Games Media Is Busted

I've mentioned on this blog a number of times that I think games media is a giant steaming pile of horse crap.  I've commented on individual things, events or articles that have pissed me off but never on why I think games media as a whole is so bad.  This is A LOT wrong with this side of the industry so if I tried to go in too great detail then this blog post would never fucking end but to me there are 2 big reasons why games media sucks so bad so I'll talk about those.

1.  The Way They Make Money

So almost every games media site that I'm aware of make money via advertising sponsorships and then clicks on their page.  This in and of itself is not a terrible thing and I'm sure there are plenty of websites that do this without being crap.  The danger of a business model like this though is that your people are going to write things in order to generate those clicks that bring in the big bucks. 

I don't mind people writing articles for clicks if it is relevant to gaming.  You can hype up the newest Call of Duty all you fucking like, lots of people enjoy that series and if writing about that game brings in the money, then by all means.  But we have had a trend in the industry for the couple of years where writers are turning not only to huge titles but to outrage in order to generate the site traffic.

All these fucking articles that have popped up complaining about certain aspects of games that the writers have probably never played or all these idiots moaning about violence and sexism that is apparently rampant in the industry.  I'm almost 100% certain that there is at least a good handful of writers on these sites that don't actually believe this crap, but writing it is what brings the people to the site which in turns brings home the pay check.

It's all well and good complaining about this side of things but I'm no fucking businessman, I don't know how you could fix this side of things.  Like I said it's not a bad model on its own so I guess the only real solution is to hire writers who actually have a sense of pride in their work and aren't willing to write stupid drivel for traffic.  This of course leads me nicely into my second point which is

2.  The Writers

This is my biggest problem with games media, more so than wanking over AAA and stupid Buzzfeed style clickbait journalism.  The writers who are currently employed by games media are fucking trash, for the most part not in terms of writing ability but in knowledge about the industry they are writing about.  This has seemed to be the case for a very VERY long time with writers shamelessly praising certain aspects of big releases for doing shit that other games did fucking YEARS ago. 

This realization came to me a long time ago with the release of the first Halo.  After getting over my disgust for the fan base and all the fucking praise that the game got Halo is actually an enjoyable series.  But every single member of the games media writing about how it was "revolutionary"?  Holy shit are you crazy?  Before Halo, first person shooters were awesome with things like Doom, Duke and Quake.  They had puzzle solving, exploration, great weapon load outs and then Halo comes along and puts everything in a grey corridor with set piece battles and that's seen as a fucking step forward?!  Are you insane?  Halo did do a couple of things for the console FPS genre but it did more to ruin it than revolutionize it.

I think if you are a fan of the horror genre then the weakness in the knowledge of these people becomes most apparent.  ANYONE who gave The Evil Within or Silent Hill Downpour a positive review is a fucking idiot who doesn't understand what they are talking about.  Just look at the IGN review in particular of The Evil Within.  "Terrifying enemies" and "convoluted story".  Most of the enemies in that game are just fucking dudes and the story is only convoluted in the sense that it seems to have been writing by a fucking 6 year old who watched too many slasher movies.

All these writers who gave The Last of Us and fucking 10/10 are either pandering or fucking stupid.  I quite like that game really but it is in no way a fucking 10 on 10 game.  Hell, it's a fucking 3rd person, over the shoulder action game and I saw numerous people praising the games originality.  It's about as unoriginal as it gets but it's very well crafted, polished and is ultimately fun to play so a good 8 or 9 I could handle but a 10?!  You really want to claim that shit is perfect? 

This isn't to say that 100% of the writers in games media are clueless.  Hell, it'd be a little harsh to call most of them "clueless" but their expertise are not enough to be writing about certain things.  This is why small time YouTube reviewers have become so popular because instead of having some idiot chatting about a series or game that you really enjoy, you can go somewhere and get the specialist knowledge.

I think what I'm trying to say in a very long winded and stupid way is that the writers for games media write for money and to echo popular opinion rather than for the benefit of the consumer.

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There are many more issues than this with games media but these are the big 2 for me and they are very closely linked.  I'm too much of a huge dumbass to know how to fix it but really we live in an age where games media isn't really needed anyway.  If you want info on a game, go lookup some passionate youtuber or twitch streamer who will give you an honest and informed opinion because they love the games rather than because they want to make some money, it's that easy.

The Last of Us: Remastered Vs Persona 4 Golden

Somewhere buried in this blog, there's a post where I had a moan about The Last of Us Remastered.  I moaned because the idea of "remaking" or "remastering" games from the last gen is nothing more than a shitty cash grab to try and make people buy the same game twice. 

So I'm playing Persona 4 Golden on my Vita when I start thinking, what is it about The Last of Us on PS4 that makes me angry while P4G doesn't?  Both are games that aren't all that old except while TLoU feels like a shitty cash grab P4G doesn't.

Before I start, I just want to say I'm not commenting on the quality of The Last of Us as a game, the game is a'ite.  I don't think it's the second coming of Jesus or the best story ever written for a game but it plays well and it's fun.  I've also not played Remastered but I've spent a damn long time googling the version differences before I made this post and with what I found I can safely say, if you bought Remastered (after owning the original), you are a moron.  If you bought it on PS4 because you didn't own it on PS3, fair enough.

Anyway, let's start with what I found regarding TLoU: Remastered.  What I found is that Remastered comes with all the DLC, features a photo mode, some commentary and runs at a higher frame rate.  BIG FUCKIN' WHOOP.  I googled the price on Amazon too and they want fucking £35 goddamn pounds for this shit.  Are the added "features" in this version worth another full price sale?  I don't fucking think so.  The big fucking hubub seems to be that it runs at 60fps on PS4 but is there any reason I couldn't have done that on PS3?  I'm pretty sure Metal Gear Rising runs at 60fps and that shits a lot more hectic than TLoU so what the fuck is going on there? 

I suppose you could argue that with all the DLC thrown in, it's kind of worth it but fuck the DLC.  The single player add on is like 2 hours long and who gives a fuck about the multiplayer?  There are much better games if you want multiplayer shooting. 

So what about Persona 4 Golden?  Why is that so much better?

Well fuck, if I tried to list of the reasons it would take all day because there's A LOT of shit going on with P4G.  While graphically there isn't much going on, there are so many things added to the game itself it'll make your fucking head spin.

There's extra dungeons, extra social links, extra arcanas for your monsters, extra cutscenes, new dialogue, re-worked combat, extra anime scenes for those who like that and this is just a small selection of things.  When I first fired up P4G I was expecting the same thing as the PS2 version but I ended up getting all this extra shit for no extra cost.

Now let's talk cost.  If you happen to live in the UK and you want to play P4G, it only costs about £13 off Amazon.  £13! Hell, you could buy the PS3 version of The Last of Us and get P4G with the money you saved.  Persona 4 isn't fucking around either, this is a meaty game with tons of shit to do that will last you way WAY longer.  Then, if you're a perfectionist, you even get some replay value for your £13 and there's even an insane difficulty mode for the true SMT masters.

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I'm expecting someone to pop up at some point and call me a prick for ragging on TLoU: Remastered but it pisses me off because it's a cashgrab of the most transparent kind.  Go look at the wikipedia page and it says that development on Remastered began straight after they finish the original game so obviously Naughty Dog think their customers are fucking idiots and judging from sales figures, a lot are.  Like I said, if you bought it because you didn't own the original and thought you'd get the "better" version, then fair enough I guess but remaking a game from one generation ago is fucking disgusting and it shows me how little respect some of this AAA game devs and publishers have for their customers.

Finally, before anyone calls me a hypocrite for buying P4G, all my PS2 games were stolen and I lost my original PS2 copy.  But even if that wasn't the case, P4G is still worth buying because it has tons of extra shit for a super low price. 

Your Race, Gender or Sexuality Doesn't Fucking Matter!!!!

Well fuckin' shit, I called it didn't I?  E3 2014 isn't even fucking over yet and I'm already hearing news of "outcry" from twats with too much time on their hands who don't know what they are talking about and hate fun.

Before I continue, let me put a big fat disclaimer on this post.  I am NOT Anti-Gay, Anti-Women or a racist and the fact that I have to spell this out for a number of people is fucking sad.  I'm not going to judge a person based on the colour of their skin, their genitals or what they decide to do with said genitals.  If I call you a fuckin' asshole, it's because you are being a goddamn fucking asshole and something as base as your sexuality, race or gender doesn't even fucking factor in.

Now that I've got that out of the way, let me address the first bit of outcry I got tipped off about and that was regarding the dude in the picture at the top of the post.  He is the villain from Farcry 4 and he's a flamboyant warlord type that goes around in a pink suit and has a foppish haircut.  The outcry comes from the fact that he MIGHT (Yes, MIGHT is the key fucking word because no one actually knows) be gay.

Well so fucking what? Villains can't be wealthy warlords? What kind of fucked up discrimination is that?  Well seriously the argument is that because he's the bad guy it's perpetuating and image of gays being "the bad guys" of society and teaches people that we should kill them off or some shit.  We all know that's bullshit and the only reason they are piping up about it is for attention and so that they have another wonky soapbox to stand on regarding the agenda.  But it's not just bullshit, it's fucking hypocritical!

[INCOMING SPOILERS]

This is Ellie from The Last of Us, as if you didn't fucking already know that since this game gets plastered everywhere.  In the DLC it was revealed that she was into chicks which is fine.  People were happy with this character being homosexual because she's the good guy and obviously they felt that the way Ellie was portrayed in The Last of Us painted homosexuals in a good light.

So let me get this straight....You're OK with good guys being homosexuals but when it's a bad guy it's a big no no?  Fuck off with your double standard!  You can't have it one when and then complain when it's another.

If you're going to complain about that kind of thing then as a British person I have way more fucking right to complain than you guys do.  Almost every villain in every action movie ever is some stuck up British dude, but you don't see us complaining do you?  Assholes

So now that I've complained about that, let's move on to outcry number 2 which is the whole thing about female characters in the new Assassins Creed.

I've talked about this issue before, maybe not on the blog but I discussed it with a few people with the game Deep Down which had a similar issue.  From a plot perspective and a development one, there was a reason for not including female playable characters in that game and it seems to be a similar issue here.  I don't care if you think the idea of including female models in the game to be used as player characters is too much work is bollocks, that's their story and they are sticking to it.

But at the end of the day, so fucking what?  Assassins Creed is a game about sneaking around and stabbing people in the face, who gives a flying rats arse if the protagonist or any other character in that game has a pair of tits or not?  As long as the sneaking is good and the stabbing is fun then who gives a shit about what gender the characters are.

Imagine if I took Doom and changed the little face at the bottom of the screen from a man to a woman.  Would it affect ANYTHING in that game? Of course it fucking wouldn't, it would still be fucking Doom and it would still be an amazing game.  So if we take Arno, the protagonist from AC: Unity and call him Arlina and give him a pair of tits, NOTHING FUCKING CHANGES.  You are STILL jumping on buildings being a sneaky bugger and you are STILL stabbing people in the face so WHO FUCKING CARES YOU WHINY PIECE OF SHIT.

There are rare examples of games that have included a characters sexuality or gender to actually mean something to the story.  Metal Gear Solid 3 is a good example of this.

This is Volgin, the bad guy and he just happens to be a fucking psychopath who gets off on sexually torturing people.  However, he also happens to be bisexual but in THIS case, that fact is an important part of his character.  He's not just some chauvinist torturing women for kicks, he's a fucking nutter torturing EVERYONE for kicks and it doesn't matter if he's taking his electro powers to men, women or even fucking dogs, he gets off on it all and THIS makes him just that little bit more intimidating as a villain.  It doesn't paint bisexuals badly it paints HIM, Volgin, the character, as a total nutter and that's what they were going for.

Unfortunately this kind of thing is pretty rare.  Even characters that people cite as "Strong female leads" are completely interchangeable.   Faith, from Mirrors Edge for example is nothing more than a camera on legs that runs on buildings.  It could be Fred for all we care and it would still be a fun game, nothing would change.

95% of the time, the race, gender or sexuality of a character in a game doesn't fucking matter.  Developers don't hate gays, women and they sure as hell aren't racist so they aren't out JUST to offend you.  They are serving a market, which is mainly made up of straight males and that's why games are made the way they are.  If you don't like it you have 2 choices, fuck off and stop moaning OR make your own game to suit what you want to see.  We live in an age where crowd funding is super popular so getting capitol for a project like that isn't an unreasonable idea.

Finally I know, I fucking KNOW that not everyone who happens to be gay or female or whatever who plays games are like this, I'm very much aware that it's a vocal minority of idiots and it's sad because I can promise you there are a lot of people not quite as level headed as me who has it out for all of you because the caustic complaints of the few are giving the rational many a bad name.

What's even worse is that things like women's issues and gay rights are an actual thing that needs support in certain places.  There are countries where it's still illegal to be gay and women still get circumcisions which is fucking disgusting and THAT'S the kind of thing that needs to stop.

So stop moaning about fucking video games and go do something worth while.  There's enough of you to maybe make a difference if you put your mind to it, stop being so fucking petty.

Don't Make a Movie of The Last of Us!

I like to chat a lot of shit about The Last of Us with my buddies, but I do actually think it's a fairly good game.  It just gets a lot of undeserved praise but that doesn't make the game bad, it just makes the people who give it that praise look like idiots.  It's a very well polished and enjoyable experience, but all the buzz that surrounded the game when it came out was a bit much.

So word on the street is that some kind of Last of Us movie is in the works.  This is a TERRIBLE idea and should be scrapped right away.  I'm not saying this because of any negative opinions I might hold about the game, but video game movies have a habit of being absolutely terrible.

But The Last of Us is one of those games that's bordering on being a movie anyway, so surely it would be easily adaptable for the big screen, right?  Well even if that was true, what would be the point?  The game is already pretty cinematic and if you do a quick google search of the movie, all they are planning to do is adapt the games story to the movie, thus making the whole thing pointless.

If you're a fan of The Last of Us, you've already played the fucking story, why would you want to see it again but with all the interactivity taken away?  Seems like a complete waste of effort to me.  This is the problem with almost every video game movie adaptation; it just turns into a shitty version of the game it's trying to copy.

Now maybe, if the movie was going to be an expansion to the games story then there would be SOME merit there, but even that is made completely pointless because Naughty Dog can do and have done that with DLC.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that this movie is a complete waste of time and the only thing it will accomplish is to piss off fans of the game.  The game is already cinematic enough and people enjoy playing it, why waste all this money creating something that will only serve to annoy the fan base?  Why not channel all that effort into an original movie or some kind of spin off to expand on the world of the game?

But no, they are going to go ahead with this movie just so they can squeeze some money out of the more gullible members of the fan base.  If it ends up being an amazing movie then I'll be genuinely surprised but I think I have more chance of winning the lottery or something.

Who Cares About VGX?

Here we go again folks!  It's getting to the end of the year, so it's now time once again for everyone to start putting their game of the year lists together!

If anyone doesn't know what VGX is it's some video game award thing hosted by Spike TV and it involves talking about games for a bit, and then announcing a load of awards given to whoever made the best of whatever category they are pushing.  The show is produced by Geoff Keighley, the man known to the masses as "Dorito Pope", so you know it's probably a load of bollocks.

Now when I woke up this morning it was already underway but having a quick look at my twitter turned me right off the whole thing.  The first thing I saw was that Nintendo announced a new Donkey Kong game, which I thought was cool but apparently the rest of the internet was just complaining about it.  The day has come when people are cursing a new DKC game....and that's a sad day.

So aside from the Dorito Pope the whole thing was hosted by Joel Mchale, who I'm not familiar with but he's not much of a game fan by the looks of things.  From what I saw and heard about the goings on, he spent most of his time looking like he didn't want to be there but he did manage to ask a couple of really awkward questions to certain people, which gave me a little chuckle.

Now I have a bit of a problem with these kinds of award shows because the winners are always really really predictable.  The game of the year winner at VGX was, surprise surprise, Grand Theft Auto 5.  Not that I'm saying that there's anything wrong with GTA5, I've not played it yet, it's probably a good game at the very least however the game of the year really can only go to like 1 of maybe 3 games off the top of my head.  Most of the big review sites will probably give their game of the year award to either The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite or Grand Theft Auto 5. 

In fact, I'll make a bet with people right now, for every major gaming site that gives it's GOTY to something different, I'll give £5 to charity, so make sure you email me and make me aware because I'm not going to go hunting for it.

Not that those 3 are bad games, they are all passable titles, well put together with lots of polish and all that jazz but the fact that every gaming site will give their awards to one of these three is a little boring and sort of smells a bit of that whole "paid review" thing that gets talked about sometimes.  I just wish that they would be more open about what their game of the year could be, so that when I watch I don't just fast forward through nominees because I know exactly what they are going to pick.

I heard though that fucking Gone Home of all goddamn things won indie game of the year.  THIS I don't fucking agree with, because it's barely even qualifies as a game.  If you want to tell me that Gone Home was better that Rouge Legacy, Don't Starve, Gunpoint, Antichamber and many others (that's just going off my sidebar) then take your shitty opinion and fuck off out of my face, I reject your awful taste in video games.  I'm not sure if it actually did though, so if I'm wrong I'll be happy to discover that.

I didn't ignore the VGX completely but what I did see seemed low budget, badly made bullshit.  The reveal about DKC was cool and I didn't see the others but the awards were so predictable I ended up closing the tab and playing fucking Gynoug on the Mega Drive.  Do people actually give a flying fuck about these award shows? They know which handful of games is probably going to win so why bother?

Although if the VGX did one thing right it bored me enough to make me get up from my computer and work through my PS3 backlog for a few hours.