Reckless Abandon (Sonic)

I forgot to mention Encore mode. For those who don’t have the plus version, Encore mode redesigns the zones and gives you a mediocre version of Knuckles Chaotix ala being able to switch between the current 5 characters via tv‘s. That’s, of course, a stupid idea as it means playing the characters you want comes down to luck. The recolored zones have slightly modified layouts with varied enemy placements, though they seem to exacerbate the problems that exist. Only real thing of value are the bonus stages changing to a simple pinball game.

Add to it, the lives system is tied to how many characters you have on hand. Yeah, you start off with Sonic first, then you have a choice between Mighty or Ray, and then you have to find the other 3 and keep them alive. But that also means having to scour the zones for tv’s if you want to use particular characters. If you have 2 on hand, you can switch between them freely, but with 3-5? You have to find specific tv’s that will rotate them so you can use the guys in your “party”. This is, of course, tedious as hell because the rotation is often random at best. Meaning finding those tv’s merely gives you a chance to swap out for a character you want or need.

So the obvious question. Why not just let us choose the characters for each and every zone? That’s what Chaotix did. And the characters you use obviously don’t impact the zone’s difficulty. This has no real benefit toward making the game fun. It simply exists. Why the team thought this would be fun is anyone’s guess. Encore mode is simply more of the regular mode without much limitation on the characters you have access to.

But I did notice this.

This is an area in Press Garden where you have to use those disappearing blocks from Mega Man to progress to the next area. I decided I wasn’t about to do that bullshit. You can jumpbto the top of those boxes and jump to the next area from there.

But, if you make it to the same spot in encore mode….

But whyyyyyy?

You can that the devs have barred off access by (literally) stacking the deck. If you don’t have Tails or Knux, you have to use the disappearing blocks. I can’t shake the suspicion that this was deliberate. Like Taxman and the boys wanted to remove any possible exploits or workarounds so that you’d have to progress through the game a certain way. As Sonic, Mighty,  or Ray, you have no other way around it (as far as I can tell)

Fuuuuck

 What i was expecting was that the Zones would be “remixed” to make them feel fresh to justify going through them all a second time. Not that it would be more difficult with minor changes. 

Regardless of what he may say in interviews about a stated intent, that shows a fundamental lack of understanding why people enjoy Sonic in the first place. This design choice was done to set you on a more linear path. Forcing the player to make skillful and precise jumps on faster acting platforms.  IE “making it harder”.

“But wait!” Says internet gamer. “What’s wrong with a harder game!? Isn’t that the point of video games? To be challenging? If you’re complaining about hard games, you have no business talking about the quality of games!” 

This belief evolved out of the desire of internet gamers to be seen as the elite. The hardcore. The big dogs. Primarily as a means to compensate for their own lack of achievement in life, they push this narrative down everyone’s throats because they feel they can impress other people with “desire” to play the most difficult games ever, and earn bragging rights online. These days, it’s a universally accepted notion that videogames were difficult as a means of generating revenue rather than being the main attraction of videogames, praying on the egos of the players by posting up leaderboards with highscores, and encouraging them to drop more quarters. You can see that happening today with DLC and microtransactions, the goal is to addict you and get enriched off of you. 

What internet gamers have done was take the commonality of a revenue stream and turn it into a dick swinging contest. 

This narrative loses its meaning when you come to find that everyone’s favorite game or entry in a franchise turns out to be the easiest games In said franchise. Mega Man 2, Resident Evil 2, Pokemon Gold and Silver, Star Fox 64, Sonic 3K, Super Metroid, etc. People tend to gravitate toward the easier games more often than not. And I’m not implying it’s because the games are easy, they simply offer something over other entries in the franchise. What that means is they’re not going into the games with it’s difficulty in mind. They are merely there to have a particular kind of experience.  If the difficulty gets in the way of that experience, it sours their opinion of the game overall. No one wants their gaming experience to be hindered by difficulty. 

But the internet gamers love that. They see someone complain about difficulty, it gives them an opportunity to make asses of themselves and wave their fingers, shaming said individuals and generally giving themselves high fives for “loving the challenge”. This is why so many of them worshipped Capcom in the past, Capcom had a nasty habit of making unreasonably difficult games back in the day, and why they clamor over the Dark Souls games. Bragging Rights.

The simple fact of the matter is that people are not looking for a challenging game. Just one that is the most interesting. Capcom made hard shit, yes, but a lot of it was interesting to people. Nowadays, people would accuse Capcom of poor game design. These days, the super difficult games that aim to “replicate” the olden days are something of a niche, only celebrated by the “super elite internet gamers” only so they can look cool to their peers online. 

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a difficult game, mind you. As i’ve said before, the point of a challenging game is more so to keep you awake. An easy game can be a boring if it has no interesting elements. Sonic, however, is probably the only franchise that I would argue shouldn‘t be quote “challenging“.

Yes. You read that right. 

When people talk about what makes Sonic games so unique and interesting, oftentimes they’ll wax poetic about physics and it’s competition with Mario, or how he was designed to be the bad boy….. but everyone tip toes around the way the health system worked. This is so far the only series who’s health system is completely dependent upon carrying particular items to survive. And I feel it’s because if they talk about the rings, they would have to admit that Sonic games are inherently easy as gamers equate difficulty to overall quality.

But it’s the ring system that changes the fundamental behavior of the player, and could very well be the “secret sauce” that creates a unique “Sonic” experience. For many platforming series (and I use that term lightly) you’re often required to exercise caution when traversing levels, mainly because the games were fucking hard. It’s easy to lose health and lives because there is danger everywhere. One level of Ninja Gaiden would wear yo ass out because of the level of caution and careful playing needed to survive until the inevitably difficult boss fight. Needless to say, a lot of games would certainly feel like work if you’re trying to do things perfectly. That’s a lot of effort for something that’s supposed to be fun. What goes unsaid is that the games that stand out the most are those games that let you see more of the content even before you’ve met the requirements to see them. What with Mario’s warp zones to Zelda allowing you to go to a multitude of dungeons, to Mega Man allowing you to choose levels off the bat… sure, these games were hard, but allowed a certain level of freedom that other games didn’t offer. Even so, you still needed a certain level of skill to beat them.

But then came Sonic the Hedgehog. Now here’s a game that doesn’t present you with a typical health system. As I’ve said before,  Sonic is (or was) a series that gave the middle finger to conventional game design. And this extended to the ring system. As long as you had one ring on hand, you could survive everything except pits. Getting hit means losing your rings, but if you’re quick enough, you could scoop them all back up and keep going strong. Even boss battles were of no challenge thanks to the rings.
It’s a simple concept, yeah. But the resulting behaviors that come from this concept are what’s important. With so many games in the market that required patience and practice to exceed, the ring system changes everything. It acted… as a release valve. The players wouldn’t be afraid to take risks. The player wouldn’t be filled with tension. They would have no fear. The player could finally throw caution to the wind and charge through levels at their own leisure! No more practice, no patience needed. You could be as wild and as hyper as you wanted! There’s no barrier to entry. Just pick up, play, and have a blast.  

People started becoming impulsive to blast through levels as fast as possible, And didn’t want to be held back by anything considered an obstacle. That’s why water zones are hated so much. As the series went on, enemies and traps were less common, or were out of the way so as not to hinder the feeling of freedom the players had. You think alternate paths was something special? No. These were all just interconnected parts of a whole that coincided with that feeling of freedom. No matter where you ended up, you could still make it to the finish line, so long as you can be as reckless as you want. The player wanted to be independent of the level designer’s whim and traverse Zones their own way. All of that evolved from the ring system. 

clockwork

You notice when you’re put into a situation where you have no rings, like the final bosses of Sonic 1&2, the whole dynamic changes. After a whole game of recklessness, the game demands caution!? Sure it’s a “challenge” because it’s the final boss, but it’s absolutely terrible game design because you’re infact punishing the player for something your system encourages for 99% of the whole game. It’s subversive at the worst possible time. Hell, the final bosses of most Sonic games are more so about maintaining your rings than trying to win.

As the years went on, this type of hyper-active experience became synonymous with Sonic the Hedgehog, and as such, people expect and demand this experience. It’s why the 3D Sonic games tend to get a bad rep because they’re often saddled with gameplay systems that demand patience, and slow down the experience. At least until boosting came around and enhanced the already impulsive behaviors of fans to blast through zones at high speed. Before then, about the only 3D Sonic that resembled Classic Sonic via gameplay was Shadow the Hedgehog. I don’t give a damn what anyone says, that was Classic Sonic in spirit. Even took the ring system further by making it so you only lose 10 rings a pop! So you could have about 100 rings, and if you got popped in the ass, you’d be like “oh I lost 10 rings? Psh! I got 90 more, bitch! Dueces!” 

This means that it’s virtually impossible to make Sonic games hard without abolishing the ring system altogether. Forces nearly tried this by making it impossible to recoup any rings you lose, thus making the game “harder“. And if not for the long heatlh bar, The werehog would’ve been a total loss. Tis also why I HATE the mech stages in SA2. Clunky as shit machines!

When people try to make Sonic games “hard”, they will sometimes invent “cheap” ways of killing the player. And when you do that, you get Sonic Unleashed. Enemies that can zap you in middair, random quicktime events, springs that turn over into spikes when you least expect it, that game (HD version at least) was a nice warm cup of “fuck you just cause!”
This is why Mania is so… stupid. It walks a thin line between allowing the players to really cut loose, or demand patience and precision. Encore mode really shows that the mindset isn’t in making the most authentic Sonic experience,  but in showing off how much goofy shit they can stuff into a game. What made Sonic games fun and unique was the level of freedom it gave the players simply by telling them “throw caution to the wind, and be as wild as you want!”. Mania’s design misses that mark on more than one occasion. Whether it’s Oil Ocean requiring that I rush through the zone to find switches to eliminate poison gas to filling jelly with enough “juice” to bounce into higher places, or having to raise/lower the water levels to progress in hydrocity and traverse those same underwater areas inside of a slow moving bubble (yes, I know that shit came from the Game Gear games), it sends the message that this game was lowkey trying to be an intricate platformer. And in the process makes the game more tedious than normally. Boss battles, because they’re focused on chaotic spectacle, end up filling the player with uncertainty as they have to follow certain patterns, have smaller windows to attack, and greater risks of losing all of your rings (and not getting them back).

There’s clear desire to make the game hard, otherwise the Zones wouldn’t be death traps and enemies around every corner. Nor would Encore mode deliberately create obstacles on your path to make sure you follow a specific trail. It’s more trying to force Sonic to be hard, and comes off as a desperate annoyance. 

To make Sonic hard is to necessitate massive changes to it’s level design, and removal of the ring system in it’s entirety. You would have to gear it towards another franchise that is difficulty incarnate. You could say the game was trying to be more like Mega Man in some ways just by the amount of enemies alone. But doing so would piss off fans, so all Taxman and the boys did was make the game tedious. On the surface, the game certainly looks like the good ol’ days, but overall, the game’s design carries influence from other franchises that simply don’t mesh well with Sonic. The only thing it does well is automation, but that requires no input from the player. You could say the only way to make Sonic hard is to take control away from the player.

So going back to my example, the “Sonic experience” that people crave from this series, the freedom that comes from giving the finger to conventional game design, was being pushed aside… in favor of conventional game design. Primarily in Chemical Plant, Flying Battery, a little bit of Press Garden, Hydrocity, Oil Ocean, Lava Reef, and especially Titanic Monarch. Shit, that’s more than half the damn game! The level design alone feels as though it’s guiding you on a specific set path for your character, considering how boxed in half the zones are.

This is one frustrating ass game. (Mania Plus)

Knuckles is pink as shit!

Well, it’s here. The physical release of Sonic Mania, a game who’s marketing tauts it’s high ratings to compensate for it’s poor sales. Clearly, the game is so far up it’s own ass to worry about competent design as it bastardizes the very zones it’s supposed to be “celebrating“. There isn’t a shred of polish that makes it “the best Sonic game in years!” It’s the most narcissistic Sonic game ever.

“BY THE MANIA, FOR THE MANIA!!” NEVER MIND IF That STATEMENT DOESN’T MAKE ANY FUCKIN SENSE! 

A team of “passionate developers” it says! Not talented or capable, just passionate! This whole preface reeks of pretentiousness, and after playing this shit, it’s beyond infuriating to see these guys are just masturbating to a mirror while they have a game out that is purely about nostalgia and nothing else. 

*sigh*

I’m trying to give this shit a fair chance, but it’s either boring or just tedious! I don’t know. It feels like I’m playing Advance 3, and you all know how I feel about that game. And top it off, the fuckin creators are so busy trying to convince me of Mania’s value, that’s why they have this art book in tow showing all these sketches. The game is pissing me off, and these fuck jobs are just shoving it in my face that “they‘re awesome“. They care more about them damn Metacritic scores than actually trying to make a coherent game. It’s frustrating, and i’m not having any fun with it. Where do I even begin?

Level-design is Rom-hack levels of bad

I think the guys of Sonic Dissected mentioned that it was easy to get lost in certain zones, using Studiopolis (the Clusterfuck that it is) as an example. And shit, I can vouch for that.

This bastardized version of Chemical Plant (just put in Wacky Workbench, you hacks), you can see that I’m all over the place. How the fuck was I supposed to know there was a ceiling that you had to bounce right into just to progress!? A detail like that is far too easy to miss when that shit blends into the stage with no obvious signs that signal to you “go here retard!”. 

One of the more amateurish things rom-hackers do is that they tend to try and one-up other hackers by trying to make the levels harder by stacking the deck, and that’s often done by fucking up enemy and trap placement. And Sonic Mania’s Zones are fucking flooded with enemies and traps to the point of absurdity and fatigue. Go check out Lava Reef and tell me how many exploding rock bitch and fire traps you run into within mere… fucking… seconds! They’re all over the goddamn place! You can literally have 3-4 of these bastards within centimeters of each other, and that alone wouldn’t bode well. But hell, earlier in Stardust Speedway, there wasn’t a platform I couldn’t reach without getting rammed with those blue spiked balls that pop out of those holes.

Enemy Placement is also a bit on the obnoxious side. I recall a few instances in Metallic Madness where, if I try to jump over one of those spike carriers, i’d run into one of those bees with maces on their asses. Or again, in Stardust, if I try to avoid those spinning spike platforms, i’m getting knocked on my ass by a roller bug.

And if it’s not enemies, it’s always a damn spike trap. They never fail!

 If the goal was to take the rare elements of older zones and ramp up the quantity, mission accomplished. But even the new zones have this bullshit. 
Titanic Monarch, I know is the final zone, but what sense is it to flood the zone with those ffffffffucking lock-on enemies!? These flying bastards who surrounds you with these balls that close in on you if you don’t kill him or escape? escaping is always a grand option, but is ultimately pointless when the very next area has another  one? Escape him, seconds later BAM another one! Escape him BAM another one! Escape BAM another one! I mean goddamn! Let me catch my damn breath for a good minute or 2!

This wouldn’t be so bad if these assholes were easy to find and kill, but often times, they’re in out of reach areas, off screen, or in areas where you get stuck on electronic balls. It doesn’t help that there’s so much shit you gotta pay attention to because the acts were designed by some guy on Ritalin. 

These examples and more often force me to take the levels slowly. But as always, if you are rewarded for taking a slower approach in a faster-paced franchise, that’s a red flag that the devs have to go back to the drawing board because they dun fucked up. Enemy and trap placement was not an issue in 2D Sonic (save for advance 3, see where I’m going with that?) Of old, but this is Rom-hack design philosophy. You flood the zone (hehe) in some sick, fetishy desire to make the game hard as hell. You gotta take everything slow cause otherwise, you’re gonna be running into shit constantly. And that’s not fun in the slightest. Unless you’ve memorized these Acts, you won’t know when shit is coming. After a while, it just gets annoying, and it’s not mitigated by the fact that the game keeps jerking itself off. How can you be proud of level-design like this!?

that being said, I’m amazed Press Garden turned out so well. That’s pure classic Sonic right there… aside from those disappearing blocks.

Fuck Mega Man!

(Personal gripe) Aside from that, there are obvious signs that Knuckles is severely hindered. I can tell this game was made purely with Sonic and Tails in mind. Being the guy who rides the Echidna’s nuts, Im trying to go through it with him, but I constantly feel pressured to play the game in the mindset of Sonic anyways. Knuckles can’t fully utilize his climbing abilities to the fullest extent because every area feels like it’s impassable without a decent jump. I even recall a certain cliff in Mirage Saloon because the Cliffside was slanted. Infact, a lot of walls in that zone are shitty to climb anyways. You get the feeling the game was working against Knuckles simply because he could climb, like they assumed knuckles players would have it easy just because he can climb. That’s not the case here. You don’t have a lot of options when it comes to Knuckles simply because there are areas that he can’t get to due to how the zones are structured. He’s honestly the worst character to use due to his shit jump height. You’re literally better off with Tails. Or Mighty because he can actually rape the bosses.

Difficulty Spikes

Up the ass. Gets more and more noticeable once you hit Mirage Saloon.

Inconsistent Themes/Gimmicks

Well, Mr. Spore, you might’ve been right about Press Garden. Act 1 is purely a newspaper factory (hence the name.) But when you get to Act 2, the theme of the zone changes to a Japanese Winter shrine… something, if only to coincide with the boss being a reference to Revenge of Shinobi. The only real connection is thr grinding down of trees to make said newspapers, but other than that.

Another jarring decision is in Studiopolis where  some strange instance, you’re playing a bingo machine. I’m like “wtf does bingo have to do with making movies?”

One could also make the argument for Chemical Plant where Act 2 and the following boss are more akin to a candy factory/laboratory, what with the gelatin floors that were spliced from Wacky Workbench, oversized syringes, and DNA elevators. Yeah, those are 2 different themes. And judging by the science lab theme that Titanic Monarch sports, Act 2 would’ve been far more appropriate there instead.

Not a frequent issue, but it shows they were more focused on the spectacle rather than it making sense. Perhaps it’s explained away by the Phantom Ruby, but all that seems to do is teleport people. A little logic wouldn’t hurt, is what I’m saying.

There was also this mechanic where your elemental shields could manipulate the environment, but these opportunities only appear in Green Hill and Oil Ocean, and only seem to be an aesthetic feature for trailers because otherwise, they serve no purpose other than for Taxman to jack off to Mega Man. 

That’s another thing. Splicing one or 2 elements from zones you did not include don’t make the ones you did include fresh. It just comes off as lazy and unoriginal. As if the game wasn’t derivative enough.

Developer Narcissism

Often times, you can tell when a game thinks too highly of itself when it smacks you over the head with references to past work. Konami and Capcom both have this problem, but see… they can get away with this because a lot of the games they choose to callback on are games that haven’t been seen in years. Like Symphony of the Night making references to Castlevania 3 and Kid Dracula, super obscure shit like that.

This doesn’t work for Sonic Mania for the simple fact that Sega’s been making a million retro collections in the last 2 generations, and even has a new one for this gen. Not to mention the single releases on digital download services, and even the classic genesis mock-up with several games installed. Sega was not intent on having us forget the “good ol days” so long as it made them a penny.

The problem? Mania is completely oblivious to this simple fact as it smacks you upside the head with it’s callbacks. It’s this juvenile theory that automatically having these references will elicit some happy response out of the audience via way of “hey, I remember that!” Whether it’s Heavy Shinobi having sound effects from Revenge of Shinobi, Knuckles having some children’s drawing of what happened to him after Lava Reef, or this bullshit:

Rest assured, you will NEVER FORGET!!! 

What irritates me is the game assuming that I’m supposed to find it cool… because it has all these references. All the while I’m zeroing in on why the Act 1 boss in Mirage Saloon is an oversized Mario enemy.

Heavy Magician works because the three cameos it turns into are those we haven’t seen in ages. Metal Sonic works because no one played those game gear games (:P), and in small part, Encore mode works because Sega absolutely refuses to rerelease Knuckles Chaotix. Now you wanna talk about a missed opportunity, between Sonic Gems and now, they seem to ignore the real obscure shit save for Sonic fighters. It’s always this non-stop parade to glorify the Genesis trilogy. Not much of a celebration if you neglect all but a few titles.

I just completely forgot what I was ranting about.

Bad Physics/bugs(?)

OHH I’m hurting some feelings with this one. Oh check your blood pressure meds at the door, these instances don’t occur throughout the entirety of the game, but seeing as this is the most tauted “pro” of mania, I expected perfection! But alas…

Please, all you Mania ass lickers. Explain to me why in a boss fight where you have to to jump to avoid missiles, your momentum DROPS!!!!?

Cause this is the 3rd time I had to fight him  cause I didn’t understand why I couldn’t jump over them very well! I thought it was the random shifts in elevation on thr road that interrupted my jumps, but the moment I notice that, I was pissed beyond belief! I was getting angry at this fight!! That shit right there is no excuse!

The game has some goddamn technical flaws, and no one said shit for a year!? Agendas, mang. Agendas

Tedious Boss Fights

Now, mind you, the bosses are prone to difficulty spikes as well, but the majority of them might as well have been in Alien Soldier.

Sonic 2, Heroes, and Shadow all have the best boss fights by virtue of the fact that you simply HIT them, and not have to wait for an opportunity to do so, unlike in the majority of sonic games. But Mania seems to be much worse. The bosses themselves prove to be just a bit more chaotic that you aren’t giving much breathing room to think and plan on what to do next. 

A lot of them, you have to figure out what In the hell you have to do first before trying to strike them, and it isn’t obvious what you have to do. That and I was playing Knux  whole time, so his shit jump height was an impediment to doing anything of worth.

Like Metal Sonic, it took me 5 tries before I figured out you had to hit the silver bastards into Metal’s chair or w/e, or with the Act 1 boss of Press Garden, you had to wait until this fuck hits a brown box to break off a chainsaw (subtle hint in the intro, I know), or that ffffucking Act 1 Lava Reef Boss where you had to wait for the Lava to burn off this asshole’s armor before you could actually hit him. It threw me off cause you had armorless fucks appear throughout the Act. Is this Sonic or Zelda?

Then there’s just fights that are just tedious. Act 2 of same zone, you have to employ the same tactics used against the final boss of Sonic 3 (hitting the middle section). Problem is this fuck randomly jumps half the damn time, so you’re being knocked away even though you’re timing your shit right.

Or the spider from Flying Battery. And he ain’t even hard, but you have to be fast and ultra precise just so the damn thing doesn’t take too long to kill, or so you can avoid accidents. And then even when you hit him, he’ll just hit the ground instead. So annoying!!!

And then they get lazy and start trotting out some of these old bosses like Sonic 1’s final boss, or the death egg security system from S3K. None of which were enjoyable to fight back then.

Special Stages are absolutely terrible. 

Ok, one. The Super Peel-Out is a shit move. Nothing is special about it. It’s an inferior spindash. Treating it like some sort of reward is laughable. And so are the conditions for unlocking this and other shit.

Blue sphere, one of the worst special stages in Sonic history, makes it’s obnoxious return to Mania, and it’s shittier than ever before. This time around, they’re treated as the bonus stages for getting 25 rings at a signposts. IE I can ignore them, right? WRONG! In order to unlock anything of worth (like Knuckles Mode), you would have to do these stages consistently. The tokens  you get from blah blah you should already know. I hate Blue sphere! Seems to be a recurring theme in Mania, bringing back all the elements I hated in the classic, namely the shit from S3K.

This wouldn’t be so bad if a lot of the new stages weren’t designed specifically to be disorienting. Like they’re scripted to be completed in a certain pattern. And if you don’t know the pattern, you’re gonna be thrown off course and you’ll lose all the time. And they included the old stages so you can do side-by-side comparisons of how retarded the new stages are. The older ones don’t rely on one-way patterns to be challenging, they were simply mazes you had to traverse. How is that a throwback when you fucked up the very essence of the damn special stages!?

But hell, that’s nothing compared to the actual special stages. This new breed of impossible blends elements of blue sphere and with character models from sonic R, and the piss ass controls that make it impossible to enjoy. I kept thinking how much better this would be if I could fucking drift. Turning by itself is an absolute chore as the characters can’t bank worth a damn, so what happens is that you start skidding around the road constantly,  and that can’t be good for anyone’s stress. Especially when you add in the need to stay off the grass, collect rings, keep from bumping into walls or falling off cliffs, etc.

And all that just to replicate the feel of the olden days!? Look, just cause your goal is to make the game feel old doesn’t mean everything about the classic days was gold. Some things need to be dumped. Why not just bring back S2’s Special Stages?  It’s the only good one that people liked.

And lastly, Knuckles is still treated like a joke!

And yet, despite this desire to replicate the good ol days, someone missed the memo that Knuckles wasn‘t comic relief, and was actually pretty popular. And yet, here he is being knocked off of planes at Mirage Saloon. Just another way of keeping the black man down, I suppose. 

I’m guessing your next question is “”well, is there anything you do like?” Cause if I don’t like anything, then that invalidates my shit, I guess. But sure there was. The soundtrack is on fleek…. that’s what the kids are saying these days, right? I love that they brought back Mighty and Ray,  and Mighty is probably the best to use considering the amount of enemies and traps there are, and the ability to use knux as a secondary character is a huuuuuuge plus! But even with all that, the frustration of this game, and the pretentious… “aura” it exudes, prevents any real praise from coming out of my mouth. It’s kinda like hearing on the news that an 8 month old baby was beaten to death by her 17yo father, and then you go outside and the sun is shining FUCK THAT DAMN SUN! Kids is dying and the sun is shining….

…not a good comparison,  I know. 

Gamers might as well be Journalists (Mafia 3’s Cassandra)

Fuck me, this game is long as shit.

Mafia 3 is a helluva game. I like it more than I should, but goddamn if it ain’t cathartic. It was just daring to be considered the most controversial videogame of this generation. It’s… admittedly disturbing hearing Nolan North and Liam O’Brien (Fuckin Infinite) pop off “ni-” like it’s nothing. 

But fuck all that. Mafia 3 became a prime target for disinformation, defamation, and all other shit you could pull from a dictionary. Most of which I already discussed before, but one element I never delved into was the “underbosses”

Mafia 3 works a little bit like Zelda. You start off with having to rescue 3 people as an introductory portion to how the game operates. You fuck up rackets, draw out the big boss, kill him, assign such and such district to bosses, rinse and repeat about 8 fucking times. It’s a lot of goddamn work. Too much goddamn work.

Anywho, there are, ofcourse, multiple endings in the game, and they are heavily dependent upon how you treat your underbosses. Here they are.

Cassandra: Black Chick. Leader of the Haitian Mafia

Burke: Drunk ass. Leader of the Irish Mafia

Vito: Author’s pet. Leader of the Italian Mob. 

Now, if you go onto any site discussing this game about which of these underbosses are on anyone’s shit list, the results are painstakingly obvious. Cassandra ranks number 1, 99% disapproval rating, all that jazz. And these are gamers no less, so we have a string of asspull reasons to why she is the most hated. But as the trope goes, these fucks don’t bother with details, so there isn’t a lick of shit to go on, so you either gotta watch YouTube vids, or play the game 3 fucking times like my stupid ass did  just to see how these endings play out. As such, I don’t think I’ve ever run into a more blatant example of gamers pushing a false narrative! Cassandra is the most hated character in the game for complete bullshit. It’s hilarious! 

Strangely enough, because these guys were hard on for their talking points, I’ve only read “3 complaints” about the character, all of which are lies or half-truths. Yes. Three Complaints. Exact number. Repeated over and over by numerous people until it becomes an acceptable fact. That’s how these publications like  IGN and Game Informer can find a ready swath of idiots to write their shitty pieces, they have entire galleries on the internet to choose from. Maybe you guys can… help me to understand where these grievances are coming from cause I don’t see shit.

1. Cassandra is a liar! And an untrustworthy ally!

As these fucks never went into detail, it’s difficult to pinpoint what in the fresh hell they’re even talking about. So playing the game over and over, I only found one instance where she lied. It was about her daughter,  Caroline. 

Early on in the game, Cassandra talks about a man named Ritchie Douchet, leader of the Dixie Mafia, who had kidnapped her “sister” and forced her into all kinds of nasty shit before eventually killing her. Later on, completing her loyalty missions gives you the real story in that Caroline was her daughter who was murdered, and why she personally felt it necessary to acquire firearms. 

It would be confusing to guess why she would keep details like that herself and not share that background with people she’s working with. But, if you talk to Emmanuel (her second in command), he reveals that she tends to push others away. A person with that kind of history tends to keep to themselves,  dontcha think? At least in fiction? 

I think the implication here is that she doesn’t open up to people unless she feels she can fully trust them, hence the fucking loyalty missions, and it also means Lincoln Clay (Main character,  no shit) has to work even harder to gain her trust considering that they used to be enemies. There’s also the matter of killing some of her men in the beginning of the game.

Other than that, I haven’t found any other instances where she could be considered a liar. Unless you want to say “the Haitians were robbing and killing people in the beginning” and no such thing happened in the game either. Probably using that soup kitchen incident as an event to exaggerate. 

2. Cassandra is a disrespectful and rude cunt!

I reiterate. Lincoln and Cassandra used to be enemies. 

But even so, it is highly important to get one thing straight. How your underbosses respond to you is 100% dependent on how much territory you give them, and if you bother to do their loyalty missions. They will often respind favorably to you if you are fair or playing favorites with him/her over the other 2. Neglecting the other 2/1 will piss them off no matter what. And by Amma, people are determined, obsessed even, to lick the sweat off of Vito’s ass. Even the developers got in on game to make sure Vito is the only “reasonable” choice.

Cassandra’s alleged rudeness is not exclusive to her in anyway. I notice barely anyone talking about Burke. Now Burke is a fuckwit. King of liability. Emperor of no respect.  This bastard doesn’t wait until he gets neglected in the sitdowns to show how much of an inbred jackass he is.

Matter of fact, he’s likely the first guy to ditch you if you ignore him or turn his rackets over to another boss. The guy has zero respect for you even though he’s supposed to have been friends with you. Above Vito and Cassandra, it should’ve been easy pickings to get him on your side. But you have to drive him around town like a maniac before you can (not) earn his respect. And yet everyone is determined to kill off Cassandra for the exact same reason. 

Furthermore, i’ve noticed that she has far greater animosity towards Vito than she does Burke, mainly as his group targeted the Haitians more than once, so there’s the implication that giving Vito more power is set to make Cassy a wee bit more pissy than you’d expect. And again…. everyone who plays Mafia 3 finds some reason, legit or otherwise, to suck him off big time. Vito is the “Femshep” of this game. So Cassandra’s responses are less than kind. That’s my guess, I never gave that Gary Stu shit to begin with. 

Actually no, I did, and Cassandra was pissed beyond belief,  Probably because she had at least one racket there, and that was given up to Vito. Losing a racket to Burke led to a more “whatever” response. I’m almost certain it’s because she hates Vito with a passion, and would probably explain the animosity from the “fans” as “you hate my favorite character!  So fuck you!” I would certainly hope that’s the case, but piff. What good is hope where gaming is concerned? 

3. Cassandra leads New Bourdoux to ruin in her ending! 

Not even close. 

By the end of the game, you have 3 options. Only one of them produces 3 distinct endings depending on what underboss you favored the most. And it’s more proof that the devs were biased towards Vito as he’s the only one who lives. The other 2 get killed. But normally, i’d read comments that after watching Cassandra’s ending, these sob’s are “more determined than ever before!” to kill her off in the next playthrough. Shit! She must’ve done something real fucked up of it piss off that many players! Right?

If Lincoln leaves New Bordeaux and Cassandra assumes control of the city, there wasn’t a crime boss from Boston to Miami who respected her claim. As a result, the Commission, the Columbians, and the Cubans all went after her. They realized too late that they had no idea who they were fighting.

Johnny Galante had his throat slit while watching Deep Throat in a porn theater. Manny Moreno was set on fire outside his daughter’s quinceanera. Severo Garcia was buried alive on the beach and drowned when the tide came in. Anton Bagrov was beaten to death with crowbars in the parking lot of the Briar Patch.

After this the real criminals came after her. The governor declared martial law and sent in the National Guard, so Cassandra shot him in the head on the steps of the capitol building. After that everyone got the message: The city belonged to Cassandra. But the government is like a rogue elephant. It’s murderous, patient, and never forgets. So the state pulled funding for schools, city maintenance, and the like. If they couldn’t get Cassandra, they’d strangle the city until it gave her up.

When the hurricane hit New Bordeaux, the locals called it Hurricane Cassandra. Nobody expected the damage to be so severe that the levees would completely fail, that the flooding would wipe out half the city and force the other half to leave, that the city would turn into the ghost town it is today. It’s hard to believe that a major American city would be left to rot like that.

Some say that Cassandra was one of the thousands who drowned in the flood. Others say she slipped away into the swamps and still rules what’s left of the city’s underworld from the bayou. Either way she’s a ghost who hasn’t been seen in years.

Right!?
*sigh*

 I could see shooting the Governor as a mistake, but if you ask me, a lot of what went into this ending equates to external forces beyond her control. When she takes over the city, the Commission (or Illuminati, rofl) basically declared war on her ass. And she was beating the fuck out of them. Nothing in the ending implies she started the war.

Then the Governor, out of nowhere, declares Martial Law. What reason he had to do this is never explained, but is implied that he did this to get rid of Cassandra. All she did was whoop Commission ass, with no real harm done to the city. Imagine that. Killing the real crooks of America rewards you with the National Guard up your ass. Killing the Governor might…. miiight have been a little too far, but if the mobs can buy off senators, Mayors, Judges, etc., then it is easy to assume that this Governor was bought off by the Commission to go that far.

And then the State itself decides to pull funding for everything in the city. Now, with all the money she accrued throughout Clay’s rampage, it’s possible she could’ve funded these elements to compensate for the involuntary ass-fucking. All we saw were some trash bags in the street. 

But then…. a fucking, convenient ass Hurricane drops by and destroys the city, and any chance of Cassandra being able to do anything beneficial. She gets captured by the Dixie bastards, and her fate is left ambiguous. 

Funny how she’s the only one who gets a Hurricane in her ending. 

I don‘t see this as her “leading the city to ruin” and more so that forces beyond her power were constantly impeding her ability to do anything of benefit. The game detailed nothing of her true intentions in the ending, unlike the other 2 cocksuckers, and we’re left with a bunch of speculation. And the city was trashed. Literally and figuratively. 

You know who did lead the city to ruin? Burke, Burke, and fucking Burke.

This jackass first gets a transplant to extend his life for 16 years, and then floods the city with drugs, and buys a seat on the council just to rename the place after some fucking beer. But then he goes to war with the Cubans and causes chaos in the streets before getting murked. And New Bourdeau is still a shithole. Buys a seat on the council just to name the city after some beer, not to actually do anything of benefit. 

Not a peep about this drunk fuck that’ll cause people to say “Burke is going down next playthrough!” Naw, we gotta focus on Cassandra because all this talk about…. voudou, she probably MADE the damn Hurricane! Oy!

and Vito just takes Marcano’s Casino & expands throughout the south 

What attachment do gamers have to New Bourdeau that’ll make them vindictive of Cassandra in the first place is anyone’s guess. But the ending ruffled their feathers this much?

You know what I really think it is? I mean, you could probably guess, but what I genuinely believed really pissed them off? That the ending (and hell, the game itself) served as a metaphor for the Haitian Revolution. Haiti was the only slave colony in history (that I and many others could recall) that liberated itself of the colonizers through revolt (I believe they were the French). This would be Marcano’s death.

Then, the other European groups (British, Germans, etc) come in to try and regain control, but also get the shit knocked out of them, same with how the Commission,  Columbians, Cubans, and even the damn Governor go after her and get fucked up. 

Then the US pulls some legal horseshit saying that the Haitians stole land from the French and basically forced them into debt, similar to how the “State” (get it? State!?) pull ed funding to strangle the city.

And the Hurricane. That writes itself.

It goes without saying that Haitians are despised by everyone as a result of those asswhoopins. Having an ending allude to that part of history would be enough to ruffle some feathers, no? Going on that, it makes too much sense for this to anger people to the point of wanting Cassandra dead.

But seriously! How the fuck can gamers claim to be higher than game journalists when they turn around and do their own personal smear campaigns on whatever they deem evil!? Cassandra is no better or worse than the other 2 underbosses, but the level of hostility towards her is very telling. Even worse is the amount of shit they spew just to get that point. I swear, if I ever decide to play Mafia 2 and come to find that vito doesn’t have this mythically tragic tale that everyone else parrots….

EDIT:  Slight correction. Sammy had mentioned that the Haitians were indeed robbing people in the hollow in the beginning of the game. It’s hard to remember that shit after dealing hours of game time. Killing, though… nothing.

Shadow’s Current Skating Animation

Fuck it

I hate the way he runs. He just looks retarded!

It’s so grating! Back in SA2, his animations had a little more intensity. Like when he hits a speeder or whatnot, he has this “don’t fuck around, don’t fuck around!” Kind of animation to it. He threw his weight into the shit! 

Now he just looks like he’s on PCP. He’s got this…. Egoraptor Awesome May Cry shit going on, like “I’m just… too cool! Swaying in the wind…” this limp wrist bullshit ass animation just makes him uncool

His skating animations got ruined as soon as Heroes came out. It’s never been right since then, it looks so artificial. Imagine that, y he one character Sehs bothers to shill, and they skimp out on the animation budget like a mother fucker….

…..Come on Tomorrow. Dat plus took to long to go physical. 

You know what’d be nice? If they took the Game Gear zones and re-did them in the Mania style? Since these fucks don’t like making new shit. I would kill for Gigapolis in 32bit.

They don’t make em like they used to. (Switch)

And here I thought the shoulder buttons on my 2DS randomly jamming up was an anomaly. 

Nintendo has been dropping the ball lately in regards to the durability of their hardware. Probably because the tech is retardedly sophisticated that they don’t bother stress testing it, but damn. Their controllers usually break as often, sure, but the actual consoles are made with jesus juice. My launch N64 still works!. Takes a while to kick in, but it’s operational, especially since N64 gets no real love (so many games that won’t ever get ported. Bomberman 64/Hero, Mischief Makers! Chameleon Twist! Oh the memories!)

But now? Seems like Nintendo grew a conscious and let up on the African Blood being shed for their shit!

Link was the only good Guest (Soul Calibur)

So… Soul Calibur 6 has yet another guest character. Geralt from the Witcher 3

Color me unethusiastic (not to mention super late but what else is new). As a person who’s never played or even has an interest in playing Witcher 3, I gotta say, this Geralt guy looks lame as shit. Who looks like a slightly younger Edge Master if he was a promiscuous drunk. And to be honest, I couldn’t give 2 shits about Ezio either.

I really can’t get behind this whole “guest characters for no reason” fad that’s been going on in the last 2 generations. Namco perverted it with Star Wars, Nintendo jumped on it with Solid Sonic and went crazy in the forth game, and Warner abuses it for promotional material while demanding you pay for said promotion. Why the fuck do we need Geralt in Soul Calibur? He looks boring, and if 5 was anything to go by, wouldn’t serve any purpose in selling the game itself. He just seems to be there.

 See, at least with Nintendo or Warner, there’s a method to their madness. Nintendo takes fan requests, and warner is trying to promote certain properties, plus guest characters sell well as DLC. Namco… I don’t think they have a clear approach to guest characters. The star wars crap could’ve said that much, but it seems to me that Namco has this estranged belief that guest characters sell fighting games, and how can they not? Everyone’s doing it. Even ASW with that Blazblue Cross Tag or whatever it is. So it must be working for them! It’ll work for me! And I could probably see that… cause it put Soul Calibur on the map via link in Soul Calibur 2. Without that guy, Soul Calibur would’ve easily fallen into obscurity. Character Creation wouldn’t have done much to keep the series afloat.

 Soul Blade, no one really heard or cared about in the slightest, and Soul Calibur, you heard some buzz about it’s greatness back on the Dreamcast, but it wasn’t really on the radar being that it was on a system that people were ignoring.

So after 2 games that were mostly ignored, how do you captivate audiences with a 3rd installment? How do you gain attention For a series that people would easily pass up in favor of Tekken, Dead or Alive, or hell, even Virtua Fighter?  

You get Link.

Now make no mistake. Back in my day (hehe), Legend of Zelda was serious business. I might not have invested a whole lot into it, but millions have, and the amount of love this series got can’t even be described. There’s something to be said about a videogame series that can get people to run away from a console if it shifted in aesthetic design. The mass exodus from the cube just shows how seriously people took Zelda. 

So for a character like Link, the hero of time himself, him being in Soul Calibur was an utterly perfect match. Soul Calibur had characters that were steeped in medieval fantasy, of the Japanese persuasion, which Link would easily fit in with. This was before peter Jackson turned Lord of the Rings into a grungy dark fantasy, which in turn influenced the direction of medieval fantasy for ages to come. And being that it was a weapon based fighting game meant that Link could transition into Soul Calibur without any retarded “adjustments” they would have to make. What I mean is Spawn.

Now, not to knock Spawn, but if I recall,  his Cape is the most significant aspect of his power. IE it’s a transformative cape. But… in-game, they simply gave him an axe and called it a day. It’s like they tried so hard to make him fit in, they took away his core super power in favor of… an axe! A fucking axe!!

The other 2 guests just felt obligatory in the end. Like “well if the Nintards get an exclusive character, Then we All get exclusive characters!” Heihachi and Spawn just didn’t feel significant enough to warrant much of anything. 

But see, Link just works well with the Soul Calibur Cast. The characters in the series were designed with a cartoon aesthetic that gives them a distinct feel. And Link is no different in that regard. It allows him to mesh well with the Soul Calibur Cast. Spawn, heihachi, and the rest of them simply didn’t fit in. And definitely not those Star Wars characters. Now, everyone had went on this bandwagon to suggest that Ezio Auditore fits Soul Calibur because he “fits the time period” or w/e, but I feel that’s more a piss take to the Star Wars characters. The only thing that makes Ezio fit is the fact that he looks like an overdressed CaC. And with everyone sporting a more animuish vibe, he feels even more out of place than he should. He probably would’ve worked better in the original Soul Blade than he does in 5.

The problem is he, and Geralt, were both not designed with that cartoony aspect. They are western characters designed in an almost hyper-realistic aesthetic to show off the amazing graphics. As such, there’s a strong contrast between them and the Soul Calibur characters. 

Even the attire comes off as too basic.

I also notice that Link got a more…. “ceremoniuous” appearance. There was more buzz about Link being in this game than there ever was about Ezio, or even now with Geralt. Mr. GOTY himself doesn’t generate buzz. In a time where people actually care about Soul Calibur, no less. Could be that everyone sees through Namco’s attempts to appeal to western gamers. Could be that everyone is dulled to the overwhelming appearance of guests in other fighting games (Smash, Injustice, MK, now Tekken). Or it could very well be that these characters are nothing special. They have one or 2 games that get lauded by the gaming populace, and Namco is simply riding their coattails. Link had a fuckin legacy. At least with that, they had a selling point. The fucking Ninja Turtles made better guest characters. 

 By now, people are looking into the actual characters of the franchise, and are starting to see guest characters as wasted slots for characters they feel should’ve been in the game over anyone else. Warner, we know, does guests for money and promotion so they’ll beat that dead horse dry. Nintendo is making the situation worse by shoving in anyone that is Japanese made (except Custom Robo). The one thing that gave Soul Calibur it’s mass audience is now to it’s detriment. Guests are no longer necessary to sell Soul Calibur, and gamers aren’t that easy to buy off. These flavor of the year guests aren’t going to make people forget how bad 4 & 5 were. The game itself has to be fantastic, or supplemental enough to wash the bad taste out of our mouths. Bringing back the old cast is good. Bringing back 5’s gameplay is not.

Link was in a far more advantageous position than Geralt is now. 

Well, now Soul Calibur 6 is on my watch list

They brought back my main!

It sucks to be a Redfield (Resident Evil)

It’s true. Throughout the Resident Evil series, we’ve seen a plethora of characters go in and out of situations without too many emotional scars, injuries, or run of the mill bad luck. But if there’s one consistent theme that never seems to fail, it’s that if your last name starts with red, you are going to hate your life with a passion. 

Replaying every RE game except 5, I noticed that the Redfield family gets screwed far more than most characters in the series. It would certainly explain why Chris needs anger management. He knows the kind of shit he gets from the series. And he ain’t too happy about that. Lets run down why that is.

Less inventory space

The early years of Resident Evil had a stick up it’s ass about the amount of items you could carry on hand. It also dared to insist that you not drop your items at anytime, so the amount of space you have for a good majority of items was important. So imagine Chris’s dismay to find he only had 6 slots. 

Going through Jill’s story, you find that those 2 extra slots she gets (8 total) make a world of difference! You won’t shy away from key items until you come across an item box, you’ll keep around more than one gun, and you’ll be able to complete more tasks without having to make several trips to that box. 

Clair gets off easy having access to an item pouch in RE2, but by 4, with Leon gaining the option to sort and flex items into a case, and get bigger cases later on, surely Chris would have that same luxury, right? Nope. He has 9 spaces and has to share items with politically correct partner. And can’t go beyond that. I guess it’s difficult to carry a whole lot when you had to make room for your massive ass arms.

Crappy Weapon Selection

Now the Redfield siblings have a nasty habit of wanting to prove how manly they are by not having the best tools on hand to deal with threats that lie ahead. For Chris, he’s limited himself to the basic handgun and shotgun treatment. He also gets limited use of the flamethrower in one section of the game. On the other hand, Jill gets those and a fucking grenade launcher. It’s a bit of a shame that Jill gets more manly weapons than Chris. Claire on the other hand at least hmgets the spark…. shot. An oversized gun that…. shoots these tiny bolts of… sparkshot is shit. But hey, she gets the grenade launcher at least! I mean, what does Leon get?

The Magnum! The Magnum is the ultimate bitch-maker in Resident Evil, able to one-shot any zombie and put down tyrants in a flash. Those crossbows are nothing compared to the ability to upgrade your own weapons. Sure, Chris can get his own Magnum in the remake, but he needs the extra space first.

But hey, they rectified that in the future, right? In 6, Chris has all the essential gear required to kick ass. And his boring, uninteresting partner only gets the Anti-material Rifle, wtf!?

What’s an Anti-material Rifle!? Who knows, but it sounds deadly as fuck! And it is! And Piers can shoot lightning from his fucking arm! They got Chris fucked up.

They’re always babysitting someone. 

More so an issue with Claire than Chris. Everytime Rebecca wants to stick around wuth Chris, he sends her ass packing. But these poor bastards are always getting stuck watching people, one way or another. From Sherry to Steve to Moira, they can’t catch a break. Jill, Rebecca, and Leon get stuck with people who can actually put up a fight (even Ashley could do friggin wrestling moves). “Bubububut…. Steve could fight!” And he’s dead. Lot of good that did. Speaking of which…

Everyone dies around them.

If you want to live long, don’t get stuck with a Redfield on your side. These guys have a poor track record of having their squads survive any incursions they come across. Chris’s entire Stars unit save for Jill and Barry, all dead. Steve Burnside, dead. BSAA African division, dead. Terrasave staff, dead. 2 extra BSAA teams under Chris’s command, including Piers, dead.

If you want to survive being on Chris’s team, pray you were born a woman, or betray the team asap. Claire? You’re fucked. 

You have to do extra work

Notice how Jill seems to get all the good stuff early? Shotgun, Assault Shotgun, etc? Chris has to do a little bit more to get those things. Like the first shotgun, you can’t just take it and have a memish cutscene, you need an extra item to allow you to keep it. So you gotta go to the opposite side of that damn mansion just to find the broken shot gun, and then go back to the room to get the original shotgun, and no crushing block for you!

Hate the Plant boss? Wanna skip it? Well, just play Jill and you gain the abilities of a chemist that would let you kill that bastard without much effort. Just a wee bit more backtracking. Chris? No, he’s a dumbass so he has to fight him off. 

Did I mention he can’t pick locks either!? Yah, half the doors in the mansion require these small keys that Chris has to waste inventory space for. Jill is the fucking master of unlocking. No wasted slots. You do the math.

And he can’t play the piano for shit.

Don’t think Claire gets off easy. While Leon can, in both scenarios, blitz through the underground lab in Raccoon City, Claire has to spend some time developing an antidote for Sherry, which requires a wee bit more backtracking before she can be done with that place.

There’s also the added bonus of Revelation 2 where what she does affects Barry’s route. Meaning if you want all the extra shit (and good ending), you’re gonna have to deal with a boss that nigh impossible health, and figure out, without a guide, that you let Moira take the final shot.

They get messed up by Wesker all the damn time.

For the fanboys, thos would be considered some great honor. But it’s quite redundant. Even without his matrix powers, Chris was no match for Wesker. And afterward, Wesker practically devolved into a troll for the Redfields, developing a horrid laugh, cheap speed, and retarded super strength. And despite all of this, he only seems to be effective against regular ass Chris. For everything else, either he runs away, or does a hit and run on certain enemies. 

It’s pretty jarring to know you can sneak up on a guy by shooting out lights, and he’s supposed to be superman. 

All these reasons (and possibly more) are why you should consider yourself lucky for not being stuck with this familial relationship, as it presents nothing but a curse as you go on this war against bioterrorism. 

RE2 sounds like it’s gonna be tedious as hell

So, now there’s knife durability, enemy AI that adjusts itself regularly to counter anything you do that might be viable, the return of ink ribbons (though I hear it’s optional), specific windows you have to board up to prevent enemies from respawning, and enemies have to be killed with precision shotgun blasts to the skull or otherwise, they will just take it and still try to murder you. And just by looking at the demo, ammo starvation is a thing. You can’t exactly get around enemies in narrow hallways, and they simply don’t budge a whole lot when you’re shooting different body parts. 

Sounds like more work than you should have to do. Capcom seems to be heavily against headshots. More often than not, Resident Evil is always punishing you for blowing the bastard’s heads or limbs away to give you a distinct advantage in running away.

Capcom’s always been on a misguided quest to make the most difficult games on Earth, and Resident Evil epitomized that with artificial difficulty. Limited saves, poor controls, bullet sponges, ammo starvation, and the inability to drop specific items, Shinji Mikami did all of this nonsense to create “tension” when all it did was piss us off. RE4’s overstayed praise probably had more to do with the removal of said bullshit to make for a much more fun game (w/e makes it fun). Since Mikami left, the magic of Resident Evil left with him, but the games weren’t retardedly tedious as before, so not all experiences since then were bad.

But this!? All throughout last month to now, we just keep hearing about all the shit you have to up with just to survive, and I get the feeling in the future, people are going to be bitching about the tedium of the game. It gives the impression that you have to be strategic about how you handle enemies, but when the game is literally designed to counter everything you do that might be useful, I think to myself “is this gonna be any fun?”

I don’t even think this bit of game design is for the purpose of creating tension or giving you the mindset to avoid enemies like the plague as the enemy AI will adjust to counter that, probably by covering up all possible escape routes. First off, zombies aren’t supposed to be intelligent, so this enemy AI adjustment shit makes no sense in context, it’s just there topiss you off. What Capcom has done was make it so you don’t have any viable strategy when dealing with zombies, and make it easier to get killed. So much…better?

The Japanese seem to have this stick up their ass about players getting into specific “habits” in their games, so in certain entries, they put these systems in place to “force” them out of these perceived “bad” habits. Nintendo is an infamous example with Smash Bros brawl, that shit was the anti-tournament game where items became necessary for half the roster to be viable, the random tripping, momentum based air-dodges to completely break wave-dashing for good, and floaty airborne mechanisms making it impossible to really do anything in that game. 

Another example would be Tecmo with DOA4/5 by changing the way counters worked. Players would habitually do mid-counters because the majority of attacks were mid-attacks, so now you had to differentiate from a mid-punch counter and a mid-kick counter, which turned the counter system into a disorienting mess of well-intentioned balancing that no one asked for.

What they’re doing for the RE2 remake sounds no different. They know RE fans will try to conserve their inventory and save ammo by running from enemies, so you’ve got all this bullshit to deal with that makes those strategies null and void. Some may make the case that this prevents stagnation and keeps the game interesting, and that would be fine if this were an arcade game. Instead, you have to conserve resources, and this game is telling you straight up that ain’t gonna work! Knowing when to deal with enemies and when not to has always been a series staple strategy, and utilization of the knife was always important in conserving ammo. This game simply punishes you… for the sake of punishing you. There’s no logic to enemy AI adjustment. 

Gamers Don’t have opinions. Gamers have Agendas! (Sonic, Mafia 3, Mass Effect, FGC)

Perhaps I was a little harsh when it came to discussing Team Sonic Racing. I only watched one video, and what little there was to see was not impressive in the slightest. Not to say it’s going to be bad. Probably. And hell, the concept of coop racing was something that intrigued me since Mario Kart Wii. Honestly, that was the only reason I bought that shitty waste of space. It’s still something to look out for.

I’m gonna be honest. I haven’t really kept up with Sonic News as of late, I had been busy with other work at the moment that Sonic really took a back seat. Besides that, a spin-off racing game doesnt really require a whole lot of attention to begin with. It’s just something to pass the time until they make a Forces 2 :D. It’s also why I wasn’t aware that Mania Plus comes out this month rather than last. And for those wondering, yes I do plan on picking this up. Primarily because of Mighty and Ray. These are 2 characters I haven’t seen since the olf Archie comics, and they always felt like Sonic’s forgotten crew. I never bought into the nonsense argument that “Mighty is never around because he’s a traveler”. Sonic, Tails, and Amy are never in the same place for each and every game. Don’t bullshit me with Darwinian crap. You don’t use him because you don’t know what to do with him.

if Mania becomes this… gateway to bring back old and unused characters (which it won’t), hell, I would probably get behind that simply because. Sonic as a franchise has far too many resources that go to waste because the Japanese, as a collective whole, see no value in their past work. If they wanted, Shadow would’ve become the new Sonic. The Japanese operate 95% on “out with the old, in with the new”. The other 5% is for those rare times when fans actually demand they maintain the old characters (IE Goku). I don’t think a Mania 2 is on the horizon as we already have an interview with Iizuka and friends saying “we don’t know what else to do with the concept”. IE “We just don’t want to do it”. 

But that’s for another day. I tended to avoid discussion regarding Mania simply because I am sick and tired of the mindless praise it gets. A lot of it comes off as artificial. Like the gamers themselves are trying too hard to sell me on a product. I absolutely hate that, and I wasn’t about to allow a toxic community to drive me from what is hopefully going to be an improvement.

This isn’t some new thing, either. The artificiality of praise or criticism that gamers often engage in. A lot of times, they feel it necessary to convince you of a game’s value or lack of simply because they want other gamers to get into a specific mindset. To react to certain games with unbridled happiness or vitriol. The Sonic Fandom as a whole engaged in this behavior in regards to thr Mania/Forces backdraft that went on until February. Just all manor of back and forth trying to convince each other of which was the superior game. And not even because they have some sort of preference, a lot of it was to prove a point and to convince Sega of the direction they should take the series. Nevermind that the Japanese are too stubborn and arrogant to listen to the very people that support them (even Namco ignores their Japanese fans). I still have to laugh at that one youtuber who was angry that Forces allegedly outsold Mania! As well as Nintendo Life who sat there and lied about the Forces demo. And ofcourse the ign dregs who trashed the entire series.

But ofcourse, this is an issue that doesn’t get addressed. This little spat between the fandom is unfortunately proof positive that the quality of the franchise is not a priority. It is simply to prove a point and to bash people over the head to follow a certain narrative. It’s not even a matter of opinions. It’s all about fulfilling an agenda.

To a non-sonic example, I recently finished the game “Mafia 3”, a game that received all kinds for a multitude of reasons. But… you wouldn’t know them seeing as eberything boiled down to technical aspects according to them. Mafia 3 gets shat on for repetitive gameplay, sometimes camera angles, and the usual bugs and glitches. The problem? Well, aside from the fact that repetitive gameplay is a trope of open-world gaming, and bugs and glitches are the norm for western games period…. it was strange to find damn near every opinion having the same exact dialogue. Now, having played the whole game, I could pretty much give them the whole “repetitive gameplay” aspect. It’s routine, it’s a lot of work, and requires an assload of patience. Bugs and glitches I’ve only experienced once, and thus cannot conceive why this is an issue.

And yet… I can’t see why this game was trashed to hell and back. Well I can, but you know. Gamers went so far as to make comparison videos to show how vastly superior Mafia 2 was, one of which would show your character at gas stations. What the fuck would that prove? 

Some reviews on Metacritic would be a little more.. ahem… “honest” about their real gripe with the game. “You play as a Black Mass Murderer!” That was an actual statement. And it’s a lie. In context, you’re actually taking down an American/Italian mob who murdered your family. All the enemies in the game are involved in crime. Even human trafficking of Haitians ala slave auctions. But the way this jackass framed it was intended to be defamatory rather than informative. And so were all the other reviews that copied and pasted the oh so “legitimate” complaints. Because very few of them even bother going into detail of those specific flaws. 

For example, the repetitive gameplay argument involves going specific districts of the city and taking down 2 specific crime rings before eventually taking on on district boss and killing him to take over the whole district. Taking down a crime ring involves going through the district and completing certain tasks, eliminating certain crooks, enforcers, and stealing their ill-gotten gains to draw them out. You do this twice for each district. The idea is to draw the district boss out in the open, and then you play an original mission to kill him. Then you assign the district to one of your own people. The issue comes from the fact that you have to do this 6 times, so as a result, it becomes routine, and the game goes on forever. Or it feels that way as taking down a whole district can feel gargantuan (it’s really not, it’s just work)

The problem is no one really says this, at least not en masse. So far, I’ve only come across one review that specified the imbalanced number of districts you had to take down at once. But the majority of them will talk about bugs and glitches.

The context of the game is that you’re a black guy fighting against white supremacists in the vaguest sense”. And that simply wasn’t going to fly with the target demographic. But as I’ve said before, gamers don’t want to have socially unacceptable opinions lest they lose whatever credibility they had, so a large majority of reviews will accentuate the technical flaws to a degree where the game can be seen as an utter failure. In truth, a lot of people’s first impressions of a game don‘t change even after release. When this game first revealed itself to have a black protagonist, you had a lot of pissed off people. Nevermind that the Mafia series went ignored for the past 2 console generations in favor of GTA, this installment got some actual attention. Negative attention. 

Those first impressions don’t just go away after release. But because of the gameplay talking points, Gamers can get away with their insanity. They wanted this game to get bad press to send the message to the industry that “black characters shouldn’t be in the spotlight”. I’m exaggerating? Wasn’t Battlefield 1 supposed to feature the Harlem Hellfighters, yet after a wave of dissent, the company behind the game caved in and took the Hellfighters out? Gamers have no concern with whether or not the game would ever be good, they care about fulfilling an agenda. 

Now this wouldn’t be so crazy and batshit insane if this was done strictly for content reasons (even if those reasons are born out of pure discrimination) but then you get cases like Mass Effect Andromeda. 

Earlier,  I had viewed a YouTube video  by which EA blamed Zelda BOTW for the failure of Andromeda. Now, that in itself is a grandiose fallacy the likes of which Capcom couldn’t even reach. Even so, the person who posted the video contested that gamers gave Andromeda a fair shot. And I call bullshit on the author. 

When news of Andromeda first dropped, I saw plenty of push back. People were literally saying “why are they making another mass effect !? We don’t need it!” The general consensus is that making another mass effect game was inherently flawed, and a lot of that was baggage from ME3’s ending. Gamers hadn’t quite gotten over that, but they were merely frustrated that another Mass Effect game was being made.  That it even exists. GCN, one of 3 gaming sins channels would often “sin” a game for “existing”. The level of shit Andromeda got was premeditated, and unfortunately, Bioware gave them a laundry list of talking points. Among the lack of attractive characters is bigs and glitches. 

Isn’t that a popular critique these days? The bugs! Oh the bugs! The glitches, they’re everywhere! Technical errors up the wazoo! You would think after years of investing into western games, the gamers would be used to it. And in truth, they are. Because there is one game in existence that calls bullshit on that entire talking point, and that is the witcher 3. 

People… have praised this game to the highest of heavens. It is currently the biggest game of this generation. And from what I’ve read and seen, it’s also loaded with technical issues. From characters models morphing to hard crashes to specific horses and weapons not working properly, and more, the game simply isn’t polished. And yet, the gamers and the industry will trip over themselves in extolling this game. What this game does to make people ignore the technical errors (probably the sex scenes) I won’t ever know because I hate medivel fantasy, but one thing is for certain. The Witcher 3 calls bullshit on the bugs and glitches line. Bugs and glitches are the new “bad cameras” of this era, this complaint is so common.

“Sonic 06 is buggy!” So is Witcher 3

“Andromeda is too buggy!” So is Witcher 3. 

“Mafia 3 is buggy!” So is Witcher 3

It never ends. Videogames have more technical problems than ever before because the technology has gotten far more complex that westerners are unwilling to mitigate them. And with patches being common, and gamers caping for the misgivings of game developers in the past, bugs and glitches should be expected. Hell, they’re practically the norm. No, they’re not desirable, and can indeed get in the way of a good time. But gamers have shown time and again that they’re willing to put up with them (or anything in fact) in order to get through a game. You can be tired of the industry not giving a damn about finishing a product so that there are no flaws. But you don’t get protests over that. You get them over endings.

Content matters more than technical aspects all the fucking time. You think those lootboxes were shat on because they existed? No, it’s because Star Wars fans couldn’t play as Luke or Darth Vader without dealing with that RNG shit. Otherwise, you wouldn’t hear a word about lootboxes. Those 2 characters were so important that Star Wars fans nearly ruined EA for it.

Bugs and glitches don’t concern gamers. But they do make convincing arguments, and that is why you hear so much about them. This isn‘t to say that having them in the first place is ok considering the high prices. But that has never been the issue. The issue is “how do I get people to hate this game!?” Because that is the true goal. They want a large mass of people to hate this or that game. Quality be damned. Most of the time, they don’t want to feel as if they’re not alone in their opinions, so they force them onto others, but there are quite a number of times when they personally feel the game in question simply shouldn‘t exist, and must delve into defamatory strategies to let other gamers and the company in question should never make this “mistake” again.

Sonic Mania/Forces: The complete elimination of 2/3D Sonic.

Mafia 3/Battlefield 1: No black protagonists. Ever

Andromeda: No more Mass Effect games. End the series.

Yeah. A lot of people threw shade at Andromeda not because they want Bioware to do better, but because they want the series to die off.

A lot of yah mentioned that trying to reason with Nintards was like talking to a brick wall. It’s because that’s what they want. A gated community where the agenda is clear and won’t be moved by “logic”. They don’t give a damn about a fair assessment. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have such proclivities toward deflection, especially in regards to the 3DS. Their Agenda is to make Nintendo look good no matter the lies they would spout. It’s no different from any other gaming community whether it be Castlevania heeping praise onto Lords of Shadow simply to show support for the series future, or PlayStation fans desperately trying convince you that every exclusive they have is an unforgettable gem. There’s a clear mentality at work that is universal amongst certain gaming communities. 

Notice these last 3 examples are attempts at generating positive reception. The pendulum swings both ways. Not all gaming agendas are steeped in defamation. Sometimes, they need a mass of people to love this game, often times for the inverse of everything I said before… but even then, you have people who praise a game simply because it is profitable. 

Enter the Fighting Game Community. 

You’ll never find a greater hive of  toxic narcissism than in the FGC. These bastards have gone on literal war marches against anyone who would dare disparage their communities. These folks have, for many years, bullied other gamers into respecting their communities because “they can kick your ass at Street Fighter 2″. 

Overcompensation is the phrase that comes to mind when these people engage in discussion over videogames as they somehow believe that their ability and freedom to talk trash and play games at a highly competitive level is somehow a good substitute for their manhood. They not only expect praise despite their undesirable behavior, they demand it. And over the years, their descent into madness has only become more pronounced. 

They love to promote EVO, a fighting game tournament series that became famous for Daigo vs Justin Wong during a match of Street Fighter 3. How do they promote it? Well, these days, they have fabricated the notion that “without EVO, a large majority of fighting games simply don’t stand a chance!” Guilty Gear Xrd was the critically acclaimed darling of the FGC and EVO, and it sold poorly. At least in America, what did EVO do to help boost the sales of Xrd? Nothing. Xrd and DBF usually only get praise for their graphical prowess. Not necessarily their gameplay. You only hear that from the FGC. They are far worse than Nintards when it comes to the gameplay talking points.

Case in point, Soul Calibur 5 & Street Fighter 5. These games were utterly hated by the world when they came out. The most notable reasons being a total of content. Missing characters,  lack of arcade modes, low budget story modes, and etc. These games caused people to run away. But if you listened to the FGC, you wouldn’t know that. Seems the FGC would give anything a pass if there’s tangible proof that a game is “competitive” enough, which is an oxymoron as any game with a multiplayer component can be highly competitive. But in the depths of their madness, only they can truly determine the quality of a game’s competitiveness. And honestly, it really only comes down to whether or not they want bother with said games, because they’ve never been clear on what makes a game “competitive“. Because they really don’t care, they want to maintain the appearance of being “elite”.

But again it goes deeper than that. There’s a youtuber named DSP or Darksydphil who for all intents and purposes is a jackass, and yet, even he is repulsed by the FGC. When he made a rant about SF5 being terrible after about a year, he mentioned that the FGC would often lie about the quality of the game in order to get a paycheck. I suppose the more people who attend EVO, the higher the paycheck, and perhaps Capcom gives them all endorsements, I don’t know or care, though I’m inclined to take DSP’s word for it based off of Street Fighter X Tekken. 

This game game was openly despised by the public for a multitude of reasons, but chief among them was the on-disc DLC. The game was ported to vita and contained an extra 12 characters. Capcom had made a statement that these extra characters would be available as DLC for the console versions. But when some hackers found that the characters were already on the disc since the game first launched, people realized off the bat that Capcom had planned this all along, and it wasn’t some bonus content they were porting from the VITA version. Everyone hates on-disc DLC. Paying for content that is locked on the disc is looked down upon. A method of making money off the same game without any additional work. This was the biggest scam Capcom could ever pull. 

And yet, the FGC caped for them. Using such talking points like “well, it was going to be DLC anyway! Why complain!?”  That horseshit reasoning went on for years, and no one was listening to them. Even Frank Yagami of The Fighters Generation website was spouting this nonsense. Then again, he isn’t the sharpest tool in the bunch.

Perhaps it’s that EVO was the house that Capcom built that causes so many of those dregs to defend and lie about the quality of fighting games. But whatever the reason, they feel it necessary to promote EVO is the end all because EVO is, in all honesty, the validation of their masculinity. 

Notice how they love talking about the fact that they make money off of E-sports and videogame tournaments? They love throwing that in people’s faces. That’s mal-adjusted behavior at work. Deep down, they’re still screaming for that validation, so all this new found attention they’re getting in the media, and these folks talking about how big E-sports has gotten, the money they get and how they can get started on careers or w/e, that’s them bludgeoning you over the head to respect them! I don’t think youtubers get anal about how they make a living off of dumb videos, they only start bitching when the money isn’t coming in steady enough. But for youtubers, it’s just a revenue stream. But the FGC gets in your face about the profits they reap from gaming tournaments simply to prove a point. Not because making money in itself is a good thing, you can make money off of pornography and you wouldn’t find it flattering to tell the whole world. If their tournaments are doing charities, they put everyone on alert they give a damn about sick children. All of this is done to force people into respecting them and what they do for a living. And when no one does, they get extremely hostile towards others. They don’t care about the games they promote, the games are merely tools to get people to attend their tournaments and by extension getting cash and respect. That’s their agenda. 

People know fully well that they cannot trust game journalists, but hell, gamers themselves are taking on those bad habits. It’s getting more and more difficult to know who’s words you can trust over other’s. Gaming communities have their own interests and goals. They do not care about objective and fair assessments, it is to fabricate a narrative in regards to certain games.