Resident Evil 7 Demo

So recently I streamed the Resident Evil 7 demo so I thought I'd take a moment to talk about it here since I was too sleepy on stream to really sum up how I felt about it.

The Resident Evil 7 demo feels like it suffers from the same problems that PT did.  The idea being to give us an idea of the plot while trying to freak us out rather than being a demo indicative of the final game.  Or at least I hope that's the case because if the final game plays like this it's going to be a fucking mess.  The Resident Evil 7 demo plays a lot more like one of those walking simulator type games that I fucking hate and while it is somewhat more enjoyable than your average walking simulator, if the final game ends up as a creepy, first person "stealth" horror game, I'm going to be rather miffed.

The demo tries insanely hard to be creepy and scary but fails mainly because we've seen this kind of horror a million times before.  It does look rather nice on PS4 hardware and creates a good atmosphere but ultimately falls flat because you very quickly realize that the scary dude teleports behind you based on certain flags you hit rather than stalking you around the house.  Aside from scary dude the general imagery is too overt for it to be scary and ends up being almost funny instead.

Interestingly enough, the demo has multiple endings which you can discover by taking slightly different paths through the game.  However this has led to something particularly frustrating and thanks to this one item the demo is more of a time vampire than an enjoyable demo of the latest Resident Evil.  The dummy finger, which I pictured above, is an item you can find while exploring and NO ONE can find a use for it.  The devs are also being intentionally douchy about it and not giving us any hints as to why it was included.

My personal theory is that it doesn't actually have a use but the demo will be changed nearer to release and then we will be able to do something with it.  The demo is ultimately a forgettable experience but this mystery gives the devs an excuse to reignite the hype near launch when we are allowed to solve it.

Hopefully the final game will be good and judging from the direction the demo has taken its gearing up to be leagues better than the hot mess that was Resi 6.  Hopefully it'll be more survival horror than walking simulator and we can go back to taking about this series with a sense of excitement and joy rather than disgust.

We Don't Need A Female Link

One of the games that came out of E3 this year that actually sort of surprised me was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  It looks really cool and is sort of giving me weird Souls vibes which is something I would never expect from a Zelda game.  It's definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on in the coming months and I'm looking forward to getting my grubby mitts on it.

So of course, like whenever there is a large piece of gaming news that people are happy about, certain outlets had to run articles crying about a lack of a female link.  These so called "journalists" even got interviews with some people from Nintendo and asked them about it.  They were told that they considered the idea for a while but ultimately scrapped it because it didn't fit in with the game they wanted to make, fair enough?  Well of course not, this idea makes them sexist, women hating misogynists because the cry baby social justice regressives can't get their way and Nintendo will not be bullied on the matter.

Link doesn't need to be a fucking girl anyway, he's already the protagonist of a well established and much loved series, suddenly changing him to female would be just weird.  People have argued that they could at least put in an option but that doesn't work either because this isn't a game where you fucking role play.  You are playing as Link, he is the hero and you join him on his adventure through Hyrule as he breaths on wild things or whatever this game is going to be about.  Link is not you, you do not need to imprint your personality, or lack thereof onto him.  You don't see anyone moaning about how Samus from Metroid should be changed to a man for the exact same reason.  Both Link and Samus are good characters in their respective games and people like them the way there are.  I don't need Samus to be a man for my to sympathize with her quest to save the galaxy because I'm not an overly sensitive little shit stain.

It's not like Zelda is a particularly original or hard concept either.  It's about a character going on an adventure to find a bunch of trinkets to save the world.  This is a concept that is, and has been, easily copied.  If you REALLY wanted a female-led Zelda game, you could quite easily make one. Call it "The Story of Belda: The Whistle of Minutes" or some shit and have a female protagonist wandering around a large world collecting shit in order to save it.  3 of this, 6 or 7 of that and a nice big over world to put it all in and BOOM, there you have it.  Are you seriously telling me that there isn't a single female developer in the industry that can make this happen? Really? Because I'm almost positive there is.  If Clover Studios can do it with a dog, you can do it with a girl.

So fuck all these shitty "journalists" and their whining.  If you don't like playing as male Link, then don't play the fucking game, go find something that suits your tastes or better yet, stop playing fucking video games and put isolate yourself from the rest of the world so that we can have our fun without having to listen to your stupid shit.

Minimum E3 Fucks

So E3 is happening....or has happened, at time of writing I'm not to sure but that should give you good indication about how I feel regarding E3.  Maybe I've gotten old or maybe I'm just a bit too jaded and cynical at this point but no matter how much I search my inner self I just can't find any fucks to give about this years E3 show.

It's sad really, it used to be such an exciting time.  When I was a young kid, before internet and streams and all this fancy new age shit, E3 was something you could only really read about in a magazine.  It was this amazing event with all these new games and all this excitement and it was the kind of thing I dreamed of going to.  Then as I got older and streams of the show started happening there would be exciting times as we'd all ball into a room with takeout pizza and watch the shit live and chatting about all the announcements.

But with the new generation of games systems came a change in the way E3 was presented.  The fun was taken away and the whole thing is delivered as a sort of business pitch by some dude in a suit telling us about "experiences" and how all these games represent "the future" or some shit.  Buzzwords and professional sounding speeches book ended with cinematic trailers topped off with applause from an audience of industry people who may only be clapping so the dude on stage doesn't feel bad.

The E3 way of presenting games hasn't just become boring to me, it's offensive.  How stupid do these companies think I am where if they write a nice speech and give me 3 minutes of cutscene I'm going to be like "OH YEAH FUCKING WOW, BUYING THAT DAY 1".  All this talk of none-game related features like TV and social media linkage to try and appeal to that mass market because mainstream gaming has become all about safe bets and that huge budget for that sequel that whoever is making is going to go to waste.  Even new IPs that are supposed to get us excited just stink of nothing more than retreading old ground.  The best example I can think of for all this is Days Gone, a game that has so many The Last of Us vibes that I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't start life as a side-story expansion pack.

Not to say it's a complete bust.  There are a number of things at E3 that did pique my interest a little bit and with all the games at the show it'll be hard to call any of them "bad" per se. I bet most of the games that appeared on E3 this year I'll pick up and at least enjoy to some degree but I just want the fun to be put back into this event.  I can't get hype for cutscenes and I especially can't get hype for dudes in suits.

Whatever, interesting games ahead and fun times to be had but I'll be waiting for more detailed news down the road rather than getting excited now.  Thanks for making me aware of the titles.....I guess.....