Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

No, I don't remember those days. Hatemail and death threats to videogame developers goes back to the days of Atari.

We just didn't have the internet to make it as visible as it is now.

I gave Mass Effect 2 another go a few weeks ago when it was free on Origin, and I was astounded how ridiculously poorly it has aged. To be fair, I never liked the series much anyway, but looking at Andromeda I think people are just slowly coming to realise that the past decade of games was a wee fuckin' shit at times, and they're growing increasingly desperate to move past that outdated mess of a generation.

edited 20th Mar '17 1:48:00 AM by TAPETRVE

Fear the cinnamon sugar swirl. By the Gods, fear it, Laurence.

A few of them survived fine, but hindsight is a powerful tool.

edited 20th Mar '17 4:03:12 AM by mrsunshinesprinkles

"Curry killed the pussy hoping that I could kill the hate in you" - Curry, D. "TABOO | TA13OO." TA13OO, PH, 2018

Happy times on the Horizon.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I'm not super interested in Horizon myself (doesn't look like my cup of tea, which is weird for me to say since the whole robots+actual color thing would be enough in most other situations), but I don't really have a problem acknowledging its success as a positive thing.

Damn, makes me proud of Horizon and Guerilla Games as a whole. Now that I think about it, kinda reminds me of the happy times of Far Cry 3 and GTA: San Andreas. Two sandbox games I heartily enjoyed throughout my time.

Welp, gonna buy this and Nioh then.

Also, hot fucking damn. Andromeda may as well be considered one of the worst games of this year, with negative responses raging all over the fucking place.

edited 20th Mar '17 11:17:15 AM by MeeMaggot

This land is peaceful, its inhabitants kind.. ∩(·ω·)∩ WAIT, is this supposed to be the mistress herself?

Andromeda being one of worst game's of the year would make this pretty awesome year then

I mean, based on trial, at worst it could be mediocre, no bad writing that is just plain "bad" can make game that awful to playthrough.

But yeah, fandom rage is annoying to watch through. Also sad that Horizon Zero Dawn probably won't be for pc in very long time if ever since playstation

I hear Andromeda is at least mechanically sound and the bad parts are still laugh-worthy so if that's the worst then this is an amazing year for games.

I will say that the animations/models for Andromeda are a mite embarassing for a big AAA game to put out. There's a joke image going around comparing characters from FFXIII (a game that came out in 2009) to Andromeda's with the implicit thing being that XIII is a much older game but has far better looking character models in comparison.

You know, looking back, Xbox One and PC gamers kinda got screwed in this period. Yeah, they got Resi 7, but without the VR headset it loses a lot of impact, and everything else has either been Zelda or Ps 4 exclusives.

And the next big multiplat is Mass Effect Andromeda, and most reviews say it sucks. Meanwhile, Ps 4 owners get Persona 5

PC gamers are fine, i think. Most games are multiplatform and PC versions, even ones with problems, usually have them fixed by modders even if not the developers themselves. Automata had some bugs fixed by someone just a day or two ago, and will probably be the best version of the game at the end of the day.

But Xbox One peeps...yeah, I don't know what to tell you there, I barely even remember that it's a thing anymore.

PC games are better than they have ever been - so much stuff being ported, Steam being a godscend, revival of indie chreativity primarily through PC we're living a fucking golden age.

Xbox One - well, that console was doomed since its first "We own you Blade Runner style" pitch. You can't come back from that.

But it's Nintendo Switch users that got the short end of the stick. Considering they had to compete with fucking Microsoft, Nintendo ending up worse than them is one hell of an achievement.

Microsoft showed a lot of contrition. Nintendo blamed the audience and called them stupid.

Steam being a godsend it an argument that has really lost a lot of its impact in the present. Steam is good in the same way a giant hose spewing liters upon liters of shit directly at your face, and occasionally some edible food as well, is good.

And I said in this period. January 1st to March 21. They got a rushed port of Nier Automata, and what else?

edited 20th Mar '17 4:41:42 PM by PincerMove

Not sure how good of a list it is, but here are some recent stuff PC gamers got.

I'll agree that we didn't get much of the big budget stuff this year, but there is always the indie scene. Low key indie scene gives us a ton of stuff all the time. My personal big standout Hollow Knight, which looks like an absolutely stellar exploration platformer.

I heavily disagree with the shithose statement, doe. Therebis a lot of shit, but the service itself has plenty of value;namely The ease of transaction and downloads, the comstant sales, etc

edited 20th Mar '17 5:04:16 PM by mrsunshinesprinkles

"Curry killed the pussy hoping that I could kill the hate in you" - Curry, D. "TABOO | TA13OO." TA13OO, PH, 2018

How was it rushed? It is easily the best PC port from Platinum Games so far.

Did MGR's port have any issues comparable to Automata's? Because I remember it running pretty spectacularly on my at the time crappy laptop with little to no problems and the general reception to the port was pretty glowing.

Also yeah, I'm pumped for Hollow Knight as well.

I haven't played Automata, but the MGR port was really good. Then again, my laptop is something of a powerhouse.

Honestly, looking at the loss of ME's storyteller, I couldn't say much that it would fail.

This land is peaceful, its inhabitants kind.. ∩(·ω·)∩ WAIT, is this supposed to be the mistress herself?

the fact that gameplay appeared only about a month before release date for it should have clued people in, too.

Watch Symphogear

Trails in the Sky the Third will be out soon, so for RPG fans that'll be great. There's tons and tons of excellent indie games.

Isn't that game a literal decade old?

And the indie thing loses a lot of its appeal when you hold it up next to the literal terabytes of utter fucking garbage that gets uploaded by indie devs who have no business being devs, weekly.

Anyway, my point was that looking through the list Jim gives off of excellent games this year has already given us, 4 of them are Ps 4 exclusive, 2 have easily the best version on Ps 4, and one i a Switch launch title. So to a critic like Jim, it looks like a great year, but if you don't have access to a Ps 4, then its not been as amazing.

But the Ps 4 is easily the best selling console, so its not like that lack is affecting that many people who care.

Does that really matter though? Most people don't even hear about the shitty indie games because they're that forgettable and irrelevant, if one has any real merit it'll either have a cult following at worst that you might hear about eventually, or blow up at best like Undertale did.

I'm leery of saying Undertale "blew up". It sold over a million copies, which is impressive for an indie title - but compared to the number of people who watched videos online about it, that's a small fraction. The same also applies to FNAF, where the first game did less than Undertale sales-wise, but apparently online interest was high enough to get Hollywood's attention and go for a film adaptation.

I think Minecraft has distorted the view of indie success. YouTube hype doesn't necessarily translate into copies sold - but it did with Minecraft (in the biggest way possible), and people keep thinking that it means the same thing for other indie games. (And if you don't consider Minecraft indie any more due to Microsoft, that's fair, although then that leaves only one very odd indie success story in the top fifty best-selling games of all time.)

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)