I've mentioned video games on this blog. Of course I play them, who doesn't in this day in age? Video gaming has become way bigger & spans a larger audience now than when I was a kid, or in any of the childhoods from people who are older than me. When you had senior citizens playing 'Wii Bowling' on local news, that's when you had people pretty much aware that it's no longer kid's stuff, despite all the T and M rated games released. Why do you like video games? I still get that question & I always have to refer to the nerd origin story that all nerds go to. I sucked at sports as a kid, wasn't good at anything until I stumbled upon video games & viola! Video Games made me the lifeless looser I am now!
Every time TV or movies have tried to make an adaptation of a video game, it would always fall short both fairly or unfairly. You had video game related movies like 'Tron' that would incorporate video games into the plot & make something unique, but for some reason Hollywood has always had a problem adapting material with a solid story, characters & a certain art direction. They're not building something from the ground up, there's already established groundwork & yet Hollywood always does the opposite, looses money then out of nowhere the studios cry "Why wasn't our movie such a huge hit?" As much as I like the man's original filmwork, Uwe Boll did nothing to make video game movies legitimate box office hits. Then again I think more damage was caused by those awful 'Resident Evil' movies or that godawful 'King of Fighters' movie. Mai needed big boobies!!!!
Despite the common (Sometimes unfair) public consensus on video game adaptations, I admit there are good films, but sadly they are overshadowed by the crap ones. I don't know about you, but the 'Super Mario Bros' movie from 1993 was fucking cool, except it's not a video game adaption. They put Super Mario into both a modern 'realistic' context & dropped them into a weird, dystopian cyberpunk future where the former king is made out of gooey fungi. It's weird, I remember showing one of my high school friends the trailer & he was blown away. He had no idea they made a Super Mario live action film (He thought I was going to show him the anime movie from Japan) & he looked at me as if I had showed him how he was going to die. The film is insane, explains a lot since it came from Rocky Morton & Annabelle Jankel, the couple who created the cult 'Max Headroom' show. If you aren't such a stickler for accuracy, I highly recommend you watch 'Super Mario Bros: The Movie'. I also find it funny that the film's tagline is "This ain't no game" Take that as you will.
I don't care what anyone says, I adore the 'Street Fighter' movie from Steven E. DeSouza. Sure, Jean Claude Van Damme was not a great Guile & Van Damme was coked out of his mind when that movie was being filmed. Lots of crazy shit happened during the filming of that film that I only touched on the surface on, but it's eons better than that crap 'Legend of Chun Li'. Then there's the standard, 'Mortal Kombat!!!!!!!', a movie so well received that the techno theme song is still being played at martial arts competitions across the globe. It should of been an R-rated gore masterpiece, but what we got instead was still entertaining enough & pretty brutal for a movie that tweens can watch. Sub Zero gets impaled by an ice spear, when that huge as hell Goro animatronic comes up on screen he's always breaking dude's spines & badass Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa as 'Shang Tsung' perfectly delivers the 'Finish Him' line. I fucking loved this movie, it hit me at the right age (11yo) when my neighbor let me borrow his bootleg VHS tape. This movie was awesome as a tween, it's solid now. As a person who is more used to fast paced & much more riskier choreography (Hong Kong cinema of the 80's & 90's), this film is a little slow with the fights (But that's just my opinion). Besides those I just mention, I've never been a fan of those 'Resident Evil' movies. They ooze too much bro-culture, obnoxious early 2000's (We're clearly ripping off the slo-mo from the Matrix movies) cliches that drive me nuts. There was one scene in the trailer where a dude in a black trench coat tosses his shades to the camera. That's some visual cringe there! Then there's 'Doom', what pisses me off was in the 2000's we were getting these eXtreme action movies like 'XXX' and shit like 'Torque' and all these quick cut action movies that make energy drinking teenagers piss their pants & shit dumbbells. Everything that could of been solidly paced with story & dialogue was turned into mindless action that made the films the on the level of jiggling car keys to the audience. Then here comes DOOM, a movie that could of mixed grotesque imagery, bloody action & fast paced editing. What could of easily been a bad ass mindless action film was turned into this slow survival slasher where basically the marines are being picked off one by one in dark corridors. Lots of people keep telling me it's not that bad so I'll give it another chance, I just basically wanted DOOM the way it was done recently with that remake game. There's a recent one where I can't say it's bad or if it's good due to the fact that I've never have played, nor do I have the desire to start. That, my friends, is the recent 'Warcraft' movie. Fans say it's cool, non-fans didn't get it or care for it. You know me, I'm not one to say that specific movies are meant to be mainstream & appeal to everyone & their grandma. Is it a good idea to make a big budget movie that would pretty much be a hit with a niche audience & leave everyone confused as hell? Then again, there have been movies that mainstream studios have funded & released whose only audience are stoner fantasy nerds like me (HEAVY METAL). I don't get why 'Warcraft' was the exception of making a movie that is pretty much for the fans, but other video game movies have fallen victim to studio interference or creative BS changes. 'Wing Commander' is one of thee worst due to the fact that the movie was both written & directed by the game's creator!!! When the FMV games from the early 90's had higher budgets, better scripts & A-list actors than the actual feature film funded by the studio, then you failed! Then there's the 'Tomb Raider' remake film that came out & people have said it's not that good. I admit, I had a blast watching that 2000 adaption with Angelina Jolie. It was over the top, sexy as hell & it was directed by Simon West, the guy behind 'Con Air'. That was big dumb fun & in 2000 I must of meshed the trailers for Tomb Raider, the Perfect Dark N64 trailer with the live action Joanna Dark putting on black panties, the Charlies Angels trailer, the scene in 'Replacement Killers' where Mia Sorvino is dancing around in lingerie making fake Id's & that scene that always played in the TV spots for 'Entrapment' where Catherine Zeta Jones was dodging the lasers very seductively. Somehow all that coalesed into this movie that I wish existed....Also I believe Pamela Anderson's 'V.I.P' was still on the air at that time. Seriously, being a slut in the late 90's & in 2000 was cool! Elephant in the room, 'Rampage' was said to be a good movie, but I still would of preferred a CG animated PG-13 movie done in the same style as the PSone & N64 games. So video game movies, they aren't given a fair shot, but at the same time they are improving a little bit. We're not getting the same crap we were getting in the early to late 2000's, the same way we aren't getting the crap comic book movies. Now that's another blogbabble entry I wanna do sometime, comic book movies/Tv shows.
Then there are those TV shows that were released to fill that niche gamer market of the time. I'm not talking G4 (though that will come up soon). I'm talking stuff like 'Gamepro TV ', that magazine had a TV show back in 1991 & a 'reboot' in 1996 if you can believe that. Believe me, it's one of theeeeee most 90's TV shows ever! Very colorful & lots of 'RAD' talk about those 'MONDO' video games. It's a sight to see & I'm sure a chunk of those episodes are still on YouTube. If not, I got them on downloads & I'll upload them on YouTube. Hey, supply & demand, plus I don't see any DVD/BluRay/Streaming release for this show. Yo ho yo ho, the pirate's life is NOT FOR ME!!! The problem I could see is the fact that this aired on a sports cable channel. I can see this working on Fox Kids or Nickelodeon back in the day, not on a channel where they air live coverage of Wimbledon & the NBA championships. Mind you, this was before jocks complained about ESPN airing stuff like the 'Magic The Gathering' tournaments & E-Sports.
Every time TV or movies have tried to make an adaptation of a video game, it would always fall short both fairly or unfairly. You had video game related movies like 'Tron' that would incorporate video games into the plot & make something unique, but for some reason Hollywood has always had a problem adapting material with a solid story, characters & a certain art direction. They're not building something from the ground up, there's already established groundwork & yet Hollywood always does the opposite, looses money then out of nowhere the studios cry "Why wasn't our movie such a huge hit?" As much as I like the man's original filmwork, Uwe Boll did nothing to make video game movies legitimate box office hits. Then again I think more damage was caused by those awful 'Resident Evil' movies or that godawful 'King of Fighters' movie. Mai needed big boobies!!!!
Despite the common (Sometimes unfair) public consensus on video game adaptations, I admit there are good films, but sadly they are overshadowed by the crap ones. I don't know about you, but the 'Super Mario Bros' movie from 1993 was fucking cool, except it's not a video game adaption. They put Super Mario into both a modern 'realistic' context & dropped them into a weird, dystopian cyberpunk future where the former king is made out of gooey fungi. It's weird, I remember showing one of my high school friends the trailer & he was blown away. He had no idea they made a Super Mario live action film (He thought I was going to show him the anime movie from Japan) & he looked at me as if I had showed him how he was going to die. The film is insane, explains a lot since it came from Rocky Morton & Annabelle Jankel, the couple who created the cult 'Max Headroom' show. If you aren't such a stickler for accuracy, I highly recommend you watch 'Super Mario Bros: The Movie'. I also find it funny that the film's tagline is "This ain't no game" Take that as you will.
I don't care what anyone says, I adore the 'Street Fighter' movie from Steven E. DeSouza. Sure, Jean Claude Van Damme was not a great Guile & Van Damme was coked out of his mind when that movie was being filmed. Lots of crazy shit happened during the filming of that film that I only touched on the surface on, but it's eons better than that crap 'Legend of Chun Li'. Then there's the standard, 'Mortal Kombat!!!!!!!', a movie so well received that the techno theme song is still being played at martial arts competitions across the globe. It should of been an R-rated gore masterpiece, but what we got instead was still entertaining enough & pretty brutal for a movie that tweens can watch. Sub Zero gets impaled by an ice spear, when that huge as hell Goro animatronic comes up on screen he's always breaking dude's spines & badass Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa as 'Shang Tsung' perfectly delivers the 'Finish Him' line. I fucking loved this movie, it hit me at the right age (11yo) when my neighbor let me borrow his bootleg VHS tape. This movie was awesome as a tween, it's solid now. As a person who is more used to fast paced & much more riskier choreography (Hong Kong cinema of the 80's & 90's), this film is a little slow with the fights (But that's just my opinion). Besides those I just mention, I've never been a fan of those 'Resident Evil' movies. They ooze too much bro-culture, obnoxious early 2000's (We're clearly ripping off the slo-mo from the Matrix movies) cliches that drive me nuts. There was one scene in the trailer where a dude in a black trench coat tosses his shades to the camera. That's some visual cringe there! Then there's 'Doom', what pisses me off was in the 2000's we were getting these eXtreme action movies like 'XXX' and shit like 'Torque' and all these quick cut action movies that make energy drinking teenagers piss their pants & shit dumbbells. Everything that could of been solidly paced with story & dialogue was turned into mindless action that made the films the on the level of jiggling car keys to the audience. Then here comes DOOM, a movie that could of mixed grotesque imagery, bloody action & fast paced editing. What could of easily been a bad ass mindless action film was turned into this slow survival slasher where basically the marines are being picked off one by one in dark corridors. Lots of people keep telling me it's not that bad so I'll give it another chance, I just basically wanted DOOM the way it was done recently with that remake game. There's a recent one where I can't say it's bad or if it's good due to the fact that I've never have played, nor do I have the desire to start. That, my friends, is the recent 'Warcraft' movie. Fans say it's cool, non-fans didn't get it or care for it. You know me, I'm not one to say that specific movies are meant to be mainstream & appeal to everyone & their grandma. Is it a good idea to make a big budget movie that would pretty much be a hit with a niche audience & leave everyone confused as hell? Then again, there have been movies that mainstream studios have funded & released whose only audience are stoner fantasy nerds like me (HEAVY METAL). I don't get why 'Warcraft' was the exception of making a movie that is pretty much for the fans, but other video game movies have fallen victim to studio interference or creative BS changes. 'Wing Commander' is one of thee worst due to the fact that the movie was both written & directed by the game's creator!!! When the FMV games from the early 90's had higher budgets, better scripts & A-list actors than the actual feature film funded by the studio, then you failed! Then there's the 'Tomb Raider' remake film that came out & people have said it's not that good. I admit, I had a blast watching that 2000 adaption with Angelina Jolie. It was over the top, sexy as hell & it was directed by Simon West, the guy behind 'Con Air'. That was big dumb fun & in 2000 I must of meshed the trailers for Tomb Raider, the Perfect Dark N64 trailer with the live action Joanna Dark putting on black panties, the Charlies Angels trailer, the scene in 'Replacement Killers' where Mia Sorvino is dancing around in lingerie making fake Id's & that scene that always played in the TV spots for 'Entrapment' where Catherine Zeta Jones was dodging the lasers very seductively. Somehow all that coalesed into this movie that I wish existed....Also I believe Pamela Anderson's 'V.I.P' was still on the air at that time. Seriously, being a slut in the late 90's & in 2000 was cool! Elephant in the room, 'Rampage' was said to be a good movie, but I still would of preferred a CG animated PG-13 movie done in the same style as the PSone & N64 games. So video game movies, they aren't given a fair shot, but at the same time they are improving a little bit. We're not getting the same crap we were getting in the early to late 2000's, the same way we aren't getting the crap comic book movies. Now that's another blogbabble entry I wanna do sometime, comic book movies/Tv shows.
Then there are those TV shows that were released to fill that niche gamer market of the time. I'm not talking G4 (though that will come up soon). I'm talking stuff like 'Gamepro TV ', that magazine had a TV show back in 1991 & a 'reboot' in 1996 if you can believe that. Believe me, it's one of theeeeee most 90's TV shows ever! Very colorful & lots of 'RAD' talk about those 'MONDO' video games. It's a sight to see & I'm sure a chunk of those episodes are still on YouTube. If not, I got them on downloads & I'll upload them on YouTube. Hey, supply & demand, plus I don't see any DVD/BluRay/Streaming release for this show. Yo ho yo ho, the pirate's life is NOT FOR ME!!! The problem I could see is the fact that this aired on a sports cable channel. I can see this working on Fox Kids or Nickelodeon back in the day, not on a channel where they air live coverage of Wimbledon & the NBA championships. Mind you, this was before jocks complained about ESPN airing stuff like the 'Magic The Gathering' tournaments & E-Sports.
It had its audience made up of kids & teenagers, viewers sent in videos for tips on certain video games, as well as their high scores. For that they received a T-shirt with the show's logo, I WANT THAT SHIRT. Sadly that show didn't last long (Also one of the hosts grew up to be a pedophile. I'll let you guess who), but it also made a comeback in the mid 90' when Playstation, Sega Saturn & the N64 were coming to the limelight. The show ditched their 90's 'eXtreme!' look for a more straight forward, no host, all narrated video magazine show. All I could remember from that revival was it was full of hype for these 'new' games & mainly focused on the inner workings of the game industry. There would be little mini-documentary episodes where they give us a look into video game design schools & the people working on this new ultimate technology called 'Motion Capture'. Gone was the colorful kids' playhouse & in was more of an educational view on video games & of course that didn't last long either. I think it lasted two or three episodes, not even sure if it aired on the sports channel or not. Maybe they were unreleased pilots, too lazy to google.
Video games were still being seen as kids stuff, even though at that point video games were reaching above the teen demographic with titles like 'Mortal Kombat' and 'Quake'. Now you have national news coverage for E3, as well as having that shit air on 'Disney XD'. I am not kidding you, Disney suspended all their cartoons & sitcoms to air E3 coverage full of blood, guts & half of a lesbian kiss. That was some funny shit I wish I could of caught as it aired. I first heard of this via Rebel Taxi's video.
E3, it used to be about video game companies letting their games do the talking. As you can already tell I'm going to rant. E3.....I watched chunks of this year's coverage & I have to say that was one of theee most cringey pieces of crap I've ever seen in my entire life. There was that one white guy playing the Japanese pipes. I wasn't offended but I was laughing my ass off at that shit performance. Besides that funny fail, all these video game companies' attempts at making the audience laugh & hyping them with some spectacle was piss poor. There was that Will Farrel guy promoting that 'Trials' game, we all knew he was going to crash into that TV set. The people who found that funny own a copy of 'Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star' on BluRay & go on social media bitching about the fact 'That's my Boy' has a low audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The best thing is nobody was laughing at that cheap attempt at humor, just like me. I have hope for humanity. Then there was that 'Just Dance' crap with all the dancers. I was getting High School flashbacks of sitting through bullshit dance performances. It's cool that we're ditching class to go into an auditorium,sit with friends & riff the thing (Sometimes the hottest gal in school would do a very bendy interpretive dance), but there is a level of cringey bullshit that not even we can tolerate. Don't get me started on that metal performance 'Bethesda' did; 'Sigh', mother of god. 1999 called, they want their bullshit Nu-metal back. That was fucking stupid, then again I'm not into Nu-metal, just good thrash metal. It seemed like a piss poor attempt at winning that 'edgy' crowd, even though they did it to present a sequel to a good game. Flawed, but good! If you look back at those dumb live performances there's always those few people that are more ecstatic than the average audience member. We know who's a paid schill for these companies, pathetic. The funniest one has to be when the Microsoft people were talking about the new 'Forza' game & in between the announcer's pause some guy yelled "We're getting a new truck!!!"
If I ever get the opportunity to get paid to clap & cheer at some function like that, even at a high school, you know I'm going to overdo it like that guy. If it's some teen performance on aids, I'm going to shout out "Booomshakalaka!" If you pay me $500 I will bring my A-Game, go in there with a wheelchair & come out walking, just to let everyone know that performance was a gift from god. Then there was that one thing 'Ubisoft' did that always annoys me when it comes to these things & that is the "Oh my god, our presentation is being sabotaged but it's clearly scripted so we can give people a cheap twist or jump scare or whatever."
Usually that type of shit is poorly done, nobody is surprised & it just makes you look like an idiot. Ubisoft did that with their new Tom Clancy whatever game, they're all the same! World politics have caused some war or covert ops shit. I'm not a fan of Tom Clancy. There's a huge difference between real technical difficulties & fabricated technical difficulties. If you manage to trick me, then I give you mass kudos. Not to leap off topic, but still sticking on topic, watch this...
If I ever get the opportunity to get paid to clap & cheer at some function like that, even at a high school, you know I'm going to overdo it like that guy. If it's some teen performance on aids, I'm going to shout out "Booomshakalaka!" If you pay me $500 I will bring my A-Game, go in there with a wheelchair & come out walking, just to let everyone know that performance was a gift from god. Then there was that one thing 'Ubisoft' did that always annoys me when it comes to these things & that is the "Oh my god, our presentation is being sabotaged but it's clearly scripted so we can give people a cheap twist or jump scare or whatever."
Usually that type of shit is poorly done, nobody is surprised & it just makes you look like an idiot. Ubisoft did that with their new Tom Clancy whatever game, they're all the same! World politics have caused some war or covert ops shit. I'm not a fan of Tom Clancy. There's a huge difference between real technical difficulties & fabricated technical difficulties. If you manage to trick me, then I give you mass kudos. Not to leap off topic, but still sticking on topic, watch this...
I remember being creeped out when I saw this back in 2004. Mind you, this was at a time when analog television was still prevalent. So seeing this made me think something went wrong with the signal, then the two squares appeared. I guess what I'm saying is authenticity is something that is needed if you want to trick the audience. I'm sure Ubisoft had their best interests by attempting to do something like this, but ended up watering it down & gimping it.
I'm pretty sure I'm in the right when I say this, Ubisoft, Microsoft, any of these companies with these spectacle performances are doing this to hide the fact that their games will end up being generic crap. I know I'll be wrong when the headline comes out saying "Ubisoft stocks soar after release of that critically acclaimed Tom Clancy game!" Time & time again I always see the biggest, most expensive stage performances from companies where their library of new releases is all generic junk. My favorite thing is when the few game companies that know their games are awesome let their upcoming titles do all the talking....NINTENDO! Shigeru Miyamota & that one Mike Tyson looking guy, Reggie something. Too lazy to google, but they came out on stage with some 'Pokemon Go' thing for the Nintendo Switch. Nobody was really impressed by that. I really could care less. Then they were pretty much thinking "Oh, you think that's fucking dumb? Well guess what? SUPER SMASH BROS!!!!" and everyone went nuts! Why not, it's Super Smash. I wasn't all that hyped by the new character, mainly because I haven't played all the Metroid games. I didn't see any of the other games they announced, but from what I heard Shigeru Miyamoto let Ubisoft borrow Star Fox for their new space shooter. It's going to be like in 'Soul Caliber II' where you got all these original characters & along for the ride is an out of place Link from 'Legend of Zelda'. That's the only respectable presentations I've seen, the rest of them were either bullshit stage shows or some of these companies have failed so much I zoned out (Microsoft). Year in & year out there's always a company that makes a flop of a game, it happens & I get it, but there are some companies (EA, Microsoft) that continue making bad decisions that people don't like. Some of those bad decisions were subject to public outcry like that idiotic decision Microsoft wanted to implement where the games would be DRM protected. So you couldn't even use that same game in a friend's console or a new console you bought. Then there's EA.....have they ever made a game these past 10 to 15 years that was entertaining or complete? It seems like they have become a shovel ware company releasing demos at full price & you fucking stupid people keep buying them! I haven't played 'Mass Effect Armada' or is it 'Andromeda'? I don't know, too lazy to google. When that came out I was thinking of that time EA completely fucked up 'Mass Effect 3' where the character import system was broken, therefore you had to start anew in the third game. The cool thing about the Mass Effect franchise is if you when complete the first Mass Effect & start the second one, you can import your customized character from the first game into the second game, thus also changing the way the story begins & plays out in that sequel. The third game pretty much tosses that aside & no matter what choices you make, everyone who plays the game gets the same ending. The story decisions don't matter, it all ends the same way. Now let's take a look at a recent example. The first one fucked up by putting a percent of the game on the disc & the rest had to be unlocked behind the paywall. This could of been boycotted, but all you rich bitches had to have your Kylo Ren & that one girl, Jin or something? Too lazy to google. Then comes the trailer for the sequel, people are hyped, EA responded to the criticism, the game comes out! Though not as bad as before, it's still pretty bad. You have the choice to pay for the rest of the game that cost $60 retail or spend time to gain enough (In game) experience points so you can unlock the rest of the maps. Maaaaan, you're really trying to stretch out a game that could be finished in a couple of hours. After a long while grinding stops being a productive path to gaining XP & starts becoming redundant. It gets tiring & at that point you would rather play another game. We're all busy people, nobody has time to grind, let alone take a long drive from point A to point B & sometimes to point C. You hear that, open world GTA games?
Most of us want to get to the action & not be bogged down by things like driving long distances & grinding in video games! EA must be run by a bunch of romper wearing monkies. They keep making the same mistakes that people hate & end up crying "Why do people hate us?" Rather than fix those issues completely, they just jerk each other off in their corporate offices & make more stupid decisions! Other companies are guilty of this, but EA seems to sink lower as a brand. Also all of you gamers are too forgiving when it comes to weird decisions the companies make. Metal Gear Solid going from a unique & very Japanese tactical stealth game to whatever the fuck Konami did recently. They put zombies in there, made it all action oriented & pretty much gave Hideo Kojima the finger. The fuck is that all about? I thought creator owned video games stayed creator owned? Though despite that, If I were to buy a PS4, I would buy 'Death Stranding'. That shit is my kind of game, weird, eerie, dark........the trailer made everyone think there was a camera inside a vagina & there was a huge penis head on screen but it was a human baby butt. That's what Hideo wanted you to think, I see you! This is my kind of weird! What is that game even about? I'm gonna go on a limb & say the Walking Dead guy is transporting a growing fetus through a post apocalyptic earth. Since this is Kojima, I'm also willing to bet the guy is pregnant.
Sadly, the few of you who actually spend full price on these overpriced demos are the reason why new video games are so fucking short. I know I know, online is teh future, but how does online play hold up in the long run? We've been seeing this for a while now with games released in the past 18 years that are well remembered for having great online play, but now are nothing but relics because the servers are gone. You wouldn't believe how many XBOX 360 games in my collection would be useless if it were not for their well done solo campaigns. Some games still have operational servers, but you also run into the issue of finding nobody around, even the bots ditched the game. I tried to play 'Halo 3' online, total ghost town. Yet for some reason 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare' is still up & running with tons of people around. Then there was the time I was in the mood to play 'Star Wars Battlefront' online for PSP & the servers were completely removed just the day before. This brings me to another pet peeve of mine when it comes to online gaming. Bad sportsmanship , I see & hear of that more online than when I did back in the days when friends would invite me to play N64 & SNES games at their homes. We got way too many fucking people pulling the plug before the last point can be made. We got too many racist little shits going around that can somehow detect a person's race from their voice. Guys, I've heard short Asian kids with the deepest black guy voice before! LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING! Apparently I sound Canadian when I talk. There's all the racism that I bet these kids wouldn't be spouting if they were dropped off in the jungles of Detroit. Then there is my favorite, theee people who always shout "Yeah, well....I fucked you mom!"
Glad to know my mom still has a very active drive in her age.
The thing that mainly pisses me off is a person who can't handle losing & pulls some shit like a bitch. It's just a fucking game, but it seems like nobody can get that through their thin shelled skull. As a kid I was never competitive, hence the reason why I never partook in sports, but I'll admit when I make several wins I feel good about myself. When I loose constantly, I don't bitch, I don't yell. I just move on & don't feel bad about it. Some of these people online must have stage parents or parents who are athletic & always berate them for the simple fact that they are a winning upper middle American family. All because mom won awards, dad won awards, sisters & brothers won awards & so this kid is putting that bullshit family mentality into something that's meant to be in good fun. People like that piss me off, the type that make things competitive for their own stupid selfish reasons. I remember going 1 on 1 on 'Modern Warfare', I was getting a nice kill streak until the screen froze & then blacked out. I was thinking "Aw man, the internet is going haywire." The menu pops up & on comes a message "You were kicked off this current match." Then I get a message from this little shit (I'm assuming this is a child) that said:
'U 1v1 m8?'
The fuck does this mean? Sorry, I don't speak chubby middle schooler listening to SKA when he gets extra mozzarella sticks!
Then we get these cheat code/ modders, I hate these people even more. What this tells me about these people is that they aren't good enough to play a game so they rely on cheats & specialized mods just so they can feel they are good at something, even though they are not. One of thee most perplexing things I've seen online was entering a match where everyone was invincible, flying above the map & firing RPG missiles at each other. When these people discovered I was in the match they kicked me out. What was the point of that online match? Hey, let's see who gets bored of this first? I don't fucking get it! Glad to know you cheaters are a bunch of weak ass hoes.
Oh don't get me started on the whole treatment of women in online gaming. I fall on neither of the sides I'm about to talk about. If you're female & like video games, cool! I'm all for it, let your skills do the talking & ( I can say this about everyone, not just women) if you're not an asshole then we're going to have ourselves a fun game. For all I know you are figuring everything out, just like me. The shit that annoys me is when other players hear that a woman is playing video games so they do everything they can to sabotage her enjoyment. Then you get the opposite reaction where almost everyone notices there's a female online & they do everything they can to gift them everything from free ammo to pretty much letting them kill them in game so she can get the extra points. Though most of the gifting & hand holding can only be seen in more of the MMORPG realm than in FPS games. I'm jaded, when a woman is in our team all the basement dwelling weebs are all "Oh my god! She sounds hot. We're married now because we said so in an IM chat!" I'm just hanging around the background like "She's a woman. Ok. Guys, enemies. 12 o' clock! Lets kick some klingon ass!!!!"
I think both of these sides are huge dumb asses. Who cares if she's a woman, all I'm looking for is if she can handle her own in the game & if we all can have fun killing bad guys or killing each other. We're all just having a good time. What some of these people's misogyny tells me is they are fucking weak. So weak they are willing to rally their little women hating MAGA hat wearing assholes just to spite one female who genuinely likes video games. Just quit being assholes about it & to the weebs...be a cut above. Just because a woman is in your server does not mean you're going to be lucky with a booty call. I have never heard of a guy scoring a gorgeous woman just because she joined their 'World of Warcraft' clan. To quote Paul Newman, "I'll tell you what I told Redford, it ain't gonna happen."
Then let's talk about 'Bully Busters'. .......It failed. That's all you need to know.
A recent phenomenon that has occurred is Live streaming in which people who game also live stream their gameplay via Twitch, YouTube's live feature & even on Facebook (Which I don't get, but alright). This is all just Walkthroughs with commentary, LIVE! Twitch is much more popular, but then there's also Plexstorm which is Twitch, but you can show nudity. You want to see a woman play a video game while showing her boobs, or a dude showing off his benis while playing Madden? Plexstorm is the place, but it's barely starting so don't expect alot of traffic. Then there's Discord, I haven't checked that out so I have no opinion on it. I imagine it's like a K-mart twitch.
I think this video game streaming is interesting, due the fact that you're watching a person's gameplay progress in real time & if they're good enough, entertaining the audience along with it. It takes most of us back to when we were kids, going over a friend's house & watching them play video games & attempting to finish the dreaded final boss. I can see why people dig this, but I don't get how people can keep a conversation while playing video games. Yes, I tried it before on Facebook, live streaming my N64 playing. I can't for the life of me keep an entertaining conversation while playing a video game. It's difficult & that's the reason why I'll never do a video game live stream, at least in terms of video gaming because I actually want to do videos of myself doing art. I love Twitch Creative, mainly when people are making art like paintings, sketch art (On paper or on digital tablets). I love it all, not a big fan of the food making because 9/10 these people would drop their food showing it on camera. It's tragic to see. There are a few Twitch streamers whom I follow (Mainly artists & cosplayers & an RPG group that plays tabletop role playing games), but here's where I come to my criticisms. Some people live stream their content either while I'm at work or while I'm asleep & for some reason almost none of them do it during the weekend when I'm free. Then you get the people that sporadically live stream when they feel like it & when you find out about their next live stream it's much too late. Then comes a problem I blame you live streamers for, not keeping an archive. Sure, there are a few people who charge viewers to access the archive (I guess it costs a fee to keep an archive). Who would pay for archive access for live streams? I don't know. An accessible archive can help a lot. People who have never seen a specific person's live stream can help them determine whether or not their live stream is worth the appointment viewing.
Ohhh boy, I'm going to make a lot of enemies with what I'm going to talk about.
There is a breed of twitch streamer who I can't stand, but they seem to be the more popular ones who get the sponsorship & get paid to be idiots on the internet & I feel these certain people are giving gamers/online content workers a very bad name. Every time I watch 'Twitch Fails' there's always these certain streamers who make you ask "Why are they so popular?" Every time I see them they're always getting into tantrums like child bitches when they loose, they break their expensive as fuck keyboards on camera all because they can't handle loosing at video games. Fedora Alert: How in fuck do these crybabies get girlfriends? I guess that one bit in Family Guy where the hot woman said "Wow, you got money. That means you're attractive" isn't that big of an exaggeration. What kind of low standards does a woman have to have in order for them to wake up in the morning & say "I'm gonna date that one incel on Twitch who yells on camera, makes cringey live streams & awkwardly flirts with camgirls on PornHub & fails. He cute!" That's some low ass standards you got there guurrrrl! What I do get is why people follow them. Humanity loves to watch the world burn, it's sad but way too common. That's why 4Chan is a thing, some people just want to shrink a bunch of people, put them in a foil can, urinate on them & set them all on fire. Why those same people would pay money to their virtual tip jar, I don't fucking get that? You're giving them money because you enjoy their stupidity. At the end of that day the streamers are the winners because they think their stupid bullshit is what sells. I just can't stand some of these people who go on stream, play the same fucking game everyone else is playing & getting paid for that. Really, do we need another Fortnite stream? Everyone & their grandma is playing Fortnite & League of Legends & Overwatch & H1Z1. Going back to what I said about companies not giving a shit, H1Z1 is one of thee most glitchy, battle royal, third person shooter out there & yet that game still has people going into their servers! "I'm shooting a guy in the head with a high powered AK-47, he's not dying, oh my god that other player shot me in the leg with one hit from a pistol!" Then you get the odd physics engine where cars fly into the air for no weird reason. H1Z1 is broken, yet you dumbasses out there still play that shit! How about playing some other games ya goddamn sheeple? I dare all you 'expert streamers/professional gamers' to play a game from 30 years ago. Play some NES games, not on an emulator but on the actual console itself! I would like to see these people who cry about "I'm not part of the MLG, boo hoo!" on camera play some hard as hell classic games like 'Ghosts & Goblins'.
Then comes a segment of Twitch I don't like one bit, not because women are playing the games but because some of these female streamers talk down to their audience. I'm talking about these female streamers who are fucking obvious with their intentions of how they build their audience & gain profit. You may of seen these idiots, they're the "Oh goodie! A viewer paid for a subscription! Therefore I'm going to show you guys my bra strap!" then all you fucking American weebs go wild all because some basic bitch showed off her pink bra strap on stream! She's playing you for a fool!!! I am a man who loves subtlety in both art & erotica, so this shit insults my intelligence! If you pay money to see a girl's bra strap or pay to see a girl write your username on a black board & bend her pancake ass over on a webcam while wearing yoga pants, I must ask, ARE YOU NEW TO THE INTERNET? It's obvious she thinks you're all desperate weebs. Her boobies aren't real, she wears push-up bras!!!! I can tell, you can say I'm a tit-a-holic. Thankfully they are a minority.
So at the end of the day, I like the right Twitch streamers. Scratch that, not just Twitch but any of those other streamers who can make me laugh, entertain me as well as give me well enough reason to support them financially. I recommend 'Good Bad Games' done by Cecil who also does 'Good Bad Flicks' on YouTube. I'm drawing a blank on the tabletop RPG one, I believe it's called 'Hyper RPG' or something. That one is a group of people who sit on a round table & play tabletop games. Then there's Vegas PG, both cosplayer & gamer who sadly hasn't been active for two years. That's the thing, some of these people haven't done a stream since 2016 & it's a damn shame, but hey, life gets in the way & we gotta get to that before we can get back to perusing our pleasures. When it come to paid streaming, the ones I can respect are the people who use Twitch to raise money for charity. Those people are AAAALLLLLLRIGHT in my book! There was one guy (I wish I could remember his name so all you people can troll him. The only trolling I will approve of) who was on Twitch & getting paid to play video games for a new car. He had the money status bar on the corner of the screen which said 'Money for new car'. This guy wore fresh clothing, his room looked very high end (As if he lived in a mansion of some sort) & had a bunch of sealed collectibles in his shelf. Ummm, GET A FUCKING JOB YOU FUCKING LEECH! If you're a rich bitch, then get a fucking job & quit mooching off the 99% you fucking bastard! One thing I am all for is when people use Twitch to earn some extra cash for their other projects. I'm talking cosplayers making content & telling their audience "Hey, aside from this I'm also working on other stuff you guys enjoy. If you want to support that other stuff, drop a few cents my way & I'll make it worth your while." That's why I don't have a problem with most of the Paetron campaigns I see. The problem with that is I also see a bunch of asshole swindles where they want to charge people alot for JPEGS or some cheap bullshit like "Your reward for supporting me financially is the gratitude of feeling you helped someone today." Call me materialistic, but I want something in return for helping your artsy ass! I support charity & I support people who I want to see more content from. Like I said, it's one thing to see someone who really needs the help financially & we as good people are willing to help, but if you're some rich bitch with a bunch of Funko pops in high end shelves in the background, asking for money for a new car & you look like somebody who sends portraits to the entertainment industry, GET A FUCKING JOB YOU FUCKING PUNK ASS BITCH! Support charity streams. I'm not a fan of speed runners, but there are those speed runners (I believe 'Pat The NES Punk' brings in speed runner friends) who speed run for charity. So if you're into speed runs then you'll appreciate the charity speed running. I dig it.
Now I don't hate new video games, I just don't like what the culture has become. I see too many people spending money on in-game loot boxes, DLC, paying stupid people on Twitch to play games terribly & open racist messages on stream with a text to speech thing because they are too stupid to screen their messages. When I bought a game, I got my money's worth. While most of the video games out are basically 30% done, there are the exceptions to that rule. Of all the new video games out, if I were to get a PS4, I would love to play the 'Shadow Warrior' remake, 'DOOM' of course, the two recent 'Far Cry' games. Despite that, I'm nowhere near interested in buying a new console due to the fact that it's all the same crap we've been getting these past ten years. Do we need more 'Call of Duty' games? Do we need another 'Gears of War'? Do we need another 'Just Dance' game? The only thing I see different between the X-BOX 360/PS3 era & this current PS4/XBOX ONE era is the slightly improved graphics & much more improved hardware. The leap between XBOX & XBOX360 was grand, graphics looks real! The leap between PS1 to PS2 to PS3 were grand leaps as well. The leap between this generation & last was not a leap, but a small obese guy hop. One thing I will say is I do love the fact that we live in an era where 'Steam' and 'GOG.com' exist. Trying to look for the physical copies of these classic PC games is difficult & pretty expensive. Not to mention trying to run them on modern computers is a pain in the ass. If my computer has more programming power & more graphical engine power than a high end computer from 1993, then I should be able to run a computer game released in 1992!! Sadly that's not how it works, but luckily I can snatch those same games on both Steam & GOG.com for a cheap price & be able to run them on my laptop, also these older games are quick to download. To think the PC version of 'Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire' is 300MB. I am currently playing 'Descent' & that game is on a whole new level. While everyone is cheering "Ohh man, Super Smash Bros has one of the aliens from 'Metroid'!" or "Oh man! Fortnite, triple kill!!!"
I'm here in my room going, "Holy fuck! I can go up, down, sideways, forward, backwards, I'm not forced into a stringent grid! Muthafucka! Dis da future!!!" I'm also trying my hand at these popular indie titles like 'Hotline Miami'. That game has a dank soundtrack & it's way more cathartic than Call of Duty. At the same time I also tried my hand at 'Hunie Pop'. 'Sigh', that game is aware of who the audience is & I do feel like shit playing that otherwise cheery & light game. Also I don't think I've gotten accustomed to the game mechanic of that fucking puzzle thing because I've been failing ALOT! I started out good in the beginning, now I'm just failing & I got this pink haired fairy calling me a cuck. Aside from that I've been playing 'F.E.A.R' on my free time. What if you asked John Woo to direct 'The Ring' & throughout the filming he says "I shoot ghosts now!" I've also played thee very first 'Max Payne' game & that still managed to amaze me, therefore I cannot say I'm jaded with video games. May Payne felt like a David Fincher crime thriller in which John Woo said "I want to direct the shootout scenes" then as a cherry on top there's a hallucinatory dream sequence that is very much 'Lynchian' accompanied with random screaming & slow motion sounds. That was an amazing game I highly recommend. I got alot on my plate of 'To-Play' video games, both digital & physical games I have bought these past months.
The thing I can't stand (I've already stated this in another blog entry) are these people who say they are above video games. "I don't play video games anymore. I'm spending my time going to wine drinking functions & being a huge asshole to the right people."
Well good for you! Don't put me down because you can't have fun anymore. I don't have as much time as I used to for video gaming, but I always make time during the weekends when I'm just drained of energy. Despite that, I will admit I would rather read a book or work on BlackTime stuff.
We're living in a crystal age of video games, there's a lot more transparency as to the quality of games that are being made. What angers me is you have these companies that have so much money, so many neat game engines, properties that the fans have been craving for sequels since forever & they decide "You know what? Let's not give them what they want. Instead lets just do the opposite, fuck up what could of been a good game & just piss everyone off.
Then comes the shadiest shit that is still happening, game companies bribing journalists with perks for a good review. How about making a good game & you won't have to pay journalists for good reviews ya fucking shysters! I won't say that most video game companies were always the beacons of good business & entertainment back in the day, you had your LJNs, your Titus (Even though Titus made a few good games, but people only remember that shitty 'Superman 64' game), you even have Acclaim Entertainment (Again, everyone remembers their shitty games from the early 90's, but they also made good games like 'Extreme G' and 'Turok 2: Seeds of Evil'), but you never heard of these companies bribing journalists (At least that's what I know). Also I won't say they've become corporatized, because it's always been corporate. I guess the fact is that we can see when they're making a bad game & the people in charge respond in a way where it sounds like they're just saying "Yeah, we're not doing our best, but we got an advantage over everyone. You idiots will still buy this game because. Hah-haw."
Despite that you still have Sony & Nintendo making quality games (With a few dips) & we also have indie developers who have gained an outlet for distribution with Playstation Network, XBOX Live & Steam. Sadly, along with the greats like 'Hotline Miami' and one I want to get to sometime 'Splosion Man', you also have a ton of shit. The best thing about letting anyone have a distribution outlet is anyone can make a game. The worst thing is anyone can make a game, so you have these half assed, what in fudge, graphical engine is a potato type games that were made over the weekend by one person. Still, there's a lot of talent in the indie scene, so it has that going for it. I don't hate new video games, my problem is the callous nature of some of these companies, the shit is too expensive for stuff that ends in an hour & is mostly made up of online stuff. I don't have room for a new game console. I'll play new stuff if I have access to it, but for now I'm pretty much catching up on the last 20 or 28 years of gaming.
Be a cut above, guys. Video games can be big dumb fun or high art. Deal with it ya goddamn Bell Jar reading, Chivas drinking, pretentious bastards. We've evolved from kids huddling around a CRT television on a Friday night into play/watching a character study. Now that we got these digital hubs where we can buy digital copies that would otherwise be lost in the past. Then you got the games that pretty much mimic a high budgeted Hollywood picture. A game like 'LA Noir', (Ignore the flawed interrogation system) that whole game plays out like a spin-off to 'LA Confidential'. So much effort was put into the graphics, the ambitious gameplay, the visual historical accuracy of 1940's Los Angeles. Of course they had to fictionalize some details of these cases for video game's sake. I remember there was a mission where you had to hunt down this killer who was basically 'The Black Dahlia Killer'. This game should of let everyone know that video games are on par, if not better, than Hollywood films. LA Noir was so praised & so hyped, I remember reading about the red carpet premiere on (of all magazines) 'Vanity Fair'. So when you got these iconoclast rich people talking about a video game as if it were a tent-pole theatrical film, you know this is something that needs to be notified on people's radars. People tend to remember soundtracks from modern games rather than the soundtracks from modern film, that's a clear indication that video games have dethroned movies for entertainment. Just because games like 'LA Noir' and even a game like 'Super Mario 64' share the same arena as stupid shit like 'Surgeon Simulator' and all that retarded shit, does not mean everything should be dismissed. Not everything has to be a character study or a reflection of life. Sometimes the artistic beauty of a game comes from the graphics which brilliantly complement the music & mindless gameplay. A game like 'Super Mario 64' is a piece of art! The music varies in sound from level to level & I still have to say the best piece of music in that game has to be the music for 'Dire Dire Docks'. I'm going to play that after this. Then you got the theme from 'Halo' which oozes power & beauty, or better yet, the soundtrack to 'Doom 64'! That soundtrack is eerie, creepy, foreboding & beautiful. AAAggh! Now I'm divided as to what soundtrack to put up at the end of this blog! Screw it, both! So I'm tired of hearing this constant argument of 'are video games art?' Time & time again the answer is yes, video games are art. Sure, not all of it is art, but at the same time not all art is good art. You got idiots in the New York metropolitan area that come up with outlandish interpretations of stupid shit like three blank canvases. If three blank canvases can get a bunch of idiots to think & come up with absurd interpretations, so can video games.
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I'm pretty sure I'm in the right when I say this, Ubisoft, Microsoft, any of these companies with these spectacle performances are doing this to hide the fact that their games will end up being generic crap. I know I'll be wrong when the headline comes out saying "Ubisoft stocks soar after release of that critically acclaimed Tom Clancy game!" Time & time again I always see the biggest, most expensive stage performances from companies where their library of new releases is all generic junk. My favorite thing is when the few game companies that know their games are awesome let their upcoming titles do all the talking....NINTENDO! Shigeru Miyamota & that one Mike Tyson looking guy, Reggie something. Too lazy to google, but they came out on stage with some 'Pokemon Go' thing for the Nintendo Switch. Nobody was really impressed by that. I really could care less. Then they were pretty much thinking "Oh, you think that's fucking dumb? Well guess what? SUPER SMASH BROS!!!!" and everyone went nuts! Why not, it's Super Smash. I wasn't all that hyped by the new character, mainly because I haven't played all the Metroid games. I didn't see any of the other games they announced, but from what I heard Shigeru Miyamoto let Ubisoft borrow Star Fox for their new space shooter. It's going to be like in 'Soul Caliber II' where you got all these original characters & along for the ride is an out of place Link from 'Legend of Zelda'. That's the only respectable presentations I've seen, the rest of them were either bullshit stage shows or some of these companies have failed so much I zoned out (Microsoft). Year in & year out there's always a company that makes a flop of a game, it happens & I get it, but there are some companies (EA, Microsoft) that continue making bad decisions that people don't like. Some of those bad decisions were subject to public outcry like that idiotic decision Microsoft wanted to implement where the games would be DRM protected. So you couldn't even use that same game in a friend's console or a new console you bought. Then there's EA.....have they ever made a game these past 10 to 15 years that was entertaining or complete? It seems like they have become a shovel ware company releasing demos at full price & you fucking stupid people keep buying them! I haven't played 'Mass Effect Armada' or is it 'Andromeda'? I don't know, too lazy to google. When that came out I was thinking of that time EA completely fucked up 'Mass Effect 3' where the character import system was broken, therefore you had to start anew in the third game. The cool thing about the Mass Effect franchise is if you when complete the first Mass Effect & start the second one, you can import your customized character from the first game into the second game, thus also changing the way the story begins & plays out in that sequel. The third game pretty much tosses that aside & no matter what choices you make, everyone who plays the game gets the same ending. The story decisions don't matter, it all ends the same way. Now let's take a look at a recent example. The first one fucked up by putting a percent of the game on the disc & the rest had to be unlocked behind the paywall. This could of been boycotted, but all you rich bitches had to have your Kylo Ren & that one girl, Jin or something? Too lazy to google. Then comes the trailer for the sequel, people are hyped, EA responded to the criticism, the game comes out! Though not as bad as before, it's still pretty bad. You have the choice to pay for the rest of the game that cost $60 retail or spend time to gain enough (In game) experience points so you can unlock the rest of the maps. Maaaaan, you're really trying to stretch out a game that could be finished in a couple of hours. After a long while grinding stops being a productive path to gaining XP & starts becoming redundant. It gets tiring & at that point you would rather play another game. We're all busy people, nobody has time to grind, let alone take a long drive from point A to point B & sometimes to point C. You hear that, open world GTA games?
Most of us want to get to the action & not be bogged down by things like driving long distances & grinding in video games! EA must be run by a bunch of romper wearing monkies. They keep making the same mistakes that people hate & end up crying "Why do people hate us?" Rather than fix those issues completely, they just jerk each other off in their corporate offices & make more stupid decisions! Other companies are guilty of this, but EA seems to sink lower as a brand. Also all of you gamers are too forgiving when it comes to weird decisions the companies make. Metal Gear Solid going from a unique & very Japanese tactical stealth game to whatever the fuck Konami did recently. They put zombies in there, made it all action oriented & pretty much gave Hideo Kojima the finger. The fuck is that all about? I thought creator owned video games stayed creator owned? Though despite that, If I were to buy a PS4, I would buy 'Death Stranding'. That shit is my kind of game, weird, eerie, dark........the trailer made everyone think there was a camera inside a vagina & there was a huge penis head on screen but it was a human baby butt. That's what Hideo wanted you to think, I see you! This is my kind of weird! What is that game even about? I'm gonna go on a limb & say the Walking Dead guy is transporting a growing fetus through a post apocalyptic earth. Since this is Kojima, I'm also willing to bet the guy is pregnant.
Sadly, the few of you who actually spend full price on these overpriced demos are the reason why new video games are so fucking short. I know I know, online is teh future, but how does online play hold up in the long run? We've been seeing this for a while now with games released in the past 18 years that are well remembered for having great online play, but now are nothing but relics because the servers are gone. You wouldn't believe how many XBOX 360 games in my collection would be useless if it were not for their well done solo campaigns. Some games still have operational servers, but you also run into the issue of finding nobody around, even the bots ditched the game. I tried to play 'Halo 3' online, total ghost town. Yet for some reason 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare' is still up & running with tons of people around. Then there was the time I was in the mood to play 'Star Wars Battlefront' online for PSP & the servers were completely removed just the day before. This brings me to another pet peeve of mine when it comes to online gaming. Bad sportsmanship , I see & hear of that more online than when I did back in the days when friends would invite me to play N64 & SNES games at their homes. We got way too many fucking people pulling the plug before the last point can be made. We got too many racist little shits going around that can somehow detect a person's race from their voice. Guys, I've heard short Asian kids with the deepest black guy voice before! LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING! Apparently I sound Canadian when I talk. There's all the racism that I bet these kids wouldn't be spouting if they were dropped off in the jungles of Detroit. Then there is my favorite, theee people who always shout "Yeah, well....I fucked you mom!"
Glad to know my mom still has a very active drive in her age.
The thing that mainly pisses me off is a person who can't handle losing & pulls some shit like a bitch. It's just a fucking game, but it seems like nobody can get that through their thin shelled skull. As a kid I was never competitive, hence the reason why I never partook in sports, but I'll admit when I make several wins I feel good about myself. When I loose constantly, I don't bitch, I don't yell. I just move on & don't feel bad about it. Some of these people online must have stage parents or parents who are athletic & always berate them for the simple fact that they are a winning upper middle American family. All because mom won awards, dad won awards, sisters & brothers won awards & so this kid is putting that bullshit family mentality into something that's meant to be in good fun. People like that piss me off, the type that make things competitive for their own stupid selfish reasons. I remember going 1 on 1 on 'Modern Warfare', I was getting a nice kill streak until the screen froze & then blacked out. I was thinking "Aw man, the internet is going haywire." The menu pops up & on comes a message "You were kicked off this current match." Then I get a message from this little shit (I'm assuming this is a child) that said:
'U 1v1 m8?'
The fuck does this mean? Sorry, I don't speak chubby middle schooler listening to SKA when he gets extra mozzarella sticks!
Then we get these cheat code/ modders, I hate these people even more. What this tells me about these people is that they aren't good enough to play a game so they rely on cheats & specialized mods just so they can feel they are good at something, even though they are not. One of thee most perplexing things I've seen online was entering a match where everyone was invincible, flying above the map & firing RPG missiles at each other. When these people discovered I was in the match they kicked me out. What was the point of that online match? Hey, let's see who gets bored of this first? I don't fucking get it! Glad to know you cheaters are a bunch of weak ass hoes.
Oh don't get me started on the whole treatment of women in online gaming. I fall on neither of the sides I'm about to talk about. If you're female & like video games, cool! I'm all for it, let your skills do the talking & ( I can say this about everyone, not just women) if you're not an asshole then we're going to have ourselves a fun game. For all I know you are figuring everything out, just like me. The shit that annoys me is when other players hear that a woman is playing video games so they do everything they can to sabotage her enjoyment. Then you get the opposite reaction where almost everyone notices there's a female online & they do everything they can to gift them everything from free ammo to pretty much letting them kill them in game so she can get the extra points. Though most of the gifting & hand holding can only be seen in more of the MMORPG realm than in FPS games. I'm jaded, when a woman is in our team all the basement dwelling weebs are all "Oh my god! She sounds hot. We're married now because we said so in an IM chat!" I'm just hanging around the background like "She's a woman. Ok. Guys, enemies. 12 o' clock! Lets kick some klingon ass!!!!"
I think both of these sides are huge dumb asses. Who cares if she's a woman, all I'm looking for is if she can handle her own in the game & if we all can have fun killing bad guys or killing each other. We're all just having a good time. What some of these people's misogyny tells me is they are fucking weak. So weak they are willing to rally their little women hating MAGA hat wearing assholes just to spite one female who genuinely likes video games. Just quit being assholes about it & to the weebs...be a cut above. Just because a woman is in your server does not mean you're going to be lucky with a booty call. I have never heard of a guy scoring a gorgeous woman just because she joined their 'World of Warcraft' clan. To quote Paul Newman, "I'll tell you what I told Redford, it ain't gonna happen."
Then let's talk about 'Bully Busters'. .......It failed. That's all you need to know.
A recent phenomenon that has occurred is Live streaming in which people who game also live stream their gameplay via Twitch, YouTube's live feature & even on Facebook (Which I don't get, but alright). This is all just Walkthroughs with commentary, LIVE! Twitch is much more popular, but then there's also Plexstorm which is Twitch, but you can show nudity. You want to see a woman play a video game while showing her boobs, or a dude showing off his benis while playing Madden? Plexstorm is the place, but it's barely starting so don't expect alot of traffic. Then there's Discord, I haven't checked that out so I have no opinion on it. I imagine it's like a K-mart twitch.
I think this video game streaming is interesting, due the fact that you're watching a person's gameplay progress in real time & if they're good enough, entertaining the audience along with it. It takes most of us back to when we were kids, going over a friend's house & watching them play video games & attempting to finish the dreaded final boss. I can see why people dig this, but I don't get how people can keep a conversation while playing video games. Yes, I tried it before on Facebook, live streaming my N64 playing. I can't for the life of me keep an entertaining conversation while playing a video game. It's difficult & that's the reason why I'll never do a video game live stream, at least in terms of video gaming because I actually want to do videos of myself doing art. I love Twitch Creative, mainly when people are making art like paintings, sketch art (On paper or on digital tablets). I love it all, not a big fan of the food making because 9/10 these people would drop their food showing it on camera. It's tragic to see. There are a few Twitch streamers whom I follow (Mainly artists & cosplayers & an RPG group that plays tabletop role playing games), but here's where I come to my criticisms. Some people live stream their content either while I'm at work or while I'm asleep & for some reason almost none of them do it during the weekend when I'm free. Then you get the people that sporadically live stream when they feel like it & when you find out about their next live stream it's much too late. Then comes a problem I blame you live streamers for, not keeping an archive. Sure, there are a few people who charge viewers to access the archive (I guess it costs a fee to keep an archive). Who would pay for archive access for live streams? I don't know. An accessible archive can help a lot. People who have never seen a specific person's live stream can help them determine whether or not their live stream is worth the appointment viewing.
Ohhh boy, I'm going to make a lot of enemies with what I'm going to talk about.
There is a breed of twitch streamer who I can't stand, but they seem to be the more popular ones who get the sponsorship & get paid to be idiots on the internet & I feel these certain people are giving gamers/online content workers a very bad name. Every time I watch 'Twitch Fails' there's always these certain streamers who make you ask "Why are they so popular?" Every time I see them they're always getting into tantrums like child bitches when they loose, they break their expensive as fuck keyboards on camera all because they can't handle loosing at video games. Fedora Alert: How in fuck do these crybabies get girlfriends? I guess that one bit in Family Guy where the hot woman said "Wow, you got money. That means you're attractive" isn't that big of an exaggeration. What kind of low standards does a woman have to have in order for them to wake up in the morning & say "I'm gonna date that one incel on Twitch who yells on camera, makes cringey live streams & awkwardly flirts with camgirls on PornHub & fails. He cute!" That's some low ass standards you got there guurrrrl! What I do get is why people follow them. Humanity loves to watch the world burn, it's sad but way too common. That's why 4Chan is a thing, some people just want to shrink a bunch of people, put them in a foil can, urinate on them & set them all on fire. Why those same people would pay money to their virtual tip jar, I don't fucking get that? You're giving them money because you enjoy their stupidity. At the end of that day the streamers are the winners because they think their stupid bullshit is what sells. I just can't stand some of these people who go on stream, play the same fucking game everyone else is playing & getting paid for that. Really, do we need another Fortnite stream? Everyone & their grandma is playing Fortnite & League of Legends & Overwatch & H1Z1. Going back to what I said about companies not giving a shit, H1Z1 is one of thee most glitchy, battle royal, third person shooter out there & yet that game still has people going into their servers! "I'm shooting a guy in the head with a high powered AK-47, he's not dying, oh my god that other player shot me in the leg with one hit from a pistol!" Then you get the odd physics engine where cars fly into the air for no weird reason. H1Z1 is broken, yet you dumbasses out there still play that shit! How about playing some other games ya goddamn sheeple? I dare all you 'expert streamers/professional gamers' to play a game from 30 years ago. Play some NES games, not on an emulator but on the actual console itself! I would like to see these people who cry about "I'm not part of the MLG, boo hoo!" on camera play some hard as hell classic games like 'Ghosts & Goblins'.
Then comes a segment of Twitch I don't like one bit, not because women are playing the games but because some of these female streamers talk down to their audience. I'm talking about these female streamers who are fucking obvious with their intentions of how they build their audience & gain profit. You may of seen these idiots, they're the "Oh goodie! A viewer paid for a subscription! Therefore I'm going to show you guys my bra strap!" then all you fucking American weebs go wild all because some basic bitch showed off her pink bra strap on stream! She's playing you for a fool!!! I am a man who loves subtlety in both art & erotica, so this shit insults my intelligence! If you pay money to see a girl's bra strap or pay to see a girl write your username on a black board & bend her pancake ass over on a webcam while wearing yoga pants, I must ask, ARE YOU NEW TO THE INTERNET? It's obvious she thinks you're all desperate weebs. Her boobies aren't real, she wears push-up bras!!!! I can tell, you can say I'm a tit-a-holic. Thankfully they are a minority.
So at the end of the day, I like the right Twitch streamers. Scratch that, not just Twitch but any of those other streamers who can make me laugh, entertain me as well as give me well enough reason to support them financially. I recommend 'Good Bad Games' done by Cecil who also does 'Good Bad Flicks' on YouTube. I'm drawing a blank on the tabletop RPG one, I believe it's called 'Hyper RPG' or something. That one is a group of people who sit on a round table & play tabletop games. Then there's Vegas PG, both cosplayer & gamer who sadly hasn't been active for two years. That's the thing, some of these people haven't done a stream since 2016 & it's a damn shame, but hey, life gets in the way & we gotta get to that before we can get back to perusing our pleasures. When it come to paid streaming, the ones I can respect are the people who use Twitch to raise money for charity. Those people are AAAALLLLLLRIGHT in my book! There was one guy (I wish I could remember his name so all you people can troll him. The only trolling I will approve of) who was on Twitch & getting paid to play video games for a new car. He had the money status bar on the corner of the screen which said 'Money for new car'. This guy wore fresh clothing, his room looked very high end (As if he lived in a mansion of some sort) & had a bunch of sealed collectibles in his shelf. Ummm, GET A FUCKING JOB YOU FUCKING LEECH! If you're a rich bitch, then get a fucking job & quit mooching off the 99% you fucking bastard! One thing I am all for is when people use Twitch to earn some extra cash for their other projects. I'm talking cosplayers making content & telling their audience "Hey, aside from this I'm also working on other stuff you guys enjoy. If you want to support that other stuff, drop a few cents my way & I'll make it worth your while." That's why I don't have a problem with most of the Paetron campaigns I see. The problem with that is I also see a bunch of asshole swindles where they want to charge people alot for JPEGS or some cheap bullshit like "Your reward for supporting me financially is the gratitude of feeling you helped someone today." Call me materialistic, but I want something in return for helping your artsy ass! I support charity & I support people who I want to see more content from. Like I said, it's one thing to see someone who really needs the help financially & we as good people are willing to help, but if you're some rich bitch with a bunch of Funko pops in high end shelves in the background, asking for money for a new car & you look like somebody who sends portraits to the entertainment industry, GET A FUCKING JOB YOU FUCKING PUNK ASS BITCH! Support charity streams. I'm not a fan of speed runners, but there are those speed runners (I believe 'Pat The NES Punk' brings in speed runner friends) who speed run for charity. So if you're into speed runs then you'll appreciate the charity speed running. I dig it.
Now I don't hate new video games, I just don't like what the culture has become. I see too many people spending money on in-game loot boxes, DLC, paying stupid people on Twitch to play games terribly & open racist messages on stream with a text to speech thing because they are too stupid to screen their messages. When I bought a game, I got my money's worth. While most of the video games out are basically 30% done, there are the exceptions to that rule. Of all the new video games out, if I were to get a PS4, I would love to play the 'Shadow Warrior' remake, 'DOOM' of course, the two recent 'Far Cry' games. Despite that, I'm nowhere near interested in buying a new console due to the fact that it's all the same crap we've been getting these past ten years. Do we need more 'Call of Duty' games? Do we need another 'Gears of War'? Do we need another 'Just Dance' game? The only thing I see different between the X-BOX 360/PS3 era & this current PS4/XBOX ONE era is the slightly improved graphics & much more improved hardware. The leap between XBOX & XBOX360 was grand, graphics looks real! The leap between PS1 to PS2 to PS3 were grand leaps as well. The leap between this generation & last was not a leap, but a small obese guy hop. One thing I will say is I do love the fact that we live in an era where 'Steam' and 'GOG.com' exist. Trying to look for the physical copies of these classic PC games is difficult & pretty expensive. Not to mention trying to run them on modern computers is a pain in the ass. If my computer has more programming power & more graphical engine power than a high end computer from 1993, then I should be able to run a computer game released in 1992!! Sadly that's not how it works, but luckily I can snatch those same games on both Steam & GOG.com for a cheap price & be able to run them on my laptop, also these older games are quick to download. To think the PC version of 'Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire' is 300MB. I am currently playing 'Descent' & that game is on a whole new level. While everyone is cheering "Ohh man, Super Smash Bros has one of the aliens from 'Metroid'!" or "Oh man! Fortnite, triple kill!!!"
I'm here in my room going, "Holy fuck! I can go up, down, sideways, forward, backwards, I'm not forced into a stringent grid! Muthafucka! Dis da future!!!" I'm also trying my hand at these popular indie titles like 'Hotline Miami'. That game has a dank soundtrack & it's way more cathartic than Call of Duty. At the same time I also tried my hand at 'Hunie Pop'. 'Sigh', that game is aware of who the audience is & I do feel like shit playing that otherwise cheery & light game. Also I don't think I've gotten accustomed to the game mechanic of that fucking puzzle thing because I've been failing ALOT! I started out good in the beginning, now I'm just failing & I got this pink haired fairy calling me a cuck. Aside from that I've been playing 'F.E.A.R' on my free time. What if you asked John Woo to direct 'The Ring' & throughout the filming he says "I shoot ghosts now!" I've also played thee very first 'Max Payne' game & that still managed to amaze me, therefore I cannot say I'm jaded with video games. May Payne felt like a David Fincher crime thriller in which John Woo said "I want to direct the shootout scenes" then as a cherry on top there's a hallucinatory dream sequence that is very much 'Lynchian' accompanied with random screaming & slow motion sounds. That was an amazing game I highly recommend. I got alot on my plate of 'To-Play' video games, both digital & physical games I have bought these past months.
The thing I can't stand (I've already stated this in another blog entry) are these people who say they are above video games. "I don't play video games anymore. I'm spending my time going to wine drinking functions & being a huge asshole to the right people."
Well good for you! Don't put me down because you can't have fun anymore. I don't have as much time as I used to for video gaming, but I always make time during the weekends when I'm just drained of energy. Despite that, I will admit I would rather read a book or work on BlackTime stuff.
We're living in a crystal age of video games, there's a lot more transparency as to the quality of games that are being made. What angers me is you have these companies that have so much money, so many neat game engines, properties that the fans have been craving for sequels since forever & they decide "You know what? Let's not give them what they want. Instead lets just do the opposite, fuck up what could of been a good game & just piss everyone off.
Then comes the shadiest shit that is still happening, game companies bribing journalists with perks for a good review. How about making a good game & you won't have to pay journalists for good reviews ya fucking shysters! I won't say that most video game companies were always the beacons of good business & entertainment back in the day, you had your LJNs, your Titus (Even though Titus made a few good games, but people only remember that shitty 'Superman 64' game), you even have Acclaim Entertainment (Again, everyone remembers their shitty games from the early 90's, but they also made good games like 'Extreme G' and 'Turok 2: Seeds of Evil'), but you never heard of these companies bribing journalists (At least that's what I know). Also I won't say they've become corporatized, because it's always been corporate. I guess the fact is that we can see when they're making a bad game & the people in charge respond in a way where it sounds like they're just saying "Yeah, we're not doing our best, but we got an advantage over everyone. You idiots will still buy this game because. Hah-haw."
Despite that you still have Sony & Nintendo making quality games (With a few dips) & we also have indie developers who have gained an outlet for distribution with Playstation Network, XBOX Live & Steam. Sadly, along with the greats like 'Hotline Miami' and one I want to get to sometime 'Splosion Man', you also have a ton of shit. The best thing about letting anyone have a distribution outlet is anyone can make a game. The worst thing is anyone can make a game, so you have these half assed, what in fudge, graphical engine is a potato type games that were made over the weekend by one person. Still, there's a lot of talent in the indie scene, so it has that going for it. I don't hate new video games, my problem is the callous nature of some of these companies, the shit is too expensive for stuff that ends in an hour & is mostly made up of online stuff. I don't have room for a new game console. I'll play new stuff if I have access to it, but for now I'm pretty much catching up on the last 20 or 28 years of gaming.
Be a cut above, guys. Video games can be big dumb fun or high art. Deal with it ya goddamn Bell Jar reading, Chivas drinking, pretentious bastards. We've evolved from kids huddling around a CRT television on a Friday night into play/watching a character study. Now that we got these digital hubs where we can buy digital copies that would otherwise be lost in the past. Then you got the games that pretty much mimic a high budgeted Hollywood picture. A game like 'LA Noir', (Ignore the flawed interrogation system) that whole game plays out like a spin-off to 'LA Confidential'. So much effort was put into the graphics, the ambitious gameplay, the visual historical accuracy of 1940's Los Angeles. Of course they had to fictionalize some details of these cases for video game's sake. I remember there was a mission where you had to hunt down this killer who was basically 'The Black Dahlia Killer'. This game should of let everyone know that video games are on par, if not better, than Hollywood films. LA Noir was so praised & so hyped, I remember reading about the red carpet premiere on (of all magazines) 'Vanity Fair'. So when you got these iconoclast rich people talking about a video game as if it were a tent-pole theatrical film, you know this is something that needs to be notified on people's radars. People tend to remember soundtracks from modern games rather than the soundtracks from modern film, that's a clear indication that video games have dethroned movies for entertainment. Just because games like 'LA Noir' and even a game like 'Super Mario 64' share the same arena as stupid shit like 'Surgeon Simulator' and all that retarded shit, does not mean everything should be dismissed. Not everything has to be a character study or a reflection of life. Sometimes the artistic beauty of a game comes from the graphics which brilliantly complement the music & mindless gameplay. A game like 'Super Mario 64' is a piece of art! The music varies in sound from level to level & I still have to say the best piece of music in that game has to be the music for 'Dire Dire Docks'. I'm going to play that after this. Then you got the theme from 'Halo' which oozes power & beauty, or better yet, the soundtrack to 'Doom 64'! That soundtrack is eerie, creepy, foreboding & beautiful. AAAggh! Now I'm divided as to what soundtrack to put up at the end of this blog! Screw it, both! So I'm tired of hearing this constant argument of 'are video games art?' Time & time again the answer is yes, video games are art. Sure, not all of it is art, but at the same time not all art is good art. You got idiots in the New York metropolitan area that come up with outlandish interpretations of stupid shit like three blank canvases. If three blank canvases can get a bunch of idiots to think & come up with absurd interpretations, so can video games.
I'd like to thank all of you for spending your free time reading this blog. I couldn't do it without you all.
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I don't get the love for 'Grandma's Boy'. I like pot humor, but for some reason that movie didn't hit me the right way.
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I don't get the love for 'Grandma's Boy'. I like pot humor, but for some reason that movie didn't hit me the right way.