I Think We’re Doing Remakes Wrong

 

I recently happened across a teaser for a remaster of legendary PC game Deus Ex.  A game so revered by gaming culture that there’s a joke that says every time you mention, someone will reinstall it.  The remaster, based on the teaser, basically looks to be the same as the original but with a bit of a face lift but it suffers from the problem of looking like complete and utter shit. 

Deus Ex was released in the year 2000 and it wasn’t the prettiest thing to ever hit our PC screens but being one of the first “immersive sims” it was an intensely interesting experience.  This new version looks less like a loving graphical rebuilding of that kinda fugly game and more like an amateur student project that you’d download for free off a modding site.  Some crap thrown together by a guy who’s been learning blender for about a year titled something like “Deus Ex HD Mod” or some shit.  Something you might download out of curiosity and then remove from your system after about 30 minutes into a new game. 

But does Deus Ex really need a remaster or a remake? Personally I don’t think so.  It was a great game when it dropped in 2000 and you can easily grab a copy, install it and still have a great time with it to this very day.  You could have just left it as is and everything would have been just fine.  Let’s face reality for a second here, though.  If you’re the kind of person who looks at something like Deus Ex (or any other deeply respected game for that matter; RE4, Crash, Dragon Quest etc etc) and then start posting online about how these things “need/deserve” remakes, then my bet is that you don’t actually like the game all that much in the first place. 

I caught whiffs of this the hardest when the RE4 remake came out.  Suddenly people in comment sections saying that they were so happy RE4R came out because the original version was “clunky”, “stiff” and even “unplayable in the modern day”.  If you GENUINELY believe any of this stuff about an old game then the reality of the matter is that you just don’t like RE4 that much.  That’s fine by itself but because RE4 is such a respected title and you’re too much of a quivering pussy to hold your own opinions on media, you start pining for remakes.  Even if your pines for modern releases are purely based in aesthetics then you’re still a bitch.  If you claim to be a fan of something or you see something that looks interesting and you’re put off even trying simply because it looks “old” then why are you even here? If you have that much open disrespect for gaming history like that, maybe you should fuck off to another hobby.

But this leads me to the title of this post, I can’t help but feel that we’re doing remakes wrong.  There’s no need to remake Deus Ex because we already know it’s good.  The only purpose this remake serves is so a sales team can utilize the power of nostalgia to make a line go up.  I think we should be using remakes and remaster to have a second go at games that were bad at the toke but that made of had value were they executed better.  One example I can think of for a game I played this year is The Bouncer on PS2.  A lackluster beat em up with extremely basic gameplay that demands that you spend about 60% of its 4 hour run time watching cutscenes.  Some levels in that game are single rooms with 3 dudes that you spam a single button to kill before the movies start playing again.  But the aesthetics were great, the world seemed interesting, if you remade The Bouncer in 2025 and fleshed out the combat, maybe made it a little Yakuza-esque you might have something special on your hands.  A more personal example for me would be a remake of the horror game Outlast.  Let someone who doesn’t have severe brain injury rewrite the plot and bring it more in line with the horror themed Mirrors Edge that I thought it was going to be instead of the painfully boring non-game it ended up being. 

Not that I’m ENTIRELY against remaking good stuff though.  I had no problems with the Crisis Core remake, for example because that was locked to the PSP, a system famous for having the battery swell and maybe explode.  Putting it on my PC was welcome.  SMT3: Nocturne was also OK in my book because original PS2 versions of Maniax were stupidly expensive and giving me a version that cost 30 bucks instead of 200 was nice.  If your remake serves as a middle finger to the retro game market then I salute you.  Finally I was completely OK with the remake of moon: Remix RPG Adventure because it never got a real English release until that came out.  I personally might be fine playing Japanese only games but when I find a good one I want to be able to suggest it without having to point to a shitty fan translation made by a guy that couldn’t order a beer in an izakaya without having a breakdown however the absolute state of that side of gaming is another post for another day

What I’m saying with all this is that we should be using remakes and remasters to have a second shake at stuff that didn’t quite make it in the execution.  Buying remakes so that you can pathetically wallow in nostalgia while giving money to suits who don’t care about the medium even a little bit needs to stop.  Next time you see a remake of a game you already know is good, just ignore it and instead go find something new and interesting and put your money there instead.  Doing a little digging will enrich your life much more than doing a 15th play though of Deus Ex but with shittier graphics this time

Edit: Please forgive the weird highlighting, the Blogger post editor is actually one of the worst things to ever exist, Ill try to ensure it doesnt happen again, maybe this post needs a fuckin remake

Developers Aren't Owed Niceties

 

Right before sitting down at my computer to write this post I read an article online about how the lead developer for Starfield went on a bit of a rant because people who don't know anything about game dev criticize games that they play.  More specifically he said that he didn't like that people will speculate on why things were made a certain way within a game when they have no knowledge of the process and yet talk about it like an authority.  Which is fine, it's no a statement I agree with 100% but I get where he's coming from.  But there was a line in that article where the guy said that he doesn't talk ill of other games out of "respect for his fellow developers" and this, to me, seems incredibly daft.

He's not the only one who has said this kind of thing either, there's been a sort of prevailing attitude in a lot of gaming spaces where it has become taboo to overly criticize developers just because the process of making games is hard.  I first ran across this idea when watching Awesome Games Done Quick where occassionally a speedrunner would accuse a developer of being "lazy" and that's why certain tricks within certain games work but then these comments became frowned upon and you aren't really allowed to say that kind of thing anymore.

Obviously game development is an extremely difficult undertaking.  With it being an amalgamation of a number of art forms as well as technical ability it's fairly obvious that the process of creating a game, either by yourself or in a team, is a stressful thing to do.  But the other thing that you have to consider here is that games also cost money.  Once money is put into the equation, any requirement for me or anyone else to be nice to you over the thing you made goes out the window.  I worked for my money and then I chose, based on the developer telling me their game is good and cool and interesting, to give you money in exchange for the thing that you made.  If then, the thing that you made sucks shit then I get to call you a stupid lying, talentless asshole.  

Take my famously well documented distaste for the Outlast games.  I get that making a horror game is hard, you have to code it all together to make sure it's actually playable and then have a bunch of artists, musicians and writers create things that are scary and then all of that has to come together and be marketed and shipped.  That's hard, I get it.  But Outlast also cost me about 20 quid and wasn't very fucking good.  The writing was shit, the music is forgetable, the game isn't scary and the enemies are are not very well coded and behave like shit.  I would go as far to say that the developers are Red Barrels are inept, having completely no idea on what makes a good horror game and instead just slapping together a bunch of imagry that's generally accepted to be "spooky" and calling it a day.  It's lazy, badly made dross and I do not feel even a single pang of guilt for saying that.  You know what else those guys are? fucking liars too.  The original marketing for Outlast made it look like Mirrors Edge Survival Horror Edition and I thought that idea was cool as fuck but then it came out and it's a slow, plodding hiding and sometimes jogging away kind of horror game and it's embarassing that  I was charged money for it.  

If Outlast was made by 2 guys and distributed for free then I wouldn't be so harsh.  I would still give my criticisms of what I didn't like about it but I would assume inexperience over ineptitude or malice. But these were guys who were previously at Ubisoft now telling me to roll up for a brand new horror experience and what I got was a waste of cash.  Outlast IS lazy and poorly made and it costs money so the devs at that company who effectively stole my cash can get fucked. 

Also why not drop the ego?  There's a lot of developers I've interacted with, such as the developers for Crosscode and Benbo Quest who get defensive and insulted when you, even gently, tell them things about their games that kind of sucks.  Criticism is good for artists and creators, it's how you get better.  Back in like, 2014, I wrote a book that I published to Amazon called Noise and I shopped it around a few people I knew for some feedback.  The thing that pissed me off about this whole process is that out of the 10 or so people I gave free copies of the book to for that feedback, only ONE gave me any kind of genuine criticisms of the story.  It fucks me off to no end that everyone just told me it was great when, reading it back now, even I can see glaring flaws with it.  I'm never going to improve as a writer if people don't give me shit when my work is low quality .

I am currently studying and working on a game of my own.  I plan to release it to wherever will take it for a low price, but I'm hoping to maybe get some money for it when it's done.  If you buy it and think that it's a poorly made piece of garbage, I'm fully expecting you to call me out on that.  If you didn't like it and have some constructive things to say, that's even more useful and if you liked it and want to say something nice, that will stroke my ego good and proper, thank you in advance.  But I am not owed niceities and gentle language just because the thing I have decided to try and teach myself is hard.  If you're so fragile that you think that difficult tasks require kid gloves, even when you're taking peoples money as you do that task, then stop.  

If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.  If you can't handle armchair developers calling you a lazy asshole for charging them 20 bucks for your shitty Zelda clone, then stop being a developer.  Just fuck off, the art world is worse with you in it.

Why Did Horror Get So Loud?

The Evil Within
Any Resident Evil after 4
Silent Hill Downpour
Alone in the Dark (new one)
Dying Light (maybe)
Outlast

What do these games and many others have in common?  Well of course, they are all horror games but they are also all very loud, frenetic and not very scary.  The game that inspired this post in particular was The Evil Within and my experience with Dying Light is a little limited but the point still stands.

So think way back to the days of Resident Evil and Silent Hill.  These were the big motherfuckers that made survival horror popular.  There were similar games such as Clock Tower and Alone in the Dark that did the whole horror thing too but I didn't know too many people who were even aware of those games back in the day.

What all these games had in common was that in order to put their horror forward they would try to build atmosphere.  A lot of this was achieved in the audio design, especially for Silent Hill and it was effective.  There are a lot of moments in a game like Resident Evil where the soundtrack is completely cut and all you have is a quiet room, some distant shuffling and an occasional moan.  That shit was effective for building tension as to what was round the next corner.  When shit got real the music would pick up and help generate that sense of panicked fear rather than the more subtle tense fear to be found in other parts of the game.

But it seems that the genre has lost that sense of subtlety and it suffers as a result.  I'm not saying that something like Resident Evil 4 is bad but it's not scary anymore.  When I play games like Silent Hill, old Resident Evil and Project Zero, there is still a little bit of uneasiness that creeps in and that adds to the enjoyment.

Silent Hill Downpour is probably one of the best examples of this.  Old Silent Hill builds up a shit ton of creepy atmosphere then hits you with the panicky stuff in the world shift.  However even when in the nightmare you'll find a room or a section where the panic lets up for a while but the horror still lasts because you know what's behind that door that you need to go through for your next key item.  Silent Hill 2 was an exception to this because the whole game is just drenched in that heavy, oppressive atmosphere that actually makes it quite uncomfortable to play.  It speaks volumes about the developers talent that they can make a game like that but still have it be enjoyable to the point where people want to keep on going.

Silent Hill Downpour on the other hand is all in your face all the time.  It tries to build the atmosphere with it's big empty streets but for the most part, that is just what they are and are therefore uninteresting or scary.  When the world shifts into the nightmare, the whole thing is over designed, too well lit and in certain sections looks more like something out of Alice: Madness Returns than a Silent Hill game.  It's the same for The Evil Within.  The game never lets up and after a while it becomes tiresome.

Imagine if you came home one day and one of your friends jumps out from around the corner in a dark room in a big scary mask and screams at you.  Of course you're going to jump and be a little frightened right?  But then imagine that instead of stopping he just keeps screaming and rolling around on the floor after you have turned on the lights, it would just be ridiculous.

That about sums up new horror games for me.  A cheap prank that goes on way too long and gets very old very fast

Horror Game Advertising Sucks

If there's one thing that's pissed me off for quite a while now it's the way horror games are advertised to the public.  They have zero subtlety and everything is made far too obvious from the trailers. 

Let's take a look at an old piece of promotional material for the original Silent Hill

and let's compare this to

See the difference?  Silent Hill has a pretty decent trailer with it posing a question and then showing you a few scenes from the game to give you an idea of it's cast an atmosphere.  The majority of the games content is left a mystery and the little bits of horror that they do show you.

Silent Hills on the other hand has a pretty bad trailer that's all about the special effects and wowing you with next gen graphics rather than making anything remotely scary.  Apart from the fact that it's all pre-rendered, which pisses me off on it's own, the whole thing is more like carnival horror house rather than cutting edge psychological horror game.  No real build up or any mystery, just a big twitchy spazbeast chasing the character down and then some weird shit with a door and a dark stairway.  Don't even bother mentioning the man throwing up centipedes or whatever because that shit was laughably dumb.

Going from that trailer into Silent Hill is like going on a horror adventure filled with mystery while the Hills trailer is like a big advert for Kojima's Spook House.  However, a bad pre-rendered trailer, while annoying isn't the end of the world and it won't sour my opinion of a game before I even get a chance to play it.  It's those stupid fucking reaction videos that do that for me.

This kind of promo material is the fucking worst.  It's like someone saying "HEY GUYS! HERE'S HOW YOUR SUPPOSED TO FEEL WHILE PLAYING OUR SUPER SCARY GAME!".  These kinds of videos falsely put forward the idea of a game being scary, so that when other people play it they already have that idea in their heads.  The game isn't scary, they've been fooled into thinking it's scary beforehand by idiots screaming in front of a camera.  Outlast is actually a really good example because it's one of the least frightening "horror" games I've ever played yet there are people who think it is scary because they've had that idea forced into their head by stupid bits of promotional material like this.

Horror games are supposed to be about mystery and atmosphere and I think whoever the people are in charge of making trailers and promo material for horror games really need to get a clue and learn how to make a good trailer again.

Outlast Is Terrible

Right, I've had some time to gather my thoughts and now I'm going to write a little bit about why Outlast is so fucking awful.

I'm going to split this piece into 2 parts.  The first being why it's terrible as a game and the second being why it's a terrible story.

The Game

I remember when I saw the first trailers for Outlast, it originally looked like it was going to be some kind of Mirrors Edge but with a horror setting, which sounded radical.  When I played the game I was a little disappointed that the final product was a slow, plodding, shit excuse of a survival horror game with a crappy chase mechanic

Granted you can sprint and vault over things every now and again but this isn't used well enough for it to be at all enjoyable. Ideally, the enemies should have ALWAYS been coming at you and you'd have to parkour through the facility to survive but instead we got a bunch of uninteresting hallways and a few obstacle courses for you to parkour through when they decide it's time for a chase sequence.

Speaking of corridors, the game is FAR too linear.  There is barely anything to explore and the designated hiding rooms are far too obvious.  Also there are plenty of places to hide from enemies but not enough enemies to make the majority of them worth using.  Most of the crazies in the asylum are non combative and once you realise this it kind of kills any tension because you know that chances are they are just going to sit there and spout nonsense.

The game is also formulaic and predictable which thus makes it extremely boring.  You can basically describe Outlast as follows

1) Go through some corridors
2) Come to a thing that needs to be activated but it's broken
3) There will be 2 valves/levers/buttons, one down a left path, one down a right path.
4) Hit these buttons while avoiding ONE enemy
5) Go To 1

The game also has a habit of treating you like an idiot to the point where it becomes annoying.  For example, there was a part where I came to a broken generator control panel.  The panel read something like "Pressure valve 1 and 2 non operational" and as soon as I approached it a big fat yellow message popped up saying "FIX THE PRESSURE VAVLES".  No fucking shit game, thanks for your obvious hint.

The last thing I have to moan about with the game itself is the control, it's garbage.  The character moves far too slow at walking speed so there is no need to not have your pinky locked down on the run button.  There is absolutely no need to never have the camera readied since it doesn't limit your view and you need it half the time to see in the dark. Finally, jumping is bollocks because the character jumps like he has ankle weights on and the auto grabbing of ledges sometimes doesn't work because of reasons.

The Story

The story to Outlast is one of the stupidest things in gaming history.  However I did take long breaks between each session so if I'm wrong about any of the points I'm about to make regarding the plot, please leave a comment and tell me how I'm wrong.  I'm willing to admit I forgot/misunderstood some things if you can give me a good reason.  It's still shit though.

I'm going to take a few characters from the plot and explain why they are dumb.  Doing this should cover all the major problems I have with the story.

Also Spoilers

1) The Wistleblower

The Whistleblower is the character we never see or really hear from.  The only thing we know or at least the only thing I remember is that he is the guy who tipped off the main character about what was going down at Mount Massive Asylum.  But think about all the things we see inside Mount Massive over the course of the game.

1) We see and hear about lots of other freelance journalists that entered the asylum and were killed by the inhabitants
2) One of the first encounters in the asylum is with a dead SWAT team.  The guy on the pike telling you to flee with his last breath
3) This means that this Whistleblower guy possibly tipped off the SWAT team, and then after they failed sent in ONE freelance journo with a camera and somehow hoped he would do better.

A fucking SWAT TEAM was taken out by probably one man with no weapons or intelligence (Chris Walker).  That means that the Whistleblower is a bit of a fucking moron.  But whatever, more stupid shit happens inside the asylum.

2) Chris Walker

His very existence doesn't make any fucking sense.  He is a big hulking tosser with no sense of tactics or stealth and is completely unarmed, yet somehow manages to take out a bunch of dudes with fucking rifles on his own and comes out of the whole ordeal completely unscathed. 

But let us assume that he did/could do that.  It's assumed by some people that the reason Chris Walker is trying to kill you is because he's trying to stop a new host for the Walrider.  This doesn't make any sense because how would he know the Walrider could do that?  The doctor in the wheelchair seemed pretty surprised when he discovered that it had taken over the protagonists body so HOW THE FUCK would a big hulking moron like Chris know that?!

Also if he is trying to stop a new host for the Walrider, why aren't all the nutters who are on the side of that priest guy trying to kill him?  The whole reason for the priest being there is to worship the Walrider, so why would he not be trying to take down an enemy of his faith?  I know he's a big strong guy but the priest had a fucking legion of nutters with shivs at his disposal, I'm sure they could have taken him down, he's not invincible.

3) The Walrider and Billy Hope

I'm going to bullet point these ones because this side of the story is so stupid it makes my head spin

- The Walrider is a swarm of NANOMACHINES controlled by some dudes fucking lucid dreams.  This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

-If they are controlled by Billy, how the fuck do they continue to function AFTER the protagonist killed Billy

-If the Walrider can function without Billy, why does it need to "infect" or "possess" the protagonist?  It could have just killed him

-But let's assume it needs a host and the last point was done as a last ditch effort at self preservation while Billy was dying.  The protagonist is gunned down by a team of dudes right at the end so surely it would shut down because A) The new host is fucking dead and B) I'm going to assume that the protagonist can't lucid dream

-Finally, if it is fucking nanomachines (a thing created by SCIENCE!) why does it need a traumatised host?  Couldn't they just work on the nanites to make them less awkward to fucking use.

So that's it, Outlast is a shit game.  I'll be doing another post soon about survival horror at large so watch this space.

Outlast Part 15 [FINAL!]

FINALLY! It's fucking over

Don't forget that you can send a charity donation to the Alzheimer's Society and request a playthrough or put something towards one of the donation incentives on the right hand side of this page!

Tau Plays Outlast Part 14

Well this one went a lot better

Tau Plays Outlast Part 13

Everything that could have gone wrong with this episode did.  The level itself AND the upload to YouTube.  Goddamnit

Tau Plays Outlast 12

You may be noticing that I'm hammering the YouTube content recently! Well I'm hoping to get this Outlast playthrough done soon so I can move on to the next game.  Enjoy the vid! Like and subscribe and all that good stuff!

Tau Plays Outlast Part 11

Well I lose a key for a while but it's OK, we get there in the end.

Tau Plays Outlast Part 10

I've had a rather busy weekend, so time to settle back into the blogging with a new video!

Tau Plays Outlast Part 9

I'm sick of this game treating me like a fucking moron

Identity Gaming Content Update

Well recently blog content has been a little bit thin on the ground.  I'm not including the large amounts of speed running I've been doing on stream when I say that because that's not something that you could ever come back to (unless I PB and upload it). 

So today, instead of raging about the industry or talking about a specific game, I'd just take a little bit of time to tell you what's going on with the blog and what might be coming up soon.

Donation Incentives

Let's start with this one since this is the stuff that people have paid for and therefore it's the most important.

You may have noticed that a couple of the incentives have been met for a while but I've not done them.  Well I just want to put your minds at rest and let you know that I've not forgotten.

For 1000 Words, I was initially waiting to get to FFX-2 and sing it live on stream, but because I took up speed running as a hobby and that takes a great deal of time, it's taking me a while to get through those Final Fantasy games.  So, hopefully some time soon I'll be heading to a Karaoke booth and performing it there instead and it'll go on YouTube shortly after.  The only problem there is that my wife and I are quite busy even at weekends so we haven't had much time to hit a karaoke booth in a good while.  Next time I go, it'll be the first song I do!

Also the Japan Poop Story and the Habanero Pepper on stream need to be done.  It's basically impossible to find peppers in this damn country, so I'm going to use the hottest death sauce I can get my hands on.  Also I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and do those goals together but a few of the donators want to see it live and it's proving rather difficulty to sync schedules but as soon as we do that'll get done.

I'm also planning to add a bunch of new incentives next month, so keep an eye out for that and keep the donations coming!

Current Content

Outlast

I'm hoping to get this game done before the 16th of this month.  I was hoping to have it done sooner but then I got wrapped up in speed running Megaman X and THEN I got a cold, so my recording schedule got messed up.  Sorry for the delay and I'm not trying to make excuses but the game is kind of shitty too....which doesn't help matters.

Gone Home

A while ago a reader donated £25 for a Gone Home playthrough and even donated the game itself, so big shoutouts to you.  This is the next game to be played after Outlast and I'll be sure to try and get through this steaming pile as fast as I can.

The Japan Gamer

I have penned a bunch of episodes for the Japan Gamer, but putting them together is taking longer than I imagined since it's not a one man job, but you can expect quite a few individual game showcases coming pretty soon (I hope)

10 Minutes of Yaroze

I started this series while I was still in Sweden and once I moved to Japan it kind of fell to the wayside.  Well I want to rectify that and get some new episodes up, so expect some real strange PS1 indie nuggets soon.

New Content and Prize Givaways

The UFO Catchers

The UFO Catchers is a series I've been planning for a while now.  Basically me and a few buddies are going to hit a game centre at least once a month and try to win shit from the UFO catcher machines.  Anything we win will be put up for grabs via a charity raffle!  So if you're into anime or video game stuff, then you might want to get that donation money ready.  More details to follow.

Future Marathons 

Due to jobs and stuff, I've had trouble finding time for marathons.  That and my webcam is busted so I can't do any facecam stuff for the stream, which kind of sucks.  But SOON, I'm getting a new computer so the monthly marathons will come back real soon.  Also I'll make a prize available every marathon for donators, so get your wallets ready.

---

Well that's it then folks, that's all the updates for now.  On a side note I'm planning to rework the site a little bit to make the content easier to navigate, but I have no clue how to go about doing that so that might take a while until I can find some time to chat with people in the know.

Thanks for your understanding and support!  Keep the donations coming and I'll keep producing content for you to enjoy!

Tau Plays Outlast Part 8

Finally out of the sewer! Things escalated rather quickly after that....

Tau Plays Outlast Part 7

Sewer levels are never good....

Outlast Part 6

I'm going to be blunt....I don't like this game really.....still, I don't want to leave a playthrough unfinished!   Hopefully the ending will be so crazy good it makes my opinion do a 180.

Tau Plays Outlast Part 5

Well here comes the next part! Bit earlier than the last one too! I'm getting better at this.

Tau Plays Outlast Part 4

I made good on my plans and released the next part pretty quickly!

Tau Plays Outlast Part 3!

Sorry for the slow uploads on this thing, I got sick and I didn't want to upload any more until I knew I could carry on doing commentary for it.

Anyway, here it is! Hopefully there will be less of a break between this and the next one!

Tau Plays Outlast Part 2!

Here we are again with Outlast!  I have a bit of a moan about the jump scare nature of the game and then get brutally murdered!  ENJOY!