Bahamut's Gaming Bullshit Rants

Nintendo 3DS

2011-08-26T13:44:00.002+01:00

I recently got a 3DS last month for my 21st birthday. It wasn't something to get on launch release due to lack of actual games to pick up and as a matter of fact, the 3DS games library is still lacking. You might be thinking why I got a 3DS when there's hardly anything out yet and to be honest, I couldn't think of a whole lot for birthday ideas. The most I asked for was CDs, some T-Shirts and the 3DS.

Even if the 3DS is having a slow start, I want to pick one up anyway for the upcoming games. And besides, the 3DS comes with a handheld Virtual Console which is great to catch up on any old Gameboy games you missed out on. I never had a chance to play Kirby's Dream Land nor Super Mario Land so I was very pleased when I bought them from Nintendo's eShop. Metroid II (which I had originally on cartridge but found it unplayable due to no backlight on my old GBA) and Super Mario Land II are on their way so the Virtual Console is worth looking out for. The 3DS shopping service also comes with DSiWare games so if you never bought the DSi due to how pointless it was with a brand new handheld coming out in two years time, now is the chance to see which games from the DSiWare that were worth a damn. All I've picked up so far is the Rayman port which found itself to be a piss easy version from the other variations (you're given six/ten hit points as opposed to three/five).

One of the main "features" for the 3DS is of course the 3D effects on the top screen. As someone who isn't bothered about 3D movies, 3DTVs or whatever other variant of 3D effects, the 3D effects on the 3DS "without needing 3D glasses" wasn't a selling point for me. Sure, I've used the 3D mode a few times to see what it's like but you know what, the 3D effects on the 3DS are crap. Maybe I'm just not seeing it properly but I've seen better 3D effects on cheap merchandise from the 90s. The fact that Nintendo put this much effort into the 3D gimmick is sad since it's nothing that actually enhances the look of video games and only makes itself a distraction. The production cost of the 3DS is a little over $100. How much would it be WITHOUT the 3D gimmick? My guess it would be at least 25% cheaper if it didn't come with the 3D effects. Let's just leave the 3D craze back in the 90s when 3D cinemas at theme parks were using it and actually looked cool.

Now, considering the video games available for the 3DS. Right now, the range of games for the 3DS is very poor. The best I can name from the released games so far are Ocarina of Time 3D, Ridge Racer 3D and Super Street Fighter IV. One of them is a remake, one of them has been a launch game fodder since the original Playstation and the other is released on pretty much every platform out there in the seventh generation. The starting point for games on the 3DS looks as bad as when the PS3 started out. Both aren't consoles to pick up right away and only to get them when some big games come out (MGS4 for PS3 and the upcoming Mario games for 3DS). Like I said on the E3 recap, there should be enough to keep the 3DS alive later on with the new Mario games, Kid Icarus and Luigi's Mansion 2 but I can't help but think Nintendo will have to do more if they want to make the 3DS a huge success.

Recently, the 3DS had a price drop worldwide. Although the handheld was very expensive to begin with, having to cut the price within six months of release isn't a good sign. Nintendo must have known how badly the 3DS was doing at the start if they're having to cut the prices. At least with the DS there was Super Mario 64 DS and Warioware: Touched. Their biggest selling point right now is remaking Ocarina of Time and... that's it. For those who bought the 3DS before the day the cost is reduced, there's the Ambadssadors extras which I am liking. Being given 10 NES games and 10 GBA games FOR FREE is a nice treat, even if I already have Super Mario Bros. and Metroid Fusion. Hey, it's hard to complain about freebies when Nintendo could have given the early customers jack shit and say "Hey, thanks for spending so much on our 3DS, LOL!" so I appluad Nintendo for this move. However, some still complained about that and Satoru Iwata had to make an apology statement to everyone... What?!

In conclusion, the 3DS is not entirely bad but it's had a very slow start. The 3D gimmick is worthless and the small amount of games gives very little desire for most to pick up a 3DS so they need to make a push with the 2011 holidays. The price drop is suggesting a bad sign but at least the Ambassador makes up for early customers of the 3DS and anyone who wants the handheld now won't have to pay as much. The Nintendo eShop will prove itself to be more and more useful as they release more handheld classics as well as showing what we may have missed out on the DSiWare.

Spyro the Dragon

2011-08-03T22:07:00.004+01:00

This is a subject I've wanted to rant about but there were some things that stopped me from covering the Spyro franchise. As a kid who grew up with the Playstation, Spyro is of course one of many games I've played. Well, to be honest it was only Spyro 2 and 3. I didn't even have the first Spyro game and never even finished Spyro 3. I was unfortunate enough to have a pirated copy of Spyro 3 and that game resets your save when you face the final boss (similar to Earthbound where it deletes your save when you confront the last battle). That was a total blow for me and ever since I've never wanted to touch a pirated copy of a game with a ten foot pole.

I never owned the first Spyro game on the PS1 back then but I keep meaning to get either on PSN or getting a copy on eBay someday. With so many games to play you lose track on things but this game should be high up on my priority list. This leaves with Spyro 2 and I actually did 100% on this game. It was the one Spyro game that I got most fun out of and I only wish to re-experience it whenever the hell I actually play Spyro 1.

Of course, after Spyro 3, Insomniac Games and people have been saying Spyro has never been the same since or how the only good Spyro games were the ones by Insomniac. You're probably guessing I'm going to make a rant on how things have gone to shit ever since Insomniac dropped Spyro to make way for Ratchet & Clank but you know what, I'm not. I have absolutely nothing to say about post-Insomniac Spyro nor Ratchet & Clank, although I was hoping to pick up the free game on PSN which I left too late. Still, even if everyone else says post-Insomniac Spyro sucks, how do I know it's bad? Same goes for the Crash Bandicoot games after Naughty Dog handed the rights over except for Crash Bash (I wasn't highly impressed like I was with the other games). I'll also apply the same thing for Final Fantasy XIII which I still need to play. Sure, many have said the game is bad and have stated why but I'll only know if it's bad once I find a good time to play and if I happen to enjoy the game, that's too bad. Not to say I will enjoy it, though since the outcome can go either way.

What I will rant on regarding Spyro is the upcoming game Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. The first thing that will come to mind if you're aware of this is the new appearance of Spyro. I believe I speak for everyone here by saying Spyro looks fucking ugly. He doesn't look like the adorable dragon from the original games, he looks like a purple goblin with wings. His face certainly suggests that. Maybe it's not a beauty contest for video game characters but there's a reason why mascots like Sonic, Crash Bandicoot and even Spyro have (or had) their own time under the sun and they were appealing to the younger audience at the time. I mean, would Sonic even be a success if this was his appearance for the Mega Drive games (hideous looking animation and disturbing yet it's still hilarious):

The other issue gamers have with the new Spyro game is the use of the action figures and how it seems to be a money grabbing technique from Activision. Yes, we've heard Activision's ways of milking their franchises and even if they're doing it to Spyro now, this idea could have been good. To be fair, if they did a similar idea for the original Spyro games and the interaction with the action figures and the video games worked well, this is something I would have eaten up so fast and probably have my parents denying to get all the toys for me. There are 32 figures in total and 29 of them are sold separately (I assume they have set releases for a batch of them every so often). They're supposedly $10 each and all of that would come to $290 just to get all the toys. It's understandable why the use of toys is getting criticised for being a milk factor but hey, at least the money isn't going towards a virtual hat. The main issue might be a biased one but the problem is the appearance they've given Spyro. It's not an adorable looking dragon as he should be and kids deserve a lot better than this.

Of course, with Spyro's new appearance and the feature using action figures to enchance the video game, there's been a backlash over the new turn for Spyro. The majority of them are of course fans who enjoyed the original games. A lot of us have the right to say why the change of direction for Spyro is a bad turn but some apparently went too far. Some were so enraged and stupid that they felt they had to send death threats to Activision and the developers who are working on this game. To those who actually said they would kill the companies over this game, YOU ARE FUCKING IDIOTS! Did any of those morons stop and realise for one second that they were taking on Activision, one of the richest (maybe THE richest) gaming companies around and with all the money Bobby Kotick is swimming in, he'd probably have enough money to get lawyers down their asses? If anyone's arrested over death threats towards a multi-billionaire company (even though that's highly unlikely considering how little seems to have been done against cyber terrorism), no sympathy should be given out.

In conclusion, Spyro had his golden days and they were over and done with ages ago. Not much can be said about the later games due to not playing them but the upcoming Spyro game is not for the better judging by Spyro's goblin-like appearance and the expensive set of toys to collect them all. The kids who are unfortunate enough to experience Spyro in a hideous form and actually want to collect all the figures better save up their pocket money. Sadly, Spyro doesn't seem to be coming back to his true form and seem to be done just like Crash... Wait, they haven't done any major titles for Crash for a few years now. What do they have in store for him next?

Capcom and Used Games

2011-07-08T12:17:00.002+01:00

Capcom are the latest gaming company to be thrown in the ring for a recent move they wish to take. It seems Capcom have a huge issue over a thing called used games. I don't know everything about finance in games but I cannot see used games harming Capcom badly. I'm sure many would rather get new copies since they're more accessible during date of release or are certain to be in working condition unlike used games.

If anything, I'd rather buy new games since I know the game will be in perfect working condition. I don't know about you but I've had a few bad experience with used games and they actually came from high street stores and not from a shady eBay seller. I'm with a copy of MGS3: Subsistence that doesn't have the main disc working (thankfully I still have the original MGS3 release on PS2) and a Final Fantasy IX copy that has badly scratched discs that was actually sold to an independent game shop. Sucks I was so desperate to play FFIX at the time and after the discs deteriating where FMVs were FUBAR, I had to pay £40 for another used copy of FFIX on eBay which fortunately is in good working shape. I had to vent out my frustration here over those two broken used copies which is why I'd much rather buy new games than used copies, unless it's from the scum that is Activision.

Unfortunately, used games are hard to avoid, especially when you want to hunt down an old game you really want to play. A great example for me would be the countless PS1 games. Oddly enough, I still have plenty of games to catch up on for that one particular console that came out 17 years ago and it's always nice to catch a copy of a specific PS1 game on eBay. For these cases, I am not against used games providing the seller is not trying to sell off a game that's not in good shape.

What Capcom are wanting to do with their games is having only one game file and having no option to reset the game data, particularly with Resident Evil: Mercenaries on 3DS. I don't know how much replay value this game has but NO GAME should ever force you to stick with one save file forever. Whoever bought the damn game should have the freedom to play through whatever game they want to play as many times as they want. The majority of us want to re-experience their favourite games simply because they are fantastic games that deserved to be played through time and time again. Capcom should know their classic titles such as Mega Man 2 and Resident Evil 4 will always be revisited because they're that good for some. It would suck if there was only one game file for those games (OK, Mega Man 2 has passwords but that's besides the point) and there was no option for any replays except for buying another copy of the same game.

Another thing that's really bad about Capcom's move is if you're wanting to buy an older game like the PS1 titles I still need to hunt down (the original Spyro is one of them), if they only had one save game that couldn't be erased, I'd be shit outta luck simply because PS1 games are no longer in print and there'll be a point in the gaming world where PS3 and Xbox 360 games will no longer be in production so the odds of being able to play Resident Evil: Mercenaries on the 3DS will be extremely low. This is what I hated about Pokemon Pinball. I bought a used copy of the game and there was no option to reset the game at all so I couldn't start from scratch and having a better experience that way.

In conclusion, Capcom's move to counter used games is a terrible idea. Unless you move this all to digital, having only one save copy for a game that can't be erased destroys the ability to replay your favourite game and this should not be allowed at all. Not only that, making the game to not be sellable as a used game will make it hard to hunt down later on, unless you move this to digital but there are those who prefer retail copies of games just like I prefer CDs over MP3 downloads. I seriously hope Capcom reconsiders this because this will easily put them on my gaming blacklist which is only occupied by Activision right now.

PSN Outage

2011-06-29T12:03:00.002+01:00

Yeah, I know this is a bit old at this point but I wanted to hold off my thoughts on the whole incident with Sony until it was all over simply because I'd be making several rants on the same subject. However, if any major incidents happen again, I'll post something much sooner rather than much later.

As we all know, the Playstation Network was taken offline for around a month. They were forced to take it offline due to a hacker breaking access into the servers. So much frustration was caused with players and even gaming developers and publishers. It was worst of timing for Sony since not only was Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat 9 released on the same week as the incident happened, we were all without online PS3 gaming for Easter. Thankfully I was focused on other things at the time so the PSN outage wasn't a huge issue for me but I can imagine and understand the frustration from others.

The real purpose for the PSN outage was to add extra security after Sony discovered personal information of their customers were leaked including real names, addresses, PASSWORDS and quite possibly credit card details. OUCH! It's hard to help but think Sony's security wasn't good enough to keep these details safe. This is the kind of stuff that should be protected in the same way as defending the privacy of the president or prime minister of a country. The confidence with Sony's handling of private details is heavily damaged and although some will have forgiven them at this point, others will be unsure about trusting Sony with their personal details and quite frankly I don't blame anyone for selling off their PS3 and getting a 360 for their console online gaming pleasure.

What really put Sony in the wrong was how long they took to mention that personal details may have been compromised. They should have warned us right away that some criminal scum may have obtained credit card details and such and that would have given us all a head start but no, it took them a week just to inform us.

After their month outage, they returned and eventually gave us the welcome back offer to make up for the troublehip for those who paid for it already was a great idea but I felt they could have done better with the games we could have picked. Although I'll take the free PS3 games for granted and get InFamous and Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty, I think the more ideal way to make up for the PSN customers is some credit for the store. Something like £10/15 to go towards anything you want would have been more convenient for choice as well as those who may have owned all the games on offer already.

In conclusion, the PSN outage was a heavy blow for Sony and it seems they're putting pieces back together bit by bit. Although private details have been violated, hopefully there'll be much tighter security everywhere (despite the hack attacks after this) and we don't have to go through this again. The welcome back offers were fine and at least Sony did something to try and make up for the huge inconvenience. Here's hoping the hacker who thought it was a good idea to ruin entertainment for many will pay the ultimate price.

E3 2011 (Part 2)

2011-06-23T13:09:00.001+01:00

Welcome back to the second part of the E3 2011 recap. This time we will cover Sony and Nintendo. Sony was next up on stage and the first thing they had to mention was the PSN outage from a while back. Can't blame them, though since it was a hard time for Sony, the third party publishers and the players and they wanted to take the right opportunity to apologise for the inconvenience (my rant on Sony is on its way). They said what they were going to show at E3 would hopefully bring back those who gave up with Sony after the PSN outage but asides from Uncharted 3, I wouldn't feel at loss if I sold my PS3 after the incident (which I wouldn't since I'm not hasty with getting rid of consoles). Sony provided such a dull show once again and there isn't any new exclusives they announced at E3 to look forward to asides from one game.

What we'd expected and dreaded from Sony's conference was more 3D crap and more PS Move. Neither are anything worth of great value for the console and can easily live without. Sony did mention the prices for their 3DTV products would drop in price but not even that is convincing. I'm happy enough with having a 23" HDTV in one of my bedrooms. The other boring stuff from Sony was the Playstation Suite and this was something to do with having Playstation stuff on mobile phones? Sorry, I'm not a user of these new mobile phones and only have a standard Nokia phone so I switched off here.

The only games that stuck out to me were Sly Cooper and BioShock Infinite. The former I hadn't even heard of the series before while BioShock Infinite will be multi-platform. However, it may be that I'll get BioShock Infinite on PS3 after the disaster that struck BioShock 2 with Games for Windows Live login and being a broken piece of shit. As for Sly Cooper, not knocking the game here but chances are I may not even look into this until five years time. I'm far too slow with gaming these days. Although Infamous 2 was shown at E3, the damn game came out the day after the conference so what was the point of even showing it? They may as well show Duke Nuke Forever which came out on the same day in Europe as Infamous 2. Why was this shown instead of a single second clip of the new Twisted Metal game? Surely that's one of Sony's most anticipated games right now.

Most of the games Sony showed were rather bland. We had Resistance 3, some space shooter game that I refuse to even remember due to blandness, a new Star Trek game that blends in with these games and some Harry Potter reject for the PS Move. Too much of it is forgettable but at least there's less to catch up on. I feel I'm falling behind with new releases too much already.

The big announcement for Sony's conference was of course the new portable named PSVita. Quite a bad name if you ask me considering its similarity to Vista. Name aside, this seems to join the trend with iPhones and such so I'm not sold. I want to see some games worth getting for the PSVita since there wasn't enough on the PSP to justify a purchase for it. Sure, the PSP had some Metal Gear Solid games, some Final Fantasy (especially Tactics remake) and Silent Hill: Origins but half of them migrated to console and I think more will follow eventually. Maybe if there's enough games that are worth a damn on the PSVita besides the Uncharted game, then I'll consider the PSV.

Overall, Sony's conference was boring as hell. The 3D advertisements, PS Move, PS Suite, PSVita and most games were nothing but a snorefest. All that caught my interest were Uncharted 3, Sly Cooper and BioShock Infinite. Sure, there's Twisted Metal to look forward to from them as well but they didn't show the fucking game there! On the bright side, the small amount of games to look forward to shall give me time to catch up on Uncharted 1 and 2 and any other big PS3/360/PC titles I've missed out on.

And last but not least is Nintendo's press conference. Like Sony, Nintendo had something big to announce so I had high expectations for what they were going to offer. To starts things off, Nintendo opened up the show with a full orchestra and to be honest, it was pretty cool to hear and much better than Sony's 3D wankery that was only good for those who were there. Shigeru Miyamoto announced 3DS re-releases of Link's Awakening, Four Swords on DSi (hopefully on 3DS as well) and most of all, Skyward Sword is said to be out for the holidays this year. I should be excited but I still need to finish off Twilight Princess. Still, this is good news assuming there won't be any delays.

Nintendo showed some 3DS games and I'm liking what I saw from them. Mario Kart 3DS is an easy buy providing they don't include too many stupid baby characters from Mario Kart Wii, Starfox 3D is a possible like and should be a step up from Starfox Command while Luigi's Mansion 2, I never played the first one and although it didn't look bad, it's a possible miss considering my slow pace of gaming. The biggest announcement was Super Mario 3DS. What really caught my interest was how it looks like a hybrid of Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario 64. I'm sure this will be a better combination of gameplay style than the floptastic Metroid: Other M. These games alone give enough light for the 3DS, especially when we'll get some of them this year!

And now for the big announcement from Nintendo. Their new console which is to take serious competition with the PS3 and 360, having HD graphics and is to appeal to the hardcore gaming community. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Wii U... What, seriously? That was the best they came up with naming their new console? At least it's better than just naming the new console Nintendo as previously claimed by Game Informer but this name is still dumb. It sounds like a Wii parody and doesn't even suggest it's the eighth generation of gaming. The Wii U just sounds like a console to catch up with its competitors now that Microsoft has Kinect while PS3 has PS Move.

The controller doesn't even suggest it appeals to non-casual gamers as previously stated. Infact, it looks like a fucking iPad and if you slapped the Apple logo on the handheld (sorry, I meant Wii U controller), sales would skyrocket. The whole idea for having a huge screen on the controller is ridiculous. Not only would the cost of the Wii U be extreme, if Nintendo were going to make such a big controller with a screen, they may as well made this the new handheld console instead of the 3DS.

Surely a new console has new games to look forward to, right? Asides from a few titles that most would be playing on the 360 or PS3 such as Arkham City and Battlefield 3 which will come out before the damn console does, they've got a rocky start for third party titles already. They already announced games may be miles better than all the shovelware crap that filled up the Wii's retail shelves but come on, these are games that many will play already on other consoles beforehand. Just add some good bonus content and we might be good. As for first party games, all they've confirmed so far is a new Super Smash Bros. game (as well as on the 3DS)... You know, I actually hate Super Smash Bros. these days. I can no longer stand the franchise and the third party character suggestions are going to be a pain to hear over the next few years. If anyone dares to say Naruto or Vegeta should be in Super Smash Bros. 4, please allow me to scream like a lunatic.

I'm hoping these are just first impressions and the Wii U will improve from this. The game lineup isn't that promising right now and the price for the Wii U console and controller combined will need us saving up.

Overall, Nintendo's conference was actually the best out of the five. Sure, the new console is very doubtful right now but hopefully things will get better for it. As for the new titles, it's all sounding good except for new Super Smash Bros. and the lack of a new Metroid game (especially the almost forgotten Metroid Dread) is a disappointment but that's just me. Hopefully I will pick these games up somewhere down the road as they deserve the most attention out of everything that was announced from these shows, even if two of them may be just yet more Mario games.

In conclusion, E3 2011's press conferences were all bad for the most part except Nintendo which although offered a console that's giving many gamers huge doubts, at least they're giving the 3DS a good lineup which is what the new handheld really needed. Games worth hyping for is what Sony needs for the PSVita if they want to be competitive in the handheld industry. Ubisoft and EA are hit and miss with their performances but at least some games are on the horizon. Sadly, Microsoft still gives me no interest from what they offer, especially when their last two press conferences have been mostly about the Kinect but at least I saw some footage of Tomb Raider 2011 and hoping it might be worth a damn. Well, same time next year for E3 2012. Can I improve my gaming habits by then? Only time will tell.

E3 2011 recap (Part 1)

2011-06-08T10:10:00.009+01:00

It's that time of year where E3 is hold and all the biggest games announcements are revealed. This year had a few big things to show such as Nintendo's upcoming console the Wii U (I'll get to that awful name later on) and the new Playstation portable named the PSVita.

Although I had no desire to watch Microsoft's conference considering I don't own a 360, they immediately got my attention when I was informed they were showing gameplay footage of Tomb Raider 2011 (I refuse to call it just Tomb Raider). Although the new look of the Tomb Raider series looks promising, I can't be too confident with the game considering the history of the series. There's a chance it could flop but I'm going to be more open minded and look beyond the quick time events and Uncharted similarities and still hope this will be a good turn out for Tomb Raider.

The rest for Microsoft's conference I didn't care one bit. They may have shown Modern Warfare 3, Gears of War 3 and announced new Halo games but you know what, meh. Not only am I a non-Xbox owner, I simply have no desire to play Gears of War or Halo but if I did end up getting a 360 or possibly the next Microsoft console, I may give these games a shot but I'm putting them aside for the time being. As for Modern Warfare 3, didn't really care for the series that much and considering there's always a new Call of Duty game every year, the excitement decreases. Heck, the presentation started off with telling the player to reconnect the console. For an E3 conference, that's rather bad. Now we know what would happen if Spinal Tap held a video game conference.

Anything else, there's a bunch of Kinect crap, Minecraft on the 360 and Xbox Live updates featuring YouTube and Bing... To get the Xbox Live update out of the way, why bother bringing up Bing, Microsoft? Clearly it's a piece of shit engine that was eventually caught out for copying Google's search results just like years back when they named it MSN Search. At least this won't affect me since I don't even have a 360 but still, why even put the effort into a horrendous search engine? Putting that aside, what I heard from Kinect wasn't catching my interest either. If I'm going to play games with motion sensor controls, I may as well use my Wii more often so everything Kinect related is going straight out of my mind except for Sesame Street by Double Fine (the guys who made Psychonauts and Brutal Legend) which I think is a good sign for the younger generation to play a game that I'm sure won't be the typical shovelware crap. As for Minecraft, if I'm going to get myself addicted to that game (which I won't since I have too many other things to do right now), I should play the PC for better modification.

Overall, Microsoft didn't seem to do a good job. So much "Meh" from it and the only thing that even sparked my interest was Tomb Raider 2011. Apparently their conference was worst than last year's but at least they didn't bring out a new Xbox design from out of nowhere and release it later on the week.

The next conference held was EA and they are always a mixed bag. As long as they keep going on about FIFA and Madden bullshit, they will never be perfect in my eyes but at least EA Sports had something else to show this year and that was the new SSX game. The appearance is a huge improvement from the original trailers and I'm looking forward to this game much more than before now that the Call of Duty feel has been eradicated. The biggest load of crap from EA Sports was how EA claimed they don't rely on live celebrities for their conference but when Madden came up, a few American footballers showed up. Wow, that was a very quick contradiction.

Outside EA Sports, EA was mostly bad but it at least had better moments such as the aforementioned SSX, Overstrike, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and Battlefield 3. Insomniac's new game Overstrike (I have to note that my childhood form is crying for them to get the rights for Spyro back) probably won't be a game I'll pick up shortly after its release but what did get my attention was some of the action sequences as well as the Dolton Brooks character. There's definitely something badass about that guy. Hopefully this game shows some great characteristics. As for Battlefield 3, I'm not so big on war themed games unless they provide an interesting twist to them but seeing the gameplay footage for BF3 definitely felt like a breath of fresh air after seeing a new Call of Duty game year after year. Maybe I haven't played that much of Call of Duty but until you can show me a part where you're blowing the shit out of everything in a tank, I'll remain focused on this game. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning I'll have to look further into but considering Ken Rolston, the lead designer of Morrowind and Oblivion is also the lead designer for this game, I better enjoy this game because I couldn't into Dragon Age which is a damn shame.

My main gripes with EA was some games showing a trailer and absolutely no game footage whatsoever. Although Overstrike may be too early in development to have any gameplay footage but the lack of any for The Old Republic wasn't good. This game has been in production since 2006 (or maybe even before) and five or so years forward, they show another trailer for the game and absolutely nothing for what it will look like when you play the damn game. It's sad that a friend of mine strongly opposed the idea of scrapping KOTOR 3 and make way for the MMORPG title. Not only does my Star Wars fandom stay limited to the original trilogy (and maybe KOTOR if it's that good), I avoid MMORPGs at all costs so this is easily a no sale for me but at least show some game footage for those who are interested. What I thought was most laughable about The Old Republic was the presenter saying "We're not here to make you play this game." If that's so, why even bother trying to sell your game? That's like a salesman saying "I'm not here to make you buy this product." You should be trying to convince the audience to buy the damn product!

The last thing that got me about EA's conference was the new Need for Speed game. I was thinking throughout the time it was shown, "I still have Hot Pursuit which I got from my future brother-in-law for free from his workplace which I've yet to play and already they're bringing out another Need for Speed game?" I suppose I take my time with games but the real shocker with Need for Speed The Run was the use of cutscenes and QTE. Although new ideas should be supported, this just feels far out of place in a racing. How would you like it if Gran Turismo had a cutscene from out of nowhere and you had to press buttons to get through the cutscene? That's almost as out of place as techno elements in death metal. Maybe it won't be a bad game but there's far too many other games to play right now and Hot Pursuit is only one of many.

The only other thing that wasn't brought up here was The Sims on Facebook but my internet connection was horrendous at the time and the live stream was buffering every two fucking seconds. I'm not really a fan of The Sims so it's not much for me to check out. Overall, EA was mostly bad with the typical FIFA and Madden bullshit, lack of gameplay footage for certain games, especially The Old Republic and QTE in Need for Speed but at least we've got some games from them to look forward to so it's not all bad.

The next conference is Ubisoft and this is the only show where I didn't tune in once for any games, not even Rayman Origins or Assassin's Creed: Revelations. I've known Ubisoft for making really bad shows and considering my recent torture with Morbid Angel's new album and Cryptopsy's The Unspoken King, I didn't even want to stomach this, even if I'd see footage for new Rayman and Assassin's Creed games. I did have From Dust in mind but that didn't show up at the conference so not watching Ubisoft's show saved me disappointment and I'll watch game footage for Rayman Origins later on. Hell, I already like the game from the artistic style. It captures the colourful look from the original game and I'm sure it'll remind me of the good ol' days. As for the new Assassin's Creed game, I was hoping they'd move onto the third main title already but I suppose that's for next year when the world is meant to end (*cough*Bullshit*cough*). I'll pick it up whenever I get Brotherhood and play through that.... It'll take a while considering it took 13 months for me to go through Assassin's Creed II after getting it for Christmas with the PS3.

Join me again in part 2 where I cover the conferences by Sony and Nintendo. There are some big things to cover from their shows.

Portal 2, Valve and the fanbase

2011-04-28T11:51:00.003+01:00

Hey all, it's been a while since my last rant but the less amount of rants in 2011 was to be expected. Hell, the next gaming "rant" of mine could have been in June for the E3 2011 recap but the recent events have inspired me to cover this subject. As we all should know, Portal 2 came out last week and while it gained an incredible praise amongst many reviewers, the fanbase weren't so happy. Before we go over the problems with Valve and their fans, I wish to address that I am not a Valve fanboy. I don't think Valve is perfect and don't enjoy all their games. I can't quite get into Counter-Strike and I'm not particularly fond of their awful and outdated Source engine. Source engine has its performance problems as well as having terrible loading times (I've witness this on high spec desktops so it's not just my laptop that takes a minute to load up a map in TF2).

Another thing I want to get out of the way is my thoughts on Portal 2. Since I just beat single player mode the other night, I can say that my expectations were met. It's a sequel that's definitely miles ahead of the original game and the longer lifespan of the game (even if it's not 15 hours long or however long that makes one single player game adequate) shows that more heart was put into this game. I still need to try out co-op mode and intend to go through it with any friends of mine who own the game. The only thing I wish Portal 2 had was a more accessible level editor. As far as I know the only way to make custom levels for Portal 2 is the Valve Hammer Editor and when I heard about custom levels somewhere for Portal 2, I hoped they'd have a system like LittleBigPlanet where you can make your levels with ease and post them online for users to play through. That's the only thing I wished for but that doesn't mean I won't be giving any Portal 2 mods a shot.

The only real gripe with Portal 2 is the items system in co-op mode a la Team Fortress 2. This I feel is completely unnecessary. It was one thing for TF2 to bring in the hat system but now Portal 2 gets it as well? It's not just hats they threw in, there's also skins for ATLUS and P-Body as well as gestures for them to make taunts in-game. It's a wonder why they put so much effort into the backpack system in Portal 2 when other Valve games such as Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike would benefit from hats better considering there's more players who can see your appearance.

The other thing about the items in Portal 2 is the in-game store just like what TF2 has. They provide a range of items for you to buy with your own money and although you could be doing this to give Valve a little something in return, I must stress the fact that they're charging too much for this stuff. A single track on Guitar Hero/Rock Band is less than £1 yet buying a single hat or even a new gesture for the robots costs more. If all the items were only 10/20p, that would be more adequate. The same thing goes for the Team Fortess 2 store. Would Valve really lose sleep if they charged their cosmetic items for a mere 10/20p?

As you might have guessed, the in-game store for Portal 2 has caused some ruckus simply because it takes an idea from another Valve game as well as charging money for cosmetic items in a video game. Yes, the items they've provided for Portal 2 could have been less but it's not like this affects single player in any way which should be the main reason why everyone bought the fucking game.

Even for single player many players were not satisfied. I'm not saying that if you didn't like the game for any reason you're an unpleasable fucktard (although if you've been contradicting yourself over Valve's actions, you ARE one) because you can like or dislike a game but what really gets me is how many have complained about the short length of the game. Some complained about the game being only four hours long and I have to facepalm at that thought. My first run of Portal 2 was nine hours long and you'd only be able to finish the game in four hours on the first run if you were following a walkthrough all the fucking way. From those nine hours spent on Portal 2, they were much better quality time than 75 hours of Pokemon White where most of that has been spent on training Pokemon. Yes, apples and oranges but it has to be pointed out how a game can be more enjoyable for nine hours than a 40+ hour long game.

The last common complaint about Portal 2 was the supposed evidence of the PC version being a port from the console versions... Is this what those PC master race dumbasses really think about every PC game that's also available on consoles? Dragon Age II got bashed for the very same reasons and I only think these dumbass PC fanboys are only pulling facts out of their arses. If this is true, I'd like to be proven wrong by seeing some solid evidence and how porting a game from console to PC makes a game really bad.

The recent backlash on Portal 2 for those small things only make me realise how unpleasable Valve's fanbase in general really is. This isn't to say every Valve fan is an unpleasable fucktard who bitches about everything Valve does and those who generally enjoy their games and make a genuine complaint about a thing or two are good in my books. Those who say Valve should do this, Valve should do that only for them to go right at Valve. The major updates for Team Fortress 2 ever since the introduction to the Mann Co. store have only shown what crybabies a fair portion of their fans are. Do you know why a store system for TF2 was introduced in the first place? PEOPLE FUCKING ASKED FOR ONE, THAT'S WHY! There were players that wanted an easier method to obtaining items and hats in TF2, even if hats are only cosmetic display and they suggested a store to buy the items. Valve went ahead with this but uh oh, the fans weren't happy.

There was (and still is) an endless amount of complaints to Valve adding new hats and items all the time. This lead them to making one small update where they added three new maps to the official roster and the other update was entitled Hatless Update. They made many changes to the game without even adding any new items (except for the Portal 2 pin) but fans STILL bitched about them. Watch as one future Valve update that tries to cater the heatrash from the players and then look at the Steam forums only to find tons of thread saying Valve have done wrong, they'll forever stop playing TF2 and boycotting Valve.

Yes, these rants I write up do make a lot of complaints and this may be a rant covering complaints by others but the difference between the rants and what the fans are bitching about are that I have a point and try to take things for granted, these unpleasable "fans" are not. If these people really don't like what Valve are doing these days and would rather boycott them, JUST FUCKING DO IT ALREADY! I'm sure Gabe Newell can do without thousands of ungrateful fucks who have nothing better to do than to throw a hissy fit over the smallest things they do that only contradict themselves.

In conclusion, Portal 2 is a fantastic game, even if it's a tad short but quality of gaming comes over quantity of gaming. The cosmetic items from the store are pricey but thankfully they won't ruin co-op mode for me at all when I get to it and certainly doesn't make single player bad in any way. As for the fans, many of them are very hard to please and almost reach the same level of ungratefulness as Sonic fans. You know which Sonic fans I'm referring to.

The Oddboxx

2011-01-06T17:06:00.004Z

Hello all and welcome to my first 2011 gaming rant. A new gaming rant may be much sooner than expected considering I'm now more focused on my Metal Monday 2011 project but I did say that my gaming rants will continue. I have to make a new gaming rant now after the experiences I had with a particular franchise I love a lot, even if it's just for two games alone. That gaming franchise is Oddworld which I covered 11 months ago.

To summarize my Oddworld rant, I expressed my disappointment with Oddworld Inhabitants and how they kept failing to deliver their promises with new games. One thing that was mentioned was the Oddboxx re-release which is all four Oddworld games including the Xbox exclusives Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath on PC. Due to delays and a history of failure, I expressed how it seemed very unlikely we'd get these games on PC and to not hype for them. However, it turns out I was wrong and they finally got the Oddboxx on Steam.

Things started to lighten up for Oddworld when a Twitter account for Abe was created (from Oddworld Inhabitants 100% legit) and announcements for new Oddworld games. HOLD IT! That's what Maxis said about a new Oddworld game three years ago and we never heard anything since. Not sure what happened with Oddworld and Maxis but now they're working with an independent developer called Just Add Water. It's said that Just Add Water are going to be working on five Oddworld games, although whether they counted the PS3 remake of Stranger's Wrath or not wasn't clearly stated.

Anyway, onto the main topic. The Oddboxx was released on Steam on 20th December just in time for Christmas. It seemed like all was good for the games considering they must have made an extra push to get it done in time for Christmas but as soon as everyone bought the games and downloaded them, we experienced nothing but HORROR! I first try out Munch's Oddysee and hope for the best of the game but then came crashing issues and this happened all the time in the first fucking level. As a result the game became unplayable to 99.9% of players.

Although Stranger's Wrath didn't suffer crash issues like Munch's Oddysee did, there were many graphical glitches and the performance of the game was completely disastrous. If your computer can run smooth frame rate with Crysis but then gets 10 FPS with Stranger's Wrath, you know the porting is a complete failure. The worst of all is how the game runs at 1 FPS on the fucking menu. I'm not shitting you on that one, Stranger's Wrath was acting like a fucking slideshow on the menu screen. That was enough for me to be put off Stranger's Wrath for the time being.

After many players experienced a porting disaster so bad that makes the Final Fantasy PS1 re-releases a masterpiece in porting, many complaints were brought up on the Steam forums as well as NeoGAF where the CEO of Just Add Water came in contact with to address the issues. Now this is where the whole thing is given credit here. Ever since hearing the feedback, the company have looked into what was causing Munch's Oddysee to crash randomly on the first level and addressed those issues for the gamers to play over Christmas. From my experiences, the rest of the game was playable but I did get some crashes here and there. This made the game playable to many gamers but there's still a lot out there who are out of luck for the time being. Stranger's Wrath is expected to be fixed sometime in the new year so hopefully soon they can provide a patch for the game.

As you can see, the Oddboxx fell to the Christmas rush and thus came with an endless amount of issues. The only bright side to this is the patches for PC but it seemed like a cheap way to get players to buy the game, especially when they had it 50% off when it was first released during the Steam holiday sale. Many customers were pissed as a result and have demanded refunds and quite frankly I don't blame them. They paid for games that didn't work for shit at the time. You may be wondering how crippled games like these even pass the approval for Steam. Hell, did they (Steam) test the game before they released it? For all they know, they could have released a virus to Steam users. The defence from Oddworld Inhabitants and Just Add Water for the bad ports was "testing various computers and getting clean results" which sounds extremely vague. To be fair, Just Add Water aren't a big company but again, it falls under the Christmas rush just to get it out in time then. Poorly done ports is one thing but rushing it for Christmas is another.

Despite everything that's said, it's good to see that the developers are working on getting the games fixed unlike 2K Games who left Bioshock 2 as a mess and Activision not addressing the bugs in Black Ops on PS3 (thanks for proving our point even more Kotick) and once they've patched Stranger's Wrath to be playable for me, I'll be sure to go through it.

Asides from bad ports, there's a few other things to point out regarding the Oddboxx. It was said that all four games would have Steam achievements once the Oddboxx is released. However, only Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath got achievements while the 2D games had nothing. Turns out they don't have the original files for compiling the game so they can't have achievements or even custom display settings. Yeah, that's a huge letdown but then again, the achievements for Munch's Oddysee were piss poor. I got all of them except for the bugged ones and they were all "get some spooces" and "beat this level" which aren't creative achievements in the slightest. There isn't even an achievement for rescuing all the mudokons and fuzzles in the game. Stranger's Wrath doesn't look much different for the achievements either so it's sad to see how little thought there was into them.

While we're talking about the Oddboxx, I may as well end the rant by sharing my thoughts on Munch's Oddysee after waiting a fucking decade just to play it. My expectations weren't as high as possible considering the game was in 3D and may have been one of those franchises that don't transfer to 3D very well just like Sonic as well as hearing some bad things about the game. After a playthrough of Munch's Oddysee, I can say that while I enjoyed the game and liked the use of the second character Munch, I was disappointed at the very low difficulty, the huge lack of secrets and the underwhelming last level. Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus had a lot of secrets and provided a lot of challenge but Munch's Oddysee is a joke in comparison. Oddworld Inhabitants should have known the fans loved secrets in the 2D games so why there was none in this game is a mystery to me. Tomb Raider and Doom are excellent for secrets in 3D games so there really isn't an excuse to leave out secrets. Still, for an Oddworld fanatic the storyline was still enjoyable, the old faces still gave me a smile and the new characters are a nice addition to the Oddworld universe. Here's hoping Stranger's Wrath will be enjoyable once it's patched.

50th rant special!

2010-12-21T13:05:00.016Z

Welcome to my 50th rant special. Some of you might think this would be better off if I saved it for whenever I reach the 100 landmark but if you read what I said about less frequent rants, you'll know that there is less to rant about there isn't a great chance of getting to 100. Of course, we'd have to wait and see but why not end off 2010 on a good note and look over how everything I've talked about starting with the first few rants about Nintendo?

For the Nintendo DSi, it's only become more pointless now that the 3DS is coming out. Sure, the 3DS is said to be expensive but considering Nintendo are getting it out in Europe and North America in 2011, what was the point of the DSi in the first place? The DSiWare could have been saved for the 3DS, especially when it would have been out just two years after the DSi. All I can say is I'm glad I waited it out rather than getting a DSi for better screen quality.

The Nintendo Wii hasn't had an update for better hard drive space and such but the console did show potential with the graphics it could handle with Metroid: Other M which I daresay was on par with PS3 and 360 graphics. Besides that, the problem with stocks for the Nintendo Wii was brought up in the second rant hasn't been an issue since but maybe that's because the majority already have a Wii and there isn't an extremely high demand for them. There was stock problems with the WiiFit in 2008 but that's no big loss.

The Virtual Console has declined and will only go further down from the looks of things. Nintendo never addressed the PAL issues. Fortunately there's alternative re-releases such as the Castlevania Collection that's said to have the classic games. There's a good chance the Castlevania games will work like shit on Virtual Console if I ever tried them on there but with re-releases such as these with real optimization, the unfortunate PAL players can become more fortunate with by playing these games perfectly considering how Sega handled the Sonic Mega Collection. There was a collection set for Mega Man and it would be nice if it was on the Wii as well as being available in Europe. The Anniversary Collection was never released in Europe.

The Wii games library has improved since I went over them since Nintendo have strongly considered their older fans as well as genuine gamers. They had a period where they only focused on the casual gamers and Mario but now they've pushed themselves by making new games for several franchises such as Metroid, Kirby and even Donkey Kong. While Kid Icarus deserves a mention for the new game, that's going to be on the 3DS and not the Wii. Still, it's good they're giving Kid Icarus some light in the modern age of gaming. Nintendo seem to have the right balance between the genuine gamers and casual gamers. Although they'll still focus on them considering their performance at E3 2010, they now know how much attention should be paid to both.

There isn't much to say about the DS now since the 3DS is coming up and Nintendo will obviously focus on the DS less and less. Even so, the DS just got Pokémon Black and White in Japan and is due for a Spring release for the other territories so it looks like Nintendo are going out with a bang for the DS. Despite the 3DS coming out, I'm still going to keep my DS since I still play GBA games from time to time and the DS is the best to use for GBA games these days.

I made several rants about Guitar Hero and Rock Band and how they manage their businesses. These games are still going on but a few things have changed. For starters, the popularity has died down greatly but still strong enough to hold a good fanbase. There doesn't seem to be as much obsession with getting 100% for the hardest track possible and the days of everyone buzzing about DragonForce's Through the Fire and Flames are behind us. Still, whether this has encouraged or discouraged the use of real instruments is still a concern.

Expenses for the whole thing was brought up and while full bundles were expensive, the prices seem to be spread out with other bundles. Full bundle prices haven't changed and it's not easy when the tory bastards are going to raise the VAT from 17.5% to 20% in 2011 so expect them to be even more expensive then. Well, for the UK at least. DLC prices haven't changed either but on the bright side, Rock Band are doing a lot to get as much songs as they possibly can on their range of downloadable songs. They even have a request page for anyone to ask them for Song A and they see what they can do on their end. I suppose if a song is really good it's worth buying again for these games but the prices could still be cheaper.

The milking factor with Guitar Hero and Rock Band has died down. Although they're going to keep the DJ Hero series, there hasn't been as many game releases for both series. Rock Band may have been more reasonable with their releases but there hasn't been a new band specific game from Guitar Hero. Infact, the only new Guitar Hero game this year is Warriors of Rock. Even Activision realised the profits of music games wasn't as good as it used to be.

The last main issue brought up was the release dates for Rock Band games. For Rock Band 3, EA made sure no-one from one territory was going to wait months on end for the game to come out no matter which console you had and that is a very good sign. Since Rock Band 3 just came out, if there's something there that really makes me want to pick the game up, I can do so whenever.

The only issues that can be said about these games are the odd tracks they throw in for Rock Band such as Lady Gaga and Snoop Dogg and you think "Why?" The only reason Lady Gaga may have had some songs on Rock Band is because of the Poker Face spoof on South Park but that shouldn't excuse her appearance on there. If you really need to put her songs in a damn video game, make a fucking Singstar Lady Gaga. Her music is not what should be expected for a game called ROCK BAND! As for Snoop Dogg, even fans of rap were scratching their heads as to why he was in Rock Band.

Even though Morrowind is a 2002 game and my rants usually focus on newer subjects, after several bad experiences with the game, I really wanted to make a rant about it and state why the game was bad. Although there isn't much can be done for Morrowind these days, I'm actually tempted to give the game another shot. There are many Elder Scrolls fans out there that prefer Morrowind over Oblivion and surely there's got to be a good reason for it, even with the crappy combat system. Yes, as much as I hated the combat system in Morrowind, if there was a way to make myself hit successfully all the time for clear hits on targets, that would do nicely. I've come across a few third-party patches that supposedly fix hundreds of errors in the game and even though I wish Bethesda Softworks could fix the glitches themselves, for a game I'm really tempted to play again it will have to do. As for being able to lose key items, I'll just have to be careful or maybe there's a patch that prevents any important items from being discarded. We'll wait and see whenever I give this game a second chance.

EA was another subject I ranted on and to be honest this is my least favourite rant I've written. I mentioned how they take all the small companies and make them bigger but at least those small companies get to live on rather than going bust. I even stated in the rant that EA have improved but they're still not perfect. As long as they make annual FIFA and Madden games, they'll be given shit one way or another. Overall, EA are a good company that deserves respect, especially for supporting smaller companies as well as new IPs.

Not much needs to be said about Activision and Bobby Kotick since a year after the first rant on them, I made more rants on them and that was only a few months ago. That alone shows they haven't improved. Infact, they're only getting worse considering they're trying to find as much ways as possible to get more money. The best example is insisting on monthly fees for their Call of Duty games.

I wrote four rants on Pokémon covering many subjects. The first point that was brought up was how many Pokémon there are. I even thought they shouldn't bother with a fifth generation of Pokémon but amazingly enough, the new Pokémon overall are good. Sure, there are some weird ones but I think they did a good job with the new Pokémon. Not one Pokémon is an evolved form or a baby form of already existing Pokémon. Game Freak wanted to take a different direction with this game and have no older Pokémon appearing in the game up until later so you can expect less Zubats, Geodudes and Tentacools in the new games. The new Pokémon alone have convinced me to get Pokémon Black/White once they're out in Europe.

Event Pokémon have become easier to obtain since Nintendo are focusing more on releasing them on WiFi than keeping them exclusive to certain venues. That is a huge improvement since it's now much easier to obtain Event Pokémon and not having to go all the way to the other side of the country or even another country just to get it.

Sadly, the Pokémon anime show is still going on and are still keeping Ash and Team Rocket for the Black/White series. Still the same old shit for the anime show then. Give me the first season of Pokémon in English over this new crap any day of the week. And yes, that does mean the 4kids dub. I still have a soft spot for the English dub of Pokémon season one.

I made two more rants about Nintendo last December which were about the Nintendo DSi XL and the adverts starring Ant & Dec. We all know how redundant the DSi XL is now but for those adverts where Nintendo had Ant & Dec promoting those games, they're still plastering those fuckers on their adverts. There's even a recent one where they're in a forest playing Donkey Kong Country Returns. You know, because they're presenters in I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. Not only that, Nintendo ended up picking up another duo hack to promote their shit and they are Jedward from the X Factor... SERIOUSLY NINTENDO?! You really want THESE retards to advertise your shit?!

To start off 2010 with my rants, I covered Rayman and how I was disappointed with the huge lack of real Rayman titles as well as how I felt the first Rayman game was vastly superior to the rest of the games. Not only have the Raving Rabbids games dropped the name Rayman from their games, Rayman is finally getting a new game for himself and in 2D!! Although the games are going to be released in episodic format just like Sonic 4, it's still worth anticipating for!

Cliffhangers and Unconfirmed sequels was a rather strange topic but it was something I wanted to get off my chest, especially when there have been several games I wanted to come out to finish off the saga but were either cancelled, got held back by development hell or whatever. The games I mentioned were sequels to Ecco the Dolphin, Aquaria, Psychonauts and Duke Nukem Forever. Ecco is still at the bottom of the ocean but if Sega are giving light to classic Sonic with Sonic 4 and a new Shenmue game (even if it's not Shenmue 3 as you desire), maybe it's Ecco's turn sometime in the future. However, it's best to assume he won't be reaching the surface anytime soon.

There is some light for a Psychonauts sequel. Tim Schafer himself has stated that he is ready work on a sequel to Psychonauts but all he needs is a publisher to support him. If there's a company with common sense, they'll pick up Double Fine in no time!

Out of everything in the gaming world, one of the last things everyone expects is seeing Duke Nukem Forever on the shelves. A few months after mentioning the fate of Duke Nukem Forever, Gearbox bought the rights to the game and are now working on the game. Although it's still too soon to be excited since for all we know they could go bankrupt before they get a chance to release the game, this is a company who have made a few games such as Borderlands and even the Half-Life expansions so I'd say it's a good sign. Still, you never know what else could happen so it's best to prepare for the worst.

Oddworld is another that's shown some light ever since my rant on the downfall for the series. The Oddboxx just came out on Steam yesterday. However, the ports of Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath were disastrous. The developers are actually looking into these issues right now but I'll have to go into this in full detail at some point and explain the dos and don'ts with re-releases and ports. Alongside to the Oddboxx, there's going to be a PS3 remake of Stranger's Wrath. Anything else, there's been some word on a new Oddworld game but I heard the same thing two years ago and it never went anywhere with Maxis. Maybe Oddworld will rise again but on the other hand, just like Duke Nukem Forever it's best preparing for the worst to avoid as much disappointment as possible.

The most that's come out from Final Fantasy since my rant on the series and its current state is the release of FFXIV. I don't even need to explain what's wrong with this game but if you really need a reason, I'll leave you with this:

In April, after playing Pokémon SoulSilver and reliving the days of Pokémon Gold/Silver, it was brought to my attention that I didn't rant on the horribly flawed trading system. It's too late to change the trading system in the fourth generation Pokémon games but hopefully Game Freak have implemented a better trading system in Pokémon Black and White. The other good news about the new Pokémon games is the less amount of HMs. They've reduced the amount to five so there's less to worry about using HMs when you really need them.

I eventually made a rant on the Irate Gamer and how much of a fraudulent gamer he really is. Although many people beat me to the punch to say how much of a douchebag he really is, I had to have my own say on him. When you thought he couldn't sink any lower, he went and scammed his fans. That's right, he scammed his fans shortly after the Tekken 6 fiasco. He claimed he talked to a website about holding a contest for the subscribers and offering them to win a PS3. What was wrong with this was the lack of statement on the games you would get, the lack of appearance of the PS3 you'd be winning and how the site itself was actually a horribly done auction site where placing a bid costs money, thus losing out on money if someone outbids you. That was pretty much the bottom of the barrel for him and ever since that, he's still as unreliable as ever for making videos. He only spent two minutes talking about God of War III and for the review for Cool Spot, it seemed to be nothing but a parody fodder as if he wants people to make fun of him.

Recent news from Tomb Raider has arisen and for the new game, they've decided to reboot the franchise AGAIN and are going to tell the story of a younger Lara Croft. Say, why does this all sound familiar? Oh yeah, Tomb Raider's first continuity told the story of a younger Lara a few times in The Last Revelation and Chronicles but maybe the new game will be more organised. However, the fact that Tomb Raider is going through another reboot after three games with the first reboot is rather sad. What's even worse about throwing away the Legends-Anniversary-Underworld continuity is that one of those games was a remake! Too bad they're tossing it aside so soon.

And that wraps up everything new from all the subjects I've ranted on. Most of it has looked better but there's still bullshit going on and that's why this isn't the last of my gaming rants. Sure, it's a special one but to look back at 49 different rants is a lot. That's all for now everyone! Starting 2011, I'm going to take a different approach with my writings and focus on heavy metal. Despite that, I've still got a few more rant ideas to post next month so stay tuned. Be sure to enjoy the rest of 2010 and here's hoping 2011 will be even better! With Portal 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Batman: Arkham City on the horizons, I'm expecting 2011 to be a good year for video games.

The Console War

2010-12-13T09:04:00.002Z

This is another common subject that's been talked about as well as something I've been wanting to rant about for a while now. Most of us can agree that fanboys/girls in general are obnoxious. We're not going to talk about them in general but rather the console fanboys as well as the console war and why I think it's all bullshit.

What I don't like about console fanboys at all is how they think the console they like the most is the best and claim that's a factual statement. Sorry, this is all wrong. Out of the three main consoles right now, there is no best console, it's a matter of which console suits your gaming interests the most. Your main preference could be Nintendo's main franchises such as Mario and Zelda but that doesn't mean the Wii is the best console out of the three. Yes, the Wii was different from the PS3 and Xbox 360 when it first came out but different doesn't always mean better. Not to say the Wii is a failure, though. It's a decent console but it has its flaws.

Speaking of flaws, all three consoles have advantages and disadvantages. The Wii isn't up to HD standards (even though the graphics in Metroid: Other M were impressive) and doesn't have great hard drive support, the Xbox 360 has many stories about product faults (although the Red Rings of Death issue seems to have gone down) and having all the good online features requires a monthly fee while the PS3 also has product faults.

When considering video games for all three consoles, I'd say they're all on par with each other. Sure, I don't own an Xbox 360 and the odds of getting one isn't very high but I still accept the fact that the 360 offers a lot of great games for gamers who own one. You may like Gears of War and Halo but I'm not too fussed about it and if I was, I'd have made the effort to get a 360 ages ago. For the Wii, even though there's an absurd amount of crappy games for the console, it still makes the effort to make up for the crap by providing great games. Sure, Brawl wasn't really up to standards and Metroid: Other M had several flaws but those games along with many others both oldest and newest justify the Wii's existence.

As for the PS3, there's still a fair amount of games to play for that console as well and anyone who brings up the retarded "PS3 has no games" meme are as ignorant as the morons who claim heavy metal is just singing about satan and yelling or rap is just about bitches and hoes and degrading women. If you looked outside the box, you'll know those statements are false (and yes, I am defending rap from ignorance despite not liking that particular music genre). The PS3 provides enough games for the gamers. If anything, I see the PS3 to have just as much as the 360. PS3's notable exclusives include God of War, LittleBigPlanet, inFamous, Resistance and of course, Metal Gear Solid 4.

As explained from the games all three consoles provide, it all depends which games that suit your interests the most. For multi-platform games, I'd say get the game which you have the console for or feel it works better on a certain console. The only thing I have to point out about multi-platform games is games that are available for the Wii. The other disadvantage for the Wii is less impressive performance for the games than the other two consoles. For a game like Tomb Raider: Underworld, the Wii isn't ideal at all due to stripping down the gameplay to meet its technical limitations.

If anyone feels it all depends on the sales in terms of who's winning the console war, I have to declare that as bullshit. It only matters if the console was a complete flop and as you can see none of the main three consoles are doing badly right now. Sure, the PS3 is selling the least and it didn't have a good start but does that make it bad? Hardly. Just look at the sales for the last generation. The Gamecube may have not sold as well as the other two but the console actually had classics such as Metroid Prime 1 and 2 and Super Smash Bros. Melee. It was even the console that was originally going to have Resident Evil 4 as one of their exclusives but that changed due to excessive complaints. Even so, it was still impressive on the Gamecube and the Gamecube proved it had great games to play regardless of its performance against the PS2 and Xbox in terms of sales.

In conclusion, console wars are stupid. There is no best console out of the lot for one gaming generation, each console has its own highlights and lowlights and the fanboys who think Console X is the best one in every way and the others plain suck are moronic. Just enjoy the consoles you have and quit with the bickering over the ones you don't have. Those consoles appeal to others gamers and not you.

Obsolete titles

2010-12-06T16:48:00.006Z

This is a rather strange topic but it's something to bring up on the table about how certain video game titles have become obsolete so quick. Although it makes sense for a really old racing game to have had a few tracks to play with and nothing else to become outdated but what we're talking about here are major titles that the game developers made redundant after a year or two.

Some of you are probably shouting out FIFA or Madden right now and yes, they do make older titles redundant, especially when they start to shut off online servers for older games, thus making them unplayable for online purposes and achievements. One might think "So what, they're just old games." but maybe there are those out there who would rather stick to the title they have already and not dish out another £40 for the latest game? We're talking about games that were a few years old, not a 2003 game.

Even one of the Call of Duty games became semi-obsolete after Activision shut down all the servers for the first game. I know for the fact that there are many players who still prefer the older Call of Duty games over the newer ones and would rather play them than Black Ops or Modern Warfare 2. These are the kind of games that should keep online support or do whatever Valve does to keep Counter-Strike, Half-Life and Team Fortress Classic's servers staying alive after a decade. Sure, we have Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2 but Valve know they'll always have players who would rather play the other games for whatever reason.

The main two games I wish to talk about for obsolete titles are Left 4 Dead and LittleBigPlanet. When both games were released, they were seen as revolutionary titles. Left 4 Dead was highly praised for the use of first person co-op shooter in a zombie apocalypse while LittleBigPlanet was raved about for making your own platformer levels. Both games had minor flaws but they were still enjoyable nonetheless.

Fast forward to June 2009 and what did Valve announce at E3? "Left 4 Dead 2: Coming out November 2009!" That's right, just over half a year later, Valve confirmed a release for Left 4 Dead 2 and at first everyone was wondering "Why?" Why make an older title obsolete already? Left 4 Dead 2 had melee weapons, new special infected, new characters, EVERYTHING that made it better than the original title. Well, almost everything since the majority of players prefer the original survivors over the others. However, even with that you can play the original survivors in any campaign by making a few adjustments. Take note that this was BEFORE the latest campaign starring these survivors called The Sacrifice.

Speaking of L4D's latest campaign, Valve said they would still offer support for L4D1 and they made that promise. However, what good did they do by making the new L4D campaign starring the original survivors available for L4D2 as well? The one thing that could have gotten players to pick up the first game again and they blew it. This isn't making L4D1 different to L4D2, it's making it redundant! The only ones who still play L4D1 are those who don't like melee weapons to begin with and/or doesn't have the money for the sequel. Yes, this gives the first game a purpose to live on but let's face it, we should have had fucking melee weapons in L4D1 in the first place! So yeah, nicely done with not making L4D1 different enough to the sequel. (Yes, there are custom campaigns but that's additional third-party content, not official.)

As for LittleBigPlanet, the game came out in November 2008 and sometime in Spring 2010, they confirm a sequel for LittleBigPlanet. While it's good to hear the new game will cover not just platformers but also other game types such as racing games, puzzles, etc. What I don't like about LittleBigPlanet 2 is that they're going to accept levels made in LBP1 on LBP2. For this reason alone, they just made LBP obsolete and it sucks how as soon as I get LBP2, there is no real reason to pick up the first game ever again.

Now I'm not against new titles for these games but what I don't like about them is how soon their sequels are released. L4D2 came out just a year after the first game and LBP2 came out two years after the original title. It just seems like these companies don't care about one title and then move onto the next and pretend the predecessors never existed to begin with. They should be more committed to the games they just release and save sequels like these for the next generation of gaming. L4D2 would have been more appropriate whenever Valve make Half-Life 3 while LBP2 would have been an ideal title for the Playstation 4. Yes, that is thinking far ahead but Sony have stated there will be a PS4 sometime in the future. They just don't expect it until 5 years time and neither do I.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

2010-11-29T16:42:00.003Z

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if someone right now was going to scream to me "OMG HOW COULD YOU RANT ABOUT SSBB?!" Hold on a minute, I've yet to explain anything but what I do want to say that it isn't a horrible game but it does have several drawbacks which we'll cover soon enough. Like the majority of Nintendo fans, when we heard about a new Super Smash Bros. game coming out, we were all excited and wish time would pass quick enough for the game to appear right in our hands. Well, that happened and it turned out all the hype wasn't exactly worth it.

The first thing to think about when talking about Super Smash Bros. is the available characters. To have a game where you can play as Mario, Link, Samus, Pikachu and many other iconic Nintendo characters brawling out (hurr hurr) in one game is a godsend. Super Smash Bros. Melee brought yet more great fighters to the table such as Bowser, Mr. Game & Watch and Zelda. Brawl did continue to add more fighters to the game that are very good but the problems with the character roster and balances had a huge problem with this game. Although it's hard to make 36 characters as strong as each other but it doesn't help when Nintendo seem to have deliberately made horrible characters that are absolute suck in any match. One great example is R.O.B. who is not a good fighter at all. His moves are very stiff and inflexible while you have a character like Meta Knight who moves quickly and efficiently. Fighting games really should have balanced characters allowing you to choose whichever one as you desire and have not having to worry about a character's sucky moves. Of course, that's a pipedream but it's should be an objective when making a fighting game.

One other thing to bring up about the characters is how Super Smash Bros. jumped the fucking shark by introducing non-Nintendo characters. As we all know, SSBB introduced Sonic and Solid Snake to the roster. While Sonic was the most requested character to be in the new SSB game, Nintendo should have stuck to their guns and kept the series Nintendo exclusive. After all, the game series is called Super Smash Bros. (replace Smash with Mario, go figure) and should remain Nintendo only. By allowing Sonic and Snake in these game, there are now demands for Cloud Strife, Shadow the Hedgehog and even Goku from Dragonball Z to be in the next Super Smash Bros. game. Sincere apologies to those who lost many brain cells after hearing about the last request for whenever Nintendo make another SSB game and I sure as hell hope it's never!

Although enough has been said about the characters themselves, what else that needs to be brought up about them are the final smashes. These are a nice example of game breakers in video games. Although to get them, you have to wait for the brawl logo to pop up on stage and break the floating item. Still, once one of the players has final smash, the results are far too deadly depending on the character. Sonic and Luigi do an incredible amount of damage while Peach's final smash totally fucking sucks. Now that's a sign of unbalanced players right there and it's sad how we get tiers for these games just because of some characters doing better than others overall.

One of the major new elements to Super Smash Bros. Brawl was the Subspace Emissary. This was something that many gamers ended up hating in the end but despite that, I'd much rather have this over Adventure Mode from Melee. Adventure Mode got rather tiring after a while due to how many times it was needed to get all the trophies in the game. Subspace Emissary on the other hand, the only times you needed to revisit any levels was mostly for 100% completion purposes as well as catching up on any dark bosses you needed to face.

What really got me about Subspace Emissary was the strange characters that you encounter. Not once were they in any other Nintendo game and to have a campaign mode facing characters that aren't relevant to Nintendo to begin with is absurd. For a game called Super Smash Bros. Brawl, you'd expect to face well known enemies from various Nintendo franchises such as space pirates, deku scrubs or even Zubats! Yes, we may hate those goddamned bats but at least it would have been highly relevant for Subspace Emissary unlike all the random crap they threw in instead. Although there were the typical Mario enemies, there should have been more than that. At least we had bosses that made sense such as Rayquaza and Ridley.

Subspace Emissary was just OK overall. I had enough determination to play through it once but to do it a second time? Nah, it's not worth going through it for the second time.

The only other things to comment on about Brawl are the stage creation mode and online battles. The stage creation mode, although it was just a little bonus to SSBB, it really was piss poor. Even though this is a Nintendo Wii game and not a PC game, there are now consoles that provide a great amount of custom content such as LittleBigPlanet. What SSBB had would have been awesome for SSBM but for a 2008 game, it feels really lacking for a custom creation feature.

Admittedly, I have only ever had one online match. That's right, just one ever since I got this game for my 18th birthday. What I recalled from the match was having to wait a while just for one damn game (it doesn't help when the game itself has terrible loading times), one person leaving the match for whatever reason and just having a 3-way battle online. You'd think playing against people online would be a lot of fun but it's rather underwhelming. Infact, I'd rather play this game with my friends and hear us all enjoying ourselves. Playing online is rather... quiet.

In conclusion, Super Smash Bros. Brawl isn't a bad game but it doesn't live up to the hype. With horribly balanced characters with final smashes that can either be really broken or utter shit, subpar Subspace Emissary and poor online service, it sadly doesn't live up to its expectations. This was meant to storm my favourite video game picks but it didn't. This isn't to say I wish my future brother-in-law got me another game for my 18th birthday, I did have enough fun with this game but not as much as I had with Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Blistered Thumbs' Article Writing

2010-11-22T17:08:00.004Z

If you are a frequent viewer of That Guy With the Glasses/Channel Awesome, you'll know that they've recently launched a new site for Blistered Thumbs, the video game section of the whole community. Even though this group name has been known for a while now, only now are they this site for them for post new videos, contests, tournaments and game journalists/article writers. To be honest, I overlooked the video announcements about the new site at first but a friend of mine approached to me about it and suggested I see if I could be a part of them and be part of the writing team.

This isn't really going to be a rant but more about what I think about being part of them if I was offered in anyway. Even so, this is still very relevant to what I've done with where I've posted my rants. I've had a good thought about this and came to a conclusion with reasons why. The response to being part of Blistered Thumbs at all is a "No." I have several reasons why I do not wish to become an associate for Blistered Thumbs starting with:

1. Lack of interest in the majority of existing members

The one thing I feel is important is to be a great supporter for the other talents who are working on videos, podcasts, etc. Out of everyone in Channel Awesome, the only ones I'm interested in are That Guy With the Glasses, Linkara, Spoony (only some for his recent videos), Angry Joe, Bennett the Sage, The Game Heroes, (depends on the game those three are reviewing) and That Dude in the Suede whenever he returns. I used to be interested in Benzaie's videos but the interest has dwindled over the last 12 months with the exception of his Heavy Metal Package videos. As you can see, I only watch certain members of the community and have no will to check out everyone. Maybe they're not asking for recruitments to know everyone off by heart but I'm sure they want someone who watches a good amount of videos from the talents on a regular basis but that's not me.

2. Less free time

When I started making these rants back in April 2009, I was unemployed and was loaded with free time. Now, I'm working 30 hours for a local school taking care of office duties. I don't have as much time as I used to and along with working, I see my friends on a regular basis and have a few other things to take care of. The best luck I've had with free time is the half term break last month when I wrote several rants so I'd be ready to post them or the appropriate weeks. For Blistered Thumbs, I'm sure they want someone who's very consistent with posting new articles every week or two. I may have done well for the most part but again, less free time gives me less time to think of new subjects, do research on them and write up the rants.

3. Possible drama with existing members

Those who know me in real life or even seen me once may think I'm a nice guy. However, I am not without flaws. There will be some people who will tick me off for whatever reason and for Blistered Thumbs members, there's possibly a few things one might say about a certain subject and I will get in an argument with them. For instance, Spoony has said a few touchy things about Final Fantasy fans that I do not agree with at all most notably where he tells his fans to "Find and kill them" for saying Final Fantasy X is a good game and I thought that comment was uncalled for. Someone like him I'd have a lot of trouble getting along with.

The other possible drama that might stir up is what I've said on my rants. Although most of them might be cool with these guys, there are the touchy subjects such as Irate Gamer and ScrewAttack and considering Handsome Tom used to be part of ScrewAttack, there could be a heated debate about something. Maybe I could keep quiet about these topics but you never know when the shit will hit the fan. Take note that these are people you'll be seeing in real life for several events such as Channel Awesome anniversaries.

4. Disagreements with existing members

Although it links to point 3, there are some things that I don't like about certain members. As stated before, Spoony has made some questionable remarks about Final Fantasy and the fans and as a fan of the series, things will not go well with him. The other things I don't like him are his ego, his arrogance and his girlfriend Scarlett who is far too ban happy on Spoony's website. I know this since I've criticised Spoony a few times on his website and now I'm unable to comment on his blog pages. I'm not sure if Scarlett is aware that Spoony is subject to criticism, especially when he's gone as far as bashing two popular Final Fantasy titles. It doesn't help when Spoony went on a rampage with banning trolls on his forum and bragged about his power hunger on Twitter.

I've lost a lot of respect for him for how he deals with trolls and how he complains about them yet he was the one who takes pride with riling up Final Fantasy fans. If any of you claim he's actually a nice guy, I'm going to call bullshit for the reasons I've explained. I've had thoughts on making a rant about him a few times for his actions over the last 12 months... Not saying he's been completely terrible since the Ultima retrospective is interesting but there's still several bad things going on with him.

Benzaie, considering he seems to know a lot about heavy metal, if I knew him personally, I could possibly get along with him. However, what I don't like about him is the lack of consistency he has. I'm never sure which video series he's still working on and I originally knew him from the Games You Might Don't Know videos. The last video I saw from that series was last year and I honestly can't remember the last video from GYMDK I sat down and watched. I really don't like his GameFap videos where the perverted jokes go so far where it becomes pathetic. I'm tolerant with sex jokes but Benzaie takes it WAAAAAAAAAY too far. I was hoping he'd resume his Heavy Metal Package series someday but from the looks of it, his brother is taking over. I'll see how the return of that series goes.

5. Wanting to focus more on another subject

For a while now, I've wanted to focus more on talking about heavy metal in general. This means reviewing albums, promoting bands who deserve more attention, etc. I've said a lot about video games already but I need to switch gears and say tons about heavy metal. I have over 400 metal albums and you can bet that there's a lot to say about them. This isn't to say the Gaming Bullshit Rants will come to a close, I just don't have as much to talk about these days and the only way to find new topics is new bullshit that comes up. Starting from next year, gaming rants will be less frequent.

I know for a fact that those who read whatever I post on here and my Newgrounds account are more interested in my gaming rants than they are in reviews for metal albums. Even so, it's something I want to talk about more and waiting for the new game rants will be all the more worth waiting for. The only problem I have with reviewing albums is getting them submitted to Metal-Archives. It can be a hassle to get a review on there, especially when they don't check reviews in a chronological order. The moderators on that site have openly admitted to checking reviews "in a chaotic order" so reviews that were submitted a few days after yours could be approved first. It might be better if I just didn't bother posting any reviews there but I know for a fact that reviews get good exposure over there and it's a good way to get your name out there.

And those are five reasons why I'm going to say no to any opportunities to join the Blistered Thumbs team for the game journalism/article writing department as well as why it wouldn't be a good idea to be with them. I have nothing against Blistered Thumbs or Channel Awesome in general despite disagreements with some of the members' actions, the position just isn't for me.

ScrewAttack (Part 3)

2010-11-22T17:02:00.003Z

For our dessert, we will have a look at Stuttering Craig and his betrayal actions. Yes, the two big moments where he kicked Handsome Tom and Guru Larry off the site. Handsome Tom leaving ScrewAttack in 2008 was definitely a surprise since he founded the site with Craig when they were talking about making podcasts based on video games. They were working together very well up until the decisions to register their company. Tom wanted Craig to register the site together but Craig wasn't up for it at the times.

However, at a later point he went and registered ScrewAttack himself without even talking to Tom about it. His reasons for doing this was terrible. He claimed he was persuaded to do this and had to take his own initiatives. That shows a huge indecency towards Tom. He was willing to work with Craig and wasn't going to do things on his own and not tell Craig about it. As one of the owners of the site, he was keeping his responsibility for the site but Craig on the other hand, he just treated his working partner and friend like trash. He even stated on the podcast that he refuses to apologise to Tom for his actions.

Tom's response for leaving ScrewAttack was stating how unhappy he was with Craig. He only wanted to work with the site because he had fun with it and wasn't looking to earn profit from the merchandise and such, only from the work he did. He actually kept his dispute between Craig short and moved onto working for his new company The Game Heroes who are associated with That Guy With the Glasses/Channel Awesome. This was the only good thing that resulted from Craig's betrayal as Tom vastly improved with his image as well as making the videos more enjoyable.

Recently Guru Larry was booted off ScrewAttack entirely despite not making a real contribution to them over the last year or two. The recent problem with him and Craig was Larry being offered by a gaming company who work for YouTube to become a YouTube partner. What ticked off Craig was Larry using the ScrewAttackEurope channel (which is Larry's own channel) and thinking he was using ScrewAttack's name for profit. Craig can't take down someone just because of a channel name on YouTube. And besides, the name ScrewAttack originally came from the Metroid games so he has no right to bitch about what others do with that particular name. As a result of this, Larry was forced to make a new channel and earn the ads from there instead of his original YouTube account that he's been used to for a few years now. The only good thing about this is that he's no longer promoting ScrewAttack in any way.

I actually sent Larry a private message asking what happened between him and Craig despite not being in contact with him before. I was suggested by a friend of mine to send him a PM asking for the details on the situation since he knew Larry was a very nice guy to almost anyone. The worst I expected from Larry was telling me to go fuck myself and die in a fire for being nosey about it. As a matter of fact, that wasn't the case and he explained EVERYTHING to me! His reasons are much better than what Craig and his butt buddies pulled out of their asses.

They made a 12 minute video ganging up on Larry and saying he had no right to use the ScrewAttackEurope channel for money and how he shouldn't be using the channel now despite it being his channel. They came up with a bunch of sarcastic bullshit (again, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit) and wished Larry to do well with his future and earning money for his work which followed by "We all like money, right?"

In conclusion, ScrewAttack as well as the owner Craig Skistimas are an abomination to mankind. They have shows that meet the same comedic value as Seltzerberg, the community (or rather "g1s") are a disgrace to humanity, the Video Game Vaults are flooded with horrible random images and videos from the internet as well as top tens which also contain some absurd decisions and most of all, Stuttering Craig is a douchebag! He is also a backstabber and doesn't even justify his own actions. He thinks he's always right whether it's for the top 10 choices or for business actions.

Maybe they have some good associates apart from the Angry Video Game Nerd but if they definitely show potential, they're not doing themselves any favour by sticking with ScrewAttack. They'll have a better image by not having any association with them and this applies even to James Rolfe. He's the reason why people even knew about ScrewAttack to begin with. The gaming world is much better off without these evil companies.

ScrewAttack (Part 2)

2010-11-22T17:02:00.001Z

And now it's time for our main course, Stuttering Craig and his Video Game Vault and Top Tens. If you've seen his appearance for the first time, you can probably tell right off the bat that he's a douchebag. For Craig's main videos, Video Game Vaults briefly shows games Craig is commenting on. He used to work on these videos with Handsome Tom when he was still with ScrewAttack but nowadays he just gets the odd guests. The word brief is used since these videos usually last 2 - 4 minutes. It's not enough to go in depth but it's enough to tell you the basis of the game.

You might think, "This is fine and dandy, what's wrong with it?" The problem with these videos are how frequent the awful jokes are. Almost every episode has them and the most notable ones are when Craig throws in random images and videos as if he discovered 4chan just recently. Well, the images at least but the random videos are shit anyone can find on YouTube so if we want random garbage, we will go to YouTube. It's never necessary to throw it in videos talking about retro games. Infact, it makes the videos rather off-putting.

The other things are that wrong with the VGVs are the odd comments from Stuttering Craig which are very elitist and should never be passed as a legitimate statement on gaming. He claims if you haven't played Ghosts 'N' Goblins, "you're not a gamer" and "you suck". "If you haven't played Mega Man, what the hell?" and "don't play Mega Man 2 on the Anniversary Collection, it doesn't do playing it on the NES justice. You'll thank me later."

Why I'm strongly against these comments is because everyone is new and has to start somewhere. My cousin who had his first birthday a while ago hasn't even picked up a controller so following Craig's logic, my cousin sucks. Maybe that's taking those comments too literally but what about those that don't get any appeal from sidescroller games? This may come to a shock to you Craig but not everyone likes Mario or Mega Man. Not everyone likes Final Fantasy, Half-Life and such but there's no need to say "You suck and you're not a gamer for not liking those games." The "Don't play games on a re-release, only play it on the original" statement is also a crock of shit since they were made for those who didn't get the chance to pick them up the first time. Should he expect a new gamer to pick up an NES as well as the cartridges which are very valuable these days?

As for the Top Tens, it's not much different to the Video Game Vaults except for listing top tens for whatever subject. To be fair, there is a variety in these lists since they range from top ten games for a particular console to music to gimmicky lists such as beards and boobs (obsession over pixelated boobs...). The joke lists are plain dumb but the decisions in the lists are genuine. Well, most of the time anyway. Some of the lowlights from them are putting Superman II on the top 10 PS3 exclusives (yet it's a fucking movie), a Super Mario 3 II (you mean New Super Mario. Bros wasn't good enough for you?) and calling ALL Final Fantasy characters "pussies" (I really wish this was made up). Some joke decisions could have been alright but where Stuttering Craig fucks up is by declaring his lists as always right. What an egotistical and arrogant PRICK!

I'm all for different opinions to make things more interesting but that doesn't mean you can go and throw in random shit that isn't even relevant or logical for some of them. No gaming list should EVER throw in a movie like that. The only time when you should be seeing moves in game-related lists are for talking about game based movies. For the cloning of Super Mario 3, if you're so desperate Craig, just look at the fucking hacks people have made for them. As for Craig's thoughts on Final Fantasy characters as a whole, just consider great characters like Kefka and Locke as well as who they put at #2 on the top 10 coolest characters (Cloud AND Sephiroth and were beaten by Duke Nukem) and facepalm so hard that you'll break your skull in the process. THAT is how dumb his statement was.

For some lists, Stuttering Craig refuses to explain why the games are good/bad. Him and Handsome Tom put Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA version) at #9 for worst Mario games and the best they explained was "You weren't playing Super Mario Bros. 2 to begin with" So fucking what if it wasn't the real Mario 2 and just Doki Doki Panic with different sprites? How's the game itself? They never explained that and from what I've seen in Super Mario Bros. 2 isn't a bad game. The other time when no explanation was given out was Aladdin in the top 10 game based movies. Instead of talking about the game, Craig just talked about a time when he was with his girlfriend watching the film. How do people pass this off as legitimate? This may be occasionally but it just shows the carelessness.

Speaking of girlfriends, at times I have a hard time believing Stuttering Craig has many followers (and friends) as well as a wife. As already established, he's a douchebag and to further show that he's very likely to be an awful friend, have a look at what he says about the Ecco. This has been some running gag with ScrewAttack and beating a short lived game series that I'd actually take over Sonic any day of the week. After several criticisms for his thoughts on Ecco the Dolphin, his response was a highly sarcastic view on the sequel. To summarise it, "Oh man, I'm so sorry for bashing Ecco. This game is actually good for all of this awesome stuff. No, Ecco sucks." Can you imagine having a friend who's sarcastic all the time, doesn't actually like you and turns his back around and quietly says "You're such a jerk." Those sort of friends are never good and sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. You might want to have some thoughts on that Craig.

We're not done with Craig just yet. Oh no, there's still another thing or two that's wrong about him but we'll leave that for the last part of my ScrewAttack rant.

ScrewAttack (Part 1)

2010-11-22T17:02:00.000Z

I think this topic has been put on hold long enough. Ever since the beginning of the Gaming Bullshit Rants series, I've been wanting to talk about ScrewAttack despite them being a website community about video games rather than the core of gaming. These topics are covered even if they're just a website or a video game reviewer on the internet. Why these are talked about is because of the "popularity" they receive for making videos. Some of them may be big but there's a lot of bullshit from them and I feel they need to be brought up to be shown that they're flawed individuals and need to make huge improvements.

The reasons just explained are why I'm bringing up ScrewAttack and the owner of the site known as Craig Skistimas (AKA Stuttering Craig). Most of you who know ScrewAttack will know them as the association for James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd series. The AVGN became a huge part of ScrewAttack in 2006 after increasing popularity of James Rolfe's project. Most of you are likely to know who he is already but what about the other associates in ScrewAttack? Asides from Video Game Vault and ScrewAttack Top Tens, the most I've seen are a few episodes of Hard News and The Game Overthinker and the second episode of Metal Gear Ben which was far too much torture for me.

Before we go into these videos, it's only appropriate to bring this up now. I'd like to say congratulations to Handsome Tom and Perfect Liz for their new child. Their new addition was born just last night and I wish those two the best of luck with their new born baby.

Now, onto the ScrewAttack videos! Not much can be said about Hard News but I have come across a few lame ass reports such as when the host Daily Destin talked about a nude mod for Zoey from Left 4 Dead. Making something like this big is just sad, especially when there are many sad fucks who will go all the way to make nude models for almost any game out there. The Game Overthinker was just OK from what I saw but I did see him as very Nintendo-biased. He may have had a lot of nostalgia with Nintendo's games but I feel to be a genuine reviewer/ranter/whatever, it's not a good idea to have some bias in you. Asides from that, his videos are adequate.

As for Metal Gear Ben, oh dear god this is bad. The first thing to say what's wrong about these videos right off the bat is the main character's name who he calls himself Metal Gear Ben. The codename Metal Gear should only be applied for the powerful machines (most notably Rex and Ray). The character Ben is NOT a Metal Gear in any way, unless he happens to transform into a huge monster at the end but that would be absurd. This may be a parody on Metal Gear but if you're going to spoof something, make sure you get your facts right, otherwise you'll only look like Seltzerberg who have poor knowledge in the films they make fun of.

The other thing that's bad about Metal Gear Ben are the awful jokes. When you hear one of the guards saying "I get it, we wear green to blend in with the trees." a minute full of horrendous gags involving radio transmissions, your mum jokes and talking about building bridges with muffins (they actually say that, this isn't made up), you just want to scream in agony at the abysmal comedic value. The last time I recall having such terror from bad jokes was watching Epic Movie.

The worst thing about the one episode of Metal Gear Ben I watched was seeing James Rolfe casting as one of the villains. He may be an associate with ScrewAttack and may be a very nice guy but seeing him wasting his talent on this pile of vomit is very depressing. This horrible excuse of a Metal Gear Solid spoof does not deserve to have someone prolific as James Rolfe. It's just like when Crispin Glover casted a role in Epic Movie. You had to cringe at how someone who played a great role like George McFly in Back to the Future sinks down to appearing in complete and utter crap. The role they gave James Rolfe was a villain named "Mega Mantis" who is meant to be a parody of Psycho Mantis but the setting seems to be based on MGS3. WRONG GAME, DAMMIT! It's even worse when they bring up jokes about cats as if we don't have enough of them from lolcats.

It may have been just one episode but from my experience with the episode I saw, it was torture. Maybe it got much better later on but honestly, there can't be much hope after all of that, especially when it had to be compared with Epic Movie/Seltzerberg not once, not twice BUT THREE TIMES! If that doesn't suggest how bad it was, I don't know what will.

That's all for the ScrewAttack associates I've watched. As for the userbase, there isn't a lot to say from my perspective but if Benzaie, one of the major contributors to That Guy With the Glasses/Channel Awesome leaves the site due to the appalling community, you know something's wrong and this is the guy who is not only open for criticism, he was hit by a lot of hate on That Guy With the Glasses initally so let that thought sink into your mind and realise how much of a trainwreck ScrewAttack's "g1" community has to be. Hell, they're bad enough if they brown nose Stuttering Craig, even for the worst comments he's made.

That's all for the other associates on ScrewAttack. Next up, we'll be heading for the main course, most notably Stuttering Craig and the Video Game Vaults and Top 10 videos.

Robert A. Kotick vs Independent developers

2010-10-17T18:02:00.003+01:00

Welcome back to yet more ranting on Activision and Bobby Kotick. Last time, we covered a lot of bullshit from them such as insisting on having monthly fees for Call of Duty games, the Infinity Ward betrayal, the hypocrisy with Kotick's thoughts on Brutal Legend and a few other things. Now we'll cover one last thing from him and what is it you may ask? His comment on independent developers. Although it wasn't direct, you could tell he was trashing on them in general by declaring Bungie as "the last remaining high quality independent developer." Now this could have been taken with a grain of salt but a few words can say a thousand words.

Where do we begin with this? How about the fact that Activision started as an independent developer when they formed their company after the dispute with Atari back in 1979? Although Kotick wasn't with the company back then, would he be happy if someone told him his company is useless and isn't worth relying on due to one independent company doing so well? There would have been a great chance of him being displeased and he should have considered what the indie developers may have thought about him.

The second thing about his indie comment is the fact that Valve didn't have any financial support at first. The best they had was Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington taking money out of their own pockets just to make Half-Life. Valve was a small company back in the 90s but look at them now. They have their own digital distribution service, they have some of the most recognisable computer gaming franchises, a popular game engine (even though it's rather shoddy at times) and are always breaking their own boundaries. This is a company who turned from small to BIG within a decade. Now why didn't Bobby Kuntick considered Valve when he made that statement on independent developers? One last thing about Activision and Valve, there are several games published by Activision on Steam and Steam offer A LOT of support for indie developers.

Another thing about that particular statement is how enjoyable games by small companies are and I say companies loosely since some games were only made by a few individuals rather than having a big company working on one game. Let's look at the computer game Aquaria which only had two people working on this game. These two did EVERYTHING including the programming, soundtrack, story and even the graphics. Those who have played this gem will know how much effort was put into the graphics as it feels like one huge art gallery. Yes, this may sound like graphic whoring but there's a difference. This is just praising the graphics for additional points and not saying the game is good just because of good graphics. The game itself is still great despite the sloppy ending and I'd recommend this game to my friends over Activision's precious Call of Duty and Guitar Hero.

There are several other indie titles I've played on Steam that are fantastic. Audiosurf, Defense Grid and Braid to name a few. There are still many indie titles I need to check out on Steam but there's so many games and so little time. These indie games I have played I want to promote and let others know about how good these games are yet only made by smaller "companies". By spreading the word, lesser known developers can climb their way up the ladder and provide more great games for the customers.

One other independent company to consider is The Behemoth. While they've only made two games so far since 2002 (a third game is on the way, though), the company has great support from Newgrounds, a site that's known to host THOUSDANDS of free flash games and movies from user submissions. Alien Hominid originally started off as a flash game but made its way onto console while Castle Crashers has been a huge success on Xbox Live and only recently it made its way onto the PS3. Maybe Kotick doesn't know The Behemoth that well but it's another independent developer that shows great success.

The way Kotick only likes bigger companies that work for him and not caring for small indie developers makes him look like one of the conservative bastards from the UK. They only want to cater the higher class and just leave the rest in the dark. Bobby Kuntick isn't giving the smaller companies any light. He doesn't even say "Best of luck to these guys with their creations." but praises Bungie who have enough establishment in the gaming industry.

So there you have it. Robert Kotick is still an evil douchebag. It's clear he doesn't give a damn about smaller companies and doesn't want to see any growth from them. He'll only give care about a developer like Bungie who have worked on major titles in the recent years. For how he treats independent developers like dirt, I'm so glad I didn't break my vow with getting Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. Playing Rush's 2112 was very tempting but not enough to overlook the fact that I'll be supporting this greedy fucker.

As for the independent developers out there, no matter which games you're working on, best of luck with climbing up the ladder and making even more games for your target audience. To the gamers who come across any gems from independent developers, do what you can by spreading the word about the great games. With your help, there's a good chance they'll be encouraged to work on more titles for their fans and working their way to the top as well. To Bobby Kotick, you've become even more of a loss and only Overkill can establish how much I and many other gamers hate you:

Activision/Robert A. Kotick: The Return

2010-10-05T19:58:00.005+01:00

A year ago, I made a rant on Activision and the CEO Robert Kotick. Activision and most especially Bobby Kotick were quite some topics last year since Kotick gained a lot of infamy for certain statements. Some of the examples were "They don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises." and "If it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further." He even made statements saying he likes to take fun out of making video games for his staff and a bunch of other bullshit. One year later he's still a big name in the gaming industry and has he improved since? Let's find out, shall we?

Sometime in November, Activision stated that they wanted to start charging monthly fees for the future Call of Duty games they release. This could have slipped through the crack but here's a few problems with that statement. First, they already raised the price of Modern Warfare 2 due to "economic issues" which shouldn't even be an issue for a company that earns a ridiculous amount of profit. Second, there are MANY Call of Duty fans who are Xbox Live players and Xbox Live charge people for their multiplayer services on a monthly/yearly basis depending on the customer. If they actually had monthly fees for their upcoming Call of Duty games, not only would the customers have to pay extra for the game itself, they'd also have to pay monthly for the game as well and if you're an Xbox Live player, there's also the charges to play games online. If this doesn't say Activision aren doing this for profit, nothing will and really, the writings are on the wall here for the company's greed.

In January, Kotick made a statement on the Spiderman games made by his very own company and claiming them they sucked. I'll admit, the only Spiderman game I ever played was Spiderman 2 on PS2 and while that game was well praised for a movie based game, I couldn't get into it. However, I do understand why others liked it. Anyway, as for what Kotick said, that just made him look like a complete dick (if he wasn't already at this point) as well as showing how much he disrespects his employees. Maybe the games he was referring to were really bad but the workers deserve more respect than that. They were the ones who put the trouble and effort into making those games and they shouldn't be treated like trash at all. What Kotick could have said to sound more respectful was "We had a look at our Spiderman games and looked at the mistakes we made. We'll make sure we improve from our past mistakes and give the customers better games."

Now here comes the most laughable statement from Kuntick he's ever made. In February, he admitted to his past mistakes and was hoping to improve upon them. However, the way he said it will make anyone spit out their drink:

"I don't know how this happened, but all my life I was the rebel flying the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing fighter and suddenly I wake up and I'm on board the Death Star."

That's right, he compared himself to Luke Skywalker on his actions in the gaming world. This is one of the most egotistical comments I've ever heard from anyone and it's really sad to see someone like him thinking he's doing good for the world and fighting off evil. The worst thing about this is that he has made no fucking improvements over his actions since then whatsoever. He's still the money-grabbing bastard we all knew from before and as a matter of fact, it's a huge surprise he's yet to ask for his face on a dollar bill considering his ego and cash obsession.

The following month came the dispute between Activision and one of their own developers Infinity Ward. It was said that Infinity Ward workers were not given any royalties from the Modern Warfare 2 sales so Jason West and Vince Zampella, two lead developers of Infinity Ward at the time approached EA. Let's look at where the whole thing started. It was said that Infinity Ward were not given the money they deserved and while this was never confirmed, considering the greedy fucks Activision as a whole are, we can easily assume that Activision were in the wrong and BACKSTABBED Infinity Ward. All that can be said is "Wow." These are the developers that started Call of Duty and went onto making the Modern Warfare titles and all they got in the end was a slap in the face from Activision? It just shows how little respect they have for the ones who work hard to make the goddamn games themselves.

The majority of the workers in Infinity Ward left as a result and are now with EA under a new company named Respawn Entertainment. Whatever they work on with their new company, best of luck to them. They shouldn't have to worry about what EA will do to them as they've made huge improvements and do a lot for the smaller ones.

You'd think after the incident with Infinity Ward no company would ever dare to approach Activision. Sadly not, it was announced in April that Bungie that they made a 10-year agreement with Activision and it makes you wonder what they were thinking. Although this is coming from a non-Xbox player (and of course a non-Halo fan), they better be careful with what they do. Otherwise, Activision may turn their backs on them and suffer the same fate as Infinity Ward.

Not much happened over the following few months up until September when it seemed Bobby Kuntick went on a rampage with his douchebaggery. The first statement of the month was suggesting games should have standalone cutscene releases and charge them for $20-30. STOP RIGHT THERE! The point of video games are to play the goddamn games, not to watch fancy cutscenes. Yes, cutscenes are vital (e.g. Metal Gear Solid, obviously) for games with a lot of story development but to release them separately from the game itself is defeating the purpose of video games. If you're that desperate to make a cinematic version of a video game, just include it with the video game as bonus content. This is what Konami did with Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence where the third disc showed the game in a cinematic format. This was a fun experiment from Konami and the fact that they made it a bonus disc for MGS3 and not selling it individually is a good thing. Sadly, Bobby doesn't want to make it free bonus content and would rather charge the customers for something like this. This just shows how little he knows about the definition of video games.

The next thing Bobby Kuntick went after is EA. That's right, the very rival company to Activision. Activision and EA are two major companies in the gaming industry and some of their games are like their Pepsi and Cola, the best examples being Guitar Hero and Rock Band and Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. However, the two don't do everything identical to each other and the differences between the two is what Kotick criticizes EA for. He insists that great people don't want to work with EA and hardly backed up his reasons for it. The best reason he came up with is claiming EA have very strict deadlines. Yes, maybe some EA games have to be released on a particular date no matter what but here's what Kotick says about his own company and deadlines:

"There’s not a studio at this company that will tell you: 'Activision is forcing us to get the game out.'"

BULL. SHIT! Does he honestly think that Infinity Ward (or whatever of that company is still with Activision) are happy with only focusing on Call of Duty games? What about Neversoft who have mostly worked on Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk games? Don't you think they want to work on something else once (or for Neversoft more often than they can) without having Guitar Hero or Call of Duty shoved down their throats 24/7? Not only that, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk have had yearly releases just like FIFA and Madden. Whatever Bobby said about the developers not being forced to get certain games out is full of shit.

Around the same day as commenting on EA, Bobby Kotick also responded to Tim Schafer's thoughts on him. While Schafer may have been harsh on Kotick by calling him a prick and could have made a less offensive comment, he has every right to be frustrated at this man. Tim Schafter's company Double Fine have gone through a lot of trouble thanks to him and Activision. Double Fine had to move to EA after Activision ditched Brutal Legend because they saw no sequel exploitation in it. They were later sued by Activision because they claimed Double Fine had money to owe back to them. Lawsuits were involved and it was all because Activision wanted Brutal Legend back after seeing the hype for the game. For all the trouble Tim Schafer and Double Fine went through, no one should blame Schafer for calling Kotick a prick.

Recently, Kotick stated Brutal Legend wasn't a good game and it missed every milestone. Now it's understandable why Brutal Legend wasn't a favourable game to some due to the RTS-elements in a console-exclusive game but the fact that Kotick goes out and says it wasn't a good game really is laughable and hypocritical. He was the one that wanted to publish the game after its increasing popularity last year. Not only that, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock blatantly plagiarizes Brutal Legend. Just look at this trailer and try telling me this doesn't remind you of Brutal Legend in any way:

Just a few days after Kotick statements on EA and Tim Schafer, he then clearly shows he cares more about making sequels for already existing IPs rather than supporting new ones. Of course, this is nothing new but it's adding more points against him. He would only support a new IP if he can trust the developers enough. This is another sickening comment since it shows Bobby Kotick hardly cares about new franchises and would much rather milk the fuck out of Call of Duty and Guitar Hero. Seriously Kotick, your luck won't last forever with those games. Your companies should have more say on which games they wish to make. Sometime in the future, the majority might get bored with these games and what will you rely on then? It's like not giving any new bands in the heavy metal universe any recognition or respect just because they're not able to write anything on the same calibre of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. They can't last forever and if people don't support a new generation of bands, who will you rely on then?

As you can see, there have been no improvements from Activision and Bobby Kotick at all. If anything, they're becoming worse than they were before by backstabbing developers who were very loyal to them, wanting to make money from cutscene-only games and monthly fees for Call of Duty, treating the games he wanted his developers to make like trash and his ways of supporting his already popular IPs and hardly giving any support to new IPs. The last part will relate to the next rant.

Tomb Raider (Part 2)

2010-08-19T12:31:00.006+01:00

WARNING: This rant contains spoilers for some of the games so read with caution if you haven't played any of these games and intend to do sometime in the future!

When I first heard about Tomb Raider Legend, I was like "Oh fuck, are they still going on with Tomb Raider even after the failure of the last few games?" But of course, with a new company and all, you couldn't knock it until you try it and when playing it, I was surprised. The game was actually good! It was a true return to form with tomb raiding with the environments, the atmosphere and the storyline. Crystal Dynamics had a better idea on the storyline which they concluded in Underworld, although Anniversary too had a part in the new continuity of Tomb Raider. The only real flaws in Legend was the shortage, the annoying commentaries from Zip and Alister who talk needlessly during gameplay and the occasional mishaps with jumping. Besides that, Legend was a breath of fresh air after the previous titles.

After the success of Tomb Raider Legend, a remake of the first game was confirmed and although video game remakes are becoming quite common these days (as well as movies), I thought this remake was well done. Not only was it very faithful to the original, there were many changes to the levels giving the older fans a new experience and not just playing the same game with modern graphics and gameplay. The gameplay was much more advanced than the original and the storyline had major improvements, although at some points they were over dramatic and silly.

The only downfalls to Anniversary were the jumping accuracy, the music and the underwhelming unlocks. The soundtrack didn't have strong characteristics like the original did and the main theme, what happened to the choir they had? That added power to the main theme. As you can see, that's more to do with personal experiences but as for the unlocks, while there were decent rewards for finding secrets and beating time trials, Crystal Dynamics failed to remake the levels found in Unfinished Business and that would have been the best bonus feature of all as the majority of old gamers would have played the original game on the Playstation, therefore missing out on the expansion pack. If you get everything in this game, the only thing you'll unlock is stronger weapons which are utterly worthless when you've done everything.

Since Unfinished Business wasn't remade as bonus levels in Anniversary, I had to resort to buying a Sold Out re-release of Tomb Raider and download Unfinished Business from a popular Tomb Raider site. It was a real trouble playing through the expansion on my laptop due to the age of the game as well as how shitty Windows' compatibility settings are (seriously, does it even work?).

Despite the flaws Anniversary had, it was still a great experience playing through a remake of a game which was made 11 years beforehand and shows how much gaming has changed within just a decade. After two successful hits, you'd think the next game Underworld would have been just as good but no, Underworld was underwhelming. Underworld follows the events of Legend as well as making Anniversary a major role in the new continuity. This game had many big appearances featuring the main villain in Legend Amanda, Lara's mother, the doppelganger and the biggest surprise of all, NATLA! There was even an interesting opening sequence with Lara's mansion being set on fire and making you wonder who caused the damage.

Tomb Raider Underworld went downhill as soon as you encounter the Kraken and kill him with a chandelier rather than having an actual boss fight. So this is the series that had you facing a giant crawling mutant, a dragon, a mutated spider, Horus (well, kinda) and a motherfucking T-Rex and they thought it was OK to avoid having a boss fight with the goddamn kraken altogether? WHAT THE HELL?! And no, there are no boss battles AT ALL in Underworld! They had all these characters in one game only for them to be thrown away. It's a damn shame because this could have been the best game since the or or even better!

Shortly after the release of Tomb Raider Underworld, the Xbox 360 was given two DLC episodes which actually continue the story where Underworld left off. This is surprising considering the original assumption of these episode releases was different scenarios and not playing a vital role to the continuity but actually, they are! The worst part of this is that these episode releases will NOT be released as DLC on PS3 or PC at all! Eidos themselves claimed that they made a deal with Microsoft for the DLC and have no plans to release them elsewhere. Eidos, is this how you treat some of your loyal fans who've been supporting you for the Tomb Raider series since the 90s? Rockstar had the decency to release the GTAIV episodes on the PS3 and PC after the Xbox 360 kept the exclusiveness for a while so why don't you do the same thing? You made bonus episodes for Tomb Raider Underworld that play a vital role to the plot and you have all the non-Xbox 360 players left in the dark. Do you know what a non-Xbox 360 user such as myself have to do in order to find out what happens? We either have to buy the console and the game again or we watch footage on YouTube. Do you really want your fans to watch someone play the episodes on YouTube and not play it themselves?

And that's all of the major Tomb Raider games talked about. No need to go on about the Game Boy spinoffs or the film as the former I never played while Tomb Raider films? Considering almost every video game based movie have failed miserably, I'll leave the thoughts up to you.

There are two new Tomb Raiders and one of them was just released on XBLA while PS3 and Steam get it next month. These will determine whether I'll call it a day or feel the light is still strong for the franchise. The next game entitled Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (note the lack of Tomb Raider in the name) is a very interesting one. Not only is it digital download only but this game is a two player co-op! That's right, Tomb Raider finally has a multiplayer game. For the second player, there'll be a maya warrior named Totec and hopefully they give this character a good role and doesn't become a repeat of Kurtis Trent in Angel of Darkness. If this game fails, then there'll be the last chance with the ninth major title. Not much is known about it right now so I'll be waiting for more information about it as time goes by.

In conclusion, Tomb Raider is one of my favourite game series from my childhood. It's had its ups and downs throughout the years but the recent disappointment of Underworld has left me doubts on whether the series can survive much longer. It doesn't help when the series has a very tough competition with Uncharted and Prince of Persia so whether it's time for Tomb Raider to throw in the towel or not depends on the two new games.

Tomb Raider (Part 1)

2010-07-29T19:13:00.002+01:00

This is going to be more of a retrospective than a rant but there's enough content to consider this a rant. This is one of my favourite game franchises from my childhood and the series overall has its ups and downs. Yes, I did play these games when I was only a kid but chances are, YOU played Grand Theft Auto 10 years younger than its age rating so we're even.

Tomb Raider begun development in mid 90s and the first game was actually set for release in 1995. However, the publisher felt the original final product wasn't good enough and wanted Core Design to revise the game and so they did. One of the changes they actually made was the main character. Before Lara Croft, they had a male character who was pretty much an Indiana Jones clone so to those who don't like Lara Croft, be grateful they came up with a more interesting idea for the protagonist of Tomb Raider and even gave a lot of light to video game heroines. Before Tomb Raider, you could only name Terra Branford and Samus Aran and now we have more of them.

After the revisions for the video game, it was approved by the publisher and became a groundbreaking video game of the mid-90s. Sure, this game may not be as popular as Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog or Final Fantasy VII and it may have not aged as well as them but Tomb Raider is still a milestone in action-adventure and platforming games. It has a strong nostalgic value to me and remains as one of my favourite games along with Crash Bandicoot and Metal Gear Solid.

The first Tomb Raider game is one of my all-time favourites. The soundtrack was limited but great, the 3D environments were fantastic (and still have a charm for me) and the game gave you several epic battles such as fighting mutant centuars, a giant mutant with a huge torso and arms to rely on and a motherfucking T-Rex! There is no other game that lets you fight all these monsters in a single game! The only real downside to this game is the controls which haven't aged well. Although I can tolerate them, others aren't likely to manage them, especially newer gamers.

Tomb Raider II wasn't as good as the first game IMO but it was still a great follow-up. The plot wasn't as great as the first game and neither were the settings but putting them aside, it was still an enjoyable experience for me. As for Tomb Raider III, it too was fun but maybe it was too difficult at some points. It didn't have a great learning curve as even the first level was hard! Putting that aside, it was a good game but not as good as the first two. Still, it's light years ahead of the following games by Core Design which was when Tomb Raider went downhill.

Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation was announced and with the exception of the first two levels, the whole game took place in Egypt and for a game based on tomb raiding, you'd think this was the best idea for Tomb Raider yet! Sadly, it was a poor game. This didn't provide a great variety of settings as its predecessors did and the gameplay wasn't straight-forward. Some levels where going straight to point B while some had several levels to look around in and that didn't make the game consistent. Not only that, the game felt like it was dragging on and on and I can never bring myself to beat this game thoroughly.

The one thing I actually hated about The Last Revelation the most was the save system on the Playstation version. The first three games had a very convenient save system where if you wanted to play a previous level or felt you needed to start the level over again, you could. This game on the other hand completely fucked it up and even still to this day I shake my fist at Core for changing something that wasn't broken in the first place. There was no going back to previous levels, no level restarting, you could only go to where you last saved and this was troublesome as I once experienced a fatal glitch where the only way to advance would be to go BACK TO SQUARE FUCKING ZERO! It may not be too bad on PC as you can make several save files and have the console command as a backup (if that game even had one) but consoles had none of that back then and game files were very limited as well.

The sad thing about the save system was that Core actually kept that one and not the convenient one from the first three games and this really harmed my enjoyment with Chronicles and Angels of Darkness as they too had fatal glitches where you'd have to restart the fucking game if the game experienced such problems.

It wasn't just the save system that made me dislike these two games, Chronicles was a bad cash-in attempt from Core Design as they knew people still wanted more Tomb Raider, even if The Last Revelation suggested the end of the series. Hell, seeing Lara getting trapped in the collapsing pyramid should have been enough to tell the gamers "SHE'S FUCKING DEAD, MOVE ON!" but no, they had to bring her back and claim she actually escaped and how you may ask? Well, they never explained that. Chronicles did show a dig searching in that pyramid and Von Croy finding Lara's backpack but we never saw Lara there and that ending wasn't even related to the levels you were playing in the slightest.

You had four different stories taking place in different times. One of them was before the events of the first game in Rome but uh oh, plothole alert! She meets Larson and Pierre and in the first game, none of them recall the events in Rome. Lara was meant to meet these two for the first time when searching for the pieces of Scion, NOT when she was at Rome searching for the Philosopher's Stone. As for the other three, one taking place in Russia, one in Ireland and the last one at Von Croy's headquarters. These stories were all pointless and added absolutely nothing to the series whatsoever.

After Chronicles came the horrendous Angel of Darkness. Core wanted to make a "next generation of Tomb Raider" here but utterly failed at delivering a good game. Although they took longer than usual to make this game and had to delay it several times, the game was still a broken piece of shit! The physics were horrible, the game was glitchy (some were fatal too) and the story had potential but contained several plotholes. Also, who the fuck is Kurtis Trent again? So much for making a whole new playable character in Tomb Raider when we've been used to Lara all this time.

The story for Angel of Darkness was meant to continue in another game or two but after the backlash from reviewers, Core Design were no longer making Tomb Raider games and thus came to an end or an era. Eidos would then hand over the rights to Crystal Dynamics and give Tomb Raider a fresh start. We'll talk about the Crystal Dynamics era in the second part.

Piracy (Part 2)

2010-07-26T16:40:00.001+01:00

You've heard about why it's hard to blame someone over downloading a game from the internet or mod their consoles to play foreign games or whatever, now to hear the bad side of piracy. Now I'm not brown nosing these companies but honestly, most of these companies deserve as much support as possible from the customers.

It's really sad to see people downloading everything and not even insist on paying these games once. I pay for all the games I get fair and square and it's really sad to see someone just taking the games without even giving up a single penny, literally. Those who don't even pay for these games aren't even supporting the companies at all. Even if you hate a company like EA, there's no right to just download every single game of theirs. It's best not to bother with their games at all or if you really want to play a game by a company you're not too fond of, just get it from an eBay seller.

There are some people out there who are so sad that they'll pirate video games that they could have bought for a single fucking penny. The Indie Humble Bundle had five different games for the price of one and all the money the companies received would go to charity. There was supposedly 25% of everyone who got them who refused to pay a single penny. How much of a fucking cheapskate could you possibly get? What's next, they'll steal penny sweets because they didn't want to pay for them?

There have been companies who have taken real action against pirates. Activision (yes, we know they're greedy fucks but bear with me) were able to get everyone who pirated Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360 and most, if not, all who broke the law had their consoles locked and couldn't do anything with it. It may have been harsh but really, these people should think twice before getting everything for free and thinking they'll get away with it. Whoever got penalised for pirating Modern Warfare 2 were lucky they didn't get arrested. I don't hear too many stories about people getting arrested over pirating games.

In conclusion, people who insist on pirating everything are pathetic. They'll even go as far as pirating games they could have gotten for a mere penny. They don't get away with everything, though as big companies such as Microsoft and Sony can track down any illegal uses on the consoles and rightfully so. Honest customers such as myself will keep supporting the companies who put all the trouble, effort and money into getting these games out on the market.

Piracy (Part 1)

2010-07-05T11:46:00.001+01:00

Piracy, an issue that almost every form of media has, especially when the internet became more accessible to the public as well as having faster internet. Video games are obviously relevant to this as there are many emulators playing all sorts of video game platforms as well have having cracks, no cds or whatever to play games for free without paying a single penny for them.

Now I'm more against piracy than for it but there are some cases when people have no choice but to download the game and that's mostly when a game is unavailable in their region or is simply far too rare. If the gamer has a special interest in a certain type of games but cannot get them in their region due to lack of popularity of the content, no-one can blame them if the only way for them to get the game is by Torrent or wherever.

Although I haven't downloaded them myself, my examples of having to download games due to lack of availability in Europe would be Xenogears and Chrono Cross from Square After playing Chrono Trigger which came out in Europe only last year (this would have been the greatest example if this rant was made three years ago), I've become more interested in the other titles by Square but sadly, Square have yet to announce any re-releases for these games or even give Europe a chance to play them. If the PS3 didn't have region locking for PS1 games, this wouldn't have been an issue. That to me is the biggest downfall of the PS3 since it could have been the greatest opportunity to get these games, even if £40 had to be forked over for rare copies of them.

There are many rare games out there, some of them are so rare that they're worth over £1,000 and that's enough to get yourself a very good desktop computer that can play the most recent games very well. Now these are the kind of games that no-one should be blamed for downloading. Heck, even paying £60 for a rare game like Tombi is steep but as a PS1 fanatic, I had to get a physical copy of this game. However, someone else might think it's too much which is understandable. If you're wondering "Well, they'll just re-release it on PSN or whatever", not for a game that was made by a now defunct company. There are many game companies who have gone bust and how would they be able to re-release their games on the latest platforms? Only a miracle can get such games on PSN, Steam, etc.

Another reason why someone would pirate a game is copy-protection, secuROM and such which harm the real customers and NEVER the pirates. The intention for copy-protection, secuROM and such are supposed to prevent the customers from copying the discs as well as illegal downloads. If a customer buys a game from retail stores, most of them will be honest enough to not copy the disc so there goes the first reason for even having copy-protection on them. As for preventing illegal downloads and requiring the original discs to play them, it's been proven that you can experience these messages when you play the retail copy YET downloading cracks will get you to play the games. If their methods of preventing piracy doesn't work on pirates and only hurts the customers, WHY would any company have copy-protection on their discs? This is completely unfair to the customers, especially when they want to be honest gamers and not having to download cracks just to play the games.

Anti-piracy crap on PC games was never an issue to me up until recently when I bought Bioshock 2 on Steam when it was 50% off making it just £10. It sounded like a very good deal considering I really enjoyed the first game and wanted to get the sequel to play as a Big Daddy. HOWEVER, research should have done as not only this game has SecuROM (Yeah, for a fucking Steam copy), this game requires Games for Windows Live which is utterly worthless and did nothing good to my computer as well as limiting on how many times I can install this game. THREE TIMES Bioshock 2 crashed on me and I want my fucking money back! Too bad Steam have a no refund policy so there's no way I can get that £10 back now.

As a matter of fact, if I'm getting Bioshock 2 on Steam, then why should I have the GFWL crap as well? Yes, that means not one but TWO logins is required for this game! Seeing that this game randomly crashes on me, the only two options now would be to pirate Bioshock 2 without the GFWL crap (if it exists) or buying the game AGAIN on the PS3. I really want to keep clear from pirating this game as I bet these are the sort of games that companies will track down on any illegal downloads for them, even if they were doing it because their legal copies failed on them. The only legal option would be to re-purchase the game on PS3 and that's a damn shame, especially when that's taking £30 of my wallet for a game that I already bought on another platform. Bioshock 1 never had any problems so why the sequel? All I can say is shame on you 2K Games for supporting this shit. Steam should have never approved GFWL for their client since it makes you log into two places. As for Microsoft for this worthless feature, FUCK YOU!From now on, I will boycott ANY game using GFWL login.

The last point that needs to be brought up is PAL optimization. You all heard how bad Mega Man 2 was on Virtual Console and how Nintendo should have gave the games the best performance. Yes, we should be supporting Nintendo and their partners as much as we can but if they give us games that don't have full performance and they can easily give these games 60Hz support when they don't, they can go fuck themselves. As a result of this, I've been VERY reluctant to buy anything from VC and since that means no playing Mega Man 1 and anything else, the only option here would be to download the ROMs for the best performance for these games.

That's the first part of piracy and why people would resort to it, even if it is illegal as well as how real customers get fucked in the ass with copy protection nonsense. For the second part, we'll go over the "customers" who do nothing but download absolutely everything illegally no matter how cheap the game(s) are.

E3 2010 (Part 2)

2010-06-24T16:14:00.003+01:00

You've heard the good parts about E3, now you'll hear the bad parts. The most teappropriate place to start off would be Microsoft's conference. I was lucky enough to have missed out on most of their conference due to being away from the computer at the time but I can still say that Microsoft did a terrible job this year. They announced all the big titles such as Halo: Reach, Fable III and Call of Duty: Black Ops at the very start and then went non-stop about Project Nat-sorry, it's Kinect now. Microsoft really want Nintendo's casual audience but the Kinect feels like EyeToy all over again with motion controls and voice recognition. It really wasn't impressive.

The funniest part of Microsoft's conference is the very last thing they announced which was the new Xbox 360 design. First thing we hear about the Xbox 360 "S" right here and right away they're releasing it in North America. Wow, what's wrong with giving the customers a chance to pre-order the new console? Elsewhere it won't be out until next month but releasing it so soon is very odd. Sure, it's got a few nice things and will be good to get whenever I need a 360 but it's best to be careful on this one incase there's any major troubles with the consoles at first.

Sony weren't great with their conference either. It was fine at first for Killzone 3 despite the lack of interest for the game but after that, it was an hour of jerking off to 3D effects for PS3, jumping on the motion control bandwagon with Playstation Move (seriously, wtf is up with the design of its right control) and marketing. Put all three together and you have a snorefest. So the PS3 will be the very first console to be in 3D, big whoop. It's not that special and only a nice extra if you have the right equipment for it. The Playstation Move, meh, I'll stick to the Wii for these kind of controls but the PS3 should be given credit for having games where you can use either the standard controller or the Playstation Move. Now if only the Wii could have more games like that.

Sony's talks about their marketing plans was very sad. The majority of the attendeesonentt at E3 came here to hear about new games, NOT how Sony are marketing their games and making pointless promotions. Seriously, why waste your time on some marketing plane with a kid who supposedly has excellent knowledge in the PSP games library? What is the goddamn point of this?

Oh but the biggest joke from Sony's conference was having to rely on EA for parts of their conference where they announced exclusive content for Medal of Honor as well as concluding the Dead Space 2 demo. You know there's something wrong with one conference when they need assistance from other companies who also held their major conference at the same venue. Showing an EA Sports game with the Playstation Move makes sense but Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 should have stayed in EA's conference and nowhere else.

Speaking of EA, they were so-so but they had to be laughed at when they brought up Madden 11 there and showing an "evolution in gaming" as well as EA Sports Active 2.0 (the 2.0 makes it even more laughable). They also showed The Sims on console and it made you think "Why?" They should know The Sims are much better on PC. Not once have I heard good things about console Sims games and I remember the terrors of playing the original on the PS2 port. Still, they were OK but only a few games stick out from their conference.

Many claim that Ubisoft are terrible with their conferences and trust me, not once did the thought of watching them cross my mind. The only notable games to me are the new Assassin's Creed game and Rayman Origins. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood I had to avoid due to not playing Assassin's Creed II yet and Rayman Origins, as stated before it was completely unexpected. To those who had to sit through their conference, my sympathies goes to you.

Unrelated to the games that were shown at E3 but one last thing that needs to be addressed is certain guests at E3. Now it's a positive thing to see good people such as James Rolfe and a few reviewers from That Guy With the Glasses/Blistered Thumbs like AngryJoe, JewWario and SpoonyOne attending E3 as they make videos on the internet on a regular basis and have a good fanbase but here's the fucked up thing. The three from TGWTG just barely made it to E3 while scumbags like Stuttering Craig and Irate Gamer get there WITH EASE!

Stuttering Craig is a complete douchebag who will treat his viewers like insects. You can easily tell this from his thoughts on the PS3 when he openly admitted to wanting to piss off Sony fanboys. Fanboys may be obnoxious but they're human being at the end of the day. It makes me wonder how anyone can tolerate this guy or even get an invite to E3. He's only there because he runs that atrocity known as ScrewAttack. There's no other reason why he'd be put into consideration for going to E3.

As for the Irate Gamer, he's a fucking fraud! If you know him very well, you know that ticket should have been saved for a legitimate gamer, not a goddamn hack! The fact that he's made it to E3 TWICE NOW is very sickening as many, MANY gamers would do so much to go to an E3 event whether it be giving up their whole game collection or breaking their thumbs. Sadly, they can't go and this piece of shit "gamer" does. It's a shame E3 doesn't know any better in this case.

That's enough ranting on certain guests at E3. In conclusion, E3 2010 had a very interesting outcome with many new games to highly anticipate for. It wasn't perfect, though due to the poor/mediocre performance from Sony, Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft but hey, at least Nintendo took E3 by storm and here's hoping E3 2011 will be just as good as the last one.

E3 2010 (Part 1)

2010-06-21T08:55:00.003+01:00

We could start off introducing E3 just like everyone else does whether they're presenting the conference or commenting on what they saw at E3 or we could just go straight to the point and talk about the games that were announced. E3 this year was very interesting with Nintendo making a huge comeback as well as many more games that easily caught my attention.

It's really hard to comment on every single game but I'll pick out the highlights or what were highlights to me. You may think "HOLY SHIT, KILLZONE 3! MEDAL OF HONOR!" but I'm not simply because they weren't that appealing to me. I for one am getting tired of these warfare games and want a breath or fresh air or at least a throwback to a classic that's been left alone for some time now.

Speaking of games that are a throwback to the classics, there was plenty of it at E3. New Donkey Kong Country, new Kirby, NEW KID ICARUS and new Rayman in 2D!! The last one amazes me the most because I never thought in a million years that Ubisoft would actually make another 2D Rayman game. You should remember my disappointment towards the series and how I thought Rayman was done for after those stupid fucking rabbids taking over so this is a godsend.

That wasn't all, though. Several remakes were announced at E3, the main being Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64 on 3DS and GoldenEye on the Wii. Regardless of extras, Ocarina of Time is one game to get on the 3DS for a smoother experience than on the Gamecube port that I own. GoldenEye Wii I'm weary about because it feels like one of those remakes that feel off and don't live up to the original game. It doesn't help when Activision are making this game but that doesn't mean it'll be discarded right away. Who knows, it could be just as good as ever.

Along with bringing the past to the future, Nintendo announced a brand new Zelda game as well as more information on the 3DS. The new Zelda games looks really good and hopefully the gameplay will work very well for the players. It may have been presented well besides the interference issues they had but the main wonder is if it'll be this good when it comes out. As for the 3DS, looking past the 3D obsession, the games library is already promising and this is looking beyond first-party titles. Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid are two of the many games that are confirmed on the 3DS. 3DS is also said to be able to play movies in 3D and it's a nice bonus but my main purpose of getting a 3DS sometime in the future will obviously be for the games.

Sony's conference was a mixed bag but they certainly left the good stuff for later. More footage of LittleBigPlanet 2 was shown and it's definitely a worthy follow-up to the first game. Sony had a few great surprises with Gabe Newell's appearance to announce Portal 2 on PS3 as well as Twisted Metal. Valve announced a surprise for E3 and it was Portal 2 for PS3 which to be honest is rather underwhelming. Sure, this is good for anyone who's a PS3 fanatic and doesn't have a good computer but Gabe Newell should know that his games work best on PC. That aside, the delay for Portal 2 are very reasonable when you consider the new gameplay elements for the sequel. As for Twisted Metal, I only briefly played one of the games from the PS1 era but if this game turns out to be good, I'll definitely give it a chance.

There are a few other bits and bobs such as Metal Gear Solid: Rising (looks really good, even if it's Raiden), new Mortal Kombat and new Silent Hill tentatively titled Silent Hill 8 (wait, they consider Origins and Shattered Memories as SH6 and 7?). I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of Mortal Kombat right now but the new game could be a good chance for anyone to get into the franchise. As for the new Silent Hill game, this better make up for the disappointment from Homecoming. All we know so far is that the main character is a convict and already the new character is miles ahead of Henry Townshend and Alex Shepherd. Let's not build our hopes just yet, though as hardly any gameplay footage was shown in the trailer. It's hard to have high expectations for Silent Hill at this point.

One last thing that needs to be brought up is the return of Eric Chahi, the mastermind behind the 1991 platformer classic Another World. Now this was the biggest surprise of all since this guy has been quiet in the gaming world for a while now and he comes out of nowhere to announce his new game! This is the strategy game he mentioned a few years back and it's good to see him finally getting the game done. There's a strong tribe feel to this one so already I'm interested to see the outcome. This shall be a game to pre-order as soon as possible.

That wraps up for the good parts of E3. Yes, there are some games missed out but as stated before, it's hard to comment on them all. Next part will be looking into the bad parts of E3.

Pokémon (Part 4)

2010-05-31T16:24:00.004+01:00

Yeah, this is a few weeks later than expected but better late than never. Infact, I'm glad I left it until now as the game cover legendaries and the starters have been announced. As most of you should know by now, the new Pokémon games were announced for the fifth generation. Like I said on the Pokémon rants last November, I was hoping they wouldn't have a fifth generation but of course, it had to happen sooner or later. As for the new titles, Black and White? Really? So they were in their conference and decided the best names would be Black and White. If this isn't a sign of running out of name ideas, I don't know what is. Still, this sounds like the most unimaginative titles you could have for Pokémon.

Obviously a gamer with common sense wouldn't judge the game by its title no matter how silly it is. That's like saying Zombies Ate My Neighbours sucks just because other monsters as well as zombies are in this game. As for the games themselves, not enough information has been provided about these games so it's hard to say right now. However, when they claimed Pokémon Black/White will be a huge revamp, let's not take their word until we play the games. I know enough bands that pull similar bullshit when talking about their upcoming albums and how it's meant to be "a return to form" or whatever and developers commenting on how their new games are is no different.

What we definitely know is that they've given these games higher 3D detail and the games look more 3D-like than the fourth generation games. The only things that look 2D are the characters and Pokémon. The Pokémon I could understand if it's just the battles but from the looks of it so far, they could have done with improving the graphics of the characters as 2D looking people in a 3D game will look strange. Who knows, maybe it's just first impressions and maybe it needs time to get used to.

As for the Pokémon announced so far, the starter Pokémon aren't too bad. Sure, a fire pig is strange but it works. The grass snake is another weird one but it too works but the watter otter, ehhhh. As for the game cover legendaries, can't say I'm impressed with them. To me, the dark one looks like Palkia covered in dirt while the white one looks really fluffy. Judging by the appearances, they're my least favourite legendaries so far.

And now for a few small things about the Pokémon games that I missed out from last time. The first one I like to mention is the Name Rater. The one guy who is willing to change your Pokémon's name but only if they have the same OT and ID as you so any Pokémon you got via trading cannot be renamed unless OT and ID happened to have matched. While this is only a minor thing, why on earth do they disallow you from naming Pokémon you get from others? Do they really think people want to have a Pokémon with a dumb name such as Dux for Farfetch'd or Ricky for Machoke?

They really should have scrapped this stupid rule by now when traded Pokémon over GTS can have names in a foreign language. From what I've heard, default names in foreign languages are changed to your appropriate language when they evolve but if it's a Pokémon who's in the last form already or doesn't have an evolved form like every legendary Pokémon besides Phione, you're screwed if you want the name default.

I got a Latios from the GTS by offering one of my many Spiritombs I was hatching to get the desired nature. However, this Latios was from a Japanese player thus having its Japanese name. It'll be awkward if I ever used this in a Pokémon battle. This wouldn't have been a problem if there was no bullshit on not being able to name any Pokémon you obtain via trading. Again, WHY?!

The last thing I'd like to address is Individual Values. Now I understand if Game Freak wanted to offer a variety with the Pokémon stats by giving them natures and Effort Values but I think it crosses the line with Individual Value. If you have a case of OCD for Pokémon's stats, you'll know how frustrating Individual Values are. Each stat has an IV between 0 and 31 and of course the higher the better the stats will be. HOWEVER, the chances of getting an overall good statistics is very slim and getting 31 for all stats...You have a better chance at winning the goddamn lottery.

The low Individual Values can be an issue when you take your Pokémon to a tournament and if someone spent a lot of time getting the best IVs for their Pokémon and you haven't, you're screwed! It's a very unbalanced system and I think IVs in Pokémon games should be scrapped. It only gives the metagamers a reason to use Pokésav to give their Pokémon the best IVs and nature. OK, maybe the tournaments can detect Pokésav but still, IVs don't make things any better. Without them, the stat system for Pokémon wouldn't feel as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons, although there'll still be Effort Values but I think that one's fine for the more experienced players to focus on.

The last thing I want to talk about is HMs. Yes, these are special moves that are used to get through obstacles but I've now come to the point that Pokémon needs to phase out HMs and use a new method so you're not having move space taken up by crap moves such as Cut or Whirlpool just because you need them to get through caves or wherever you are. Bibarel is called a HM slave for a very good reason as it's able to use any HM except for Fly and when you have to make a specific Pokémon a HM fodder, it becomes a joke. I think it'd be better if these special moves were instead a fifth move that Pokémon can use but only outside of battle. That I think is fair and you won't have to worry about swapping out Pokémon whenever you need to get through an obstacle.

In conclusion, name restriction on Pokémon that aren't originally yours is stupid, Individual Values makes thing really awkward for the Pokémon's stats and HMs need to do something new for the future releases as it's become a joke with horrible moves and HM slaves. As for getting Pokémon Black and White, it's undecided. It all depends on what the game itself is like and not taking the designs of the new Pokémon into account. If it's the same old get all 8 gym badges and face the Pokémon League, this game will be given a miss but again, we'll have to wait and see.

Irate Gamer

2010-05-13T12:29:00.005+01:00

Well, it finally happened. One of the blacklisted rant subjects is finally going to be ranted on. If you read the introduction to my rants, you may have read this:

"The only other one that's not to be ranted on is the Irate Gamer, although that might end up changing if he manages to do something so horrific that it makes my blood boil (not too literally, of course since this is only the internet). However, it's a no for now."

And here we are, my very own rant on the Irate Gamer and why I utterly despise him. There have been many rants on this particular person, especially BatDan's Irate Gamer Sucks blog page and while this may be beating a dead horse, this guy just keeps digging down that deep hole, especially the latest Irate Gamer NEO review where he "reviewed" three games in one episode but we'll get to that later.

When I first heard about the Irate Gamer and how we was accused of being an Angry Video Game Nerd ripoff, I was curious as to how bad he really is and I saw his review for TMNT. My first impression was "He's like a downgraded version of AVGN" and that's still a point to stand by even to this day since the concept of the show was solely based on AVGN but that's actually the least of our worries about this moron. And by we, I mean everyone who knows there's much more to this farce than ripping off an individual's series of video game reviews.

What makes the Irate Gamer an abomination to mankind is the amount of lies he's made ever since he appeared on YouTube. This "professional gamer" who's been playing games for 20 years and knows all the ins and outs is a complete fraud. For starters, he gets some common video game facts wrong! He actually called Super Mario World an NES game and even called Super Mario Bros. 2 (Lost Levels remake) the "perfect predecessor" to the first game. I could finish this rant off right here as that's enough to prove how much of a fraud "gamer" he is. If these were actual mistakes, surely he would have corrected them at a later point but he hasn't even addressed them. Not correcting these mistakes at all just shows extremely poor knowledge in video gaming as well as bad numeracy!

We could spend ALL DAY pointing out all the false statements he's made but before we move on, it needs to be said that someone who makes a lot of false claims is actually making a series on video game history! This is a really bad idea for someone who does very poor research and doesn't prove to be a real gamer considering all the bullshit that came from the fat bastard's mouth. Imagine if you had a history teacher who didn't know jack shit about the World Wars and had to read up a Wikipedia article after hearing about it. It's the exact same thing!

The next major issue with his reviews is how little he actually plays the games he's reviewing. I'm not saying this happens for every game he's played but he's done it several times in the past and has even done it on his most recent IG NEO episode so this isn't a past issue with him and it's something he and every single human being should avoid doing.

You can look at his review for MUSCLE where he literally spends a few minutes on the game and claims you can't do any special moves which has been proven otherwise by those who aren't braindead like Chris Bores. He also played a side mode on Tekken 6 rather than the main part of the game and bases his review on THAT and bitching about the use of Japanese voice actors (even though not all the characters speak in Japanese)! The former argument to this is like calling Final Fantasy X shit just because they hated Blitzball.

There are reviews where he openly admits to not playing the whole of it and you just think "What the fuck?" He first pulled off this bullshit in his review for The Simpsons Game where he says "I've only gotten up to Level 3 so I haven't explored any of the cooler stages, but I'm sure the rest of the game is good." He also repeats the same bullshit in his latest NEO review where he says he only played an hour of Brutal Legend. HOW CAN ANYONE CALL THESE REVIEWS LEGITIMATE?! The sad thing is, his fanboys will actually call this review good.

Never should anyone just spend so little time on anything they're reviewing, whether it be a music album, a film, a video game or whatever. You may hate Metallica's St. Anger or Epic Movie with an extreme passion but at least go through the goddamn album/movie before you give it a big fat zero. It just leaves a bad impression on the viewer and they'll only think the reviewer didn't care that much. Video games can be quite different since you could be playing a game like Superman 64 is so unplayable to advance any further than you can. Still, give it enough of a chance before dropping it and giving it a bad review. As for enjoying a video game, PLAY THROUGH THE GODDAMN GAME BEFORE REVIEWING IT!!

The next issue to bring up is actually more about Chris Bores himself rather than the video game reviews but it's still something that he should be called out for in front of the public. This guy is a LYING SCUMBAG! The above statements are enough to show that his supposedly 20 years of gaming and knows all the ins and outs claim is a load of bullshit. Any experienced gamer would give the games they play enough time before making a final verdict on the game, although them passing the game on to play something else due to lack of interest is understandable. Chris Bores has gone as far as lying about being friends with James Rolfe the Angry Video Game Nerd. He even made this false claim on a goddamn radio show but a year later, he said he hasn't even watched AVGN for two years now. If he's actually a friend of James Rolfe, then he is one terrible friend. He also claimed he had unique footage for old video games but he created them on his own behalf. It's clear as day when you see how smooth those games ran. I have a strong hatred towards liars and that's why I find Chris Bores' lies to be more disgraceful than most of his problems.

The last main problem to address about this guy is the censorship on user comments. Now it's only natural for us to not like negative comments but for a guy with over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and contains many flaws is expected to receive criticism as well as hate. He's removed hate/criticism comments in the past and still does it from time to time. Infact, I even posted a comment on his latest IG NEO review. This was my second comment after finding out my original one was removed by those fuckers:

After that, Gottgame posted a comment saying my comment was "profane and not worth while to read." Wow, just wow. It's like Chris Bores has cyber bodyguards and for a person with some notability, such comments are to be expected. ANY existing musical artist in the world expects to be hated by at least one person. So what would they do if Chris Bores was writing music and people on YouTube or Last.fm posted negative comments about him? Will they take those comments down just because they thought they were profane and not worthwhile to read? Good fuckity god!

There's much more to this hack but to sum up the rest of his problems, his comedy value is terrible, his acting is incredibly bad, he has poor directing skills, bad writing skills and wastes so much time on pointless characters. There is no redeeming value to this guy and he only gets worse and worse as time goes by.

In conclusion, Chris Bores the Irate Gamer is a scumbag. He can't get his facts right, some games he reviews he hardly plays, he's a liar and so much more crap! My only advice to him would be to give up video game reviewing and film making altogether as he clearly shows to not do either of them very well. He needs to make a fresh start and focus on something else in his life.

Confusion

2010-05-03T14:57:00.002+01:00

Today's rant was going to be another Pokémon rant covering over a few other things but after hearing that more species will be announced on 9th May, I'm going to hold it off for the time being. In the meantime, here's a fun subject about a conditional status that's downright annoying and please take note of the word fun here.

When you think of abnormal status in video games (mostly RPGs), you'll immediately think of poison, sleep, slow/stop and confusion. There are more to name but those are the biggest ones that come to mind. They give out different obstacles in these kind of games for you to handle. However, when you think of confusion, while it does make things more challenging, whenever this comes up, it's just out there to HATE the player!

Let's look at Final Fantasy and other RPGs that follow the same actions with confusion status. When a character is confused, obviously the character has no control over itself and starts doing stupid shit like hurting itself or its allies. What's really bad about this is how strong their attacks will be. Usually your main characters will be equally leveled but they can inflict enough damage to hurt one of your allies in one turn, thus increasing the possibility of them killing yet another character in your team. You better hope you have a mage in your team. Well, assuming there are any in that particular game.

That's not all for confusion in these games. Some of them they actually go as far as casting random support spells or even your items to the enemy and making them stronger. You just think "WTF?" Benefiting the enemy by your confused team giving them a potion isn't cool. You may as well have someone taking the controller off you and they randomly mash buttons until the battle ends. Yes, there are immunities you can get in these games to counter it but if you can't get them in time due to lack of accessibility whenever, you can be screwed so easily it's not even funny. It doesn't help when a lot of enemies are able to cast confusion on the entire party or even with other status aliments. Those goddamn Malboros are a great example.

As for the other way of confusion as I know in Pokémon, this is also troublesome. At least there's a chance of attacking while confused but when it should be 50:50 chance of succeeding, it definitely feels like a biased coin...Unless it's the trading card game but we're talking about the video games here. Ask any Pokémon fan in the world about the confusion status. There's a good chance they'll say "You always hurt yourself but the opponent never fails when they get it." To be fair, that does over exaggerate since I've been successful with attacking while confused several times on any game but that's like 25% success and 75% fail and 90% success and 10% fail for the opponent because it hardly works for them. No doubt that feels like a biased coin.

Of course, as stated before you can get abilities that can prevent confusion but that depends when and IF you can get them. Yes, some games may not be kind enough to offer confusion prevention AT ALL so if you happen to play a game like that, confusion is the last thing you'll want on your party. As for Pokémon, some have the Own Tempo ability that prevents it but only 11 Pokémon know that move so for the other option if you're in a Pokémon battle against someone or in the Battle Frontier, you'll need Persim Berry but that's a one-time effect so the opposing Pokémon can cast Confuse Ray again and then the frustration from biased coin begins. This is why everyone hates those goddamn bats!

In conclusion, while confusion is another status aliment that offers more variety in battles in RPGs as well as adding difficulty, it seems to be designed just to spite the player when your whole team becomes confused and starts hurting each other, thus giving you a game over or in Pokémon where it feels like a biased coin since the AI Pokémon are less likely to fail than you are. Not very fair, is it?

Pokémon (Part 3)

2010-04-19T09:06:00.000+01:00

Recently, I've been playing A LOT of Pokémon SoulSilver Version. I bought this game on the day of release in Europe and not often do I do this. The last time I pre-ordered a game/bought it on the day of release was Zeno Clash on Steam last year (shame that game was underwhelming). What's more, I didn't get Final Fantasy XIII on the day of release and won't be playing it anytime soon. Why I was more desperate to get Pokémon SoulSilver than FFXIII was because this is a remake of the good ol' days of Pokémon Gold/Silver.

Out of all the games to be remade, this is the one I wanted the most. Gold/Silver were fantastic games but they were becoming unplayable due to not being backwards compatible on the DS as well as the rumours about the clock batteries dying out after so many years. If I went back and dug up my Silver cartridge and TRIED to play it on my old GBA, I wouldn't be surprised if the game wouldn't work because there had to be SOMETHING inside to keep the day and time running all these years. And now I've been hearing the batteries in the Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald cartridges won't run much longer. I guess some things weren't made to last and I still have my original Sapphire save from 2003.

Anyway, with playing SoulSilver recently, there's been a couple of things that I feel need to be brought up about Pokémon but we'll cover one topic today and this is the Global Trade Station. A place to seek for desired Pokémon and store a Pokémon that's being offered to be traded to another player on the other side of the world. Sounds like the greatest idea ever, doesn't it? Sadly, Game Freak FUCKED THIS UP in so many ways!

The search function these games have are quite possibly the WORST search engines I've ever seen in my life and I dare anyone to find an even worse search system than what Pokémon has to offer. There's a large portion of trades people put up there that are downright ridiculous. The best example is someone asking for a level 9 or under Mew for their Magikarp. Not only is it impossible to get a level 9 or lower Mew besides the Mew Glitch but really? Like such trade would be done unless the seeker's been hacking and Mew Glitch was only in Red/Blue. Also, who in their right mind would give away their only legitimate Mew for a less significant Pokémon for someone who you'll never care about in your life?

Even taking out those who want low level legendaries, there's still a lot of awful "offers" to go through. You'll come across people asking for level 100 Pokémon of anything, even a level 100 Bulbasaur and you think yourself "Why Bulbasaur at level 100?" It's a clear sign of many people fucking around with the system and makes it really hard to find a doable trade. From all of this crap I wonder how people are able to find my trades on there.

What really sucks about searching for your desired Pokémon is that you can only search for Pokémon you've seen. This is a real pain in the ass, especially when a HeartGold exclusive Pokémon like Kyogre isn't viewable on SoulSilver at all through normal gameplay. So how would you find Kygore then? Sure, you could just migrate one from the Generation III cartridges or obtain it via friend trade but even so, you should be allowed to ask for any Pokémon you desire right away. Well, maybe just limit it to the region's Pokédex and then be able to choose from all 493 Pokémon once you have the National Dex. There's nothing wrong with that.

And no, Pokémon you see via online battle, Battle Frontier or even the Trainer House won't be added to the Pokédex. Really now, whose dumb idea was this? I was unfortunate enough to connect my Pokéwalker to some lame kids who used Action Replay to have Deoxys and Arceus in their teams and I had to face them in the Trainer House. I was fortunate enough to beat one of them but come on, no Pokédex entries for seeing them in Trainer House?

Why these trades are so bad is because when you search for any Pokémon in the GTS, the most you can see at once is seven and most of the time you can only see three. There's no next page or anything to see more trades that meet the criteria, the three to seven traders you see is all you get.

Instead of searching for specific gender, level or the original location of the Pokémon, what we really need is a FULL LIST of the specific Pokémon for trade. The only reason why they couldn't provide a long list of a certain species of Pokémon for trade is the amount of data required to load onto the DS. To be fair, the DS has some limitations but there was still the other good method to finding a specific trade and that's giving each one an ID number, so if it was trade ID# 325438, you'd type it up on the DS and find that very trade in front of you and no hassle whatsoever.

In conclusion, online trading with the Global Trade Station sounded like the greatest idea for Pokémon since...ever but Game Freak had to mess it up big time. You can only search for Pokémon you've seen and that doesn't include wireless/WiFi battles, Battle Frontier nor Trainer House. The trades people ask for are downright ridiculous and the limitation on how many trades you can see at once is unnecessary. Hopefully they improve this in the fifth generation games and I was disappointed enough to see how little Game Freak improved the search engine from Diamond/Pearl (assuming Platinum's search engine was exact to Diamond/Pearl but I never picked up the third title).

GameFAQs' Character Battle contests

2010-04-12T09:16:00.004+01:00

What you're going to read now is actually a remake of my very first gaming rant and I'm not talking about the DSi rant which is the first in the Gaming Bullshit Rants series, I'm talking about the rant I made about GameFAQs' Character Battle contests back in November 2008 (excuse all the other stuff in that post). Seeing their latest tournament ended a while ago, I thought now would be a great time to go over this topic once again.

This may seem as a lesser issue due to not being a problem with video games themselves but rather on a single website. However, let's consider a few things here. GameFAQs is one of the most well known gaming websites on the internet and over 100,000 people contribute to their Character Battle contests and that's TONS of gamers worldwide! So to me, it is an issue that needs to be brought up.

First, take a look at the winners for all the main Character Battle contests so far:

Character Battle I - Link
Character Battle II - Cloud Strife
Character Battle III - Link
Character Battle IV - Mario
Character Battle V - Samus Aran
Character Battle VI - L-Block
Character Battle VII - Link

And for the latest Character Battle, Link (AGAIN)! To be fair, these are well known video game icons so it's only natural for them to win. I mean, besides non-gamers, who doesn't know Link, Mario or Cloud? However, what really pisses me off is how these tournaments consist of nothing but extremely well known characters and doesn't get anywhere. Link has won half of the contests now and really, other characters deserve to have the spotlight on them. If they keep Link and the other winning characters on future Character Battles, there's no way in hell we'll get others characters winning for once, unless it was some stupid ass "character" like L-Block.

You may be thinking "You may as well stop Tiger Woods from competing in any future golf tournaments or Brazil from competing in any more World Cup tournaments." There is a huge difference here. Those are sports tournaments involving skill while GameFAQs' Character Battle contests involves who is liked the most by the voters, so popular characters like Link can easily sit out of future contests but it wouldn't be simple to keep Brazil away from the World Cup for all eternity.

As for L-Block winning the sixth Character Battle....Someone tell me, how the fuck is L-Block even a character?! This is not a character in the slightest and we're to be competing characters head to head, not stupid objects. If you're gonna add "characters" such as L-Block and Weighted Companion Cube, then how about adding other stupid shit like Buster Sword, rings and pong balls? There is so much stupid shit that can get on these contests it's not even funny.

Do you know what's even sadder? These "characters" actually get far in the tournament. Seriously, look how far L-Block and Weighted Companion Cube went. Both of them got through the first two rounds and Cube even defeated The Boss from MGS3. DO YOU FUCKTARDS EVEN KNOW WHO THE BOSS IS?! Many gamers on that site should know who The Boss is considering Metal Gear Solid is popular other there and those who voted a cube in favour of a character who trained Big fucking Boss should be ashamed of themselves.

Yes, I have played Portal myself. Infact, I've played through it at least five times now and even went as far as downloading a map as I couldn't get enough Portal to satisfy me. It's one of my favourite 30 or so games of all-time so I very well know about Weighted Companion Cube. However, it's still not a character and never will be, unless it actually talks and moves on its own in the sequel. Still, there's no excuse to make something as disgusting as THIS to represent the whole contest!

On second thought, at least it's telling the viewers what a horrible representation their contests have. To me, it says that the majority of voters have a fetish for cubes.

Really, with these "characters" entering these tournaments as well as recurring winners, legitimate characters have been left out in favour for them. Allow me to name TWENTY characters which could have been there but didn't:

Abe (Oddworld)
Bomberman (Bomberman)
Coco Bandicoot (Crash Bandicoot)
Dr. Robotnik (Sonic the Hedgehog)
Ecco the Dolphin (Ecco the Dolphin)
G-Man (Half-Life)
Jin Kazama (Tekken)
Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
Locke Cole (Final Fantasy)
Louis (Left 4 Dead)
Lucario (Pokémon)
Naija (Aquaria)
Psycho Mantis (Metal Gear Solid)
Pyramid Head (Silent Hill)
Raz (Psychonauts)
Scorpion (Mortal Kombat)
Scout (Team Fortress)
Spyro (Spyro the Dragon)
Tombi (Tombi)
Tommy Vercetti (Grand Theft Auto)

That's twenty different games/series and I was able to name a character from each one there with ease. Some of the characters there may not be brilliant in your opinion and not all the characters can fit in considering they had only 128 spaces, but at least they're more legitimate than a fucking Tetris block and at least they'd make the contests more interesting rather than having Cloud, Link and Mario all the time.

Another thing that's bad about these contests is the overflow of characters from certain franchises. Yes, Final Fantasy is the biggest target here and while it's my favourite game franchise, I really think too many characters from one series get through to the bracket. Almost TWENTY characters from Final Fantasy were in the latest contest. Don't you think that's going overboard, even if the series has plenty of well known characters?

The sad thing is, the worst part about GameFAQs' Character Battles has yet to be mentioned! For these tournaments, GameFAQs gives out prizes for those who make the most correct predictions on which characters will win for each and every battle. So what do you get for winning this contest? YOU GET FUCKING MONEY!!

You may be thinking "Yay money" but hold on a second. This is money you get from playing a guessing game over a stupid internet contest. That's so much precious money wasted on such crap. Then again, we have millions of pounds wasted on talentless hacks such as Ant & Dec for their own game show. Oh, only American (I'm going to guess it's USA only) citizens are able to earn the cash, so a non-American citizen such as myself is fucked. Yeah, that's really unfair. Sure, they may have foreign exchange issues but if it's that awkward, just scrap the damn money altogether and be fair on everyone!

Maybe this is being taken too literally for an online contest but there's so much wrong about this that it's hard to overlook. Characters winning the contests far too often, false characters entering these tournaments replacing those with real characteristics and money being wasted on this garbage, something is going terribly wrong with the gaming community.

You know what's really a joke about the whole thing, I've made my own Character Battle contests and despite the obscurity in comparison to GameFAQs, I feel they've worked out much better than they could possibly do unless they got their act together. My latest contest had a wide range of characters from the classics such as Donkey Kong and Crash Bandicoot to those that are only found in Japan-exclusive games such as Rin Tohsaka. If you only found out about my contests now, you'll most likely wonder who the character I just mentioned is.

I even go as far as excluding GameFAQs winners and runner-ups altogether so they're out of the way. Not only that, no inanimate objects can compete and any winning characters sit out in all future major contests. How I run my contests is how I think GameFAQs should run theirs. Of course, that's in their poll formats rather than comment-based like mine.

Not only that, Gamespot also ran their own character contest last year. Their All Time Greatest Game Hero contest was actually pretty good and had a few interesting differences. Anyone who participated in this will remember Bub & Bob taking down Master Chief and Sonic, Gordon Freeman took down Snake, Mario AND GameFAQs' most prized character Link! Now that was a good turn out for the contest. I even want to see another character contest from Gamespot sometime soon! It's a shame both sites are owned by the same corporation and GameFAQs can't take a few notes from how Gamespot handled it.

Maybe there is some light to their contests. After the latest contest finished, GameFAQs posted a poll to hear feedback from their viewers and the most voted option turned out to be "Terrible, I hope that was the last one ever" with "Pretty good, but it could use fewer joke characters" being a close second. That's over half of the total voters so surely this should give them a message to make improvements or at least cut the bullshit with "joke characters".

So there you have it. GameFAQs' Character Battles are poorly organised. It's hard to say if they'll ever consider changing a few things. They claim they'll never take out any winning characters as it's a "popularity contest" yet those who won have shown to be good enough characters to sit on the throne. Whether they'll take out these "joke characters" or not depends but if they do, good for them. If not, way to keep on digging that hole GameFAQs. There's no use hoping for a limitation on how many characters from one game/franchise can be in the bracket.

Sadly, you can find better contests from related sites such as Gamespot or an individual such as myself!

New rant series

2010-04-01T11:20:00.001+01:00

http://musicalbsrants.blogspot.com

Read for more details.

Final Fantasy X-2

2010-03-08T15:23:00.003Z

You know, looking back at this game and remembering all the horrible things isn't pleasant at all. Final Fantasy X-2 is definitely one of the worst moments in all of Final Fantasy. This game shouldn't have existed at all and the hope for a sequel to Final Fantasy X was a big mistake! When people tell you to be careful what you wish for, this is a great example!

After spending over 100 hours on FFX, beating Yu Yevon (yeah, he was a horrible excuse of a last boss) and watching the ending to this game, that last part made me think "What the? Does Tidus actually return to his home or what?" For all we know, he could have been back in Besaid Island. Hell, that was my thought all along and what do you know, that's what actually happened! That's what I hated most about FFX. It wasn't the infamous laughing scene, not even Tidus being a whiny bitch or the god awful minigames, it was the very last part that bugged me the most. That to me left ideas well open for a sequel to FFX and made me wish they made another game to tell us what the hell happened to Tidus, even if they weren't making actual sequels on a regular basis back then.

So FFX-2 was announced and it takes place two years after the events of the first game and the three main characters are Yuna, Rikku and Paine...Wait, who the fuck is Paine? Yeah, the third playable character was a brand new character but she's a really forgettable one. There's absolutely nothing about her that makes her an appealing character. As for Yuna and Rikku, no drastic changes for Rikku except for different appearances (although it did scream fanservice) but Yuna?! She became a fucking Lara Croft wannabe! Now it was only natural for her character to change after summoners had no more purpose in Spira but really? The best they came up with was making her a sphere hunter holding and making two pistols as her primary weapon. Yeah, really creative Square.

The overall appearance for the rest of the characters weren't much better either. Although the other returning characters haven't changed a bit, the newly introduced characters were horrid. I mean, Nooj? Gippal? Baralai? Are you serious?! These are just poor clones of Auron, Zell and Wakka respectively. It's like they didn't even try to make good characters for this game.

And then we have Shuyin and Tidus who looked like Tidus and Yuna (sorta) and the whole story with FFX-2 started with a sphere showing Shuyin. Say what you want about Lightning in FFXIII but this is completely lazy! Not all the new characters were poor imitations of already existing characters, though. LeBlanc was at least a whole new design but not a very good one. Her appearance was just...laughable.

Most enemies were recycled from the first game. Now it's only natural to see a lot of familiar faces in the same world but come on, the majority of bosses were palette swaps! Yes, there are common enemies in the whole of Final Fantasy such as Cactuars and Malboros but that's just some familiarization in the whole franchise. This on the other hand, it seems Square went “Yeah, let's just palette swap a lot of enemies from the first game, create a few new ones and BAM, we've got ourselves a new game!”

Infact, there were even the exact same bosses brought back such as Chocobo Eater and Ultima and Omega Weapon. Actually, Omega and Ultima Weapons weren't even bosses, they were REGULAR ENEMIES! ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?! These are known to be some of the strongest bosses in several Final Fantasy games and Square just made them regular enemies in X-2? Not cool.

The downgrade of Omega and Ultima Weapon is just the beginning of all the traditions of Final Fantasy this game breaks. The soundtrack completely ignores what kind of music Final Fantasy is meant to have! The game starts off with a pop concert with Yuna (well, actually it's LeBlanc but why should anyone care?) and never before Square did any of this shit in their games, although later on they did choose one of the X Factor winner's songs as their main theme for FFXIII but that was already explained previously.

The soundtrack for FFX-2 is balls! I mean, it doesn't seem to have the slightest clue as to what kind of music Final Fantasy SHOULD have! OK, for some of the tracks, they set the right mood but most part it's traditional world music-style thrown in randomly, underwhelming and boring pieces or j-pop. The other flaw with the soundtrack is more to do with the Final Fantasy traditions and that's the severe lack of chocobo theme, prelude, opening and fanfare. Although battle fanfares was absent in XII, that game at least had the other aspects of Final Fantasy music. Seriously, though, does THIS sound like chocobo music to you?

I still wonder what Square were thinking with making THAT track the “chocobo theme”. THIS IS NOT CHOCOBO MUSIC! This is more like gangster music. Man, I thought the soundtrack for FFX wasn't all that great but it still felt like Final Fantasy music. This felt like you were going through a thunder storm:

While this:

No, just no. That doesn't have the right atmosphere. You may think I'm going on about the music too much but it's one of the best parts of Final Fantasy and it's so good that even those who aren't fans of Final Fantasy like the music. Sure, it wasn't Nobuo Uematsu who made the music for FFX-2 and he probably wanted to stay away from this catastrophe as far away as possible but one of the main composers known as Noriko Matsueda contributed to Chrono Trigger, a game that has a soundtrack on the same quality level as Final Fantasy in general and to think that same person would lower himself to this. You'd think with him around the soundtrack would be tolerable overall but only a few tracks are even listenable to me. Let's hope Square never allow music this bad to appear in a Final Fantasy game ever again...Oh wait, FFXIII's English main theme. AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Interesting fact: While Square were making a game which starts off with a pop concert, Nobuo Uematsu was rocking out with his heavy metal Final Fantasy tribute band known as The Black Mages. He made a very wise decision by forming and playing with this band instead of wasting his talent in a god awful game. However, he is going to the be main composer of FFXIV. Come on Nobuo, why are you making a huge comeback for an MMORPG? You deserve more than that.

Anyway, about the plot, Yuna sees a sphere showing someone who looks very much like Tidus, she becomes a sphere hunter to find more about what happened to Tidus and is accompanied by Rikku and Paine...Whoever the fuck she is. They hope to find Tidus and on the way learn about Shuyin and Lenne and then hear about this ancient machina called Vegnagun which was too dangerous to use during the Machina War and was kept under Bevelle for a thousand years. So while Sin was scaring the whole of Spira for a thousand years, there was conveniently a huge machina below the surface and was brought up in the sequel. A bunch of other shit happens in this game but hardly any of it is even worth mentioning.

And of course, there are the endings and one to mention is returning Tidus with ease. It was just an excuse to have a happy ending and bring Tidus and Yuna back together. So yeah, playing through another game rewards you this ending when something like this could have happened in the first game as a bonus or you know, NOT HAPPENED AT ALL and say “You don't always get a happy ending”. I have to give Advent Children some credit for not bringing Aeris back to life at the end of the film and make Cloud and Aeris live happily ever after. Now that would have been a silly way to conclude that film, even if the film felt underwhelming already with Sephiroth returning for only 10 minutes.

Final Fantasy X-2 has a few endings but you had to go all the way through the game two or three times to see them all. The use of multiple endings isn't executed as well as Chrono Trigger which had over ten different endings and the majority of them depended on when you defeated Lavos. Chrono Trigger is an awesome game and was worth playing three times over (one for regular playthrough, two for bonus ending on the DS and three for beating Lavos after every notable event). X-2 on the other hand, definitely not worth the time and effort to go through the game more than once and watch all the endings.

You're probably thinking “Is there anything good thing about FFX-2?” As a matter of fact, there is! The battle system in this game was actually....pretty good. Well, minus the gimmick dress spheres, of course. It was a faster ATB system and was one of the two things that kept me going when playing through this atrocity. As a matter of fact, just for the playable battle system, I'll take this game over FFII any day of the week. It's a shame this updated ATB system wasn't put to great use.

In conclusion, Final Fantasy X-2 SUCKS! The music utterly blows, the new characters aren't appealing and the storyline was dumb. The only saving grace this game had was the battle system. Let's hope with all the sequels they've been making from the Final Fantasy series they don't even think of making FFX-3. Seriously Square, don't even think about it! Now if you excuse me, I could do with playing FFIX again. It's been too long since I last played this wonderful game.

Oh, and lastly, FAAANSERVICE!

Final Fantasy

2010-02-22T15:01:00.005Z

As soon as you read the subject, you're probably thinking "Final Fantasy is your favourite franchise and you're going to rant on it?!" Yes, it is my favourite gaming franchise. However, Final Fantasy as a whole doesn't come without flaws. As much as I love IV - VII, IX and X, Final Fantasy over the last few years has been on a rocky path.

A good place to start off would be the main titles. While Square have done very well to correct the title confusions by giving us the real FFII, III and V games, on the other hand they have included MMORPGs to the main titles and not everyone wants to pay monthly for them. When I heard FFXI was going to be an MMORPG, I was disappointed since I wasn't willing to pay a monthly subscription for a game. I don't even like MMORPGs in general so FFXI and the upcoming FFXIV are a miss and two blank spots in my main FF titles collection. Who here also wanted to collect all the main FF titles but had that idea screwed up thanks to FFXI? Let's see some hands raised here.

The inclusion of MMORPGs in the main FF series has displeased players so much that they refuse to even count FFXI and XIV as part of the main series and collections, despite the roman numeral titles. You really can't blame these people and why couldn't FFXI be called FF Online instead and make FFXIV Online 2. Yeah, that would look silly but better that than making it a major title for Final Fantasy.

As for the other newer main FF titles that aren't MMOs, the most recent ones are FFX, XII and the upcoming FFXIII and they don't seem to be released so frequently. Not saying that's a bad thing, though as it shows they take their time with the big titles. As stated before, FFX is a fantastic game IN MY OPINION but XII, while adequate, the long wait for the game wasn't worth it. Now I don't hate it as much as others and I do praise the game for some aspects of it but it's rather poor for Final Fantasy's standards and the only time it's replayable is for a Final Fantasy marathon.

Along with the main titles, Final Fantasy has sequels/prequels based on certain games, spin-offs and remakes. Square have made many additional titles to the main games, especially the Compilation of FFVII and the dreadful X-2. I'll admit, I've not picked up every single sequel and there's no need for me to do so. However. that means it's hard to really judge these games but I still find it unnecessary for most of these sequels to be made. For instance, why did FFIV get a sequel? It's a brilliant game, yes but I felt everything was concluded at the end. There didn't seem to be a need to make a sequel to FFIV. It was fine where it was.

As for the FFXII sequel, FFXII itself wasn't great enough to convince me to get the sequel but the "It was fine where it was." comment may not work here as XII was based in Ivalice and that's been a common setting for Final Fantasy games, especially the spinoffs so this sequel may have been necessary for the Ivalice world. The keyword being may so there's no saying it was crucial.

The last to mention right now is the Compilation of FFVII. For those who don't know, FFVII is my favourite Final Fantasy game as well as my all-time favourite and before the crowd starts to throw tomatoes at me, no I don't go everywhere saying "OMFG FFVII IS THE BEST GAME EVAR!!!", I do not declare Cloud and Sephiroth as THE greatest video game characters of all time (To me, they're great characters nonetheless) and if anyone wasn't particularly fond of FFVII for any legitimate reason, that's fine with me. FFVII is just a personal favourite of mine.

Anyway, the Compilation of FFVII is not something I've been fond of despite them being based on my favourite game. Yes, I did want a sequel of some sort for FFVII at one point but what I wished was a direct GAME sequel to FFVII. However, what we got was a CGI movie known as Advent Children and I gotta say, this was a poor film. While the action sequences and the graphics (yeah, even with all the grey in that film) were great to look at and the voice actors for some of the characters were exactly what I had in my head whilst playing through FFVII, the plot didn't do justice. The whole film built up to the return of Sephiroth who only appeared for 5 - 10 minutes and that's it. Everything seemed to have went back to square one at the end and I felt it added hardly anything to the FFVII universe so overall, it was a disappointment but as a sequel and a game-based movie, it was definitely an improvement from FFX-2 and The Spirits Within.

The other FFVII titles haven't taken any interest either but Crisis Core is a maybe sometime in the future if I ever get a PSP but that's only if I can get enough games to make a purchase for the PSP worth the money. Supposedly there's going to be more FFVII titles and I have to say ENOUGH ALREADY!! There's two game prequels, one game sequel, a film sequel and an anime short. Does there have to be more games for FFVII? The only FFVII-related game that needs to be released is a remake. Yes, Square have done a lot of remakes already but a remake for FFVII in 5 years time is reasonable. However, if there's one remake I wish to see, it's FFVI.

The only other sequel that comes to mind is FFX-2 but that's for another time. Anything else, Square intend to make yet more sequels to the Final Fantasy games and you wonder how long they'll keep this up. These games shouldn't need sequels in the first place, although an additional title for FFVI could work. Takeshi Arakawa, one of the game designers at Square has expressed an interest in making a sequel to FFIX and you gotta think to yourself "Why FFIX?" Everything was settled at the end and it's one of those happily ever after games (pardon the cliché but some things are better left as they are).

Yes, Square need to come up with more games to keep their company running but really, all these sequels is just making Final Fantasy the next Disney. Most of them seem unnecessary and if certain main games explained just about everything, why go on?

The other supposedly milking factor with Final Fantasy are the remakes. Some people see remakes as pointless but they're good to give newer gamers a chance to play them as well as giving older gamers a new experience and Square treat all fans nicely with their remakes so they're all reasonable except for FFI and II which have been remade more than once! I always thought it was silly doing remakes for the PSP after releasing the remakes for PS1 and GBA a few years prior to them. If the PSP versions were just ports of the remakes they had before, that would have been fair but no, they went and redrew everything for them. It seems rather unnecessary. They didn't redrew the graphics for Chrono Trigger when they released it for the DS and they even made that game compatible with the touch screen. Besides that, no complaints about the remakes.

Along with sequels and remakes, Final Fantasy have also made a lot of spinoff titles. The most notable ones are of course Tactics and Dissidia. Now this may sound strange to some of you but I have yet to play a Final Fantasy spinoff (FFX-2 doesn't count). Again, it's hard to really judge these games but I'm sure I'd enjoy Tactics (PSP remake only as Square fucked the Europeans in the ass with Tactics on PS1) and Dissidia if I had the chance to play them. As for the rest of the spinoffs, though, ehhh there's not really much of interest from the lot. They're just extra games and nothing more but except the odd few, there's really nothing appealing for me. I mean, Chocobo games? Really? I'll stick to the chocobo minigames in the main titles.

After all this ranting on the main titles, sequels and spinoffs, you're probably wondering what will happen with FFXIII? This is still a game for me to look forward to and get when most appropriate. FFXII may have had several flaws but that doesn't mean I should have no hope in FFXIII. If it's good, it's good. If it's really bad, then not cool Square. However, that's just a matter of opinion. What needs to be addressed about this game right now before even playing are the main theme and the summon system.

The main theme for North America and Europe is different to what Japan had and while Japan have a generic, forgettable j-pop ballad, North America and Europe have...Leona Lewis? Really? Square decided to have a singer who came from The X Factor? ...WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SQUARE?! What on earth were you thinking when you chose one of her songs as the main theme for FFXIII for America and Europe?! Why have you done this? WHY A PRODUCT FROM THE FUCKING X FACTOR FOR THE MAIN THEME OF A MAJOR FINAL FANTASY TITLE?! Hell, just for any Final Fantasy game is insulting enough.

So, for the summon system in FFXIII, after the absence of the traditional summons in FFXII such as Shiva and Bahamut where they were named as airships instead (yeah, silly idea), Square brought the classic summons back in FFXIII and it all sounds fine and dandy, right? Let's see what happens with the summons in this game as summoning in FFXII was worthless.

Well, that's a horrible looking Bahamut but at least the summon system doesn't look as bad as Twe-...What the? Did Bahamut just make a transformation sequence? What the fuck?! Transforming summons IN MY FINAL FANTASY?! No, that's just far too silly. Transformers and Final Fantasy do not go well together! THIS ISN'T FUNNY SQUARE! STOP PLAYING TRICKS ON ME! *sigh* I thought the Balamb airship was ridiculous but THIS?! What the bat credit card is to Nostalgia Critic is what that ridiculous thing is to me. And yes, despite these two things about FFXIII, I still intend to get it. I'll just have to hold myself when it comes to those summons.

In conclusion, I still love Final Fantasy but most of the sequels and spinoffs just aren't particularly interesting. The MMORPG titles shouldn't take up the roman numeral titles, the sequels are rather unnecessary, Final Fantasy VII is getting far too much extra stuff and FFXIII, well, we'll see how I go when the game comes out. Next time, we'll go through the atrocity known as FFX-2. Wish me luck as I try to remember the worst parts of this game as well as being horrified at remembering them.

Oddworld

2010-02-08T14:42:00.002Z

Once again, this is a rant heavily focusing on my personal interests but it's something I really want to address. Before we begin, I just want to say that to those who guessed Sonic would be my next rant, as good as that guess was, you were wrong. As a matter of fact, I haven't even thought of writing up a Sonic rant since not only have I not been a big fan of Sonic (I have Mega Collection for Gamecube and that's it), I've stayed far away from modern Sonic but Sonic 4 might make an exception if it's said to be really good. You may never see a Sonic rant from me but there's definitely Sonic rants elsewhere.

Anyway, for those who don't know, the console that truly got me to gaming was the Playstation. This particular console was home to many major titles such as Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Spyro the Dragon, Tekken, Oddworld and of course, Final Fantasy VII. Although some of these games were also available for other consoles, they were well recognised on the Playstation. However, where all of these games lucky in the later years? Sadly not and Oddworld was one of them.

What is it so bad that makes me think Oddworld has had terrible luck in the gaming industry? Let's start with the beginning. In the first game, Oddworld Inhabitants promised the gamers there would be five main games but we only ever had two which were Abe's Oddysee and Munch's Oddysee. No, Abe's Exoddus was NOT part of this planned quintilogy as some would have assumed it to be.

Of course, an explanation is in order as to why these games stand out to me more than the majority including Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and even Mario (no joke). You could argue that I'm being a "nostalgiafag" or even a fanboy when it comes to Oddworld but I love just about everything about the first two games. The visuals, the characters, the plot, the gameplay, the music, the atmosphere, EVERYTHING!

The imaginery this game had along with the character designs and the atmosphere was outstanding. I mean, does a Slig look like anything you've seen before? Can you relate Scrabs to an existing species? Ever heard of a race of green human-like creatures notable for their farting abilities? I can only answer no to them all. What made Oddworld even more original was the gameplay. While there have been many 2D platformers before Oddworld, none of them involved with speaking commands to communicate with NPCs. For these reasons, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was extremely rich in originality and still remains to me as one of the most original games ever made!

As for the sequel, it was a great follow-up and I'd say this was even better than the sequel for its enhanced gameplay, more secrets, more of a challenge and of course, flying sligs. Infact, what truly brought me to the Oddworld games was playing the demo version of this game found in one of Official Playstation Magazines' demo discs. This is another key factor to my gaming interests in the fifth generation but that's another story.

With five paragraphs praising the hell out of Oddworld, you must be wondering where I think things went wrong with the franchise? The first downfall to the series was moving to Microsoft after their first publisher GT Interactive were bought out by Infogrames. While the first two Oddworld games were for PC and PS1, the other two weren't. They were Xbox exclusive and that was a huge kick in the nuts for Oddworld fans who expected to get the games on PS2 as promised. Although I've yet to play these games myself for that very reason, this is one of the main reasons why they sold poorly in comparison to the other two.

As a matter of fact, Stranger's Wrath was so badly promoted that I never even acknowledged the existence of this game until a year after its release. What's really sad about this game are the publishers they got for this game and that's EA. Take note that this was before Guitar Hero was big and corrupted the whole of Activision, so EA was the worst company out there at the time. Yes, EA have improved over the last year or two but they didn't even push themselves to make sure Stranger's Wrath got the exposure it deserved and instead, they were probably too busy with rehashing Madden and FIFA. These games get more than enough promotion and then you see a game where the game makers take the time to make and don't sell as much. Goddamn the gaming industry!

After the release of Stranger's Wrath, Oddworld Inhabitants were more interested in making TV show and movies. The latter was that was what they wanted to all along. So after "shutting down" Oddworld Inhabitants, Lorne Lanning announced Citizen Siege, a sci-fi CGI movie. Whether it's related to Oddworld or not, this is a movie I definitely want to see when it comes out...Well, if it DOES come out, that is. This film was expected to be released in 2009 with two video game tie-ins. Wage Wars was meant to be released BEFORE Citizen Siege came out but here we are in 2010 and still hardly any information about the whole thing.

You might be wondering what's happened to the film? In a recent interview with Lanning, he stated it's on hold. So yeah, "shutting down" Oddworld Inhabitants to make way for films and shows and the only thing that came out from that was Citizen Siege and that's been put on hold.

This isn't to say Lorne Lanning completely gave up Oddworld. Maybe he wasn't happy at one point but in 2008, Maxis (yeah yeah, EA company) confirmed the return of the series but claimed it'll take years for the game to be finished. While it was great to hear another Oddworld game in the works, that's actually all we've heard about it since. Not once after have they told us anything else about the game or even given us additional screenshots of the game. Telling us some minor info once in a while will let everyone know they're still working on it and not completely forgetting about it.

The latest actions by Oddworld Inhabitants is the re-release of the first two games on PSN a few months ago. They claim to be re-releasing Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath on Steam and a few other places but let's not build our hopes just yet. While they said they're on their way, they've had quite a history of cancelled games. Not only that, they were originally going to be released at the end of 2009 so now it's pushed back to Q1 2010. Whenever it's due to be released, we'll just have to see it to believe it. If there's nothing on Steam by the time I get back from the Opeth concert I'm going to on 5th April, then it'll be another deadline failed for these games and more disappointment.

Not only did the other three main titles in the quintilogy not see the light of day but a few other Oddworld titles went down the drain too. Munch's Exoddus, SligStorm, Hand of Odd and The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot were all games Oddworld Inhabitants were to make but never did and have stated that they MIGHT finish them at some point. The keyword being might. If (big huge fucking IF) Maxis go through with the Oddworld game they're supporting, then it could be Hand of Odd we'll see coming out as that game was meant to be an online RTS and that sounds like Maxis' department.

The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot was going to be the next Oddworld game after Stranger's Wrath and it too had a great idea. It was announced in April but guess what happened a week later? It was cancelled due to Oddworld Inhabitants going down. However, there was an interview with Lanning about this game last year and stated they might go back to working on this game but this too is a big might.

I just want to see at least SOMETHING from Oddworld or anything by Lorne Lanning to show that they're still alive and not just all talk. The re-releases are nice but we need to hear more. Of course, these games take time to make but it would be nice if we were given something small like SligStorm which we were meant to have and was said to be only the length of Slig Barracks in Abe's Exoddus (that's shorter than Portal) or even another 2D platformer starring Abe. That would be fantastic! Of course, both of them are just wishful thinking but for another Abe game, a new platformer would be great considering how this particular genre has evolved with community levels.

There are fans who have tried to work on their own Oddworld games due to the misfortunes this franchise had and I'm not even sure if there's a single person out there who succeeded on making their own Oddworld game. If we got something like this, MANY would be so made up.

In conclusion, Oddworld had full potential but things didn't go well when they lost GT Interactive. Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath may not be bad games but for a non-Xbox player, there's no saying how good or bad these games are until they're supposedly re-released on Steam and PSN. However, that's IF they do get ported to them.

There's no guarantee of seeing another Oddworld coming out, despite Lorne Lanning constantly saying he's got something big to announce soon (he even admits to saying that too much) as well as the game Maxis are helping out with. All of this doesn't mean jack shit until they actually release something but I'll more than satisfied if another game is definitely on its way. Right now, they're on their way to becoming the next Duke Nukem Forever and a far bigger joke seeing they have several games to work on as well as a movie.

This rant made me play through Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus again so that's my nostalgia satisfied...For now.

Cliffhangers and unconfirmed sequels

2010-02-01T15:19:00.003Z

There are many fantastic gaming franchises out there and there are some that do a phenomenal job at telling an amazing story as well as offering great gameplay. A huge example of that is Metal Gear Solid. Sadly, not all games or gaming franchises are that lucky to conclude their sagas (No matter which other games in the Metal Gear franchise are coming out, the saga with Snake has been concluded) and some have been left in the dark.

You could say this is more a personal rant as it's mainly talking about games I really like and possibly overlooked a few others but it's still an issue with at least a few games and it's really sad to see the game developers giving up half-way or throwing the gamers with a cliffhanger and not stating the slightest information on a sequel.

The oldest games mentioned here are the Ecco games. There was meant to be a third game to follow The Tides of Time which didn't have a conclusive ending and what did they make instead of this? Well about making Ecco Jr. to take a breather from the Nintendo Hard difficulty the two games had? To be fair, I haven't played Ecco Jr. but is this a game I really want to play? What happened to Ecco 3? Well, that never happened. In 2000, the Ecco series was rebooted and it's a shame they went that way as they should have finished what they started with the original story. Infact, what didn't they like about the Mega Drive games that lead them to rebooting Ecco? The story Ecco the Dolphin had was different and did very well and this was when stories in video games started to really pick up.

An annoyance with sequels is when a game ends with a cliffhanger and the game makers don't plan or even confirm a sequel right away. When you play a game, beat it and find out the game has a cliffhanger, you'd expect them to be working on a sequel right away. Not for everyone, though. This isn't like films and in some cases TV shows who can handle cliffhangers much better than video games. I only ever saw the first two episodes of Lost but I will admit that the cliffhanger to the second episode does make me want to watch more, despite originally watching them in college 3 years ago. As for films with good cliffhangers and are concluded with sequels, film trilogies spring into mind.

For video games, unless they have enough money and are committed to making a sequel shortly after the release of the latest games, it's not a great idea. Yes, the same thing could happen to TV and films but video games aren't as lucky at times. Aquaria and Psychonauts are the best examples of mine. Both are fantastic games and highly recommended to anyone who's looking for something that stands out of the gaming crowd.

However, where they fall (not too hard, though as the rest of the games are still worth seeing) are how both games end. They clearly suggest a sequel on the way but neither of them have had a real confirmation of one yet and it's not pleasant for the players to go through the game only to find out the story is to continue on a sequel which have yet to be announced and won't be in works until years time. Yes, people should be patient and of course, a lot of time is needed to develop a game on the same level as these two games but when they start working on other projects, it's not a good sign. Other ideas from these kind of developers are great and all such as Tim Schafer's Brutal Legend but they really need to be more committed to working on concluding games with strong storyline before moving onto other ideas. Otherwise, it just seems like a tease to the fans who would absolutely love to see a sequel to games ending with cliffhangers.

This rant would be far from complete if Duke Nukem Forever wasn't mentioned. Now this is the biggest joke of all! 12 years of development and 3DRealms have stopped working on it. I'll admit, I have yet to play Duke Nukem but don't fret, that is on my list of games to play sometime. I won't know if there was a cliffhanger in one Duke Nukem game which was meant to be followed by Duke Nukem Forever. Either way, the long development for this game and the high possibility of this game never coming out is a huge kick in the balls.

However, one could argue that people stopped caring about it long ago because of how long it took to make the game. If (this is a huge if) it did come out, regardless of quality I'd be happy they finally got the game released. As horrible as Chinese Democracy was, at least the album finally came out. Duke Nukem Forever on the other hand, seems to have no light at the end of the tunnel and it's a damn shame. 12 years for nothing.

Of course, there is no saying that it's mandatory for the game makers to finish or even work on these games in the first place but by not filling in gaps where players expected a sequel to tie-up the loose ends, it only delivers disappointment to their fans.

In conclusion, it's really sad to see these titles having a small chance of finishing what they started and it's a damn shame to acknowledge the ease of yearly releases of certain games series that shouldn't even have new games that frequently. You know which games I'm referring to. Next week, we'll be onto a game franchise that means a lot to me and will express a lot of disappointment with it over the years.

Achievements

2010-01-25T13:55:00.003Z

Achievements have played quite a big role in the recent years of video games. As far as PC and home consoles go (besides the Wii), most games have achievements. Infact, they're becoming so popular that flash websites such as Kongregate and Newgrounds are using achievements for their games. Not all recent games have them, though and not all of them have to. These are just small bonuses to me with the exception of Team Fortress 2 where unlockables are obtained via achievements.

If you're reading this to hear an onslaught on achievement obsessed players in general, you're best looking elsewhere now as this is not an achievement whores bashfest and claiming they have no lives. I won't look any better by writing these rants if that's what I was doing here. However, I will say that those who play games just to get achievements and not to enjoy the game really need to calm down. If you're going to get a game just for the sake of more achievements, what's the point of playing the game in the first place when it's not something you'll actually enjoy? Games were made to have fun, not to compete with people getting the most achievements/points as possible.

On the other hand, if it's a game you enjoy a lot and want to try and get every reasonable achievement, there's no problems with that. Adding extra experience to the game and making you do additional things that wouldn't have been done normally is what the main purpose of achievements should be. It's always good for games that you love so much that playing through it once just isn't enough for you.

There is one kind of achievement whores who definitely need to be slammed here and they are the hackers. Those who modify their consoles or download a program just to mess around with the game and get all the achievements at the click of your fingers. These people are beyond pathetic! Achievement farming can slide but this? You go all the way to get something to get you all these achievements but you know what, the administrators will easily catch you and they have every right to take all your achievements away or even ban your account if they want! Hacking achievements is a waste of time, especially when you do it just to get higher up the rankings.

There are achievements which are obtained whilst playing through the game and again, that's all good. The best examples are beating a certain boss or finishing the game for the first time. However, there are achievements obtainable via normal playthrough of games that cannot even be called achievements at all. Some fine examples are first blood and just entering a certain game mode. First Blood achievements are what I've seen in a few games now and by killing an enemy for the first game you instantly get an achievement message? As for viewing a certain obvious page which only a complete idiot wouldn't know where it is, why even make this an achievement at all? There are a few more examples but those are some of the best ones that come to mind.

As for any stupidly hard achievements, while it's only natural for a game to have really hard to obtain achievements for the sake of challenging the players, there are some that simply cross the line such as Garry's Mod's Addict achievement where you have to spend A YEAR'S WORTH of playing the damn game. The fact that there are such achievements made to get people to spend so much on one game disgusts me. A few Team Fortress 2 achievements are rather stupid as well where you can only get them if you're extremely lucky or by achievement farming. No examples will be named considering TF2 has a shitload of achievements but if you look at the list of them yourself, you can spot some that apply to the above.

Not all very hard achievements are stupid, just those that don't involve pure luck, spending tons of time on one game or deliberately making you not getting them naturally and just achievement farming for them. What are reasonably difficult achievements are beating the game on highest difficulty, discovering all secrets, taking on additional challenges and so on.

One other thing about achievements, if a game company disagrees with the idea of achievements, don't force them to include achievements in their games. This especially goes towards PS3 and Xbox 360 where ALL games released from a certain date have to include achievements. Ages ago, I came across the biggest achievement points giveaway in Avatar.

No, not that Avatar.

That Avatar. You can easily tell the company didn't want to have achievements in their game so they just threw in piss easy achievements for everyone to obtain. If the companies don't want to put achievements in their games, just leave them be.

In conclusion, achievements are a nice addition to games but they shouldn't be taken to the heart. They're good to do additional stuff in a game and to unlock new features like in Team Fortress 2 with their items but nothing to make you buy every single game with them and obtain every single achievement just to get the highest ranking possible. As for the difficulty of obtaining them, anything reasonably easy to realistically hard is good but nothing that's plain stupid.

Rayman

2010-01-04T12:26:00.004Z

To me, Rayman was a short lived franchise. The first game is a classic. It really is a fantastic 2D platformer and was what put Ubisoft on the map and now they're a huge gaming company going alongside EA and Square. Rayman was such a popular game back then and rightfully so. The levels had beautiful and surreal backgrounds as well as being well coloured. Even by today's standards this is one of the most colourful games out there. The game itself was fun and while it was perhaps too difficult here and there for a game's audience being mostly kids, it proved itself to be a challenge. OK, it's hard Nintendo hard but I digress.

Sadly, Rayman went downhill right after the first game. The Rayman franchise suffered a terrible fate just like Spyro and Crash. Infact, Rayman has been mistreated even worse than those two as there was only a good game or two. At least they had 3/4 good games. The first problem with Rayman was several educational games. Instead of having an actual sequel to the first game, they went and made educational games and as a kid back in the 90s, I wanted a great follow-up to Rayman which would have been another 2D platformer and not some educational games!

There was eventually a Rayman 2 which was released four years after the original game and although this is the most critically acclaimed Rayman game, I can't say I was a big fan of it as I much desired another Rayman 2D platformer but even taking out that, the game overall just wasn't that impressive. Contrary to what was just said, there was actually a bonus level where Rayman was in his 2D glory and that was one hell of a reward for me for beating the game with the majority of lums obtained. One level may have not been much but it was better than nothing.

Rayman had one more additional major title but this was a game I never had a slight interest in and after that, Ubisoft introduced Raving Rabbits and this was another huge stain on the Rayman franchise. Although Rayman had some appearances, it was clear as day that these games were more focused on those goddamn rabbids and not as much on Rayman. Although they have dropped the name Rayman in these games now, that's what they should have done from the start but it seems they needed to throw him in these games just to try and get it recognised and that's just mistreating him even more.

The other major problem with the franchise is the numerous re-releases Rayman 1 had. The occasional re-releases would have been fine but they took it a step too far by not only re-releasing it TWICE back in the 90s before they even got out Rayman 2 but still even re-releasing the game today. The latest re-release is for DSiWare...Really now? Instead of making a fourth major Rayman title or even a return to form of the original game which I'd really love to see from Rayman, they keep re-releasing this game and most recently on a shitty console too?! I guess if I want to play more in the 2D style, my only choice is to find Rayman Gold and hope to get it working on Windows Vista but the demo couldn't even work for shit.

In conclusion, Rayman had a good start but quickly went downhill after transferring to 3D (moreso Hoodlum Havoc) and then turned for the worse afterwards when those goddamn rabbids came along to overshadow Rayman when the franchise was clearly named after him and not some douchey creatures. It doesn't help the franchise at all when it was pretty much replaced by this as well as the supposedly fourth title taking ages to come out. I'd say it's mostly due to caring more about re-releasing the original game again and again. Even if they actually make it, I think I'm done with what seemed to be a very short lived franchise unless they go Mega Man 9 on us but that's just wishful thinking.

A little bonus, here's a Garry's Mod video starring Rayman:

Nintendo Adverts starri ng Ant & Dec

2009-12-21T13:01:00.000Z

Over the recent years of Nintendo, they have taken a different approach to advertising their products. They have been more casual and clearly showing they're appealing to a wider audience. These were all fine and dandy at first but the more adverts they made and the more they're shown on TV and anywhere else, the more you wonder if they still care about their true fans or not.

Now I would have let these adverts slide but recently there's been a huge problem with them, most especially in the UK and that's showing the twats known as Ant & Dec. If you've never heard of them before, your luck runs out! All they do is present a bunch of shows run by ITV and get fame from them and believe me, they're getting far FAR too much than they actually deserve.

long with being twats as usual on TV shows, they've recently started appearing on Nintendo adverts and this really pissed me off. The last thing the gaming industry needs are two hacks appearing on game adverts when they should be serving food at McDonalds. It doesn't help when ITV and Nintendo thought this would be a great advertising campaign and reckon it's actually promoting Nintendo's games. What the fuck is up with humanity?! What kind of audience are they trying to attract with slapping these dickheads on their adverts?!

I just fear which other "celebrities" Nintendo want on their adverts but showing Ant & Dec is bad enough. They are fucking nobodies, so why are they there? Infact, why the fuck are they even on TV in the first place? Anyone could be a better presenter than these douchebags. GET YOUR ASSES BACK TO THE FRIER, DAMMIT!

If anyone wants to know how bad these guys are, you should have heard what they said about someone eating rats in I'm a Celebrity (no, I don't watch the show. My mum watches it and I happen to be in the living room when it's on). They claimed it was as spectacular as the moon landing in 1969. I'm not making this up at all. These morons DARED to make such a horrible comparison and they should be booted off TV forever for it!

In conclusion, Nintendo's adverts just make me want to cry, especially when I saw Ant & Dec appearing on them. If anything, these adverts just make me want to sell the Wii and get a 360 or PS3 instead. Well done Nintendo, you've dug deeper into that hole. Just be lucky that I'm still wanting to play the new Metroid game as that and Zelda seem to be the only Nintendo franchises that are still alive and aren't Mario. If it weren't for this, I would have completely given up Nintendo by now. As for you Ant & Dec, GET THE FUCK OFF TV YOU NO GOOD WORTHLESS PIECES OF SHIT!

Brutal Legend's publishing issues

2009-12-21T02:02:00.001Z

Original date of rant: 12/10/09
Original rant entry: #17

You've heard most about Activision and Robert Kotick and how much of a disgrace to the gaming industry they are. Now...You're going to hear yet more about them as the one action they made towards one game I found to be so despicable, horrible, disgusting, disgraceful, and so sickening that it got a rant separate to the previous one.

Brutal Legend is an action-adventure game with RTS elements based on heavy metal music directed by Tim Schafer. I anticipated for this game as much as SSBB and MGS4 for those very reasons. Also, heavy metal and video games are two of my favourite things and not only that, this is a game directed by Tim Schafer. This guy has made/worked with several big titles such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, despite some of them suffering in poor sales.

Majesco, the publisher for Psychonauts had financial troubles from the poor sales for that game so when it came to Brutal Legend, they had to seek for another publisher and the first one that took them on was Activision who were interested at the time. It all seemed quite good since Tim Schafer had several games which didn't receive enough praise they deserved and a company like Activision would have given them better exposure.

Unfortunately, it all went on a bumpy ride once Activision lost interest in publishing Brutal Legend. EA then picked them up and while they're a bad company most of the time, they at least deserve some respect for willing to publish original titles. However, a few months after, Activision claimed they were still in negotiations with Double Fine over this game and THREATENED A LAWSUIT! BULLSHIT! They left the game behind due to lack of "exploitations" and didn't even care about it. They just wanted it back because they saw its increase in popularity and regretted dropping the title. You were too late to take it back Activision. That was your mistake and you should have lived with it. Too bad they didn't stop there.

The worst of this happened right after E3 2009 press conferences. Following Activision's threat to sue Double Fine for bullshit reasons, after acknowledging even more popularity for Brutal Legend and seeing a huge ass poster advertising the game, they became really jealous and decided to sue Double Fine for yet more bullshit reasons and even going as far as preventing the game from being released!!

You dirty, stuck-up, sadistic, SHIT-EATING COCKSUCKING BUTTFUCKING...If you've ever seen Nostalgia Critic's AVGN Wizard rant, you'll know the rest of the line. I don't mean to take someone else's insults like that but there is nothing more fitting to describe them for this horrible action than that. This is the very reason why I detest Activision and Robert Kuntick and why whenever I look at EA or even 99.9% of the world population, I see halos on their heads.

It was obvious why Activision wanted Brutal Legend back. However, trying to prevent the game from ever being published? That is very VERY low! What pisses me off the most is that this game had more of a chance of getting decent sales and it's a damn shame. The last thing Schafer needs is yet another big issue with his releases. NO-ONE should ever stop a game frok being released just for childish excuses.

Activision were crying about how Brutal Legend needed so much money to develop the game and supposedly failed to meet one deadline. Well excuse Tim Schafer for actually putting heart into these video games rather than rushing to make a yearly game you fucktards. It was your fault in the first place for not even caring about the game afterwards. Also, the comment on failing to meet one deadline is laughable. Why can't these greedy fucks at least be grateful that they were never going to publish Duke Nukem Forever? Now a lawsuit for the problems with 3DRealms makes some sense but to take a game back they lost interest in only to want it back after acknowledging its hype? No words can describe how pathetic Activision and Robert Kuntick truly are.

What really pissed me off the most is that if Activision actually succeeded and Brutal Legend would never see the day of release as a result, that would have been it for Tim Schafer's games or at least not until ages like the time gap between Grim Fandango and Psychonauts. We would have had to thank these motherfucking cocksucking scumbags for losing a potentially great title as well as destroying any light there would have been for Psychonauts 2.

Fortunately, Tim Schafer and Double Fine weren't going to back down from this. They fought their way to defend their title from Activision and made sure the public would still get their game which they desire to play and for this, they are very respectful in my books, unlike that menacing Kotick.

As you can see, this is why I truly detest Activision and Robert Kotick to oblivion! This is why they don't deserve any respect from me, the fans of Tim Schafer, anyone who acknowledges the heart of gaming...As a matter of fact, WHO THE HELL would even give them any respect after this? The only reasons would be for publishing noteworthy games but besides that, there's nothing for them to make them respectful.

As for Tim Schafer and everyone at Double Fine, I'm aware of the lack of mention of RTS elements in the game before the release and while it wasn't the best of choice to use it for a console only game, it was still a great game and you deserved every credit you got from it. Of course, whatever future projects you have in mind, I'll be willing to hear out for them, even though I would like the next project to be the sequel to Psychonauts considering the ending that game had.

To Activision and Robert Kotick, FUCK YOU! You may have failed to take Brutal Legend back but this is a huge scar on your company's reputation and many gamers such as myself are not likely to forgive you. We'll put every effort into making sure our money doesn't fall into your hands.

Whew, I'm glad that's over with.

Activision/Robert A. Kotick

2009-12-21T01:47:00.003Z

Original date of rant: 05/10/09
Original rant entry: #16

NOTE: I'm well aware that Activision have merged with Blizzard to become Activision Blizzard but regardless, this rant focuses more on the Activision side. Anything Blizzard-related is left out due to not covering that area very well for the time being. Maybe there'll be rant on Blizzard themselves at a later point or maybe not. It all depends how I feel in the near future. ANYWAY...

Boy oh boy oh boy. If you thought my rage from the bullshit with Virtual Console, Wii games and EA in general were bad, you have seen nothing until now. Activision is the real deal for the BULLSHIT in the gaming industry, most especially for their actions over the last few years. Yes, this rant contains excessive swearing and CAP LOCKS, surprisingly unlike most of my written rants so far.

If you're not too familiar with their history, then it might come to a surprise that they formed in 1979 and became the very first third-party gaming developers/distributors. The reason for forming the company to begin with was due to a dispute with the programmers and how Atari treated them at the time. Activision even earned respect for the right reasons during the 1980's for making Pitfall which is said to be a strong influence for the very early days of platformer games, possibly even an influence on Super Mario Bros.

You're probably thinking "How can a company who made a huge contribution to the early days of video gaming fuck up so badly in the later years?" Back when they formed, the company wasn't run by a dickhead known as Robert Kotick who is an evil man. This horrible excuse of a human being didn't become the CEO of Activision until 1991. Now to be fair, the company didn't start becoming terrible right away. Infact, they've done some good in the past such as making the 3D remake of Battlezone (very underrated FPS-RTS game and is one of the very few things that I liked about the company) and publishing most Quake titles.

When did things start to go wrong? Hmm, what about the Tony Hawk series? I'll admit, I did play the first game in the series and enjoyed it but never picked up any of the later titles and when looking at the series now, that was a good thing. Sure, the first game lacked a few things such as customization but ah well, that's something I can easily live without, especially when I lost interest in skateboarding years ago.

The problem with the Tony Hawk games is yearly releases à la EA Sports' FIFA, Madden and such. Although, there was an exception in 2008 when there was only a mere spin-off release but the rest still could have cut down with the amount of sequels, especially in some games they actually RECYCLE skate parks from other games!

It doesn't end there! While the Tony Hawk's yearly releases are what EA Sports do with certain series of games, this isn't even the worst actions from Activision. They, more especially Robert Kotick didn't become complete and utter douchebags until the current generation. What appeared to have corrupted their minds entirely are Guitar Hero and Call of Duty. Not saying these games are bad, especially when the idea itself of Guitar Hero isn't bad and the Call of Duty games are fun to play (OK, I've only played a bit of Modern Warfare 2 as I'm writing this but still...).

Ever since they released sequels for Guitar Hero and Call of Duty in the recent years and the franchises became increasingly popular, Activision knew they could make millions from these games and begun making at least one sequel each year or rather several titles in a short amount of time for Guitar Hero. Sadly, it's become clear as day that they're only doing this to make as much money as they can and making sure Robert Kotick has a lot more than enough money to afford a mansion and a fucking Ferrari. Infact, Kotick openly made this statement on video games which had little to no guarantee on having many sequels:

"Don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises."

I swear to God, this was NOT made up! This is an actual statement from Bobby Kuntick and this proved that he only cares about the money and not whether the games will be a real success. THIS MOTHERFUCKER could care less if the next Guitar Hero game was literally a PIECE OF TURD he took. If it's shit that sells gold, that's all he'll care about, nothing more. This is THE reason as to why these greedy bastards care about Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, Crash and Spyro but completely ditch Brutal Legend, Ghostbusters and Riddick despite their hype.

Just seeing Activision "exploiting" the Crash and Spyro franchises truly sickens me. Sure, if they didn't pick up those games, someone else would but the point still stands with Activision's true intentions. What really disgusts me about how they're treating Crash and Spyro is that they were two games series I loved when I was a child, more especially Crash since Crash Bandicoot was the very first PS1 game I ever played and that console made a huge impact on my gaming interests. A decade after that great moment, the franchise has been utterly destroyed and the chances of Crash to make a return to form is pretty much good as gone.

As for ditching non-exploitable games, this is another great example that the fuckers at Activision don't care about the quality and abandoned them simply because there was no potential abuse of making sequels for these games every year. For your information fucktards at Activision, most especially Bobby Kuntick, games like Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters were NEVER made to have annual releases like your precious Guitar Hero and Call of Duty! THIS IS NOT HOW GAMES SHOULD BE TREATED! These games were made to give the public a brand new game to enjoy themselves playing to, not putting as much money as possible in your damn pockets! Care more about the heart and soul into making these games.

That's not even the lowlight of the whole company. Even after they claimed to have no interest in publishing Brutal Legend, they later insisted on taking it back due to its popularity from the public afterwards. Although the publishing issues have been solved, this still pisses me off even today. Those money whores only wanted Brutal Legend back just because they knew the game would put yet more money in their pockets.

You may be thinking "Hang on, how could Activision make any exploitations on Brutal Legend?" Word came from Double Fine that those greedy fucktards wanted to make a Guitar Hero sequel out of Brutal Legend. FUCK YOU ACTIVISION, YOU DO NOT TARNISH OTHER GAMES LIKE THIS JUST TO BENEFIT YOURSELVES, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT WAS MADE BY A VERY TALENTED DIRECTOR! Take note that while they tried to make a Guitar Hero sequel from this game, they later claimed there was no potential to exploit the game so they left it behind and allowed another publisher to take care of the game while they were wiping their arses with dollar bills. Maybe Tim Schafer refused such game to come out and if he did, he has earned so much respect from me for that.

Every gamer is aware of the extreme hype of Modern Warfare 2 for most of 2009 and it became so anticipated that Activision went and upped the RRP in the UK by £15, making it £55 due to more shit no-one cares about or even believe and that's just the standard edition. It really kills how the UK residents are penalized for such bullshit reasons and there hasn't been a game in the retail stores sold that high since the N64 days when some games actually went as high as £60. Luckily this backfired when Sainsbury's and Morrisons were selling them for as cheap as £25, way below the RRP.

It didn't even stop there. Activision was asked a few questions by a guy named Tony Gikas about how they handled their business and Bobby Kuntick's response to the question regarding prices for new games was this:

"And Tony, you know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further."

YOU SWINE, THIS IS TRULY DESPICABLE! I don't care if this was just a joke, a comment like that only makes you look more of a disgrace than you already are. It's like he wants all the money from the consumers just for his sake. Goddamn, you truly are a selfish bastard Bobby. Even if you were joking, it's clear as day you want games to cost more for...Isn't is obvious by now?

For someone like Robert Kuntick who's on thin ice with all these controversial statements on the gaming industry, the last thing he should do is making such a joke. There was a huge backlash from this and joke or not he deserved every single hate comment for that. Do you see other well hated people like George W. Bush intentionally joking about anything that can make them look like worse individuals than before? Best be careful with what you say next time Bobby.

Not only that, he's also wanting Sony to lower the prices of their consoles and if they don't, he won't give Sony anymore support. This is really a lot coming from Mr I want to raise game prices. Sony already brought the PS3 down to a reasonable price and he thinks the prices need to go lower just to please him? IS HE EVEN AWARE OF THE CAPABILITY OF PLAYING FUCKING BLU-RAY ON THE PS3?! What a douchebag, the prices for PS3 and the PSP (not PSP Go!) are fine right now for what they are.

Another thing that makes Bobby Kuntick a wretched being is how he treats his workers. He has gone as far as saying:

"We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."

WHAT A SACK OF SHIT! Which kind of place would want to make people as miserable as possible? It's like he wants to treat his workers as slaves (except they get paid) and this is the last thing the head of a company should do in business. If I ever worked at Activision (god forbid), I would be seeking for a job elsewhere immediately but here I am still seeking for a first actual job. *sigh* What a shithole this country is.

It's not just Robert Kuntick who's a complete twat, there was actually a statement from Michael Sportouch (Senior Director of Guitar Hero) that retailers should stop selling their rivalry products just because they don't sell as many copies as Guitar Hero. Sorry dipshit, it simply doesn't work that way. There is no way in hell you can force ANY shop to decide what they can sell and what they can't and why he even made such a thought is beyond any sane person's mind. Other companies deserve a chance to sell some products in the gaming industry, unless you're EA Sports or Activision who milk the fuck out of their games to get as much cash as possible. So Michael Sportouch, consider yourself a selfish bastard and a representative that it's not just Robert Kuntick who's a complete jerk in Activision.

In conclusion, Activision may have been the very first third-party company in the gaming industry but that doesn't excuse them for their recent behavior. Tony Hawk, Call of Duty and Guitar Hero have become huge cash-in attempts and they are only keeping those games for that very reason. Any games that aren't going to sell billions will be ditched by the company due to lack of potential to "exploit" them.

As for Robert Kotick, he is the scum of the earth. He is one of the people I despise the most in the entire world for tarnishing video games and business in general. For clearly stating he wants to exploit video games for cash and won't be willing to give other games with little to no chance of surviving, he should be banned from contributing to video games entirely as well as not being involved in business. It's obvious he's only here for more than enough money you ever need so do we really want him hurting businesses even more?

Because of Activision's huge success and with this cocksucking scumbag around, I fear for the future of video gaming. However, the more game companies that know not to become like Kuntick, the better. As a result of these actions, I never want to buy another game of Activision's, unless HE is no longer running the business or it's a second hand copy to show less support towards them.

I'm not done yet, though. There's still one particular topic that hasn't been covered in this rant. That one move from Activision that has triggered me to hate the bastards to hell and despising them more than any other game company out there. Stay tuned and let's hope I live through the next one. In the meantime, enjoy Nostalgia Critic's thoughts on the #1 douchebag and try to resist yourself from punching the monitor after seeing his ugly face:

The Sims

2009-12-21T01:39:00.002Z

Original date of rant: 24/09/09
Original rant entry: #14

This is a gaming franchise we should all be familiar with, especially when it became extremely popular at the start of the 2000's with its debut. As a life simulation game where you can create your own characters in the house, design the house how you want it to be and having the opportunity to give them commands, it only made sense for a game like The Sims to become critically acclaimed.

I'll admit, I wasn't a big fan of The Sims but my parents got me the PS2 version of it ages ago. Of course, I may have been better off with the PC platform but that's how life went. Although, the PS2 port didn't make you worry about expansion packs so to mess around with the family I created, it was fine.

Speaking of expansion packs, The Sims have a huge problem with them and that's having far too many of them. While it's only natural for a company to make more content in a few expansion packs, was it really necessary for Maxis to make SEVEN of them for the first game? Each one was £10 (possibly more) back then so that was £40 for the main game and then £10 for each expansion pack, making it at least £100 in total. Really. they should have reduced the amount of expansion packs by having up to three for each major title. As far as I know, no other game needed seven goddamn expansion packs for one game, so why The Sims?

It didn't stop there with the ridiculous amount of expansion packs, Maxis went even further with the sequel. Not only were there EIGHT expansions packs in total and each of them costing £20 RRP, there were also TEN "stuff packs" consisting of extra parts to use for The Sims 2 and each of them were £10 RRP. Again, way too many releases for one game and the most there should have been was three expansions and two stuff packs. Of course, that's still quite a lot but better that than eighteen additional packs.

The other problem here is the prices for them. No matter how much content you've put on the expansion packs, £20 is really too much, especially when the main title was originally at least £30. As for the parts pack, no more than £5 would have been fine. Since those aren't the prices Maxis thought would be best for them, to own everything in The Sims 2, the total could have been £250 if one bought each game on the day of release. TOTAL FUCKING RIP OFF MAXIS!

Now that The Sims 3 is out, Maxis are no longer making any more additional packs for The Sims 2 but now they're going to focus on expansion packs for The Sims 3. The third major title only came out earlier this year and had their first expansion pack in November. No stuff packs have been announced just yet but here's hoping Maxis will be more reasonable with expansion packs as well as making stuff packs DLC and if a fee is required for them, at least give them a fair price.

That's not all for the wrongdoings with The Sims franchise, there's one particular spin-offs which are Nintendo DS and Wii only called MySims. First of all, what an extremely horrible name. The amount of My_____ names I've come across over the past years are an atrocity and it all started with MySpace which was a stupid name to begin with. This is what I call the MySpace Disease (credit goes to Linkara for the similar idea of his own disease terms in his reviews).

Second, MySims is nothing more than an alternative to Mii characters as well as being a Sims game that's suitable for kids but looking at the gameplay footage, it's a good thing this is just a spin-off series. And yes, I do mean series as alongside the main MySims, there are four more games for the series and one of them I still can't get over what Maxis did and that is making a Mario Kart clone. Seriously, just looking at it for a few seconds was enough to tell it was a blatant Mario Kart ripoff. Why on earth did Maxis think this was a good idea when the same target audience most likely had Mario Kart Wii already? They could also do with slowing down with the amount of titles MySims will get as five titles in two years isn't a good sign at all.

In conclusion, The Sims as games themselves aren't bad, although MySims is exempt from that, but the amount of additional packs Maxis have made for the first two major titles is ridiculous, especially how much the recommended retail prices are. The Sims 3 will most likely suffer the same fate, even though they should consider DLC for the stuff packs and try not making too many expansion packs. After all, it should be quality over quantity. It's reasons like this that make me glad I was never a big fan of The Sims to begin with.

EA Sports

2009-12-21T01:19:00.003Z

Original date of rant: 18/09/09
Original rant entry: #13

You've heard about EA Games themselves, now listen to what's bad about EA Sports. We all know what EA Sports are like with their annual releases. Now I'm not a fan of sports game and if someone else enjoys playing them, that's fine. I'm not going to say "Why play a sports video game when you could do this outside" since would I really want to try extreme sports with little to no practice? XD What's truly wrong with EA Sports is how they release their titles EVERY FUCKING YEAR with very little changes, most notably FIFA and Madden.

The annual releases from EA Sports is perhaps one of the lowest forms of scum in the whole gaming industry. Releasing the same goddamn games every year at full price for games which have very little differences (or even reasonable ones) to the previous title. It's even worse when there are hundreds of thousands who are willing to buy this shit yearly. No, this isn't made up, it's actually true since many FIFA/Madden titles have accomplished Platinum/Greatest Hits status. It's even more depressing when other games which deserve more recognition such as Tombi and Psychonauts don't even achieve this status, but that's another story.

The amount of copies each game are sold are part of the problem with the yearly releases. With getting aforementioned statuses for selling well, it only encourages EA Sports to keep making these games every year. It doesn't help either when supposedly these games HAVE to be made so often under contract with the NFL and FIFA. Sounds like both EA Sports and the football companies (the term football applies to both British and American here) want to suck as much money possible from their customers, doesn't it?

These games have become exploited so much that even if John Madden, the person the Madden series was named after retired from football altogether, EA Sports STILL insist on slapping his name on every professional football video game. Although he must have agreed with EA Sports to use his name on their games, you have to feel sorry for the man when a company still insists on exploiting his name even after retirement. It seems no matter what happens to the man, they still want to put his name on these games every year. Do they even have any respect towards him? It's not as bad as how EA Games are treating Tolkkien's Lord of the Rings franchise but still, this point stands.

The worst hasn't even been mentioned. Alongside annual releases of Madden, there's ANOTHER American Football video game series also made by EA Sports. This is no joke, have a look at NCAA Football. What are the real differences between this and Madden? Umm, this is college football and not professional? That's right, this is the same thing except with completely different teams. EA Sports are going as far as making TWO game series of American Football running at the same time with different teams.

The only reason why there's both Madden NFL and NCAA Football games is because of two different companies. There may be those who care more about college football than professional but still, is this necessary? This is money grabbing and plastic wasting to the fucking extreme. They could have found some way to merge the two into one game.

These games would be a lot more tolerable if they were released every few years and not every damn year. Whatever little changes they'd want to make in their games could have easily been saved for whenever they release their next installment and the differences between two games would have been a lot more significant. Whenever a new season starts, why not make a DLC pack to represent the latest teams? You don't see Super Smash Bros. releasing a new game every time Nintendo come up with a brand new idea and name it Super Smash Bros. 09, 10, etc and that's one of the many reasons why a franchise like Super Smash Bros. is highly respected amongst gamers.

Another thing that's rather annoying with EA Sports is how there's also an EA Sports Big. This additional name is rather pointless since they're still games by EA Sports. The only difference is EA Sports Big focuses more on extreme sports but the additional name still isn't necessary. It's like Square-Enix making an additional name for their online games and calling it Square-Enix Online. Besides the name, the other problem with EA Sports Big is making "simpler arcade style" FIFA games. This brings the question, why can't they just make an arcade mode in the main FIFA games? Do they really have to make another FIFA title just to have an alternative gameplay style which could easily fit in the main titles?

On the bright side, EA Sports Big have at least made some games that I enjoyed which are the SSX titles. As stated earlier, this is an extreme sport and it would takes years of practice to become a professional snowboarder in real life so a video game based on snowboarding is a nice substitute if you're not the sort of person who'll ever be able to compete in this kind of sport in the outside world. Another thing that EA Sports Big should be given a pat on the back on for is not releasing their titles yearly. It's actually been 2 years since the last SSX title was released and I wouldn't mind a new title in a few years time. Now why can't all of EA Sports' titles be like this?

In conclusion, EA Sports have blatantly proven to be complete and utter scumbags in the video game industry and the fact that not only will they still keep making yearly games but they sell extremely well is very sickening. This has to be one of the lowest points of the gaming industry. Also, while the additional title of EA Sports Big being rather redundant, they have at least made some worthwhile titles and don't push their money-grabbing schemes to the extreme for SSX, NBA Street and any other games series of theirs. Still, that doesn't compensate the terrible actions the company has made.

Electonic Arts

2009-12-21T01:14:00.002Z

Original date of rant: 08/09/09
Original rant entry: #12

Electronic Arts....Well, this will be a lot of fun, won't it? EA have become infamous for several things and most of us should name at least one thing wrong with them. However, EA haven't entirely been a bad company. They have at least made/published worthwhile titles back then and today such as Theme Park, Command & Conquer, Brutal Legend and Rock Band (Considering the fun side of it only), so they're not entirely bad but the amount of terrible actions they've made in the gaming industry does outweigh its positive side.

One of the things EA are notorious for are acquiring other game companies. The occasional few companies they obtained such as Bullfrog and Maxis would have been fine and a few others who have struggled with financial issues (before the current crisis, that is) but they have acquired over THIRTY game companies since the early 90's when they started taking over other companies. Sure, this is business but this only makes these sort of companies even bigger and giving very little chance for smaller companies to rise. EA only looks like an evil empire that crushes smaller businesses like insects. As a matter of fact, one of the co-founders of id Software said that himself at one point so good to know even other game developers can see through this bullshit.

The sad thing is, EA's acquisitions will continue, most especially when UbiSoft, another major game company have said to merge with them someday. Not only that, EA once attempted to take over Take-Two Interactive when they were unwilling to be merged with them and considering that's they own Rockstar Games and 2K Games and would have had some rights over Grand Theft Auto, it really gives it away for what EA want which is $$$$$!

Speaking of money, EA are one of those companies who are known for creating many movie-based titles. The one series of movie-based games that I have a bone to pick on is the Lord of the Rings games. Now it's only inevitable for a company like EA to make movie-based games on a popular series of films such as The Lord of the Rings and release them on every console. What is truly unacceptable of EA to do is not how poorly made they are but actually the fact that even after the last film in the trilogy was released, the fuckers still intended to make YET MORE games based on the franchise.

Why on earth did there have to be more Lord of the Rings games after the film trilogy was finished? They shouldn't have made any more games based on the novels afterwards but nope, they still went and made MANY games no matter what. Now this is truly milking the franchise and it's truly disgusting. It may not be as bad as Guitar Hero getting at least 20 new titles every year but how EA are treating The Lord of the Rings is almost as bad, especially when the last game they should have made was The Return of the King. Worst of all, EA are still making yet more games based on The Lord of the Rings and for what? My only guess is to make money. Do they even have any respect for Tolkien? There is a huge doubt on that.

Now there's another book/film franchise with many video game titles who are also made by EA but surprisingly enough, the only other Harry Potter game they've made is a stupid Quidditch mini-game. For now, they haven't milked the franchise as bad as they milked The Lord of the Rings but once they make the last game, just you wait and see EA announcing yet more Harry Potter games just so they can suck away yet more money from kids and their parents.

Despite all of this, EA as a company have improved over the past years. There were a lot of problems with their employment policies and DRM issues, especially when Spore was released. EA's working hours a few years back were utterly terrible with over 60 hours a week and UNPAID OVERTIME and it makes me think, who would want to work with a company who force you to work so many hours and not pay you for overtime? Most would look for a job elsewhere if that ever happened to them. Fortunately, EA have wised up and are being less harsh on overtime and will pay extra if workers need to spend more time at the office.

As for DRM, EA used to have a SecuROM software which limits the amount of installs you could do on one disc so if you hit the limit (formerly three and later five), you're screwed and had to buy another copy. EA have wised up here as well where instead of having DRM, anyone who buys the game legitimately will be given extra features for the games they buy. So anyone pirating the game will not get the extras they'll offer for the games and hand them out to the honest buyers. If the company got everything right to make sure there's no back doors, this is actually a good idea and although the honest buyers outweigh the pirates, more companies should reward customers of their services for purchasing their games rightfully.

It's also good for EA to publish noteworthy titles such as Rock Band and Brutal Legend. However, the good they've done here doesn't let them get away with their bad actions, most especially their money-grabbing scheme known as EA Sports. Next up, E! A! SPORTS!

Nintendo DSi XL

2009-12-14T15:06:00.002Z

Going back to Nintendo, eh? Can't say I'm too surprised considering they were bound to do more stupid things one way or another and my rants will cover latest subjects, even if I've gone through similar things before. Recently, Nintendo have made two more horrible moves.

If this is the first rant of mine you've read, you won't be familiar with the very first gaming I made back in April which I talked about the DSi and how much of a terrible console it really is. Fast forward to the present and Nintendo have announced yet another DS console and what is it, you may ask? It's the DSi XL...

Are you serious Nintendo?! Just a year after the failure known as DSi was released you go and make another fucking handheld which is nothing but a bigger version than its predecessor. That means no return of the GBA slot or even anything to make it a real improvement from the previous "update" of the DS.

Sure, the DS Lite was released within the same amount of time after the DS but Nintendo could have learned from this and released both the DSi and DSi XL at the same time to give their customers an option whether they want the smaller or bigger version. Making a new design a year after is just stupid.

What's worse is that DSi XL is going back to the size issues the original DS has. That just barely fit in most pockets but this is just monsterous. If they want to make the screen bigger, they may as well as made it the size of a goddamn laptop considering the DSi XL will have similar size issues to the original DS. If that's what you really want to do with this piece of shit, then you better make sure you have a huge pocket or a bag to place it somewhere.You know Nintendo, handheld consoles were made to have a gaming console that's easy to carry around and with the DSi XL, that doesn't seem to be something you had in mind.

So there you have it. A pointless "update" from the DSi and absolutely nothing to actually make it an improvement from its predecessor. If it had the GBA slot back or even better, allow it to play GB and GBC games, that would be great. Sadly, Nintendo didn't go with that idea and have still yet to officially announce the DSi Virtual Console which would slightly redeem themselves. My guess is unless they think straight, we'll never have a handheld Virtual Console. What are the odds of them making yet another stupid DS console? We'll see what happens.

As for the other stupid move Nintendo have made lately, you'll find out next week.

Credits

2009-12-07T14:51:00.001Z

Just like TV and films, video games also have credits usually after you beat the game or under the options menu. While I respect the fact that these credits are to give, well, CREDIT to those who took part in a certain video game, there has been a few things that always bugged me about credits, most especially in video games as I play video games more than I watch TV and films.

This isn't every game but there have been some games I've played in the past where credits were simply unskippable. Most of you have probably played a game before where after beating the game, you had to sit through the credits just to save the game data. Really now, WHY do game developers even do this?

I don't care about an excuse like "Oh it's just to give recognition to those who put hard work into making this game" if that even if a point brought up for this subject before and while I acknowledge the fact that they do a lot to get these games finished and released to the public, you should always be allowed to skip the credits if you don't want to. It's like if you're watching a TV DVD boxset and you couldn't even go past the credits after every episode.

If and I do mean IF credits are not meant to be skipped, at least show something to make it interesting like the ending scene going along with the credits shown and not just a blank screen or a still background. What do these developers think of the players when they make them stare at this crap?

On the other hand, if it's a game where you'll be playing time and time again, the last thing you want is not being able to skip the damn credits, even if it has something worth watching. Although it's an old game, Metal Gear Solid is a great example of this. This is a game you may have played through several times for the additional items but before you could even use your Bandana or Stealth Camouflage, you had to let the credits run through and you just have various clips of animals and places for half of the time. That is nothing but a chore.

Another old game but I was playing through Crash Bandicoot again and when I got to the end of the game, I found out I couldn't even skip the goddamn credits. I mean, WHY?! All was shown after Crash and Tawna leaving was the background, nothing else apart from credits. Surely there's modern games that have done this and if game developers are doing this, they had better stop it right away unless they put more effort into credit rolls.

In conclusion, unskippable credits, most especially those that don't show a lot besides names scrolling across are a pain in the ass. They are no better than unskippable ads on DVDs, especially when some games give you benefit for a second playthrough.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

2009-11-23T17:58:00.003Z

*** THIS RANT CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

A while ago, I got myself to complete the main storyline of Oblivion. While I could have done this much sooner, I wanted to pay A LOT of attention to side quests before making anymore progress with the main quest and I'm glad I did. That was 150+ hours well spent. Now you're probably wondering "Isn't this more of a review than a rant?" That is a good point but there are some things here that don't quite make it an actual review in my view.

To begin with, I have to praise this game for several things. First off, the combat system is a huge improvement over the crappy one in Morrowind as you no longer have those miss hitting the targets bullshit. With that out of the way, battling was a lot more enjoyable and of course, I was happy to explore the whole of Cyrodiil (i.e. world map for Oblivion) with the exception of one thing which I'll explain later on.

Not often should graphics be an important in factor in video games but credit has to be given to Bethesda Softworks for making such amazing settings in Oblivion along with great graphics. I even thought they were spoiling the players with the scenery in the game as you can see the Imperial City at a far distance from many places in Cyrodiil. You could even climb the highest mountain and still have the chance to see it. It's that awesome! Too bad these places aren't real.

One complaint you might remember from my Morrowind rant is the jumping mechanics. They didn't make your character hurt from falling from heights into deep water which is another huge improvement. However, you can still easily raise your Acrobatics skill by jumping all the time. However, I didn't overdo it with pressing the jump button all the time as I made Acrobatics my major skill and this if I did so, my level would skyrocket too quickly and enemies will become far too strong for me. I learned this the hard way but easily adapted to the system after a while and it worked like a charm.

What really bugged me was the amount of pointless locations. While it's better than having half of the map empty, I still wish they could have given most of these places more use as without anything special within these places, what's the point of even exploring them in the first place, especially when they all look alike? It's a good thing I didn't go through all the trouble to go through each and every one as a lot of hours spent into the game would have been for nothing. That was actually my original intention at first but later thought it wasn't worth it. However, it's still funny that the first Ayleid Ruins I discovered actually contained a key item for the main quest without even realising it.

About the world map, why the hell are we not offered to view the full map when needed? Having to drag across the zoomed in map gets really annoying, especially if your desired location is on the other side of Cyrodiil. Sure, if it's a quest the map location will take you there right away but not for any other cases. This is a similar problem I had in Spore where the creature stage didn't offer a full map view mode and it makes me wonder, why on earth do game companies do this? Is there really something wrong with viewing the full map in the game?

What else didn't I really like about Oblivion? Are the boss fights any good? Only the main ones apply here rather than a sidequest character and out of all the main ones, only one of them was actually good which is Jyggalag of the Shivering Isles expansion. Umaril in Knights of the Nine is a pushover as well as the last boss you fight yourself in the main quest. Infact, these two bosses were so easy that the goblins and clannfears were more of a challenge and they're two common monsters in mines and Oblivion planes respectively.

The final boss you see in Oblivion you don't actually fight at all. Instead, you have a NPC fighting the main villain for you. While the scene was epic, this is a game I'm playing and I should be one in this fight! At least THE final fight in Final Fantasy VII let you barely use the controller in order to beat the game. This on the other hand is nothing. How on earth could they take away the opportunity to let you become a giant dragon fighting the fierce Lord Dagon? I don't care if Martin's a key character in Oblivion, it should be the player fighting at the end. If I wanted to watch two giant monsters battle, I would have watched a Godzilla film.

In conclusion, as brilliant as Oblivion is, it does have its drawbacks. Them being the excessive amount of locations without any meaning whatsoever, lack of full view map and piss poor boss fights except for Jyggalag. Despite these drawbacks, it is still an improvement from Morrowind and the next thing I want to do in The Elder Scrolls universe is playing the full version of Morroblivion whenever it comes out. That or finally get to Fallout 3 as a few people have demanded me to do so.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

2009-11-23T17:57:00.004Z

Original date of rant: 28/08/09
Original rant entry: #11

In June, I saw Morrowind and Oblivion uploaded to Steam along with an offer where you could get the two games with expansion packs for 20% off, making it just £17.50. I thought it was a fantastic offer and couldn't pass it up considering both games have great reception. When I had nothing else to focus on, I started up Morrowind and hoping for the best. However, that hope was shattered rather quickly.

I like to give every game I play a chance so I didn't stop playing after an hour or two. In the past, I've played games that required me to spend a few hours before passing it up and I knew Morrowind was no exception. It took me a while to get used to the surroundings and how the combat system worked. The fantasy settings did look very good and it was fun to explore the areas, although I probably only saw 10% or less of the whole game.

However, the combat system was atrocious. I know about the character's stats and shit as with other RPGs I've played and I was aware of the fatigue bar affecting the character's performance with battling but what really got me was even if the fatigue bar was full, my character was still missing quite often. What's worse was that even when my fatigue was very low, the character's success rate at attacking the enemy wasn't much different.

This really frustrated me since I often rested to recover health and fatigue and when I search for some enemies to fight, the last thing I want to see is my character failing to hit a goddamn rat with his battle axe. It's worse when as a low level character facing some of the weakest enemies in the game, they should not have to struggle killing a fucking rat with anaxe. I mean, I could be a better hero than this piece of shit. GET YOUR ASS BACK TO THE FRIER, DAMMIT!

What else really annoyed me was the jumping mechanics. OK, it's only fair to take damage from a huge fall but when you're going to fall in deep water from such heights and STILL lose some of your health, that's really fucked up. Falling in water should prevent you from taking damage. Imagine you're playing Tomb Raider and Lara took damage from falling from tall heights EVEN IF she falls in the water. Wouldn't that be a pain in the ass? Also, the way to increase your Acrobatics is really silly when to level up, you just need to keep jumping. Yeah, spend all day pressing the jump button and you'll have a high level in Acrobatics in no time. I was level 60 in this specific skill before I packed it in.

The game engine for Morrowind is awful. Quite often I experienced the game lagging and even freezing for a few seconds. For a laptop that runs modern games very well and struggles to play a 2002 game, this isn't a good sign at all. What's worse is that Oblivion runs much better than Morrowind...THIS DOES NOT ADD UP AT ALL!!

That's not even the worst issues I had with Morrowind. The biggest trouble were the glitches I came across. The first experience was falling below ground randomly a few times and this is definitely bad when you can't get back up except by inserting a console command to put you in the town you were in but that doesn't actually put you back on ground where you were, only to a specific part of the place. This may not sound bad but some of these commands actually place you somewhere away from the location itself making it impossible to travel back by foot. Your only options would be to go elsewhere via console command or a spell to get you there assuming there is such thing. I don't know since I never looked that far and have no desire to.

The next glitchy problem was being able to discard/sell key items. Although I should have been more careful with some of the items I got rid of, the game designers should have had the decency to prevent you from throwing away items you need for quests. For one of the quests I wanted to complete, I needed to give Character A an item Character B wanted me to deliver. However, it turns out I accidentally dropped the item out of the inventory and what did I had to do in order to get this quest done? I had to insert a console command to give me the goddamn item! You don't get to sell key items in Final Fantasy, Pokemon and such, so why was this allowed in Morrowind?

And the last glitch I came across which was the one where I thought enough was enough was NPCs disappearing, most especially when one guy who was following me around for one quest and after climbing over a hill and looked back, it turns out he disappeared. I spent half an hour searching for him and were wasn't a trace of him. Sure, I could have just reloaded the latest save but after that, I thought "Fuck this, why continue when I'm bound to experience yet more similar problems?"

That was a few too many bad glitches and I felt I gave this game more than enough of a chance. 15 hours of playtime and it all ended with having too much trouble with glitches. As it was a Steam release as well as Game of the Year edition, it makes you wonder one thing. Did they even test the game before releasing it? You'd think a company like Bethesda Softworks who are most likely a big company (not huge like Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony, though) would have had some good game testers to find any bugs but nope, some major ones were horribly overlooked.

Of course, Daggerfall is said to be much worse but we're talking about Morrowind here. Some of you may enjoy this game despite its glitches but it really kills the fun for me when I have to start cheating in order to make progress in the game. And yes, I'm aware that there are third-party patches that solve these issues but really, Bethesda Softworks themselves should have fixed them, not someone outside the company.

In conclusion, Morrowind was a game I've been curious about for a long time now and had a great chance after a great Steam offer for the two Elder Scrolls games as well as having a kick ass laptop. It all seemed good from the beginning but shortly went downhill from the appalling combat system, a poor game engine and of course, the goddamn glitches which should have been fixed by the company themselves. I'm sorry but third-party patches/mods just doesn't do it for me so I won't be searching for ways to fix these problems. Good thing Oblivion is so much better than this.

Pokémon (Part 2)

2009-11-12T15:46:00.003Z

Welcome to the second part of my Pokémon rant which covers the anime show and the card game. If you've yet to read the first part and want to hear my thoughts on Pokémon itself and the video games, I suggest you head over there before reading the second part. Anyway, like I said on the first rant, 12th November 1999 is the day I became a Pokémon fan after watching Here Comes the Squirtle Squad. This episode made Squirtle one of my very first Pokémon favourites as well as the beginning of my Pokémon fandom.

In the anime show, the phrase "Gotta Catch 'em All" certainly doesn't apply to the show and as a matter of fact, maybe it didn't in the first place. Sure, Ash was wanting to catch all 150 Pokémon at the time but this became redundant as soon as he released Butterfree. You're not really becoming a Pokémon master if you start releasing most of your Pokémon. As for becoming the best Pokémon trainer, Ash has won at least one of the Pokémon leagues but still continues this quest after 600 episodes. And we're still following Ash because...? Perhaps there isn't even a reason at all.

The fact that the anime show has over 600 episodes is frightening, most especially when they've followed Ash and Pikachu the whole time as well as Team Rocket causing havoc almost every goddamn episode. Although anime episodes can be released more frequently, it's still quite a shock that Pokémon has more episodes than The Simpsons and they've been running roughly twice as long as Pokémon.

The worst of it is how in almost every episode, you see Team Rocket planning to take the main cast's Pokémon and any others that are involved in the episode, spend half a minute saying their motto speech and always blasting off again at the end as they always say. What makes it even more cringe-worthy is how they disguise themselves most of the time and Ash and his friends ALWAYS fall for it! You could put a moustache over your mouth and you're automatically a completely different person to them. -_-

I don't care if this is just a cartoon, they need to have some psychological sense and make them suspicious of seeing two "strangers" with red and purple hair. That's not all, they keep falling for traps they set up, most especially the one which they suspected of being yet another trap by Team Rocket. Goddamn, they make the citizens of Springfield look like rocket scientists and they've fallen for a wedding for Bart Simpson and Lotta Cooties (I swear, I am not making this up).

Another thing about the anime are the movies. Although I've never watched any of them after the third film (which I couldn't get past 10 minutes as I got bored watching it), anyone can agree that Pokémon has an unhealthy amount of sequels considering they have almost as much sequels as The Land Before Time! Each movie involves the Legendary Pokémon which is how they managed to make so many sequels within 11 years but honestly, most of them would be better off in the anime show rather than having to make full-length movies about them.

The anime show really needed all new characters to start off new arcs involving different regions. It seems pointless making a new series of the show when it's just showing Ash, Pikachu, Brock and Team Rocket all the time. Sure, new main characters were introduced in those series but if they dropped the old cast altogether, they would have new characters who'd have a fresh start on their adventure rather than hanging with old-timers who seem to be traveling around the Pokémon world for nothing. Too bad that's not so and continue to repeat the same old shit for over 600 episodes and will continue doing so.

The other major part of Pokémon outside the video games is the card game. Those who were into Pokémon during the height of its peak almost certainly owned a Pokémon card. This was a fun game in the past but these days, I'm completely lost. Maybe it's just I lost interest in the card game when Yu-Gi-Oh came out but when you look at Delta Species and Crystal Pokémon, you just wonder what the card makers were thinking. The only reason why they'd make Charmander and its evolved forms an electric-type (I am dead serious here) is running short on ideas but it's still inexcusable to completely fuck up the elements the Pokémon are well established for. It's like making Ifrit a wind element summon. Its makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Surprisingly enough, the card game is still going strong, even though it's no longer at its peak like the franchise in general. It's not something I'll ever get back to since not only do I wish to stay away from horrible variants of Pokémon as far away as possible but going back now would mean having to catch up on a lot of cards I won't even recognise due to being absent from the game for so long. On top of that, I hear you can't even use the old cards anymore so if you built a deck consisting of cards from the first and second generations, you won't be allowed to compete in tournaments which is a damn shame.

In conclusion, Pokémon isn't entirely bad and it's still enjoyable. Maybe I'm just older now but it's certainly lost its charm when the amount of Pokémon became excessive as well as milking the older Pokémon by giving them evolved forms as well as pointless baby Pokémon. They've come to the point where they've used up all their great ideas but of course, they have intentions to make yet more Pokémon. They really need to give it a rest with these new Pokémon, though.

The phrases "Gotta Catch 'em All" and Pokémon master have lost some meaning when there are far too many different species to collect, most especially when several are only obtainable from Nintendo Events and that only leads to Gameshark or hacking the games to obtain the unobtainable (Someone sent me an egg which contained Arceus). This is something that should be avoided at all costs after the infamous MissingNo. glitch.

The anime show has become stale and repetitive from making Ash the main protagonist and Team Rocket the main bad guys to ruin the day each time for over 600 episodes. It doesn't help when there are far too many movie sequels to go with it as well. The later series could have been much better if all new characters were introduced and left the original characters behind.

The card game isn't in such a great state either when they made horrible variants of Pokémon after running short on ideas for cards, most especially the illogical Delta Species. Anyone trying to get back into the game now would have a really hard time fitting in with all the new stuff they made.

So yeah, a decade later and it all came to this. Now that I've done ranting on Pokémon, I should relax and re-watch the first season of the show for nostalgia sake as well as playing LeafGreen again. Yes, I know that's more recent but it's the closest I'm going to get considering the DS doesn't play GB games. :(

Pokémon (Part 1)

2009-11-09T15:30:00.002Z

A decade ago, Pokémon became a huge success outside Japan, even though the franchise was established in 1996 over there. The popularity of Pokémon was crazy at the end of the 1990s where the video games, card game, show and toys were everywhere. Sure, the popularity is no longer as its peak but Pokémon still has a strong fanbase which some find rather surprising. Not as surprising as Digimon still lasting, though but that's another story.

It's been 10 years since I became a fan of Pokémon and I have to admit, I never thought I'd still consider myself as a fan of the franchise for a whole decade as I thought I'd lose interest in Pokémon well before then. I was wrong and the main reason why I still declare myself as a fan is because of the main titles. I'll still want to play these games every now and again. However, when looking at the whole franchise today, it's not as good as it used to be.

First off, there are too many Pokémon. This is one of the most common complaints Pokémon receives and I was actually disagreeing with those thoughts up until Generation IV. The second generation was a nice addition to the series with more great Pokémon to choose from, even though this was when they introduced baby Pokémon. The third generation introduced yet more great Pokémon.

While Tyrogue and Togepi were reasonable baby Pokémon, I have wondered why they had to make baby forms of Clefairy, Jigglypuff and Pikachu, even if he's the most well known Pokémon. Were they to have a 'cuter' form of Pokémon that already had a cute appearance? o_O Infact, most of the baby Pokémon were made to have a cuter appearance and to be honest, they're rather pointless considering the original forms were already designed to look cute. The strongest exceptions are Togepi and Riolu who weren't baby versions of Pokémon from previous generations.

The second generation was also when they started to make evolved forms of Pokémon from previous generations and these were reasonable additions, most especially Scizor and Steelix. Amazingly, the third generation didn't have any of these kind of Pokémon and were mostly original. However, the fourth generation was when they took the piss. TWENTY-ONE Pokémon were based on older ones and they were really lazy with designing Pokémon. Some of them I did use for the heck of it in Pearl but when you think about it, it's like Game Freak felt Rhydon and Electabuzz weren't powerful enough and an additional form was necessary. Only a few offered different elements from the other Pokémon in the Evolution chain.

The main reason they were made was to have higher base stats for more powerful Pokémon but if they had to make strong Pokémon, they should have focused more on making brand new Pokémon and not basing most on older Pokémon. It only made me think they were starting to run out of ideas, especially when they went and made the 'god' Pokémon. It's reasons like this why with the exception of 7 more Pokémon to make it 500, there should never be a fifth generation. They seem to have covered most ideas already and anymore will be overdoing it but of course, it's going to happen sometime.

The games themselves are really enjoyable. Of course, they use the same formula but I love them nonetheless, although D/P/Pt are the weakest out of the lot. I actually like R/B/Y, G/S/C and R/S/E equally. The first games for nostalgia sake, the second for how much fun you can have with both Johto and Kanto regions and the third games were yet more fun, even though they didn't have two regions to explore like G/S/C did. However, HeartGold/SoulSilver are most likely the last Pokémon games I'll care about as none of the spin-offs interest me and the fifth generation thoughts as stated already. The only exception would be a huge 3D RPG which is what they need to make eventually.

What has really annoyed me the most about these games are Event Pokémon. The ones where you have to attend a Nintendo event in order to obtain the item that allows you to encounter the Pokémon or even get it right away. They've always had Pokémon that you could only obtain via Nintendo events, even though it was later found out that Mew was actually obtainable via glitch. Can't say the same thing for other Event Pokémon, though.

Event-exclusive Pokémon is a horrible idea. Sure, it's a nice bonus for those who are able to attend the events but what about those who aren't able to go to them at all? I mean, the main target audience is kids and it's not easy for a 10 year old to reach their nearest event, especially when their parents might not go all the way to one just so they can have another Pokémon added to their game cartridge. It's even worse when the closest event could be MILES away and if you live in my area, you'll know how tough it is to get to the nearest Nintendo Event.

This only encouraged Gameshark and that's the last thing Game Freak should be doing, especially after all the bad stories on save corruptions and MissingNo. Otherwise, what's the point of the "Gotta Catch 'em All" phrase? One of the two main aspects of Pokémon is to collect all different species and battle to become "the best" but the former has lost so much meaning from all these Event Pokémon as well as how many you need in order to complete your National Dex.

That's all for Pokémon itself and the video games. There's still two more sections to tackle which I shall go over on the next part. Yes, these are the anime show and the card game. Be here on Thursday which is the actual day that marks 10 years of myself being a Pokémon fan.

Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 4)

2009-11-08T15:55:00.002Z

Original rant entry: 01/10/09
Original rant entry: #15

Hello all and welcome to the last Guitar Hero/Rock Band rant...Well, for now at least. Along with obsession, expenses and milking, there are a few other things that really annoy me.

First off, the technical issues with Guitar Hero's instruments. Apart from Rock Band peripherals not working with Guitar Hero games and vice-versa (this problem appears to have been solved, though), Guitar Hero has had a few mishaps with their drum peripherals. When World Tour just came out, people were experiencing problems with playing the drums when it was failing to register hard notes. If you never bought this game when it first came out, you can easily feel how frustrating it must have been for those who were having such troubles with the game and in the instrument. I'd sure as hell be frustrated if it ever happened to me.

The other drum problem on Guitar Hero's side is with the latest game when you play on Expert. Supposedly on Expert, the game thinks you're playing Expert+ and the drums won't respond well. It really makes you wonder how Activision (or rather Neversoft) overlooked these two issues when they were developing the game. You'd think at least someone at the office would bring these problems up and try and fix them immediately but they didn't. Perhaps these games were rushed so they could be released in time to make as much money as possible. Shame on you Activision and Neversoft.

The other main problem with Rock Band are the extremely ridiculous release dates for non-American territories. The first title had the PS3 and 360 platforms released in November 2007, 18th December for PS2 and then 22nd June 2008 for the Wii. For Europe, it was Xbox 360 only from its release in 23rd May up until 22nd September when they finally got it out for PS2, PS3 and Wii. Although there are three different developers for Rock Band (one for PS3 and 360, another for PS2 and Wii and the last for Japan), they should have put the effort into releasing the game on all platforms simultaneously. Despite getting it after Europe, Australia had Rock Band released on all platforms simultaneously. EA have the decency to release EA Sports games and movie-based games on the same day for all platforms!

It didn't stop with the first Rock Band. While the gap lengths between the American and European releases were much smaller for the sequel, they failed to release the game on all platforms simultaneously once again. European Xbox 360 players only had to wait 2 months after the American release while it's taken 4 months, 5 months and a terrible 10 months for PS2, PS3 and Wii respectively. As a matter of fact, Rock Band 2 on the Wii only came out last month and guess what? The Beatles Rock Band on the Wii came out BEFORE and that's a newer game!

Speaking of The Beatles Rock Band, that game was actually released on all four consoles simultaneously worldwide. Although 9/9/09 was a "Beatles Day" (isn't that meant to be 10th July?) where the video game and the remastering of all their studio albums were released, it really makes you wonder why there was a lack of consistency with releases for Rock Band 1 and 2. Who knows, maybe they'll do a better job with Rock Band 3 but it still seems like they're penalising non-American territories.

The only other things in mind are Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP and the recent controversy with Kurt Cobain on Guitar Hero 5. PSP lacks guitar, drums and vocal peripherals which makes the gameplay different to the main titles. However, when you look at it, it just seems like a poor cash-in attempt and nothing more. It makes sense to have a Guitar Hero game on the DS (even though there's a few too many) but these kind of games for the PSP? Doesn't sound like a great idea.

In conclusion, Guitar Hero and Rock Band as games were (and still are excluding all the bullshit) a great idea to begin with, but as time went by and the craze became more pouplar, the companies, more especially Activision, begun to milk the hell out of their franchises by making so many unnecessary spinoffs when most of them could easily be huge DLC packs. The amount of games they're making is getting out of hand and it seems they'll only make yet more titles for the sake of more money.

The expenses for the games and DLC content are also ridiculous when a full kit is £150 at first and a single downloadable track is £1.70. This is further proof that the companies want as much money as possible. As for the gamers, there are those who are taking these games far too seriously and need to realise these games were intended to have fun, not who could score the most points on Through the Fire and Flames Expert mode.

The technical issues with the peripherals and the awkward release dates for Rock Band on each platform doesn't help anything either. It just adds frustration to the whole thing, most especially unnecessary wait for these games when America had them months ago. All these reasons are why the whole craze has simply gone insane and really need to calm down sooner or later.

Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 3)

2009-11-08T15:37:00.002Z

Original rant entry: 20/07/09
Original rant entry: #10

Hello all and welcome to the third part of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band rant. I first talked about the extreme obsession of the whole craze and then went onto the expenses for the video games, peripherals and downloadable content. And now for another big issue with these games:

MILKING!!

That's right, these games, most especially the Guitar Hero franchise, have been milked to death. Activision begun milking their franchise with spinoffs. Now the occasional one such as Rock the 80's would have been tolerable, but they decided to take a step further by making games for individual bands starting with Aerosmith followed by Metallica and now Van Halen.

They announced Guitar Hero: Metallica just before Aerosmith's game was to come out and two months after Metallica's game was out, it was announced for Van Halen to have a Guitar Hero game as well. All these games are coming out in a short period of time and it'll be no surprise if they announce yet another Artist X game sometime soon. Infact, due to sales and success, they'll probably announce two more Guitar Hero: Artist X titles at the same time and wouldn't that be milking the franchise even further?

Really, besides the excuse to grab more money than needed, why do they need to make a whole video game on one band? What makes these games so different to the main titles? The most they can do is a plot consisting of a band history or a basic world tour. If they're going all the way to have so many new songs and....just new songs, why can't they just release massive DLC packs? There's already pretty big DLC packs for certain bands such as Iron Maiden and the same thing should be done for those who are getting their own games.

That's not all for the milking in the franchise. Each year, there's a brand new Guitar Hero/Rock Band game which are acceptable if they make actual changes, but when Activision announced the fifth main Guitar Hero, they also announced Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Band Hero and DJ Hero AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME! Seriously, that's four new titles at once.

Band Hero is basically Guitar Hero but appeals to a younger audience and feature mainstream tracks targeted towards family audiences, the same kind of audience Nintendo mostly care about these days. Why on earth give this game a different title to Guitar Hero? Infact, this is the name the franchise should have now, but obviously the name Guitar Hero is such a big name they refuse to change it to Band Hero, even if drums and vocals are part of these games since World Tour.

DJ Hero is self-explanatory. Your only instrument shall be the DJ turntable, which to be fair isn't a bad idea as it appeals to who have different tastes in music. However, there is a huge problem with making a new series of music rhythm playing. This will become another thing for Activision to milk the fuck out of. Just imagine the yearly games along with spinoffs, most especially those that are based on a specific artist for DJ Hero as well. If they don't end up doing that and keep it to a reasonable amount of releases, good for them but we all know that's not going to happen. We know they're going to make yet more games just to suck up yet more money from their customers.

What's more, now that they're making a new Hero series, what's going to be next? Will they make Hero games based on other instruments? It'll be no surprise if they end up making an Orchestra Hero. Imagine how many peripherals that would have. It would be INSANE and considering Activision are one of the biggest money whores out there, they're bound to do it eventually.

The saddest part about the whole craze is, Activision ACTUALLY INTEND to "triple" the amount of Guitar Hero releases by next year, so there could be around 30 Guitar Hero titles by then and right now, there's around 45 Final Fantasy titles. If they keep this trend up, there'll not only be more Hero games than Final Fantasy games but the Hero series could eventually have more games than Mario, and Mario is known to have a shitload of spinoffs. All can be said here is this shit needs to calm down as soon as possible before if it goes completely out of control.

If you've heard of Guitar Hero Smash Hits then you'll know how utterly ridiculous this release was. It was nothing more than re-releasing a selection of songs from every game before World Tour. The only reason why this was done was to make songs from the previous titles playable with drums and vocals. Instead of making a huge DLC pack for the newer games, they had to go and make a whole new game. That is really low of Activision to make a quick buck for this shit load of fuck.

Sadly, Rock Band are also milking their franchise but fortunately it hasn't gone as far as Guitar Hero. While the occasional spin-off title like The Beatles Rock Band is perfectly acceptable, does there have to be a LEGO ROCK BAND?! Maybe I just don't agree with the idea of Lego video games, especially when there's a whole series of them but really now? Lego Rock Band sounds plain silly.

I'm not done just yet. There's just one part left which will cover a few more things on the whole craze.

Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 2)

2009-11-08T15:24:00.002Z

Original rant entry: 22/06/09
Original rant entry: #09

Hello all and welcome to the second part of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band rant. Previously, I mentioned how obsessed people are with the whole craze and how if some of them are that dedicated to playing music, why can't they pick up a real instrument.

So what else is wrong with these games? How about the expenses for this game? Now it's only natural for the game with peripherals whether it be just the guitar or a full rock band kit to cost a little extra, but when you think about it, do they have to charge £150 for the desired game, a guitar, a microphone and a drum?! The game with a guitar was £70 RRP, so that's another £80 coming out of your pockets for two more peripherals. Although Rock Band's kit with the game has gone down in price, it used to be that much at first and since the release of Guitar Hero: World Tour, Activision want to charge their customers £150 for the whole thing.

These peripherals are rather overcharged, most especially when the craze expanded beyond just playing a guitar. £75 would be more reasonable since it'd be £35 for the guitar, £35 for the drums and £5 for the microphone. However, these companies LOVE to suck as much money as possible from their customers, although they've at least had the decency to cut the prices of the older games down.

What else is so bad about the expenses for these games? Downloadable Content which has a fee. As small as it may be, it's actually sad to think how much you have to pay for the desired tracks. Now to be fair, some expense would have been acceptable, most especially when they offer to let you play an entire album (e.g. Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance, Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy, etc), but the fact that they charge you at least £1.70 for one track is despicable.

Let's look at how much iTunes charge you for music. A single track only costs 79p. It might be a little higher or lower than that for whichever track you look at, but that's the usual price. A track you pay for 79p, you can put on your MP3 Player, play it on your favourite media software or even play the track on a music rhythm game known as Audiosurf. Now what can you do with a single track you purchase from Guitar Hero/Rock Band? You can play them on whichever game the track is for and....That's it. So unless you hack the game and export the track as an MP3 file, you're paying roughly twice the amount to play a track on these games and only to play on these games than to listen to it on your media player, your MP3 Player and even use it on a completely different music rhythm game.

What's worse, imagine if you bought a certain track from iTunes already and had to pay for it AGAIN just to play it on these games! Let's say you buy an Iron Maiden track from iTunes and really enjoyed what you heard. You then find out that the same track you picked up from iTunes is also available to download from Rock Band. You'd think to yourself, "Hey, that's good news!" but it all goes downhill as soon as you hear you have to pay around £1.70 for the desired track when you already bought it from iTunes. Wouldn't you hate having to pay for the same track twice?

Same thing can be said for albums where you buy one album you really like and then find out on Rock Band you have to pay for the entire album AGAIN! So that's spending roughly £10 for the album itself and then another £10 for the DLC on whichever game it's available for. Now this wouldn't be as bad if you only get the album via DLC and not a retail or an actual digital purchase, but the fact that they charge you that much just to play more tracks on the games when they should be charging much less is appalling.

These tracks should really be charged for 20p per track. If that's far too low for the companies, then what about 40p? That's a more reasonable price for a track which can only be played on Guitar Hero/Rock Band. If that's still too low for the companies, then they can get the hell outta here. The only excuses they'd come up with are "Ohh we're suffering recession, please spare us a few more pennies to make us last longer." or "Ohh there's far too many people downloading these tracks from the internet illegally." The former is already an invalid argument as Guitar Hero and Rock Band are published by Activision and EA respectively, while the latter, just have a look at the records charts and tell me if the sales are suffering or not. Trust me, they're not! Sure, there's a good amount of people who aren't buying music for squat, but there are many people who still buy music legitimately and it's actually more than enough for the record companies to survive.

Unless it's a track that becomes neglected for a long time, these companies won't reconsider the fees for their DLC and it's a damn shame. Now that's the expense issues covered, there's still one more topic to go through concerning Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 1)

2009-11-05T14:09:00.003Z

Originally posted on 15/06/09
Original rant entry: #08

PLEASE NOTE: This rant is more towards the extremely obsessed players and not those who simply enjoy the game, so if you play a lot of these games, don't immediately assume this applies to you.

It's no surprise that Guitar Hero (and later on Rock Band) has become a phenomenon in the gaming industry over the last few years. With the ability to play rock songs on a video game, it's understandable for the franchise to catch so much attention from gamers and even non-gamers.

The idea of Guitar Hero and Rock Band itself isn't so bad. As long as you're having fun and not taking the games too literally, there's no problems with that. I might be contradicting myself here from the Nintendo rants, but even if casual "gamers" who play the game just for fun, there's nothing wrong with that since the games were made to have a good time with your friends.

Sadly, there's a good number of people who take these games far too fucking seriously. These people are the ones who HAVE to play every single note correctly on expert mode, even the hardest songs officially released (i.e. Through the Fire and Flames, Free Bird, etc) and they will keep trying and trying until they perfected it on the hardest mode. Some have succeeded in mastering these songs in the video games but really, was the effort worth it in the end?

iamchris4life, a user on YouTube was well known for the highest score for Through the Fire and Flames at the time. He was also known for being the first to get 100% on that particular song due to its extreme difficulty. However, what did he achieve in the end? Thousands of YouTube comments praising him? A little box on the screen saying "Achievement Unlocked"? As far I'm concerned, all he got for this was 15 minutes of fame.

There's no pot of gold waiting for him or anyone else for perfecting these songs on a video game. Sure, there's no pot of gold waiting for the real musicians to perform these difficult songs flawlessly either, but at least at a concert they'd get legitimate praise, not thousands of YouTube users going "OMG U ROX 4 PALYING DAT SONG 100%!!!!!!!!" Which brings up a good question: Which would impress you more? A video on YouTube showing someone playing a song with a plastic guitar or an actual band playing REAL instruments at a concert? The answer should be pretty obvious.

There was one kid who dropped out of high school so he could focus his life on being a professional in Guitar Hero. Although it was said that the kid was to be homeschooled in return for not going to school, when you think about it, it's one of the saddest excuses you could ever think of to get out of school. What's worse, this kid's parents are SUPPORTING THIS! He's also been given sponsors and such and he's actually getting paid for this! He claims he'll be going to college sometime, but dedicating your life to a video game sure doesn't suggest he'll get in, let alone do well.

Another thing to wonder is if these people are so obsessed with playing these songs on a video game, why haven't they considered getting a real instrument for themselves to play? Not only you'd have more freedom to play whichever song you want to cover (assuming you know which notes to play), but the effort into playing these songs well would be much more satisfying than pretending to play it on a video game. Sure, this would require practice, but the amount of effort you put in to playing a guitar very well would be worth it in the end, most especially if you get in a band and do very well. All Guitar Hero or Rock Band will get you is hopefully some motivation to get you to play a real instrument.

Unfortunately, there have been people who have given up playing real instruments and paid attention to these games when really, playing real instruments should be more encouraged, most especially to those who are spending an excessive amount of time. However, when there are sponsorships, tournaments and Guinness world records encouraging this, you know there's a problem.

Yes, for playing plastic instruments to a video game, people can get these sort of recognitions. Although there are professional gaming tournaments for other games such as Halo and Super Smash Bros. and there's already world record for other games, they really shouldn't highly encourage Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

There's still more to talk about regarding Guitar Hero and Rock Band, most especially the expenses for these games and the DLC, but I'll be covering this on the next rant where the subject on these games will be concluded.

Nintendo: Overview

2009-11-02T18:42:00.002Z

Originally posted on 08/06/09
Original rant entry: #07

Hello and welcome to my overview on Nintendo's current state as well as the last rant on Nintendo for the time being. This isn't really a rant and more of a review on how they are right now, but it's part of the rant series for the heck of it.

Since the release of the DS, Nintendo have been on a very bumpy ride. While the Nintendo DS is a good handheld overall, it still suffers from a few issues and them being the shovelware overload and the lack of backwards compatibility for GB and GBC games, which is a damn shame. They even released the Game Boy Micro a year later, but for some fucked up reason, that wasn't able to play GB or GBC games either. This downfall is really bad since if you want to play any games from those two platforms, you'll have to get an SP in order to play them with backlight.

They went onto making a new DS console called the DS Lite. Sadly, this was the same as the DS, only smaller. Not bad for those who have yet to get a DS or want a smaller console, but the real deal is the DSi, the piece of shit which can't play GBA games in place for a stupid ass camers with terrible quality. Editing pictures and an MP3 Player doesn't do justice for the DSi and the only thing that came close to saving it is a possible handheld Virtual Console. However, there's been no actual confirmation on this and there isn't much light on seeing this, unless Nintendo go the other way and actually have more decency.

The Nintendo Wii had its ups and downs. It had originality and creativity and made lots of gamers looking forward to Nintendo's newest console. However, it all went downhill with stock issues, low amount of great exclusives, stupid ass Wii _____ games and their poorly done Virtual Console, which most games suffered from PAL conversion bullshit and not having games which should be there from the fucking start (e.g. certain Rareware games). With these problems, the Wii isn't fully enjoyable and should have met its expectations and most of the time, it's been nothing but a disappointment.

Their target audience has also changed over the last years. Before the DS and Wii, it was focused on actual gamers and actual gamers only. Now, they are paying more and more attention to casual "gamers". While it was fine for them to introduce others into gaming, the main problems are not only most of them will have a poor knowledge in video gaming, but Nintendo have proven they care about casual "gamers" a lot more than real gamers, most especially at their E3 2008 press conference.

Which leads to the next subject on Nintendo: Their E3 conferences. They became a laughing stock at E3 2008 when they made Wii Music as their main announcement. The only notable game they announced was GTA Chinatown Wars, a DS third-party exclusive. Overall, they were an embarassment at E3 2008 and the only reason this was shaken from some of our heads was because of the latest Wii titles, Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

As for E3 2009, it wasn't as bad as last year but major improvements could have been made. For instance, they made such a big deal out of Wii Fit Plus, Motion Plus and Vitality Sensor crap. This didn't give a good impression on their conference.

On the other hand, they did announce games worth checking out such as a new Metroid game, some Mario games and the third-party exclusives were also positive with The Conduit and Dead Space: Extraction. Despite that, there are still wishes for other Nintendo franchises to have a new game such as F-Zero and Kid Icarus. Perhaps Nintendo paid far too much attention to Mario and although the upcoming games don't sound too bad, they can't rely on Mario all the time. They have other brilliant franchises, dammit! If they announced other franchises to have new games as well as what we've been given, Nintendo would have restored so much respect from many gamers.

In conclusion, Nintendo have made many bad moves over the last few years, but they're slowly kicking back with certain titles. Unfortunately, they'll still pay a ridiculous amount of attention to casual "gamers", but as long as they still care about the real gamers, even if it's just a teeny amount, there's still some light at the end of the tunnel and we can only hope things get better for Nintendo from now on.

Wii _____ games

2009-10-26T13:27:00.002Z

Originally posted on 11/05/09
Original rant entry: #05

You've all heard my thoughts on the Wii games library and now you're about to hear what I have to say about the Wii _____ games. These games are of course Wii Sports, Wii Fit and such.

To begin with, we had Wii Sports which was included with every Wii console and still is. This game was only fun for a few weeks. Now, it's just boring and I don't see the point in ever going back to this game ever again in my life. All this game has is five mini-games, which I just saw as giving a good feel of the Wii controllers. Now, is there any point to go back to this game sometime? Nope, nothing at all. However, I will give it one thing. I'd rather play this game again than touching any shitty ass EA Sports games with a 10-foot pole.

Next up, there's Wii Play. My sister and her boyfriend bought this game around the same time they got a Wii for their flat. I decided to give this game a go and see what it was like. It was amusing for the first time, but after that, no desire to play it ever again.

After that, we got Wii Fit. This game had lots of mini games and was only notable because of its use with the Wii Balance Board, which is required to play Wii Fit. While there are a bunch of mini games in Wii Fit, this suffers the same problem as the other two, THEY GET BORING VERY FAST!! Thus making the Wii Balance Board nothing but a dust collector.

The fourth game is Wii Chess.

...

Really? They had to make a Chess game as well? Why on earth is this shit necessary? Not only if you wanted to play Chess with someone in real life you'd get a damn Chess set out, if you wanted to play Chess online, there are so many other alternatives to this. Hell, I remember playing Chess on the AOL software when I was still using that piece of shit years back. Now you're saying I can play Chess on the Wii? Give me a break, I'll get a Chess piece out or go to a Chess website (FOR FUCKING FREE!) if I want to play Chess, not a Wii game based on it.

The fifth Wii series game is Wii Music and although I've never played this game and never will, what I wish to say is it's just another gimmick from Nintendo. As far as I'm concerned, all you're doing is waving and shaking your controller around to the music you're currently playing. There doesn't seem to be any reward to playing the tracks in this game, so what's the point? Just wave your controller around to the current music? Fuck that, Guitar Hero and Donkey Konga have proper peripherals to the respective games and not another gimmicky use of the Wiimote. At least with Guitar Hero, you felt like you were playing the game. Wii Music on the other hand, pfffffffft!

Oh, and here's anothing thing about Wii Music, my mum reckons it's pointless as "You just move your Wiimote around." and my mum is like one of those causal "gamers" you see on Nintendo's adverts. So yeah, you know Wii Music has got to suck so badly when even the target audience hates it. What's even worse is that this was Nintendo's main announcement at their press conference in 2008. Looks like Nintendo kicked themselves in the nuts really hard then for promoting Wii Music that much.

As for Wii Sports resort and Fit Plus, forget them. They're just yet more mini-games to play and I got really sick of all this Wii bullshit by then so I don't even want to go near them.

I really wish Nintendo made something a hell lot better than these games, more especially when they're big titles for the console. In the previous generations of gaming, kids grew up with Mario, Sonic and Crash Bandicoot, but this? I have to feel sorry for the newer generation who are growing up with these games right now since they deserve a lot more than this.

In conclusion, these Wii games are a joke. While they may seem fun at first, they get boring really quick and there's absolutely no point in going back to them ever again once you're sick of them. To me, there is no purpose to playing any of these games now and I highly doubt I'll even go near any of them over the next 10 years. I'll still have the urge to play my favourite games again and again even in the next decade or two OR THREE no matter how many times I've beaten them. Wii _____ games on the other hand, never again.

Wii games

2009-10-22T16:42:00.003+01:00

Originally posted on 11/05/09
Original rant entry: #04

Welcome to the third part of the Wii rant. Previously, I mentioned Virtual Console which had so much potential for someone like me, but Nintendo made huge mistakes on it and I'll only put faith back in it once they correct the mistakes they've made, most notably giving us games more frequently as well as fixing the PAL conversion bullshit.Today, we'll be looking at the Wii's games library, and by games I don't mean whatever is playable on the Wii, I'm talking about games you buy from real stores, so no WiiWare and no Virtual Console, just Wii games!

Like I said before, there were games to be excited for to come out on the Wii, most especially Metroid Prime 3, Mario Kart Wii and of course, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. There was also Zelda: Twilight Princess to look forward to, but that was also available for the GameCube. We're even going to get two more Mario games but besides Mario who is more than popular to have a lot of games, we're due to get a new Metroid which I am looking forward to. However, nothing has been said about a new F-Zero game or any other Nintendo franchises and that just adds disappointment to the Wii. If we end up not having games from certain franchises for the Wii, the games library will feel like it's lacking a lot of things.

As for third-party exclusives WHICH ARE WORTH CHECKING OUT, there sadly isn't as much as there should be, but I guess some support is better than nothing, right? As weird as this may sound, the third-party company that's giving Wii the best support right now is actually Sega (I'm talking about games BESIDES Sonic) who are giving the console worthwhile games such as The Conduit and MadWorld! Yeah, it sounds bizarre when Nintendo and Sega were competing head-to-head back in the days, most especially the 16-bit era. Nothing bad about that but really, the Wii needs more gaming companies that will give them good support and not just throwaway/shovelware crap, which EA and Activision make most of the time.

The main problem with the Wii's games library is how much crap there is. From the looks of things, Nintendo will accept almost everything, even if the game is utter shit. Rumour has it that Rockstar wanted to have at least one Grand Theft Auto game on the Wii and Nintendo went against the idea and said they never want to see any of those games on their consoles with the exception of handhelds. Really, if Rockstar want a GTA game on the Wii, just let them do so Nintendo. The fact that they allow a fucking Deal or No Deal Game on the Wii and not GTA is just embarrassing.

The one other big issue with the games library is the "New Play Control!" This is nothing but GameCube games being re-released to support Wii controls, which to me is a shameful cash cow from Nintendo. These games were released just last generation on Nintendo's previous console and they think it's necessary to release them again so soon. The GameCube controllers are fine as they are, they don't need to have Wii controls to be any better, even Metroid Prime 1 and 2. I mean, what was wrong with the GameCube controls?! Nothing! Nintendo needs to learn the phrase, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it!"

In conclusion, the Wii was looking good with its exclusives but it now has very little light and I highly doubt that light will last long. We have some games from Sega, a few more first-party exclusives and Nintendo pointlessly re-releasing GameCube games on the Wii. It's a shame the Wii didn't meet its expectations really well and the console truly deserves a lot more than this. And yes, I'm aware I haven't mentioned one particular series of exclusives for the Wii. Next up, Wii _____ games!

Virtual Console

2009-10-19T23:17:00.002+01:00

Originally posted on 27/04/09
Original rant entry: #03

Welcome to the second part of the Wii rant. Previously, I commented on how ridiculous the price of the accessories are, the pointless features the console has, the small ass hard drive space and a few other things about the Wii itself. The second part of the Wii rant will be on Virtual Console.

Like I said previously, Virtual Console is (or maybe I should say was in some cases) a great opportunity for myself and other gamers to pick up old games we missed out on. Although there were already other ways to catch-up on old games such as NES re-releases on the GBA, Final Fantasy ports on PS1 and GBA, etc., Virtual Console have games that haven't had a re-release before such as Super Metroid, which was a game I was dying to play ever since I got into the Metroid franchise.

Initially, I (and perhaps others) thought there'd be most, if not, all the titles from NES, SNES and N64 as soon as the console was launched. Too bad Nintendo decided to take another path by releasing 3 - 5 games every week and then every fortnight when WiiWare was launched. While it made it exciting to find out which would be the next game to be released on Virtual Console, it's now coming to the point where they're slowing down and doing nothing but testing people's patience.

Sure, they've released most of the most well known titles from NES and SNES and some of N64, but the keywords here are most and some, not all. This means we've yet to see games like Battletoads, Earthbound, GoldenEye, Star Fox and more and it's beginning to piss people off, especially myself. Besides agreements on releasing games and shit, I cannot see why Nintendo can't release the majority of the previous generation games right away.

Earthbound, this one has been debated about A LOT on the internet. There could be a whole rant on why not releasing Earthbound on Virtual Console is bullshit but to keep it short, would Nintendo rather have people downloading the ROM of it or paying 800 Nintendo points for the game on Virtual Console? The only other option would be to spend over $75 on the original SNES cartridge, but unless there's a toploader for the SNES, the Europeans/Australians wouldn't be able to play this game on their console.

Star Fox, a well known franchise and since Star Fox 64 is on VC, why not release the first of the series? After playing Star Fox 64, I would love to play the original game. It's very surprising that this game has yet to be released on Virtual Console.

Battletoads and GoldenEye, although they were developed by Rare who are now owned by Microsoft, it's still a wonder why there isn't any actual word on them being released on Virtual Console. Supposedly, Nintendo have the right to release anything from their previous consoles on Virtual Console, no matter if a game company is now part of Sony or Microsoft. If that's the case, you wonder what's holding them up. They've released the Donkey Kong Country games, so shouldn't they have thought of releasing other Rareware games by now? Oh, and it doesn't matter if Rare's with Microsoft now, Nintendo still have some rights over these games.

I won't go on asking why each and every NES/SNES/N64 game isn't released on Virtual Console yet, but I will say that it's ridiculous how we've got to wait so long for certain games to come out or may not even see certain games coming out to give gamers such as myself a chance to catch-up on what we've missed on. Sure, there's always the option to get the actual consoles and the game cartridges, but:

1) As someone who missed out on the NES, SNES and N64, I thought it was convenient to catch-up on all the must-play games with just the one console, the Wii;
2) Getting the consoles and all the must-have games is going to cost so much money, especially when there's many games that are very rare nowadays.

There is one other major problem with Virtual Console and that's excluding the hard drive space problem. This is the fact that PAL gamers are FUCKED IN THE ASS for most VC games. Why so, you may ask? The majority of pre-N64 games are forced to run on 50Hz rather than 60Hz. Therefore, the games run on a slower frame rate and the music is slower as well. Mega Man 2 is a great example. Compare the PAL version to NTSC. This game has some of the finest music in video game industry, but was butchered to death by the PAL conversion and IT'S COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT!

You're saying that a problem which occurred to PAL users only years back is still happening on a console which was launched in 2006?! You'd expect them to fix the issue, especially when you can play the games from Sonic Mega Collection and such in 60Hz, but it seems they didn't care/try one fucking bit. The sad thing is, even the Sonic games from Virtual Console run slower, but from a compilation game, it runs at the right refresh rate. You know what? NINTENDO HAVE NO FUCKING EXCUSE AS TO WHY THESE GAMES CAN'T RUN ON 60HZ FOR PAL USERS!!!

This is yet another reason why people may resort to playing these games on an emulator rather than buying them from Virtual Console. This is also why I've been reluctant to buying any other pre-N64 game from the store. As a matter of fact, besides the N64 titles Star Fox 64 and F-Zero X, the last old games I bought from there were Mega Man 2 and Super Metroid together last summer. I'd be willing to buy more games from Virtual Console if Nintendo solved this issue, but from the looks of it, they don't seem to give a shit at all. It's even worse when they've barely released any more games over the last few months. So yeah, thanks for ignoring us, fuckheads.

In conclusion, Virtual Console had so much potential for those who missed out on previous game consoles, but Nintendo completely ruined it by taking far too long to release certain games and making some games a nightmare to play thanks to PAL conversion bullshit which shouldn't have even happened in the first place. These two factors do nothing but disappoint gamers and most likely encourage them to get emulators instead of purchasing the games from their store. If Nintendo want more people to buy games from their store, they really need to release old games more frequently as well as solving the PAL issues for the applicable games.

Stay tuned, we still have more to go.

Nintendo Wii

2009-10-15T14:16:00.004+01:00

Originally posted on 14/04/09
Original rant entry: #02

In the beginning, I was hyped for the Wii and so were many others. The Wii Remote was a great idea from Nintendo and the ability to download older games from the Wii Shop was also great. Well, to those who missed out on previous generations, that is. Sadly, I never owned a NES, SNES or even a N64 (though I considered it, I ended up wanting a PS1 instead) and when I heard the Wii would allow people to download games from those consoles as well as others, I was really excited as I would finally have the chance to play games such as Mega Man 2 and Super Metroid, which are considered as classics by many.

Of course, the major titles such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime 3 were to be excited for as well, most especially how they would go with the Wii Remote. The idea of trying to get different kind of people into gaming wasn't such a bad idea back then since Nintendo wanted to get more people into gaming. So as time went on and more information on the Wii were revealed, I was more excited about the console and couldn't wait to get the console. However, things went wrong as soon as the console was released.

When the Wii was launched, there was a huge shortage of stock (most especially in the UK) of the console for reasons I'm not aware of, but I'm pretty sure Nintendo can't come up with any good excuses, especially when they released it near fucking Christmas when millions were wanting to get it. Most were unable to get a Wii that Christmas and either had to wait until they were back in stock or get something else such as the DS or even a PS3 or Xbox 360, thus giving Nintendo's competitors an advantage, which is what competitive companies should be avoiding at all costs.

What's more, when it was Christmas 2007, there were even more stock problems and the shops were fully stocked with Wiis that summer. There was even more struggle to get hands on a Wii and once again, people were unlucky enough to miss out on getting a Wii for the second time running. Fortunately, it's now easy to get a Wii, but having such shortage of stock for both holidays is a big fuck up by Nintendo.

As for the prices, the Nintendo Wii itself is at a decent price, which is £180. Although the console isn't technically as powerful as the Xbox 360 and PS3, seeing it at a price lower than its competitors when it was launched was good to know. Sadly, if you're wanting to get all the accessories you want, prepare to take out a lot of money out of your wallet as the Wii Remote with the nunchuck is £40 each and that's a ridiculous price for a controller. No-one should have to spend far too much money for more accessories when they've spent at least £150 for the console itself already.

The controllers have one huge problem and that's being run on AA batteries. No-one should have to keep buying AA batteries or buying special rechargers for these controllers, especially when you may have four of them. Why can't it be nice and simple by having USB rechargers like the PS3 does? This would take away the purpose of purchasing batteries or another accessory for the console.

The other problem with the Wii controllers is how most game developers handle the controls with the Wiimote. While some games like Mario Kart Wii do a great job with it, others have done terrible. Some set out the controls for their games so bad it feels like they didn't even think for one second "You know, these controls don't feel right. Should we revise the controls for this game?" The game developers that don't seem to test the controllers for the Wii really should be more careful with how they handle the Wiimote controls as making them feel awkward to use is only going to put people off from playing their games.

The Nintendo Wii came with such pointless features such as the News channel, Weather channel and Photo Channel. Honestly, what were they thinking with these ideas? They have absolutely nothing to do with gaming and the space they wasted on this crap should have been saved for something that would have benefited the games. If someone with common sense wanted to check on the latest news/weather forecast, they'd read the newspaper, watch the news on TV or have a look on news websites such as BBC.co.uk. The Photo Channel is nothing but a shitty image editor which has a little amount of things to do. You're much better off editing pictures on a GOOD image editor such as Photoshop or GIMP.

The main issue about the Wii not being technically as powerful as the PS3 or 360 is how some games have to be stripped down in graphics or even gameplay just so it can be on the Wii. One example is what Tomb Raider Underworld on the Wii is like compared to the PC, PS3 and 360 ports. On the Wii version of that game, the graphics and gameplay was actually different to the other ports. Although I've yet to come across any other games that have had these sort of problems, I'm sure there are some out there that have had similar issues.

Another big problem with the Wii is how small the hard drive space is. Whoever bought a lot of stuff from Virtual Console/Wii Ware would have to delete stuff from the Wii to make space. The primary storage of the Wii is only 512 MB and that's at least 40x smaller than the hard drive space both the PS3 and 360 have. I'd much rather have it convenient by storing more than enough space for dozens of games.

In conclusion, the Wii had great potential and it has some good uses, but it's been brought down by ridiculous prices for the accessories, pointless features, poorly set out controls for most games, small hard drive and this is what someone gets after going through all the trouble to get his/her hands on the console. This is just the first rant on this particular console.

Nintendo DS

2009-10-12T22:00:00.002+01:00

Originally posted on 25/05/2009
Original rant entry: #06

Previously, I took down the Nintendo DSi for being an abomination to the gaming industry and now we're going onto the Nintendo DS itself. Now let me start off by saying I don't hate the DS. As a matter of fact, it's a good handheld. Sadly, there are a few things about the DS that are simply unforgivable.

The main issue, the one no-one was happy to hear about, was Game Boy and Game Boy Color games not compatible with the DS. This sure pissed me off when there are GB and GBC games I still wish to play from time to time and I was hoping the DS would support all four platforms. As the successor of the Game Boy Advance, you'd have expected the DS to support them all. Too bad Nintendo went against that and said "It's not an actual Game Boy, so it only supports GBA games." Fuck that shit, it's still a Game Boy to me except with two screens and not having Game Boy in the name.

The lack of support for GB and GBC games on the DS was a terrible idea since if I wanted to play any games from those two platforms, I'll have to get out my original GBA, which is scratched to death and has no backlight and it's really awkward for me to play games on the old GBA now. Sure, the Game Boy Advance SP can play all these games but really, I shouldn't have to get another console just to play games that should have been backward compatible on a newer console. However, this is something I have to resort to eventually.

Now I'm fully aware the Nintendo 64 can't play NES or SNES games and the Super Nintendo can't play NES games, but when you consider the GBC was able to play GB games and the GBA was able to play both GB AND GBC games yet the DS can't play GB or GBC games, that's just fucked up. Sure, it may have a GBA slot unlike a certain piece of shit called the DSi, but COME ON!

As for the Nintendo DS games library, it's actually better than the Wii and there's a lot of noteworthy games out there such as Mario Kart DS, Metroid Prime Hunters (even though I think it's a piece of shit) and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl and even recent titles such as Chrono Trigger, GTA: Chinatown Wars and Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, so the DS has good support with major games.

However, the DS also suffers a similar problem with the Wii: SHOVELWARE OVERLOAD! Seriously, the DS has so much shitty games out there it's unbelievable. There's loads of Disney games (e.g. High School Musical, Hannah Montana and similar crap), Deal or No Deal, cooking guides, "What's Cooking with Jamie Oliver" AND A MOTHERFUCKING CORONATION STREET GAME! Honestly, why fucking Jamie Oliver and Coronation Street? Why did the game developers think it would be a good idea to make games based on a douchebag/crappy soap opera that gives Britain a bad name?! These examples of worthless games are enough to tell you that there is so much shit on the DS.

One last thing about games for the DS, game developers need to realise that the DS isn't cut out for first-person shooter games. Having to use the touchscreen to aim where you want to shoot as well as tapping on the screen/pressing a button isn't very pleasant. I know this very well after playing Metroid Prime Hunters where my hands were in agony after 15 minutes playing it. I won't be surprised if I get a similar problem if I ever tried another FPS game on the DS such as anything from the Call of Duty franchise..

In conclusion, the Nintendo DS is a good console but the fact that it can't play GB or GBC games still pisses me and many others off even to this day. The games library is good with the exception of the shovelware overload and first-person shooter games should stay the hell away from this handheld as it will do no good to your hands. Despite that, it's good to see the DS is doing fairly well besides that worthless pile of crap known as the DSi.

Nintendo DSi

2009-10-07T22:52:00.005+01:00

Originally posted on 14/04/2009
Original rant entry: #01

So we begin with the Nintendo DSi, the third Nintendo DS console. There was the original release in 2004/2005 and then there was the DS Lite in 2006 which was just a smaller version of the DS. No real complaints about it since smaller size yet keeping the technical details intact was fair for those who didn't have a DS at the time. Three years later (for outside Japan), however, Nintendo announced yet another DS "update" called the DSi.

Sadly, the DSi is anything but an update to the DS Lite. It is a fucking downgrade from it and that's so for these two very reasons:

1) There is no GBA slot and has been made way for the SD card slot;
2) There is a camera, which the GBA slot is gone in favour for.

The first issue is really bad since I still play GBA games from time to time and so do many others and I'm still annoyed at how the DS can't play GB or GBC games. As an "update" of the DS Lite, Nintendo should have tried to make it compatible with GB and GBC game cartridges as well as keeping the GBA slot. If they did that, I would have traded in my original DS and get the Nintendo DSi right away, despite the stupid ass camera feature.

As for the camera feature, why? Just why? Why on earth did Nintendo even think of this dumbass idea? Handheld consoles are for playing games on, not for taking pictures and putting them onto your favourite social networking site. And on top of that, a 0.3 Megapixel camera is terrible and with £150 you could be spending on a DSi, you could get a 10 Megapixel camera with that money.

The only use the camera has are for the DSiWare games but by looking at the library right now, there's nothing worth getting. This just sounds like EyeToy all over again where the games compatible with that were only fun for a while and got boring really really quick. The only use the EyeToy has nowadays is for webcam (yes, it's possible to do that). The DSi on the other hand, if it were to be used for a webcam, I'd rather use the EyeToy or better yet, the built-in webcam on my laptop which may not be fantastic but gets the job done.

Another (pointless) feature the DSi has is a music player. You'll be able to play music by having an SD card of any size, but sadly, that fails as you could actually use that SD card you're holding for the Creative Zen products and that has space for music and videos to begin with. So really, if one of the main reasons you're getting a DSi is for the music player, you might as well forget it and get a Creative Zen or an iPod instead. I'm sure as hell happy with my 120GB iPod Classic.

The only thing that would make the DSi actually worth getting is if there WILL be a handheld version of Virtual Console, where you can download GB and GBC games. This wouldn't be too bad for any games that are really hard to obtain these days as in a game where you'd be having to take out £40+ from your wallet in order to get it. However, I'm not sure how many rare GB/GBC games there are and I'd rather not get the DSi just to download the rare games. Even if they go ahead and release those games, they'll only take AAAAAAAAAAGES to release them all, just like the Wii's Virtual Console. I'd rather have a DS that can play the cartridges of those games! As a matter of fact, it's been almost a year since the release of the DSi for Japan and still no real word on a handheld Virtual Console.

In conclusion, the DSi is a complete and utter piece of shit that should have never seen the light of day. This is perhaps Nintendo's worst idea since Virtual Boy. Removing the GBA slot was a terrible mistake and they should have tried to make GB and GBC cartridges backwards compatible. The music player and camera features are extremely pointless since with £150, you might as well get a digital camera, an MP3 Player or even a PSP. Those three have way more value than the DSi.

I just hope Nintendo realise what a terrible mistake they made with the DSi but sadly, they'll only care what the casual gamers think and barely listen to their true fans who have been supporting them for years. I wouldn't say this is the last nail on the coffin for Nintendo but as far as their consoles go, they're getting there.