m76

The most violent games were probably carmageddon, mortal kombat, duke3d, shadow warrior, gta, quarantine, and who knows what others that I don't remember.

In case of assassin's creed they ended up successful with the changes as those games are still popular. You can never please everyone but if more people are pissed than excited then they obviously made mistakes. Of course they are entitled to making changes and trying new things, what they are not entitled to is automatic approval by players. But I don't condemn anyone for trying. A long as it is on good faith. What I do condemn them for is when they try to blame the audience after a failed attempt. I applaud devs who can take the criticism to heart and attempt to address the issues. But very few chose this road, even if it's proven to work. I mentioned in my Terminator Resistance review that gaming sites no longer represent gamers. They have formed an elitist bubble and since major developers often collaborate with press, they think IGN or Eurogamer and the rest speaks for gamers, when in reality they don't. Maybe that can also explain why they think these changes would go down well. IDK, I'm just ranting. I'm interested to find out their reasoning. The latest example is obviously the Saints Row reboot, where they tried to turn a game about big city gangsters into a game about desert hipsters. And I don't know where is that big audience who wants to play as hipsters, that is worth alienating all original fans for. They also said the game will no longer include any sexual humour or offensive jokes, both of which were trademarks of the franchise. I mean you could use a giant dildo as a weapon in them. And now they suddenly act more reverent than a monk? Is this pretence or they really think bland unoffensive hipsters sell games better?

The mainstream gaming media cannot stop talking about gamers supposed entitlement, but let's flip the coin for a moment here. When a developer takes an established franchise, and completely redesigns it to have almost nothing in common with what made that franchise successful in the first place. Are they then entitled to unconditional acceptance by the fans? Why do they feel like they can make something that is completely anathema to every part of the established lore without getting any pushback? And when there is inevitably pushback, instead of trying to sell the changes to the fans reassuring them that their concept is sound and it will be good, they go on an all out offensive, attacking fans on social media and in multiple publications around the mainstream media. What is this if not entitlement? What are they trying to achieve? Who do they think they are making these games for if not for the built in core audience of the franchise? Or if they feel they don't need or want that audience, then why not start with a clean slate so there are no expectations to begin with? is this a deliberate attempt at getting hate based publicity, or are they really this clueless and disconnected from their own audience?

Wasn't that the case where it turned out that the reviewer didn't even play the game?

More focus on storytelling and less focus on clout and after sales monetization options. I don't know why are we accepting those. Would you accept your car charging you each time you turn on the radio? Or each time you roll down the window? After you bought a game you should be able to play them unrestricted, and any later purchases should be additional content, and I don't mean weapon skins. Actual meaningful content.

Fun Fact Fifa also had a Metric song that was favorited by a lot of people

Just because you refuse the acknowledge the trend doesn't mean it's not happening. We can add it to all the other things you also refuse to acknowledge. Like the previous line in my post: "But they also shouldn't deliberately make things that they know their core fans will be against." Into which category making unattractive characters falls.

No, they don't have to bow to whims. But they also shouldn't deliberately make things that they know their core fans will be against. It's kind of the point of game development to make games that people will actually want to play. I'm not saying cater to the lowest common denominator, but don't hang your established audience out to dry for the twitter mob. Case in point: The Saints Row reveal from a few days ago.

Most tedious boss fights are dragons in dragon age inquisition. They were never hard but took half an hour to kill. It's a waste of time. And the damn game was prone to crashing in the final minutes of the fights.

Yes you can say that, but this is primarily a shooter with some rpg elements added, so it is not as complex as fallout4.

With the extended cut it is acceptable, but nowhere near what this epic saga deserved. You still have starbrat, you still have the paradox that in order to prevent AI from wiping out all life, you create an AI to wipe out all life. That makes sense...NOT.

I just finished this game and I have to say it's pretty amazing, especially for the budget and the size of the development team. But all mainstream sites that even bothered to review it uniformly said that it is a terrible game. Well 94% of gamers says otherwise. Here is my take on it.

They already got rid of it in the director's cut patch soon after the original release. It was no longer required to play multiplayer to get the necessary readiness level. That said multiplayer in ME3 was quite fun actually, one of the few games that I enjoyed playing online, so it is a shame that it is not included in the legendary edition.

I think this counts too.

Passive aggressive as ever. Modus operandi: Present unreasonable premise, painting the debate partner as a complete idiot if they were to refuse your premise When inevitably they refuse it claim you were right all along: they are idiots indeed Act the victim and bask in your imaginary glory without even addressing actual points raised If you are so afraid to have your viewpoints challenged don't start a debate about them. And more importantly quit wasting my time. At least have the common courtesy of honestly addressing my points like I did yours. But if that's too much to ask, then I guess there is no point in takling to you going forward. Because a wall would be a more rewarding partner.

Yet nobody seems to be raising their voice against representing Eastern Europeans or Italians as criminial, it's only when black people are presented when the crying starts. So why is that? Unconscious bias, that's why.

If you didn't want to be hostile you should've just skipped this entire preface. You are dismissing the idea that you could be wrong even a tiny bit. They have a negative influence on society, so it's not unjust to label the self identifying progressives as a negative element. Those negative influences create division, hate, and most sadly segregation. But I'm not going to go further into that here as that is irrelevant to the topic. If you need to self identify as a progressive, you probably aren't really progressive. Fiction is based on real world themes and topics. But if it were to mirror reality exactly it wouldn't be fiction. It's called fiction because it is fictional as in the opposite of real. I'm assuming you are working up to the part where this will explain why we need to count the number of female characters in fiction like they were numbers in a spreadsheet. Because so far this seems irrelevant to the topic. Write what you know is good advice, but it doesn't mean you have to write your own life's story. It just means that it is unwise to go into detail when writing about topics that you are not familiar with. For example if I'm writing a book it would be ill advised for me to write about the process of bomb making because I know nothing about it. But I can learn about it, or call in experts. I still don't know where is this going however. That is called being inspired by real world events. Tolkien' does not write about Ottomans and Hapsburgs fighting, but Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, etc. So it does not mirror reality, it takes and reinterprets it for its own purpose. If this is what you mean by mirroring reality, that's entirely different. But then why are we counting the number of female characters? Obviously we can't count orcs, so we already strayed from reality, why do we need to adhere to some arbitrary representation of female characters? Nobody said fiction can have nothing taken from reality. Actually, all fiction is derived from reality, because that is the only thing we know and can draw upon as humans. I said it does not need to be a mirror image of it. I can't offer the same admiration to a fictional hero, because I know it's not real. I'm not saying a non heroic character becomes heroic if they are good looking. I'm saying that if I have to choose between an ugly hero and a beautiful hero, I'll always chose the latter. while all their other characteristics are exactly the same. It's a simple matter of preference. Because it is fiction it is not real, so we can do anything, so why make them ugly, it literally makes no sense. You invented this argument and now you are arguing against it, great, I'm not even needed here, because you can argue just as well with yourself. There are numerous examples, but I'll just stick to one from each genre. For a TV Show: Star Trek Discovery. Michael Burnham is anathema to every value of star trek, and the federation. But when I criticize the character and the show I'm instantly labelled as a racist and/ or a sexist. When it has nothing to do with either. The only thing it has to do with is that they are written an unlikable and arrogant character who goes against the values established by the story so far. Then among movies let's use Star Wars Force Awakens. Rey does not go through a hero's journey she is just awesome at everything she tries automatically. She uses force suggestion without any training, a feat that took Obi Wan half his life to master. She even holds her own against a sith lord in battle without ever training in the ways of the Jedi or handling a lightsaber. This is what we call a Mary Sue character. But when the movie got criticized rightly it was "all those toxic manbabies". And among animations let's use something recent: Masters of the Universe revelations. They lied to people about the show's nature saying it will be focused on he-man, then when it wasn't and people got angry rightfully so it was the toxic fans fault again. But even when we look past that the real hero of the show Teela is represented as an arrogant egotistic, self absorbed character, who is just awesome at everything, and better than he-man himself. Let's see a game. For example Uncharted Lost Legacy. All negative characters are male in it, and even the few male characters who aren't villains are represented as these dudebros. And the two perfect female heroes are awesome at everything and regularly exchange feminist talking points between each other. Egotistic, arrogant, does not equal wilful and stern. If you are now going to say that there were no wilful and stern women and weak/emotional men in fiction before recently I'm just going to quit right here, because it means you actually created a fiction that you pretend is reality. Yes they are different. And surprise surprise I think Daniel Craig is a terrible James Bond, he doesn't fit the bill. Because you can't criticize them without being called a bigot or an ist. So you just have to pretend that they are perfect. That's the first thing you are completely right about. Because it is all fake, it is not aimed at the actual minorities. it is aimed at white woke progressives smelling their own farts about how virtuous they are, the likes who start counting the exact number of women in games like the writers of this hitpiece. The complains about lack of inclusion comes from white liberals for the most part. Who even attack actual members of said groups if they speak out against their brand of inclusiveness. It's my way or the highway with them. if you paid attention you'd have known that I agree, I mentioned the heroes journey multiple times. Every hero needs its kryptonite. I know the difference, but progressive hollywood writers certainly don't as there were multiple instances in progressive shows excusing villains for henious acts. LOL, they don't intend them to be arrogant, but that's exactly how they come out. They can still be infallible while being egotistic and filled with hate. But of course to progressives indiscriminate hate against things like white man is virtuous so that's a positive for them. No, I'm not. From the games that are accused of being woke, TLOU2 is the least woke. TLOU is not trying to virtue signal or pass judgement either way. It just represents as all fiction should. The rage there is not random undirected anger against an antire group or some pretend systemic oppression, but has a cause. Admittedly LGBTQ representation is not an issue with games yet, most games can only be accused of being shallow and tokenizing in this regard. I'm tired of all this negativity anyway so I'll cite a positive example. in outer worlds Parvati and her romance with Junlei. It's one of the best overall romance storylines in any game. To think this topic was supposed to be about female representation. How did we get from there to homophobic?

So in the previous two GTAs you play white italian dudes. First thing they do is kill people steal cars, etc. You presumably don't take issue with that. But when you are playing the same game with a black guy, that is painting black people in a bad light? When you are presented with a white criminal you automatically think that it is just one guy and not representative of the entire group of people, as you should. But with the black guy you immediately jump to the conclusion "they are saying all black people are thieves" No, you are adding that part. They are just presenting one dude, same as the white ones in the previous games. So why do you apply a different standard if it is not projection?

they will probably argue that the filings are publicly available information if this ever gets to court, but that doesn't make the whole thing any less dirty. If they can do this without actually breaking any law that's worse. It's already deep enough. former Executive of grading company sells his collection of games to current director of grading company who then proceeds to use his own grading company to value the games, all while pretending to be a 3rd party in public. People with close ties to them started buying up games years before they started driving up prices. This is at best collusion to commit fraud. Whether it can be proven is another thing.

I'd add street racing to Gran Turismo Vehicles in fallout3 / 4

Yes Anna Ternheim via Alan Wake Garbage via Gran Turismo The Cardigans via Gran Turismo 2 Metric via Test Drive Unlimited

This has to be criminal. Please tell me that doing this is not OK? Auction house quetly sets up video game collectibe grading company Said grading company uses said auction house as reference before doing any grading to speak of People close to the auction company buy a few games at insanely inflated prices then do a press release about how video game prices are going up to no end news outlets dumbly reproduce the press release without looking into it People from the grading company go on publicity tour valuing games 5-10 times their actual value on popular tv shows Effectively creating a bubble where outsiders start buying games at inflated prices through them Auction house cashes in on buyer premiums and seller commissions with literally zero monetary risk The only people standing to loose are the ones holding the "million dollar" games when the bubble bursts This is insanity.

Being attracted to the characters makes games more enjoyable. If that makes me vain, then so be it. But superficial? No. It would be superficial if we judged them only on their looks, and not their deeds. This has nothing to do with real world heroes. We are talking about fiction, which is meant to entertain, and it does that better if the characters are attractive. That's all there is to it. Nobody is trying to diminish real world heroes, or imply that if you don't look like adonis you can't be heroic IRL. This seems to be an ongoing issue, that the so called progressives are trying to make fiction a mirror of reality. While most gamers prefer it as an idealized version. There is a wide scale between perfect and completely mundane. The heroes journey can't even be completed or enjoyable if the hero is perfect the very failure many modern fiction is guilty of. Well I see the opposite. Attractive but imperfect people, are replaced with repulsive (not necessarily visually), entitled, egotistic and infallible characters who can do no wrong. They never struggle, they beat masters at their own game with scant training. It's a complete farce. Ironically the exact opposite is being done under the guise of inclusion. "Behold perfection" is exactly what they say, and if you dare to criticize you are called a bigot, misogynist, racist and so on. I'm not a fan of the whole superhero genre. No amount of suspension of disbelief can make those passable to me. So I really don't have any opinion on that. I think heroes are made relatable by their flaws and mistakes. Simply making them less sexy won't make them more relatable. Complex heroes are good, but nowadays it seems that writers go out of their way to justify the actions of villains, excusing them, or even painting them as victims. The problem I see is that as soon as they make a character from a "protected" class, they don't dare write any flaws for them, they make them seem perfect, which is the opposite of relatable. There were great LGBTQ characters in fiction up to 5 years ago, that I could easily relate to and loved. Nowadays, they are all written completely unlikable, with no redeeming qualities. It's almost as if being from a minority automatically implies they need to be arrogant and filled with unbridled rage against the entire world.

Duke Nukem was a character from a 2D scroller with no real backstory. Lara Croft has a believable backstory. that was constantly expanded upon. I cannot even begin to describe how wrong you are to equate those two. And only because her waist is thin in a game with terrible graphics. You couldn't really make a subtle female figure with that kind of graphics hardware. If that prevents you from getting invested in the story well, it's on you. Besides you are moving the goalposts. The article was only talking about the sheer numbers not how complex the heroes were. Back in the early 90s, most heroes backstory was 2 lines or none, male, female, or other. Most narratives are about heroic deeds and achievements you have no hope of doing in real life. And for that you need a heroic character. Not that being down to earth and attractive are mutually exclusive anyway.

Female leads were not anathema to gamers before 1996. I find it laughable that people think that sexual attraction is a bad thing. That said I never found Lara Croft's depiction in the early games attractive, I think it was just a bad design from the dark ages of 3D graphics. When your character budget is 150 polygons the best you can do is cones. What you call over sexualized I call idealized. Same as male heroes all had idealized figures unattainable to most average men. I didn't see that as a problem, so I don't know why is it a problem with female characters. Heros should look like something to aspire to, not average dudes and gals.