Heaven or Hell! Let's Rock!

Back at university, me and my friends would have a couple of go-to fighting games when we wanted to get our competitive gaming going.  Tekken, Street Fighter Alpha and Guilty Gear X2 were those games.  Until Tekken 6 came out we sunk A LOT of time into good old X2.

So after a busy weekend of eating sushi and drinking far too much alcohol, I come home to find there is a trailer for a new Guilty Gear game!  Check it out!

I've not looked too deeply into it, so I don't know what the general consensus is on the trailer, but if you ask me, I'm fucking hyped.  That's all I really have to say about it for now to be honest, just another upcoming game to throw onto the cargo of the hype train.  Hopefully we'll get some more info on it soon and maybe I'll write a bit more about it when I'm not making posts at 2 in the morning...

Not Sure If Hype

Shadow of the Eternals is a game that I should probably be super hyped for, but there are certain things stopping me from jumping up and down and getting all my cash cards ready for purchasing copies of the game en masse.

Just as a little backstory for those who aren't clued up on what this is.  Back in the days of the Gamecube there was a little title called Eternal Darkness, a fucking awesome horror game which had this gimmick of having inventive ways of fucking with the player.  It had an interesting plot and the ways of scaring you that went way beyond simple jump scare tactics and apart from maybe one section near the end, it was a ton of fun to play.

So Shadow of the Eternals is supposed to be a sort of sequel to that game, which sounds fucking awesome right?  Well there are some things that are worrying me a little bit.  The first of which is sort of a personal thing, I just don't like episodic gaming.  They are saying that Shadow of the Eternals is going to be released in what I think is 12 episodes, and I personally dislike this way of releasing the game.  When I get to the end of a game I want some form of closure on the story, not just a cliffhanger and the promise of a new episode to be released soon.

Of course this is just a personal thing and if the game does turn out to be really good I'll still pick it up, but maybe once all 12 parts are available at the same time.  The second thing that worries me though is the company that is developing the game.  Precursor Games is a company that, to my knowledge is made up entirely of staff from Silicon Knights, the guys who made Eternal Darkness.  This sounds good at first, right? They have given us some great titles in the past, Eternal Darkness and Twin Snakes just to name a couple.

But then think about the last two things they came out with.  Too Human, a game so bad it got pulled from existence or some shit, and X-Men Destiny, a game I've not played but heard that it's so fantastically fucking bad that it causes aneurysms in the players.  Now I don't know the 100% full stories behind those two games, but they goofed those titles pretty hard.  So if it's basically the same group of people developing this thing, I'm worried that they'll goof this one just as hard too.

Still, for the time being I'm excited and interested to see what gets put out.  Although my worries are holding me back from supporting the crowd funding effort, but I'll support the final product the best I can if it's good.

Stop Naming Games All Weird

This has been something that has annoyed me for some time, and since I was reminded of this issue by seeing the above game on Steam, I thought I'd moan about it for a while.

I've been quite fond of the Heroes of Might and Magic games for a long long time, me and a friend of mine would stay up to the wee hours of the morning doing hot seat games because that's how fucking sick this goddamn game was.  Now, notice the name of the 6th game in the series, it's no longer Heroes of Might and Magic, it's become Might and Magic Heroes 6.

Who the ever loving fuck decided to do that?! But more importantly WHY the fuck did you go and do that!?  It's a minor thing, it's not like I hate the game because of this but it just boggles my fucking mind why suddenly you go and start rearranging the name on me like that.

You have called it Heroes of Might and Magic for 5 games and a fuckton of expansions and NOW you go and change it around?  For what purpose?  Someone please explain this shit to me.

But at least all the components of the title are there and there is a big fat 6 on the end so you know which one it is.  What I hate worse is the naming of all these fucking reboots that are popping up.

Let's take Tomb Raider as an example.  Tomb Raider is a game from 1996 and is probably most well known for Lara Croft's triangular titties.  So 2013 rolls around and they reboot the series and decide to call the new game fucking Tomb Raider.  So now when I want to talk about Tomb Raider I have to make it clear which one I'm fucking talking about because the first game and the latest game now share the same goddamn title!  Why do that!?  Can't you put a number on the end? or a subtitle?! Can't you just call it fucking Tomb Raider: Gaiden or Tomb Raider: Origins or some shit?

This whole rant reminds me of that Angry Video Game Nerd video where he talks about shit naming.  Go look up Chronologically Confused to go watch him rant about games and films with fucking stupid sequel names.

The absolute worst offender is fucking Devil May Cry with that stupid "DmC: Devil May Cry" title.  Literally the worst name for a game I have ever seen.  You don't see me calling this blog iG: Identity Gaming, fucking idiots.

To cut a long post short, make game titles clearer so we know which one in the series it is, goddamnit!

Don't Buy Metro: Last Light

Typing that title hurt, goddamnit.

Now before people start losing their shit and calling me a hater, because I do hate a lot of things, but Metro is not one of them.

Metro 2033 was one of those games I bought on Steam during a sale because I had some extra dosh sitting in my bank account and upon firing it up had absolutely zero expectations.  What I got was a slightly frustrating but all round awesome shooter, way different from most of the military CoD crap that I had long since got bored of at the time.

So when I heard about Last Light I was super hyped up and ready to throw my money at 4A Games in a fit of joy.  But then something went very, VERY wrong.  Once again, greed has come into play and has completely soured my attitude to this title.

Most people know what's up by now, but for those that don't a whole mode got removed from the game so it could feature as preorder DLC.  I wish I was fucking joking.  What's even worse is that it's the Ranger Mode that got removed, which was the whole reason I enjoyed the original Metro so fucking much.

What pisses me off about the whole thing is that I heard somewhere that the reason they did this is because they were being pressured by retailers to make preorder DLC available to push sales.  Well let's look at what preorder bonuses are being offered alongside the ranger mode.  An exclusive gun, 100 military grade bullets (game currency) and a digital comic.

THAT'S NOT ENOUGH?!  Let's make clear what is actually going on here.  Greed! Flat out, fucking low down, money grubbing, shitlicking greed.  They fucking knew how much fans of the original enjoyed ranger mode, so now their punishing consumers by fucking charging for it.

Oh yeah, you can still get it if you don't preorder but it'll cost you an extra $5 or £3 or whatever.  Fucking dogshit, especially out of a niche game like this and a no name developer.

So here's the deal, DON'T BUY LAST LIGHT! DON'T FUCKING DO IT!!  But if, like me, you want to play the game, just wait a while.  Eventually there will be a steam sale or the price will drop, buy it then.  Getting the game at a reduced price means that paying the extra for the ranger mode won't matter.  Vote with you're wallet! If you pre order the game or buy that DLC, you are sending a message to the developers and the publishers saying that this shit is OK, and it's fucking not.

There are plenty of other great games available on steam, for a cheaper price that you could have a crack at while you wait for this to go on sale.  Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a few games in your backlogs to be getting through while you wait for Last Light.  So just chill out for a while and save a few bucks, let's not have this practice creeping into more and more games.

Visual Novels! Not Games, Still Fun

I think a lot of gaming enthusiasts are aware of these but I doubt many pay much attention to them since they can just go play proper games instead of spending 5 hours glued to a screen reading.

That said, the whole visual novel thing is something I've been trying to get into for a while now as I've been told there do exist really good ones.  You see, my view on visual novels is a little skewed since all I ever see from the genre on store shelves for the PS3/PSP are stupid, semi dating sim love stories set in high schools.  Either that, or stupid shit like Milky Holmes which looks so insufferably annoying I couldn't bare to sit down and translate the damn thing.

So I've been making careful picks and I'm actually quite impressed with the results I've had so far.  I've played 2 in Japanese and 2 in English and I've enjoyed them enough to be arsed to seek out more.  The two English visual novels that I played were 999 and Lux-Pain both on the DS.  999 is pretty well known for it's quality and Lux-Pain, while having a terrible English translation still had quite an interesting premise.  The two Japanese games that I've had a crack at are Silent Hill: Play Novel and Kamaitachi no Yoru which are both extremely interesting if a little difficult for me sometimes,  Mainly due to lack of Kanji ability

I've also heard good things about Dunamis 15 and Steins Gate which are titles I really want to try.  The problem is that if you want to play the really good ones then quite a good command of the Japanese language is required.

I want to go into more detail about these games in individual posts but the game play across the board is basically the same.  You have a story with choose your own adventure style choices at certain points along with minor puzzling so that you're really not just reading a book on your PSP or DS.

So to anyone who may dismiss the VN because of it's lack of game elements, I'd urge you to give them a try.  The good ones are actually really interesting and I would easily recommend 999 to anyone as it's one of the best ones with an English version.

Watch this space for more detailed articles on individual titles.

I'm not dead!

This is just a place holder post to let the world know I've not just dropped off the face of the earth.

It's been a super hectic weekend with people coming to visit me and me going to visit people and I've barely had any time at home.  There are a lot of new things coming though so watch this space.

YouTube Paid Channels

I found out today that there are now channels on YouTube that you must pay a monthly subscription to in order to view.  Wow, what a load of fucking shit!

OK, I'm being a bit harsh, I do see the point of it here.  It allows creators of content to get something back for the work their putting in.  Not that they weren't getting it already with the whole YouTube monetisation thing, but this just gives them more options or some shit I guess.

Right now I don't give a flying fuck really because all the channels that are pay2view are a load of shit anyway.  But I hope people with gaming channels are aware of the fact that not ONE FUCKING PERSON with any kind of common sense would pay a fucking penny to watch shit like playthroughs and reviews.

I mean think about it, if someone like IGN went and put a subscription on their channel, people would just fuck off somewhere else for content.  If some Let's Player goes and does the same thing, people will just fuck of to another guy who didn't.  Even more so with playthroughs because why pay a monthly fee to view them when you could just buy the game yourself and fucking play it.

I know full well my nobody status on YouTube but rest assured that if I ever did somehow get to the point where subscription content would be an option, I would tell YT to go shove it up it's own arse.  If people are going to pay money for anything I create, I'd rather they direct it at the Alzheimer's Society than me, I can just get a fucking job!

Speaking of which, don't forget to throw a donation to the Society, that disease ain't going to cure itself!

www.justgiving.com/identitygaming

(Please forgive my shameless begging for charity donations, I won't do it often)