Games Journalism Strikes Again

So this is a thing that happened quite a while ago and I wanted to comment on it sooner but I've had another one of those goddamn busy periods so it's taken me until now to get anything down.

So the story is that some shitty gaming news website called VG24/7 went down to TGS and they played around a bit with the Uncharted remastered thing at the Sony booth.  Then they come back and they write an article about how they think Uncharted 4 is too formulaic or some shit like that.  Except like I just said, they weren't playing Uncharted 4, they were playing the remastered version of 2 for PS4 but because no one has a fucking clue what they are on about they thought it was a new game.

So Sony call them out on their stupid bullshit and they pull the article, fair enough.  But the thing that really brings my piss to a boil is the weak as fuck apology they made on their website shortly after.  If you google search the issue you can find it pretty easily but I'm not linking that sorry excuse for a website here.

At first everything seems OK, they just talk about how they made a mistake and they immediately pulled the article but shortly after that they write the most sorry, shitty, lying excuse I've ever fucking seen.  They basically start talking about how Tokyo Game Show is a very busy place and the signage on the games isn't in English and that is this reason this whole thing happened at all.

BULL. FUCKING. SHIT.

I was there at TGS on a fucking public day and sure, it was busy but not busy enough to fuck you up to the point you can't read things.  Also the signage not being in English?  Fuck off with that because that's just not true.  Obviously there are a lot of things written in Japanese with it being the TOKYO Game Show and all but I went to that Sony booth and the title of the game was written IN ENGLISH ON A GODDAMN CIRCULAR BLUE NEON SIGN.

Hell, most of the titles of the games around the Sony area were written in English.  Even games like fucking Star Ocean had their title presented in English but I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to present that as a new Final Fantasy.  But you know what?  Language shouldn't even be a fucking issue here, why are you sending someone to the TOKYO Game Show if they don't know any fucking Japanese?  If you can't find someone who speaks and reads it at least send them along with someone who does.

I've been saying for a long long time that these gaming news websites are mostly trash.  If you want news on latest games or what is happening with your favorite developer, go and follow their official accounts on social media or something.  The only thing gaming news sites are probably good for is delivering purely factual information on certain events like PT getting cancelled or Kojima leaving Konami, it's hard to fuck articles like that up I guess.

I've believed for a long time that the people who write for these sites know the bare minimum they have to know about games and the games industry in order to do their job.  Hell, I've seen some reviews and articles that make me think that maybe certain writers don't actually anything about the topic they are writing about, it's sad.

I guess we should be thankful now where we don't have to pay attention to these guys and there are things like YouTube, Twitter, Blogs and other outlets where actually knowledgeable and passionate individuals can write their stuff and share it out.  Go find those guys, don't give clicks to these know-nothing idiots.

The TGS 2015 Roundup!

Well I'm back in Nagoya and I'm recovered from my post show drinking hangover so now I'm ready to share my thoughts on the Tokyo Game Show.  While I had a lot of fun at the show walking around and staring at all the shiny new games, I was a little disappointing and there isn't really all that much I came out feeling excited about.

So, let's gets started with the good stuff. 

The first thing we saw as we came into the entrance this time was the Playstation indie booth thing which contained a number of games made by different people from all sorts of backgrounds.  2 games of note that I got my hands on were Slashy Hero and Illan.

Slashy Hero is a dungeon crawling game for mobile platforms where you control a little dude during Halloween slicing up monsters for candy and collecting loot to progress.  It's free to play, fun to muck about with and the system of changing costume to modify stats reminded me of Costume Quest a little bit.  However, Costume Quest sucked a massive cock and Slashy Hero is actually pretty good.  It's available for free next month and I'd totally recommend checking it out.

A little later in the day I got my hands on Illan: Shades of Memories which was a really cool puzzle platformer for PC.  You control a cute little black thing called Illan and you must solve puzzles and do some light platforming to progress.  Really fun and kind of relaxing to play but taxed my brain just enough to avoid becoming boring, nice and chill.   Right now Illan is not available for purchase BUT if you are interested then it is available for voting on Steam Greenlight, so go hit that vote button and get this thing on the store.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=507636802

After we left the indie booth we looked at the cosplayers for a while which was your same old attractive Japanese girls wearing either not much or incredibly elaborate costumes.  I snapped a few shots but right now my camera is inside my bag and I'm too lazy to get it out, so maybe I'll upload later.

Next we came across Star Wars Battlefront which looked absolutely INSANE

I don't really need to say much about this one since people are familiar with other games in the series and there's already a lot of excitement.  That said, this thing looks INSANELY fun and I can't wait to get my hands on it.  Tokyo Game Show are very uptight when it comes to taking pictures and videos on the show floor but I managed to get a minute or so of footage of the game play so I'm just going to let that do all the talking for me.

Moving on from there we saw the Sony booth which had a number of cool looking games including a new Star Ocean, some JRPG thing called Exist Archive, new content for Bloodborne, a collection of the Uncharted games and a whole host of VR stuff which unfortunately we couldn't get our hands on.  Other cool stuff included a new game play video for Persona 5 and a remake of a PS2 game I really enjoyed called Odin Sphere. 

The final thing to jump out of my mind was a title called Nioh

A game being developed by Koei Tecmo and what essentially looks like Asian Dark Souls which is not a bad thing.  I'd never heard of it before but apparently it was showcased back in 2005 and then vanished for some reason and now it's resurfaced at TGS which is cool.  Game looks really fun and is just another reason that I need to go out and buy a fucking PS4 already.

Now let's talk about the not so great stuff about the show.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of mobile gaming, I don't mind giving the occasional title a try and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised but there was SO MUCH fucking mobile at TGS this year.  You couldn't walk 5 fucking minutes along the show floor without seeing a booth that had a fucking iPad hooked up to it.

I can understand why companies may see mobile as a decent platform because almost everyone has phone so your game will reach a much wider audience.  However, you can't get a decent experience from a game on a mobile device.  Mobile is perfect for games like the aforementioned Slashy Hero because that's the kind of game I can muck about with on a train and then put away when I get to work.  But playing RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest or god forbid even trying to play FPS games on a mobile platform?  FUCK. THAT.

Call me a purist, call me a snob, that's fine but Tokyo Game Show was fucking drowning in mobile stuff and I couldn't help but feel like it was a bit of a shame.  Hell, one of the biggest games at show was a fucking social RPG from 2013

Now granted, since returning from the show I have downloaded and given Granblue Fantasy a go and it is one of those rare mobile games that is actually pretty decent.  Hell, it even has Nobuo Uematsu and Hideo Minaba of Final Fantasy fame behind it so I guess that has to say something about the amount of effort in it's production.  That said, the game is from fucking 2013, why is it so prominently displayed at a big games con 2 years later?!  It's not new, I go there to see new shit, not to wank over above average phone RPGs from 2 years ago...

Konami was also a fucking disgrace this year

When I arrived at the booth my eyes were greeted with a football (soccer) game, a baseball game and 4 girls (admittedly rather pretty) dancing around and lip syncing to some shitty Japanese J-Pop song.  We were so bored and disgusted that we left after a short time but upon googling something I remember seeing in the background of the dancing girls there WAS actually a game being talked about.

The game is called Tokyo Xanadu, being produced for the Vita and actually looks like it could be kind of fun.  However I wouldn't have fucking know that if I hadn't remembered the title that was hidden away behind 4 girls dancing about.  Fuck you Konami, you're a fucking mess.

The last thing that kind of ticked me off was the content for The Last Guardian

All they had was some fucking projection of the dog-eagle thing that you could stand in front of and it would kind of react to your movements and a short demo video of footage that we had seen months ago.  I'm excited for this game but what was on display at the show was disappointing.

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So that's it folks, my thoughts on TGS 2015.  Not completely shitty but definitely not as good as it was last year.  Few things to be excited about and some cool indie games made it worth while.  Here's hoping that next years show will bring much more excitement. 

I'm not sure if I wrote about everything, I'm going mainly off the top of my head, if I remember anything extra I'll throw it up on twitter.

Update Time! Tokyo Gameshow 2014!

You may have noticed that posts up to now have been a little sporadic.  Don't worry, I'm not giving up on the blog or anything like that but I've just been very busy having a wedding party.  Due to the fact I had visitors coming from all over Japan/the world my time for blogging/gaming was extremely limited and considering that I have spent almost every evening of the last 2 weeks or so drinking heavily I've not been in the best mindset for blogging.

Still though, my wedding party is all done with so with any luck I'll be back to my usual routine of daily posts and livestreams.  However, I have recently got a new job and I have to move to Tokyo for a month for training but I've been told that the hotels I am staying in all have internet connections so I should still be able to update regularly.

The first thing I am doing when I arrive in Tokyo in the morning is heading to Tokyo Game Show to see all the fancy new shit flying around so expect some kind of long post or maybe even a vlog detailing my adventures at this yearly gaming extravaganza! 

For now though, I have to hit the hay and wake up early for my Shinkansen tomorrow.  Watch this space

Not Getting on the Hype Train

With Tokyo Game Show stuff filling up all the gaming websites that I usually browse through, I thought now would be a good chance to talk about game hype and why I don't bother with it 90% of the time.

First let's start with what I like to do.  I usually head over to one of the many sites that provide me with gaming news and information and check out announcements and stuff like that.  Once I learn that a upcoming game exists, that's it, I'm done.  For most games I don't ever read more into them than that. Sure, I might watch a trailer or two to see what it looks like, but I don't like to get behind these huge advertising campaigns that some games have and get super hyped for something before I've even had a chance to play it.

The reason I try to read as little as possible on upcoming titles is that a common complaint I hear is that a certain game "didn't live up to expectations" so I figure, the less you know about a game, the less expectation you have and then you don't get the pangs of disappointment when it sucks.  On top of that, if the game does end up being really really good, you feel extra happy for getting a pleasant surprise.

It's true that I don't do this for every game, but the majority of games I try to follow as little as possible until after they have been released.  I don't want a marketing campaign giving me preconceptions as to how awesome I should think it should be, I want to form my own goddamn opinion by actually playing the game.

So before I finish I just want to clarify that this doesn't mean I bury my head in the sand and ignore everything that's put out on a game after the initial announcement.  Reading news regarding a games development is not the same as following the hype but there is a very thin line.

I'm quite tired and I'm expecting to read this in the morning and getting a faceful of twaddle, but you're intelligent people, you know what I'm at least trying to say.