Things That Bother You About Gaming

[Daxdiv]

The red flag for me was the fact that Jennifer Hale was the 1 taking over Bayonetta. I mean, if they wanted to cut costs somewhere, I would figured that they would have chosen someone a bit more cheaper. Turns out Hellena just wanted more money. I'm all for people demanding what they're worth, but Bayonetta isn't really that much of a juggernaut if you think about it. Remember the fact that the only reasons why Bayonetta 2 & 3 are even Nintendo exclusives is because Nintendo is funding it when no one else was & only Bayonetta 1 is on various different consoles. There's a part of me that does imagine that PlatinumGames isn't in the best financial situation. Their last game of Babylon's Fall being a bit of a failure & the fact that they had to use Kickstarter to fund porting/remastering The Wonderful 101 to other consoles to begin with

Now I imagine that it's gonna be harder for VAs to talk about fair wages due to this muddling the issues.

[Mustang]

So I've been sitting on my thoughts for the action genre for quite some time now. Truth be told nothing compares to Ninja Gaiden Black. The way combat flows in that game is 2nd to none. If there's anything that I'd actually want for a new NG is ambition. Don't need to be open world or souls-like, but I would like to be able to do more. What I mean by that is akin to Sifu. Roll over tables, throw whatever's in your hands at people. You know, the Jackie Chan experience.

That's pretty much the gist of it. I haven't been listening to my podcasts as of late so I'm pretty far behind on things. Nothing really to get me triggered. What I'm hearing and seeing about Dad of War 2 is about what I expected. I don't think I've heard anyone say that it has the best combat. I think I've been hearing people say that the combat works for this game. So can't get triggered by that.

If anything got me triggered, it's the Game awards panel. Whoever is behind it need to get choked out. Sifu a fighting game? Really? I dig Sifu, and I suppose I get what's trying to be said, but fighting games been around for years and we all know what fighting games consists of. Trying to fit Sifu in with fighting games is the last thing that shouldn't be considered. Game awards once again proves why I never pay attention to it other than for it's trailers.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So I've been sitting on my thoughts for the action genre for quite some time now. Truth be told nothing compares to Ninja Gaiden Black. The way combat flows in that game is 2nd to none. If there's anything that I'd actually want for a new NG is ambition. Don't need to be open world or souls-like, but I would like to be able to do more. What I mean by that is akin to Sifu. Roll over tables, throw whatever's in your hands at people. You know, the Jackie Chan experience.

Funny you should bring this up, because among other games, I have been replaying Ninja Gaiden Black recently (and I mean specifically Black, not Sigma from the Master Collection), and it's absolutely insane to me just how well the core mechanics of this game hold up. Yes, I won't pretend that it doesn't have plenty of dated aspects to it that may be a barrier to some modern gamers, but it honestly still feels much more precise and all-around smoother to play than even most game AAA action-focused games that come out today. Everything has a rhyme and rhythm to it, and understanding how to get the most effect out of your combat and movement abilities will essentially make a difficult game into one that you can mostly balance in your favor. I'm actually on my third playthrough of this go around of the game, playing on Very Hard mode, and what it has to separate it from other games in the genre is how much more intense it feels. Now all of a sudden you tend to be more cautious with using items and healing since the game rarely gives you any freebies anymore, and you can hold less items in general, so you tend to try and kill enemies to get blue orbs and save your items for tougher encounters. Most enemies can kill you insanely fast, some of which you never would have even encountered on Normal difficulty, and your approach to fights changes drastically from when you first played the game.

To this day, I have yet to play another action game (including this game's own sequels) that has this kind of intense flow to it's combat. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta (currently playing Bayo 3, of course), have superb combat systems with far more combat options that Ninja Gaiden Black, but it is more focused on combos, parries, and enemy pattern recognition than on directly engaging with your enemies in a way that requires precisely executed actions. What I'm saying is that Ninja Gaiden takes less of a combo-heavy approach (though that is still available to you if you have the skills to pull it off), and is more geared towards expecting you to think through encounters and adapt very quickly on the fly.

It's very telling when I seem some of the modern Twitch streamers try to play this game and get turned off because it doesn't play like other games they have played (whether it be Dark Souls or Devil May Cry), and those who don't adapt to learn the game on it's own merits tend to get frustrated with it and quit. I love watching Maximillian Dood, but he's clearly one of those people that just didn't seem to "get" the game when he played it. Other character action game reviewers also seem to not fully grasp the game and only go through one playthrough so they barely scratch the surface of how it's combat actually is supposed to function. I remember Cvit's video, despite being overall positive on the first game, being rather frustrating since he blatantly got key features of the game wrong in his criticisms of it. At the same time, it's hard to blame him or others since the community for this game has severely diminished over time, so a lot of core skills that you should know and be able to execute are not widely spread throughout the community, and the game does have the very legitimate fault of not doing a great job of teaching you it's more advanced mechanics.

Still, I plan on beating this game on Master Ninja difficulty, and I'm still genuinely loving it. It's not perfect, but it's still easily one of my favorite video games of all time, and there truly is nothing else like it. I love Nioh and Nioh 2, and I'm sure that I'll love Wo-Long if the demo is anything to go by (which was great), and I'm keeping an eye out for Rise of the Ronin as well, but to me I can still safely say that none of them hold a candle to how great NGB is.

That's pretty much the gist of it. I haven't been listening to my podcasts as of late so I'm pretty far behind on things. Nothing really to get me triggered. What I'm hearing and seeing about Dad of War 2 is about what I expected. I don't think I've heard anyone say that it has the best combat. I think I've been hearing people say that the combat works for this game. So can't get triggered by that.

I'm actually playing God of War: Ragnarok, believe it or not. It's funny, because I do want to give the developers some credit here, as they clearly listened to some criticisms of the first game and improved the combat mechanics to have more of a proper flow to it rather than having you essentially rely on one single power move and a few other guaranteed ways to kills enemies relatively quickly and safely. Seriously, the combat in the first game was fucking awful on anything above the default difficulty because enemies took way too long to kill unless you used a fully charged R2 most of the time, and most regular attacks felt pointless other than to add some useless flash into the mix. Ragnarök actually lets you properly launch and juggle enemies, and there is some room for experimentation and free-form combos. So on a base level, I can actually have some fun. That said, it made me realize that it only brings it back to the same level as the classic God of War games, which was perfectly competent for some mindless fun, but too shallow to hold my interest for more than a single playthrough. And considering that this game is 20+ hours long, I can see myself still getting exhausted with it after about half-way through. I guess we'll see, though.

The funny thing is that I'm also currently playing Evil West, which does seem to take some notable influence from God of War's combat (but at the same time is really it's own thing with it's mix of gunplay), but it feels far smoother and even at the beginning has a much more engaging dynamic with enemy encounters in how you have to mix melee, ranged combat, and evading enemy attacks while still needing to get close and dealing killing blows to heal (which is clearly taken from DOOM). I haven't even gotten that far or unlocked much of anything, but that only goes to show that already on a core level this game is far more engaging to me than God of War is. However, it's telling that this game has mostly only gotten lukewarm reviews since it's presented through a B-movie, graphic-novel style story that clearly isn't trying to be the video game equivalent of an Oscar-bait movie. However, the game will still get called out by journalists on what they perceive to be it's shortcomings (and to be fair, some of these may be valid, as I can't judge until I fully explore it's combat system), but even at a base level it's at least as diverse (if not more so) than God of War is at it's full capacity, yet that game somehow gets away with it and never seems to be called out on it's pretty mediocre combat mechanics. On the contrary I've actually seen an IGN journalist say that they consider it to be one of the top 5 favorite combat systems in gaming, and I'm sorry, I know that everyone is entitled to their personal opinions, but I just couldn't help but laugh at that remark.

[Mustang]

So I was watching MinnMax's 2 10's the other day. I'm not an advocate for Horizon. Never played them and probably never will, but I respect them and their developers. I haven't read IGN, Gamespot, or whoever else, but it's mostly these gaming journalists on Youtube these days with these weird takes that rubs me the wrong way. You probably could've said anything about Horizon and I'd probably gloss over it, but the excuse for knocking it is because it only expanded on what the 1st already did? Hello. What sequel didn't do that? You'd be better off just saying it's not Elden Ring or Ragnarok. I hate GotY's exactly because of this type of talk, especially when it comes to groups trying to give a collective list instead of giving your personal favorites. Dr. Ensatsu-ken hit the nail on its head with how journalists treat the B's. I saw who you were talking about with the God of War: Ragnarok's combat btw. I saw the review recently. Talk about an uppercut that I didn't see coming, wow.

Anyway, I bring that up because AAA games in general, I think Ghost of Tsushima was the last AAA game that I actually enjoyed. Going further back was probably Breath of the Wild and Metal Gear Solid 5. I think for the most part AAA games in general don't do anything for me because most of them aren't for me to begin with (hell, I barely know what consists of being an AAA game to begin with other than a large sum of money going into making a game). Take this year and last year. If it wasn't a fighting game most of my time was spent on either a JRPG (that wasn't Final Fantasy) or something even more obscure like a Musou game or DB Xenoverse 2. Hell, even Yugioh have seen more play from me than your average AAA title. Don't get me started on the Twitch side of things. I haven't a single streamer play a single player game, let alone the AAA games. If we combine the 2 years, I've probably watched over a thousand hours of Among Us being played. JackBox, Codenames, Project Winter, Worms, Uno, all these little games have seen more screen time from me.

Looking to next year, while it's going to be a stacked year, for me it's not the AAA's that's gonna make it a stacked year. Outside of Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, it's these niche games that's going to kill my pockets.

[Mustang]

People are weird. I just finished listening to MinnMax and one of the discussions was about Forspoken. For the most part I've been tuned out since the final delay, but I've seen glimpses of some reviews. So we're complaining about dialogue now? The average Japanese game has bad dialogue so all of a sudden it's worth complaining about now? On the flipside, weird ish about not liking this game means you don't like black women as the leading character... WTF?!!

We're all relatively close in age right? The whole dialogue thing reminds me of DmC and Dante's hair complaint. Let's go back to the PS2, Gamecube, Xbox era. We couldn't have possibly been this dumb in our younger days right? I mean, I remember having some dumb moments when I was 16-19 but to this degree? Not liking certain games means you hate something. This one really takes the cake.

Gamers, honestly, I got nothing lol. I'm bout checked out on gaming communities. I used to like hearing and engaging in conversation about games, but, yeah, not so much these days.

[Mustang]

Hmm. Playing catch up on what I've missed from Playstation Access. Come across Rob playing this polarizing game called Hogwarts Legacy. Yep, I've heard all the noise. Pretty sure everyone's been hearing it. I'm going to do everyone a favor and not talk about it though.

Let me start by saying this. I don't have a horse in this fight. I've never seen Harry Potter nor do I know who the creator is. Don't even know what started everything. I just know there's some noise going on about it.

But HOT DAMN this game looks gorgeous. So like I said, I'm watching Rob play and to see what this final product turned out be, damn. The map is huge. It might be up there with Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild (in terms of the world map. Scope and scale, nah). I'm not sure yet so don't quote me on that. Combat looking Forsaken-ish. Not sure how I feel about it. I mean, you're flinging magic with a wand, so, never been my kind of thing, but I get it.

Flying on a broom made me instantly think of a way a Superman or Ironman game can be handled, but we'll save that for another time. I turned it off after about 10 minutes, but man, I was impressed with the little bit I've saw.

I HATE how all this bickering between both sides detracted away from what the devs did with this game. This game looks ambitious as hell (and that's me just looking at about 5-10 minutes of the game). Looking at Rob giving this tour of the game, he seemed genuinely happy about giving the tour of Scotland and in my mind I'm thinking "this is sad" because all of this bullshit noise.

[Mustang]

Heh, I see why gaming journalism needs to go. Just in general, I hate seeing people lose jobs, but on the other side of that coin, and I'm just being honest here, with the layoffs they been going through as of late, I "shrug" my shoulders and think to myself, "welcome to our world". I hope they can bounce back for sure, but sometimes it's hard to be sympathetic towards journalism.

I have no problems with Zelda. The accolades are well deserved. I'm a Zelda fan just as much as the next person. Y'all already know where this is going. That good old "gushing" that the media loves to do. So apparently there was a GQ (Really? GQ as in that model shit GQ? ...okay) article that got all the prominent gaming journalists together to come up with a top 100 games of all time list, and Breath of the Wild came out with the top spot. So with Tears of the Kingdom getting 10's almost across the board that's pretty much been the conversation.

"Is Tears of the Kingdom the best game ever already"

Kinda similar to my stance on Elden Ring in a sense. I think my problem isn't towards the people (the fans/consumers). I expect that from us regular folk that work a 9-5. It's hard to explain, but in general, across the board, gaming journalists act a certain way when it comes to Zelda, like it can do no wrong (same with Mario, I'm bias against Mario, but I take nothing away from that franchise. Accolades well deserved). It's one thing with Elden Ring with all the gushing. It's another thing with Zelda. One group got a Zelda day going on. Another group got a Zelda marathon. I got people that LOVES ZELDA. I LOVE ZELDA. At this point I'm not even trying to tell the MEDIA to take their fandom out of it. All I want to know is why don't other games get this same kind of treatment? Elden Ring didn't get an Elden Ring day. God of War, Horizon (absolutely not), so on and so forth don't get marathons.

And you know it's crazy when your audience is starting to point that out. IGN got questions from viewers. Kinda Funny got question from viewers. MinnMax I believe got question from viewers (those are the only ones I go to) all asking what can other games do to get that same treatment (I'm spit-balling).

As great as a year it has been so far for games it's almost like last year. Why even have a GOTY conversation at all? Why not just argue for #2 onward? People have already glossed over the likes of Street Fighter 6, Diablo 4, Final Fantasy 16. Already expecting Spider-Man 2 to be a good game but not to the degree of TotK (Why? Is this one of those, "because it's Zelda" bullshit attitude type of moments?). There was 1 person to actually acknowledge that there may be people that don't like Zelda out there (I know some of those people too. They ain't hard to find in the FGC). None other than Kyle Bosman. Of all people.

I used to ignore all of this, but when you're at work listening to this shit it becomes a chore.

Again, I take nothing away from Zelda. It probably is a 10/10 game. I will get it evetually. I don't know if I'm in a rush to get it now that's for sure. When did the media start thinking they were hot shit?

[Daxdiv]

So, the whole OverWatch 2 thing... In case you didn't hear, Blizzard announced that their plans for the PvE campaign for OverWatch 2 has been cancelled. The 1 thing that probably justified them adding the number "2" to the OverWatch name is now cancelled. This whole thing does make me wonder why they decided to put a 2 in there. Was it to move away from the controversial Lootbox system in favor of the currently more safer option of the Battle Pass? Cause honestly that's what it feels like. You could have easily added the new things from OverWatch 2 into 1, including multiple hero reworks, the new heroes themselves, the new Push game mode, PvP being 5v5 instead of 6v6. All those things could have came in balance patches that most games of this caliber operate on. They also promised updated graphics, but the graphics look the same the to me. Which makes it another point of how useless this "sequel" is.

Also doesn't help that during the time frame of OverWatch 2's announcement and release that OverWatch 1 was pretty much in maintenance mode for 3-4 years with them only doing occasional holiday events (Which mostly consisted of them flipping the switch for having said holiday game modes in the arcade rotation) and releasing skins for said holidays. Now I think I get why they decided to shut down the first Overwatch game servers & make 2 their main hub, cause there's practically no real difference between OW 1&2. This does make me wonder what the hell Blizzard was doing during that time frame? No wonder Jeff Kaplan left.It also sucks that for owners of OverWatch whose benefits from migrating to Overwatch 2 was keeping all skins/cosmetics from before & only getting the first 3 heroes Blizzard made. What's that, you paid money for Overwatch 1, well... you get first three new heroes for free. Want the other ones we're releasing? Hope you're ready to grind for levels or buy our battle pass to get them.

[Mustang]

I've been seeing all kinds of weird takes with Final Fantasy 16 as of late. I haven't played it yet, nor have I bought it (the way my back account works...  , jokes aside, budget issues. Not comfortable spending $70 for a game yet) but I've been seeing people complain about FF16 being an action game, leaving out the RPG/fantasy elements of it. I get it, I guess, but at the same time, why not let Square experiment? We complain about games feeling the same, but when one tries to deviate from it, we complain and become scared of change. I mean, we still have Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (?) coming and I highly doubt it's going to play anything like FF16. I don't even think the same team is even working on FF7, so why not let them experiment from time to time? I mean, we have 16 Final Fantasies for crying out loud. We need all of them to be turn-based?

Hell, if Capcom wants to take DMC in a souls/like direction, I'd be willing to let them try, just to see how it turns out. I'd roll my eyes for sure (because of copying instead of being their own), but I'd definitely let them experiment, especially if the games are becoming stale and need a new direction.

Are we really that afraid of change? Sheesh

[Mustang]

Fairly certain everyone has seen that Sony is raising the price on their subscription services, yeah? If not, the gist of it, everything is going up by $20-$30, so basically, just to play online will cost you $80. The extra plan will be $135 and the premium plan is going to be $160. I saw no reason for being a premium member to begin with but NOW, I don't see a reason for PSN at all. $80 just to play online? Whatever happened to just paying $50 back in the PS3 era? This might end playing fighting games on consoles online to be honest (big post coming in the future for fighting game thread). I think everyone has been flocking to PC slowly anyway, but this might push us from console to PC even faster. I've been defending Microsoft, or rather, I've been more understanding of them these days, but at the end of the day, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony can all piss off. Cause you already know others are gonna follow anyway. Tears of the Kingdom being the only $70 Switch game, really?

I won't jump the gun and say I'm done gaming, but damn, I will be getting my PC and using my PS5 for only single player games at this point. And with all these games of service bullshit that's supposedly coming, even me playing single player games may take a hit, at least in terms of new games (2024 maybe? 2025 just might). Thoughts?

[Mustang]

So how about them layoffs? Layoff's sucks obviously, but if you're in any working industry, you understand that they happen. Nah, my problem is not with the layoffs. Again they suck. I am seeing a trend leading up to them though. I think some of these media outlets have even spoken about it as well. The reviews, or rather how much people tend to rely on them might be the problem. If developers/publishers are relying on these reviews, shame on them, but at the same time these review sites only have 1 (ONE) person reviewing said game (the exception might be Kinda Funny, at least the only one I'm aware of since they usually have whoever is on the panel to weigh in).

I don't know when it started, but seeing companies fold or the layoffs, because of said game flopping, wow. I understand that you took a huge hit and gotta cut cost somewhere. That's business, but like I said, 1 review from each outlet, and word of mouth. It's like gaming as of right now, if your game is not perfect you fold, and I don't like it. Games get 7/10 and the company still fold in the end. 7/10 is good though, right? And then you start wondering if game scores are getting tainted just to keep your buddy business from folding.

My thoughts are jumbled with this, but gaming as a whole, as of right now, I don't like where it's heading, especially when it seem like so many people rely on these gaming media outlets more than ever. I'm not into conspiracy theories, or rather I tend to not pay attention to them, but at the end of the day, call a spade a spade.

Just something that's been on the brain for the past couple of weeks. I got fighting game thoughts on the brain as well. I'm gonna sit on my thoughts about the FGC and these award/direct shows for a bit.

[Mustang]

So I've been seeing from all these outlets that they wanted something new from Spider-Man 2. Those who're not in the know about Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite. The gist of it was Marvel pretty much called the shots, Capcom US and Capcom JPN were not seeing eye-to-eye, and it basically died upon release. I bring that up because every single outlet keep asking for something new from Spider-Man, and my thing is what could Insomniac do? Spider-Man is based in New York. Going anywhere outside of New York (outside of the whole Secret Wars angle) you're pretty much asking for trouble. Let's be honest. What you want is Avengers.

I'm almost at the point where despite the amount of money that can be made, it's getting pointless to do games based off of licensed material, especially if you want to do sequels. Doing your own IP, when people ask for something new, you can do that. Trying to do that in games like Spider-Man and Batman, you're pretty much in a lose-lose situation. At least when I bring it up for DMC there's potential there for something, and trying to keep the series alive in this modern era. Spider-man or Batman-likes, you change something up and you end up like Suicide Squad or Gotham Knights.

All this GotY talk irks me lol

[Mustang]

The noise around Suicide Squad, jeez. I already had no horse in this race, but man, I think out of all the reviews I actually tried to listen to, Skill up and Kinda Funny Games were the ones to actually tell their opinion on why it's a bad game. The whole thing is kind of similar to how people were up and arms about The Last of Us 2 (minus the attacks on "shilling").

[Mustang]

These layoffs, WOW!

Something's definitely not adding up here. Last year alone had quite a year when it comes to the bangers that came out. How is it that you have banger after banger (January - current as well) and you making all this money only to be laying off 2000+ workers (I think overall as of right now might be at or near 10,000)? Why buy all these companies only to close up shop?

My mind is all over the place with this. Spider-man 2 and God of War Ragnarok cost $200 million a piece to make!!! Are you serious!? I support both games. I'm a big fan of the Spider-man games, but REALLY? 200 million just to make the game look good? Gameplay-wise you're not seeing that. Content-wise, you're not seeing that. Hell, Spider-man 2 is about 20-25 hrs skipping the side stuff. You can do open world and not break the bank. All these games striving to be AAA when in reality, most of us lives in that AA-B tier.

Whatever Nintendo is doing, my goodness, Sony and Microsoft need to follow suit. If I'm a developer working for either one I'm taking a buyout to become independent at this point, because it has to be nerve wrecking working at Sony and Microsoft not knowing your job's not secure. Like I said, my mind is all over the place with this.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Alright, I mostly just ignore IGN drama and gaming journalist drama altogether these days. But there's something ironically hilarious about them publishing an article criticizing the idea of an RE5 remake being too politically incorrect in this day and age when that's the exact same shit that came up when the game first came out over a decade ago and almost no actual controversy was raised other than what the game journalists back then tried to convince people was an issue. It's even funnier when you consider that this implies, just like over a decade ago, that it's somehow OK by these writers that we killed a bunch of enemies of rural European ethnicity in RE4 and the game was praised for it, but now that it's set in Africa it's suddenly an issue. And this is RE, I remind you, a series that is not at all subtle about it's villains, in this case the original RE5 has a sugnglass wearing Matrix wannabe in Albert Wesker as the primary antagonist and some cartoonlishly evil white colonizers as the actual villains of that game, with the African enemies being infected by a virus similar to Las Plagas from RE4....so basically zombies.

To be clear, I'm not keen on RE5 remake myself if only because I'm over the whole remake craze and would rather have new entries instead, but this argument against it for something that's not the least bit controversial if you actually stop to think about it's context is quite frankly ridiculous. Also, didn't IGN also give the original game a pretty positive review? That makes this whole thing even funnier.