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The ‘I told you so’ Post

So maybe I can’t tell you all ‘I told you so,’ but there are a number of Rando Calrissians on the internet who I can laugh in their faces with the smugness befitting that of an anime profile picture. So what do I have to be so smug about?

EA HAS ANNOUNCED LOOTBOXES THAT CONTAIN IN-GAME ABILITIES TO BOOST YOUR PLAY!

Oh yes, it's shaping up to be a Pay2Win service full of plenty of Fee2Pay elements. All the bollocks about 'But they're announcing free DLC' arguments from overhyped, and overexcited, fanboys who just want to play the game they bought argued those of us who didn't quite trust EA on their word. Because as we've seen in the past, EA should not be trusted by its word alone. Everyone would tell me 'But they LISTENED to us this time! They are gonna make it a good game this time!' Yeah, well fuck that idea right off. EA has done an EA, as it always has, and managed to shove some kind of micro-transaction element that will take center stage of the multiplayer.

As someone who is an avid fan of the Original Battlefront games, particularly the second one, I'm sad to see EA fuck up the license twice in a row. I have no doubt the single player will be great, as its being written by the same people who did Spec Ops: The Line, a game I recently enjoyed and may do a review on soon. But I want the fanbase to hold EA by their throats and demand a good game. 'How do we do this, my King?' Well, my friend, I have an answer for you.

Do not buy this game for 2 weeks, if at all.

I understand the idea of wanting to play the damn game, but if you're going to buy it at launch, hold off. Don't give pre-orders. Wait 2 weeks, because that is the most important weeks to publishers, as it's their opening weeks. They care about day 1 sales. Call it a mini-strike in which you get to eat your cake too.

Thank you for reading this mini-think piece and putting up with some padding so I can write a short little piece so I can be smug at all of the people who told me to sit down and shut up because "EA Was going to do us right this time." Hope you all enjoyed, and hope to see you in the next post!

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Video Gaming hype culture and how it relates to why we probably don't see Half-Life 3 ever happening

In modern video gaming world, we see words like 'Hype Culture,' and a lot of people, I think, don't really realize what that quite is. Even the simple minded could deduce it was based on hype for a particular release, but that's not quite the end of that story. In this post, we're going to describe for you what it is, why it's dangerous to indulge in, and why it relates to Half-Life 3.

Video games are no stranger to hype. Many of our beloved video games and their sequels get many a hype every year, even if we're expecting their yearly release. Take the new Call of Duty coming out. We knew it was coming. We knew they probably were going to follow in the footsteps of Battlefield 1. Why have we been tricked into being so excited for it? The trick is how companies have handled themselves and their products. It's been forever since we've seen a proper Triple-A World War II shooter, and we were craving it. (However, the WWII genre is not an innovative setting, no matter how much you want to argue that point.) When we crave something and the Triple-A market decides to give it to us, we get overhyped to the point we just want to throw money at it. We forget years of mistrust and poor treatment of the consumer base that we take a look at them throwing us one single bone, and that bone might not even be that good. There is no promise of this new CoD doing anything new with its series, just a new setting. And as gamers have made it evident and clear during the release of the new Battlefield, they want something new in gameplay and in setting. However, none of us have got anything new with these two releases. They are still the same games we know from the past, just a new setting in each of them. And that's what hype culture is. It's allowing developers, small or large, gain your attention using flashy methods in order to buy your wallet from you. These include trailers that don't show gameplay. When Battlefield 1 came out, while everyone was screaming and getting excited about it, I could only think '...okay, but what does the gameplay look like?' We never got to see any of that gameplay beforehand. Everyone got excited and was calling it the best game ever based on a premise, not the gameplay. And when that game came out... well, it was all right. Aside from my own personal beliefs about the story mode, the game was okay. It wasn't groundbreaking, it wasn't new, we had more of the same. And that's it. During the marketing phase, the devs and everyone else was screaming about how it was going to be the best, new, thing that was going to turn gaming on its head. But it was just another Battlefield game, really. Not much was really added in the way of gameplay, and the familiar tropes of its namesake were still there. But that's what that hype does. Devs get you, the consumer, riled up so you do their marketing for them, and buy their pre-orders, and buy into the hype so they have a guarantee on your wallet. Now, you may be asking. Why is this dangerous? What you're probably asking is why hasn't this fuck talked about Half-Life 3 yet. Don't worry, settle yourself, I'll get to that soon. Hype culture is dangerous because it gives devs another reason to guarantee your money before launch. Before we know anything about the game so that we give them pre-order money. Every time I see a new anticipated game come out, I see on forums and posts everywhere about how they are so ready to give their money to the developer and going to pre-order as soon as they can. But pre-ordering... doesn't do anything for you. It may give you an in-game bonus, but that's smoke and mirrors. There is no benefit to you, as the consumer. Getting an extra skin or weapon does very little for you, and any pre-order bonus is just an excuse to call it a favor to you. They want to give you a treat for you obediently barking and giving your hard earned cash up. And you're not a dog, you are a human being and you're smart enough to not give in to a culture that just wants your money, and pretends like they're doing you a favor! This is what this kind of hype does. It gets people riled, and when someone has a criticism or encouraged to stop preordering because preordering games is bad for the industry at large in most cases, creates fanboys ready to throw up pitchforks and torches whenever someone says something bad about the new Call of Duty. Because we should be appreciating that CoD is going back to another era it's already done 10 times before. (And I would like to point out, that's the actual number of Call of Duty WWII games not including the new one.)

But aside from innate ranting, why is this article titled Half-Life 3? Well, this is the section for it. Upon completing the cliffhanger ending of Half-Life 2, it started to gain its own attention for hype. People were excited to play the next game and wanted a conclusion to their promised 3-part series. This is a reasonable response to a cliffhanger. That's what they're designed to do. But as time went on, it started to become evident that we were not going to get the 3rd installment to our series. But the immense amount of excited-ness around the series hasn't died down because everyone wants to know how this story ended because it's a good story. The release of it spawned the start of the 'Valve can't release the 3rd game in a series' meme. It spawned so much hype, from just the community, that they could stealth release it onto their store page with no marketing, and everyone would be on it in less than an hour. They don't even need marketing, because of how anticipated this game is. But we also have an issue. With such an anticipated game, regardless of the quality of this game... it's not going to be enough for the gamers that want it. It's been so long awaited, that people are going to hate it because it won't live up to expectation. I really want to say that gamers can handle it, but from the recent behaviour from the community at large, not all gamers, they'll shoot down Half-Life 3 as soon as they get their hands on it because.. well they're going to be expecting the most polished, well put together, and amazing game of their entire lives. But that level of quality is unfair of Valve to portray. Valve makes great games, don't get me wrong. But the amount of polish people will be expecting will be ridiculous. Now here's the part where I talk about their corporate structure. Valve doesn't commission people to make a game, everyone works on the projects they choose to work on, that way they aren't being forced to use their creativity and make a game they are truly passionate about. That being said, if I were in their position... I really wouldn't want to make Half-Life 3 either. Many people have the opportunity to make the game, and there have been, I think, 5 iterations made in the past of the game that were scrapped. The game was in development, just not to the level Valve wanted. They don't want to make the game because they know fans will be expecting something amazing. Not just another Valve game. The worst part about it is as more times go on, the more fans will be expecting. Look at the likes of Duke Nukem Forever. After 12 years, fans were expecting something amazing. But it flopped in a game that... really kinda was just okay. It was an average game. In my opinion, in short, that'd be a shaky 4/10.

And that's what hype culture does. It can ruin experiences from potentially good games and can make average games look like pinnacles of innovation and design. That's why we need to take a look at each release of a game and go "Well what does this game actually do aside from looking pretty?" In essence, stop throwing money at a pretty looking game with an established background, and stop pre-ordering Triple-A releases.

Thank you all for reading, and please do give a Subscription if you want to read more reviews or these neat little discussion topics!

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DOOM(2016): A tale of badass

So I had just finished DOOM, the 2016 version. I fell in love with the game the moment I picked it up, and I maintain that joyful feeling throughout each time I pick it back up again. DOOM is a game that is often revered, as I see more scores bellowing its greatness, rather than kick its teeth in. Like a demon. There's a very good reason that these reviews give it glowing scores, and its because the game is genuinely fun as all hell. The development of this game was actually really interesting, as the devs took a good approach to rebooting a franchise. It's simply this: "Does this make the game feel more like DOOM?" If it didn't, they scrapped it. That is how you re-boot a series, you take what people loved and give it nice polish. You make it feel like the lovely experience that first made fans fall in love with it. But thankfully, you don't have to be a DOOM classic fan to enjoy this masterpiece.

The game garners towards the classic FPS style that DOOM spawned from. There's no reloading weapons, there are pick ups and power ups, and all the kerfuffle. It's definitely a change from the more 'immersion' loving era. Where as most games would have you sit through a 10 second long mini-cutscene to get your ammo back or some bollocks, DOOM wonderfully keeps the action very smooth by just letting things drop and pick up like the classics. Everything from health, to armor, to ammo. The great thing about old games is they needed to save time and space. Programming in animations for the sake of 'immersion' simply wasn't a thing. You had to condense your games into the fun bits. No story, no cut scene, and sometimes even no dialogue. You worked with what you had. It was bloody beautiful, and even more beautiful is that workarounds to some problems are so creative and innovative that some people can't even comprehend them. For example, the original DOOM wasn't even true 3-D. It tricked you into thinking it was, and something I want to touch on in another article later on. These workarounds are the most amazing and creative things I ever hear, and I love learning about them oh so much. The game keeps you immersed in its universe by one simple factor: "You are a badass."

This philosophy of keeping a player engaged by giving them a power-trip can be dangerous, especially when treading into game balance. This game balances this feeling and mechanics beautifully, and make you feel like the DoomSlayer, the guy Satan is literally afraid of, but still keeps the difficulty up. It's not the most difficult game in the world, but I had moments where I had a hard time getting past the thing. This shooter takes real skill to master, and doesn't handhold you. It's you v.s Hell's entire army. You don't get help, you don't sit there and allow A.I or something to kill for you. You actively engage in the combat with flowing brilliance, and it doesn't stop until every Demon is dead. Which brings me to the next lovely segway:

DoomGuy is the most bad ass character in video games. This is due to the simple fact of how the game play, from how the DoomGuy behaves and reacts. He does not care for plot or exposition. He does not care for reasoning. He does not care for why the demons must be put down. He simply does. And like I've said before: It's bloody beautiful. DoomGuy, from the get go, waking up from a 1000 year slumber (-I'm not sure if that's exact, but I do like to let mistakes be aware,) and just starts killing demons. He wakes up from a long ass sleep, sees a demon, and his first thought is 'That fucker is dead.' Then he breaks his chains, and starts killing fuckers. He's so bad ass, that he literally punches the plot in the face. Twice. (-He punches monitors with a man that spouts exposition.) DoomGuy does not need reason or motive, he simply kills demons. That's the end of it. It's great to have a game that forces context into you, when you KNOW why you want to kill those demons. Because you want to kill demons! That's the beauty of video games, you don't need to be told why you want to progress and play the game. You just need a game with good mechanics!

DOOM is a prime example of how a reboot should be done, through and through, and how making a 'silent protagonist' doesn't need to be some broody motherfucker. Doomguy, despite having no third person camera shots or voice lines, is one of the more expressive and lovable characters in video games. He doesn't sit there and brood about how people died. He sees a corpse that has the prints he needs. He doesn't even bother to pick the guy up, he just rips his hand off with no remorse or reaction. They're dead, and there's nothing to go with it. On the flip side, during the opening cut scene, Samuel Hayden is talking to the Doomguy about how 'I did what I had to,' and 'There was no other way,' and Doomguy looks down at a corpse sharing the elevator ride, looks back up at the monitor, and punches it. He shows care for people, while at the same time not worrying about the body count. To save others, he must kill. And that’s what he does! That's it. He shows his personality without a word uttered, and it's something that is actually quite hard to do! A main character that doesn't speak is hard to nail. But they did it, and did it right.

Overall, the game deserves all praise it has gotten when it was first released, and if you haven't played it yet, please do.

10/10

DOOM is definitly a game I will be revisiting to get all the collectibles. Thank you all for reading!

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Yooka-Laylee came out!

So I'm going to review Banjo-Kazooie.

 We often are quick to dismiss classic games in reviews because, why would we? We've seen those games, they're past. But some games are worth remembering, and especially for all the nostalgia for older games, why are we so afraid to put them up to scrutiny? Games that we love should be put under a microscope and dissected to figure out why we loved them so, so we can realize what we need to do to keep more of them coming. So instead of reviewing the spiritual successor, Yooka-Laylee, I'm going to take the time to review Banjo-Kazooie and explain to people, young and old, my thoughts on this iconic game. Full disclosure, I have nostalgic attachment to this game and would like to point that out before continuing with the review, as I think it's important to let things like that be out in the open.

 Banjo-Kazooie is an amazing game, plain and simple. There is no denying it. From the fun, to the music, it's all there. There is so much to talk and gush about that I couldn't fit it into the review if I tried for the entire day. So we'll start with the most memorable of the game: the Music.

 Most people, when I talk to them, about this game often refer to the music, composed by the talented Grant Kirkhope. He has created a soundtrack that is unforgettable in this series, and has given life to it's levels. It truly would not be the same without the music, and the levels would feel dead. The music carries the feeling of each level with ease, and puts you invested into the game. If they want you to feel dread, the music will change slow and somber. If they want to scare you, the music will get low, and menacing. If they want you to have fun and be happy, the music will change to be upbeat and the tempo will pick up. This could be considered a no brainer. "No duh," I hear you thinking, "a game changes its themes to the emotions they want to convey." Yes, dear reader, you are correct. But this is often passed up in a lot of games, including Triple A titles in favor of something that just sounds nice. There's a difference between just sounding emotional, and conveying an emotion. If I played a song from any part of Banjo-Kazooie, it is recognizable and most players could tell you what section of the game it belongs to. Could you do that with any of the latest Triple A titles you've played? Most games often just put in music. Banjo-Kazooie makes music. It creates such a wonderful atmosphere with it, in what I feel is the most important aspect in the game's aesthetic design based purely on how memorable the music is. The game also throws in small little polish with it, going as far as things like if you go underwater, the music changes to sound more bubbly. It slows it down, or adds a filter to do. To make you feel like you, the player, are hearing it from underwater. It's bloody beautiful.

 The game is a platformer, so the most important mechanic: How's the platforming? It could be summed up in a simple answer. Wonderful. Jumping is easy, and moving around the world doesn't feel too weighty or floaty. It's just the right amount of control that makes this game have skill, albeit the game has a skill ceiling; much unlike Super Mario 64. There's only a finite amount of skill you can really have with the game because of how tight it is. But the game is constantly peppering you with new skills and mechanics in the game throughout the experience that this is easily forgotten. There's never really a level that you don't need to go back to if you want to 100% the game. New skills you learn in later levels force you to go back and access new areas. Normally this back tracking would kill a game, but this is a game that does it right. These new areas provide new experiences and the level is pleasant to go back to. If backtracking was always bad, why do we give so much praise to the original Resident Evil? Banjo-Kazooie is one of those 'Spencer Mansions' where you get to have intimate time with a level and enjoy it.

 Now the game isn't perfect. It's damn near close. But the camera is a major feature that can ruin it. Of course, this was common for cameras at the time in video games just bursting into the 3rd dimension. But this is coming from a review written in 2017, and applying our standards truly shows if a game ages well. In this case, this is something that would surprisingly hold up. For the most part, the camera is pretty controlled and tight, but can feel uncontrollable. Since the design for the overall game is generally in a very open area, the camera isn't plagued by tight corridors that can make the camera feel claustrophobic.

 Overall, I feel the game deserves a perfect, and solid, 10. Due to the overwhelming factors and craft and polish they put into the game, the game really feels like it's not just a tech demo like a lot of new 3-D games of the era can feel like, where they're testing the waters. These guys somehow pulled out a lovingly crafted experience that a lot of time and effort went into it. It's truly a masterpiece worth all of the merits it gets.

10/10 -Masterpiece

(Addendum) I wanted to start my first review with something that is uplifting and nice, so I chose a game I know I love. With the coming of Yooka-Laylee I wanted to go back to the team's roots, and really explain to new comers of their work what they did in the past, and if its possible for them to play the older games that its definitely worth checking out.

Thank you for reading, and have a magnificent day.

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A guide to the numerical system for the King's Decree

This is a short little guide to how I do numbers in a review. The numerical system is often disregarded, due to the misuse of it throughout review sites. Often scores being vague, and meaning nothing, giving way to just simply being unreliable. However, my system gives these numbers meaning, in a nutshell, summing up my opinion in 3 or 4 characters that you can quickly look at in a rush. In essence, it is a tl;dr for each of my reviews. The system is meant to be taken with a grain of salt, and give you a reason to read the review to discover how I came to that score, and a simple number is not meant to represent 1000 words. It isn't a picture. Technically. 

The numbers each correspond to a 1-10 system, 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. This guide will explain what exactly I mean by these numbers, and give you a look into how I give these scores out. The scores do have a decimal system in place, giving a .5 for a game that was almost higher, but something held it back from getting that particular score.

10: A 10 represents a game that is near perfection. A pinnacle of its genre at the time, and a game meant that does what it sets out to do in style. This game is to be regarded as something that can be enjoyed by all who even slightly enjoy the genre, with a healthy mix of characters and storytelling, or even lack thereof if its goal is to simply be fun. A 10 is given out very sparingly, as it is reserved to those that take the time and effort to craft a truly glorious game. 

9: A 9 represents excellence in its class, with very few major issues getting in the way of your enjoyment of the game. This score is the more common score among those that can be classed as near perfect. This game may have some bits to it that will turn very few people away, and will only serve as an enjoyable time 90% of the time. 8: An 8 represents a game that can easily be enjoyable by most people. A score of a game that does not do anything new, but can easily be enjoyed by your most cynical and harsh game reviewers (me.) This is a game worth its merit and hours that you can put into it. 

7: A 7 represents something that is quite good. Simply put, it is a game that doesn't do anything particular of merit besides 1 or 2 memorable things in it that could create some good memories. 6: A 6 represents a game that, for lack of better wording, is a solid experience that doesn't stand out too much in the crowd. It's bland but somewhat enjoyable. They come in, you play it and have an okay time, and shelf it. 

5: A 5 represents a 'true neutral' game that is mediocre. It's something that comes in and out quicker than the life that's flashing before your eyes. It's something that may be worth your time picking up on a sale, or waiting for a price drop. 

4: A 4 represents something that has a lackluster experience overall. There may be promise, and a few enjoyable moments, but something that ultimately falls flat on its face due to multiple issues that hold it back. 

3: A 3 represents a game that has a playable state, but overall cannot be enjoyed by anyone but a dedicated fan of a previous installment or of the developer. The game falls on story and mechanics so harshly that it takes away from any potentially enjoyable moments. 

2: A 2 represents a game that is such a travesty that you could not enjoy it if you tried. Any game with this number is something that is so broken and miserable that it will make you more miserable the more you play it. 

1: A 1 represents a video game that just isn't playable. It's broken, it looks awful, and a million other issues small and large. Games in this category will have no saving grace features and ultimately shouldn't waste money on if you were paid to play it.

That is the guide to how I give numbers to each game I review. It is very clear-cut, easy to follow, and gives a wide range of wiggle room. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the content!