Gamespot being embarassing again

 

I don't usually read gaming news websites but every so often an article from one of these rags will come across desk and I was absolutely stunned when I saw the headline of this one inparticular written by one George Yang. 

I had to do a double take when I first saw it and read it slowly.  Helldivers was a game that came out in 2015 that I didn't play.  It was a twin stick shooter with online co-op about shooting stuff, I didn't give a fuck about it.  The game has a lot of positive reviews on Steam, netting it an overall Very Positive rating and yet I have never met a single person either online or in real life who has played it and until its sequel came out, I think a vast majority of the gaming public didn't know what the fuck it even was.  Then Helldivers 2 comes out and the game explodes in popularity and granted, after looking up some gameplay for this post, it does look kinda cool.  I'm not personally a fan of doing online co-op, I'm not into games that are multiplayer focused but it looks like a good time.  It looks like Earth Defense Force.

The first Earth Defense Force game came out on the PS2 back in 2003 developed by a company called SANDLOT and was released under the SIMPLE series.  The SIMPLE series was a collection of budget games for various systems where the number in the title indicated their cost.  For example EDF1 was released under the name SIMPLE 2000: THE 地球防衛軍 MONSTER ATTACK in Japan, the 2000 in the title meaning that the game cost 2000 yen.  This game actually got a western release under the title Global Defence Force and involved shooting a bunch of bugs in third person.

Now I'm not particularly good at doing maths but Helldivers 2 came out in 2024 and I'm pretty sure that is a long time after 2003.  I'm pretty sure, Mr Yang, that your title is the wrong way round.  The title of the article makes it sound as if EDF 6 is cribbing off Helldivers 2 despite not only the series being much older, but Earth Defence Force 6 coming out TWO FUCKING YEARS PRIOR in Japan.  What makes it even more frustrating is that he knows this fact and gives this half assed little paragraph at the bottom of the article about the original EDF but only talking about how the name changed a couple of times before finally settling on the Earth Defence Force title.

This is frustrating in two ways. The first, is that George Yang is such an insipid, crap writer that he's name dropping Helldivers 2, a hot trending game, to drive clicks.  But whatever, that's not exactly uncommon practice in 2024.  What's more frustrating is that George had an opportunity here to educate some people on some gaming history.  "Earth Defense Force 6, the game that helped inspire Helldivers 2, delayed to summer" could have been the article.  He could have spent more time talking about the simple series, EDF and letting people know about a cool series that might have not known about prior.  And let's be honest here, the kind of people who are reading Gamespot are the kind of people who have the most surface level knowledge of gaming, these are the people who could maybe use a little nudge into something about more lower budget and unknown. 

I had a look through George's article history and inspid unseasoned-chicken style writing seems to be his bread and butter.  You're a fucking writer for an enthusiast press outlet, George, why don't you fucking act like one.

Bellend

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.

Why Do People Like God of War So Much Again?

A while ago I posted my thoughts on a replay I did of God of War and I followed it up by starting to play God of War 2 and while I am having a certain amount of fun I can't help but be a little confused as to just how these games became so huge.

Now don't get me wrong, these aren't bad games by any stretch and the production quality on pretty much all the titles in the series are top notch but the review scores for these games are always really REALLY high and I don't quite understand.  For example God of War 1 on Gamespot got a review score of 9.3 and God of War 2 got 9.7(!) on IGN!  That's a damn near perfect score and maybe it's just because I've become cynical in my old age but I just don't understand.

These games do have some good things going for them such as great cinematic quality and an insane level of violence which is rather satisfying to watch after battling your way through a horde of enemies.  There's also a decent variation in enemy types and the soundtracks are quite nice feeling appropriately epic for the tasks at hand and the main theme will pretty much stick with your forever after playing.

That said though, in the game play department these games are samey and a little dull.  Combat consists of nothing more than mashing square on an enemy until the prompt appears above their head and then doing a little QTE sequence to finish them off.  The game tries to give you lots of tools to try and deal with all the enemies such as magic spells and alternate weapons but there is very little reason to use any of them because mashing square is easily the best thing you have.  If mashing square doesn't seem to be working quite as well as usual against a certain enemy then click in both your control sticks to activate Rage of the Gods which is basically a win button.  Rage makes you strong, removes hitstun and makes your standard combo so insane and screen filling that even bosses don't stand a chance against you.

Aside from the combat the puzzles are insultingly easy at best and frustratingly obtuse at worst.  There have been instances during my God of War 2 playthrough where I'll be stuck in a room for a few minutes not knowing what to do because the key to a puzzle is some kind of pullable block but the block just looks like a background prop so I end up stumbling on it by accident and I never would have known if it wasn't for the big stupid R1 prompt in the corner.  The worst case of "puzzle" solving though is when the game wants you to find keys.  Usually there's a locked door and another path, go down the other path, kill dudes, get key and then loop back on yourself so that you can go through the door.  If this happened just once or twice but this is almost every single locked door in God Of War 2.

Like I said I don't hate these games at all but they get near perfect scores, glowing reviews and hordes of raving fans.  If I worked for one of these websites I would have given it like a 6/10 for being a competently made action game with some annoying aspects and an over reliance on QTE for cool shit to happen.  Devil May Cry let's you look cool as hell without using QTE at all but God of War struggles to pull of anything visually impressive in the combat without going into canned animation mode.

Still, despite my complaints I'm gonna finish off 2 and probably go play the third one again too, good bit of mindless fun after a stressful day.

Please Don't Make a Shadow of the Colossus Movie

So while I was digging around the internet for gaming related things, I came across at article on Gamespot that said "Shadow of the Colossus movie gets Hanna writer" here is the original article

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/shadow-of-the-colossus-movie-gets-hanna-writer-6402101

Now I've never seen Hanna or anything else written by the guy but the fact that this game is getting a movie upsets me, and it upsets me greatly, so let me tell you why.

This will not work as a movie, it just wont.  Think about the game itself, it's a dude running around, not saying anything, killing huge things to resurrect a dead girl.  How the fuck do you turn THAT into a movie that lasts at least an hour twenty?  If anything OTHER than that, is the plot of your movie, you are going to piss people off.

But games of movies are almost always awful, right?  On top of that, games of movies are also pretty shitty for the most part, so why is this?  Well for the answer lets look to Wagner!

This is a guy who would write music and opera and shit like that, and he basically came up with an idea known as Gesamkunstwerk, which is German for "Complete work of art".  Now I'm not super clued up on this whole thing, but the way I understand it is with something like Opera, if the music, sets, actors etc. etc. all come together in harmony, then it makes something really fuckin' good.

So that idea can be applied to this!  The reason game movies suck so bad is because you're talking away the whole GAME bit, and you're ruining the experience as a result.  The same goes the other way round, you have to change bits of a movie to make it a game, so you piss off fans of the movie, and gamers don't like it either because usually the game sucks ass.

The reason Shadow of the Colossus is so damn good, is because all the elements of that game make it so.  You take away the whole gameplay bit, the whole bit that makes you sympathise with just how hard this guys fuckin' job is, then you're taking away from the experience, and you're going to be left with a steaming piece of shit most likely.

So please, for the love of God, if you really are planning to make a movie of this game, FUCKING DON'T!