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sally-mun · 7 years ago

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As someone who hasn't, wouldn't, and won't be experiencing Major/Minor (or whatever it was called) could you perhaps analyze more specifically some of the things you felt were missteps more in depth, so others who decide they might want to make a visual novel or even just a story, might be able to avoid the same issues? I realize this might not be your area of interest, but I'm always interested in these kinds of analyses.

Man, where do I even begin.

I suppose I should start by saying that this game could have been fine; I don’t necessarily hate this game for the story, even if I think it’s uninspired. I play lots of point-and-click games and usually enjoy them (even the stupid ones) so long as they have merit in one area or another. But that’s the core of the problems with Major/Minor: It has NO merit to work with. Its construction shows absolutely no understanding of this genre of game design. Or of writing. Or of entertainment in general. Or of simply respecting one’s audience.

First and foremost, let’s discuss visual novels.

The critical difference between a novel and a visual novel is interactivity; a novel is a set and done deal that takes its readers along for the ride, whereas a visual novel invites the readers to be part of the ride itself. The direction of the story is influenced by the player, and this allows them to personally take ownership of later events. It’s the sort of game that tries to put you in the role of the protagonist in the most direct form possible. Like other first-person games your view as a player is exactly that of the character you’re playing, but in a VN’s case it’s like reading a comic book in a choose-your-own-adventure format.

Major/Minor not only fails on both the visual and novel elements, but it also fails when combined as a visual novel.

1) Visual

For the most part, visual novels don’t have a lot of action. They primarily consist of conversations with NPCs and usually take place in static locations. For this reason, both the characters and the environments need to have a lot of personality. Players need to feel like they’re actually having conversations with the characters and that they’ve entered a unique location that sees real use. This is the red, meaty center of how VNs engage and gratify their players.

Designing characters in a visual novel is about more than giving each one a different face; it’s about giving each character enough of a range of actions and emotions to sell the idea that the character is actually interacting with you, and in a way that’s truly unique from every other character. In real life, people do all sorts of crap when speaking: Our expressions change, we gesture with our hands, our posture varies, and sometimes we even have small ticks associated with certain topics or emotions. Between these visual cues and the actual discussions themselves, players ought to know the NPCs well enough to be able to describe them like real-life friends by the end of the game.

This brings us to Major/Minor’s first serious offense: Every character has one face. Typically in a VN, each character has a minimum of half a dozen expressions, poses, and gestures/ticks to match the different emotions they’ll need to exhibit over the course of their conversation topics. The characters in Major/Minor can only make a single expression and pose throughout the entire game, which immediately leads to some seriously disjointed discussions. It’s hard for me to take a character seriously when they say they’re angry with me when the art staring through the computer screen is bright, cheerful, and apparently mid-laugh. Sorry, NPC #672, I really don’t care that you’re allegedly on the brink of tears, because your singular piece of character art is so smarmy and mischievous that I forgot you were trying to tell me something tragic.

What makes this even more annoying is that most of the characters DO have a secondary piece of art, but it’s only ever used ONE time as an introduction to a new character before the game chucks it in the bin and we never see it again. Each character COULD have had at least two expressions if the dev had planned his commissions carefully enough, buuut instead he chose to get two shots that are barely distinguishable from one another so there could be a ~=*FLOURISH*=~ when we see someone for the first time. Granted, two per character still isn’t anywhere near enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than just one! It makes me wonder why he bothered to spend the money on a second image for each character at all, since half of these commissions only get about 10 seconds of screen time. What a waste.

And hey, speaking of wasted opportunities, let’s talk more about the environments! Lots of visual novels don’t spend much energy on their backgrounds, and although that’s usually fine (albeit not my first preference), Major/Minor seriously needed to think more about its settings. For the moment I’ll ignore the laziness of the fact that the backgrounds are generic photos with a blur filter over them; what’s more important is that this game loves to tell us all kinds of random crap about the rooms we’re in, especially during the scenes that take place in Japan. This game would’ve benefited dearly from simply having more detailed backgrounds and just letting us observe the goings on of the room on our own. Y’know, because that makes it more... visual.

Honestly, if it were me, I would’ve taken it all a step further and gone full-blown Ace Attorney on the environments. In AA games, investigating the scene is very important because you have to look for clues. I’m not saying Major/Minor needed to let you hunt for items, but I do think that it could’ve cut a ton of random information from the text by simply letting us inspect the backgrounds. That way the players that want to know what a kotatsu is can find out on their own time and players that already know or don’t care can move on.

Something else that would’ve brought the game a much-needed boost of interest is cut scenes. As noted earlier, visual novels don’t tend to have a lot of action, so when something physical DOES happen, it makes an impact. One way to maximize that flash of excitement is with a cut scene – or at least, the visual novel equivalent of one. A “cut scene” in a VN isn’t typically a full motion video like most video games boast; it still makes use of a static image, but it’s an image whose quality far surpasses that of the rest of the art in the game. Maybe it’s abnormally large and the camera slowly pans across for dramatic effect, or maybe it’s a scene drawn from an interesting angle that isn’t the player’s POV. Some games take this even farther and really do animate their cut scenes a bit (usually on par with a nice animated gif). Lots of VN cut scenes make use of sound effects or action-specific music cues to keep the player emotionally involved with the scene, as it’s a moment that’s out of the player’s control.

Major/Minor, on the other hand, does none of this. Much like the drought of facial expressions, the game simply pelts you with paragraph after paragraph to tell you about the events taking place around you, rather than simply letting you see for yourself and be, y’know, involved. Even a handful of cut scenes that had some real effort put into them would’ve really given this game some pep. Not only would it have kept me engaged as a player, but it would’ve weeded out even more unnecessary narration.

Oh, and speaking of weeding shit out of the text…

2) Novel

The writing in this game badly, badly needed to be edited. Like, so badly it makes me physically hurt from how poorly this text is constructed. I’m not talking about the simple things like misspellings and failed capitalizations, I mean BIG mistakes, like sentence fragments and improper conjugations and completely misusing some words all together. It’s also excruciatingly repetitive. Never in my life have I ever seen prose that recaps itself so frequently – sometimes literally within minutes of the event that it’s reminding you of. It even recaps itself within the same block of text a few times.

It’s pretty obvious the dev never allowed a seasoned editor to proof the text, but it’s so unbelievably bad that I’m not even sure the dev himself ever gave it a second glance. It reeks of being a first draft that was never once revisited; actually, it strongly reminds me of the sort of stories I myself wrote when I was about 13. At that time I wanted so badly to write big, dramatic stories! Stories that had deep themes and lots of intrigue! With a complicated plot and several subplots!! And lots of characters that would all totally be different and completely matter!!!! But the problem was I was so wrapped up in wanting to make my stories big, impressive epics that I stretched myself way too thin and everything came out incredibly shallow. It’s honestly kind of eerie to think back on the things I wrote as a kid while I play this game. The similarities are so striking that I can’t tell if this is something the dev wrote at that age and just never decided to polish, or if he did write it as an adult but has the writing skill-level of a teenager.

But honestly, I’d overlook all the technical flaws and melodrama this guy could throw at me if he would just show and not tell. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the oldest rules in the book when it comes to storytelling, and for good reason: Telling instead of showing is not only fucking boring, but it treats the reader like an idiot. If a writer knows what they’re doing, they shouldn’t have to tell, because they’d just demonstrate those things instead.

For example, let’s examine another huge flaw with the writing: Incredibly shallow characterizations. Early in the game the player meets a character named Rook. Rook is very rude. I know this because the game tells me. All. The. Time. I legit don’t remember how many times the game has mentioned that Rook is rude at this point. The dev seems completely oblivious to the notion that you don’t have to tell the player these things. You can just… write Rook as being rude. Trust me, my dude, I can figure out if a character is an asshole or not. Not only can Rook’s rudeness be demonstrated by how he treats me as a player, but it can be further reinforced by other characters reacting to him in a put-off manner. If you’re so concerned that I won’t pick up on the fact that Rook is a rude person just based on how he behaves, then you’re doing it wrong, end of discussion.

But then, as I said, the characterizations are shallow in general. Everyone tends to have their one basic trope and the story rests on the idea that you know what the character is. None of the scenes go out of their way to really dig into who someone is – which is kind of amazing, honestly, since the prose is so obsessed with making sure you know the most inane and unrelated shit half the time – and even after I’ve known a character for several chapters they still feel like a cardboard cut-out to me.

To be honest, I’m kind of impressed by the sheer volume of ways that Major/Minor fails at showing instead of telling. It tells you what characters are like instead of just letting you interact with them, it tells you about the places you visit instead of just letting you view them, it tells you every single time the characters have a mood shift or expression change because it couldn’t be bothered to give them each more than one face, and it hamfists unnecessary information into the script where it’s unneeded and interrupts the scene – and THEN, it makes SURE you notice that it’s telling instead of showing by repeating those things over and over and over again!

All of this is further exacerbated, by the way, because the dev has no idea how to tell a story in the first place. Even with all the above flaws, I miiight have still been able to enjoy this game if it was just a compelling narrative in any sense of the word at all. I will happily deal with poor construction and telling-not-showing if the story still has some intrigue. Even a flawed story can have a mind-blowing plot and keep you reading just to find out what happens next, right? I thought so too, until I realized that Major/Minor goes SO far out of its way to spoil its own plot that it frequently makes you sit through scenes that you, the protagonist, are not even present for. Yes, in a game that’s built upon being a first-person experience, the story will slam on the brakes and take you OUT of the protagonist’s shoes to make you sit by as an observer to events that probably would’ve been an great reveal later on had the dev just kept his mouth shut.

3) Visual Novel

So the visuals suck and the writing sucks, but hey, lots of games get by without investing much in those areas. Could Major/Minor pull it together and at least give the player an interesting mechanic? Hahahaha no, of course it didn’t. As far as the gameplay is concerned, Major/Minor is so bad that in many ways I hesitate to even call it a game.

The cornerstone of visual novels is making choices. They can range from serious decisions that determine the overall outcome of the game or small cosmetic details, but either way, the core of this gaming style is putting the player in the driver’s seat as often as possible. When playing Major/Minor, however, the player is strapped into a straight jacket, blindfolded, and tossed into the trunk of the damn car. This game is so reluctant to surrender control of the narrative that it’s not uncommon at all to go through entire sections of the game having made no choices whatsoever. It fails so spectacularly as a visual novel that I’d be willing to bet that the dev had never played one before. He is astonishingly disinterested in what makes a visual novel enjoyable to the player.

There’s a principle in game design called Illusion of Control. The goal of this idea is to allow the player to feel like they’re in charge of the game while actually keeping them within strict boundaries. It applies to a lot of games, but it’s especially important in visual novels. Players need to be able to dictate how the story progresses, even if some of those choices make no real impact on outcomes. For example, players can enter conversation trees with NPCs that seemingly offer a lot of control – perhaps the player chooses the discussion topics, or can decide if they want to be shy or snarky in their replies – and yet at the end of the scene there could realistically be no change to the story’s progress. The greater point is that the player feels like they handled the conversation the way they wanted to. This allows them to still feel like they’ve gotten somewhere and that they accomplished something.

Major/Minor appears to scoff at the very idea of this, like the game’s worried you’ll cramp its style if it gives you too much power.The player is allotted no input whatsoever on how the PC treats the other characters, what subjects to discuss, where they’d like to go, how to react to the actions of other characters… It’s truly mind-blowing just how consistently the game misses opportunities to allow the player even the illusion of control. For example, there’s a scene where the player character (PC) is awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on the door, and no options are offered on how the player would like to handle this. A better game might allow the player to choose if they want to pretend to keep sleeping, or call out to whomever is knocking, or try escaping out a window, or crack the door open to see what the person wants. Even if it’s an absolute necessity to the plot that this person enters the room, it’s still better to let the player choose, because there are a plethora of ways to redirect each of those options back around toward the character getting in.

Unfortunately, Major/Minor is just too damn lazy to be bothered with gameplay, and the PC just lets the stranger in with no input from the player. Soon after, the stranger attacks the PC, which would again be a prime opportunity for lots of reactionary options: The player could duck! Or the player could punch their assailant! Or maybe they could kick instead! Maybe they’d try to run away or call for help! Buuut no, Major/Minor really doesn’t care what you want YOUR CHARACTER to do, and it’s already decided that you’re going to put up no fight at all and immediately pass out. It’s by far one of the most unsatisfying things I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

The disconnect between the player and the protagonist is so extreme that I honestly don’t feel it’s a fair assessment to refer to the protagonist as the “player character.” It’s not uncommon for visual novel protagonists to speak in the first person, but in most games it feels like the PC is speaking on your behalf because they’re acting according to your will. The protagonist of Major/Minor decides so many things for themself that it stopped feeling like “my” character a very, very long time ago. This character isn’t me and never was; it’s the main character of a book that I didn’t ask to read, who very occasionally pauses to ask my opinion on something.

HEY HOWDY HEY SPEAKING OF PAUSING… If you boot this “game” up for a session, you’d better hope you have plenty of time on your hands to get through it, because you’re at the dev’s mercy for when you can save your progress. Being able to save anytime you want is a staple of visual novels because 1) people read at wildly different paces, and 2) for many people, excessive reading makes them tired. Not only that, but sometimes life just plain gets in the way and you have to pick up and go on short notice. Major/Minor ignores all of these factors and leaves the player relegated to appointed checkpoints throughout the game.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that checkpoints are inherently bad, but they do need to be used very, very wisely. Any game (VN or otherwise) that doesn’t allow the player to save anytime they want needs to be sure checkpoints are reasonably close from any given location, and furthermore that they’re spaced at regular intervals. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, however, the dev flushed that idea down the toilet along with what was left of his common sense and parents’ love. Sometimes Major/Minor stacks save points practically back-to-back within the span of a few minutes, and in other cases I’ve literally played for over and hour before the game finally rewarded me with the option to save.

There’s no discernible pattern or technique that I can detect for when save points are bestowed on the player; you’re not even guaranteed an opportunity to save when the game switches chapters! I would say that I can’t fathom why the dev thought this would be a good idea, but let’s not kid ourselves here, it’s clear that the dev never thought this through in the first place. If he had, he might’ve noticed that players being uncertain about whether or not they’ll be able to save their progress discourages them from playing at all.

Also, before I fully move on from the game design, I just wanted to make a brief side note about the music. To be honest, I turned the music off a VERY long time ago, so I don’t even remember what it sounds like; however, I’ve read that all of the music in the game is from the free assets you get in RPG Maker. I’ve further read that the free assets (both audio and visual) were the entire reason the dev decided to use RPG Maker for this game in the first place, in spite of the fact that there are other programs out there specifically geared toward making visual novels. This is worth mentioning because it further highlights just how lazy this entire game is. It’s not a sin to use free program assets – that IS what they’re there for, after all – but when you ONLY use the free assets and then advertise your game on Steam for being sooo creative and original, AND have the gall to charge $20 for it?? Yeah, that’s a gigantic slap in the face.

Speaking of Steam, you’d think a game like this would’ve been weeded out by the gaming community for being the garbage that it is, right? After all, there’s a ranking right at the top of the page showing the proportion of good and bad reviews it’s gotten, and right now it says the feedback is “very positive.” I will say that I do take community feedback into consideration when I’m thinking about a game that I haven’t otherwise heard of before, and my misstep with this game has definitely taught me a valuable lesson. When I saw that the game is ranked “very positive” and I scrolled down to see several glowing reviews, I felt that was sufficient enough research to know if the game was worth my time and money.

However, upon trying out the game and realizing just how badly I’d been deceived, I did a little more digging. As it turns out, the dev is known for flagging negative reviews as “abusive” and getting them deleted, allowing him to effectively filter out the bad press so long as he can make some kind of a case to Steam. This debacle has taught me that it’s not enough to scroll to the bottom of a Steam page for user reviews, as those tend to be the most recent; what you do instead is click the “Read all [x] reviews” link, as those reviews are sorted by popularity. THIS is where you’ll find the reviews that the community has deemed the most helpful and informative, and in this case, it’s like night and day. ALL of the highest-ranked reviews of Major/Minor are negative, and the numbers are staggering. Literally HUNDREDS of people have ranked these terrible reviews as helpful, and most of them are in the 80-90% range on agreement. You have to load more reviews four times to find even one single positive post, and once you do start getting into the positives, the upvotes are significantly fewer.

SO, in conclusion...

I want to say that’s about all I have to give on this subject, but the sad truth is it’s not. I could probably critique this game line-by-line, moment-by-moment, if I really wanted to. Fortunately for my sanity, I really don’t want to. … Not right now, anyway. I’m sure I’ll lose it at some point and decide to go through and count all the missed opportunities in the game or something, but I won’t be doing that right now, thankfully.

So in the vein of others learning from the mistakes of this game: If you were thinking about buying Major/Minor, don’t. If you bought it a while ago during a sale and were thinking about starting to play it, don’t. If you’re interested in making a visual novel and wanted to learn from this game’s mistakes… Well granted there’s a lot to learn about what not to do, but still, don’t give this lazy, deceptive dev any more money. Learn from this guy’s shortcomings based on the feedback of players. Hell, read or watch a Let’s Play if you really want to experience it first-hand. Just please don’t buy and play this game. As a favor to ME, please don’t buy and play this game.

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#sciver #Sallymun plays Major/Minor #I hope you guys enjoy this because it was not easy #if you know someone who's thinking about this game please show them this post #REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE

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exquisitelyeco · 7 years ago

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Everything sexualised.....

You know, I got a message this morning telling me that ‘Everyone has a crush on so and so’s blog’ Then you read things like ‘Sophia’s face cream for a red hot look’

Why the hell does this society have to make EVERYTHING sex?? I like sex as much as most of us, but bloody hell. It’s for the bedroom!!

No, I personally do not find any face cream, washing power, insurance, cereal or deodorant sexy thanks. It does not make me rush out, grab a man and give him a quickie, out of desire for said items use!

I mean come on!!! Have you looked at men’s deodorant lately? Rambo, sultry, sultan, galactic, Captive, etc, kind of names. For goodness sake! I know men like it a lot, but you’d think they were raving sexual beasts out for conquest! (and yup, some are! Ladies too!)

But am I going to smooch with a guy who comes up to me, wafts his scent at me, growls and tells me wants to captivate me? And he’s a red hot rambo? Well, I can tell you, I’d be out of there quicker than a bullet from a gun.

It’s cringe worthy. Sex, sex, sex. It��s enough to put you off it!

Can you imagine, doing your laundry, and telling your partner, or prospective one, that the washing powder you use makes you want to have it off? Or the shower gel make you horny for a shag?? Or even worse, the sprinkle of stuff you Hoover up to make the room small fresh, makes you want to pant for it?? Really!

And we have those messages 24/7, even worse, so do our kids. How are they going to learn what good, safe, wonderful, relationship is, when they are being taught that the right loo paper will bring the man/woman they desire, whose red hot?!

I hate the term ‘let’s have sex’ it sounds like prostitution. Like a plastic replica (and you can use them too!) of what love is. Sex is ordinary. Plain, boring. Repetitive, empty, and methodical, with no substance. One night stands are NOT really what satisfies. You just want more, and still have an empty belly. Conquest is meaningless. Sex is just the froth off the beer.

Now love making, that’s totally different. Love making is an art form. It takes confidence and true transparency, not just being nude and pumping it a bit. And it takes one partner, not multiple experiences of different partners. Practise in the right way.

How can you really tell someone you only met an hour ago the depths of what gives you pleasure? And when you hold them afterwards, know that they wanted You, not IT. To know the security of seeing them as yours. Not saying goodbye but hello!

Anyone can have sex. Animals do it frequently. But to make love, now that is an experience very few of us, in this society have. It’s not taught. Sex is. The mechanics of how you do it. Anyone can do that. It gets boring.

Lovemaking is alive, pulsating, vibrant and living. Because it is always for the other person, and not just for self. And because it’s for the other person, both are given pleasure. Do you know how satisfying it truly is sexually, to give pleasure, rather than take it? Actually giving it is arousing.

To share it. Not flaunt it. It takes deep, learning, humble relationship, both of you, to make love.

Not a Rambo, look at how big mine is. Not, a she’s hot let’s get it on. Not, I have had a drink, love your tits, fancy some? But that is what society thinks of as normal. More fish in the sea. But that’s hollow. And a lie. Each fish we try makes us more empty. It means nothing. We feel briefly, whilst we chase the next fish, but once that next fish becomes human, we chuck them out the boat and find another quick solution.

What do I mean by become human? I mean begin to learn about them. What we don’t want to see. The way they spit crumbs, fart in bed and think it’s funny to pull the quilt up, in short, the non romantic side. The mundane, human side. Repetitive, and embarrassing, tiring and disgusting. Now I have pet hates, picking skin off feet, EWwwwww that is GROSS. Being kissed with bad breath, yuck, yuck and more yuck. NO thank YOU!!

Going to work and coming back to someone who is grumpy. Moaning or tired. Life, just life as it is lived by us all!

But relationship is about compromise, not throwing the baby out with the bath water. And that’s what makes life and lovemaking so much better. Because we KNOW the person. Inside out. We learn, always willing to learn, quick to forgive, we talk, we choose to love the other, which may mean stopping something WE like. FOR them. Because we realise that ultimately it is FOR US. Not just ME.

Sometimes you have to get out. To stay in them is dangerous and folly. Violence, drinking, drugs are a no no. You leave. Period. Because that is not love, it’s control, manipulation and self loathing. Not love. Don’t even dare to call it a twisted kind of love. It’s not. Love does not exist there. It may have, at the beginning, but someone UNWILLING to change that type of behaviour does not love you. They love themselves.

Working through is one thing. But no change, justification, blame and lack of responsibility is another.

But loving as I suggested above, loving like that, every day love, is WORK…. a lot of us just don’t want to put in the time to do it. We are lazy. We think they should do the work. We get lulled into the lie they are boring, and the grass is greener on the other side.

You know what? That green bloody grass, we think is so enticing is full of thistles and thorns. It’s full of dog shit, but we never saw it though the green grass. And sooner or later it will cause us pain, regret, betrayal, brokenness and emptiness. We suffer, they suffer, everyone suffers. All for a bit of the other. Literally. Not love making. But sex. ’ oh, my God, he was just too sexy I just couldn’t help it.’ “She was just too hot, and after all, I don’t get it any more….‘Excuse after excuse. Justification after justification. Saying we couldn’t help it. Life was to hard, tiring, boring,stressful etc, etc..we say we could not have helped it.

BOLLOCKS!!! Yes you could. But you chose not too. Know how I know? Cos I’ve been there and done it. Chosen to blind myself to every hope, but just wanted a shag. And my God. The cost of that. It just was not worth it.

But sometimes, when we change and learn anew we see what the other person really was like, and it was nothing like we thought…..when I did try to truly love, the love was not wanted. Only the lust and sex. Not lovemaking. I felt like a whore. In that incidence, it was the ex husband not me. He wanted something hollow, shallow and all about crutchless knickers. ( nothing wrong, if you like them, but for me personally, they made me feel cheap, tarty and full of my past. I could not love like that.) Don’t get me wrong. He was not all to blame. My selfishness, lack of true love and sacrifice, and what I offered in the beginning (just sex) were as much to blame, as his leaving, cos I was not who he though I was. I forgot my new habits of loving and honouring myself, and picked up my old ones of pulling and seducing a man, to get him. So I deceived him. And that hurt my ex husband. And between us we destroyed our relationship. Because both of us had hidden agendas. Could we have tried, talked and worked it out? Yes. But, sadly it didn’t happen that way. But why did it happen?

Why? Partly Cos I rushed into it. Forgot to honour and love myself. Thought I’d lose him if I didn’t jump. Picked up shallow habits, dressed badly, provocatively. Ultimately, did not get to KNOW him first! Become friends. Because if I had, we would never have married. Why? because he and I were not compatible. He wanted sex, I wanted lovemaking. He wanted control. I wanted vulnerability. And that comes at a cost. Taking time, and effort to learn about the other person.

So sex came at a high price. The loss of a marriage, the loss of a father. The loss of history together. After all, what new partner wants to hear about what good times you had with the old one, if you are willing to actually admit there were good times? Which most of us aren’t. We only see the bad, forgetting what we did for our part, to destroy it. Relationship takes two. Even if one is a little heavy, the other one still said yes.

Actually, I have made an active choice. I will not let the pain rob me of the good memories. I choose actively to allow myself to remember them, talk about them. Because they did happen. And I will not choose to rub them out. Even though I’d love to kick his arse at times.

Love making is honour. It is special, sacred, deep, meaningful, beautiful and lasting. And it is so much more satisfying than a quick one. But it takes work. And in our society we are taught NOW. If it takes to long, move on, there’s something else. We are taught ME, my needs, my life, my desires. And all of that destroys true love making. Because it is self cantered and rushed.

Until we stop teaching, looking and believing sex is ok, we will never learn the art of true lovemaking.

#love #life

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illusivegore · 6 years ago

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Gore Reviews Rage

Release Date: October 4, 2011 Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (reviewed), OS X

Rage starts out like so many other games from recent memory. Some catastrophic event has turned the world into a post-apocalyptic wasteland and somehow you’ve been chosen as the hero who’s going to save humanity. Before this event you and a small group have volunteered to be preserved in a contraption called an Ark (basically a vault) in order to help ensure that the human race will live on. Fast forward 106 years and you are finally released from your pod to find that you are the only survivor of your Ark. Once you get your bearings back you escape and are promptly attacked by some hideous mutant. Just when things are looking pretty grim you are saved by none other than John Goodman, well his name is actually Dan Hagar. You hop in Hagar’s buggy and he gets you up to speed with what’s going on in the wasteland. What follows is a series of fetch quests, repetitive corridor shooter sequences and quite possibly one of the worst endings to a game ever.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about Rage would be the graphics. They are absolutely gorgeous and just might be the best I’ve seen on a console this generation. Environments are detailed (even though they mostly fall into the brown and grey trap that so many post-apocalyptic games do) and each character you meet along the way has their own unique qualities. As beautiful as the graphics may be they aren’t without their issues. During my time with Rage I noticed texture pop-in quite frequently (even with the game installed). This happens when you load into a new area and sometimes just by making a quick turn. While it’s nothing that hinders your experience, it is quite noticeable at times. In order to keep the graphics looking their best the game needs to be installed to the hard drive (you’re actually prompted to do so). If you don’t have the space (22 total gigs across 3 discs on the 360, but each disc can be installed separately and 8 gigs on the PS3) then you’re in for a rough experience. I started off without the game installed and there was a considerable amount of screen tearing and constant frame rate drops. So if there’s no way for you to install that could very well be a deal breaker.

While the graphics are great, the sound of Rage is a bit of a mixed bag. I found the music was okay, but completely forgettable. The score was also a bit over dramatic for my taste. During most battles over-the-top music would be blaring in the background while nothing was actually going on. It did add a slight sense of urgency, but most of the time it was just a little much. Sound effects were also lacking. I noticed that every enemy that could speak had the same voice and said the same five or six phrases over and over. Weapons, explosions and other ambient noises were all fine, but didn’t stand out as particularly special. All of the voice acting in Rage was rather good. There are a few instances where the actor just seemed to phone it in, but all in all every character ended up having their own personality and charm. Sadly, as good as some of the voice work was, most of the time I honestly couldn’t have cared less what the characters were actually talking about. This is due in large part to Rage’s terribly lazy narrative.

The story of Rage is uninspired at best and completely awful at its lowest points. It is your cliché tale of some authoritative group trying to hold down the population and control all aspects of life. This time that group is known as “The Authority” (very clever indeed) and they are looking to find any Ark survivors and take control of the wasteland. Everything about the story is bland and lifeless and only exists to push you to the next bland and lifeless area of the game. There have been plenty offenders of this type of writing, but Rage has set a new low.

What’s worse than the overall narrative is how abruptly the game ends. While the story isn’t strong at any point in the game it really takes a nose dive in the second half and then completely goes down the toilet in the final sequence of events. The final mission of Rage is quite possibly the laziest and most unsatisfying end to a game I’ve ever seen from both story and gameplay aspects. The game resorts to making you play some sick game of “Whack-a-Mole” which is neither fun nor creative. Then all of a sudden I was seeing the final cutscene (which was all of about three minutes long) then the credits ran and I was left scratching my head.

When you throw the horrible story out of the way and really get to the core of Rage you’ll find a very competent first-person shooter. It doesn’t break the mold when it comes to the genre, but it definitely does right by it when it comes to gameplay and this really shouldn’t be a surprise since the game was created by FPS pioneers id Software (creators of Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake). You’ll be given your standard set of weapons (assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, etc.), as well as some more unique items to use in combat. These items include sentry bots (which look like robotic spiders that will attack your enemies), sentry turrets and (my personal favorite) wing sticks. I would describe the wing sticks as a cross between a throwing star and a boomerang. These are extremely powerful and on normal difficulty will take out most enemies in a single hit. These special items can be engineered using items you find in the wasteland or buy from vendors. You’ll also be able to create a variety of ammo types and other items (such as health restoration) as you progress through the game.

While the shooting in Rage is well done and can be fun at times, there are numerous issues that hinder it and end up making it feel just as boring as the narrative. First and foremost is the way quests are presented to you. Almost every one of them involves going to a “dungeon” and fighting through a horde of enemies, grabbing what you came for and fighting your way out. This would be fine if I felt like what I was doing actually mattered. That brings me to my next issue; there is absolutely no gratification in completing a quest or killing an enemy. You don’t gain XP, your character doesn’t get more powerful over time, and your weapons don’t improve much over the course of the game. So from beginning to end, it all feels exactly the same and it all feels completely pointless. If I’m going to be grinding through fetch quest after fetch quest I want to feel like I’m earning something worthwhile.

Another issue that makes combat feel repetitive are the enemies (or lack thereof). Throughout Rage you’ll basically encounter the same three enemies over and over: mutants, bandits and the Authority. I have no issue with the mutants because they are the most unpredictable of the three and each battle feels a little different from the last. Sadly you’ll see them the least of the three. The bandits and the Authority are basically the same enemy with different weapons and they will simply take cover and chuck grenades at you until you decide to snipe them or rush them with a shotgun. Having to fight the same fight dozens of times over the course of the game really began to test my patience. Then we get to the boss fights, which are very few and far between. The bosses are as uninspired as the story and all of them are easy to take down. No patterns to learn just shoot them until they’re dead.

My biggest complaint about Rage is that it tries to fool you into thinking you are getting an RPG style game by giving you the ability to talk to the townsfolk, pick up side quests and encouraging you to loot and explore. However all these are completely shallow experiences. You can talk to most people, but very rarely will you pick up a quest from them and most of the dialog you receive is nothing more than small talk. There is absolutely no character development anywhere in Rage, so being able to talk to various characters seems like nothing more than a waste of time. Exploration in Rage is also a complete joke. On various load screens the game encourages you to explore the wasteland, so I found myself checking around every corner and in every dark crevice looking for any sort of loot. However, nine times out of ten there was nothing to be found. When I was lucky enough to find something it was simply a can of beans or an empty beer bottle (which fetch the amazing price of around $4), so eventually I got sick of wasting time and just stopped looking. Almost every piece of loot is blatantly thrown in your face (and shining bright as the sun no less) so that you won’t miss it.

The biggest offender in this RPG mirage is the side quest system. I think I may have found three or four side quests from talking to NPCs found in the game and most of those were less than impressive. Then I saw a small glimmer of hope that there might be something greater to be found in the wasteland when I found the Bounty Board. Little did I know that I would get a big whopping total of six side quests. What’s even worse is that most of these were quests that sent me back to locations I had previously visited in the main storyline to do pretty much the same thing. There is honestly no point in doing side quests in Rage, unless you’re just bored. What little loot and money you’ll find usually won’t even cover what you waste in ammo and equipment, all of which would be better suited to help you get through the main story as quickly as possible.

I’ll admit that Rage does try to throw in a little variety by implementing the use of vehicles. Throughout the campaign you’ll be able to buy and upgrade your own rides to travel the wasteland in. As you travel from location to location you’ll be engaged in vehicular combat and in the beginning this can be fun, but just like the gunplay it eventually grows stale when the same enemies pop up in the same locations every time. Towards the end of the game I found that I’d rather just ignore the enemies altogether and get to my next destination. There are also races that you can enter which will help you upgrade your rides, if you so desire. One other way Rage tries to spice things up is through mini-games. They come in a few varieties and provide ways of making money and breaking some of the monotony of the game, but they are largely forgettable.

Outside of the single player campaign you’ll find a couple of multiplayer options. The first is a co-op mode known as Wasteland Legends where you and a partner run through maps from the single player campaign and try to complete objectives and accumulate the highest score possible. You can do this split screen or with a partner online. As I couldn’t find anyone online to team up with I tried it out split screen and I have to say it was far more enjoyable than the single player. This could simply be because playing with someone, especially in the same room, usually lead to some pretty fun experiences, but it also offered a much greater challenge than the campaign. Not to mention when you killed an enemy you actually got a little gratification by earning points, unlike the single player where every kill felt completely pointless. There are nine separate mission to play through, so if you can find a friend who has the game or who is willing to play some split screen you might find some fun here.

The other multiplayer option comes in the form of a competitive car combat mode know as “Road Rage” (another clever name). Here you and three other people (online only) will compete in one of four types of “races”. These vary from straight-up death match to more objective based modes. This way by far the most fun I had with Rage. I’ve never been a big fan of Twisted Metal style games, but after the lackluster campaign this was a much needed breath of fresh air. Unlike the single player, here you will actually gain XP and level up as you play. This allows you to unlock new weapons, vehicles and power-ups. While this is probably the most satisfying and enjoyable aspect of the game I’m not sure how long this will be a viable option as I found it difficult to get into lobbies during my time playing. However, if I can continue to find games, Road Rage might actually have me putting the Rage disc back in the tray from time to time.

Rage succeeds in being a pretty game to look at and also in creating two fun combat systems. However, both of these positives suffer due to Rage’s shortcomings. No matter how fun something is, when you are forced to do it over and over in exactly the same way, eventually it will grow tiresome. When you couple this with the terrible story and false promises of an RPG style experience, Rage ends up being one of the shallowest gaming experiences I‘ve had in a long time. The only slight saving grace for Rage is that the multiplayer options are both twice as fun as the single player campaign and show off what the solo experience could have been.

Score: 2 out of 5

#Rage #video games #games #bethesda #xbox #xbox 360 #ps3 #playstation #playstation 3

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briefhistorybriefhistory · 8 years ago

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Context & The Most Famous Artist: Why the Boring Bro of Art Needs To Shut TF Up

A video has been circulating Facebook recently of Matty Mo, self proclaimed Most Famous Artist, and his Snapchat nudes project. Many of you will already be familiar with Mo as the guy who walked into a gallery and displayed one million US dollars, which he sold off as chunks for an inflated value, or perhaps you’ve seen one of his more innocuous projects such as Selfie Wall.

The premise of the project is simple: Mo put a call out on Instagram, asking for people to Snapchat him nudes with the caption Happy birthday Most Famous Artist. In the video, Mo speaks at length about how he makes art for the internet age, an age where ideas of shock or shame are disconnected from daily reality and the act of sending nudes is a normal part of life. We see him setting up for his show and directly interacting with young art buyers who pay up to $1200 USD for a large size print (printed on “high quality art paper,” which is a technical term for “trying to compensate for the low resolution delivered by front facing cameras” by the by).

Understandably, the internet is critical.

Firstly, many are understandably skeptical about how this constitutes Art, which admittedly is a debate held around the wider context of contemporary art and how it can often be difficult to read, appreciate or enjoy. Mo receives nude photos which someone else has composed, shot and edited, and has applied an opaque curatorial process in deciding which of the hundreds of photos he used is makes the final exhibition. Many are responding with questions about how Mo’s input has elevated the photos from snapshots into pieces of fine art.

The artist defends himself by drawing heavily on the Duchampian concept of the readymade, which was birthed just over one hundred years ago and first defined in the Abridged Dictionary of Surrealists, published 1938. Interestingly, Duchamp’s best well known and most controversial readymade, Fountain, was first exhibited one hundred years ago in 1917, and in May of that year, the following text was published in The Blind Man, a magazine run by Duchamp and two friends:

Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.

Readymades were, and still can be, incredible pieces of art (although I suspect many viewers would disagree with me there), because of the Duchampian act of transformation applied to the object. This was often a simple twist - when Duchamp painted a fake name on the side of a urinal and placed it on its back, on a plinth, he was transforming it from simple commodity into objet d’art, simply by deciding it would become a piece of art.

At the time, of course the public viewed his work with scrutiny, but the artistic merit of his work was also contextualised by other artistic movements and scientific developments in the world. The problem with the readymade now is that our nearest and most immediate contextualisation is the work of the YBAs - Tracy Emin’s My Bed (1998), for example.

My Bed illustrates the difference between a Duchamp readymade and a late 20th Century readymade, which is the theoretical and contextual framework which surrounds the work.

Duchamp’s Fountain was made at a time when Dadaism was a huge force for change in contemporary art, and his practice of readymades was supported by the Dadaist tradition of lifting things from their original context and putting them into new ones, creating ridiculous and nonsensical objects and scenes. (Although, to be clear: Duchamp was not directly associated with the Dadaists and was careful of his use of the term.) The Dadaist movement was a forerunner of Surrealism, and made work in a specific time in world history - surrounding the First World War - when modernisation and industrialisation was happening before the eyes of the artists.

Emin’s My Bed has been referred to as a readymade, but draws from a very different conceptual root from Duchamp’s Fountain. Emin made her bed in the heyday of the Young British Artist, in the 1990s, after years of postmodernist thought. Her work is inherently personal, and My Bed is allegedly a faithful recreation of the scene of a four day depressive episode. It’s impossible to read My Bed without putting it into perspective of the decades of feminist art which came before it - My Bed wouldn’t and couldn’t exist without the work of artists like Valie Export, Yayoi Kusama or Louise Bourgeois (although, please trust me when I say I have multiple issues with that era of feminist art).

To compare Duchamp’s readymades to Emin’s readymades forces us to ask what they really have in common - which is ultimately very little, other than the fact that they both come from pre-manufactured objects.

This is what brings us back to Matty Mo and his use of Duchampian buzzwords to justify his work. He may say he draws from Dadaist thought on the readymade and the contextualising of items, but the problem is that his work exists in a hugely different context to Duchamp’s Fountain. When Fountain was first presented, the world was just coming to terms with its own modernity, and mediums like photography were still difficult to access for many.

Now, photography is a staple of the 21st Century. We live in a more visually exciting and explosive time than ever before, and imagery floods our eyes and minds constantly in advertising, popular culture and social media. While the nude portrait has long been a staple of art, we now live in a time where the nude, as a medium, moves between Art and Ordinary. This is probably where Mo draws the link between the readymade and how he sees his “work,” but it is a lazy and shallow comparison.

Today’s nudes represent a type of self portrait which has previously only existed within the art world. Now, anyone can be both model and artist, anyone can define the parameters in which their body is seen, consumed, transformed into an objet d’art. The power of the nude is in the ability to self define, which is removed by Mo’s clumsy curatorial efforts.

Look at the images that Matty Mo surrounds himself with - bodies which are traditionally aesthetically pleasing - generally white, generally slim, generally a reflection of the beauty standards applied to society. While Duchamp changed the world with his readymades, Mo merely reiterates oppressive power patterns which are already a part of daily life. As any young woman who’s ever sent or received a nude knows, those power struggles find their way into every aspect of our lives, including our sex lives.

I fail to see the power or the glory in an artist upholding the same oppressive standards which the feminist artists above worked to subvert. In fact, I see this less as a genuine curatorial effort and more as a man’s way to make himself feel a sense of power and control, by selecting the bodies worthy enough to be transformed into “art”.

(You’ll also notice a particularly gross moment in the video, where Mo sends a heart-in-eyes-emoji in response to a sexy picture and looks far too pleased with himself. Gross.)

We don’t gain any conceptual ground from this rehashing of oppressive practice, because Matty Mo is unable to critically reflect on it. He deflects, pointing to Duchamp, pointing to the ephemeral nature of Snapchat, claiming his screenshotting of images is a crucially transformative act instead of a repetition of dynamics seen both inside and outside of the contemporary art circuit.

Readymades no longer have any inherent value, which means we fall back onto the second most prominent element of Mo’s work: shock.

The images are designed to be inherently shocking. Snapchat has distinct visual cues, the greyed out text bar or comically enlarged emojis, which feature in most of his images. The shock aspect of his work is broken down into two components:

Firstly, the idea that people have volunteered to send their personal images to a man they do not know and will probably never meet. Mo banks on the controversy that he gains here, which is made apparent by the lengths he goes to in the video to explain how he gathered the images.

Secondly, the images have been blown up to large size and hung in a prominent location. Mo speaks at length about how he managed to get a gallery space on Wall Street, which we see features large glass windows. A woman walks past and covers her eyes as she sees the sexualised imagery, emphasising the supposed horror felt by members of the public.

Both of these factors are designed to shock the viewer with Mo’s brazen curatorial choices. But the problem is? I don’t find it shocking. I find it terribly dull and reminiscent of regular, daily life. Wow, a man asking for nudes which he’ll use for his own personal gain. Colour me surprised.

Shock art only works where the normal is subverted, bastardised, turned inside out - and even then, you have to be willing to do some pretty weird stuff to be shocking in this day and age. Mo is trying to appeal to a generation who grew up linking each other to shock sites on the internet, he’s trying to market himself to young collectors who probably have memories of the weird stuff we used to send via MSN and AIM. But now? There is very little that can shock a desensitised audience, and children of the internet generation are our most desensitised audience yet. The idea that we are meant to be shocked by nude bodies is a weirdly Victorian throw back, considering the feminist movements of the 1960s and 70s, and today’s contemporary body positivity movement. Perhaps Mo intends for us to be shocked by their method of distribution - he does harp on at length about how he’s ‘subverting’ Snapchat and how humanity have used our base nature to turn it into a sex tool rather than for ‘ephemeral conversation,’ but I find that line of thought just utterly boring and unworthy of being followed up on. Wow, the consumer base has had a huge input in this app is used, humanity is so base and driven by sex, yadda yadda, some crap about the lowest common denominator, so deep, wake up sheeple.

Besides which, shock art has been thoroughly explored. Artists have worked with shock for decades to disrupt conversations and turn them on their head. Hell, in 1961, Piero Manzoni produced 90 cans of Artist’s Shit and since then nothing has been off limits. We’ve seen artists pull scrolls of paper from their vaginas, tattoo lines across the backs of paid participants, crucify themselves on cars, and generally do anything and everything that has been seen as taboo or off limits.

Matty Mo’s work is inherently derivative, and he embraces that with open arms. A quick scan of his website, which I will not subject you to, shows work which is openly reminiscent of Yves Klein, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Roy Lichtenstein - that’s without even talking about the parallels between his Snapchat series and Richard Prince’s appropriated (and also gross) nudes.

While there’s nothing wrong with being derivative, nor drawing on the work of artists who have inspired you in the past, Mo’s work shows a level of entitlement and a sense of ownership through his framing of his use of artistic trope as new, exciting and original. His personal branding as The Most Famous Artist reflects the privilege most white male artists have - repeating a pattern seen many times throughout history before - where a male artist commodifies and uses the bodies of non-men as “inspiration” or “muses,” all the while giving little respect, or financial renumeration, to his subjects.

Frankly, I am not surprised or startled by Mo’s work. His “work” has the conceptual depth and agility of a first year art school student, which is probably ungenerous to first year art school students. He is the product of a long line of entitlement, an entitlement which does not invite him to critically reflect on his “creations,” but allows him instead to continue to push flat, boring and derivative ideas out while retaining media attention - and that’s without even fully exploring the ethics of the project, the issue of intellectual property, the way viewers and collectors have responded to it, but frankly, I’ve already devoted enough time and attention to him.

If you’d like to take a look at a really interesting internet artist instead, check out the work of Darius Kazemi, artist and botmaker. I particularly enjoy the Bureau of Nice Stats project, which automatically sources “nice statistics” in a fabulously surreal and hilarious way.

#the most famous artist #art bros are the worst #matty mo #please art history is really important because it stops us making boring work like this #really wish i'd been there for your art school crits #tumblr long reads

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sleepy--mage · 8 years ago

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I just finished Mass Effect: Andromeda and I have some thoughts. Some spoilers ahead but I'll try to be vague. Basically, it's bad. WRITING - Some characters were a pleasure to talk to, and I genuinely loved them, but others were actually painful to be around. Vetra, Jaal and Drack were particularly lovable. - The game had some really nasty homophobic elements. Nothing hateful, just ignorant. It's classic bioware bullshit but worse. I never found any trans characters but I've heard bad things. - Only gay dude is obsessed with his female friend and having babies, he barely has his own character he's just there to facilitate some kind of weird procreation thing and some of the dialogue is actually kinda homophobic. - They killed off the first character voiced by a trans person before you even get to see her which is majorly disappointing. I thought maybe we would get some actual trans representation. But no. - Cora is the worst example of bioware queercoding Straight characters. It literally felt like a trait of her character was "looks, acts, and is written as if she is a queer person, but periodically reminds you of how OF COURSE SHE IS NOT GAY WHY WOULD YOU ASSUME THAT". Shit tier writing. - Romance was really lack lustre for a Vetra. I loved her character but not a lot happened. I think I got two romance specific cutscenes and no romantic dialogue wheels. Not sure what other romances are like but I'm guessing they're all probably a little limited. - Story had a lot of recycled elements from the old trilogy that were not handled as well, and was generally... rather dull. Also the story felt rather short, ending very quickly and achieving nothing. While Inquisition felt exciting and fun Andromeda is just... empty. It has no heart. - Choices don't matter. In the original trilogy the Paragon/Renegade choices changed the tone of your playthrough quite drastically. While it's possible to be colder or more emotional in dialogue there's no real way to effect the world around you. This is particularly apparent in the main quest but is especially unfulfilling in dialogue scenes with the crew. It makes what you're playing rather two dimensional and it doesn't feel like mass effect. You guide the character through loyalty missions but ultimately you have no impact. Doesn't matter if you've done loyalty missions for main quest stuff either. It feels shallow. GAMEPLAY - Environments are... okay. They're not bad, but they're entirely generic. I feel as if Inquisition did a better job of creating distinct, pretty and fun to travel environments. It's not great, but it's not bad. It just kind of is. - In the game loading screens are hidden well. Considering how often it needs to load something I'd say it does well here. Most are covered up by nice flight animations and they're the one thing about the animation that actually looks stunning. - While you can take different approaches to combat it generally feels pretty stale. I changed only one of my powers from the beginning of the game and I honestly had no desire to switch it up. Mostly because much of it was confusing in places. I changed some things but not much, it didn't develop as well as inquisition. - What is asked of you gameplay wise is VERY REPETITIVE. Gameplay mechanics are so limited. You will be scanning things forever. Interfacing with tech is much more boring than it should be. Driving is painful in so many ways. There might be a lot to do but most of what you actually are doing is just the same thing over and over and over. It got boring fast and then quickly became annoying. The open world doesn't feel open either. It's not worth it. - My game was bugged to hell. Parts of it were unplayable and I had to load back just to be able to continue. It left me feeling very frustrated, and it happened multiple times. Luckily the auto save feature was excellent, although I wish it would let me save myself during missions. ANIMATION/ACTING - Voice acting was generally good, and the actors themselves brilliant, but there are moments when they clearly lacked context for what was being recorded. Lots of strange and awkward moments caused by characters either over or under reacting to situations, and it was bad for immersion. Bioware squandered the talent it had. -You know the animation is bad. It mostly looks unfinished. Faces barely move, eye contact is way off and body language was repetitive and often didn't match their mood. - Movement was glitchy as heck. For example, Peebee couldn't talk to be without doing a full 360 spin, and I triggered dialogue with Vetra and got transported clumsily across the Tempest. The game felt unfinished and clumsily put together. - Character models were so lazy. Character creation was limited by presets which was very disappointing. Again skin tones were off and hair options shitty. Models of other races were copy and pasted with only colours changed. All turians looked the same, and worse all Asari apart from Peebee had the same face. Many well known and loved races were not included physically so that bioware wouldn't have to animate them. It was lazy and the game looked shit because of it. I was majorly disappointed with his game and will probably end up selling it on sooner rather than later. I'm pretty sure I won't be spending any money on DLC. If you were considering getting this game I would suggest not bothering and just watching a playthrough on YouTube if you're curious. Instead buy Inquisition if you haven't already (it's super cheap at the moment) or try other titles like Horizon Zero Dawn and NieR: Automata.

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barbosaasouza · 6 years ago

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Destiny 2: A Second Opinion

When the first Destiny came out, most gamers and journalists gave it a free pass, myself included. After all, it was an innovative game. A MMO meets first-person-shooter in a Bungie world! The game was interesting, introducing us to Strikes, Raids and the Crucible, where I spent most of my time. I eventually got bored, but this was after over seventy hours. The game had its faults, but it kept me playing and the game got better with DLC. The Taken King was particularly good and a step in the right direction. Three years later Destiny 2 was released, but it offered nothing new, different, or innovative compared to the first game, and the free pass is no longer in effect.

Destiny 2: Now With More Cutscenes!

One of my biggest gripes about the first Destiny was the story, or lack thereof. One Shacker, Wikus Van De Merwe, summed it up rather nicely "The game didn’t have time to explain, why it didn’t have time to explain…" Destiny 2 improved on storytelling, but honestly the bar was set so low it wasn't hard. The story in Destiny 2 is shallow, cliché, and boring. In a universe that’s very interesting (I read the Grimoire cards), Bungie seemingly didn’t give a lot of thought to the writing. Aside from the opening story mission, where you are fighting beside the three main characters, the rest of the game's story falls completely flat. The villain even gives the clichéd "You’re not so different, you and I" speech. The Speaker from the first game also dies in a very awkward way, if he did die. It’s not really clear. The writing just feels lazy. It's like Bungie begrudgingly added in more story in response to its community asking for it. The story is bad, the campaign short, and other than Cayde-6 and Failsafe, all of the characters are forgettable one-dimensional placeholders for you to turn in rep rewards to. Bungie told such an epic and awesome story with Halo series and set the bar high. To see them drop the ball so hard with Destiny is disappointing. A great story should leave you wanting more, but Destiny 2 is so preoccupied with trying to sell you what's around the corner that it misses the bigger picture. The Destiny 2 campaign felt more like a DLC add-on for the first game rather than a continuation of the story.

A Shallow, Hollow Shell of a Game

One of the better parts of Destiny 2 is the gameplay. It's Bungie, the people who made Halo. The gunplay is spot on, but after completing the single-player story and spending over ten hours in PVE, players will start to see how repetitive and shallow the game really is. The game loop is short. You shoot things and they die, which is the same that could be said for any FPS, however Destiny 2 lacks any depth, tactics or diversity in this matter. Games like Doom, Borderlands, and Warframe have strategies and tactics, while dealing with a variety of enemy types. However, in Destiny 2, there is no diversity or strategy to disposing of the enemies in the game. Except for the Raids, most enemies, including bosses, are defeated the exact same way. Shoot, reload, and occasionally take cover. It’s incredibly simple, too simple, with no meta or interesting abilities to spam. That’s not to say simple gameplay mechanics are bad. Take Super Mario World. Players can jump and run, but it’s the underlying mechanics that create a sense of precision, depth and strategy to the game. This shines when players take a look at the levels in Mario Marker. Destiny lacks this type of depth in every way, shape, and form.

The enemy AI is also painfully stupid. The combat simply isn’t deep enough, sorely lacking any type of diversity. The game does try to give you things to do including missions, patrols, public events, and more. Sady, all these things are all centered around dumping more bullets into the lackluster enemies. Ultimately, the game blurs together into a big mess of mindless, dull shooting. The game tries to spice things up with the the Warlock, Hunter and Titan classes, but they’re so similar it almost feels pointless to have include them. Since all of them DPS the exact same way (shoot, reload, repeat), there really isn’t a difference in play style. There’s also no penalty for death in the game. More could have been done to make the classes feel unique, like restricting Warlocks to Submachine Guns, or by giving classes roles, like having a Titan Tank/Hold Agro, so Hunters can get shots off on a strike boss. Anything to differentiate the classes beyond what Destiny 2 offers would have been welcomed. As of right now, the Destiny 2 classes offer only the illusion of choice.

The world gives you a lot to do, but it all boils down to shooting, reloading and more shooting. The only example of diverse gameplay I saw was using shade in the Almighty: 1AU mission, to avoid sun/fire damage. Why wasn’t more of this in the game? Less shooting and more environment interaction would have been welcome changes from the original Destiny. What the hell happened? Where are all the new features? Modes? Classes? Add-ons? Why can’t we do simple MMO things like transmogrify gear on our character? Why is there no crafting system? Destiny 2 severely lacked content at launch, and it tried to make up for by having players do the same things on four different planets, but it’s all the same. Shoot, reload, and repeat until everything’s dead. With very little incentive to explore, the game becomes a mindless chore.

The Ten Year "Plan"

Before the first Destiny was released, Bungie and Activision promised a ten year plan. I thought that this ten year plan meant that they would continue to support the game and expand the world internally. I was very wrong. The ten year plan was basically just a publishing deal with Bungie and Activision, promising four separate game releases as well as DLC for the Destiny IP. This means we have two more games to go. The plan was confirmed again in an interview with a Bungie developer at E3 2017 that "this is a fresh start…" with all your gear gone and all old locations unable to be revisited (even the Post Office). They simply rebooted Destiny with Destiny 2 and quickly used PR buzz words like “boots on the ground” and “action shooter” to try to pull away from the MMO branding the franchise had become known for. However, if they just planned on releasing four separate games each with a “fresh start” would that have flown with fans? Imagine if World of Warcraft started players fresh after each expansion and prevented them from visiting old locations and trashed all their gear. Players would revolt, but for some reason this is accepted by some of the Destiny community, and looks like it will be done two more times. Why limit your game? Why not just build and expand this universe? Bungie could have done something like WoW did in The Cataclysm expansion, and reflect the old locations in Destiny 1 with the after effects of the Cabal Invasion. What did the three years of developer time go to? It seems Bungie is making one giant game, breaking it up, and selling it to us in pieces, but the pieces don’t even connect, and they’ll all be stand alone games. I think gamers, including myself, were hoping for a massive sci-fi world at the end of the ten year mark.

The "Esports" Angle

The Crucible in the first Destiny was where I spent the majority of my time playing the game. Honestly, the mode was quite fun. The maps were diverse, the game types enjoyable, and the fight for the heavy weapon ammo spawns was always a rush. Crucible was one of the original Destiny’s high points. I expected the PVP in Destiny 2 to be just as good if not better. However, it ended up being a small step backwards. Vehicles are completely gone, despite the community demanding more of them. Space Battles were not included, another example of community feedback being completely ignored by Bungie. It was one of biggest and loudest requests from the Destiny community, and Bungie confirmed they have no plans for vehicles or space battles in any Destiny games in the future. Going back to the Crucible in Destiny 2, the PVP has gotten a little worse for wear. Players have been restricted to 4v4 battles down from 6v6. Another annoying change are the smaller corridor-like maps that feel half the size of most maps from the first Destiny. The most disappointing change was to the arsenal of weapons, which became even more limited. Sniper rifles, fusion rifles, and shotguns are now power weapons, meaning they require heavy ammo to use, which is spawned in limited amounts throughout the match. These changes made the already small variety of weapons and play style even more restrictive. I understand this makes the game a lot easier to balance, but in return this leaves a small amount of weapon options for Guardians. Abilities have also taken a hit, with grenades on an annoyingly long cooldown timer, and it’s been my experience that player's class super can only be charged and used once per match. Doing this lets you focus more on skill-based gameplay, but with such a limiting weapon set, it just makes the experience less enjoyable.

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The Light is Fading…

Destiny 2 is not a bad game or a good game - it's mediocre. The lavish marketing campaign, Bungie's legacy, and the extremely loyal community worked together to present the game as a genre-defining experince, but when laucnh day came around, the emporer had no clothes. We need to call developers out when they don't deliver on what was promised. The potential of the first Destiny still hasn't been reached with the sequel. Bungie gave players a mediocre game that they clearly chopped up to sell you (again) in bits of DLC. In total, players can expect to spend around $90 for the full Destiny 2 experience. How is this acceptable? Are they testing gamers to see how little they can put into a game and still be rewarded? The game-buying public should be smarter than this. Destiny 2 is a mediocre game that does not deserve the hype, positive scores, or the overly-forgiving community that it currently has.

Destiny 2: A Second Opinion published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

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barbosaasouza · 6 years ago

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Destiny 2: A Second Opinion

Destiny 2: Now With More Cutscenes!

A Shallow, Hollow Shell of a Game

The Ten Year "Plan"

The "Esports" Angle

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The Light is Fading…

Destiny 2: A Second Opinion published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

0 notes