The Videogames I Played in 2014!

Okay here's the deal, at time of writing this self-referential opening there is one hour left of 2014. I decided on NOT doing a Game of the Year piece on 2014 because for a magnitude of reasons but I've changed my mind and I'M ALLOWED TO DO THAT. But I've got an hour to get this written and posted; so it's going to be fast and barely structured and not proofread so strap in.

A brief commentary on every game I played in 2014 (that actually was released in 2014) starts NOW:

Shovel Knight

It's really nice to see something wallowing in nostalgia that actually introduces some common sense to the formula, none of that Mega Man 9 "turn on the sprite filter because god knows we all loved that" garbage. It's a solidly designed platformer with a stellar soundtrack from Jake Kaufman, but what really cemented my approval of it was the fantastic almost competitive-feeling boss battles. With some tweaks Shovel Knight could probably work in a multiplayer deathmatch arena mode, which really is the biggest compliment you can give any action game.

Probably the game I enjoyed the most this year out of the given options, hesitate to call it my Game of the Year because it represents and indeed panders to a lot of what I hate about the industry right now, but it's pretty damn good.

Mario Kart 8

IT'S ALRIGHT, I just wish Nintendo had gone more in the same direction they went with Smash Bros this year and tailored the game for a slightly more competitive environment. The rubberbanding and pretense that grandma is going to want to play the game with you for some reason holds it back from being a terrific racer. I got Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed for my Wii U this year as well, and honestly I think I might like that game a little more.

Professor Layton Vs Ace Attorney

The Phoenix Wright trial segments are FANTASTIC, seriously some of the best ever created within the Ace Attorney series. I love Level-5s far more traditional puzzle take on the evidence, giving you a very small pool of it with multiple uses and actually requiring firm understanding and sound logic to pass testimonies. The Professor Layton sections however feel a little phoned in, maybe the trial segments just steal the show from them too much, but I was disappointed by puzzles included. The ending is going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people and pretty much murders any replay value the game could possibly have, which would be fine only there's no COCKING CHAPTER SELECT FEATURE TO REPLAY THE TRIALS DANGNABBIT.

Loved the music though, some of my favourite of the year.

South Park: Stick of Truth

It wasn't awful, but definitely my biggest disappointment of the year. The amount of good comedy in videogames is genuinely pathetic and I thought this game could actually be notable and potentially groundbreaking in some ways. Turns out its just an incredibly short, overcomplicated (yet bizarrely easy) RPG with far too much faffing around with items and menus, featuring South Park humour at its absolute worst. There's a couple of good jokes in it but for the most part it's largely references and shock humour. A shame to be honest.

Hearthstone

YES I PLAYED A LITTLE OF HEARTHSTONE. NOT MUCH. BUT A LITTLE

IT'S A BIT LIKE YU-GI-OH! BUT A 1000 TIMES LESS COMPLICATED, PROBABLY FOR THE BEST

Yu-Gi-Oh! Millenium Duels

I ALSO ACTUALLY PLAYED SOME YU-GI-OH! THIS...okay I'm done with that.

It's literally nothing but the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game but on the PS3...somehow it has really severe framerate issues. You figure that one out.

Bayonetta 2

I like it! Just not as much as you! There's a full review on the site go read that I'm on the clock here.

Ace Attorney Trilogy

At time of writing I've beaten the first game again, I still think it's pretty great! The added fifth case that was initially exclusive to the DS remake is especially great, there's a lot of great subtext to it (even more so now due to recent events) and it feels legitimately big, like all sorts of scandals and corruption and political intrigue is just all collapsing in on itself. Trials and Tribulations is one of my favourite games of all time too; and let's not talk about Justice For All. Takumi had about three months to write the entire game, cut him some slack.

I'm not a fan of painting over fantastic pixel art for the sake of a glossy "HD" release, but it still looks fine. It'll do. I'll accept it. Still wish the 3DS had better sound so I could blast out Cornered ~2001 harder though.

Ultra Street Fighter IV

I'm six years late to the Street Fighter IV party...and unfortunately I think that might be far too late to get started now. I do like the game a lot though, I can see the little touches Capcom made to basically build tournament hype into the engine that's made the game such a huge success. I'll be there Day 1 for Street Fighter V though, don't you worry.

Guilty Gear Xrd 

IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL, anyone who complained about it having 3D models and running on Unreal has been proven to be dumb and wrong forever. Haven't played a lot of it yet, but I'll be putting in a bunch of hours in 2015!

Abe's Oddysee New N' Tasty

This remake's weird and I'm not sure I like it at all! Definitely doesn't have the same atmosphere of the PlayStation original, and the fact the controls have been "improved" to feel like a more traditional platformer doesn't seem like a great move when you're keeping essentially the same control and design. Also hate the autorun and dynamic camera angles, OddWorld's real cool though so I'll give this another shot at some point.

Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker

I only got it today! I'll review it properly soon! Let's move on!

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto in first person RULES, Grand Theft Auto V however still kind of does not. I don't think it says great things about the game that playing the same missions again but with completely different shooting and a new perspective made it way more enjoyable. The main thing I resent about GTA V on PS4 is it's actually kind of a good shooter now but it's still designed around a cover system that I wish wasn't there at all when playing this version. 

Other than that, it's still GTA V, warts and all. I probably enjoyed the story even less second time round. Let's put it this way, when I played Grand Theft Auto V on PS3 in 2013 I had not seen Reservoir Dogs, when I played Grand Theft Auto V on PS4 in 2014 I HAD seen Reservoir Dogs. You do the math.

Super Smash Bros on Wii U

First of all, Nintendo's strategy to put the inarguably inferior 3DS version out 2 months early then market the Wii U one on how much better and necessary to have it was is a work of god-damned genius. I still don't know why YOU bought the 3DS version though, seriously what is wrong with you.

I'm not a fan of how Nintendo's analogue sticks feel with 2D games on basically any of their controllers, maybe I just suck but I regularly have issues with changing directions quickly in these games and mess up inputs a lot. This is the first time I've been in danger of genuinely getting into Smash though, it feels like a lot of work has been put into every character in ways that aren't stupid. Definitely another game I'll be playing a lot more of in 2015.

LittleBigPlanet 3 

Another game I've done a full review of on this very site so GET LOOKING. It frustrates me to have to keep talking smack about these games, they're so close to being my favourite thing in the world but they fall down on the most important hurdle every time and I end up not liking them at all.

To paraphrase my favourite line from my review; "The most important thing with games based about level creators is making the game fun, there's a reason there's a thriving Super Mario World mod community and there isn't a Cool Spot one."

GAMES I HAVEN'T PLAYED BUT AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT ANYWAY

WWE 2K15

These are seriously some of the worst AAA games on the market right now, it's unbelievable and people should talk about them more. What amazes me is how they somehow still keep finding ways to take steps backward. I saw some footage of the PS4 version once and had to look up about 5 other videos of it to clarify because I couldn't believe how bad it looked, I seriously could not tell the difference between that and the PS3 version of 2K14 in gameplay.

But yea, these games are awful, and even the masochistic weirdos who buy them every year seem to agree WWE 2K15 was a terrible entry to the series. AVOID FOREVER.

Watch_Dogs

I'd just like to take this time to congratulate Watch_Dogs on its groundbreaking innovation and gamechanging mechanics. Specifically the amazing "press square on a traffic light to make a car teleport into reality and drive into another  car" function, which was used so prominently on every stream and video I saw of this game it may as well have been the core mechanic. 

Yoshi's New Island 

People love to love on Nintendo, but don't forget that they semi-regularly produce garbage like this too. An utterly pointless spin-off of a SNES classic which only serves to make the original more forgettable and stomp on its timeless art style. Haven't played it and never will, hate it just for existing.

The Evil Within

When you get over the ridiculous amounts of technical issues it has (no small feat) it doesn't seem THAT bad, not as bad as some people were making it seem anyway. Shinji Mikami knows how to do jumpscares and there's still some real solid looking action in this, but the story and environments are just strings of magical nonsense with the subtly of a sledgehammer to the groin and embarrassing amounts of the game look like they were copied and pasted from Resident Evil 4. Still, will probably pick up the PS4 version cheap at some point and give it a whirl. 

GAME OF THE YEAR 2014 TIME

Well, I didn't exactly fall in love with anything I played this year. But I did play The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS in January, which came out in late late 2013 and was better than anything I played this year. So I'm going to be an utter nob and just pick that and y'all are just going to have to deal with it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Sonic The Hedgehog RULES (in Super Smash Bros)

Super Smash Bros on Wii U is pretty great. That's about as much of a review as you're going to get here, Smash Bros in general seems to be one of those series that will forever be immune from criticism. At the end of the day; either you love yourself some Smash or you don't, I mean even Brawl wasn't bad enough to chase people away, this is just the way the world is. 

I will say the thing that really stands out about the new Smash is the attention to detail on...well basically everything, but especially the roster. Every character feels thought out, and it's the kind of game where you can play each character once and instantly know whether they're your kind of thing or not. Whereas in Brawl it felt like stuff was just being shoved in for the sake of having stuff, everything in the Wii U version feels like it's there for a reason.

However, as great as the majority of the roster is, the undisputed crown of "Best Character" HAS to go to Sonic The Hedgehog. Not necessarily because he's a top tier character (I don't know or care if he is or not) or that he's objectively the most fun or anything, but that no matter how good any of the other characters may be they aren't overcoming 20 years of poor design.

Seriously, Sonic The Hedgehog has never been better than he is in the new Smash Bros.

I am kind of a jerk when it comes to Sonic, I've written rambly 7,000 word pieces questioning whether even the classic games were ever any good, and I roll my eyes every time a new Sonic game comes out and we all have to play the "oh my god this one sucks TOO" game. Let the record also show that I also don't really like Sonic 4 or Sonic Generations either, and now that I've played the new Smash Bros I feel perfectly comfortable with throwing them on the "suck" pile as well.

I don't even want to talk about Sonic Generations. But I will say the fact people say the 2D parts of that are just as good as the original games makes me wonder how long its been since Sonic fans actually last played the "classics". Some of the 3D parts were okay, not enough to save the game though. 

Sonic 4 was in all honesty a genuine effort from Sonic Team. It looked alright, the music did have an aura of 16-bit nostalgia (although they did forget that a big part of why people love the old Sonic music is that it wasn't terrible) and they did try and tweak some frustrations the old games had. For example, wasn't it annoying when you would lose all your momentum in Sonic 3 and would have to stop and rev up a spindash to get out of pit or something? Well in Sonic 4 don't worry about that, because now you can just walk up the side of a hill from a standstill and everything will be fine!

Wait what.

Granted this does *kind of* solve the problem, but wasn't it kind of fun to rev up a spindash? Everyone who played Sonic 2 or 3 has sat there for a minute pointlessly mashing the button to charge up a spindash before letting it go. Why? Because it feels good man, Sonic feels like god-damned lightning in a bottle and you're sitting there mashing that button waiting for the stormclouds to gather before you let him go. I know you can still do that in Sonic 4 but it's not the same when you make momentum less important, Sonic is no longer this supercharged woodland animal that you want to make bounce across to the end of a racetrack, he's a stupid blue sloth you're just dragging to the end of mediocre platforming levels.

The point is, Sonic The Hedgehog *is* his movement, compromising that for the sake of the level design is freaking stupid and Sonic 4 blows because of it.

This is the fundamental thing Smash Bros gets so right. The character on the roster is undoubtedly and instantly recognisable as Sonic The Hedgehog, he's fast, he's got the classic sound effects, he freaks out if you stand too close to a ledge and of course you can rev up a spindash like normal! Once again he feels like lightning in a bottle, but yet always controlled. You control Sonic's speed by either moving the stick to walk or double tapping it to run. You can jump and even change direction multiple times while rolling around after a spindash. You can rev up a spindash, shoot yourself to the other side of the stage, use a special move to launch Sonic into the air and perform a divekick to fire yourself back onto the ground with ease in a matter of seconds. 

In short, Sonic The Hedgehog RULES in this game. He has the speed, he has the momentum, he's got that all important tiny bit of slide to him, and he never ever feels out of control despite how genuinely fast he is. He's not just a racetrack character any more, he's got some proper action chops to him now without requiring some weird airdash lock on move to bounce across rows of enemies. And the genius of all of this is it's done without any of the BS compromise of Sonic 4 or any other recent entry, this is the Sonic we all remember just a heck of a lot better. Sonic can be fun and fast and smart and maybe even not irritating! Honestly, this is all a little humbling, I've been saying for years that there's probably not going to be another great Sonic game. Now I basically have to accept there almost certainly will be.

It's just the catch is Sega and Sonic Team will have nothing to do with it. 

It's time for Nintendo and/or Sega (probably Sega) to get on the phone and get that dream Mario/Sonic crossover platformer cooking. Imagine the level design and polish of Super Mario 3D Land but basically a lot faster and maybe with some chilli dogs as powerups in it. It'd be BEAUTIFUL.

So yea, maybe buy the new Smash over Sonic Boom okay?

LittleBigPlanet 3 Review - As Wonderful and Janky as ever

I'm not sure why I even bothered playing LittleBigPlanet 3 before writing this review, I could have just as easily drafted this entire thing 5 months ago when the game was shown at E3 2014 as part of Sony's press conference. Those first 5 seconds of that trailer sum up the entire experience: feelings of hope as the logo pops up, a beautiful colourful world bursting with personality appears...then Sackboy does his goofy floaty jump, and hearts worldwide sink to the centre of the Earth. 

So yes, LittleBigPlanet continues to be the most frustrating series in videogames. It ticks so many of the right boxes and scratches so many itches but it's continually brought down by this one huge flaw it has. I've played all three home console LittleBigPlanet entries and it still baffles me just how long Sackboy floats in the air before he lands, it's simply wrong. It still drives me nuts that there isn't a button to run yet there's a button to cover the level in stickers for no reason. It might be even worse in LittleBigPlanet 3, which adds depth perception issues to the clumsiness, as well as changeable weapons/items that you fire with the same button you use to grab, making it ridiculously easy to accidentally shoot the thing you're trying to grab out of reach. 

It's so hard to be mean about LittleBigPlanet, it continues to have decent and occasionally great level design, it's looks fantastic, the concept is wonderful and the physics of all the different materials and objects gives it world and objects some true weight and meaning. But you know what, all those things have been praised to death in reviews for the first four LittleBigPlanet games and there's no getting away from it any more...the game feels like garbage. It's floaty, flaky, unnatural feeling vile trash which insults the senses of anyone with a history of 2D platforming. It's kind of a big deal.

There are signs of life within LittleBigPlanet 3 however, as well as the returning Sackboy there are three brand new characters with their own controls and playstyles! Now you can be sack-dog, sack-fat-guy or sack-chicken (they have real names but who cares)! Sack-dog can run fast and jump off walls, sack-fat-guy can switch between large and small while sack-chicken can fly around. Their addition is pretty interesting, especially considering this game was developed by Sumo Digital instead of original creators Media Molecule. Maybe this new team also thought Sackboy was kind of rubbish but were too scared to change it so they injected their own characters to the mix.

The new characters are welcome additions as their inclusion opens new possibilities for level creators to base levels around all or one of them. They're not enough to save this game from its fatal flaw however, the best of the three is sack-dog just because the platforming begins to actually have some genuine flow when you play as him. Even then, you don't have enough control over his speed (run button please!!!!) and he gets stuck to walls without the slick slide of Super Meat Boy, so we're still not quite there yet.

Probably the funniest part of the new characters is they have the side effect of making Sackboy feel even more crap. In the main story mode you collect marbles in several levels as Sackboy to unlock one of the new characters in each world, then you play a tutorial level and a boss level as those characters to get a feel for them. However, as soon as you proceed to the next world it's straight back to Sackboy with his jaunty run and floaty hop, and boy do you really miss that wall jump when that happens. 

Let's talk about the story mode a little bit first though, because I've never understood this aspect of LittleBigPlanet and it makes even less sense in 3. I understand why you would want a story mode in there, get some on-disc professionally made content in the package which shows off what's possible to do within the level creator. But what is the deal with having the objects for the level creator locked and hard as balls to obtain within these levels? There's objects you can only get if you have a second player and there's objects you can only get by perfecting a level by not dying and finding all the hidden objects within the stage. Even worse, LittleBigPlanet 3 includes one of the classic platformer-sequel sins of having some collectibles only obtainable via characters and items unlocked later in the game, forcing repeat plays and backtracking.

What is the thought process here? If I'm the sort of player who's just here to run through the levels on-disc and maybe community created too then I don't care about collecting all the object for the level creator anyway. But on the other hand, if I am the sort of player who wants to dive head first into the level creator, then I want to be designing and playing my own levels, so why I am so thoroughly encouraged to play the on-disc levels over and over and over?

Of course we haven't actually discussed the level creator itself yet, the main event when it comes to LittleBigPlanet, and we're not going to either because I haven't tried it out.

...oh don't look at me like that.

Look here is the issue that just shoots this entire franchise through the head for me and a lot of people like me. LittleBigPlanet is wonderful, it's so close to being one of my favourite games, I'm sure the level creator is great and has had its interface improved and all that good stuff you would expect from a sequel, but I don't care. I don't want to make levels in LittleBigPlanet because I wouldn't want to play anything I could make in LittleBigPlanet. There is a reason why there's a thriving Super Mario World ROM modding community and there isn't a Cool Spot one, level creators are only exciting when the game you're creating for is interesting. Also, with Mario Maker heading to the Wii U next year, I'm finding it even more difficult to entertain the possibility of ever making a level in LittleBigPlanet again.

Having said that, if you are someone who had each of their fingers smashed in with a hammer as a child and think LittleBigPlanet is a great platformer, Sumo Digital have done a mostly good job with this new one. It's a bit glitchy and stuttery which is a first for the series, but the new characters are at least better than Sackboy, the level design is still good and it still has all the charm that makes LittleBigPlanet a game we all really want to love. Also it has Hugh Laurie in it.

For everyone else who's been put off by the LittleBigPlatforming already, rest assured it still blows and there's nothing in this new one that'll change your mind. Ah well, it's not all a loss Sony, the level editor in the new Smash Bros isn't that great so at least you won at something.

The Contradiction of Wrestling Videogames

Well it's that time of year again; the WWE are plopping out another "videogame" into the cultural landfill. At time of writing WWE 2K15 is already out on previous generation consoles with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions on the way and they sure have a LOT of graphics. I haven't played the game and never will; the WWE 2K games are the equivalent of taking two wrestling action figures and smashing them together in your hands. Wait no scratch that, they're more like telling your little brother how to smash the action figures together until eventually you both break down in tears from the bleakness of your own existence.

There's no doubt about it people, WWE 2K15 is god-awful, as was WWE 2K14, WWE 12 was embarrassing, wrestling games sure have sucked for a while now. This is normally the part where people start gushing with nostalgia regarding the old Nintendo 64 games or something, but to be honest I'm starting to question whether wrestling games have ever been good. But let's not get into that now.

Wrestling games often get dumped in with other sports franchises, especially with the WWE games being long established as a yearly franchise now and are also accompanied with all the stats and licensed crap you would expect from an official Madden or FIFA release. Here's where the problem with these games is rooted; "real" competitive sports are already games in themselves. Whether it's soccer, or tennis, or even something like Mixed Martial Arts or sumo wrestling, they all have set rules and the participants are attempting to win within said rules. So a videogame based on a competitive sport transfers nicely (most of them) into a competitive videogame where you take the same rules but replace the athletic participation with game mechanics. The design philosophy of both entities is identical, you have the same rules and everyone involved is still trying to win.

Professional wrestling however is it a different beast. Not to be the guy who tells kids that there's no Santa Claus, but wrestling isn't actually real and the vast majority of the fanbase understands that. So what you have is two (or more) participants pretending to have a competitive contest with a pre-determined result, but the actual goal is to work together to entertain the audience with the best match possible. This is not to say the audience doesn't care who wins or how, but wrestling uses dramatic elements from more conventional forms of storytelling to make you root for one character over another. Scripted elements and structured storytelling (when it's done right anyway) combine with the appeal of live entertainment and athleticism to create one of the most unique shows on the planet, and even though everyone knows it's "fake" it still works due to elements of realism that come from the personalities of the real-life performers. It's a lot of fun to get into when it's good, and just about as much fun to laugh at when it gets really stupid.

But here's where the contradiction of wrestling videogames comes in; at their core almost all of them are competitive multiplayer games, but they are simultaneously attempting to come off like the real thing. This has got out of control with the recent WWE games, there's an absurd amount of focus on replicating the real television show's camera angles, and in emulating specific chains of moves. Some grapple attacks actually include a sequence where your opponent counters you multiple times mid-animation with no input or control from either player. So what you end up with is basically a fighting game where both participants are trying to beat the other, but the rules and mechanics are defined by design principles that the game should emulate a staged contest where the emphasis is to entertain. A real fight (or even something cartoony like a Street Fighter fight) doesn't look anything like a wrestling match, no-one punches each other in the face for 45 minutes and keeps going on adrenaline fuelled comebacks. 

Here's the worst example from a recent game that I can come up with which illustrates this point. In WWE 2K14 (and to be honest, I'm just going to go ahead and assume this is still a problem in WWE 2K15) it is possible to completely curbstomp your opponent for the entirety of the match without taking any damage, receive a finisher for the momentum, have your finisher attempt countered which now gives your opponent full momentum, then get hit by a finisher and lose because the pinfall mini game is more difficult to beat after a finishing move. The thought behind this is that:

• The climax of a wrestling match should always be exciting and involve crucial reversals.
• A wrestlers marketed and long established finishing move should always be harder to recover from.
• If a wrestler attempts his finishing move, chances are it's a part of the climax so an attempt at a finisher by the other guy shouldn't be too far behind.

The result of this is you end up with scenarios that both fail to represent a real physical contest, a scripted wrestling match and the balance of a well-designed competitive videogame. I don't think it's any coincidence that the majority of the more fondly remembered wrestling games (the Nintendo 64 ones, the early Smackdown games, WWE All Stars) hold a closer resemblance to arcade button mashers than any kind of attempt at a "simulation". Most modern wrestling games try to walk the line between simulation and competitiveness, and the result is pretty much always complete garbage.

So what can be done to improve wrestling games and if not entirely remove, but at least subdue this fundamental contradiction? I think wrestling games need to focus more on what actually makes wrestling so fun in the first place, the personalities. Now, that's not to say I think there should be Guitar Hero minigames as you bash buttons in sequence with your wrestler spewing catchphrases in a backstage interview, but something can definitely be done to encourage the player not just to win but win in the coolest way possible.

The Smackdown series of games has dabbled with this in the past; in some versions mashing the punch button or reusing the same move over and over again will cause the crowd to boo you and take away your momentum. That's the kind of mentality we need more of! Only it needs to be plastered over the entire engine, imagine if instead of trying to reverse a guy when he tries to pick you off the floor, you're encouraged to wait until he has you to your foot when you can respond with a punch to the face because it gives you more momentum. Encourage combo attacks too, if you're Daniel Bryan and you dropkick someone out of the ring, then you sure as sugar should be wanting to go for an outside dive immediately following that. 

That's just more exciting I tell you! It's far more interesting than the reverse-fest farces the current games have turned into, and since wrestling matches usually feature a lot of moves it's going to require some re-education of the player to strip them of this problem. People who are still buying the WWE 2K games every year have been so mellowed out by its blandness by now I don't think they know how to feel things any more other than occasional rage.

Wrestling games simply need to embrace something like this to make them more special, they can't keep going for realism because that's not something wrestling is synonymous with in the first place. They need to become fighting/grappling games where the focus is on spectacle and drama. NOT the spectacle and drama of the television show, you can't recapture that and all attempts to so far have been embarrassing. Let the games breathe with their own special moments and interesting situations. 

I guess I'm referring to the same sort of drama that high level Street Fighter play has, where the excitement comes from crazy comebacks and micro stories regarding the players and the characters they pick which takes the audience on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs. Wrestling games could easily be encouraging their players to emulate that excitement in as many matches as possible. Wow, my idea of a perfect wrestling game is one that does what professional wrestling does to real fighting to other fighting games. That wasn't even intentional, but it's not really that surprising! 

Bottom line; drop the "it's just like the show!" stuff and make a real videogame already, gosh dang it.

Bayonetta 2 Review: Action games need to grow up

Okay, I am fully aware of what that title sounds like so I better address this particular issue right out of the gate. No, this is not going to be one of those reviews that tears Bayonetta 2 to pieces for oversexualization and attempting to appeal to 13-year old boys. For the record nothing in Bayonetta 2 was that gross in my opinion, quite frankly everything that was happening on the screen was too incomprehensible for me to gage how much the camera was or wasn't fixated on her butt. 

In all honesty I don't feel like its my place personally to weigh in too strongly either way on the "is Bayonetta sexist?" conversation. This is more of a damning critique of the industry as a whole than a defence of Bayonetta herself; but the fact that she's interesting enough for feminists to have such a lengthy dialogue about in the first place is a step up over most leading female characters in videogames. Don't get me wrong, that's kind of sad, but if you're going to get mad about treatment of female characters in videogames Bayonetta is nowhere near the best place to start that particular rampage.

Other than the fact I don't feel particularly qualified, I am glossing over the sexuality element of Bayonetta 2 for another reason. It's been talked about at length in a lot of reviews, and 'm really impressed about that and happy that more critics are taking their jobs a little more seriously. Having said that, I almost feel a little...betrayed by the critical reception of this game. Not necessarily because most critics disagree with me (although they do) but there's this kind of assumption that Bayonetta 2 does action perfectly, so they gloss over THAT to talk about there's multiple costumes and you can dress as Samus now or whatever.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why everyone loves these games so much. It's got a LOT of graphics, and the amount of stuff going on in terms of screen-filling bosses and scenery and just general HECK YEA on the screen running at a perfect 60 frames per second in Bayonetta 2 is nothing short of incredible. Bayonetta has a really solid feel to her when she's on the ground and makes it fun to give that old analog stick a twirl every now and then. The combat is made of an incredibly simple two button system (with a third button for guns/extra weapons), there's a lot of finesse built into it in terms of the ridiculous amount of moves you have and the combo potential but at the same time you can pretty much just chimp out on your buttons and still kill all the dudes just fine. There's also a single-button dodge move, which is a lot more self-explanatory than say, the parry system from Metal Gear Rising and literally anyone can get used to it pretty quickly. On top of that, all the big fights end in huge beautifully animated climaxes where Bayonetta uses her hair to drag demons out of Hell to rip the boss monstrosities to pieces (or whatever, this is probably inaccurate but I don't care).

In short, Bayonetta 2 feels great, it looks great, it rewards and encourages the player to master its combat while being easy and accessible enough so basically any noob can get through the core experience. It's big and beautiful enough to be a fun one-time romp for the more casual player and deep enough to ooze replay value out of perfectionists. In terms of rating the action by itself, this is definitely Platinum Games' best so far.

So why am I not feeling blown away by any of it?

I guess as far as the action is concerned, there's a lot of little reasons for that. The game is still stuck in the over-decade-old-now "corridors and locked circular rooms" design of Devil May Cry. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with this if the fighting is the main event of your game, but with Bayonetta 2 there's still not really a lot of spatial awareness required for the fighting. It doesn't matter where you are or where your enemies are, the ONLY challenge in terms of "not dying" is being able to use the dodge, if an enemy does an attack and you hit that dodge button, nothing else matters, you go into the "Witch Time" slow-mo and get a couple of free seconds to pound on dudes. There is something about this that makes the game seem a little more brainless to me, when the game doesn't care about where I am or what I'm doing really and will constantly reward me for being to time one button press I feel like it's more okay to not really try. I mean, I'm not dying, I'm killing all the guys, I'm fairly consistently getting Gold and sometimes even Platinum medals for what I'm doing,  why not just keep on facerolling on my buttons there?

The dodge mechanic in general is what I find the most interesting about all this, at least in terms of why people LOVE this game so much. Because I noticed a lot in the second half of the game where I actually kind of knew what I was doing, the dodge move is really deceptively forgiving. In the tutorial the game informs you that you only go into "Witch Time" if you dodge at the last possible moment, and I think this is a deliberate lie to make the player feel more badass. Don't get me wrong Bayonetta 2, I know I'm awesome and everything, but there is NO WAY I am dodging at the "last possible moment" 90% of the time, half the time when I don't know what the enemy I'm fighting even is I'm just hitting it at random and getting similar results. Also I noticed that the game still actives Witch Time even if the attack you're "dodging" was going to miss you anyway, this includes projectiles and other-obviously-visible-super-easy to avoid stuff. Most of the time, there's going to be a cluster of attacks on screen, either from a boss going crazy or just a gang of regular (okay this game doesn't really do "regular", but common) enemies, and if you just happen to smash that dodge button next to one of them the game will reward you for it and call you AWESOME as it does that.

One last little moan on this, you know the part where I said the dodge mechanic is the ONLY skill to the combat as far as "not dying" is concerned? (Disclaimer: There is a lot more going on in the combat other than "not dying") Well that makes it all the more annoying when you can't dodge certain enemies because they're just a bizarre mesh of stuff that you don't know where they start or end or what their idea of an "attack" would even be. I think I died about six times during my first playthrough, and I'm going to say 3 of those where because I got curb-stomped by a visually confusing overdesigned pile of crap. I think it says a lot about this game (or maybe more about my own personal tastes in general) that for all the visually stunning theme park ride-esque screen-filling rollercoaster battles in Bayonetta 2, my personal two favourite fights were against a humanoid Sage who is the same size as you.

Running through the game and mostly ignoring stuff like the challenge rooms took me about 10 hours, and do you know what makes up 2 out of those 10 hours? CUTSCENES.

NO. STOP. Do not run to the comments section, or scream at me on Twitter that "the cutscenes don't matter" or "they're supposed to be dumb" or "don't you know you can skip them IDIOT?!" I know all these things, but I just don't care. Listen up jerks, 2 hours is about the length of feature length film, that's a feature length films worth of dialogue and storyboards someone had to come up with. They took work, a LOT of work, they're the glue which is the only hope this game has of giving its endless parade of locked rooms where you fight huge monsters any context whatsoever. Their inclusion and their quantity were both directorial decisions, they are a key part of the presentation and the experience the designers wanted you to have. Insisting that they should be ignored or forgiven because you can skip them is not just a cop-out, to the people at Platinum it's flat out insulting.

Maybe not as insulting as this though; they suck. And let's be clear here; I'm talking power surge at the Dyson factory levels of sucking. Even for videogames, no back up on that, even for Japanese 3D Action Games Translated into English these are embarrassingly awful. For example, in the opening cutscene, Bayonetta is hanging out with her comic relief fat Italian stereotype (who appears to yell "FUGGEDABOUTIT" at complete random) and shenanigans occur where she wrecks his Christmas shopping. In response to dropping a whole batch of stuff the Italian stereotype says "Ugh, this is why I can't have good things!" 

Wait, hold the phone. "This is why I can't have....good things?" Okay granted, this isn't necessarily grammatically incorrect or anything, but it's instantly jarring to the brains of anyone who speaks English as a first language because no-one says that ever. I don't expect that the original Japanese script is a work of art or anything, but at this point of the game I was already in dread that maybe this entire game had been translated in a day, perhaps by someone who majored in hieroglyphics or something. But I kid you not, twice in the next 15 minutes the same character actually says "This is why I can't have nice things."

So what happened here? Did the script editor seriously not notice the obvious "good things" error in translation on the first line? Did he/she not care? Was he/she just embarrassed that the same terrible line appears three times in the span of 15 minutes and just changed one of them at the last minute even though it sounds wrong? Didn't the voice actor stop in the booth and ask "wait...good things? What?" You may be thinking this is a bizarre and insignificant little nitpick to dedicate two entire paragraphs too, but I think it's the best way to communicate how awful these scenes are because there is no way I can provide any kind of summarisation of how stupid the story is without playing the game four more times and melting my brain into soup. I also hate how all the characters are potty-mouthed for no reason whatsoever. If you can't write anything good or don't even want to try, at least go for a campy sense of light-heartedness like God Hand did, don't just riddle the script with curses in an attempt to make the game appear more mature. If there's anything worse than bad writing, it's a 13 year olds attempt at good writing. 

Also for whatever reason half the cutscenes in the game aren't even animated properly, they're just kind of awkward still while the camera pans around the character models as they talk dribble. I don't know if they ran out of time or money, or just felt that these scenes were SO IMPORTANT that they had to appear in the game in some form even if they couldn't do them properly. I refuse to believe it was any kind of artistic decision though, they just look dumb when they're juxtaposed against the proper cutscenes and balls out insanity of the core gameplay, and they attempt to do slapstick humour in them. SLAPSTICK. IN A GOD-DAMNED SLIDESHOW. You can't do that!

Chances are if you love the Bayonetta games, or are a fan of Platinum Games in general, you don't care about any of this, but I care! You know why I care? Because this game is GORGEOUS; it's got at least 1000 of those ps and it's running at a solid 60 frames per second and almost every location is jaw droppingly beautiful. I want to like the characters! I want to know what all these places are, why we're there and care about what happens next. I want to understand what I'm fighting and why, and I want to have some kind of context and investment in the gigantic boss battles so I feel twice as awesome when I beat them. Instead, as beautiful as it is, without the context or any effort to offer some I see the game for what is actually is; a bunch of corridors and locked rooms in random locations. It doesn't HAVE to be like this!

Ultimately, making your story and world "intentionally awful" or "ironic" or "lol so dumb" or whatever your choice of phrase for this particular thing is just shielding yourself from criticism and more importantly; shielding the player from getting sucked into your game. By the second half of the game I wasn't just rolling my eyes at the cutscenes, I was actively starting to hate them for being so bad, and for making this beautiful world inaccessible to me.

Making the world inaccessible does have negative gameplay effects too. Earlier on I was humblebragging about how more often than not I would get Gold medals or higher for combat sections, but I rarely got ratings this high for the level overall. Why? Because there are optional combat scenes that are off the beaten path, and if you miss them you'll have a blank space in your end of level rating and it'll screw the whole thing up. Okay, these are there to add replay value and appeal to hardcore players without forcing them upon the casual player who just wants to get to the end of the game, got it. But honestly, what kind of action game design is this? This is the kind of game steaming with invisible walls and perceived linearity, but you actively punish me for not bumbling around this wasteland to randomly get attacked by angels for the sake of "perfecting" the level?

This is the kind of thing I am sick of, every single one of these god-damned character action games does something like this. In Devil May Cry 4 I was smashing pews and chairs one at a time for Devil Blood because the game would yell at me if I didn't find enough orbs, in Metal Gear Rising they crowbarred in some bonus backtracking, and now in Bayonetta 2 I am supposed to be randomly running around in wastelands just waiting to get attacked and checking every nook and cranny while praying to god that I don't accidentally miss one. Knock it off with the kleptomania nonsense already! Why even have "hidden" battles when you already have entirely optional and extensive challenge rooms, as well as multiple difficulty settings? Don't get me wrong, this is a problem with the genre in general and not a stab at Bayonetta 2, and even though it's nowhere near as bad as that pew-smashing garbage in Devil May Cry 4 it's almost more annoying here because the action is some of the best out there. Your game is really fun! Have fun with the fact that your game is fun!

This is what I was referring to about action games needing to grow up. Why is it constantly assumed that if I want to play an action game then I'm some dumb jerk who wants it to come packaged in some fifth-rate anime dribble with some gift-wrapping of superfluous design to go with it. Is Bayonetta 2 top of its class in the 3D character action genre right now? Absolutely. Have 3D character action games hit their potential? NOT EVEN SORT OF, and it still feels like we're glued to the shortcomings the first Devil May Cry game made 13 years old and I am so tired of it. Can we please just have one action game that is kind of not dumb? Or at the very least coherent?

Consider this more of a stance of "we can do so much better" on action games in general rather than a critical slaughtering of Bayonetta 2. I had fun with Bayonetta 2, I'll probably boot it up again some time in the future and have some more fun with it, and if you've got a Wii U then OF COURSE it comes recommended! I mean why do you even have one of those if you're not going to buy this game? My point is not to knock Bayonetta 2 and I'm not saying it's not a good game, it just bugs me this sort of thing is confused for a masterpiece just because it looks and feels nice, no other genre in videogames has standards this low (other than the WWE games maybe)! I still say the game is not better than God Hand or Spartan Total Warrior, two imperfect wonderful games steaming with good ideas and solutions to a lot of what I've complained about in this piece...that were completely ignored by almost everyone...

*sigh* 

Debunking "Objective Reviews"

It's been a month now since the infamous "Zoë Post" and GamerGate continues to roll on, continuing to threaten the sanity of every games journalist on the planet. We're not here to take personal shots (or "censor") at the movement right now though, but rather to tackle one of their issues head on.

We're here to talk about "objective videogame reviews", something that has come up again and again within the GamerGate hashtag. Now, I will point out that a lot of people posting on the hashtag claim they want objective news and reporting and agree that reviews are better off as subjective pieces. To those people; fair enough! Granted, people a lot smarter than me have pointed out in recent weeks that objectivity really isn't a positive thing for journalists to strive for and often leads to misinformation. For a crash course example check out John Oliver's take on climate change which gives a great visual example of how "objectivity" is inherently misleading. 

But we're not here to talk about that, OBJECTIVE REVIEWS, even before GamerGate there were rumblings of people thinking that they should be a thing...or that it's even possible for them to be a thing. In an attempt to understand the agenda of people using the GamerGate hashtag, Jenni Goodchild created a poll of questions regarding common GG topics to gather up as many responses as possible, and one of the topics was about "objective reviews". I'd like the thank Jenni for her work, because without her spelunking into the dark depths of that hashtag for me there's no way I would have had the patience to not immediately rage quit this piece during researching. 

You can read all of her findings regarding GamerGate here. 

I have read through every single response she gathered on the topic of "objective reviews" and have separated four common arguments within them that are actually worth responding to. The responses were mostly anonymous, but all quotes in this piece are from the responses in the above link.

 Okay full disclosure; there was also a "fifth" argument regarding reviewers not sleeping around/taking money but most of those responses were grounded in personal insults and slander so I'm choosing not to address them. Obviously a developer/publisher exchanging money to get a positive review is a bad thing, but let's keep the conspiracy theories and arguments about "corruption" involving non-existent reviews out of it yea?

Anyway, let's tackle the four kinds of arguments for why websites should strive for "OBJECTIVE REVIEWS":

1) Fear of politics and/or agendas in reviews

"I think the “objective gamer reviews” idea has a bit of a range with people satisfied with having disclosure of any personal/financial connections, those who just want gameplay/technical details, those who want to avoid politics (having to be PC) when they play games, etc."

"For me an object game review is simply a review that covers both the good and bad aspects of a game e.g. graphics, game play, story etc. No agendas to be pushed i.e. let the customer weight up the pros and cons."

Okay, so to break down the argument, politics should be left out of game reviews because it's unprofessional for the writer to impose his/her political feelings on the reader; and that their job is strictly to articulate a game's core quality as fairly as possible and leave the matter of politics up to the consumer.

I don't really follow this argument for three reasons. First, politics are, no doubt, likely to affect a reviewer's opinion in some form. When you ask the writer to not mention any kind of opinion that could be deemed "political" you are asking them to throw away part of their own feelings on a game and instead make assumptions on what the "reader" (which is a lot of people) want, which if you ask me can only lead to dishonest writing that neither the writer or reader can put any confidence in.

Secondly this argument seems to assume that by a writer interjecting their own personal politics into a review they are somehow forcing them onto the reader. If you really can't stand a particular reviews tone, or that you feel it's coming from a position that you personally can't relate to; that's fine! You can find another review to read, for pretty much any mainstream release there's literally dozens if not hundreds of alternatives. It's your choice whether you want to go elsewhere for a review, in my opinion you should read multiple reviews of games anyway, but this isn't in any way an argument for the review you disagree with to not exist. And furthermore; let's say for example, someone writes a mostly positive 9/10 review of, I don't know, let's say Grand Theft Auto V, and it has a paragraph or two in it raising concerns about the treatment of female characters. If you personally couldn't care less about this topic (and if so, feel free to NOT follow me on Twitter) then clearly this paragraph isn't relevant to you...so ignore it. Why does it offend you that this paragraph exist, why must every syllable of a review be catered to specifically YOU?

As for my third point, well let's talk about it after reading this little gem of a response:

"(We want) Game reviews that focus on artistical and technological merits vs execution of concept. Politics are superfluous commentary. Gaming is apolitical."

 Okay WOW. So my third and final point is basically against the assumption that politics are inserted by reviewers and not a part of the core game design itself. Listen up champ; game developers are affected by their personal backgrounds (as we ALL are), games get funded by publishers because they're likely to sell, and advertised to target markets whose politics and outlook on the world are part of what products they choose to consume. Story writers have politics, game designers have politics, advertisers have politics and the market has politics. Games have overtaken movies as the biggest entertainment industry in the world, they are a part of pop culture, not only do they play a part in moulding how we think they themselves are moulded by how we think. To assume that games are stuck in this bubble and that nothing they have to say matters both highlight your ignorance about how art and entertainment is made and your lack of respect for videogames in general. 

For further reading on how literally all of videogame design is political, check out this recent Midnight Resistance piece on the subject. 

Before we move on, here's a brief example off the top of my head about how leaving politics out of reviews can make them less informative. Let's take David Cage's latest emotional wasteland of a videogame Beyond: Two Souls, one of the most bafflingly terrible games ever made. In an attempt to "emotionally connect" with the audience, the game has multiple scenes that involve some kind of attempt of sexual violence or rape upon the main character Jodie. Now, maybe you personally aren't offended by this treatment of a female character or cheap usage of rape imagery, but the fact that this game's attempt at an "emotional story" uses them so frequently is a key point to mention in why it doesn't work. Cage regularly throws violence and rape at his main character to attempt to make the player uncomfortable because it's the best he can do, he's deliberately throwing out these sensitive issues to manipulate the audience into having a response because of lack of investment in the story or characters. If you argue that a reviewer shouldn't discuss this because "rape is bad" is too political of a point for you to tolerate, you're forcing the reviewer to overlook something that highlights so many of the game's core problems. 

You're essentially demanding less honest and less complete reviews.

2) Not Knowing What "Objective" Means

"An opinion piece makes it personal. A review shouldn't be personal. If you want an opinionated piece on a game, so be it but don´t destroy a game with a bad score because you as a reviewer didn’t like something." 

"A review has to be objective. As games is a interactive and complex media, the experience vary, therefore can only be an opinion."

"When the reviewer goes beyond that and starts interjecting personal biases, the review itself becomes less objective.” 

"By “Objective” reviews, we are asking for Game Journalists such as myself, to review video games fairly, without bias or outside influence."

 Do I even have to say anything here? I mean look at these responses, I've read the second one like 80 times and I still have no idea what the guy is talking about. Nevertheless, I think we can cover this one quickly.

The problem is these people are saying that a review shouldn't reflect a personal experience, but when you play through a videogame what do you have but a personal experience? There's no "objective" good narrative or good writing, maybe you can argue there's objective functional writing or game design or whatever, but that's definitely not the same thing as "good". 

You have to understand that reviewing a game without "bias or personal influence" is IMPOSSIBLE. There's nothing in the world you could say that would convince me it's possible. Hell, what kind of controller a reviewer uses while playing through a game can be considered a personal bias, and that's without diving into the muddy waters of taste and education and politics etc. Some graphical styles will look artsy to some and crap to other, some people will hate how a game feels and others will love it, some people feel ripped off by a game that's five hours long others feel that most games are way too god-damned long anyway. All a reviewer can do is try to take their personal time with a game and articulate their experience in the most useful way possible. Pretty much everyone will have a different experience with a videogame; hence why I recommend reading multiple reviews and following writers you personally identify with!

“This is a bit of subjective thing. I think that one of the problems is you have people with strong opinions expressing themselves in reviews, which is fine, but gamers aren’t looking for that. They’re looking to be informed. Here’s a potential analogy. Imagine you’re reading the review for a product, for example a toy on Amazon, and you run across one that starts off with a rant about how the toy cultivates unhealthy representations of gender to children, but ends with some minor issues with the toy’s joints, stickers, etc. The next review just details the issues without an opinion on what the toy represents. As a toy collector, I’m more interested in the second than the first review.”

Wait, how can any review be objective if the concept of objectivity itself is subjective, wait that doesn't make any sense...oh...my brain...I feel kind of dizzy of a sudden. 

But I'm glad you made an analogy about toys though, that leads us nicer into the next category. You guys scroll down to that I'm just...gonna just sit down a bit over here...

3) HEY! Games are about the GAMEPLAY man

“When we say objective game reviews we mean that. Some of us believe a “game” cannot be described as a whole but as a sum of all it´s parts. Story, music, graphics, control, gameplay… It´s the whole deal or nothing. Pretty much what happens with movies. When a “biased review” happens is when they disregard all of the other elements inside a game for one thing a reviewer doesn´t like. You have probably heard about polygon´s infamous Dragon´s Crown review, which many of us see it as unfair.”

“Not really, unless I could find magazine articles from the 90s. I can outline one for you though, it’s pretty simple; no lifestyle oriented nonsense, all the available facts about it, all the technical aspects, from performance to music to writing to art – without any ‘this art is sexist and offensive because i say so’ nonsense.

“Well, I don’t. But if I did, I’d say it’d be a review that focuses exclusively on things that are without debate. “This game runs at a solid 60FPS,” “This game has accurate and responsive controls,” “This game is buggy to the point that it hinders the experience.””

“i would prefer reviews to make a clear separation between critique of mechanics and cultural analysis. total biscuit does this pretty decently"

Admittedly I'm probably failing, but I am trying to not be a jerk in this piece, but aren't these just the most boring people in the world? I kind of want to record these quotes in Microsoft Sam and sell the audio on iTunes as a cure for insomnia.

First things first, videogames aren't dishwashers okay. They shouldn't be reviewed as pieces of technology, a game being technically functional should be a standard not a main focus of a review. I'm not saying that a game being technically non-functional isn't worth mentioning because it definitely is, but seriously, this is all you care about?! 

"A review that focuses exclusively on thing that are without debate" this isn't a review then. That's a list of features you stick on the back of the box, or maybe in a press release. If you seriously can't handle critical analysis more complicated than back-of-the-box quotes in your reviews then you should probably just give up on reading anything forever. 

We covered the political/cultural analysis part in the political segment. All game design is political, for most games you can't separate art/mechanics/story/politics and still give an accurate summation of the product. YOU CAN'T.

And then there's the concept of breaking games down into graphics/sound/story/gameplay/replay value whatever. Yes, this is what videogame reviews mostly did in the 90s, and guess what, most videogame reviews in the 90s were terrible! Once again, it's pretty insulting and shows lack of understanding for the creation process that some people believe a good review is one that breaks a product down into the sum of its parts.

For example; if I hire the best level design, best story writer, best composer and best artist in the world, lock them in separate rooms for two years with no communication to one another, then by "sum of their parts" review logic they would still make the best game ever made. If this example makes even a lick of sense to you please refrain from eating any more paint immediately. 

Whether you consider videogames to be an artform, braindead popcorn munching entertainment or somewhere inbetween, surely we can all agree that they are experiences. A review should be about that experience, not coldly and mechanically breaking the product down into arbitrary categories. A bad ending can completely ruin an otherwise decent two hour movie for someone, a videogame can be incredibly janky and still connect with a lot of people (Deadly Premonition), good points like hot graphics can become entirely irrelevant if they don't gel with the rest of the game, and giving the game "bonus points" for it would be silly and dishonest. Criticism is not as easy as some of you guys seem to think it is! We have to actually think about this stuff a lot. 

4) The Youtubers

“Probably the best one would be Angry Joe. His reviews are as objective as you can be without becoming a robot. “

"If you look at any of TotalBiscuits ‘WTF Is’ videos on Youtube or if you remember what IGN’s reviews were like 5 years ago (but certainly not anymore).”

“Any review provided by Youtubers such as Jimmy BGaming, ProJared, ReviewzoneHD, ThatOneVideogamer and many others. Some like JonTron and Lord Karnage provide comedy while still being insightful and objective.”

This isn't really a rebuttal to an argument but rather something interesting I noticed within these responses. In her gathering of opinions, one of Jenni's questions in the "objective review" category was asking for an existing example of what GamerGate would consider an objective review. Most responses didn't really answer the question; either posting "I can't think of one right now" or praising their favourite Youtubers. Seriously, almost no writers were mentioned, just a barrage of Youtube personalities.

This is interesting because Youtubers don't really identify as journalists usually, and most games journalists consider themselves in a different business to Youtubers. This is not a comment against Youtube content, because I personally am I fan of some of the personalities quoted above, but I think this highlights a core problem within GamerGate itself. 

Without going into the whole harassment campaign and misogyny stuff, my personal biggest frustration with GamerGate has been the lack of understanding and almost childlike ignorance of how games journalism actually works. Common misconceptions of how freelancing works, or what the relationship between journalists and developers/publishers are, or relationships between journalists themselves are constantly in the background eating away at the credibility of GamerGate arguments.

I guess I'm just highlighting how unsurprising I find it that most GamerGaters seem to follow Youtubers and can't actually list any examples of writers they enjoy...probably because they don't pay too much attention to games journalism in general. This seems to be one of the boundaries between journalists and GamerGaters and is probably where a lot of the culture divide comes from. 

Wrapping It Up

I've made it clear by now that I find the concept of "objective reviews" hilariously silly, and the arguments for them seem to come from people who don't want to discuss games at all. Look, you don't have to be invested in videogames beyond viewing them as a toy or a timewaster, but that doesn't mean game reviews should be filtered down to cold analysis of mechanics and feature lists. 

A lot of the fear seems to come from this idea that a journalist will use their political disagreement with a videogame to duck a games score and hurt its Metacritic...thus lowing sales and taking those games out of the market entirely. I feel dumber just for typing that out, but this fear once again shows his misguided a lot of GamerGate is. Take Duke Nukem Forever for example, the game was almost universally panned as a shooter and offended "social justice" writers by having a god-damned rape cave in it as well as generally being a tasteless, misogynistic and unfunny waste of time. Regardless, the game still has a 51 on Metacritic! Why? Because it says "Duke Nukem" on the box, and some people like that about it.

The point is if your fears are about review scores being imbalanced or Metacritic having too much influence within the industry, then your angst against "political" writers is solely misplaced and these issues are far bigger than that. 

In conclusion, find writers and publications you identify with and speak to your interests. Read multiple reviews, get alternative perspectives, find out what matters to you about videogames and hey maybe in that process you'll find out what matters to some other people at the same time and grow as a person! But don't try and argue the ongoing and increasingly intellectual discussions about videogames should go away...or even be moved out of your sight for you. 

Videogames grow as an industry every year, and eventually the exclusionary "gamer" culture bubble is going to pop and you'll have to let everyone in to play with your toys. May as well get ready for it!

Videogames and Catharsis: The Benefits Of Being An Online Jerk

When "catharsis" was revealed to be topic of this particular edition of the Critical Distance Blogs of the Round Table I initially thought I would have to sit this round out or show myself up for the hack that I truly up. The last time I entered a blog into BoRT I annoyed Alan Williamson by implying the Sega Mega Drive controller was a bit rubbish, imagine how much I could screw up a topic that requires discussion of emotional release and problem solving. When I actually sat down and thought about it however, I realised how perfect of a topic this is for me. Videogames have been a source of catharsis for me my entire life, and ever since online gaming became a major thing they've probably become the main source.

In order to get you up to speed regarding myself ASAP here's a little nugget of information; I have Borderline Personality Disorder. Actually, "borderline" is considered to be a little bit of an old hat term these days, apparently the more modern term of choice is "Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder". CHRIST. As if the stigma regarding mental health issues wasn't bad enough! Even I want kind of wanted to lock myself up after hearing that for the first time. Anyway, before you call the cops on me here's a passage taken from the Wikipedia page on BPD just in case you don't know what it is:

"...symptoms usually include intense fears of abandonment and intense anger and irritability, the reason for which others have difficulty understanding. People with BPD often engage in idealization and devaluation of others, alternating between high positive regard and great disappointment."

The short version of that particular passage is "I don't deal with people well." As I've "matured" (if you can even call it that) I've found far more comfort in spending a lot of time by myself. That's not to say I don't care about people, in fact I would probably be a lot happier if I didn't, but I have to make sure I don't put myself in situations where I don't get overwhelmed by them. By far the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life was to move in with FIVE other people during my third year of university. Yes, I can't believe it either, FIVE of them. The truth is they were five decently well-mannered people, but to me it was like living inside a mosh pit for a year. I mean, what if I'm having a day were I'll just scream if I see a real human being and I need to go to the bathroom? I have to assess the situation so my morning schedule doesn't clash with FIVE other people, or do what I actually did which was to deliberately ruin my sleep patterns and be awake to go to the bathroom at 3/4 in the morning instead. This really didn't have anything to do with the particular people I was living with, it's just the fact that they were people. 

This is where online videogames come in; assuming that most people you're playing with aren't using microphones (and I've been predominately a PS3 player this generation, so they're relatively rare) most online games involve two or more people interacting with each other purely through an avatar. Granted, people still find ways to act like a dick through these limitations, whether it's rage-quitting, teabagging or sending over some hate mail, but the point is they are mostly stripped of their humanity within this environment. What I'm saying is, no matter how big of a jerk you are online, I'm far less likely to get stressed out by a Nathan Drake avatar thrusting at me than a real human being.

I find it helpful that there is always an opportunity for me to interact with other people without the need to engage with them intellectually or emotionally. I go through semi-regular periods of withdrawal, where it's just best for me to lock myself in a dark room and get on with whatever needs getting on with, but it's important to not completely detach yourself from the world. And hey, it's the topic of the roundtable and it's been tiptoed around so far so I'll just come out and say it; it's pretty cathartic to be able to shoot people in the face when you're having a bad day. 

It doesn't always work though; game choice is pretty important depending on what mood I'm in. For example, I'm pretty fond of The Last of Us' multiplayer, it definitely feels like a tacked on feature in a lot of ways but there genuinely are a lot of really neat ideas in it. The problem, or rather the complication for me, is that these neat ideas are mostly based around the idea of working together as a team, which involves trusting other people. There's a mode in it called "Interrogation", which is basically the game's equivalent of capture the bag. The premise is you wound members of the opposing team to "down" them, and then when a safe opportunity presents itself you mount them to interrogate them. If your team does this successfully five times you find the location of the opposing team's safe and first to unlock that wins the game. 

It's a great idea for a mode, and it can really spark up a "let's GET 'EM BOYS" sort of comradery with your teammates when it all gels together. But when it doesn't work, oh boy does it not work, when I shoot down a guy and some waste of flesh on my team deliberately caps him in the head to steal points for himself and screw the team over...let's just say this is part of the reason why two of my controllers don't really work properly any more. This is the general flaw of online multiplayer in general, and I don't think there's been a game that's overcome it entirely, no matter how tight and polished your mechanics are they can be DESTROYED by pure stupidity. If I'm in a bad mood and this happens this can be a mood killer for an entire evening, I mean I'm already playing this game in the first place to escape people and now they're infiltrating my online space to ruin even this for me. It doesn't help that getting killed in The Last Of Us involves the opposing player's avatar mounting you and viciously smashing your skull against the concrete as you particularly feel the shockwaves tingle up your arm, basically a perfect metaphor for how I'm feeling around that point. 

That's worse case scenario though, here's a much more optimistic example. I was messing around on Grand Theft Auto Online recently (messing around is pretty much all you can do on it due to barely functional matchmaking, but that's a different topic in itself) and there was a kid on microphone who couldn't have possibly been any older than 13. Some other (adult) guy was so offended by his Mickey Mouse voice and too clueless to figure out how to mute him that he just HAD to plug in his own microphone and verbally abuse this kid. Eventually it got to the point where he was threatening to stab the kid while asking him questions about where he lived, causing the kid to get audibly upset. I took it upon myself at this moment to ruin this guy's time as much as possible, messing with his objectives and running over him whenever I could get an easy shot in, which conveniently agitated him enough to forget about the kid.

Hey look at that! When it comes to GTA online I am literally a social justice warrior! Maybe that's a little much, probably more like a social justice troll, but justice is justice!

Here's the thing though, the fact that through the medium of videogames I was able to slightly ruin this one jerk's night probably momentarily deflated any stress or frustration I had been harbouring at that time, and personally I think that's a pretty healthy way of dealing with it!  Find online videogames that you personally enjoy, and when the jerks inevitably pop up out-jerk them in the funniest way possible. 

So that's my personal source of catharsis as far as videogames are concerned; using on-screen avatars to interact with people in a meaningless and harmless environment. Even with these limitations, the fact that most games have some kind of strategy or etiquette attached to them still gives the people you meet potential to either be really cool or really lame. This gives an outlet to feel some kind of comradery with the former, and appropriately screw with the latter. Both can be a source of releasing stress, and perhaps learning to hate people a little less. 

Even if you don't agree with this let's just end on this; all of this is DEFINITELY a better idea than going on Twitter.