Tau and Friends Play Silent Bomber Part 5

This time I take up the controller and protect stuff.  That's why the episode is 8 minutes long and contains no deaths...ENJOY!

The Problem With Metroidvania

Today I polished off a replay of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and really there is this huge glaring problem with the whole "metroidvania" thing that I feel the need to express my opinion on because I'm a bit of a self absorbed twat.

Anyway, the first thing to mention is that I fucking love these games.  Aria of Sorrow being my personal favourite, but really I love new school "metriodvania" as much as I love old school side scrolling Castlevania.

So if I love these games so much, what could the problem possibly be?  Well let's think about Metroid for a moment since they are quite similar in game play.  In Metroid you explore a large 2D world, collecting powerups and special abilities in order to move forward, basically the same as new school Castlevania right?  Well the difference between the two games is that every single power up in Metroid feels useful in some way.  A life boost or a missile boost is always welcome, while in Castlevania not everything you get is very good.

In fact, while I was playing Order of Ecclesia I was collecting all the different glyphs that can be used as weaponry, but pretty much through the whole game I stuck to the same 3 and didn't really have much trouble at all.  I would constantly find new weapons, Armour and accessories throughout the game but I would end up ignoring most of them just because what I was currently using was a better anyway.

This problem really affects the game play sometimes because exploring starts to feel like a bit of a chore after a while.  I don't care about searching 100% of a map for that extra item or chest because I know that I'll end up not using it anyway.  I did explore 100% of every map because I'm a bit OCD like that, but your normal player might just get sick of being given sub-par "power ups" and just sack the whole exploring thing and just make a dash for the boss room.

Still, there is plenty of verity in the Castlevania equipment lists so you can always play pretty much exactly how you want, which is a plus.  To me these problems aren't game breaking, just a minor annoyance but I can imagine for some it really turns them off these kind of games.

Tau and Friends Play Silent Bomber Part 4

My good buddy Paul takes up the controller in this episode to fight a bunch of mechs, enjoy!

A Change Of Charity

I am fucking mad right now, like you don't even know, holy shit.

I made a post on a forum a couple of days ago looking for fund raising ideas, and the feedback I got was mostly negative.  Apparently I'm a huge arsehole looking for tax breaks and my idea to raise money through producing entertaining, game related content is a load of shit.

Well I'm not paying attention to them since the donations have reached well over £700 and if people are willing to donate to charity because they enjoy my content, I'm not stopping.  I'll keep writing, keep making videos and keep streaming in the hopes that you'll throw a couple of pennies to a good cause.

ANYWAY! One post in the forum topic I made slagged off the JustGiving tracker saying that charity donation page middle men are a bunch of greedy cockbags.  Well when I first set up Identity Gaming this never occurred to me, JustGiving is pretty much the most recognised donation service and I just went with what I know.

Anyway it turns out that JustGiving is a load of shit and they skim 5% off the donations made to the charity!  Luckily, 5% of the values that people have been giving isn't much but it fucking adds up and it's an absolutely disgusting practice that they are charging a subscription fee AND taking money from the donations.

So, for that reason, I have changed the donation service to something called BTMyDonate.  After doing some searching around I found out that BTMyDonate don't charge any fees and don't take any commission off the donations, which is great.  As far as I understand their service, they are just a straight up tracker that gives you, the donater, a visual indication of how much has been raised via Identity Gaming, which is really just what I wanted in the first place. 

Please direct all future donations towards the new links on the right hand side bar.  I'll put the link here too just in case

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/identitygaming

Everything still goes to the Alzheimer's Society, so hit that donate button and lets see some money go to a good cause!

The Return of Nintendo Hard....Maybe...

It's funny that I should discover this news today, just a few days ago I was talking about how hard old school Mario is and then this pops up.

So, first of all, let me link to to what the fuck I'm talking about

http://gimmegimmegames.com/2013/10/nintendo-focusing-making-games-easier-anymore-getting-lost-really-good/

If you can't be arsed to read the link, the story is that Eiji Aonuma of Nintendo said that he recognises that Nintendo games of recent years have been on a little on the easy side but there are plans to change that.  He basically says that some people at Nintendo thought that making games easier so that people could progress was better but him and Miyamoto think that having some degree of difficulty and "getting lost" in a game is way more important.

This is great news, I've always complained that modern gaming is way to hand holdy and way too easy.  Even the games that are touted about as hard games, such as Dark Souls, aren't actually all that hard once you re-adapt to not having your hand held through a video game.

Old school Nintendo used to produce some really REALLY difficult games back in the day, like the above pictured Japanese Mario 2 and the idea of them going back to that makes me extremely excited.  I want to experience an actual challenge and feel like the act of beating a game actually took some skill and effort on my part. 

Hop to it Nintendo, I want the hardest games you can possibly imagine, let's see what you got!

The Stanley Parable and Racism

This is kind of a hard issue to talk about because I've not actually played the game in question yet, it was one of those things I was going to get round to when I move into my new place, but now I don't know if I even want to play it at all.

So the story is a remake of an old mod called The Stanley Parable gets released on Steam and people are happy.  Then people start playing and enjoying the Stanley Parable and it seems they are having fun with their interactive storytelling experience.  Then some moron on twitter says that a certain scene in the game is racist and this prompts the developer to back peddle on himself and change his work.

Right, first of all let's talk about the scene.  Apparently it's a scene about choice or something and there is an image of a man lighting a cigarette for a little boy, or pouring him in petrol and lighting him on fire.  From what I've been told regarding the scene the gag is satire of old values from like the 50s and may or or may not have something to do with how first world meddling in third world affairs isn't actually doing all that much good.

Anyway, the point is that race actually had nothing to do with the scene, but morons on twitter got all upset about it because it features a white man in a suit and a small black child being set on fire.  Race doesn't factor into this part of the game AT ALL, yet people are whining about it offending them.  These are people looking for issues where there are none and desperately grasping at straws to try and kick up a fuss.  I bet that if the kid in the above picture was white, there would be no issue here, which kind of brings up the idea that the people who complained are actually the racists because they aren't complaining about a black kid being set on fire, they are complaining about a black kid being featured in the game.....think about that.

So anyway, the developer of The Stanley Parable said he isn't particularly "married to the gag" and is willing to change it.  THIS, is a fucking problem, right here.  People have been saying that it's sort of commendable of the developer because he's changing it after people have complained about it and this shows flexibility and receptiveness or whatever, but no, that's a load of bollocks and anyone with half a brain knows it.

The Stanley Parable is one of those games that's being thrown around as an art game.  Go fire up your steam client and read some of the review quotes on the store page, it may cause you to roll your eyes a little bit.  But here is the thing, art is one of those things that is supposed to inspire debate and not all art is supposed to make you happy.  If something is truly art, then sometimes it's going to make you feel uncomfortable or maybe even offended, but that's what makes it a good piece of art.  The fact that it drew those emotions out of you and made you talk about it is good, that's what art is supposed to fucking do.

But no, the developer of this game proved right here that The Stanley Parable is not art in the slightest.  It doesn't matter how fond of the gag or not he is, the fact is that he made that scene for a reason and he made it that way for a reason and now he's changing it because people are offended by it.  He doesn't care about his own artistic vision, he just wants to sell as many copies as possible.  So if The Stanley Parable is supposed to be one of those games you could consider art, but the integrity of the art is shattered because of this, then why the fuck would I buy it?

It's BARELY a game and now after this it doesn't even qualify as a piece of art.  So my only remaining impression of The Stanley Parable now is that it's sort of like Portal but with absolutely 0 game play.

I think The Stanley Parable will be getting moved to quite a low position on my wish list, and it'll take a pretty big sale to get me to buy it.

A Big Donation Push

Begging for donations is not something I like to do.  This blog is about video games mainly and sometimes it's about stuff I do in Japan.  Between all the fun time gaming goodness and ranting about industry bullshit, it's very easy to forget what the goal of this blog was in the first place even if it is written on the side bar.

That's right, just over a year ago I think I started this blog with the goal of raising money for the Alzheimer's Society, donated by people who enjoy the content and want to raise money for a good cause. 

Right now, through the posts, YouTube content and Stream effort, the donations have reached a pretty staggering £726 ($1175) but a quick look at the donation page says that the goal is £1000.  We're so close to that first (yes, first) £1000 goal that I can smell the Alzheimer's being cured from all the way in my apartment in Japan.

So yeah, right now, I'm begging for donations.   On my knees begging you to donate even a little something to the Alzheimer's Society and hopefully we can meet that goal before the end of December!

Even though I'm begging I'm not expect to get donations for nothing.  If you look a little to the right hand side of the blog, then you may see a new text box that reads "Donation Incentives".  Most of these pertain to the stream so if you want to know when I'm streaming I suggest following me on Twitter @Taurinensis

However, all charity money is good charity money, so if you would like to see something streamed or something done for the YouTube channel or even just something you want me to write about feel free to request it!  Just type out your request with your donation, or send me an email with the name you used to donate with with your request.  Generally speaking, a donation of £10 will get me to play or stream most things as long as they aren't god awful sacks of crap.  If I feel your donation is too small for something then it won't be ignored, it'll become a donation incentive and then you can convince all your friends to make up the extra! 

But I'm a nice guy for the most part, I took on a Daikatana run for £10, so yeah.

So please, share this link with any gaming friends you have, or even anyone who just wants to help get rid of Alzheimer's Disease.  Let's hit that goal and move on to bigger, badder and better goals!