August Retro Haul

Death of a Gamer?

What the fuck is going on man?  Why is it just so fucking HARD to enjoy games anymore?  The world has gone fucking topsey turvey. 

A few days ago I posted a story about the whole Zoe Quinn situation and how I didn't give a fuck about it because we all knew just how corrupt the whole gaming "journalism" situation was.  Then some new Anita Sarkeesian video comes out with all its cherry picked retarded arguments made by a woman who knows absolutely diddly dick about video games and between the Zoe situation and that video getting released what can only be described as an all out war has fucking started.

I got to the point where I just accepted that all these agenda pushing "social justice warriors" or SJWs for short were completely off the fucking rails.  None of them knew anything about games and none of them had anything constructive to say.  If you tried to argue with them they throw personal insults and say all sorts of nasty shit to you and they never want a real discussion.

People who play games were never mad at Zoe for cheating on her boyfriend and they were never mad at Anita for making feminist videos.  They were mad because Zoe revealed the corrupt nature of games journalism and Anita showed just how totally bullshit their whole agenda really is.  Problems arise when you have your typical internet twats sending threats and whatnot and just fueling the fire.  For the most part however, gamers were willing to talk about these issues and their willingness for debate was met with hostility and insults.

Today, 5 articles were written by a bunch of so called "journalists" claiming that in the light of recent events we are witnessing the death of the "gamer" identity.  What a bunch of fucking bullshit.  I refuse to link those articles but you can go and look them up but be prepared for some of the most mind numbingly retarded fucking diarrhoea that you have ever read in your life.

When you are writing worse articles than ME! you need to rethink your life.

These articles, written by so called "professionals" are just flat out insulting people who enjoy games.  Lumping them all in the same boat and calling them "toxic" to the industry.  Claiming that anyone who doesn't agree with their immensely fucked up world view on what equates to sexism or bigotry must therefore be a horrible person.  We have all been described as terrorists by these people, just because we try to point out their blatant bullshit in the comments sections of news websites and YouTube videos.

It's fucking disgusting

I don't want to hear it anymore.  I already did a long fucking article on why your race/sexuality DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER when it comes to games but we all know that it's not really about games is it?  It's about making clickbait articles to generate ad revenue for your shitty websites and for people like Anita it's about manufacturing outrage at something that doesn't fucking exist to fill her damn pockets.

I can't fucking MOVE anywhere on the goddamn internet anymore without hearing about this shit and I'm fucking sick of it.  Games are turning to shit and now I can't even fucking ignore it because it doesn't matter where I turn, some cocknugget is claiming how something in a game offends him and it should be censored or pulled or some level of stupid garbage bullshit.  I can't go a single fucking day without someone bringing up "feminism" like women in the industry is even a fucking issue.  Like women in the industry are totally oppressed and it's impossible for them to do anything which is total bullshit.  Like women in the industry get threats way worse than those of men but that's also complete bullshit and anyone willing to look at facts and not just cherry pick tweets from nobodies can realise in about 20 fucking GODDAMN SECONDS.

Gaming and the identity of the "gamer" isn't dead but people have finally had it up to here with all the bullshit and people aren't standing for it anymore!  I won't fucking stand for it anymore!  But I'm not going to join this so called "war" against social justice types, I'm just going to keep enjoying games and ignoring journalists and writing about things that I enjoy.

I get upset about this because I'm passionate about this hobby I have held since the age of 4.  I am not a misogynist, I am not toxic and I am absolutely not a fucking terrorist just because I had fun playing Project Diva F2nd this morning.

Get out of my goddamn hobby and stop pushing your fucking -isms where they don't belong.

Fuck.  

Kuime [喰女]

I know I don't usually do posts about movies but this one was just SO DAMN GOOD that I feel like I have to write something.  Information about this movie is extremely hard to come by on the internet and any sites that do have any entries only have a vague couple of lines and a cast list.

Kuime is a Japanese supernatural horror movie about an actor who is filming some kind of Samurai type looking movie thing.  As far as I understood it he was the main character and his girlfriend was playing the lead female role.  It becomes apparent very early on in the movie that the relationship between our two main characters is not a good one and after filming he's going off and fucking around with another member of the cast.  It's from here that all the weird ghostly shit starts happening and stuff gets all kinds of crazy but if I try and outline any more of the plot I'm worried I might spoil something.

So last night I went to the cinema to see this movie and the majority of the film is spent watching the characters act out this traditional samurai drama thing and then a couple of scary things happen and the movie ends.  When the credits started to roll and the lights in the theatre got brighter our initial reaction was "what the fuck was that?!" Not because the movie was bad but because we had absolutely no clue what had just happened on screen.

Nothing made any goddamn sense to us.  Sure, it was a cool horror movie but it seemed like one of the most non-nonsensical movies ever with all these weird disconnected things happening between a movie production and a haunting.  But then it clicked for one of us and after doing some research I realised that Kuime might just be one of the best horror movies I've ever seen in my goddamn life.

The movie production that is being filmed in the movie is for an old Japanese ghost story called Yotsuya Kaidan.  Yotsuya Kaidan is a story from 1825 about betrayal, murder and ghostly revenge and once you understand that it's not just "some samurai drama" then all the strange shit going on in the movie makes a hell of a lot more sense.  Some understanding of how Japanese ghosts work may also be required to fully "get" the film, but once you do and everything clicks you can truly appreciate it for just how great it is.

I do understand how that last paragraph makes me sound.  It makes me sound like I'm saying "oooh, look at how much *I* understand about Japanese culture and stuff! fnar fnar fnar"  which is not how I want to sound but if I try and go into more detail I'm going to spoil everything and I don't want that.  You just need to see the damn thing first and then you'll understand what I'm getting at.

The only other problem with this film is the language.  I'd say my Japanese is pretty good but a lot of the time people are talking in ye' olde Japanese which makes things a little hard to follow at times.  Even the two native Japanese speakers I saw the movie with came out commenting on just how hard the language was so once again, I'm not trying to show off, shit is genuinely tough to understand.

It's kind of a shame though because I know that if any western critics get a hold of this movie they aren't going to like it.  When people watch a movie they just want to relax and watch a fucking movie.  They don't want to have to take a history lesson and a 1800s Japanese Language course just to enjoy a film.  I just happen to be really into Japanese ghost stories and folk tales so looking all this stuff up and having the movie fall into place for me was an absolute joy.

Kuime is not for everyone but if you like Japanese supernatural horror movies and you're willing to clue yourself in a little bit then it's absolutely fantastic.

Pokken? Are you fucking Serious?

This is a joke right?  It's not serious, is it?  This is some sick joke being played by some cunt with bad taste?! RIGHT?!

Shit

I had a completely different topic planned for this evening, something positive where I was going to praise a game that I've been playing recently but then THIS shit fucking happened and I've swung right back into being an angry shithead on the internet.

Google the term "Pokken" and word going round is that this title has been officially announced.  Now just read that stupid fucking title, "Pokken", you guessed what it is yet?

A TEKKEN GAME WITH FUCKING POKEMON IN IT!

I have never heard anything so bullshit in my entire life.  Is there nothing sacred in this fucking industry.  Is there nothing I can enjoy so much without it turning into complete shit and betrayal?! 

Now why am I so angry?  Well Tekken is a great game and Pokemon is a shit game.  Tekken is a game made for people who enjoy competitive fighters and Pokemon is designed for people with brain damage.  All the depth that can be found in Tekken is going to be stripped out and the game dumbed down so that the title can cater to Pokemon's target audience.

So you might come back at me and say "well if you don't like Pokemon just ignore it and don't play it, it's not like it ruins Tekken as a whole or anything".  Well you may be right there but this game is getting a release in fucking ARCADES so I have every right to be pissed off.  All the space being clogged up by this fucking disgrace of a game is space that could be used for something that doesn't suck...or a vending machine.  Hell, I'd even take a giant 6 foot deep hole in the floor filled with shit than cabinets for this game.

First they come along and piss all over Nobunaga's Ambition with "Pokemon Conquest" which was a total failure as a monster breeding game and a total failure as a historical strategy game.  Not content with shitting over RPGs, Strategy, Dungeon Crawls and other genres they have now turned to fighting games to try and milk this crappy series for more Yen and Dollars.

Fuck Pokemon.

Fuck Off Zoe

In certain parts of the internet there's a topic that many many people are discussing and that's the situation involving someone called Zoe Quinn.

I'm not entirely sure of all the intricate details of all the bullshit flying around but I'll try to fill you in to the best of my understanding. 

Basically, there's a woman called Zoe Quinn who makes a shitty non game called Depression Quest.  This woman cheats on her boyfriend with something like 5 people and the boyfriend who is understandably just a little upset posts a bunch of info about Zoe on a blog.  When I first came across this information a lot of people were just waving it away with a "who gives a shit about someones personal life" but after some digging it turned out to be a bit more than just a gossip story about someone cheating on their boyfriend.

The information that's come to light, which you can look up on your own time because I'm not providing a fucking toilet paper long list of links for you, exposes that Zoe was sleeping with other developers and members of gaming "journalism" in order to get her game green lighted on steam and to drum up publicity and all sorts of other shit.  A lot of the articles being written by various outlets and their hypocrisy by covering this scandal but exposing other (male) members of the industry for far less also exposes the agenda driven bullshit side of the games "journalism" industry.

Now my explanation might not be enough or my understanding might be wrong but I don't give a fuck. 

Anyone with half a working brain has known that games "journalism" has been complete and utter bollocks for YEARS and it's only gotten worse.  I don't follow ANY of these fucking sites because they are all complete garbage run by people who generally speaking don't know diddly shit about anything and it's only gotten worse.

Anyone with a working brain can see that scores are being bought and relationships between publishers and the press are being used to generate buzz for a game so they can generate more sales.  Shit games getting great scores and a bunch of undeserved acclaim because some money changed hands somewhere probably.  All this Zoe Quinn situation is doing is laying it out out bare but we all knew it was going on anyway and we don't need to go on a fucking internet crusade to "take down shitty journalism". 

All you have to do is stop reading the reviews from the sites that you KNOW are bullshit.  Stop giving them clicks, then you stop giving them money and then maybe one day they'll go away.

It's an almost impossible task anyway since the way "gamers" feel is that if you don't conform to the mass opinion then you are some kind of deviant that should be purged.  If I don't agree with the 10/10s for The Last of Us and GTA5 or whatever then I'm just some cunt who doesn't know what I'm on about when really it's the exact opposite and anyone with a lick of taste knows that.  But the problem is that there are so many of these twats that you could lay the whole corrupt state of things completely bare for all to see and these sites would still make money hand over fist because opinionless twats need to see the big fat 10/10 for video game du jour so they have a sense of self validation.

Fuck Zoe and fuck games "journalism".  Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to actually go and PLAY and have some FUN with a game instead of worrying about if some cunt thinks it's worthy of a good score or not.

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae

I don't even know where to begin with this one.

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae is a game that was released this year on Steam developed by Zenith Blue.  It's one of those games that could be compared to something like Devil May Cry but stripped of almost all it's quality.

You play as a school girl with a katana who is some kind of demon slaying warrior.  A classmate of yours has made off with some evil sword of legend that has possessed her and now it's up to you to take her down before she destroys the world or something, I don't know.

You are given a number of attacks such as a slash which drains a sword meter, a punch to recover the meter and a charge attack for a sort of AOE.  As you play you obtain little red balls which are used to buy upgrades such as longer/stronger combos, air attacks, gap closers and so on.   It's quite clear to see why so many people make the connection with a game like Devil May Cry with this title but this game doesn't even come close.

Each level is just one big circular room and enemies are teleported in for you to slaughter.  Considering that this is only a small game there is actually quite a surprising number of different enemy types and they all behave differently and there is actually quite a bit of strategy when it comes to adapting to different combinations.  After a certain number of enemies a boss shows up and these fights range from being stupidly easy to crazy nuts hard.  Maybe I'm just bad but there were parts of the game that I would just breeze though and then my progress would come to a screeching halt because the boss was such bullshit.

However once you work out what you are doing and find an attack pattern that works you can kill the bosses no problem.  But that's one of my complaints with this game since this is a genre where mixing things up and creating combos is part of the fun but here I was just finding a chain of moves that worked and spamming that until the bad thing fell down.

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae is not a bad game by any stretch but it's extremely unpolished.  The problem is that there are so many games like this that are WAY better that it becomes hard to recommend.  It's not good enough on it's own and there is nothing really unique about it that makes it stand out.  However if you like schoolgirls cutting things then maybe you might get a kick out of it for an afternoon.

Child of Light Mini Review

A couple of weeks ago I beat Child of Light so I'm going to do that thing I always do a write a little bit about it.  I made a post previously talking about how the combat was basically a poor mans Grandia and used it as a basis for the idea that games are getting dumber and dumber but I actually quite enjoyed Child of Light.

The game follows Princess Aurora who kinda, maybe but didn't really die and was sent to the land of Leumeria.  There she is thrust into an adventure to rid the world of a dark queen by gathering the sun, the moon and the stars and then shoving a sword into her big ugly face.

You spend the whole game exploring 2D environments and fighting monsters for EXP.  Once you reach the end of an area you will fight a boss and once that's all said and done you get some story.  The exploration is fun since Aurora can fly freely around the map and there is quite a lot to find in each area.  Some areas even have little sub areas that involve traps that could potentially kill you or a special enemy that will drop a nice prize if you manage to kill it.

The combat, while simplistic, is fast and never I never really got bored with it.  You level up at a stupidly fast rate but the monsters remain challenging as long as you keep moving forward.  You could hang back and grind a little but I feel that if you did that then the fun behind the challenge of combat would be diminished somewhat.  Just as a note, I played the game on hard so I can't speak for the lower difficulty levels, but for a game like this playing on anything less than hard is just a bit embarrassing, quite frankly.

I was told going in that the story, while not bad, is annoying because almost all the dialogue is delivered in rhyme.  It would be really annoying if it was voiced but only a small number of key scenes have any voice work and the rest of the story is delivered in text, so I don't really know what people are moaning about.  The story is pretty basic but it's driven by some pretty good characters with well fleshed out personalities.  You get to know your squad pretty well over the course of the game and since each one has a unique function in combat then it's rare for any one character to get truly sidelined and forgotten.

I would recommend Child of Light to fans of the RPG genre.  It's a lighthearted little adventure with some nice characters, interesting art direction and fun game play.  While some of it's features feel underdeveloped such as the skill tree and Oculi stat boost stuff, it's not intrusive enough to ruin the whole experience.  It's also just the right length for this kind of thing wrapping everything up before things start to get stale.

Go give it a go.