Prince of Persia Sands of a Headache

Ok, I know this is one of those "classic" games that I shouldn't poop on and recognize that it's an early work of amazingness...but honestly I can't for the life of me find anything redeeming in this game or the series for that matter. So on another great Steam sale I got every Prince of Persia game ever made for like $11 and of course I started with the first in the series Prince of Persia Sands of Time.

Story:

It started off compelling enough with an interesting narration at the opening and a siege with an Arabian setting. You and your father set out to overthrow a castle place thingie and take all the goodies. You come across a wizard guy who tells the Prince to activate the hourglass for some totally not sinister reason...(the wizard is a copy-paste Jafar from Aladdin). It had the makings of a really cool tale with some kind of twist involving evil hourglass sand that turns people into...mummies? zombies? zomummies? I don't know, but the story takes a huge dive from the moment he cracks the hourglass open and everyone goes all undead on you. You meet this dancer girl who has immunity to the evil plague sand like the Prince does and you traverse the castle to restore order to the chaos. Of course the very first thing you do is restore the castle's "defense system" which activates super ridiculous elaborate traps that only end up hindering you.

So from this point on the game is a huge facepalm as nearly every obstacle that you face is of your own doing because you activated the traps. Also, the story completely stops for the next 7 hours. It is entirely driven by getting to the next room, leaping around a bit, and then getting to the next room...where you leap around a bit. I was going to put that in the "Gameplay" section but since the story apparently turns into a tale about how a Prince can make ridiculous leaps all over the place...well I guess I had to mention it.

And then...you fight the wizard which is the game's only boss battle, and it's not a good one either. The wizard barely puts up a better struggle than some of the basic enemies and I'll get into more of that later. I have to instead go into super mega detail about the cataclysmic events that take place at the end. You beat the wizard and restore order to the hourglass however, that reverts everything back in time before the siege and the Prince goes to warn the dancer girl he found to prevent what just happened in the game...

And then I woke up from a bad nightmare and none of this ever happened, and I never played the game!

But then I woke up again remembering that I DID actually waste 8 hours playing this pile of poo and screamed in horror!

What a twist...

Gameplay:

Alright, so the story was a drag, big deal this game was touted as being a classic video game so the gameplay has to be great right? Well...no not really...no.

The combat is pretty awful honestly. Basically you have to get every single enemy in the game into a stun point where you can then stab them and turn them back into sand. This right here annoys the poo out of me because you have to finish off EVERY god damn enemy in the same way. Either they get knocked down to be stabbed, or you stab them first to freeze them and then slice them to scatter the sand. There really isn't any combat tactics to be had here. Plus there are only a very small handful of enemies to fight.

But that's ok, because 90% of what you do in this game is leap around a room for hours and hours on end. After playing this for 4 hours I came the conclusion that this game is literally the very worst parts of Assassin's Creed 2. My most hated parts of course being the ones where you leap around a room for an hour to collect 1 of 6 keys that eventually nets you the best armor in the game. Except...that with Prince of Persia...that is ALL you do! The entire game! Just when you think they couldn't throw another room at you to leap around in...they throw another room for you to leap around in.

It goes beyond repetitive, it gives the word repetitive a bad name. It took me a lot longer to beat this game than it really should have because after a while I could only do one room at a time before I got a headache from sheer boredom. I mean the worst part of it is probably that every room is nearly identical to one another, you really start to lose track of how many times you solved a "leaping puzzle" the same way over and over again. There's only SO much creativity that can be thrown around with leaping to one unassailable ledge to another.

Alright, I also want to take a small jab at the logistics of all of this too. I get this is a video game, I know it's not meant to be realistic in any way...but HONESTLY how the fuck do normal human beings traverse this castle? If you've played this, you should immediately understand where I'm coming from. It's not like this castle has been destroyed or maimed in some way, but EVERY single god damn room appears entirely unpassable unless you have a time rewinding device (which the Prince has) and cat-like or god-like jumping and wall running abilities (which the Prince has). Any normal dude would walk into one of these rooms and say, "Where the fuck are the stairs?" Like is this some kind of fucking joke? Who built this god forsaken building? HOW did they build it when there ARE NO STAIRS! Literally, there are no stairs in any of these rooms. The only way to get around anywhere to flip on poles, run on walls, and climb very out of place ladders. Even in the FUCKING courtyard just getting up to the fucking gazebo is nigh impossible! Also...WHERE ARE THE TOILETS?

Ok...I went too far there but you get my point. Still, one last thing to mention gameplay wise is the device that lets you rewind time. This is a pretty pointless tool honestly. The game works and acts much like other fail 3D platformers where your next leap is not only obvious, but totally staged. By that I mean, you point him in the right direction and press "jump" and he'll go there and never miss. This isn't Mario where you have to have skills, and practice, and know your distances. You know...an actual platforming game? So the time re-winder lets you fix your mistakes if you happen to leap like a freak to your death.

That's the game though...dancer chick tells you what you need to do in a room, you do it, move on, partake in a terrible combat system, lather rinse repeat for 8 hours.

Sound:

The voice acting was good, and a few lines actually had me laughing. I mainly enjoy how the Prince looks down on the dancer chick and acts all high and mighty. What I found strange though, is how he jumps back and forth from empathizing with her to condescending her. And I get that it should be a character arc thing where he progressively warms up to her...but like I said, he randomly jumps back and forth with it. In one room he will scoff at her and in the next want to make sweet sweet love to her...then in the next he wants to leave her behind... It doesn't progress well...sorry erm...off topic now...

The music is ok I guess. It's very..."Arabian" and let me tell you it sounds EXACTLY like you think it will.

Graphics:

I can't complain here, it's an older game so yeah it doesn't look great but it doesn't look bad either for it's time. There are no glitches, everything runs smoothly and is textured well enough. The camera can be awful at times but is more often than not good enough. I know that should go under gameplay but I ranted enough there =)

Multiplayer:

None. And that's a positive honestly.

Conclusion:

To be perfectly honest, I would have had a less scathing review of this game if I hadn't also played the very latest game from the series Forgotten Sands. I put in maybe 13 minutes so far and that game...is...exactly...the same as Sands of Time. Now I'm all for a successful formula returning for new and exciting challenges in an updated game but MY FUCKING GOD it's literally the exact same game. You enter a castle under siege, some evil sand causes the undead to uprise, and then a guy turns on the "defense system" **they actually call it that in both games** and you have to avoid these traps. But not only is the setup exactly the same as the first game, but the "traps" are EXACTLY the same. Giant swinging logs with spikes? Check. Wall pole-axes swinging down at you? Check. They are all there, and all avoided the same way as the previous game.

There are very minor improvements to the wall running...but the combat is largely the same only improved by the fact that I don't have to dagger stab every enemy I see. It's still really bad though.

So yeah, playing 13 minutes of the newest Prince of Persia makes me hate the oldest one even more. To see a series go through like 5 games to have THAT much stagnation shocks me to the core. I mean yeah, Mega Man had 10 games where they were all exactly the same, the difference there is that gameplay didn't need improvement. Prince of Persia needs TONS of improvement. It just wasn't fun...ever. Not a single leap fulfilled me since they are pre-programmed jumps, not one battle was satisfying in the way God of War or Devil May Cry satisfies me, and the story was garbage. It was a trial to go through to say the very least.

*...changes are coming*

Console Generation VII - All the Good It's Done

Now, I disliked basically everything that Acefondu did about this current generation. In fact, I probably disliked it even more. However, I try to be a positive person, and so I can't help but want to find the good in this. I've been floundering on where exactly to start this for several days, and mostly what I've come up with is separable into two simple categories: Hardware and Software.

Hardware:

There are certain things about this generation of consoles that, simple though they may be, are truly excellent and often glossed over- wireless controllers. On this front, the clear winner is Sony. Not only wireless, but rechargeable! Everyone else still requires AA batteries.

Another good feature is that the hardware basically guarantees good graphics. Even the very worst games on the market look decent. Honestly, this is the best I could come up with. Based solely on hardware, this was a disappointing generation to say the least.

Software:

Here's where it truly shined. Some of the best games I've ever played have been released in this generation among the deep sludge of FPShooters and grizzled space marines. We're talking whole franchises I have come to love, like Bioshock, Dead Space, InFamous, Assassin's Creed, and let's not forget the cream of the crop- Batman: Arkham Asylum. These games are all truly excellent, and great starts to a whole new world of gaming. So much so that they deserve their own article, and I'll elaborate on them all later.

Instead, I choose now to post something of a rebuttal to a part of Ace's article: his complaint about sequels.

Firstly, I find his statement about game series rarely reaching so many sequels before now to be a bit silly. After all, our two favorite franchises of all time, Mario (his) and The Legend of Zelda (mine) have such high numbers of sequels that it's actually difficult to nail down just how many there are. (Mario has 115 titles to his name if you count side games and sports and whatnot, and Zelda has over twenty.) The reason that there haven't been so many sequels to series until this point is that they simply hadn't been around long enough. Of course the longer a game franchise is around, the higher its number of sequels go. That's just logical. Secondly, the more sequels quality companies make to quality games, the better. Every new sequel is an opportunity for a good game. Some of the many many Megaman sequels were excellent, as Ace himself pointed out in his most recent article. Thirdly, sequels aren't harming the new in the industry. All the new franchises I mentioned weren't hindered by the fact that there's now eight Silent Hills. In many cases, not only have the sequels NOT hit critical mass, but they've reached a finite ending. As of now, at four games, Snake's saga in Metal Gear Solid is over and done with. There may be more games on the horizon, but we've effectively wrapped up the character in style.

Another truly excellent addition is DLC, and online download networks, when utilized properly. I love replacing old PSX games with PSN titles, and I especially love the reasonably priced DLC you can get for many new games. Mission packs and new content are always welcome.

Basically, what it comes down to, in my thought process, is that as long as the games themselves don't suffer, the generation was a success. This generation has brought with it many, many evils. the FPS plague, the obsession with repeating successes of other companies instead of finding their own, the casual gaming market. However, buried amongst the filth are several new games and new standards that make it all worthwhile. At the end of the day, this generation has delivered a lot of fun, and isn't that what truly matters?

The Death of Mega Man

Keiji Inafune left Capcom some many months ago, and it seems as though that has pissed Capcom off more than I had hoped. I pondered what would happen to our favorite blue bomber once its creator left. I assumed Capcom would continue making great Mega Man games and little would be lost. If anything I thought maybe a new director would breathe a little life into the series. I of course, couldn't have been more wrong.

Capcom as far as I can tell has all but decided that Mega Man is no longer a viable mascot character. Admittedly, his games haven't sold well the past few years apart from the DLC games of Mega Man 9 and 10, and in Japan Battle Network is a really strong series. As a whole though, the Mega Man property is not nearly as lucrative as it once was.

Despite that, I believe there is something more to this story that fans will never really know. Just how badly did Keiji piss Capcom off? I mean, he really must have upset them greatly. After he initially left, Mega Man Universe was immediately cancelled which was supposed to be a sort of Little Big Planet meets Mega Man. It was pretty far in development too, they had trailers for it, and even a pseudo release date planned. Now that didn't really register with me too much at the time as far as just how badly Capcom is trying to keep Mega Man titles off the shelves.

Just this past week Capcom cancelled Mega Man Legends 3 on the 3DS. They were going to release a demo to see how viable the game would be before actually finishing it. However, they never even let the demo get released to see how well it would do. That strikes me as very fishy. Initially they said to the fans that if the Mega Man Legends 3 demo got enough attention and downloads that they would make the full game. Why suddenly deviate from that plan and pan the game? It makes NO sense. But ok, whatever, the Legends series was probably the least lucrative of all the Mega Man spinoffs, I get the decision.

However, it's this last bit of news that strikes me as odd. Capcom just earlier today announced a follow up to Marvel vs Capcom 3, called Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. They also released the names of the new combatants the game will have. Before I mention who is in and who isn't let me tell you that Capcom had polls on their website of characters people wanted to see, and more often than not Mega Man or Mega Man X would appear in the top 5 for the Capcom side of the game. He is, however, nowhere to be found on the new version of MvC3.

What strikes me as REALLY fishy about the choice to leave him out though, is who they put in. They put in Virgil from Devil May Cry. WHY? They are rebooting the Devil May Cry series, GOD knows if Virgil will even BE in that reboot. So we have Zero in MvC3 who was put in before the Keiji fiasco and Dante, but no Mega Man who is the star of his series but they add Virgil? At this point, it's a blatant snub.

Clearly there is no question to me now that Capcom has lost faith in the Mega Man brand as it stands now. Whether we ever see Mega Man again is something I doubt heavily, but it IS Capcom after all and rarely do they ever let a series die off. But this is a rather strange series's of occurrences against Mega Man. If I had to make bets, I would say one of two things will happen.

1. Capcom is going to revamp Mega Man into something brand new yet familiar like they did with Street Fighter 4.
2. We never see Mega Man again.

What I'm 99% sure of is we'll never see Mega Man 11, or a new Mega Man X. The Zero series on handhelds died several years ago so we won't see that again either. Hopefully, I'm wrong and we see Mega Man soon. He's my second favorite video game character of all time. I enjoy every Mega Man game made apart from the Battle Network games, and I could play Mega Man games through a Mega Man 100 if that ever happened.

It saddens me to think he may be gone. Honestly, it kills me inside as a gamer to think it. The way of gaming as I knew it is dying off making way for FPS after FPS. If they make a Mega Man FPS I'll probably assassinate myself. I know there's a fan game of a Mega Man FPS, that doesn't count. Like music though, what you grow up with ends up being what you like most and all the new stuff is crap. I feel video games will have the same stigma among people. Despite my bias, I think gaming fans can agree that watching Mega Man get sent to his unceremonious death is very sad.

*21 Charge Shot salute*

Crysis 2: Everything that's Wrong with Gaming Today

If you have rummaged through earlier posts of mine you'll note that I have become somewhat of a PC gamer. I enjoy PC games more these days with their mod communities and customization, mouse control especially for games like this, and the online communities are generally older and easier to get along with.

Crytek made an amazing game some years back called Crysis. It was the Mount Olympus of graphical benchmarks for PC's. To this day it's used as a benchmark to see just how good your PC is. Though it is being slowly replaced by Metro 2033 and Witcher 2, it had a really good long run. Graphical benchmarks aside, it was an amazing adventure. Beyond its lush landscapes lay a great foundation of gameplay, utilizing suit powers and allowing the player to plan how to attack every situation. I played through it 3 or 4 times and always doing things differently each time. The story was simple, but compelling and succinct. It made sense and didn't leave you scratching your head. The ending was a cliffhanger and left us really wanting Crysis 2. Let me just say that not only wasn't this cliffhanger resolved, it was left entirely ignored as if it never happened.

So Crysis 2 finally comes and Crytek brings the game to consoles. This of course is an immediate detriment to PC gamers. Crysis 2 by comparison to Crysis looks awful. The textures are not nearly as crisp, the environments are unimpressive, and the scope of the game in all has shrunk significantly. They all but abandoned the first game's story for console gamers who had no history with the first game. You could play Crysis 2 without ever playing Crysis 1 and not be lost. What doesn't make ANY sense though, is if you HAVE played Crysis 1 you will be SO lost playing Crysis 2. If I went back in time and didn't play Crisis 1, maybe Crysis 2 would make sense....maybe.

Gameplay:

Crysis 2 is flat out a downgrade in every conceivable way from Crysis 1 and the gameplay is no exception. In Crysis 1 you got FULL suit control. You could switch from Power, Speed, Armor, and Stealth whenever you wanted, and use them strategically as you want. In Crysis 2 there is no Speed or Power anymore. Speed is the WORST offender in my opinion because it's permanently on. Every time you run your suit power drains. What sickens me is you aren't even running in what Crysis 1 would consider "speed" mode. In Crysis 1 you ran like a rocket. It was brief sure, but it was a great way to bum rush a guy or escape a heavy firefight. In Crysis 2...you just run, like ANY normal human being yet your suit energy gets drained. This is supposed to be the SAME suit from the first game right? How then did it suddenly get shittier? Well it did and we're stuck with it.

Losing Power annoys me too. With Power on in Crysis 1 it was a gamble, you did more damage but were highly susceptible to dying really fast. I loved this gamble myself. Often I would use it against tough foes that took too long to kill, and I'd quickly use Power mode to dispatch them. It felt great, like a strategic move in combat. It was risky and fulfilling. Do we get ANY of that in Crysis 2? Nope, there is no Power mode.

What Crysis 2 does add are suit upgrades with RPG experience points and it added stealth killing. The stealth kills are fun admittedly but it wasn't anything you couldn't also do in Crysis 1. Instead of sneaking up on guys in Crysis 1 and unloading a silencer in them, in Crysis 2 you get to just press a button for a cinematic stab to the neck. The suit upgrades is the bigger addition however it's utterly stupid. The upgrades you get are mostly pointless. The only ones that make a big impact are the stealth ones, such as longer stealth power and silent steps. With those two equipped you are basically invisible to enemies. All the other upgrades are super shitty and don't matter. Like enemy sensor. I never actually got that one because your mini map displays your enemies, what the hell is the point?

Other minor additions to gameplay is being able to run and slide or jump and use a foot stomp move. I barely used either feature as they were pointless and more than not left you open for attack rather than safely shooting behind walls.

The enemies in this game were shitty too. Also, no final boss fight really pissed me off. Just like Bioshock 2, it made no sense. Crysis 1 and Bioshock 1 BOTH had final boss fights. Their sequels did not. WHY? But anyway in Crysis 2 you fight normal humans for a few hours then it's all aliens, of which there are only 3 types and 1 giant robot walker thing and you only fight 2 of those so I don't really count it.

The aliens are admittedly more fun to fight in this game than Crysis 1....but they don't make ANY friggin sense story wise. They look COMPLETELY different from the first game. They are literally a completely different species in my opinion. What's really dumb though is they're basically de-evolved from the first game. In Crysis 1 all the aliens flew around, in this one they are biped...WHY? Why did the aliens get worse all of the sudden? They JUST started their assault on earth after being awoken and suddenly they opt to NOT use their airborne comrades? Where are they? Did I really kill all of them in the first game?

Really I can't get over how completely different they are from the first game. As far as I can tell it was never explained why they look so different. In the first game they were basically robots, in this game they are full on aliens. It just doesn't make any sense, and you'll hear this complaint A LOT in my review of the story.

Story:

It didn't make ANY god damn sense!!!

SPOILER ALERT

In the first Crysis, at the end of the game we see our hero going back to the Island from whence the aliens came to stop them, then the credits rolled. Ok, are we caught up now?

END SPOILER

In Crysis 2 we open to...New York with a band of half-wits trying to defend it. They immediately get pwned and Prophet is inexplicably right there to fish what will become the main character of this game out of the water. Prophet kills himself and gives the new guy the suit.

Right there I had to stop the game. I had SOOOOO many issues with this after playing Crysis 1. First off, why aren't they on the island again? Where is Nomad from the first game? He's never spoken of, he's the main god damn character! It's as if he never existed at all! What the hell! My second issue is how in the holy fuck does Prophet give the new guy the suit? It's explained in the first game how these suits are symbiotic to the host and if you die, the suit literally burns you to ashes leaving no trace of your existence.

My question is how the FUCK did he get the suit off? He shouldn't be able to! Crysis 2, later in the game even points this very fact out all by itself. At one point the evil dude of the game goes to GREAT LENGTHS to take the suit off of you to use if for himself. He has a SHIT ASS TON of equipment lined up to get the damn thing off of you. He doesn't succeed by the way. So here we have Prophet in the opening of the game taking the suit off bare handed and later in the game they revert back to the first game's claim which is you shouldn't be able to take it off through normal means.

That was JUST the first FUCKING cinema and already I found like 4 plot holes. Not withstanding the incomprehensible nature of our new alien friends, this game may as well not have been called Crysis 2 at all. Just to tie it up, do we ever find out Nomad's exploits on the Island? No. Do we ever figure out just how in the hell Prophet got off the island? No. The island was supposed to be VERY important, and instead we get a defend New York story with none of our Suit wielding combatants like Nomad or Psycho (who by the way was the best character in the series).

Ugh, ok so I accept that I'm some new guy, fine. So immediately you're contacted by some random hippie character who still thinks you are Prophet. And as before you're a silent protagonist so he never opts to tell this hippie dick that you are NOT in fact Prophet. This will present another glorious plot hole later. First I'd like to identify, not exactly a plot hole but something that REALLY pissed me off.

So the hippie guy wants to meet up with you ASAP. You go through many stages trying to get to this dick fuck. Finally, in one level he is surrounded by the enemy on all sides and you have to break in and save him. You break in, shoot up all the dudes, but the hippie guy is nowhere to be found. Ok, so I think he gets captured, big whoop.

THE VERY NEXT CUT-SCENE:

Hippie Guy: "I fucked up"

I don't remember the exact next quote but he basically says he "fucked up" and left the place he was surrounded on all sides by to....get this...try to save his girlfriend..or go to his girlfriends house...something like that. I about shit a brick.

1. How did he escape? If he was in SO much peril HOW did he get out?
2. His girlfriend is never mentioned again.
3. If his ultimate goal is to meet up with Prophet WHY not wait?
4. Again, suit guy is a very good bodyguard. Wouldn't it have been smarter to wait for him and then save the girlfriend? YES!!

Fuck me this is beyond stupid.

So here's that plothole that I mentioned earlier. You FINALLY meet up with hippie guy who when he meets you is immediately thrown that you are NOT in fact Prophet. So much so, he suspects you are there to kill him and then he pulls a gun on you. This is where the idea of having a silent protagonist is utterly retarded. He could have told the hippie guy from the start what happened, and avoided this ugly incident. Furthermore, he doesn't even explain himself when the gun is on him. The suit RANDOMLY projects the game's first cinema which is a recording Prophet made...on the suit...which he wasn't wearing at the time...I have no idea how that worked....Anyway, so Prophet's message plays which gets the hippie guy off your case and he trusts you now. Thank god Prophet had the foresight to know he was recruiting a fucking mute and made that message!

It's at this point I mentally gave up on the story. The game drags on and you meet the old guy who started the suit program and wants the suit for himself to live longer and save everyone from the aliens. Once he fails to get the suit off he suddenly turns good guy and helps you out through the end...it's senseless just like everything else. I mean, your character had no reason NOT help stop the aliens in the first place. Why wouldn't the old man just wait for your character to stop the aliens then take the suit? No he has to fuck you up a bit, realize he's being a dick and then assist in you in the mission you were already fucking on in the first place! FUCK this is dumb!

Oh, and at one point in the story they threaten to nuke the aliens if you don't succeed in your mission in a certain time limit. In the first game it is discovered that nuclear warheads EMPOWER the fucking aliens. It gives them ENERGY! HOW was this forgotten? Did they just not tell anyone?

"You know sir, I think it'd be a good idea to tell the rest of the military that nukes don't work on these aliens."

"Nah, fuck that, let them figure it out."

Now, granted they never launch the Nuke so I didn't get to bitch about yet another plothole where the Nuke fried the aliens (which it shouldn't) so that's good they avoided that. But for them to even suggest a nuke makes me want to punch small baby Panda's for just how fucking dumb it is to suggest.

It actually gets dumber. The very end of the game made zero sense. Maybe I have to watch it again, I don't know. I still can't piece together exactly what happened. But basically you complete a mission destroying some alien power towers, get launched out of the last one and a cinema plays showing you rise up and Prophet's voice plays and he says he's Prophet...So Prophet came back to life? ....Somehow? WTF?

End Credits...

My only thought was what the hell did I just see? And I turned the god damn abomination off and played something good....

Sound:

Great sound as usual. Loved the gun sounds and I really enjoy Crysis's soundtracks. They are all fitting and give an air of futuristic war. It's good shit, can't say much else. Oh, -10 points for your main character causing plotholes because he's a silent protagonist. Yeah, that's in the sound department. Oh, and the voice acting in general was terrible. WHERE THE FUCK IS PSYCHO? He would have made this game a billion times better. "C'mere moppet!" - Psycho says to a Korean.

Graphics:

I went over this a bit earlier, but the graphics are worse than Crysis 1 by quite a bit. That's not to say the game looks bad though because it doesn't. I'm not a graphics whore by any means, but it would be embarrassing to me as a game developer to say that a game I made 4 years ago looks better than a game I just made. I mean it will confuse people in the future I bet. Playing Crysis, then Crysis 2 and saying "What the hell is this garbage?" Kind of like watching the old Star Wars movies and then the new ones which look better despite being prequels. It's all kinds of fucked up.

Multiplayer:

I actually tried to get into this, but it's too terrible. Finding a game is really hard, and most of them don't start. Furthermore, this game is bugged to hell and 90% of the time the game does NOT recognize that I'm online. I have to reboot the game 9 out of 10 times before Crysis 2 goes "Oh, yeah I see now, you ARE online! You can play now." I have no idea how to fix this error. From what I understand though it doesn't approve of Wifi connections. Sadly that's the only connection I have so fuck it, can't play online.

Conclusion:

I titled this with "Everything that's Wrong with Gaming Today." Specifically what I mean is Crysis 2 catered to console gamers and abandoned its core audience which is what a LOT of developers are doing these days in different ways. Whether it be to the casual crowd, or selling out making yet another FPS game, developers these days just don't give a shit about their fans. It's like when Epic Games called their fans thieves and refused to continue the Gears of War series on the PC. People pirated Gears of War on the PC and it didn't sell well, so Epic just said fuck you to PC gamers. It doesn't help that Gears of War is one of the shittiest PC ports in existence either. So really it's their own damn fault.

Also, the crappy story. Games these days are so poorly written, far worse than even the bad translated games of yore. I don't think developers hire writers anymore, really I don't. They probably let the clerical staff, or the janitor write some shit down and they use it. That's what this game felt like. It felt like whoever wrote it honestly never played the first game at all nor knew it existed and probably wondered why the executives kept insisting he title the game "Crysis 2."

This game should not have been called Crysis 2. It should have been called "Aliens fuck up New York," it would have made SO much more sense.

*This game sucked*

Console Generation VII

It's been a while since I've posted here, mainly because I lost my job last month. I lost it mostly due to our new governor cutting school funding across the board and also because of incompetent management, but hey what are you gonna do? I just get to join the 10% of jobless Americans at the moment and be in the 60% of Americans living in or below poverty. So I've been job hunting for the last month getting absolutely nowhere as I have been for the last 2 years job hunting as a side project. I'd rant more on it but if potential employers put 2 and 2 together and learn who "acefondu" is and google me they'd probably reconsider hiring me if I rant about how absolutely retarded my previous employer was. Suffice it to say I didn't have a job description for 4 years and they blamed me for not having enough work to do...Just a thought, when you hire someone, you probably should have something in mind for that position...But no, I was in the wrong...It took them 4 years to figure out I didn't have enough work to do, let that settle in on how dumb they are. They probably would have never figured it out had I not given myself projects to do, which when I presented them is when they caught on that I had too much free time. So by trying to help them out, I get fucked over. Take my advice, always look busy and don't do anything extra. It would have been safer for me to post more of these blogs at work, seriously.

So back to what I know best, gaming...and ranting. Today I'm going to rant about the 7th generation of gaming as it is reaching its twilight hours.

The 7th generation of gaming will be known historically as the online generation. But for me, it will be known as quite possibly the worst gaming generation I have ever been through. From shoddy hardware to terrible innovation the 7th generation of gaming is arguably the very bottom of the barrel when looking at previous gens. As usual I shall rant categorically.

Hardware:

The 7th generation, for me and many others, will mark the first time we ever had to send our systems in for repairs...and not just once but multiple times. We are all very aware of the Red Ring of Death fiasco, and I personally avoided the Xbox 360 for that very reason. However, the utter shittyness of the 7th generation would not let me escape hardware failures. Within the very first month of owning the Wii I had to send it in for repair. The first models had faulty graphics cards that would overheat and cause the screen to flicker tiny green dots everywhere. This wasn't an isolated incident either. The very same issue happened to my friend in the exact same week.

Just last week my original 60GB PS3 flubbed out on me in the middle of a Street Fighter match. It had been showing signs of breaking on me the last few months. Mainly when I would start a game it wouldn't boot up the audio properly half the time. It would make stuttering noises in many games. Also, some games would lag on me on boot up. I saw it coming.

And more recently my Wii has been making serious grinding noises when I run my games. It's so loud and obnoxious that I have since put it in my nearby closet while I play it. This muddles the sound enough to where it's tolerable to play, and generally not noticeable thankfully. This isn't an isolated issue either. There are many youtubes on this explaining how to fix it. I tried my damnedest to fix it myself but I could NOT for the life of me remove the final screw keeping it together. It's impossible, several of my friends have tried their hand at it and it's just not coming off.

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Sure, the hardware of the 7th generation is the most complicated it's ever been. But when I can, to this day, still pop on my Atari 2600 after nearly 30 years it just makes me wince that NONE of the 7th generation's consoles are reliable. Absolutely none of them. What's worse is although they are more complex and have more working parts to fail, they can be compared best to desktop PC's. Now, I have owned around 4 or 5 desktop PC's and NONE of those have failed in the slightest. They all still work, and I still have them. If someone told me that a 14 year old PC is more reliable than a 7th generation gaming console I would have laughed in their face. If someone would have told me that a Nintendo console of all things would be shittier than a Panasonic TV I would not have even responded as my sides would have been splitting.

Seriously, up until the 7th generation of gaming consoles I was under the impression that game consoles were damn near invincible apart from the PS2 which has the infamous shoddy disc laser. I am baffled at the lack of quality of this generation of consoles. It's like all 3 companies purposefully made their systems cheap just so they could pull in repair service money and pooled repairs into one large warehouse so they all get a cut of the profits. Only problem is Microsoft went too far and their system was so shoddy they got a class action lawsuit. Good old Microsoft always taking ingenious devious corporate plans one step too far.

But I digress...

Software:

The 7th generation of gaming can be summed up in three words; First Person Shooter. Between the 360 and the PS3 you cannot escape this genre. I have pointed out before that previous consoles were plagued with too many bad side scrolling platformer games, however, in this day and age the over saturation of one genre is FAR FAR worse. Why? Because it takes WAY more time and WAY more resources to churn out shitty games these days, and because of that fact, we get less overall games than we did in previous generations.

Allow me to explain further. A company can spend some 3 to 4 years developing a crap fest like the new Turok game let's say, or god forbid the 14 years it took Duke Nukem Forever but that's clearly an exception. Still, they spend all that time on what is essentially a terrible First Person Shooter in an overcrowded First Person Shooter gaming environment. The console cycle after all this time is nearly passed, and what do they do for their second game? Make a sequel to their shitty FPS game of course, that's normally the case.

So instead of getting something interesting or unique from a developer, we are forced to eat their shitty FPS game. Back in the day a company may have spent a year or less on a really shitty side scrolling platformer. Maybe they would waste their time on a sequel, but generally they would explore a new avenue and create something generally worthwhile if not something of a cult classic title. In this 7th generation of games there are SO few risky titles, or cult classics, that it is simply ridiculous. The worst part about that for the developer is if they're just coming into existence and essentially make a game that will make or break them, they almost always end up failing on that one FPS title. I get why they choose that genre as their moneymaker, it just statistically sells the best right now. Even FPS games that do poorly still have way better margins than a shitty RPG. Take Homefront for instance. It's practically a dead game now, even though it's really young. It did terribly sales-wise, but it still danced circles around games like Nier and Disgaea 3. But in the end, everyone who worked on Homefront joins me and 10 out of every 100 Americans now as being jobless. As a gamer I would have taken my chances hitting it big with a game like Demon's Souls than try to insert another ho-hum FPS game into the 7th generation...but that's just me.

Game sequels are also what tells the story of the 7th generation. Before this one, you'd rarely see a game series go past 2 or 3, in this generation that's all we can expect. Most game series's now are in 4's, 5's and 6's. Others have dropped the number all together because they know just how embarrassing this is. From a business standpoint, I get it, it makes more sense to make something familiar and successful than something that may not resonate well with gamers or sell at all. With development cycles taking 3+ years it makes complete sense. But for gamers, we end up suffering though another Call of Duty, or only getting Madden to choose from rather than the superior Blitz games.

Worst of all the online scene that has defined the 7th generation has made it all the more worse. If you are one of those gamers that seeks a robust online experience you really have to play the popular game of the month, or one that keeps a robust online community. If you are like me, you pretty much hate all of those games. Considering mostly all those popular games are FPS games.

Even in the fighting game genre that I love you pretty much have to play the popular fighting game if you want online play. Thankfully I really enjoy Street Fighter 4 and it is the most popular one. But god help me if I want to play Blazblue online, or Soul Calibur 4. Those games online are a barren wasteland. You spend more time finding games than playing them. With that in mind, I simply stopped bothering with them as most people have.

Now I have mostly focused on my issues with the PS3 and Xbox 360 with their endless sequels and the FPS genre effectively ruining aspiring game companies seeking to make names for themselves, but the Wii is by far the worst offender to the horrid software that came out this generation. Let me just get this out of the way, I am ETERNALLY grateful for Super Mario Galaxy. It is my favorite Mario game ever made, and I've gushed over it in previous blogs. Really though, it is the perfect 3D Mario game.

With that said, the Wii has done way more harm than good. It spurred up a new kind of gamer, the casual gamer. Someone who not only doesn't care about the quality of video games, but one who doesn't even know what makes a game quality in the first place. If they can flail around and get a chuckle out of it then they are happy campers. That is exactly how the Wii games went after a while. Crappy flail-a-thons were made, many shovelware titles sold like champs, and Sony and Microsoft actually developed their own shitty flail hardware only furthering to damage the already terrible software lineups this generation had.

As Nintendo fans we expect Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, Metroid, Donkey Kong, and so forth. That's why we buy Nintendo dammit! They innovate, offer new and fun gameplay to their series's, and always manage to keep things fresh and interesting. With the Wii...we traded in Star Fox and F-Zero for Wii Fit and Wii Sports...We never got a new Pikmin, and we still technically NEVER got a new Zelda. The one we got is a heavily delayed Gamecube Zelda, period. The new Skyward Sword game will alleviate that itch, but I can't help but be super annoyed that all the time spent making shitty "Wii" centric games could have been used to give us Zelda two years ago, a Star Fox game, F-Zero, Pikmin, and maybe something totally new and fun. Oh wait we got Wii Music!

*shoots self*

One more point I would like to make about how terrible the software has been is REMAKES. Never before have we seen so many remakes, or companies who look to cash in. Sony has banwagoned to this trolly like no one else. They are HD remaking nearly everything after God of War 1 and 2 sold so well. Nintendo went so far as to remake Super Mario All Stars and had the gall to sell it for $30! The Wii itself launched with mostly remakes of RE Zero -4, OkamWii, and others. So not only is the software in CONCEPT copied from last gen with sequels up the ass, but just straight up copied with remakes. And to this day you can still hear Square fanboys chanting for a HD Final Fantasy 7...

Conclusion:

I was going to write a final paragraph or two about how this gen hasn't been a complete waste, but really I can't think of too much that was good about it. The good games felt way too much like last generation to really make me go "wow, that could not have been done without this new generation of consoles." I mean really, Mario Galaxy could have been done on the Gamecube and would have been better for it as we wouldn't have the shitty waggle attack. Really the only fantastic game of this gen that could really not have been done on the last gen consoles is Demon's Souls since it needed constant online connectivity to succeed beyond its great gameplay.

Personally, I rarely went online with it as I hated getting interrupted by an aggressor and it also screwed up the careful balance of pure black and pure white world tendencies you need to collect certain items. But the game succeeded on its online play. You could say that with a LOT of 7th generation games, and that's just my issue. A game like Demon's Souls can stand on its own without online, but its concept only works with online developed in mind for it. It's still a great game either way, the problem is that can NOT be said about 90% of the 7th generation's games. Would anyone say ANY FPS game was worth a damn without its online component? Of course not. Rare exceptions would be Bioshock and Metro 2033, and I'm thankful for those exceptions. But as I explained before the game has to be popular for the online component to even be worth a damn, and in MOST cases they aren't. Crysis 2 is the only FPS game I considered dicking around with the online as I loved Crysis 1. Sadly for me the game is not popular in the slightest and finding matches is frustrating, (Crysis 2 sucked anyway).

I know my last few posts all have a similar tune, mainly ranting about how I don't feel online gaming is an improvement for gaming, and how the FPS genre / sequels are stifling innovation, and I think I've driven those points home now. So my next blog will surely be bitching about how terrible Crysis 2 is.

*Crysis 2: Everything that's Wrong with Gaming*

E3 2011

E3 came and went so fast I didn't even prepare my pre-E3 thoughts. For the first time in years Startbutton didn't do a video on it either. Which is a bit sad since this year's E3 was probably better than the last two years combined. I'm not looking to go into super long winded details like I usually do.

Microsoft:
Microsoft's conference can be summed up thus: Gears 3, Halo 4, Halo remake, assload of crappy Kinect games. Oh, and I think they were proud to announce Youtube coming to Xbox, which is a lot like being proud of inventing the toaster in 2011. By then everyone already had one and you just weren't paying attention.

Sony:
In my opinion Sony had the best conference showing off PS Vita their new handheld which effectively blows away the 3DS at a $250 price point. With games that look like PS3 but handheld, it would be really hard not to bet against them this time around. They apologized for the PSN issues too which was nice, I dare say we'd never get that from Nintendo nor the Welcome Back program they initiated. The PS Move was talked about at minimum thank the gaming gods. They showed off game after game after game, most of them were pretty cool like Uncharted 3, Infamous 2, Resistance 3, and some of their Vita games. Also on hand were their HD remake program with Zone of the Enders 1 and 2, God of War PSP -> PS3 conversions and ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. And we saw a new Sly Cooper *yawn*

Despite that the gameplay and games that were shown were pretty great and took a page from Nintendo last year simply showing us more and more games. The downside of the show like Microsoft was their constant need to tell us how "everyone can play" "inclusion" and "connectivity." Every single game intro or monologue began this way, through the WHOLE 2 hour show. Like we get it Sony....Vita, PS3, other Sony shit all connects and does stuff together in the happy land of technology. Got it, thanks...shut it now.

Nintendo:
Wow talk about a turn around. Last year Nintendo had more games to show us than I own! Well at the age of 6 anyway...This year Nintendo decided to go a different route and show us practically nothing software wise. They began with the 3DS and we saw some neat things but nothing we haven't seen since last year like Mario Kart and Kid Icarus. Luigi's Mansion 2 was the welcome surprise here and literally the best part of their show.

Yeah they showed a new system...er...the controller for it anyway. I was immediately disappointed by it to say the least. And I was pretty hype for it beforehand. It's a giant tablet with buttons...Yes that's what I want to play games on, a giant ass tablet. And not a good tablet either. The touch screen tech on it is lifted from the DS, meaning it's functionality will never even compare to some of the shittiest tablets on the market. No multitouch, and no 'smart' touch features will be included here. That's not the worst part of it though. It appears bulky, "awkward" to use as I've heard from the E3 blogsphere, and the "joysticks" aren't joysticks, they are 3DS circle pads. Circle pads? Why? By comparison to joysticks I may as well play with my nose as opposed to my thumbs as practice for when this shit-turd hits store shelves. And the shoulder buttons do not possess a set of analog buttons, they are all just regular buttons. Way to alienate third parties yet again who often rely on those analog shoulder buttons for FPS games...

And let's be perfectly clear on what we're getting here. The hardware itself is no better than a PS3 or Xbox 360 which can stream gameplay to your controller and you can interact in a "new" way with games (though I'm tremendously skeptical on whether "new" means good or new means "waggle") all for an untold price. But to speculate it will probably be $300-$350 as they have admitted it will cost more than the Wii. I don't know about you but that's just embarrassing to me. They are making a system that is already 6 years old tech-wise and selling it for, probably, MORE than what the current generation consoles are selling for?

Now I know they did this exact thing with the Wii and I didn't begrudge it because they promised us a new way to control games that the other two units couldn't offer and 5 years later they deliver that promise with the Motion Plus that no developer made games for and that Nintendo themselves only made the new Zelda for...Yeah, so what I'm getting at is the Wii didn't deliver on that promise until the very end of it's life with a SINGLE game no one has even played yet. What am I supposed to think of this new system who's only defining feature is a touch screen and the letter U (it's called the Wii U)...?

Furthermore, when Sony and Microsoft decide to go into the next generation of consoles they will take with them the prevailing wind of developers leaving Nintendo behind once again with no ports and no third party support as we've seen now these past two and a half years with the current Wii.

I'm putting on a lot of hate and speculation for something I haven't used myself, but really the thoughts of the gaming community are with me. Even Nintendo's own shareholders are unhappy with their show/announcements. Their stock hasn't been this low since the end of the Gamecube days. Practically no one has confidence in this gambit.

I do see the positives it could bring to gameplay like having maps, radar, inventory screens, puzzle solving, other interesting elements I haven't thought of....but there's too many drawbacks....too many why's? Drawbacks like how much is one of these damned controllers? Also Nintendo said as of now the Wii U can only use 1 touch screen controller at a time while friends will have to use Wii motes and classic controllers. The problem is the system isn't powerful enough to stream to multiple controllers at a time. Isn't that kind of a BIG problem? What if the controller breaks? $150 to replace it? I was already pissed at replacing my PS3 controllers for $60. And I will often ask "why" while using this thing. Is it honestly required? Does it really make the game better? Could I have just hit "start" to see my inventory, solved different puzzles, or looked at my hud on the TV to see the map/radar and effectively not having to look away from the TV every ten seconds? Yeah....probably.

Barring a Mario release at launch this will probably be the first Nintendo system I ever pass on until it has a decent library of games. Or if it ever does, the current Wii doesn't have anything that qualifies as a "good" library of games.

Oh, and we saw some more of Zelda Skyward Sword. Link gets tired now for running too much and we have to wait to watch him catch his breath....really Nintendo? That wasn't a good idea in the Grand Theft Auto games it's not a good idea now. This is about as bad as adding random tripping in Smash Brothers Brawl.

E3 Wrap:
Sony impressed me a lot this year which I honestly didn't expect. Mainly I really thought the Vita would be like $400 (which it probably should be considering the tech it has). Sony showed us the games we wanted to see and did a good job of demoing this time around. Last year they were more content showing trailers and video after video after video, which they still did some of that this year too but they were better videos this time.

Microsoft is still trying to convince us the Kinect is somehow good, but at least they brought back Halo. And while I'm not one to like Halo at all in any way, I'd much rather be forced to play that for the rest of my life than touch even a SINGLE Kinect game for more than 5 minutes.

Nintendo thinks it's 2006 I guess showing off 6 year old tech and a lame duck touch screen controller. I've never really been one to want the utmost quality in things, but I'm starting to feel like Nintendo is the dollar store and Sony / Microsoft are K-Mart. You may not always find what you want at K-Mart but the prices are right for what you get at least whereas stuff at the dollar store is plentiful but never really turns out satisfying you in the same way brand name items do. (ex. Call of Duty World at War on Wii vs on PS3/360).

I guess you could even compare Nintendo to Apple in a way. They both overcharge you for their stuff and often don't support the latest games, like how there are next to no ports for Wii and Apple hardly ever gets Mac OS versions of PC games. At least Apple gives you the best touch screen money can buy...even if that amount of money could technically buy a small country and your own factory of children to make the best touch screens money can buy....

**cracks whip** MAKE ME MORE TOUCH SCREENS!!*

Journey to PC Gaming

I should first apologize for the very overused stock photo seen:
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However, in my mind's eye that's exactly how I felt myself to be after my long quest to fulfill some strange itch to build an ultimate gaming rig. But stories are not without their beginnings as I will describe to you the tales of my quest, wrought with heartbreak and scorn, victory and conquest, and above all else an empty wallet.

The year was 2006. Us gaming nerds were about to be adorned the Wii and PS3, our gaming itches were to be fulfilled on all fronts. Poised was I to claim my Wii, however early reports of the PS3 were saddening my inner gamer with developers crying over terrible user interfaces and the price-tag soaring above expectations. All hope was lost for my needs of HD gaming and JRPG's.

Fearing that I have lost a friend in Sony I turned to the PC market. My refusal to get an Xbox as I still deemed it the invader of my otherwise happy Nintendo Sony rivalry, I went to PC's as my alternative. Many Xbox exclusives were also on the PC so I had no worries. I did however have next to no PC building experience, or the ability to decipher what a "good" computer was. I figured if nothing else it will assist in my schoolwork (lol gamer mentality lies).

I did the mildest amount of research on the subject and closed my search on a stock HP Pavilion from Circuit City. Almost immediately I regretted the purchase. I found myself unable to run even the simplest games like Doom 3 which wasn't even a current gen title. Then I learned of graphics cards and that what I had was just an integrated piece of monkey dung. So I set out in search of a good yet affordable graphics card.

My searching left me at a quandary however. I was unable to understand exactly what my computer could handle. The go to gaming graphics card at the time was the Nvidia 8800GTX. Everyone and their mother recommended it. I was not sure that my PC could handle it though. I knew nothing about PCi connections or power supply wattage, or that motherboards even existed. I saw them as fairytale words and phrases tech junkies used to get off. Assuming for no discernible reason that I could not use the 8800GTX in my current rig, I bought a 8600GT.

The improvements in gaming were immediate and noticeably better. I could even run Crysis! I was very pleased. I would have this card for three years in my rig, but not really doing much gaming at all, mostly out of fear that my computer couldn't handle the latest games. Also, I had broken down and bought a PS3 for $600...a decision I do not regret however.

Years waned on, and my PC was all but gameless as my full attention was on the PS3 and fighting games. Nintendo and the Wii had disappointed me greatly the past few years with almost even less offerings than the PC had. That void had to be filled, and though the PS3 had amazing games there was just something missing.

My PC bug blossomed from the Orange Box. I read a few reviews that slammed the PS3 version calling it one of the worst ports of all time. I didn't figure I could run it on my PC, but a sale at Toys r Us for $20 for this set of games was "too good to pass up" (a quote that would later define my PC gaming habit). So I ran through Portal and Half Life 2 and was greatly invigorated, enjoying myself more than most gaming lately.

Somewhere, in the deep void of the Orange Box lurked a small seemingly harmless program called Steam. I would go on to ignore Steam and really not fully understand it's purpose. But on one dark and stormy night after surveying the youtubes, updating my myspace, and growing bored of so much porn I clicked on Steam. There I saw Lost Planet, a very well received Xbox 360 game that I had marginal interest in playing for just $5. Again worrying about how my PC could handle it I was hesitant....but at $5....how could I go wrong?

Luckily the game ran well, and soon this spawned an active interest in Steam and their wacky sales. My PC game library exploded in 2010 going from a mere 6 or 7 games to nearly 40. Not all was well on my Steam list however. Some games were not kind to my 8600GT and decided to run poorly. Late in 2010 I learned a bit more about PC's and realized I could handle a 9800GT just fine. I bought it, and noticed a marginal performance boost but not in the games I was hoping to see a boost.

I learned that this was likely due to a poor processor. Mine was a simple processor of just 2.1 GHz dual core. One of the first dual core models AMD made as well. This was a challenge as I had to learn about many PC related things. My motherboard apparently would only accept up to a 2.9 GHz dual core of the same model. A .8 GHz upgrade...would that noticeably improve my performance? Well at $80 it wouldn't hurt to try....right?

I did try, and try I did. Putting in a processor was the hardest thing I ever did in PC gaming. At first I put too much of that goop on causing the processor to overheat...though I found that out AFTER buying a new heatsink. Putting on this new heatsink was unmanageably difficult. I can't describe in detail what it was that struck me as so challenging as exhaustion and heat from doing this task purged my memory of the experience. Suffice to say I did not want to experience that again.

With the 2.9 dual core in I set out to try my games again. I was instantly disappointed to learn I gained MAYBE 5 frames per second on most games. Not enough to notice, and not enough to stop the constant stuttering of many of my games. Somewhere in this scrum of peace meal upgrades I had bought 2 more 1GB Ram of DDR2, and a Power Supply which I have since forgotten the wattage of. All totaled I spent probably over $500 from 2006 to early 2011 trying to get the performance I wanted out of my PC. The initial purchase was $700 for the Pavilion mind you.

What I ended up with was frustration and a yearning to get that right gaming rig I always wanted. Money was a factor as I moved out recently and pay my own bills on a job which I only work 4 days a week. Though, in this economy I guess I'm doing well? I had done a lot of research in 2010 and had the components I wanted in my Amazon cart gathering digital dust. Uncle Sam had given me enough for a wedding recently with the first home buyers tax credit with quite a sum of money to spare. Enough for my dream computer to be sure. But doubt still lingered...

Admittedly, I could play 85% of my games on medium or higher with few or no hiccups. But increasingly I was noticing games were requiring Quad core processors. With a push from my future wife to get the damn thing already and telling me to "stop whining" I abruptly ordered my parts, though still fearing my ability to put this thing together.

The parts arrived yesterday, and I enlisted the help of a friend with about the same knowledge as me of PC parts. We set to work putting everything in bit by bit. 6 hours later after many very small hiccups we got it on. Of course, my sound didn't work, and one of my 2GB Ram cards wasn't recognized. But, if it's one thing I've been VERY good at, it's troubleshooting and ironed out those small issues.

Using my dedicated Steam hard drive I put on GTA IV first as it gave me many issues on my old computer. It ran beautifully, not a single issue. Later, I ran Saints Row 2 which I deem to be the very worst PC port of all time. It also ran swimmingly. It had become 2am and I had work in the morning. While it needs more testing I think I can say with confidence that this is the PC I've always wanted. And at least this will be much easier to upgrade in the future.

Specs:
Intel i7 950 3.06Ghz
Nvidia GTX 460
6GB DDR3 Ram
ASUS Sabertooth x58 Motherboard

I know I could do with a better video card, I had planned on SLI with another 460, but it seems my case may not allow for it as it would literally bump right up against my power supply....lame. Oh, well SLI is kinda shitty anyway.

*Pixel pushing is a hazardous lifestyle*

Overrating the term "Overrated"

This will mark my very first post without a picture. Why? Because pictures in blog posts are highly overrated.

Everyone uses pictures in blog posts, absolutely EVERYONE. I am here to paint a broad spectrum of bloggers for you, the reader, to grasp just how many people use pictures in their blog posts. See diagram below:
There, now I feel you have some sense of the magnitude of this phenomenon. Everyone puts pictures in their blogs, it's a fact as proven above. See? Even I, determined to not post a picture in this blog, have indeed done just that! Why is this true across the board? Why because pictures in blog posts are overrated, which means everyone does it so it must be good...or bad as in the case with "overrating" something. But if everyone posts pictures in their blogs (as we have now proven they do) why does it suddenly get the mark of being "overrated"? Well, it doesn't really, since I made that claim. It's an arbitrary claim to make with no point of base or reference as is when anyone uses the phrase "overrated" for anything at all.

This is where I leave my sarcasm and get to the heart of the matter. I've discussed this term before in a post I did about Final Fantasy 7, but I want to revisit that word as I have noticed it has not died yet. People still use it, a lot, and I find the word to be quite overrated...

The term is used to describe something that "everyone" feels is "amazing" and the person using the word feels it is not as amazing as "everyone" says it is. Here's where we have the first and main issue I take with this phrase. WHO is "everyone"? Who are these people? What standards are their "amazing"? Let's take a really basic example on why this logic is outright ridiculous.

Example:

Guy 1 - George Bush is the greatest president EVER!
Guy 2 - Nah, he was overrated.

Now what we see here is one guy professing his admiration for our previous President. Guy 2 claims that president to be overrated. What is the basis for Guy 2's claim? Who are the people that loved George Bush? Republicans, sure. Evangelical Christians, ok sure them too. War vets, probably. How many of those people do we have in America? A lot, and enough to vote him into office TWICE. Does a majority vote make Guy's 2 claim valid? He was historically a bad President sure, but a majority of people got him elected which in turn means they think he is the shizzle, so in that view Guy 2 is right, George Bush was overrated since Guy 2 believes Bush was a poor President.

However, when we see ratings and national polls Bush was rated the worst President in history making Guy 2's claim wrong. How could he be "overrated" when the majority feel he did a poor job? Well ask the people who voted him in twice, what do they feel about Bush? They loved him as he fought for their needs such as preventing stem cell research, gay marriage, and lowering taxes for the rich. This is where we have a sort of paradox. On one hand he was voted in by "everyone" and yet later torn down in polls by "everyone" as an awful President. In the perspective where he was voted in calling him overrated makes Guy 2 correct (correct to him), but he is wrong by calling him overrated in the face of polls that show he was hated by "everyone".

So the question becomes, who are we asking when this term gets thrown around? Or who is this "everyone" the term overrated automatically refers to? Isn't it just a blanket statement for opinion? Why yes, yes it is! The problem is people like to try and base this term in some kind of perceived "fact." This perceived fact is created through an idea of popularity, like Chrono Trigger for instance which is a very popular game that could often be called "overrated" by some ignorant putz who refuses to have an opinion of his own and simply throws that term around to tally some kind of impersonal scorecard through others. While it is perceived that "everyone" loves Chrono Trigger and no one doesn't, this outcast as we shall now call him, must not only spread hate on something he doesn't like, but must also include those who do by immediately placing those who rate it highly into the "overrated flock of sheep (as he sees them)" into his own little category. This empowers the outcast, makes him feel stronger as a person, makes him feel like an individual for going against the grain. I find this to be a very common emotion among those who use the phrase overrated.

Now sure, there are people who do not like what is popular for one reason or another, but they will often give valid reasons and never throw around the phrase "overrated" and then call it a day. They will have actual opinions on the matter, comparisons and so forth. But then there are people, many people that will simply hate what is popular just because it is and use overrated like it's a flag they say an oath to, proud of its immediate power and concurrent defacing of those who don't go with the outcasts perceived grain.

Gamers everywhere, I beg you, please stop using this word. If you do not like something that is perceived as popular, that is fine, please explain why with thoughtful words, words of meaning. Do not have faith in your conviction for hating something, have reason instead! Reason would not use blanket statements like overrated, it would instead invoke thoughtful dialogue on the subject rather than be proud for whatever reason that you are different from everyone else for going against the grain on something as stupidly small and otherwise meaningless to "everyone" as an opinion.

*See what I did there, I just said opinions were overrated without using the word, boom!*

PSN is Down yall!

Those of us PSN users have been well aware that since this past Wednesday the Playstation Network has been dead. While we were all hoping it would be resurrected like some mythical figurehead that brings us chocolate bunnies every year, that has not happened yet. As for Sony they haven't made many comments on its status either except that the issue was through an external force.

This external force could easily be the group Anonymous, an elite gang of cyber hackers who has waged war on Sony. While all of that is speculation the fact is the PSN has been down for the longest stretch since its inception.

As a PSN user myself it really doesn't bother me. I don't have to pay for this service so I don't really care, but it seems like some people care quite a bit. IGN even went so far as to post this:

"I barely have the will to play PS3 without its online functionality, and I know there are millions of gamers that feel the same."

Wow really? That bad eh? Can't enjoy some Uncharted? Some Bayonetta? Maybe a bit of God of War 3 (or any of the hundreds of titles that end in "3" now). Assassin's Creed? Has single player gaming died that much? Have we gone so far that we "need" to see friends online? That we have to send messages in between killing bosses? Can we only play games that gives us a bonus +5 points for a headshot? The article goes on further to say that the PS3 is no better than the NES now that PSN is down.

Really it isn't any better than the NES now? Well the games are way better graphically, sound is better, gameplay in general is more robust and interesting, you can play with up to 4 people offline in some games (only 2 on the NES), stories are better and make more sense. I mean there are some pitfalls like 90% of lead characters are all space marines now and most games want to be first person shooters but that's not really any different than when every game wanted to be a crappy side scrolling platformer on the NES. Some are good some are bad. Still I'd say the PS3 has a lot over the NES. Can the NES play Blu Ray movies? Can it play music? Show a picture slideshow? Do you have to blow in the PS3 to get it to work? Of course, I need not go on to point out how stupid I feel this comment is, but the idea that people think a console without online is useless still shocks me.

When I started writing this I couldn't believe how integral online gaming has become to the gaming community. I knew it has become imperative for developers to include multiplayer in games, that was the motif in 2010, but looking at 2011 it seems like every game is made specifically for online play.

Just gazing at this year's PS3 lineup we have Little Big Planet 2, Killzone 3, Uncharted 3, Twisted Metal, SOCOM 4, and Infamous 2. Most of those are pretty much online only games with the offline being an afterthought. Even games like Infamous 2 and Uncharted 3 which will likely have robust offline only seems to be touting their online gameplay in previews and interviews. It's like they don't even care they made an offline component at all.

I'd like to point out that the PSN won't last forever. All these games people buy specifically to play with their friends online will die off and newer games will come. I can still enjoy games like Tetris and Mario 20 years later, but who's going to play Little Big Planet 2 or SOCOM 4 in 20 years? No one that's who. And it's sooner yet for even our modern games. How big is the online scene in the first Resistance game? How big is it even now for the new Homefront game? It sucked, sure and that's why people went back to playing Black Ops, but that's just my point. Why do I have to guess at what online game will stay popular for more than a few months? I'm glad I don't have to guess, I'm glad I can find enjoyment in the single player or offline aspects of games.

But sadly my way of gaming is dying it seems. Even Nintendo's new system is code named Project Cafe. Now what that means we have no idea, but the code name feels like it means online connectivity like being in a local cafe. I'm sure that's where they are going with it. Who knows. All I know is I will rue the day if I ever have to coordinate a dungeon with several other people in Zelda. And YES Zelda 4 Swords sucked ass don't even try say it didn't!

It's not that I'm totally against online play either. I do enjoy it a lot actually. Playing Street Fighter and Marvel online is loads of fun, (albeit frustrating at times) but honestly the offline play is far superior for those games and any fighting game fan will agree with that. As much as I do find 0nline fun for some games I just don't see it as an essential aspect of gaming. It might be for most people, but I can still happily play Vagrant Story on my PSP while watching some online streams of a fighting game tournament or something. I'm only annoyed that I can't play Final Fight HD on my PS3 because it requires a PSN connection. I learned my lesson not to buy Capcom games with that restriction on them ever again. Looking at you Bionic Commando 2.

**EDIT 4/26/11**

Breaking news on the PSN debacle. Sony has finally sent a message to all of us saying it was INDEED hacked and furthermore everyone's personal data has been compromised. That's right, credit card info / passwords to home addresses and phone numbers all hacked. This is seriously FUCKED up! Sony got hosed hard and the backlash from angry consumers will certainly be heavy I imagine. Class action lawsuits abound I am sure. It is ultimately their fault for not securing our shit. This doesn't happen with any other online source I'm aware of, Steam, Amazon, Ebay, my bank or credit card sites have never had this happen. Sony screwed the pooch on this one bigtime.

Worse yet if you use your PSN password for other things be sure to change that IMMEDIATELY. Also, once PSN comes back online you must change your shit IMMEDIATELY lest the hackers change your shit first then you become locked out....from your SHIT! Brad Pitt could have delivered that funnier than I...still...

*PSN is down. So what?*

Achievements in Gaming

Achievements, trophies, carrots on a stick, whatever you prefer to call them they are apparently here to stay in the world of gaming. As a gamer of the late 80's early 90's I immediately recoiled at the idea of a game telling me I "did good" when I "did something good..." Why do I need the game to tell me I beat the end boss? Why does it have to tell me with a cryptic message like "Worst Day Shift Manager Ever" - Star Wars Force Unleashed- Achievement unlocked! What purpose does this serve?

When this craze began, I quickly dismissed it and assumed it would go away. But then Sony tagged in with Trophies, and then some Wii games have their own personal dedicated achievements. My beloved Steam has achievements as well! It seems like these days if your game doesn't reward you while rewarding you (playing it) then it's doing something wrong.

Once I realized these silly things weren't going away I quickly wondered why? People actually like these things? The answer is yes apparently. Perusing joystiq.com as I often do I came across the quote below:

"GFWL has achievements, integrated with your XBox live account. Nothing on Steam can compensate for that. No one gives a crap about Steam achievements. "

The worst part about this quote isn't that it's so stupid it's hard to be believed, but that it got up-voted to blue. People AGREED with this, which on joystiq is often hard to attain blue status on a quote. But what makes this quote so unabashedly stupid? He's arguing one achievement means something where another means nothing...

News flash - They BOTH mean nothing!

And this kind of behavior isn't exactly new from gamers either. I see things in forums all the time like "I won't buy this if it doesn't have achievements," and "Are they going to patch the game to add achievements? I really hope so!"

Yes that's right companies have retroactively patched games to add in these worthless achievements! Star Wars Force Unleashed and Grand Theft Auto 4 are two I can think of on the PS3 that retroactively got trophy support. The worst thing happened was with the indie game called The Last Guy. Great game, I played the crap out of it. Automatically it updated to add Trophy support. Ok, whatever... Then I start up the game to find a message telling me that my game has been deleted because of the Trophy patch. Let me get this straight...the trophy patch deleted my game save file? The WORTHLESS trophy patch DELETED my VALUABLE game save? Ensuring that all I have achieved prior is now gone?

What I learned from that is game developers think that gamers can no longer recognize their own achievements. Like you know me getting all perfect runs in The Last Guy levels. I have no ability to recognize this according to game developers. No, I need a fucking Golden trophy to tell me I did this. BULLSHIT!

And gamers want this. They WANT it. I am so baffled by this. I simply can't understand it. You now it's really sad when Blizzard added achievements to World of Warcraft. THAT is utterly sad. Here we have a game that you dedicate your life to, and it gives you achievements? A game that rewards you constantly while playing it whether it be exp, gold, item drops, skill upgrades, new friends added, you NAME it you get rewarded. But Blizzard thought, no, that's not quite enough we need to give players tiny symbols and phrases of praise with tiny points next to that to really hook them in!

Dear Blizzard,

You have already enslaved a mass number of people that even the Germans would be appalled by and you feel you have to further secure these people with MORE ego stroking digital appeasements? You sick sons of bitches!

PS - Where do I buy stock options?

I remember gaming for my own achievements, being proud of things I set out to accomplish in a game which was mostly just to see the ending. Somewhere we got lost and we want to be rewarded for seeing the first cut-scene? For completing the training mode? For using a Hadoken more than 100 times? For going online? Playing in your first online match? Setting up your first online lobby? Patching the game? Replacing your batteries? Blowing into the console to clear out the dust? Buying the "I survived the Red Ring of Death," T-SHIRT!!!!

*pant wheeze* Ok, only SOME of the above are true. But the fact that some of those ARE true at all disturbs me greatly. What happened to us gamers? What has become of us? We have to play video games, things that are already giving us pleasure, but they have to now inform us we are pleased with what we're doing? That's what it comes down to honestly. That's exactly what these "Achievements" mean. It is like going down a huge water slide at an amusement park and at the end a large park mascot yelled "Congratulations!! You just had fun!!" Then he takes your picture and posts it on a large park board. And your response is "I did! I really did have fun!" And now that you did "achieve" this you won't do it again. Why would you, there's a record of it for all to see.

Now, I'm the kind of guy that wants to go down that water slide again. I'm the kind of guy that wants to play a game again, and yeah, maybe I do want to collect all the flags in Assassin's Creed again too even though I know I've done it before. But that Trophy tells me I already did it, and I won't get "rewarded" for doing it again, so I have no real reason to do it...

I have a ton of Final Fantasy 7 completed save files. All different, all perfect completions. Same with Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, and Pokemon Blue. I have no achievements for these games and I guarantee I have put more time in just one of these than all the games I have got a "platinum trophy" on combined.

I am not sure what the moral of this story is exactly. I hate achievements of all kinds. I hate that people feel they are useful in some way. I hate everything about these digital rewards. It's not what gaming is about. Though, I am not one to tell anyone what the point of doing a pointless activity like gaming, or anything classified as "entertainment" because everyone has their own reasons, but this....this is basically outright telling you why you're doing something which is exactly what I'm against. People read the achievement lists and go "Ah, yes I have to parachute 500 meters out of an airplane for this achievement." And then they do it... Not because they thought of doing it for the fun of it, no they want the 10 gamer points!

*Arguably the hardest achievement in gaming is catching all the Pokemon. Guess how many gamer points it's worth? NONE!*

Marvel vs Capcom 3 - Review

There are a few kinds of fighting games. Some are very balanced where all characters are created equal. Some require a high amount of skill/practice and patience to be great at it. Some are just stupid amounts of fun and totally unbalanced. That is what the Marvel vs Capcom series has always been, fun, but horridly unbalanced. Games that stop being fun at tournament level because they require you to use the very best of the best characters and not who you want to use to win.

Luckily in this day and age of online gaming, not everyone cares about who's the best, and don't play with an always win mentality, so games like this aren't so bad anymore. What's better is MvC3 is much more user friendly where combos are relatively universal between characters and are pretty simple to pull off. This offends the pros, but honestly I think it's for the better. There's nothing I hate seeing more than in MvC2 someone whip out Magneto and use his infinite that took him years of practice to do. That is not my interest when playing a game, to invest years of time into it to 'get it.' That's just sad really. MvC3 lets everyone in on the fun, and the high level stuff is still hard enough to do where you'll need a few good months of practice still.

Now enough with my initial banter, onto the review.

Graphics:

This game is gorgeous. It plays and feels like you're in a comic book. The lights are flashy, the frames are smooth and the backgrounds are interesting and always on the move. The level of detail on the characters shine through, and the animations really make you feel like you're using certain characters. Like Dante, if you've ever played a Devil May Cry game this really feels like Dante if he were in a fighting game. He has damn near all of his moves from the games, and his sword swing flows just like the DMC games. That's pretty impressive, and that isn't noticed just with him, but with everyone else too.

Still, it's hard to write anything else about the graphics. They are great, the end.

Sound:

The music is shockingly good, I guess they needed these 10 years to finally get decent tracks for a Marvel game. MvC2 was noted as having practically the WORST soundtrack for a fighting game ever. MvC3 on the other hand, not only has really great music, but it fluctuates by what characters you have out which is really neat.

The voice acting is...good? Ok, it's good...but annoying and ever present. I think I've gone to bed the past few nights hearing Deadpool scream "PINEAPPLE SURPRISE!" It's not as bad as some games like Blazblue where EVERY character is constantly talking, but this is still pretty bad as MOST characters are saying something all the time.

The sound effects are very satisfying and fit well with everything going onscreen. Chris's shotgun blast sound is especially good.

Gameplay:

Unlike the previous Marvel vs Capcom game where you needed a Ph.D in combo execution to play it, MvC3 tones that down and makes it much easier for nearly anyone to play. This is great honestly. I can't find a downside to this. While it's nice to know playing Street Fighter that I can do this or that and few others can, it still creates a barrier of people in the know and people who are not. And those who are not are often in the majority, so you're left with a smaller selection of people to play against in the end who are at or above your level.

Making the game easier to play was the best thing they could have done with this kind of game. It's still challenging to do advanced combos, and the best of the best will still undoubtedly be the best, but at least the worst of us gets a sporting chance now.

The game plays as such, everyone has a light, medium, hard, and launcher button, and two assist buttons. You get a 3 man team, and combos are pretty much always A, B, C, D or light, medium, hard, launcher (special as Capcom calls it) as is the case with this game. Once you hit the launcher you may jump to meet them and continue a A, B, C pattern ending on D to ground/bounce them to continue another combo or end in a super move. See? Simple isn't it?

There's advanced things to do like air dashing, super jumping, instant overheads/crossovers, and maintaining a zone like in most fighters. But the basics of the game are very simple, probably the simplest I have ever played.

There are 35 characters for now, and more on the way comprising of course of Marvel and Capcom characters. A fine selection to choose from indeed.

Online:

Online is great, once you get into a game. But that's the problem, finding a game is REALLY dumb. Unlike Street Fighter 4 where you select from a list of potential opponents which showed their connection speed, MvC3 does an auto search that has a high chance of failing. When it fails, it sends you back to the loading screen, which takes a bit, then back to the online menu. This is very annoying, and very frustrating. It takes longer to find a single match than it takes to play two of them.

With that said the online is decent. It matches you up very close to your opponents rank. There's a fun RPG level up mechanic much like what is found in nearly every online game ever now. And you can save 3 of your favorite team combinations for speedy access.

Player matches are great, because you find someone and can quickly rifle games off at the speed of light. Once a match is done if both players select rematch, then BOOM you immediately get another match, no loading times, no menu selections, nothing, it's fantastic. The same is for offline Versus, which is just super convenient.

Lobby is terrible though. There's no spectator view, and I have yet to find a fighting game except MvC3 that doesn't have spectator view. That's pretty bad. So when you're in a lobby you get to watch...nothing and wait your turn. It's so boring. I'm not sure what Capcom was thinking here. I almost bet we'll get it in DLC for an added cost...

Story:

N/A it's a fighting game.

Conclusion:

MvC3 is a pretty fun fighting game. It will most likely end up being known for a handful of cheap tactics the pro community comes up with, but oh well, hopefully a bunch of people from all skill sets stick with it to make the online stay fun for a few years.

Keep up the good work Capcom.

***UPDATE 4/1/11***

I couldn't hate this game more. Sure it's still fun in small amounts, but it has a TON of issues. Blocking things for one seems utterly broken and sometimes impossible. There are times in this game I have my hands off the buttons entirely, blocking in the correct way and the game doesn't register me blocking. THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME, and it's ridiculous. Most of the cast is entirely pointless as well, and utterly useless. Just like in MvC2, there are only a handful of characters worth picking and you'll never get a team of 3 where you like every character in it. No, you are FORCED to pick some characters just because they work well with others.

Other notes: X-Factor is the dumbest system ever. Wesker is broken beyond belief, he has way too much priority, is way too fast, does way too much damage for having way above average health. Everything is WAY too safe especially Wesker who I honestly believe has nothing punishable about him.

After 40 hours with this game I can honestly say I think I'm done with it. I find no enjoyment in creating teams for the sole purpose of killing characters in one combo, or teams that just run away and throw projectiles. I'd like to use Zero and Haggar on a team if possible, but they are both terrible and REALLY don't work well together. Too bad. Sticking with Street Fighter where you are allowed to block, can pick whoever you want, don't have to worry about stupid things like team synergy and broken hypers that deal WAY too much chip damage (especially in x-factor where blocking nets you as much damage as if you ate the hyper cleanly).

The game frustrates me to no end, and I'm not easily flustered. Sure, I could be good at this game too. All I have to do is pick Sentinel, Dr. Doom, and Ammy. Or a similar combination of broken characters like everyone else does.

***END UPDATE***

*"Pineapple Surprise" is in reference to grenades Deadpool throws at you*