Having watched that intro myself, I think it’s only fair to criticize it with whatever intensity we so choose. Sonic Superstars (so far) looks like a cheap cash grab. The intro to the game looks pathetic compared to what we used to get. Not just in animation, but also in presentation. The music sucks, the characters look silly, and the game is coasting off of more nostalgia. I think it’s safe to say we barely get any new content these days. Everything is recycled assets. There’s always this appearance of Sega giving a rats ass about the fans, but this game doesn’t say anything about them caring to improve the brand. What they’re doing now is exploitative. $60 for something that would be reasonably priced around 40 or even 30. Sonic Superstars is not worthy of $60. Mega Man 11 started off with $30 to my knowledge. Super Bomberman R was $40. Those are sensible prices for cheap looking (and feeling) games.
So for an animated intro with that level of quality, I think we deserve a little bit more for the price they’re demanding. You gotta think, we’ve been spoiled by the likes of Sonic CD and Riders. Take into account of how Sonic is presented. Take note of the music. CD, Sonic looks serious, Sonic looks intense, he looks friggin badass pulling off his stunts. But he rarely ever smiles. His mannerisms even in the ending animations convey a sense of intensity that is sorely lacking in the Sonic of today. In the Sonic of Superstars where he’s aloof, goofy, doesn’t watch where he’s going because hyuck there’s Tails to give him a ride. Also took a couple of years, but when we got the uncompressed version, that animation is smooth. There… is… no… excuse for the animation of Superstars to be that ass. Where are the FRAMES on this bitch!? How is that worth $60!?
It’s kinda sad this is Tee Lopes spittin this. Really talented musician, very childish responses. He did write a response explaining his irritation, and I have trouble accepting it. Not because of his own personal reasons for stating it, but it’s the part where he goes “It’s a tough and ungrateful job”. That… goes… for…. every… single… job in the world. Not just those of the entertainment industry. I absolutely despise this mindset amongst those within the industry because it comes from a place of entitlement and conceit, plain and simple. People within the entertainment industry honestly live in a parallel universe where they are put upon by critics. But the truth of the matter is people will usually be kissing their asses the next day or month. Their names are known. Their mere words carry influence simply because they create entertainment.
But the average joe in the service sector? They are looked down upon. They are unknown. If they died today, few would care. They are devalued and dehumanized every single day, and are easily forgotten when people have gotten their goods and left. They work to survive, and have few prospects outside of just keeping a roof over their heads. You can bet your ass no one in the entertainment industry respects or values them. People who work in entertainment will at least be known for their work, talent, passion, and whatever other buzzword they can think of to give themselves far more prestige than they would consider giving to someone else. But they have the gall to go online and whine about people criticizing their work. And you know the best part? People… will actually…. give a shit about them! These other mother fuckers? They can have a whole shitty year of work, and people will tell them to get over it, quit their jobs, find another one. Because no one gives a rat fuck about them. But artists, animators, they’ve got plenty of supporters to wipe their tears and their asses. I’m almost reminded of Montel Williams when he talked about why there was more media coverage of Heath Ledger’s death when 28 soldiers were killed in Iraq, then got cancelled afterward. The problem is that they have a whole media apparatus that tells them they are more important than the rest of the world. We hear more about a celebrity breakup than we do about the people that get gunned down at a school. They’re just statistics at that point.
That’s why the wording in that tweet feels disingenuous, it’s like he’s trying to tug at the heartstrings of certain fans (or sychophants) with emotional wording like “compassion, criticism coming from a place of hate and not love, working so hard (the go-to slogan of lowering one’s guard when it comes to reviews), striving to give people something special”. All of this for a product, mind you. A piece of software that is exploitative as fuck, and comes from a company that has fucked over hard working people over and over again. Hell, they didn’t even PAY that one musician from Sonic Adventure 2! This honestly goes into why artistic people aren’t respected. They can’t handle criticism for shit. Twitter exposed this mindset of “I create art, and damn anyone who doesn’t like it”. I’d sooner say get off of Twitter (unless he’s required to have a twitter account by his employers for the sake of PR, that kind of shit).
And please. “Actively working to find details to bash?” The implication that there is more to praise than criticize (assuming your work is better than how the public perceives it), but aside from that… this is what fans do. We pick shit apart because we infact DO give a damn. When you get deep into some shit, you often want to know every little detail. Every inch, every cranny, every grain of dirt. So of course we’re going to over analyze shit like a damn cartoon intro. We care! We care about how it’s presented, we care about how it’s handled, we care about who’s handling it, all that good stuff. Why? Because we have fond memories of what this franchise was. True blue and way past cool. Throughout the decade, we’ve seen this series degrade into something unrecognizable. Something childish, something that appeals to true snowflakes. Appeals to fans of nonsense like Teen Titans Go, Thunder Cats Roar, and Disney Pixar. Steering far and away from those that liked Swat Cats, Star Fox, Samurai Jack, DBZ (Pre-Maijin Buu). The Intro to Superstars proves this. It shows a version of Sonic that is neutered. Not the Sonic that was a bad ass. That seems to be the case with everything Sonic related these days, we just want to nerf and spay the poor bastard into this sad little child who only children can relate to. The rad Sonic of yesteryear reminds people of toxic masculinity or something, so he has to be raped into this characature of complete dork to be “relatable”. Because the cool people don’t play Sonic, so why should Sonic be cool? That’s the impression I got. I wouldn’t take it personally if people take things apart piece by piece. That’s how some people learn. That’s how some people understand the inner workings of things, by taking them apart.
Also, nothing about Superstars is “for the fans”. It’s corporate excess. Nostalgia pandering with 2D, a bastardized concept of classic Sonic, and some returning characters that will never be utilized in the more modern iterations of the franchise because Iizuka has no sense of imagination whatsoever. The game is evidence or creative bankruptcy. Recycled assets to create the same old tired looking bosses and backdrops, the same music (sorry… “placeholder”), the same SLOW ASS GAMEPLAY, and the same nonsense of thinking cute shit easter eggs equates to caring about the fans. The only reason nostalgia pandering works so well is because the modern era of entertainment is so wildly opposed to the shit that came before (EXCLUSIVELY because these companies hire people that HATE these works in the first place!), and people are so miserable in their adult years that anything that reminds them of their childhood will instantly be on their to-do list. It’s pure exploitation at it’s core. The $60 price tag is just further proof of it. But frankly, Sega’s been on this “for the fans” bullshit for a good 12 years now, it’s a slogan that rings hollow. For the fans means the game would have better, more passionate music. For the fans means they’d maintain what made Sonic so appealing in the past instead of selling out to the whims of people who hyped up Breath of the Wild. For the fans means not blowing off those very fans just because they dared to have an opinion that didn’t reek of a brown nose. But hey, for what it’s worth, that’s fine. We’re getting old, Sega wants Sonic to be a hero of children, and they’re not going to shirk that goal post for anyone because that’s where the MONEY is.
Though it is interesting how something this cheap looking came about as a result of “proving to Sega that Sonic has value”, and at that price tag, no less. Price of fame, I suppose.
Yah know, it’s rather annoying how often game companies leave people hanging after merely giving them a taste of what they’re making. Whether it be Godzilla: Save the Earth, Soul Calibur 3, Phantasy Star Online 2 in the west, Platinum Games in general, Mortal Kombat X, and even… an update to an existing game.
Cyberpunk 2077 was an unmitigated disaster, for sure. Tons of issues revolving around bugs, save data corruption, and a genuinely shit storyline that skewed everything away from your character to focus on a popular celebrity because WB is videogame cancer. CP2077 is likely the most hated game of all time, and for very good reason.
Despite that, and at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the least bit curious as to what Phantom Liberty would bring to the table if only for the prospect of a better ending than the one we got. With V being inducted into the US government for the promise of a cure… which sounds completely idiotic considering that the Government gains nothing from V’s involvement, but whatever. Perhaps the story itself is yet another red herring because Amma forbid we have a happy ending in AAA vidya gaems anymore.
But as it turns out, I won’t have to worry about this at all because CDPR is eager to burn bridges once more. Pardon me for bringing up the rear one year down the road, but the Phantom Liberty expansion will be exclusive to current gen consoles and PC. Those who chose to remain on or are stuck on last gen consoles are screwed. Now I could see if it was like a physical copy that is exclusive to PS5 and such, but… no! Phantom Liberty won’t be available AT ALL on PS4 or XBone! Digitally or otherwise! Not even as some cock sucking DLC! CDPR is not putting Phantom Liberty on last gen consoles period!
As expected, the sycophants are out in full force in support of this decision with trite remarks of how it was always meant to be. Being last gen is to deserve being left behind. Welcome to reality, the world is moving on, this usually happens with new consoles after some time, etc. etc., fuck you for being poor, the class warfare, the flexing of having the money to have a new console, all that shit. The sycophancy, however, is fascinating in this case as these people, blinded by their godforsaken hubris, actually believe that Cyberpunk was never intended to be on 8th generation consoles. That being on PS4 of Xbone was “holding the games back” from greatness… except for the fact that the game was announced waaaaaay back in 2012. 2 years prior to the launches of the PS4 and Xbone. Cyberpunk was completely, 100% intended to be on last gen consoles in all it’s triteness. It was developed with those consoles and the PC in mind. So… what we got in 2020 is absolutely inexcusible.
So many years came and went in between 2012 and 2020, things change of course, so what was supposed to be the idea back then isn’t the reality now, but the main thing to take note of was that PS5 wasn’t even a concept back when Cyberpunk was originally announced. So the rampant idiocy of people to try and flex on others for not having a PS5 is utter ridiculousness. I still have the footage of Rippa on his PS5 going through about 50 butt fucking crashes playing that shit. PS5, not the 4! Not the nne, the tano! I don’t know why people think the fucking hardware matters! The PS5 version of the game still ran like shit, still crashed like shit! Has it ever crossed people’s minds that maybe… JUST MAYBE…. the developers are incompetent jackasses!?
For some reason, CDPR still has their advocates, these morons who will go to bat for them even in the face of pure dickory. There is not a single excuse for why Phantom Liberty is exclusive to XSX and PS5. The economy is fucked beyond all reason, you’ve had that… chip shortage or whatever, somehow the consoles are still hard to find, and they’re still more expensive than last gen consoles. I can tell yah right now, where I work, the goddamn employees are not allowed to purchase a PS5, those are to be reserved for the customers only! That’s how bad it is! People wanna talk about how this is just the natural order of the world or some shit, there are too many factors going on right now where just getting your hands on current gen hardware is still a hassle. But CDPR is telling you tough titty. If you wanna even save money and stick it out with last gen, that’s not their problem. They wanna “move on” to current gen, that means leaving the last gen folks with a permanently broken version of the game that requires an external HDD just for the updates alone. The game is about 70gigs out the box with a separate install disk, and updates that are about… what… 50 or so gigs in total? idk, but it’s inconvenient that you yourself have to be tethered to the internet just to get the game to work whereas it should be working out of the box. All for them to say “if you’re still on PS4 or Xbone, fuck you, you’re not getting anymore updates”.
And people are defending this? It’s no wonder that gamers get no respect from people, this is the kind of BS that they are willing to simp for out of this ridiculous notion that programming for last gen consoles are holding the games back. Back from what!? Being playable!? All this shit for GRAPHICS, and none of them could even spell out why a PS5 game would look better than a PS4 game. Graphics have come so far in the last 30 years that any upgrade at this point is miniscule and negligeble. Technology doesn’t hold back gaming. People do. It is up to the developers to make the damn games work. If they fuck up, you’re NOT supposed to say “well it’s the console’s fault!” This attitude comes from people who are concerned with validating their purchases. No one wants to have buyers remorse, especially with money being so damn tight, so what people do is that they try to cope. They want to feel as though they spent their money wisely as spending money on games is probably the MOST irresponsible thing you could be doing today. So many terrible games cost so much money that people constantly feel burned with every purchase, but there are always those who feel entitled to bark at others for not buying the right games and equipment for a better gaming experience. One could easily write them off as shills for these companies as these decisions (especially from CDPR who has burned so many butt cracks back in 2020) are becoming faaaaaar more difficult to defend as the years go on. This is honestly the first time I’ve ever heard of a company ending support of a single game simply because it’s on a previous console generation. And what if you’re on a PS5 playing a PS4 version of Cyberpunk, you’ll be like “WTF I can’t get Phantom Liberty just because it’s the PS4 version!?” It’s so stupid. I could hazard a guess that the vast majority of people who bought Cyberpunk were on previous gen consoles, and if they decided to stick it out with the game, CDPR is telling them to piss off to infinity and beyond.
Shit, I don’t even know why I got worked up over this. There’s always youtube for the cutscenes. And Deus Ex.
After playing and finishing Shenmue 3, I began to wonder about something. Why is the writing in videogames getting worse?
Shenmue 3 is only the most recent example alongside the Yakuza games, Tekken, the vast swath of Japanese games in general, and even some western franchises like Last of Us Part 2. The writing in video games have never been perfect in the past, but the simplicity of most narratives in games allowed them to florish and not really leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. Since the late 90s, however, the idea of narrative driven gaming experiences came to the forefront as a result of the Playstation brand, from influencial titles like FF7, Resident Evil (heheh), Metal Gear Solid, Parasite Eve, to the Dreamcast with the Shenmue series, and continuing on the 6th generation of consoles. Games only got better with more talented voice actors and more talented writers as the years went on.
Except… as the years went on, the writing… has only gotten worse and worse and worse. It doesn’t take too long (even as little as 2 games as is the case for LOU2) before the cracks in the writing become apparent and almost ruins the perception of a franchise before the inevitable reboot that changes almost everything that people loved about the series… because one title had a writer with delusions of granduer. The 7th gen games had somewhat decent stories for the first 3 years. As with everything else, around the 2010s, things started to go awry as writers struggled to come up with more “epic” settings of their next gen games… but failed time and again to come up with equally epic narratives. And in some cases, like the afformentioned Shenmue 3, they don’t try at all. From nonsensical actions and responses from the characters just for certain events to take place, to inconclusive and outright frustrating endings that leave more questions and disatisfaction than expected. If story is a big part of a game, then by all means… make it good! Publishers demand $70 full price when they’re not willing to put forth the effort, and in many cases, a poor story can contribute to the frustration (especially if they are sequels).
Metroid Other M’s story, for example, involved turning Samus Aran from a badass bounty hunter into a broken house wife who has a rather confusing mental breakdown in the face of an enemy she has vanquished at least 5 times in the past, and her complete lack of autonomy during the entire operation on the bottleship has left many (me included) incredibly frustrated with the confusing portrayal of it’s leading lady for years. Many reasons for the decisions in the story remain elusive and baffling, but can only stem from Sakamoto’s desire to show that “she is a woman”. Accusations of sexism aside, the fact that he thought any of this was a good idea is an example of hubris from a writer that did not bother to look into why people actually loved this character, and thought it was more appropiate to “set the record straight” by disregarding what made her so special.
Another example would be the bizarre narrative of RE6. While being the premiere example of Survival Horror done completely wrong, much of the frustration could also be laid at the feet of it’s story which…. ugggggh. So the story is that some random guy named Derreck Simmons is a member of a secret society known as “the family”. He was obsessed with Ada Wong because she did a few odd jobs for him. But Ada left him which made him feel bitter, leading him to enticing a fellow scientist named Carla Radames into becoming Ada Wong, by using a viral agent called the “C-Virus” to transform her face and body. However, Simmons wasn’t satisfied with her, and threw her into the trash. Because of this, Carla became spiteful and decided to unleash the C-Virus around the world in an attempt to destroy everything Simmons held dear. His grip on the world. Which is interesting because Simmons himself used a regular zombie virus on the same day that Carla decided to ruin the world in an attempt to kill the President of the United States, nuking the city in the process just to destroy any attempts to reveal America’s involvement with Umbrella. A far more interesting plot that is relevent to the series as a whole. Yet that is aborted immediately after Leon’s 3rd chapter where the rest ofthe game is razor focused on the C-Virus being unleashed in China, leading to a story so unfocused and bloated with characters and arcs that no one cares about to this day. It feels like the writers didn’t know what type of story they wanted to make with there being 2 major plotlines going on at the same time, and more baffling additions to the cast such as Jake Mueller who is the estranged son of Albert Wesker. To say people were furious with this game is an understatement. People had plenty of misgivings regarding RE5 as well, but we can only assume people tolerate it due to concluding an arc involving the rivarly between Chris Redfield and Albert Wesker himself. RE6 does nothing to expand on the Resident Evil series as a whole, and just feels like a random idea that has since been thrown in the trash in favor of a smaller scale reboot involving a regular joe schmuck who just so happens to be a plant monster that can survive a Kano fatality, and fights against a witch that is powered by a magical fungus that houses the souls of the dead as if this were a dark fantasy series. …. fuck.
Mass Effect 3 remains infamous amongst fans of the series, so much so that they outright refused to give it’s sequel, Andromeda, a fair shot. A game that, like many, failed to have a satisfying conclusion merely because the writers of that game thought it would be better to be philosophical than to be pragmatic. After the massive Reaper invasion of Earth that involved the entire galaxy’s species fighting in a last ditch effort to preserve their existence, we conclude the arc with the Illusive Man who was completely indoctrinated. Afterward, Captain Anderson dies all before Shepard is pulled up to an elevator by the now infamous “Star Child”. This little bastard is what controls all of the Reapers, and makes a lot of meaningless arguments and gestures as to why the Reapers must initiate a cycle of extinction, none of which actually makes sense, but never needs to. Star Brat gives Shepard a choice in whether to destory, control, or synthasize the Reapers, where 2 choices are just pulled out of their asses, and the one choice that had been the goal of the series since the beginning is presented as “renegade” choice. Fan theories about this make more sense than what was given in the game’s ending relating to Shepard being indoctrinated to see the only logical choice as being the bad one. In all endings, however, Shepard dies, the Reapers stop trying to kill everyone, the Mass Relays are destroyed, the Normandy is sent into another dimension, and the game ends. Players persistent enough to do everything are treated to a few seconds of Shepard taking a single breath… and that’s it. Fans of the game were so righteously pissed off with the sheer enigmatic scope of the ending that they held a protest over it. Bioware, in all their hubris, included another ending in later versions of the game which presented a forth option in which the player was allowed to refuse all choices and have Shepard proclaim loudly and proudly that they all will “die on their own terms”, where the Star Brat goes “so be it” and proceeds to wipe out all life in the Galaxy (save for a few that won’t be a problem). While many players have used this ending as a term of endearment, the true intent was to insult the fans by presenting them a choice where they are punished for their own hubris in “thinking they know better than the writers”. Many of the game’s writers have actually expressed that they have NO PROBLEM with what they did with the ending, and would never change it for any reason, meaning that the fans entire experiences with the franchise up until that point were never even considered. The spitefulness of the “Refuse” ending drives this point home.
I’ve not played any of the Kingdom Hearts Games, so it’s impossible for me to know why the 3rd game is awful, but apparently that series was on the verge of madness since the second game, and the audacious demands of Tetsuya Nomura OR Disney for the player to have played every… single… game… produced in order to understand everything that’s going on if ONLY to push sales and nothing else. They employed the MCU strategy before it became popular.
Speaking of Nomura, Final Fantasy 7 Remake remains a thorn in the fans ripe asses in that the game isn’t a remake at all, and is more of a rewrite. The remake itself is an episodic adventure in which bits and pieces of the game will be released whole console generations apart for the sake of more money and intense Hubris. With the introductions of the Whispers of Fate, the game posits itself as an alternate timeline in which the events are changing constantly, and the Whispers are trying to ensure that history stays the course. Not only does this defeat the purpose of being a remake, it introduces the concept of time travel and fighting against fate… which goes against the idea of the original that included the acceptance of loss. Events in the remake are slightly different in that the characters do more than what they originally did in the original, including Cloud getting fired from Avalance before Jesse gets crippled, Barret being a nutjob, Aerith knowing the fate of the game world before anything actually happens, the 2-3 Avalance members surviving at the end, Zack not dying, Sephiroth killing Barret before he is revived by the Whispers sucking his supple nipples (*chuckles*), and then the most caveman inspired ending in which Cloud and the gang enter the Shadow Realm to fight some… thing, and Sephiroth himself with Aerith proclaiming that they can change the future and make it right. As a person who hasn’t played the original, I can only sympathize with the fans that were outraged by whatever the fuck is going on here. Those that were expecting their precious childhood memories to be preserved in gorgeous HD visuals have now had their dreams completely shattered by even more hubris and time travel antics.
Speaking of time travel…. dear God… Mortal Kombat 11. Where does one begin when describing the rampant idiocy of Netherrealm Studios in their refusal to allow consequences to stick? MK9 is the only game in the series that handled this pretty well with Raiden trying to figure out clues from the future that lead him to making plenty of mistakes that get people killed, leading to his followers losing faith in him and fighting against him in the end, leading to the destruction of Shao Khan, and a completely different future that fans could only anticipate with (sometimes morbid) curiousity. And then MKX happened and… bye bye enthusiasm. MK11 makes this all worse by having Time Travel itself as the central conflict. The consequence of the last game was that Raiden became Dark Raiden immediately at the end… and this was erased at the beginning of MK11 with the merging of different timelines because… the story of… Injustice was…. popular!? It should be noted that DC has a history of doing this sort of bullshit, so it should be no surprise that WB’s influence created this sort of premise for Mortal Kombat to follow in the future. It’s a concept that doesn’t really work as well as it does in Injustice because that game merged parallel universes for the sake of one universe fighting against another. It was a very simple plotline that worked extremely well given how often DC had done it in the past. The problem with MK11’s story is that everything that happens is the result of a new character, Kronika, who plans to restart the timeline… as she’s always done, because Raiden decapitated Shinnok… her son. So her rationale for this entire game’s plot is vindictive spite. What happens is that past characters fight with or collaborate with their future selves in a series of petty antics that goes nowhere because of this bizarre assumption that MK fans cared about how the past and present versions of the MK fighters would interact with each other. Narrative convenience isn’t even a concept as events happen… “just because”. It’s not at all a compelling narrative as nothing makes any sense, things just happen, and the villain’s overall plan… isn’t actually the most evil thing in the universe. Kronika is trying to restart time, something she has done over and over and over again, just because she can, or is tired of Raiden screwing up her planned history or.. something. The story was so apocalyptically bad that NRS released an addon story in the form of Aftermath, a plot line that, admittedly, DOES fix a lot of problems with the story, even coming up with a (rather poor) reason for why Kronika needs a crown to restart time if that’s her thing, and gives them an excuse to make Shang Tsung lovable again. But then…. their hubris comes up once again in which they villified Sindel to such an extreme that fans would never forgive them. All of this… just so they could reboot the timeline again in time for “Mortal Kombat 1”. MK11 in it’s entirety was just a prequel to yet another reboot to the timeline, and for that, it’s simply a terrible story all around.
Last of Us 2 was one of the most anticipated games of the modern age, only to crash and burn when Neil Drunkman thought it would be a good idea if Joel got pwn’d early to make way for Ellie to take center stage as the main character, everything that happens after this point becomes meaningless for the player outside of a burning lust for revenge due to the antihero having killed their modern gaming equivalent to Optimus Prime. Only… for the story to drop this in favor of forcing you to PLAY that antihero in the hopes of understanding her motives for why she killed Joel… except that is resolved early… and the rest of the plot is petty spite involving psycho Christians who are persecuting their LGBT representitives, and the writers thought this was the perfect game to air their grievances when the player wants pure vintage vengeance against the wicked bitch of the West. And to top it all off, Ellie.. doesn’t even get her revenge, loses 2 fingers, and lets Abby and Lev go without even inquiring as to why she killed Joel in the first place, resolving nothing in this central conflict, and leaving Ellie with… nothing! Her only connection to Joel is lost in the loss of her fingers, her wife and adopted child abandoned her, and now Ellie is all alone… because they wanted to preach about how wrong revenge is. Leaving out the question of why writers these days want to preach about why revenge is wrong considering they often hail from a group of people who have conquered and oppressed other groups of people throughout history (See Korean dude from Yakuza 6), denying the player that sweet… sweet revenge against a character that they are forced to sympathize with would do nothing but make the player feel bitter for years to come, and whatever enthusiasm they might have for a 3rd installment is all but lost because the writers chose the Aesop over Satisfaction.
Some other examples include:
Tales of Zesteria/Berseria Tales of Arise (Second half) Samurai Warriors 5 Dead or Alive 5 and 6 Tekken 7 to some extent Soul Calibur 5 (long since rectified, but bares mentioning) FF15 Sonic Frontiers Cyberpunk 2077 (I Don’t think Phantom Liberty will resolve this) Yakuza series RE8 DMC5 MGS5 Nier Automata Spider-Man Miles Morales Shadow of the Tomb Raider Dying Light 2 (What the hell was this shit!?) New Tales from the Borderlands Borderlands 3 And of course, Shenmue 3
The common link between all of these entries seems to be one of or a combination of incompetence or conceit. People not thinking about the implications of their plot, or are extremely arrogant in believing that the players don’t deserve to have a satisfying conclusion to their long and drawn out narratives. I’ve noted before that a LOT of games have had the main character get killed off in the end, and that seemed to be a favorite pasttime during the 6th generation of consoles. That doesn’t appear to have changed much, but it’s the least of our problems now.
Given the direction many of these stories take, it’s inevitable that these Devils have their advocates who believe that writers should not compromise their vision just for the satisfaction of their audiences. And I get that to a degree even though that goes into aspirational selfishness. Artistic people are always going to be in conflict with capitalism, because it’s a system that demands conformity at the expense of one’s soul, and reinforces this mentality through economics.
The thing is artists are always at odds with the majority. They see the world differently than everyone else, and wish to express their perspectives in often creative and unorthodoxed ways. This isn’t inherently bad, but they often take on these mindsets without considering what other people are already used to, thus we constantly get arguments favoring capitalist realism because the artist is often more concerned with “challenging” other people’s views. To challenge is to criticize, and people don’t like to be criticized simply for holding views that they might’ve had for years on end. This is why you have film critics who tell you that your job is to entertain them, not lecture them. Artists don’t often see things that way, and are constantly trying to challenge perspectives or do things in often bizarre ways in a rather… juvenile attempt to be as unique as possible. Artists constantly fight the horde. That sort of mentality is incompatible with capitalism, unfortunately. You can’t constantly go against what the people want, and that’s something that artists don’t want to hear. People engage in entertainment for ego gratification, and they do not give a damn about you trying to teach them otherwise. It doesn’t help that artists…. don’t really know how to convey their vision in a way that makes it graspable to audiences, which shows a certain amount of inconsideration for other people’s expectations and experiences.
Take for example the scene in Superman 2 where Clarke loses his powers, and is beaten up by some asshole at a diner. At the end of the film, Clarke already has his powers back, and the asshole tries to go at him again… only to be slapped around like Superman’s personal bitch. To the artist, this is petty and vindictive on Superman’s part, and instead of being the bigger man and walking away, he proceeds to take his revenge on a man that he could now easily kill if he were too eager or careless. Sure, but no one could deny how satisfying it was for Superman to get his sweet revenge. If the artist were writing the story, he would likely take into account Superman as a symbol of virtue, and have it where Superman just leaves him alone because he isn’t worth his time. The majority would, likely, not enjoy this at all because he was allowed to be jerk, and doesn’t get his commuppance. Revenge is petty to the artist because they would see it as a negative concept and not as an emotional desire for wrongs committed. Revenge isn’t black and white, and in some cases might lead to better outcomes in life. The removal or defeat of one person might be beneficial to others, regardless of the original desire to remove/defeat said person. It doesn’t exclusively lead to worse outcomes. IE the asshole in the diner is less likely to mess with people because he got decked. Thus the narrative they weave is little more than a tool to express a life lesson rather have a narrative that is cathartic for the audience. An Episode from South Park (yes… South Park) comes to mind when Stan goes to see Passion of the Christ.
“We go to School to Learn, we go to a movie to be entertained!”
The audience is not going to forgo their own desires for the sake of the artist’s vision, and that’s something the artist refuses to accept. Thus we have a LOT of unsatisfying, inconclusive stories in games that do nothing but frustrate the player who only wished to escape for just a little while, where the artist wishes to re-invoke reality in an arena where people wish to escape reality.
Then there are the decisions that are made outside the control of the writers, and… yeah. I’m inclined to believe that Kingdom Hearts is NOT something Nomura is wholly responsible for as it seems to be motivated purely by capitalism, especially considering that Kingdom Hearts is a Disney property. It’s just an assumption of mine based on how Disney typically operates, so it’s possible I’m wrong on that front. It’s highly likely that’s what happened with the Mortal Kombat series now with the desire to play on nostalgia as the selling point of MK11 (minus good art direction, fuck these games are ugly now… well MK1 looks colorful for a change). So not everything can be laid at the feet of the writers either.
Whether it’s the publishers or the writers, however, the steps they take in weaving their narrative seems to leave people dissatisfied no matter what. So then people start looking at gamers as being “entitled” and/or having too high an expectation. There was a LOT of this for Shenmue 3, and it reinforces the idea of Shenmue fans being unbearable to most people. Considering the 20 wait for the game to come out, it is not unreasonable for people to be upset at the lack of conclusion. Shenmue was a series that was practically cancelled after 2 games. The fact that it was able to continue is a FUCKING MIRACLE, but because of how… “fragile” the existence of the series is, and how many people actually WANT it to die off, some things should have been considered in how the story was handled. There is no certainty in whether the series will actually continue beyond the 3rd game (especially with it’s horrid reception), and life is too short to be thinking long term. Suzuki could croak any day now, he’s up there in years, leaving the series unfinished permanently (unless he passed on some notes to others, we don’t know). So to have the story not conclude, ESPECIALLY in the manner that it did, you’ve left people with a lack of enthusiasm, confidence, and more uncertainty an despair. Telling people that this is how it’s supposed to be is only going to upset people even further, and in many cases will force the series to be tainted by the fandom. It is not unreasonable for people to be upset at how everything turned out.
Whatever the case may be, it seems to be an all around problem of not just the videogame industry, but entertainment as a whole. People’s desire to tell an interesting story is compromised by other ulterior motives, or just a lack of talent. And because they’re still highly successful, this approach to story telling will simply not change.
Well, I don’t hate it, but I do feel a sense of nothingness.
Shenmue 3 is possibly the third most controversial game of the previous generation, with cyberpunk taking center stage, and Last of Us 2 taking the 2nd. While sporting nothing as mind bogglingly outrageous as what those 2 titles have done, Shenmue 3 was no less infuriating to long time fans who desired a proper conclusion to the series after waiting roughly 2 decades for something meaningful. As someone who only recently got into the series, I cannot feel the same spark of outrage as many others have, including jaded backers who literally invested money to have that proper final confrontation. So to not get it feels like you wasted your money.
Suzuki had mentioned in certain interviews leading up to the game that Shenmue 3 would infact not be the final game, or be the final battle against Lan Di. Despite that, it still feels like the game goes through leaps and bounds to waste your time. It throws out that sense of logic and makes the test of patience illogical, irrational, and frankly, unwarranted. Unlike characters in the previous games where their rational for the decisions they make have some semblence of logic, the characters in S3 are jackasses who make the most bone headed of decisions purely for their own pride as Chinese martial artists.
Shenmue 3 is a game of jumping through hoops just to get around the idiocy of it’s characters, namely the Chinese Martial Arts Masters who believe it’s better to teach than it is to help people, giving one the impression that they are dickheads who don’t value the lives of those around them. For one, the first area of the game, Bailu village, is under attack by “thugs” (lets just call em Red Snakes) who have been going around and ransacking the place looking for stone masons because they want the Phoenix Mirror. They’ve holed themselves up in one part of the village, and have taken an apprentice stonemason hostage. Ryo, being the robot chad he is, tries to save him, only to get his ass whooped by… lets just call him Hulk Hogan because these Asian names are difficult to remember for people who simply are not important. While this happens, I’m sitting here wondering how Ryo could lose to this guy considering he beat someone far larger and stronger than him in the last game, with a much simpler technique. Dou Niu is strong enough to cause earthquakes with his goddamn feet.
Then he tries to fight him again, and gets beaten again, which is preposterous and infuriating. So Ryo, genius that he is, decides that he needs a particular technique to defeat him.
That technique is known as “Back Dat Ass Up”.
So Ryo seeks out some old fart near a replica Shenmue tree (I was a little miffed to know the game’s title referred to a tree), and Ryo pleads for his help. But for no particular reason, Old fart tells him to piss off because “Kung Fu takes too long to learn”. Everyone’s excuse is the same. “It’s too dangerous and Kung Fu can’t be learned overnight.” My dude, your village is under siege. Badguys are tearing up the place, and if they don’t get what they want, they’re highly likely to burn the whole place down. But you are refusing to get off your high horse and do something about it. The very least you can do… is give me some advice on how to handle big bitches… even though… I defeated a MUCH LARGER FOE 4 months ago, and shouldn’t have any issues now. But no. Piss off I say! So Ryo then goes to another old master named “Cam Clarke” for aid. He too won’t get off his drunk ass to do something about the invaders in the village. But in exchange for his “advice” and valued technique, you have to give him 3 servings of wine and buns. The first 2 for some insipid questions and a sparring match where the guy spends all day talking about how crappy you are at fighting without the self awareness that “You’re a Kung Fu master and I’m some punk kid! OF COURSE you’re not gonna be impressed!” This is made all the more asinine by the fact the reason Ryo lost had nothing to do with technique, but a lack of actually trying to dodge his punches!
Or rather it’s made more asinine by the fact that in the first game, you could actually beat Chai the first time you faced him if you were adequate at playing Virtua Fighter, but the option is not present here.
So after his 3rd meal ticket, he then demands some 50 year old wine. So you go around town, the game literally tells you to go to a particular shop that doesn’t even have what you’re looking for, so you gotta go to the shop at the ass end of the village, find the wine, pay 2000 smackaroos to get it (good thing I spent like 5 days looking for herbs and spices to sell cause I would NEVER had made that money in time. Though in hindsight, I should’ve been smoking it while putting up with this nonsense). You buy the beer, take it back to Cam Clarke… and this cocksucker then demands you catch some chickens. Fine, whatever. So I go through pure tedium trying to use QTEs to capture chickens, and then… this Cocksucker tells me to GO HOME! It’s getting dark soon, and he’s got nothing to teach you now.
…dafuq!?
At least this game has a time skip function along with quick jump (when it wants you to jump). So you go home, sleep, Quick Jump back to the village (but NOT to the temple where Cam Clarke is, we need some element of backtracking), and you get back to do some Horse Stance training (but I already maxed this out! This does nothing for me!) Then… You have to catch more chickens!! What the… why!? So I’m going to catch chickens, but careful now! Triangle becomes a prompt this time, making the exercise more tedious. After catching cocks, Cam Clarke tells me to piss off again! But… why!? It’s only 10:03 AM!! What, are you getting heat stroke all of a sudden!? All this shade!? Ugh! So… Go home, sleep off the stress, go back, and now we’re doing some shit called “Rooster Steps”. Well at least I can level up my endurance. And his smug ass talks about “you know what I’m gonna ask for next, right!?” COCK! YAY!! So… I’m catching MORE chickens, but be careful, you’ve gotta hit X on occasion now! So… after that… he FINALLY teaches you the coveted “Back Dat Ass Up” move!
Except… no he doesn’t!
Now he wants you to fight someone called “White Tiger” at the Martial Hall… at the ass end of the village! So you go over there, you fight at least 4 opponents, but not before realizing my health didn’t recover after each fight, so by the 3rd fight, I thought I got one shotted, but in reality, my health was just low… fuck you, game.
I was aware of how the stamina worked prior to playing this game, but it had slipped my at this point because Cam Clarke was pissing me off, and I just wanted to end the madness. So I finally beat these guys, go back to Cam Clarke but OH SHIT, it’s 5:45 PM, he tells me to lick his crusty nuts and go home. So I go home, sleep off the outrage, then go back.. and then finally, FINALLY… we learn… the coveted… Back Dat Ass Up! Which… looks like a move that Ryo had learned in the previous games, but eh. Now I was playing with power via QTE!
Then we go back to Hulk Hogan, enter the input for “Back Dat Ass Up”, and… despite how bulky his back is, this move, this simple ass maneuver… is enough to put him out of commission. So NOW the story progress, and we go to Niaowu, this place kicks so much ass, and… I get… to call my bae Nozomi! Long Distance Relationship, Joe Musashi not included! And… Ryo… is still an idiot!
THANK YOU TOM MINUS THE UNCLE! At least SOMEBODY got some sense in this bitch! But I guess Ryo was holding out for my one true love!
THE FORKLIFT! Oh baby, it’s been so long! You won’t believe those horrible, horrible minigames from Shenmue 2 that I had to put up with! I had to carry crates by hand! BY HAND! I had endured many great madness in video games, but that!? That was… just…. siiiick!!! I had to gamble and save scum just to makes ends meat! I had to do QTEs for everything, even walking across planks in sky scrapers! I had to fight actual Virtua Fighter characters, one of which was a murder happy cowgirl with Sarah Bryant’s Moves! Another with Jeffery’s McWild’s, and another with Wolf Hawkfield’s! All of which gave me the horrifying realization that I grow up to Akira Yuki! The worst character in the game! And my arch nemesis is Lau Chan! MERCENARY TAO!!! It was awful!! I’d give it all up just to make money with you!!!
In all seriousness, I’m glad they brought that back!
Niaowu was a pleasant experience all around… until… Oh.. oh no. Not again!
So Ryo gets a lead on the location of Shenua’s father (Shenua is a girl that appeared in the first 2 games and now sounds like a bootleg Erica Lindbeck), and he’s being held up by the Red Snakes. So we go to their hideout… and..
There’s another Wrestler, lets call him Triple H, who uses Animal Kung Fu and kicks Ryo’s ass! So now, Ryo embarks on a quest to find out what style of Kung Fu he uses, which through a series of trial and error, he finds out is called “chicken scratch Kung Fu” (the name is too long to remember). So the only way to defeat it is by learning a new technique.
This technique is called “Back Dat Ass Up… The Revenge!”
And this time, it costs 5000 smackaroos to learn. Thank goodness I looked up that book exchange cheat, otherwise I’d have quit this game! But then you buy it, you find out the final page is missing, and it turns out a fisherman named Kyle Hebert knows the move and will teach you. They have a sparring match, Hebert puts his stank ass foot on Ryo’s swag, and then tells him his Kung Fu sucks, and to piss off until he beats some Golden Child at a temple at the ass end of the city. SO you beat Huang Long, go back to Hebert, and learn the new “Back Dat Ass Up” tech. And you find out… IT’S THE SAME… GODDAMN…. MOVE!!!
*sighs* the whole game… is not like this. No. These are just 2 instances of a roughly 20 hour game. But these 2 segments take up a good portion of that, and contributes nothing to the game. At all. These techniques are, as far as I’m aware, cutscene only, and only seem to exist for 2 reasons. As literal padding, and to remind people that Shenmue was supposed to be Virtua Fighter RPG, because it’s one of Akira’s signature attacks. If they wanted to show these 2 (but really 1) move as being significant to learn, they should’ve been more than just progression walls and self-indulgence from the developer. I can’t blame anyone for feeling any actual frustration from this, especially in regards to how the game ends. Considering that the ending is just as controversial as Mass Effect 3, you’ve no doubt heard just how “evil” it is, and the uncertainty that comes from the series future. 19 years of people wanting an actual, tangible battle against Lan Di, the killer of Ryo’s father… and what happens is a little sparring match where… you can’t inflict any damage on him because hurrr he’s too powerful or some shit, puts Ryo into an arm lock after about 30 seconds of non fighting, threatens to kill Ryo, but Ren distracts Lan Di with something shiny, and he and Ryo both run away like bitches.
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…………. WHAT THE FU-
Putting aside the fact that Yu basicaly said this wasn’t going to be the final chapter, just… for those who have played the game and do in fact try to see the good in it, or even try to defend the game and it’s ending, I would implore yah to at least… think… about what it took… to get here. Not for the previous 2 games, not for the 2 decade waiting period, just… from the game… itself. The game… does not… build this up… at all. The entire time playing through Shenmue 3, you are not thinking about Lan Di, even with all the backstory being told, very little of it has to do with Lan Di, so he’s not even a speck in your mind. And then all of a sudden, you get to the final dungeon, some sexy red head tells you that “Lan Di is waiting for you”, and my only response is “I’m sorry… what!?” I care more about the fact that Ryo’s stupid ass gave up the real mirror! Yeah, being cautious because friendship is more important, but Ren had a good idea for once! I don’t give a fuck about Lan Di right now!”. The game has virtually NOTHING to do with Lan Di, now he’s just automatically here!? No, that does not work. It feels rushed, it feels half assed. I don’t think Lan Di was originally going to be in the 3rd game, but he’s just here because of the 20 year wait, fanservice, etc. So his presence at the tail end of the game feels… manipulative, maybe? A last minute effort to get people hyped? Idk.
And then… there’s the encounter itself. You have waves of enemies, you’ve got Triple H, you’ve got another wave of what looks like the most important Backers who’s asses you get to kick (this was bizarre, and a little shady if those final enemies were indeed backers for the game), and then you get a QTE for kicking a door, bashing 3 mooks, and then you fight Lan Di. It goes on for a bit, you can’t damage him, sexy red head starts a fire to KILL Lan Di for reasons we are not given and probably will never know until we’re all stuck in wheel chairs, Lan Di kicks Ryo’s ass, then gets distracted by a shiny object whereby Ryo and Ren escape. There’s no furthering of this animosity, it just happens, there’s a fight that doesn’t last long, and then they leave.
I do believe the frustration is warranted.
Regardless of whether or not this was supposed to be the end of the series, it’s the end of the game, and the ending is equally as important as the beginning. Videogames are an interactive medium, thus the player has more, for lack of a better term, emotional investment in the events that go on. Because you are an active participant in the story. So if the conclusion to that story is unfulfilling, unrewarding, yadda yadda, you are going to feel cheated and robbed. You feel like all your time and effort was for nothing. For Shenmue 3, there is no pay off at the end. Ryo gets his ass whooped, and nothing happens. Shenua is reunited with her father, but they don’t… even… interact with each other during the ending. That’s evidence the game was rushed. The ending sequence goes by way too fast, and then all of a sudden, Ryo, Shenua, and Ren are at the great wall of China for some reason. …..wut…
That… and entire course of the game reflects poorly on Ryo himself. The fact that he’s getting whooped by 2 retards just because they’re bigger or have Animal Kung Fu attacks… shows a complete lack of progress on his part. Ryo has beaten enemies of similar or larger builds in Shenmue 2 alone. The 3 Street Fighters that you were required to fight before getting to the Yellow Head building were bigger and faster than the pink buster crew in 3. And then there’s Dou Niu, the leader of Kowloon city who is twice as strong and durable than those 2. If you do the math, Ryo should never have lost to them in the first place. Twice each! So all that time spent training, learning new moves, and getting some street fighting experience all across the board… didn’t help him one bit!? Ryo’s characterization throughout the series is shoddy at best, but one thing that was consistent was his lust for martial arts, so him losing to pushovers is absolutely unrealistic at best, and laughable at worst. It makes it seem like Ryo’s abilities haven’t progressed one iota when that is not even the case! But apparently, learning 1 new move and it’s (so-called) variation… that’s all it really takes? I could think of several other strategies he could’ve used like.. idk, Muay Thai their legs!? Maybe Triple H wouldn’t be so easy, but Hogan!? That guy is a chump! What about those counter moves you learned from Chen and Guizhang? The Elbow coutner from Xiuying!? Those should be enough, but… no, I guess not. So you have to go around and be insulted by these jackoff masters for not having enough kung fu (But he’s got Karate and Jiu Jitsu which should be more than enough considering people have proven that “Kung Fu” isn’t all that practical in a fight), so the only Kung Fu they offer is “Back Dat Ass Up”.
It gives you the feeling that the game finds every meaningful way to completely shit on Ryo when the opportunity comes, and that is a little discouraging. We’re supposed to be rooting for the hero of the story, but the game gives us no reason to have confidence in him because he’s getting slapped all over China by nearly every character! A lot of fans like to make up their own Death Battles (ewwwwwww), and the one I’ve seen the most of was Ryo Hazuki and Kazuma Kiryu, with most fanboys positing that Ryo would get ripped to shreds because Kiryu fought Tigers and Ryo didn’t. While I’d love to be contrary on that regard, Shenmue 3 makes this virtually impossible! Not because they actually cared about showing Ryo’s level of skill… but because they wanted to pad out the game! Ryo’s strength and skill will forever be perceived as piss weak because they wanted to pad out the game! It’s canon! It’s real! Ryo cannot handle pushovers! He was defeated so easily 2 times each! Even Shenua is strong enough to break Hogan’s will! What the hell is this noise!?
So here’s the thing. You go through all this tedium just to learn this one move… and Ryo… doesn’t… use it… against Lan Di!? I don’t get it. Ryo utilized Xiuying’s Counter Strike for Dou Niu, which was the game’s way of showing how much Ryo had progressed as a fighter. And for the most part, she taught him that attack for free! Book airings withstanding. You would think they would apply the same logic to the Body Check. The fact that they didn’t is precisely… the problem! It exposes what these 2 petty exercises were. Pure… unapologetic… padding.
There is zero justification for this. And it’s cute how Cam Clarke tries to justify you catching chickens by suggesting you need to have a quick, lower stance or… some shit. But Ryo already has techniques that take him into a lower stance! Infact, those techniques would probably be enough to take down those chumps. Ryo would not (SHOULD not) need to do more than simply getting the move down pat. The teachers from the previous games did not require anything more of Ryo than the simple desire for him to improve and learn. This asinine process of catching chickens and paying out the ass for some goddamn booze not only drives me up the walls, but reflects poorly of those in mainland China. You’d get the idea that people in Hong Kong are pretty chill in comparison (probably true in real life). Here’s the thing. Master Chen refused to help Ryo any further because, out of obligation to his father, he did not want the kid to pursue revenge which would likely get him killed. Xiuying tried to stop Ryo from taking revenge out of concern that he would go down the same dark path as her long lost brother. They had completely legit, understandable concerns about Ryo’s safety and mentality which makes perfect sense considering just how reckless and stubborn Ryo can be. The Bailu and Niaowu masters are so stuck up their own asses about “How Kung Fu should be applied” that when Ryo actually has a perfectly justified reason to get their aid, they turn him away at the drop of a hat. Not because he’s going down a dark path, not because they fear for his safety, but because they just “know better” about how Kung Fu is supposed to work. It is no wonder there was an MMA fighter who took it upon himself to whoop the asses of Chinese Grandmasters all over China. If they are THIS arrogant that they outright REFUSE to help people who’s lives are in danger because the Code of the fucking Dragon says it’s bad Juju, they deserve to get stuffed! Oh I’m sorry, they have to get shit faced on 50 year old liquor before hand, being drunk dulls the pain of dishonor because they’re granting aid to the Japanese. 😛
Look, I get… that it’s a Kickstarter game. I get… that Yu Suzuki hasn’t worked a game since Shenmue 2 decades ago. I get… that the budget was probably not enough to make more than 2… pretty small areas in comparison to Hong Kong and Kowloon (I mean… 20 million is a LOT, so…idk). I get… that they needed to find some way to make the game long enough to justify the 20 year wait. But as someone who has no game development experience, I can only assume that Game Design is not influenced by the budget. If they needed to make the game longer, there are so… many… better ways of doing so. Just have it where Ryo needs to defeat the four Tiger warriors at the Martial Hall (which is required anyway!), and cut out chicken and beer! Same thing for Niaowu. It’d be less monotonous and maybe a little more fun. It would encourage the player to train more often, despite the fact that many of them hate the training games, this is a worthy alternative to having to scrounge up enough coin just to buy some beer, only for the jackoff to demand you catch farm animals for the next 3 days while the village is under assault by a gang of marauders! That’s another thing, you are tasked with getting enough money to buy certain things, but for some reason, they demand even more after the fact! It’s not enough that I paid 2000 for alcohol, now I’ve got to catch chickens for 3 days straight! It’s not enough that I have to pay 5000 for a skill book, the page is missing, and some dickhead near the harbor will just teach you anyone if you can crack some skulls at the Martial Hall. Audacious doesn’t begin to describe having to scrounge up an outrageous amount of money to buy things only to be further denied a reward until I do even more crap.
For all the bitching and whining about how Shenmue 1 makes you wait certain days before you can get to the next part of the story, at least stuff happens in between! You get the feeling that the story does indeed progress in between all the waiting times with different events taking place throughout. Just because you’re told to wait a certain time after an encounter at the tattoo parlor doesn’t mean you won’t have another event pop up afterward, or that the order was misleading, and you don’t have to wait that long for another event. And the difference is… you get exactly what you work/wait for! A continuation of the fucking story! This damn game jerks you around with mindless tasks over and over, and even after meeting the outrageous demands of those characters, they tell you to piss off until the next morning because of some arbitrary reasoning like “it’s getting dark out”. WELL GO INSIDE AND LIGHT A CANDLE, YOU GODDAMN MORON!! See, you didn’t just do shit that didn’t make sense in the first 2 games. Characters and tasks felt like they made logical sense within the game world, trying to apply real world logic via character’s own personal schedules. Charlie from the Tattoo Parlor schemes to get his buddies together, that’s why he tells you to wait until the next day. He DOESN’T make good on his promise, and decides it’s better to kill you while you’re in the neighborhood. You can bash his brains in for lying which is satisfying for him even thinking he could get away with that. You getting a job in order to find info on the Mad Angels, during the job, you get attacked by them without warning, and during the job, you have to break away and save someone’s life. Stuff is constantly happening even when you’re doing mundane tasks. Here… NOTHING HAPPENS! Nothing makes logical sense! Cam Clarke makes the excuse that “we can’t train in the dark”, but I show up early in the morning, do some training for about 2 hours (that includes the fucking chickens), and then he tells you piss off… WITHOUT REASON!!! “Well you can’t rush Kung Fu”, bullshit. The teachers from the previous games taught you different techniques by simply instructing you on how they are performed. They acknowledged that you already had a significant level of training, and thus did not require mindless tasks to get your body right, they just taught you how to perform them! This nonsense of “well catching chickens will help your legs get into formation”. You’ve already set a precident for how to acquire new moves merely by seeking them out via exploration or story progression. Not only that, but you have the option of using the moves in gameplay. This nonsense of “learning the same move twice” just kills all the logic in the game, and the process in which you learn them just adds to the frustration, more so than the fact that this move doesn’t even look all that impressive nor practical. It’s arbitrary and nonsensical.
And again, with all that in mind, Ryo doesn’t even bother to use this technique against Lan Di… it feels like an utter waste of time. The game makes a huge deal about this one move, with Ryo doing back breaking nonsense just to get that move, all so he wastes all that effort just to throw basic punches and kicks at the man. I just…. *sighs*… there is supposed to be some sort of payoff for all of that time and work spent doing those mindless tasks. Sure, Ryo doesn’t have to win… but this is pathetic. Like I said in the Yakuza posts, the context in which you have to do these things has to make a certain amount of sense. Otherwise, you get questions that arise when terrible game design comes to a head. “Why do I have to do this!?” A question that can only be answered as “because the game needed to be long enough.”
I think it’s rather interesting that the stamina system in this game doesn’t bother me at all when compared to what the game actually requires of you, and has the balls to not fairly compensate you for all your work.
Now that I’m all worked up…. lets get to the combat. Oy… the combat…
As a person who does not personally like Virtua Fighter (not that it’s a crap series, it’s just not fun), I was turned off by Shenmue’s combat at first. However with enough practice (what little you could get in both games), it was starting to become fun, and while the remaster collection had some weird input delays going on, I still found the fighting system to be fairly competent if not average. The problem I had with those games is that, because you had few avenues to actually train, the idea of leveling up moves by going into a parking lot became laughable. I was unable to get throws downpat until S2 because there were plenty of fights to be had. But for the most part, I played more defensibly because too many of Ryo’s moves left him open for attack, and there was this weird effect where my attack is blocked, I would try to block or evade, but Ryo will automatically try for another attack which gets me crushed easily, and my rage couldn’t be contained because that’s a goddamn bug, I swear it is. But the thing to note is that with the first 2 games, even if you don’t like Virtua Fighter, you couldn’t say that you didn’t have control during the fights (even with the afformentioned jank). Then… there’s S3’s combat system. Suzuki had always mentioned that he wanted a more simplistic fighting system for Shenmue games, even suggesting that combat would be more like a puzzle game.
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I’ll let that sink in for a moment.
So originally, the control scheme (PS4 wise) is Square and X being punch and kick respectively, Triangle is Block and Dodge, and Circle is throw. R2 was shortcut commands, and you performed moves like you would in a typical 3D fighter, namely Virtua Fighter. S3… uhhhhhhh. So now Triangle and Circle are the punches, and Square and X are now the kicks. Throwing does NOT exist (wha!?), blocking just… mildly decreases damage but has no effect on the opponent, and dodging… also doesn’t exist. So… now in order to pull off attacks, you have to use dial-a-combo logic from Tekken and MK9 in which you hit a series of buttons in a particular order. This would be fine if the game actually PLAYED like Tekken or MK9. But with dial-a-combo in fighting games, you unleash a series of attacks as the entire move. Pressing X twice would normally initiate 2 kicks.
…… S3 DOESN’T DO THIS!
So the dial-a-combo system in this game… is just you pressing a series of buttons… to initiate one whole attack. This is bad for a number of reasons, but it’s exacerbated by how bizarre the combat actually works. Aside from Triangle which are just light punches, hitting any of the buttons… doesn’t immediately initiate an attack. Hitting X once should go for a regular spin kick. But instead, Ryo waits a good second before actually kicking. Yes, there is a delay between the button press… and the actual attack. It is not immediate, it is not instantaneous, you literally have to wait for Ryo to actually attack the opponent. At first, I thought it was because of the controller I was using. I use different types of controllers depending on the genre of the game, I got a particular Hori pad that looks like a Sega Saturn controller just for fighting games (it was dirt cheap too). So I assumed S3 would play just like the other games, but fuck, I was wrong! So I switched over to a regular DS4… and the same thing happens! Delayed inputs all over the place! I assumed this was a massive bug… but it’s not until I saw the command list for certain moves… and entered those commands quickly. And by the end of the command entry, the amount of time before Ryo did the move… was dramatically decreased! So if I wanted to do a Tornado Kick, that’s X X Square Square, I enter the command… and Ryo does it immediately! Or not, there is a slight delay, but you perform the move much faster than just hitting a button once.
So… this delayed input… is by design!? This is execution complexity gone retarded!!!
So Ryo basically waits for the player to hit a certain amount of buttons to enter the command before he will actually attack. If you hit nothing in between, you get a feeling that your attack is delayed, but no. The command window is just on overdrive, and Ryo will wait to see if you are going to enter in more buttons. This is absolutely terrible design, and here is why. When your game has combat, the player’s own natural skill should be able to determine the outcome. For that to be a thing, the inputs for certain attacks need to be accurate and instantaneous. Reason being is because the player has to take into account what’s going on. Distance from the opponent, hazards in the field, multiple enemies, etc. All so that the player can reasonably react accordingly. If the controls are unresponsive (or seemingly so), the player cannot reasonably react to what is going on, and the player cannont be blamed for losing or dying. This game throws out all sense of logic and reason, and opts for a control scheme that simulates unresponsive controls 100% of the time!!! You are supposed to enter the commands quickly in order to pull off the moves, but this is completely impractical because the game assumes that execution complexity is paramount when regular combat is about timing and quick reactions. While you’re busy entering commands for moves, your attack can be interrupted because the enemies are allowed to react faster than you. You want to pull off some impressive move, well just hit buttons in a certain order, but that doesn’t work in the real world! Doing anything other than jabs with Triangle will make the game impossible to play without a maximum amount of frustration and bewilderment.
BUT WAIT! There is a solution to this! Just map the moves you want to use to the shoulder button (you can actually cycle moves via L1/R1, and perform with R2) and the moves will be used instantaneously! This is a bandaid solution at best, and I definetly am not going to excuse the combat in this game for this one aspect as it means you’ll be more focused cycling through certain moves just to use them (memorizing names of moves, etc) rather than, again, actually fighting. I don’t know where the Puzzle game aspects of the combat lie, I’m just puzzled at how they thought this was in anyway an adequate replacement for the Virtua Fighter style of combat. Again, this can’t be blamed on budget! They just weren’t using their brains! Japanese developers have a wacky idea of simplifying combat, from fighting games being reduced to 3 buttons of just “light, Medium, and Heavy”, to having just the light button cycle a combo, special attack, and then wasting a super like so many doujin fighters do, and even KOF14-15. But… this!? This is madness!! It makes no logical sense!!
The game in it’s entirety is not terrible. I have to constantly reiterate that point as people have gone out of their way to make this game seem like the absolute worst thing that has ever been made. I honestly believe most of the worst reception came from people who are dissappointed by the ending, or people who have a vested interest in the defamation of the Shenmue series. But for the former, I can’t fault them for feeling that because they were waiting for a glorious continuous of the series, and that simply didn’t happen. For me, at least, it didn’t happen. Shenmue 3 is definitely the weakest game in the series, but I don’t think it’s terrible. What it is… is kinda boring. The previous 2 games had a sense of excitement, a sense of discovery, a sense of adventure and mystery at every corner. Shenmue 3 has a sense of emptiness. A lot of this boils down to what you’re required to do, and the lack of payoff for doing it. It feels like nothing of importance actually happens in the game. It’s like… filler. And that’s not really the case. You get new insight into the significance of the Mirrors, why they’re so important, and why Shenua’s father is implicated in all of this. And when the game is going into those details, yes it’s interesting! A little exciting, even! But these moments are few and fleeting. Shenmue 2 was a really long game, but it didn’t feel like every moment was empty calories. A lot of time is spent just finding the right places, but when you do, shit of interest actually happens, you gain something. Here… Idk, it’s just not the same. S1+2, you ask people some questions, you may get small clues here and there, but you get definitive answers, and the destinations they point out… actually go somewhere! S3, you ask questions, they point you in a direction because “they’re not too sure”, but it turns out to be a dead end and you have to keep asking more questions, this happens frequently in this game. It’s nonstop misdirection, and that frustrates people. There is no comparison to the first 2 games outside of just asking people questions. It’s getting shit answers over and over again requiring you to inquire more and more, when in previous games, you ask question, get answer, BOOM! Shit has been found! I can actually progress! No bullshit of “oh there’s nothing here”, but the game’s NPCs told me this was the spot! What the fuck!? This ain’t Castlevania II, stop jerking me around like this!
When you’re not progressing the story, you might actually have a decent time. Leisurely activities in the game… are fine! There’s a LOT more to do here than in the previous games, and most of it is actually pretty fun. It’s when you’re trying to progress the story that it becomes a drag, and that is not good. I shouldn’t dread continuing the story because the process of doing so is tacky beyond all reason. I don’t think they were using their heads when they were designing the game. A lot of what you do in the game feels like it’s there just to make the game longer, not to be meaningful in anyway, and that’s at the core of what’s wrong. This is basically Kowloon all over again, only now there is zero payoff for all the shit you do. I can’t defend Shenmue 3. A lot of people can say that “well, you’re doing the same things that you did in the first 2 games, so aren’t you basically admitting that Shenmue was never good?” No, that’s only if you look at things from the surface. How the first 2 games did this was far better than how it’s done now, and that’s simply because S3 is less rewarding overall. Very little of what you do is properly developed or built up to be meaningful, the new characters you meet are either not important (the ones that “join you” in the final battle), are dickheads, or just… there. The entire time feels like the game was done out of obligation than something that was passionately put together. The only thing that they were passionate about… were referencing the backers who gave money to the kickstarter. I’m not gonna knock that, that shows gratitude and goodwill, so good on them. It’s honestly heartwarming, that little journal at the hotel. But that aside, it doesn’t really feel like they wanted to make an immersive world for the player to get lost in. I could go back to the first 2 games and get way more out of them. But the thing is… all the weird decisions they made throughout… I could ignore all that… if the game… wasn’t… such… a bore! The narrative is not compelling, the characters are dull and lifeless, and the story goes nowhere. The entire time, it just feels like filler, and that is not a good thing.
People invested a lot of money into this game, and for it to go literally nowhere feels like a bad investment. It’s not “Terrible”, but one can’t help but feel a little jipped. It’s a let down with weird design choices, and because of all the poor reception (50/50 warranted), the future of the series is uncertain. Where people got the idea that, just based off this one game alone, that the series as a whole is shit, I don’t know. Seems like a farfetched defamation campaign from people who hate Shenmue fans, but w/e. Perhaps if there wasn’t this massive 20 year gap in between games, a lot of this work would still be fresh in Suzuki’s mind, but… idk. If there is a Shenmue 4, I won’t complain, but… they would need to make a LOT of adjustments to their design, and not jerk people around with tasks in game. There needs to be some actual payoff for whatever you’re doing cause as it stands now, this could’ve have been a fan project and none would be the wiser.
So I had a rather interesting conversation months back in regards to Spider-Fan, and my… actual feelings about his sickening admiration for Iron Man in the MCU. The person I talked to about it… asserted that my hatred of this dynamic… had less to do with comic book accuracy or general dislike of MCU Iron Man as a character (though I still believe that’s a large part of it), but more so this version of Spider-Man… invalidating my core beliefs in regards to the character and life in general. That in some respects, I didn’t want to admit that this character resonates with me. I mentioned before that “there’s a little bit of you in everything you like”, but I refused to acknowledge that in regards to Spider-Man. Personally, I just find it embarrassing. I got an ego too. But… that created a blindspot in how I viewed the relationship between Spinder-Fan and Iron Man. Why it sickens me so damn much, and why the worldwide embrace of this character bothers me so much. Because in truth… yes, it DOES have less to due with the source material! Ugh, this is gonna be mortifying, but here goes…
So the conversation went a little a something like this. This was months ago so it’s not all fresh in memory, so pardon some of the exaggerated verbiage. So…shit, that’s a lot of “so’s”, it started off with a bit of a random question, this person related to you mentions that you constantly refuse to watch certain movies with her even though she wants to share in the experience of them… with you. And maybe she felt a certain way about it, idk, she wont talk to me about it. But I knew what movies she was talking about, that goddamn Far From Home, and that equally as retarded No Way Home. I’m like “Fuck no. Homecoming was insufferable enough! I refuse to endulge her any longer!” In all my ramblings, she’s talking “You’re quite passionate about this character, but you don’t want to see any of these films based on him?” Y’all know me, I went into my bullshit rationalizing away on why I don’t, comic book accuracy, “little bit of you–” and all, and of course she goes on that bullshit of “well not everything has to be just like what it’s based off of. Maybe people are just tired of hearing the same stories.” That kind of shit I didn’t want to hear. Then she asks “are you sure that’s what you don’t like about these movies? There’s nothing you feel personally frustrated about? You never really told me what you didn’t like about the movie, you just mentioned that you don’t like the fact that Spider-Man admires Iron Man.”
… Fuck, right? Yeah, I admit, I never talked about the movie in length. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a shit movie, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that so much of it revolves around goddamn Iron Man. From Vulture being a villain because of Iron Man, to Spider-Man’s antics mostly coming from his suit being Iron Man technology, to that fucking, goddamn, no good, mother fucking line of “I want to be just like you”. Fuck that movie, I hate it so goddamn much. No I don’t care that he fought the badguys by himself in the end without Iron Man’s approval or tech, the damage was already done, and made worse by Far From Home where he’s crying like a little bitch over not being able to meet his standards. Maaaaan, when Iron Dick is lecturing him on that roof top, you see the fucking FEAR in Spider-Man’s face, that crawled up my butt.
But to her, I kinda told on myself. “So you don’t like the fact that Iron Man is more involved in his story? That he’s more dependent on Iron Man?” I’m like “…. Yeah? Kinda? Yeah, ok, fine, I’m a petty dickhead!” I didn’t say it like that, but you know. She’s like “No, no, just… why is this a problem? What don’t you like about Iron Man?” “…. He’s a narcissitic asshole!? He’s honestly a piece of shit that causes more conflicts than he solves, yet he’s constantly getting all the rewards for his wrongdoings! The idea of Spider-Man, as you say, being more dependent on him, and even desiring his approval, no, that doesn’t sit well with me.” “Just because he’s a narcissist?” I’m thinking “Why the hell not!?” “Well that’s not a good reason to refuse someone’s help. Just because they’re arrogant doesn’t mean they can’t be of use to people. And… if he needs his help, then maybe there’s a reason for his arrogance.” Nevermind the fact that HE came into HIS life wanting HIS help, not the other way around! Spider-Man didn’t need his ass!
So then comes the kicker. “Ok then… what does Spider-Man mean to you?” And I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t actually know how to answer that question. I paused for a while. So she goes “You already said it. There’s a little bit of you in everything you like. …Is there a little bit of you in Spider-Man?” And she chuckled a little bit, I was kinda annoyed. But… nah, I couldn’t find an answer to that. And we left it at that.
Kinda wish I didn’t now….
See, I mentioned before that I didn’t get into Spider-Man until the Sam Raimi trilogy, and there is perfectly good reason for this even though it’s not comfortable for me to admit. Um… Elementary school. Pretty good times, had a decent circle of friends, everyone was hocked up on Power Rangers and Pokemon, everyone wanted to be Tommy, I wanted to be Billy (blue was my favorite color, unrelated to Sonic), I remember an episode of AOSTH having sloths on it, and that allowed me to answer a question that everyone else couldn’t figure out (What kind of animal is this), everyone thought it was a monkey, I called it a sloth, everyone was confused as shit… that’s a good memory. Only thing that sucked about those days was homework, and being grounded almost every month for bad grades, might as well never have had a Genesis cause I couldn’t play the damn thing for more than a month before them progress reports fucked me over (It ain’t my fault that fractions and decimals didn’t make any sense!). Sure there were dicks from time to time, but for the most part, my experiences in those days were… pleasant.
Then came the middle school years, and shit… just… goes… wrong. Most of my friends went to different schools, so I felt… alone. I was on my own, and people weren’t concerned with making friends. They wanted to make enemies. When I tell yah these people made my life a living hell, I shit you not. Every single day, for one reason or another, I was that guy to fuck with. It’d be a least 5 of those fucks everyday, if not half the goddamn class. Even those I once called friend would stab me in the back and join in with the rest of ’em. The shit they would do, the things they would say, I mean it never got extreme like shoving one’s head into a toilet or being stuffed into a locker, but it never had to be. The shit these people would get up to, a lot of these fucks would even joke that I’d become a psychopath in the future, the next columbine shooter, even.
Got into a fight, was left with a bloody nose, that only encouraged them to go extra.
And the entire time I was dealing with this shit, I had people constantly telling me that… I was at fault. I gave them reason to constantly fuck with me. They couldn’t say I didn’t fight back, but that didn’t help at all since I lost that brawl. But the key thing is I was made to feel like I deserved it. Because it’s just “natural” for people to fuck with people, and the problem lies with you if you happened to be on the receiving end. Even worse was being told constantly that at the end of the day, they won’t care, they’ll just move on with their lives while you’re still crying about it, so just get over it. I was only 12/13 at the time, how the fuck was I supposed to get over something that was a daily occurrence? Being reminded that all the shit they were doing wouldn’t matter to them in the end? And beyond any reasonable doubt, nobody had my back during all of this?
Yeah I’m gonna honest, I actually contemplated suicide. It… it was a rough year. Cause I really felt like the whole goddamn world was against me, family included. I mean… they were trying to be helpful, I guess, but you know that old saying of “The Road to Hell being paved with the best intentions”. But because of that, I really did start to believe that I was the problem. That I deserved to be treated poorly by everyone around me. Cause that’s what it all boiled down to, that I was “supposed to be a certain way”, and because I wasn’t, I sleep in the bed I made. IE… yes… so much yes… “The Hell… that was… my existence.”
That’s… where Spider-Man came in.
Like I mentioned before, I wasn’t into Spider-Man during the 90s. Having a crap cartoon didn’t help. It was all about the X-Men for me. But I wanted to see this movie for some reason, maybe I thought it’d be neat how they do it in live-action. And… I ended up loving the hell out of it! But it honestly had less to do with the film’s quality, and more to do with…. you know, that was me! I was that guy that got fucked with endlessly! For a moment, the movie hit a little too close to home for the beginning portions of the film, but that’s what endeared the character to me. To know that he was going through the same shit that I was. Nobody liked him, even AFTER he became Spider-Man, he was still getting shitted on! That shit resonated with me, and I don’t know why I’m abashed to say that. But the bigger takeaway was that… despite all the shit he was going through, all the judgemental crap he had to put up with… he honestly didn’t give a fuck! He carried on with his daring do (heard that on Incredibles, don’t ask) without regard to what people thought about him. Sure he had superpowers and that was a massive boost to his self-esteem, but hell, even in Spider-Man 2 he was like “Yo I can’t do this anymore”, so even with all his power, all his skills, he still felt a tinge of worthlessness, that his life wasn’t getting any better, it wasn’t going anywhere. And yet, he managed to get out of his funk and carry on. It was… empowering, to say the least. He was the real rebel, if you will. The one who gives no fucks. The one that says “I’mma do what I need to do, fuck what you say, fuck what you heard.” Yeah I know I’m being vulgar, but I don’t wanna sound sappy like so many others when they talk about why they were so inspired by things, yah know? But it’s true. Like that guy talking about Black Panther getting him through the crack house years, I don’t think I could ever get through middleschool without that inspiration.
Suffice to say… I wanted everything Spider-Man! I wanted all the gamecube games (which I don’t own, sucks to say, but Blockbuster still existed so… cool), I wanted to watch every episode of that MTV series (the CGI one), I wanted to go through all the backlogs of the Spider-Man comics… jeez, I had it bad! During them 2 years, I did not give a fuck about anything else but Spiderman! Well… that and Sonic Adventure 2 and Smash Bros., but I was all about Spider-Man! “Man, I want Spider-Man in the next Smash Bros.”! Yeah I…. *chuckles* dude, I was that bad! I think that was also the first time I ever played Marvel vs Capcom 2, and I only ever picked Spider-Man, Cyclops, and Wolverine. But I would always pick Spider-Man for my teams, I had it real bad back in the day! And I HATED losing to that fucking Hulk! Yeah, I despise the Hulk, and it’s for petty reasons. I watched the 90s Fantastic Four cartoon, Thing was my favorite character on the show, and Hulk made him his bitch. I didn’t like that at all, especially now knowing that the Thing was considered a worthy sparring partner for the fucking Beyonder! A SPACE GOD!! So I’m like “Man FUCK Hulk!” But… yeah, Spider-Man was muh boi. I still find it amusing that he crashed Human Torch’s birthday party. He didn’t give a fuck.
It didn’t take long for me to grow out of that. Highschool was nowhere near as bad as that shit I put up with in 7th Grade alone, but I think that mostly had to do with moving to a new neighborhood and going to a school where I didn’t know anyone, so the baggage was left behind. But most of the people there were pretty chill. You had assholes from time to time, but not even close to the shit from junior high. Still loved Spider-Man, but I was no longer in a hostile environment to feel that massive sort of attachment… for the most part.
So I guess the answer to what Spider-Man meant to me was… “You do you. Fuck everybody else!” Gaining someone else’s validation, meeting someone else’s standards, it’s not worth it. Greatness doesn’t come from an approval rating, it comes from within. There are always going to be people who do not respect you, and that’s fine. You don’t have to be what the world wants you to be. For me, Spider-Man was the first film that gave me that sort of assurance. I know that wasn’t the point of the movie or the character, especially given that his experiences dealing with people made him bitter and spiteful toward the world, and that spitefulness led to the death of his Uncle Ben, hench forth with great power comes great responsibility. But what I took from those films was that “You’re not special, you’re not exceptional, and no one respects you. But there’s… nothing… wrong with you, and you don’t have to change who you are just to meet their demands.” Admittedly, I might’ve taken the wrong lessons from that in later years, but.. I’ll put that to the side for the time being.
So… you can imagine how I felt in regards to Miles Morales. I could never get onboard with his character simply due to first impression. He donned the Spider-Man costume and took Peter’s place because… well, he died. But Shield and Spider-Woman both took issue with this because it was just “so disrespectful” to Peter’s memory or some shit. But I didn’t see it like that. I saw it as contextual gatekeeping. “How dare this ni***r think himself worthy of the mantle of Spider-Man!” Because again, as far as I’m aware, he is the only Spider-Man who had to gain the approval of others before he could be Spider-Man, and that definitely did not sit well with me. Peter became his own hero without the approval (or even desire) of others. Miles had to essentially prove his worth, and the excuse was he was wearing Peter’s costume after he died. It did not help that later down the line, they STOPPED calling him Spider-Man and referred to him as “Kid Arachnid”. Ohhhh! He’s just a “BOY”, is that it!? That’s why I kinda tolerate the Spider-Verse version cause by the end, he didn’t care that they didn’t think he was ready to whoop some ass, he broke out of that room, got his own costume (or rather… got one from Aunt May who’s Alfred in this version), and saved everyone’s ass before fighting Kingpin. So that’s cool, still don’t really jive with this character.
But in almost all of his versions (I’ve only seen 3 of em, so… so far), his story is one of trying to gain validation from others. He submits himself to authority, which I personally feel was missing the point of Spider-Man. Miles took the initiative to become the next Spider-Man, and they’re making a big deal over “how” he takes the reigns as some sort of “Dude, not cool” aesop. A convenient excuse if anything. Of course, it’s one thing to submit to some authority figure for how you’re supposed to fight crime. It’s another when that authority figure is some pompous authoritarian rich kid.
It goes without saying that I hate Iron Man. But unlike Hulk, I didn’t always hate him. I watched the Iron Man cartoon back in the 90s when he looked partially Mexican (heh), but because it was a 90s cartoon, he didn’t have the asshole trappings that he is usually associated with. Never cared to use him in any of the Marvel fighters, though. I had Spidy and the X-Men, and Cap even though he wasn’t really all that good in the games. But it wasn’t until the Civil War series that I saw just how evil Tony can be. Imprisoning people in an internment camp in the Negative Zone, creating a clone of Thor to kill Goliath, instigating a war with Atlantis just to force people to unite under the SHRA, manipulating Spider-Man to reveal his identity which led to the murder of Aunt May and that godawful One More Day fiasco, and most importantly, leading to the death of Captain America. All of this for a authoritarian law. The entire time, I’m going “why would Iron Man do all of this shit!?” Then I do some research on the character to find that Iron Man was a fucking monster waaay before Civil War. It blew my mind just how massive a dickhead he is! Stuff like him being an agent for Kang the Conquerer and going on a killing spree, beating the shit out of Stingray for practically no reason or… well… everything about armor wars, killing the Supreme Intelligence in Galactic Storm, you name it. And despite his popularity from the films, he just got worse in the comics. Superior Iron Man is so fucked up, I swear.
But what was most significant was Iron Man, in Civil War, was fighting to take away the autonomy of other heroes for the sake of bringing them all under Government Control, which he rationalizes as the best option for compromise. What’s funny was that they wanted to have Civil War be a polarizing series where readers would in fact take sides on the matter. But… because Iron Man was a massive dickhead, nobody was on the Pro-Reg. side. I’ve seen so much fanart and sprite edits with people hating Iron Man with extreme prejudice, there was no mercy. At the time, Iron Man was a symbol of tyranny and authoritarianism. “Dick” became his fan name up until the movie came out (so like… a good year). Whats worse is that, for a time, he didn’t really face any repurcussions for this (I stopped reading those issues after Cap got gunned down, save for OMD where… the son of a bitch almost refused to provide medical aid to May simply because Spider-Man was a fugitive), so it just seemed like he got away with all the horrible shit he did, and that irritated me for a while. None of this is helped by the fact that he is a filled to the brim with conceit, and didn’t seem to have any remorse for his actions. What’s more bizarre is that this is probably the most accurate portrayel of a character in the MCU, but the response to his actions are the complete opposite of Civil War Comic reception, and… I admit, that burned my ass. I’m petty, fuck it.
The Civil War series framed my entire opinion of the character considering just how far he went to try and force people to give up their freedoms all for Government control. That’s significant because after 9/11, we did not trust the Government at all. We despised Bush and all the shit he was pulling, none of that changed with Obama, the Government was, for us, pure evil (and that attitude hasn’t changed, thankfully). So with Iron Man goin extra just for the sake of the Government and dictate to all the other heroes that they MUST register or else…. pff, FUCK IRON MAN!!! We were all like “FUCK IRON MAN!!!” *sighs* Good times.
That’s what makes the MCU version so frustrating (if not concerning). Disney flipped the script on this, so when Cap 3 comes around with the Sokovia accords, they actually made it impossible to support the Anti-Reg side. Like… you can go back and watch that movie a thousand times, you are not going to find a decent argument against the Pro-Reg side… AT ALL! That and they pretty much washed Iron Man’s hands clean of imprisoning other superheroes (except Scarlet Tits), instigating wars to support registration… the studio basically wiped his ass clean with Cap’s shield, and didn’t give a fuck about it. Because he was more popular, he wasn’t given any valid counter points to his side of the accords. Then the film drops the accords altogether to turn it into “Bucky Battle” because it all revolved around him in the end. Ugh… it’s entertaining, but it’s so stupid…
So back to Spidey, some of you might be wondering “am I ok with him revealing his identity in the comics?”. Fuck no. I was more pissed that he was even on the Pro-Reg side. But hell, I could easily put that on Iron Man since Spidey was at the time employed by him. And I doubt Stark is above coercion. Thankfully, Spider-Man jumped ships once he knew how much of a bastard Iron Man was, and was rewarded with the playboy’s wrath. Needless to say, that solidified my hatred of him even before Cap’s death. But despite all that, Spider-Man was still his own being, with his own agency. He even went on to start his own company that directly competed with Stark Industries which is bad ass.
*sighs*… And so… we come, once again… to Spider-Fan. If I could sum up this character in one word, it would be “disempowering”. A character that I empathetically connected with had been turned into a sniveling, deferential little Toady. He pined for his acceptance, craved his approval, he looks up to him, he admires him as being someone better than himself…. I hate it. Like I said before, Spider-Man was, to me, a character that sort of forged his own path. Did things his own way, and didn’t give a damn about who had a problem with him, whether it was the people of NYC or JJJ. He wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t special, yet somehow, he was able to pull through without any baggage holding him back. And here he is yielding to this highly opinionated technocratic jackoff who loves to dictate to other people how they should be, and believes he’s entitled to do so because he’s a engineering genius and rich. He desperately wanted his approval, talking about “I want to be just like you”, that really bothered me. Then he’s crying over not measuring up to his standards in that sequel… fuck man. It’s like… they were trying to change the character… to fit into a hierarchial paradigm. What I mean is they wanted to say that there is indeed a standard that the hero must live up to. And for Disney, that high standard… was Iron Man, bwahahahaahahaha, goddammit. The audacity to put Iron Man on that sort of pedestal, and to have Spider-Man vying to reach his level is beyond absurd and infuriating. Spidey was far too concerned with Iron Man’s opinion of him, and he had absolutely no reason to be!
I can only assume they did this because for Disney, for a corporation, they can only relate to Iron Man himself. He is an arrogant, capitalistic, authoritarian douchbag who would sooner harm kittens before helping to save the world. But for them, it’s more cathartic to have Iron Man front and center as the… well… “center” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Damn near every movie connects back to Iron Man in some way. The Ant Man connection was far too egregious because the Starks were all about technology, Ant Man was a chemist. 2 different fields, but they had.. to have… that Iron Man connection. Nothing else. Nothing more sensible, more logical. I could see if Bruce Banner maybe… possibly going to Pym for a cure for his Hulk disease… far sooner than I would see Howard Stark trying to take the goddamn Pym Particles, having Hank Pym hating the Stark family simply for the sake of connecting Ant Man to Iron Man (Stark fam had little to nothing to do with movie). And we know they went extra with Spider-Man’s villains. Iron Man is the posterboy for the MCU simply because he is the one that Disney can relate to the most. On the other hand, Spider-Man is the character that regular joe shit whistlers like myself can relate to. Like Mario from gaming, Spider-Man is the every man in comic book form. So in a way, it’s like they were saying that it is only natural… for the common man to worship, glorify, and aspire… to be a corporate dickhead. A Government stooge. Because they’re higher up on the Pyramid, they SHOULD aspire to be like them. They’re intelligent, they’re rich, they’re powerful, and they set the standard for the rest of the world. And in some sick, twisted joke, because this Spider-Man is so desperate to brown nose them, they shower him with labels of “being the best”. I don’t know if anyone ever felt like this, but when I was watching clips of Spider-Fan 3 (because my sister swore I had to watch SOME part of that goddamn movie because Andrew Garfield came back), it seemed like they were trying to imply/dictate to us that Tom Holland Spidey was the best, perfect, and most important Spider-Man to exist. More so than the MCU sycophants online, even! You know that part where he’s like “I’m Peter #1!” that shit… that felt a little too on the nose for me, not gonna lie. That’s not even talking about the implications that the prior Spider-Man films somehow handled their villains wrong, but that’s another issue. It’s like they were trying to force this idea that whatever they did in the MCU is perfection. They can do no wrong. Every decision they make is divine, and to hell with the idiots that have a problem with them.
*pic*
And Idk if they made some deal with Sony to always reference MCU Spider-Man no matter what, but between Morbius, Venom 2, and Spiderverse 2, it’s like they have to have a constant callback to the events of Spider-Fan 3, like that’s the most significant and important event to have ever happened, so much that it occurs across studios. They literally advertised that in the tv spots and trailers for Spiderverse 2, what the fuck!? It’s like they HAVE to constantly remind us that their version of Spider-Man, their corporate kiss ass version, is the best and most important Spider-Man. You’re trying to shove your versions of the characters into everyone’s faces. Rambling, sure, fuck it.
So they basically changed the core of the character to suit their own tastes… and then arrogantly proclaims that this is the only good Spider-Man, there is something deeply wrong with that.
It’s not just Spider-Man alone, I got this feeling that all forms of media, story telling, has begun to ascribe to a moral that is less about being inspirational, and more about reinforcing a code of conduct, a hierarchal standard that you are supposed to meet without question or complaint. It’s just a feeling, I don’t have any concrete examples, might be me just talking out of my ass, but that’s the feeling I get from the entertainment landscape. Either that or I’m indulging into too much Japanese entertainment, and that’s just a nonstop litany of conformist rhetoric probably because everyone who is working is probably old as shit. I think a perfect metaphor for this is that movie “Robots” with Robin Williams where you’ve got Mr. Big Wield talking about “You can shine no matter what you’re made of!” before his company gets taken over by Ratchet and mada’am Gasket where the new motto goes “Why be you when you can be new!?”
But in any case… I don’t have a decent closing statement. I just wanted to get that off my chest and say yeah, Spider-Man meant a lot more to me than I wanted to admit, and it just felt like they were tearing him down to be this sad and lost puppy with the aid of their pompous rich kid. Feels like the industry wants to tear down all of our heroes from the past via massive amounts of parodies and deconstructions of super hero tropes and genres to… idk, desensitize us from the idea of superheroes ever being inspirational in the first place, turn them all into one big joke, fitting their perspectives rather than our own.
Conflicting Views 