1ST IMPACT! Phantasy Star Zero vs Phantasy Star Portable 2.

VS

WARNING: The following post WILL contain spoilers, so if you’re like those gamefaqs babies that cry “BAN HIM” because someone posted a spoiler without a “proper warning”, please leave. No, gtfo.

Ok. I’ve been playing some major Phantasy Star titles, and I can’t express how much Sega just gave Nintendo fans the finger with the only Phantasy Star title we’ve gotten last generation on the DS. That is Phantasy Star Zero. The other game I’ve been playing was Phantasy Star Portable 2. And HORRRY SHEEEET!Sega really dick rode Sony this time around. While we get shitty Sonic spinoffs and ONE good Sonic game as well as a rail shooter that gets a special edition on the HD consoles, the few PSP lovers out there get a fantastic RPG. 2 infact!

I’ve read reviews, I’ve heard all the BS about how this is the definitive PSO experience on a handheld. I don’t know who they’re fooling, but I think the PSO fans who played the Gamecube games are in denial. Zero is kinda ass in comparison.

But let me be clear. It’s NOT BECAUSE OF GWAFIX! Yes, the PSP is more powerful and that might be why the Portable games got more content, but there’s a few things that pretty much signifies how much Sega just said “fuck it, lets NOT give Nintendo fans some real shit”. So here’s a list of things that scream “Fuck the Nintendo kiddies”. But I’ll be fair and not completely bash Zero. I don’t hate the game. I just hate how piddly the whole package feels.

It’s time for a VS post. Zero vs Portable 2.

And I say Portable 2 only because I haven’t played the first one.  So don’t ask me why I used that over Portable 1.

1. Box Art!

Lets take a look.

VERDICT: TIE

The box art for both games… aren’t very appealing. These are games that will mostly be played by males, so Sega failed in that department. Girls will love it though.

Anywho, I’ll give a few points more to Zero’s box art. The bluish theme does less to deter some folks away from the game, and that dragon looks incredible. But something’s… off about it. Can you point to what it is, viewers? Take a second look at it. Have you found it yet?

BINGO!

This creature from the depths of hell is supposed to be a cowboy. Dear lord. See, Zero has this fantastic nonsense called a “space western” theme surrounding it, so everyone looks like they were dragged out of the late 1800’s. At least the Human Hunters and Rangers.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he looked like this.

A real RAmar!

No. No kick ass Space gunner. We get the “Cowboys from Moo Mesa”

What is this shit!?

This looks like a class that was made for little kids when the game is far more complex. The designs of the game need to fit with the content. You can’t make a game to appeal to little kids when they will not be able to get passed the dragon boss. And how could it not? The game’s poster boy class is a little kid himself!

“Nintendo” Obviously.

As for Portable, the same thing. First off, it’s got this pinkish theme going on which destroys any appeal it might have for men. While they try to salvage it with the Beast in the background and the main white HUmar with saber and gun, it’s ruined by this Numan bitch right here.

IMA LOLI!

Want to destroy any appeal you might have with westerners? Put in loli’s on the front cover. Mission accomplished. You’ve lost profits because you think Japanese shit appeals to the west. And ironically, this is still better than that damn cowboy!

And not to mention the dragon looks a lot less epic than the one on Zero. Zero Dragon looks fierce and intimidating. Portable Dragon looks like a juvenile about to get curb-stomped. Oh and… nice job obscuring your Gundam CAST behind the ESRB rating, geniuses. I wouldn’t want to know about how awesome the game could be if I had an extra Race to shave off the estrogen of that Loli character. The beast is far to small to make much of a difference. People will pay attention to the pink, the crappy dragon, the white trash douche bag, and the Loli!

Well, at least the HUmar is more appealing than that little fucking kid.

Sega used to do what Nintendon’t

So both boxarts are complete trash which would more than likely scare away some customers. Zero with it’s Saturday morning Anime bullshit, and Portable 2 with it’s lovely array of “Pink”. Sega has practically confirmed they have no idea how to appeal to the west with Phantasy Star.

I also noticed. These portable games started to show more of the characters fighting dragons after Universe. Perhaps a sign that Capcom pretty much stole Sega’s Console MMO Market, so they had to get it back by appealing to Monster Hunter fans? Well, at least the gameplay wasn’t fucked to all hell.

2. Presentation!

NOTE: I only look at Presentation as how the game tries to pull me in IE intros. Nothing beyond that.

You’ll have to forgive me for the low quality. You see, Youtube is full of otaku jackasses that hate the english versions of everything.

VERDICT: Portable 2

Ok, I’m sure all 3 of you have seen the Japanese intro in one of my last posts.

Anywho, Zero‘s intro is still typical of the Saturday morning get up. While Reve’s pose is cool as is the shots of Ana’s “delectables”…

fellati- me now.

…the whole thing is ruined by the later portion of the intro where they show the 3 main races at once, followed by all of them sitting in a field of flowers.. staring off to nowhere. The campiness of it all is quite awful. You get that insidious feeling that you were not the intended audience for the game.  Not to mention Sarisa’s awful spin with her shitty wand and pink background. You notice how Kai (token nigga slashing the wolves), Ogi (the robot), and the HUmar (stupid kid) all have action shots without a shitty “low production cost” action background? Sarisa just comes in and ruins that ounce of consistency.

I will admit though that the animation is smooth through out the whole production. That is until you get to Reve’s portion where he uses some… mega punch against Kai and they both produce this big ass energy explosion. Yeah, Reve’s animation frames were cut back for some unknown reason.

Also, after Ana’s exhibition flight, you have Dairoh and Lindow (robot bitch) pop out from the bottom with smiley faces abound, which gives off the full “saturday morning effect” like you wouldn’t believe. And believe me, it’s MUCH… MUCH worse with that Japanese intro music. The Western version tries to scale back on the estrogen and manages to make the package seem a little more…. well… it tries to make it seem better. But no amount of music can change what is essentially a poor intro.

Now, Portable 2 already has shitty intro music. First off, the singer is making a song about… wishing to the stars. I’ve grown limp listening to this bitch. Why couldn’t they do what SOA did with Zero and change the music to something better? The animation is pretty good though. Since it’s all CGI, and Sega is no stranger to damn good CGI.

Yeah, no matter what you think of the game, you have to admit, that looks mother fucking awesome!

The one thing that kinda kills it for me is seeing the 4 main races running toward that jive turkey of a dragon like lame little heroes, shooting off their attacks at random. Not to mention the lyric “PHANTASY STARS UNIVERSE!” pops in right as they’re doing all of this. It honestly kills the mood of the whole intro.

But overall, there’s no debating it. Portable 2 definitely has the better intro by far.

3: CHARACTER CREATION!

Verdict: Portable 2

Yes, I get it. “Memory limitations” of the DS and all that jazz.

Look, Zero just has a poor customization feature in the first place. First off, not every race gets all 3 classes. The humans get everything, the CASTS and the Numans get jipped. The main problem is that you don’t even get that many options to change your character’s appearance. For instance, if you want a HUmar, you’ll be stuck with that fucking kid. You can’t make them taller or change the attire. The most you can do is change the color of their clothes and tinker around with hair styles.

RASTAFARIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

You can at least pick a lot of character voices too. When it comes to hair color, it changes the eye color as well, essentially limiting them to phenotypical stereotypes. Blonde-Blue eyes. Red-Green eyes. Black-Brown eyes.

And at least you can change the skin color, wouldn’t buy this game if I was forced to play a crac- BUT I DIGRESS! You can also change the color of your mag, but a fat lot of good that does. You also have very limited options in changing up how your character looked and sounded, so if you start a new game with your character, don’t expect to be able to change a whole lot. And if you buy any new mags, they won’t be the color you chose. How bullshit is that?

You also only get 3 files, so if you want to try out a new character, you better be ready to sacrifice one of your old ones to do so. In general, your character basically has one design preset. There are no new outfits to try out, you get one body model and 4 head models per race/class. I guess I can admit that at least we can do that much with the creation system given how limited the DS’s capabilities are, but it’s still quite shallow and given that the basic models we’re given for all the Human characters are…. shit, then it doesn’t help much. Plus, why do FOnewearls always have to be designed like lolis?!

Portable 2 is a different story altogether. Thanks to MORE MEMORY LOL, there are no class limitations within the 4 races. 4? Yes, this game has the beast class who actually live up to their names. You have the default outfits, up to 47 hair styles, voice clips, etc. The issue I have is skin color. It’s actually quite limited in the more “pale” looking department. If I wanted to make like… a caramel skinned Newearl, that’s entirely impossible. And let me be the one to say the CASTS look like ass. Especially the female ones. That’s some uncanny valley shit right there.

Why do robots need titties?

And for some reason, the Numans now have an asian theme surrounding them. Why? They were cool as space elves, why make them japanese? Ugh, praise Amma you can change that at least. More than I can say for this asshole.

SON OF A BITCH, SORA! GET OUT OF MY PHANTASY STAR!

Did I mention that you can change damn near everything about your character mid game? From overall design to class to weapon choices? There is way more freedom to customization than you will ever see in Zero. And that’s an understatement.

Of course, the Japanese will make shitty characters like always.

4. STORY!

NOTE: For future references, just know that during BOTH games, you will have the options to answer questions during the storyline which only affects what kind of dialogue you see from the characters.

Verdict: Portable 2

There’s no question about it. Zero presents a tale of a planet that is on the verge of destruction due to… pollution. A group of mercenaries called “hunters” led by Dairoh and Kai take on jobs just to earn money. While this happens, a strange space pod lands on Earth with a Numan girl named Sarisa. After saving her from a dragon, Kai takes her under his wing and lets her join the Hunters. While at first, she isn’t trusting of the Humans, she becomes great friends with them later on in the game. Course, the Numans become worried and decide to track her down, with Reve at the helm. You see, the Numans believe the Humans are responsible for the planet’s destruction (they’re absolutely right), so the game kinda leads you on about a possible conflict between both races. But no, instead, near the end, you find out the Numans were just duped by a super computer they believed was actually a goddess that created them. Yeah, lets not make an INTERESTING story based on Human/Numan conflict, lets make a bloated version of Sonic 3’s story.

Sega did you wrong, Knuckles.

Not to mention the characters are horribly dickish in nature.

Asshole leader

Kai tries faaar to hard to be “perfect” and seems to disagree with EVERY…. FUCKING…. CHOICE you make in the game! Whether you just have a sense of humor or want to get straight to work, he will bitch you out for the simplest of shit! Oh Amma, I hate that guy! Not to mention he’s shit in the fights! One of the best hunters the guild has!? How low are your expectations for this line of work!? I could be my slow ass-tard character from Monster Hunter…. and I would STILL do work on these bitches more than Kai could! And his voice is awful!

Whiny, self-righteous bitch.

Where do I begin with the “CREAM THE RABBIT” of this game? Well, for starters, she’s a cleric with crappy skills and a personality no one would love. She comes off as overly kind, but has a bitch side to her as well. In some instances, if you say the snow tastes “delicious”, she’ll be pissed at you because “she just KNOWS and RESEARCHED everything about snow!” Where the hell did that level of insecurity come from?! She also has that damned “self-righteous” attitude that 99% of all shonen/kids anime presents. You have a villain that does some “bad stuff” which is pretty damn tame to what most REAL villains could do.

You’ve been trying to catch Pikachu for 14 years!? YOU’RE THE MOST ROTTEN PEOPLE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH!

She also gets raped by a tentacle monster…… and seemingly likes it.  I am not making this up. But, she’s quick to slap a robot for liking what it sees because it’s not proper like he gives a shit. Who am I talking about?

Robot

Ogi is the only character that knows how to live. And is the only robot I know that actually likes titties. Yeah. I couldn’t make this up if I wanted. There isn’t much I can say about this character.

Bitches love me.

Reve is the best character ever. Well… he would be if he wasn’t a tool. He didn’t have time for all that “power of friendship” BS that Kai and Sarisa were spittin. He just wanted to crush the little fuckers. He also has his own Voltron machine that will rape you to crumbs.

But story wise, Zero falls flatter than day old soda. Not only is the plot devoid of any real surprises, but the characters are horrifically intolerable. But I do have to give them some credit. The story alters depending on what race you choose, giving you a different perspective. If you play a Human, you’ll be Kai’s partner from the start in the Hunters Guild. If you’re a Numan, you’re amnesiac and have the mission of tracking down Sarisa’s stupid ass while observing the Human’s activities. If you’re a CAST, you have no real allegiance and just… do shit. Even then, the plot doesn’t change by much considering that the story format is exactly the same. You show up in town, join the Hunters, take jobs, fight Reve, go to ruins, go to moon, etc. But at least they tried to invoke some replay value, even if you need to delete characters to do so.

And again, Portable 2 is a different story altogether. It’s like Sega actually gave a shit about the plot!

In Portable 2, it takes place 3 years after Universe for the PS2, 360, and PSP (and no Wii version in sight. *sigh*). After the conflict with an enemy race called “Seed” (what a shitty name for an enemy race). After the wars, the Planets of Parum, Moatoob, and Neudias (whatever  their names are) are all devastated. But a new technological theory has been developed. It is called “subspace travel”. With that, the races of these planets can go to different worlds to be colonized (IE taken over, if history is any evidence to go by… fucking British Empire).

So the game starts off in some ruins where you’re a nobody who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when all of a sudden, a girl wearing all pink decides to have a headache which causes an explosion that traps you inside.

THE…. CHRONIC!

Essentially, after helping her out, you get blackmailed into joining a mercenary group called “Little Wing”. Yeah, that’s your reward for saving this white bitch. Strange world, huh?

Yeah, the guy in charge is considered “evil” by everyone, so at least there’s a bit of realism in personalities. Anywho, the characters are a helluva lot more tolerable in this game as well.

A like-able loli!? It really IS a MadWorld!

Emillia is essentially this game’s Sarisa in that she’s your main partner for everything. The difference is she’s human and not much of a total bitch like Sarisa. Infact, she’s actually… pretty cool for a blond. She’s just as useless in combat, but her ass whippins are barely noticeable. She also has some “Ancient” bitch living inside of her, making her “veerrrry spheshal”. Ooooooo

Get a haircut, hippy.

This “beast” is the boss of Little Wing….. who blackmails you for saving Emilia. Yeah, don’t expect to like him early on. He gives that child more hell than anything. If it was Sarisa, I could understand. Eh, later on, he actually gets better as the story progresses. But it is damned funny.

Coolest… outfit… ever.

Yut Yun… Yunkers. There’s no amount of vocabulary available to describe how much I want to kick his lily ass all over the place. First, he’s an annoying ass boss, then he acts like that little brother whose ass needs to be kicked with a vengeance! He runs away from you in every… damn… chapter, thinks a near death experience will turn you into a Super Saiyan (seriously, he thinks dying will make you stronger. That’s Vegeta’s own fucking thought process!) and LOVES TO SHOUT ABOUT HIS SENSES! DAMMIT! Hate this bastard!

The “White” Ana

She introduces herself by delivering the best insult ever to Kraz. “Your breath makes me want to buy a Hazmat Suit”. These Numans are some cold mother fuckers. And despite that, she ends up marrying that guy anyway! Also has a laser whip, making her a futuristic Belmont of sorts.

The “Seto Kaiba” of Phantasy Star.

She thinks she’s hot shit because she’s a member of the “Guardians”, a fancy name given to space police. apparently, she’s the sister of Ethan Weber who was the main character of Phantasy Star Universe, otherwise known as the game every PS fan hates. That said, no wonder Lumia has a nasty disposition when you first meet her. Lumia meets people who were introduced in a game that got much better reception than her first game! And how about that? 2 mages that seem to be rivals. I think this was intended to be cute. It failed.

The story is more involved with a conspiracy involving a corporation whose motives are questionable. That and subspace travel is actually driving lots of monsters and inhabitants batshit insane.

Already, that sounds more interesting than a race of beings getting fooled into believing Humans are “mean people”. We hate corporations almost instinctively, so there is a much broader appeal to be had here than in Zero. Not to mention much better characters and even better writing. I don’t think a weak script is the fault of the DS’s hardware now, is it? 😛

5. GAMEPLAY!

VERDICT: Portable 2
Now I feel like I’m being unfair. Lets rundown what the deal is with Zero‘s gameplay.

If only that touch screen was put to good use.

Firstly, it’s slow. Combat is quite the chore in that all of your attacks have to be timed. No, I don’t have a problem with needing to time your attacks! The problem is with the amount of time it takes to get the damn attacks out! You see, when it comes to attack animations, every single move you do comes out slowly. Even your evasive abilities chug like all hell. If your character has poor recovery times for every single move, then the combat is going to deter people from playing the game alone. Especially when you need to grind. And believe me, grinding in this game is a draaaaaaaaaag. It takes far to long to level up, I haven’t even found the motivation to move my character passed 36 at this point. It takes waaaay to long to kill one enemy because no matter how much you buff you characters up, their awful recovery times as well as all the evasive moves you’d have to do in order to avoid a supreme ass kicking make everything take far longer than it needed to be. And honestly, why do the characters have such overly long animations for all of their moves? Even dodging, it’s like after you stop rolling, your character has to slowly stand up in his/her own 2 feet before doing anything again. So even your own evasive maneuver puts you at risk! I didn’t think Sega would look toward Mortal Kombat for inspiration of how to make the game even harder, but dammit they’ve done it well. On top of that, you can’t block unless you use a shield. WHY!? You also have the ability to use Photon arts which are basically weapon exclusive special moves you can perform by holding down w/e button your weapon is configured to, then releasing to unleash an onslaught of attacks. These moves still have the same problems in recovery, but less so. At the same time, if you need to switch weapons, oh man, you are shit out of luck. You have to pause the game, IE you prevent YOURSELF from moving just to go through some menus and change your weapon. While doing this, you are vulnerable to attack. So your best bet is to find a safe place to change weapons. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking. And just… why didn’t they take advantage of the touch screen beyond map controls and a shitty speech system? The touch screen is better used for convenience of menu navigation, and this game would SEVERLY benefit from it. You could go through the menus for weapon changes WHILE MOVING YOUR DAMN CHARACTER! It just creates this air of artificial difficulty when you have to find a SAFE PLACE to change your weapons! I don’t care about the menu shortcuts, THAT SHIT IS NOT A RESPONSE TO BAD GAME DESIGN! Zero is difficult enough as it is, it just seems like boneheaded decisions were made  that makes everything much more unbearable! They were not using their brains at this point!

Contrast to Portable 2 where the combat is much faster, you can actually cancel out of an attack to an evasive roll, block, or Photon arts. Photon Arts are configured to a separate button for easy access and better canceling opportunities, all of which makes combat more enjoyable, faster paced, etc.  Plus, you don’t need to bend over backwards with your balls in a knot to CHANGE YOUR WEAPONS! You’re mobile while navigating a quick drop menu to scroll through to change your weapons on the fly. Just hold circle and scroll to what you need! Simple and painless! It would’ve been much better if they did that with touch controls! But no! Oh, and you can block with anything besides a shield. You just need a 2 handed weapon. While the action palette is a lot less customizable in this game, it’s at least manageable that it doesn’t get in the way of the ass kickings.

As well, the dungeons/areas you go through are randomly generated. Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if the rooms themselves had…. idk… some variety maybe? It’s like everywhere you go, it’s the same bland area. You might get a few traps here and there, and you might get some turrets to deal with. But after the first time, these little gimmicks are used and abused so much that we might as well not have anymore than 4 areas in the game. This wouldn’t be such a problem if all the areas weren’t so damn long! It could take you a good 10-30 minutes at worst to clear these places, and that’s not including how long a single fight against several waves of enemies could take.

While Portable 2 has a better variety of areas, I can’t say the same for your enemies. How many bipedal aliens with fireball attacks do they have in this game? I can apply the same strategies for everything. Because everything you kill fights exactly the same. No need to change tactics, no need for different weapons, just sit back and spam the same bloody strategies you’ve been using since the beginning.

In addition, for both games, your character’s weapon choices seem to be out of wack. For some reason, weapons that should be available to you are not based on insignificant issues such as “race”. If you are a HUnewn, for example, you cannot use a specific SWORD weapon that a CAST could. Because robots are obviously stronger. This, I guess I could accept, but when I can’t use a type of gun because I’m not a CAST, fucking lines are getting crossed. An array of weapons could be denied because you’re a black guy… er… “beast race”. And no reason would be given.

On the plus side of portable, leveling is much faster, and you actually notice some changes to your states. reaching the 40s, you could be doing up 3-400 points of damage to an enemy. Zero will hardly let you pass beyond the 100 mark. On the negative side, you don’t get mags in Portable 2.

……….FUCK!

Both games have an equal amount of quests (all of which are basically just going through the same dungeons over and over again with no real variation, just complete the dungeons again… and again). Portable 2 basically just gives you “challenges” like complete a dungeon under 7 minutes or so. Other than that, the questing system for both games are shallow. But at least Zero gives you some sweet rewards for all the trouble. Overall, however, Portable 2’s smoother and faster combat already makes it a more enjoyable experience for Phantasy Star players. Zero might have some better… erm… rewards for completing quests, but Portable is more focused on character customization, and in the end, that’s what really counts for MMO styled games.

I think I’ve been unfair enough as it is. There’s really no comparison. Portable 2 is the better game in every way imaginable. Story, combat, customization, everything. So why is it that Sega practically gimped Zero?

I know everyone is thinking hardware, but I don’t think that’s really the idea. Was hardware really the reason why combat in Zero chugs like shit? Why not cut a few frames from attack animations? That would save more memory and give you much better combat. It would look cheaper, yes, but it would flow that much better. And believe me, memory is a terrible excuse for that storyline they put into the game. It’s so unbelievably bland. When you look at the script for Portable 2, you literally “feel” like they didn’t care about Zero. I don’t think any Journalist could spin it any other way. Zero was gimped from the start. And if the gameplay can’t overshoot everything else, the product is a failure. The meat of the gameplay is combat and looting, and when looting is the only enjoyable aspect of the game, hampered by a poor inventory system, you know it’s fucked.

And no, I have not tried the online capabilities of either game, mainly because TRENDnet is a pile of shit router that isn’t supported by any real gaming device as far as I can tell. But even then, I wouldn’t bother trying to get a connection on the DS either way. It gets dropped like a million times, I swear. And with the piss ass combat of Zero, I wouldn’t even bother period. The combat alone is just that boring and tedious. This factor I think needs to be hammered into everyone’s skull. The combat sucks. The combat sucks. The combat completely sucks.

Honestly, the only reason Zero is an inferior product is because Sega just didn’t care. They didn’t care enough with a lot of games they made for Nintendo’s consoles. Portable 2 has a much bigger community than Zero, as well. So even if folks could come up with reasons (CASUALZ!) why Zero is superior, there are LESS people playing that game than Portable 2. There’s no getting around that.

WINNAR: Phantasy Star Portable 2

Capcom fans know mind control

This above sums up how much I despise Capcom at this point.

It will also be the reason that less people will be interested in the series.

Capcom is the school yard bully who enjoys taking a piss on everything people do. Whether it’s continuing to require unlock keys for on-disc content, canceling games based on lies, pulling dick moves to kill used games… and lied about it,  or destroying franchises because COD sells more, Capcom is no stranger to taking pisses. What I find strange is that regardless of the many piss takes and ass pulls this company has dealt… people will still baste their one-eyed snakes.

U Mad?

It’s almost unthinkable to imagine that a company that shows nothing but spite for their fans time and time again, the fans are ready and willing to take the abuse. They’re like women who don’t know what a good relationship is and just believe their man is “hurting inside”. And the journalists, oh the journalists, seem to give them all the credit in the world. How SF4 “revived the fighting game genre” despite the success of Tekken and Soul Calibur during Street Fighter’s main series absence. How Mega Man 9 “proved you don’t need good graphics to make good games” despite constantly bashing the Wii 2 years prior to the game’s release.

Fits nicely. But moving on, there seems to be something incredibly strange about why Capcom continues to remain so popular with fans despite the amount of times they get screwed over by all of their bullshit. Everyone calls EA on it’s shit, Nintendo no matter what, and Sega especially. But people cannot seem to break their love with Capcom. Well, them and Square-Enix. Just what is it that Capcom is doing that makes everyone love them so much?

Well, turns out, it’s jack shit. Capcom never advertises anything outside of Resident Evil. I hardly recall any ads for Street Fighter 4 or… hell, any mega man game ever made outside of those “BLUE BOMBER IS BACK!” commercials. They don’t have any real marketing out there beyond announcements. So why do the fans like it? The secret…. lies in the fans themselves.

Think back folks. How many of you love Street Fighter? Mega Man? Resident Evil? Those are Capcom’s 3 top franchises. Now… how many of you actually HATE those franchises? I’m talking to you. And I’m certain there’s quite a few of you.

Now, have you ever voiced your complaints about these games on the forums? How many of you were chewed out the ass? I’d wager a good… 80-95% of yah. Believe me when I say Capcom fans will not let you shit talk their games for any reason, valid or otherwise. They are second only to Metroid fans in their overzealous desire to negate all negative criticism. Of course, I already said this before, but it’s worth mentioning again. Capcom has managed to become a company of worship due to the fans themselves. They were basically just “kick ass” back in the 90s, but nowadays, Capcom is a religion in itself. I say this mainly because… of Street Fighter.

The Street Fighter Series will always be remembered as the franchise that “revolutionized” fighting games despite doing jack shit for the genre except make even more fireballs. Most fighting games before then had many of SF2’s elements prior to it’s release. But the younglins will not acknowledge them. None of them had thunder thighs. Much of Street fighter 2’s appeal came from the diversity of it’s characters and people wanting to discover how to do those “secret moves”. It only started to get obnoxious due to the game’s glitches being co-opted by other companies, like SNK, and exploded into a genre of games that became inaccessible to everyone with a life.

This was, strangely, seen as a “good” thing by the hardcore. See, the hardcore treat video games like women. No one likes to share women. No one wants to see their women being interested in those “other guys” either. So they demean those other guys. They threaten them, they might even resort to violence.

BACK OFF CASUALS! THAT’S MAH BITCH!

Anywho, the deal with Street Fighter is, due to a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands, decided that Street Fighter would be their definitive penis pump. They would study the games really… really hard, learn all the cancels (defined as the only thing you need to do to be good at fighting games), count frames, all this technical crap and start going to the internet, become the official authorities of the genre, and dictate how good you have to be to comment on a game’s quality. And that usually means you have to pull this off. And I fear that isn’t hyperbole. Most gamers wouldn’t be allowed to criticize Street Fighter if they weren’t tournament/competitive players. And even this is silly to define. Competitive gaming is now mutually exclusive from the living room and can only be defined as “sporting events” or “penis galleries”. The hardcore have been adamant with their desire to keep Street Fighter away from the “dreaded casuals”, even going so far as to write off SF4, MVC3, and SFxT as “not deep or complex enough to matter”. (ignoring that MVC games are clusterfucks enough as they are without the whole striker spamming going on). Typically, a lot of gamers would go around declaring that they play games for fun, which is quickly retorted with “winning is fun”, which is met with “I don’t have that much time, I have a lot of work” which is retorted with “lame excuses, you can make time“, and becomes a broken record on the internet. I’m sure the asshole that wrote this had more than a few roles in perpetuating this atmosphere amongst the hardcore, this despite being in fear of Akuma.

Some day, I will FUCKING MURDER YOU, AKUMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

The hardcore will never allow anyone to shit talk Street Fighter. Another funny thing is that video with the Daigo Parry was actually the reason people give even remotely any real fuck about SF3. Before then, it was irrelevant to the world. But thanks to a tournament community, it is considered “the shit” by everyone in the world. But it was only by a Japanese kid cyborg that did an inhuman manuvuer was SF3 ever sky rocketed to the heavens. And again, how many people have enough balls to come out and say “SF3 sucks”?

The problem is that this isn’t exclusive to Street Fighter but to a lot of Capcom games. I don’t think I need to speak about Mega Man cause Amma knows MM9 caused a thousand shit storms since it’s announcement. But Capcom fans know how to keep criticism to an all time low via the universal technique of PEER PRESSURE! Believe me when I say many people, even those that are tired of SF4, continue to play it because of the “you suck” rhetoric used by the hardcore as a form of emotional terrorism against the “casuals”.

Change that score from a 6 to a 10 or you will find yourself in a most unprecedented war!

This prevalent attitude amongst the Capcom fanbase is probably the most notorious brand you could find. Other fanbases would not be so quick to judge your ability in a video game as much as capcom fans. Well, aside from Sonic fans who scream at every IGN review after Shadow the Hedgehog, but that’s aside the point. Peer pressure is a mother fucker. And if I’m being honest, that’s the main reason Capcom is still relevant today. Fans will tyrannize other fans into playing their games just to be socially accepted amongst other gamers. It sounds like a sad cycle, but this is the environment that was created by the hardcore. We could easily say “stay off the internet. Problem solved”. No. If you meet fans of fighting games, chances are they are those kinds of people. Otherwise, any discussion about video games in the real world translates to “I don’t want tang”. Video games are still one of the most socially unnacceptable products on the market. And gamers are portrayed as losers constantly in the media. And that’s gonna be hard to come out of with shit like this. (and the first vid was fake) The internet is the only safe haven gamers have to be able to socialize without fear of discrimination. And even THAT is becoming difficult due to gamers THEMSELVES making the social environment unbearable and causing even more discrimination against themselves. They apparently don’t know that damn near everyone uses the internet.

Bottom line though, Capcom games get more praise than they deserve due to their fans being dicks. Take what happened with gamespot’s Twilight Princess review…. “and multiply it by 6”. You get Capcom fans acting like Bridezillas over a single critique of a video game in the Monster Hunter franchise, and see who posts sales numbers to prove people wrong.

So why does Capcom get to continue practicing dick moves in video games where as there are massive protests over Mass Effect’s ending, or EA getting so much shit thrown at them for everything? Take a look at the fans. Square is no longer off the hook, people are getting fed up with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, Namco is getting slammed over voice actors in Tekken Tag 2 while every shits all over Soul Calibur 5, but Capcom? Naw, they’re gods. They’re free to go and screw us over!

Or maybe… there is hope? A sign that maybe even Capcom isn’t safe from teh dreaded casuals?

Takashi Iizuka is an Asshole.

Everyone’s gaming childhood resonates with a particular franchise. There’s Street Fighter, obviously Mario, PacMan, or for the new generation of Emo gamers, Final Fantasy 7.
Me? It would have to be this guy.

It’s the “chubby” one

I don’t think anyone can deny how influential the Sonic series has been when it came to games. Well… maybe you could given his sour reputation in the recent years. But he started the trend of “animals with attitude”. I doubt we would’ve had Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Sly Cooper, the Ratchet and Clank games, etc. if not for the original blue hedgehog.

And we all know he would kick Mario’s fat ass into the curb.

There’s something to be said for a guy whose reputation went down the shitter and still came out as the most requested character for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. And  no matter what, people will not stop buying his games. We can over analyze and criticize people’s tastes all we want to, but Sonic won’t be dead…. yet.

Sega is in a bit of a financial peril. While I attribute it to Sammy buying Sega up and making them develop pachinko machines that lose them money, it can be argued that crap software sales are killing them too. It’s good to hear that PSO2 is doing well for a franchise that’s been getting it’s ass kicked by Monster Hunter on the PSP and abroad.

I wonder why

But aside from that, seeing how Sega is very fickle when it comes to Anarchy Reigns in the West, these financial troubles must be terrible.

It’s not hard to imagine why Sega’s in this mess. Afterall, they killed themselves with the Saturn, and ran out of money on the Dreamcast.

But money is a crap excuse 😛

Truth be told, Sega has been in a financial slump after the DreamCast, so they allowed Sammy to buy them up…. just to continue losing more money than ever before. How the fuck did that happen?

Who knows? Maybe it’s the same reason Ark Systems were desperate to buy the Guilty Gear license from Sammy. Pachinko companies being evil viruses that cannot seem to do good things with arcade companies.

Sega’s money problems are why we would usually see yearly releases of Sonic games from 2004-present. Considering that Sonic Team has to produce several other games alongside Sonic games, the drop in quality is evident. Games are rushed, mass produced, and treated like shit to make money. Sonic Team is like a sweatshop. Just look how close all of these years are. I don’t know who makes all the decisions, but he needs to be fired.

But… that’s not what upsets me.

Sonic 4… is.

Fuck you, Sonic 4

I don’t hate that Sonic 4 isn’t a complete throwback to the originals. I don’t hate that the game is a shallow ploy to get nostalgiatards to break out the jacksons for the game. I don’t hate the fact that the physics aren’t 100% accurate like the hardcore pretend to care about. I don’t hate the fact that Sonic has green eyes.

What I do hate… is this shit.

TORCH PUZZLES!? NOOOOOOOO!

I don’t know… for the life of me… what kind of asshole thought this shit would be fun. In Act 3 of Lost Labyrinth, there is a fucking puzzle where you need to light torches at the right time and order to progress. Do you know how long it takes to get the timing right for this shit!? It’s infuriating! Another thing I hate is this shit.

You will not be find of what comes after he takes a dive in the aquatic mines.

In this part of the level, you are trapped in a water box. You are suspended in the middle of the puddle under water. You cannot move or breathe. So you need to tilt the area to the right so that this can happen.

I CAME!

Sorry. Anywho, this doesn’t seem bad, but after you get passed that god damned torch puzzle, you come to ANOTHER water pit. Whats worse is the exit has a group of spikes pointed right at you. Everytime you tilt, Sonic will move slightly towards where you tilt. So again, you have to be very careful in tilting this section. But those spikes will scare you. You get hit, you won’t be able to retrieve your rings, so what you have to do is tilt to the left to give yourself some room, then tilt all the way back again. If you touch the spikes, you lose rings and the room RETURNS TO IT’S DEFAULT POSITION! Obviously, if you touch the spikes again, you’re dead, but you need to hurry up because Sonic cannot breathe under water.  So this is a puzzle that you are stressed to finish, but it requires some work that takes even more time than usual.

THAT’S NOOOOOOO GOOD!

Then I realized this game was the brain child of Takashi Iizuka, apparently one of the few original Sonic Team members that came up with an idea to challenge gamers back in Sonic 3, his first Sonic game. What was that challenge?

Oh yes!

That fucking drum that became infamous for many Sonic fans back in the day, which could only be solved by moving the Dpad up and down on the drum. Well, that takes care of the complaints for why “game saves are evil”.

Takashi Iizuka was also the main man behind Sonic Heroes. You know, the game where “Team Work” was just an excuse to have you stop rushing through a level because of a locked door, switch to a certain character and solve a bloody puzzle just to progress. He was also the director behind Sonic Adventure DX’s Mission Mode, where every mission was esoteric to the brink of insanity? Shadow the Hedgehog? I think Mad Matrix speaks for itself. That and Central City.

What’s the recurring theme with all the Sonic games made by Iizuka? There’s a puzzle that interrupts the action aspect of the game. Suddenly, Shadow’s bad reception makes more sense than before!

Takashi Iizuka… is the Eiji Aonuma of Sega!

But I doubt he’s the only one.

The Japanese seem to have a hard on for puzzle games. They inject some bullshit “mystery” for the players to solve when all people really want to do is go through a game without having to stop the action.

Why can’t I just run away from zombies!?

I said this before in a previous post. Action-stopping puzzles are NOT FUN! AT ALL! A gamer’s WORST and ABSOLUTELY LOATHED MEMORIES FROM A VIDEO GAME… is a puzzle. THere’s a reason that fucking drum is so infamous to this very day. We couldn’t progress not because of a particular jump, not tough enemies, not a challenging boss… but because no one knew how to solve the mystery of that fucking drum.

And they just kept doing this. Action games DO NOT NEED PUZZLES! If I play God of War, Lords of Shadow, or even the damn Werehog, DON’T MAKE ME SOLVE A PUZZLE TO PROGRESS THROUGH THE GAME!

Puzzles like Tetris… are fun. Puzzles like Panel De Pon… are fun. Puzzles like Total Collapse on Iphones…. are fun. Why? Because they are puzzle games AT THEIR CORE! Needing to figure out what paintings I should mix and match to open the next area in RE4? LOATHE ENTIRELY!

And may Ra strike vengence upon they who put THIS SHIT in an action game. Right RE4 Ashley chapter?

These bastards just CANNOT HELP THEMSELVES! Why do we need this shit in action games? Hell, even the small, not so puzzily puzzles ruin the experience. How many mech levels require you to search for a switch back in SA2? Why were the Gamma levels way better than the mech levels? Gamma just went through everything blowing shit up… aside from the Hot Shelter Stage.

No one likes Treasure Hunting because it’s a fetch quest (amplified by needing to change gravity or use rockets to get to high places or raising water levels…. that kind of shit.) Silver’s levels in 06 were the definition of puzzle action (whatever action there is). Werehog levels. Why does no one like them? How many levers did you need to pull? Switches you needed to press just to get a barrel of water to kill enemies a certain way?

Why was Sonic Colors and Generations more well received than Unleashed? Why is Sonic 4 being shat on? I think the answer is obvious. Action is being halted just for the developers to experiment with puzzles. Puzzles in certain levels kill the desire and motivation for a player to play through a game again. At least most of the time. I know some people are children and can’t articulate what’s wrong with a game until they hit puberty, or they’re fanboys that outright deny that something is making them shelve the game.

But… that’s not what really bothers me.

I received this interview via email about Takashi’s development of Sonic 4 Episode 2. As typical of Nintendo’s horse shit, Takashi waxes poetic about how they made the game, that kind of shit. At first, I wanted to play Episode 2, until I read this shit.

“Whether you’re playing alone or in co-op, the Tag Action is a necessity for you to clear the game. The design of the levels have been created with Tag Actions in mind. That really shaped how we designed levels.”

Great. Thanks for saving me money. I would NOT want to play Sonic Advance 3 all over again. What was this asshole thinking!? The Team system wasn’t the most loved aspect of Sonic Heroes. Despite that it could’ve been the Sonic game everyone would love, this team system caused the game to have mixed reactions due to the team play being a necessity to complete levels. Infact, that’s where most believe the true rot of the franchise began. That’s not even including that you have to play through the same 7 levels 3 more times just to complete the whole game, the “cooperation” of one player action is driven home.

But read on.

“When playing with a friend in particular, you have to time these moves just right – it really encourages communication between players and we think that will be a very fun experience.”

Except that isn’t good coop gameplay. Another game had something similar to this, I think it was “Cookie and Cream” for the PS2. Not a lot of people remember that game, but both players had to do things on their side of the level to ensure the OTHER player could progress.

Yeah, it’s not exactly similar, but that’s the impression I’m getting when he says this part. Good coop would allow both players to strategize different ways of tackling a level, not ensuring they time specific moves right in unison. It’s probably fun for a kind of “Genuis World Records” gong show for people to show off, but as a general game you just want to play to pass the time? No. Just no.

But this is the good part.

“Sonic CD is a game that the fans had always asked to be brought back… the problem is that it’s a really difficult game to port or emulate!”

So difficult, you ported it to the PC, Gamecube, PS2, and remade it currently for digital release (why you needed to make a new engine when thegame was ported to Gems wonderfully is BEYOND ME!). Why is Sega the only company that has problems porting their own shit? Capcom had no problems porting SF2 to the Commodore 64! Does it look and play like shit? Yes. Does that mean you can’t port to consoles like this? NO! They built the damn shit from ground up. Infact, why haven’t they ported Knuckles Chaotix yet if they can go and remake this?

I’ve never seen a game company that has bitched and moaned about not being able to port their own shit. It boggles my mind. You have the software and technology, and you should have knowledge of your own hardware to make it work on a different platform. How did we get Sonic Championship and  Sonic CD at 60 frames per second!? Don’t give me that clear water bullshit from Tidal Tempest, the game runs smoothly!

The PC version of Sonic CD was STILL GOOD! Just because it had lower frame rates doesn’t detract from it’s quality. And hell, the Wii isn’t underpowered to the point of absurdity, yet every new Sonic game produced for it runs at about 30-40 frames per second! Even Sonic Unleashed which is just a broken old hand me down! Cut the bullshit, Sega. You didn’t care!

“[Painful laugh] Hmm… probably not. People aren’t as vocal about Chaotix as they have been about Sonic CD. So at the moment I don’t really have any strong feeling or obligation to do that.”

Not many people even know Knuckles Chaotix exists. That’s another reason.

I like how he talks about obligation while continuing to shove puzzles into Sonic games, ruining the reputation of the franchise.

But here’s the quotes that break the camel’s back.

“So we really wanted to drive home the idea that this is a continuation from the Mega Drive era, in a way that was really easy to understand. To do that, we thought the best way was to present familiar stages, and show some consistency in that sense. That’s probably why Episode 1 likely came off as something of an homage to the past games instead.”

I think he’s confusing Sonic 3 as being the only Mega Drive game out there. How the fuck is a TORCH PUZZLE consistent? It’s consistent with the drum in it’s frustration and deterring difficulty. Many people just gave up after that shit fest. I don’t recall any shitty puzzles in Sonic 1, 2, or CD. And before all you jackoffs come in here with your corrections, yes, I KNOW CD wasn’t on the MegaDrive, dipshits.

“In Episode 2, we think that players really got that message. They now know that this is a continuation of the Mega Drive games, so we can do new things. If you think about it, it’s a 50/50 split between making sure we’ve got stuff in there that people will recognise as classic Sonic design, and also providing completely new experiences.”

Oh Amma! Sega must really want to be like Nintendo! They’re actually taking inspiration from the company’s practices during the Wii cycle! “Lets give gamers want they want, just to get on their good side!”

“Ok! Now everyone loves us! Lets go back to doing shit WE want to do now!” *Makes Wii U*

“During this period, that was missing – there were too many branches of play styles and mechanics, and as a result people didn’t know what was going on with Sonic or what he was really about. I think that caused a lot of confusion with the fans.”

And that was your fault, jackass. Weren’t you the director behind Sonic Adventure that started the trend of branching gameplay styles?. Your fucking name was listed TWICE just so people would understand! You were also the director for Sonic Heroes, which just furthered that crap. You want consistency, yet you’re going to change up the gameplay of Sonic4 Episode 2!? I… don’t… erg…. WHAAAAAAAT!?

And what confusion? People were just getting PISSED OFF! They ask for one thing, you give them that and then something else that sets them off! People wanted Shadow to have his own game. NO ONE WANTED HIM TO HAVE A GUN! They weren’t confused just because they hated what they asked for! You gave them a nasty surprise that ruined what they wanted. Same thing with Sonic 06. You decided to RUSH THE FUCKING GAME FOR THE HOLIDAYS! And ruined everything. Now thanks to that busted ass Amigo system, people were DEMANDING that Sonic be the only playable character. But the real reason was because THE AMIGO SYSTEM IS SHIT! So now you give Sonic fans Sonic as the only playable character. But then you secretly add Sonic himself as a new playable character IE Werehog. People were pissed off again! And then Sega had the gall to say they can’t please their fans. WHAT… HORSE SHIT!

Personally, I liked Shadow and Unleashed, but I cannot overlook the facts. The games were flawed… heavily. And that’s because Iizuka wanted to experiment with Heroes. Other devs in the sonic series were the ones really confused. THEY didn’t know what the fuck to do. But here’s the truth. You want to go on about “consistency” now because you have no choice. You find something that the Sonic fans actually love and now you’re giving them what they fucking want. And you know why?

BECAUSE YOU’RE LOSING PROFITS!

You NEED to make Sonic fans happy because your own stupidity is costing the company billions! Consistency my ass! Look at this shit!

“Ever since getting involved with Sonic Colours, going through to Generations, Episode 1 and now Episode 2, I’ve tried to make sure that this question of what Sonic fundamentally is has been answered, and is consistent. The essence of Sonic is what we’ve been trying to clarify, and drive home to people. Now that we’ve done this, I think we can actually start thinking about spin-offs and branches of the Sonic gameplay.”

What an arrogant son of a bitch! He’s essentially saying “good, we made them happy, lets go back to not giving a fuck anymore!” You… fucking… jackass! He’s poppin all this good shit about consistency, BUT THEN GOES ON TO SAY “Fuck it! Lets jut do what we want again!” He practically ignored his entire interview and said fuck it. He doesn’t even care anymore!

How DARE you call yourself a game designer! I expected this shit out of Nintendo, but YOU!? NO! When Nintendo fucked up, Sega was a company I could go to for relief! But this is just low. I’ve never seen or heard of someone so blatant in his insulting and arrogant attitude! Sonic fans, though retarded, deserve better than this shit. What this means is we won’t get more Sonic Colors or Generations. No, we’re going to get more Heroes, Advance 3, Tag Action bullshit so he can experiement with his own desires of game design.

I swear, the more I learn about Sega, the more I want to quit gaming forever.

Gamestop is not evil.

Let me be clear on something. I do not like shopping at Gamestop. The primary reason is because I do not enjoy being harassed to spend more money on shit other than a game I put on the desk. Secondly, used games shouldn’t go up as high as $40 (if you ask me). It just depends on the games. I don’t think Brawl should’ve sold for $40 based on the fact that it’s a major disappointment in every regard. I’ve never played a fighting game slower than Tekken. Brawl is a slug on acid! Kirby Return to Dreamland is a little more understandable considering I bought it used after a few months of it’s release (2 months). A lot of people would consider it a rip off.
Infact, prices on used games from Gamestop are always considered a rip off, because you’re paying more money on a product that has been used. Of course, the same assholes that complain about this would turn around and charge up to $100 for PSO on the gamecube “just because it’s rare“. It’s also quite outdated, and it has no servers available on them to play it’s title card literally. Hell, considering how shitty the PSP was, I think Gamestop’s prices for used models were MUCH better than the shit I see on Amazon. I still see prices ranging up to $339.99 just for the PSPgo.

No bullshit.

And just to be clear, the PSP Go released at only $250 back in 2009. If this the European version, that’s understandable. The problem is it’s shipped from the US, not Europe. As far as I’m concerned, PSP Go hasn’t been discontinued in the US.

The PSPgo REQUIRES the internet just to buy a video game. And it looks like shit. Sony knew they were ripping you off the moment they put this  out on the market. Too bad the fans of these products don’t understand that crap shouldn’t cost THAT much after the packaging has been torn open. It’s absurd.

I don’t want to justify Gamestop’s practices on used items, but dammit, seeing things like this just tells me gamers want more for less. And get pissed off that Gamestop trades in their crappy games for a pittance of the price they payed and resale them for more. Is it bullshit? Yes and No.

Yes, in that you expected more for what you were trading in and got shafted. Instead, they sold it for more than they were willing to give you for it. No, in the fact that this is the most realistic approach.

You mad?

Here’s the problem with Gamestop customers and the industry as a whole. Shit… be… expensive. When we have the ability to try and get things cheaper than before, we will take every opportunity to bring down the costs. We have our excuses. Oh the economy is bad! Things are too expensive! Yet on Sunday, I had to fight my way through a crowd of folks who wanted to fork over $350 big ones for a new Wii U. People have money. They just don’t want to fork it over until something they like is out there.

This is the real reason why everyone hates Gamestop. Because shopping at Gamestop is expensive. People expect to trade in their shitty games to bring down the prices as much as possible, and then turn around and throw a pissing contest when Gamestop won’t let them have their way. Gamers don’t want to pay money. And that’s understandable considering how expensive everything is.

But then, you go to #1 on this list. Suddenly, we have the urge to scream “self-entitlement”. And gamers will fight tooth and nail to “battle” this new label upon thousands of stereotypical labels that gamers have been given since the Playstation days.

And the funny thing is we’re all just as selfish. Living in a consumer culture, we learn to be selfish. We’re told day in and day out that we should have the best of everything, that we can look like hollywood celebrities without working out, or living like celebrities without sufficient funds.  So when you think about Gamestop’s business practice, well no shit people will get pissed off. They aren’t getting anything for free just by trading in a game, or stacking paper to the ceiling. And you know damn well that’s what people really want.

Gamestop KNOWS you don’t value your used games and consoles, which is why the trade in value is so low. They know how people think. You can just waltz in there and get a ginormous discount for trading in shitty games and buy up everything at your limit. Businesses like money. And if it means “ripping you off” as you say, you are going to pay some money.

As for why they resale games for double what they gave you? That’s even easier to explain. Have you ever heard the phrase “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”?

What if the piece of shit you traded in is worth something more to the people buying it? What if someone else was a fanatic of said shitty game? That fanatic would probably fork over as much money as possible to get a hold of the game. If he/she really wants something, the price matters nothing. Gamestop would be stupid NOT to take advantage of it. If anyone was stupid for not taking the opportunity and just wanted to rush to a store and get something as fast as possible, it’s you. Just think about it. This guy was willing to fork over $40 bucks for a used game you thought was shit! You could’ve sold the game to him for twice as much if he was that stupid! But then, you’d have to compete against Gamestop themselves.

The easiest explanation is that you are just bitter that you didn’t get more than what you wanted, and had to pay more than you predicted. Half the time, people just say “I traded in games and got a low number for them” yet we NEVER hear about the title of the game. Crap goes for as much as 65 cents at these stores (even on Amazon). Because no one honestly wants that shit, and you know it.

You ain’t slick. You would probably sell it for $60 if given the chance.

Luckily, Amazon users aren’t THAT stupid. But there’s always a certain breed of people who honestly think they can get away with prices like that PSP go. It’s disgusting. And those same people would bitch about Gamestop’s credit system.

As for the issue of Gamestop possibly destroying the game industry…. lol.

Why do people buy used games in the first place? Well, we already know people want shit for free. But at the same time, there are those folks of morality who want to support those companies by buying games at full price. And those folks aren’t entirely the minority. And those folks are the ones screaming about anti-piracy issues like DRM and shit. Pirates will crack the security measures within a day.

YOU CRACKAS RUIN EVERYTHING! EVEN GAMING!

Lets think for a minute. Why does Call of Duty make money, and why did people prefer to buy Heavy Rain used? it caused Quantic Dream to have a bitch fit over 1million less users buying his product.

The devs behind Call of Duty don’t apparently have this problem. Why? Lets stop being critical about the game’s quality and try to analyze why gamers prefer to pay for COD over Heavy Rain. What is heavy Rain about? It’s an interactive movie about Ethan Mars who’s son dies in a car-

I stopped reading at “interactive movie”. A lot of HD games have turned into Interactive Movies. It’s why the Resident Evil Series has fallen from grace, not just because it ditched zombies for tentacle monsters. Resident Evil sells because of name brand appeal, but if the sales of Darkside Chronicles is anything to go by, I assume it’s time to hang that up too.

COD is an FPS that’s all about multiplayer where you get to curse in your mic, talk trash and kick ass. Gamers have become monsters in that they want to dominate people. And video games allows that level of competition. COD provides a much bigger platform for this level of competition, even more than Halo it seems, given it’s setting resonates with our culture, and see above. Why the fuck would I fork over $60 for a fucking game that gives me button prompts to continue watching a shitty drama movie when I can snipe someone and yell at them for it!? No shit people are going to buy the game used! You’re just spending money and development time to keep Gamestop in business for years.

Quantic Dream sees me rollin. He hatin.

Lets just be realistic. If you want this shit to stop, STOP GOING TO GAMESTOP! PERIOD! But we all know you won’t do that. They’re close by, and have cheaper prices for most of their products.  A much better deal would take weeks to get to your shipping address. You want shit fast at the pittance of a few ounces of gas. Gamestop isn’t going anywhere because as far as everyone is concerned, you are too drunk on consumer culture to not stop shopping there.

You wish you knew how to quit them.

Good Wii games that got bad press.

As a Wii owner, I am no stranger to having my entire library be considered a tragedy. Now, in my previous post, I have stated before that you actually need to search for a good game on the console. What I really mean is… searching amongst the most recommended pieces of shit the Hardcore will swear are the greatest games ever. You see, the most recommended games are also the worst loads of tripe I’ve ever had the misfortune of playing myself. So, in order to steer people in the right direction of what I believe are some the best games to get on Wii, here’s a run down.

#1! Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing

WAIT! DON’T LEAVE YET! I’M SERIOUS!

I’m not one of those guys who writes off a game for being a “rip off”. Quality is not defined by originality. Otherwise, there needs to be a reason for the success of Sony’s consoles considering how much they ripped off.

It’s a lollipop!

Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing is one of the most fun titles on the system. Considering that Sega fucked up with Zero Gravity, I was expecting some of the worst controls of all time. But this game controls very smoothly. I was literally stupified. The characters mostly come from the Sonic series, but you get a nice selection of Sega characters to boot. Who would think you’d get to see Ryo Hazuki from Shenmue race against Jacky Bryant from Virtua Fighter? (And yes, Jacky sucks in this game). Not to mention the Bonanza Bros., Alex the Kidd, and…..ew… Billy Hatcher!? WHY!? Of all the characters you’d put in this game, you put in that queer ass bitch!? Billy Hatcher is a game virtually NO ONE gives a shit about! First off, it’s on the gamecube which is already a red flag to not bother with, second, the music is a huge turn off, and 3….

Even Ash hates him!

Fuck Billy Hatcher. It’s a good thing he doesn’t do anything in a race. He sucks even in the hands of the CPU!

The gameplay of “drifting to boost” actually works quite well. If you’re good enough, you can drift anywhere without slamming into walls and giving yourself infinite boosts on the track. I have to admit, I felt like I was playing the Sega version of Fast and Furious, Tokyo Drift when using BD Joe on Rokkaku Hill (Jet Set Radio). The items are the basic things you see in many mascot racing games, so no high expectations for originality. Hell, even the announcer is enjoyable to listen to, and makes the races more lively. If it gets boring, he will literally let you know he’s bored as hell! He’ll bitch until something happens. How many video game announcers do you know will actually bitch you out for not giving him a show?

The downside is that many courses are just the “Act 1, Act 2, Act 3” set ups. IE, there are 3 Seaside Hill courses, 3 Samba De Amigo courses, etc. So there isn’t a whole lot of variation between the courses. The Monkey Ball and Jet Set stages feel different enough from each other at least, but aside from those, you’re not gonna feel like playing certain stages because they don’t vary enough. Hell, we get 9 Sonic stages alone! We need more exposure from other Sega games.  Overall though, the game is quite fun (but multiplayer is where it’s at, so make sure you have a buddy on board). If you need a substitute for Mario Kart, this is it.

#2! Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

I wish Aipom was in the game.

The name is awful, and more Wii motion gimmicks! YARRRRRG!

Reading certain reviews, it seemed like Monkey Ball on Wii is the most awful damned thing in the world. It’s quite the opposite. If you’re a fan of Marble Madness or the Monkey Ball games in general, the conversion from an analog stick to motion controls is seemless. While having the inability to control the game holding the Wiimote sideways pissed me off beyond belief, the game controls very well. So the controls are damn near invisible. The game itself is probably the hardest I’ve played in a while. The motion controls actually helped to alleviate the difficulty of tilting the ball from doom. The only problem is that Sea became a little too sadistic. Many stages will probably give you a heart attack from high blood pressure. The very first stage from world 7 left me speechless. It was ridiculous! Why didn’t I watch this video prior to this stage!?

The minigames….. yeah, those do suck. Not all of them, there’s like 50 of these things. I did like the boxing and baseball games, but the minigame section is like the entirety of the Wii library! You literally have to search some more! From what I recalled, this game got bad press for controls and minigames alone. Though I honestly believe it’s the difficulty of the game that’s turned them off. And I can’t blame them, holy fucking shit! See, this is what Monster Hunter difficulty should be like. You actually WANT to keep going despite how much your ass gets kicked! Sega is sadistic, but in a good way. Capcom just fucks up on difficulty alone.

#3! Sin and Punishment: Star Successor

Sometimes, the hardcore are actually right.

Rail shooters were starting to get a bad rep on the Wii because the console was flooded with them during the mid years of the console’s lifespan. I assume it has nothing to do with Sin and Punishment’s reception, but seeing how motherfucking good it is, I can assume the hardcore aren’t always that stupid. The Sin and Punishment games are rail shooters with a nice twist. It’s not in first person. You actually need to control a character, manvuer around bullets, deflect missiles back enemies (or whereever you’re pointing at), etc. If you needed an arcade experience, this game has it. The first game was on the N64 with incredibly shitty controls, making the game more difficult than it needed to be. So this game, using the pointer, has much better controls. The difficulty hasn’t changed one bit. If you needed a good ass kicking, this is it. By it’s nature, the game is short by 7 stages, you have 2 characters with drastic gameplay changes (one has basic shooting while the other locks on to enemies). This game gives you the ability to hover in the air, so avoid bullets and enemies are slightly easier, but you need some real good coordination to shoot as well as avoid attacks. It’s not quite like rubbing your tummy and patting your head, but it’s close enough to the level of concentration you’ll if you’re thinking about playing on hard mode.

I don’t need to praise this game enough. The fact that it’s made by Treasure alone speaks volumes.

#4! Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

I’m serious.

No really. Rail shooters have gotten a bad rep. And this game is a primary example. You see, it was made during Capcom’s false promises of Wii owners hoping to get an RE5 port. Instead, they got another light gun game. So the Wii owners shat all over this title and Capcom “quits the Wii” over it. It’s a shame, really, this game is a huge improvement over the first rail shooter, umboredom chronicles…. despite the rampant amount of cutscenes. The game does have the unfortunate element of playing more like a movie than a game as there are any moments where you will take a break from shooting everything to watch the characters talk shit. Of course, this actually adds an element of tension itself because you really don’t know if something is going to pop out at you during the shit talking. So you’re literally put into a movie like setting where shit just pops out. It’s one of the scariest rail shooters on the market, but people for some reason turn their noses up at “pop up” scares like their nerves are that impervious to some unexpected shit happening. Gameplay wise, the guns will actually HURT something in this game. Ammo starvation is present meaning you have to make every shot count, as the Resident Evil series is known for. Of course, anyone can stick to using the inf. pistol, but eh. Health is no longer shared, making it easier to manage between 2 players, but you won’t know whether you or player 2 will take damage.

AMMO is shared for some stupid reason, which makes both players very angry and stingy. The shaky cam isn’t too intrusive, but headshots are quite useless. Aside from those issues, the game is quite fun. The scares and reactions from the characters alone make the game enjoyable. Plus, I know all you Resident Evil fans bitched and moaned about wanting Claire back. Merry fucking Christmas.

#5! Samurai Warriors 3

Dynasty Warriors in Japanese

BLAH GENERIC HACK IN SLASH WITH MILLION ENEMIES! I’ve heard it all through out the course of the Dynasty Warriors series. I never understood the logic that ass must be kicked in several different ways just for the game to feel like it’s worth your time despite that people will pick a shotoclone and abuse them over and over again in fighters. If you are obsessed with having the most content, this game alone will do it for you. You have over 30 characters at your disposal, NONE OF WHICH ARE CLONES! Every fighter has a unique style that is practical for the sake of whippin ass. While the general story mode for all characters goes up to 5 stages, you have a total of 38. So you have like a million characters, and a million stages :P. You also have a freeplay mode, historical mode (which gives you the actual story of every character), murasame castle (based off of an old Nintendo game, included with Takamaru, an actual Nintendo character(!)) not to mention….. a create a character mode. If 30+ characters wasnt enough for you, you can make your own damn characters using whatever styles you choose. Clothing is limited, but that aside, they’re mostly there to fit the setting of the game. Honestly, this game will leave you playing for a looooong time. If you just want a game to beat insane ass, you can’t go wrong here. Just be aware that the stages have their own missions and secrets. It’s not just mindless button mashing, you actually need to focus on certain objectives, keep people alive, kill 3 of such and such, race to a particular spot in time, etc. And best of all, none of this truly gets in the way of the actual ass beating.

I was a bit put off by the low frame rate considering the PS2 games could go up to 60 frames. What’s with the half assed effort? If you’re into graphics, the game does look cheap so you’ll be disappointed. But otherwise, it’s a great game for people who just want to beat ass.

#6! Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes

Then Samurai warriors gets pwn’t.. sort of.

Wow, why do games that start with the letter “S” kick so much ass? Anywho, if Samurai Warriors doesn’t do it for yah, then there’s this game. I’ve heard the claims of “repetition” plenty. But like I said, if all you want to do is beat ass, then there is no way in hell you could go wrong here. This game gets compared obsessively to Samurai Warriors by the hardcore, but is just as despised. While I agree it is a PISS EASY game given every character you use is overpowered as shit, that’s the idea. If you thought GOW was obnoxious, you haven’t played this title. One of the annoying things in this title is that every character will not shut the fuck up. They either bitch and moan about dying or something else that Capcom thought was “funny”. The content in this game is less so than Samurai Warriors 3. You have only 16 characters but the same exact number of stages almost. The story modes are longer and much more enjoyable, but overall, the gameplay is less about missions combined with beating ass… and is just about beating ass. And taking enemy camps. But mostly ass beating. So if Samurai Warriors didn’t fulfill your needs, then Sengoku is a nice substitute. Did I mention the ass beatings?

#7! New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Hehe

I know what you’re thinking. “This game got excellent awards and sales! How could you say it got bad press!?”. Go to gamefaqs, Neogaf or w/e and dare to suggest that this game is the best Mario game on Wii. I dare you. Believe me when I say the hardcore will NEVER admit this game is the shit. The second best selling Wii game behind Mario Kart Wii, it cannot be denied.

I was gonna list the Trauma Series, but it seems kinda pointless at this point. No one seems to care about those games, but I will say that New Blood was the best in the series. Trauma Team, while interesting, had an annoying cast of characters who all feel as though they were ripped straight out of an anime series. Plus, not a lot of the new mechanics worked well…… like at all. But hey, you get to open up a white bitch’s blouse and steth… for all you fetishists out there. 😛

So yeah, don’t take my word on it. These are some of the few titles on the system I would say are worth owning more so than what the hardcore recommends. If you’re in need of some Wii titles, don’t be discouraged by what the forums say. The Amazon reviews are a helluva lot more honest and truthful than most. They’re actually written by several more demographics than usual so you can gain a much broader view of what the game’s qualities are.

Here’s also… a few honorable mentions. These games didn’t necessarily get bad press, but they’re just as good, even if they didn’t sell.

Muramasa

Castle of Shikigami (if you need a new take on shmups… or you are a masochist)

Kirby Return to Dreamland.

Castlevania Judgment (your call, really. I liked it for what it was, but it REALLY needed some improvement… badly)

Klonoa

Tatsunoko vs Capcom

Bomberman Blast

Pokemon Rumble.

3rd Party Spitefulness has gotten worse

Click to understand this picture even further.

Oh Wii. It’s very, very odd that Nintendo never caught a break during the Wii’s lifespan. I think a lot of people are, at this point and time, extremely aware of the prejudice that was unleashed upon Nintendo’s consoles (even by Nintendo themselves!) This is a complete contrast to the PS2 which got millions of games on it’s console with the highest install base. The Wii was this generation’s PS2, by far. The problem for the Wii was the lack of quality games. Never in my days of owning anything did I have to literally search for enjoyable titles on the system, and while it isn’t the most difficult task, the best games I’ve played were those NOT recommended by the Hardcore. Yes. Super Monkey Ball; Banana Blitz is more entertaining than Metroid Prime 3.

Just…. what the fuck?

The only titles worth investing into were 3 Rainfall RPGs (one of which we won’t be getting anytime soon), 2D revivals, ports, and 2D retro collections of games readily available on the virtual console. I mean, how sparse is the quality of Nintendo’s game’s on the Wii? You would be hard-pressed to bother looking through all the shit just to find the gold.

The sad part is that everyone is blaming the customers for why a developer isn’t supporting the Wii. It is the customer’s fault that Capcom was starting to drop support for the wii after Darkside Chronicles bombed. They claimed that the hardcore market had “dried up”. Here’s the problem. Capcom didn’t bother to realize that Wii gamers were getting sick and tired of rail shooters that were flooding the console.  We got so many rail shooters, but no Time Crisis game. And this adds insult to injury when Capcom themselves said they would bring RE5 to the Wii if RE4 and UC both did well. They both passed the 1 million sales mark, and Wii got shitted on.

A lot of developers have made similar statements. “If this does well, we might think about it”. And a lot of times, people outright buy games based on the promise of better things. After getting burned so righteously, we can pretty much say that these “promises” are undetectable marketing techniques exploiting a gamer’s desperation. It’s almost sickening to think about, but Capcom has been pretty ballsy lately with horseshit like charging actual money for cheat codes. Yes Capcom, we understand how stupid the Hardcore are, but this is unacceptable behavior. And now you know why.

That’ll be $30 please!

Quite frankly, I always had this idea that because the Wii had the highest install base, 3rd parties schemed (or were payed off) to sabotage the system and steer gamers toward the HD twins. That way, 3rd parties can even take advantage of them with $60 AAA titles as well as Collector’s editions and DLC and tons more digital content they can crank out anytime they please. You pay full price for half the content, and you gotta pay extra to get the rest (or unlock it on the disc). Since Wii’s online capabilities are shit, 3rd parties can’t rip off the “retarded casuals”. So they put on this show about how the Wii could destroy gaming, and how we, the hardcore, must rise up in the name of the controller and defend our sanctuary from Nintendo’s expanded audience!

And the hardcore swallowed that shit up like oatmeal from grandma. Looking at things like this, one would assume that Nintendo would “show those bastards how it’s done”. When everyone believed Nintendo was finished in 09, here comes NSMBW to break holiday sales records.

And then… Nintendo just shot themselves in the foot. Instead of taking advantage of their own image and putting out more quality titles, they started to sabotage their own console with their own brand of “creativity”. Here comes Other M and Skyward Sword. Wii Music, Wii Sports Resort, and the 3DS. The Wii died in 2010. Just what the hell were you doing, Nintendo?

I was kicking my aaaaaaaaass! Do you mind!?

If anything, Nintendo is doing exactly what the 3rd Parties want with Wii U and 3DS.

But ignoring that, it really does appear that the enemies of the gamers are the developers themselves. They seem to be out of control with all of their money grubbing schemes and intentional sabotage of consoles not named “Xbox”. It’s quite amusing to see Sony fans going berserk everytime they lose an exclusive. They’re feeling exactly what Nintendo fans have felt for 2 console generations. Neglect, betrayal, and being the mockery of any fanboy ever seen. Suddenly, it was the Sony fans getting the worst versions of their console games.

Console developers are no strangers to bribing 3rd Parties to NOT develop games for other consoles. This in itself is disgusting. Game  Developers used to make games for us. Now, they’ll easily deny anyone any form of entertainment if a console maker pays out the ass for someone’s tears. I never recalled this level of disproportion back when the Genesis and SNES were going head to head. The same level of quality for both consoles was evident. You actually had a choice in the matter. Nowadays, it’s honestly just the 360 for worthwhile games. The Wii was sabotaged internally and externally. PS3 was getting the worst versions of a majority of their games now. And this was a result of 3rd Parties.

It’s as though the 3rd parties have become the villains in this age. Where the hardcore have placed them on pedestals higher than the heavens, they have egos so astronomical, David Sirlin would shit himself. Instead of looking at themselves for mistreating their customers, they will instead accuse the customers of not supporting them. And then continue to screw over those that do. The game industry has literally turned into the Federal government.

But the one developer that has completely shocked me this generation…. was Sega.

Sega was considered an old rival of nintendo’s and now an ally. People amusingly believe Nintendo bought the company out as well. We would’ve all assumed that with the very decent support for the cube and early Wii cycles, Sega would be on board to help Nintendo.

But they too shared the same views against the Wii. It literally blew my mind when they stated they would not port Sonic Generations to the Wii….. because it had bad graphics. Lets ignore how fantastic Sonic Colors looks. Devs didn’t publish most games on GC even if it was much more powerful than PS2, now with Wii they say that it’s not powerful enough, they always have something to be disappointed for.

I HATE THAT HEDGEHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG!

And even then, graphics is a cop out excuse. “If Street Fighter 2 can get ported to the Commodore 64, ANYTHING can be ported to the Wii” (+1 Sean)

I’ve actually read that Sonic Colors was tailor-made to appeal to the Wii audience. The game’s overall theme is a lot more childish than previous Sonic games at this point. So we can assume that Sega thinks the Nintendo’s expanded audience…..are just retarded children.

At first, I thought that was silly. I mean, this was Sega! They had MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill! But at this point, I might take ANYONE’S bullshit on this considering Phantasy Star.

This is Phantasy Star Portable 2 for the (god damned) PSP. Ignore the gay ass song and tell me. Does this look interesting to play? Look at the images of the demonic Beast race. The chick with the eye-patch and oversized samurai sword. You get a sense that there is something epic in this package, regardless of who it might appeal to.

HORRY SHEEET!!! MY EYES! THEY BURN!

Phantasy Star Zero for the DS. Yes. Sony players get some epic, more serious looking shit…. and DS owners get gay ass “4kids tv” saturday morning trash. THIS is what Sega thinks of the Nintendo crowd. They obviously like kiddy bullshit with Zero appeal, right?

I don’t know how to even end this post. I’m so pissed at PSZ right now.

The Japanese don’t seem to care about the West anymore.

Fuck you, Namco

 

Ever notice that a lot of famous game franchises from the early 80s until now seem a little….  fruity.

Lets review a few franchises

The Legend of Zelda. It starts off as a game based on medevil fantasy where you are a swordsman on a quest to rescue a princess from an evil pig demon in the far reaches of Death Mountain. Today, you are a teenager named Link who has a highschool crush on a random girl named Zelda while dealing with bullies and freaks with long tongues. Zelda displays attributes of a mild tsundere type of character. Sassy, but always worried about you, the main character. And trains.

Sonic the Hedgehog. Series starts off mainly as a tech demo for the Mega Drive but turned into a way past cool mascot for Sega in the 90’s. For a brief time, due to Sonic X, was turned into a happy go plucky good guy who has no flaws and is just that guy that everyone can count on. Apparently tells the princess to just smile, and is always the last hope for humanity. Shadow has a dark past, and Blaze is used a vehicle to drive the “power of friendship” home, while Silver reminds everyone of Trunks for no goddamn reason. Currently, Sega is trying to reverse this.

I don’t think I need to talk about Final Fantasy.

Current day RPG’s are more and more trying to capitalize on modern day anime, which is why they’ve declined, because modern anime is shit. This also goes for Japanese developed fighting games like Blazblue and Arcana Heart.

A lot of Japanese developed games in general look like anime.

I think RPG’s have always tried to be like anime, but most of the bullshit that appealed to the Japanese stayed in Japan. However, the Japanese knew how to appeal to our tastes overseas with their own flavor added to them. Science Fiction doesn’t appeal that much to the Japanese, but we somehow got Metroid and Phantasy Star out of the deal.

Speaking of Metroid, why was Nintendo forcing canon from a Manga into the series so late? Why does Sakamoto feel like it’s important to our enjoyment of the franchise?
The truth is, simply…. the Japanese are beginning to care lesser and lesser about our entertainment.

One of the reasons I say this is (and probably isn’t a good reason imo) is due to the PSP. See, the PSP is perceived as “shit” here in the West. But PSP is godly in Japan due to Monster Hunter. Due to Monster Hunter’s immense success, Japanese developers rushed to the system, developing all kinds of MH clones for it. God Eater being one of them, and was one of the more successful MH clones to be released. I have to admit, I actually considered getting one for this game. But here’s the problem. We don’t like the PSP in the west. For what it is, it’s too pricey for a system of shit value. Why do used PSP’s cost up to 175 on Amazon? I can get a DS Lite for as little as 75 bucks  (Oh, found one for 55). The system is fragile as fuck, the functionality is hardly decent, and the system has a severe lack of games people would actually want. And online capabilities mean jack shit when all the people you could find would usually NOT have a PSP and stick with a DS. Over here, we don’t like PSP. But over there, the Japanese do. So the Japanese will load the system with a ton of RPG’s for their Japanese audiences, but then export them over here, never advertising them, and expecting us to buy a shitty system to play a game no one knows about.

If the Japanese bothered looking at world wide trends and not their small, imploding Island, they would realize that not bothering with exports would be a wise idea. An even better idea would be to port the games to a cheaper to develop for console with a higher install base (IE, the Wii). And then try to export that. The problem is, the Japanese have the same prejudice against the console as the West does. It’s underpowered and/or the Wii audience is a bunch of fucking retarded children. I’m shocked we got visual novel games like Trauma Center, and artsy dipshit games like Muramasa (No, I am not saying it sucks. Hell, I like it). But Monster Hunter sold best on PSP over in Japan. So what happens is God Eater goes to a system that the West despises.

God Eater would probably have a much better chance in the west on a System the West cares about. The Wii version of Monster Hunter Tri was the most successful in the west. More than the fucking PSP games!

And I doubt the Wii audience is full of prudes either.

The Ragnarok game sold more on the DS than the Vita. Phantasy Star Zero sold extremely close to Phantasy Star Portable’s numbers (this is impressive considering ZERO advertising for both games). If anything, the Japanese would benefit by making US copies of their games exclusive to systems the West actually likes. Like Monster Hunter. Keep Tri on Wii while every other MH game goes to PSP in Japan only. It’s a waste of time putting it out on the PSP as an export. God Eater sold like piss in the west, but no one is going to buy a PSP for this game anyway. As crazy and as ridiculous as that is to conceive, it’s a logical choice if the Japanese want to appeal to the west again.

See, the reason the Japanese does this shit is that they’re assuming that because it does well in their tiny little world, it should also do well in the West. This is funny considering Metroid usually sells like ass in Japan, yet they still had the balls to give us the series. Super Metroid actually sold better in Japan than it did in America, but Nintendo decided to take a hiatus on the series for an entire console generation. Nintendo didn’t give a shit that Japan liked Super Metroid over the U.S. So why are they trying to appeal to them now? Japan is a much smaller market than in North America as well. They would benefit much more by trying to appeal to our sensibilities as they have done before. Sega realized this with Sonic, and while not immediate, I assume there will be a nice, steady recovery for the blue hedgehog. But other gaming companies outside of Sega and Capcom don’t seem to give 2 shits about anyone outside of the country. But this goes beyond what platforms the companies decide to use.

I’m playing Phantasy Star Zero right now. The game is very fun despite it’s repetition. However, there’s one element that pisses me off. The vending machine exclusives are disproportionate for the US.

Then there’s this annoying little bitch.

Ignoring the whole “copy right” excuses, because I personally don’t see that many items that are of copyright, and besides that, since it’s a nintendo console, Nintendo shouldn’t have much of an issue putting out Easter eggs of their own shit into the game at this point. Maybe the localization team renamed the items, but for fucking what!? If it’s on a Nintendo platform, Nintendo shouldn’t even give Sega any shit for it especially since you still have an item called “NINTENDO POWER” in the US version. We STILL get less items than the Japanese. That’s not even ignoring the Sonic Gems collection getting even MORE games in Japan than here (the excuse was trying to keep the ESRB ratings down, but Sega will make a game like Shadow the Hedgehog) It’s not like Sega can’t censor the damn games at this point. Fang the Wolf was exclusive to the Japanese version of Bloody Roar: Primal Fury on the gamecube. Why? They had no problem putting his ass on the Xbox version. Hell, Mai’s tits were no longer realistic and were just those fake, hard tits you see on blond white women these days. Why!?

Apparently, the reason this happens is to discourage their own audience from buying cheaper versions from abroad. Japanese merchandise is expensive as fuck to buy. But the Japanese rival the jews in their greed that they INTENTIONALLY FUCK UP THEIR OWN EXPORTS to discourage the japanese from buying international releases of their own games. And they don’t give a rats ass if the overseas audiences are pissed off about it.

The Japanese have made one thing clear. They would rather cater to their domestic locations. That’s fine and dandy. That’s your home turf. That’s your own kind. Japan was originally supposed to be a very isolated country, having little contact with the outside world as it is (which is why they’re so ignorant of other races and don’t know what the fuck to do if a foreigner strolls in without being rude about it). The problem is they’re making games for us anyway. We shouldn’t be ignored deliberately for the sake of your own domain. We shouldn’t get screwed over because you drive a hard bargain for your entertainment. And we shouldn’t be expected to like something just because it sold well in your country. And if something is successful over in the West, you need to examine why and KEEP IT THAT WAY!

We don’t get Sonic Manga or Metroid Manga for good reason. We instead have American comics that actually appeal to us. TAKE A HINT FROM THAT AND KEEP YOUR ANIME BULLSHIT OUT OF SONIC AND METROID!

Here’s something that’s funny. Everyone keeps crying for Retro to make another Metroid game despite the fact that Retro was already running the series into the ground. Corruption was the worst the series had to offer by that point. But Retro is more desirable than Sakamoto and Nintendo EAD at this point because Other M KILLED the Metroid franchise. What does that tell you? We will literally lower our standards of quality when the Japanese destroys something we love for the sake of appealing to the Japanese. How arrogant to give us something, and then immediately shut us out from it? That is what Japan is doing in a nutshell.

This guy = BLACK btw. 😛

……Sticker Star?

Above: The gayest shit ever.
And yes, I’m using gay as an offensive term. Now go cry to Wanda Sykes’s boring ass.

Not only is the guy explaining all this is incredibly dull to listen to, but point out what he says multiple times.

Puzzles

Puzzles

Puzzles

While RPG’s are known to have puzzles, a lot of times, these are usually the worst and most forgettable parts of RPG’s. No one enjoys rpg’s for puzzles. They instead point out story or even the battle system being intense (but mostly stories). No one gives a fuck about the puzzles.
Nintendo seems to be the most brain-dead company out there now. Why do so many of their games contain faux-puzzles!? Oh look, you need a fucking bowling ball to get through a forest. Does that even make sense?! Yes, it’s called a mushroom kingdom, yes you have a plumber who can grow bigger with mushrooms, but now we’re just pushing it with bowling forests. And this shit is supposed to be sticker star’s best aspect!? I can just see it failing. Hopefully people aren’t so stupid they would buy this crap. Basically, all the puzzles will be based on a fetch quest. You have to search for any items that will help you get through a few obstacles to progress. This is not going to be a fun game to play.

But not only is this game more “puzzle based”, it seems Nintendo is going to fuck up the combat  system in that you now just select a “set of commands”. If you’ve played the Bomberman games with the charaboms, you will know what I’m talking about, and you will know why that shit never caught on with ANYONE IN THE WORLD! Not only were the charaboms percieved as shitty knock offs of pokemon, hardly anyone remembers that busted ass combat system in which you select a set of 3 different commands for each turn. So what happens is that you turn the combat into a programming simulation. I remember a game called Dr. Brain, it had this one minigame where you had to program this robot in the same manner. You select the commands and press go, hoping everything works out. But it was the worst minigame ever. If you still don’t know what I’m talking about, think about the game Chu Chu Rocket for the Dreamcast.

And that’s essentially Sticker Star’s entire combat system. You have to find stickers, which are essentially the commands for your attacks, go into battle and use up each command per fight. Once you use the command, it’s gone for good!?

I can just see it now. You’ll be avoiding battles just to look or buy more stickers, and then march off into battle. So now even the FUCKING COMBAT is based on a fetch quest! What the fuck is with Nintendo and fetch quests!? Don’t they realize that people are getting tired of all this searching and endless searching for keys to progress through worlds?! It’s getting to the point that every game they make has to have some sort of element where you need to constantly find things just to unlock secrets or progress through the game. And no, Zelda 1 wasn’t based on endless fetch quests. Keys were easy to come by, and dungeons were simple to navigate. The only thing that halted your progress were the bad ass enemies. Hell, even METROID wasn’t a fetch quest. Not every item you could get was essential to progress. They were simply there for you to become more powerful, but more power ups you didn’t even need. For some reason, Nintendo thinks you need games to last you a life time, so they distract with stupid fetch quests in which they can extend gameplaying time. That’s all they’ve been doing with their games! Wind Waker’s triforce bullshit was admitted to be a deliberate attempt to extend gameplay time because the game was rushed! But dammit, Aonuma just… kept… doing this. And now Sillicon Knights, or whoever the fuck is in charge of Paper Shittio now, has been infected with the fetch quest disease. Every Nintendo game is now some over bloated fetch quest. But Nintendo assumes the lack of interest in their games is a lack of accessibility!?

I am SICK AND TIRED OF NINTENDO’S BULLSHIT!

Monster Hunter and why we accept fake difficulty

Desperation is a sign of starvation. When you haven’t had a bite to eat in over a decade, people tend to reach out for anything that may just satisfy their hunger. Video games satisfied a certain craving. A certain level of accomplishment. Why Xbox “achievements” are so important to people. We all want to feel like we’ve accomplished something in life. We become desperate when the thoughts of “dying without accomplishing anything” race through our minds during the 20s. So we do anything. We find work, deal with college, or join the military. We need to validate our lives somehow. The problem is our society encourages this desire in the most negative of ways just to get profits.

I will admit one thing. I am a college drop out. No shame. I felt that after 3 years of paying an extreme amount of money to jump through hoops as a sign of accomplishment just wasn’t worth a blank check per semester. Of course, I have become a disgrace to my family, friends…..actually just my family. Quitting anything is a sign of weakness. It is to be abhorred, never encouraged. So not getting through college, combined with the amount of money wasted = terrible fucking disaster.

But dammit, I am tired of going through life jumping through hoops. To everyone, jumping through hoops is supposed to make you a “man”. To see that you can take anything anyone throws at you. To be “tough”. To be “rugged”. A test of your worth in life. Worth in this case meaning if you are willing to be a capable product, you are worth the amount of money we will pay you.

And all this came from a tiny quote from an NPC in Monster Hunter Tri. The guild “sweet heart” who says “people look up to hunters because you’re supposed to take anything they throw at you!” It makes you think about what purpose we have in our lives. Only through hardship will we be rewarded and worshipped by all. This is the idealogy of our current religion where Jesus went through hardship for everyone else’s sake.
Yeah… fuck that.

The degree to which Monster Hunter fans rage every time someone points out that their precious is a tedious snoozefest is magnificent btw.

Capcom is no stranger to having warm saliva bast their under garment members. Check out this piece of work in which an angry blogger on a “Capcom website” retorts easy target complaints of Monster Hunter FU (a fantastic acronym). tl;dr “You hate it cause you suck at it”.

I don’t understand this mentality where the hardcore immediately writes off complaints about a game and narrows it down to…. someone just having some sort of disability in playing video games in general? It’s always the player’s fault for not enjoying the game. The “nicer” version of this is the favorite “it’s not for everyone”. This retort, while much kinder and one I would encourage, is deliberate damage control. Something not being for everyone is a fact of life. This is not a good defense against a flaw of the game. If so, Superman 64 should be included in the same boat. Not be held exclusively for games you love to death.

Anywho, Monster Hunter is practically one of the least loved franchises in the West. But, because the Japanese love it, it has to be that  damn fantastic. Considering it saved the PSP in Japan, it would be ethnocentric to say the Japanese love shitty games and devices, but eh, we like shitty movies like Transformers. As many know, Monster Hunter is this “deep and complex” Action/RPG/farm sim/clusterfuck which is extoled by the hardcore as their key to exclusion from the dreaded casuals.

Of course, the only thing that’s complex about the game is simple preparation and tral and error gameplay. See, just like Resident Evil before the series stopped being shit apparently, Monster Hunter is based on “realism” to the point of absurdity. And when I say realism, I fucking mean it. For one, you cannot equip gear unless you are in your private room, just as in the real world where you can’t change clothes unless you are in the comfort of your own home…. or beating up someone and taking their clothes as a disguise or whatever. So you don’t have the option of changing gear at will. You have to be home to do so. Another issue is the need to kill monsters to make your own clothes, like in the real world where fur is murder…. except you’re justified and PETA isn’t around to splash blood on you. As well, your character has “Stamina” (yes, this is where Aonuma got his ideas from) where you can tire out from running, evading, swimming, and the only way to replenish your strength is by eating a fat juicy steak. Also, swinging big weapons is realistically SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. No Cloud Strifes in this game. Nope. Capcom shoe-horned the REALISM into this bitch. You even have to buy a ton of shit just to make new items which in itself is trial and error in that you have a certain percent chance of crafting an item or getting garbage, meaning you may have to go back out and get more materials to go back to crafting… IF you can get those materials when you want them.

So we run into the first problem of why MH didn’t take off in the west. Too much realism. Westerners only like realism in the sense of guns… and football. There’s no football, and the guns in this game have to be reloaded after 5 shots tops. That’s primative shit. Not to mention the spoilage of RPG’s that allowed you to change gear during your journey, not before and after. In action rpgs, you didn’t have incredibly limited means of attacking, IE awful mobility as well as a stamina gauge to watch out for. And don’t even abuse your weapon as it will lose it’s sharpness and possibly break. Infact, every tool you use in this game can break, meaning you’ll have to buy more shit for when they do (which is a pain in the ass for farming ores from those rocks). What this results in is a game that is more of a chore to play than an action game.

And you’re probably dulled out by the first shitty quests you’ve done, once you come to the Great Jaggi, you’re already bored to death as the Great Jaggi is nothing more than just a bigger version of enemies you’ved faced several times already. Not to mention another quest later on requires you to face the same monster again just to catch it. So first, you’ve got this realism shit shoved in which makes the game feel like dog shit… and then you bore people to death with the same monsters in a new area? After a while of fighting the same types of enemies (you basically kill the first half game enemies in the same way as usual… you just attack them over and over again), you now have the opportunity to fight some dragon bird… thing with a vocal sack. He has flight and fire breath. Your sense of strategy has been completely dulled by fighting shitty enemies by this point, now you are immediately expected to prep for this fight.

I hate you, Guild bleeding heart

Strike 3. Lack of consistency. Capcom, you cannot just throw curve balls at people so late in the game after boring the to death with tutorial monsters. They won’t learn to change up their strategies for different situations by this point. What this leads to is frustration, which eventually leads to players saying “fuck this shit”. This is just bad game design.

It’s a strange phenomenon this day in age where people defend shit like this in video games for the main sake of it being “realistic”. People don’t like a whole lot of realism in their video games, especially those where you get the opportunity to fight giant monsters. You need to be aware of what the market has been exposed to, and not assume that everything the Japanese loves will be well received by the US either. I’m shocked Capcom hasn’t made MH japan only since no one over here wants that shit.

Realism is just an obstacle to your enjoyment of a video game. Reload animations delay your ability to get back into the action after running our of caps, needing to find ink before you can save meaning you play a game as long as the game wants you to play, falling from a high place and taking damage from the ground (despite having taking leaps of faith before and coming out just fine like Mario), etc. We rarely had this shit back then, why is it so important to make games “realistic” this day in age?

Other than that, in MH, because of this realism shit, combat itself is a chore. As I’ve said before, your character attacks excruciatingly slowly. Now you have giant monsters, right? Now, if we were looking for realism, the monsters themselves would be kinda slow in many regards. Fuck no. Every giant monster moves at the speed of sound. They are limber, and are made of greased lightning. But you’re the one who’s slow. You’re the ONLY one in combat who is slow. Your evasive tactics are held back by stamina, and that’s if you don’t have your weapon unsheathed because it takes nearly 2 seconds to take your weapon out… and put it away, making you completely immobile. If you have just the sword, you basically be smashing your shortsword against his flank over and over and over again, chipping away at his wretchedly massive amount of health for half an hour because every other weapon was so fucking slow to use that he’d jump out of the way and slap you across the chops with his tail in the time it took to swing them.

You either have to try and fight skittish monsters with a warhammer, hoping to Amma that they’ll eventually calmly sit on the ground for the eighteen seconds necessary to swing the bloody giant swords…. or just say fuck this game because since every monster you fight is faster than the speed of sound despite being larger than a mountain. You’d think Capcom said fuck it and decided to watch Jurassic Park and make a guess as to how fast prehistoric predators were back then. The great Jaggi, I could forgive. Royal Ludroth and Barroth were fucking pushing it. Especially with that bullshit barrel roll shit. And this assuming you didn’t look up a guide first to prep for all of these fights beforehand

The reason why this game is forgiven despite it’s obvious signs of artificial difficulty is the same reason people keep playing SF4 despite bitching about it all the time…. like Lupasan (no offense. The guy is funny as hell, but seriously?). Because of the jackoffs that scream at you on the internet for complaining about shit like this. How is that we can look at NES games and say they were just poorly designed, buggy, glitched up fuck fests, yet accept some half-assed misguided attempts at making a so-called “challenging” experience? The hardcore asses have been crossing some fucking lines if they’re implying that a game isn’t challenging unless the difficulty is made blatantly obvious early on.

Well, it’s like I said earlier, we’re all hungry for something called “accomplishment”. We’ve become drowned in an era of artsy games with retarded skill caps so that we can experience the amazing genius of every developer in existence. The HC crowd will never admit that the games they crave are actually the games that are killing the industry. It gives Capcom so much leverage in that they can design any game in a misguided quest to offer a challenge that they make shit like Monster Hunter. And man, the Japanese must’ve been starving for an asswhipping if they allowed the PSP of all things to become a success in Japan, over the superior DS.

Video games have gotten far too easy if we are willing to accept games from Capcom like this. If MegaMan 9 wasn’t proof, the entirety of the Monster Hunter franchise is. Capcom is essentially that kind person walking by a million homeless people starving in the streets. They offer the food of “challenge” to the hardcore, and they gladly bite. Heaven help you if it also has achievements. You could feed a 3rd world country with that alone.

We’re starved for challenging games. But Monster Hunter’s piss ass realism is definitely not the way to go about it

Do developers promise quality games for the amount of asskissing from the Hardcore?

Continuing from the previous post, I am reminded of a convo I had with one of my coworkers about (as always) the dreaded hardcore. We were talking about this game.

Nintendo’s only real Final Fantasy game

Already not making love to critics, the Hardcore have easily fallen in love with this title. And considering that Sakaguchi (the one who cursed the minds of the youth of today with FF7 and started the rot of JRPG’s) made this game, it was going to get hardcore love no matter what.

This love can easily blind them to the faults of the game itself. For one, bad AI. There are so many times where I just wanted to strangle Lowell considering he’s just about the only character that can literally “heal” your enemies. How? Some enemies absorb certain types of magic. Ice element is the only one that gets absorbed, making Lowell that fucking prick who will fire away without even knowing what he’s trying to kill.

He’s stupid and his big ugly face is as dumb as a butt.

Oh Amma, I hate Lowell. Lowell is this game’s Sheva Alomar. But who cares about practically when he’s (supposed to be) funny? Anywho, the only way to prevent this is by using the game’s poorly implemented Command Mode which is the equivalent to RTB bars from Chrono Trigger to FF7. Yes, you need to fill a bar up before you can tell your idiots to stop attacking. Luckily, the amount of time it takes before you get a full bar is seemless. It does fill up rather quickly, but that doesn’t solve the problems of stupid AI. You have to tell Lowell not to use Ice magic everytime a battle starts. It wouldn’t be so bad if Lowell was actually… you know… a GOOD CHARACTER whose awesome power might put the team at risk, but no. He’s shit. Just like everyone that’s not named Yurick. Yurick is a bad mother fucker. His fire attacks are the most useful (when is fire NEVER useful?), and can turn enemy heal circles into death circles, killing enemies faster. Not to mention he actually KNOWS how to SURVIVE! Stupid bitches like Mirania will literally run into danger when you need that bitch to heal you. That Kracken fight alone will show you just how stupid she is. But Yurick? Oh no. He’s the real bad ass. Do you know any other character that has 2 Super Skills? One that actually rapes the final boss (Dagran btw)? I didn’t think so. Yurick is awesome.  He knows how to wreck shit and stay alive during the course of ass wrecking.  He’s just that mother fucking good. He’s no wuss, he’s smart enough to take cover and avoid enemies. His Super Moves are incredible and wtf I love this bastard!

It’s almost as if I’m turning homo.

Eitherway, when you discuss flawed AI with fans of this game (100% of any forum at least), you’ll get the usual crap ranging from “The game is too easy anyway! Why would you want good AI?” to “the developers intended for you to use the command system”. That last bit irks me to no end. Imagine that. The developers purposefully making something flawed to justify an in-game mechanic. You know the guys behind Sonic Heroes just had a helping hand with this title if that was the case.

Lets be clear on something. The developers can intend for a lot of bullshit in the game. They’re making it, so why the fuck shouldn’t they intend for something!? The problem I have is when these fanboys walk around shoving “developer intent” down my throat as if I’m supposed to like it just because the developers had this shit in mind? Capcom’s developers intended for you to “conserve your ink” when you desperately wanted to save your game. No one tolerated that shit even if the games were moderately successful (probably not even by that much). What happened? RE4 took that bullshit out.

Sega intended for people to fall in love with the Werehog. We didn’t tolerate that shit, but we LOVED the day stages. We get Colors and Generations based almost entirely on the day stages of Unleashed. And we had little problem with that.

This is how the game industry SHOULD operate! Not by us taking any kind of shit that developers throw at us. This is the entire mentality behind why devs can get away with charging people extra or content that’s locked on the disc. Because of assholes who believe “the developers intended it. Therefore, it is good”. Developer intent shouldn’t be an excuse to accept poor game design.

The devs intended for you to use the gathering system in the Last Story, but everyone complains about the game being repetitive. Well no shit! Turn on Gathering and you become overpowered. But the devs intended for that which makes it automatically “well designed”. Give me a fucking break. There’s a reason why a lot of people haven’t even bothered to warm up to the Last Story like they did with Xenoblade. You have several options for combat, even if the thing is on auto pilot half the time. Last Story? Turn on Gathering and hello free wins in spite of shitty AI!

The developers should intend for gamers to have FUN with their titles. Not for them to justify gameplay mechanics.