Every year, by the time Christmas passes, we all take stock in the year we had. Many of us look back, promise to do better next year, and look forward to a better New Year. I don’t make that promise, because I know I’m going to fuck up just as bad in the upcoming year as I did in the year I’m ending, if not worse. I’m old; I ain’t changing anything except my underwear, and even THAT can be prolonged for a day, depending on circumstances and how willing I am to go to the laundromat!
2016, however, cannot disappear from my memory fast enough! It has been a trying year personally, but events outside my sphere of influence have conspired to make the year worse than I could ever imagine. We can all substitute one event from another, but I guarantee that many will claim 2016 as a year where the negative FAR outweighed the positive, regardless of location.
For me, 2016 is the year when we lost a Prince, we lost a Princess (Leia), and we lost several kings and queens in their respective fields. I’d tell 2016 to go fuck itself, but it’s already gotten enough action after it fucked us so hard and dirty.
Still, it’s good to call out the things that sucked about 2016, even if it only matters to the person griefing.
I decided to list a few flashpoints from 2016 that pissed me off. This will encompass gaming, as this site mainly deals with video games. It’s a personal rant, so my ramblings may not mirror yours. But if you have a grievance or hatred that is not mentioned here, please feel free to state it. We all need to vent because of 2016; give your grievances a voice!
If you do wish to vent, keep political or ideological views out. We are hurt and angry enough as a people without those shitty things polluting minds further.
Street Fighter V: When Half a Game is Three Times Too Little!
I have railed against the bullshit that video game publishers do to sucker consumers in a bid to make money. Games like Star Wars: Battlefront and Rainbow Six: Siege duped gamers in 2015, promising a complete gaming experience while providing them half a game.
Although Rainbow Six: Siege managed to be a fun game despite its half-ass delivery, the half-ass delivery needed to be called out. Many elements of the game were left off the base package as a way to push microtransactions on the player. Star Wars: Battlefront was worse, with EA admitting in 2016 that the game was released half-cocked to capitalize of the exposure of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, and dependent on the Season Pass to complete the experience. So Rainbow Six: Siege was a game that released half-made but fun, while Star Wars: Battlefront was just half a game.
Capcom, managed even worse with Street Fighter V in 2016. The game available at launch was a shell of the proper fighting game fans expect. There was no single-player arcade mode, just multiplayer modes. The “story mode” consisted of half-ass sequences that are weaker than the plot of your average Michael Bay movie. Even modes that were programmed into the menu were greyed out at launch, like Challenges and the FUCKING SHOP!!! As a final stab, server issues at launch prevented players from even – you know – PLAYING!
Capcom has busied itself with fixes to the base game’s bullshit. A free “General Story Mode” that encompasses the entire Street Fighter universe like Mortal Kombat’s did was added. New characters have also been added and are accessible to players who refuse to stump up the cash for the game’s $30 Season Pass. They can even be earned in-game, requiring in-game Fight Money that dedicated players can grind for. Capcom promises that they will add more free content during the game’s lifespan. None of this, of course, excuses the state of this game at launch.
Worst of all, for me at least, is the absolutely balls-kicking way Capcom expects us to keep Street Fighter V updated. For my copy on the PS4, I will receive occasional updates via PSN. It’s convenient, but expects me to keep my console’s 500GB drive clean in case the update arrives. When I start the game after the update, I sometimes get a message saying that an update NOT PART OF THE PSN UPDATE needs to apply afterward. So the game has to update before AND after starting it up. What’s the point of automatic updates if all the updates don’t install automatically?
Oh, wait. The General Story Mode isn’t part of the updates. For that, you have to MANUALLY DOWNLOAD THE UPDATE FROM THE PLAYSTATION STORE YOUR FUCKING SELF!!! For those playing at home, I have to get the updates PSN detects, I have to get the updates that don’t trigger with PSN, and I have to manually grab a big update in the PlayStation Store. And if I don’t do this, I don’t get the full experience.
Street Fighter V is not a game. It is a digital LEGO set that does not come with instructions and expects us to put it together just to play. If I have to build your game after I bought it, it’s no longer a game: it’s an erector set!
Overwatch: A Game I Love with a Habit I Hate
I absolutely love Overwatch. It has done for the FPS genre what Call of Duty, Battlefront, and dozens of other franchises could not do: get me interested in playing an FPS again. This game is fun in ways I can’t even describe. I am a huge fan of Blizzard, and I am a huger fan of the games they release.
Which is why the loot box system in this game pisses me off so much!
The system’s concept is defensible in the narrowest sense. Every time a player goes up a level, they unlock a loot box. The loot box contains collectibles, from spray patterns to skins. Some of the costumes are rare, legendary skins. They are highly coveted, and many players pine for those legendary skins.
Of course, their rarity makes them extremely difficult to obtain under normal circumstances. Blizzard has a couple of ways to remedy that. The first is handled in-game. Players can earn currency that can be used to buy rare skins for their favorite heroes. The currency is earned by grinding, and duplicate items can be converted to extra currency. So if you play the game long enough, you can earn enough currency to deck your heroes out in some fancy skins.
The second way is more insidious. There is a microtransaction system which allows players to plunk down real-world money in return for extra loot boxes. The purchased boxes do not guarantee rare skins, just an extra chance to get one. It’s a makeshift lottery system that rewards players who want those rare skins and throw money at loot boxes. For all intents and purposes, it’s a digital gambling system.
If you’re like me, you can stay away from those microtransactions and just grind levels to earn them. The game is still fun, and it’s not like the skins are all that important. If I shoot you in the face as Soldier 76, who cares what he’s wearing?
Except that there are people that DO care what Soldier 76 is wearing, and those people will be especially interested in getting a super-rare skin for him. I bet these people will get seriously peeved when special events roll in.
During the Summer Olympic Games in Rio, Blizzard trotted out a set of unique legendary skins as a form of commemoration. They did so as well recently with their winter event. The legendary skins introduced in both cases were ultra-unique, available only for the period they were a part of. If you didn’t play during the Rio Games or during the winter event, you missed out on those skins. They will not be available outside of their respective time periods, period.
Worse, the normal rules for acquiring them did not apply. They could not be purchased in-game, no matter how much in-game currency you have. If you hoarded loot boxes until the event hoping to get one of those skins that way, you were screwed as well. Loot boxes obtained before the start of the event will not have event-specific items no matter what. If you wanted the super-ultra-rare items available during the event, you have to earn a loot box during the event.
Of course, you could just BUY a loot box during that period. Or 5. Or 100.
Overwatch’s loot box system and the exclusivity of certain rewards is just one example of a PC and console title applying mobile game elements into a full-retail game. Yes, the loot boxes are not required in order to play the game. And yes, the skins are optional and not needed to play. But no, it’s not cool. As much as I hate to say it, it would actually be better for Blizzard to just outright sell the skins! It would make the legendary skins less rare, but at least it would be less bullshit than the gambling system they have now!
Mighty No. 9: The Danger of Overpromising when Crowdfunding
Back in 2013, self-proclaimed creator of Mega Man, Kenji Inafune, launched a Kickstarter campaign for Mighty No. 9, the spiritual successor to the Blue Bomber. The Kickstarter campaign was a success, raising about 70 bajillion dollars during its run. With that money, Inafune was set to make a game that would make Mega Man fans “cry like an anime fan on prom night”!
Oh, wait. That was just the game’s marketing campaign.
After years of promises and hype, Mighty No. 9 released in 2016 and was…pedestrian. The original vision was lost in a mire of empty wishes and unicorn farts. What remained was a weak PlayStation 2-era side-scroller that resembled a Unity asset-flip more than a game that gamers threw money at. The original art assets disappeared, replaced by generic shit. The gameplay was as far as a Mega Man game could be without changing genres. And the dialogue…oh, FUCK the dialogue! It made the horrible script in Mega Man 8 almost seem competent!
OK, it wasn’t THAT bad. But it was close.
Mighty No. 9 is not completely representative of the games we can expect from Kickstarter. Let’s not forget that games like Shovel Knight, Pillars of Eternity, and FTL: Faster than Light went through the same process and rewarded backers with phenomenal gameplay. The upcoming Friday the 13th, which just passed through a breathtaking beta, is on track to deliver on its Kickstarter promises as well.
But for every Shovel Knight, there are a gaggle of also-rans that promise gaming nirvana and deliver nothing more than promises. For every Pillars of Eternity, there’s a Yogventures!, Code Hero, and Shadow of the Eternals waiting to fail.
Do I want to place Mighty No. 9 in the same category as CLANG? No. I think Inafune-san was more prepared than the average Kickstarter grifter. But he did the same thing they did: overpromise. The game that was released was nothing like the game he hyped. It’s like going from Mega Man 2 to Cheetah Men. In other words, not good at all.
Worse, this puts doubt on what Koji Igarashi is doing with his own Kickstarter-backed project, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Iga-san’s Metroid-vania-inspired side-scroller has not had the same drama surrounding it as Mighty No. 9 has, but backers are a bit nervous because of Inafune-san’s misstep. In fact, the idea of the Kickstarter game project might have taken a shot to the teeth because of Mighty No. 9. For indie studios trying to make their vision a reality, that can be disastrous.
Oh, and for those of you wondering, Inafune-san did NOT create Mega Man. He was a Capcom artist that did some minor work in the series. At least Iga-san was the assistant director for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. So there’s that.
PlayStation 4 Pro: When a Console Gets Delusions of Grandeur
The PC vs console debate had raged on for years. The main argument console lovers love to throw at PC defenders is that consoles just worked, while PCs need maintenance and upgrades to stay relevant. Under this logic, I could buy a console and play games from its inception until its retirement. That can take as much as 10 years. In that space, a PC would need to be upgraded at least twice in order to keep up.
When rumors surfaced back in May that Sony was entertaining the notion of a mid-cycle console reboot that introduced some form of 4K performance, a seismic shift began to form. Their idea of a 4K-capable console was news in and of itself. The thought of a current-gen console receiving such a horsepower boost mid-cycle was unprecedented. And stupid!
The aforementioned seismic shift has happened. Suddenly, a console manufacturer has upset the apple cart, releasing an “Ultra” version of their hardware. Insiders were calling Sony’s project “Neo”; the final version was labeled and is being sold as the PlayStation 4 Pro. As a result, many gamers had to come to terms with the possibility that the console they purchased at the beginning of a console generation would be obsolete before the end of said generation.
Not long after its official reveal, Sony executives went on the record to state that the “Super Turbo EX Plus Alpha” version of Sony’s PS4 hardware was setting its sights higher than usual. Sony didn’t want to compete against Microsoft; their true competition was the PC.
Microsoft, of course, wasn’t going to be outdone. During E6 2016, they formally announced their plans for the future. It included a mid-cycle refresh that was more in line with the past: the Xbox One S. But it also mentioned that by 2017, the Xbox Scorpio, its answer to “Neo”, will take over the living room.
For Microsoft to be reactionary and announce a beefed-up console mid-cycle is silly but necessary. Sony launched this performance race, and Microsoft has to lee step. But the fact that Sony, the console maker that literally defined the extended console product cycle with the PlayStation 2, dipped into that well of shit is indefensible. Worse, Sony’s insistence that their competition is the PC instead of the Xbox One is ridiculous.
In truth, both Sony and Microsoft have worked for years to make their consoles more PC-like. The architectures of the PS4 and Xbox One are PC-based, with AMD-binned x86 processors running the show. PlayStation network and Xbox Live, respectively, work very similarly to Steam or Origin. As storefronts and as online matchmaking services, consoles are becoming increasingly PC-like.
Except that PC does everything better. Updates on Steam are seamless and quick. PSN and Xbox Live, meanwhile, frequently botch the updates and download them extremely slow. Read the above section about Street Fighter V and its update issues if you want an example. And let’s not forget that with PSN and Xbox Live, players are PAYING for the inferior infrastructure; Steam is free. Now, the console makers are adding the possibility that consoles will not last an entire generation without major hardware upgrades.
In my opinion, the fact that Sony felt the PlayStation 4 needed a mid-generation hardware upgrade tells me that Sony failed at making a console.
For Christmas, I bought myself an MSI Radeon RX 480 4GB OC for under $200. The PlayStation 4 Pro retails for $400. In my opinion, the fact that I was able to upgrade my PC for half the amount I would need to upgrade my PlayStation 4 tells me that Sony failed at making a PC competitor.
As soon as Microsoft beings selling Project Scorpio, their mid-cycle console upgrade, those opinions will apply to them as well. It may not matter to them as much; Windows is the main platform for PC gaming. I will – and should – matter to Sony.
Steam: Running Out of Itself
There’s no denying that Steam was a pioneer in digital PC gaming. From the time Valve launched it on September 12, 2003 to now, the platform has become almost ubiquitous when PC gaming is discussed. It has its competitors, but it’s considered by many to be the premier digital gaming platform on PC.
Lately, though, Steam is beginning to look like the absentee landlord of an apartment building filled with convicts. The whole CSGoLotto bit opened up Steam’s gambling culture for greater scrutiny. Steam’s hands-off policy regarding title curation has let a torrent of shitty games flood the storefront. A majority of them come Steam’s Greenlight program, which has become a bit of a sham. Rogue Steam Groups have been poisoning the Greenlight process, getting members to vote for subpar games in exchange for keys to games. An entire sub-economy has also popped up, where half-ass developers put shit games up on the market with the goal of peddling trading cards and emoticons. It’s a strategy Digital Homicide used to great effect – until Steam kicked them off the platform after harassing members.
When Valve decided to loosen control to allow more indie developers to sell their wares on Steam, it loosened up too much. There’s no curation, there are no real standards other than, “don’t break shit.” Literally anyone can publish a game on Steam now, rendering the prestige of having a game on the platform practically worthless.
Of course, Valve may not care. From where they’re sitting, they’re making money regardless. They make money off every trading card transaction, from every initial Greenlight submission, and from every CS:GO skin traded (or gambled). Yes, they could tighten things up, begin to curate, and apply standards. They could regulate trading more, and they could work to stop the rigging of Greenlight votes.
But they won’t. They don’t need to. Yet.
GOG has come a long way, going from selling older games to being a legit alternative to Steam. They do cull out chaff, and they have an indie submission program that is choosier about entrants to the program.
Valve is the big dog now, but there’s no rule that says the big dog has to rule the kennel. If GOG can put some fear in Valve’s mind, maybe it’ll redouble its efforts with Steam. Competition is a good thing, and it’s time Steam had some.
Or Steam can just ignore everything and keep raking in coin until everyone’s fed up. Either way, I’ll have to buy my PC games somewhere.
Nintendo: No More Rants
Every time I’ve written an article chastising Nintendo, I’ve gotten backlash. Big N still has a loyal, rabid fan base. Many of their fans cut their teeth on a Nintendo console and revere the company because of their memories with that console. I can empathize with that; I still revere the console that introduced me to gaming and loved the company for years.
The console I still revere is the Atari 2600. The company that made it is a scum-sucking shit stain on my hobby. At least Nintendo isn’t that bad. But they’re bad enough.
Honestly, I’m tired of spitting bile at Nintendo, and everyone is tired of hearing me. But I have to speak ill of them one last time. No more cursing at them, though. I’m just done with them. I already said I wasn’t going to buy a Nintendo Switch – or any new console. I stopped buying anything new from them the day I bought Super Mario Maker for the Wii U.
They will not earn one more cent from me. It’s nothing to them; one consumer doesn’t affect their bottom line all that much. It affects mine, though. I work hard for my money, and I’m not going to give it to a company that stopped caring. And after this, I will not waste any more spit on their name. It was good while it lasted, but it’s ended.
I can still go on collecting Game Boys and their older handhelds. They won’t be making a dime from those. I may despise what they’ve become, but I still have fond memories of nights spend playing their games. Nostalgia tends to let a villain in and look back on good times.
It’s not like Microsoft and Sony are going to benefit completely from my defection. My loyalty has died, and I don’t feel anyone else deserves it. If Microsoft or Sony do something I like, I’ll give them my business. It’s my only power as a consumer, and I choose to use it to benefit me.
At least I know that if I want something Microsoft or Sony has, I can buy it.
I wanted to give a close friend a NES Classic Edition for her birthday, which is close to Christmas. She’s a semi-retired gamer, but I knew she would love the tiny console. And it would’ve made a great present – if they had seen fit to release enough of them that I would be able to get one without spending $500 or camping out for days. Sadly, I couldn’t find one in time. They decided that my desire to buy one wasn’t worth the effort to make one available.
That was my last straw.
So I went rogue. I bought a Raspberry Pi 3 kit, slapped RetroPie into it, loaded it up with ROMs, and gave that to her instead. She’s happy, I’m happy, and there is still no meaningful inventory of the NES Classic Edition.
I don’t even feel ashamed. They didn’t want my money, so I gave it to someone that did. It’s a principle I’ll apply against them from now on.
Enough negativity! 2016 was a rough year, but I am optimistic for 2017. Here’s to hoping my optimism is rewarded – for all of us. Have a happy and safe new year!
