Things That Bother You About Gaming

[gunswordfist]

That is bad news. While I would have still preferred them to make it like the first game...only actually use its mechanics well, Prey 2 looked promising. I hope Prey 2 gets the Sleeping Dogs treatment one day (minus the extremely long wait) and Tommy gets a sequel.

[Foggle]

I'm starting to get really annoyed by the mixed reception The Evil Within has received. Literally 80% of the negative reviews I've seen fall into one of these categories:

• The graphics are bad, therefore the game is bad. What is an art style?
• Why is ammo scarce in a survival horror game?
• Easy mode is too hard!
• The story is bad in a game directed by Shinji Mikami.

I mean, seriously, what the hell is this? Did people suddenly forget what video games are and stop researching things before buying them? These aren't even reviews by games journalists, they're reviews by normal people!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The graphics are great on next-gen consoles and high-end PCs, which is what the game was meant to be played on. And even on the dated consoles, the game still performs smoothly and has a good art-style going for it.

Anyone complaining about ammo should just be educated on what the difference is between a survival horror game and an action game.

As for the difficulty complaints, my response would literally be this: "That's what you call a video game if you suck at it, you aren't going it win. So, either learn to play better, or go find some cheap movie game that will stroke your ego. Either way, clearly you are not meant to be playing this game."

As for story, I'd ask them to give me their idea of what a good video game story in this genre is to begin with, and if it's some bull-shit movie game, I'd then proceed to rip it to pieces and explain to them how they wouldn't know a good story if it bit them in the ass. Seriously, we have a huge sub-section of gamers who just flat-out don't know anything about what they claims their hobby. It's rather annoying.

[Nel_Annette]

The only negative thing I've seen was Jesse Cox tearing it apart on a Co-optional Podcast, but even then it seemed like he went into the game expecting something totally different than what he got.

[Foggle]

I will say that TEW isn't the most attractive title on the market technically, but man that art style is so good, especially on current gen consoles/PC. People are really blowing that out of proportion; but even if they weren't, top of the line graphics are one of the least important aspects of a video game. The last gen version is smooth for the most part, though a couple of scenarios do drop to an unacceptable frame rate IMO, but that's what you get for playing a cross-gen port. It's only an issue in like 5% of the game, anyway.

It's one of the more challenging games I've played recently, but outside of one specific moment, it doesn't rely on cheap bullshit for difficulty (I don't even think the OHK's are unfair in this game, since they're all pretty easy to avoid), so I have no idea where those complaints come from. I guess these are the same people who wish Tropical Freeze had checkpoints during boss fights.

To be fair, survival horror titles usually have some of the better stories in gaming (ignoring the Resident Evil series, of course), but considering the complaints these folks have, I highly doubt any of them have ever actually played a survival horror game before. Also, TEW's plot isn't really bad, just cheesy and weird.

The only negative thing I've seen was Jesse Cox tearing it apart on a Co-optional Podcast, but even then it seemed like he went into the game expecting something totally different than what he got.

I mean, it's cool if people don't like it, and have reasons to back their opinion up. But TEW being "too hard" does not make it bad. It isn't even the hardest game released so far this year.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

If TS17 (and others) have managed to clear this game on AKUMU difficulty (aka; everything is a one-hit-kill) without the use of any upgrades, that really cements how these people have no real right to complain about difficulty. If it's essentially possible to clear the game under those extreme conditions, it's certainly possible on the easiest difficulty with the use of plenty of upgrades.

[talonmalon333]

Rate it, Foggle. Rate it.

[Foggle]

Apparently Sega isn't doing too well as of late; even their pachinko money is starting to dry up. As much as I wouldn't miss their boneheaded business practices from the last few years, I'd be sad if they closed down, especially since they own Atlus now.

Rate it, Foggle. Rate it.

Think I'd give it a 9/10 overall, probably a 9.5 if you disregard the Id Tech 5 jank and an 8 if you're playing one of the last gen ports. It's easily become one of my favorite games of all time and will probably end up being my GOTY unless Bayonetta 2 manages to dethrone it, but it definitely has some technical issues that are hard to overlook even for me. It would be a perfect 10 if it ran flawlessly and Tango removed/overhauled the first half of chapter 12.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It definitely looks like TPS of the year to me, at the very least. Of course since I'm more of a fan of character action games, Bayonetta 2 would probably end up being my GOTY if I actually had the means to play it.

Speaking of which, I have to say that, as my personal favorite genre in video games, the character action genre is disappointingly underrated, on the whole. The term "character action," as I have come to realize, is the common term that gamers use to describe games like DMC, NG, Bayonetta, God of War, God Hand, and so on that basically encompasses all third person action/adventure games with a primary focus on melee combat and some adventure elements as opposed to other forms of combat taking center stage, such as shooting or vehicles. While the name makes no sense to me, I'm just using that from now on since that's the term that everyone else has adopted.

Anyways, my point being that, despite some of the best games in the genre getting legitimately great reviews and being well-renowned among the community that loves these games, there is actually a much larger portion of gamers who refuse to play these games due to huge misconceptions of the genre. These people generally fall into two categories. They either are the ones who think that these are all button-mashing affairs and involve no level of real skill or tactical depth (basically, they assume that these games are all just like Dynasty Warriors), or they are on the opposite end and think that these games are all too skill-based and are only for the hardcore (basically assuming that everything is like the first 3D Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi games). Outside of the God of a war series, which has proven to be the exception to the rule, I do feel that, despite occasionally good sales, this genre and many games within it (including the best ones) are not viewed as being as respectable in the gaming industry as any great FPS, platformer, RPG, or other well-loved genre.

And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Various YouTubers that I follow who specialize in playing games like these with a high level of skill have commented on how many people there encountered that have very ignorant views of the genre and just outright refuse to give any games within it a chance, partly which became a big issue when many Metal Gear fans refused to even give MGRR a chance because "Kojima was selling out by producing a spin-off game within an uninspired and tired genre." Even Game Trailers, a big gaming site and probably the only decent one left in the entire business commented on how they have fears that, despite being an excellent game, Bayonetta 2 probably won't sell nearly as well as it should, not only because it's on the Wii-U, but also because the character action genre is not quite as favorably viewed as it should be compared to the big games from much more popular genres, and I believe that there is some truth to that.

[Foggle]

I think the term "character action" was coined by Naughty Dog in reference to the Jak & Daxter series. I read that in some GameSpy article a long ass time ago (located here). It seems to have originated as a way for PS2 era developers to label their video games if they were feeling too pretentious to call them "platformers." Of course, I suppose the phrase may have been co-opted over time to describe games like Devil May Cry, since I've been met with intense nerd rage a couple of times for describing DMC as "hack 'n slash."

I think a big reason why a lot of people won't play those kind of games is because they remember all the hoopla about Ninja Gaiden being "impossibly difficult" when it was first released. I still meet people today who think NG is some ungodly difficult game because that's what the media told them to believe.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, the game is no cake-walk, but I never agreed that it was as hard as people made it out to be. The game is only hard until you learn how to play it, at least on Normal difficulty. I used to die a bunch on the 2nd level, but on subsequent playthroughs, I wonder how I even found it so hard to begin with.

[Nel_Annette]

Hey, instead of releasing one game a year, let's milk our franchise and do two this year! On the same fucking day! Those fucking idiots will lap up whatever we release! Hey, let's release the bigger one, the PS4/XBO/PC one, in an unplayable state, with loading issues, lag issues from having too many people rendering at once, glaring graphical issues, and game crashes every few minutes! And just to add insult to injury, let's release this unplayable lagfest with multiple day one microtransactions, some of which are the only ways to upgrade your character. In this SINGLE PLAYER game! Don't forget to buy a season pass for more half-assed content! Hey, and let's pull early reviews saying how shit our game is! And be sure to have someone on standby on our Facebook page to do damage control when the masses come for us like they did in the French Revolution! Oh, and pull the game from Steam for some random reason! Force everyone to use uPlay! But hey, at least the main character's girlfriend is hot, right?



Oh, wait, her face didn't load! Ooopsie! We'll be sure to patch that shit too! Just bear with us, you dumb fucks! You preordered this shit show so that you could get an exclusive spear weapon with nothing cool or special about it whatsoever other than that it was an exclusive preorder spear, so we know you'll take it up your collective bungholes for less!

[gunswordfist]

whoa...i hope it kills the franchise. i liked 2 but they are doing too much. they should just revive prince of persia.

[talonmalon333]

That picture looks like a horror movie.

[Daxdiv]

Well, guess we found out why Ubisoft said "Women are hard to animate"

Ubisoft has had a shit year as far as their games are concerned. What with them over dressing Watch_Dogs footage at E3, leading it to not live up to it's own hype and now the whole Assassin's Creed Unity thing being buggy as shit, that dumb 12 hour review embargo ON LAUNCH DAY, and a $100 microtransaction! It's like they're EA now.

I can't wait to see what happens next week when Far Cry 4 comes out.