Breaking News: Angry People Online Angry At Other People! (NSFW)

People are angry.  And not just angry, violently angry.  I brought this up briefly at the beginning of the month regarding Konami's cancellation of Silent Hills and the outcry regarding the destruction and imminent failure of the studio due to disappointing their most fervent (violently aggressive) and devoted fans.  This morning, Bethesda Softworks tweeted/instagrammed/social media'd a 12 second teaser of a Revenant shooting/screaming at something it apparently is not rather fond of.  And let me tell you, the outpouring of support for a new game in this beloved franchise has been so incredibly heartfelt.

Just a warning, the rest of this article will contain language, both taken directly from the interwebs as well as general sentiment interpreted and reworked by me in order to make a point.  I feel odd to mention that I do not, in fact, agree with genocide of any magnitude upon anyone.

And it's not even that those who apparently only want to see Fallout 4 released by Bethesda to be announced/released at E3 this year as being the game, that for lack of a better and friendly term, unfriendly people here really want to see/hear about.  Even some of those in favor of the development by id Software and release by Bethesda Softworks of Doom by taking a defensive position are just as crass in their response to people complaining about no Fallout 4 announcement.

I can only imagine what Tumblr, Pintrest, 4chan, digg, fark, forbes and reddit all have to say about the people on the other side of their personal opinion.  And no, I am not going to be looking.  I can only take so much of people yelling at their screens about their displeasure expecting a sudden 180 in a company's decision.  Like someone at Bethesda and id will be scratching their heads in a years time wondering why no one said anything about their bad decision to develop and release an updated vision of a game that kickstarted the fps genre.  If only they had bothered to actually listen to what the rest of the world and not the people tasked with writing and designing their own product.

I genuinely wonder what occurred in these people's lives that have made them believe that demanding that what they want is what everyone else wants.  That by making demanding in a derogatory manner will give them what it is that they so desperately crave.  Has yelling "I want General Mills to release the Super Mario Bros. cereal again fucking-damnit!" ever worked out?  For anyone?  At the end of a relationship, do they yell "If you leave me I'm going to commit genocide on your mother fucking family!"  Has company ever been thankful for the "Hey, leave them alone for making a game you don't want to play you whining bitch faggots!" comments that are left in their defense?  When has ever threatening a company or complaining like someone whining while online ever given someone their way?

The comments that really get me are the ones that sound like "No one cares about Doom, everyone wants Fallout 4!  Why don't you listen to your fans!?"  Which are usually followed up by some conglomeration of "Shut the fuck up whining fallout fanboy piece of shit!  Doom is amazeballs!"  Meanwhile, Bethesda is over in the corner drinking themselves into an early grave wondering why they didn't listen to their real fans and publish a game that real gamers actually want to play and not this Doom shit.  Sarcasm.

I saw similar fallout (eh?) when The Chinese Room announced that their upcoming game Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was announced as a Playstation 4 exclusive, which included infuriated statements.  I read statements wanting The Chinese Room to fail with their game resulting in the closing of the company and that people would cancel their pre-order of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs as a sign of protest against PS4 exclusivity.  As a fan of both Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, I was saddened to hear that EGttR was going to be an exclusive, but I wasn't up in arms wishing for the failure of the studio and death upon everyone associated with the company.  

Granted not everyone wanting Fallout 4 wants to bomb Bethesda back to the stone age until they create Fallout 4 (or Elder Scrolls VI: [Insert Name of Desired Geographical Tamriel Province that You Think Everyone Will Only Want to Play in and Everyone Can Suck a Bag of Dicks Because They're Wrong, Obviously]).  Some people just leave "Fallout 4" as a comment, and while it can be annoying to see a page full of a game's title on a teaser video for a different game, at least those people are not threatening to set a person's dog of fire (Bioware helpfully suggests not to pet them).

I'm just going to stop as I know that I could just go on and on (and on some more) often repeating myself and how I view the people who apparently feel that complaining in the above referenced (and shown) manner will get them what they want.  See, I was just about to do it again, but I stopped.  That's called self control.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

How Blind Can You Be, Don't You See?

E3 2014: Post Game Show Recap

Welcome to the day after E3 2014.  The Electronics & Entertainment Exposition has come to a close.  Following last years reveal of the Big Three's consoles, this year looked to be primarily focused on games and which systems you could  not play those games on.  I do not have an exact count (because I'm lazy) of the number of exclusives released for each system (PS4, Vita, XBone, Wii U, 3DS, PC), but as to be expected there were a handful (PS4: The Order: 1886; Vita: Persona 4: Dancing All Night; XBone: Sunset Overdrive; Wii U: Baynetta 2; 3DS: Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney; PC: Civilization: Beyond Earth).  Additionally there are games being released/announced this year that only last year were exclusives (Dead Rising 3).

And what about gaming products and peripherals (I cannot spell "peripherals" without help)?  I was surprised that I did not hear anything about the Oculus Rift or Sony's Project Morpheus.  And only a couple of days ago and not related to E3 did I hear about Valve's VR headset so I expected to at least hear something from/about one of these products looking to springboard us into the VR "future" of gaming.  I actually had to read an article from RollingStone about a comparison between the Oculus and Morpheus.  Even on Gizmodo I was unable to find anything E3 related, which I found a touch odd, but maybe they are boycotting this year??

Back to the games.

In my previous post, I mentioned a few games that interested me from my perspective of PC/3DS gaming along with a couple extras that I will not be able to get my hands on unless I acquire a PS4, Vita, XBone or Wii U, which does not look like it is going to happen anytime soon.  You know what, let us explore this idea a little bit.  Of the games that were revealed as exclusives, what game would convince me to buy that particular system.

Playstation 4: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.  I love The Chinese Room from their work on Dear Esther and how they helped out with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.  I imagine that EGtoP will be a lot like both of those games.  A story that is told in FP view that probably will not include any combat, but may have enemies of some sort that you have to avoid.  And it looks absolutely gorgeous.

Vita:  Axiom Verge.  Although Axiom Verge is not a Vita exclusive, it is a Playstation exclusive and there only seemed to be a couple that were exclusive to the Vita.  I only found out about this game a few minutes before typing the paragraph two above this one.  The game looks like a mix between Contra (NES) and Super Metroid (SNES), which is a great combination to have.

XBone: D4 (Dark Dreams Don't Die).  I know that being a male video game player between the ages of 18-35, I should be balls out for Halo 5, Halo: The Masterchief Collection or Sunset Overdrive, but those are just not my bag of tea baby.  I did not like Halo the one time I played it and while Sunset Overdrive looks quirky, I like the idea behind D4 a lot more.  An episodic supernatural murder mystery.  That is just more up my proverbial light rail track (streets are so last year bro).

Wii U: The Legend of Zelda.  While I've stated before my growing disinterest in the Legend of Zelda franchise, but damn is this game pretty!  It will be interesting in the coming months to see what the storyline will be and while I can optimistically that it will not involve Princess Zelda being held captive by Ganon/Ganondorf, I will not be surprised if this is the case.  UNLESS!, this will be a Wii U remake of the original that came out back in 1986, then I might actually have to break down and buy a Wii U on the spot.

3DS:  Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call.  Okay, yes, I already own a 3DS, but if I did not, then this game would probably make me go out and buy the system.  My excitement over this game does have a bit of a hiccup though.  In the first Theatrhythm, there are roughly 60 additional songs that you can buy (at $0.99 a piece) to play in the game.  TFFCC touts a total of 200 playable songs and I really hope that that does not include the songs that Square Enix will be trying to sell me.  I also hope that there is a significant enough difference between the songs from the first game and this sequel, even with the inclusion of Final Fantasy Tactics, Advent Children, FF XIII-2, Lightning Returns and FF XIV: A Realm Reborn.

Lastly, a game that I am extremely excited to see released is Gunman Clive 2, the sequel to the awesome 2d side scrolling western platformer from Hörberg Productions.  Is it bad that being surprised by this games announcement was the most excited I became during all three days of E3 coverage?  I do not say this as a critique of the video game industry, or maybe I am and I just do not know how to articulate myself as well as I would like.  Either way, Steam starts their Summer Sale next Thursday (June 19th), so there is plenty of time to build up my self control and hide my credit card where I know it will not be found.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
But Just The Good Days


P.S.  Three additional games, coincidentially all Final Fantasy related that I did not have place for are a 3DS action adventure game akin to the  Monster Hunter series, a mobile game based on the FF VII motorcycle sequence and a f2p mobile game based off of the Japanese released PSP game, Final Fantasy Type-0.

When Worlds Collide II: Awesome Collaborations for 2013

I'm one of those kinds of people that likes it when two things that I like, happen to separately like each other back.  And through that liking, have their own child instead of my imaginary brain child.  This has been happening since I first found out that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were friends and were part of/founded a literary group at Oxford called The Inklings.  This continued when I was about 11 and discovered that George Lucas and Steven Speilberg were friends, hence why I was seeing George Lucas on set while watching a documentary about Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It's these kinds of collaborations that make me happy.

One of the first games that I bought via Steam that wasn't part of a Humble Indie Bundle was Dear Esther.  I bought it because it looked beautiful.  Yes, I was judging a book by it's cover and let me tell you, it was god-damn-beautiful.  So Dear Esther was developed by a small company called thechineseroom, which is amusing as they're a British company.  So they made this game, which I didn't fully understand until about the time I finished it, which was after about two hours of playing, but that's beside the point.  The point is, is that it was beautiful and fun.

Moving onto Frictional Games (but not forgetting thechineseroom), they're the company that made both the Penumbra series and Amnesia ~The Dark Descent~.  I've already talked about both games previously here and here, so I won't need to go into either of those again.

NOW, Frictional Games is teaming up with thechineseroom to develop the indirect sequel to Amnesia called Amnesia ~A Machine for Pigs~.  Yes, the title is a bit obscure, other than being slightly obvious with the quote/reference during the beginning of the trailer but other than that, there are both living and dead pigs featured in both trailers for the game.  The point is, is that I've really liked both Amnesia and Dear Esther and this collaboration looks to be pretty amazing.

Okay, now jumping back to thechineseroom, they are in development of another game dealing with a genre that I've been a fan of for a very large portion of my life.  I don't really know when it was that I realized I liked the apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic genre, but it was definitely sometime in the early to mid 1990s, so in my early teenage years.  So thechineseroom's new game will be titled Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.  According to thechineseroom, the game will be in a similar vain to Dear Esther, in that it will be an open world exploration POV game.  

This is almost too much for my brain to handle

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Be Careful Not To Slip On The Puddle