What's Wrong With Gaming?

A personal outlook on what is wrong with gaming today and why they're detracting from the experience.

[wwwgaming]

The Xbox One Is a Joke

Here we go everyone.  The downfall of the Xbox.

Why is it the "downfall"?  It's considered an "entertainment center", not a console.  It's designed to work with your TV to give you a better "experience".

That.  That right there.  Why do they keep calling new things an "experience"?   I think I'm getting an experience right now.  I'm experiencing a piece of shit.  Why do they want to integrate it into your TV so damn much?  Just give me a console, some games, and send me on my way.  I don't need it to change channels.  That's what a remote control is for.

Also, why the required use of Kinect?  Why the need to use it like a mobile device with the whole grab and minimize/maximize?  Why do I need to talk to an inanimate object?  That's what people with mental issues do.  I guess Microsoft treats all their customers as people with mental issues and having them talk to something that is inanimate just reaffirms the fact.

You have to have the Kinect active on the Xbox in order to use it.  That right there is more than enough of a need NOT to buy this piece of shit.  If I learned any lesson about consoles this generation going into next, it's that I'm not going to be buying any.  Sure, I consider myself a pretty big PC gamer.  I have over 450 games in my Steam library.  The amount of console games I have doesn't even come close to breaking 20 (not including DS/3DS titles).  Console gaming is trying really hard to play catch-up to PC gaming when it comes to community interaction, indie titles, and convenience.  I can watch Netflix on my computer while my game is loading, or trying to find a game in multiplayer, take screenshots, have an extensive amount of people on my friends list, join communities, create communities, mod games, VoIP with dozens of people all at the same time, and tons more that console games can't even contend with.  Sure, it might sound like I'm biased, but the new Xbox gives me more of a reason to be.

The used game market is going to die as well.  This includes any company in the used game market.  Amazon, Best Buy, and especially GameStop.  I've worked at a GameStop before.  Can't say I didn't like it because it was enjoyable for the amount of time I worked there, but knowing what I know now, the company strives off of used games like nobody's business.  Microsoft just wants to pull the rug out from under businesses in the used game market because they feel that it's another form of piracy.  Borrowing games is free advertising.  No, we're not talking about stealing games...unless you're a gutless turd that likes to steal games from whomever you loaned them from.  The person who borrowed a game can play it or whatever and if they liked it enough, would probably go out and buy a copy for themselves which is something that probably wouldn't have happened if they didn't borrow it in the first place.  Now Mircosoft wants people to PAY to play a used a game.  Buy a used game for 5% off the retail price?  You're paying that retail price again to actually play it.  There is NO way companies like GameStop can contend with this or work around it.  None.  If Sony had any brains with the PS4, they would allow backwards compatibility with PS3 games, although that doesn't seem to be likely due to the development of the PS3 vs PS4 CPU architecture.  If Sony had any brains again with the PS4, they would allow used games to be played no problem.  If Sony wants to win the "console war", they would do the exact opposite of what Microsoft is doing and actually be smart about it. 

Let this be a lesson to Microsoft.  Let them reap what they sow. 

[wwwgaming]

My Short Take On Bioshock Infinite

Just to throw it out there right now, I neither liked or hated this game.  It felt very...average.

One of the reasons I found it average was that it felt like I've played this same exact game dozens of times already.  Wander in a straight line from A to B and enter an area with enemies.  Rinse and repeat.  People have said that the Bioshock series rewards exploration.  What exploration?  Tiny side rooms that hardly make you go away from the path from A to B?  That's not exploration, that's scavenging.  Not to mention most of these rooms don't hold any importance worth jack shit.  Sure, you'll find a movie theater's worth of food throughout the game and the occasional voxophone laying around, but that's pretty much it.  Nothing really rewards you for scavenging around.

Another thing that bugs me that every other game now days has is that why does your character always hold his/her gun so god damn close to your face?  No one holds a pistol where their hands are 2 inches away from their eyes.  They hold it in front of them when firing it.  Every video game character that holds guns have T-Rex arms and it drives me nuts.  Make characters hold guns realistically.  Of course, this is a general complaint with FPS games in general, so I can't hold it against Bioshock...oh wait, I can.  Try something different for once.

Gun fights are bland as well.  Enter a gun fight, hide behind cover until your shield regenerates, pop out, fire, hide again.  This goes with what I talked about regenerating health I made on New Years.  I don't want to hide for half the firefight, game!  That's literally what I felt like I was doing...apart from looking like a bum rummaging through the pockets of the people I just shot in the face.  Vigors are pretty "meh" as well.  I really only used a couple because I only really saw any use out of the couple I used.  Any of the other ones just seemed to do more of the same, just a different effect.  It's uninspired and lazy.  Gun upgrades?  What, just damage, recoil, and clip upgrades to name most of them.  Again, uninspired and lazy. 

The story's pacing was terrible as well.  Half of the story is told through voxophones, and the other half is spoonfed to you in ways that don't make any sense and feel rushed in general.  Why is this character important?  Oh, I guess we'll find out via voxophones.  It felt like I was watching Game of Thrones without reading the books first.  You're introduced to seemingly important characters who you find out that they're important only through their names being mentioned a lot, through voxophones, or when they die in front of you.  That's not good story telling, that's lazy. 

*SPOILER ALERT* Let's fill in any plot holes and whatnot by saying the whole thing is based on different universes and time travel.  That is such a cliche way of doing anything relating to story unless it's done right.  Nice try, but you didn't sell me on a "spectacular story".

*END SPOILER*

Let's talk about Elizabeth.  I...I just don't...what a terrible gameplay mechanic.  You rely on her WAY too much in gunfights, she finds random shit lying around which makes me wonder why I couldn't find that random shit myself, and not to mention she is annoying as shit.  Half the time when the main character and her talk, it's mindless banter so I'm either not paying attention to anything important to what they DO say, or I just don't care.  Maybe that was one of my main gripes I had with the story.  It simply didn't hold my attention because they relied on voxophones half the time to deliver a story.  I only found half of them through the entire game and I was still going "wut" to certain plot points...and that isn't a shocked "wut", that is just a "uhh....wut".  The story just felt like something I've heard before in a general standpoint.  There was no "holy shit..." shocked moments in it at all.  I had those moments several times in Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward because that game had a fantastic story that Bioshock can't even wave a finger at.

I will say though that the game is visually pretty to look at.

Although I find scoring systems to be flawed, I'd give the game a 7.5/10...on a bad day it would have gotten a flat 7.

[wwwgaming]

Apart from telling you what to do, let's tell you nothing at all!

Games now days love telling you what to do, but not how do the things you want to do.

Some games just drop you off right in the heat of things, throw every bit of complexity of the game in your face and leave you to cope with it.  Sure, you can slowly learn how to do something, but if they're not going to ease you into something like that, why even bother?

Games in the past, they started off dropping you right into the game, but they slowly explain things in subtlety.  The game starts out easy and gradually gets harder until it reaches it's plateau. 

Games now days don't really do that anymore.  They just assume.  Apart from a single player campaign doing everything for you, if they drop you into multiplayer, they won't even tell you what end your shit comes out of.  Multiplayer games need to adopt Left 4 Dead's "game instructor" system.  The more you play, the less and less the same messages appear until they don't appear again.  These cater more towards people who don't know a keyboard from a controller, but it eases you into the complexity of multiplayer.  That's what games need to do.  ASSUME the player doesn't know his ass from his face, but don't tell them how to play the game.  Show them.

Multiplayer games need to also have AI bots to practice with.  Really, the only games out there that do that now (to the best of my knowledge) are the Treyarch Call of Duty games (as much as I hate them for doing the same shit over and over again) and Counter-Strike just to name a couple.  Let's have you learn the maps, learn the controls, find good ambush spots, etc.  Sure, you can learn that in real multiplayer, but it's only going to slow down the progression of learning everything.  How hard can it really be to program bots that don't suck? I'm looking at you, Valve.  Your bots are terrible.

[wwwgaming]

Let Me Show You How To Beat The Game

All games are like this now.  They show you how to beat the game.  You never have to figure anything out anymore. 

This goes along with the whole waypoint bullshit.  The game constantly tells you where to go, what to do, what to shoot, where to stand...they treat the player like a first grader.  Oh, you're targeting players 17 and older (18 and older for other countries)?  Why not treat them like it?  Hey, game, I can cross the street on my own, I don't need you to hold my hand and have you remind me to look both ways first before crossing.

What about games that have you move your camera as a part of their "tutorial"?  DURR HURR HOW DO I MOUSE?  I'm looking at you RTS games.  "You can zoom in and zoom out using the mouse wheel." Oh, really?  I couldn't have thought of that.

Older games didn't have time to teach the player how to play the game, that's what those discarded instruction manuals were for.  I'm pushing you back into the past with a game like Ultima Underworld.  You didn't know what you had in your inventory was important until you were TOLD it was important, or figured it out yourself.  In a fit of drunkenness, you could have accidentally threw it into the water (don't know why, but you're drunk, right?) and now you're screwed.  What do you do?  Either reload your game or start over knowing not to do stupid shit like that again.  It gave players the satisfaction of figuring things out on their own instead of being held by the hand the entire game.

Games at the very least need to show you the bare-bones basics, then throw you into the fray so you can figure out how to do things yourself.

[wwwgaming]

WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

Japan.  I want to experience a culture completely different than the one I'm used to.

[wwwgaming]

Regenerating Health

Yup, nothing feels more arcadey than having your health regenerate.  "Shit! I got a bullet lodged in my stomach... let me sit behind cover for 10 seconds and I'll be good as new!"

People are too dependent on it now days.  There is no sense of urgency anymore.  There is no feeling of, "I'm at 5 health.  I'm going to die if I go into the next room...I should go back and see if I can find any health".

Non-regenerating health gives a better element of strategy.  It makes you THINK on your feet better than hiding behind walls constantly at the slightest bit of danger.  I would rather have half of my health and fight a room full of baddies and die multiple times instead of spending half the firefight hiding like a wuss.  If you have 50 health with none of it regenerating, you'll think things through more.  If one plan doesn't work, try another route.  If that doesn't work, try picking one or two guys, hiding back, and doing it again.

I blame games like Halo which was one of the first games to popularize regenerating health.  Suddenly everyone has to be like the "cool kids" and do the same shit.  Games try to be as realistic as possible, but what do they do? Throw in regenerating health.  Shit, that's not realistic, that's stupid.

Also, Happy New Years.

[wwwgaming]

My Game of the Year?

What's my game of the year for 2012?  Easy.

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward for the 3DS/Vita.

It is the sequel to 999 on the DS.  It's also one of those "escape the room" types of games, but with a heavy emphasis on player choice and reading.  Sure, the reading may turn people away from the game, but if you can wrap your head about the mind-boggling story, you'll wonder why such an idea was never conceived before.

The game has over 20 ways to end with a True Ending cliffhanger which paves the way for the sequel. 

You'll never see trust in the same light ever again.

Buy it.  Play it.  Enjoy every minute of it...because I did. http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Escape-Virtues-Reward-nintendo-3ds/dp/B007FMSDU0

[wwwgaming]

Auto-Saving

I hate games that auto-save.  Seems like auto-saving happens way too often, and sometimes at the worst possible times.  They also seem to trigger whenever the fuck they feel like (thank you very much, developers) because of timed intervals.

"Fuck... I accidentally used an item!  NO! DON'T AUTO-SAVE IT! FUUUUUUUUUUUU!"

Don't get me started on games that fucking auto-save EVERY TIME YOU USE AN ITEM.

You know what, game?  Let me save when I want.  Stop making me irresponsible and dependent on you.  You didn't have auto-saving back in the day.  If you forgot to save and lost hours of gameplay time, you bet your sorry ass you are going to remember to save before you quit the next time.

What about games that don't have an separate auto-save slot?  Fuck that shit.

Saving in general... I'll get to that another time.

[wwwgaming]

So what's this all about?

Basically this is to outline what is wrong with gaming today and why it's nothing but the same drab, and boring crap you see day in and day out.

Now, this isn't a whole thing bashing gaming.  I, myself, am a huge gamer.  I can't get enough of them.  Thing is though, games today aren't exactly what I was hoping they would be and I'll be outlining why I think that way.  Why games/concepts are good, bad, or anything in between. 

You may not agree with everything, or anything for that matter.  That's perfectly fine.  I don't play as many games as I used to because I find them all the be the "same rehash, different title" situation.  I'll go over why indie game quality is, at times, vastly superior than so-called "AAA" games as well.

Also, the page is all dark and whatnot for a reason.  It's easier on the eyes because I care.