap out on you because they are a badly coded buggy mess is the EXACT same thing as the above example.  You end up squeezing the controller as hard as you can and cursing the very life of the person who developed the piece of shit that is clogging up your gaming system.

So well done BBC and everyone involved in that "research", you discovered something that anyone with half a functioning brain worked out back in 197 fucking 2.

The most bullshit top 100 list of all time

The above picture was sent to me this morning by a friend of mine via Facebook and good lord, I have never had a worse start to a day than this.

While browsing a certain anonymous forum last night, this picture popped up in a thread, but given the nature of said forum I dismissed it as photoshopped bait in order to rile people up.  That said, after having it linked on facebook, I had to go make sure so I did a google search.

The picture wasn't bait at all and it turns out it came from a top 100 list written on the Xbox Official Magazine website, you can check out the whole of their stupid bullshit list here.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/57106/features/the-100-most-important-people-in-the-world-of-xbox/?page=1

   Now everyones problem is the placement of John Carmack when compared to Anita Sarkeesian.

For those that don't know, John Carmack is one of those legendary game developers, basically credited for putting the FPS genre on the map.  The lead programmer of classics like Doom, Quake and Commander Keen and well known for working on the more recent Rage.  John Carmack, along with everyone else who worked on those games are awesome people who made awesome games and have done a lot for the industry.

But what about Anita?  Well if you don't know who she is, Anita is a feminist who started a kickstarter so she could make videos on YouTube titled "Tropes Vs Women".  In this video she puts forward badly researched points about how the damsel in distress trope in gaming is "harmful towards women".  Anita Sarkeesian is a moron of the highest calibre who took a large amount of money from a large amount of people to make two shitty YouTube videos that show nothing but her bleak outlook that the idea of a male wanting to protect someone that he loves is harmful to women and we as males should be ashamed about wanting to protect our families and friends.

Yet somehow, this idiot is higher on a list of most important people in the industry?! Are you fucking HIGH OXM?! A man who put a genre on the fucking map, the genre that just so happens to be the most played this generation, is somehow less important to the industry than some moron who makes videos on YouTube.  I'M a fucking moron who makes videos on YouTube, but I didn't need a fucking kickstarter to do it, so why aren't I on that list?!  Yeah, it sounds stupid but that's how stupid the idea of Anita being on that fucking list is.

Also since that picture was taken, the title of the article has been changed to "The 100 most important people in the world of Xbox" which is STILL bullshit because if that's the case, why is Anita on there at all?!  A feminist who talks about video game cliches has NOTHING to do with the world of Xbox.  Double bullshit is that rank 39 is fucking Satoru Iwata, the president of fucking NINTENDO.

What the fuck does Nintendo have to do with the world of fucking Xbox?! HUH?! Are you crediting him for motion controls or some shit?  That can't be the case though because if the kinect borrows its concept from anything, it's the fucking Playstation Eye Toy, fucking idiots.  It's not like anyone who works at Microsoft shares the worth ethic and outlook of someone like Iwata so why is he even on the list?

So you know what OXM? Get fucked, you're nothing but a bunch of morons who have no idea what you're on about and I hope whoever wrote this article encounters a gorgon and has his hands turned to stone so he can never write another fucking shitty list again in his goddamn life.

Yes, I'm mad

Less Shooters Please

This generation we have had a lot of first person shooter games, and I do mean A LOT.  To be honest, I wish this shit would fucking stop.

Before I go on, I don't have anything against FPS games, I actually quite enjoy them but I'm sick to death of going to a game store and just seeing FPS games fucking everywhere.  New Call of Duty, new Medal of Honour, new Crysis.  Good lord, don't people get bored of playing the same kind of game day in day out?

I mean we've just had the PS4 thing from Sony which I mentioned yesterday and already we've had fucking Destiny and Killzone.  Keeping in mind that the other games were Knack and inFamous (and I'm not counting that "announcement" from Square as a thing, fuck off) that's half the line up so far as fucking FPS games.  If there were more games than that I don't care, 2 is too many.

I'm a big fan of Rhythm games, I enjoy all sorts of shit from Voltex to DDR to Beatmania, it's great.  But if I just played rhythm games every time I went to the game centre and every time I came home then I probably would have quit gaming by now, that shit would be stale.

I wouldn't even be so annoyed about it if the styles were varied.  If we had some more Doom/Quake-esque FPS games at least there would be some variation on the theme.  I know it's probably not going to happen because this shit sells like hot cakes but I've got my fingers crossed on there being significantly less semi realistic military shooters in the upcoming generation.

Note: I know Destiny isn't quite a "military" FPS but it's still the same kind of game play that I'm bored of.