2014 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Tabe]

So my kids are getting to the stage where they are getting pretty decent at games so they are stepping up and trying to take on the legend that is Dad.

 

I downloaded Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the Wii U and my son thinks he can beat me when I take Sagat.  I hit him with the Tiger Uppercut so many times he'll need to do a rethink on that.

 

I tell him and his younger brother the same thing on that Godzilla Xbox game we still play.  NOBODY beats me as Gigan. 

Anytime my nephew starts talking trash after destroying me - yet again - in an FPS, I'll fire up a fighting game. It can be SF4, VF5, or whatever.  Even with a whole bunch of rust on my skills since i rarely play fighting games anymore, he ends up getting decimated.  His generation/group just doesn't really play that style of games much and so they are fairly foreign to him.  It's great.

[Big Fresh]

I think the only reasons this forum is as decent as it is is that we skew a bit older than most, and no one here really gives enough of shit about video games to argue about them.  Dedicated gaming forums are all a goddamned Boschian nightmare.

 

It really bugs me when people accuse sites like IGN or Gamestop of being paid off because they didn't like a game quite as much as you or liked it more than you did. Yeah, stuff like Call of Duty isn't for me, but are they extroidinarily well-crafted games that deserve high scores? Yep. Fucking assholes....

[Big Fresh]

X-Box One is officially a better deal than Playstation 4 (at least between September 7-13). Buy the console, get any $60 you want for free. Yes, even Destiny. Plus, remember the console has dropped to $400 without Kinect.

 

www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/04/buy-an-xbox-one-get-a-free-game

[MarcosLoura]

If you want to read something about #GamerGate and these last 2 "fantastic" weeks in vidya games, without walking neck deep through canals of internet waste, read this:

 

 http://ogeeku.com/2014/08/31/war-over-zoe-quinn-nowinners/

[Zimbra]

If you want to read something about #GamerGate and these last 2 "fantastic" weeks in vidya games, without walking neck deep through canals of internet waste, read this:

 

 http://ogeeku.com/2014/08/31/war-over-zoe-quinn-nowinners/

 

That's a pretty horseshit, one-sided article that elides some pretty major facts.  Don't read that.

 

 

 

I think the only reasons this forum is as decent as it is is that we skew a bit older than most, and no one here really gives enough of shit about video games to argue about them.  Dedicated gaming forums are all a goddamned Boschian nightmare.

 

It really bugs me when people accuse sites like IGN or Gamestop of being paid off because they didn't like a game quite as much as you or liked it more than you did. Yeah, stuff like Call of Duty isn't for me, but are they extroidinarily well-crafted games that deserve high scores? Yep. Fucking assholes....

 

 

More sites need to do away with the numeric review score altogether.  

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

I love how that article defends being labeled like it should be a positive thing. "Come on, guys, just come back and embrace identifying as a demographic!"

 

Also, a friend of mine made a funny point about trying to contextualize this: Imagine a group of people calling themselves Filmers who hail Brett Ratner as a supreme artist and bitch about documentary makers. Michael Bay fans screaming "FUCK JIM JARMUSCH!"

 

I make jokes because otherwise I get depressed about this situation and the people that are getting too scared to ever speak out, or to ever make games, or to admit they like games because they're not in blind love with the status quo.

[BurningBeard]

So, couldn't find Dead Space 1 and 2 in the sale on PSN so got Deadly Premonition and Splinter Cell Trilogy on the cheap instead

 

As for the whole gamergate bullshit, the only two decent op-eds I've read around the whole thing are

Here: http://badassdigest.com/2014/08/31/why-i-feel-bad-for-and-understand-the-angry-gamergate-gamers/

and here: http://midnightresistance.co.uk/articles/plight-grown-ass-gamer

 

The reasons for their attitude and views does tend to amount to 'games are predominantly played by boys going through puberty' - how do you reason with a shit slinging howler monkey who is going through puberty and exists on Monster energy drinks? Trying to explain why they're wrong just seems to throw fuel on the fire. Online gaming and the gaming 'community' often feels like some sub-Lord of the Flies bullshit which is why I keep my distance from it

[Guest The Magnificent 7]

 

I tell him and his younger brother the same thing on that Godzilla Xbox game we still play. NOBODY beats me as Gigan.

Holy shit, I loved those games. I wish they still made them.

 

 

Yeah I can't understand why whoever has the license didn't make a new one with the success of the Godzilla movie this summer.  They are a ton of fun and simple controls mean the Wii U would be an ideal home for it. 

[GojiColin]

I think the only reasons this forum is as decent as it is is that we skew a bit older than most, and no one here really gives enough of shit about video games to argue about them.  Dedicated gaming forums are all a goddamned Boschian nightmare.

 

I remember when I first came to this board there was a guy who was a reviewer for IGN that used to post here.  I remember we got into a couple of arguments, mostly in the vein of me arguing that my favorite obscure jRPG deserved way better then the mere 7 it got; whereas he pointed out that a 7 is in fact not a bad score.

 

That's one of the few things I'm happy to see die with the old boards

[Raziel]

So, playing Dead Space now.  I've been playing Survival Horror games for neigh on 20 years now, I'm used to jump scares, but damn if this game isn't trying its damndest to get me.  

 

This is one of those games, that while checking off every Horror/Sci-Fi game trope in the list, still manages to be fun and engrossing and keeping me playing.

 

Although I wish I hadn't read reviews of 3 because now I'm gonna be dissappointed when I get there.  But then again, I found Mass Effect 3's ending enjoyable even though there's still endless bitching about it.  (Not saying people are unfairly bitching about DS3, I haven't gotten there yet and will reserve judgement until I get there myself.)

[Andrew POE!]

I think the only reasons this forum is as decent as it is is that we skew a bit older than most, and no one here really gives enough of shit about video games to argue about them.  Dedicated gaming forums are all a goddamned Boschian nightmare.

 

Yeah, unless the topic of The Last Of Us comes up then -- look out.

[Jiji]

He's gone now though.

[Raziel]

The Last of Us, the most polarizing game of all time.

[MarcosLoura]

 

If you want to read something about #GamerGate and these last 2 "fantastic" weeks in vidya games, without walking neck deep through canals of internet waste, read this:

 

 http://ogeeku.com/2014/08/31/war-over-zoe-quinn-nowinners/

 

That's a pretty horseshit, one-sided article that elides some pretty major facts.  Don't read that.

 

 

I was going to try and stay away from this whole thing because I started reading shit about it on August 16 and honestly I'm felling burned out, but fuck it. Why do you think the article is horseshit and one-sided and what are the pretty major facts omitted?

[Zimbra]

 

 

If you want to read something about #GamerGate and these last 2 "fantastic" weeks in vidya games, without walking neck deep through canals of internet waste, read this:

 

 http://ogeeku.com/2014/08/31/war-over-zoe-quinn-nowinners/

 

That's a pretty horseshit, one-sided article that elides some pretty major facts.  Don't read that.

 

 

I was going to try and stay away from this whole thing because I started reading shit about it on August 16 and honestly I'm felling burned out, but fuck it. Why do you think the article is horseshit and one-sided and what are the pretty major facts omitted?

 

 

The first half of the article is entirely an attack on Quinn, while the constant stream of harassment, abuse and threats that people like Quinn, Sarkeesian, Mattie Brice, and Jenn Frank (Look 'em up on twitter, they write good stuff) have received get downplayed into a bullet point.  It conflates this abuse with the criticism JonTron received for including a pornographic cartoon of Quinn in one of his videos, a fact it fails to mention entirely.  It also leaves out most of the other bad behavior that's gone on, like 4chan encouraging people to create fake accounts posing as minorities to support their attacks, which were about as nuanced and sensitive as you can imagine.  This all makes their "Gee, shucks, can't we all just have fun and play games?" conclusion pretty disingenuous when they ignore behaviors that make gaming an unsafe and unfun space for large swaths of the population.

 

I'm not trying to attack you or put you on blast at all; you seem like a perfectly good dude.  I just didn't want anyone to think that article was a fair or even-handed accounting of events.

 

 

 

I think the only reasons this forum is as decent as it is is that we skew a bit older than most, and no one here really gives enough of shit about video games to argue about them.  Dedicated gaming forums are all a goddamned Boschian nightmare.

 

I remember when I first came to this board there was a guy who was a reviewer for IGN that used to post here.  I remember we got into a couple of arguments, mostly in the vein of me arguing that my favorite obscure jRPG deserved way better then the mere 7 it got; whereas he pointed out that a 7 is in fact not a bad score.

 

That's one of the few things I'm happy to see die with the old boards

 

 

Shit, I remember that guy.  Didn't he have the same joshi avatar forever?  He had some capital-O Opinions about video games.

[Big Fresh]

The Last of Us, the most polarizing game of all time.

 

You misspelled "greatest".

[Niners Fan in CT]

I am so happy to have no f'n clue what you guys are talking about.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

And now a topic diversion with popular opinions!

 

I bought this game on sale, and regret it. My current theory is that anyone who likes SUPER MARIO 3D LAND would fuck a corpse, and haven't been given an opportunity.

 

To clarify, I think the best Mario game is SMB3, which is a game about a massively confusing world full of weird secrets. Actual secrets. Like, deeply complicated techniques to do things you didn't think the game could actually do. I love that shit. It makes every world feel like a real place because there's not just one understood route, and there's nuances in those routes. And the game doesn't tell you shit about them, unlike Super Mario World (flashing dots on the world map mark levels with secret exits).

 

The world map in SM3DL is literally a straight line. That's where we're at. Oh, but there's a (SUPER OBVIOUS) secret path that's a warp pipe from 1-2 to 2-1! Oh, I remember that! I remember when a mario game had that! hahaha, I am playing a mario game and they know I have played one!

 

The number of times I have yelled "WHY DO YOU HATE MARIO" at SM3DL breached a dozen today.

 

 

Also I started playing The Minish Cap and it's the first time I've enjoyed a Zelda game, so, that's cool.

[Zimbra]

I go back and forth about whether SMB3 or SMW is my favorite Mario game.  3 has the edge in incredibly tight level design, but definitely has some clunkers.  And SMW is such a big world filled with weird shit that rewards exploration and experimentation.

[Salads]

(to BL88) Ooooh. I remember thinking your Gears of War summary in the Gotg sub-forum was Tim Rogers-ey, and he made the exact same argument about SMB3/SMW secrets. And even he loves 3D Land.

 

Firstly, there's nowt wrong with SMW flagging its secrets. SMB3 was an arcade assault course with secrets. SMW was a platform adventure about finding them. The reward for finding those secrets was the rest of the game you spent crazy 90s prices on. SMB3 gave you warp whistles and the like because you started from scratch every time you turned it on and the 'hold your nose and turn around twelve times' method of getting some of them was its better integrated version of the Konami code. You don't have to find them and you arguably aren't meant to, but if you don't find any of the secrets in SMW you can't even get to Bowser. Also, I remember taking ages to find the exit to my final course with a big signpost telling me where it was (both on the world map and in the level!), and I don't think my satisfaction would have been enhanced if instead of looking for that exit on Cheese Bridge all I knew was that it was somewhere across the seventy one courses I already had. Even as a kid I wouldn't have bothered.

 

Secondly you say you like it when games have super-obscure secrets. Cool. I like it when a voice announces the name of the game on the title screen, but I don't accuser players who like games without that feature of being corpse-fuckers.

 

Thirdly, the world map in SMB was literally a straight line. It isn't 'where we're at', it's where we've already been, though your warp pipe comment suggests the complaint could now switch to 'Nintendo out of ideas world map relies on nostalgia'. This isn't a Doom Map then > COD map now scenario. Reminds me of when NSMBW came out and people were were making the same 'didn't feel like a cohesive world' complaint on the grounds that the world maps were separate and didn't scroll into each other like like SMW because they were reaching so hard they forgot about every Mario Bros game prior.

[Basara]

Super Mario World is definitely my favorite Mario game ever, hell it might be my favorite game ever. But that's probably nostalgia talking. I get that 90% of the Mario games have the same straight line map layout but i would be lying if i didn't say i was a little disappointed every time i play a new Mario game and the world map isn't like SMW. I think i spent more time playing that game as a kid than i did any other.

 

I liked SM3DL even if it was a little easy. I cant complain though since i got it free when i brought my 3DS. (an offer at the time, if you brought a 3DS with Mario kart between certain dates you got a download code for SM3DL for free, a happy coincidence)

 

I'm also currently playing New Super Mario Bros 2 that i got a couple of weeks back. again a little easy like 3D Land was but that seems to be the trend with Mario games now? you can accumulate 100s of lives without really trying. In my day they made you work for it!

 

P.S i don't fuck corpses

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

This is one of those times where I remember I speak with declaratives because to me "in my opinion" is a given part of a conversation until data comes up. I am writing it, ergo it is my opinion, so I do not take time to state "IN MY OPINION FUCKING CORPSES" or whatever. I realize doing that would make it easier for people to go "pssh whatever" and I've had this knowledge for years and I still do things this way, so, I'm sorry for offending and please understand that I don't mean to.

 

In my defense, I said "theory." Haven't tested it yet. </toosoonjoke>

 

In order!

 

0: for someone who keeps using "tim rogers-y" as a negative, you sure seem to know a lot about things tim rogers has said. also he likes all sorts of shit I think is terrible, and vice versa. this is how a relationship with a critic is supposed to work.

 

1: There's nothing objectively wrong with doing anything with a game's design, just as there's nothing objectively wrong with finding those decisions distasteful. It's an aesthetic disagreement. And with the number of people I've talked to the last few days about 3D Land and what the best Mario games are, I'm outnumbered. I still think it's horrific design, and it upsets me because their whole approach with Mario is kid-friendly, and pushing bad design to children will lead to aspiring game developers with nostalgia for bad design. Nintendo's design process right now is all about keeping experiences static for generations who will experience something for their first time (see Mario Kart and how little that changes), and I think they're careless about that and it's making for worse and worse games with grim consequences. 3DLand is this problem as one game.

 

Also, SMB3 could not have done battery save like SMW. That's a hardware limitation and a SUPER unfair criticism to level against it.

 

2: Fair.

 

3: We call a trend like that "regression." SMB1/2 didn't have overworlds, so it's weird to cite them as a defense for afterthought overworlds. It feels like this game has an overworld because the In-House Mario Bible dictates that these games have overworlds, and they've rationalized that this counts. You take out the overworld conceit and I'd be having an awesome time with this game! I wouldn't be constantly questioning "why am I spending so much time not playing this game when there's nothing to actually see here?" The moment I start wondering about why someone has made a game a certain way is the moment I stop enjoying my time with a game*. Like, I don't really know how to describe the thing about Nuclear Throne that makes me want to play it until society stops, because I don't ever have to ask those questions. It just feels... coherent. Super Mario 3D Land feels really incoherent and that gives me time to pick apart little things that keep me from playing in stride.

 

*this is not necessarily about fun. Gone Home's mechanics work excellently for what they're doing and I don't know that I'd call it fun.

 

3a: I HATE referential humor. Referential humor is the fastest way to get me to dismiss whatever I'm experiencing at a given moment. That's the only reason the warp pipe thing came up. Everyone has a critical vexing point in humor/writing, and mine is "remember this other thing?"

 

So yeah. Much more reasonable, much less wild swinging ad-hoc.

[MarcosLoura]

 

The first half of the article is entirely an attack on Quinn, while the constant stream of harassment, abuse and threats that people like Quinn, Sarkeesian, Mattie Brice, and Jenn Frank (Look 'em up on twitter, they write good stuff) have received get downplayed into a bullet point.  It conflates this abuse with the criticism JonTron received for including a pornographic cartoon of Quinn in one of his videos, a fact it fails to mention entirely.  It also leaves out most of the other bad behavior that's gone on, like 4chan encouraging people to create fake accounts posing as minorities to support their attacks, which were about as nuanced and sensitive as you can imagine.  This all makes their "Gee, shucks, can't we all just have fun and play games?" conclusion pretty disingenuous when they ignore behaviors that make gaming an unsafe and unfun space for large swaths of the population.

 

I'm not trying to attack you or put you on blast at all; you seem like a perfectly good dude.  I just didn't want anyone to think that article was a fair or even-handed accounting of events.

 

 

 

 

 

To me the most interesting thing about the article was that it read more like a timeline than a in-depth critique of the various topics brought up in the last 2 weeks.

 

 I'll try to be succinct about my thoughts about this:

 

Prior to this,

 

- I had no idea who Zoe Quinn was.

- I had clicked on about 2-3 Kotaku articles and heard about them about 5 other times and had never heard/read about Gamasutra, Polygon etc.

- I had read Sarkeesian's name about 2 times (and thought tehehe that's a silly name).

- I had no idea that the indie video game scene was such a drama volcano.

- I knew Phil Fish because Phil Fish (and mainly this video which I think is really good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w)

 

What I learned,

 

- Zoe Quinn doesn't seem like a good person and it's kinda sad that some many people look up to her as a beacon of social justice. Of course I don't condone any kind of harassment directed to her or anyone involved in this no matter what "side" they are/were (Anita, Jenn Frank, TotalBiscuit, Boogie2988, Phil Fish or even dumb ass JonTron).

- Anita Sarkeesian's (tehehe) has a good show and I liked watching it, but I liked some critiques about it more (example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGQxJrPK92g)

- Anything positive about this was drowned by the massive ongoing flame war because extremists decided do dig trenches and set up barricades and started throwing shit to the other side and a lot of "innocent" people got shitted on. This whole thing will have to die down before any meaningful discussion happens.

- Twitter is a garbage medium for any kind of discussion.

 

What impact this had in my life,

 

- Minimal, next to zero, even though it had my interest for some days.

- I discovered some people that I found interesting (http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s6j3sh and http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s644c0) and follow some that I knew more attentively.

 

Just a final though, don't lump 4chan under a single banner of evilness. It's the same site that has an amazing /lgtb/board and /pol/ where every thread is about TheJewsDidIt,andTheFemNazis watched plus amazing waifu wars.

[Big Fresh]

So..... the Jews didn't do it???

[Larry Rydell]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/sega-claims-gearbox-mismanaged-aliens-colonial-mar/1100-6422087/

 

Not a good two weeks for Randy Pitchford and Gearbox, as Sega settles with the Aliens: Colonial Marines plaintiffs and throws Gearbox under the bus in the process, blaming them for the delays and why the demo looked nothing like the eventual game, and Randy gets shit on by Twitter for not announcing Borderlands 3.