#i love zelda but its not THAT well written. not since they went with gameplay over story post-skyward sword

[youssefguedira]

watching a video about unanswered questions in totk and it's like. well i can answer these! it's because nintendo doesnt care about the story and overarching preexisting lore that much

[eggoreviews]

My Top 10 Games of All Time

Just so I’m not talking about Smash Bros for once, here’s my top 10 games of all time that I will always think are perfect and never accept that they have flaws! Enjoy and I hope one of your faves is in here!

Probably spoilers for the games I mention under the cut

10. Kingdom Hearts II (2005)

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Kingdom Hearts is a big weird crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy. I played this game as a kid and it was mostly exploring the Disney worlds and the really good combat system that kept me interested (I had literally no clue what was happening in the story and still kind of don’t) and I never really lost that sense of nostalgia that became attached to this game for me. And yeah I’m definitely getting Kingdom Hearts 3.

9. Life Is Strange (2015)

Life Is Strange is an emotional, cheesily written episodic series that I got into totally by accident about a teenage girl called Max who does some high school stuff and also has superpowers. What really made this game so memorable for me was the sheer emotion behind a lot of the plot and I will admit I cried several points during, which is what made the game stick with me. Plus this has one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in a game so yeah. Go play it (and everything on this list).

8. Until Dawn (2015)

This game probably doesn’t belong here but I love it. Until Dawn follows 8 teenagers who go back to a snowy cabin where some shit went down the year before and u have to keep them all alive by making the right choices n stuff. The horror factor is good in this game, but it’s mostly the characters and how strangely attached I was to them by the end (I know they’re all tropes but I still love them). I’ve honestly lost count of the amount of times I’ve replayed this. Still probably gonna do it again.

7. Mass Effect 2 (2010)

The sequel to what is basically the space version of Dragon Age is shamefully my only exposure to the Mass Effect series, but the gameplay and characters left enough of a mark on me to give it a comfortable spot in this list. Mass Effect 2 follows Commander Shepard, overly macho space guy/gal who is a terrible flirt as he attempts to rid the universe of some massive insects. Along the way, you run into a huge cast of memorable, unique characters (and then Jacob as well) and explore a wealth of interesting and varying locations. But what really made the game stick out were the genuine lasting consequences of the frankly huge final mission; if you don’t make the right choices and buy the right upgrades, a lot of your faves are going to die.

6. Dishonored (2012)

This entry in my list is a bit cheaty, as it includes all dlc expansions from the first game as well as Dishonored 2, because all of these are just as good as each other. Dishonored puts you in the shoes of self-righteous arsehole Corvo Attano (I’m kidding btw, he’s only an arse if you make him kill everyone) as he gets framed for the murder of his lover who also happens to be the Empress, as well as the kidnap of his daughter who also happens to be the Empress’ daughter. So kind of a big deal. But all joking aside, Dishonored is one of the finest examples of the first person stealth genre, with arguably its only flaw being that it gives you a sprawling variety of fun and interesting ways to kill people and then makes you feel like a monster at the end of the game for doing it. I played this game and its sequels to death, and became especially invested in the character of Daud (who was totally butchered in Death of the Outsider. Yeah, I really wasn’t a fan of that game. Like, I love Billie Lurk and everything but what the hell were they thinking doing THAT to the Outsider?? Sorry I’m rambling)

5. Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

And now to one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played, Dragon Age is fucking amazing from start to finish. A gripping storyline, characters and companions that are impossible to forget and a combat system that’s fairly easy to get to grips with but becomes a bit of an arse later in the game. As much as I liked Inquisition (despite the fact it butchered Leliana. That’s just my hot take I don’t think anyone else thinks this, she just kind of lost that sense of fun and badassery that made her my fave in Origins. Rambling again), none of the other games in the series really matched up to the original for me.

4. Medievil Resurrection (2005)

I’ve been reliably informed that I am Bad And Naughty for loving this version of the game because it’s apparently rubbish compared to the PS1 version. But I loved this game so much as a kid that I played it to DEATH. Like more than Dishonored. The levels aren’t quite open world, but you get so immersed in them that you think they are. Honestly, I’ve never played a game with such a creative concept behind it, with humour that’s surprisingly meta for an RPG of the time, not to mention the fact that there’s a whole level devoted to carnival minigames. Are you not convinced yet? Well, you should be because Tom Baker is a voice in it and it’s coming out as a remaster for the PS4 at some point (I hope it’s soon. It’s gone eerily quiet)

3. Undertale (2015)

I know this is high for such a recent game, but it really has justified its place. I don’t care how much this game or its following has been ruined by the internet, I still hold it in the same regard I did when I first played it (and then bought all the subsequent ports because I’m a Capitalist Sheep). With an amazing narrative, some spicy retro-era graphics, memorable characters and possibly the best soundtrack I’ve ever heard in a game, there’s no way I’m ever getting sick of Undertale.

2. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (2009)

What sets this game apart from the other RPGs on this list was that not only did it have everything I look for in a game (amazing narrative, characters, soundtrack, game design, combat and open world) but it carried it all out with a sense of emotion I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Every single character, every single detail seemed to be something else you immediately became attached to and it all comes together to make a game so immersive I didn’t put it down for a solid 3 years, even after I’d completed it. Basically, if you own a DS, you NEED to play this. Like you will cry many times throughout this game. Sometimes happy crying (I think I just get a bit too invested in these things tbh)

Before I ramble on incessantly about my number 1 pick, here’s some of the best bois I’ve played that didn’t quite make the list:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) - I’m loving this game to bits so far. I’m only a recent Switch owner so I’m catching up on what I’ve missed and if this game carries on the way it is, it’s going to have to be in my top 10.

Rayman Legends (2013) - Fun, unique and memorable platformer that especially shines in couch co-op. I’ve played this one countless times and I won’t stop until Rayman gets in Smash.

The Walking Dead series (2012-2018) - One of the best sets of decision based games on the market and perfect if you’re looking for a game that tears your heart out and stomps on it!

Fallout 4 (2015) - Amazing open world, characters and combat. Well-designed, genuinely terrifying monsters. The ability to name your weapons ridiculous things. Heck yeah it’s going on this list.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales (2006) - A cute lil card based RPG that was a Final Fantasy spin-off no one seemed to like. But hey, I loved it and I’ll never say it’s anything other than perfect because childhood.

1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)

Oh my god. Ohhh my god. Where do I even begin with this one? Yes, Skyrim was amazing, but Oblivion just beats it due to a combination of a storyline I prefer (oops sorry), nostalgic attachment and a lovely set of glitches and exploits that to me make the game all the more lovable. There’s nothing I’ve played since Oblivion that’s matched the experience of wandering through a forest or one of the cities with THAT MUSIC in the background. And don’t even get me started on the quests. And that Shivering Isles DLC? Big yes. I knew this segment wouldn’t make much sense but I love the game so much that I can’t even begin to tell you all the things that make it my favourite.

Thank you for reading if you made it this far! It was just me rambling about games really but I appreciate u a lot if you made it this far. Have a good day and if you get the time, pick up one or two of the titles on this list! You bigly won’t regret it.

[ahiddenpath]

Vidja Games

So I checked out Game Informer’s list of the top 300 greatest video games, and they are objectively wrong, lol (I can’t imagine the fights that went into making this list??)!

I’m no critic, and I’m not interested in attempting to objectively rate games, but here are my (subjective) faves in rough order-ish, if you’re interested!  They are arranged by franchise for my sanity below the cut.

The Elder Scrolls (TES)

My all time favorite video game series is TES, although I wasn’t able to stomach playing I and II.  In order, my favorites are: Morrowind, then Oblivion, then Skyrim.

Morrowind is unfriendly to casual gamers, and even experienced folks need to learn the lay of the enormous world, how to fast travel, and even how to level and plan characters to best effect.  The learning curve is enormous, and if you decide to play a different type of character later on, you’re stuck!  You might even have to start over, since you level your character by increasing the major and minor skills you chose upfront.

But I have never experienced such an open, imaginative world.  The later installments felt both smaller and less varied.  In Morrowind, you’ll find everything from sprawling floating cities to houses built into enormous mushrooms, with ashlands, swamps, and mountainous terrains in between, complete with hell-on-earth smack-dab in the middle of everything.

Oblivion is more user-friendly than Morrowind, and it has some of the most engaging quests in the series.  What it loses in environmental diversity and sheer exploration potential, it almost- almost- compensates for in fun quests (there’s much less ‘fetch me some swamp muck’ involved), easier transportation, and the wonderful world of Shivering Isles, an expansion.

Skyrim is the most accessible of the three by far, and it’s forgiving in that it allows players to change their play style on the fly with little repercussions.  It also has the best combat.  Sadly, the repetitive environments make it far less compelling to explore than its predecessors, which is a huge part of TES’s charm for me.  I also found the enemies repetitive.  The more fanciful enemies are almost absent, and the few that exist are tied to specific daedric quest lines.  Do you know how hard it is to recharge enchanted items when you only encounter a handful of daedra?  Wolves and trolls just don’t fill them back up well.

Also, while the accessibility widens the target audience considerably, it cuts into the customization options previously available to more experienced gamers.  That was a huge disappointment for me, personally.

To be clear, though, I still adore Skyrim.

Personal anecdote:  My Morrowind strategy book was so worn that it fell apart, so I punched holes in the pages and kept it in a binder.  I took out the fast travel map and the local map of whatever area I was combing to find a dungeon door tucked into a cave hidden behind ivy or whatever.  I still have it; it’s a sentimental treasure.

The Sims

The more open-ended a game is, the more I like it, and The Sims is king of that arena!  For me, 3 is by far the best installment.  2 introduced the idea of having types of Sims with personal goals to meet to create direction for the player, but ultimately, it felt like I was stuck with the same five Sims over and over again.  The wishes and moodlet system of 3, along with the five slots for personality traits, gave me so much more power to create Sims that felt like actual characters.

I... don’t even want to know how much of my life I’ve put into The Sims...

My ranking:  3>1>2>4

It should be noted that I didn’t mind 1′s lack of direction, since my imagination alone is way more than enough to pull me forward in a sandbox game.  In comparison, 2 felt restrictive by creating five character types, limiting me to that in a way I couldn’t ignore.

Personal anecdote:  I received the original Sims for Christmas when I was in middle school.  I accidentally played from bed time until 4 AM, which is the closest I’ve ever come to pulling an all-nighter.

Sonic the Hedgehog

WHERE DO I EVEN START WITH THE BLUE BLUR.

Sonic was an enormous part of my childhood, guys.  I played all the games.  I watched both cartoons (the one with Sally and the Freedom Fighters and the one where it’s just Sonic/Tails/Eggman/some robots), I learned to read with the comic books.  I have a vivid memory of my brother taunting me by refusing to let me see his comics “because I couldn’t read”...  So I spite-learned using the comics when he wasn’t paying attention.

I don’t think I can pick a favorite!  As a kid, I played Sonic 3 the most; I was a huge Knuckles fan, so that might have played a role (also the original Sonic was too difficult for me at the time, although I certainly tried).  But I also loooooved Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.  And Sonic Generations was so much fun!

Mario Bros

Lord, I was playing Mario games before I could read, I don’t...  Mario has always been around for me, okay?  It’s a huge part of my story, and the franchise is so iconic that there’s little for me to say.  There are way too many amazing games in this franchise for me to name, but personal faves include: Super Mario RPG, Super Mario World, and Yoshi’s Island.

The Legend of Zelda

This is another franchise where I don’t know what to say...  It’s too iconic for me to offer much.  Zelda games are known for their exploration and adventure, even from the beginning.  Ocarina of Time was a big part of my childhood, but I also adore the newest installment, Breath of the Wild.  And I know this may be silly, but I love Hyrule Warriors!  I can’t wait to play it on the Switch with all the DLC.

And the music???  Guys?????  THE MUSIC?!?!?!    

Bioshock 

Amazing atmosphere, fun game play, and one of the best stories in gaming history add up to an unforgettable experience.  Also a fore-runner to the idea of playing dialogue and recordings while the player explores, a trend that caught on in a huuuge way.

Persona

It’s hard to describe Persona games...  They basically combine Jungian psychology with various mythologies, sprinkle in some horror (or glob it on in the case of 3), throw in an RPG, and add a heaping serving of everyday high school life.  The games tackle a wide range of ideas and game play, creating a unique experience that has drawn a devoted following.

I’ll make this quick:

3:  Best story and atmosphere, worst/most needlessly frustrating game play, very prickly cast lol

4:  Best characters and character development

5:  Best game play (exquisitely polished game play, really), best overall style, worst story and character development

My ranking is 4>3>5.  It should probably be noted that story and character are king for me, so while 5 was incredibly polished mechanics wise, the comparatively weak story and characters sunk it to the bottom of the list for me.  It was one of those games where I understood where they were going hours ahead of time, and then they would explain “the twist” to the player for half an hour over and over and over.  Frankly, it was... kind of insulting, and soured the experience for me.

Also, Mona, I swear to god, how am I supposed to pass school if you don’t let me study or do my homework because you think I need to sleep at 5 PM every day ahhhhh!  XD

Harvest Moon

Oh god, here’s another franchise I don’t want to delve into in terms of hours I’ve spent playing O_O

I can’t even explain why I like these games...  In HM, you are a farmer, and your job is usually to prove to the villagers that you’re a valuable member of society so that they won’t evict you from your own inherited property.  (I’m curious about their deeds and legal policies, lol.  How do you write that clause up?).

These games combine farming with socialization and light dating sim elements, and time management is the name of the game.  They pull in players by tapping into the universal desire to create order and advancement.

My favorite installment is Friends of Mineral Town.  I also adored Harvest Moon 64, but the controls are sadly too dated for me to replay it.

Pokemon

I’m sure I’ve missed at least one, but I’ve played almost every mainstream release of Pokemon since Red and Blue came out.  It must be doing something right, lol!

I’m a huge sucker for games where you choose monsters to raise.  It’s so fun to assemble a team based on your tastes and raise them just so!

My favorite release is the remake of Gold and Silver.

Monster Rancher 2

OH MY LORD I played this game to the point where I’m shocked the disc still works.  In Monster Rancher 2, you find monsters by placing discs into your Play Station, which each encode a monster.  In order to access the strongest monsters, you must raise your rank as a trainer by winning official tournaments.

I wish I could explain why I latched on to this particular game so hard, but...  I think it had something to do with the massive variety of monsters, the difficulty of the tournaments (I never did hit S rank, and not for lack of trying!), and the myriad of odd ways to unlock special monsters.

Mario Kart

Seriously, who doesn’t like smiting friends and family on the race track?  MK is a fun, family-friendly way to deliver a beat down...  As long as you contain your desire to cuss like a sailor, anyway.

It’s so hard to pick a favorite here!  It’s hard to top the original for the challenge...  But Double Dash and Infinity are contenders, too.

Danganronpa

Danganronpa games are visual novels that mix survival, horror, and crime-solving into a dark, bizarre, unique experience.  I’ve written a ton about this series lately, so I won’t delve into it here, but you can check out the danganronpa tag on my blog for more.

Kingdom Hearts

These games are so charming and fun to play!  I’ve never completed one on my own- linear games are rough for me- but I’ve seen my husband play them all, even the (many) extra installments.  KH2 is probably my favorite, although Birth by Sleep was amazing, too.

Final Fantasy

I’ll admit that I don’t really enjoy playing Japanese RPGs; linear gameplay doesn’t appeal to me much in general.  But the FF franchise is famous for its sweeping narratives, imaginative environments, and breath-taking music, and I enjoy them for that.  I’ve watched my husband play X-XV, and I briefly joined him in playing XI and XIV.  My favorite is probably X...  Although I have an enormous crush on Ignis from XV.  

My favorite FF game to play is Theaterhythm: Curtain Call.

Mass Effect

How do I say this...  I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that better simulated becoming an entire universe’s hero and moral center.  In Mass Effect, you shape the world and the political climate in unprecedented ways.  By the end of 3, every player is so deeply invested in their Shepard and the world s/he created.  In that sense, it’s en epic experience without peer.

Destiny

I love playing Destiny with my husband and our friend!  I’m a titan, Tony is a hunter, and our buddy is a warlock, and together, we are... three guardians, lol!  

Okay, so the vanilla Destiny release needed some help, but it became a great game with the expansions.  I’m still waiting for that breath of rejuvenation for 2, but I treasure the time we spend together kicking ass as a team.

Left 4 Dead

This game redefined what co-op meant to me.  I always thought of it as Halo, basically competing on the same team against other players.  And yeah, you do that in L4D...  But the cooperation angle that this game brought to the table was more or less unprecedented.

In L4D, if your team of ragtag survivors doesn’t work together, it’s unlikely that anyone will survive.  I spent a lot of free time in college playing this with my friends spread out over different schools.  I had so, so much fun with it.

Although 2 had more varied game play, which was great, I enjoyed the original more, mostly because the online game play wasn’t as loaded in favor of the zombie team.  Objectively speaking, though, the sequel was the more robust game.

Personal anecdote:  L4D is where I learned about dealing with males online.  With Halo, which I also played at the time, I only enjoyed it enough to play it with people I knew.  I loved L4D so much that I would log in to play even when my friends weren’t available, which meant that I was teamed with random players.

I have a very feminine voice, which apparently means that I am meant to be treated like crap online.  Even though it’s a co-op game, and communication is important, I spent most of my sessions with the headset turned off.

Borderlands

THIS GAME, I HAD SO MUCH FUN WITH IT!  The crass humor, the expanse of wastelands, the gun-slinging insanity, the incredible couch co-op!  What’s not to love?

Sadly, the sequel was a downgrade from the original, but the first game was an amazing ride.  I’ve been considering replaying it with Tony with all of the DLC.

Metal Gear

I’ve never played these myself, but I watched my husband play the first three.  They’re so cinematic and goofy and over-the-top and awesome!  I love breaking out my Solid Snake gravel voice, too.  My favorite is... probably 3?  It’s hard to pick between 2 and 3, though... 

Disgaea

Hmm...  How to describe these games...  They’re tactics games, I guess?  And there’s a lot of story, too...  Game play wise, the later installments perfect what the earlier ones started, but you can’t beat the story and characters of the original.  Laharl is still one of my all-time favorite male video game characters.  He’s... such a brat?  I love him???

Honorable mentions in no order (ie, I’m tired of writing descriptions, sorry to the rest of these games):

Halo, Dragon Age, Fallout 3, Ratchet & Clank, Resident Evil, Portal, Soul Calibur, Tetris Attack, Uncharted, Ms. Pacman,  the Batman Arkham games

EDIT:  I forgot Nier: Automata and Super Smash Bros!  FOR SHAME!

[thesummonerofaskr]

Salt 3: Fire Emblem Fates, the Story

Post under the read more

I decided to go ahead and make this since I am currently sick, agitated, and ready to rant about something. I've poked fun at Fates' narrative or outright insulted it before, but I've never said anything about why it's bad. Why is that? Well that would probably be because most Fire Emblem fans are expected to hate Fates' story at this point and so saying that you hate it is just a given. But you know what? I can do better then that. I've done it twice already, so why not? Now to be fair, I will admit I'm a bit spoiled. My first Fire Emblem game was Path of Radiance, a Fire Emblem game considered to have one of the best stories in the series this side of Genealogy of the Holy War. So when I went in and played Awakening, with its fun-yet-busted gameplay and yet still flawed narrative, I was slightly disappointed. I still love Awakening and how it helped save the series, but I'm not above saying it could've been better. Still, when Fates, or rather "if," was announced, I couldn't help but fall in love with the premise. Two families, two different storylines, and a choice to make on which side you would follow? The ability to customize your own personal fortress? It sounded like a dream come true. But then the game to the States and... it crushed sales. You know why Fates gets all the seasonal units in Heroes alongside Awakening? It's because those games sold well, so of course they're going to get more attention whether we like it or not. However, Fates did disappoint... a lot... with the execution of its narrative. I feel like we all convinced ourselves that this was going to be the best game ever only to get something sub-par, which to the hyped up fan can end up being the worst thing ever. Where did Fates fail and how can it be improved? Well that's what I'd like to explore.

Prologue: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

Fates may not have been the best game in the world, but it certainly wasn't the worst. If you ask some people in the fandom about Fates, they'll get onto their high horse and tell you that everything about Fates was horrible, there wasn't a single redeeming factor, and it single-handedly ruined the entire franchise to such a degree that it took Echoes being made to save it. (And if I ever get around to beating Echoes, I'm sure I could make a rant on how little fun I've been having with it, to the point where I can't beat it.) Those people are... exaggerating. So before we jump into the negativity, I'll offer some positives. For starters, much as with Awakening, I found myself getting attached to a good majority of the characters. Sure there were exceptions (Niles and Hayato), but there always are and that doesn't necessarily make the characters bad for the purpose they were created. Secondly, the village customization was everything I hoped it would be. Yes, I did enjoy playing around with the My Castle feature. I've always been a bit of a world builder, driving my interest in RTS games like Age of Empires and the original Warcraft, and even a small little thing like this got me thinking on how to make my castle pretty. Gameplay mechanics introduced in Awakening were fixed. Pair Up mechanics were no longer broken and allowed you to be more strategic regarding both offensive and defensive measure. Archers and Knights were made not only useful, but amazing, and so characters you wouldn't have used in other games suddenly becomes amazing in this one. Personal skills now exist and even a few of those aforementioned people will turn around and say they would bring personal skills back for future installments. The music... why would people even hate the soundtrack? It was absolutely beautiful. As a sucker for both Japanese and Celtic music, I can certainly say there was not a track in this game that I despised. And I know that some people like how battles get their own music in other games before Awakening, but I've never been fond of that. It feels like I don't get to hear enough of the music in game before it switches over to Battle and back, again and again, until the Enemy Phase... Thanks Echoes. Also, dagger weapons... I hope those return next game to be honest. I don't expect there to be a duality like in Fates, but I do hope there's at least some manner of throwing debuff weapon.

Perhaps this wasn't the most eloquently written paragraph in the history of the world, but I did want to at least start off on a high note... now let's delve into the topic at hand, shall we?

Chapter 1: Pre-Determined Destiny

One of the first issues with Fire Emblem Fates was how it was advertised versus how it was shipped. One of the things we saw leading up to the game's release was how there was going to be a choice between which side you wanted to affiliate with. Would you stand with your blood family, the Kingdom or Hoshido, or the family that raised you, the Kingdom of Nohr? It was a question that actually got a lot of people both excited and competetive, a light battle that I'd only seen in the Warcraft fandom, though not nearly as tense and hostile as Alliance vs. Horde to be fair. But then tragedy immediately struck when it was revealed that to make your choice, you had to purchase the right game for it, split between Birthright and Conquest. That's one hell of a way to make this seeming question lose its meaning. The first five chapters are spent introducing you to both Nohr and Hoshido and by Chapter 6 you're supposed to make your decision based on what you know and how you feel, but that will only work if you had purchased the Special Edition of Fates or, more realistically, if you'd ended up paying the extra $20 to put the other side on your 3DS digitally. Otherwise you'll end up with a 50% chance on whether you now want to side with the kingdom you bought ther version for still or if you'll end up like "wait no I actually want to side with the others," but you can't because this is the version of the game you paid for, kiddo.

It stank of greed to a lot of people and there were even comparisons made to Pokemon as a result. Now to be fair, these comparisons are still completely incorrect. Birthright and Conquest, and the third story released later in Revelations, do in fact tell different stories. There's more major differences in the narrative then which units you get. But it overall came up to $80 in total. Couldn't you have just put Birthright and Conquest on the same cartridge and then made Revelations cost $40 on its own then? Well no, that still would've pissed people off and for good reason. I feel bad for cartridge owners who wanted the game. I heard there was a way to get both on cartridge for $60, but I bought all my Fates content digitally, so I cannot confirm. There's no real way to improve this because it was on Nintendo's marketing for giving the illusion that the choice came in game, not immediately based on version.

Chapter 2: The Avatar of Salt

Honestly self-insert characters are the worst. In a game like The Legend of Zelda, it works because the story takes a backseat to gameplay and Link doesn't need to be anything more then the silent hero who will save the day and bring peace to Hyrule no matter what the challenges are that come to test him. Fire Emblem doesn't get that luxury. Being a tactical RPG that weaves both story and gameplay together as important as the other, it needs characters that can serve to further the narrative while still being interesting and enjoyable. None should be more so then the main character of the game, especially if they're a major talker in the story. RPGs like Suikoden and Persona can get away with not having the main character say much because the focus goes into secondary characters more so then the primary one and so you can enjoy them more extensively, watching them interact amongst each other as well, but Fire Emblem doesn't often bring secondary characters into the main narrative and usually reserves their development and storyline importance for supports to look into. Awakening and Fates are especially guilty of this, with the former utilizing mainly Chrom, the Avatar, Frederick, and Lissa over anyone else. In Fates, it would be the Avatar, Azura, and the royals. So it is important that these characters at least be able to carry the story well enough and... they don't always. But Awakening gets some leeway in that its self insert Robin, while plot integral enough to be a flaw on Awakening's story, is not the main character. That would actually be Chrom. Fates' Avatar, Corrin, serves as both the self insert... and the main character. It goes about as well as you expect.

Many consider Corrin to be the worst lord in the series, more so then even Roy, Eliwood, and Gaiden!Alm before Echoes turned him into a good boy. A lot of this is because of how static Corrin is. In the first five chapters, Corrin is given some leeway because they are still sheltered and naive. They were raised by the Nohrian royals, who are not complete monsters like their father, and so of course they would be horrified at the thought of executing prisoners for fun. After being kidnapped by Hoshido and shown around, they would of course expect to die, be confused by their circumstances, and only after a horrific traumatic effect bringing back their memories ends up disturbed by what happened to them. These five chapters were better storywise then the rest of the game by far because after choosing their side and going through an admittedly heartfelt battle... they seem to just settle in and end up a static character. Whether it's the justified avenger in Birthright or the suffering deceiver in Conquest, they never really show any change in their character. There's no major development for them as they have to stay in a certain role that is easy to insert themself into, even though in some cases they also fail in this.

Revelations is the worst in this regard. Corrin keeps their naivete to the very end. This gets them into a lot of trouble with a certain character who ends up betraying the group, yet this behavior is never called out on. In fact, their overtrusting nature is commended and encouraged, which I suppose is natural considering the fact that they were manipulated by both Hoshido and Nohr in their own right. Obviously Nohr was manipulating Corrin into believe they were of Nohrian decent, but Hoshido, or rather... only Ryoma, never bothered to let Corrin know the truth that they were adopted. I suppose they would want Corrin to remain the same way. It gives them further leeway over Corrin in the future.

I know there are people who like Corrin the way they are, especially the female Corrin, though how much of that is between her looks and the fact that one out of all six voices has the best performance in Chapter 5's cutscene and it's her default voice I don't know, but if I had to change the story without removing Corrin in order to preserve the original premise of choosing one of your two families, I would definitely have Corrin "mature" throughout each path in a different way. In Birthright, I would have them start off as bitter towards Garon for what happened to Mikoto, but still not hating Nohr and so being angry at characters like Hinoka, Takumi, and Oboro for their constant racist tendencies. As they progress, however, they see what Nohr has done to their people and so they feel that Nohr would be much more prosperous under Hoshidan rule. On the other side, Conquest's Corrin would still want to change Nohr from the inside and that would be the ultimate goal regardless, but going into Hoshido, they would notice all of these goods, all this food and luxury, that Hoshido's been hoarding to itself. They might think conquering Hoshido would be good for Nohr in more ways then one and so feel less sympathetic when going through the battles. Revelations' Corrin is such an enigma that I feel like the game would need to be drawn out longer to justify everything that happened in it. Corrin gets both families working together half way in, so I guess they would feel that being the same would work out. I guess you can't win them all.

Chapter 3: Black and White, for what is Gray and Grey?

Whenever you play a Fire Emblem game, you usually see multiple perspectives. The enemy's side has good people in it and so you might be inclined to sympathize with them to a degree while the good guys still have to deal with issues of internal corruption and strife. Tellius did a good job with this as there were people within Daein who could not stand Ashnard's rule despite being forced to follow him, such as Jill's father, while Begnion had its internal corruption in spades between the massive racism against Laguz that allowed slave trafficking to progress as far as it did, especially in the hands of senators like Oliver. Radiant Dawn furthered this by having Daein in such a state of suffering to Begnion after the war in the first game that our heroine Micaiah is leading a revolution within. Even Awakening did this to a small degree in its first third with the character Mustafa, a Plegian general who had been touched by Emmeryn's words after her death, offered to shelter Chrom and the Ylisseans if they surrendered, and who allowed his men to leave if they so desired because of how hard they found it to fight with the knowledge of what they'd done, though none of them ended up leaving after his compassion and so chose to fight and die for him.

You'd think with Fates' premise, it would be the perfect Gray on Grey story, with both Hoshido and Nohr having its goods and bads. Unfortunately that is not the case. In many aspects, it looks incredibly like Hoshido did nothing wrong and does nothing wrong ever while Nohr is essentially Nazi Germany. Hoshido wanted to stay out of a war. They even have a barrier around the country that makes enemy soldiers lose the will to fight, keeping everything seemingly peaceful. What a bloody MacGuffin that barrier is, but hey, the Nohrians found a way to combat it by calling upon the Faceless, soulless creatures that can rampage villages even in the barriers, though they are so monstrous they can even kill the mages that summoned them if not properly controlled. I wonder who the baddies are in this situation.

For starters, Hoshdio's food hoarding needs to be addressed by the Nohrian royals as a reason for Nohr to invade. Nohr's conditions as a practically barren wasteland where food cannot easily grow also needs to be brought up. Hoshido also needs an equivalent to Hans and Iago. Some might point out Kotaro, but he is not actually a part of Hoshido and so does not count. Even if they cannot be as bad as the aforementioned two, they need to be a driving force of antagonism that can make Hoshido at least look less then perfect. Perhaps their racism against Nohrians can make Oboro look like an equal opportunist. Or maybe they act nice on the outside, but are secretly plotting to usurp Mikoto and take the throne for themselves. Speaking of which...

Chapter 4: The Father, the Mother, and the Holy Spirit

What are the similarities between Mikoto and Garon? You might say that there is no simlarity, that both could not be more different in any single manner. But after Chapter 5 and in Revelations, there are two simlarities between the two. They also share these simlarities with Sumeragi. Both are dead and possessed by Anankos. This causes Mikoto be removed from the story and it is the reason why Garon is an old tyrannical cunt more one-dimensional then the inability to conceive the horizontal and vertical. These characters are nothing more then wasted potential. The former gives Corrin their memories of Hoshido back with her death and the latter is a walking giant with a sign pointing at him in neon letters saying "I'm basically Ivan the Terrible in Fire Emblem!" Certainly there must be ways to make better use of them, yes?

The first step is avoiding that anime urge to kill off Mikoto. That's right... don't have her die. Instead, let her remain the driving force for Hoshido as she is injured so much she cannot keep the barrier up, but otherwise remains alive. You might argue that this wouldn't be fair to Nohr as Garon is already the way he is and that it goes against the pre-determined ending of both Ryoma and Xander being made the kings of each country respectively, but it would also allow us to build up Mikoto more then just this "perfect messiah" figure in a similar vein to Emmeryn and maybe even make her more memorable as a character. Now in Revelations, she might get killed and brought back just because it is what it is in that damn story, but in Birthright, there's a chance for her to grow as a leader when she learns of how Nohr has been suffering and so does not hesitate in offering diplomacy when Leo is instated as King. In Conquest, we could see her being the driving force for Ryoma to be as uncharacteristically desperate to get Corrin back as he turns out to be, encouraging him to do whatever it takes, even if it means forsaking his honor. Sounds rather ruthless, I know, but hell hath no fury like a mother scorned after all.

But what about Garon? Well Garon's issue is that he has no traits outside of being evil. What he used to be like is all told in supports. And we all know that "show, don't tell" is the golden rule of writing, so why is Garon nothing but evil when an Anankos possessed Mikoto is able to act kind and loving? My proposal is that Garon is shown to have a more loving side. For instance, what if he actually expressed happiness that Azura was brought back as opposed to... brushing her off? It would be heavily out of character to how we know him now, but it would definitely fit the descriptions of him as a loving father we've been told by Xander, Camilla, and Leo. It would also make putting him down all the more sad in Conquest when we're revealed to his true form, building onto the whole "tragedy" feel that it's supposed to have all the way through as opposed to this cathartic break until possessed Takumi. "But then why would he be evil? Why would he want to conquer Hoshido?" If diplomacy failed and Garon was pushed to that point in life, he might've kept his new perspective on conquering in death. He has men like Hans and Iago around to give him the results he needs and they could be seen as the ones manipulating him into doing evil, except Corrin and Azura know the truth thanks to that crystal ball. All I'm saying is that making Garon less of a twat would give Nohr that push it needs to be more reasonable a pick. As opposed to picking it because your brothers are hot... oh, and about that...

Chapter 5: Genealogy of the Holy Fate

And now the Jugdral fans will tear me apart for that joke. Time to jump into the triggering topic of incest. Now I'm going to go ahead and make this section mercifully short, even if it still requires a trigger warning, but what I am going to say is that these supports were an utter mistake. For starters, on Hoshido's side, you initially believe you're blood related to them. Why is Mikoto writing letters to everyone but Ryoma on the off chance that they fall in love with their middle sibling? What kind of mother does that? That's just stupid. And even though Ryoma knows the truth, he should still see Corrin as a sister regardless. They're in-laws. Are you kidding me? On the Nohrian side of things, they may not have ever been blood related, but Corrin was raised there for so long that them developing any feelings for the Nohrian siblings is even closer to developing feelings for an actual brother and sister then it would be for Hoshido's side.

It's amazing that the actual incestuous couple is more understandable then the pseudo-ones. Corrin and Azura together were a very popular pair when they were first revealed in the same vein of Chrom and Robin being a popular pair. Two main characters, very close together, it all ends up working out in that manner. The problem is that Revelations drops in one line something that isn't stated in any support conversations, world building lines, or any part of the story apart from that one line, that one sentence of dialogue from a dying Mikoto that killed an entire ship. "Azura's mother and I are sisters." Corrin and Azura barely knew each other as they were raised in entirely different kingdoms. They were perfect strangers until Mikoto stated this. Now they're first cousins and so the once beloved ship is so problematic that your previous posts praising it are probably getting you anon hate even now unless you delete them.

The solution to this is obvious. Remove the ability to S-Rank them. Add in a few more characters if you need to, but no more Azzurrin, Corriander, Corryoma, Camillin, Hinokin, Takurrin, Correo, Sakurrin, and Corrlise... no more weird ship names in general to be honest.

Chapter 6: We Must Go Deeper

I love the children units of Genealogy and Awakening. I feel they bring in some neat personalities in the latter's case and in the former's case continue the story in a way that was never done before. However, Fates' case is... horrible. Just simply horrible. In an attempt to recapture some of the glory from Awakening's use of the children, without understanding why it worked in Awakening the way it did, the children units in Fates are literally child soldiers aged up to a proper age in Fates' equivalent of Hyperbolic Time Chambers. Sure they weren't intended to be, either in-universe or from the perspective of the writers, but that's sure what they look like when their presence is entirely optional, has no bearing on the stories whatsoever, and their existence is justified with one of the worst concepts I ever seen... the Deeprealms.

The Deeprealms as a construct are disgusting and unncessary. Their existence and the unit's use of them is actually harmful to the likeability of every single character in the game. They essentially place their own children in these pocket dimensions to be raised away from the horrors of their war without considering the ramifications of doing such a thing. It worked in Genealogy because they had no parallel dimensions to store their children in, having them sent to other lands away from where the fighting would be and them only growing after years of development proper. It worked in Awakening because the kids came from the future and so had already been through a world without their parents because of how Awakening's story functions. In Fates, however, they tried to combine the two and what we get are children who grow up with abandonment issues because that's essentially what their parents did. They abandoned the kids in worlds that have time streams that run slower then "the real world's" and caused them to age exponentially quicker from their perspective as a result. From this, we get Rhajat being older then her own father, Velouria being expected to break away from her parents despite barely getting to spend time with them and becoming obsessive to the point of... see the above chapter, Percy hating his father and considering him a villain, Asugi wanting to escape his identity as the next Saizo, and various other examples. Sure some of the kids continue to love their families like Midori, Soleil, Ophelia, Caeldori, and Selkie, but you'd still have to question if said families deserve it.

As much as we make like these characters, it would overall be better if they did not exist at all. It would cease being a stain on the first gen characters. If they had to exist, there could be DLC for them as opposed to them being in the base game.

Chapter 7: The Vallite Expedition

Valla's story is the worst story of the three. Conquest can still be enjoyable. Birthright is cliche, but simple. Revelations, however, is a story that utterly suffers from its incompetence. The characters are all swift to join Corrin's side due to the "chapter limit" that the games consistently hold themselves to, the Hoshidan and Nohrian conflict is explained to be the machinations of a bigger threat to life itself, and everything that we know from the previous two games no longer manages to be an issue because now there's something bigger we can blame. Revelations is to Fates what the end of Mists of Pandaria was to Warcraft and Anankos is essentially this game's Garrosh Hellscream. Why even worry about moral relativity, economic issues, and the bonds of family when it was all a dragon's fault?

Valla boasts bad writing from beginning to end and culminates in an asspull of epic proportions. It's true you see Anankos name dropped in Conquest, as well as get to see Valla proper, but neither of these needed to really be in the game. Anankos didn't need to be a thing. And if he did, then he needed more development or needed to be mentioned by Garon more. After all, Anankos is a very important character. He's Corrin's father for fuck's sake. Sadly Valla couldn't get any world building at all though because of a coincidental curse that kills anyone who name drops it. Really makes building it up into a proper threat difficult, doesn't it? It's a world you can't talk about unless you go there. So when you go there, you have no idea what to make of it because you've never heard about it before. And then you can't tell your friends or family about it because it'll kill you if you do, which means Corrin has to convince a bunch of people to jump into a bottomless canyon without name dropping it, except they're totally prepared to name drop it and die... only for said people to say they'll trust Corrin entirely.

Between that, Corrin being encouraged to remain trusting to the point of insanity, Anthony existing, the sentence that made a popular ship incestuous... I'm not sure there's even a way to save Valla. It pisses all over the premise that got people excited for Fates to begin with, that these two families who have good reasons for going to war want you to join only one of them to fight the other. Why do that when you can have both and fight against a big evil dragon?

ENDGAME: The Path is filled with Legos

I am by no means a professional writer. I've considered multiple ways to salvage Fire Emblem Fates' story. I've seen people say there is no way to salvage it and that it should burn. I've seen people state the only way to save it is to remove Corrin from it and make it more like Radiant Dawn with the two kingdoms being playable and having their own tales. I've seen people state the game is fine as it is already and that not too many changes need to made except removing the Deeprealms. I've seen people not mess with the story and only mention how much they hate the weapons now that they're unbreakable thanks to the stat issues on them. Fates is a game with many opinions on it because of how controversial it is. I suppose one could argue that this is a good thing. Fates will always have people talking about it. Even if it's mostly critique and anger, it's still publicity that'll get people looking at it. And if they find that they do in fact like what they see, that's another Fates fan added to the pool, which is not a bad thing.

For better or worse, Awakening saved the franchise and Fates made it popular. You can argue that this sucks because the S-Support and children somehow "makes it a dating sim." I take it as another chance, a potential to see more stories utilizing the Fire Emblem formula, and it's not like this salvation turned out to be for the worst. We got Heroes, which is currently going through some turbulent times and yet is still one of the best gacha games made. We got Warriors, which may be surrounded by controversy concerning its roster and yet is still a fun experience. We got Echoes, which I may not have personally enjoyed, but I've seen a lot of people happy for it and stating it has one of the best stories in the franchise. And we have Fire Emblem 16 coming out for the Switch at some point.

Fates' story is... problematic. It's very irritating as you expected a manga writer to do better then what he did. But I suppose if it didn't exist at all, things would've been for the worst. So I still love Fates. I still respect what it did for the series. Just... not enough to not make this post.

[componentplanet]

How Much Does It Matter That PCs Are Faster Than Consoles?

Earlier this week, I argued that the backward-compatibility features Microsoft is launching with the Xbox Series X will put consoles on an equal footing with PCs for the first time ever. My point was not to claim that PC and console gaming would now literally be identical, but that adding accessory and software backward compatibility represented the last major feature gap between the two platforms and that the Xbox Series X represented a convergence between PC and consoles.

Plenty of readers disagreed. This article is the first of several I intend to write on various counter-arguments or views raised by readers. According to some vehement readers, the entire point of PC gaming is to maintain higher frame rates than anything a console is capable of. Speed (and to a lesser extent, higher detail levels) aren’t just a nice perk — they’re the defining characteristic that separates PC and console gaming. 60fps is one common target, but some of the people who responded claimed higher targets, including 144 and even 240fps. Many of the same people who emphasized this argument made other comments indicating they believed I was a console gamer.

For the record, I’m not. I’d estimate upwards of 95 percent of my total lifetime gaming has been done on a PC, and I’ve been a PC gamer since 1987. Obviously people are allowed to value anything they want about a platform, but I want to talk about the idea that PC gaming is explicitly about high frame rates. I think whether you associate PC gaming

specifically with fast gaming depends, at least in part, on when you grew up.

PCs Used to Be the Slowest Gaming Solution Around

When I was young, PC games were slow. While there were 8-bit machines from Atari and Commodore that offered richer graphics and audio options, the generic hardware in the IBM PC and its immediate successors wasn’t well-suited to fast-paced gaming. Graphics on the PC began as a crude series of static images — the first graphical adventure game, Mystery House, was published in 1980 by On-Line Systems, the forerunner of Sierra On-Line. Lists of the best games of the 1980s are dominated by RPGs, simulations, and adventure games.

Games that primarily relied on typed input mostly didn’t rely on fast gameplay to avoid turning them into inadvertent typing speed tests. Early Sierra games like Kings Quest I – III, Space Quest I and II, Police Quest I, and the original Leisure Suit Larry didn’t even pause the game when you started to type.

I went to my friends’ houses to play games like Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., and Double Dragon because they were faster and smoother than anything I had access to at home. Platforming on the PC in the late 1980s looked like Captain Comic, shown below. I beat this game. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as Super Mario Bros. and it didn’t play as well. This blog post dives into some of the technical reasons why a $2,000 PC in 1991 couldn’t match a $200 console — because, at the time, it couldn’t.

If you fell in love with PC gaming in this era, it wasn’t because PCs outperformed consoles. It took far longer to load data off a floppy disk or even hard drive than an NES cartridge, and the NES, Genesis, and Super Nintendo had better graphics than the PC at launch. You played Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar instead of Final Fantasy because Ultima IV actually let you talk to each and every NPC, asking them detailed questions about their lives, as opposed to limiting the NPCs to single-response answers. Ultima IV had standard RPG elements like levels and spellcasting, but part of the feeling of progression came from learning which NPCs knew what information and puzzling out various webs of information. Squint a little and it’s an organic quest system without the in-game tracking.

Consoles had nothing to match this kind of capability. In the era before dialog menus, keyboard support made game engines feel as if they supported far richer levels of text interactivity than they actually did. It’s an advantage the PC lost after games moved away from emphasizing text input and towards the use of dialog menus.

In the late 1980s, if you wanted to make a game run meaningfully faster, you copied it to your hard drive. A faster CPU would play animations faster, but games of the day loaded data one screen at a time. Above a certain point, running a game off multiple 5.25-inch floppies and swapping between them hit performance much harder than a slower CPU. You also ran the risk of discovering one of your floppies had gone bad mid-game. If you wanted fast, animated, on-screen gaming, you bought a console. If you wanted deep, thoughtful, slower-paced titles, you played on PC.

Games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom made tremendous waves in the PC market precisely because they were some of the first PC games to offer fast-paced, arcade-like play. But Wolf 3D didn’t show up until 1992, with Doom following in 1993. At the time, I could play Wolfenstein 3D reasonably well on my 386SX-16 with 8MB of RAM, but I had to shrink Doom to postage-stamp size to play it, and the only version of Doom 2 I had access to required a CD-ROM, which my machine didn’t have. I played older games like Civilization on my home PC and titles like Civilization II and Doom 2 on my best friend’s computer, since his parents had bought a 486-DX2. CD-ROM capabilities were huge in the mid-90s and game developers quickly found ways to offer additional features on the CD-ROM versions of their games.

Performance Evolves Slowly

The arrival of 3D cards in the late 1990s revolutionized gaming, but they didn’t immediately unlock super-high frame rates for your average PC gamer. Higher spend has always equaled higher frame rates, but the speed at which the market moved and the higher number of variables to track made it harder and more expensive to get decent performance than it is today. In 1997, if you had money, you bought a Pentium or Pentium II. If you didn’t have money, you bought a K6 or K6-2.

The arrival of Athlon in 1999 kicked off the first high-end war between AMD and Intel, but I’d bought my first system in 1997. As a college student, I was firmly in the “don’t have money” crowd, and these are the kind of frame rates you got from Quake III Arena in 2000 if you had, say, a K6-2 300. All of these graphs are from nearly the same period of time — two articles from Anandtech, written in June and November of 2000. All images below by Anandtech.

Image by Anandtech

Here’s the same test from a K6-3 450:

Image by Anandtech

Finally, the same test at the same resolution, running on an array of higher-end CPUs:

Graph by Anandtech

Only one of those graphs — the last one — looks like the kind of CPU results we see in games today. The K6-3 was so much faster than the K6-2 thanks to the combined impact of an on-die L2 cache and its higher clock speed. What’s unusual is that the large performance gains aren’t confined to the highest-end GPU, but show up even when tested with older cards like the TNT2 Ultra. Even a low-end card like the Voodoo 3 2000 showed much stronger CPU scaling than what we see today. And all of these chips were new by modern standards  — the K6-2 300 was less than 2.5 years old in November 2000. The “old” Voodoo 3 2000 was barely 15 months old.

My initial forays into overclocking were driven by a desire to squeeze more performance out of budget hardware so I could game at something that didn’t look like potato quality running at terrible frame rates. That was scarcely uncommon. In the era when CPU and GPU performance were both leaping ahead, relatively few people could afford to stay on the absolute cutting edge of technology. While Quake 3 showed what looks like modern CPU performance clustering, this wasn’t universal. Compare it with Unreal Tournament, from the same review:

Image by Anandtech

Games like Unreal Tournament still showed strong impacts from CPU and illustrated how quickly the market was moving. The Athlon 500 (KX133) that couldn’t even hit 45fps? It was a few days short of its first birthday. If you had wanted to stay on top of that mythical 60fps target, you might have found yourself replacing $500 – $1,000 worth of components every single year. I’m sure some people did. Most didn’t.

The Limits of FPS as a Metric:

There are three specific reasons I’ve spent so much time on the history above. First, I wanted to illustrate how the evolution of gaming itself has changed which system components need to be upgraded in order to improve performance, and how much the position of PCs versus consoles has changed.

Second, I wanted to emphasize that defining PC gaming strictly in terms of high frame rates is ahistorical relative to how many of us experienced that history. The fastest CPU you could buy the month after Quake came out (June 1996) was a Pentium 200 MMX. The minimum CPU requirement for Quake 3 Arena in 1999 was a Pentium II 233. There was no upgrade path between the two platforms. Most PC gamers didn’t spend thousands of dollars every single year to stay current on hardware. You bought when you could, overclocked where you could, and played what you could with the result.

Third, I wanted to discuss how attempting to define gaming superiority in terms of how frame rate punishes PC players who simply can’t afford to spend as much money as others. By extension, it implies that the only valuable games are games that can push PC hardware. There’s nothing wrong with having enough disposable income to choose a higher-performing platform or with loving games that push the envelope, but you aren’t less of a PC gamer just because you game on a low-end PC. One of the best aspects of the indie boom has been a proliferation of games that don’t require much in the way of hardware. A low-end 2019 laptop may not play much in the way of modern titles, but it’ll play the biggest hits of 1997 – 2007 just fine.

Like a lot of you, I enjoy playing PC games at higher frame rates than consoles typically offer. Like a lot of you, I consider this a major strength. I don’t, however, consider higher frame rates to be an intrinsic advantage of the platform. They’re only an advantage if you have access to them in the first place, and not all PC gamers do. There are a lot of flaws in the Steam Hardware Survey, but according to the best data we have, the GTX 1060, 1050 Ti, and 1050 are the top three GPUs on the market today, with 28.92 percent of the market between them. The people who buy those GPUs are still PC gamers, but they aren’t necessarily enjoying better frame rates than they’d see on an Xbox One X.

I’m happy to acknowledge superior performance as a current perk of building a high-end gaming PC, but you can love PC gaming passionately and be stuck doing it on old equipment. There’s no question that it’ll be possible to build a PC that outperforms the Xbox Series X,

but I don’t consider faster frame rates to be a fundamental characteristic of PC gaming as a category — just a really nice benefit I’m happy to take advantage of when I have the money and the opportunity.

Now Read:

The Next-Generation ‘Xbox Series X’ Is Actually Just Called Xbox

Microsoft’s Xbox Series X Just Ended the PC-Console War

Best Games for Laptops and Low-End PCs in 2020

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/303658-how-important-is-performance-pc-versus-consoles from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2019/12/how-much-does-it-matter-that-pcs-are.html

[luminisvii]

So it’s pretty late right now and I’m liberally using the Bold function, but let’s talk about bad fanfiction.

Usually the first thing that springs to mind when it comes to bad fanfiction is My Immortal. Anyone who’s talked to me for more than five minutes knows that My Immortal is undoubtedly one of my favorite pieces of literature. And that’s not a joke, I think it’s an absolute masterpiece of bad. The misspellings, the reworkings of the characters to be goth/scene in an incredibly middle school way, to Marty McFly’s cameo to the chapter written by a self proclaimed troll--It’s a perfect storm of bad literature that makes for a hilarious read. I won’t get into a huge tangent but what makes My Immortal so funny is it has a certain level of naturalness to its writing where you’re never quite sure how serious the author is. The true joke is the mystery. We’ll never know who wrote the infamous fic and how serious they were when they did.

However, My Immortal is kind of scratching the surface. See, that’s a fic that’s actually funny bad. Most bad fanfiction is bad bad. Today, I intend to discuss the lesser known fanfic that I rank as being one of the most difficult reading experiences I ever had, and I only successfully pulled through after many years thanks to the love and support of my friends and us reading it out loud at 4 AM.

That fanfic is known as My Inner Life. Don’t let the title fool you, it was written well before our favorite goff showcase and it’s honestly a whole lot worse. This Legend of Zelda fic, written by one Jen and based on her dreams, features a young lady named Jenna who is a simple merchant traveling in Hyrule when one Link catches her eye and it goes downhill from there. The short version is that there’s a lot of overly dramatic sex, tedious clothes descriptions that include too many triforces, poor treatment of horses, Jenna getting praised and lavished with attention for no reason, and no research put into the lore.  After a while it straight up forgets about being an Ocarina of Time fanfic and launches off into some nonsense about griffins and an evil lord I can’t actually remember the name of (It was very late and I was very tired so I called him Lord Asshole after a while, it has the same effect) and also that The Griffins, who live just beyond the Black Mountains, do not trust easily.

If you wish to read it, you should probably quit now, but if you are too weak (which is honestly understandable) here’s my recounting of the story.

Where to start is a little bit hard, but a good place is the insane 2,000 word author’s note at the beginning. Jen, seemingly unaware of how thin skinned she’s being, goes on about how anyone who leaves her a negative review is being is immature and thin-skinned. Here’s a delightful excerpt that shows the author’s view on all of this!

“Also as a side note, I NEVER physically hurt ANYONE with this story. I got one reviewer that said. “Oh God please stop writing, your hurting everyone.” Now I want to know where I physically touched that person. I want to know how I’m twisting anyone’s arms to read this. I have never done anything of the sort in any way, shape or form and I DO NOT appreciate being accused of that! If you’re emotionally hurt over this, its your fault not mine.”

She spends quite a bit of time talking about how reviewers need to be more mature as she dedicates that much time to complaining about negative reviews and methodically rebuking everything they say from her poor grammar to Jenna being a Mary Sue. Now, props to the author for straight up saying that Jenna is the obvious author avatar that she is--Jenna is simply the dream persona of Jen, which okay, fine, that is not that bad. It’s what happens with Jenna that really makes me want to drink.

The other majorly telling factor is the first line of the story itself.

“Dreams come in many forms. Some good, some bad, some very realistic, even ones that feels very real.”

You may have noticed a redundancy there. That is only the beginning. If you get tired of hearing about the same things repeatedly, you will be VERY tired very quickly in here. Jen likes to constantly explain things to the point where she has footnotes in the story, and just after citing a footnote she explains what was cited in text anyway so now you have a double explanation.

“A tale of love, passion, despair and hope. I enjoyed my inner life. I looked forward to going to sleep to it every night. And I look forward to ones that will come, because LOVE WILL NEVER DIE.”

I love quoting that. I’m also not sleeping so I guess I don’t know the meaning of true love.

Anything beyond this point is where I start to die because I actually grew up playing Ocarina of Time and I’m quite well versed in its lore, so if you are too this is going to be about as pleasant as root canal.

Since me recounting everything in detail means we’d be here into the next year, I’m going to try to boil this down to its essence. TL;DR: Jenna meets Link and they fuck. Badly. A month later and they’re getting married so they can fuck more. This whole time you have King Hyrule who is treating a random merchant off the street better than Zelda, the Sages are just inexplicably back despite now residing in the Sacred Realm. Zelda also inherently gives up the throne because she will not marry and thus is no longer in the line of succession but this random guy from Kokiri Forest who married a random merchant is! Ruto is turned into a jealous harpy and the other sages hardly appear at all.

After they get married they go to the part where I quit the first time I started reading this fic which was the Bonding Ceremony. If getting married to a guy you met a month ago wasn’t enough, going to a monastery and getting telepathically bonded by drinking his piss sure is. Okay, it’s not JUST the piss drinking, but that was enough to make poor 2014 me stop trying and go lie down. They also fuck in front of the monks because that’s a thing straight people do, I guess.

Somewhere in there Jenna gets pregnant and has a child. She names the child Link Jr. I don’t have anything to say about that, I think it’s comedy in itself. On top of that Epona also gets pregnant so they get new horses named Midnight Star and Star Dancer. That’s not an important detail at all, my friend simply hates those horse names and I’m bringing them up on the off chance that she reads this.

Oh yeah, Dark Link is an antagonist at one point and he inexplicably talks exactly like a stereotypical villain and ties Link and Jenna up in a room and leaves them there for no reason like a small time crook leaving Batman in a cage with all his gizmos nearby. And turns out Jenna has magical powers and is from some ancient race of super people or whatever. They have to explain this over and over again in the same few paragraphs and I want to die.

Beyond all the bad sex that has tiger metaphors (Somehow Jen knows how tigers fuck) there’s the Original Material which had me crying more than the tragedy that was the remain of OoT’s story. Once we get tired of Link and Jenna’s love story and Tiger Sex, there’s suddenly an invasion from Lord Ariakas who is threatening the Griffins who live beyond the Black Mountains, just a day’s ride from Hyrule. He’s just some evil guy who threatens the Griffins, who do not trust easily, and who live near The Black Mountains. If you think redundancy is painful then prepare for the worst redundancy you’ve seen yet. I went insane when we were reading this and tallied all the times The Black Mountains are mentioned and turns out it was a whole lot less than I thought, but almost all of them happened in a short amount of time so it felt like an eternity of explaining The Black Fucking Mountains. Turns out I’m a masochist of sorts because this STILL didn’t shake me off. In order to repel Lord Arakias’ forces, Link and Jenna need to talk to the Griffins who like to make a big deal about how they don’t trust anyone as they instantly trust Jenna and let her into their royal court to give her support and magical gifts. It’s kind of incredible how Jenna does nothing and is constantly rewarded for it.

Sadly this ends in a cliffhanger, like all good terrible fanfics. But that’s a semi-coherent retelling of the actual plot. It takes way too long to explain any of these plot points in story. Characters constantly repeat themselves, there’s a bunch of small plot points I left out because we’d REALLY be here all year if we talked about this, there’s the original material where I have to give credit that she went and did this BUT ALSO DID YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS MANY TIMES WHAT THE BLACK FUCKING MOUNTAINS ARE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

I’m not okay. Time for some deeper analysis of particularly notable parts.

The sex scenes are sadly some of the less entertaining sections. They’re pretty boring for the most part, but then you have shit like “I turned tigress” and my personal favorite, “when I took his nut sack and caressed it with my hand, it was his undoing.” That exact sentence shows up TWICE in the fic, same wording and everything. Remember this, ladies, next time you have sex with a man, caress his nut sack. It’ll be his undoing. It’s not just the silly wording, though, there’s some stupid stuff in there too about how having sex makes your children stronger and also exactly how much fluid Jenna is ejecting which is a little bit alarming to say the least. Otherwise they’re a bit bland and use the same flowery language that you’d expect from poorly written erotica. Also they fuck in front of a bunch of monks. It’s for the bonding.

If you’re into LoZ lore then you’re going to have a bad time, too. My favorite thing is showing people the segment where Jenna explains how the OoT timeskip works because it makes zero sense to everyone, OoT fan or not. Let’s take a quick history lesson for OoT if you’re not familiar with it. In Ocarina of Time, a major plot point and element of gameplay is that Link travels between past and future in a seven year gap. From Link’s point of view, the change is instantaneous, right down to the fact that his age changes from child to adult and vice versa. To everyone else, they’re living those seven years. Time continues without Link there to observe it, and in Link’s absence Hyrule collapses. Thus is the plot--trying to stop Ganondorf from destroying the future with a power that Link and Zelda accidentally gave him. The point is all Non-Link people experience time normally, and the world moves on.

Somehow Jenna missed something that I inherently understood when I was a wee child of 8, barely able to play Ocarina of Time due to poor reading comprehension and lack of Zelda Puzzle Solving Skills™.

“Gannondorf tricked the soon to be "Hero of Time" into unlocking the door to the Sacred Realm. I even noticed that Zelda was a little older then I. Last I saw her she was four years younger then me. It was told to me that when Gannondorf went into the Temple of Time and into the Scared Realm, time jumped ahead in Hyrule seven years. Yet only two years passed in my land. And in the rest of the world.

After the "Hero of Time" defeated the King of Evil, the hero was granted to either return to the past or to remain in the present time. Since he chose to remain in the present Zelda jumped ahead of me in age by four years.  It seems that everyone in Hyrule jumped in age from the rest of the world.”

I’m not sure I really understand still. I’ve read this so many times trying to comprehend and maybe I’m just stupid but this doesn’t scan. But when you time travel it should affect the whole world or else that’d be pretty fucked. Back To The Future would be pretty wack if only Hill Valley was sent back to the 50s but everywhere else was still 80s.

God, I spent too much time on this. It still hurts my brain.

I also just have to have a section where I metaphorically hand Zelda a box of chocolates and a check for 5,000 dollars for even being in this mess. The real MVP of the story is Zelda for tolerating all this bullshit. She has to watch her father treat Jenna better than her, she gives Jenna a bracelet from her mother who is dead for Jenna’s wedding, she has to passively accept that because she isn’t married she’s lost her claim to the throne and it’s being handed over to Link and Jenna because despite both of them being nobodies they’re more legitimate heirs to the throne than the king’s own daughter. She also has to be the one to help Jenna birth her baby and it’s maybe a little bit weird to have the princess of a nation be your personal midwife. Even if she is your so called best friend. Were I ever in the circumstances of giving birth, I wouldn’t make my friends help. Please get an actual nurse. Also for some reason Jenna won’t stop calling her baby a miracle and it’s done so frequently it’s a little off-putting. Even the chapter where the child is born is called “The Miracle” like idk I know life is mysterious and miraculous but I’m not sure giving birth, something a lot of cis woman can do, is a “miracle.” Me not sobbing while reading this is a miracle. Zelda, honey, you deserve so much better.

I’m running out of things that will actually last a paragraph or so tangent wise, so time to wrap things up with smaller notes:

-Jenna thinks that you boot horses in the knees to get them moving. You are probably not riding a horse right if you can kick it in the knees while sitting on its back. That’s not even getting into other horse related mishaps like the fact that kneecapping them isn’t a good idea either.

-Link Jr. is capable of math at like, four months or something. I wish I was that talented.

-Ruto is my wife and I will not stand for this slander against her. Yeah, call me a fish fucker if you want, Sidon is cute too don’t @ me

-Take a shot every time Jenna mentions triforces on her outfit (actually don’t)

-Jenna makes a big deal about how Link has to go off to war and how she’ll miss him and he’ll miss her and it’s all very emotional but he’s back literally the next chapter

-One of my favorite moments is Mido rightfully pointing out that Jenna isn’t a Kokiri and thus has no right to receive a fairy but everyone thinks he’s being super rude for actually having common sense. They barely gave LINK a fairy and he grew up there!

-I inflicted this on my friends and it went as well as you’d think it would. Quote supplied by Jen who is not THAT Jen but a far superior one

-Somewhere in the fic suddenly Link and Zelda’s eyes are capable of changing color based on mood, or maybe they could do this the whole time and my eyes were changing based on mood alright, they were glazing over and I missed it

-Jen always types “threw” instead of “through” and it’s just enough to throw me off every time. Also every time a character starts a new sentence she starts another set of quotations even if they were already talking and occasionally she misspells “huge” as “hugh” which leads to some hilarious circumstances

-THEY DRANK EACH OTHER’S PISS

-Apparently when you are telepathically bonded with your Husband/Wife you aren’t allowed to be in a room with someone of the opposite sex AT ALL. Personally I think that reeks of insecurity

-Also because a good pal loses her shit every time we mention it, Jen couldn’t come up with a marriage ceremony that wasn’t just a christian one for a universe where christianity doesn’t exist, but she sure likes to put world building into those DAMN GRIFFINS

All in All? My Inner Life is not for the weak willed. It is INCREDIBLY long and redundant and while it’s still pretty funny, it’s mostly plain terrible. I consider is a much better showcase of what bad fanfiction is actually like, and also since it’s of a more standard awful, it means people can’t badly parody it while missing the point as to why it’s funny. So at least there will only be one My Inner Life and no imitators.

Seriously, I hate My Immortal imitators. Write your own terrible fanfiction, damn you! If I had a shot for every time a fanfic was compared to My Immortal I would be dead six years ago. Getting compared to MI is not a good thing, but not for the reasons you’d think. At least My Inner Life only shares the basic premise of a self insert character and the rest is a ride of complete bullshit that’s par the course for terrible Mary Sue fiction. Everyone loves Jenna for no reason and those who voice the valid concerns against her are seen as unreasonable and stupid. Characters are bent backwards to serve the threadbare plot and apparently Jenna’s love life alone is enough to constitute half of the story before we just plain forget it’s a Legend of Zelda fanfic and it goes off into some generic high fantasy horse crap with dragons and Griffins and some evil guy like what even is his name and it all ends without any real closure.

However if you are strong enough or maybe just a masochist (me) I highly recommend this fic for just being a test of endurance and also for all the funny little moments sprinkled throughout. It’ll certainly be a waste of time and it’s a good thing to read with friends. While it’s an oldie, it’s a goodie, and no one comes out unscathed.

Also the author apparently is a good sport about it now, although who knows. It’s just a thing I heard. While I like making fun of Jen throughout reading the fic, she doesn’t seem awful. Just perhaps young and unaware.

Truly, the real treasure was the piss we drank along the way. I’m sorry I will never be over that

[aurimeanswind]

Treading Water—Sunday Chats (6/18/17)

It’s weird to see TWO chats posts in a week, but hopefully I’ll keep this brief. It’s been a bad, long day, but the chatting stopes for nothing.

Kinda Funny Live 3

The KFLs have seriously been the highlight of my year for quite a while now. Ever since the first one, which only came together as a last minute thing when I missed the PAX East of 2015, I have known I can’t miss one. The first marks the relationships I built with folks who have gone on to be my real best friends. The second as a high point and a reminder that we’re all working. Now the third has been a look at some of those friends who have gone on to “Make it”, as well as a shift to such intimacy in regards to being fans of Kinda Funny. 

We all loved a thing that brought us together, but now I think our love for each other, the friendships there, have spawned off to be their own independent strength. Barrett alone, who I stayed with while I was in SF, him and Alyssa have become really deep, personal friends to me. Anytime I get to spend with them is like time with family, and it’s incredibly important to me. I cannot express how lucky I am to have them, as well as Roger Pokorny and Danny Juarez, the two other folks staying with me. They acted as my rock and center in a week that has gone on to have a lot of fallout with my emotional state, like I talked about in Tuesday Chats. All of them there, happily supporting me, even when I am a mess and feel as though I’m not worth supporting, made that weekend for me.

I didn’t get to hug and meet and talk to as many people as I would have liked. But that week I really needed the family that I have out west. And I got it. And I’m just so happy for that.

Talking about KFL is such a blur. I haven’t gotten the chance to really sit and think about it, thus the lack of written recap for it. But everyone there encourages and most of all challenges each other. To do things, to be creative, to engage, to work together, and most of all, to support one another. For a community filled with folks trying to either actually get hired at Kinda Funny proper or to get into games or entertainment coverage, there is a ton of “send me your stuff and I’ll check it out” and it just warms me. I’m the same way. I’m always down to see and consume new stuff. Any because of the KFLs I have gotten the chance to have so many amazing people on Irrational Passions Podcast.

I am infinitely lucky. And even though everyday I definitely feel undeserving of the adoration and affection folks give me, I can always just flash back to the weekend of KFL3 now. Where, in the movie theatre after seeing Wonder Woman, Sean Pitts called my name, and me turning, swinging my big gorilla arms, knocked a glass over an broke it. This led Roger Pokorny to start a round of applause from the crowd of KFL-goers. So. If I ever need to humble myself real quick I got that.

Thank you everyone who came and said hi, or gave me a hug, or forced me to follow them on Twitter (please stop doing that last one). I cannot express deeply and honestly enough my appreciation for you all. 

But I can write one big long blog post about it.

What I’ve Been Working On

I wrote a big long editorial on E3 that I think I am gonna try and publish either tonight or tomorrow. But I’ve been writing weird stuff. This past week has been dominated by thoughts and feelings on the E3 shows. And it’s been weird to write about what I love so much while feeling all messed up in the head. I can feel how it changes my tone, but I think it brings something different out of me.

Outside of the sphere of writing, I’ve been making and uploading all of the ExtraLife 2016 videos! I’ve made it happen y’all! The last one finished uploading this morning, and while I had hoped it was done last night, for now I can say 100% for sure, it is done. The Deed is done. ExtraLife is finally behind me...

And also ahead of me. Oh boy. We have some surprises for the upcoming ExtraLife 2017 that I am so excited to announce. Trying to find the right time and place for them, but people should be excited. We are going to be putting on one hell of a show. 

What’s on Tap

It’s a weird one, so bear with me

Alundra

The big one I’ve been playing and the one I’ll probably go back to playing tonight is Alundra.

For folks who don’t know, and it’s probably a ton of you, Alundra is a PS1 game that is a Zelda-like, and it’s one of the best I’ve ever played. Right up there with Okami as far as NOT Zelda games that are maybe even better than some Zelda games.

All you need to do to want to play Alundra is watch its INCREDIBLE intro.

Don’t lie to me, or yourself. It’s great.

The Evil Within

I just bought this last night on the podcast when I found out it was on sale.

It ends up my old save from October 2014 was still on my PlayStation. I had gotten to chapter 4 apparently, but I started over.

Man that part with the butcher at the beginning is totally not fun at all.

I remember the first time I went through it I knew exactly what to do, and this time, I DID NOT. AND OOOOOH BOY. I WAS MAD.

I died about 12 times before getting through, so let’s hope it picks up the pace pretty soon.

QUESTIONS!!

One again, thank you all for your questions. Even in my worst days I can turn to the outpouring of support from you amazing lovelies and smile. If you want to have your question answered on Sunday Chats, just look for my tweet on Sunday afternoons (Eastern Time) with the hashtag #SundayChats in it, send your question in a reply to it, and I’ll get it covered!

It’s a little bit exhausting, to be honest. I don’t like to admit it, but Sunday Chats is probably the most exhausting things I write outside of Alex Talks scripts. I don’t say that to make it sound like a burden, I love it! But I do put a ton of love and care into it. I’d do one of these every day if I could, they’re so limitless rewarding. Seeing people come out to interact with me it just... Well, it’s a really special feeling that I cherish a great deal. And they help make my favorite day, my favorite day still.

As for PSX. I just don’t think it’s in the cards. I’m more focused on making ExtraLife an event to remember for the folks coming to my house for that.

Hrm... This is really tough. I think I have some things that I don’t necessarily have no one to talk to about, but we’re just in different headspaces about. Like Harry Potter. I didn’t have anyone to chat about that with for the longest time, because it’s so deep and emotional for me. I did have a pretty good conversation about it that was pretty contrary to me recently though, so it can happen. I just have to be in the right headspace. And also I have my friends Barrett and Ally to talk real-ass Harry Potter stuff about now, and I think they’re both in a very similar place to me with it.

Music is another one, because the way I consume and appreciate it is super weird and unorthodox, and I don’t know anyone else who listens to music like me. I usually take an album and eat away at it over a month or two. Sometimes even a year. And just continue listening to it over and over again. It’s just my process I think.

So I don’t think there are necessarily things I am crazy passionate about that I have no one to talk to about, but no one really interprets certain things the way I do.

Fuck. Uh, Nathan Drake, because he is so cool.

No... Uhh, Joel, because when I die he goes super jaded.

Nope... 

Yuri Lowell. There. Anime dad.

Also fuck you Ben I took 10 minutes to think of this answer so I hope you’re happy.

Well, Google is defining esoteric as “intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.” I think when I say my writing is esoteric, I don’t necessarily lean into the idea that it’s specialized, but more abstract. Intended for my audience. I make things overtly flowery, too long, and redundant usually. So that’s what I meant.

Fuck this question.

Also it’s Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle.

This is so hard for me. I love the Shatter soundtrack, for example, but I’ve played all of 25 minutes of that game.

It’s somewhere between the Persona 3/Persona 4/Persona 5 domain. I love the hiphop inspirations in Persona 3. Oh boy do I. Persona 4 has the jolly pop-y vibes down to a science. And then Persona 5 does jazz, and holy shit do I love me some jazz. Even if I never listen to jazz music in my spare time (I should) the sound of it awakens something in me.

Right now it’s probably Persona 5, which I do think has maybe the strongest soundtrack of the three, but that’s just where I’m at right now. That’ll probably change, so take it with a grain of salt.

Hrm, well if this includes games that were just announced, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and that Shadow of the Colossus Remake are right up there. If we’re leaving just games that actually got shown and with gameplay, its Tacoma and Mario Odyssey. Holy shit does that new Mario game look in-credible.

No and Jesus Logan... Between this and that tweet you sent out with you using a fidget spinner, I don’t know what to tell you.

I’ve said before on Sunday Chats that me and my dad aren’t crazy close, so I don’t have a lot. But here are a few.

One time my dad, his friend Roy, and myself, we all drove to New York to see Bruce Springsteen. It was in the backseat of this big van we got to drive to and from Florida, and it had a TV in it. I hooked up my N64 and played Super Smash Bros with my dad in the back seat for an hour. It was a ton of fun.

One time when I was younger and I couldn’t sleep, I came downstairs to see my dad awake playing MLB for the PS2. We talked a bit and then I played a game against him. He absolutely destroyed me. Like, not even close. We had a good laugh about it though.

Me and my dad went jet skiing outside the house he used to live in on the water once. It was pretty cool. We went out to the Chesapeake bay and everything.

I used to watch my dad play the OG Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda as a kid. Some of my very first memories of video games ever.

Why are you so wrong Jon? Well, I don’t know. I can’t help you with that.

What I can tell you is that, while not the greatest Mexican food in the world, not even necessarily Mexican food, Chipotle is definitely better than California Tortilla. And Qdoba and their wet tortillas. But that’s an aside.

I don’t know! I haven’t seen it yet! It sounds like they just adjusted it so that an actual fight happens at the end, not just a cut to black. It’s probably for the best, since it really was super anticlimactic before.

YO IT’S SO GOOD!!

Tacoma is out so soon and I barely have any room in July to breath. Luckily the only big release there is Splatoon 2, which isn’t a massive investment of time for me. But holy shit dude. Video games are so good. Like, I wasn’t even mad at Sony’s seen-it-all-before-except-sotc-remake-holyshit because video games this year are just so damn good.

I am shooting for at least ONE. If it doesn’t happen Joey, I can safely say you’ve let me down.

But no, it’ll happen. It was such a nice time to actually get to talk to you in person again at KFL. I miss you!

It’s probably either Ochako because she made me cry so so hard, or Kirishima because I just like him a whole lot. Iida is also up there, because he is just the best and I just want to hug him and make him less high strung all the time.

Luckily I will never be as good as Griffin McElroy, but if you wanna be my Australian Nick Robinson you know I am so down for this.

Checklist

I know I said I’d try to make up for my lack of a Checklist last Chats on Tuesday, but I didn’t really watch as much E3 content as I wanted to. I’ll share what I can though

The #1: Easy Allies E3 Reactions

While I haven’t listened to their Frame Trap or Easy Allies Podcast on E3 yet, their nightly reactions have been stellar. The only real E3 reactions I’ve gotten to so far. Though I’m really looking forward to getting into Kinda Funny and Giantbomb’s reactions.

GiantBomb.com - The Nightly Post Shows only sort of about video games. 

Even if I haven’t watched them yet, my day of is tomorrow and I can’t want to snuggle up under a blanket and crack into these. They are industry-spanning, insightful, hilarious, and honest-to-god historic. In the absence of Ryan Davis at Giantbomb, the finales of having Dave Lange, Adam Boyes, John Vignocchi and Jeff Gerstmann together, as the panel, really bring me that sense of family that I miss from GB’s Ryan-less content. Not to say their content isn’t amazing, but those four are truly family, and their closer to the yearly GiantBomb E3 streams is always a sight to behold.

Jeff Gerstmann’s Interview with Phil Spencer

I know I’m doubling up on my GB content here, but this interview is just fantastic. It is every year, and I look forward to it every year.

Totally not video games related, but here is a Buzzfeed article on why I love Lin Manuel Miranda. 

Gotta love those MBMBaM references.

Okay. Whew, that’s everything I got. Sorry for the weak checklist. My lack of having a computer has thrown my article-reading off a ton, but I try and at least get to two a week.

Thank you all for your support. Happy father’s day to the dads out there! And thank you all for reading.

As always, do me a favor

and 

keep

it

real.

(fan fact: this gif is the exact moment in My Hero Academia that absolutely fucking destroyed me)

[aurimeanswind]

“I Feel Like I’m Going Crazy”—Sunday Chats (3-26-17)

So, I was going to, for the third week in a row, write again about how I’m just horribly depressed and unhappy.

But I’m not going to. Not because I’m not, but because I am not a broken record. Good things happen in my life too, and even if I feel a little overwhelmingly depressed, it’s not all there is to me.

That, and as much as I appreciate all the texts and DMs reaching out after I post one of these things, I just can’t right now. Long day, long days ahead, and too much I need to focus on.

Thank you all, let’s talk about good things.

I Finished Zelda

I mean, there really isn’t much to this. I beat that Zelda game. I think my final time was around or close to 105-115 hours. It’s hard to tell on Switch, since it only gives you an idea of your time played, so I kind of had to track it in my head. It’s honestly incredible that all that time passed with such ease. Tales of Berseria, a game that I LOVED that came out this year took me 64-ish hours, and it felt like much longer. Zelda took me more time, and felt like much shorter.

I know the phrase of “it’s an easy 10″ has been thrown around a lot, and sure, yeah, but there is no easy 10. It’s a masterpiece, and when I review it, I’ll probably give it a 10 on our scale, but it’s not flawless. No game is without its flaws, but what Zelda sets out to do, and what it accomplishes along the way is something wholly unique that I have never actually see a video game do before. Ever.

And also that’s subjective. What that game did for me and for the way I look at and experience games is very much unique to my perspective. Other people I’m sure don’t like it as much as me, but for me, Breath of the Wild is probably the second best video game I have ever played. Second literally only to Person 4 Golden. And it’s close, which I never ever imagined I’d say ever in my life. But that’s also part of what’s so exciting. Games are changing and evolving and Zelda is a clear resultant of that. It’s a new benchmark and I can’t wait to see what people do from here out.

Whatever it is, it’s gonna be exciting as all hell.

Case Study Update

For folks who don’t know, I’ve been working on a new format of my video show called Alex Talks. It’s called Case Study.

It’s been a weird up and down with this show, and since my drive and passion had all but fallen away for doing video content, I had to find a way to bring that passion back. I decided to write a new first episode of this show that I am more passionate about. I wrote it on Persona 4.

It’s not good enough to encapsulate the feelings I have for that game. Nowhere near good enough, but the conclusion specifically really meant something to me. It was genuinely impossible for me to finish my cold read without it getting to me, and when I’ve written something that brings emotions out of me like that, I know I’ve done the thing write. And I say in the script that it’s impossible to really capture what the game did for me in one go at it.

I finished the script in three days, and it was over 3400 words. It’s in the editorial process right now, and I’ll probably chip away at it after I finish this, but when it’s ready I am gonna try and shoot it. Aiming to do so this Wednesday. I’m trying not to put a time constraint on it, since I want to take as much time as I need with it, but hopefully I’ll have it out before Persona 5. We’ll see. No promises.

It’s gonna look different so I have to do some test shoots. And I am probably going to go back to my old webcam to shoot it, and it probably won’t be on a green screen. We’ll see how it turns out.

What’s on Tap

Spectre of Torment

The only other thing besides Zelda I’ve been playing

STILL GOOD.

Zelda is really good you guys.

Questions

I used to be way into System of a Down. I know somewhere Tyler is laughing saying, out loud, “oh yeah, of course you were.” But I had this weird point in my life when I was into “metal”. I dug way into SOAD and Disturbed. And also Slip Knot? 

I mean, I was like 16 so of course. Like, what do you expect. But I stopped listening to them.

Honestly I still really like some Disturbed songs, but I’ve stopped listening to almost any and all guitar heavy music. Anything of that sound.

But the answer? I don’t know. That line never made any sense. I don’t think it had to.

Smash or Pass huh?

I waited until Nabeshin got to talk about it on the podcast, and it sounds like a hard pass. I was really fucking disappointed by Dragon Age 3, so I don’t know if I have it in me to have another Bioware series bummed down for me.

I have not, as mentioned above. I wanted to hear Nabeshin talk about it, which he did excellently on the podcast last night. It just sounds like a lot of the things I go to a Mass Effect for are absolutely not present.

And I’ve been playing nothing but SUPERB games all year, and I don’t know if I have time for a subpar one especially in a franchise that I have a very high regard to.

Seems like its a pass for now, but I may grab it on the cheap before the end of the year to at least know for myself.

Colin talks in pretty definitive sweeps, and while I don’t think he is wrong per sé, I think he himself knows that the pendulum swings all around. GiantBomb specifically living as long as it has tells me that there is still hope for all of us yet. Look at Glixel AND Waypoint, two absolutely fantastic video game websites that both sprouted up on 2016, thriving and growing. Not to mention stuff like UploadVR going big.

I think the big sites have a tough battle, trying to balance appealing to their niche, maintaining their appearance of girth, and also appealing to the largest common audience. That’s tough. All these little guys like Kinda Funny and Easy Allies and GiantBomb (none of which are strictly “little, either) have their audience that they have a relationship with and talk to. All of them are in some way subscription based. All of them do just fine.

I still think the Patreon bubble will burst at some point, but it’s going strong now, and I don’t think there is anything wrong, inherently, with that model. But the IGNs and the GameSpots might not be the same in the next few years. But I still think there are plenty of spaces to get hired into the industry and make really, really cool stuff.

But hey, everything will probably change in the next five years anyway. Think about it: when IP started, it was BEFORE streaming. We were on the ground floor with some of that stuff, and though we didn’t stick with it (when we totally should have) that just wasn’t around in 2010 when we began.

And the prize for most-creepiest Sunday Chats question goes tooooooooo

DAN JUAREZ

It’s not that easy. And I know that there was that reply to your tweet saying it is all about the money, but I just don’t think of it as strictly like that. Sure, it’s probably a big part of it. Microsoft wanted to make another Halo game, Bungie didn’t. They found someone to make a new Halo game. It probably wasn’t hard.

I think the better question we should be asking is who do we want to continue making these games? I think it really depends on who and what they’re doing it for.

I think of it in a lot of ways, but a big thing is if I were a creator in the games space, someone who had finally risen to a director, I’d want to get a crack at making a new entry in one of my favorite franchises. If the leads at 343 felt like they could tell a really cool story in the Halo universe with Master Chief, they were given the opportunity to do so, would you really ever turn that down? A big thing that gets left out of this conversation, criminally I think, is the fact that creators want to challenge themselves to surpass the work that comes before them. 

I’m a writer. I write every day. Every day I want what I write to be better than yesterday. Is it? No. So I keep writing and working every day. That’s a huge part as to why I still do this.

With that empathy in hand, I understand the need and want to make new stories, to build on what has come before, and to keep trying to iterate, even though sometimes we fail. So many amazing and talented teams went through the effort of creating not only worlds and cavalcades of lore, but mechanics, concepts, and design philosophies. Making new games not only challenges us on the story front, but also on the mechanical and design front. I don’t know personally, but I imagine that’s such an enticing and exciting idea to a developer.

I could go on and on about this, obviously, but also look at companies like Nintendo: they’ve iterated and reimagined the same concepts over and over again, and we still adore them. No two games in any of their franchises are quite the same. Except for the “New” Super Mario Bros games. And they’re a bummer. But think of all Nintendo has done with Mario alone. 

There is room to keep growing a franchise, but you need to have the right philosophy, and the right spirit behind it. But, it’s a complicated topic. Curious as to what you’re working on.

It’s probably the Lingering Will fight from Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix. Not only is that one of my favorite games ever, but that fight is intense and engaging in a way that only the best fights in that franchise are. And it’s hard as balls.

You can watch me attempt, and eventually beat the fight, here:

Part of what made that fight was the way it incorporated the combat mechanics of the game as a whole, and continued to challenge you to use them. It’s really fun and intense, and it totes the line of frustrating well. It never feels cheap.

On top of that, the Linger Will is this representation of the pain a character suffers through throughout an entire game in that franchise. It is the embodiment of Terra’s strength and determination. It’s a representation of the power that character stood for in his group of friends, and it’s really meaningful to that series as a whole, I think.

When you get that bit of lore and that bit of gameplay together just right, you can make something that is emotional and mechanical; that perfect serendipity.

Some of my other favorite boss fights do this too. Pretty much any and all of the bosses in Undertale, which also have the hook of being brilliant representatives of those characters. Roxas’s fight from Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix. Duke’s fight in Tales of Vesperia. The Sephiroth fight at the end of FF7. The list goes on.

I am drinking nothing right now. I had a lot of wine during the podcast last night so I am trying to not drink tonight.

Maybe some water?

Persona 4 is really good for this honestly. Honestly I don’t know. Maybe Breath of the Wild? Just because restarting that game and going in a different direction on a new play through would be super exciting.

Also: Tretris is great. But I get more from my games than gameplay. Sometimes emotion and gameplay can outweigh the other if they’re VERY good. For example, Breath of the Wild is so great on a gameplay level that few games can compete with it. But it’s really the balance of both that’s the best. See: Persona 4 Golden.

Tetris gets old after a while. It’s a game that’s great in short bursts though. Unpopular opinion I guess?

I have not! Should I? Jeff Gerstmann was talking it up on the Bombcast and it sounds pretty fun. I don’t know if I’m in the right mood for a weird and silly physics-y indie game right now, but is there more to that game than that? Going off everything I have heard, that’s all I’ve gleamed. But i’d give it a shot, for sure.

Too many for me to give a lick.

Wow, pressures on, huh?

I honestly don’t know. I don’t have a good answer for this. It’s gonna sound super dumb, maybe, but I go most of my days not feeling awesome, and not thinking I’m awesome, regardless of what other people think. I try and do things that I think are awesome though, and I try and challenge myself to be better and get better, and I think people are receptive to that.

I’ve also just been incredibly lucky. So, so, sooooo lucky. Being at the right place, at the right time. Talking to the right people, which has helped me leave more memorable impressions of folks, and so when I ask them to do stuff with me, them remembering who I am helps.

But bringing people together is basically impossible. I just ask, I try and be cognizant of being annoying, I try and engage with as many different people as possible, I try and be cool, I try and never get too worked up or excited to disappointed on the other end of things, and I be the best person I can be. Ask questions, dig deeper, hear the whole story.

I don’t think that’s advice, more of how I came to have so many amazing internet friends, like yourself Harold, and it’s worked for me so far.

Shoutouts

A massive shoutout to all the folks who have been super receptive to me bringing them on as guests for these next few podcasts. We are going to be short one Nabeshin for a few weeks to come, so all these great hosts who have been cool about me reaching out and inviting them on has been super great. Dustin, Cameron, Andrew, and more to be announced and revealed, all great people.

All the love to the amazing network of friends who I have gotten the opportunity to work with.

That’s it. It’s the end. I feel a little bit better, but not a lot. Staying strong. We out here.

Gonna go drink some water and get ready to podcast with Quinten Hoffman. Let’s goooooooo.