The Zelda timeline. Why?

The biggest clusterfuck of the century.

For years and years, those lovely geniuses at Nintendo didn’t care about a little thing called continuity. And why should they? If they can crank out lovely well-crafted stories about a once silent white woman who now cares about pleasing a guy called “ADAM”, we shouldn’t ever want them to care either.

The Zelda franchise is a series of games that have no real continuity whatsoever. Every game in the series has such disconnected stories, it’s hard to take any of it into serious consideration. But it was fun for Zelda fans to try and connect all the dots. This is the magic of entertainment. It left us to do all the piecing together, while the developers create more products for us to dive into our own imaginations. But, like all hardcore, the Zelda fanboys ruined everything and decided to go to war on the internet over theories being “correct”. It wasn’t enough to just come up with your own theory and leave it at that, but the elitist jackasses on the forums didn’t give a fuck about “imaginations”. Imagination was for pussies. Having the CORRECT imagination made you a man.
There was even a youtube video of a guy named “Ocarinahero10” who literally wanted to petition to make an official timeline when he emailed Nintendo and was told exactly what was the truth. “There was no timeline”. He freaked the fuck out over it. All those years  of not chasing tang had left his world shattered. There just HAD to be an official timeline! His pride and ego would not allow all of his had work of using his imagination to go to waste! Because having no timeline would invalidate his sense of self-worth in life. So he gathered around some fans…. just to get a timeline.

Merry fucking christmas, hero of musical flutes

Feast your eyes on Yurugu’s mistake! Out of fear of the insanity of the Zelda fanbase, Nintendo caved in and ruined what was considered a fun hobby for us real Zelda fans and decided to give them the holy bible of Hyrule! Released in 2012 (convenient year to give this fanbase religion, no?), the fanbase went into a frenzy. Not exactly a war, but a celebration! This is mainly because most of the fan theories that had been shat out of an ass… was mutated into this timeline.

Damn near everything the fans came up with, word for word, was copied and pasted into this book just to give them an aphrodisiac. Hardcore gamers have huge egos. Good developers know how to stroke them if they want to stay on their good sides. Nintendo “saving” Bayonetta is a good way to get on their good sides (even though it will fail). So now everyone is happy with this split timeline nonsense. Not to mention a 3rd timeline which is based on Link getting his ass beat by Ganon at the end of OoT.

He should’ve listened to that fairy.

Lets rundown the timeline

1. Skyward Sword is the beginning, which explains why Link is a total pussy.

2. Minish Cap is next. I guess Link and Zelda had children or… something.

3. Four Swords….. wha?

4. Fanboy Wet Dream Ocarina of Time.

SPLIT!

5. Child Timleline. Includes Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess.

6. Adult Timeline. Includes all the toony shit that killed the series.

7. Failure Timeline. Includes all of the 2D games not produced by Aonuma

Notice that? Aonuma conveniently made a 3rd timeline to express his contempt for games he himself is shit at.

Your rewards are PUZZLES! AONUMA STYLE!

Fuck this timeline. Now the fanbase has a nice new cleaver of elitism. Since this is originally the fanbase’s work officially plagiarized, the fanbase’s E-Peen is now in a state of constant orgasmic charges. As such, it’s quite sensitive to criticism and must be defended at all costs. DO NOT QUESTION this timeline! EVER! Lest you wish to feel the fucking fury of being labeld a simpleton who can’t understand “simple storyline concepts”. It’s simple enough to understand this is something YOU came up with, and can’t ever be arsed to admit that, because now it’s been made official. Why give a fuck?

What was the point of this timeline? It couldn’t have been to make the tiny minority of Zelda fans who give 2 fractions of a fuck about…. happy. How about focusing on making a GOOD Zelda game  instead of adding Four Swords spinoffs into the equation of official status. Tell me where did Link get Epona from in a Link to the Past to the Oracle games?  Why is Twinrova alive? Why is Minish Cap a part of the timeline when it has very little relevance in the series overall? Why make a split timeline period? Nintendo was not using their brains in the whole matter of creating this shitty book.

But of course, I will be wrong! Nintendo said it is official, therefore it holds true! Yet the same assholes won’t admit that Samus is a pussy who can’t face Ridly even though the bitch fought him like 5 times in a row prior to Other M.

If this isn’t the real Samus, then Aonuma’s timeline isn’t the real timeline.

Zelda fans are in the same boat as any hardcore gamer. They take what the developers say as the gospel. Their words are absolute and anyone that says otherwise must be silenced. The developers are a renegade priesthood that must never be defied.  If you choose to do so, you must be destroyed. As a result, this timeline will get much love regardless of how shitty it is. It must be nice to be a Zelda fan. Oblivious to any objective view to something called “quality”. Looking at the LACK of an objective view for how terrible Skyward Sword really is, I can assume they are as blind as that thief in a Link to the past.

If naivete were a disability, the Zelda fanbase would get a full pension.

The inhumanity of Bayonetta’s exclusitivity.

This is also important.

Back in August/September (can’t remember), there was much ahem… “rage” in regards to the news that Bayonetta 2 would be exclusive to the Wii U.

I think it’s safe to say people hate it when sequels go to other consoles. There are several reasons  for this, but the most common reasons are.

1. Brand Loyalty.

2. Shit be expensive to buy multiple consoles.

I can feel their pain. Seeing as I played Godzilla on the gamecube, only to see the sequel go straight to the PS2, and played a multplatform Soul Calibur, while never having the sequels grace another platform that I owned (but we got that piece of shit Legends, fat lot of good that does me.)

Course, I don’t think people have to worry about Bayonetta, seeing as devs aren’t very loyal to Nintendo. Look at Capcom and how they stabbed Nintendo in the back several times on the gamecube. Viewtiful Joe and RE4 come to mind (especially when Mikami didn’t want that to happen, Capcom likes money. So… like fuck what Mikami wants). People raged that Wii would get Monster Hunter Tri and no one else…. until a PSP port came out. Samurai Warriors 3 was supposed to be exclusive… until an HD port came out (in Japan only!). People shouldn’t even have a piss fit over Bayonetta.  Nintendo did start playing the bribe game and the devs said that without Nintendo, the franchise wouldn’t have been saved.

Wait… saved?

Platinum Games doesn’t pay the bills, I swear. What else could we expect from a company that started with Okami, which bombed twice on consoles with the highest install bases of their generations? Have any of their games had any success? I could’ve sworn with all the fucking hype surrounding MadWorld, it would’ve shown that the company was capable of generating any real buzz. Unfortunately, MadWorld went out with a whimper. The only reason it got hype was because of the Wii stigma that the Hardcore shills buzzed around.

OVER COMPENSATION DOESN’T SELL!? I WILL RIP YOUR HEART OUT!

MadWorld itself was just a crappy attempt at “maturity”, a buzzword that people assume means blood and gore and tits. Hell mention the word “mature” in a pokemon forum. Bricks will be shat. The hardcore fail to realize that “Maturity” to your level of development. Your growth, both physically and mentally. Looking at how people react to a simple news post of video games (or a normal fucking opinion), MadWorld would easily appeal to the hardcore. They’re loud, brash, impulsive, and just as aggressive as this game is. Not to mention it’s precious art style mirroring that of Sin City.

The normal people saw through the Hardcore marketing (whatever marketing there was) and brushed off MadWorld, knowing how much of a try hard game that was. As expected, the hardcore will not admit that MadWorld was a failure and instead blames Wii Fit “suckers” for the game’s demise. Suddenly, there is no market for M-rated games on wii despite RE4’s great success on the console. But that’s just “name brand appeal”, which explains why Darkside Chronicles failed and caused Capcom proclaim the same bullshit. “No market for our wanna-be hollywood games”.

The Hardcore crowd needs to cut the bullshit and admit their AAA titles are just not appealing. No one was excited for Bayonetta because it looked like shit. Shameless main character with guns, tight leather suits, and a “sassy” personality. Probably has moments where she elevates women at the expense of men too, fulfilling the fantasies of feminists everywhere, which is all these “sassy” amazon women are good for.

Well… at least Bayonetta has a personality.

Long story short, if Bayonetta needed to be “saved”, it probably wasn’t worth saving. Usually, video games and tv shows that die out are usually because they are of low quality and weren’t bringing in the money. Nintendo latching onto Bayonetta is illogical. Why pay so much money to bring what will be a failure… to the Wii U?  Doesn’t your console need good launch games to attract people? All the Wii U has is this game, several $60 ports, a shitty Pikmin game, something called “Nintendo Land” where they turn Link into a fucking sock puppet…. and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge (probably my only reason to buy the console at a price drop, and that’s only for Momiji).

 

The star of my wet dreams.

*Pictured above*. A real Amazon woman. Knows how to kill shit, but isn’t a total bitch about her prowess. Why can’t more video game amazons be like Momiji? No, lets have more Chun Li’s and Mai Shiranui’s along with more Ayane’s. Bitches are much… much more appealing to western audiences (if Juri’s fame from Super Street Fighter 4 is anything to go by, damn I hate that bitch). Why can’t we have more women like Momiji? Kind-hearted, but aren’t total pushovers?

Oh right.

Anywho, the madness over Bayonetta’s exclusivity is nothing new to the world of gaming. But I do find it rather odd when it isn’t exclusive to a Sony console, then everyone isn’t cool. But when it is, no harm done. Sony exclusivity is a natural part of fucking nature. Otherwise, either Nintendo or Microsoft, a powerful elite has manipulated nature to serve their own interests. Therefore, Sonytards will FIGHT FOR FREEDOM to get what they want. Because dammit, they deserve every game produced to be on their console. Ever. Considering that Sony can hardly afford to make a PS4, they might as well start getting used to this.

 

Sonic is already like Mario, drowning popularity and the like.

Fuck you H.A.A.R.P

Before this AlphaOmegaChristianWrathSuperStorm hits my hometown and eventually ends my life, I might as well write this up now.

Ever since the dawn of 2006, Sonic fans have nosedived into the pit of insanity! Sega had crossed the moral event horizon. Sonic was finished!

It didn’t matter what Sega could do next to quell the tears of the Sonic fanbase. Pandora’s box was opened when a white woman kissed a corpse to turn it into a super saiyan! The franchise was fucking ruined. And nothing could change that.
Shadow’s “gangsta” attitude was already pushing it, and 06 sealed the deal. Yes folks, 2 games in an entire franchise is death.  And usually, it takes just 1 time to kill something. Look at Bloody Roar 4.

Yugo: WHAT DID YOU DO TO EIGHTING!?

So, since the end had finally come, like all hardcore gamers, the sonic fanbase had been convinced, and nothing would change their perception. The only conceivable way to “save the franchise” (as several million blog posts will tell you)…. is to sell the franchise to Nintendo.

Yes, the company that produced classics such as Metroid: Other M, Pikmin, and Zelda: Skyward Bore should be given a franchise that can still be salvaged. The logic behind this insane notion is that Sonic’s rival from the over-stated genesis/SNES “conflict”, Super Mario, has produced nothing but quality titles since the very beginning of the NES’s birth. Mario has never seen a bad game (we just pretended sunshine never happened).

The fanboys and viral marketers couldn’t be further from the truth. The reason Sonic’s popularity is already in the shitter…. was because Sonic tried to be exactly like Mario.

You see, there’s a strange phenomenon in the gaming world. When things go 3D, franchises seem to die easily. The transition to 3D is always rocky, but Nintendo is known as the only company who has ever been able to pull it off. I mean, Ocarina of Time sold 8 Million units! And those awards! It won GOTY 3 times in the same year! Did Sonic Adventure make GOTY?! Hell no! That means it sucked!

What didn’t Ocarina of Time do? Well, it certainly got a lot of awards and “revolutionized gaming” by giving people a lock on system for combat.

…….So why didn’t it sell N64’s? Why didn’t it sell 3DS’s? Fuck, wasn’t the fact that this game sold like shit the major contributing factor that led to the 3DS going through a price drop and leading to Nintendo’s massive profit loss of 970 million?

It really IS in the red!

The problem is because Ocarina of Time didn’t do shit for Nintendo except give Eiji Aonuma an inflated sense of self-worth that allowed him to unleash his magnificence that is Skyward Sword, officially turning the franchise into a giant fucking laughing stock (hell, it already was when Spirit Tracks wounded up in the bomba bin of Japan).

Thought I was making that shit up!?

I wouldn’t even fucking joke about wanting to sell Sonic to this company just because of a “perceived” quality of Mario games. If people thought Sonic sucks now, then great Amma I fear what Nintendo would do if those Olympics games are anything to go by.

The truth is Mario games aren’t of the highest quality as many people think. When Mario jumped into 3D, the same thing happened as with a lot of 2D franchises. It’s popularity declined. The N64 was only popular in a tiny sect of North America. And Mario 64 hardly got people interested in it’s silly 64bit power. Infact, Mario was already starting to suck even before Mario 64 came out.

Back when the SNES first released, Sonic was already kicking ass. Super Mario World came out and didn’t even put a dent in Sonic’s asskickery. Super Mario World was less popular than his first 3 outings on the NES. Shitty music, lack of any real new content (oh sure, Yoshi was cool. That’s it’s only real contribution) and a downgraded version of SMB3’s gameplay. Super Mario World 2 came out, and no one wanted that shit. Cutesy graphics (yes, this actually MATTERED back then) and you playing the role of a mutant baby sitter. Who thought this would be a success!? Oh right, that “genius” Shigeru Miyamoto!

He secretly wants to kill that little fucker.

Sit down kids for a little camping story.

You see, what eventually saved the SNES from a supreme ass beating were 2 games.

Super Street Fighter 2

And primarily, Donkey Kong Country.

You can ride rhinos!? FUCK YEAH!

DKC was a special treat that nearly saved Nintendo’s asses back in the 90’s. It was made by Rare, you know, that company that gave Nintendo that fucking awesome fighting game and FPS called GoldenEye? Yeah Nintendo fans, feel free to curse their names knowing THEY ensured you have to buy those shitty, unstable Xbox’s just to play Killer Instinct, costing you more money to rebuy that shit.

Anywho, due to DKC’s success in saving ass, Nintendo wanted Miyamoto to make a similar game using 32bit graphics. But Miyamoto was “above” using pseudo 3D graphics. In defiance, he made Yoshi’s Island to show he can make good games without good graphics. And the hardcore gamers believe this was a good decision. How well did Yoshi’s Island do? Oh wait, it didn’t! It didn’t even sell half as much as DKC. It didn’t even get SNES’s into people’s households. The game was a fluke.

Nintendo fans seem to be in a state of continual psychosis that makes them believe everything they love is an astounding success. That explains the praise of Super Metroid even though it also sold like shit (1 Million in the 90’s was nothing to write home about, considering Nintendo could produce numbers bigger than that). Miyamoto’s defiance proved nothing except his arrogance. He also designed the Virtual Boy… which failed. He made 2 Pikmin games… that failed (yet has the audacity to make a 3rd one). He designed the 3DS… which cost the company 900mil. He appointed Aonuma to be Mr. Zelda… who made Zelda go into the Bomba Bin.

BUT IT WAS THOSE MARKETERS, I’LL TELL YAH!

History dictates that this man should’ve been fired a long time ago. But Nintendo likes to protect their employees from the investors. Miyamoto has been made into an idol to be worshipped, which makes him a valuable asset to the company’s image, which is working nicely. But his image apparently runs a high price tag considering many of his recent projects end up being less than stellar.

But I would pay money to see him fight Tomonabu Itigaki with the Master Sword.

His 3D Mario games haven’t been making serious numbers to compete with his earlier Mario titles. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that people hate fetch quests. When you have to spend hours looking for keys or items just to progress through a level, people will curse the game, and usually it ends up failing. Look at Knuckles in the Adventure games. People LOATHE ENTIRELY! And Sega has yet to get that message. No one likes searching a level for some items. It’s not fun. It feels unnatural to progress through a level by having to find X number of the same item. It takes the fun out of conquering a tough level by turning it into a chug fest to backtrack areas several times, especially if nothing happens. So what happened to Mario? Miyamoto turns the entire goal of Mario into a fetch quest! It wasn’t enough looking for stupid Yoshi coins in SMW, lets make that the main goal for all Mario games produced!

BRILLIANT! *toasts*

What happened next? People stop buying Nintendo consoles for Mario games. And usually, that’s the main reason to get a Nintendo console. To play Mario. Most people don’t give 2 shits about Metroid. But now they don’t care about Mario either. And who the fuck could blame them with terrifying marketing like this!? Hory shiiit! I don’t want to buy Mario games anymore!

Iz diz fool srs? That commercial was funny, not gay!

And nintendo wonders why the game didn’t sell well.

During 2009, people believed that the Wii would stop selling because usually after 3 years, consoles stop selling. Then we got NSMBW that got people buying even more Wii’s. What the fuck happened here!?

This is what people saw when NSMBW was launched.

It was a giant wake-up call to the industry that people like games that appeared before this 3d gunk shit. What did Miyamoto do? Same thing with Yoshi’s Island. He wrote it off saying it was “nostalgia” and proceeded to insult people’s intelligence by including an instructional DVD with copies of Super Mario Galaxy 2… which bombed. Hate to break it to yah Ninty, but people also don’t like being treated like idiots. Which is why Fi is being considered the worst Zelda character… ever.

One of the things that tickles my soul is hearing people say that Mario has always stuck to his roots whereas Sonic has not. Really? I suppose running around really fast while collecting rings and kicking enemy ass along the way to the finish line is so… un-classic.

Above: Totally not the roots of Sonic.

If Nintendo fans honestly believe that running stages 6-8 times to find an item over and over again are sticking closely to Mario’s roots, then they must be nutty as squirrel shit. Shadow the Hedgehog was literally closer to Sonic’s roots than Mario Galaxy 2 was to Super Mario Brothers. Even with the guns. Give me a pp7 over that pussy water gun anyday.

The votes are in. Mario’s popularity waned when he jumped into 3D. Why? Gay ass commercials and fetch quests as the main goal of the games. Nintendo fans are easily pacified due to Nintendo’s “innocent’ seeming nature. It’s easy to forgive a company that doesn’t display a bad boy image. Sega was “rad” and brash, while Nintendo was “so friendly” with it’s marketing. It’s easier to bash Sonic than the laughing stock that is Mario Galaxy because…. Sonic’s a dick. And Mario just saves princesses.
But the truth is Sonic fans need to stop going overboard with such hyperbole as “Sega needing to sell Sonic to Nintendo”, because Nintendo would fucking ruin Sonic in ways a pedophile could ruin a child’s life. They would rape Sonic sans lube, and that’s before greasing their “friendly” creativity dicks with bacon fat and then leaving them to baste in an oven for 2 hours. That visual alone isn’t enough to describe the horrors of Miyamoto’s arrogance in making quality products.

Gaming was better when it was a Caterpillar, not a Monarch

Hardcore gamers are a fickle group of people. They should be featured in an issue of National Geographic for their estranged behavior on gaming message boards.

For one, the Hardcore are easily manipulated. There is no greater marketing than one where you give people an imaginary foe. It worked well for the war on terror as well as politics. Why not video games since most consumers of electronic media happen to be quite… well… stupid.

For the hardcore, it is the dreaded “casuals”. This term has never been used in such a negative fashion until the fucking Wii came out. Before then, it was used to describe a certain way you play video games. You play fighting games casually, I.E. you didn’t give a fuck about SRK or smashboards or other kinds of bullshit people use to exxagerate their sense of self-worth to a damn video game. Can you believe these jackoffs at Smashboards actually believe they contributed to the longevity of Smash Bros. Melee?

But aside from that, the reason why the “dreaded casuals” are so evil is because they apparently retard the “evolution of gaming”. IE, you would get more games like pac-man instead of more installments of Modern Borefare.

Pac-Man somehow winded up being confused with Ninja-bread Man as well as everything listed on the 3rd party wall of shame. And we get gamers (and even developers) who end up preaching about needing to become the saviors of gaming. IE, we need video games to evolve, and we can’t do it with these stupid children getting in our way.

Hardcore types (not exclusively gamers) are a cancer to any medium, be it books, movies, tv shows, comics, christianity, nationalism, college, you name it. They fucking ruin everything. If you’ve got a cool game and just want to talk about it or get something off your chest about what irked you in the game, DON’T! You will open the floodgates of hell!

Hardcore gamers see videogames as a Monarch Butterfly.  Monarchs, considered the most beautiful of all butterflies, are what I would call modern gaming of the 6th generation console war (arrogantly titled the PS2 era because it sold more). We won’t name gen 7 as the Wii era. Instead, it will be known as the HD era. It’s convenient and keeps us in dreamland where the Monarch was never shoved back into a cocoon because it just wasn’t fucking done yet.

You see, Caterpillars are fun. Butterflies are arrogant jackasses who think we shouldn’t have something called “fun”. Back when we were all children, at some point, we used to play with caterpillars. Caterpillars were fun and interesting little insects. It was cute and warm-hearted how they crawled around your fingers, tickling your every nerve. It was cool if you ever got to see one break out of it’s ugly furry skin and turned into a kick ass green worm. It was also a little messed up if they decided to take a nice green piss on your hands. The thing is, though, was that caterpillars were nice. Not like other bugs that could sting you, bite you, and even poison you if given the chance. Not Caterpillars. They’re bad mother fuckers, and we loved them for it. When I caught my first Caterpie, I never evolved it. Butterfree was always a pussy.

Caterpillars then decide that these “annoying children” that keep playing with them were not worthy of it’s presence. So, instead of embracing it’s fame, the caterpillar shuts itself off from the world in a cocoon. Overtime, it develops into what is known as the butterfly. Lets say the Monarch. The people that used to love the caterpillar is in awe of the monarch. It’s ravenous beauty, it’s majestic flight. The Monarch was a true work of art. The Monarch flies high into the air, impressing everyone around it. Then, a younger child comes out and asks “can we touch it?”

Qouth the Monarch “Touch it!? You, the unwashed heathen, would DARE request to lay your filthy hands upon ME!? The Golden!? I am the epitome of beauty! I am an artist whose passion and celestial beauty rivals that of GOD! You are unworthy! BEGONE! I shall traverse the world and meet with people that are worthy of my presence!”

The Monarch flies away, with a sneer and relief in it’s expression of contempt for children. In 4 weeks, it dies, and it’s carcass up for display in a museum… with people that understand it’s beauty and tragic life expectancy.
The is what I see as the decline of gaming. We encourage the medium to “evolve” into a pristine art form… and then it dies shortly after our “experience” with it’s spectacle. The NES, Genesis, and Super Nintendo were the caterpillars of gaming. They were fun, they were cool, and really “pissed” you off at level 2.

The N64, Saturn, and Playstation were the cocoons after so many years of being nothing but amusement for the unwashed masses. They were artists whose talents haven’t truly been explored. They were just getting started.

And now, we come to the Monarch of the 128bit console era, the last gen. The PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. This was wrongly considered by the hardcore as the “growth of gaming” because they’re easily satisfied by sales numbers. This was an era in which gaming could finally be “understood” as an art form. To be taken seriously by those who were simply amused. Gaming could finally rise above the masses and declare that the masses are beneath it. It is a pure work of art. The greatest art form there is, as it could be the hollywood you could interact with. It is the alpha and omega (and could only be experienced to it’s greatest with the PS2).
But then… another caterpillar showed up. It was a wii-bit smaller than other caterpillars but was just as energetic and friendly as any. The masses started to look away from the Monarch and pay attention to the caterpillar.

Qouth the Monarch “HOW DARE YOU! I am a god you dull creatures!! I WILL NOT BE IGNORED FOR THIS… THIS UNEVOLVED… CHILD’S PLAYTHING!”

So… I guess the Monarch decided to take steroids to get bigger and meaner. But people still ignored it largely for the Caterpillar. Because Caterpillars are bad mother fuckers.

If none of this is getting through, then simply put, hardcore gamers want gaming to evolve into a pure art form. And the more developers cater to this attitude and desire, the more gaming becomes less fun and more complex. True art is complex and can never be fully interpreted. As such, people become alienated. Because now this art has become pretentious. It has become arrogant. It has become bloated and desperate for attention. It emulates a dying model of hollywood spectacle to attract people, but usually fails.

Art is not fun. Once you experience art, the thrill of it dies quickly. This is the case for many video games produced today that try to be art. Games that are solely recommended by the hardcore online who try to pressure their artistic or generic favorites on people by reposting the “top games for so and so console” over and over again. The lack of variety says the hardcore do nothing but take suggestions from other people reposting the same lists. IE more games are bought, more games are shelved or resold.

The hardcore now just do nothing but waste paper on taking up shelf space alone. Art is so beautiful that it can only be cherished the first time. Like a kiss.

It’s to want to watch a movie twice after the first time. You’ve already seen it. You know what’s going to happen, you know the hero gets the bitch at the end, the day is saved. Batman continues having mommy issues, that kind of shit. Video games should be different from that. Video games should always have a different outcome. It’s a medium that should be controlled by you. If you die by falling in a pit, you can try again and not fall in the pit. The pit is not the ending for your avatar. There are multiple outcomes that can be determined by you and your own skills.

But in order for art to be experienced, you need to retard the skill gap necessary to complete a level. Now, everything is just a process. You know to get a key and backtrack to the entrance to open a new door, you know to kill 3 enemies easily and return to unlock a new door, you know to press a switch while navigating a platform puzzle full of “clever devices” that scream “you will never be able to design something this genius like I could”. After the last 100 attempts to distinguish these devices, I don’t care about the design. The design screams “just kick my ass already”.

The Monarch cares not for your dissatisfaction. It only cares for your worship and praise of it. A god feeds off of your unwavering faith, no matter how many times it screws you over. It doesn’t care. It lies to you and says it is there to serve your interests, but it instead, it serves itself and demands your praise of a self-serving interest.

Caterpillars haven’t developed a sense of entitlement to be taken seriously. It’s a friend to all. And everyone is a friend to it. That’s how gaming used to be.  It was inviting to everyone. Now, the Monarchy that is hardcore gaming and the industry… it wishes to be exclusive to those with unwavering faith, despite not realizing their mission (to make a real profit) is to be inclusive. Caterpillars are inclusive because they do not choose to fly away from those who are interested in them. While the Monarch, with it’s artistic glory, is expected to die a short and painless death. Art is meant to last only after it’s first breath of air. Then it dies. The world of gaming is dying. It’s focus on art and graphics as well as bloated horse power has alienated the populace. Sony can’t even afford to make a PS4 with the amount of profits they lost with the PS3 and Portable.

In order for gaming to be truly saved, we need more bad mother fucking caterpillars, not artsy dipshit Monarchs.

I can’t stand Mortal Kombat

Fighting games have to be the most bad ass video games to ever exist. There’s nothing more refreshing after a day of grimy work/school than picking up some sticks and tossing fireballs all day long (Don’t sit there with your arms crossed, you all know who you are).  Fighting games fulfill the desires of everybody who isn’t physically fit to kick someone’s ass in real life. Not to mention the eye candy of the female fighters.

I’m so glad Tecmo added a sistah to DOA before proceeding to bleach her skin.

Fighting games are great for a load of reasons, but the main reason is that they just satisfy a primal craving. Using wacky characters to beat the living hell out of anything that breathes.

….But fuck Mortal Kombat.

I, for the life of me, cannot see why people love this franchise after the 90s. I could see the appeal of Tekken, Street Fighter, and maybe Soul Calibur (to this day, I still believe it is popular because of Link’s addition to the gamecube version of SC2), but Mortal Kombat? I can’t see it.

I mean yeah, back in the 90s, it was probably one of the most influential fighting games ever. It caused so much controversy and even established the ESRB. I was literally forbidden to play fighting games by my own mother back then because of Mortal Kombat (and being pissed off because all of the kids at school were always talking about the fatalities, and passing notes on how to do them in class). Now I’m in my 20’s and I just don’t see the appeal anymore to see why people get so angry when someone criticizes the franchise. People literally have an embolism over saying the games aren’t even good.

But moving on, just what is wrong with the Mortal Kombat series?

1. The move sets.

Back then, I get that a lot of game companies made overly complex commands for special attacks (Geese’s Deadly Storm Super from the Fatal Fury games for example), but in MK some command inputs aren’t practical or even silly. For example, in Street Fighter, you have basic punches and kicks which have varying strengths of special moves mapped for the buttons. You could do a Fireball, Shin Fireball, and a Dragon Punch all on the same button if you wanted. In MK? You have special moves mapped separately for every button. You could have Scorpion’s spear mapped to a High punch, but a teleport mapped to a Medium Punch, or a kick. There were no varying strengths for special attack, so each button was used for individual special attacks. What made them worse were how most of the move inputs felt strange and unnatural.

Needing to do a Down, Forward motion for 1 move and then a weird motion like Down, Back, Forward for another move on a separate button became tiresome and difficult to remember. Infact, because of the weird inputs, none of the character’s moves were easy to remember. For example, Sub-Zero’s slide requires you to press 4 buttons at once. A simple slide. You’d think pressing 4 buttons simultaneously would do something really cool (like a fatality) but it’s for a simple slide move. It felt illogical. While in more recent games, this kind of complexity was lowered, the moves still had weird motions and were mapped on separate buttons. There’s nothing worse in a fighting game with over 63 characters than having to pause the game and constantly refer to a moves list because they’re so hard to remember. As well having strange button inputs, performing the inputs also feel off. In practically every other fighting game, if you wanted to do a fireball, you would usually roll your thumb from Down to Forward in one smooth motion. In MK, you literally just tap Down and then Forward. You have to take your thumb off of the D-Pad after tapping down once. It doesn’t feel like your performing a special move. It feels like your entering a cheat code during the match.

The Right Way

Doing it  wrong

Actual images from strategy wiki.
2. Rigid, awkward, and stiff movement/animation.

Since I’ve been spoiled by Bloody Roar and Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat just feels like you’re playing through syrup. The characters move so incredibly slow and haphazardly, it’s like you’re playing a beta of Tekken. There’s something wrong with a series if you needed to include a run button when other fighters at the time were using double taps on the D-Pad to run or dash about the arena. This isn’t present in the recent games, of course, but it came off as silly. Even in the 3D games, the characters feel less mobile than ever. Infact, the recovery times for every… single… attack are insanely long. You have to make sure your moves connect or are not blocked or else you are completely vulnerable to attack. I’ve noticed that the characters, when they finished the animation for their attack (doesn’t matter what attack it is), they do a completely new animation that returns them back to their original fighting stance. Why!? It can’t be for the sake of strategy unless the development team intended to punish players for not perfectly connecting every attack you do. And Amma help you if you challenge the CPU on hard mode. You will be eaten alive as the CPU can miss an attack and then immediately block without finishing their attack animations. This probably has something to do with the motion capture techniques that they abused. The animations come off as stiff and awkward looking. It doesn’t even look realistic, even compared to Tekken. It’s like Boon and gang looked at a couple of videos on Youtube, told the motion capture actors to mimic the moves seen in said videos, and then called it a day.

3. Lack of uniqueness with characters.

And I don’t mean palette swaps of every single ninja prior to the 3D games. In the original games, all of the characters had the same (or similar) animations for their attacks. The rapid punches, the sweeps, the roundhouses, the uppercuts, everything. The fighting styles lacked variation, even with the 3D fighters that presented different “styles” for the characters, right down to reusing certain attacks for different styles. This probably has something to do with the fact that many characters have fighting styles that are derived from Shaolin kung fu (Reptile practices Pao Chui and has similar kicks to Kai who uses Moi Fah, both derived from Shaolin Kung fu), but that just seems like an excuse to be lazy with programming. How did Reptile come to learn Shaolin Martial Arts? Since when did Jax Briggs learn Muay Thai!?

Tony Jaa ain’t shit! Look at my massive arms!!!

The only things that made them stand out were of course the special moves…. which were reused. Almost every character can teleport. I do not know what it is with Ed Boon and teleporting, but I can probably name at least 20 characters that can zip around the room with no trouble at all. It’s a little disheartening to hear so much about the new MK and see previews of characters once again teleporting around the stages. From Scorpion to Sektor or Quan-Chi to Noob Saibot. The “Shoto-clones” of Street Fighter pale in comparison to what MK does. Both Johnny Cage and Jade possess a Shadow Kick. Reptile, Kano, and Blaze can curl into a ball and strike their opponents easily. Jarek now has Scorpion’s trademark Spear. It’s laziness at best.

4. Certain mechanics seem to be “Birdmen fallacies” at work.

In the newest MK, they decided to take a page out of Tekken and map all of the buttons to every character’s limb. Why? Simply put, Ed Boon likes Tekken. I can’t say how well that was done as I haven’t played the game, but having played the previous 3D games, I can assume that it’s haphazard and pointless to the overall fighting. Watching videos, you see people jabbing with the same limb almost 90% of the time. The weapons in the 3D titles were probably thrown in due to Soul Calibur and other weapon-based fighters, and they felt sluggish. In Armageddon, I never use the weapons due to their lack of practicality in a match. I keep asking myself why they were added to the series as they’ve done little to add to the gameplay. The rush down combos from MK3-4 were borrowed from other dial-a-combo systems at the time (probably Killer Instinct as it was released a year earlier than MK3), and were criticized by the fans themselves for adding more of a learning curve than already needed. The air-combos and combo breakers seem either pointless or even abusive. It seems like they add in just about anything that seems “cool” at the time, but they never try to understand how they work in the context of fighting games. And oh Amma, those breakers! Firstly, you don’t have those trite rush down combos from MK3-4, so this system is pathetically pointless. The combos in the latest games are shit, having a combo breaker literally breaks the game and turns it into a “punch, punch, counter, kick” match like in DOA. Except it’s more choppy and a helluva lot more abusive than ever before.

The series has so many flaws at this point, I can’t say I’m willing to give the ninth game in the series a chance. The fighting is stiff, rigid and slow, the mechanics don’t work as they should, and the characters lack any real variety aside from being more or less powerful versions of other characters. I feel like the hardcore gaming crowd in saying “THIS GAEM R CASUEL TRASH!”. You play a lot of fighting games after a while, Mortal Kombat just feels tacky and shallow with no real passion put into the development process. A lot of corners are cut just to put out whatever sells best. Lets “Mokap” the fuck out of everything! It’s cheaper than to animate our own models by hand! And people lap that shit up because of fatalities.
And no, I’m not a Street Fighter fanboy. I can’t stand that piece of shit either. Who’s the genius that thought players should be rewarded for getting their asses kicked in SF4!? Give me Bloody Roar and Guilty Gear over that whoredouken fest any day. And I swear, Omar Dogan needs to stop jacking off to Ibuki.

Welcome to conflicting views

Why does gaming seem to revolve around “casual” and “hardcore” warfare that so easily resembles the instigated class warfare of the US?

Why do developers resort to using DLC as a means to a quick buck rather than actual fixes in-game?
Why is Capcom charging money to use cheat codes?

 

……….Why are video games essentially… dying?

We may not have all the answers, really. But we can make a damn good guess as to why.