Drowsy Emperor

Downloaded a demo of Monster Hunter 4 on the 3DS to see what all the fuss is about. Seems like all the worst parts of an MMO and Dark Souls rolled together, the grind, the needless complexity and obsession with vapid mechanical systems - without any story or atmosphere. My first and only reaction to these type of otaku games is "kill it with fire" Meanwhile: playing Ocarina of Time at a leisurely pace. Its quite enjoyable

Although this only applies to the US, it is possibly the most important market or at least one of the most important ones. The numbers look worse when you take into account market expansion. Some stats say that 155 out of 320 million Americans play videogames (of all kinds) regularly. So a great success is when you get a device into the hands of a third of that number, as the Wii did. But, fundamentally, Nintendo hasn't been able to achieve an even more moderate goal with their home consoles for a long time. The handheld division was doing spectacularly well up until the rise of smartphones and tablets but the subsequent plunge has been pretty catastrophic. That said, the company itself is still massive- at the height of the Pokemon Go frenzy surpassing Sony in market value. So while these are costly mistakes (or middling successes at best) they can take a lot more punches than one would think.

Jade Empire is a fire and forget type of game. I may have even played through it twice but I don't remember anything at all about it.

So, a Sega Nomad with a Nintendo badge? I guess you're right. I'm not super hyped or anything. I just hope whatever it is, that is is good enough for me to buy. I don't know. Its all just speculation. But Nintendo is a company that has relatively low prices that target the wallets of parents so I just don't see them doing something spectacular hardware wise. And I don't see them repeating another straight up home console because after the WiiU, I think they have no place in that market anymore. The Wii honeypot days are over and those customers aren't coming back. The market has shrunk for Sony - even the "winner" of this console generation, the PS4 has sold around 60 million units which looks paltry compared to the PSX 100 or the PS2's 150. Nintendo, always being on the bottom of that race apart from the Wii fluke, can only suffer even more - as they did with the WiiU. So I see them merging their handheld and console development for a hybrid device... but I don't see that device shipping as a "PS4 with a Vita" for 300$, if you get my meaning.

I'm still of the opinion that the only way they can release a "hybrid" at typical Nintendo prices (around the 300$ mark) is if the handheld contains everything and the dock is just an HDMI port/internal storage. In other words I believe its just going to be a handheld that can project to an external screen, which at current hardware limitations is going to be far below any console in power - limiting what you can actually play at home down to Nintendo first party, indie games and other titles specifically developed for the device. So, a hybrid in name only.

So I finished Inside, the latest indie darling of the critics. Its about a boy that's running away from what seemingly represents an authority in some sort of post apocalyptic universe where one group of humans is using others as brainwashed puppets. To that end you keep on running from "humans", "dogs", some sort of underwater monstrosity that may or may not be on your side through forest, farmland, unspecified industrial levels etc. until you meet a tragic and mildly disgusting end about 3 hours or so in. Its supposed to be a mood piece that tells you a "story" through visuals alone. But it doesn't actually tell anything and what little you see makes no sense at all and progresses to make less and less sense as time goes on until it just flops over and proclaims that its done. And this is a game that has critics raving. Yet it manages to encapsulate the absolute worst traits of indie games, a vague pretentiousness about being something "deep" without a clear idea of what the "deep" thing is actually going to be. If you're going to make art without explicit or implicit allusions to something you have to at least give the viewer something to reflect on. But there's nothing to reflect on in Inside. Its just a jumbled mess of ideas that goes nowhere. Which is a shame as the graphics, animations and sound design are all around excellent - which is I guess why the critics found it an easy piece to praise to high heaven. Looking at the credits, its apparently a Danish game. Reminds me of movies like Valhalla Rising in its typically Nordic approach: "the world is bleak and violent and then you die".

Yeah, she's all flaky and temperamental. Opting for the less feminist option. :D

The core gameplay is not holding me. Too much repetitive combat and too little exposition of value for a game that's already 20+ hours long. Nine times out of ten I can just smack R2 at the appropriate time with the Zweihander and then do it again while they're still getting up, one shotting or two shotting everything - but never so carelessly that I can just breeze through it to see what happens next. So I'm sort of forced to pay attention to something that's not really engaging on a quest that hasn't really gone anywhere for over twenty hours. I'm all for minimalism, but if its only the environments and the combat telling the story then it must take care not to get a little overdone and in typical Japanese fashion, they just didn't know when to stop.... or start making sense. Still much better than anything I played in recent memory, I'll give them that.

What is this weeaboo horror

I got to Anor Londo in Dark Souls, Soul Level 64. I think I'm done with the game. Its a good game, great level design - nowhere near as hard as the internet will have you believe. Its basically normal difficulty of a 90's game - without the cushion of today's permanent checkpoint abuse, invisible walls over blocking death falls, enemies that don't roll over when the player shows up, health that doesn't regenerate etc. Nothing really hard in itself. The fact that its considered 'hard' says more about today's gamers than the game itself.

I hate all the number related nonsense in RPG's. Its a remnant of wargaming and PnP where you needed some way to structure and immerse into a game as opposed to just having adults playing with toy soldiers or cops and robbers. There is no reason to have any of that anymore except in a most bare bones fashion. Randomly generated loot, crafting, sophisticated leveling and builds - extensive upgrading - its all just pavlovian nonsense that has no real impact on creating an immersive experience.

With both of them I have a strong feeling of been there done that. They're so bent on out GTA-ing the GTA formula that they don't realized its already tired and overdone.

Aaaaand some Chinese dudes are saying its fake. *shrugs*

Yep. Probably because it was impossible to achieve something that resembles acceptable home console graphics in a device that would be an entirely handheld unit. Especially if you expect that device to project to a larger screen as well. If its true, they wanted both something that looks good on handheld and is at least on WiiU level (kek) at home. i mean, they could hardly go below right? The price is the brick.

Its basically a souped up handheld. If the CPU/GPU can run off battery power in a small portable housing then its not a home console in regards to the power level. Unless Nintendo discovered quantum computers. Unfortunately it makes business sense. The console market is contracting. Sony has given up on the possibility of a successor to the PS Vita - they have retreated into the domain where they are strong and still making money, the home console. If the rumor is true, Nintendo is doing the same, except its strength is the handheld device. Their home consoles have been a string of relative failures ever since the SNES with the exception of the Wii. But their handhelds are still doing alright, so focusing on a handheld device that offers some features of a home console makes sense.

Latest rumor allegedly from chinese Foxconn factory: "NX is a console-handheld hybrid. It is detachable. It contains the console itself, performance module, and the handheld/gamepad. The console (I think it is supposed to be a dock. I'll call it a dock from now on) contains HDD, cartridge slot and various other interfaces. It supports TV output (but no CPU/GPU). The performance module is a portable device that provides power supply. It contains a Li-Ion battery. CPU/GPU also is contained inside. It supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and wired connections. You plug the dock inside and it becomes a PS4/Xbone like console, but you can also transfer the signals to the handheld (like Remote Play?) There are two candidate SoC for it: Pascal SoC from nVidia or AMD R9 SoC. The handheld part is a 6 inch 720p screen and has a low-TDP SoC, which can satisfy basic operations with lower quality graphics when the performance module is not connected. But it can also display game graphics from the performance module which can provide a console-level graphics. A bit like nVidia Shield streaming. You can bring the performance module with you portable (since it has its own battery). Additional info: whatever the solution will be, the computing power it has falls far behind a PS4, let alone a PS4 Pro. Don't have high hopes for that. The selling point for it is high portability and hybrid providing rich gameplay possibilities.

They're salvaging WiiU first party software by re-releasing it on the 3DS via quick and dirty porting. They think its cheap for them so some more moneys aren't bad. Its basically a death sentence for both systems, although the 3DS will be around for a while yet.

Dark Souls is kinda losing me in Blighttown. The area is like something straight out of a trash 90's action adventure game like Deathtrap Dungeon. In fact I'm reminded of the atrocious Vampire Bloodlines sewers. Narrow, cramped, groan inducing status effects etc. Its not even difficult, just annoying. A completely different universe from the brilliance of the various castle, sewer and forest areas I've seen so far.

Best article about the WiiU flop: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret-developers-wii-u-the-inside-story Its a fascinating read because of the mindset Nintendo shows. Eg: they were trying to implement online infrastructure but it turned out they didn't know how to do it so it ended up being a 5gig day 1 patch*. When questioned about why they didn't do some features like PSN and XBL did it the answer was "nobody in Nintendo's development teams used those systems"!? Another example: Japanese internal development took up to a week to respond to every third party developer question because none of them spoke English and it all had to be translated. You can only imagine the hell of trying to code for a new unfamiliar system and having to wait a week for every issue to be cleared up. *(that bricked some people's consoles, because they thought it was frozen because the process was taking hours and unplugged it)

Looking at videos of people playing Dark Souls expertly, Dark Souls'll look cheesy too. Takes a lot of skill to do all that. ... Not saying Dark Souls is easier or even as difficult as Dishonored, obviously. To be fair tho, skeletons never really gave me too much trouble in DS. Not even those. I don't know, I might have broken some aspects of the game for the time being. I spent a lot of time in Darkroot Garden, where I found the Stone armor and a bit later I ran into Havel and got his ring and now I'm roflstomping everything. Catacombs was a joke as well as Pinwheel. Then I finally understood that I had to go to lower undead Burg which was obviously much lower level. I could stand toe to toe with the Capra demon and take every blow and still walk all over him, including everything in the Lower Burg, the Depths and the Gaping Dragon (died once). Now I'm in Blighttown and I died again to poison which I'm sure is going to be a trend but other than that the enemies don't seem too scary.

This is a chicken and egg thing - did customers lose interest because everything is the same or is everything the same because the customers lost interest or aren't numerous enough to warrant niche development at current costs. What I'm sure of is that there was tangible excitement in the PSX, PS2 era. For the PS3 it was a little less and the PS4 was basically met with a sigh, even before it became clear what the console would actually offer. Of course, the advancement was tangible as well, PSX and PS2 were worlds apart. The PS3 was better than PS2 but the PS4 was the barest of upgrades over the PS3. As much as publishers now talk about 4k gaming, its decidedly unimpressive, nothing but a resolution boost. While I will agree that gameplay was really more varied in the PSX, PS2 era - its important that this was something that can be assessed only after the fact. It was not the promise of variety that sold these consoles but the technological leap that spurred sales, which spurred development, which resulted in variety. Variety and quality are on the end of the process - if you were to assume what the PS2 would become on the basis of its launch titles, you would think the thing would certainly fail.

Yes, this isn't happening. Slight FPS increase and a additional few graphical options are all that can be realistically expected.

One interesting trend: The PS4 is considered the "winner" of this generation. However, if you look at the numbers, its the lowest selling Playstation ever: PS2>PS>PS3>PS4 and whether it will crack PS3 sales during its remaining lifetime is still uncertain. And this is not an insignificant shrinkage - if we ignore the all time high of the PS2 and go with the PSX instead its: PSX: 100 million to PS4's 43 million. Competition sales are even more revealing: the Xbone and WiiU are both a clear debacle, selling little better than the Sega Dreamcast numbers at 18 million and 13 million respectively. The only reason they haven't tanked their respective companies is that these are huge players that can absorb big disasters. Since this contraction cannot be explained by the PC, the only remaining platform, the only explanation is that the core gaming market on the whole has contracted and a lot of people have either stopped gaming or moved on to something else. It seems that all the major players anticipated this, since they all made cheap consoles with weak hardware instead of spending insane amounts of money on R&D like they used to do. And even that wasn't enough. So, have consoles reached the end of the line? If development costs keep rising, as they shall, but the platforms don't sell hardware units and by extension software to sustain these costs in the long term (as is apparently happening), but games and consoles remain at the same price point then the profit margin will narrow down to nothingness for everything that isn't Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed. After becoming the past-time of a generation, is "core" gaming slowly going back to being a niche thing?

After learning to respect every shambling skeleton in Dark Souls (the hard way) that looks incredibly... cheesy.

Human Revolution's story disintegrated slowly over the course of the game only to come to one of gaming's most ridiculous finales - taking the old design contrivance of "press button for your chosen ending" and implementing in the most literal and baffling way ever.