Drowsy Emperor

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.

Not sure how about you, but for me, a big part of BG's scope was also my ability to role-play just about anything (the game wasn't too reactive about it but hey, I like Elder Scrolls) and to completely change playstyle just by swapping companions. Witcher 3 is a lot more limited in that respect - the world is huge, the quests are epic, some stories are absolutely stellar, but no matter what you do, you are and always will be Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher - and your decisions will always be constrained by this. Gameplay also eventually gets rather repetitive, without much you could do to make it more interesting. Eh, I suppose that's the main reason as to why Pillars of Eternity was my GOTY of 2015 as opposed to Witcher 3. The thing is, all that applies to Mass Effect series, arguably the best thing Bioware made since Baldur's Gate except its all much worse there. The world is tiny, the combat is reptitive, the entire universe revolves around Shepard etc. The old argument used to be that it would be too expensive to make a massive cinematic 3D game - one where the graphics would be the best that can be done up close but with a size that compares to the 2D generation. CDPR showed that it can be done. I don't find being a more defined character negatively impacting my enjoyment, because I have no problem being a "passenger" - watching someone else's adventure. Fundamentally what I want is to enjoy a good story and an interesting world and games that are extremely open as a rule fall apart in the narrative department. Even the world suffers because it "has" to be huge so its full of poorly disguised copy-paste content. The character on the other hand, whether he's the Bhaalspawn from BG2, Geralt, Nameless One, Tidus of FFX etc. provides context for the whole experience. Some characters are more open-ended than others but most of the time its just the illusion of choice anyway - the Bhaalspawn had 3 fundamental responses to most situations and so does Geralt (don't get involved, be nice, don't be nice). It just feels like you have more options because you can choose your class and party composition and fiddle around with these systems. The counter-argument is that Geralt is basically the three stock DnD classes rolled into one so you have just as much variety...

Watching some Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone gameplay since I don't have anything to play it on. My laptop can't do over 30 fps in it, for shame. It looks like they really did it this time, the writing seems much better handled, the characters more interesting - I actually want to play it, whereas with the second Witcher my gut feeling that the game was going to be a lukewarm experience turned out right. When I look at the game its amazing how far CDPR has come in such a short time - it took Bioware years to do something resembling a cinematic RPG experience, never really matching the same scope and ambition Baldur's Gate had. Seemingly, the Witcher 3 manages to do it. Dragon Age Inquisiton looks a generation or two behind by comparison.

Dark Souls. Found a Zweihander, promptly upgraded it to +5. Also Elite Knight Armor. I'm steamrolling Darkroot garden, one-shotting everything except the green knights and crystal golems which are all terribly slow. Dunno if I'm overleveled for the area at SL 31 or what but the difficulty has dropped off a lot. Destroyed the 2 Bell Gargoyles as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z6YPVsohzQ Random encounter with a new type of pokemon And he wasn't even standing in tall grass

I was reading articles about the 3DS, turns out it was hacked so that it can download games from Nintendo's eShop for free. They don't even bother to rip the games anymore. I can't tell whether that's hilarious or really really sad, or both. How could they design such easily exploitable internet infrastructure

Ran into 2 gargoyles. Almost killed one then his buddy decided to show up and throw me off the roof. I was doing pretty well though, they're not very intimidating vs my +4 Claymore. Maybe 4 hits and I had him down to 25%

Upgrading your weapon is probably the most important thing. Just keep playing and you will find out soon how to upgrade. The Claymore is a very solid weapon. My favorite greatsword for the early game. But is it worth blowing titanite chunks on?

In the land where a pocket knife hurts like getting hit by a combine harvester I'll take any piece of steel between me and the ugly strangers I can get.

Well I got a Titanite chunk, which is better than nothing. But I spent half an hour baiting him around the stone fountain by the bonfire. I have no idea what is worth upgrading and where to upgrade anything for that matter. I'm playing a Knight with the stock shield and Claymore.

And I really wanted that massive black phallic symbol ... Well that came out wrong

He's alone on top of a tower? What did I unlock?

Killed the Black Knight on top of a tower in Undead Burg in Dark Souls. He made me work for it. Reward totally underwhelming, a paltry 800 souls.

I realized the series is not for me - in fact Persona 3 burned me out on the genre (mostly) for good. 70 hours of grind in a randomly generated 200 level dungeon (all of it very similar) to see the outcome of a story that ultimately collapsed in on itself and amounted to nothing was the most soul draining experience I ever had in my 18 years of gaming. Haven't touched a jRPG for any length of time since.

If you want the more detailed version, Jim Sterling has a number of videos about the thing on his Youtube channel. TL:DR Its two brothers throwing out shovelware out of Unity assets, got slammed by Sterling, attacked him and tried to sue him over it - managed to blow the whole thing so out of proportion that Steam is kicking their ass. I'm in full agreement with Jim that Steam needs some form of quality control, because the kind of **** that's appearing on the platform now is worse than at any point in the last 20 years. Its not that hard to identify the scammers, but they shouldn't be allowed in the first place.

Look, each review is a subjective opinion. But there are still some standards of excellence in the gaming world. There are compelling reasons why games like FF (or at least some of them), Chrono Trigger etc. are regarded as they are - and I can see that even though I personally may not like them. For example, I'm not enamored with Chrono Trigger at all - in fact, I played it only recently, but to anyone who has played the genre its immediately apparent why the game is considered great. Excellent pacing, story stripped from many of the most obnoxious JRPG conventions, fluid and relatively fast combat, variety and inventiveness in setting - all great for its time and very good even today. Final Fantasy games had insane production values for their time and most of them pack a decent story and gameplay as well. And the series at least tries to reinvent itself with every iteration - even if it fails occasionally. These are just two examples. By comparison, what does SMT have that makes it qualify to be in the same crowd? In my experience these are games that have intriguing ideas that they never manage to deliver on married to rote dungeon crawling and, essentially, a grittier version of pokemon.

So, now objectively worse sequel in a series that hasn't changed in 13 years somehow qualifies for critical acclaim? Also Shin Megami Tensei is now somehow in the same league as (insert favorite) Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and other 9/10, JRPG cream of the crop type games? Despite no game in the series (that I've played - and that list includes Persona 3/4, Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga 1+2) ever being anything but gibberish in the story department, at most decent in production values and gameplay (if that's your sort of thing). The **** is the point of scoring games if showing up gets you a 9/10. Come on guys, we're not IGN here

I finished New Super Mario Bros 2. About 25 hours to get to 100% completion. Its a decent game but its easy to see why it wasn't received all that enthusiastically by critics - it doesn't really add anything to the Mario universe. One might argue that more of the same would be fine as well, but with Mario being around for so long, its kinda less forgivable, particularly as Nintendo showed they could introduce interesting changes to the overall formula.

I just commented that 9/10 is too much for a game that's the same thing but worse as something released 13 years ago. Not the rest of the stuff from the post above. I don't even see anything contentious about it, its just common ****ing sense. Not even Nocturne got such scores back in the day - so it appears SMTIV is somehow failing upwards.