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Post by kitten on Jul 2, 2011 23:02:32 GMT -5
Oh, Kirby. Never a challenge, but always a treat. Clearly, you haven't played the true arena on super star ultra  |
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Post by kitten on Jul 1, 2011 12:14:17 GMT -5
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 21:58:49 GMT -5
I played a -ton- of Doom on XBLA both by myself and with friends (completing it on ultra violence solo), and I never once had it freeze. It seemed like a really good port, to me!
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 20:24:02 GMT -5
It was only 600 points while on sale...  |
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 19:03:40 GMT -5
Well I can't recall a single headline about the Olsen twins ever dating anyone, let alone being sluts, so the joke is already off to a bad start. They're more known for not eating anything and even then, that's only one of them. Are you kidding? They're widely regarded as incredibly slutty. Google "olsen twins slutty." There's 1,300,000 results, among them being compared to "most slutty celebrities." Or Google "olsen twins porn," where you get 2,160,000 results. Their promiscuity has been a huge gossip trend for years, now. There was huge buzz about one of them going to give Heath Ledger a "massage" before his suicide, too. Alien impregnation has been a popular theme in science fiction for decades, and the "executions" are just mercy kills. Duke says things like "you're better off this way" and "she wasn't even human anymore" in remorseful tones when you shoot them each and every time you do, and sometimes he just makes a distressed wail. If it makes you uncomfortable, I understand, but there's nothing insidious going on with the game. Pretty much every woman in the game wants to fuck Duke, and every man in the game wants to be Duke (many die imitating him in funny manners). It's a game built entirely revolving around the ego of a satirical macho man meant to poke fun at action heroes. |
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 17:49:23 GMT -5
I have yet to play Shadows, but perhaps it's a case of people feeling that the execution isn't as refined as in No More Heroes. This often happens when a quirky creator gets more freedom on a later project. I definitely would not say it's any less refined. They're captured and impregnated by aliens. The same thing happened in DN3D. If you kill them, Duke does say remorseful things, too, which many reviewers neglected to include in their scathing criticisms of the game (and you kind-of need to kill them considering they explode into octababies). I never said Duke Nukem was feminist, it's most certainly not, but I implied a feminist can still enjoy the humor. The problem most people have with the game is when the Holsem twins, who are very clearly obnoxious parodies of the Olson twins, get joked about as being "fucked" (a double entendere regarding the fact they were impregnated by aliens and that they're, well, "fucked") by Duke before they explode into alien babies. It's so ridiculous and silly that I can't believe so many people are upset by it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqNm9OS3BQ#t=01m50sSkip to 1:50 for the scene ( Edited it so it should take you there). Sure, it's in bad taste. The game clearly knows it is, that's part of why it's funny. There's no rape joke, it's just implied the Holsem twins actually had sex with aliens (which is supposed to parody how slutty the actual Olson twins are). It's literally the very worst the game ever gets on terms of offensive humor, and if you've ever enjoyed Aliens or action hero movies, I'm sure you can find it within yourself to deal with a combination parody of the two of them where the protagonist is a chauvinistic, titty-obsessed, steroid-abusing "badass." It's the nature of a satire to use exaggerated caricatures, and I don't see Duke really doing anything wrong. Duke, himself, is clearly sexist, but that's part of the joke - the men in the game aren't exactly painted very positively, either. |
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 15:33:39 GMT -5
Yeah, I got it during the sale. I'm really surprised by the quality of it. It starts off pretty basic, but gets surprisingly complex and engaging (though only very rarely at all difficult).
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 14:32:48 GMT -5
you know what? plants vs zombies is good
you wanna fide aboud id?
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 14:17:53 GMT -5
I used phrases like "artificially inflating" and "make it worse." I'm definitely in agreement it's a bad idea, I was just pointing out why I assume they did it. From what I understand, all of the maps and characters are from other games, too. It's just a lazy piece of shit for people who loved that game mode, and selling it is only going to further descend Capcom into doing shit like this.
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 14:04:30 GMT -5
The internet seems really divided on whether or not DNF is actually misogynistic, with people who identify as feminist sometimes finding themselves staunchly arguing one side or the other. Personally, I believe the game was far too outrageous and aware of its ridiculousness to be considered misogynist. The characters are all too caricatured to be considered misogynist portrayals - the fact they're all called "babes" and less referred to as "women" should be some indication that the game itself and the people who made it all realize these characters are not actual portrayals of remotely realistic women. I can understand arguments accusing DNF of being in bad taste, but it's really not misogynist, and it portrays itself in no worse a way than DN3D did, back in the day. And I don't think No More Heroes went for outright shock value like Shadows did. It was more subtle about things, for the most part. Not to sound prudish; I don't MIND that kind of humor, but there's good and bad ways of using it. Wait? More subtle? Are you kidding me? Did you happen to forget how you recharge your beam sabers in that game? Not only does Travis simulate male masturbation, but the player is meant to join in doing the same. Nothing in Shadows of the Damned makes the player involved in doing something that silly (don't get me wrong, I like "silly" a lot). You also save by taking a shit in No More Heroes, and there's a point in the game where Sylvia treats your beam saber like it's a penis and then kisses it, only for it to turn on after that. I'm not saying that No More Heroes didn't have subtleties that made it great (SotD has them, too), but that game had a bunch of very raunchy humor no more ridiculous than what's in Shadows of the Damned. It's really peculiar for me to see someone turning down SotD for being "tacky," but otherwise being a fan of Suda51's work. |
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 13:29:53 GMT -5
Given that they're selling a bonus mode from a game as a stand-alone entity, they had to do something to artificially inflate the replay value and make it look like they weren't just taking money from your pockets. Good thing that what they did was just make it worse! |
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 13:24:55 GMT -5
I'm afraid the rape analogy is making me drop out of this argument.
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 4:29:41 GMT -5
Are there any big businesses you actually like? I used to like both Capcom and Konami a very great deal. Aside from that, no, not really. I enjoy some services and products from big companies a very great deal, though! |
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 4:25:42 GMT -5
I guess I can't argue with this, but I can at least ask one question: why do they HAVE to? I'd prefer a lot of Japanese game design stay the same, but I think it's very obvious that's not enough to keep it alive, as most of the big names in Japan have realized (unfortunately, in realizing so, they seem to spend all their money poorly imitating western games, rather than trying to be one step ahead of them). Some of my favorite genres are defined by classic Japanese titles, like Contra, Gradius, Mega Man and countless others. Out of my top 10 favorite games, only one is Western, and 3 of the Eastern titles were developed in the last 3 years. Like I said, there are still some things I love about modern Japanese titles, and I still very much love the classics. However, Japan only making the odd game I love here and there is not indicative of how they've been doing on the whole, which is embarrassingly poorly. Too bad they're doing an awful job! Games you used as examples like El Shaddai and Gravity Daze both have clearly rudimentary, dated, poor combat that fails to be on-par with western juggernauts like the God of War series. Shmups have taken a huge nose-dive in quality from their halcyon days (and become infected with smut), and westerners have really taken over in making better platformers and action games. If they were just making old genres better, I'd sure love to see all the great new run 'n guns, action-platformers and platformers coming out of Japan - but they don't exist. Many revivals of classic titles are being handed to Western developers, too, and in some cases, like Bionic Commando Rearmed, they're doing better than the Japanese themselves could even do anymore. Westerners are not just outdoing the Japanese in genres they defined, they're outdoing them even in their very own series. Westerners seem more interested in preserving classics than the Japanese do, honestly. |
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Post by kitten on Jun 29, 2011 3:24:31 GMT -5
Unless it's translated into English and I'm given a free copy, there's almost no way on Earth this is possibly going to happen. I don't see anything at all even remotely interesting about this game, and the art design is that of which I despise about anime, today. It doesn't help it falls into the stupid trope of every character needing to be a high schooler. It also has an evil teddy bear that looks completely asinine (I don't understand what it is with Japan these days and evil things that look borderline cute/innocent) and a couple token fetish characters like a maid.
This is my point. Some. A decreasingly smaller and more insular some. I clearly don't speak for the entire gaming world, but when even a site like Hardcore Gaming 101 hasn't heard of most of the titles you're listing, I think it's pretty safe to say that Japan is in serious decline.
The portion of the gaming world I do speak for is a rapidly growing majority. You can argue that Japan is still as talented at making games, but don't you think the amount of people that disagree with you is some sort of indication you might just have niche taste? Most big name Japanese companies are losing a lot of money, and big names in Japan (like Keiji Inafune!) have admitted that Japanese game design is shit. Square Enix even had to issue a formal apology to FFXIV players for the game being bad.
Some of Japan is innovative, still! It's just that most of it isn't. While some of these games you linked may have innovative premises or ideas, few of them seem to do anything to actually innovate as to how you play video games. They're making small strides in tired genres like dungeon crawlers, visual novels and BEU/hack n' slash. Japan's bigger names are dying because they just can't sustain interest in their products and the only ones that are really thriving are the odd companies like From Software that actually still make something amazing and people who make these niche games, usually on handhelds and at a tightened budget.
Even if you were to somehow get me to agree that these games innovating how games play, I strongly doubt you'd get me to agree more than a fractional handful of them are actually interesting enough to play, and that seems to be how the very vast majority of gamers feel about it. I really hate pulling "more people think this way, so I win," but the market has been overwhelmingly suggesting this huge decline in interest and quality.
I've already argued reasons why I find most modern Japanese games uninteresting, so it's really down to "most other people think this way, too," as a bottom line. Given the subjective nature of entertainment's quality, nothing I can say will "prove" whether or not Japan's on a decline, but it's widely considered as being on a massive one, and your argument has done nothing to convince me otherwise. I would, in fact, sincerely argue that the fact you believe these games you listed are evidence that Japan is still doing well has only made me feel more conviction toward my belief that Japan has seriously just stopped knowing how to make good video games.
As for the Sony defense, I'm literally at a loss for words as to how you could defend that company after all the things they've done. Maybe if I worked with them and they made my job easier, it would be easier for me to neglect how awful they are to everyone else, and how awful their history is. Regarding what Jason X said, you really have tunnel vision on the issue. Also, I hate Nintendo, too, so going "Nintendo has also done awful things" does nothing to make me view Sony any lighter.
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