Next Gen - Thoughts

So it's that time again, after some 7 years of no new consoles (except the Wii U) the 'next gen' is nearly upon us. In one week the trumpets will sound ushering in a new age of tech with a new age of games. Parades with circus animals will roam the streets, jets will fly overhead, fireworks will go off, bunnies will have sex....well bunnies always have sex....It will be a time of jubilation for us gamers, that's what I'm getting at.

Or is it??

Now don't get me wrong, I am intrinsically hyped for the new consoles as is my techie nature, but something about this new generation of consoles leaves me with reserved feelings. Each new generation has offered a promise of better games for some obvious tangible reason or another. Let's break that down for a moment.

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The NES gave us prospects of gaming where we could identify characters, there was obvious level progression, boss encounters, and a general beginning and ending to games unlike previously with Atari games which were all high score based.

The SNES / Genesis promised us what all consoles will do from here on, which is better graphics. It advanced gameplay further by mastering the side scrolling adventure so they weren't mostly shitty expierences but instead and understood medium by now and developers made good ones generally. We also got a glimpse into 3D gaming, and 3D modeling for some games.

The N64 / Playstation reigned in the very awkward transition into 3D gaming. One could argue whether the graphics were "better" here though as the 3D polygons were so early, and so terrible, that during this early period gamers were crying out for those well drawn 2D games they came to love in the previous generation. But time passed and the devs got better at it and the games started to look pretty great. Never the less, this gen will be defined as one that brought us 3D worlds for the very first time.

The Gamecube / PS2 / Xbox will be known as the era that got 3D gaming right and nearly perfected. No longer were gamers subjected to mostly empty, often overly large 3D worlds. Things became more inhabited, realistic, and overall more fun as the gameplay got fine tuned. This generation also ushered in the beginnings of online gameplay, we got a taste of the future here.

The Wii / PS3 / XBox 360 era is easily defined as the online console era. Gamers were no longer restricted to one TV anymore to play with other people. Games were designed with online experiences in mind, and most gamers were expected to have access to them. Multiplayer overshadowed single player experiences in many cases. This gen will also be defined as one of trying to bait a casual market of gamers with mostly unsuccessful results minus the Wii. Now at the end of their rope, we can pretty much call it a short term success seeing as none of them transitioned to the Wii U if sales are any indication.

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But here we come to this new generation of games, what will it be known for? What will it do that previous generations could not? Sure, we'll get better graphics again as we always do, but what else? Is there anything else? I can identify a few things this gen might offer, but none of them are as wholly groundbreaking as 3D gaming was, or the online era.

1. Indie games. All 3 new console makers have stretched out their hand to indie devs. No longer will the process be super restrictive like it was in the past. Indie devs can make games and not go through very much red tape to get their games on the new consoles. We'll either see an influx of creativity from this, or a lot of trash.

2. Second screens. Again this is another sort of 'meh' improvement of new consoles, IF they even bother taking advantage of it. The Wii U clearly has this figured out providing all gamers with a second screen for various uses making some games a lot more enjoyable not having to pause for menus anymore. The system also is selling worse than any Nintendo system previously and isn't garnering support to showcase its second screen. PS4 will allow gamers to use the Vita as a second screen, and Xbox One is letting gamers use the Microsoft iPad (wtf is it called?) as a second screen. Will any of this amount to anything? I doubt it personally, but it's there and I can see it actually improving gameplay if utilized.

3. Social media. For someone like me still getting his feet wet in streaming games and recording shit for youtube, this new addition is sort of a godsend. Both the PS4 and Xbox One will allow gamers to stream and upload gameplay to youtube and Twitch TV. How well this will work is still questionable though. Will we be able to do webcams, have separate audio, can we green screen ourselves out, etc? If the utility of this is mitigated in most ways, prominent streamers will continue to use capture cards and their PC setups to make sure they are still making quality streams. So again, this is interesting but will gamers even use it much?

That about sums it up for what I feel these new consoles can really offer. Oh sure, Microsoft will tout it's "cloud" until it literally becomes a flying nimbus in their own minds...

What I'm saying is...it's not gonna do much of anything worthwhile. The cloud isn't going to revolutionize the way developers make their game worlds, and it isn't going to streamline any online gameplay either. What it will do is serve as a talking point of marketing and those in the console war debate much like Sony's PS3 CELL processor we all thought would change gaming like Robo Cop changed crime...except...

...Yeah didn't really do anything for them did it...

Maybe it's because I've been a part of the PC master gaming race for the last 3 years and a lot of these so called "advancements" consoles are getting are just something I've already had on PC. The graphics are a downgrade vs my computer, live streaming is already here and I have more options to choose from, indie games have been a staple of the Steam community since its inception, and second screens are...well...multiple monitors.

So what it really comes down to this gen is the games. We have to see a deluge of good games that need to stand out from the crowd...but so far the games I see devs focusing on ONCE again are First Person shooters. Destiny, Titanfall, Halo, COD, Battlefield...will it NEVER end with these things? Now we're getting "new IP's" with MORE FPS games? There will be some devs that will take chances as there always are, I just with more of them would lest gaming become some pseudo virtual paintball hub.

Son of a bitch!!

*NEXT GEN IS SO SOOON CAN'T WAIIIIT!!*

** please be aware the views and comments given by "*" are not consistent with the views given by "**" or this blog. The new consoles offer nothing new and suck donkey dick...good day **

* Screw you **! You and your logic! GAMES Muthafuckkaa!!*

** I will not lower myself to this petty argument...I have standards **

*Here's your standards*

** touche' **

*Damn right Frenchie!*

Streaming Schedule!

Ok so I am going to lay out a pseudo stream schedule over this weekend. I'm either going to play one of two games, haven't totally decided yet.

Either I'm going to play Bioshock Infinite on 1999 mode:

OR I'm going to play Crysis on some kind of hard difficulty, not sure if I should do the maximum hard though because it's REALLY unfair.

In any case it should be fun and I should get annihilated a lot which is always entertaining. So while everyone plays Pokemon this weekend I'll be murdering myself with one of these games. Enjoy!

*PS I might be getting pokemon too....damn the hype monster!*

Stream Update!

Ok so I just got new internets to make my stream look a billion times better which makes me happy. Didn't get to stream much last night because the guy was late as hell and it took some time to get it working. But I hopped into some Final Fight 2 and Street Fighter. Most of it was me tinkering with settings as I had to change everything over now that I can hit a higher bitrate. I still have tweaking to do though. I still need an intro to my stream, I need to have things set up on the back-end for scene switching, I still need a capture card, and probably a better web cam. I am using my old clunky digital camera....that was like $1,600 when it was released and I can get a $70 webcam that has nearly 10 times higher mega pixels than this thing....oh technology.

I also need to set a schedule of sorts. I need to pick some games to stick with and beat so I have something decent to upload to the youtube channel.

Anyway I had a lot of Street Fighter matches, actually won like 16 in a row or something crazy. With better internet there's a lot less lag which is great. Some matches felt like the guy was in the room with me. This particular highlight though was somewhat laggy, but probably the best moment of the night for hilarity.


Watch live video from Acefondu on TwitchTV

*streaming streaming I'm just streaming*

More Streaming!

So I've been doing more streaming, 3 hours worth last night of JUST Spelunky. Here's the best moment when I actually beat the game:


Watch live video from Acefondu on TwitchTV


Head over to my channel sometime: http://www.twitch.tv/acefondu/

Spelunky Stream Failure!

So I streamed a bit today, a lot yesterday with a ton of Street Fighter 4 action. Still working out the kinks in my stream though, but ultimately I have discovered I need BETTER INTERNET! I'll still adjust some things here and there and more testing is needed too but my god 2 mb upload speed is just not cutting it.

Please enjoy the videos below as they are pretty funny fails. Would be better though if the audio were synced .... ugh.... oh well.




Watch live video from Acefondu on TwitchTV




Watch live video from Acefondu on TwitchTV


*I died...therefore I lived*

It has BEGUN!

So I have begun streaming! My first real day of it has generally concluded, but I will continue a bit to fix some technical issues. Ultimately I wish my internet was decent. Didn't have any viewers =( but that could have helped me solve some problems I was having with feedback. Never the less here's a highlight of some of my stream from today. The earlier parts I was zanier, but meh.



Watch live video from Acefondu on TwitchTV

Blog Update

So I haven't updated in a while, this much is clear. Had a year of a pretty great new job, and yet a year of being more emotionally depressed than I ever have been. It's rather clear few if anyone reads this but I've come to the conclusion that some creative outlet is needed to break this cycle of my depressive state. This was a good tool for when I was bored at work, but I don't get those moments anymore as my current job is super busy which is fine. I used to do a lot of things, or at least dabble in a bit of everything. I created a short run web comic, made a few movies, wrote screen plays and short stories all with little fanfare and not much return on investment. Little did I know though how therapeutic it could be and the satisfaction of doing something with my time as opposed to whittling it away with gaming.

This blog isn't entirely better, most of this blog is me ranting at video games or the current state of gaming. And to be fair there is an awful lot wrong with it, especially for us 80's kids that grew up in a world where games had more creativity in one tiny smiley faced mushroom than anything that rhymes with Squall of Doodie *best joke I can come up with at midnight* There is a good amount going right with the gaming world too though, and as we enter the console transition we're seeing some of the most polished games we'll likely see in the coming years until developers can get their heads around the new hardware again. Then again, the new consoles are mirroring what PC's have been for a while now, so perhaps this will be the first console transition that doesn't include game developers taking lessons on how to tie effective killing yourself knots. So who knows.

Got off topic there, this is a game blog after all and somehow gaming infected this post....damnable old habits. So where was I....oh yes, being horribly depressed. So nothing I've been able to do has really knocked me out of this ... oh how do I put it ... wishing the world would suffer greatly while I gazed from high atop my safety hill of candy and moonshine? Nah, that's a bit too long of a title...and I don't like booze....my safety hill sucks. Geeze even in my ideal state of the world I'm not satisfied.

So back to the point, what to do...For a long time now I've watched Twitch, or JustinTV as it used to be called, and I've greatly been interested in doing something there. It's blown up so big now though the odds of having more than even 1 viewer are probably abysmally small. Plus I hate games like League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and any other game that would garner a mass of viewers. Not for that reason though, but because those games really suck. I'd likely play NES games, or SNES games. Games I grew up with that made me happy. Plus I'd save a lot of money not buying a lot of new games but instead playing older ones that I really enjoy.

Man VS Game is one of the most popular Twitch streamers there is and has long said that he aspires to have his stream good enough to play those older games on it consistently. Not sure why I feel the need to mention that, but it always gave me pause, like why are you not playing the games that you like most? Reflectively I can say the same about myself. I have been playing a lot of games I just flat out don't enjoy. I've been avoiding spending more time with Spelunky, Super Meat Boy, Rayman, and of course older Mario and Final Fantasy games all for the sake of playing that new popular thing everyone is talking about. It wasn't until GTAV released that that message really hit home to me. Everyone is talking about and loving the shit out of GTAV and while I respect certain aspects of the game, ultimately it's not what I enjoy about gaming much at all. I enjoy overcoming a challenge set forth by the developer, and games like GTA come with a very "new age" philosophy of gaming where the player cannot die easily, cannot get lost, and essentially cannot get frustrated. If play testers get stuck at x take it out or give the player the proverbial BFG weapon (big fucking gun). That describes a very large amount of gaming these days baring many indie games or godsends like Dark Souls.

Not to mention I prefer games that have unique enemies with combat that's engrossing. GTA is about killing 1 enemy type which is squishy people which gets old really fast. Take an indie game like Spelunky which I've come to love. There are numerous enemy types and though the game is limited in what you're allowed to do, dealing with one kind of enemy requires you do something different than another type of enemy and that's fun, that's variety. In GTA you can get through the whole game with a gun and a car (baring missions that require you use a boat or a helicopter of course) and you are always just dispatching people in a mundane cover mechanic of shooting.

When I play a game I like that challenge, that feeling of nauseating failure after hours and hours of trial all leading up to that moment of success. Hitting that emotional high is amazing and rewarding. Nothing compares to it, and you just can't find it in a game like GTAV, Borderlands, or Call of Duty. What you did that mission everyone else did in one try? *golf clap* Who cares. I still remember where I was and who I was with when I beat a game like Ninja Gaiden on the NES because it was that amazing, and that exciting. I'll never remember the time I beat GTAIV for instance. I can't even remember who the end bad guy was.

That will be my focus when I start up my stream. Games that give me that emotional high, or are just that much fun to play. I will probably go back in time to older games, and some of the really great newer games. Also, if I do play a "blockbuster" type game I will probably force myself to do the hard modes and at least try to force the game to be about the gaming aspect rather than the everlasting gobstopper developers are trying to peddle to the masses.

Once I get everything set up I'll post about the stream here, and possibly start a new blog.

*I do a thing at the end where I put an asterisk and say something witty every blog I've ever done. Not sure if anyone really noticed that*

A Love Letter: Playstation Vita

 Dear Playstation Vita,

You have the biggest, most gorgeous looking screen that there's ever been on a handheld gaming device. Your joysticks feel wonderful, like real joysticks (only mini). You are comfortable in my hands and I can grope both your front and back. I can touch you all over and get a response. Your d-pad is remarkably good, your battery life sufficient, your online....free. But you are not cheap, you are high class! Your sleek and sexy design makes other handhelds look childish -



But there's where our relationship goes south. You see that child's smiling face? He's playing a video game on his gaming device. This is something I want to do to you Vita. I want to take an enjoyable game and shove it in your slot...in....and out. The problem being is there isn't one to be found! Sure you have mini Uncharted, and mini Resistance, but neither of those games makes me feel like an 8 year old boy getting fingered by Mario...I long for that feeling with you Vita! I want to thrust at a good God of War game, I want to penetrate a Demon's Souls game, I want to climax over a solid RPG....I want you Vita...I want you....

You are like an older mistress filled with desires of obtaining a youthful bachelor to rekindle a love long lost because you let your career get in the way and now all you want is unabashed amounts of wild sex. Well that's what I want too! But we can't dance the tango of gaming love together without a good third party developer to support your beautiful screen.

All I can do now is just push your buttons, browse your apps, and watch youtube on you. These things cannot sate my young passionate desires (unless you get a redtube app). So please Vita...do us both a favor and go out into the world and show em' what your mama gave you! Let them experience your high def LED screen, let them see deep gaming worlds on a handheld, let them understand why a great gaming experience can be had on you!

For now Vita....we have to part ways. Please drop me a message on PSN when you get your act together and can support yourself.

You...have my gamertag.

Yours truly - Acefondu