Silent Hills Apparently Cancelled and I'm Kind of Happy

Apparently it's all over and Silent Hills is a dead project.  A quick google search tells stories about Del Toro saying "It ain't gonna happen" and Norman Reedus confirming the canning of the project over at Konami.  This all comes along side news of Hideo Kojima, the big name behind the project, leaving Konami after the completion of Metal Gear Solid 5.  A lot of people are upset by this news but me, I'm kind of happy.

Now don't get me wrong and start raging, Silent Hills looked OK and had a lot of talent behind it and I'd be overjoyed to get a modern Silent Hill game that doesn't suck complete ass.  Hell, the first 3 Silent Hill games are some of my all time favourites but as a fan of the series I can't help but feel that the axing of this project is probably for the best.

There was a lot wrong with Silent Hills up to this point.  P.T, while very effective as it's own horror thing wasn't very "Silent Hill".  The second trailer that got released for Silent Hills which involved a person running away from monsters in what looked like a school made my heart sink pretty hard.  The whole thing looked something out of a haunted house and it looked like all the subtlety of the previous games had been removed for big set piece monsters chasing you through corridors.  If it was it's own IP then it's the kind of thing I would have been keeping an eye on but as soon as you attach "Silent Hill" to something like that I start to lose interest. 

The problem is though, Konami have come out and said that they will still be developing the Silent Hill series and this upsets me greatly.  Silent Hill is OVER and it's been over since 2003 (or 2004 depending on how you see it).  There is absolutely no need to develop any more fucking Silent Hill games, just let it die.  We are now at a sad point where there are more terrible Silent Hill games than good ones developed by people who don't have a fucking clue about anything.

Silent Hills was a little different because even if Kojima and Del Toro didn't have a fucking clue about the storyline at least it probably would have been a good game.  The problem is that the story is one of the most important aspects of Silent Hill and even if you make a decent game under the name, getting the story wrong just ruins everything.  If news comes out in the next few months that Kojima is carrying on the project with Del Toro under a different name my interest may spark.  "Inspired" by Silent Hill is great but being a part of that series sets you up for so much failure.

People should just let Silent Hill die and focus on bringing forward the next big horror IP.  We have all this awesome technology and graphical power now, I'm sure someone somewhere can make something that's just as chilling as SH1 was when that first came out.  A new IP would mean I'm not looking at it through the SH lens and nitpicking every single aspect of the story, presentation, game play, characters etc.

Lord knows gaming needs a good new horror game but Silent Hills was not it and I can't help but feel the series is better off without it.  Good luck to Kojima after he leaves Konami and I am kind of hoping the project gets restored under a new, original IP and it's just as scary an engaging as Silent Hill used to be. 

Hopes For Next Year

With Christmas happening tomorrow and new year right around the corner, I thought I'd express a couple of my hopes for gaming in the year 2015.

1)  Next Gen Gets Interesting

The PS4 and Xbox One have been out for a good while now and I still have very little interest in either.  With Ys8 and Persona 5 along with a couple of others being announced I have some reason to be at least a little bit interested in PS4 but I'm really hoping that there will be more than just big name sequels in the near future.  I'm really looking forward to some new IP and I'm crossing my fingers that something will get released that's going to blow my goddamn mind.

2)  Less Bullshit

This one probably won't happen because bullshit makes money for publishers but I can dream.  Less crappy DLC, less day 1 drama, less glitchy and unfinished bullshit.  I'm hoping that at some point in the next year publishers will have some kind of epiphany and think "oh, maybe we should stop fucking customers up the asshole all the time" and there will be a lot less to be angry about.

3) Less Drama

There was a lot of drama this year.  Gamergate is still ongoing and people can't seem to shut up about misogyny, harassment, doxing and all sorts of other stupid bullshit.  I'm glad something like Gamergate exists to put shitty journalists on the spot but I think everyone would be better off if the drama in general just stopped.
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I'd say that about sums up my top 3 wishes for gaming in 2015.  Let's hope it'll be fun! 

The WiiU ain't so bad

The WiiU has a pretty rough time in a lot of gaming circles.  It's always branded as the "kiddy" console or tossed aside because it doesn't have all the next gen military first person shooting games that the PS4 and Xbox One has.  It's also not as powerful so for the kind of people that think graphics are super important to a game then there is no way they are going to touch the damn thing.

But it's a damn shame really because to me, the WiiU is about the only console I can talk about and not get incredibly pissed off with.  There's so much drama surrounding the PS4 and the Xbox One and there are so many extra features and other useless crap on those machines that it almost feels like they have forgotten what their first function is.  Playing fucking games.

That's not to say that the PS4 or the Xbox One are bad and that the WiiU is super good, but it's just a case of the WiiU having some fucking personality that the other two don't.  Off the top of my head at time of writing I cannot think of a SINGLE PS4 or XBox One game that I am looking forward to.  However I can think of plenty of WiiU titles that I want or am looking forward to and I don't even own the bloody system yet, I've been playing one that I borrowed from a friend.

I'm sure this will all change over time but right now the WiiU is absolutely storming this generation and it's being ignored because of the reputation Nintendo created for themselves after the Wii.  There are things I dislike about the WiiU but the quality of the games and the general ease of use makes it the number 1 system for me right now. 

Will be picking up one of my very own rather soon I think

More Xbox One Disappointment

Remember a while back I said next gen didn't work properly and it was a big disappointment?  Well yeah, time for more of that!

Although this time it's not really about things that work, we're going to be talking DRM again.  So today I came across an article (which I will link at the bottom) which describes an occurrence that happened during a Killer Instinct tournament.  Basically, during the matches, the Xbox One check in DRM kicked in and just ended the match then and there to make sure that they owned the game that they were playing.  It didn't warn anyone that this was going to take place, it just booted them right out of the game with no regard for what they were doing.

I thought that Microsoft had done away with the check in DRM thing, but it turns out I was wrong.  The way I now understand it is, if you have a disc and it is inserted into the Xbox, then this doesn't happen.  However if you are playing a game that does not have a disc (So anything off the marketplace then), then the Xbox will just boot you out of the game so you can do the little check-in procedure.

If you go click the link at the bottom of this thing and check out the YouTube video in the article, it LOOKS like they were between matches or something, I'm not sure I've not played the new KI, so it looks more inconvenient than anything else, but this might seriously have an impact on Killer Instinct making an appearance at something like EVO, because I'm sure both tournament organisers and players won't be happy if the Xbox decides that it wants to do it's little DRM check during a battle.  I'm sure someone would be pissed if they were winning a match that's stopped due to DRM, then they lose their mojo and get trounced in the re-match; that shit ain't fair.

But even if your not into fighting games or the competitive gaming scene, it's STILL a problem.  Imagine if a little way down the line something like an RPG comes out on the marketplace.  Imagine if this RPG doesn't have checkpoints or something bullshit like that, it just has good old fashioned save spots.  Then imagine if you're doing a dungeon, a long dungeon, maybe the final one, you're near the end and you're having a hard time making it through but just before you can go fight the final boss BAM! DRM check kicks in an you lose all that progress for fucking nothing.  I wouldn't be too happy about that if it was me.

This is even going to have an impact on people who enjoy speed running because during a good run you don't want to have all that effort killed because of something you can't control.  If there are multi platform digital distribution games that look good for a speed runner, they will more than likely go buy it on a system that doesn't threaten to kick you out if you don't confirm you own it every 24 hours or whatever it is.

So yeah, more next generation disappointment.  Microsoft need to sort their shit out, I thought this DRM check in stuff was done with, but now it's here just ruining fighting game tournaments and being a bit of a bastard.

Here's the link to the original article I heard this on.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Xbox-One-24-Hour-Check-DRM-Returns-During-Killer-Instinct-Tournament-61114.html

Next Gen Attitudes Are Worrying

We are really close now to the launch dates for the next gen systems and it's an exciting time to be a fan of video games as we get to try out all the cool new hardware coming out.

Microsoft and their Xbox One are basically writing the rulebook on how not to launch a console, PS4 is quietly doing its thing and impressing people but isn't completely devoid of it's own bullshit and the WiiU, the one who got out the gate early, is just chugging away in the background producing a decent game once every couple of months.

So what do I mean when I say that the attitudes are worrying?  Well, think about it, what do you buy a games console for?  Playing video games on, right?  So what's everyone talking about when the topic of next gen comes up? Anything but fucking video games.

Sure, there is plenty of talk of hardware, resolutions, capabilities, if it needs online or not, the ability to play used games etc. etc. but where is any of the talk of the actual games?  Just thinking about the lineups for the Xbox One and PS4, there isn't anything that has me jumping up and down thinking I just HAVE to buy the new systems at launch to play that one really good game.

I remember back when the Dreamcast came out, people were pretty impressed with how the thing looked compared to stuff like the PS1 but the FOCUS was the fucking games.  I remember getting seeing footage for things like Power Stone and Jet Set Radio and thinking that I had to have a Dreamcast just to play those damn games.

That game focus seems to have been lost a little bit and with it so has the fun in a new console launch.  Back then, it didn't matter what system you were buying because no matter what you bought you were going to have fun with it.  Even the fan boys were happy if their buddies got the other thing, because then they had a chance to play it and despite many an argument being had over which one was "better" at the end of the day it didn't matter because you were still having fun.

That's gone now, and it's been replaced with technological pissing contests between the major companies and which system gets bought basically boils down to which one is fucking over the consumer the least.  Add a bunch of elitist PC pricks in the background screaming about how awesome their stuff is and all it makes for is a very tiring and unexciting start to the next gen.

There isn't a single game for the next gen systems that I have seen thus far that has made me excited, and that's sad.  If this next gen release period has proved anything to me, it's that gaming isn't about fun anymore, it's about which group of fan boys has the best machine.

I'm sure once the dust settles and some decent games get released, both systems will end up being pretty good in the end.  Hell, I'm sure even the WiiU will end up with a decent library a few more years down the line.  But the point is, that all this outcry at business policy and constant crying over things like screen resolution and frames per second has just pissed me off and now I don't give a flying rats ass about "next gen" anymore.

I'll be keeping an eye out for that one game that eventually makes me excited enough to drop money on a system, but until then, I'll be just sat here biding my time until Dark Souls 2.

I think it's time Call of Duty just stopped

This was something I was supposed to talk about a long time ago but I got side tracked.

So Call of Duty: Ghosts got quite a bit of flak from people with taste after E3.  They made a big deal about this stupid dog and how you will connect with it on an emotional level or some such nonsense and then proceeded to show absolutely no game play at the major press conferences, at least none that I remember.

Then during E3 I found a game play clip that pretty much sealed the fact I'm never going to buy this game, and I'll show it to you.

Are people actually serious about this goddamn game?  There are so many problems with that trailer it boggles my mind.  How does a dog do that? How does one dog freak out a room full of trained soldiers to the point where the break the bloody door down and allow themselves to be shot in the back of the head. 

The people who think these kind of scenes are cool are either idiots or just underage.  It's been the same with pretty much every Call of Duty where all the set pieces are just either designed to shock the user or to imitate popular action flims.

I personally got sick of CoD a long long time ago, but this bit of footage really shows just how stupid the series has got.  It's probably still a ton of fun to play for the people who like these games, and I bet the multiplayer is a blast but I'm not going anywhere near this game upon release.