Jimquisition "Garme Jurrnalizm!"

[Solkia]

 

I love this man

[Scar]

So good.

[Nepenthe]

I wouldn't call that cynical so much as being realist. The overarching gaming industry is full of so much dishonest and sleazy bullshit that I find it marvelous that anyone can even find themselves staking claims on the various sides of console and game wars anymore, why anyone even continues to express such wide-eyed enthusiasm for the smoke and mirrors that is the AAA industry instead of getting angrier at the copious amounts of awfulness more often and actually deciding to take a financial stand more often. The public Xbone response and subsequent curtailing of its more insidious features shouldn't have been a miracle; it should've been business as usual.

 

But then E3's gonna come and we're all going to go "ooh shiny." Even I am. Games these days are just more often than not depressing.

[Solkia]

We're in an era where gamers are actively awaiting for a game to come out and be shit. The fact that people followed Watch Dogs and Rise of Lyric as long as they did makes that clear to me.

[Autosaver]

I wouldn't call that cynical so much as being realist. The overarching gaming industry is full of so much dishonest and sleazy bullshit that I find it marvelous that anyone can even find themselves staking claims on the various sides of console and game wars anymore, why anyone even continues to express such wide-eyed enthusiasm for the smoke and mirrors that is the AAA industry instead of getting angrier at the copious amounts of awfulness more often and actually deciding to take a financial stand more often. The public Xbone response and subsequent curtailing of its more insidious features shouldn't have been a miracle; it should've been business as usual.

 

But then E3's gonna come and we're all going to go "ooh shiny." Even I am. Games these days are just more often than not depressing.

Well I mean...

 

I don't remember the last time Nintendo lied. Their trailers tend to end up looking like the actual game.

[Nepenthe]

I can't personally recall a time where Nintendo has directly deceived people on game footage, although it wouldn't surprise me if there were some historical cases someone more knowledgeable could pull up. But Nintendo aren't without its issues, particularly with their insulting and confusing localization efforts or lack thereof of some games, as well as their inability to court third parties like they used to. They're not as criminal as EA, and while I want a Wii U out of all the consoles I'm still not particularly enthused about modern console gaming in general.

 

After all, Nintendo are only one part of the pie which, to me, is an overall frustrating mess of bland art styles, repetitive action-adventure mechanics, broken releases justified to people by patches, and unnecessary microtransactions that only proceed to obscure the mechanical simplicity of games that have worked before for the sake of trying to make me part with more money, with the cherry on top being the frivolous hype concerning new releases and the predictable titles that will be awarded GotY the world over. There's probably some points where I come across as a Luddite (I say to people all the time "Remember when you could pop in a game and play the goddamned fucking thing immedietely without having to wait on a stupid-ass download? How the fuck is this inconvenience the future?"), but in general I have no real love for the medium anymore due to its bullshit mainstream industry and the aggressive people that follow it.

 

I just can't.

[Sir Tynen]

Well I mean...

 

I don't remember the last time Nintendo lied. Their trailers tend to end up looking like the actual game.

 

Well, that's because they actually tend to show gameplay of their games first and foremost, rather than just a cinematic and none of it. Heck, even when they do cinematics, they transition straight to gameplay.

[Kuzu]

I start to wonder if anybody even enjoys playing games anymore.

 

 

 

Well, that's because they actually tend to show gameplay of their games first and foremost, rather than just a cinematic and none of it. Heck, even when they do cinematics, they transition straight to gameplay.

 

Nintendo aren't exactly champions of justice either mate.

[Wraith]

Nintendo are oldschool about a lot of things, which comes with a lot of positives, but a lot of negatives as well. You basically get none of the bullshit that modern games come with, but none of the conveniences either. Even as a fan of theirs I wouldn't call them much of a solution or some kind of model I want the game industry to follow.

[Sami]

What really gets me is that there are games that genuinely do look fucking stunning. The tech is there. People have been and will be impressed with it, because these games look genuinely great and the devs should be proud of themselves for what they can accomplish.

 

Look at these - all images taken with in-game photo modes by GAFfers for fun:

 

 

 

 

^I even took that one myself

 

 

And then there's this - captured using photo mode, slowly panning around the camera while frozen:

 

 

I've been called a "graphics whore" or whatever before, I don't care, visuals are really fucking important to me and even I'm really god damn sick and tired of the shit devs like Ubisoft are pulling. Fucking stop it. I'm done bitching about the graphical arms race and AAA gaming as a whole - I've ironically come to really enjoy it, I've become really invested and interested in the tech side of game design as a result of it,  and honestly I've come to realize that I just enjoy a lot of AAA games and the pros that only big budgets can offer. Many of my favorite games fall into that "wah wah big budget AAA games" category - The Last of Us, Shadow of the Colossus, and Metal Gear Solid 2 all come easily off the top of my head as masterpieces, and whether people want to admit it or not all three of them are big budget AAA games. 

 

That's not the issue.

 

The issue is the outright moronic, shortsighted decision to create and pander to expectations that AREN'T GOING TO BE MET JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. You know what bothers me? What really fucking bothers me? Star Wars Battlefront is going to look good. It's not going to be an ugly game. And the graphics we've seen looked amazing to me, but believable. ... Mmm, then we found out it was going to be 60fps and have 40 player online battles. 

 

Riiiiiiight.

 

That's just not happening. I'm hopeful, I'm optimistic, but I'm not an idiot. So now we've got a trailer that absolutely does not look like what the actual game is going to in the end, instead of having a trailer that would be exciting and moderately impressive in and of itself. For no reason. Games look great already, and we should always be pushing them to be bigger and better. That's what AAA gaming is for. There is an appeal to it that can't be outright ignored. But I'm so fucking jaded by the lofty promises that I really wish devs would realize that producing something realistically impressive and detailed is enough. We don't need to be promised the fucking moon to buy your game.

 

Rant over.

[Gabz Girl]

Like Jim, I've become more and more skeptical about gameplay trailers since...I think Watch Dogs? Sure there are games that really DO end up looking as good as those trailers like Last of Us, Infamous Second Son and especially The Order 1886 but they're only a minority. There's trailers like the Star Wars Battlefront one that barely shows actual gameplay, looking more like a scripted cinematic, and they expect me to believe it's ALL in game?

 

What's worse, we're probably gonna get even more of these annoying, bullshot filled trailers at E3 and everyone's going to gush and obsess over these AMAZING graphics and ohhhh this game is going to look awesome even though it's only a very scripted cinematic trailer with no actual gameplay. And watch how once the game is released or more actual screenshots are revealed, disappointed will settle in. Isn't this gen the greatest guys?!

 

I think Nintendo are the only ones left that hardly if ever use this bullshot crap, and I'm glad for it.

[Willsy]

Isn't this gen the greatest guys?!

This happened last gen, in fact it dates back even further IIRC. This is hardly anything new, but it's become more common and it is concerning. Being honest might generate less hype (or then again it might not, you never know) but at least you're not being a lying asshole.

I think Nintendo are the only ones left that hardly if ever use this bullshot crap, and I'm glad for it.

I don't think it's gotten that bad yet Gabz. There are still developers who are completely honest about how their games look, unfortunetly they tend to be smaller than the likes of EA and Ubisoft. I think some good examples are Media Molecule, TT Games, and like you said, Nintendo. There are probably tons of others that are so obvious that I'm very stupidly forgetting about.

I'm still excited for Battlefront, because I'm a huge fan of Star Wars and Battlefront and the gameplay sounds like a lot of fun. It's frustrating though that they are falling back on a trailer that was rendered in-engine that only represents some of the things you can do. I want to see actual gameplay of the Rebels and Imperials duking it out on Endor. Another thing is that the game will not look like that and everyone knows it won't. Unless EA just suddenly discovered a major breakthrough in graphical fidelity with just one project then I refuse to believe it. No doubt the game will look nice but come on, at times in that trailer you could easily mistake it for live action.

[Ripe]

I totally agree with Sterling in this weeks episode. I already said in thread "what would make you exited in new Sonic game" -thread that CGI-trailer would not make me exited. I just don't trust video game companies enough anymore. Especially the ones like Sega, which doesn't have very good track record. Even gameplay footage wouldn't hype me much because we can't know whetever the footage is real. And while I'm not very picky about graphics, I don't like that somebody lies to me.

[Phos]

A while back I started evaluating announcement trailers/teasers (whatever is the first bit of video released about a game) with the following criteria: "How much does this look like gameplay?"  There have been a few problems with it over the years, such as Asura's Wrath's gameplay not looking like gameplay, and games like Sonic Unleashed having their marketing cycle screwed up throw it off, but it's been a decent yardstick over the years.  

[Ripe]

New episode:

It was probably easy to guess that Sterling will going to talk about this. I mostly agree with him. Idea is interesting but it's needed to handle carefully or it will become dumping ground of bad mods for easy cash, which is already issue with places like greenlight and early access. I also hope that modders actually get some amount of that money. Also, how will companies react?

[Daisy-Fan]

New video of Jim about the DLC of the up coming Batman game.

[Nepenthe]

And here I was thinking he'd do an episode ripping Konami to shreads for the whole Silent Hill kerfluffle. Slightly disappointed we're talking about DLC today. xD

[Badnik Mechanic]

And here I was thinking he'd do an episode ripping Konami to shreads for the whole Silent Hill kerfluffle. Slightly disappointed we're talking about DLC today. xD

 

Well we talked about that a few days ago.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynl4sIFazmM

[Solkia]

tbh I give Arkham City a free pass on the Catwoman thing since Catwoman was a really fucking shitty addition to the game.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

It's really telling to me that these days it's most of Nintendo's first party games compared to the majority of actual new titles coming out on the Xbone and/or PS4, and indie titles like Shovel Knight, and smaller series like the Shantae series, that are actually worth the hype that so many companies these days pour money into advertising with trailer graphics porn.

[Willsy]

I don't think it's because Nintendo is naturally better, but because big publishers are more interested in maximising profits. If anything, Nintendo have just remained stagnant the whole time whil everyone else has fumbled in some way shape or form. Back in 6th gen and arguably 7th gen you couldn't really go wrong with owning a Playstation or Xbox over a Nintendo system (though almost everyone had a Wii). So far 8th gen just seems very strange to me as most big AAA publishers are following trends of selling half of the game full price and then charging double to get the complete experience, and when it comes to Nintendo....well, the Wii U has great first party titles but almost nothing else due to poor business decisions on Ninty's part. Everyone seems to be fucking up in some way and it's worrying.

I have faith that by the end 8th gen there will be some great games on all three systems, and there already are some, but I don't think that it will be as good as last gen. I will probably switch to primarily gaming on PC for 9th gen so I can at least have my complete library there if things get any worse.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

I'm not claiming that Nintendo is "naturally better" . Just that so far, they've been doing a better job of actually getting games that are worth the hype in the end. The Wii U while not doing quite as bad as it initially was also actually had quite a few games that are actually fun and don't have to resort to being just fancy smancy ports of hashes from the previous gen.

Back in 6th gen and arguably 7th gen you couldn't really go wrong with owning a Playstation or Xbox over a Nintendo system (though almost everyone had a Wii).

Maybe So when it comes to 6th gen, Dreamcast games ported into the GameCube notwithstanding, but in 7th gen, the Wii wasn't just a powerhouse on the gimmick alone; you'd be missing out on a mass of titles, but that's a story for another topic.

[Willsy]

As Hogfather said, the additional content for Arkham Knight does sound tempting but it's better to wait for an inevitable sale. Ultimately as long as the base game is as good as they are making it out to be then it's not really tat much of a problem. It's a problem when the base game itself is lacking and the DLC is intended to fill those holes. Evolve is an example of this and thankfully it didn't do terribly well.

I think I am just as indifferent to the way the industry is heading as everyone else. I'm getting pretty tired of overhyped releases and DLC/Microtransactions up the wazoo and the actual game cases we buy are just half of the experience. I'm not totally against DLC though, in fact I think it's good when it actually adds on to the game, like in Grand Theft Auto IV or Mario Kart 8. We need more instances like that.

[Blacklightning]

 

This image was made at least five years ago and for fuck's sake it's somehow become more relevant over time.

 

Goddamnit.

[shdowhunt60]

I remember the days of expansion packs: back when $20 could add a whole new game on top of your game. I miss those days.