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

Best Games of 2020 (That I played)

 Its New Years goddamn Day and therefore it's time to look back at all the stuff I played last year and pick a few games to say a short few things about.  Before I get into it though let me just make clear that this is not a "best games of 2020 list", this is a random assortment of shit of games that I PLAYED LAST YEAR.  Meaning stuff I talk about might not be from 2020, I just played it in 2020

Got it?

Good!

Lets go!

Best Game of 2020

 Looking back at the list of games I beat last year, I didn't actually beat that many games from 2020 so I really have no choice but to give it to Final Fantasy 7 Remake.  While it's sort of annoying that it's being split up into a trilogy, the things they have done with the game play and story are, so far, good enough to have me wanting more.  I'm looking forward to seeing where they go with parts 2 and 3 after the ending of the first one and I'm even more looking forward to seeing more of High Definition Tifa Midriff

Runner up goes to Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD Remaster.  I might have put it in my best game slot but its a remake of a game that came out in 2003 so even though I love it, it can fuck right off. 

Best non-2020 Game wot I played in 2020 (for the first time)

This award is for a game that I played this year, that was a first playthrough but didn't come out in 2020, and the winner is 

Challenging yet satisfying game play? Check

Killer soundtrack? Check

Built in counters for hitless/deathless challenge runs? Double check

Furi was easily one of the best games I played this year with its easy to understand yet hard to master game play and it's quirky bosses it pulls you in pretty quick.  Even after you beat it though, the extra difficulty level that comes with new attack patterns to deal with makes a second playthrough even more fun than the first.  It does an annoying thing where during the story you have to slow-walk between each stages but after the first play you can just select bosses off a list and avoid all of that so I guess it can be forgiven.  If you haven't played Furi yet, do it

Most Pleasant Surprise

When I first fired up Illbleed during the (still ongoing at time of writing) Horror Gauntlet, I'll be honest, I kind of hated it.  It has a weird brand of game play where damage can quickly spiral out of control and you can be left completely fucked and hidden traps that have to be marked before passing them can mean that at first, you'll be blundering into game overs constantly, but once Illbleed clicks, it becomes a really enjoyable experience.  With its absolutely bonkers plot about a killer theme park and terrible voice acting you're not only in for a challenging "horror" game but an absolute laugh riot to boot 

Worst Game of 2020

2020 was a special year for me, because Outlast 2 wasn't just the worst game I played that year, it was the worst game I have ever played IN. MY. LIFE.  

Takeshis Challenge, Super/Virtual Hydlide, Action 52 or any other shitty game you care to mention PALE in comparison to the absolute train wreck that is Outlast 2.  I plan to do a longer article about this absolute shit show but to summarize, Outlast 2 is a poorly written, poorly designed "horror" game that relies on nothing more than cheap shock value which will leave you frustrated and angry rather than terrified.  The first game was already a gigantic pile of shit and Red Barrels really outdid themselves on this one.  

Do no play Outlast 2, stay well away.  I could write a dissertation on everything that's wrong with this one and that's what I plan to do but until then just don't play it, don't even think about it.  Some people say that playing video games is a waste of life, and while I don't agree with that sentiment at all, I think that they may have a point when it comes to this one.

Runner up goes to shitty, generic open world zombie game Days Gone for being a boring buggy mess, but still leagues better than Outlast 2

2021: A Year For Extreme MegaTen Hype

I'm a bit of a cynical bugger when it comes to new releases, I sort of just assume that everything that's coming out is shit so that when I buy it and it ends up being shit I don't feel too put out.  As a result of this cynicism I tend to ignore things like Nintendo Directs because I don't give a shit about anything they have to say and if something interesting does happen either someone will tell me or I'll just see it on a shelf at some point after release day.  But good lord do I regret not checking out the Nintendo Direct last night because HO-LY SHIT there was some good news to come out of that one.

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne was a game on PS2 that came out in 2003 and as quite frankly one of the best games on the system.  For the completely uninitiated the game is sort of like grim-dark Pokémon only the goal of a Shin Megami Tensei game isn't so much to collect them all but to survive whatever apocalypse is going on and maybe punch some Gods in the face.  You negotiate with and collect demons to put them in your party and fight with them in a sort of Pokémon-esque way but that's pretty much where the similarities end.

One of the reasons I personally am so happy about this news is because Nocturne is a game that's stupidly expensive to buy here in Japan.  Over here there were 3 versions of the game released, a standard version, a 'Maniax' edition and a third one that featured Raidou from the Devil Summoner series instead of Dante from Devil May Cry.  The standard edition is pretty fairly priced but it's lacking a lot of the features that the Maniax one does.  The Maniax edition, the one we got over in the west, costs about $200 and the one with Raidou costs even more than that.  This remake version is going to apparently cost $60 and is the Raidou version of the game which means that my wallet is just as happy as I am.

But that's not all!  Shin Megami Tensei 5 also got another trailer and it's extremely exciting to see that the game hasn't been forgotten about despite not hearing anything about it for a VERY long time.  The first announcement for SMT5 was the only reason I bought a Switch in the first place.  I don't give a flying rat fuck about Zelda or Mario or whatever tired Nintendo IP is being churned out but I care very much about being able to play SMT5 on the day it comes out.

Not only is this news extremely exciting but it's also extremely funny.  One quick look at Twitter and the amount of crying from various parties had me giggling all throughout my day.  Nintendo fans were butthurt because it wasn't Smash news or something, despite the fact they very clearly stated it was a partner presentation and Persona fans (an SMT spinoff series designed for braindead twats, myself included) were EXTRA butthurt because they have been clamoring for a Switch port of Persona 5 for a good while now.  There was even a small group of butthurt Persona fans crying about how P5Scramble, a Dynasty Warrriors knockoff set in the Persona 5 universe hasn't been localized yet.

July 21st was an extremely good day for MegaTen fans and we can only hope that the success of SMT3 remake will maybe trigger a remake of Digital Devil Saga or maybe, the best game in the franchise, Jack Brothers.  We can dream

Dragons Crown: Money Grub Edition

So I was talking with my friend the other day and he said that all I do is complain on here, like I'm full of nothing but rage and negativity.  This may be partly true so I planned a bunch of blog topics so that the next handful of posts would be nothing but sunshine and rainbows but then I saw this and now I can't help complaining again.

Dragons Crown is a game that was released in 2013 for the PS3 and Vita and was a bit of a side scrolly hack and slashy affair and if there's one thing I can't be mad about it's the game itself.  If you haven't played Dragons Crown I would totally suggest picking up a copy and giving it a spin, it's really fucking fun. 

So ATLUS did this a while ago with a similar game called Odin Sphere which was awesome.  The original Odin Sphere came out on PS2 and playing a PS2 game on a modern TV can look a bit crappy, which was a shame for a game with such a beautiful art style.  Not only did it get a bit of a facelift though, it came with some extra content and tweaks to game play which made it worth buying.  I have no problem re releasing an older game if it has some, even just a little, extra or different shit in it to warrant the purchase.

Dragons Crown on the other hand is a different tale.  This is a game from just the last generation that looks just fine on the PS3.   It's not like the PS4 can do all that much to improve the look of that game really, the generational face lift is not needed here.  It feels like that sort of pointless remake that's put out just  to milk a bit of extra money from the fans, kind of like the "HD" version of The Last of Us.  Not only that though but from what I can tell after reading some of the news stories about this game, there is NOTHING new in terms of content.  The only thing I can find is that it contains all the original games original features.  It's a fucking sad day when the fact that we're not having anything removed from a remake is noteworthy.

Unless for some weird reason you don't own a PS3 (or a Vita), don't buy the £50 pro edition of the game.  Just go find a PS3 or Vita version in a store or on Amazon or something.  At time of writing the original PS3 version is available on Amazon for like £30 so save yourself the money and get the exact same game at a much lower price.

Finally the thing that irks me is the name.  It's not Dragons Crown: Remaster, it's Dragons Crown Pro Edition.  With a name like that you'd expect it to be tweaked to be harder or something.  Like, the PS2 SMT RPG Lucifer's Call (Or Nocturne depending on where you're from) in Japan has something called a "maniacs edition".  This is the version that featured slightly tougher combat, an extra hard as fuck side quest and Dante from Devil May Cry.  There's nothing "pro" about this version over the other one, it's just the same fucking game with some slightly better graphics.

Anyway, go try Dragons Crown because it's fucking sick, just don't pay out the nose for this version and grab it on PS3.  ATLUS have been good in the past with shit like P4G so don't let them get away with this crap.