Sick of this shit

I can't go one fucking day, ONE FUCKING DAY without having to hear some politically correct social justice bullshit being spouted by some wanker on the internet.  I shouldn't have to rant about this stuff this many fucking times, goddamnit.

So what's the story?  The story is that Kotaku writer Patricia Hernandez is fucking at it again with her bullshit.  I already fucking hate Kotaku enough as it is, and if you want the article just google Blood Dragon gay joke and it'll pop up, but I'm not linking that shit.

Anyway, at the start of the game there is an exchange between two characters where one of them implies that his buddy likes to be with men in a romantic way in order to shut the dude up since he keeps mouthing off about his own perfection.  Apparently, calling someone gay is now really really harmful!  You might hurt someones feelings with that shit and then they'll be all sad....

FUCK. OFF.  No seriously, just get fucked.

Back in my school days people would call each other gay all the fucking time but that doesn't mean any of us are homophobic.  It's the same with this fucking game, just because one guy implied the other was gay doesn't mean that the writer or the entire development team are a bunch of gay hating macho men, it was just a joke.

I bet I could quiz a bunch of gay people on this section of the dialogue in this game and I would bet money on not a single one being offended and I'd be willing to bet quite a large sum.  If you are seriously offended by this kind of shit you need to step back and seriously reconsider your own life because something has gone horribly wrong.

There really should have been only two reactions to that line which are "Heh, he got told" or "That wasn't funny".  Not flying off the handle writing a huge article on the potential damage it could have done to the gay community.  What's even worse is that she even had an interview with the developer and writes the article in such a way that makes him sound like he's a gay hating ass hole who's trying to justify his in game hate-talk.  Not true and Patricia Hernandez is a fucking talentless hack.

Dean Evans is not homophobic.  This game is not homophobic.  Patricia Hernandez IS a fucking talentless loser just trying to stir up controversy because otherwise she'll have nothing of substance to write about.  Try seeing something ACTUALLY offensive and then realise how one little shit joke isn't really anything to dwell on. 

No more social justice bullshit, just let me enjoy fucking video games.

Patapon

You know it saddens me that games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 get all the praise it gets when it's just another bland military shooter, and then games like Patapon barely get any attention at all because it's got cute characters and gameplay that doesn't involve shooting things in the face....

My bitterness aside, Patapon is a game on the PSP that I've been playing recently that is sort of hard to put into one genre.  It's kind of a strategy game, kind of an action game and kind of a rhythm game all at the same time.
So the deal is that you are an drum playing God known to the Patapons as "Almighty", and using your drums you must guide your Patapon army to a place called Earthend so they can go and visit a thing called IT.  The Patapons pilgrimage to see IT is sort of their entire purpose in life, but there is a rival clan called the Zigatons who have their own prophecy that involves stopping you no matter what.

It's a cool plot and considering I've not managed to beat the game yet I'm genuinely curious as to see if the Zigatons were at all justified in trying to wipe me out.

So the game play involves playing drums in rhythm to assign actions to your Patapon army.  For example "Pata pata pata pon" (square square square circle) will make your army move foward on the 2D level.  Other combinations of pata, pon and chaka will do different thinks like attack, defend, charge up etc.  Between levels you are taken to a camp screen where you can change equipment, make new Patapons for your army or play rhythm mini games for bonus items.

It's a simple game but that doesn't meant it's easy because this game will fucking kick your ass sideways if you're not well prepared and cunning in battle.  If you think you can just advance and attack your way through the game you will be wiped out faster than the blink of one of your little dudes eyes.  This thing is hard and requires a great deal of preparation and planning before you can beat the later story missions, but when you do it the feeling of achievement is great.

So if you have a PSP and you have not played this, go fucking do it.  If you can't find this but you can get hold of Patapon 2 or 3, go play them as well.  I've not had much experience with the sequels but they can only get better really.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World

Damn, there is a big backlog of games that I beat but never talked about, so let's start at the top.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World is a game for the master system that involves punching things in the face and playing rock paper scissors.   There is some minuscule plot about saving something or other but I was getting so frustrated with the later levels that I forgot it.

It's sort of hard to say stuff about Alex Kidd, I mean it's a good game but it's just a standard platform game.  It does this thing where you get items but barely any of them are useful outside of certain levels and you'll find that you spend most of the game just punching things in the face.  Also I find the rock paper scissors thing really annoying because the first two throws for each boss are always the same, but you'll never know what they are first time (obviously) and the only way to find out is to play it over and over.  Nothing game breaking but just little irritating things but the game itself is a ton of fun, so playing it over to learn the RPS patterns isn't all that big of a deal.

A cool little fact about this game is that it came packaged with the Master System, but you never got a cart for it, it came built into the system.  By turning on your Master System with no cart this thing would boot up.  Free, convenient and a lot of fun, worth playing if you want some retro goodness in your life.

Let's Talk Sonic

13th December 1993 was the day I first received a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis if you're American and wrong) with a copy of The Lion King from my parents.  On the 25th December of that year I got Sonic 1 and 2 as presents, that was a good day.

At the age of 4 I was fucking enthralled with these video games and thanks to Sonic and The Lion King I am now the game loving lunatic who writes crap articles on a blog you are seeing today.  Sonic was fucking great back then and he was a big deal too.  There was all sorts of sonic related shit like merchandise, comics, TV shows and the list goes on.

But something went wrong, arguably around 2006 when he got a game on the Xbox 360.  Ever since that fucking game the Sonic franchise has been in the absolute shitter, and the only game that has come close to delivering a good sonic experience is Sonic Generations.

What makes the whole situation really sad is that you could fix the whole Sonic thing on basically no money and it baffles my goddamn mind why they don't do this.  So, here they are, 2 points that would save Sonic the Hedgehog.

1) Get rid of the fucking friends

Sonic's friends are the fucking worst, I can't stress how bad these characters are.  I'll give you Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, they are fine but shit like Shadow, Amy, that fucking cat from Rush, Cream and every other strange creature just need to fuck off forever.  NO ONE with any kind of brain or taste like Sonic's friends.  The people who do like this group of stupid arseholes are the kind of people that do weird fan art on the internet and do character cosplay to go fucking shopping.  They need help, not games designed for them

2) Just make it 2D; the more Mega Drive-like the better

Part of the problem with modern Sonic is the whole 3D thing.  I mean it was OK in Adventure 1 and 2 but for the most part, playing Sonic in 3D is fucking arse.  Trying to control a character who moves at that speed is basically impossible and I think this fact just has to be accepted.  So I said before that you can make a good Sonic game for no money, here is now!  Simply take the engine used for Sonic 2 or 3, get some level designer who knows what he/she is doing to get a bunch of shit together, get a decent musician to bash out some catchy 16 bit tunes, release it on PC under steam or some shit and BAM! Sonic might not be terrible anymore.

Megaman went and released fucking TWO 8-bit games on the PS3/360 and they did pretty damn well.  Why are you clinging to this fucking 3D garbage when no one wants it.  I don't care that you have designs for Cullus the Dung Beetle or some shit ready to go, throw that shit in a fire and go make a 16 bit Sonic game so that you remember how to fucking do it.

Then mail me 50% of your profits. You're fucking welcome.

How Scary Is Outlast? Not very

Outlast is a game I've mentioned a few times on this blog.

First I said that it was worth looking out for, then I said that while some of my hype had been dashed I was still looking forward to it, and now it's just another one of those games in the back of my mind that I'll probably get on the cheap about a year after it's release date.

I saw this video on YouTube put out by IGN called "How Scary is Outlast?" here it is

This is a silly video where a bunch of people play the game and over react to bad scares like they are 12 years old.

The game itself looks pretty solid technically speaking.  The demo that they were playing ran smoothly and it didn't bug out or anything like that.  Also the game doesn't seem to have that DreadOut problem of the character having a move speed no faster than a frail old person with broken legs.

But I'm not talking about the game from a technical standpoint, I'm not here to discuss fucking graphics, frame rate and shit like that, I'm here to talk about scares, and this is where this whole thing really falls flat on its fucking face.

If you are scared by this game, you need to seek help.  Now I'm not saying I'm some big manly man but this game isn't scaring you at any point, it's only shocking you.  All the gore and bodies and shit like that is really in your face and it's the same kind of "scary" that a movie like Saw is.  Also when the game does attempt a scare it plays a huge bang and fucking loud violins go off in the background here, the soundtrack is TELLING you to be scared and instead it has the opposite effects.

When you hear huge bangs and shit like that you aren't scared, you're shocked and the effect wares off immediately after.  What's worse is that jump scares seems to be the only thing this game has, so it becomes even less scary because I know when I play the game I'm just going to be looking for points where a jump scare is probably going to come out.

Also the big dude running around and grabbing you isn't scary because he's just a fucking dude with a strange face.  Even the Amnesia monster was scarier than that because even though it was just a humanoid type thing at least it looked sort of fucked up and you could only ever get a passing glance at it.  But no, here, it's just a big burly man trying to beat the shit out of you, WHOOP DE FUCKING DOO.  Plenty of games have big burly men beating the shit out of you, and they aren't scary, it's not just magically scary here because you put the burly man in a long corridor and surrounded him in gore.

Outlast has disappointed me before it has even come out.  Way to go Red Barrels, you proved that you know absolutely nothing about making horror games.  I'll be sure to give it a go still, but the rant about your incompetency is going to get really long when that day comes.

Video Game Addiction A.K.A Bad Parenting

 

Look at that fucking thing, look at it, what a load of bullshit

Is this seriously how people think? I don't want to believe that there are people on this planet who are this stupid and create something like that.  I mean there is a big problem right at the fucking start of that damn thing where it's comparing video games to fucking hardcore drugs, but the worst part about that whole thing is the requirement to be considered an "addict"

Fucking 10 hours per week?!  I made a status on facebook about this and a friend responded "I play double that, minimum" and he's not wasting his life away or anything like that, he's part of the large number of people I know who are working out here in Japan.  Last night alone I clocked around 7 or 8 hours of game time because it's my fucking holiday and I'm not going to have some pricks judge me based on the fact I like to enjoy some interactive entertainment in my free time.

Why don't these people just face up to facts here.  Games don't generate addicts, shit parents do.  If your child or teenager is spending enough time on the computer to the point where it's affecting their life in a bad way, that's YOUR fault as a parent for not doing your fucking job and stepping in and putting them on the right track.  But of course, parents these days don't want to do their fucking jobs as parents so they will just happily kick back and blame things while doing NOTHING for their kids.

Game Addiction may be a thing, but it's not the huge problem you make it out to be.  If you are the kind of person who complains about this shit, get fucked and give your child to someone who might actually take care of it.  You're incompetency should not reflect badly on my hobby, piss off.

I'm seriously hoping that the above image was made as a troll just to piss me off, but even if it is there are still people who are alive right now who believe shit like that, and that's just bad.

No one knows how to do horror anymore

I mentioned a long time ago that the Survival Horror genre was pretty much dead.  In that post I called the developers of Silent Hill: Homecoming a bunch of knobs who had no idea what they were doing.  Well right now I'm going to expand on that by pointing out exactly just how fucking useless today's developers are when it comes to delivering scares.

So, I'm going to take 4 scares (2 from Silent Hill, 1 from Resident Evil and 1 from Dead Space) put them side by side and explain why games from over 10 years ago were better at delivering fear than modern games despite all the fancy graphics and processing power.

SCARE #1! SILENT HILL 2 BATHROOM FREAKYNESS!

So in Silent Hill two there is a point where you have to walk around a prison.  This prison is already a pretty terrible place with strange noises and some...thing...muttering the word "ritual" at you as you walk through cells, but it's one of the bathrooms that will really shit you up.

So you walk into this bathroom and there is nothing in it, at least nothing of importance that I remember.  While here you can make James check the doors of each stall by knocking on them.  Knocking on the doors yields no response and you can't get inside, but things start to get super weird when you start to leave.  Just before you make it to the exit, you hear a sound as if someone fell over accompanied by a woman's yelp.  Now I use the word yelp instead of scream because this isn't a jump scare.  The sound of the crash or the scream isn't loud enough to make you jump, but it sure as fuck creeps you the fuck out.  The strangest part of the whole thing is that if you go back, nothing has changed at all and it doesn't change anything in the level, it is there PURELY to fuck with you and it does a damn good job.

SCARE #2! SILENT HILL: HOMECOMING BATHROOM BULLSHIT!

So Silent Hill games are pretty famous for having freaky bathrooms, but Homecoming shows just how the developer had no fucking clue.  The bathroom is the place you get to meet your first enemy in homecoming, but there is no tension built up here at all.  You pull a knife from a wall and a movie nurse walks out of the only "locked" stall to act as your tutorial fight.  As soon as you check the door and see the knife in the wall you can pretty much see how the whole situation is going to go.  Also bathrooms in homecoming from what I remember tend to have a dead body in them, or at least at the start they do. 

What makes the SH2 scare so much better than the Homecoming scare is that your mind is filling in the blanks.  You just ASSUME something terrible went on in that prison stall but the game doesn't actually show you anything at all.  The sound it makes isn't even that bad when you think about it, it's the kind of sound you might hear if someone slipped and banged against the door, but because of the way the game messes with your head you are just assuming that something terrible is going on.  Homecoming on the other hand does the opposite of this and just shows you death and blood everywhere so when you see a dead body for the millionth time you end up just ignoring it because it's nothing more than set dressing for the level.

SCARE #3! RESIDENT EVIL HUNTERS

The Hunter is Resident Evil is a stroke of fucking genius.  Not because it's a particularly good monster or anything like that, but because of the way it is introduced to the player.  First off, the entirety of Resident Evil up to the point with the Hunters you are fighting stuff like zombies, dogs, crows and shit like that.  Dead people or animals that have been infected by the T-Virus.  I think before the Hunters you have to fight Yawn, but even he isn't so bad because 1) It's still just an animal and 2) He isn't very hard to fight, and his venom can be counteracted with shit lying around the house.

The Hunter on the other hand is somethin' else.  You don't even see it when it first turns up, you just get a first person cutscene of it running into the main house and straight away you know something is fucked up.  Then it scares you even more by actually showing up and being stronger and faster than anything else.  You can just evade it like a zombie, and it's not easily killed like the dogs, these things will make you panic while you try to figure out what the fuck is happening and them BAM! off goes your head in one swipe, enjoy loading your game to try again shitlord.

SCARE #4! DEAD SPACE ANYTHING

None of the monsters in these games are scary, not a single one.  Enemies tend to just jump out at you and scream and are easily killed in a couple of shots from pretty much anything.  Bosses are even less scary because most come with giant "fuck me" lights, and the ones that lack "fuck me" lights have pretty blatant weaknesses.  The enemy design in this game is weak and they are not scary nor do they make you panic.  It doesn't matter if one sneaks up on you or they attack in groups because you always be able to deal with them no matter what guns you have.

In the case of Resident Evil, I might not be carrying the Shotgun or the Grenade Launcher.  So when the Hunter appears to take chunks out of my dopey arse, getting out of that situation with just a pistol is a real shit sucker.  Then again in Dead Space, if I had that piece of shit machine gun, it still didn't really matter because it would get the job done well enough.  Also I didn't feel the need to conserve ammo because it would drop so fucking frequently and I was playing that shit on hard mode.

To sum it all up and to sort of repeat myself from the survival horror post I made in the summer.  Stop making shit like Dead Space, Homecoming or whatever other arsehole "horror" games exist at the moment, go study the good ones and come back.  It's been far too long and I'm getting sick of it